#i used at least 4 techniques for the first time drawing this. wild

[aterfish]

The way Spider-verse inspires.

I was thinking about the meaning of mirrors, reflections and being upside down in this movie. I love how the Spot is never reversed in relation to Miles, almost as if they... mirrored each other 👀

hey, look! now its upside down! just like in Spiderve- *gunshot sound*

#spiderverse #across the spiderverse #spiderman #spiderman across the spiderverse #spoilers #miles morales #the spot #ater art #ok i thing thats all #i was literally just sketching few minutes ago #and BAM its 5am and im sitting with finished artwork #i used at least 4 techniques for the first time drawing this. wild #spiderverse is amazing and i cant wait for 3rd part bc its going to break me in all the ways it matters #there are SO MANY THING to think about meanwhile #i wanted to name it whats up. in realtion to whats up danger and this being two way. but it sounds like a way to say hello #i mean it is a way to say hello you know what i mean? #its 5am i should go to sleep #im so proud of this one...

[universallywriting]

As you’re learning, do you have any tips you could either to other people trying to improve their drawing skills?

1. Look shit up. This is such big advice it’s actually a pet peeve of mine. Like, I see people talking on Tumblr or Discord or Facebook or whatever and I’m just like “Google it, bro”.You have infinite information at your fingertips. There are so, so many tutorials out there. Google shit.

2. Make experienced friends. Get involved in your community. People learn from each other. Get involved, talk to people, reblog their shit, just, like, participate so you can make friends with talented folks who will often graciously offer you advice and assistance when your Googling fails.

3. Be critical. Yeah, uh, I still don’t know why people are afraid of this, but I 100% credit a huge part of any given success to the fact that I look at how people fuck up and go “Ooh, yeah, not gonna do that”. Don’t just learn from your mistake - learn from other people’s. Look at art and analyze it and don’t just see the successes, look at the failures.

And do that with your own art too. Liiike...

Second I finished this shit I was like - “Okay, you’re still struggling with drawing circles on the eyes. Your hand will grow steadier with time. On the hand, the curve of it doesn’t differentiate between the index finger and palm well enough. The hips are uneven and awkward.” etc. Best work I’ve done so far for sure, but I’m not gonna get better if I don’t pay attention to the specifics of where I fell flat.

4. Don’t be afraid to fuck up. Do stupid shit. Do weird shit. Experimentation is how you improve. @suf-fering is having a dtiys contest with this image: https://suf-fering.tumblr.com/post/619646483520684032/oops-i-forgot-to-post-this-here-im-hosting-a

I HAVE HER PERMISSION FOR ALL OF THE FOLLOWING.

I traced her art. It was gonna be a joke, honestly. We like to mess around, and I thought it would be funny to trace her art and do some stupid stuff. In this case, the terrible joke was that Steven and Connie were at a rave.

Couple things with this though - The first was that because I was so unafraid to mess up, I did really, really confident lines. I didn’t bother cleaning it up, but following her great art and knowing that it wasn’t supposed to be serious, I completely loosened up, made the fast movements everyone had been insisting on, and had incredibly stable lines.

Next was that, well, I was just more confident and felt better after tracing, because I came away with something that looked good. Yeah, I didn’t do it. But it’s like training wheels on a bike. Sometimes it’s better to “cheat” and give yourself a boost rather than do it the hard way and fall flat on your face. BUT DON’T POST IF YOU TRACE. Practice is all well and good, and I did feel pretty great that I managed to do better, but this is not my art. Or, at the very least, this is my edit of someone’s art, and it would be rude, mean and art theft if I was posting this without suffering’s permission and with the clear disclaimer that this is traced.

And, finally, by being stupid and being like “what are rave colors?” I ended up finding some cool techniques. I like the vibrancy of the colors I chose, I liked the places the crashed, and by choosing a wild palette, there’s actually a cool consistency that makes it pleasing to look at.

And the lighting isn’t a filter - it’s the spray paint tool on another layer, and I liked how it turned out, so I learned how to do some neat lighting tricks too.

I’m not going to be a professional artist. I’m not going to freehand anything as good as a lot of my friends anytime soon. But I have a lot of fun, and I think that I’m improving as fast as I am because of everything I listed here.

Four months ago I used a tablet for the first time and drew this: 

So, all things considered, I’m pretty fucking happy with how far I’ve come!

#my art #art advice #i'm a dirty tracing ho #please cancel me #please send me your art to trace also #this blog is now the blog of thievery #Anonymous

[valdotpng]

Question. Do you have any specific resources you used to learn art and painting, etc?? Your style and skill is so so good and I'd love to see how you Do It

oh, gosh. i dont think i could ever answer this question in a truly satisfying manner, but i’ll try my best to do it!

learning art in general has just been a road of trial and error for me! looots of trial and error. im a ‘self-taught’ artist & i’ve been drawing since i was a toddler, so i’ve accumulated certain skills just bc i’ve been doing it for so dang long

that being said, i’ll share some links in a moment! but first, some advice from me to you, anon. just.. go wild. try new things and dont set too many rules for yourself, yknow what i mean? nowadays i tend to use lots of weird textured brushes + work on only one layer (which i hear is quite bad for when youre working on commissions, but i paint for myself so i dont gotta worry about correcting things all the time), and as a person struggling w/ a pretty severe case of OCD, i find it so liberating to be Forced to not give a shit through that painting method. just have fun! allow yourself to be messy, to make mistakes, and remember that you can just paint over them later. some of your ‘mistakes’ might even end up being the things that make your drawing look more interesting/organic, in the end! the ‘happy little accidents’ mindset just makes the whole process much more enjoyable imo :]

ALSO, an important thing to me was finding the right brushes for painting. just dl a shit ton of the ones that look fun to you (or make your own if your drawing program allows it!) and make an effort to try out each and every one of them at least once!! the brushes certainly arent that important-- you could paint a masterpiece with a simple square brush-- but more often than not i find my style being subtly influenced by the brushes that i use at the moment. its a thing worth considering!

another thing i should note is that, while im mostly happy with my art nowadays, i AM still learning, and i dont think i’ll ever stop learning, so, like, check in in a couple of years for some better tips i guess asuhdfuashfusdf

anyways, here are some resources that are/were very helpful to me:

when i need to browse for general art tips/tutorials/cheat sheets/etc, i usually go here: [link 1], [link 2], [link 3], [link 4], [link 5], 

now, here are some specific posts ive collected over the years that really made me rethink how i approach composition and the like in my, uh, more ‘serious’ paintings: [link 1], [link 2], [link 3], [link 4], [link 5]

this [link] video series is a Godsend, its got some very good advice AND its got nice editing too, my hellbrain was actually able to focus and learn smth from a video tutorial for once

heres a nice post about practice and improvement that you should deffo read before using all of these resources

i also find it very helpful to just.. look at art that inspires you/ that you find appealing Right before painting? that way all of the techniques you might pick up while staring at other peoples art will stay fresh in your mind, so you’ll be more likely to try em out. (setting a drawing that you really like as a phone/desktop bg works well too since youll inevitably stare at it quite often)

i also really like seeing other peoples process, so i tend to watch speedpaints/analyse process gifs & photosets a lot! seeing how messy and abstract most drawings are in the early stages of painting is really comforting/reassuring to me :] heres a couple for u: [link 1], [link 2], [link 3], [link 4], [link 5], [link 6], [link 7], [link 8], and finally, [link 9] and [link 10] (3, 9 and 10 are the ones that inspire me the most atm)

as a bonus, heres one from me as well! (usually i only post these on my patreon, but ik times are tough rn and any of your spare money could (and should) go to a far better cause) im putting it under a read more bc it contains blood and self-impalement, so beware! (bloodborne bosses, man) i might make a speedpaint in the future, too, so watch out for that!

#good luck! #hope you have fun :] #Anonymous #gif #blood

[recentanimenews]

FEATURE: The Top 10 Anime OPs of 2020 According to YOU!

  As we near the voting period for the Anime Awards where we will collectively determine the anime bests of the year 2020, the well-worn adage of “never skip the OP” comes to mind. I’m confident we’ll make the best choice, but there were many great OPs this year that won't make the cut to be highlighted in the nominations. So let’s take a look back at some of the year’s greatest not determined by our admittedly extremely qualified panel of judges, but by numbers and you, the fans.

  We’ve been posting up OPs on YouTube all year and have even made a playlist for 2020 — so what better way to unbiasedly look at the year's best than with the most important votes of all? Views. Below I’ve composed a Top 10 list of anime OPs featured on Crunchyroll Collection YouTube Channel by views at 30 days so as not to give an unfair advantage to OPs posted earlier in the year. This is not a perfect metric — as I’ll get into a bit later — but delivers either an interesting look at what people have been watching this year or, at the very least, some great new additions to your playlist on YouTube ...

  10. Black Clover - "Everlasting Shine" by TOMORROW X TOGETHER

    The collision of anime and K-pop will become a theme on this list, so it’s only natural that it should begin with the collaboration between TOMORROW X TOGETHER and the anime that has never missed an OP. Black Clover hit off its next slate of anime-original content under the supervision of Yuki Tabata with a killer opening highlighting the magic knight captains. "Everlasting Shine" cleared 800k views in its first month and joined the series’ killer playlist snuggly between songs by Snowman.

  9. HAIKYU!! TO THE TOP - "Phoenix" by BURNOUT SYNDROMES

    BURNOUT SYNDROMES brought in the new year with a bang, heralding the beginning of Haikyu’s spring tournament arc with yet another absolute banger of an OP to compete with their own iconic "Hikare Are" and "Fly High!" Phoenix rose to claim 900k views in 30 days, especially impressive since Karasuno had no highlight opponents facing them down in the first half of the new TO THE TOP season.

  8. Black Clover - "Stories" by Snowman

    Black Clovers 11th OP had a lot of weight to carry introducing the first post-manga content the anime had to offer and nailed it with a Snowman collaboration so good that the group not only got signed to return for OP 13, but Daisuke Sakuma voiced an anime-original character designed just for him in Episode 140. "Stories" came just under 1 million views in its first month at 950k, joining the pantheon of hit Black Clover OPs.

  7. Rent-a-Girlfriend - "Centimeter" by the peggies

    I don’t know about you, but ever since Sarazanmai’s spectacular ED "Stand by Me" featuring the peggies, I’ve been waiting for more anime music by the group, and it is absolutely not a surprise to see their next collaboration on this list. They delivered an absolutely addictive song which TMS elevated with some great dance moves and brilliant color work. A smart move, as we’ll see later in this list.

  No metric for measurement is perfect and "Centimeter" may be the best example of where this list sells an OP short. The song barely cleared 1 million views in its first month and placed the peggies in the Number 7 spot, however, the viewership on Rent-a-Girlfriend’s OP has only accelerated since, and it now sits comfortably at 6 million views, tying it for second place in overall viewership. Looking back again in another six months, it might even be Number 1 ...

  6. Black Clover - "Black Catcher" by Vickeblanka

    The original Black Clover OP artists returned to close out the anime’s last wildly-escalating manga-adapted arc with a killer OP that got served up twice. First in a dark black-and-white aesthetic going into the series climactic battle, then again in brilliant color after the conclusion of the epic conflict. 

  "Black Catcher" brought in 1.1 million views in what is an astonishing sweep in popular viewership for this list. Every OP Black Clover dropped this year made it into the top 10. A spectacular feat for a series that serves up a new one every cour.

  5. Re:ZERO Season 2 - "Realize" by Konomi Suzuki

    In a series so notorious for outright ignoring it’s OP and/or EDs for the majority of its episodes to pack in as much extra time as possible for Subaru’s continued suffering, it’s absolutely amazing how quality each of its OPs has been. "Realize" rapidly ascended to 1.5 million in its first month and has since aged like a fine wine as the events of the series slowly added context to many of the unusual and intriguing visuals therein.

  4. JUJUTSU KAISEN - "Kaikai Kitan" by Eve

    Launching one of the most anticipated new series in years and adapted by studio MAPPA, who has acted as the headline studio of 2020 with multiple hit productions, "Kaikai Kitan" was a shoo-in for this list. JUJUTSU KAISEN didn’t disappoint with a slick OP directed by one of the all-time animation greats and Naruto alumni Shingo Yamashita. "Kaikai Kitan" cleared 2 million in its first 30 days, and if anything, is only accelerating as the series’ sterling production continues to draw more fans. Also, TOHO released the video early on their own channel, where it’s performing even better.

  3. Boruto - "Hajimatteiku Takamatteiku" by Sambomaster

    This ED stands out as a love letter to Naruto in an anime that is essentially one big love letter to Naruto. Returning to the franchise after crafting what may have been the original Naruto’s most iconic OP, "Rhapsody of Youth," Sambomaster delivers yet another bop, while Pierrot seeded the visual sequence with references to many iconic Naruto OP visuals. "Hajimatteiku Takamatteiku" cleared 2 million views in its first month and was the perfect introduction for the series' slow build toward the manga’s Kara arc.

  2. The God of High School - "Contradiction" ft. Tyler Carter by KSUKE

      Subtlety is not The God of High School’s thing and "Contradiction" dropped like a punch in the face with some completely wild visuals and music. Techno doesn’t often make appearances in anime OPs, so a song composed by KSUKE featuring the American metalcore vocalist of Issues, Tyler Carter, was a galaxy away from ordinary even in a year where an avalanche of K-pop has been dropping into anime. The accompanying visuals could only be described as aggressive with fight scenes set under a color-swapped psychedelic blacklight style effect. 2.5 million viewers tuned in in the first month, and the song recently cleared 6 million to continue competing with Rent-a-Girlfriend's "Centimeter" from the same season.

  1. Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! - "Easy Breezy" by chelmico

    It really couldn’t have been anyone else. Storyboarded by Masaaki Yuasa himself and animated with some surprisingly analog techniques by the talented French animator Abel Gongora, "Easy Breezy" cleared 3 million views in its first month and has breezed its way past 10 million over the course of 2020. This OP was easy, it was breezy, and it was super meme-y. The riffs of the girls of Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! dancing to chelmico’s addicting tune were absolutely legion and for good reason, the loud colors, the simple style, and the Drake references were a perfect breeding ground for some truly inspired fan content, making it, in my opinion, the only choice for OP of the Year for 2020.

  Gotta say I’m overjoyed to see Eizouken at the top of the list even after spending half a year working that earworm out of my head, as well as so much love for Black Clover's OPs which have really been an achievement in quality even against Pierrot’s own storied legacy in Naruto and Bleach music.

  And don’t think I’m stopping here. While many fans studiously never skip the OP, I also never skip the ED ...

  What's your favorite OP from this list? Let us know in the comments. And tune in tomorrow for the top EDs of 2020 according to YouTube!

      Peter Fobian is an Associate Producer at Crunchyroll, writer for Anime Academy and Anime in America, and an editor at Anime Feminist. You can follow him on Twitter @PeterFobian.

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features! 

By: Peter Fobian

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

[octopusunoreverse]

Little white lies

Little white lies is a magazine created with the sole aim of capturing and reviewing movies through out the year normally printing 4 times a year quarterly, though the magazine has become more well known for its independent ethos and iconic, striking illustrative covers created by a new artists each time, deadicating its front section to upcoming theatrical release.

