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13thdoodle · 7 months

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bunch of Phantasy AU doodles n wip from earlier this year

Basically I just found out this year that ball-jointed dolls actually have strings in them and not just... magically attached by the ball joints themselves? And 31 in this AU is a ball jointed doll that were made out of Danny's energy so here we are :3c

I've been watching a lot of doll customization since earlier this year and found out from dollightful's video that no they are all connected by elastic strings inside so that's where the idea came from

...i was looking on google to find a good example to put here and clearly I'm not exactly paying attention to how the main body strings are actually.. pinned to?

the video I've been watching the most is dollightful n moonlight jewel and they have their bjd usually only to the bottom of the doll head instead of all the way to the top on the skull pin like the diagram above

Which is why 31 has his strings all connected to the 'heart' in the middle instead of the head kasjdnkasjnd

But yeah uhhh specifics aside...

----

Those ball jointed dolls made me think of 31, and then thinking about the clones in Phantasy AU and like.. the logistic of it

for 31, the idea is that during the circus gothica arc for this AU, Danny actually got kidnapped all the whole way into another universe/plane in which he met Valeska (Enn's oc) who unalive what his face the circus leader n break Danny's hypnosis

and now that Danny is essentially stuck in a whole other plane/realm/or sth he just following Valeska hoping she'll help him find his way back.

In one such trip, Danny got kidnapped (again) by another group/cult who wanted to use his power/energy as a gate keeper to the ghost zone to make their own gate keeper so they can open portals to ghost zones and maybe other realms too

31 is part of the experiments. He's a doll made with part of Danny's energy as his core.

And then it's.. uhh.. sth sth Valeska finally found out where they kept Danny and devour everyone there safe from Danny n 31 who helped him escape so now the three of them travel together~

The last pict is me thinking about clones and kingdom hearts :tm: so dramatic about Danny being the soul separated from the main body and 31 a clone made from part of the soul too and all that Not sure where I'm going with that but it do sound cool

And there's also Danielle but I'm not exactly sure.. how she would fit in? but it would be interesting if she was made from Danny's body somehow

so 31 made from part of teh soul and Dani from part of the body sounds poetic somehow

#13thdoodle #dp phantasy au #dp fantasy au #dp 31 #if u noticed that I've been putting some read more lately #it's bc one of the school project is to document all your progresses in a doc including all ur research and fails and what not #and basically i'm trying to make it into a habit by doing it here too #like.. no harm done i think in putting up what inspired me and where ideas came from #n what rambling about things #yall follow me here so i assume ur interested a lil bit about me rambling my ideas n such #i put them under readmore specifically bc I know how long I can go on #and like the main thing about documentation is to be transparent about it #u learn from ur failures n ur successes n this is one way to track them #if u fcked up figure out where how and why and what u can learn from it n then improve from said fail so yea anyway #but yea i been trying to keep things short n clean so it look nice before #but i got a p good grade for documenting everything last tri so now I'm well actually I DO have a lot to say about things #so heree i am #am i gonna be more active tho that would be a whole different topic all together bc ha ha capstone qwq

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burningvelvet · 6 months

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i thought nothing could be worse than the burning of byron’s memoirs but i stand corrected after reading jane austen’s poor wikipedia page

because at least we still have thousands of byron’s letters and journals which are mostly uncensored and which reveal his personality in all of it’s aspects, flaws and all, and everyone in his circle documented every detail of his life because he was a huge celebrity. his letters are considered some of the most brutally transparent ever written. i'm just using him as an example; him and austen shared the same publisher, lived during the same time, both very studied.

but with jane austen? we don’t get that honesty or that truly full picture. her relatives are the main sources of information, and all her surviving letters were carefully selected by them to portray her according to a specific agenda which would favor them, and so the true extent of her personality can never be as fully ascertained.

but at the same time... i don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. she doesn't seem to have wanted attention for herself but to have likely preferred privacy, and her books have gotten more acclaim that she ever could have comprehended -- her books are the way we access her, her life, her thoughts and her voice. i think that about all writers, though i do love biographical criticism and biography.

some writers we know nothing about and some writers we know everything about -- at least they all live on in their writing, yes. but on the one hand, i'm grateful all writers live on in their work (as a fan of history and literature) and on the other hand, my unquenchable curiousity does get annoyed with the lack of available information. i would really love to read an extensive series of austen diaries. there is something sort of voyeuristic about this, i know, but there is also a love of preserving the niche parts of history, the parts that others overlook, the undervalued parts (letters, diaries, receipts, notes, scraps, drafts, juvenilia, etc.)

marcus aurelius wanted his diaries burned but perverse curiousity, likely driven by excessive admiration, led to their preservation, and thus we have his meditations which is now one of the most valued pieces of literature ever. so i think letters and diaries, and any piece of writing, does have immense value, even when it borders on a violation of privacy or has the potential to ruin a reputation.

i think this all simply ties in to the fact that i don't believe in book-burning in any form. embarrassing love letters from 1812 ARE important, depressing diary entries from 1818 ARE important. i could go on and on and on but the point is that i think all words and all history are imporant. in my classes we've discussed how archival technology is at the forefront of all human knowledge: what do we keep, what do we preserve, what do we spend more time on salvaging?

it just kills me that so much has been burned and destroyed, regardless of all the intense ethical discussions which could derive from all this, which could go on for a million years. my point is that it is tragic that so much of austen's work was destroyed, and it is tragic that byron's memoirs were destroyed even though we have so much of his work any way. any loss of writing is a loss to posterity.

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dqmeron · 9 months

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here's my quick tutorial for making layouts in photoshop! i'll be going over how to make this 4-panel square one! ↳ requires basic knowledge of photoshop

「 step 1: making your file 」 make a new file, 540 x whatever height you want (just make sure it fits within tumblr’s image size guidelines), and make sure the background is set to transparent. for this specific layout, i want the overall shape to be square, so my dimensions are 540x540!

「 step 2: mapping out 」 the best way to make sure your layouts are even and spaced equally is using guides! go to view > guides > new guide layout. the color of your guides doesn’t matter at all (i just like green so mine are green lol), and you can have as many columns and rows as you want. since this is going to be a 2x2 layout, i’ll have 2 columns and 2 rows. the general rule of thumb for gutter is 4px.

once your guides pop up, select the rectangle tool by pressing U on your keyboard. make sure shape is selected from the drop-down menu at the top (right by the home button in the top left), and make sure that you have snapping on (view > snap).

using the rectangle tool, trace out your layout panels! as long as you have snapping on, your path should naturally snap to the guidelines, making it a LOT easier to do this! when you’re done making your rectangles, you can turn off guides by going to view > guides > clear guides (i usually keep them on until i’m done adding in my gifs but this is up to you). i always name each shape layer after where it is in the grid to not get confused.

