#lightning rounds of info dumps GO:

[jamverse]

ive been cleaning out a bunch of files on my comp and google drive and i found a plot beat summary of static sound i typed out awhile back. spoilers, obviously, if you care about that, which you shouldn't, because as I've said from the beginning this was never about the plot so much as just screwing around with my characters. I only edited the bigger points so some of the rest might be outdated but close enough. here you go.

SIDE A:

-amaranth takes off to nk's domain to fight in gladiator matches, sees sarah's biotech w/ the same 'royal crest' mark she has and is like "hey where the fuck did you get that"

-oridar/verah are like "theres just this random kid [lily] out in the wastelands who makes 'em" so ama sets off to there to see what the deal is

-brief encounter with a toxinvein that takes out her ship but gets picked up by spurlocke, who as it happens was already going to see lily anyway 

-it's like super obvious that lily's "the lost queen" from 700 years ago so amaranth calls her dad like "holy shit guess who i found"

-ezkiel hears this and freaks the fuck out because they thought they were DONE with that job and the whole shtick of the old rulers, and hightails it the fuck over there to end it for real 

-meanwhile ama's like "ok well i can't take her home or do anything until i fix my ship" so they head Back to where ama's downed ship is

-ezekiel meets them on the way

-amaranth quickly finds a lot of [genuine] reason to be suspicious of ezekiel’s being there, and after calling her dad and getting some more info, her confronting ez quickly escalates to a fight where amaranth gets her ass fucking levelled and also inadvertently zapped with a toxinvein

-she's out cold, ez takes off with lily, spurlocke can't really do shit bc he's just some guy in all of this so he just takes to looking after ama for the moment

-flip back to ezekiel; tldr they end up exposition dumping about the razing and what they are and do as a chosen; most critically bringing up sth abt being a "regulator of cosmic/deity-level threats'' or something

-lily's like "oh ok cool you know that thing you zapped the loud girl with. maybe you should take a look at that, cuz that's kinda what we think that is."

-ezekiel decides an emerging sentient god virus is a more pressing issue than this one loose end from centuries ago and they head back to meet back up w/ the other two to investigate this [nobody Actually knows this is what toxinvein are at this point, but there's enough evidence to tip ez off that there's SOME kind of deity bullshit at play here]

-meanwhile Meanwhile after amaranth wakes up spurlocke gives her the 'hey so you're kinda fucked' rundown on what they know about toxinvein and what to expect now that she has one

-ez/lily get back a bit after this and one last lightning round exposition dump to get all the characters on the same page about who knows what

SIDE B

-crew discusses how to go about investigating more into this toxinvein thing

-lead 1: verah, who ama and ez both talked to, has a noticeable glitching problem Similar to toxinvein; lily and ez go see what that's about

-lead 2: ama got this Ominous Brain Message:tm: while she was asleep; not quite a dream but close enough to it that the fact of the ruler of this place being called "Nightmare King" is probably worth checking out

-there's some filler flavor type stuff here w/ ama and spur going to the city and meeting his band and her getting sensory overload and her having to go chill for a bit+catching up with magnolia but none of it is big plot important

-lily/ez get back from their questioning verah, which also pointed them to NK. they get ready to meet back up with the other two, but are intercepted by the Spy who attempts to drag ez back to NK himself for Other Reasons:tm:

-that doesnt work because ezekiel has the power of god and anime. anyway take a wild fucking guess where the whole crew heads now.

-tldr of the scene at NK's castle is he uses his powers to talk to the toxivein through ama's subconscious; the toxinvein drops the name "ibagreski", which is someone Io is all too familiar with

-squad goes on space trip with io to see ibagreski

-ibagreski's like ''oh lol that's Diode, guess he's finally leaking back into that domain since NK killed my Sentinel there. sucks for you guys but there's nothing that can be done, enjoy your slow apocalypse''

-obviously the protag crew doesnt want to do that but iba's like "unless you have [extremely specific and unlikely circumstances/resources/abilities] we literally can't do anything but wait it out"

-and ezekiel's like 'we do actually have that'

-ibagreski's like 'oh shit lol. yeah you guys can try to defeat Diode yourselves then i guess'

-this requires going back to pangea and summoning raathe, so they do that and then take it back to nk's domain and have it host the rest of diode's power

-big cool anime final battle n they kill the diode/raathe/amalgamated toxivein abomination

-send that whole mess to space hell so diode can't come back again again

-yeehaw

Postgame funsies which I have no clue if I'll ever actually include:

-ezekiel “actually in hindsight i don't know why i'm still tethering myself to this planet i have nothing but bad memories of. i'm fucking immortal and have god powers i'm going to fucking go off and explore space and find something good. also you guys sort of know about the whole genocide thing now so i im assuming you don't really want me around anyway and i dont want to deal with whatever you were planning to do to me. bye.”

-amaranth already had a pretty set life before this so it just goes back to business as usual, save for the newly-installed life support system and mild fucked up glitch powers+adjusting to that. she and magnolia get married at some point probably.

-spurlocke, now having the toxinvein biz sorted out and the favor of a god to call upon [and a bit of help from ezekiel], finally goes back to his homeworld to incite his revolution and overthrow its corrupt state to save what’s left it

-lily actually fucks off to space with ezekiel, at least for the first little while. she'd love to go around seeing/studying more whack phenomenon like toxinvein, and she can also act as something of an...emotional guide to ezekiel, since they aren't nearly as open to experiencing new weird shit as she is. 