Sin City Issue 2 - Jul/Aug 2005   this one was one of the first early covers that stood out to me, reminiscent of early grunge comic styles used for the gritty Noir/Action graphic novels, fitting for the fact that the movie itself is based of the Sin city comics, the difference for this is that the artist for this cover has taken the features form the actor to then blend it with the style used for comics; heavy sett shadows sonf light shown but blacking out the ares where the shadows are completely in black and leaving the background showing through to show where the light hits, but they still show a lot of texture in the face by using what I can assume is almost like a dry brush texture, roughing up the face  implanting the idea that this character is ether rough character or dangerous, the artist also hints at the story itself with smaller type and illustration shown in the form of tattoos hidden under the layers of grime and of what I would assume are plasters, I do like the white negative look off it.

Marie Antoinette Issue 8 - Oct/Nov 2006  I personally like this one because the vibrant colours, hinting most likely to her more risky and existing life before she became romantic heroine that we know now in history, though its nice to at least learn more about the various females throughout history as there stores are normally erased or twisted, so for a historical drama I believe it works well, the one single figure of Marie Antoinette by herself standing out against the flat black background, making the character of Antoinette the main visual point of the illustration, because she is, looking at the portrait itself, id assume they took a image of the actor in their costume and thresholded it and then they most likely multiplied the layer so that they could then drawn underneath, similar to the techniques in the pen tool workshop.

Control Issue 13 - Sep/Oct 2007  the cover for this one I like the monochrome colours and black used, it gives this feeling of hollow pared along side the mood the thresholded image of the actor, I particularly enjoy the typography the font strong and bold in its shapes has these spirals exploding, visually interpreting it as them loosing control which I thinks works very well for a  sci-fi mystery thriller film, so meany lose ends left unsolved. the colour palette as I said before is monochrome which I think is a interesting handle on a typical cover the highlighting the character with lighter colours showing the characters important and stands out against the simple darker colour background and text.

Let the Right One In Issue 22 - Mar/Apr 2009 This Swedish romantic horror film reinvented vampier in the love film, because lets be honest most vampire movie suck, the artist took one of the iconic scenes from the movie and beautify painted it with water colours and pencil/graphite, the iconic light eyes of the character shine through as the, watercolour blood drips down her face ones again reminiscent to the movie itself, I like the use of the hair being used to silhouette  the face, the position/placement of the face itself it feels like its looking directly into your soul almost.

An Education Issue 25 - Sep/Oct 2009 I think this is a brilliant depiction of a coming of age movie, straight away introducing you to the main character, the bright pink hue, brilliantly used to show off the innocences of the character themselves, and that is pushed by the limited about of skin showing. the illustration itself seems to of been done with gouache paints considering the smoothness of the colours working together on the page, the hair, nose and eyes are my favourite, especially with the eyes and nose they have so much detail, you can see the youth in the eyes and the realistic look of them works so well and I love how the artist has used just shadow and light to detail the nose, and I like the hair personally because of the way they got light to reflect onto it as well as how it looks so soft and neat it looked.

Where the Wild Things Are Issue 26 - Nov/Dec 2009 I wanted to personally wanted to look at this issue was because it relates to the movie/book that I am looking at now, I think this is a brilliant concept for the movie I personally love the childish simple drawing, reminding me of childish drawings, and I like the idea of the ‘wild things’ climbing from in Max’s mouth, I think this is brilliant due to the fact that Max has problems of acting out in such a wild way. it also relates to the original poster for the movie ‘there is one in all of us’, I like the use of the colours are quite depressing in itself, but in the realistic view of the movie where in the ‘real’ world the character maxi is struggling with the divorce of his family.

Attack the BlockIssue 34 - Mar/Apr 2011 This one stood out to me both because of the colour pallet and the style of the outline. The outline themselves reminds me primarily of the linocuts, I think it shows the mystery and the lack of empathy for there assailants and how the gang themselves blend together when the character is all one colour. I personally loved the background/the sky it has beautiful speckles of stars and meteorite shower. I don’t particularly understand the Artists use of smoke, id have to assume that it has a impact or relevance to the story itself but it beautify shapes that fit with the Lino style.

Call me by your name  - issue 71- Sep/Oct 2017 I particularly like this illustration for this coming-of-age romantic drama film, though I personally don’t like cinematic worlds use of age gaps between their gay romantic relationships. but this particularly artistic interpretation, the oil pastils drawing dose defiantly scream coming of age movie and it also dose make me think of the link that combines with the main character being half Italian, the background flows but also seems to be pulled away from the page, maybe because of the fact that there is less gaps in the foreground, I also like there use of lighting its done well to be presented coming from the right side of the page. But the type that they used to show the title docent fit for the rest of the image, naturally I believe that the artists probably wanted to remove from the original type from the movie poster.

The miseducation of Cameron post Issue 76 - Aug/Sep/Oct 2018 I believe that this depiction of their movie, the colour used for the face is a direct reference to the film poster the yellows, green  and pinks. the background gives away so much for the movie and the elements and its relationships with the story of being sent to a conversion camp, and the coping methods that one turns to. The expression on there face is a well done illustration of Chloë Grace Moretz, I honestly recognised her straight away without knowing that it was her in the movie; back to the expression itself shows so much betray, sadness and heartbreak all in one, its an expression that is shown through out the film a common apparition.

isle of dogs - Issue 74 - Mar/Apr 2018  I personally loved this movie, the entire stile used in the cover in the magazine is in the same style used throughout the movie itself, the movie used these 2D elements through out the stop animation. the posters show off so meany aspects of the movie the setting of the movie ‘the isle of dogs’ the science group trying to find a cure for the ‘dog flu’ it hints to the open scenes that were done in the original Japanese style. This is a common aspect in this imagery it has little elements of the story dotted around this.

[osakaso5]

Sogo Osaka Twelve Hits! Rabbit Chat Part 2: Request Hits 1

Part 1 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Tsumugi: Thank you all for coming! We'll be accepting requests for Sogo-san's RADIO STATION Twelve Hits! here. 

Tsumugi: We managers are here to monitor your progress and the content you post. I look forward to chatting with all of you!

Banri: I look forward to seeing your requests for Sogo-kun!

Sogo: Everyone, I am most delighted that you would take the time to come here amidst your busy schedules. I am truly grateful for your cooperation today.

Momo: That's too stiff, Sogo!!! Are you trying to re-enact a historical play!?

Nagi: The way of the samurai! Harakiri!

Kaoru: I can almost see him doing a perfect 90 degree bow on the other side of my screen.

Tamaki: You're talking like you're doing some kinda magic chant again

Sogo: I-I'm sorry... It was just meant to be a greeting...

Gaku: Osaka's nervous as usual (lol)

Tenn: Maybe he's just scared of you, Gaku?

Gaku: You think so..?

Sogo: Of course I'm not! I'm very happy that you're always so friendly to us!

Gaku: You sure you're not scared..? What about me scares you? Tell me, and I'll tone it down.

Tenn: Sorry, I was just kidding.

Tenn: I thought it'd help Sogo Osaka relax.

Mitsuki: You just made things worse, lol

Ryunosuke: It's fine. Sogo-kun knows that Gaku's a nice guy.

Sogo: Yes! Of course!

Yuki: Sogo-kun, take deep breaths. In and out, in and out.

Momo: You're lovely even when you're being corny, Yuki (*´∀σ)

Riku: The Lamaze technique! I know that one!

Iori: Nanase-san, don't engage them in earnest.

Momo: Yuki's dumb joke, lololol

Yuki: It got taken seriously...

Rinto: Hang in there, Yuki-kun!

Riku: Oh! It was a joke! I'm sorry..!

Yamato: It did make Sou laugh, at least.

Sogo: I-I'm sorry! This conversation was just so funny!

Tsumugi: Now that things are less tense, let's get right to the requests..!

Mitsuki: Huh? Are things really less tense now? lol

Nagi: It would appear Sogo has managed to relax :-)

Sogo: Laughing did make my fingers feel more light, somehow...

Yamato: Yep, he's definitely less tense in some ways (lol)

Tsumugi: That's great! Well then, let's start with our youngest, as usual. Tamaki-san, you'll be the first to step up to the plate!

Tamaki: Yup

Tamaki: Tell us the last thing you wanna do before Earth blows up

Riku: Ah! That's from the movie we watched the other day!

Tamaki: It was soooooo awesome!!! I cried a ton at the end

Nagi: Tamaki, you are already very into this!

Sogo: Before Earth blows up... Why is it blowing up?

Tamaki: I dunno? Does it matter?

Sogo: I'm curious, since it wouldn't just blow up for no reason.

Tamaki: Ugh. Whatever

Tamaki: Gas, I guess?

Sogo: I wonder what type of gas... I don't know much about astronomy, but I suppose I'd search for a way to stop the explosion.

Sogo: What kind of mechanism is the detonation tied to? 

Tamaki: So-chan, you're so annoying! That's not what I meant

Tamaki: Forget the reason

Tamaki: Don't you have anything like, eating pudding or singing together?

Mitsuki: Sogo's such a serious guy!

Iori: I'm curious as well, so I can relate, Osaka-san.

Sogo: Right. I'm still wondering about the reason behind the explosion, but I'll think of something.

Tsumugi: That was a very grand and sci-fi request! Thank you, Tamaki-san.

Tsumugi: Iori-san, you're next!

Iori: Mine is to tell a secret he's never told anyone.

Iori: Osaka-san has a mysterious charm. I'm sure his fans must be eager to know his secrets.

Sogo: What level of secret are we talking about..?

Iori: Just anything that's suited for a radio broadcast is fine.

Sogo: Good.

Momo: Like that you watch cat videos when you're sad!

Ryunosuke: Or that you prefer chili oil to tabasco!

Rinto: Neither of those sound like secrets!

Gaku: There's no real revelation to them.

Sogo: It'll be a difficult balance to strike, but I'll think of a secret that's both interesting and appropriate for radio.

Tsumugi: Iori-san, thank you for an exciting request! Riku-san, you're next!

Riku: Okay! Mine is to tell us his first impressions of the other IDOLiSH7 members.

Nagi: That is a very interesting request!

Yamato: You mean from when we played basketball in the practice room? That really takes me back.

Sogo: It got so intense that it was hard to believe we'd just met.

Iori: Maybe that was due to the sport we were playing. Moving around improves your mood, and builds your communication skills.

Riku: I think I would've totally loved Sogo-san right away, even without basketball!

Iori: Isn't that your first impression of him, then..?

Sogo: Thank you, Riku-kun. I'm happy to hear that.

Mitsuki: I love you, too!

Nagi: I love you as well, Sogo.

Iori: Do the rest of us have to continue this..?

Yamato: Don't stop the flow, it makes this even more embarrassing (lol)

Iori: You may go ahead of me, Nikaido-san.

Yamato: Nope, it's more fun to hear this stuff from you youngings. Come on, Tama.

Tamaki: Don't dump this on me, Yama-san!

Mitsuki: Adults need to take the lead with this stuff, you  geezer!

Nagi: The Japanese are very shy :-(

Momo: You guys are so cute!

Ryunosuke: Should we say "I love you" to each other, too?

Gaku: You mean we as in TRIGGER?

Tenn: I'm not doing it.

Sogo: Thank you, everyone..! I love you, too!

Tsumugi: That'll be a heartwarming request..! Kujo-san, could you tell us your request next?

Tenn: Yes. Mine is for Sogo Osaka to show a wild side of himself.

Tenn: He's known as mild-mannered and gentle, right? I'm sure many of his fans want to see an unexpected side to him.

Tenn: His 12 SONGS GIFT solo was a cool rock song, too.

Sogo: I-I'm honored to hear that..!

Tenn: I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Tenn: You've never been one to make mistakes with your singing and dancing, probably thanks to lots of steady practice. With 12 SONGS GIFT, it felt like I'd gotten a taste of not only your sincerity, but your passion, too.

Yuki: "Maybe" gave me chills

Yuki: It was the perfect song for you, very liberating

Tamaki: Stop taking screencaps, So-chan

Sogo: I thought I'd make this my lock screen wallpaper...

Yamato: This bit of our chat?

Mitsuki: It must make Sogo real happy!

Banri: I'm happy for you, Sogo-kun!

Tamaki: He's way more excited than usual

Sogo: Thank you very much. I'm so glad I got to sing that song..!

Ryunosuke: Tenn looks happy that he made you happy!

Tenn: Ryu, you don't have to tell him that.

Gaku: This guy's just being shy.

Tenn: Takanashi-san, shouldn't we move on to the next request?

Tsumugi: I-I'm sorry! I was lost in this nice mood, myself..! Nagi-san, go ahead!

Nagi: Mine is for Sogo to talk about the music he loves.

Nagi: When he talks of things he likes, his eyes sparkle with joy. I want his fans to see him in such a state, as well!

Iori: They can't see him through the radio, but I'm sure they'll be able to tell that he's having fun.

Sogo: Thank you, Nagi-kun. I didn't know you felt that way.

Riku: Sogo-san and Nagi get together to talk about their hobbies a lot!

Yamato: Sou actually bothers to hear Nagi’s  anime ramblings all the way to the end.

Mitsuki: Even when we're falling asleep from boredom, Sogo will be nodding along to every word!

Nagi: Sogo is a good listener! He listens no matter how long I take, so I often find myself unable to stop rambling about Cocona to him X-)

Sogo: Everyone likes talking about the things they love. It warms my heart to see their affection.

Sogo: Also, Nagi-kun talks in such a witty and fun way. I could listen to him forever.

Nagi: I also feel soothed and happy when listening to you, Sogo.

Tsumugi: I'd like to hear you talk more, as well!

Choices/outcomes:

1. About the music you love!

Sogo: I'm always talking about that on our radio show, but there's still plenty I haven't had a chance to talk about!  

2. About IDOLiSH7!

Sogo: Meeting the others was one of the biggest events in my life. So was meeting you, manager.

3. About something you've secretly been into lately!

Sogo: Taking different routes on my way back home, I guess? It's fun to make new discoveries. Just the other day, Mitsuki-san and I found a shop that sells coffee beans.

Sogo: I worry that I won't be able to entertain with anything I talk about, but I'm happy that you want to listen.

Tsumugi: Of course I want to listen to you! I want to know more about you, Sogo-san!

Sogo: Thank you.

Tsumugi: Now it's time for you to make a request, Sogo-san!

Sogo: Yes. My request for myself is to pick one more request.

Mitsuki: Huh? One more? Why?

Iori: You want to draw and extra request?

Sogo: Yeah. You've put so much effort into coming up with them that I want to read as many as I can.

Yamato: That's certainly a very Sou  request to make.

Momo: You don't have to be so considerate to us!

Yuki: Yeah, don't hold back. Just do whatever you want

Sogo: Ah, no! I'm not trying to be considerate.

Sogo: I'm just happy that you took the time to think of requests for me. I want to return the sentiment.

Sogo: I was actually really looking forward to what kinds of requests I'd get today!

Sogo: Though I was also nervous, since some of these requests can be a bit daring...

Momo: Sogo~~~~ You're such a nice boy (*´>ω<))ω`●)

Ryunosuke: I didn't know you were that excited for our requests!

Ryunosuke: Now I want to make my request that you'll choose another extra request!

Tsumugi: I-I'm sorry, but we can't increase the amount of requests due to time limitations... ><

Tenn: It's like a magic lamp.

Gaku: You're not allowed to ask for more wishes.

Mitsuki: Sorry! Can we pause the chat for a minute!?

Mitsuki: Kinako just jumped out of my backpack..!