「 step 3: adding gifs 」 some quick things before i go over actually adding in your gifs: 1. make each of your gifs in their own individual files. you’ll be adding them into the main one later. 2. your gifs have to be the same length — you can cut them down to length in their own individual files or later in the main one. either way is fine, totally up to you!

now you have your layout set up, you can make and add your gifs! in order to make sure that they fit into the panels, check the dimensions of each shape you’ve created by selecting the layer and looking in the properties tab. my panels are each 268x268.

i’ll actually be making each of my gifs 270x270, just to make sure that i don’t have any weird gaps or anything (i’ll talk about how i’ll be getting rid of the 2 extra pixels on each side later).

once you have your gifs done, you can duplicate them into the main one. convert your gif and anything else (coloring etc) into a smart object (right click > convert to smart object), and then right click it and select “duplicate layer”. make sure the document you’re duplicating to is the one with your layout in it.

layers automatically duplicate aligned into the top left corner. since this is where my first panel is, i can just leave my gif there, but for the other ones, drag your gifs into place using transform and your mouse (once again making sure that snapping is on).

now to get rid of those extra pixels. this step also makes sure your gif is perfectly in line with the shape you’ve outlined the layout with. make sure your gif is right above the shape layer in the layers tab, and then right click and select “create clipping mask”. this makes sure your gif doesn’t go outside the limits of your guidelines. this is what it should look like in the layers tab:

「 step 4: exporting 」 exporting a layout gif is pretty much like exporting any other gif, but you do need to check your matte settings before saving. the wrong ones can make what should be the transparent dividers solid, which can throw off the look of your gifs. make sure matte is set to “none”, and then save as normal!

here's my finished gif:

happy giffing! feel free to send me an ask/message me w any questions!

#gif tutorial #gif tutorials #allresources #completeresources #userchibi #userpjo #uservivaldi #userraffa #userbess #usermorgan #tuserheidi #userrobin #userkosmos #usershreyu #userzaynab #userisaiah #thingschanged #rogerhealey #*mine

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gf-seasons-zine · 1 month

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Information About

Writers, it's your turn to shine/see the specific application guidances that apply to writing applications (same thing, really...)

Applications open April 1 (this upcoming Monday)! Of course there is always complete information on our carrd, but if you are curious to see the application guidance for writers here instead, we entreat you to read below the cut!

General Application Guidelines

1. PLEASE tag your content!

The zine will be completely SFW and will not feature ships but we understand some people may wish to submit ship art or content that might be less family-friendly in their portfolios.

All mods are 18+ but we don't want any surprises, so please describe your art in the boxes provided if required!

2. At least ONE of your pieces must be Gravity Falls themed or featuring Gravity Falls characters.

We would particularly like to see your work of Ford, Stan, Mabel, or Dipper as the Pines family is the main focus of this zine!

3. Check your sharing settings!

If sharing a Google Drive folder link for your portfolio, please ensure your folder's sharing settings are set to 'allow anyone with the link to view'. You can test this on an Incognito browser or a browser NOT logged into your Google account to make sure.

Mods will NOT be able to contact every person who makes this mistake to ask them for a new link to their portfolio and it is very likely your application will just be dismissed.

Writer Specific Guidelines

*~*~*~*A note from us mods to you, for transparency: ~*~*~*~*

We won't have space for long fics in the physical zine due to page limitations, but we would like to include more of your work in our digital zine where we will have unlimited space. For the physical zine, a maximum of two pages of writing per writer will be printed, whether it is for the diary entry OR the writing piece. The rest of the pages will be printed in the digital zine if you wish to write more!

Please submit 2-3 pieces that best demonstrate your style of writing.

1. At least one sample should be a minimum of 1,500 words. All three samples combined should not exceed 7k words. (If you would like us to read a particular chapter or extract of one of your fics you should copy that into a word document and put it into a folder in your Google Drive portfolio).

2. Samples should be in English as this is the language the zine will be published in.

It doesn’t matter what kind of English spelling or vocabulary you use (British, American, etc) as long as you are consistent.

3. We will judge samples based on characterisation, grammar, punctuation, flow, and plot.

4. All samples must be entirely written by you. AI generated content is NOT allowed and does not count. Previous zine works are allowed but please ask for permission from your mods to share first! We will not be sharing ANY applicants’ links outside of the GF Seasons Zine Mod Team.

5. NSFW works will NOT be allowed in the zine (this will be a family friendly SFW zine!) but you CAN put them in your portfolio.

If your pieces require trigger warnings, feature ANY ships, or feature NSFW content there WILL be a space for you to write this on your form and we expect you to do so. All moderators are 18+ but we wish to avoid any surprises.

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding (Yep, this was so important we included it twice!)

6. Two types of writing pieces will be featured in this zine- ‘diary entries’ from the perspective of Dipper, Ford, Stan, and Mabel; and ‘normal’ fics.

If you would be interested in contributing a diary entry for characters from the perspective of Stan, Ford, Mabel, or Dipper, please also provide a SHORT extract of how you think a diary entry by them might go!

And there you have it! Please let us know if you have any questions, and we look forward to checking out your applications! See you April 1st!

The GF Seasons Zine Mod Team

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Disclaimer: We are not affiliated with Disney in any way. The zine will be a charity zine with all surplus going to charity- no one will profit from this zine.

CARRD TWITTER RETROSPRING

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asbestieos · 1 year

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ok i dont care that my blog is silly gacha idol boys on main i need every person in the world ever to see the absolute bullshit these anti union propaganda posters are. the absolute fear-mongering of these posters is INSANE. they frame the union as if its a third-party corporation trying to take our wages and our voices away as if SBCorp doesnt already do that

first, what is a union?

A union (or labor union) is any group of workers who negotiate a contract / labor rights with their employer, for the purpose of protecting their rights as workers.

emphasis on group of workers because a union is not comprised of third-party. there are no outsiders who come to a workplace and go ‘hey fuck your boss organize with me :)))’. a union is organized because the employees of a workplace want to organize. and when they organize a union, they democratically decide upon a contract that they as the workers want, whether its increased wages, better protections, other benefits, etc.

Union organizers are visiting stores to get partners to sign up, with some stores filing in as little as a few days.

THIS IS A LIE. the phrasing of this implies not only a third-party organization, but one that isnt also comprised of starbucks workers. the union is MADE of starbucks workers and organizers DO NOT independently reach out to stores: WORKERS reach out to ORGANIZERS to unionize.

This card carries legal weight.

again, blatant fear-mongering. they do not have ‘legal weight’. the ONLY thing union cards say is that you want to be represented by a union. NO ONE CAN SUE YOU OVER SIGNING A UNION CARD, NOT EVEN STARBUCKS CORP ITSELF. THAT IS ILLEGAL. in the first place union cards are entirely anonymous: no one knows what you signed except the National Labor Relations Board. you CAN sign ‘no’. you CAN choose not to sign a card at all.

