#I only want 1... I don't really know how to sell things online

[kremlin]

@wikwalker hi sure yes anything to give me an excuse to procrastinate the post i should be writing right now. here are all teh drugs and how to manage them. you can trust me, a drug addict

first of all: https://www.erowid.org/ , erowid always

don't be afraid of drugs, if they're the right drugs, you should do them since they will be a blast regardless and overcoming fear is also good (but outside the scope here)

OK to do as much as you want: alcohol - social benefit greatly outweighs health effects, no reason to avoid if predisposed to abuse since that'll happen sooner or later. what can i say? don't be a fucking dork. when you start drinking, really overdo it as much as possible without dying and get a few real nasty hangovers under your belt so you know how much is the right amount to drink.

weed - innocuous enough to be fine but will make you stupid in the long term. make sure to only buy from a real drug dealer and never some legal institution. cut it out when you're a "real adult". don't smoke weed and watch TV routinely, go out and do things so you naturally grow to hate it. good to go through this as early as possible to minimize the time you spend as a cringe weed enthusiast

i guess those are the only two.

ok to do infrequently (annually): "lsd" - or whatever it is, probably not lsd, blah blah blah, if it works and is sold on blotter its fine and won't make you go nuts or whatever. opt for a better psychadelic imo. see psych rule at bottom of section

mushrooms - better than acid since you know what they are. rule of thumb is to always do more than you think you want. minimum 1/8oz. see psych rule at bottom of post

dmt - if you somehow have a dmt hookup you don't need to be reading any of this. lasts 10 minutes which leads to tendency to way overdo it, don't do this, my favorite webcomic artist is permanently crazy from exactly that. using a crack pipe is also not the uhhhh most dignifying-feeling thing to do either. it's harder than you think.

mdma - for use at electronic music event or rave. overuse causes brain lesions or something.

coke - wait until you're in your 20s, have maxed out your roth IRA for a couple of years in a row, and havent missed a car payment in a similar timeframe. better still if you've worked a very shitty low paying job and know the value of a dollar. if you still find yourself buying candy you're not ready. too expensive to be worth it to get hooked on. know that you are VERY ANNOYING to anyone who also isn't high. don't fuck around with the guy selling it to you. avoid discussing or thinking about business ideas. you can't afford to make it a habit + kinda turns you into a piece of shit after a while, but at least a very interesting one

ketamine - another sick drug that rules, but save it for a special occasion. don't try and go into the k-hole your first time

rule for psychedelics - you get one good strong trip a year and that's it, make it count, always opt for doing a bit more than a bit less. but don't make it a habit, otherwise you turn into a very stupid very annoying "hippy" style cliché and believe in ghosts, aliens, crap like that.

ok to try once prescription opiates/benzodiazepine (xanax), valium, this kind of shit - worth trying so you can go "holy shit, this stuff is way way way too good to ever use responsibly" and then never do again. especially if you're white. for some reason we just can't handle this shit. if a doctor prescribes it to you, idk, that's your call to make.

ayhuasca - this is just dmt in a different form. do some other psychadelics a number of times before you do this. once you realize the whole "substantial visual hallucinations" thing is made up, its time. do exactly this: -buy root online (legal). receive box of dirt -boil dirt into "tea" (read erowid for exact recipe) -take over-the-counter anti nausea medicine or anything that will give you a stronger stomach -drink tea (its nasty as fuck, get it down quick) -have someone bigger than you keep an eye on you for the next five hours. -have the experience, which is absurdly intense, has no bearing to the real world, etc etc. don't be a bitch and throw up, if you do it'll only last an hour or so. again there is no way to provide a consistent description of the experience except that you will meet god. you only ever need to do this once and never again. trust me

peyote/salvia/etc - try em if you want, you'll never ever want to again afterwords. these are drugs for idiot teenagers too lame to get real drugs. imagine being very very sick from poison and utterly terrified at the same time. No good

whippets/nitrous oxide - just find a dentist that uses it and don't bother creating hundreds of pounds of trash on your floor for this crap that lasts ten seconds. you have to understand the extremely short timeframe coupled with the cost makes zero sense. go to a phish concert parking lot and do some people watching -- you do not want to be these people. only use is as a motivator to get routine dental exam. also if you somehow manage to make it a heavy habit your fucking legs stop working, no shit, but they start working again once you quit.

don't ever do heroin/meth/pcp - is is truly a mystery why you should never do these 🙄

synthetic weed/k2/shit from the gas station - it is so funny that they sell this as "weed that won't pop you on a drug test". its not weed. it is some dubious chemical sprayed on yard waste. smoke it to have a terrible time and go nuts. only buy drugs from legitimate drug dealers!

kratom - anyone's guess as to why this is legal but it's heroin for pussies. its still heroin

dxm/cough syrup - do you ever wonder why it is exclusively teenagers robotripping? it's because it sucks ass. is like a cheesegrater on your brain in terms of health effects with repeated usage. you're better than this king

inhalants - these are at the bottom of the list for a reason. do not huff gas. don't huff paint. do not consume computer duster. not fun + fastest way to make yourself a complete, uh, (word i can't say anymore) and then dead

not listed quaaludes- unavailable due to no longer being manufactured. these ruled apparantly

sincis2c - unavailable due to not existing, i just made this up

amphetamines - cannot provide objective take here. they're my albatross, lifelong (posted 4:55am natch)

#posts i will be deleting

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for giving a friend tickets to a concert that I originally bought for a different friend?

This kind of petty drama tbh but my friends are divided over this whole thing and I worry that the way I acted was wrong.

I (16) bought 4 tickets to a concert that I really wanted to see, intending to ask my friends to go with me for my birthday. Because I was the one who wanted to go, and I know none of my friends are super into this artist, I thought it was only fair that I bought the tickets. They were like £70 each and I spent some of the money I got as gifts to buy them.

I asked 1 friend who has kind of been my on and off best friend for the past 4 years, we'll call her E, to go with m. She asked if we could also invite someone she's friends with, who I don't know that well- let's call her O. I wasn't super happy with the idea but I really wanted E to come and I thought maybe it could be a good way to get to know O more. The asked a few of other friends if they wanted the last ticket but they were either busy or didn't know if they would be allowed (the concert was happening in another city) so the last ticket wasn't claimed for a while.

The week of the concert arrived and I ended up in hospital because I dislocated my knee. I was told I probably shouldn't go to a concert because I should be on rest for a few days. I was pretty upset but there wasn't really anything I could do about it. I let E know I couldn't go anymore and that I was just gonna post the tickets for sale online. I told her she could buy hers if she still wanted to go. She didn't reply so I had a feeling she was pissed about it. On the day of the concert, the tickets hadn't been bought. I was home from school all day but a few of my friends came by after to see how I was doing.

This is when I learned that E had told everyone that I had given her all four tickets and that she had told two guys from the year above that they could have my ticket and the spare one for free if they gave her and O a ride to the concert. I tried calling E but she didn't pick up or reply to texts. I'll admit I was kind of angry. The girls who came to see me after school said they would buy the tickets from me and go to the concert if the tickets were still available. So I sold them the tickets for £50 each (that was all the had on them at the time and I was fine with getting at least some of the money back versus giving them to E and some random people for free) and they went to the concert.

A few hours before the concert started, E showed up at my house and asked for the tickets. I told her I had sold them to some other friends and she kicked OFF. She said I had given her at least her and O's tickets as a gift and that I couldn't just take that back. She had the guy from the year above come up to my house and ask where the tickets were too, though he seemed confused about the whole thing and was pretty understanding when I said I had bought them for my birthday but got injured so I decided to sell them. Eventually my mum had to ask them to leave because E was just yelling at me, saying that I was a shitty friend, and I was pretty upset.

Things have been so tense in school since the concert. Some of my friends don't believe that I never promised E all of the tickets after I got injured, so they're really mad at me and the friends who went to the concert. The whole thing is really awkward and I'm starting to feel like maybe it was an asshole move on my part. I don't know. E basically hasn't spoken to me since. I knew she had made plans with the tickets so I guess it was bad of me to sell the tickets to those other friends. I just feel like she shouldn't have assumed I would give them all away to her for free? Especially when I told her ahead of time that she could buy the tickets, otherwise I was gonna try selling them. She never replied to let me know she wanted them. AITA?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

[greyias]

I really don’t want swtor to shut down it’s the only eu thing that’s active we have left

I knew these asks were going to start coming in.