Momo: You mean Tsumugi-chan's rabbit?

Yuki: At least it's not 'kinako' as in soy bean flour

Kaoru: Oh dear, now I'm in the mood for some anmitsu.

Sogo: She really did! When did Kinako-san get in there..?

Tsumugi: I'm very sorry about her, Mitsuki-san..!

Mitsuki: I'll drop by the agency real quick. Kinako can't even use the bathroom in our dorm.

Iori: I'll go, too. Animals are prone to escaping, so it'll be safer with the two of us.

Riku: I'll go, too! Let's buy snacks while we're at it!

Tenn: We were just about to make some tea, so we'd like to take a break, too.

Tsumugi: Thank you, everyone..! Let's all take a small break!

#idolish7 #sogo osaka #twelve hits! #translation #i7 #rabbit chat

[agentwallflower]

Supernova: Chapter 4

Well... I’m here.

Not much to say. I started my new art project, I’m still editing and working on my writing. I kind of gave up anthology submission until July, though. It’s depressing and I don’t have a therapist yet. My friends hear me whine enough, you know?

Next chapter goes up June 13th. If you’re interested in supporting my Coke Zero fund, here’s my Ko-Fi. 

Thanks, see you in two weeks.

“Hi there, Angel. Are you here to see Mr. Kaufman today?”

“Hey, Barb. Ruth said he's been looking a little lonely lately, so I figured I might as well make his day.”

The hospital was as sterile as it always was. Though they tried to make it welcoming, nothing about it put Angel at ease as he waited at the desk for his fluorescent visitor's badge. Of course ,he wasn't the one getting treated there – it might have been nice for the patients. Then again, if he was the one stuck there... well, he didn't like hospitals.

The nice nurse behind the desk slid the badge over with a smile. “He always seems to do better when you come around. I think he looks forward to it.”

“Can't imagine why.” He smiled and accepted the badge. “Thanks, see you later.”

By now, Angel had the path memorized. Go left, then right, then wait for the elevator and head up to the 6th floor. Today, there were a few others going to visit relatives. They didn't notice him as he squeezed into the back of the elevator. There was no psychic stuff going on there, though – most people were just in their own world when they went to the hospital. Probably worrying too much about the people they were there to see to notice a skinny guy with long hair and glasses in the back.

He liked it that way. Too much attention gave him a headache.

Eventually, the elevator dinged and Angel got out. The plate said it was the cancer ward. He would have known that anyway from the energy that always made him a little lightheaded as he stepped out. It was an aura thing – life and death mingling with some pretty heavy drugs trying to tip the balance towards the former. It was his least favorite place in the entire hospital, but he still went there whenever he could. After all, someone important was waiting for him.

“Twice in one week? Aren't I the lucky one.”

Leo Kaufman, the old asshole himself, was sitting up in bed. He was alone – his wife was probably at work. For once, he had some color in his cheeks as he put the book down. It was a heavy looking one, and he was halfway through it. Two others were waiting for him on the bedside table.

Cancer was fighting dirty, given how much muscle he had lost since he had gone in a year ago. Before that, he held a damn heavy shield that could have dented even the heaviest armor. Now it hung in the Union house, waiting for him to come back. Lately, Angel got the feeling it was going to be waiting for a long time.

Of course, the man himself never would have said that. Paladin was stubborn like that.

Angel sat down at his bedside, sighing in relief. “Figured I should pop in before the summer semester gets too ridiculous.”

“Trying to graduate early still? Make sure you're not getting too stressed. Your telepathy goes wild when that happens.” Leo spoke with a twinkle in his eye and the voice of experience. “Remember when you-”

It was a good thing Angel was psychic, or his glasses would've flown off his face he shook his head so hard. Heat literally leaked off his face as the man in the hospital bed laughed. It wasn't as strong as it used to be, but he still had some life in him yet that was still fighting against the cancer trying to eat his body. Good signs, stages be damned.

“Come on, old man, you promised that you wouldn't talk about that anymore! I was 17!”

Leo patted his former apprentice on the shoulder, eyes twinkling. “I doubt anyone really noticed you floated the teacher two inches off the ground. It was finals, everyone was hallucinating.”

“You are the worst, you know that?” Angel groaned as he sunk deeper into his seat, head in his hands. “Absolutely the worst.”

The fun thing about being psychic was that he had a near photographic memory thanks to his brain wiring. Psychic blasts also meant he could never forget an awkward turn of phrase with someone he was trying to impress - 7th grade, he still cringed at the thought – or his first clumsy attempts at using his powers. Or, in this case, how he had almost floated his high school math teacher off the floor when finals got to him. He was practically back in that seat, sticking to the plastic as he tried to stay awake. And there went the teacher, slipping at the last second and hitting the ground hard. His classmates weren't laughing at him, but -

“Going down the rabbit hole again?”

Something about Leo's voice always managed to pull him out of the worst of his spirals. Angel felt his mind clearing as his ass unsticking from a school chair that was probably long worn into the dust. He was no longer in that class – it was the hospital room instead.

Honestly, he wasn't sure what was worse.

“Just a little bit.” He shook his head, hair brushing against his glasses in the process. He slicked it back with his hand, but it only fell back into place. “No big deal, I've been there before. Besides, I'm here to talk to you, not work on my focusing techniques.”

“There is always time to work on focusing techniques.” The twinkle never left Leo's eyes as he sat back in bed, adjusting his position. He had grimaced briefly – maybe something was bothering him. Hopefully it wasn't a sore. Before he had gotten the cancer, those had popped up. “Not that you seem to be having trouble. I watched you on the news this morning.”

The mere mention of it made Angel's face heat up once more. He was still sore in places, and not just because he had fallen asleep on the couch funny. Even though he hadn't been hit, his psyche had taken quite a beating. It almost felt like he had the flu, only there was no chills or throwing up that he had to worry about.

“They only called me in because Richter was a no show again.” The young man sighed and brushed hair from his eyes once more – back it went the second he moved his hand. “You haven't heard from him, have you? Scanner tried to reach him on his cell, but it went to voicemail.”

Leo shook his head and frowned. “We haven't spoken since the last time I was at the Union house. That's not like him.”

“Yeah, well... he hasn't been himself lately. Dude's been skipping left and right. Ember's this close to kicking him out and I can't say I blame her. Me and PT have been covering his shifts and it's wearing us out.”

Of course, if they did... then they'd be down an elemental master. Richter might have been a flake as of late, but he was solid. More importantly, he was a warm body that could do the shifts the rest of them couldn't. Even if Angel didn't like the guy, he kept him from having to come in all the time. They might not have been as busy as the bigger cities, but even being on duty could be exhausting.

Besides... it was really uncomfortable to sit around in his gear, waiting to get the call. It made doing homework a nightmare.

“I'm sorry I can't be there to help you.” Leo's voice was soft, and the light had dwindled in his eyes. “Ember has been taking up the role beautifully, and you've all adjusted well. Maybe once my chemo is over...”

The words died on his lips, and a heavy feeling descended on the room. The chart the doctors kept pouring over, and the looks they gave their patient when they thought he wasn't looking, didn't exactly give it a hopeful feeling. Angel wouldn't say it, though. If he gave it words, then it would become reality. At least, that's what he had been taught as a child.

It had yet to do him wrong.

So he held up his hand. “Don't worry about it, old man. We're holding down the fort fine until you kick this cancer's ass. Scan's even working on expanding their drones to update the early warning system. They had me float one up to city hall the other day, nearly scared the crap out of some poor intern.”

That got Leo laughing, though it was weak. “Stop scaring the interns, Angel. And good. It sounds like Scanner is doing well. Maybe they can get in contact with Richter later. After all, they were partners.”

Yeah... Angel wasn't so sure about that. But he kept that off his face as he shifted in the chair. It wasn't a lie, per se... just something he wasn't telling his mentor. He didn't need to know everything that went on while he was gone, especially not the way the tech's hand clenched whenever someone mentioned their former partner. Some wounds take longer to heal... and there were those that didn't do it at all. Right then, it looked pretty open to the psychic.

Then again, he wasn't a doctor – just a psych student.

“Speaking of doing well,” Leo's voice was light, but there was nothing about his eyes, “Have you decided yet what you are going to do when you graduate? The last time we spoke, you said you hadn't made up your mind.”

Ice slid to Angel's stomach and churned up a tsunami. He thought back to his desk at home, covered in papers. Grad school applications were going to start being due soon, and then there would be interviews. Add in his school work...

“No... not yet.”

The old man in the bed frowned as he watched his former protege deflate. “I think graduate school would be a fine direction to take, Angel.”

“Yeah, but... not like we could get another psychic to come out here without you as our drawing point.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It's a lot to think over still.”

His advisers wanted him to apply, but how could he? They were down two people with Leo sick and Richter showing up less. Add in the fact Scanner couldn't go on active duty, and it was just the three of them. When it came down to it, Bear Paw didn't have the draw of big cities where there was plenty of action to keep full teams busy. They were just... not interesting enough.

But...

“It's your future, Angel. No one would ask you to come on full time unless you wanted to do it.” Leo reached out to pat his shoulder – his hand was warm, but his grip wasn't as strong as it had been the first time they had met years ago. “Give it plenty of thought.”

He offered the man a weak smile as he nodded. “I will, don't worry about that. Overthinking things is my specialty.”

“Don't I know it. How many times-” The walk down memory lane was interrupted. A nurse was at the door, pills at the ready. “Ah. I believe it is time for my afternoon dose.”

Angel stood and swapped places with the nurse, heading for the door instead. Leo had long since asked him not to stick around for this part – something about being watched made him uncomfortable. His protege was more than happy to play by this rule as he entered the hall, leaning against it as he made a grab for his phone.

Oh, great. He was on twitter again.

“If I ever find the person who started super asses I'm going to mind wipe them.” The young man scowled as more than a few shots of said super ass in his duty pants showed up on his twitter feed. “I don't even follow any hero shit on here!”

Leave it to the people he followed to make his life miserable. Wasn't like he could complain about it, though – how would that even go? “Hey, stop posting pictures of Sky Rider's ass, it makes me really uncomfortable.” Like that would work. He couldn't even use the excuse he was gay – his friends knew he was aro-ace. So there went his last defense as he sighed and marked it for spam.

What, he was only human. Maybe it would even get taken down this time.

“Don't hate, just appreciate as the young people say!” Leo's voice called him back into the room with more than a healthy dose of cringe. The nurse on duty laughed at his expression as he returned to his seat. “What, it's not a bad shot.”

“YOU SAW IT?”

“I do have twitter, you know.”

Angel groaned and buried his head into his hands as his mentor only laughed harder as his abject misery. With friends like that, who needed super villains (and not so super villains) beating the crap out of him on a daily basis?

“I hate you. I really hate you.” Was all he could manage once he came up for air. At least Leo was smiling and had some color in his cheeks. If something came out of his humiliation, then maybe it wasn't all bad.

Oh, who was he kidding – he was trying to make himself feel better with that one. He hated seeing himself on twitter.

Leo's only response was to smile and lean back on his pillow. “You know you like me, or you wouldn't show up.”

“Oh just rub it in.” But Angel was smiling as he said it. Or at least, he was. The minute his pocket started to emit a familiar frequency, that good mood went out the window. “You have GOT to be kidding me, twice in one day?!”

The psychic fished the device out of his pocket. It wasn't his phone – that was in his pants. This was something Scanner and the rest of the team used to get in contact with him. No way to trace the number and figure him out, which meant it was perfect. Normally, the name showed up on screen. Seeing it made him cock his eyebrow, though.

PT should have been sleeping, it was way past her shift...

He cleared his throat as he answered, dropping his pitch. “Yeah, PT?”

There was the sound of growling and a familiar hiss that dropped his stomach to his shoes. Despite that, the voice on the other end was deathly calm – almost monotonous. He had never heard them before, but they sounded young as they held the phone close.

“Is this Sky Rider? You need to get here now! Aunt Miri's boxed in and her powers don't work on them!”

The phone call cut out before Angel could get any details. He was left staring at the device in his hand, eyebrow cocked. When he looked up, though – that was when he saw it. Panic was written all over Leo's face as he leaned in, straining to hear.

“You know who-”

The old man beat him to it. “It's PT's niece. Get the coordinates from Scanner and go before something bad happens.”

There was iron in his voice, like there used to be before the cancer had started to eat him from the inside out. With it came the order to get going and be a big damn hero. Angel nodded as he grabbed for his bag and started out of the hospital. His bike – and his gear – was parked and waiting for him.

Damn... he had wanted to meet the kid, but this was something else. Maybe he should be careful when he wished for something next time.

#Supernova Collision Trilogy #One day I will decide if Paladin lives or dies

[imuybemovoko]

So I just read an article that talked about brainwashing techniques employed in POW camps in North Korea. (It’s linked here.)

I’m inclined to take this article with a slight grain of salt, but there’s something very eerily familiar about the ten steps it lists for brainwashing. It reminds me quite a damn bit of the way your more fundamentalist churches will tell you to share the gospel. I’m going to take a quick run through them and show what I mean. For reasons I’ll explain as “about half shitty site design and about half trauma” I’m having a hell of a time finding specific examples of what I’m talking about here because it involves navigating confusingly executed ministry websites crammed with the exact shit that spent a childhood and five more recent years breaking me. For that reason I’ll make a shitty gospel tract in paint.net with a slide or two to illustrate each point. I’ll probably be annoyingly close to the real thing. Trigger warning here. If this is going to bring something up that you’re not ready to deal with, please do not read any further. 

With that in mind, what would our shitty gospel tract be without some kind of eye-catching title? I’ll take more of a Jack Chick kind of approach to formatting here; Ray Comfort has also been known to make terrible comics following a vaguely similar pattern and typically with far less diverse plots. (Hate-reading Chick tracts is honestly oddly fun sometimes because of the variety and the absolute over-the-top fearmongering about entirely innocent aspects of life and culture.) I’m shooting for a bit of parody energy, so for a title let’s go with:

God’s Blast Furnace Because that seems like the exact kind of cursed energy we should be going for here. I’ll go for a 2x1 aspect ratio here because that also seems pretty typical.

Chick tracts like... usually include people terrified by either God or the flames of hell. I chose the latter. The idea is as much fear factor as you can shove into one tiny page. If you think I’m exaggerating, prepare to be disappointed. Ray Comfort and a lot of campus ministry resources take a less... “in your face” approach to the hellfire bit, but they’ll make damn sure to mention it and how much it’s going to suck to be burned forever. But this is a parody, so if it’s somehow possible to be more over the top than Chick, that’s the goal here.

1. Assault on identity.  In most evangelism guides I remember, one of the first things you’re supposed to mention is that God created the earth and humans and wants us to worship him. Finding specific examples would be a bit of a mindfuck for me because this shit is honestly kinda triggering, but they have a strong tendency towards heavily focusing this in the beginning of their approach. A simple scroll through Chick.com’s tract inventory or, if you can find it, this kind of resource on other sites will show that this assault on identity is extremely important in their approach. Since our parody tract is going to include all of these steps (this is a common but far from universal approach; Ray Comfort tends to include them all but Chick will hyperfocus one or two in every piece of literature), let’s make the first page. The idea here is that they’re saying “you are not who you think you are”. If someone tries to tell you that you’re created by a god rather than a product of evolution, this is their true message. They’ll even mask-off this one, saying “these people think they’re accidental descendants of apes, they’re denying that they were created by God”. So for our parody, let’s do exactly that. I’ll introduce two characters, one Christian and one dreaded “other”, and I won’t bother giving them names; in the real industry, approaches vary. Chick typically gives names, Comfort typically doesn’t. They also tend to grossly caricature unbelievers, so I’ll do that too. I’m going for the “tiny graphic novel” approach here, so I’ll make a panel.