Union cards are legal documents and by signing you may give up your rights to speak for yourself.

yet another blatant lie! you do not forfeit ANY rights by signing a union card. NONE. in fact, if you sign a union card, it is not even a definite yes to a union. always always always, starbucks denies the legitimacy of a union card signing and requires an election vote, which is the ACTUAL election that calls for unionization.

Signing a card has legal meaning.

AGAIN. IT DOESNT. THE ONLY THING a union card says is ‘i want a union’ and that is IF you sign yes. you can sign no. OR EVEN NOT SIGN ONE AT ALL. every organizing partner is completely transparent about this because that is the truth, these union cards are in no way binding, yet starbucks corporate employs scare tactics to make it seem as if these cards will seal the deal. THEY WONT. NOT UNTIL AN ELECTION IS CALLED.

No, union organizers do not have special privileges that require you to talk to them. If at any time you are feeling harassed or unreasonably pressured, please contact your managers and the Partner Resources numbers on the Make The Right Call poster in your back room.

this is the worst part of the poster.

first, no, union organizers dont have special privileges because again they are baristas. starbucks partners who work on the floor. the same sentiment applies to shift supervisors and even store and district managers. you arent required to speak to a ‘union organizer’ because no one can fucking make you speak to your manager if you dont want to and express that you dont want to.

second, they frame ‘union organizers’ (i.e. partners and coworkers who want to organize) as authoritative and controlling, and make it easy for a partner to report an organizing partner. this will kill union organizing at a store before it can even begin.

i know none of my followers are starbucks workers and tbh i also know none of you have worked a job yet but you have to fucking look at this and see that this is blatant union busting! this is what it looks like! its manipulating language to scare workers from organizing, its lying about what a union is and how the process works and what a contract does to benefit its workers!!

like.. honest to god this is so infuriating. this is what Starbucks workers have to put up with. NATIONWIDE. across the country. INTERNATIONAL even. on top of the ridiculous changes from sbcorp itself. and you have to think, if this is what we face because of organizing, think of the shit we get every single week from corporates trying to maximize profits by cutting hours, delaying benefits, leaving partners unsafe and unsupported. its frankly fucking ridiculous

#i am so very close to doxxing myself maybe but tbfh if i lose my job i dont give a shit #YOU HAVE TO SEE THE BULLSHIT #READ THE BULLSHIT SEE THE BULLSHIT STEW IN IT #STARBUCKS #long post

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lambdollsxx · 1 year

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how i make scripts aesthetic on google docs (on pc) <33

Part One - Images

! Due to Tumblr's 30 image limit, I'll have to make this in parts. This one revolves around how I sort pictures to make them look aesthetic or just more organised in my script. + I'm not the best at organising tutorials sometimes but I'm trying to not make this confusing <//3

Ignore any typos and errors, thankyou. If you need me to re-explain anything, please feel free to ask. I feel like I haven't explained properly but, idk what else to do, lol :,)

Page isn't broken, to avoid messing up the way images are organised.

— ◦◦◦

What do I use?

Other than Google Docs (obviously), — Fontspace | A background remover [my mains: 1, 2] | Pinterest/WeHeartIt/Google search, and other sources for pretty pictures, pngs, etc. 🤍🌙

bundling images

Using the different text wrapping options, I found that it helped a lot more to "bundle" images together, so that things look prettier + more organised.

! example

This is pretty simple, honestly; Fontspace provides font text as pictures, transparent bg and not, — so organising the text from it will fall under the tut for this bit.

^ These are the text wrapping options. The first one is the default and limits text placement/movement, the other four allow you to move text where-ever on the document (especially if print view is off) but each do different things.

In order of settings, examples (press images to see properly):

! tip : If you're bundling images that "overlap" too much, make sure to crop at least one (or however many needed) past its actual size so that it won't be a pain in the ass moving them later on.

- You may also use "behind text" for one of them, if it helps, so that it's easier to select the images, this also applies to using image over text (examples in each image).

what I mean:

Using these features, I'll—as per the aesthetic of my script—sort things accordingly. Get creative with the way you're doing this, and keep experimenting 'till you're able to make stuff look the way you want, lol.

"BuT DaRLIng wHaT Do I dO wItH ThIS iNFo??!?!?" bitch idk find an aesthetic 💀💀

like those 2016 fashion sticker books or smthn, idk- whatever u like-

Going into the aesthetics more ;; I usually pick diff aesthetics for each script and refuse to script until I find a pretty one LMFOAOAO- But I especially go for inspiration from (Korean?) bullet journal aesthetics which include lots of image bundling and customised tables.

Why korean ones specifically? Idk the difference, but using "Korean" as a keyword gets the stuff I'm looking for. 💀 But I also search for little pngs I want to add to my script; and if it's a false transparent png or has any background, I use my background removers to make it an actual transparent png.

And, sometimes, I like to search for colours then use my snip tool to screenshot them really thin, like those brown-beige borders you see in all my posts, then use them in my script like highlighter lines, like-

That's pretty much it, really.

! examples from two of my scripts

Fontspace fonts apply as well. One thing about Fontspace is that, you can change the colour of the text ;; as well as the background.

The brown colour is the text's colour, the blue one is the background's colour. You can of course choose to have no background, but it's there as an option.

I don't know of any features where you can save a colour but that's maybe me being dumb ;; but what I do is set a certain colour (i.e. blue) then use the colour adjustment in google docs to change it to black, red, or whatever over colours r in the script.

i.e.:

Anyways I'm p close to the image limit, so that's it for this post.

I hope this makes sense bc explaining this was harder than I thought. 💀💀 Once again I can clear anything up if needed

! tips

Keywords you can use for tiny decorations, are "clipart", "[aethetic name] clipart transparent png", "[aesthetic name] sticker png transparent", etc.

You can have a look at the aesthetics wiki for ideas for your script

Fotor is what I use to crop images into different shapes, and it is how I got the circle/heart shaped pictures in my documents ^-^*

...I'll add more when I remember them.

next up ··· customising tables ✿

#—DARLINQ'S DOMAIN🤍🌙#reality shifting #reality shifting script #shifting script #shifting realities #shiftblr #respawning #idk what else to put #im just using tags bc itll probably help ppl #i feel so shy posting bear w me 😔❗❗❗

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hwd405 · 1 year

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Spyro 3 - The GameSpot Build and Lost Media

I've been actively researching and documenting early builds of Spyro 3 for something like 7 or 8 years now, and while I feel like I've made a significant impact, there's always going to be people that have never seen any the content that I've helped to document - so, every now and then, I get the urge to infodump about one piece of my research to a new group of people, to help make sure that the documentation I've done isn't only known to a very small group of people... that'd defeat the purpose of documentation, to an extent, I think.

Sometimes, outreach ends up being extremely important to the research and preservation of prerelease content - and this is no better exemplified than with Spyro 3's "GameSpot build".

