#but my reason for doing so is that I'd have to either do a Kickstarter for each book

[deoidesign]

Hiya, I wanted to share a kinda weird story and ask a question. Just wanted to say you’re a very talented storyteller and I’ve been thinking of your work a lot. I ended up having a dream about time & time again last night where Steve tries to steal the American flag for a bunch of children. It was a pretty angsty dream but I still found it kinda funny because it seems on brand for Steve lol. Also, for those who can’t afford to buy the books on kickstarter, will there be other options to help fund? If the kickstarter succeeds will you list the books on your website or are they one and done? I hope you’re having a lovely day!

I love how the way you've approached this makes me unable to ignore the first part to be able to answer the second.

To start with the questions though, I'll be making a PDF people can get to help support (that will be included in all tiers)! It should be a fun item for any fan of the series... You'll also be able to get just one book instead of all 4 from season 1. I'm trying to plan some other things, but it's all still very much in development so I'm wary of committing too openly to it!

And I am planning to have the Kickstarter goal fund extra copies for me to put on my site and take to conventions, yes! So if someone can't support when it comes out, if it funds then they can order the books later, or find me at a convention with some copies!

I'm planning to be incredibly up front about the costs and processes by which I came to all my decisions, because I've made quite a few strange choices but I assure you they're all just in service of getting books out as soon as (and as fun as) possible!

And for the first bit, it's incredibly flattering to hear that you think about my work... And to the extent that it's invaded your subconscious! Wow! Depending on the context it's definitely something he'd do, complete with angst in a silly situation. Thank you for sharing this with me, I hope your day is kind to you.

#the pdf is going to be an activity book you can print out at home! #it's designed to be activities that line up with each arc #so youre meant to 'play along' as you read! #which of course is something that can be done without the books ^^ #but im planning on paper dolls #maybe some crosswords #mazes #stuff like that! #no promises i haven't made too much of it yet... ive been uhh #busy with making the comics and prepping the books for print #its all been nearly a month of work so far #and ive nearly a month of work more to go #but im right about halfway and i think things are settling down! #as for the books... im planning to ship them out one at a time. #so its a bit more expensive for this... #but my reason for doing so is that I'd have to either do a Kickstarter for each book #which is WAY WAY WAY too many kickstarters theres gonna be like 10 books or something by the end of this comic #OR id have to wait a year to do them all at once. #so im going to put the shipping costs for one at a time #and then explain 'if you wait a year to get them all at once shipping will be approx this much' #again trying to be very very transparent about the costs of things #cause im trying to make it as inexpensive as it possibly can be... #but 4 books is like $100 pretty much any way you slice it :( #so im very nervous about it all succeeding #so im trying to add in as much as i can to hopefully help ease it towards success #cause also 4 books... thats like a 10k goal minimum. #very big project and incredibly scary!!! #anon #asks #Kickstarter stuff

[monkey-wrench-zeurel]

In a post you reblogged, it said "we could lose Monkey Wrench already if not enough eyeballs get on it."

Does that mean you would halt production on the show entirely if views don't pick up? Or would you just have to release episodes at a slower pace?

There are two contingency plans I have set up in case things still don't pick up;

1 - We release eps over a much longer period. Like with Ep 2, I only had money for our voice actors, sfx and music. I did about 95% of the animation (with Greg and Wright pitching in because they're great folks) that 18 min ep took around 7-8 months solo (on top of doing NDA freelance work). The only reason ep 3 is coming out so fast after 2 is that we actually had the money saved up from merch sales and new patreon pledges to be able to hire 50+ people to be able to make it.

2 - We go the animatic route. And honestly I'm really favoring this one as I'd only have to animate the really fun parts and everything else can be keyframes, similar to those simpson/MW shit post vids I posted a while ago. It also harkens back to my old OCT days. Mmm the nostalgia~ This method is much more affordable (we'd still have voices and music), I can tell this story faster and move onto the other two stories I'm working with on the side.

Indie animation is brutally expensive and it really does suck that fans have to foot the bill with either patreon, merch purchases or just showing it around. Youtube ad rev is dirt nowadays and I'm not resorting to sponsorships as that'd completely deflate and devalue what we're trying to do. I have been considering doing a kickstarter type thing for ep 4, like what the good folks at Lackadaisy did, though I'm doubtful we could raise the $150k needed for one 25-30 minute episode. Could be worth the risk, though, we'll see.

This stupid story will be told one way or another! Either way, at the end of the day this IS just a cartoon show. We're not curing cancer or anything, it ain't that serious.

[blackbackedjackal]

I was the one who started the server and founded the studio. I invited DogBlud to the server.

I was an investor on the project, quoted a total of $5200 out of the full $13,600 on a website that DogBlud commissioned Angela and her team to make.

One of the first red flags I noticed as an investor was that DogBlud never patched me through to Angela and her team. She said she would after I read over and agreed to the contract that Angela wrote up, but she never did. She promised to add me and Rex to a server with Angela so we could keep up to date with the progress. This never happened.

I messaged DogBlud several times about my payments. My first one was due February 12th. I didn't know where to send the funds and brought it up with her several days before. It was around this time that I suspected she was hiding me away from Angela and her team, and now I know why.

According to Angela's own account, DogBlud is saying she invited ME to the project. Which is a blatant lie. So let's go ahead and add taking credit for space a Black woman created, a space that was predominantly women of color (DogBlud being the ONLY exception) to the pile.

Dog was not the "group leader". She was tasked with being an investor, my business partner/consultant, a writer, and an inker. Since we agreed to start on her project, Same As Always, first, I asked her to be a project manager so that she could tell us the art direction she wanted us to take. She was asked to do these things, by me, the studio founder and lead who was working on contracts, setting up meetings with lawyers/other investors and participants, researching for and planning a KickStarter campaign that was intended to help us raise more money for the studio, set up an LLC for the studio, be a character/writing consultant, cultural consultant, art director, colorist, and more.

The reason I "wasn't able to hit my deadlines" is because A. She made completely unrealistic deadlines on a project that I and Rex were under the impression was volunteer work since none of us were getting paid. We agreed to this because we knew that a lot of work needed to be completed before the site launched.