Notice how 1. the unbelievers are presented as strawmen, 2. the Christian is presented as totally normal and even wholesome, 3. he presents this like it’s a self-evident truth, and 4. the response by he unbelievers is angry denial. This is very common and based on prevailing perspectives about unbelievers. You’ll notice an approach quite like this in movies like God’s Not Dead as well, where they make a caricature of Christians that’s way tamer than they present in real life (the kid in God’s Not Dead is super vanilla and a lot of Christians are at best passive-aggressive about it) and a caricature of unbelievers, particularly atheists (they have the most problem with atheists for some reason) that’s straight up aggressive and hostile. In Chick’s tracts, sometimes they wear shirts not that different from the shittily-drawn ones I put on these two unbelievers. I also tried to give the one a mohawk, though the perspective probably isn’t that good. 

Some literature you’ll find in the wild takes a much more detailed approach to this, attacking established scientific facts such as evolution, but others simply present the creation narrative or something akin to it as self-evident and move on. I’ll take the second approach here to save space. Thus, having our unbelievers respond with “how dare you” fits even better because there’s a strong tendency for Christians to think they’re challenging the entire worldview of unbelievers (again, particularly atheists) by even presenting this “fact”. This sets us up perfectly for point 2. 

2. Guilt. In the evangelical view, and in these evangelism resources online, a combination of guilt and fear is very important. Point 2 of the ten in the article is summed up as “you are bad” in the paragraph detailing it; in these forms of Christianity, and very strongly in evangelism techniques, this should be summed up more like “not only are you bad, but the consequences for that are going to be unending and extreme when you die”. This is the strength of the hell narrative in a sentence. On someone who believes it or can be led to believe it, the impact is profoundly damaging. In every “properly-done” evangelism, it is included. Jack Chick goes fucking mental with this narrative and it features in most of his work with vivid pictures of fearful people being yeeted into the flames after pleading for their lives. Ray Comfort also hammers this point fairly hard, framing it as a natural consequence of a life not lived for Jesus and using a metaphor likening death to a long fall and his message to a parachute. In our tract let’s take a mixed approach. Our Christian will yoink Comfort’s parachute metaphor and, much later, we’ll show one of our unbelievers being Chicked. More on that later. 

I’ve started to establish a dichotomy of a type that Chick often uses here where he shows one person getting saved and one getting yeeted into hellfire. “lol sex is epic” is going to dig his heels in like the scary atheist and “there is no god” is going to have his world absolutely rocked by this news. Also, a common caricature is that unbelievers haven’t heard the hellfire bit before. "there is no god” gets this treatment while “lol sex is epic” digs in and gets mad. (It seems to me that the reader is likely meant to find this fitting because he’s the one with the mohawk.) Chick might draw shadowy demons around “lol sex is epic” here, but he doesn’t in every case. Also, note that I’ve brought our title, “God’s blast furnace”, into it here. “there is no god” is walking right into step 3 here. 

3. Self-betrayal. The trick here is to get you to agree that you’re bad. You don’t necessarily have to agree to the hellfire thing; Comfort doesn’t hit that very hard during this phase of a conversation. His approach, which I’ll more or less emulate here, is to get the person to admit that they’ve lied about anything at all, stolen anything at all, or had any lustful thought at all (and, with the latter, referencing Matthew 5:28). Most humans have done at least two of these things at least once (some don’t steal and some are asexual, and there’s most likely overlap, but I feel confident in saying literally everyone lies at least about minor things from time to time), so once he has the confession, Comfort will catastrophise it with a line like “ok so that makes you a lying thieving adulterer in heart” and then pressure the person into answering whether a “just God” will call them innocent or guilty based on this standard. Many people say “guilty” here, as desired. (He paints the ones who say “innocent” or question the standard as dishonest when he makes videos of this.) With guilt thus established, he then asks whether this means a person goes to heaven or to hell. Again, in a typical conversation, the other person answers that this means hell. Ray has triumphed in this moment, because whether he says it or not, the connection is made in the person’s mind that as one guilty of these “sins”, they are bad and deserving of hellfire. So, for our tract, let’s have “there is no god” ask some questions and learn just how “dire” this is from our Christian, a la Ray Comfort. 

“there is no god” betrays himself; “lol sex is epic” stays mad. 

In evangelism, at least in Ray Comfort’s approach, step 3 most often comes in tandem with a lite version of the compulsion to confession, step 6. I’ve condensed this process a bit to fit it into a single panel. “there is no god” now proceeds into step 4. 

4. Breaking point. “there is no god” is now in the trap. This has him questioning everything about himself, his life, and the world. I’ll change his facial expression for the next few panels to illustrate the change. In real life, it takes a lot of repetition, scare tactics and/or other abuse, application during childhood or a moment of great weakness, or a combination of more than one of these to get this done. Since these tracts are a caricature of reality, this is always shown as a fast process. The fast process is also seen as normative because of the belief that God is self-evident, but I am aware of almost no Christians who had this kind of shift because of a single conversation. To my knowledge, this is a months- to years-long process even in most cases of childhood indoctrination. In any case, the victim reaches a point where their view of the world has begun to shatter around them. Or, as the article puts it, asking “who am I, where am I, what am I supposed to do?” We’ll have “there is no god” ask this latter question and add an interjection from “lol sex is epic” to add weight to this. 

“lol sex is epic” gets mad again and says something that many Evangelicals caricature as a common saying of unbelievers, particularly atheists, and progressive Christians (who they have mad beef with for a variety of reasons. Like, I genuinely think they hate progressive Christians more than atheists sometimes). This shows that, in the evangelist’s eyes, “lol sex is epic” has missed the point. Meanwhile, “there is no god” has arrived right at that breaking point, questioning his moral character and asking desperately if there’s a solution to this problem. Our Christian is right there to provide an answer. 

5. Leniency.  Our Christian is going to give “there is no god” the out he’s looking for, declaring that God has given him a solution in the form of Jesus Christ. To show the remaining steps I’ll separate a few things out more than tracts often do. Let’s have a bit more rage from “lol sex is epic” and, for now, have him leave the scene because his use as a character is over until the “and then they both died” bit.

“lol sex is epic” is now gone. Meanwhile, our evangelist has a captive audience for the other steps of this process. 

At this point I’m going to list a couple of steps for each panel because I’m not completely sure how to parse it out the way I’ve been doing thus far. In my perception of this, I tend to view these more easily as far fewer steps. I’ll probably draw this as two or three panels, followed by one where “there is no god” is happy about the decision he’s made. (And wearing a new shirt.)

6. Compulsion to Confession.  Part of the process of salvation is a confession. The fledgling Christian must admit to their status as a sinner and their need of a savior, often in prayer but sometimes also in person to an evangelist or spiritual mentor. This is framed as a relief, a part of casting one’s burdens onto Christ or, as the article puts it, “ the target is faced with the contrast between the guilt and pain of identity assault and the sudden relief of leniency. The target may feel a desire to reciprocate the kindness offered to him, and at this point, the agent may present the possibility of confession as a means to relieving guilt and pain.” The person has been carrying a “lifetime of sin” and a “guilty conscience” and is now letting it all go for the first time. The Catholic church goes absolutely nuts with this, institutionalizing regular confessions. “there is no god” will be presented with a call to confess to Christ. 

7-8. Channeling of guilt; releasing of guilt. The groundwork for this was already laid in the beginning; I forgot to include that part in this tract, but many evangelists will touch on their beliefs about the beginning of the world and the fall of Adam. Thus, they establish the concept of an in-born nature towards sin in all humans. They can give this concept to their target in the form of framing sin as an inherited curse that they can’t avoid having, but isn’t their fault (their actions are but the curse isn’t) and thus can be considered the source of all their “evil” motivations and actions. In this process, a lifestyle of sin is what they channel their guilt into, saying, “I feel bad because I’ve been living this way and not believing in Jesus!” Then, they can use this curse of sin to say, “it’s not me, it’s my bad nature.” Thus, this sense of guilt is channeled and released. This is repentance described in a paragraph. 

9. Progress and harmony.  At this point, the target is encouraged to choose Jesus and the abuse and negativity will stop. They must now make an active and conscious choice towards belief. The fears of hell will be abated. (At least for now).

10. Final confession and rebirth. Evangelicals go full mask off with this, touting a “born again experience” as proof of someone who is truly Christian. Often, the previous several steps are confessed in what’s called the “sinner’s prayer”. I’ll paste it below for a full explanation before I draw the panels for this. At the end, the person invites Jesus into their lives and grants him lordship over their life, then thanks God for this occurrence. This is the end of this process, though the church behaves in ways that reinforce every step of this. You know, for maintenance.  The sinner’s prayer, in one of its several, similar forms: “Dear Lord, I’m a sinner. Please forgive me. Come into my life and cleans me of my unbelief. I believe in you and in salvation through the blood of Jesus. I turn from sin and trust in Jesus alone as my Savior. In Jesus name I pray, Amen.”

Here we see the Christian offering the solution and the broad outline of the sinner’s prayer. Also, “there is no god” is greatly relieved. I’ll make one panel of him doing the sinner’s prayer, then we’ll touch on the “after they both die” thing. Our Christian character is also disposable and this, in this case, is his final appearance.

Here he is getting saved. (His shirt changes alongside this.) And, of course, he ends this with a desire to go tell literally everyone about this. That’s normative in evangelical circles too.

After this, we’re back to more fearmongering, this time involving a dichotomy meant to imply hope, as I yoink a page right out of Chick’s playbook for a couple more panels. 

Here we see a (shittily-executed) great white throne with our Christianized “there is no god” and our angry unbeliever standing before it. The circumstances of their deaths are outlined (fuck you Jack Chick that’s a creepy vibe) and their condition now is clearly explained. Notice how “lol sex is epic” is still angry. But not for long...

The mask drops:

They never portray Jesus putting it exactly like this but this is the kind of energy, at least it’s how it comes across to me when I read these after deconverting. Tracts tend to give a more detailed reaction to the “but I was good” and “give me a chance” things if their damned victims say these things. They assert that deeds aren’t enough and no one is good. Convenient for brainwashing, there’s also an artificial sense of urgency in that this life is listed as your only chance to accept this message and avoid having your flesh boil away before your eyes over and over again for all of time. 

Chick is a big fan of showing the damned being dragged or frogmarched to the pit by angels. 

And here, mohawk man gets the big yeet. 

After this, particularly if they take the Chick approach and include the hell yeet scene and/or the thing at the throne of judgement, they’ll tend to have some questions like this:

Again, parody. They’re not this goddamn on the nose with it.

I could translate this entire thing in one image:

So this has been a painful little look at what goes into a gospel tract/the brainwashing inherent to the gospel message as understood by fundies/evangelicals.

I hate that I used to think this way and unironically tell people this kind of shit. It’s manipulative and stupid, and also deeply cringey. If you’ve read this far, I’m sorry/congratulations. 

Oh, and one final thought: People who don’t generally do this with tracts use verbal, often shorter, versions of the exact same process. CRU reduces it to five points in their resources (and this is a common approach): something like 1. God made the world, 2. we screwed things up and deserve the big yeet, 3. but Jesus makes a way to fix this shit, 4. He died on a cross and rose from the dead so we could be saved, 5. so believe in him and live forever in a realm that doesn’t have to be filled with fire all the fucking time. They’ll tell you to do something involving counting on your hand while explaining this shit. It’s goddamned cursed, and you’ll notice it goes through the exact process I mentioned above. It literally intends to break you down and mold a new person out of the shards and ashes this produces.

Evangelists are assholes. 

#ex christian #religious trauma #fuck jack chick #fuck ray comfort

[daily-rayless]

20 Years of Art

2000

(OC / Celes from Final Fantasy 6 / OC / OC)

The influence of Final Fantasy 6, off of the Anthology collection, and Yoshitaka Amano caused a significant shift in my art, leading my human figures to be very slender, graceful, and frequently pale. Most of it was of women, some of it was of horses, and by then I was very self-consciously starting to draw men. I mostly worked in pencils and colored pencils. Faces were oval with high hairlines and long, sharp, narrow noses. Also note my evident fear of mouth-seams and lower eyelids. I was pretty terrible at coloring, often feeling that coloring one of my sketches ruined all the nice linework.

2001

(Quistis from Final Fantasy 8 / Rosa from Final Fantasy 4? / Schala from Chrono Trigger / Dark Knight OC from Final Fantasy 4)

This is where more anime influences came in, and I consciously took on a semi-anime, semi-realistic (in my own mind) style. My ideal of beauty was overbig eyes, overlong nose, and oversmall mouth, and I stuck to it pretty relentlessly. Trying to figure out shadows and face structure. Still bad at coloring. I was incredibly proud of that charcoal picture. Was also going through my mandatory Dark 'n Edgy phase, with a big helping of Phantom of the Opera, Sarah Brightman, and my attempts at designing supercool clothes, many of which I wouldn't have actually worn, even given the opportunity.

2002

(Me trying to recreate “Flaming June” / OC, who incidentally looks almost exactly like Sarah Brightman and whose diadem was bodily lifted from a Jodi Lee painting / angsty symbolic wet chain lady / OC)

Deep in the Dark 'n Edgy. Faces are still very heavily made-up, with big lashes, defined upper eyelids, and dark lips. Trying very hard to be a good artist though, have high expectations for the future. I was so proud of that final pose and worked so hard on it. Lined paper? So not a problem. Besides, how else am I supposed to draw during class? A sketchbook would've been even more obvious than the incredibly obvious I already was. I'm able to listen while drawing pretty reliably, and I did manage to take detailed notes while doodling, so at least I had that going for me.

2003

(Celes / OC / OC / Hermes-inspired wing lady)

I was focusing (at least some of the time) on backgrounds and trying to make my work detailed and polished. Coloring is still hopeless. Often when I colored, I would go super light, even when I was using dark or intense colors. It would give my pictures a sort of faint, half-assed hazy look. I remember an art teacher urging me to use more color, but I probably resisted because I knew that way lay total destruction. I'm sorry, well-meaning art teacher. You are unversed in the ways of my pencils. I have killed too many sketches to take those kinds of risks.

2004

(Rosa? / Meliara from Crown Duel / willow-dress lady / Geddoe and Queen from Suikoden 3)

See the Meliara picture? That's supposed to be a night scene in a forest. Front-lit by blazing firelight. I was too afraid to make the colors darker. This is dark enough, okay? Anyway, this year, along with being utterly obsessed with Suikoden 3 and Crown Duel, I was letting my art head in a more realistic direction...

2005

(OC / Queen / Queen / part of Zetta and Salome from Makai Kingdom; I remember deliberately copying those swoopy Ss from one of my friends’ handwriting. Wishes ended up being the first longform fanfic I posted online.)

...that really flourished this year. It's not actually realism, but I made a point to give my characters, especially the women, more realistic bodies. Faces are very round in this period, often with soft features. Noses are prominent. I'm also, finally, using more vibrant colors. I probably got my first Prismacolor pencils around this time. I also got some really cheap markers, but had no idea how to use them so mostly stuck to pencils.