On June 23rd, 2000, several websites and publications revealed early previews of Spyro: Year of the Dragon - this date was probably some sort of online embargo date.

The "April preview", an early build which seems to match the one used at E3 2000, was used by most of these publications. A few of them, according to accounts from those that wrote the previews, received exclusive gameplay sessions from the likes of Mark Cerny - these previews apparently took place quite close to the embargo date and certainly would have used a later build than the April one. We know that IGN received one of these sessions (but, according to the author of the preview article, was allegedly unable to record gameplay during this session, which resulted in IGN having to use the same build everyone else did in their preview articles), and it's a pretty safe bet that GameSpot did, too. In GameSpot's case, we actually got to see what this build looked like:

As expected, it's a later build than the April prototype - this one seems to be from around the same point in development as the earliest demo disc version, though we're not sure if it's an earlier build or a later one. Three main characteristics stick out in these screenshots:

We don't ever see what the eggs looked like in this build, but the fragments use this bizarre ornate gold texture.

The HUD uses a green egg sprite similar to some of the eggs seen in the April build; the earliest demo disc version also uses this sprite.

For some reason, transparent polygons are a solid black colour, making some screenshots look sort of ominous and weird.

Perhaps the weirdest thing about this build is that the gold egg fragments it uses, which to most players would be completely unrecognisable and unlike anything they've ever seen before, actually do appear in the final game. And they hatch from every egg in the entire game. In most cases, the fragment flies off screen before the player can spot it.

The earliest demo build, which seems to be from around May 25th, 2000, does not include this texture at all, which has called into question the timeline placement of the GameSpot build. On one hand, they might've used the final egg texture momentarily, switched to the gold one, and switched back, accidentally leaving one of the textures intact. On the other hand, there have been cases in many Spyro builds of random early assets weeding their way back into the game via means that we don't really understand. Look no further than the August 27th, 1998 localisation prototype of Spyro the Dragon, a post-final build which inexplicably re-uses an early Gnasty Gnorc model, textures, and animations, from around 2 months earlier in development:

The info we have on this build doesn't just stop at screenshots, though! GameSpot kindly uploaded 5 videos of the build - labelled "Movie 2" through "Movie 6" (thanks GameSpot. that's not confusing at all) - to their website. Most of these videos were later temporarily put behind a paywall, and in 2014, 4 of these videos were deleted during a server move, with only Movie 2 (the one never put behind a paywall) remaining. The one movie that remained didn't even play properly in GameSpot's video player for years, so I had to download the video from the API to view it at all:

youtube

While the video is an important piece of history, and did reveal to us that the early Sgt. Byrd theme heard in some old IGN videos of the April preview had a previously unheard guitar section (this was prior to the public release of the April preview), it doesn't tell us very much new about the build. If we really wanted to more precisely date the build, we'd need to know what the eggs looked or sounded like - but the egg collection section was entirely cut from the video. As of yet, we just don't have this information.

As for Movies 3 - 6? These are now lost media. They were up on the site for 14 years, we know that people saw them, and I suspect there were people that downloaded them. However, since they were deleted nearly 10 years ago, nobody has come forward to say that they have one of the videos and to show what was in it. Anyone that does come forward with this info should be met with some scepticism, of course, but I think the only way we'll ever see more of this build is with a greater outreach and more widespread knowledge of the missing videos - the videos were readily downloadable from the website, and so someone still has the videos, I'm sure.

And before anyone asks, yes, the WayBack Machine has been very extensively searched for these videos - we can't find them, there's just no trace of them on there.

Judging by the video descriptions, Movie 3 would have focused on Bentley, Movie 4 on either Sheila or Agent 9, and Movies 5 and 6 on Spyro gameplay.

I've only ever encountered one person who claims to have seen these videos, and whether they're to be believed or not, they claimed that one of the videos showed Sunny Villa using Fireworks Factory's theme (levels using the wrong themes was very common in early builds of these games! Additionally, Fireworks Factory's theme is very likely to have been present around this point in development), and another showed Agent 9 gameplay using a track that didn't sound very Spyro-like, but more like "something from James Bond".

When the April preview released later on, it was discovered that early Spyro 3 builds actually do have a number of entirely non-Spyro themes, all by µ-Ziq and Propellerheads, left unused in their soundtrack data. The tracks in these builds seem to line up with the levels present in an earlier build of the game, and by this metric, it seems that "Spybreak!", a theme from the Matrix soundtrack, would have (fittingly?) lined up with Agent 9's Lab, and possibly would have been used in that level in internal development builds. Sure enough, my contact agreed that this was the theme they heard, when I sent them the track - if this is indeed the case, then this build is very very weird indeed.

It remains to be seen whether we'll ever learn anything new about this build, but we can only hope. I've linked to an archived 7z file containing all the screenshots uploaded to GameSpot below, as well as a link to a TCRF article detailing some of the known differences spotted in this build:

Archive.org

TCRF

#spyro 3 #spyro #spyro the dragon #spyro year of the dragon #spyro: year of the dragon #spyro prototype #prerelease materials #press materials #press screenshots #gamespot build #gamespot #playstation #sony ps1 #lost media #lost videos #prototypes

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rainbowonyourparade · 2 years

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Since JWST pics are going around, what with the new release and all, I'd like to clue tumblr users in to the Rename JWST campaign that many astronomers have been on for ages since that seems to not be common knowledge.

So most people probably know that JWST stands for the James Webb Space Telescope. It's been an ongoing, international project proposed before I was even born and had many launch delays, but finally launched on December 25th, 2021.

It's named after James Webb, a former NASA director in the 60s, who oversaw tne Mercury and Gemini missions. It was originally going to be named the Next Generation Telescope, but someone within nasa decided to change that in 2002 because he oversaw the Mercury and Gemini projects.

March 2021, before launch, there was a call from four astronomers in an opinion piece to rename the telescope. They go through the history and arguments quite well in there and are much more articulate than me lol, but to summarize: he helped organize what's known as the Lavender Scare where queer people were kicked out of government jobs simply for being queer. The authors suggest naming the telescope after Harriet Tubman because she navigated using the north star.

The piece kicked off a lot of astronomers protesting the name, especially on twitter where many are quite active, but nasa claimed there was "no evidence... that warrants changing the name." Which is, uh. Well. Utter bullshit. The evidence is literally publically accessible.

Even the American Astronomical Society (AAS, the main organization for astronomers in the united states) thought NASA's reasoning wasn't transparent enough and sent nasa a letter in November 2021 asking for more info. It's gone unanswered as far as i know.

March 2022, Nature published documents that showed that, yeah. He was a Bad Dude and was definitely involved in keeping queer people out of NASA because they were queer. Again, there was outcry. Again, nothing happened.

Issues within the astronomy community tend to be pretty niche, so I'm not surprised that when I mentioned it to my mom she wasn't aware. So I thought I'd make a post here so people would know.