So for those who haven't heard, it was reported, and then later confirmed by Keith Kanneg on the forums, that EA is "selling" SWTOR to another developer, Broadsword. For those who want to read the article discussing it, you can read here: https://www.ign.com/articles/star-wars-the-old-republic-development-third-party-bioware

TL;DR -- It's not shutting down. The servers are going to stay active for a while

There's a few points to note here:

If I understand things correctly, EA actually owns Broadsword. So EA is in fact not actually offloading a property, I think what's actually happening is BioWare Austin itself is being divvied out and would not be surprised to see if that branch is shut down

At least half of the SWTOR dev team is part of this move, so the key things to keep an eye on is which members of the dev team are moving. If the narrative staff is kept intact, then we have more story ahead of us beyond what's been written, and they've confirmed we're getting 7.3, 7.3.1, and 7.4. It's important to note that their production timeline is generally a year out from things being written, so story-wise, if they have narrative staff, we'll likely still have some story drops ahead of us

SWTOR is profitable (it hit over $1 billion in profit several years ago), and I will admit I don't have the best understanding of video game finances, but my impresion it was far into the black and maybe not an enromous cash cow, but a decent consistent revenue stream. EA is a publisher that is about profits, so as long as the game is profitable, even if there's not new story drops, the game will stay online

Disney has seemingly taken a recent interest in SWTOR after mostly ignoring it after its acquisition of Star Wars, even going so far as to finally acknowledge the general KOTOR/SWTOR era in their presentations last year at Celebration. Does this ultimately mean anything? I don't know, but SWTOR is one of the longest running current properties with a stable player base. They're just as interested in profit as EA. Probably another indicator that the game will keep running for a while.

Other properties that Broadsword operates, such as Dark Age of Camelot and Ultima Online, are old games. Ultima Online was released in 1997, and the servers are still active. So like, I think regardless of what happens in regards of the story, we're not losing the ability to log in and play the game

Long term subscriptions - I remember reading, and forgive me, because I've long forgotten the source, that a key indicator if the servers are going offline is to also keep an eye on the six-month subscription option. Basically, if suddenly the only option for subs goes down to one month, that's when to worry about being able to actually play the game.

This is probably not about SWTOR, but BioWare as a whole. It seems there's a leadership issue at the main Alberta office that's causing issues. This is likely an Anthem issue all over again, but Anthem this time happens to be the Mass Effect and Dragon Age properties. Unfortunately, BioWare Austin looks like it's going to suffer the consequences of that, even though they've been running a tight ship overall compared to the rest of the branches. I feel for them. This sucks.

Now I'm not an oracle, I have no idea if this is ultimately a good or bad thing for the game itself. There's a lot of evidence for both sides of the coin, so right now the best thing is to wait and see. We at least have the promise of the next two patches. Let's focus on enjoying that, and celebrating what we love about our silly space game.

If you love the game, keep playing it. Spend money on it, and keep it profitable and it will stay around. Be kind and supportive of the devs, who regardless of how this shakes out, are going through a major transition. But immediately decrying an active game's death and going into doom and gloom is not going to help things.

Will we get more story beyond 7.4? I do not know one way or the other. I hope we do, but it's hard to say for certain on that front. But I do believe we'll still have our toons and be able to replay all of the released content for quite a while to come. Again, for now I'm just going to enjoy my favorite game, and support it as long as I have it. Even if this inevitably means it's going to change.

#i will say #they made a significant investment in regards to the upcoming date night stuff #as its all fully voiced #which involves a LOT of voice actors #so i just don't know guys #i'm just going to focus on loving my game #in all its quirks and quibbles #but will probably be muting or unfollowing anyone being overtly negative about this news #as i just don't have it in me to see a constant stream of negativity about my happy place right now #you do you #we all cope in our own ways #i'm trying to remain cautiously hopeful #forgive me i got about four hours of sleep last night #because insomnia has to insomnia #so i hope this came across well

[tokyo-tower-symbolism]

I've been meaning to get into the re:live game story for a while now, but I don't know how necessary the event stories are in comparison to the main and school stories...

do you have a recommended reading order for main story and events if the timeline makes them interspersed?

Uhh, there was this one good google doc that had a bunch of stuff like what stories were important for each character, but I cannot find that right now so I'll do my best from memory but honestly I might miss a couple things so my bad.

Edit: thank you @pallastronomy for finding the doc in question, i really wanted to read that again too

To read it you can go to the wikia, read it on karth.top, or look up the parts on Youtube. That last one might be the best since you'll get the full visual novel experience.

So first off I would suggest reading the first part of the story, so Main Story chapters 1-6. Well, suggest is a strong word. I think those chapters kinda suck, but I guess they're necessary for the premise and to introduce the characters? But then again they abandon the original premise half way in favor of the performance festival so whatever. And if you want a better introduction to the characters you should read the School Stories (ignoring SJH) and also maybe watch Shoujo Cante All Starlight. So really I don't suggest you read those chapters but

I think at this point you are can read the event stories from "Hello to Halloween" to "Surprise! Rehearsal Friends!"

And you don't need to read them all, but they're fun! I couldn't really tell you which ones are super important to the plot, sorry about that. Honestly my personal opinion at this point is to just pick a couple characters you like to follow and read their stories. You can see who participates in each one on the Revue Starlight wikia

Plus, character card bond stories! Each event has a couple gacha cards they're trying to sell, and sometimes they're not super related to the story, but sometimes they are. If someone references something that happened off screen, it either happened in an earlier event or in the bond card, but I'd still only read the bond cards once you're done reading the event is over since otherwise they can be spoilers. Just think of those as prequels instead of preludes.

Then at this point you can read Main Story Chapters 7-11. And I really do think you should read these since they are juicy. There's a new plot and we really get to dive deep into the ReLive characters and see their individual pasts and why they now stand on stage. It's great.

Now for the Event Stories, feel free to read any story from "Starry Diamond Tragic Orion" up until "Royal Retainer"

Although now I gotta bring up some caveats. Anything with Seiran is not going to matter to the main plot of ReLive, and if you're curious about them, then that gets into Stage Play Territory which is much easier to follow but not in ReLive.

And honestly same with the Seisho only stories. They're fun, don't get me wrong, but they kinda don't affect the developments of the cast at all.

Starry Diamond is a live show that had some Revues, so some of the relive events are just rehashings of those. Except Venus & Cupid Story, which is a sequel to Zeus no Chuusai from the Starry Diamond Live, and that revue is actually super important to the Yumeoji Sisters's story but it is not in ReLive.

And once you've had your fill of those stories, you can start reading Main Story Chapters 12-18, Arcana Arcadia. And this one is really good. Iirc, the main revue starlight writer came in for these parts. There's some info that directly leads into the movie. And it's honestly great.

But the issue is that there are intermission bond stories that need to be read in the middle of the chapters. If you are reading it online that can be kind of pain, but in the game I think it's in the right order? I could not say for sure since I don't actually play it. Anyways, here's the vague order according to the wikia, but I'm not 100% on this

Chapter 12: 1-2

Chapter 13: Tower, Hermit, Empress, 1-3, High Priestess, 4-5, Magician, 6-9, Hanged Man, Strength, 10-15

Chapter 14: Wheel of Fortune, Chariot, 1-2, Lovers, 3-14, Faith, Hierophant, 15

Chapter 15: 1-2, Devil, Sun, Justice, 3-15

Chapter 16: Death, Charity, 1-15

Chapter 17: Temperance, 1, Fool, 2-4, World, Judgement, 5-15

Chapter 18: Hope, 1-9, Emperor, 10-14, 15/Moon

So yeah, after this you have basically free reign to read the remaining event stories. The next big ongoing plot seems to be about Siegfeld Junior High, but that one also isn't really connected to the previous stories at all.

Also some cards have connecting bond stories even without events, such as the Frontier Rangers, Orpheus, Camelot, Snow White, and Yin-Yang.

But for real, I think the best way to get into the story is to read the main story and then see what characters you like. Then you can read along all their bond stories and events that they star in, and maybe you'll find other characters that stand out. If you are missing any information, usually characters will reference whatever they are talking about, so you won't be completely lost.