B. Because I was in the process of moving (a move that DogBlud encouraged me to do due to my horrid living situation at the time) and did not have access to my PC for certain working hours that was had agreed to. I was working consistently on the off-hours to make up for any scheduled time I missed (my art updates were posted in the server) and kept the team updated with my moving situation. I assured Dog that once I was done moving, I'd be on a proper schedule. My move was delayed and complicated due to external factors outside of my control. After about a week and a half into what was a three week process, Dog either stopped acknowledging my updates in the chat or said that she "wasn't happy" with me even though she was harassing me and pressuring me to work on pages nearly every day when I physically could not work on them.

#dogblud #long post #yes I have screenshots to prove all of this #I have over 200

[miscreantahead]

Tbh I've seen a LOT of people saying they don't think Chester and Norris are Jon and Martin in any way but the way I see it the other possibilities just don't make sense with what we have. (Not talking to people who just don't want it to be them because I see your point there but... well anyway.) Possibilities I've considered are as follows, let me know if there's some other thing I didn't think of:

They're completely unrelated to Jon or Martin and Alex and Jonny are just using their voices for new "characters". The reason I don't believe this at all is simple: is because it feels cheap and like a bad storytelling decision, and that may be a matter of opinion but I've listened to enough Q&A's between the two of them to feel like they wouldn't go that route. I could absolutely accept this if they were on a constrained budget and short on VA's, but the kickstarter suggests otherwise. I'm not saying they couldn't have cameos were Jon and Martin not in this, but large cryptic parts after the ambiguity of what happens to these two at the end of TMA would be a tasteless bait and switch that I feel like I trust them not to do. I'm using my Reasonable Typing Voice but I honestly think this take is borderline impossible and it would blow me away if this was the case.

2 is under the cut.

2. Something else simply pulled their voices from all of the statements they read that the web collected and is imitating them while reading new material. This one is *possible* but still feels entirely unlikely but the why is more complicated so I'm going to break down why this doesn't add up to me:

• The cases are being read by something sentient enough to understand and apply strong emotional tone to the human "speech" in each case. The contrast of the introductions and headers/filing information makes this even more apparent which suggests it was a conscious decision (blatantly, IMO, and after an explanation was provided for all the statements sounding like the same writing style in TMA, I'd be extremely surprised if this had no bearing on the narrative and is just a choice of execution.). So there's no way this is just a computer program, even if it's influenced by beholding, we know from TMA that beholding doesn't have that kind of understanding of human emotion either. Something with a deeper understanding of language and humanity than a computer program could have is reading these. Unless they're actually taking us down a sentient AI route, but that seems unlikely. So it has to be something in some way human.

• We consider it could just be Freddy (I forget how it's actually spelled, FR3-DI?) using their voices and that Freddy is the individual in question with human level sentience, but I have no explanation for why it would use their voices separately, why it wouldn't include others who read statements like Melanie, Basira, Tim, Daisy, etc. Yes, there's still Augustus, but that can only cover one of the other characters who read statements, and only Jon and Martin read a significant enough amount of them to set themselves aside from the others who read. The ONLY thing that would make this theory work for me is if Augustus turned out to be Gertrude, and honestly I wouldn't put it past Alice, trans legend, to call a quite seemingly older woman's voice by a masculine sounding name just for the hell of it. But, again, seems unlikely.

• We could consider that they are to only some small degree themselves, but they've lost a significant enough portion that they aren't truly, and are simply extensions of this universe's "Eye" (saying eye because I think the motivation would still have to be voyeuristic to bother?), to the point where who they used to be won't even be a concern. But this one is still challenged by the first bullet to some degree, I think. This one is possible, albeit a little boring in my opinion.

I'm willing to accept that none of the characters we know and love will truly be present in this new narrative. I actually went into it with that expectation and was jump-scared by AJN's voice 10 minutes into the first episode. But with everything in episodes 1 and 2, I don't think it's far-fetched at all to hope we're going to get some jmart again (I think the other direction is more far-fetched). I do think it's perfectly likely it's going to be miserable and painful the whole fucking time, though.

#the magnus protocol #seeing a lot of posts saying they dont think it's them and it doesn't track for me so voila! a take! #again this isn't for anyone who just hates the idea of it being them that's sensible but im just saying i can't find a way that it's not

[zarvasace]

😍 published lines or a section of a fic that you loved writing? 🥰 a fluff WIP snippet

😍 a piece of a published fic that I loved writing

"Yeah, make up already!" Megan called, and three pairs of footsteps retreated.  Shadow's hand, still on Vio's arm, tightened in the deep blackness of the lightless closet. None of these closets had light switches on the inside. They were stuck. "What was that?" Shadow whispered. "Make out? I heard make out." Vio moved his hand just enough to whisper back. "I think I did, too. We might have pushed them too hard." "Yeah. Us, sexual tension? Right." Shadow's other hand flailed around a bit for Vio's waist, but finally managed to pull him in.  "I'm not too interested in that, " Vio said, resting his hands where they belonged around Shadow's neck. "Me either." Shadow paused. "But I do like kissing." "That's not really the same thing." "I know. I actually want to kiss you." "Well," Vio said. "We have fifteen minutes, apparently. That's plenty of time. We argued for a bit and then made up, sound good?" "Made out?" Shadow said brightly, entirely missing the point on purpose.  Vio rolled his eyes, though he knew Shadow wouldn't be able to see it. "You're an idiot, and I like you for some reason."  "It's because I'm good at kissing." "You weren't at first." "Well, neither were you." "I never claimed to be." "You are now. Are we gonna—"

This is from I'd Pay Your Bail, a Vidow fic that kinda kickstarted my Vidow fic writing. :) There's a lot I'd write differently now, but I love some of these exchanges, still.