There's really no resolution here except to bother NASA to change the name. You can sign this petition, but it does seem to be aimed at astronomers. It's also a google doc, sooo.... yeah. There really is no recourse other than to bother the agency leaders though. If you want to be clear about things, you gotta use the current name of the telescope, unfortunately. Though I have seen some fun alternative acronym meanings on twitter lol.

Dr. Katie Mack, a well respected astronomer, recommended this youtube video on this same subject on twitter and while I haven't watched it yet myself, I trust her judgement so it's probably good.

But yeah, that's what I know. I just wanted to raise awareness that, while space is definitely gay, NASA is still a government agency with many queerphobes in positions of power.

#rename jwst #astronomy #space #jwst #james webb space telescope

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dracolichbitch · 20 days

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😶, 💌, and 😃 for jura?

😶 for a headcanon of a secret that they keep!

OK THIS IS A HARD ONE because Jura’s a snooping little shithead and she knows a LOT of secrets about a lot of people.

Now the easiest way to answer this is of course, the dark brotherhood. Even if she doesn’t work for them as an assassin, she is still a prominent member as she manages a lot of their remaining contacts and keeps the brotherhood in supply of various things from enchanted items to potions and alchemical supplies. But her main and her official role in the brotherhood is historian and archivist. She’s responsible for the safekeeping of all the brotherhood’s written secrets and historical documents, and some of the tomes and journals in her library can be dated back to the second era. This has actually been her family’s role in the brotherhood for 200 years since the oblivion crisis, and it’s thanks to the Rhapsodos family that a lot of the brotherhood’s spells and alchemical recipes, and a lot of other important, practical information the brotherhood needs hasn’t been lost over time as the brotherhood’s power and influence dwindled.

A more fun answer is that Jura knows more about who’s dating who and who likes who at the college of winterhold than anybody else does. Obviously relationships between the faculty aren’t exactly forbidden but it’s a bit frowned upon to be extremely loud about them in front of the students, so most of the teachers who might be together tend to keep the pda down in front of students. Jura and Miraak are the main ones who are completely transparent about their relationship in the college, and because of that, they’re usually the ones a student might go to if they have a crush. Of course, being from an assassin family and having been trained from birth to take notice of anything that might be useful information, Jura’s usually already aware that student has a crush on someone and knows who it is, and she probably already knows whether or not that person likes them back. So Jura absolutely does play matchmaker with the apprentices

💌 for a romantic headcanon

This is a fun one because Jura is absolutely a closet romantic, although she’d be very embarrassed if anyone ever teased her about it. This absolutely led to a lot of confusion for/with Miraak, as having been a high ranking dragon priest, it was expected that other people throw gifts and favors and such at HIS feet. He’d never had to do it the other way around, and as such, he was entirely clueless as how to even begin trying to woo her once he came to realize he was smitten with her. Naturally he thought practical gifts were the way to go. Why wouldn’t they be? After all, Jura was a very practical person and while she clearly liked nice things, she had plenty of money so if she wanted something nice she could just buy it herself couldn’t she? It wasn’t until after talking to Faralda and Tolfdir (who were practically her second set of parents at the college) that he realized that’s what pretty much EVERYONE thought and thus no one had ever gifted her nice things. So of course he had to remedy that. He learned that her favorite flowers were a special kind of rose native to the summerset isles that were borderline impossible to grow anywhere else, due to their incredible fickleness when it came to temperature, sunlight, and soil composition, and thus she’d never even seen them herself outside of pictures in alchemical books before. And what does this man do, he proceeded to spend an insane amount of time, money, and effort obtaining the seeds for these flower (difficult enough considering Skyrim’s tension with the thalmor) and getting them to grow in Winterhold.

And he succeeded. He’s never going to forget the face Jura made when he showed her the small flowering bush in his room’s garden for the first time

😃 for a happiness headcanon!

Considering that Jura never really anticipated surviving avenging her parents against the volkihar and the thalmor, she’d never really considered marriage or her wedding or the fact that if/when she got married, her parents wouldn’t be there to play their traditional roles in it (I hc that with both altmer and Nords being very family oriented people, your parents and grandparents would be very important parts of your wedding) but after surviving everything that went down with the volkihar and then the dragons and Alduin and falling in love with Miraak, she eventually had to face the incredibly depressing realization that her parents wouldn’t be at her wedding. Because they’d more or less filled in the spot and took over the role of her parents in her life at the college, she considered asking Faralda and Tolfdir if they would be her parents in her wedding, but she almost didn’t ask, terrified they would say no. (This being genuinely one of the few times she’s ever actually been scared to do something in her life) but of course they immediately agreed to it (longest two seconds of Jura’s life) and honestly Jura probably cried in relief and happiness that they said yes

#oc: jura rhapsodos #headcanons #ask games

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mariacallous · 2 months

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In the mid-1980s, although its dissolution was nearly at hand, few were predicting the complete demise of the Soviet Union. But when it came to the politics of leadership succession, a country that had been widely feared or respected for decades had already begun making a mockery of itself.

By the late 1970s, Leonid Brezhnev, the once-vigorous man who had shunted aside Nikita Khrushchev in 1964 to lead the country, had been reduced to a shell of his former self by years of heavy smoking, hard drinking, and emphysema. He visibly huffed and puffed as he walked with a shuffling gait, and he occasionally slurred his words or displayed obvious memory lapses.

After Brezhnev, things in Moscow only got worse. He was succeeded by the former intelligence chief, Yuri Andropov, who was regarded in almost equal measure as a reformist thinker and as a corrupt and sternly authoritarian figure. No one knows which of these traits might have prevailed over time, because time was the one thing Andropov did not have. He died at age 69, his power lasting only 15 months, during the last year of which he suffered total kidney failure.

Andropov was followed by the scarcely-remembered Konstantin Chernenko, another heavy smoker afflicted with emphysema and heart problems. His rule only lasted for 13 months. The historian John Lewis Gaddis said of the ephemeral Chernenko that he was “an enfeebled geriatric so zombie-like as to be beyond assessing intelligence reports, alarming or not.” Chernenko’s death in office paved the way in 1985, finally, for the comparatively youthful Mikhail Gorbachev.

But by then it was the Soviet system itself that was running out of time.

Existential crises linked to the vagaries of succession politics are typically thought to be the province of authoritarian systems that lack regular and transparent rules for the passing of power from one leader to the next. But for the past three years, it is precisely this specter that has hung over the world’s oldest electoral democracy, the United States.

This has never been clearer than in the past two weeks. First, the mental competence of President Joe Biden, 81, was called into question in a report by Robert Hur, a special counsel appointed to look into the president’s improper handling of classified documents, and then by new flights of disturbing rhetoric by former President Donald Trump, 77, raised renewed profound questions—or should have—about his own fitness for presidential office. Describing a real or imagined conversation about NATO dues with a European leader, Trump related: “I said: ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’ … ‘No, I would not protect you, in fact I would encourage [Russia] to do whatever they want. You gotta pay.’”