So yeah, I hope you have fun with the relive story! It touches on a lot of the themes from the show and honestly I just really liked seeing the characters again. And also Arcana Arcadia is great, just so great.

#asks #revue starlight

[bug-memory]

Muriel bjd update

An update about my Muriel ball-jointed doll(s)!

I am planning a Kickstarter for this project. It is not ready yet but I hope to have it ready later this month or early next month. I do NOT plan to sell these online apart from the KS campaign, because of recasting. I plan to sell them at furry conventions and ball-jointed doll conventions if I can get myself to one (I live in Florida, though). There will likely be fewer than 100 of these but I haven't calculated all of that yet. I have a serial numbering system and a way to authenticate them that I'm excited to try in my next prototype!

After discussing having them casted, I think I will be 3D printing them myself, as the open mouth faceplate cannot be casted, and I don't want to deal with having to print that anyway and making it fit a casted one... If I regret that choice, I will learn for next time lol. The next doll I am working on (my Harold) I thinking might be a better choice for casting, as they would be one color and have a closed mouth.

I was using Siraya Tech Fast Mecha for my next prototype, which was to be the Official Muriel in her natural colors. What happened was basically two things: 1) resin is expensive and 2) it got really really hot outside, which separates Fast Mecha from the Tenacious I mix it with. My next prototype is basically on hold until it stops being 100 degrees out, which it has been since May... Fast Mecha is a compounded resin and does separate. One of the tails I printed for another doll had a transparent tip because the resin separated at the end of the print once it got hot out, so I'm not going to have that happen with a 20-hour print!

Anyway, I'm going to try a few different mixes of the good resin with some ABS-like and Tenacious, as I like how those feel more than Fast Mecha on its own. Mecha is kind of like, powdery, or has a rougher sort of texture, seems to get dirty easier (or I am bad at cleaning it) and is not as transparent. I liked how you could see through the ears a little, like real ears, and Mecha robbed me of that lol, so I want to try cutting it to like a 50/50 ABS-like and Mecha mix, and then add 1/5 of Tenacious to that (math is not my thing but I always add my Tenacious at the end now; it gives me extra resin to not run out in the print and helps my brain calculate things). Also, the cleaning process for Mecha is like, they tell you to toothbrush the entire thing with alcohol, and I want to streamline my post processing, so a resin mix would be good, as long as it doesn't create the scratches in the joints. I want to get it down to a ratio where there is no powdery grinding residue on the joints. The only review I can find said they did 50/50 Mecha and Tenacious and it still did not powder itself at that ratio, so I'm hoping I can do that but with the ABS-like resin I like.

So! Stay tuned for updates for the Kickstarter. I know a few people on here expressed interest and I'm excited at the possibility of actually being able to send some Muriels out into the world, if I can generate enough interest!

#muriel bjd #muriel #ball jointed doll #bjd

[gender-trash]

like the grand innovation of ros is that actually now 1) you don't have to rewrite your MESSAGING FRAMEWORK from scratch every time and you get a bunch of debug tools for free and 2) theres a bunch of prototype grade components you can probably plug together to get a demo if you know what you're doing

it's great but it's not like. whatever's going on in webservices world. and the webservices people and vcs who are used to it HATE this!!! i interned for a really crappy startup once whose entire concept was "hey, why is robotics not like webservices? clearly we need to reimplement ros but worse and dockerized lol what's hard realtime" and it so clearly had only survived as long as it had because it was The Baby of this VC guy who tried to sell me on javascript like it was an abusive boyfriend i should give ~another chance~, and right after i left they hired a new ceo and pivoted to having an actual product. theres ALLLL these guys coming from webservices land who want to pretend really hard that a malfunctioning robot is exactly as disposable as a malfunctioning docker container, and that gluing together preexisting robotics components (largely research-grade code developed on a completely different robot from whatever your product is) is exactly as easy as gluing together APIs, and it ends so badly for them every time. it's adorable.

relatedly my dad has this theory, which i think has a lot of predictive power, about how a company Makes It Big doing one thing (SAAS, or online ads, or B2B software, or like. making computer chips) and then that product cycle cadence/approach is baked into the company culture so hard that they completely flub it when they try to make something that necessitates a different approach. intel fucking sucks at making software because they inevitably drop support after 18 months because when you make a chip you design it and you send it to the fab and then it's out of your hands and there's no real way to "fix bugs" (you just maintain an errata sheet and add more tests so you can catch the bugs in the next chip you design). webservices companies who do continuous deployment or bust are often really really bad at coping with the sales and maintenance cycles of Big Businesses that a lot of b2b software is for. and software people in full generality have a ridiculously hard time with the concept that you can't exactly continuously deploy improved suspension for your robot chassis, because you have to actually crack the robot open on a workbench and swap it out.

in microservices world one of the baked-in cultural attitudes is "cattle not pets" -- your herd of docker containers is like a herd of cattle; when one of them malfunctions you take it out back and shoot it and spin up a new one, you don't waste energy on failure recovery. when you bring this approach to robotics land it inevitably fails! you have spent 4 or 5 figures minimum on a robot, that thing's a fucking pet! and also, when it malfunctions, it's flailing around potentially doing damage out here in the real world, which is... generally considered to be bad. there have to be layers and layers and layers of safety systems and fallbacks and failure recovery logic and everything needs to be designed to fail into a state that won't maim anyone, or it inevitably will fail, and maim someone. even just "if something goes wrong stop moving immediately" has some complexity to it.

webservices people are also big on "eventual consistency" and almost nothing in robotics is physically safe to do on an eventual consistency basis or else your robot will eventually (but consistently!) destroy itself and/or anything around it. the closer you get to low level control the more important it is to have hard timing guarantees and that's generally sort of antithetical to the philosophy that hardware should be as abstracted away as possible

#vc guy cornered me in an otherwise empty room with no windows for this speech too it was . bad #the trashcan speaks #robotics

[liveforjeongin]

hi umm, can u write a lee!Felix and ler!Hyunjin with prompts, 18, 21 and 53? Have a good day!

Sketchbook

Okay I absolutely LOVE Hyunlix tickle fics so I was really happy writing one myself

Also, I wasn't sure which list you meant for the prompts so I assumed it was list #1 cuz list #2 has only 30 prompts but still not sure so I'm sorry if it wasn't the prompts you asked for💔💔💔💔

Anddd, thanks for the request anon, I hope you have a good day too<3

-tickle fic, if you don't like that you can keep scrolling

requested by: anon

warnings: nibbles, raspberries

Prompt 18, list #1: “I’m gonna count down from 10.”

Prompt 21, list #1: “I know other ways to make you talk…”

Prompt 53, list #1: “You wouldn’t.”

➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷

It was all normal in 3racha+Hyunjin dorm. It was about 2pm and 3racha were on the company producing some songs cuz... Why not? So Hyunnie was home alone, on his bed staring at the ceiling.

Until he got an idea. He wanted to paint something, but didn't know exactly what to paint, so he opted for taking a look at his old sketchbook, to maybe get some inspiration from that, but he couldn't find it.

Huh... He could've swore it was in the drawer...

Not willing to give up, kept on searching it, but still couldn't find it. Hmm... Maybe someone took it? But who would've done that? It was surely not one of 3racha guys, they respect a lot Hyunjin's artist things and they never touch anything.

Maybe Lee Know that they he and Chan wreck the shit of of him?... Nah, Chan wouldn't have let him.

Seungmin was totally discarded, he barely went to visit the other dorm, and he never touches others' things unless it is to organize them.

Jeongin last night? Nope, he only went to tickle Changbin so just was in his room and in the living room, and barely had entered before at Hyunjin's room, so it wasn't Jeongin neither.

There was only one member left.

Felix.

I know what you're thinking. "Why would a sunshine like Felix do that?" Well, I don't know, and Hyunjin neither, but then the realization hit Hyunjin like a cold water bucket.

"I'm gonna sell this online" Said Felix once in an interview on GQ, referring to that sketchbook.

No... He would never do that...

Or he would?

There was only one way to find out, so Hyunjin immediately went to maknaes+Lino dorm, in where there was also just one member, casually Felix.

"Hi, Lixie" Hyunjin waved with a small smile.