🥰 fluff wip snippet

Wind swam up to him with a lazy breaststroke and grabbed onto the edge to steady himself. "Hey, Legend! Are you asleep?"  Legend's face twisted. He didn't open his eyes, but spoke with an airy sort of tone. "Not yet." "How does your hat stay on underwater? Shouldn't it fall off?"  "It's fused to my skull." Wind blinked. He could've sworn he'd seen it off at some point. "What, really?"  "No." Legend snorted. He tilted his head to the side to crack a cool blue eye and look at Wind. "It's pinned. With normal hair clips."  "Oh," Wind said. "Why?"  "So it… stays on?" 

A piece of the next chapter of Marvelous Misadventures :)

#ask game #fs 80s au #marvelous misadventures #:) #vidow

[dumbingofage]

Hi, I hope this is the account managed by David Willis. It's pretty hard to find an email adress to contact the artist.

I have a very simple question. Are you ever coming to Europe to do a comic con stuff? I would really really like to shake (or wave) to you. For the last +10 years, you have made my life pleasant by your comics. I started with Shortpaced, for the sole reason I liked the art. The awesome storyline got to me later, went reading It's walky and after that, I begin reading Joyce and Walky. I started reading Dumbing of Age from the start.

Anyway I stop with the praising. Don't want to make this awkward, so let me start asking if you are aware that you have fans in Europe?

It would be awesome if you could visit Holland or any of the west-european countries on the mainland, so not UK.

Greetings from The Hague, The Netherlands.

Ronnie.

Thanks for reading! It warms my dark heart. I mail quite a few books each Kickstarter to various European countries, so I know you folks are over there.

In order to get me to Europe, I'd basically have to have my way paid for by a convention, because otherwise such a trip is a little out of my financial comfort zone, especially if I want to be not a terrible father/husband and bring my family with me. Because I live in the United States, I'd basically have to choose between Europe Trip or Healthcare. Well, okay, US Healthcare for a family of four is like ten Europe Trips. I live in a great country! Just a wonderful, amazing country, full of freedom and getting charged $300 for a 15-minute annual checkup because they billed the wrong insurance and then you spend six days on the phone.

Long story short, if you want me in Europe, start begging local conventions to have me flown in as a guest.

or get the united states to implement nationwide socialized medicine, either or

[moiraimyths]

Hi there, I have a technical question about the custom MC sprites. I know it's not guaranteed to open back up, and even if it did the slots will fill quick due to interest, but I'm still curious to know the answer. The description says unique and full-body, but do we get any say in the outfit? It's fine if not, but I'd like to go with bulkier clothing to hide how skinny MC is supposed to be as part of the plot (not against that plot point either, just my preference in terms of MC looks). Thanks!

Yep! The outfit will be entirely up to you. The personalized MC sprite in the Queen's Favour tier differs a little bit from the customized MC sprite stretch goal in that the personalized MC is a complete commission from our sprite artist, so you can decide what your MC is wearing. If the customized MC stretch goal is unlocked, the mechanic will operate a little bit like Picrew in that some aspects of the sprite can be customized (skin tone, hair style/colour, eye colour, certain facial features) but the sprite's base/clothes will remain the same or only vary for plot reasons (i.e. the custom MC's clothing may change after the boutique scene in Keagan's chapter, for example).

If Queen's Favour backers decide they want their MCs to be a playable option in-game, then those sprites can be opted for as an alternative to the customized MC. Only thing we may do is make a partial-alt outfit if the personalized MC appears in-game and their commissioned outfit is too immersion-breaking, i.e. a backer asks for an elaborate gown that the MC might wear after being in TNN for a while, but wouldn't make sense pre-Ch. 3.

***

The Good People (Na Daoine Maithe)’s Kickstarter is now live! Check our pinned post for links to the Kickstarter and demo, and for more details!

KICKSTARTER STATUS: 77% funded!

FLAN SPRITE STATUS: 93% (need to reach $27k CAD before 22nd)

#ask #clotho answers #the good people #na daoine maithe #otome #visual novel #dating sim #interactive fiction

[ratkiing-a]

GET TO KNOW THE MUN !!

NAME : chuck or charlie !! funny enough i started going by charlie before my always sunny hyperfixation started. also, my fiance's name is dee which i just think is hilarious.

PRONOUNS : he/him/his & it/its.

PREFERENCE OF COMMUNICATION : discord is for sure the easiest way to get in touch with me, i tend to reply quicker there !! ims are fine though, my activity is just a tad more sporadic there.

MOST ACTIVE MUSE : currently, that muse would be charlie ( and everyone gasped ) !! however i've been having a bit more inspiration for dennis over on my sideblog. in the past, my loudest muses have been skunk and hiroto over on my multi. i was honestly really surprised when charlie took over my brain bc i've been so used to hiroto being my loudest muse for so long.

EXPERIENCE / HOW MANY YEARS : oh brother, i don't really even know anymore. i started writing on tumblr in like ... 2013 i believe. i've been off and on the site for so long i can't really figure out how many years total.

BEST EXPERIENCE : i think i'd have to say meeting all of my mutuals and becoming friends with y'all !! i've really met some lovely people in the rpc and i am so thankful that i did. i can really consider some of you true friends (':

RP PET PEEVE : the first thing that comes to mind is a lack of patience. like, pressure for ic and ooc replies and not understanding that i do have a life outside of writing. that always grinds my gears.

PLOTS OR MEMES : both work lovely for me. i do adore plotting but sometimes my brain is simply soup and it's hard for me to think of how to get plotting started. memes are a super good way to kickstart an interaction with me, it's part of the reason why i love reblogging them !! it gives me a good place to start and i've really created some lovely plots with my rp partners from inbox memes/prompts.

LONG OR SHORT REPLIES : it truly depends on the vibe !! i can either write a huge multi paragraph reply or just a shorter couple sentence one. it all depends on how much charlie is thinking, or what all he wants to say. it varies depending on interaction. i'm totally okay with both tho, reply length has never been something that has been super important to me.

ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSES : i am more like charlie kelly than i want to admit, tbh. it's not a bad thing at all !! we just tend to have the same coping mechanisms ( cough cough drinking too much ), and i relate a lot to charlie with his feelings of being different or isolated. we also share a similar brand of humor, to. and care about our friends more than anything !! thankfully for me, my friends are great and it's nothing close to what he goes through with the gang <;3

TAGGED BY: @antigodeus & @k4ndallTAGGING: @inhabets, @americanedpsycho, @gateway31, @hcavcnswept, @pnkb1tch, @goofily, @whomuses, @sovereyn & you !!

#chuck speaks. #alcohol mention // #alcoholism // #anyone who i tagged that has already answered just ignore this hehe #i cannot remember who has been tagged and who hasnt woopsies #this was so fun tho !!!

[not-poignant]

Wooooheeee merch!! Me is excited!!! Food for thought, maybe you could start a kickstarter campaign or something to cover publishing costs? I know they have a publishing category 🤔 I don't exactly know their policies so it's best to check further but I've definitely seen erotica books/art campaigns on there. Might be a good idea?

Hi anon,

I think this is a cool idea if you're a) American and b) can get to a post office, lol.

The thing is, I can't do anything that would involve me fulfilling orders from my house.

Firstly, there's simply too many books to cover (Game Theory would have to be broken down into 4 volumes, with the possibility of a 2-part release later on). I don't want to run complicated and stressful Kickstarter campaigns every 6 months forever. (Not to mention, frankly, that most Kickstarter campaigns fail to earn the amount they need, and I'm still figuring out how to make minimum wage via Patreon).

I do not have the spoons to think about dealing with the shipment costs (let alone the fact that I can't drive or catch public transport and therefore get to post offices) of extremely heavy, chunky books. But what I do know is that a lot of readers will be extremely put off by shipping costs easily in excess of $50-100 alone - not including the books or the tax on the books. Australia has one of the highest tax rates for books in the world, we have some of the must punitive shipping charges (some of your favourite Australian artists use drop shippers and this is why), etc. I used to ship small original pieces of art internationally, about half the size of a piece of paper, and extremely light-weight, and the *starting price* for shipping was around $30 USD. For heaver books it shoots up immediately.

For this reason, I actually have zero confidence in how this is actually going to work out without using a drop-shipper and distributor like IngramSpark. Mosk Kickstarters don't fulfill out of Australia wherever possible. And I have no intention of paying thousands of dollars to put books in my tiny cottage, only to realise I've shafted myself and all my international readers (which is...nearly all of you) by forcing everyone to pay an extra 10% GST on the book itself along with the extortionate postage prices for what will be, honestly, heavy books (postage is calculated by weight). Not to mention that I then can't get to a post office, and am completely dependent on other people to help me with that! And then on top of that, I don't believe many books will actually sell, so I'd prefer to use third party vendors wherever possible so I can be not miserable about it. When people can always read the ebooks for free, the only folks who are going to dish out money for paperbacks/hardbacks are going to be the really hardcore fans (I do not have a ton of these, though I love every one of them), or folks who hate ebooks.

Even if I had money at my disposal, I could never use a system like this (Kickstarter / paying for the mass printing of books), and almost no Australian author would, tbh.

On the other hand, aside from the book cover fees, I could technically list a book today on IngramSpark and my only fee would be the ISBNs.

And that's way less stressful than a Kickstarter. ;) And if I get booted for my content, that's just gonna be how it is. It possibly leaves Lulu as an option, but I'd prefer not to go that route mostly because it dumps more of the cost on you folks, and it also eats more profit margins for me.

The biggest issue is and has always been tbh the editing and the fact that chunks of Game Theory need to either be completely rewritten, or removed (the spanking chapter is incredibly OOC), and working out the covers because if the story has to be broken into multiple volumes, continuity in design is vital.

#asks and answers #pia on publishing #i cannot overstate just how punitive shipping costs are in australia when sending internationally #this has been the reason i haven't offered merch for over 7 years via Patreon #and if i do offer merch again it will have to be once every 6 months #and that will be for *extremely light-weight goods* #there's so many things people in the northern hemisphere are privileged to be able to do #especially folks in the USA #which is that you can generally access fast shipping #and generally affordable shipping #did you know in january of last year i couldn't get anything shipped to me from the US #for under $150 #it's better now x.x #but not by much

[dartagnantt]

Illusory Shinanigans

PDFs of this and more can be found over on at my Patreon here! You should also follow my new Kickstarter so you can be alerted when it goes live next year!

The last of my potential. How tragic! … err… I mean, the last of my "potential" theme. (saved it)

This week, I delve into my favourite school of magic, the one with the vaguest rules and is either awesome or lame depending on your game master. I've fortunately had some pretty rad GMs who run with my nonsense. So I get a lot of mileage out of illusions. I mostly play with phantasms this week AKA hallucinations but I also throw in some shadow magic for fun. The fleece is getting stretched very thin today.

Daydream

This one seemed like a lot of fun after all of the hallucinating I was doing. Literally trap someone in their thoughts. It's a bit of an advanced single target colour spray.

Mass Phantasmal Force

I couldn't figure out how to scale the power of phantasmal force, as a result it kind of became four spells. This was a version of of the original scaled for additional targets.

Phantasmal Force: Revised

This is the one closest to the original, however, this one is specifically attack focused, hence why it scales the damage. I did do an overall change where instead of just believing everything but still being able to use an action to escape, I make failing a check force the belief instead. As much as I call this revised phantasmal force, I kind of rewrote the entire spell so I could use it for other projects because for some reason, they left my favourite spell out of the SRD >:(

Phantasmal Image

This one is my primary use case of the spell, you'll note that you can be more vague with this. This is borrowed from audiovisual hallucination, a spell from pathfinder and my actual favourite spell. This is also how I both use and run the spell. Because the phantasm subschool is locked inside someone's mind, its weaker in that only a designated creature can see it, but because it taps into their mind you can force belief and use their own knowledge against them. But yeah, as much fun as harming creatures with illusions is fun, the diverse fuckery in funner.

This one scales in size, because I've had to abuse the notion of perspective more than I'd like in a hallucination to get around the size limitation. Tempted to make a 'phantasmal diarama' spell at some point, but that's kind of what the next one is for.