2006

(All OCs)

I look back on this as a good year. I was learning better coloring techniques. (Bold colors! Press that pencil down! Okay, I still had much to learn.) I got an Elfwood gallery while the site was doing its slow mosey into oblivion. But that was an important step, not just looking at other people's art online, but putting my own up as well. There were downsides though. I began to feel more insecure – or maybe more realistic? – about my art, on this site with so many highly talented artists. Still, 2006 is a good year. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot.

2007

(vampire and hunter / Fleur from Harry Potter / OC / Avril from Wild Arms 5)

The year of Fleur Delacour. This is when I was writing Kindred. I think it was because I was trying to depict Fleur as distinctly non-human that my art shifted away from that more realistic style. Fleur, and my other figures, became very tall and slender. The anime DNA is still there though. For a long time, I felt the lying-down picture of Fleur was my best work.

2008

(Revya and Gig from Soul Nomad / my attempts at being “abstract” / OC / OC)

This was the year of Soul Nomad and, towards the end, Tales of the Abyss. Unsurprisingly, the anime influences start moving back to the fore. The eyes are becoming larger again, the features a bit more angular and stylized, mouths are shrinking. I'm still desperately trying to figure out markers and wondering why it's so darn hard (I don't try to educate myself, I just flail), but I was proud of that blue OC picture. It made me feel like I was getting somewhere. 2008 is when I started my deviantART gallery, right when everyone else was moving on to Tumblr.

2009

(teacup lady / Persona 4 noir-style comic / Revya / OC)

Then Persona 4 hit. Shigenori Soejima was a huge influence in this period, especially in eyes and faces. Pupils, chins, and jawlines shrink, eyelashes are sparse and stylized, noses are simplified. 2008 and 2009 are about as pure anime as I've ever gotten. Meanwhile, I'm really exited about my dA gallery and trying lots of different combinations of media. I'm super active on dA and FFN at this point, writing Elysion and then a slew of shorter Persona fics.

2010

(Minako from Persona 3: Portable / concept-art-version Minako / lady with dragon ferret thing / other lady with dragon ferret thing)

I'm still drawing with a lot of Soejima influences. Additionally, bodies are becoming even longer, taller, thinner, and bendier. Some of them look absurd to me now. On the other hand, a lot of pictures from this period have a nice elegance to them. I was still using colored pencils a fair bit, but more clumsy markers are showing up. Persona 3: Portable came out, and this is when I was writing Death and Ker.

2011

(mask lady / hat lady / Archaya, Duphaston, and Iryth from Eternal Poison / symbolic autumn lady and her winter baby)

Midway through this year, I hit a breakthrough when I got my first set of Copics – and skin tones, no less. Even though I was still flailing, I was so thrilled with my results. That Eternal Poison picture left me enormously proud, as did the mother and child one. My style hasn't changed all that much, but it's starting to feel less extreme. The focus on big eyes and tiny little mouths remains.

2012

(Elza from Suikoden 2 / Daryl and Setzer from Final Fantasy 6 / Killey and Lorelai from Suikoden 2 / Lyssa, Greek goddess of madness)

This is the year of Elza. Lots of delicate sketches of this lovely scarred lady, and lots of colored pictures too. I've definitely shifted away from pencils towards markers. The Daryl and Setzer one was an attempt to use both, and I was very happy with it. These pictures show their age, but there's still a lot here I like. Mouths are larger too. However, my online activity was starting to lag.

2013

(Rydia from Final Fantasy 4 / Nia from Infinite Space / the prophet and Schala / Argos and Io from Greek mythology)

The mid-2010s weren't entirely great for me, marked with a lot of frustration and discontent. And that definitely carried over to my art, making me feel very disappointed with myself. There was lots of marker work this year. Probably the standout picture is Argos and Io. This is also when I played through all three routes of Fate/Extra, and my art was suddenly full of Hakuno and Emiya.

2014

(Minako / butterfly lady / Marta and Tenebrae from Tales of Symphonia 2 / Elza)

Looking at it now, this was a good year. Lots of nice marker art. The butterfly one was a big step up for me in terms of coloring. The Marta and Tenebrae has a really cool stylized look to it. But I was becoming less enthusiastic about sharing my art with others. I started to post less and less.

2015

(evil Hakuno and Emiya from the Fate series / Mitsuru from Persona 3 / half moon cookie lady / Hakuno)

I barely posted anything this year, though I was still drawing a ton. As far as making strides, this is one of my better years. Coloring will never be my strong suit, but it's a lot more fun, and it looks a lot better. It's almost entirely marker-work at this point. Despite my, er, angst, a lot of people are smiling this year.

2016

(OC / doodle lady / Luna from Roman mythology / hair bow lady)

At this point, it's feeling too recent for me to really see what's changed. I did a fair bit of eraserless work. One problem I still have – and, yes, it involves coloring my pictures – is losing some of the image's personality after I've inked it and erased the initial pencil work. The picture's still there, but not as nuanced as it originally was. The results often feel stiff to me. Doing the first linework in ink, or not inking at all, allows me to keep that sensitive, spontaneous quality. Luna and the bow and doodle ladies were done without erasers. Another thing I did a lot this year was fill backgrounds with busy shapes and colors, which is a trend I’m still following today.

2017

(flapper and dog / Alcyone and Ceyx from Greek mythology / flower hair lady / Kida from Atlantis)

Not a good year. Not that the art is bad, there just isn't a lot of it, and what there is often isn't very finished. I was still mostly dark online, wondering if I should take down my dA gallery. Drawing and knowing I wasn't going to post something took off some of the pressure of my own expectations, but I was still unhappy.

2018

(Altera from the Fate series / Elizabeth Bathory from the Fate series / OC / Aranea from Final Fantasy 15)

This was a really important year for me. I wrote a novel I'm really proud of, and it's done a lot to give me confidence and a sense of creative direction. I also decided that after New Years, I was going to start a Tumblr gallery...just as everyone who was still on the site was jumping off of it. Much of my 2018 work is still sketchy and unfinished, but I also think it's loosening up some. It feels less stiff than the stuff from the middle of the decade.

2019

(Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn / medievaly lady / Red from Transistor / Red)

The year of Supergiant Games, which led me to focus more on bright saturated colors. It's really hard for me to analyze these objectively. Coloring is better? I worked more on details? I used my metallic gel pens a ton and did shape-cluttered backgrounds? These aren't new things, but I think they paid off okay. I'm more at peace with my level of ability, I've finished more complicated works, and I crawled out of my den and started posting regularly online again. So that's all good. Curious to see what the art looks like in twenty more years.

#art progression #20 years of art #2000-2019 #i'm not tagging all the characters #this is a terribly long post #and shouldn't clutter up too many search results #thank you if you read the whole thing #i apologize for typos #art meme #art summary

[the-coconut-asado]

Crazy for Kiwi Crickets

When it comes to eating out in Fiji, you are only as good as your last success.

 Consistently get it right and the punters will flock. Anything less than excellent and it’s ‘Maaan that place has gone downhill – but the duck soup at Harbour Centre is the Bomb!’ You can’t actually get duck soup at Harbour Centre, but anything with duck in Suva is a sure-fire winner as they are in constant short supply.

 Fiji is always in pursuit of the New Big Thing. That duck soup place I mentioned was actually the New Big Thing once, so was The Guava Café (doorstep griddled toast and Land of the Giant-sized portions); Singh’s burn-your-ring curry house and the Chinese restaurant at Samabula where you got a decent takeaway and a ringside seat at a sailors’ punch up.

 There are some classics that never go out of fashion. The cream buns at Hot Bread Kitchen – the ‘cream’ is actually buttercream and they sell them in sets of six like monkey bread so yeah, good luck with just eating one; Cardo’s Steakhouse in Denarau – they claim their cattle are descendants of Argentine castaways from the 19th century (kind of yarn that could spark a punch up in that Samabula Chinese restaurant, but the steaks ARE consistently good); Friday seafood lunch at Suva Bowling Club (you may not recognise half the seafood on your plate, and that’s a good thing); And, sadly closed now, The Cottage – tucked behind the main drag in Suva, serving the best local Fiji food and only open at lunchtime. And didn’t we all wail when the owner retired and shut up shop after decades of top-quality chow.

Anyway, it’s quite something when the New Big Thing is your sister-in-law’s café. Weta (Coffee) Fiji, the fifth child of Mue and her husband Darran, opened its doors in March this year. 

The café gets its name from a gerbil-sized cricket native to New Zealand. A quick google search and you can watch a film of a weta fighting a foraging pig, so maybe not exotic pet material. 

While the lion’s share of daily sales will always be the coffee (and we returned with bags of beans to London, it’s that good), it’s the food at Weta that’s getting the lion’s share of hype. World Health Organisation apparatchiks would probably advise not have more than one Honey Butter Waffle a month, yet people are spectacularly carb-loading these Weta signature goodies daily on their way to work. Take a look at the picture below and you could so easily join them.

Aside from the waffle-fest, Mue and cousin Cherie (whose aunt founded that other Fiji café classic Bulaccino) have entered into a kind of foodie face-off with each other, competing to see who can come up with the most mouth-watering innovations. The Honey Butter Waffles already give 1-0 to Mue; but ever thought of combining crispy nuggets of bacon with a rich mayonnaise, slathering it on a chicken schnitzel and sandwiching it all in a toasted mini baguette? Then check out their Chicken Baconnaise Panini and Cherie evens the score. How about a teal-green smoothie that tastes fruity and delicious but you don’t know why? Place your order for their Ugly Green Juice  - a joint invention so let’s call it a draw. I assiduously worked my way through most of their menu over two weeks and couldn’t find much that was less than evil genius.

Because this is a family concern, and Mue does a lot of her experimenting in her own kitchen, I got caught up in the whole entrepreneurial swirl when we were there this summer. Watching while Mue, with apparent carelessness cloaking a keen cook’s eye, tossed ingredients for her Marsala Chai muffins into the food processor at 5 in the morning while simultaneously whipping up a vegan version of her waffle mix. Slavishly watching her EPOS app to see if the sales dial had moved to kerching! levels – in short, generally starting to catch the fever of the hospitality business owner. Is Suva ready for Kava Hot Chocolate? (Kava is the ceremonial drink of Fiji with delicate overtones of mud). Apparently yes, and at least 10 people on the first day of sales had a dreamless sleep that night. Another invention marked up to Mue and another profit stream.

Having eaten our body weight in tropical breakfast patisserie, we left Suva for a few days to head to our own New Big Thing on Fiji’s Other Big Island.   

Savusavu is a picturesque town with a bay big enough to host a fistful of yachts and a marina to moor them. Even though it’s popular, the road to Savusavu – which nestled on the South coast of Vanua Levu - is one less travelled compared to the resort islands of Western Viti Levu. It has a reputation as a millionaire’s playground and we were told ‘be careful, you won’t want to come back’ (do people wrongly assume that we are at home in the company of dicks with yachts?). Anyway, they weren’t wrong about the beauty of the place, and I can now tell them a few tales about some unexpected food epiphanies.

The first was thanks to Sarah, the owner of the Gecko Guesthouse. It said in our Airbnb blurb that she would throw in a cooking lesson if we asked nicely. Which we did, and she obliged, if a little reluctantly at first. We spent one chilled-out evening learning her techniques for snake bean and bitter gourd curries (be sparing rather than slavish with your spices), a-ma-zing fish madras (although we can’t get fresh walu in the West, swordfish would be a decent substitute) and clever hack for cooking rice (err, use an electric rice maker).

However, the piece de resistance of Savusavu is a ‘dive’ (my friend Ije’s word when he saw the Insta post) called Arun’s Hidden Taste of Paradise. 

The name felt a bit at odds with its appearance, which is a little grubby and dishevelled, but don’t be fooled. The clue is in the word ‘hidden’ because if you make it through their mesh-covered door you will taste cassava chips which are meltingly creamy on the inside and quadruple-cooked crispy on the outside and, hands down, the best butter chicken I have eaten in my life. The eponymous Arun, both owner and cook, seemed frankly scared when I asked for a photo, so I didn’t push on asking for the recipe – but kept the flavour profile running around in my head for the rest of the trip.

Obsessed as I was, I hunted down ingredients lists for butter chicken on my bookshelves and I think I have found a pretty good match in Vivek Singh, who based his Cinnamon Club classic on a 1950’s recipe from the Moti Mahal in Old Delhi. But then I saw a recipe for a curry pie in last month’s Delicious Magazine and had the brainwave to make this pie with the butter chicken. And while you might have to make the trip to Suva to get Mue’s original and best Honey Butter Waffles TM, I have slightly adapted her Chai Latte and Choc Chip Muffins  and Ugly Green juice here.

So raise your Ugly-Green juice-filled glass to New Big Things. And watch out for the next one - the launch of Mue and Darran’s Writers Lodge guesthouse with Kava Bar and Weta Café later this Autumn.

You can follow them on @wetafiji. 

 Butter Chicken Pie

You can just make this butter chicken straight with pilau rice and all the trimmings, but turning it into a pie takes it to the next level. This pastry is super short and crispy, thanks to a mix of butter and lard. Don’t be put off by the long list of ingredients or the processes. It’s dead easy over a lazy Sunday and the flavours are so worth it. Serves 4.

 Ingredients:

For the butter chicken:

800g boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces

One red chilli and some coriander leaves

1 large red pepper, seeded and cut into strips

For the marinade: 

120g Greek yoghurt

5 garlic cloves, grated or crushed

1 inch piece  of ginger, peeled and grated

1 tbsp sunflower oil

Juice of 1 large lemon

Kosher salt and pepper to taste

3 tsp chilli powder

1 tsp ground cumin

½ tsp garam masala

½ tsp turmeric

For the sauce:

8-10 tomatoes

1 in piece of ginger, half grated and half chopped finely

4 garlic cloves, grated or crushed

4 green cardamom pods, 2 cloves, 1 bay leaf

2 tsp chilli powder

80g salted butter, diced

2 green chillies, split lengthwise but still joined at the stem

80ml single cream

A few dried fenugreek leaves

1tsp garam masala

1 tbsp. sugar

For the spiced butter:

1 Tbsp. ghee

1 tsp black mustard seeds

1 tsp. crushed chillies

For the pastry:

230g plain flour

1 tsp kosher salt

65g salted butter, and 50g lard, both chilled and cubed

4tsp. soured cream

1 tbsp. apple cider vinegar( or use white wine vinegar as a substitute)

4 tsp. water

1 egg., beaten

3 tbsp. lime pickle (I like Pataks)

2 tbsp. sugar

How to make:

First marinate the chicken. Mix all marinade ingredients, stir in the chicken, cover and pop in the fridge for at least 2 hours, or preferably overnight.

 Heat the oven to 220C/ Gas 9. Spread the chicken pieces out in one layer on a large baking tray, leaving a margin on the side to say out the strips of red pepper, tossed in a tsp. olive oil. Cook for 15-20 mins, turning the pieces halfway through so that they cook evenly. Remove from the oven and set aside while you make the sauce.

 Slice the tomatoes in half and put in a large saute pan with 125 ml water, grated ginger, garlic, cardamom, cloves and bay leaf. Simmer, covered for about 25 mins until the tomatoes are mushy (the aroma from this simmer will already be driving you wild with desire). Remove the whole spices, add the chilli powder and simmer for a further 10 mins (Vivek likes to push the tomatoes through a sieve and just use the resultant puree, but I prefer my sauce to be a bit more rugged, a little less refined).