"Oh hi, Hyunjinnie, what you doing here? You almost never come" waved back as he moved aside to let Hyunjin in.

"Nothing much, just came to ask you a little question" entered the dorm.

"Oh really? What's it?" Felix asked as closed the door and sat on the couch, where Hyunjin sat too.

"Have you seen my sketchbook, Lix?"

Felix seemed visibly nervous for the question "Y-Your sketchbook? You mean that old sketchbook you used when you first started to paint and draw?" wanted to make sure, the panic visible in his voice

"Yes, Lix, that old sketchbook I used when I first started to paint and draw"

"U-Ummm... Yeah, uhhh, I..." Felix was about to confess, but decided not to in the last second "... Haven't seen it since... A lot time ago" lied.

"Oh really? Are you sure? Cuz you know... I know other ways to make you talk..." Hyunjin grinned slightly as he said this.

Felix paralyzed for a second, and then spoke up "You wouldn't" said, sounding extremely flustered cuz he knew what the ferret boy was about to do.

"Oh, Yongbokkie... Trust me, I definitely would. You sure you're not gonna confess?" The taller one teased.

"I... I... Ummm... I have... Nothing to confess" Felix denied, blushing slightly.

"Oh really? Alright, since this is how it is going to be, I'mma count down from 10" Hyunjin warned, and started counting, making the younger extremely flustered.

"N-No... Hyunjin... Hyunnie please... Plehehease don't" the freckled boy started giggling in anticipation.

"Four... Three... Two... One" Hyunjin finished counting, and immediately jumped over Felix, sitting on his hip and going wild squeezing his sides.

"N-NOHOHO HYUnjihihihIHIHIHIN! IT'S REAlly bahaHAHAHAHAD!" Yongbok started squirming the more he could, but surprisingly, he wasn't trying to stop Hyunjin, just layed there and received the tickles.

"You still not gonna talk? Alright" then proceeded to lift the younger's arms and scribbled slowly and slightly on his left armpit.

"H-Hyuhuhuhunjihihin! That tihihihickles! It really dohohohoes!" Said Felix as he blushed more.

"Just tell me what I wanna know, Lixie, and we'll finish this~" Hyunjin started to go down on the younger's torso to tickle his ribs slightly, an ultimate death spot for the freckled boy.

"N-NOHOHOHOHO! HYUNJIN, HYUNJIN PLEASE NOT THEHEHEHERE!"

"Aww... But Lixie... You haven't told me to stop... Have you? Besides, I'm being the gentlest! How can you still laughing like that?" Hyunjin used a bit more of pressure and speed to tickle Felix on his ribs.

Lix couldn't help but blush at the older's comment, he wasn't supposed to figure out how much he was loving this "HYUHUHUHUHUNJINNIHIHIHIE! PLEASE NOT THERE, NOT THEHEHHEHEHERE, ANYWHERE BUT THEHEHEHERE!"

Seeing the younger wasn't gonna talk still, the ferret boy decided to go really bad now, so he took a breath and leaned down to blew a pretty long raspberry on the younger's ribs.

And, as if that weren't enough to absolutely kill Felix, Hyunjin also used one of his hands to poke, scribble, and squeeze all over Lix's belly and sides, while occasionally also changed between blowing raspberries on his ribs and nibble his sides.

Needless to say this was absolutely wilding Felix crazy, he was laughing and squirming madly.

"AAAAAHAHHAHAHHAHA HYUHUHUHUHUNJIHIHIN! HAHAHAHHAHAHA FIHIHIHINE! FINE FIHIHIHIHIHINE! I SURRENDEHEHEHEHER! I TOOK YOUR SKETCHBOHOHOHOHOOK! I STILL GOHOHOHOHHOHOHOT IT! IT'S IN MYHYHYHYHY DRAWEHEHEHER! PLEHAHAHAHHAHAHASE STOP NOHOHOHOHOW!" Was the last thing the sunshine boy said before his laugh went silent at the overwhelming feeling of the tickles.

Hyunjin, of course, stopped immediately, he didn't want to kill his little sunshine at all.

After stopping, Hyunjin got off of Felix and walked to the boy's room, opened his drawer and took back his sketchbook, after that, he came back to the living room with Lix, with some water for him.

Felix, meanwhile, was still layed on the couch, all blushed, recovering his breath and with a couple more giggles still scaping his mouth. Hyunjin handed him the glass of water and Lixie sat up to drink it.

After a while, he spoke up again "Thank you" Felix said.

"Did you just thank me? For what?" Hyunjin asked, kinda confused.

"For... You know, tickling me" Felix answered, a lot embarrassed.

"You're thanking me for tickling you?"

Felix stayed silent for a couple seconds, and then nodded shyly with his head.

Hyunjin couldn't help but smile and pull the sunshine into a hug "Oh, Lix... You're too cute"

They just cuddled for a a while on the couch, and after some minutes, they fell asleep. Minho, Seungmin and Jeongin came back home after about 10 minutes later, and found them sleeping on the couch. They found it extremely cute.

Minho brought a blanket of Felix and put it over them two, to make sure they're comfy enough.

That afternoon, Felix dreamt with the scene of Hyunjin tickling him, while Hyunjin... He limited to enjoy the warmth feeling of cuddling with his sunshine.

➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷➷

Hellooooo again😻

Okay I know the name is WAY much simple than the usual but I couldn't think of anything else so😻

I also have a lot of requests so I'm gonna try to finish them this week (emphasis in try)

I've like 8 more to go so I'mma keep working on them

I hope you guys liked this one<3

#skz tickle #kpop tickle #stray kids tickle #tickle #tickle content #ahhie's blog

[iraprince]

Hey Ira how do you finish stuff? i've been working on a project for months and i just cant find a way to complete it

see, the thing is my first instinctive response to this question was "idk, because i feel like i never finish anything either!"

i mean, obviously i DO, i finish stuff for work etc and if i really never finished anything then there would be nothing on this blog. but from where i'm standing it feels like the amount of stuff i've actually finished is like, a tiny tiny drop in the massive ocean of stuff i've THOUGHT about or WANT to do or maybe have even STARTED but are all collecting dust on the back burner

i think ive had the idea for project catboy since, like, 2017 or something, and i still only have the first draft outline done; i keep thinking i'm not ready to do it justice yet. i think the villains win has existed for a similar amount of time as a concept and i DID finally start it but i've been too busy/occupied w other things to continue. i've been wanting to open an online shop and sell prints + merch for years now, and have done maybe one or two steps in that direction, but then it keeps stalling and getting lost amidst my other more pressing to-dos

basically: i am always working on projects for months (and years!) and never finding ways to complete them, and any personal project i do end up finishing feels like a huge outlier most of the time

so i don't really have solid advice bc i struggle w it so much myself, but i guess i do have a "hey, you're not alone." just keep banging away at things and eventually some of it will pop through, even if most of it doesn't. if i try really hard to skim over the stuff that DOES get done and find a common thread, it's either 1. i literally Had to (work stuff etc,) or 2. i was EXTREMELY passionate/excited about it, and i had a plan/the scope was visible + digestible (i knew how it was going to end or i was kind of aware of all the parts that needed to come together, rather than just kind of writing/drawing endlessly into the abyss without being able to visualize how much progress i was making). if there's no end in sight, maybe the next best step is getting more specific/granular about what the end would actually look like; a lot of times i find that i THINK i know what a project would need to be done, but in reality it's all just a pretty vague concept in my head, and i never actually sat down and hammered out the steps of what i need to do/make! if you have a fixed endpoint, you can ALWAYS be inching toward it, even if it takes forever.

(also, do it shittier. im being so serious. whenever u get really stuck, do a shitty job just to get onto the next step. if you hit the finish line you can always go back and improve/redo things, but a lot of times you might look back and be like "actually the low effort version is fine, in the big picture")

[notcaycepollard]

I just saw your Barbie jacket and fell in love, such beautiful work!

I want to get into sewing but have no idea where to start, do you have any tips?

Yes! FYI, I had the privilege of learning to sew at a really young age, around 10-12, thanks to 1) learning the basics from my mum 2) having a second-hand sewing machine I could futz around on as I pleased. But I truly think anyone can learn to sew, it does not have to be a childhood skill.