Programmed Hallucination

This I made mostly as a retroactive excuse for what I did to my players in my game (I do this quite often, feel free to judge me) I wanted a hallucination trap, because they needed to enter a crowded room, and needless to say, if they didn't feel the people, then this would fail immediately. But I wanted a more general use case, because fuck yes!

Shared Hallucination

And this is the last variation, scaling the non damaging version for more people. Because you really need to distract multiple people with one concentration spell.

Shadow Duplicate

Kage Bunshin no Jutsu! Not called shadow clone, because that would imply its related to the clone spell. But really this is effectively a lesser simulacrum. I was always disappointed that mirror image doesn't give you illusory doubles that can move indepenat from you, kind of like the trickery domain power, and I didn't really want to make a specific spell for it, because silent image and major image can kind of do that already. So instead, a spell that makes a copy, that you can cast from or attack, or whatever. This should probably be a higher level, but I REALLY wanted this is be available for bonus spell lists.

And now to plug my stuff. I release homebrews weekly over on my Patreon. Anyone who pledges $1 or more per post don't have to wait a month to see them, and also help fund my being alive habit.

At the moment, they have exclusive access to the following:

Concubus Patron

The Siren's Call

Satyr Ancestry

Sanguine Seeker Ranger Archetype

I also have three classes, and a splatbook over on DriveThrueRPG to check out:

The Rift Binder. A class specialising in summoning monsters and controlling the battlefield.

The Witch Knight. A class that combines swords and sorcery in the most literal way.

The Werebeast. A class that turns you into a half beast to destroy your foes.

d'Artagnan's Adventurer Almanac. A compendium of races, subclasses, feats, spells, monsters and more!

#d&d 5e #spells #illusion

[gutsfics]

Tobias should have been a canon LI. Where is the Open Heart Book 3 rewrite that the we need? If someone ever kickstarts this project ILW style, I will be the first to donate. I was rereading the series. I got to Book 3 and I had to stop. The characters deserved better. The series deserved so much better. The Open Heart fandom deserved better. There was so much more that PB could have done with the characters if they cared about the player experience. OH was one of Pixelberry's best series and they let it die in the most disappointing way possible. Anyone who is willing to give the story a better ending deserves the Choices fandom's support. It's been ages since we have had a real romance arc on this app.

im fine w Tobias not being a canon LI as i personally headcanon him as aromantic & have him in a queerplatonic relationship w my LOA mc, Reigan, but like other than that HUGE agree

and now i'm gonna use this ask as a reason to talk about what all i would change of book 3 lmao thank u <3

so first of all, there's really no reason for Harper to be part of the diagnostics team besides "whoah oh noeses Ethan is talking with his ex whoopsie oopsie i hope he doesn't fall back in love with her!!!!!1!!111!!!" (which goes nowhere, iirc MC doesn't ever talk really to him about their jealousy) and a few nice friendship moments between her and MC when Tobias and Ethan are being dumb at each other (like when you can choose to side w either E or T during an argument OR ask Harper if she wants to get coffee- i genuinely love that part so much). so i would change it so that instead of the opening on the diagnostics team being because Baz is leaving (which also had no reason to happen), but because Ethan took too long to find a replacement for June

imo it would have been more interesting if Bloom had used Ethan taking the whole 3-month closure of Edenbrook to decide on a new team member as an excuse to try and get more hands on with the DT. so like right after Ethan, Baz and MC sit down the first day back he should have just showed up w Tobias & made that new rule about voting on cases. i did like the feud between Bloom and Ethan though, the writers just majorly dropped the ball there. and kept dropping it the whole book.

I'd also remove all of the parts where the MC just straight up ditches work to go play with their friends. it felt so wrong that the MC fought so hard to get to the place where they're at just for them to blow of work every five seconds bc Jackie and Sienna want to go shopping or Bryce wants to drive a fancy car or whatever. or i'd like change it so it happens on days off or after their shift is over.

+ the diamond scene in ch1 where MC and their friends are enjoying all of the amenities that Bloom added for employees, I would have loved the option to be more wary of them, a lot of them seemed like a distraction, like the video games in the breakroom

like imagine ur surgeon being late to ur life-saving surgery bc they were too busy playing mario kart or whatever

i would say there should have been another Big Important Disaster but honestly Rafael has already been through enough with the first two book's Big Disasters being somewhat focused on him

also the fuckin uuuuuuh. patient suing Ethan over medical malpractice plotline?

100% should have been Ethan's fault.

having Naveen actually be the one who did it feels kinda.... racist??? a little bit????? like god forbid PB's Specialest White Boy do something wrong and face the consequences for it

i have more qualms with this book but i am gonna be honest: i straight up do not remember most of the book. it was such a nothing end to such a good series

i did like being able to do that team building exercise w jackie's group. Dr Gary Garison, my beloved, i'm so glad i got to see you for one single scene this whole book

#open heart #playchoices #also probably worth mentioning: no Ethan Dark Mood scene unless you have a high enough relationship with him. or at all. #or if it was there i'd have the MC suggest it instead of Ethan suggesting it. he was so scandalized by an ice cube at the end of book 2 #why would he suddenly be into bdsm. when did he get a riding crop.

[micahdraws]

What Micah's been up to

It's been about four years since Tumblr put up that ill-advised NSFW ban and led me to leave "forever." I honestly didn't think I'd come back. I started gaining a lot of momentum on Twitter and I'd been growing dissatisfied with Tumblr on the whole. At the time I was looking for a reason to leave and the carte-blanche NSFW ban was the nail in the coffin. I still don't fully trust Tumblr's admin, but they're allowing the kind of art I do again and my past frustrations with Tumblr don't need to be covered here.

So here are some of the things I've done the last few years!

Calendar projects!

Since 2018, I have produced four illustrated calendars that funded on Kickstarter! I started with the 2019 Hunks & Myth Calendar, which featured shirtless men from around the world carrying cute baby versions of mythological creatures!