There is a dismaying amount of confusion in the parallels and comparisons that many commentators have drawn between these two men, the current president and his immediate predecessor, each the prohibitive favorite at this point to head his party’s ticket in the coming election. This proceeds from the unavoidable impression that some things must be broken in the United States for its two main political parties to have simultaneously offered up two such flawed candidates.

There is a world of difference in the ways in which they are flawed, though. The anxieties and discontent aroused by Biden’s performance, whether it is his frequent public memory lapses and misstatements or his shuffling gait and other signs of frailty, are perfectly normal. It is far from ideal for the United States to be led by someone with such traits, but there is nothing about the Biden presidency that conceivably threatens the future of the U.S. republic.

Like his politics or not, for this is not a partisan argument, Biden has presided over a smoothly functioning government that with few exceptions has executed its policies in competent and predictable ways. Other than the outlier factor of Biden’s age, history will likely regard his tenure as fitting firmly within the conventional bounds of U.S. politics. Even Biden’s potential death in office, which would be unsurprising given that, if reelected, he would be 82 years old on Inauguration Day, would yield a routine and proper succession by an elected vice president whom the American people would be free to throw out on the regular timetable should they choose to do so.

The case of Trump, though, couldn’t be more different. Whether one calls it an insurrection or not, the former president’s attempts to rally support for him to stay in power on January 6, 2021, or arm-twist lawmakers and his vice president to bend electoral rules for the same purpose were threats to the integrity of the U.S. political system. And they were not the only ones he has created, either. It is, of course, Trump’s right to defend himself against the many charges he faces in numerous courts of law, but one of his arguments should be seen as uniquely menacing—namely, that a president should be free from prosecution for any criminal behavior committed while in office.

The U.S. Supreme Court must now decide whether to consider the former president’s argument. A legal victory by Trump in this case, however unlikely, would spell the end of republican-style rule in the country by placing presidents above the law.

Trump has also positively invoked the word dictator in describing himself, unreassuringly justifying this by saying this aspiration would only apply to his first day back in office.

He has backed the state of Texas in refusing to comply with a federal court order asserting Washington’s control over the country’s borders, reportedly pledging to encourage other states to send their national guards to Texas to bolster its defiance of the United States’ federalist order. He is reportedly considering naming his daughter-in-law as head of the Republican Party, no crime to be sure, but a personalizing corruption of the political system in line with his other authoritarian instincts. And most recently, as the quote above shows, he has casually threatened members of the NATO alliance that if they don’t meet an agreed benchmark for defense spending, he would not only tolerate a Russian attack on them, but also encourage it.

Even taken individually, many of these positions or actions pose existential threats to the United States that are far more threatening that any concerns raised by Biden’s age. It is the NATO comment, though, that brings us back directly to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

That country’s decay was brought on by the failure of its elites at renewal and reform. The ossification of its system was symbolized, if not exactly brought on, by the advanced age or poor health of its leaders in the pivotal moments of the 1980s. Economic growth in the Soviet Union was the envy of the world in the 1950s, and one might argue that, in fact, it was in the following decade that the country’s political system became too hidebound and corrupt to continue thriving.

Trump’s NATO rhetoric—and, should he become elected, his anti-alliance politics,—are even more damaging. They strike at the heart of U.S. success and prosperity in the world. If pursued, they would deliver a devastating blow to both the country and the global order, an own-goal with few historical parallels.

As filtered through Trump’s mind, alliances are like mob protection rackets in which the payments must keep flowing upward or back to the boss to keep him happy. Otherwise, he will allow bad things to happen, and the victims will have deserved their fate. Biden presents none of these risks.

There seems to be no recognition that the United States has been the premier beneficiary of its great alliances. Its former enemy Japan, for example, helped the United States in crucial, if indirect ways, in resisting North Korea’s takeover of the Korean Peninsula in the 1950s, and South Korea and Japan similarly helped Washington during the Vietnam War. Taken together, they and other allies in Asia are what allow the United States to maintain a favorable order and counterweight to China in the world’s most economically dynamic region.

NATO, likewise, has been similarly indispensable to U.S. power and preeminence in the North Atlantic. For decades, it has kept the peace in Europe and prevented renewed bids by Russia for imperial expansion. The accession of Sweden and Finland to the alliance that is now underway is not a sign of Washington being taken for a ride, as Trump might imagine, but rather a reaffirmation of U.S. power and vitality in the world. Enormous prosperity has flowed from this peace, as much to the United States as to the Europeans themselves.

Ukraine has been the one major exception in the post-Soviet era, and just as Trump seems to have no idea why the United States should help protect NATO members, he seems equally clueless about why allowing Ukraine to crumble before Moscow’s aggression should matter on the far side of the Atlantic.

I write this as someone who has spent a career freely criticizing Western imperialism, including the United States’ own. But if you want to overturn long-standing constitutional arrangements or the architecture of grand alliances, as Trump seems so inclined to do, you should have a coherent plan for alternatives. In a democracy, that should mean an exhaustive discussion and adherence to legal processes and informed choices at the ballot box. From Trump and many of his most ardent supporters, one hears no hint of anything beyond grievance and will to power. Matters of democracy fall by the wayside. All that remains is to follow the great leader.

Trump is a man who personalizes everything and seems to operate on impulses, whims, and grudges. If he is given a second chance to follow and execute them, in another decade or two, historians may be writing the kinds of books one can find today about the Soviet Union in the 1980s, all asking some version of the question: How did things go so completely off the rails?

The big difference, it seems, is that if this befalls the United States, it would be the result of an election in which voters choose a dangerous and incompetent leader—and one who is, moreover, nearly as old as Biden—and not a matter of elite mismanagement of an undemocratic succession. He would be enabled by members of his own party who have repeatedly shown little inclination to stand up to him on matters of constitutional or democratic principle.

Under such a grim scenario, it would not just be the conductor driving the train into the abyss, but also half the passengers, the station master, and the switch operators all contributing to the derailment.

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dungeons-and-dragon-age · 9 months

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Asking as someone who has no editing skills of any sort: How did you make those character pages with the symbols for major things that happened and like the specialisations? I wanna make em for my canon characters, but I have absolutely no clue how,,,

Hiya! :)

Uhh idk if i can explain very well lol, but i'll try!