If you want to try it out before committing to buying anything except fabric, there are almost always community or adult education classes or courses that can teach you basics on their machines. Depends where you live but you might find them through your local community college or high school night class, library, YMCA/community centre, or even by asking at a fabric/craft store.

I highly recommend taking a couple of classes if you're a complete beginner - they can teach things like laying out and cutting patterns, threading a machine, the basic stitch and finishing options, etc. Often they can also teach you how to use your own machine, if you've bought one but you're a beginner.

If you want to try at home, at minimum you will need:

A basic sewing machine - you can very often find good second-hand machines online (ebay, craigslist, local buy/sell Facebook pages). Mine is a Janome and I've had it for almost 20 years, but the old 70s steel Singer machines are fantastic in terms of longevity.

A pair of reasonably sharp fabric scissors. You do not need to pay a million dollars for the best scissors, but going up a level from basic craft scissors, and keeping them only for cutting fabric (no paper) will make your cutting-out experience a lot easier.

A packet of sewing pins. For pinning down patterns and seams. I like the glass-head pins since they don't melt if you iron over them.

A tape measure for measuring yourself and checking your seam width, hems, etc.

An iron and ironing board (or table with a thick towel laid down, if space is a real problem).

A flat surface to lay out and cut your fabric - dining table or floor both work fine.

A needle for hand-sewing - to sew on things like buttons.

A box of empty bobbins to wind your bobbin thread onto.

In terms of patterns - there are a huge range of indie pattern companies online now (meaning they're not the big commercial patternmakers like Butterick). Most often, you can buy their patterns as a PDF and print it out on your home computer. In all honesty I much prefer indie patterns to commercial - they're often a lot more up to date with style, and usually not as expensive - but they can also be limited in terms of sizing, the range of style options, and some people really like a printed paper pattern instead of having to print your own. I recommend Papercut Patterns as an indie option that's great for beginners.

Indie instructions can also sometimes be a bit confusing (I find Etsy patterns the worst for this) although often you can email them and ask - or Google "[name of pattern] sew along" for a video tutorial. You can also find step by step video or blog post tutorials for pretty much every sewing technique, including things like putting in a zip, sewing buttonholes, etc.

Once you've picked your pattern, you'll obviously need fabric. There are a million people online who espouse the virtue of sewing with old bedsheets from thrift stores; in all honesty I don't love doing this because 1) I get a huge amount of joy from beautiful fabrics 2) if you want to make things that look 'professional'/store-bought, bedsheet cotton is not always your best friend. BUT it is probably the cheapest option for fabric, and a very good way to start or to test that a pattern fits and you know how to make it before you cut it out in the nice linen that cost $30 a yard. Using thrifted fabric is also obviously really eco-conscious, although a lot of fabric stores (especially independent ones vs chain stores like Spotlight or Joann) make a point of selling 'deadstock' fabric - fabric leftover from a clothing designer's run.

That's probably enough to start, honestly just fuck around and have fun with it, screw up a few times, lean into the imperfection. I still regularly scrap projects that aren't working for me, no shame in doing so as long as you're enjoying yourself!

#sewing

[crazysodomite]

i see a ton of issues with 'creativity' in art online spaces on social media... not just the 'adoptables' community or whatever but it's REALLY bad in there. and i think i know why... man it's hard to structure my thoughts...

'originality' is actually extremely narrow in art spaces specifically on social media. people get extremely fixated on having an 'original art style' but at the same time all art is being funneled into 1 specific way of making it. and when someone DOES go outside of the norm it becomes their 'thing'. their 'brand'. read: what sells their art/gets them popular.

a few examples: so many posts on the internet complaining about hating drawing lineart, having to redo the line 100 times, etc.

lineart is immediately suggested for beginners and most art is based on lineart first, which makes some people hate art. and they end up thinking doing it any other way is 'wrong' or 'too difficult'. beginners feel like they must make their art like this. sketch > lineart > color fill > shading > detail. when in reality you really don't have to do any of this at all. your art can truly be anything and anything that you hate about creating art can just be removed from the process. am i making any sense? i think i went through this process too. i started out doing lineart and i fucking hated it. i couldn't initially realize that painting is the easiest and most fun way for me to do art. because most art advice on social media (how most people nowadays try to learn i think) is aimed at this specific way to do it.

we aren't giving advice on how to explore art and creativity but only how to make your art most appealing...

same thing with smaller stuff like not being able to do the second eye in art. you don't even HAVE to make your art symmetrical. you can obviously desire that result but i feel like some people aren't even considering the possibility. and this isn't just because people are just lacking in creativity. if your art is 'too weird' and 'not pretty' 'outside of the norm' you will get bullied and made fun of viciously. your art can only venture outside the norm if it's still appealing. and most people aren't up to taking that risk because a few horrible words about a persons art can end their desire to do it completely!!! am i making any sense. when you venture and see art outside of what's popular on social media it's like your eyes are wide open...

and then, when someone does venture out of the norm in a creative and appealing way, it suddenly becomes 'their brand' and if someone creates something remotely similar to it, it's considered 'plagiarism' and drama and harassment follows. it's MY THING to draw this in that way. you can't get inspired by it. it's MY BRAND.

so we come to the conclusion of people trying to claim ideas as their own only and try to make profit out of it. and attack anyone who threatens 'their thing'. the endless battles over adoptable markings and palettes. the 'style theft'.

the 'my artstyle is so inconsistent'. it's okay to want to feel like your art is truly your own but the reality often is that. 'i need a concrete style so people expect this one specific thing from me and will pay for it' which obviously there's no blame in people trying to make money but the way it affects artists is just horrible.

the 'artist branding' thing is really fucking bad in adoptable spaces. if you're an 'in demand' artist a lot of attention is paid to your art not because people really enjoy it but because it has trade value. and even really gorgeous designs from people are looked over and devalued because they're not a high trade value artist...

im tired of trying to make my art appealing and popular instead of what i like to do. and im also tired of people not being able to appreciate art outside of it's most appealing form and calling ANYTHING outside what appeals to them bad or boring or whatever the fuck. i can really say more but i have trouble structuring my thoughts...

Mommy needs cigarettes 🚬 i just ranted on facebook.

[chipper-asks]

Hi! I've been following you for a good while now and have always rly admired the community you've build, and, your art itself, obviously, it's always very cozy in here. May be a strange question, but as a relatively popular artist on the interned, are there any tips you could share on how to engage and sustain an audience? maybe you know some recourses for artist to get their art seen? I've been an artist posting online for roughly 10 yrs and pretty much failed at accumulating any sort of prominent presence. I don't feel bad about it really, it's not why I do art per say, but these are pretty rough times and unfortunately other means of art monetization grow thinner with stupid updates & algorithms forcing anyone who can't afford payed adds or subscriptions out of business. I kinda have to make use of social media, even if it's not my element in the slightest. Feel free not to answer if you feel like it. Thanks in advance! Also big thanks for your shouts of my art overall, I really appreciate your support!

So I've had a post in my drafts for who knows how long detailing how to build and curate your audience online. But I haven't found a good way to go about posting it because I didn't want it to come off as tooting my own horn xD

BUT YOU HAVE ENABLED ME SO HERE WE GO!!!

(im going to generalize, you may already be doing some of these things but I think its good info for anyone who wants to build an online presence)

1. Engaging your audience

A: First, you have to think of the platform you're sharing your art on and what people use it for. Not even tumblr, but the internet as a whole. It is a place where people form communities and share information. It's also one of the most popular ways to mentally escape; from school, boredom, to the horrors of real life.

So if you want people to find you, make a space where they can escape/feel community.

This means: No callout posting, no venting, no doom posting, no politics, no guilt posting, no anything that would make you unfollow someone else if you were having a bad day.

It's okay to have an occasional vent or political post cause we're human, but trauma dumping is something thats very hard for someone else to read and honestly should you be putting that kind of information online, the internet is a place of community but it also isnt safe.

B: The Value of Fandoms

It's time for some metrics, featuring my own follower count.

I've been on tumblr for 9 years and I have been making an effort to grow my base as a way of getting money as a freelancer (like you) so I started doing this allll the way back in highschool. I can remember each milestone and which fandom I got them in

1,000 I got when I was posting stuff for Undertale

2,000 I got when I was posting stuff for The Property of Hate

there was a big break between these milestones where I was just drawing ocs and object heads and stuff, but nothing I was hyperfixated on

5,000 I got from Hollow Knight

but then something really unexpected happened.