I followed that up with the 2020 Hunks & Myth Calendar, which had mythological men and baby animals. That one was successful but not as big as the prior year. Fortunately, it was pre-covid, so I can tell it was less about the life circumstances and more about the subject itself. Just wasn't as in-demand, which is okay! Live and learn.

I took a year off from calendars and then put together the 2022 Coffeehouse Hunks Calendar! This one featured twelve coffee recipes you can make at home, all accompanied by a sort of "gijinka" hunk of that coffee drink! This one did VERY well and it was very encouraging to see it go so hard.

The Coffeehouse Hunks' success led me to create this year's calendar project, the 2023 Cocktail Hunks Calendar! The Cocktail Hunks followed the Coffeehouse theme -- a series of cocktail recipes accompanied by a "gijinka" of that drink. This was even more fun and it's been great to see how my art has evolved since the first calendar -- since the 2022 calendar, even! The Cocktail Hunks far surpassed my expectations and it feels really, really good to see so many people interested in my work like this!

If any of you are interested in the Cocktail Hunks Calendar, or recipe cards for either the Cocktails or Coffeehouse Hunks, I do have copies that I'll be posting for sale soon. So please keep an eye out for that!

The Sparrow

The year 2021 marked another big, big, big spike in my artistic career. It's when I ran and funded the Kickstarter for the Sparrow!

Some of you may remember I was still working on the Sparrow even before I left Tumblr. A lot has changed, a lot has grown out of it, a lot has happened, and thanks to Kickstarter support, I was able to fund the Sparrow's very first print run! A whole 70 pages of comics plus some bonus content like character interviews, RPG character sheets and profiles, and more.

I'm in the midst of making Book 2 right now. It'll be a while before I finish that, but you wouldn't believe how amazing it was to see so many people back the Sparrow, a book many of them had never heard of. Honestly, it was a little overwhelming, and it's amazing that I still get people interested in buying at cons and the like.

You can get a PDF version of the Sparrow on my Gumroad shop or read the whole thing on my Sparrow website. It's like Percy Jackson meets the X-Men but more gay :D

Other things

The Sparrow and the Calendars have been my biggest projects the last few years. But some other things I've worked on include:

Soldier/Sailor: A gay superhero oneshot -- This 20-page one-shot was written by Andrew Wheeler (Sins of Black Flamingo, Marvel Voices: Pride, etc.) and drawn by me. It follows the story of Jacob, aka Warrior One, as he reunites with his old lover Armon, Prince of Atlantis.

The Strapping Lads: A D&D Supplement - Twelve classes, twelve men, all ready for your D&D campaign. I put this together for FlameCon 2019 and it went over pretty well >:]

Mutants and Masterminds: Parade Route - I got hired to do the cover art for this Mutants and Masterminds RPG supplement! This illustration features the gay man Johnny Rocket supporting teammate and trans woman Lady Liberty as she attends her first Pride as both an openly queer person and a superhero!

I think there's more that's happened but those are some of my big highlights for the last few years. I'll also post some of my backlog here over the next while, once I have a chance to schedule in some posting. I hope you enjoy, and thank you to everyone that is still here and remembers lil ol' me!

#micah talks

[milfbro]

Please what are your thoughts on Merlin, I haven't thought about that show in 8 years

Forgive me lads for putting Merlin meta in your dash in 2022. I am sorry. But know that this could be much longer

important context tho, is that I find Merlin infinitely rewatchable cause I don't have to like, use my brain. So I pop an episode on sometimes. I must have rewatched the show like, 7 times over the years. Idk it's almost white noise for me

ok I guess my general thesis of the hypothetical presentation on Merlin I'd give on the fly is that Merlin is a show that's constantly in a tug of war against itself. It's already an extremely conservative show where the main theme is that 'things right now are bad, but we can change them for the better by keeping things exactly as they are' which is hilarious to me.

A bbc show for children can't encourage questioning authority and traditional values or the existence of the monarchy but also this show wants to have things to say about all of those topics. It wants to be modern but can't openly critique arthuriana, it's trying to both maintain the nonsense english identity and ideology attached to it over the centuries without embracing the weirdness of the old legends, but also is trying be hip and young, cash in on the freaky england fashion trend americans are going through

So how does that manifest in the show? Besides some vague nonsense with semi-colorblind casting and vague metaphors for every marginalized group possible? Every episode they introduce a new threat that, if they thought about it with the same mindset that they had in the previous episode, should lead them to the obvious conclusion that the monarchy that is currently committing genocide is bad. But they can't have that, so they have Gaius say the opposite of something he said in another episode (Gaius being the moral guide of each ep so we learn the new rules of the universe for the current one) and Merlin reacts as if it was understood that this new stance is the what they'd already had; they fight the threat and save the king. Rinse, repeat

It's a neverending cycle of moving goalposts and a completely fluid morality so that they always reach the same conclusion over and over and over, each episode echoing the overarching story. It's like a big conservative loop with no logic, only the idea that Arthur being king is good and will fix things (the genocide that is currently still happening), even after he is already king and is already not fixing anything. But he is 'the greatest king Camelot has ever had', whatever that means.

BUT there's a turn that happens in the last season that kind of collapses this whole schtick. I need to give context for this in case the person reading hasn't rewatched Merlin six times: Merlin is given the choice to save or kill Mordred, the guy he knows will kill Arthur. For convoluted reasons, saving Mordred will make magic legal. So Merlin has to choose to either save Arthur or end the prosecution of his own people. He saves Arthur, like he does for the entire show, and when he does that he accidentally kickstarts the last arc where Mordred kills Arthur and the show ends with magic remaining hidden for the rest of time. Thanks Merlin! This is kind of surreal coming from this show, and I AM reading too much into it obviously but you asked for it: the final arc is when Merlin has to face the fact that protecting the status quo and maintaining the state that is actively persecuting his people, doesn't do anything to end said persecution. He had the agency in this moment to cause the solution that he'd wanted the whole time but he doesn't do it because he has never accepted that the means to cause change is through change.