 Add the chicken pieces and the red pepper slices and all their juices and give it a good stir. Slowly stir in the butter, a couple of cubes at a time, and simmer for about 8 minutes until the chicken is cooked through. Add the chopped ginger, chillies and cream and simmer for a minute or two longer. Stir in 1 tsp.kosher salt, crumble in the fenugreek leaves and the garam masala. Adjust the seasoning if necessary then add the sugar.

 In a separate small pan, warm up all the ingredients for the spiced butter until the seeds start to pop. At this stage you can serve the Butter Chicken with the spiced butter spooned over the top, but if progressing with the pie (which I urge you to do) , then set both the chicken and the spiced butter to one side.

Now make the pastry (you can also make this ahead and chill, just bring back to room temperature before rolling out). Combine the flour , salt and a generous grind of black pepper in a food processor. Add the butter and lard and blitz until it has the texture of fine breadcrumbs. In a separate bowl, mix the soured cream, vinegar and water then add to the flour and butter mix and just blitz until the mixture starts to come together (don’t overwork it). Turn out onto a floured surface and bring together into a smooth ball. Wrap in cling film then chill for at least 30 mins.

Heat the oven to 200C/ Gas 6. Brush the rim of your pie dish with the beaten egg, then fill the dish with the butter chicken and drizzle the spiced butter all over the surface. Roll out the pastry in a circle big enough to cover the pie dish, then lay over the top of the dish, crimping the edges to seal and trim off any surplus pastry to neaten the edges. Cut a small cross in the middle to let the steam out during cooking and make some pastry leaves with any pastry offcuts.

Brush all over with the rest of the egg glaze then pop in the fridge for 10 minutes.During that 10 minutes, make the lime pickle glaze by mixing the pickle with 2 tbsp. boiling water and the sugar. Set aside.

Bake the pie for 40 mins then brush all over with the lime pickle glaze and bake for 15 mins more. Serve garnished with the chilli (dipped in a little oil to make it glisten) and a few coriander leaves.

 Mue’s Chai Latte Choc Chip Muffins (and some variations)

When I asked Mue for the recipe she had to quantify her instincts on ingredients, (and thanks for leaving out the eggs first time round missus) but the results were judged by those who ate them as ‘the best they have ever had’. I have slightly adjusted the recipe, using chai latte mix instead of masala chai and used my favourite buttermilk instead of sour cream. (makes 12 generous muffins)

Ingredients:

3.5 cups flour (about 350g) plain flour

3 tbsp. baking powder

1 tbsp chai latte powder

Pinch kosher salt

125g butter, melted

200g sugar

2 tbsp. Coconut oil, melted

2 tsp vanilla

2 cups buttermilk and maybe a tbsp of milk

2 eggs

1 50g packet of chocolate chips plus a few extra for serving

For the streusel topping: 

20g plain flour

10g sugar

10g butter

1 tsp. Chai latte powder

How to make

Heat the oven to 220C/ Gas 7-8. Line a 12 cup muffin tin with muffin holders (I like the tulip-shaped ones in the photo). 

In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, sugar, chai latte powder and salt. In separate bowl mix the melted, cooled butter and coconut oil with the beaten eggs, Buttermilk, splash of milk (1 tbsp) and the vanilla paste. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon until a thick, gloopy consistency. Add a little more milk if the mix is too stiff. You want it not quite falling off your spoon. Then fold in the chocolate chips. 

In a third bowl, rub the butter into the flour until you have fine breadcrumbs then mix in the sugar and chai latte. 

Fill the muffin cups evenly (about 2 tbsp. Mix per cup), then top with the streusel and pop in the oven, turning the heat down immediately to 180C/ Gas 5. Bake for 30 mins until a skewer comes out clean from the centre, then remove from the oven and dot each muffin with a few more chocolate chips cool and serve. 

Variations

For Blueberry muffins, omit the chai latte powder and choc chips and stir in 3 oz fresh blueberries into the muffin mix. Bake as before. 

For Apple, Pecan and Golden Syrup muffins. Melt 2 tbsp golden syrup with the butter and coconut oil, then add all the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients as before. Fold in 1 grated apple and 50g coarsely chopped pecans into the muffin mix then bake as before. Dot each muffin with a few more chopped pecans when out of the oven and before they cool. 

Mue and Cherie’s Ugly Green Juice

This is the colour of verdigris but tastes delightful. Just shut your eyes and drink (or colour match with your nail polish, like here). 

Ingredients: 

½ cup frozen strawberries

2 tsp acai berry powder or lingonberry powder

2 tsp Splenda or Stevia sweetener

4 tsp. Spirulina

1-2 Cups nut milk (try to get a nice think consistency, so start with 1 cup and add more to taste

How to Make

Put all your ingredients into a blender, blitz till smooth and serve. 

It’s that simple.

[serkonans]

i would legit love to know ur answer to all of those dnd questions tbh

so many gfsljgf thank you antonia i love ask memesputting #13 up here for the anon who requested it and the rest below the cut!13. Introduce your current party.I currently DM a few games! School is hectic and I don’t get to play very often but all the characters are GoodI have one group campaign titled “When the River Bleeds Red” (which is probably news to you, Antonia, and everyone else who plays, idt I ever mentioned that slkfjglfskj) that has a blacksmith (half-elven cleric, @the-idiot-who-stood-still​) named Brigitte Faestrum, a pumpkin farmer (halfling druid, @beesgnees​) named Cathal Headrig, a former stage performer (fire genasi sorcerer, @merrigold​) named Emelia Sparks, and a former mercenary (gnome fighter, @jacqmutiny​) named Nyx!I also DM one-on-one campaigns for @merrigold​ (who plays an aasimar druid named senua tasked with undertaking journeys on behalf of the gods in “The Glacial Erratic”) and @fictitiousbees​ (who plays a kenku wizard named scribbles called to the service of a high dragon in “Luck of the Draw”)Everything else below the cut!

1. A favorite character you have played.

I’ve only played two characters! One was Carran Warset, who is my Son and like the bulk of the reason I know I’m trans, and one was Chim from your one-on-one campaign. I rly like both of them tbh but Carran is my child gkjlsfgjs

2. Your favorite character that someone else has played.

Excluding anything I’ve DMed, Sivarna by @pluviance!

3. Your favorite side quest.

In the group campaign we played in together, there was one session that idr if you were able to be there for but we like,,, went into a forest and bought a really ugly belt from a stoner for zero plot reasons and I count it as a side quest in my heart

4. Your current campaign.

Well, you know everything about all my current campaigns that you’re allowed to know rn, but for anyone who might be reading who isn’t in them:

The group campaign is being used as scapegoats in the brutal murder of an ambassador’s daughter and is fleeing a city through secret tunnels -- we last left off at Cathal becoming a giant badger and burrowing upward

In the solo campaign with Senua, she’s attempting to deliver a large, magical object from the goddess of earth deep inside a mountain, and she’s facing down a basilisk with three NPCs

And in the solo campaign with Scribbles, he’s just played a card game that was really more of an interrogation, where he found out a high dragon has taken interest in him, and he is, in unrelated news, taking a package to the local apothecary

5. Favorite NPC.

Of someone else’s, I love Lucy from the Chim campaign!

Of mine, I will never stop loving Mr. Kretever Tatell. Kret is a goddamn idiot but he’s my goddamn idiot

6. Favorite death (monster, player character, NPC, etc).

Carran once killed an evil poison merchant by seducing her in an enemy king’s bedroom and stabbing her when he went in for the kiss gkfsljgfsj. Then he and Sivarna wound up hiding with her corpse under a bed discussing the concept of threesomes in whispers while the king wandered around his room. Not as like, a possibility. Just because the topic came up

7. Your favorite downtime activity.

S,,,hop,,,,,,, money tiem $

8. Your favorite fight/encounter.

I liked the fight where I balanced the combat correctly lkgsflkjskljg, the one with guards in the tunnels

9. Your favorite thing about D&D.

Storytelling!

10. Your favorite enemy and the enemy you hate the most.

Homebrew enemies are coolest imo but hard to balance; the giant gemstone ant I had you fight would’ve been my favorite if it’d been able to get more than like two attacks in gskjgksj

And insect swarms are very annoying to fight

11. How often do you play and how often would you ideally like to play?

How often I play is whenever every single one of the stars align and ideally I would play like every other day fksjglskfjg

12. Your in game inside jokes/memes/catchphrases and where they came from.

God the current ones haven’t gone long enough for those yet really and I’m blanking on most from the group player campaign

I do remember Carran was 1000% convinced basil was poison at one point and his pet rat killed an evil, powerful sorcerer by chewing his ear

14. Introduce any other parties you have played in or DM-ed.

Just the group player campaign with Carran, which didn’t get to the heavy plot stuff before it ended tbh, and then the solo one you ran with Chim in what was rly a Very cool world concept of like hellish Las Vegas that I’d like to steal at some point

And then you ofc know this but for anyone reading who doesn’t, I’m going DM a maybe-oneshot, maybe-a few more than oneshot post-apocalyptic campaign for you and @fictitiousbees​, set in a world that’s been destroyed by fast growing invasive fungi which is like. only The sexiest apocalypse scenario

15. Do you have snacks during game times?

Yes, religiously. Game time snack time

16. Do you play online or in person? Which do you prefer?

I’ve never played in person other than a single test game for new players! I prefer online tho; you can look things up and type if you’re shy

17. What are some house rules that your group has?

I have a rule about only two players being able to try the same sort of check, but that’s it for us so far that I can think of

18. Does your party keep any pets?

Not yet! Cathal has a way with animals though

19. Do you or your party have any dice superstitions?

I Do

20. How did you get into D&D? How long have you been playing?

I got into it bc Critical Role made it look super super fun, and I’ve been playing off and on for two years now

21. Have you ever regretted something your character has done?

I’ve regretted everything any character I’ve controlled has done I think that’s just dnd

Realistically tho, big yes for a lot of what Carran did, most notably snooping on another player character who had cast Alarm on her room

22. What color was your first dragon?

Haven’t had one yet!

23. Do you use premade modules or original campaigns?

100% original babey

24. How much planning/preparation do you do for a game?

3% planning 97% “oh fuck I need to have an idea Now” babey

For DMs

25. What have your players done that you never could have planned for?

Everything, it’s why I never know what I’m doing

I never expected Cathal to become a large badger and dig out of the underground, how do you prepare for someone to, in all seriousness, tell you they’re going to become a badger and scrabble to the surface

26. What was your favorite scene to write and show your characters.

I really tend to enjoy the one-on-one scenes; I think my favorite was having you roll that insane wild magic surge and detailing What Happened At The Theatre

27. Do you allow homebrew content?

Yes if it can go in DND Beyond

28. How often do you use NPCs in a party?

In group campaigns, not often, although we have two with us right now. In solo campaigns, if you want combat you’re getting an NPC party, at least for a bit

29. Do you prefer RP heavy sessions or combat sessions?

Personally I love RP heavy sessions; combat is fun but I crave Story

30. Are your players diplomatic or murder hobos?

I think mostly diplomatic with a dash of murder hobo

For Players

31. What is your favorite class? Favorite race?

I’m so so so boring but I love humans gksfjgsk

Humans, elves, and half-elves are my favorite

And then I Would Die For Every Rogue, it’s hands down my favorite class

32. What role do you like to play the most? (Tank/healer/etc?)

Rogue role

Lemme stealth and steal and stab

33. How do you write your backstory, or do you even write a backstory?

For Carran it was,, A Whole Process

I came up with a basic idea, then journaled as him several times and wrote and rewrote until I had what felt Right, and then I kept toying with it and adding more details throughout the campaign -- I love playing and would really like to again but the obsession with expanding upon his story made me realize I need the freedom of worldbuilding that goes along with DMing; I don’t think I could be a player without DMing a separate campaign bc I just try to take over

34. Do you tend pick weapons/spells for being useful or for flavor?

Both!

35. How much roleplay do you like to do?

So much, I usually use old acting techniques and get fully into character

thank you again antonia!!! these were fun

#fox speaks #long post #in case the cut doesn't work bc tumblr bad #merrigold

[aslanbct-blog]

Reflective Journal

For the first BCT studio project, I joined a group that created the Card Ass project. Card Ass is the name we gave to our product because it is silly and wacky, and it is a shortened version of “Card Assistant”. Card Ass was a product aimed at, but not limited to, young creatives. The aim of the experience is to assist and inspire creativity amongst artists especially when they are stuck at creative blocks. To take part in the experience the user draws three cards, a character card, a setting card, and a wild card. The character card gives the user a character they must interpret and draw, Setting Card provides the situation or place the character must be drawn in, and finally the wild card gives the overall drawing/artwork a bit of a twist, an example is that you must draw a girlfriend for your character or your character will die in this drawing.

At the beginning of the project, I was initially in a group of 3. We decided to merge with another group of 4 to create a larger group of 7. This group of 7 then became Card Ass. We wanted to join groups because we felt that there weren’t enough ideas just amongst us 3 and thought creating a larger group could provoke more ideas and concepts. Initially, the group was looking at basing our product on creative writers and authors. We wanted to encourage more people to begin writing and we were trying to create a very enjoyable way for people to get interested in writing. However, as a group we realized that none of us were very interested in writing, so we didn’t have a lot of interest in the topic and thought it would be a better idea to look at a different topic. As a group, we were stuck and couldn’t think of any new ideas. The final week before the submission date arrived and everyone started to panic. We did an activity to brainstorm ideas and one of our members, Ella, thought it would be a good idea to keep the same idea we had for the creative writing but, aim it at artists and young creatives. The group really liked this idea and we concepted, tested, and designed our final product all in the final week.

Looking back at the process we went through, the group seemed to be doing a lot of work but the topics we were researching and looking at basing our product experience on just was interesting to us. We mistakenly spent a lot of time on something we didn’t like, instead, we should’ve come together as a group sooner and discussed what we are interested in and find if there were any mutual interests earlier on so we could spend more time on that, so we potentially could have made a better product and experience in the end. I noticed that at the beginning of the process there were a lot of ideas by members that were just shut down too quickly or weren’t considered very much at all. This is sort of disappointing to look back at as I realize the creative drawing and young creatives topic was originally brought up right at the beginning of the process and as a group, we should’ve researched it more and realized that it was a really good idea. If we did that it would’ve saved so much time and would have improved our product because we would’ve had more time to work on it. From this, personally, I learned that instead of coming up with one good idea right at the beginning and only focusing on that, we should put it to the side, research other ideas and topics to see if there is anything better or more interesting and if nothing can be found then we can come back to the original idea and focus on it from there, but since we only focused on the one idea for most of the process, we missed out on many opportunities that would’ve benefited us. As a group, we learned that we should be more open to different ideas and that we should brainstorm our ideas and interests more often.

However, also looking back at the process there are a lot of positives. When doing the testing we did it on both classmates and the public and it was great to see that our product provided the experience it was intended to as everyone enjoyed our product and praised the experience and how it triggered creativity. The group had very good chemistry as well which meant we all got along and worked well together. I think this is because we all have very similar personalities and interests which meant that we could feed off each other’s energy and ideas to produce even better ones.