In late 2021 and early 2022 I decided cringe was a worthless social construct and decided to fully indulge in my enjoyment of doodling dragons.

I juuust inched past 5,000 when 2022 started. I Ended Up With 12,000 as 2022 ended. That's more than double. As of posting this I am at 13,600 and its only February.

So how did that happen? I could tout along and say that it was simply luck and I wasn't really making an effort anyway but that's a big fuckin lie, i've been "selling out" this whole time (it's not fucking selling out to post in fandom. You like a thing? You go to the thing's community and post about the thing)

Posting in a fandom is essentially like, now bear with me, advertising for your blog. Fandom is where the eyes are and where the traffic goes. Big tags like #artistsontumblr #tumblrart #art are used OFTEN but they're too general and often people look for things that are specific. Fandoms like Hollow Knight, BNHA, Mob Psycho, The Owl House, etc are currently popping off and have a lot of traffic.

This doesn't necessarily mean that you need to join a popular fandom to post your work in to get followers, it just means that if you're into a show or a media, post it on your main art blog and don't make side blogs. Keep it all together

Why?

Because 5% of those fandom people stick around for YOUR STUFF and those 5% of people are the best goddamn people in the world. You want those 5% to see EVERYTHING you do and THEY'RE the ones who will recommend you to THEIR friends and do outreach on your behalf because they like YOU and not YOUR STUFF.

i fuckin love those guys

So as you hop from fandom to fandom, you're going to lose some people but that's fine. Everyone curates their experience online and if you head off in a direction they don't like then they can deal with it. The rest come along for the ride cause 1: they either really like your stuff or 2: are into the new thing you're getting into.

SO ANYWAY

posting in fandoms under one name is GOOD because it puts everyone in the same bucket that will see your stuff and there's a chance that a few will stick just for your stuff. It is not cheap, its how you reach out to people to help cheer up their day and escape from things stressing them out.

C: What should you post?

So this is something that isn't an exact science but if you're looking to increase your follower count, this is something you can keep in mind.

Because this is the internet and the digital word of escaping from stress, people flock to things that are

1: Familiar 2: Funny 3: Relatable

So i've already been over fandoms and that's something that goes into the Familiar category. Familiar can also mean generalized but still popular concepts, like werewolves, dragons, vampires, apocalyptic scenarios, etc.

The more you trail into something niche, like marine biology, the seelie/unseelie courts, object heads, etc, the less traffic you'll find. There are communities centered around these but they're not massive like certain fandoms.

Which is how you end up with artists who spend hours upon hours on every piece only getting like 14 - 32 notes per piece. It's not lack of people caring or lack of interest, its the fact that these artists haven't "advertised" their blogs in fandom. Those people who end up caring about more personal posts are those 5% you find from fandom spaces. Their Familiar from that fandom begins to include your artwork as Familiar and thus they're more likely to share it.

Funny is simple. Tumblr is a platform of shitposts and memes. Do you have a favorite character in a fandom? Shitpost them. 2 birds with one stone, Familiar and Funny. I can't teach you how to be funny, but if you see something that makes you laugh online, pause and try to find out why and see if you can replicate it. (You wont get it in one go)

Relate-ability is also simple. If someone finds something they can easily associate with they will eagerly tag #mood #me or @ one of their friends in the post.

What doesn't get people following just by itself is your skill.

This sounds really fucking depressing but hear me out.

Your skill in art is a multiplier. It can take those three categories from above and BOOST IT to fantastic new heights. People love things that are from their fandoms that are funny and relate-able. People go FERAL for shit that is from their fandoms that are funny, relate-able AND COOL AS FUCK. If art represented x5 in an equation and you have nothing else, you get 0. If you include any of those three other things and then x5, you get something grand.

2. Sustaining your Audience.

If you want to set up your blog as a platform to eventually gain freelance income from, you need to make it yours and not your audience's.

This is key to prevent burnout and feeling obligation to create for thousands of featureless faces and losing sight of what made you enjoy art in the first place.

It is REALLY EASY to fall into that pit, especially as you grow your audience. When you have a small audience, it's easier to interact one on one with someone. Engagement is exciting when you have a small audience! People? Interested in your work!! Fuck yeah!!

But as you reach those milestones, the vibe begins to change. More and more people demand your attention. People who are new don't see you as an artist they knew from another fandom, they see you as a content creator and that is the worst goddamn stone wheel to get stuck around your neck.

You can still respond to requests and answer silly questions, but now you have to keep in mind that if you draw this little dragon for someone, three other people are going to ask for their own little dragons. And that's fine because you love dragons and they asked so nicely. You make those dragons but now there's seven people asking for their own dragons and you actually want to work on something other than dragons-- but you made those dragon doodles for those other people so wouldn't it be hypocritical to say no-

It becomes a spiral.

So to prevent that situation from happening, you need to respect your boundaries as an artist and what you will do and what you will draw the line at. If someone doesn't like you for that, they can unfollow.

In terms of posting regularly to sustain your audience, i've found that it helps but ultimately doesn't matter.

(this is a tumblr centric view, i cannot say the same for other platforms)

The way tumblr works resembles a massive recycling facility. You will see shit on your dash from 7 years ago but you dont mind, its how this place works.

It doesn't matter how often you post. You won't lose priority on people's dashboards if you don't make your daily art post. What matters is that you just make the post.

Each post you make is like sending out a bucket of chum into the grand ocean of tumblr. The more buckets of chum you have, the more likely you are to attract fish. The more you post the larger your radius is. The more variety you make in spreading out to different fandoms the wider your range is. And these spots of chum don't go away! They're permanent brown spots in a big blue wasteland and fish will stumble across it and then try to find the source.

Basically, you can disappear for an entire month and then suddenly return out of nowhere and shove 57 posts into a week and then disappear again and people will show up and stick around.

THis post is getting really long and there are probably some things im missing but my hadns are getting achy and i think that's my call to stop :p

if you have anymore questions tho im very willing to answer 👍

#asks #long post #nofandom

[wollfling]

🎀 lolita sales post 🎀

A little mix of styles, I'll post below the cut. I'm open to offers and whatever doesn't sell I'll probably list to lacemarket? Prices in usd, I will provide photos to anyone interested! I just didn't want to go through the hassle of photographing everything. I'll state the condition and notes I have on each piece~ everything has been purchased secondhand.

I've linked lolibrary entries for sizing and release info. Feel free to make offers!!! I based my prices from quick searches on other sites, but I'm flexible. Depending on the item and country I would estimate 20-40$ shipping (im in canada)

I dont really have formal feedback for selling clothes anymore since I haven't in forever, but I do have an online shop where I sell art prints, so I have experience selling things online and whatnot.

Metamorphose Sailor Short Sleeve OP in ivory (2011) - $100

Missing bow (left photo), but still has the tie (like right photo) this dress is so lightweight and perfect for summer, I just don't like how the sleeves fit on my arms. No noticeable damage. I washed it but i havent worn it out!

Btssb Tartan Check Jacket in green (2005) - $180

No damage, only tried on by me. Another wonderful piece but too tight in the arms for me. It's soft, but polyester. I'm honestly so sad about letting this piece go I adore it, but I need to stop holding onto things I won't wear!

Btssb Ribbon Sherbet Skirt in pink (2010) - $40

Really adorable skirt, it's shorter and perfect for casual wear. You can't tell in the stock photos, but the fabric is woven with glitter! Again, washed but I haven't worn it besides trying on.

Aatp Sylvester vest (2011 or 2013) - $80

I think its the women's size, as there is so spider tag. I had forgotten and then realized upon inspecting while writing this that one of the back panel buttons had come off and I must have stored it somewhere to keep safe. I'll look for it (I know I have it somewhere lol) on the offchance I can't find it though I will discount accordingly. Worn by me and washed, there is no other noticeable damage.