Anyway, the very ending of the show features Colin Morgan in old man make-up walking next to what I presume is the M-25 because it would be funny if it was. And we're meant to think that it's bittersweet and he's waiting for Arthur to return and take his place back on the throne, so he can be there to help him usher a new era where magic will be back to Albion. But given the reading I just gave you, the ending of Merlin, thematically, is a sad ending where the main character is still doing nothing to change the current world but expecting and hoping that change will come if we stay still. It's really sad and awfully tragic of the show. This is what will happen if you live your life to guard the institutions that do not love you back.

And that's what I have overthought about Merlin. I have much more where this came from. I'm sorry for this.

#I mention genocide a couple of times in this! beware #i don't go into it but I mention it

[silenthillmutual]

What's the fic 👀

ugh. i'm not going to namedrop the fic on anon. but i can tell you some gripes i had with it that lead to me not liking it:

the characters mention the central twist of the game in conversation, which i think is a fascinating angle to take a fic in. unfortunately they just bring it up the once and it is literally never addressed again despite this fic including character death as a major aspect of it. and i would think that knowing that none of this is real and you're dolls in a sandbox would change how you view things like death.

the characters have anal sex without lube. okay, not all that strange for a fanfic, except that immediately after the sex scene one of them mentions having lube with them. so what was the fucking point of them having sex without lube? either don't bring up the lube or edit your sex scene so they use it. that's just fucking asinine.

not sure if this kickstarted the herb bride!daniil thing or not, but considering its age it probably contributed to its popularity and there are, you know, issues with taking a sacred indigenous role and plopping it onto the (racist) white dude love interest. not to mention that's not how the role of herb bride works in canon and several people just outright get this wrong in their fics.

speaking of things breaking canon: it breaks the extremely well-established and explicitly stated canon that the polyhedron does not work on adults. which, even if i'd liked the fic, would have completely ruined it for me. i don't expect everyone to have every detail of the game memorized and there are going to be times when people forget bits and pieces of canon or ignore them because they don't like them, but the happy ending hinged on something that is, like, central to daniil's route.

there's a recap chapter.

i didn't think the characterization was all that good. it was another one of those fics where artemy just seems to kind of exist to be daniil's love interest, despite the story predominantly being (from what i can remember, and granted it has been about a year since i read it) from his perspective. this is a problem with a lot of fic, people are just sort of fascinated with daniil and seem to decide to use artemy as a lens through which to view him. but i've read fic more recently which is a, much more up front about doing this and b, still gives artemy his own characterization through which he interacts with daniil (and others). but there's a point in this fic where artemy is getting ready to destroy the entire town just to keep daniil alive. which is just such a disservice to his character, imo, especially if you're not even going to bring up the fact that artemy's ending was about saving the town. and i didn't really feel a connection or relationship between the two that the author clearly wanted us to feel.

there's also a weird thing toward the end of the fic where artemy hatemarries a character for no apparent reason and has a kid with her and he hates this kid but also this kid reminds him of daniil? it's just. bizarre.

my problem overall with this fic isn't necessarily that it's not good. i wasn't nearly as impressed with it as everyone else seems to be. some of the prose here and there was nice, but overall it was just kind of mediocre. my problem is that people treat this fic like the notre dame of the fanbase, giving it a level of reverence it doesn't deserve. and then this adoration of this fic bleeds into how people treat both source material and fanon. which is why i am just begging people to read better fanfic. like we have obt and alaiw and more recently this fic are all much better than what i just described. like i'm not going to say i 100% agree with everything every author of every fic i rec writes, but they're just. much more enjoyable imo.

anyway rant over lol. this message will self-destruct in the morning<3

#harker.txt

[onewomancitadel]

If Jaune helps redeem Cinder I don't see how Knightfall wouldn't happen. I mean Idon't know about other girls but if a man saved my life in such a way I'd never be able to stop thinking about him. And for a girl like Cinder who has NEVER received that level of kindness from anyone? You cannot even begin to convince me that she wouldn't be utterly obsessed with him after that. Lol. Theres just no way they dont get together if he saves her.

Hi, thanks for your ask.

I really do need to say that I appreciate getting an ask like this but the original asker trying to stir shit (I really don't want to go back and find the post right now, sorry) doesn't seem like someone that responds to reason or is interested in hearing a refutation, that was why they ignored everything else I wrote and haven't read anything on my blog before they decided to share their unwanted opinion/try to change my mind and make me feel bad. It's really not worth wasting time on people who aren't having the same conversation as you are.

It's pretty demoralising for me, because I genuinely care about writing out my responses (like many Tumblr users! It's what makes the site so fun to use) and hoping that, irrespective of personal taste, I can share something interesting (and different). Really, when I think about my blog over the past ~year, there have been a ton of anons who've challenged me or given me things to think about. I just had my inbox open as a default, and had a lot of people early on my messaging me about my fic, so I didn't expect my blog to take this direction lol. I'm in the corner wearing a dunce hat etc.

If Jaune helps redeem Cinder I don't see how Knightfall wouldn't happen.

I am going to quibble a bit. I have written that I think Jaune is a key structural part of Cinder's redemption, but when I think of redemption arcs, I look at it from a more active character perspective as opposed to a passive one. I know what you mean, but I just don't want drive-by readers getting the wrong idea.

You can read more about my opinion on Cindemption and redemption arcs under those two tags, where in the former there's a lot of crossover with Knightfall. I really do think that you need some sort of answer/redemption of the people that failed Cinder, and I really feel like Jaune's the right fit to kickstart that lol.

And for a girl like Cinder who has NEVER received that level of kindness from anyone?

I think the distinction here is that it would be sincere and earnest - and unapologetic - even in the face of everything she's done. It's why I really don't understand people who think Emerald will play a major role in helping Cinder. If that were possible, we wouldn't be in the position we are narratively lol. I think that the Emerald-Cinder partnership is written in such a way that prevents all true connection (because transactional partnership/cynicism reasons/side of Evil is where goodness can't blossom) and demonstrates - to me - superficial overtures of the Power of Friendship aren't enough. I really felt that throughout V8 as well (where Cinder pretends to be friendly, no less).