I got the templates from here! At the bottom you can find the template for each game with corresponding icons for the classes/events etc

I find it easiest to make everything transparent first; some programs have some sort of "colour to alpha" option that will either apply transparency by brightness (darker value = more opaque) or will have a more customisable selection, though how that looks or where it is in the menu will depend on what you're using. Otherwise, check if the program has a "selection by brightness/value" option. Then on a new layer you can fill the selection with a solid color, and it will do the same job as the first method. You can hide or delete the original layer, or fill it with whatever background color you fancy. All that is so you don't have to worry so much about clean selection, and so that you can easily adjust colours ~

After this you're free to move everything around! For this i like to isolate the main part of the template into a new document (crop the top part and "save as", or select & copy it and make a new canvas via clipboard and save that), but you can keep it as is and crop it later if you prefer. Either way you can now select whichever icons you want and move em to where you want em! Best way to do that is to cut & paste them so they're on their own layer and you don't have to worry about destroying things if they overlap.

If you want to insert an image, import or paste it into the canvas and move it below the main template layer. There are different ways to crop it, e.g through a clipping layer or mask, or you can select the outside of the frame and delete that part of the image.

If you don't have an art program yet, some free ones are Krita (for art), Gimp (for photo editing), or Firealpaca/Medibang (for art but simpler than krita) c:

And that's pretty much it! I hope that's helpful, but if something is unclear and/or it would help to have images lmk and i'll edit it! I can also try to dig up the .psd file i made of the template, if that helps :>

#lay answers #explaining is not my strong suit lol and i'm always worried that i'm either too vague or too detailed so feedback is def appreciated x'D

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sophieinwonderland · 9 months

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While we're not your biggest fans by any means and do feel bad for what happened with kipandkandi it really feels like they dug their own grave there.

If they had trauma from slander perhaps they shouldn't have went on a hate campaign against your blog for ages to the point of spamming their positivity blog with it for a week. It feels hypocritical at best and outright two faced at worst.

We hope they recover well, but if they can't handle what they themselves serve they probably shouldn't be interacting with a space as inherently toxic and agressive as syscourse, especially when they did worse.

I really wouldn't be cavalier with phrasing of "dug their own grave" right now.

But, yeah... I feel the same sentiment.

Everything about their posts on this are just filled with hypocrisy and projection.

Warning: what's about to follow is a very angry vent.

They accuse me of having a "vendetta" against their alters. I've literally only talked about them a few times over the past few days due to everything happening. Meanwhile, my name has been continuously mentioned on their syscourse blog since the start of the year.

They accuse me of talking about them behind their back. I was blocked during the entire period they attacked me since around, I think, April to July 17th when they unblocked me to try to get me to read their document. They tried again on July 18th. And I blocked them right after.

They accuse me of block-evading, but their whole defense of why they @'d Eeveecraft is because they claim that they thought tagging them would still send the message to the account that blocked them.

This also means, by extension, that when they @'d me in May with a post calling me bigoted and transphobic, they intended for that post to be sent to my notifications despite having me blocked at the time.

They also said that they plan on remaking their post on their main because Eeveecraft doesn't have them blocked there... which... is still block evading. If somebody blocks you on one account, don't try to contact them on another.

They consider me mentioning them a few times without tagging them block evasion. Which... I genuinely don't think is true. Blocks aren't gag orders. As long as you aren't encouraging harassment or trying to contact a user, I don't think there's a rule against talking about people. But if it was block evasion, then they've clearly done much worse between both their syscourse blog and the positivity blog. (And for that matter, I think most of their friend group has made posts about me by name while having me blocked.)

And as I said in the other post, @'ing somebody you have blocked is bad because it links potential harassers directly to the blog of the other person. Don't @ them.

And immediately after reading my post explaining that @'ing doesn't send notifications to the blocked users and that all it does is make it easier for harassers to get to them, they @ my blog and link to two of my posts "for transparency". Which since they read and comprehended my previous post, I can only possibly interpret the @'ing as them trying to get me harassed.

There's no other explanation, is there?

It's the only possible reason to do that after it's explicitly explained that there's no other advantage to @'ing blocked accounts.

Block Evasion ✅

Talking About People Behind Their Back ✅

False Accusations ✅

Spreading False, Targeted Rumors ✅

Personal Vendetta ✅

After calling me an asshole, a proud racist, a transphobe, a zoophilia supporter, a bigot, telling me to get banned, and so much else on their blogs... I said "reporting someone seems like something they would do since they told me to get banned, but there are a lot of other suspects who are just as likely who could have done it too so IDK 🤷‍♀️" and I said them saying people are being incredibly racist is an "attack."

These are the things they refer to as "slander."

I legitimately believe them when they say I hurt them. Because their continuous, almost-obsessive attacks felt very personal for some reason. But like you, I feel that if getting a tiny fraction of what they dished out back caused them this much distress, they really should have stepped away a long time ago for their own health.

I sincerely hope that they can find healthier coping mechanisms. And, for the love of the gods, stop tagging people who have them blocked!

Also, this should go without saying, but please don't send hate to them. Don't harass them. Don't engage with them. I'm angry at the repeated smears and am expressing that, but the last thing I'd want is for anymore harm to come to them.

#syscourse

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dragonskyheart · 2 months

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(Ghost Pokemon AU) Ghost Type Pokemon Pac Trio

So I was working on the Ghost Pokemon AU and was going through a resurgence of a PMATGA hyperfixation at the moment and then I remembered "Hey the main characters of PMATGA have a role in this ,AU, why not draw them in the AU?",and because of that, here we are! This AU spans a lot of series and is very extremely crossovery in general, so why not! I need to make a masterpost/synopsis of this AU, I swear-

Also Spiral was a pain to draw bc I never drew Dragapult before and AAAAAAA- (I'm fine! Don't worry! Haha! Seriously though why...)

So they are! In all of their ghost fighting glory!

Started on: 2-18-2024

it's to be noted that they didn't start out in these forms exactly. A series of events caused their souls to take the forms they did. I made their eyes look similar to how ghosts in the show had them. Also the reason for the spectral lighting was because of Dragapults looking slightly more spectral... I'll try to elaborate more when I get to it.

Pac (Gengar)

The yellow boi himself! The way he goes out is on the hands of a certain other ghost fighting hero through way of misunderstanding. The beginning of his character arc is based on a fanmade one minute melee on Deviantart I read when I was younger. (I might link to it when I find it...) I will probably make the choreography of the fight somewhat different to that but the outcome is the same. I chose Gengar because of their long tongues and round bodies. (That and the fact the ears can be made to resemble his eyebrows.) He is known as the "Golden Gengar" to locals via rumors and became quite the urban legend. But rest assured, he is still the same Pac inside! Just more traumatized! :')

Cyli (Gourgeist)

Cyli is a Gourgeist since it and Pumpkaboo could be seen as a somewhat gothic cute ghost type Pokemon. (If that reasoning makes sense...) The fur of Pumpkaboo is black and the hairstyle of Gourgeist is simular in my opinion. Also the default shinies mesh well enough ingame. Besides the grass typing is somewhat befitting of her upbringing. So, how did she end up like this? Well, if i'll be honest, I didn't quite document how well her death goes quite yet. Same with Spiral. I only have the basics rn. Essentially, she dies to a mysterious enity in a meadow with a colony of pumpkins (is that what a group of pumpkins called...?) growing in Autumn. Her soul destablizes and is forced to bind into a pumpkin, giving a new form! By the way, she is an Average Size Gourgeist.