Aatp Justin pants in red (2018) - $100

Only tried on by me- I'm going to keep it real with you I'm just too bottom heavy. The waist is full of room but the leg measurement (in average clothing sizing proportion) is really small. I don't understand why they would add so much extra room in the waist and not make the thighs adjustable at all. The sizing doesn't match up with the lolibrary entry, the waist can stretch up to 90cm, and is about 76cm not stretched... the inside measurement of the leg cuff is maybe 46 cm (the fabric is thick so measures 50 on the outside if that makes sense) when wearing this, the top of the waistband was floating around but made a sharp ^ down the back, these shorts will not be flattering if you have wider hips. All of that said they are really beautiful, I adore the fabric, but the lolibrary entry is very misleading!

---

I've run out room for photos in this post and need to locate the second blouse, but I have 2 white bodyline blouses and the strawberry gingham skirt I might bundle all together for idk 50$? I'll have to find them all first, but in case anyone is interested.

---

Other pieces I've been going back and forth on selling are:

victorian maiden velveteen frill bustier in wine (2002)

Metamorphose velveteen high waist ribbon jsk in red (2004) (missing detachable bust panel)

But tbh I can't come up with a reasonable price I'd be willing to sell them at. On the off chance they are someone's #1 dream items and you'd like to make an offer I am open for it but I might turn it down. I would be open to trades for similar items too though! Such as another vm bustier or old meta velveteen op/jsk of the era.

#egl sales #egl community

[langernameohnebedeutung]

Im rewatching season 1 how crazy it is that liv could have- probably not, but it would have definitely changed things- stopped blaines brain business by supplying him with brains herself. It would have been nice to have another zombie during those early days to talk to, esp if liv still believed blaine was making a change in his life or whatever he said. Kinda like what lowell was to her but less british

(I actually have this very similar AU-idea that I like to explore at the bottom of my hindbrain 'what if Liv hadn't seen Blaine in that alleyway and had been willing to buy into his 'repentant drug dealer' persona and they had been on semi-friendly terms for the first season)(though I kind of like the angle that he still does the brain business thing. And Ravi and Liv (and Major, separately) catch on to the fact that a brain business exists and try to find out who is running it - and even clue Blaine in case he can help and perhaps he delivers them wrong information or otherwise manipulates them) so it's a bigger personal betrayal when they find out that it was Blaine all along)

The thing is, I think it's a bit of a veeeery soft retcon they did at the beginning of season 2 (or perhaps just a clarification) because when the cast talks about Blaine's original return in the second episode, they talk about how it was supposed to be very ambiguous where he's standing.

But at the start of season 2, Blaine mentions that Angus was his 'first customer' - and since the first person we see him infect for his business is Jackie (we don't really know when he infected the Meat Cute gang or when he stored Julien and the others in his freezer), season 1 leaves the option that Jackie was the start of his business and that he used her money to expand OR that she was just one of many in a row. Saying Angus was the first means he would already definitely have been at it for a while when he found out about Liv. (On the other hand, it could be argued that infecting and 'owning' Angus is so personal that it doesn't really count as part of the bigger brain business scheme. That maybe he just infected him to keep himself afloat AND to get back at his father and then only later decided 'hey, actually I can do this to everyone I want!' (or perhaps he just told Angus that he was the first, but personally, I like the theory that he went straight to Angus the moment he had a shot at revenge. Plus, I don't think he would tell Angus that he was the first if he wasn't - because that would be admitting how much power Angus still has over him.)

Though, I also think that the way in which Blaine infects Jackie...seems pretty routined and pre-meditated. And when he did that, it was before the alleyway scene so at that point, Blaine still thought Liv was going to give him brains. So to me that certainly always felt like the plan was to x two birds with 1 stone:

a) check out the people who are looking for me online and who are working at a morgue and stay in touch to keep an eye on them (and the cops by extension)(after all, he even does a similar thing in season 2, when he wants Liv to keep an eye on Dale for him)

b) do hapless remorseful drug dealer and fellow zombie act, secure brain, secure customer, play grateful that Liv is giving you brains but sell them off behind her back. Profit! >:)

(that's my personal interpretation though)

But I also definitely would have enjoyed if there had been a longer period of just...uncertainty about what Blaine's deal is and more time in which to perhaps explore Liv's feelings about Blaine's part in her infection and everything that happened at the boat party at large and also perhaps the way her feelings on the matter conflicted with Ravi's, who was a lot more willing to give Blaine the benefit of the doubt. (and you know who could have given us that??? the old 24-episode format!! ...but that's another passion topic of mine)

(On the other hand, it's also a topic that I feel a bit conflicted on because I've seen some people (cough reddit! cough) literally blame Liv for the bullshit Blaine does à la "ohh, surely Blaine wouldn't have gone and built a giant business on the back of murdered orphans if Liv had just shared that brain with him in ep. 2" ...which. nah. I think that is an obstacle that could be overcome without going full Mrs. Lovett.)

#izombie #fandom

[greaseonmymouth]

my copy of A Power Unbound (Illumicrate edition) arrived today and so I am going to ramble about 💫book production💫 and ✨special finishes✨!

(in case this breaks containment, I work in publishing though not for Freya Marske's publisher nor Illumicrate, and I have been terminally online in fandom and writing spaces for 20+ years)

when I heard about Marske's book deal it was both through tumblr and professional channels, and since I already liked her fanfiction I decided to Watch Out For Interesting Things, because I wanted to see how tradpub was going to treat a fandom-originated author - not the first one in tradpub by any means, but one I knew writes unabashedly queer stories and I wanted to see how that would play out in a world that had only just started making mainstream queer media

so, book 1, A Marvellous Light. I preordered the Waterstones special edition because there was a Waterstones special edition and I hadn't expected there to be

the finishes on this book are:

wibalin case (or arlin, or any other imitation bookcloth paper, brand is irrelevant) with matt varnish

title printed on spine

dustjacket with matt lamination, spot uv and embossing

sprayed edges in one colour (pantone or imitation pantone - this is different from 4 colour)

this is very neat and a bit splashy, but not so splashy as to break the budget - this is a reasonable amount of splashy for a debut author that the publisher is planning to push hard/has expectations to sell well. I personally expected this to sell really well also, for multiple reasons I won't get into here, and that as a result we'd get more fun finishes on the next book in the series

so, book 2, A Restless Truth, the Waterstones special edition which i again pre-ordered

everything about this book screams 'book 1 did really well so let's RAMP UP THE FANCY we can afford it now!

the finishes on this book are:

wibalin case

title printed on spine

dustjacket with matt lamination, spot uv, embossing, and foil

sprayed edges in one colour and a digitally printed fore edge in 4 colour

two more expensive finishes added! the retail price on this was £2 more than for AML, which let me tell you, those extra finishes do not cost that much lmao, at least not at the printers my company works with, but 2022 saw prices go up everywhere. so ehh fair's fair.

and this brings us to book 3, A Power Unbound, which didn't get a Waterstones special edition which I was upset about for SO LONG because a) I wanted one to match my existing set even if the two editions didn't match to begin with as the finishes were different and b) I was worried this was a sign that book 2 hadn't performed as well (or just not performed to the publisher's expectations, which is not the same) and the publisher wouldn't justify the cost of doing another special edition - considering book 2 was sapphic that was a real worry as historically they don't sell as well as gay books. but book 3 got an Illumicrate edition instead

without writing an essay, in simple terms there's no difference between a Waterstones special edition, an independent bookshop special edition (not covered by this post) or an Illumicrate (or other boxes) special edition as they all have extra finishes and they all TCM, meaning sales are registered and counted towards bestseller lists. however there is a perceived difference for many consumers that Illumicrate editions are specialer than Waterstones or indie because they are exclusive (so are Waterstones and indie), and often are only available through mystery subscription boxes (you don't know which book or items are in the box, only the theme) or semi-transparent boxes (title is known, possibly some of the finishes, none of the items) or through single purchases of a limited nature (finishes often not revealed), which this one is.

so to sum up, the Illumicrate edition is functionally the same, but it has a different status, and perceived higher value, attached to it. considering the RRP was £23 for the Illumicrate edition but only £18.99 for ART and £16.99 for AML, this adds to the perceived higher value/status. With me so far?

the finishes on this book are:

matt lamination case (cheaper than wibalin), however printed in 4 colour

dustjacket made of some kind of plastic (I can't tell from touch which kind), which, at the printers my company works with, costs about 10-15%, of what a dustjacket of say 125gsm coated paper with matt lamination finish would cost

title digitally printed on the dustjacket

no spot uv, no embossing, no foil

sprayed edges in one colour with a digitally printed fore edge in 4 colour

does this look cool as fuck though? yes. does it look expensive? not if you know how books are made and what they cost to make. I expect this was cheaper to print than ART because dropping foil, spot UV and embossing alone is a huge saving. and ngl I was expecting the same kind of finishes on APU as for ART, perhaps with all 3 edges digitally sprayed instead of just the fore edge, perhaps with the title foiled on the spine instead of printed on. maybe it would even have endbands. so to open the parcel to see this instead was a delight, because it's different. you can see the case underneath the dust jacket! you get a fun 3D effect with the plastic overlay!