To me, I'm not sure how you could write Jaune into being a position where he empathises with Cinder and have that not lead to romance. It's too romantic of a set-up, it answers too many things about their characters, it's too much effort for connecting their characters together like that not to do it. Either you commit to the idea that she can redeem herself and go beyond what she's done - thereby a romance is acceptable - or she's not. There's really no half-measure for something like this.

I also feel that the one-sided romance redemption with Ilia and the potential, softer enemies-to-lovers Emerald/Mercury are both structural foreshadowing/set-up for another enemies-to-lovers ship involving someone else who has a much more major redemption arc (Cinder). It's really just asking for it. Then once you get into that, you're already in Reverse Ozlem territory, anyway, my Knightfall masterpost is here.

But once we're appreciating something from a narrative and thematic perspective and the kind of spectacle that emerges from it, it's a completely different approach to somebody who thinks their personal taste is universal and that Jaune could or should somehow kill Cinder because they clearly don't understand him or any of the themes or anything that has pretty much happened in the story, ever. (I also realised recently that her being killed is rejected both by Jaune in V5 and Raven, because Raven trying to kill Cinder is bad/not heroic. It's later positively answered by Winter vs. Ironwood - same Vault fight, same maternal/paternal figure involved, plus Cinder-Winter foiling - where Winter manages to win).

This difference in perspective is something I actually don't know where to begin, because it's not something, I think, that can be bridged overnight. Narrative literalism/cynicism is something I can't really help. It's like the assertion that, "Ben Solo cannot be redeemed because he murdered his father," is very different from, "Symbolic paternal sacrifice showed Ben Solo that his father really would do anything for him when he needed it, and that's the breaking point - something that you would think is the thing that damns him is ultimately something that saves him." Tfw narrative irony. That was something that they did almost get right in TROS (Rey is involved too, because she's the protagonist, but I'm just demonstrating that a damning act is read as a salvific act, depending on your mode of analysis - for Star Wars, the mythic/metaphorical feels more tonally appropriate).

Never the twain shall meet, though.

Ironically, the exact same dispute over Pyrrha's death is held, except it's like the majority of the fandom vs. me talking to myself. You wouldn't get the same tone of Cinder's redemption without it, and you wouldn't get Jaune intimately linked to Cinder without it.

So, I have gone on record many times before I think there's a structural key to Cinder's redemption and it's suspicious that Jaune's been put in a position of narrative empathy with her (Penny). There's no way you can feasibly get Ruby to help Cinder (or Cinder to let her help) without something in between. I don't necessarily know what that's going to look like in canon; I can only speculate in my fanfic.

Enemies-to-lovers involving romance is a rather obvious conceit. Some people don't get it and are incurious by nature.

But again, it's not really about whether Cinder's redemption is possible (see my most recent post about redemption), whether Knightfall is possible, whether it's tonally appropriate, whether xyz could happen, whether Tuesday could be Thursday instead. It's nonsense. I've been subjected to this shit for years, with other pairings - not all enemies-to-lovers, just disliked for whatever reason, like threatening the fandom hegemony or involving a character some people don't like - and it's really rarely about the discourse you think it is.

Reasonable people with interesting and worthwhile concerns behave very differently. They don't send whiny messages on anon, for one, and most of us know how to respect each other's spaces.

If you're new to my blog, sorry, this is the usual length of my ask responses. In addition to that, the topic of Knightfall and Cindemption is something that my blog is pretty much predicated upon, and I spend a lot of time writing fanfic about it. It's one of my favourite hobbies.

Cinder's redemption is a very interesting topic for me, because there are more obvious hoops to jump through, keys needed, and questions asked about it, compared to other redemption arcs in the show. It's why I think it's something that will occur in totality towards the end of the series, and V8 - rather than the end of the possibility - is potentially the time they've decided to start flagging it for the General Audience. To me, who is an uberfan, it seemed structurally obvious as far back as the end of V3 (giving Cinder that dialogue with Pyrrha, and some other details; a bigger bad than Cinder) and the beginning of V4.

Anyway, I still think Knightfall is both the most hopeful/funniest thing to possibly happen, if it does.

#seraphina's asks #user: anonymouse #knightfall

[transqueeneli]

Talking OCs Part 2

Yes, here I am once more after being away for…fuck damn near three weeks since I did part one because life got busy. I am continuing this, and hopefully, I won't get so overwhelmed I miss out on more. So anyway, onward!

4. Any Villian OCs? In the previous part, I mentioned that my oldest OC was to be a protagonist. Of course, this means there is an antagonist in the form of Yamikaze. Though they never had a chance to appear in written form, they have existed almost as long as my number one answer. In the whole multiverse of craziness, Yamikaze is one of the strongest beings in known reality, a Guardian of Darkness whose sole existence is to keep the scales balanced, along with his sister, the Guardian of Light.

The thing about Yamikaze is he is tired of the whole system of death and rebirth and comes up with the entire process of wanting to bring back the entity that kickstarted the multiverse, to begin with, and wipe out all of current existence. Of course, significant issues happened in events before the fanfic's beginnings and delayed things considerably.

5.Main Reason for Making OCs?

For writing, though, a lot was made for role-playing over the last ten years. It has been over a year since I have done any role-playing proper, with some very short exceptions, and so I've reworked some older OCs for the times I have recently.

6.Describe my Character Creation Process Depends on what I'm doing. Am I writing a story? Then, for the most part, the main characters get some VIP treatment in figuring them out. However, if I'm writing a story, I usually already have enough initially to give them a personality. Is it for Role-play? This depends. If it for having a roster to choose from for a random role-play? Then, they are typically made and open backstory-wise so they can be adjusted to fit. If they are being made specifically for Role-play, they are typically made with the history of the role-playing world in mind.

I make more female or transfem characters. More often than not, I like them to have either some power or magic. Most are lesbian or bi, and typically polyamorous as of late, though that is more for my desire to understand what such a relationship entails.

In the end, for looks, I like using different Picrews to go through and figure out how I'd like them to look. This is mainly because I haven't drawn since high school, and I get too engrossed in wanting the art to be perfect.

#my writing #ocs #original character #oc