Spiral (Dragapult)

And finally, Spiral is a Dragapult! He wound up killed in the Lake of Dragons. (Name and Location Pending) His soul wound up absorbing the ancient draconic energies in the lake causing him to take the form of a Dreepy. Dragapult is from what I recall the tallest of the three pokemon, so it seem pretty befitting for him! (Also it gives me an excuse to use Dragapult somewhere, so yea.) He basically has a whole story thing with Soko, as Soko has the distinction of being the first of the three's Partner Digimon to find out about their respective deceased Tamer's whereabouts and travels with him! At one point after he first evolves a random Dreepy finds him and follows him around! He eventually goes "I guess it's mine now." and takes it in. (You could probably guess more eventually came.) He basically exudes so much big sibling energy that it was inevitable anyways!

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qqueenofhades · 2 years

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Have you read Ian Mortimer's book about Henry V?

I have not, both because it isn't my primary field of interest and because Mortimer is one of the historians, in my opinion, that has to be approached with a heaping handful of salt. I have enjoyed some of his work before and found it to be genuinely useful: i.e. The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England, which is a clever way to do social history and answer some of the questions that laypeople often have about what the past was "really" like, though you have to remember that his interpretation is still subjective and I wish that he would have been more transparent about how he used and selected sources. Still, it's a book that I can generally recommend at least as a starting point and a place to branch off into other work, and it's definitely accessible to someone without specialist training.

The main problem with Mortimer and his crowd, as detailed in this recent ask, is that they are extremely wedded to particular historical theories -- in this case, their insistence that Edward II of England was not killed in 1327, as commonly believed, but escaped and lived in exile abroad until sometime in the 1340s. They correctly point to some amount of documentary evidence that at least raises the possibility that this was indeed what happened, but then they go whole-hog on insisting that THIS WAS DEFINITELY THE ANSWER, and anyone who disagrees or even just doesn't instantly buy their brilliance is either stupid or a participant in Big Academia (tm) conspiracy to keep the conventional wisdom from being substantively challenged.

This, if you look at the profession of history in general, and especially what is going on right now, is obviously nonsensical. Mortimer had an article published in the prestigious English Historical Review journal which discussed the possibility of Edward II's survival; it's not as if there's some big organized conspiracy to prevent this fourteenth-century event from being re-examined. That is literally what happens in history all the time. As I said in that other post, if lots of other historians have examined the same evidence and the best they can do is "maybe, but we don't actually know for sure," that is actually a GOOD thing, and reflective of the self-criticism and evidential lacunae that are naturally built into the practice of academic, especially premodern, history. We have to be able to admit when we don't know things or when the record is confusing, contradictory, or incomplete, rather than insisting that THIS IS OBVIOUSLY WHAT IT MEANS.

Anyway, all this means that if you just go on insisting that you're right and nobody else has anything valid to offer, that is not going to make you very popular, and doesn't signify that you're very interested in contributing to the overall field, rather than your own ego. It's also doubly ridiculous to me to insist that we DEFINITELY KNOW the truth, considering the nature and the biases of premodern evidence, and the way we always have to be careful about drawing sweeping or generalized conclusions even for well-documented events. The historian's entire practice is going "well maybe, but what about this?" or otherwise picking out exceptions and nuance and showing what we can and can't know, so this just... doesn't work with that. Hence, Mortimer is on my list of people who need to be read with caution, and with an eye to how I can independently corroborate (or indeed, challenge) his analysis. Nobody in this field is so smart that their word alone should stand as ultimate proof, and there are, alas, plenty of (often male) historians who just don't get that.

#anonymous #ask #history #medieval history

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coochiequeens · 2 years

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“I’m curious if the LGBTQ commission has an interest in advising on some language (that says people who can get pregnant), not just women.” Just say women and girls.

Austin’s Commission for Women passed a recommendation this week in support of the GRACE Act, which would de-prioritize abortion investigations and prevent city funds from being used to report procedures, which will soon be completely illegal in the state.

While City Council is currently in recess, the GRACE Act will be discussed when Council convenes on Thursday for a special session. So at their most recent meeting, the Commission for Women discussed the local ramifications of the Supreme Court decision Dobbs v. Jackson, which overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion.

“We all know we come from different backgrounds with different beliefs … we’re not here to get into a debate about all of that. It’s more about if we need to take actions to protect equity for women and girls, which is part of our core mission,” said Commission Chair Rebecca Austen.

Austen, who drafted the initial recommendation and posted the item for discussion and possible action, workshopped the initial version of the document with her fellow commissioners. Various members chimed in with suggestions for additional bullet points to be incorporated in the final version of the recommendation before it is published.

“Referring to women and girls makes invisible people needing health care who are trans men or nonbinary individuals … trans men are people who are born with uteruses and cervixes and vaginas but identify as men now, and they are absolutely getting pregnant,” said Commissioner Juliana Gonzales, in response to the recommendation using women as the main subject. “I’m curious if the LGBTQ commission has an interest in advising on some language (that says people who can get pregnant), not just women.”

The commission also decided to add a line that explicitly states the consequences for victims of rape, incest and sex trafficking.

“I’m wondering if it’s not worth it to really state what that means for child victims of sexual assault who are capable of getting pregnant – like 10- or 11-year-olds who get pregnant and can’t get abortions now,” said Commissioner Neva Fernandez, who will take the lead on incorporating this sentiment into the final version.

Members also volunteered to add a section about the mental health consequences of the lack of abortion access in the area, and a section referring back to the pre-Roe statutes that date back to the 1920s that are relevant now that the landmark case was overturned.

The commission also expressed an interest in adding a statement about increasing funding for legal aid and for out-of-state travel to obtain an abortion, but decided they’ll update their statement once they know what the upcoming city budget is already slotted to include. In March, after Texas limited abortions to those under six weeks pregnant, the Commission for Women passed an initial recommendation that the next budget cycle includes funding for things like legal aid and travel support for abortion access and prenatal and health care options for those who choose to carry out their pregnancy.

The recommendation to Council on support of the GRACE Act was passed with one opposing vote cast by Commissioner Pam Rattan. The recommendation will be updated with the additional statements from commissioners as they were discussed in the meeting in the coming days. Once finalized, the recommendation will be distributed to other city committees like the Joint Inclusion Committee and the Public Safety Committee with the hopes that they may also want to express their support for the GRACE Act.

Photo made available through a Creative Commons license.

The Austin Monitor’s work is made possible by donations from the community. Though our reporting covers donors from time to time, we are careful to keep business and editorial efforts separate while maintaining transparency. A complete list of donors is available here, and our code of ethics is explained here.

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