I'm not saying that the Illumicrate edition is cheap garbage, the point I'm making is manifold:

moving away from Waterstones special edition to Illumicrate special edition will make a lot of consumers thing this book is The Shit

the Illumicrate edition indeeds Looks like The Shit

you don't always need expensive finishes to wind up with a Cool end result

in conclusion: Illumicrate call me I want to talk business

man I do wish my copy of AML had a cooler fore edge though so they could all match

#personally the only thing I dislike about the Illumicrate edition is that I don't like touching plastic #so I will be leaving the dust jacket off while reading it #(I do that anyway so the jackets don't get damaged but in this case leaving it off will make the book look like a misprint bc no title!) #and before anyone asks: no I will not be decorating that fore edge myself #my bookbinding skills do not extend to fore edge painting #I have done a few solids but actually drawing patterns? nope nope nope #a marvellous light #a restless truth #a power unbound #freya marske #book production #books

[kustas]

It's so disappointing how time and time again I see reminders of Taiyô Matsumoto's stuff being put on that high shelf of "artsy, highbrow, gatekept", this line from My dream is to die was yesterday's reminder for me

"If you know you know, if you don't we can't help".

I went to a manga specific bookstore with friends lately and despite how accessible manga is here, being mainstream nowadays, you don't find his works alongsides normal series but only in the section reserved to artbooks and fancy collector's editions. It's not published like other manga. Other releases that suffer the same fate are the monsters dominating the "classic manga" category like Akira and Tezuka's work. Several editors have collections in a larger fancier format, of which I own a copy of for "Monster", but you can and will find that one edited as regular manga and on the same shelves as in stores too. I wanted to show the stuff I read to the people I was with and struggled to find anything until I hit that fancy section asides from the rest and even with that it took time to find the books, most of which who were, like fancy editions are, under plastic and not browsable. And extremely expensive, of course...

"both genius and a bit of a hard sell" annoys me. If something is good it has potential to be famous from being recognized as such. Why a hard sell? Assuming it's a mix of the weirdness in the writing and the unconventional art styles. Ironic for both as I grew up to see most manga labeled as weird and quirky for being culturally different, and as for the art, the crushing success of modern series like Mob Psycho and arguably One Piece should have (despite the amount of weebs hating on their visuals, I know) shown publishers it's worth giving them a chance.

In the first place, one of the reasons his work stands out from other manga are the BD influences, especially Moebius, and for having read Moebius and Druillet and Bilal among other Heavy Metal classics I can say their writing is way harder to parse. Taiyô Matsumoto's stories are typically extremely simple ones if anything, often slightly surreal or nuanced, but still damn simple. It'd take me a few paragraphs to explain the plot of the Incal. I can explain no.5's in two sentences and that series is the most obtuse I've read by him. Ironic that in taking some inspiration in french comics, french editors don't seem to see him as accessible either.

Why this annoys me in the first place is I am very fond of his work and it's disappointing to see that...subtle gatekeeping? Prevent him from a chance to the mainstream. Anyone who's really into comics as a whole usually reads his stuff but I seldom see it recommended. It's invisible in online manga communities that I've stumbled upon. My limited anime con experience gives the same results.

But when I find comment sections online related to his work, left on clips of the animes based of it, on tweet threads about a series, etc, I always find a few people saying hey, I saw/read this as a child and it stuck with me forever. Even if I was already grown up when I discovered his stuff the constant shilling from my end on here should show how much I think more people should read his work. It's why I'm annoyed and disappointed - I don't want those manga to explode in popularity because I want clout and stacks for the author and my favorite things to be #1, but because his work honestly does not come off as hard to access to me AND is both refreshing and very, very touching

#mine #rbs locked for now

[siphersaysstuff]

So I'm (slowly) rewatching Transformers: Victory...

And Zod have mercy, I'm having to power through it.

See, when I did the pictures of the Dinoforce toys for @tfwiki, I saw how their fiction sections were massively empty, and I thought to myself "self, these guys are major characters in Japanese canon who are VERY VERY LIKELY going to get new toys soon (the Legacy Core Class Dinobots are blatantly Dinoking pretools), and they pretty much always appear as a big group, you can do a lot of copy-paste once you get team leader Goryu's section done, plugging another big hole that's been on the wiki for nearly two decades." So I dug up a subtitled run of Victory and...

It's incredibly, suffocatingly dry.

It's in this kind of awful middle ground where it's too simple and repetitive to be GOOD, but that lack of ambition means it never dips into the depths of ludicrously ridiculous/poor/careless writing that would make it BAD. It's just... there. A workmanlike product, inoffensive but also largely uninteresting.

The first six episodes are all basically the same story: Decepticons (mostly Dinoforce) attack a place, extended carnage and a few scenes of Kakuryu bungling, oh no some humans are in danger, Autobots show up, extruded fight sequences which typically lead up to a combiner sequence, Star Saber shows up to basically no-sell and win the day by just being super-powerful. It's only come episode seven that the formula changes. The stories don't necessarily get more complex, but they are at least different.

The Autobots are incredibly rigid and formal and it's hard to tell what most of them have got for personalities. It's not helping that, not being familiar with Japanese accents, they all sound incredibly similar and characters' faceplates don't move when they talk, meaning sometimes I literally can't tell who's talking. The Decepticons fare slightly better, thanks mainly to Leozack and Hellbat being super-duplicitous assholes and Goryu being a big proud lug, but the rest of Dinoforce are mostly childish idiots and the rest of Breastforce (yes, yes) are as flat as any Autobot, only evil.

Things do start changing up and getting slightly more character-driven after a while but really, it's all so rote. Also, six of the thirty-eight episodes are clip shows with no framing device whatsoever. The NINTH episode is a clip show, followed by another at episode 13. Yikes.

And stock footage. So, so, so much stock footage.

Supposedly, after the weirdness that was the Masterforce anime, Takara wanted to get "back to the roots" of Transformers, which had taken Japan by storm when it first released there in 1985. But by all accounts, a hefty part of what made TF so appealing o'er there to the point where re-releases of toys that had been on the market two years prior (in Diaclone and Microchange) suddenly sold like deep-fried crack was how it was so different from other "mecha" shows. It had a real goody-dumb to downright chaotic charm a lot of the time. But Victory is incredibly straight-laced, even to the point where the comedy relief bits are super predictable.

I was talking about it with @therobotmonster and he looked up what else was on "kids" TV in Japan (1989), and... whoof. Dragon Ball Z was ramping up to the first big fight with Vegeta. SD Gundam. Ranma 1/2 was hitting its stride. Never mind what was going on in the realm of Super Sentai and Masked Rider style action shows. And apparently, while Victory toys sold well, the show basically bombed.

Can't say that's surprising.

It's just kind of impressive the dull thud it's landing with, given I very distinctly remember the early days of online TF fandom in the 90s, when people swore up and down how amazing the anime were, especially Victory. Of course, by and large, nobody saying that actually understood Japanese and subtitles were out of the question, plus simply seeing the show was an endeavor all its own. You got a 9th-generation VHS copy from someone you didn't know on super-long-running speed (aka "worst fidelity") and just guessed at what was being said.

Ah well, I'm'a keep with it. I can't say I'm having fun with it, but well, it IS the wiki's purpose to catalog all this stuff, and Victory, dry as the cartoon is, DOES have nostalgia behind it and IS pretty much "The" Japanese Transformers Show.

And really, there are so many pieces of TF media that are so underwhelming compared to the toys they exist to advertise, and honestly, most of those are harder to watch than even the worst of Victory (looking at you, Prime Wars/War For Cybertron trilogies).

#transformers #transformers victory #star saber #deathsaurus #transformers anime