My understanding of the experience and the process we went through to complete our project can be related to James Webb Young. In his book “A technique for producing ideas” he explains that people shouldn’t figure out where to look for new ideas but instead train our minds to generate new ideas naturally. I feel like that related to our group project as we spent a very large amount of time on one idea and looking for ideas online when instead we should have done what we did at the end of the project and went away and came up ideas on our own without external help and with doing that we were able to create a very good idea and project. I think it may be a good idea to investigate a different process for the next project. SmartStorming.com studied the question “what makes a good idea, good?” and according to the website, there are four specific things your idea should have to make it good. It needs to be different or an improved version of an existing idea, it needs value, it needs to be physically possible and doable, and it needs to have acceptable cost-benefit. Looking at these key ideas. Personally, I would like to follow these steps or at least consider this way of idea creation in the next project. This is because I want to test out another method of idea creation and find which versions suit me best. I also want to follow that criteria because some of the techniques we were taught during the process of our project didn’t necessarily benefit us or help us but having this criteria to look back at and follow will help give us a good basis for the project.

In the future, I would like to work with this group again as they provided a very good product but also the process was very enjoyable, and the group worked well together. However, I would like to look at other ways of researching ideas or maybe follow a different process to the one we did. Instead of all looking at one specific topic, we could split up as a group and brainstorm and create on our own and then come back as a group and mix and match and find the best aspects of everyone’s idea and turn it into the best idea we could make. Also, when I look back at the process I often ask myself “did I contribute enough”? and if so “what aspects were specifically inspired by me or my actions”? for the future projects I would like to contribute more at a higher level, providing more impactful ideas or strategies that could help shape our overall project a bit better.

 James Webb Young. A Technique for producing ideas. Chicago: Important Books, 2012

“What Makes A Good Idea, Good?” SmartStorming, 19 Sept. 2018, https://www.smartstorming.com/what-makes-a-good-idea-good/

#ctec502

[vykodlak]

the way you draw muscles and anatomy in general is just incredible, so flowy and beautiful. i'd love to be able to do anatomy like you one day, do you do specific studies for it? do you have any advice for drawing muscles (like that naked skydancer for example)?

Hearing this makes me so happy, I love drawing anatomy and hope that usually comes through in my work! Thank you.

To be honest, 90% of the time I’m flying by the seat of my pants when it comes to drawing it ‘correctly’ [that is, as it’d look in real life]. I do studies then and now, but nothing in-debth, though I’ve been tryin’ to correct that lately. That SD in particular was drawn very quickly and is rife with mistakes, hahah. Most of it is style I’ve built up over the past few years, just by drawing werid-lookin’ monsters. The best advice is to just keep at it, but you already know that so…

I can’t teach you how to draw specifically like I do since that’s developed over time and a lot of it is shorthand, but I can tell you what I do & keep in mind when drawing and doing more serious anatomy studies.

1. Having confidence in your lines is one of the most important things and something I stress every time someone asks me for advice. You can’t be unsure in your lines or they’ll let you down. Do a lot of line exercises and build up that muscle memory. Even the most sketchy drawings done in like 5 minutes can look intentional and slick if you’ve got confidence in this area, so just become an expert bluffer.

[personally I love swooshing lines so I zoom out as much as I can w/out losing clarity and just. Swoosh. Swoosh as much as you can. Do as much as you can with a single line.]

2. In the end it’s all about learning how to stylize the form and deciding how much detail you want to go into. Sometimes I use just a single line to convey muscles, sometimes I go wild with the hatching. Having a strong foundation is important but don’t focus too much on rigidity. Once you’ve got a good idea of what a limb looks like, play around with it’s shape a little, stretch it, squash it, make it look like a twizzler if ya want, and see what looks good to you. A part of what makes my figures look the way they do is that I add some lines that aren’t actually there in real life, but I just think look good. Play around w/ it.

3. A worthwhile thing to practice is basic forms first, just cylinders at various angles. Try to visualize how they’d look in 3D, how your lines would curve around them, think ‘bout how the muscle and skin might curve and wrap around a limb. This post on volume and keeping things in perspective literally changed my life lol. I usually check my forms with some circles these days. The coil technique follows a similar tactic but personally too many circles make my head spin.

4. Save as many reference photos as you can, from as many angles as you can find. What I usually do when studying these is to do an eyeballed drawing of the picture, then do a traced version, compare both to see where I’m lacking and then eyeball it again using what I’ve learned from the trace. Sometimes I hide the reference on the third try just to see what I’ve memorized. Do this as many times as you need until you feel you’ve got it down [but make sure to check yourself or get someone to check for you every once in a while so you don’t keep repeating a mistake]! Don’t ever rely on tracing as a crutch tho, just a note.

5. When studying, use different colors [or colored lines] to isolate the various muscles/parts of the body. I do this on both pictures and my art and it really helps some stuff ‘click’ into place for me. It might also help you memorize the shapes quicker. Anatomy4Sculptors has a lot of good small refs like that [just… not on their official website, everything there is locked behind membership. Use google images or tumblr to find some].

6. Be aware of how limbs overlap. I’m just gonna now its an example here ‘cause I’m bad at explaining lol. It might seem pretty intuitive and easy at more extreme angles but it’s a good thing to keep in mind nonetheless. Keep them cylinders in mind and consider how they’d overlap in simplified forms.

7. When referencing, take note of where each body part is in relation to another [say, how the elbow might be at level with the ear when he arm is raised/angled a certain way].

And. That’s about most of the stuff i try to keep in mind while drawing! I hope it was at least a little bit coherent/helpful, hahah. If you’ve got any more questions abt anything specific I can try to clarify further. [Also just to note, never use other’s art as anatomical reference, even the lil studies I’ve done here, because you’ll just end up copying their mistakes.] You’re welcome to do some private studies of my art style, though, if you want to get the hang of how I place down lines & how I stylize.

#i hope this is what you had in mind! sometimes it's hard to translate my thoughts into words [english especially] :-( #long post #koshkaah speaks #text

[thesteadydietofeverything]

Video Game Year in Review: The Top 10

As with any year-end list, this one probably isn’t complete. Last year, I fell in love with Nioh over winter break after I had already made my top 10, and just a few days ago, I started playing Hollow Knight. As I made clear in my previous lists, Metroidvanias can be hit or miss for me. I can get fed up with wandering around without a clear destination, and Hollow Knight has a bit of that so far, but it also has one of the most atmospherically welcoming settings for a video game in recent memory, and so far I’ve been pretty damn enraptured by it. I’m not too worried about it making the list at this point; it didn’t even technically come out this year anyway, but its Switch release earlier this year gave it somewhat of a second debut, for all the earned attention it finally got. At least I got a little shout-out here before publishing.

Anyway, here’s ten games I loved the shit out of in 2018. This was one year with a handful of games that I absolutely adored, none of which necessarily immediately jumped out to me as hands down the best one of the bunch, and honestly, that’s the way I’d prefer it, but it did make ranking them a bit tough. Really, from number five onward, the ranking gets pretty interchangeable. I didn’t plan on the game in my number one spot being the one that it is until I actually wrote out my feelings for it and decided that out of all them it was the easiest for me to just gush about. Alright, no further ado:

10. Donut County - Overall, it’s probably a good thing that Donut County isn’t longer than it is, but for as mechanically simple as sucking objects into an ever-expanding void is, it’s something that I felt I would’ve been perfectly entertained doing for a lot longer than the game lasted. Donut County has a wildly inspired and novel central gameplay hook, a relatably goofy sense of humor that might border on obnoxious if it weren’t so sincerely delivered, and an anti-gentrification, anti-capitalist message that mostly works without beating you over the head too hard with it. Ben Esposito and his team have created one of the most charming and original games I’ve played in years here.

9. Paratopic - “Cinematic” is a grossly overused and frequently inappropriate word to use in games criticism, but this game often had me coming back to the word, observing how many ways it feels like it authentically takes inspiration from creative methods seen more often in film, particularly art films, than in games, much more so than say, Red Dead Redemption 2, which typically embarrassingly pales in comparison to any movies it’s obviously aping from. There’s its willingness to not explain to you what’s going on, letting you pick up on clues from scenery and incidental dialogue. Its multiple switching perspectives, laced together to draw meaningful narrative connections. Its tendency to sit in the atmosphere of a scene. Its ability to tell a succinct story intended to be experienced in one sitting. And most of all, those jump cuts. I know Paratopic isn’t the first game to employ this technique, but as far as I can remember, it’s the first that I’ve played to utilize them for purposeful artistic effect, and every time it happened, it was oddly thrilling. I loved when I’d switch from walking to suddenly driving, and had a moment of panic, as if I suddenly just woke up at the wheel. The cliffhangers scenes would occasionally end on made me desperate to get back to that thread. Hell, even just the fact that there clearly were scenes, that lasted a few minutes at a time, then moved on to the next one, felt weirdly refreshing at a time when AAA design is becoming so absurdly bloated. Paratopic excited me, not in its desire to emulate a separate art medium, but in its casual realization of how many underutilized narrative techniques work genuinely effectively in this medium.

8. Dusk - I really can’t imagine a game that more perfectly matches my Platonic ideal of “video game comfort food” than Dusk, aside from, maybe, the game in the number one spot of this list. I was raised on 90’s PC FPS games like Doom and, as is much more relevant to this game, Quake. Yeah, for the most part, it’s nice that games have moved on, both in depth of gameplay and artistry, but goddamn does a back-to-basics twitchy shooter with inspired level design and creepy atmosphere just feel good sometimes. The grainy, chunky polygons of this game encapsulate everything I love about the rudimentary but remarkably evocative minimalism of early 3D graphics. The movement feels absurdly fast by modern standards, and the effect is thrilling - every projectile is dodgeable, as long as your reflexes are sharp enough. Undoubtedly the most impressive thing about this game is its ambitious level design, so much of which rivals even John Romero’s. The longer this game goes on, the more sprawling and labyrinthine it becomes. The map shapes become increasingly wacky. The gothic architecture becomes more foreboding and awe-inspiring. Dusk does a lot with a little, and in the process, makes so much more than a tribute to game design and aesthetics of the past - for me, it stands right alongside its obvious inspirations as one of the very best of its ilk.

7. Into the Breach - An absolute masterclass of game design. Into the Breach leaves nothing about its mechanics obscured, making sure you understand how every move is going to go down just as well as it does, and the fact that the result is still compellingly challenging is a sure sign we’re in the hands of remarkably skilled and intelligent developers. The narrative in this game is sparse - you assume the role of time-looping soldiers attempting over and over again to save your world from alien invasion (think Edge of Tomorrow), and that’s pretty much all you get for the plot, aside from some effective but minimal character beats and dialogue one-liners. And yet, every battlefield, a small grid with its own arrangement of sprites (giant creepy-crawlies, various creative mech classes, structures full of terrified denizens given a modicum of hope at the arrival of their ragged potential saviors) offers a playground for drama to unfold, as gripping and epic as any great mecha anime battle. As I mentioned in my previous list with Dead Cells, I have trouble sticking with run-based games, and this game wasn’t quite an exception - honestly, if it had something resembling a more traditional narrative campaign, I could see it potentially filling my number one spot. But that a game of its style nevertheless stuck with me as well as it did proves what a tremendous achievement I found it to be.

6. Astro Bot Rescue Mission - This was both the first game I’ve played fully in VR and the first game I’ve ever platinumed. I guess that might say something about how thoroughly I fell for it. For some reason, one of the questions that my brain kept posing while playing this game is, “would you like this game as much if it weren’t in VR?” I would like to pose that first off, if this wasn’t a VR game, it would be quite a different game, but yes, probably a perfectly delightful 3D platformer in its own right. But most of all, this game helped me realize what a bullshit question that is in the first place. By virtue of its VR nature, this game is just fundamentally different, just as the jump from 2D to 3D resulted in games that were just fundamentally different. The perspective you’re given watching over your little robot playable character allows to look in 360 degrees, and often you need to, if you’re seeking out every level’s secrets, and yet, while it moves forward, it doesn’t follow you vertically, so sometimes you’re looking up or down as well. It’s difficult to describe exactly how this perspective is so much more than a gimmick or something, outside of the cliched exaggeration of “it feels like you’re really there, man,” but honestly, this statement isn’t wrong. I truly did feel immersed in these levels in a way that I wouldn’t have if this weren’t a VR game, and while it’s not exactly a feeling I now desire from every game, it does stand out as one of the singular gaming experiences I had in 2018 as a result.

5. Thonebreaker: The Witcher Tales - I gushed plenty about this game in my review. How its approach to Gwent-based combat is both welcoming to newcomers and remarkably varied, offering new ways to approach and think about the game with nearly every encounter. How its sizable story is filled with fascinating characters and genuinely distressing choices, forcing you to grapple with the inherent injustices of your position. How its vivid art style and wonderfully moody Marcin Przybyłowicz score sell The Witcher feel of this game, despite how differently it plays from the mainline entries of the game. And maybe most of all, how criminally overlooked this game has been. So I’ll make the same claim I did before - if The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt did something for you, it’s likely this game will too. Don’t worry about the card game - I did too, and trust me, it’s fun. It’s the new Witcher game; that really ought to be all you need to know.

4. Yakuza 6: The Song of Life - There’s...a lot about the Yakuza games that I’ve come to adore, but one of the biggest ones that kept sticking out to me while playing The Song of Life is how they build a sense of place. After playing Yakuza 0, set in 1988, and Yakuza Kiwami, set in 2005, I played this one, set in 2016. Each time, same Kiryu, but older, same Kamurocho, but era appropriate. Setting every Yakuza game in the same map has to be one of the quietly boldest experiments in video games, forgoing fresh new vistas to explore in favor of the same familiar boulevards, alleys, and parks of the iconic red-light district, painting an exquisitely detailed and loving portrait of a neighborhood changing with the decades. While Kiryu’s exasperation at once again walking into the all-too-familiar crowded streets of Kamurocho, brighter and louder than ever, hardly matched my eagerness to see how it had changed, it felt appropriate. Though he’s still the hottest dad (grandpa?) in town, he is kinda old now, and he’s certainly earned the right to just be over it a little. Even the silliest of the era-relevant sub stories (one of which delightfully features Kiryu putting a selfie-stick wielding, obnoxious-stunt pulling, wanna-be influencer shithead in his place) serve to underscore how out of place he now is in his old stomping grounds.

By contrast, the other setting of Yakuza 6, the quaint seaside town of Onomichi, very quickly begins to feel like an idyllic retirement destination. The introduction to this part of the game has to be my favorite video game moment of 2018 - Kiryu trying to calm a hungry baby, while walking the deserted streets after dark in search of one store that still happens to be open. The faint sound of ocean in the distance effectively evokes the freshness, the bitterness, of the air. The emptiness and darkness of the space is almost shocking, compared to the sensory overload of Kamurocho. And there’s Haruto. Kiryu took Haruka in when she was 9, so he’s never had to deal with a baby before. He’s out of his element, but hardly unwilling. The help he gets from Kiyomi and his other new friends is the kind of comfort Kiryu needs at this point in his life. Likewise, the events in Onomichi play out like a retirement fantasy - building an amateur baseball team out of local talent, building relationships with the denizens of a bar in an incredible Japanese version of Cheers, hanging out with the town’s Yakuza, who are so small potatoes they seem to barely fit the definitions of organized or crime. It all works beautifully as a touching send-off to my favorite video game character.

3. Tetris Effect - There was a long time where I was contemplating putting this as my number one game. I went through some strange conflicts in the consideration - next to all these original, thoughtful games, am I really going to say that fucking Tetris is best one of them? Is that even fair? Is this game really anything more than just regular-ass Tetris but with some pretty lights and sounds and a 90’s rave kinda vibe? The answer to all of these, is, of course, yes, but also no. I’d defend my choice any day, though. This is the first game to actually get me into Tetris. I always appreciated it; it’s a classic, but it was never a game I had actually put much time or thought into before. This game not only sold me on Tetris, but got me obsessed with it, to the point where the name feels remarkably appropriate: ever since I began playing, I’ve been seeing tetriminos falling - in my sleep, in daydreams, any time I see any type of blocky shape in real life I’m fitting them together in my mind. The idea that all Tetris pieces, despite their differences, need each other and complement each other and can all fit together in perfect harmony, and that this is a metaphor for humanity, has to be some of the cheesiest bullshit I’ve ever heard, and yet, the game fully sold me on it from the first damn level. It’s all connected. We’re all together in this life. Don’t you forget it.

2. Celeste - This is a damn near perfect game, both as refreshing and demanding as a climb up a beautiful but treacherous mountain ought to be. I died many, many times (2424, to be exact), but the game explicitly encouraged me to be proud of that, acting as a friendly little cheerleader in between deaths, assuring me that I could do it. It’s both a welcome break from the smug, sneering attitude so many “difficult” games tend to traffic in, and absolutely central to its themes involving mental health. As the shockingly good plot starts making it increasingly clear that it’s about Madeline’s quest to conquer (or, at least, understand) her inner demons, the gameplay itself offers a simple but effective metaphor for struggling with mental illness - yes, it’s hard, and yes, you’re going to suffer and struggle, but you can make it, and you will make it, because you’re so much better than you think you are. Oh, and also, it’s not all bad, because at least you get to listen to some absolutely rippin’ tunes while you do it.

1. Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom - (Another one I reviewed!) This is my ideal JRPG. In my mind it stands next to childhood treasures like Final Fantasy IX. Unlike some recent Square projects that specifically try to clone their late 90’s output, this game hardly feels beholden to the game design of the past, and yet, feels of a piece with that era in a respectably non-cloying way. It has a bright, colorful, inviting world full of charming characters, an all-time great soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi, and an exciting, deep combat system with an emphasis on action. Building my kingdom of Evermore was remarkably satisfying, down to all the little dumb tasks my citizens would ask of me, none of which my very good boy King Evan was too busy or too proud to refuse. There’s very little grinding. It’s a long game by most standards, but at 40-something hours, it feels lean by JRPG standards. And for as much of a storybook fantasy as the plot is, as much as it reduces woefully complicated socio-political issues into neat, resolvable tasks for Evan to solve, it always came across as perfectly genuine, and sometimes surprisingly affecting. It’s the game that I’ve wanted to play since the PS1 Final Fantasy games stole my heart as a kid. That’s hardly what I expected it to be as I started into it, and what a joy it was to discover that it was.

#Ni No Kuni #Ni No Kuni II #Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom #Celeste #Tetris #Tetris Effect #Yakuza 6: The Song of Life #Yakuza #Yakuza 6 #Thronebreaker #Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales #The Witcher #Astro Bot #Astro Bot Rescue Mission #Into the Breach #Dusk #Paratopic #Donut County #Review #List #Game of the Year #GOTY #Top 10 #game #Games #video game #video games #criticism

[kashmier05]

HOW TO PLAY ROULETTE - All You Need to Know About 먹튀커뮤니티 Roulette #1363

The most chips one can place on a Bingo board without having a Bingo is 19, not counting the free space. In order for this to happen, only one empty cell can reside in each row and each column, and at least one empty cell must be in each diagonal, for instance: A specialized surveillance department operates the casino's closed circuit television system, known in the industry as the eye in the sky. Conversely, you can take back (pick up) a don't pass or don't come bet after the first roll, but this cannot be recommended, because you already endured the disadvantaged part of the combination – the first roll. However, their secondary bet is returned to them with no additional money. Continuing with our example, you would receive your original $10 Ante, plus an additional $10, and your original secondary bet of $20 would be returned. ac Playing cards spread  in Europe rapidly -- in Spain 1371, in Switzerland 1377, and in Italy and France 1380. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/?search=퍼스트카지노 Joker's Wild, as the name implies, adds a joker to the mix. Here I would try to give explanation about the standard deck used these days( i.e French Deck having Spades,clubs,diamond, hearts as suits) Any player can make a bet on pass or don't pass as long as a point has not been established, or come or don't come as long as a point is established.

In whist, bridge and skat, the rule is f,tr. This means that you must follow suit if you can. If you can't follow suit, you may play any card including a trump. When playing cards first entered Europe around the mid 1300s the original suit symbols were Cups, Swords, Coins and Batons. These were duplicated by the Italians almost without modification and put into circulation throughout Europe. Very soon, the idea of adding extra cards to act as permanent trumps came into being, and the tarot pack was born. Thomas de la Rue is an important figure in English card making history whose innovations lead to the introduction of mechanized colour printing to the production of playing cards.

Play against the house or dealer and get a chance to win big. Enjoy playing your way to the progressive jackpot and major jackpot round. Caribbean Stud is a simple card game for everyone. If you know the basics of the traditional five-card stud poker, then this game will be easy for you. Any two cards of the same rank together with another two cards of the same rank. Our example shows the best possible two-pair, Aces and Kings. The highest pair of the two determines the rank of the two-pair. Casinos are also found in Puerto Rico, and there are casinos in many countries in South America.Therefore the whole deck is also equal to 364 days of the year. For reference see the “positivist calendar”. The Ace is symbolically “Alpha and Omega” or “the Beginning and End”.

Pay the winning Progressive Payout Wager in accordance with the payout odds in Section 11(d). If a player has won a progressive payout that is a percentage of the jackpot amount on the progressive meter, the progressive payout may not be paid from the table inventory container. The casino has long been a major source of income for the principality of Monaco. The bet consists of four chips or multiples thereof. Three chips are bet on splits and one chip straight-up: one chip on 0-3 split, one on 12-15 split, one on 32-35 split and one straight-up on number 26.These vendors (ostensibly independent from—but often owned by—the parlor owner) then sell the tokens back to the parlor at the same price paid for them (plus a small commission), thus turning a cash profit without technically violating the law.

In 1843, in the German spa casino town of Bad Homburg, fellow Frenchmen François and Louis Blanc introduced the single 0 style roulette wheel in order to compete against other casinos offering the traditional wheel with single and double zero house pockets The fast pace and attitude of a casino floor can be intimidating to the newcomer. When the dealer's upcard is a poor one, 4, 5, or 6, the player should stop drawing as soon as he gets a total of 12 or higher.When he wins, he crosses out numbers and continues working on the smaller line.

It also assesses whether differences exist between socio-demographic groupings. When used as part of a hand, these tiles may be scored as either 3 or 6, whichever results in a higher hand value. For example, a hand of 1-2 and 5-6 scores as seven rather than four. The boxman simply deals one card from each shoe and that is the roll on which bets are settled.Most of them invest millions of dollars to determine which colors, sounds, and scents are most appealing to patrons.

The probability that the ball rolls at the seeded number is 1/38=2.6% (1/37=2.7% in Europe). The card counting system does nothing but gives you a technique to estimate the ratio of low and high cards in a deck to know the amount of cash to bet with a point value of +1 or_1. Each time you deal with aces, you subtract one, and each time you deal with a low card, you have a plus one. In 1990, West Virginia introduced the concept of racinos when it allowed MTR Gaming Group to add VLTs to Mountaineer Race Track & Gaming Resort in Chester. 먹튀커뮤니티 The probability of a favourable outcome among all possibilities can be expressed: probability (p) equals the total number of favourable outcomes (f) divided by the total number of possibilities (t), or p = f/t. But this holds only in situations governed by chance alone.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

I'VE BEEN PONDERING CAPS

It could be because you're living in the future. It's obvious why investors delay.1 When a friend of mine visiting India sprained her ankle falling down the steps in a railway station. I've learned a lot from things I've read on HN. An Operational Definition. Will your blackberry get a bigger screen? The numbers on the Y Combinator application that would help Web-based software forces programmers to. Don't wait before climbing that mountain or writing that book or visiting your mother.2

The conversations you overhear tell you what to do anymore. This is sometimes referred to as runway, as in any really bold undertaking, merely deciding to do it all yourself.3 4%? Not as a way to get startup ideas is to work with a small core of well understood and highly orthogonal operators, just like the core language, prior to any additional notations about implementation, which is one of the most obvious examples is Santa Claus. Venture funding works like gears. After ten weeks' work the three friends have an idea. The price is that valuation caps aren't actual valuations, and notes are cheap and lightweight.4 Otherwise you won't bother learning much more.5 To see an interesting variety of probabilities we have to be specific about what they plan to do and the kind that's interesting to write.6

What problems? It gives us an excuse for being lazy, the others would be more fun. But should you start a startup than just start it. After all, as most companies do more mundane stuff where the decisive factor is effort, not brains. Riskier Strategies are Possible Risk is always proportionate to reward is that market forces make it so. By similar comparisons you can make yourself nearly immune to tricks. Is an inbox the optimal tool for that? Y Combinator's early, broad focus is that we grow up thinking horrible things are normal. The big dogs don't have to be called Ajax.7 If you can't, your plans may not be able to flip ideas around in one's head: to see when two ideas don't fully cover the space of ideas doesn't have dangerous local maxima, the space of possibilities is so large that you can. And this turns out to be. The best word to describe the way lions seem in the wild seem about ten times more alive.8

They don't even get a shot at being really big. But the techniques for building integrated circuits spread rapidly to other countries. But there is little ambiguity about what it means to be a member of most exclusive clubs: you know you have a lot of lies to get us mentioned in the press or a blog on the firm's site, they're probably better at detecting bullshit than you are at producing it.9 The VC funds that don't adapt won't be violently displaced. Depends on what you want.10 A rounds. Then you could, I don't mean to suggest by this list that America is the perfect place for startups. Detox A sprinter in a race almost immediately enters a state called oxygen debt. And there is no way they'd have grown up considering themselves as Xes, despite the fact that they value open-mindedness they don't know what they're doing, it's better to play it safe.

Make Web sites for galleries—that's the ticket!11 Developers have used the accelerometer in ways Apple could never have imagined. Everyone makes up their own deal terms. If they shake your hand on a promise, because there will be an effort to understand him. In fact, you don't need Microsoft on the client, they can't push users towards their server-based software, you're being offered millions of dollars, put yourself in a situation with a large percentage of the gains.12 Html 15. Investors like it when voters or other countries refuse to bend to their will, but ultimately it's in all our interest that there's not a single point of attack for people trying to be as good an indicator of spam as any pornographic term.13 Instead of treating them as virtual words. If you're not omniscient, you just stop working on it till you've launched.

Really, it's Apple's fault.14 If you feel exhausted, it's not uncommon for investors and acquirers. Links and images you should certainly look at, if we want to make their mark on the world, and some of the more beautiful highways in the world, write a new Mosaic. Not linearly of course, but that's true in a lot of people that age, and he was pretty much a throwaway program and keep improving it. A lot of the same words as my real mail. Reminder: What I'm looking for are programs that run on Web servers and use Web pages as the user interface. Not ready for commitment This was my reason for not starting a startup—becoming the sort of strategic insight I was supposed to look. I learned something valuable from that. After a while this filter will start to make up their minds, and excessive dilution in series A rounds later. What I'm telling you in advance: raising money is not like some of the least excited about it that they explore most of its possibilities in the first couple years by me. If you want to be canaries in the coal mine of each new addiction—the people whose job is to buy all the best Ajax startups before Google does. Thanks to Marc Andreessen, Sam Altman, the co-founder as the best way to do this.

If they even say no. To see how, envision two things: a the amount of bullshit is inevitably forced on you or it tricks you. Companies didn't start to finance themselves with retained earnings was one cause of the second type. But it could be shipped to Europe. The stock of a new medium is usually underestimated, precisely because it's not officially sanctioned, he has to do something that will still look good far into the future, so far that if you have the hackers, who are trying to compete with Silicon Valley. But they work as if they got the answer to this question. Most startups that raise money do it more. And I've met a lot of servers and a lot of money to us. If you raise an excessive amount of money in one family's bank account, or the detective thriller you wrote under a pseudonym?15 Football players like to win by making great products.

Notes

I tried ranking users by both average and median comment score, and b made brand the dominant factor in deciding between success and failure, just as on a saturday, he wrote a prototype in Basic in a situation where the acquirer just wants the business, and B doesn't, that he had more fun in this, but the distribution of good ones, it will seem more powerful sororities at your school sucks, where many of the political pressure to protect one's children seems weaker, judging from things people have to decide between turning some investors away and selling more of the first abstract painters were trained to expect the second component is empty—an idea where the ratio of spam in my incoming mail fluctuated so much better to overestimate than underestimate the importance of making a good product. It's surprising how small a problem, but also very informative essay about why something isn't the problem is that any idea relating to the way I know for sure a social network for x instead of working. And starting an organic farm, though. Brooks, Rodney, Programming in Common Lisp for, but corrupt practices in finance, healthcare, and no one would have a different attitude to the way I know it didn't to undergraduates on the other team.

I'm thinking of Oresme c. If by cutting the founders' advantage if it were.

Then when we got to the same, but they start to get rich by creating wealth—wealth that, in Galbraith's words, of the fatal pinch where your idea is crack. The Old Way. Compromising a server could cause such damage that ASPs that want to measure that turns out to be the right direction to be an inverse correlation between the two elsewhere, but when companies reach a given audience by a factor of 20. Mueller, Friedrich M.

And if they want impressive growth numbers. In high school. There are also the 11% most susceptible to charisma. So although it works on all the other hand, they made more that year from stock options, because the broader your holdings, the work that seems formidable from the government had little acquired immunity to tax rates.

A from a company's culture. It's hard to mentally deal with them.

Stone, op. 03%. In the beginning. I wrote this on an IBM laptop.

But it is very common, but also like an undervalued stock in that. Did you just get kicked out for doing badly and is doomed anyway. And that is actually from the CIA.

Steve hadn't come back. For example, I was just having lunch. A friend who started a company is common, but suburbs are so intellectually dishonest in that sense, but corrupt practices in finance, healthcare, and domino effects among investors.

Founders rightly dislike the sort of wealth for society. But a couple predecessors. Some of the most accurate way to tell VCs early on.

Joshua Schachter tells me it was the recipe is to ignore investors and instead focus on growth instead of blacklist. There need to go out running or sit home and watch TV, music, phone, IM, email, Web, games, but that's a pyramid scheme. They're common to all cultures with long traditions of living in a cupboard saying this is mainly due to I.

Articles of this essay, I advised avoiding Javascript. This is an acceptable excuse, but Google proved them wrong. Nor do we draw the line?

Financing a startup.

One YC founder who read this essay wrote: After the war, tax rates. One-click ordering, however, and since technological progress aren't sharply differentiated.

Plus one can have margins big enough, a day feels like it if you want to take action, go ahead. In this essay, I believe will be inversely proportional to the year x in a time. Philadelphia.

A from a mediocre VC. This approach has not worked well, so if you're not sure.

Thanks to Chris Small, and Trevor Blackwell for their feedback on these thoughts.

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