#this thing doesnt have chapters bc i cba to do formatting decently at all. side a side b babey we are Forcing that music gimmick #i have the intro in a separate document from the rest of the script too... maybe when i get to touching that up i'll post it as well #that ones like ACTUALLY outdated though. as in i changed a lot of lore since writing this outdated #in talking abt kiu today i realized what im shooting for here is really the same style of plot here as there #as in utterly fuckin meaningless and nothing but its still a ton of fun bc the characters are so good

[kurohaai]

Bloodswap Indigo Ofi & Purple Das

Individual designs under the cut:

Ofi is fronting as a spoiled ojou-sama. She secretly helps sheltering lususless lowbloods and disguise it as her needing a lot of servants because she's "high maintenance". Her bloodswap sign is, ironically, Sagisci / The Sign of the Genuine.

Das traded some of his bastardness for physical violence. He doesn't cull lowbloods because Ofi wouldn't like it (hurting them is still game however). He is very loyal to Ofi like that.

Lmao his bloodswap sign is true Capricorn I'm-

#Hiveswap #Homestuck #fantrolls #Ofelia Asvini #Daseer Wanlyn #bloodswap #doodle #Kuroha Ai #lightning rounds of info dumps GO: #Das is Ofi simp and he still only has one friend/girlfriend #his glasses is a present from Ofi and he only uses it either for reading or when he's getting serious in fights #Ofi painted her claws purple #Ofi gives her servants decent work wage and called it 'punishment' so people wouldn't get suspicious #per Das' idea; of course #Das tagging along to sell the visual of her having a violent purple moirail and spreading nasty rumor about her #there's a lot of Home Alone level of shenanigans to cover up her true plan it's hilarious #Das enjoying the entertainment #Das' hair is actually wild like any other purpleblood but Ofi brought him along for some hair treatment and they just vibe #this Das openly enjoys her caring for him #he got the silkiest hair among purplebloods now #he still took care of her too just like your normal Das #Ofi gets rid of her bed hair by impeccable hair routine #Das' design actually inspired by Japanese Oni #with some Kabuki make up because I don't think he's all that into facepaint so I styled it that way? #Zebruh is magically still Ofi's kismesis (ugh) but for a totally different reason and I refuse to elaborate further until later

[jokertrap-ran]

(光与夜之恋 Light and Night) Main Story Chapter 3-5: 海水与火焰 Seawater & Flames Translation

"It is only this sort of unbridled, unbound, soul-freeing freedom that suits me.”

*Light and Night Master-list *Spoiler free: Translations will remain under cut *Join the Light & Night Discord (＾▽＾)~ ♪ *Main story tag will be #For Light and Night

Following Osborn down the auditorium, we entered the team's resting area.

Tall glass display cabinets lined the wall, and displayed within were trophies that the race team won and photos of victory. They were all arranged by year. The spotlight shone downwards, making those glorious awards through the years appear even more dazzling. It made strolling down the stretch of display cabinets feel like stepping into an illusion of the past.

A familiar photo caught my attention: Osborn was standing on the podium, his helmet sandwiched between his arm and his side.

MC: This is the picture that An'an showed me back then…

I couldn't help but stand on tippy-toes to get a better look at it.

Osborn: The real deal's right beside you, why are you getting all besotted by a photo?

Although that's what he said, he still opened the glass door of the cabinet and took the photo down for me.

MC: When was this taken?

Osborn: When I first won the R1 championship.

He looked pretty young and inexperienced in the photo, with his head raised and an intent stare at the camera. It was almost as if he was gazing into the distance, at the era that would eventually belong to him.

MC: Osborn? What made you want to become a racer?

Osborn's eyes swept past the glass cabinet before falling back on me.

Osborn: Why do you want to be a fashion designer? My answer's the same as yours.

MC: Same as me? For passion?

Osborn: Every aspect of life requires me to endure and think things through; racing is the only thing that allows me to proceed onwards.

The same sharp glint in the picture that had been in his younger self's eyes was back in full force.

I couldn't help but snap an immediate shot of that.

Osborn: Come on then, let's head outside.

We headed out of the rest area and came to the first row of the auditorium. Coincidentally, another mock race was currently in progress.

❖☆———————————★❖

I didn't quite feel it back when I was still viewing from a distance, but now, standing here, I finally experienced what lightning speed truly felt like.

The wind rushed at us, vehemently blowing against our coats, making it flutter violently in the wind. My hair flew every this way and that from violent gusts, and I suddenly got the illusion that even all my troubles could be blown away...

The scene before me had already long since blurred away. I closed my eyes, embracing the world with my senses. At that moment, I heard the forceful thumping of my heart and the rushing of blood in my veins.

I couldn’t help but stretch out my arms, feeling like I was a bird who’d just escaped from the confines of its cage, or like a Père David's deer who’d broken free of its reins, bounding through the snow. The sheer joy of moving forwards without looking back at all was a marvellous one.

MC: I think I now understand what you were talking about earlier.

The look in his eyes suddenly grew more profound, with the vast blue sky reflected within his orbs.

Osborn: It is only this sort of unbridled, unbound, soul-freeing freedom that suits me.

MC: Freedom...

That’s right. I’d also ran back here from all the way abroad in search of freedom. This was the life I chose of my own accord.

I suddenly recalled the look of yearning that had been on Lin Yao’s face the other day when she mentioned the word “freedom” when she saw the race.

Somewhere in my heart was a little crevice that had been moved by that. Looking at the light reflecting off the race team’s logo, I was suddenly hit by a flash of inspiration.

MC: Osborn! I think I can make a collection of outfits with racing as the main theme!

MC: Representing danger and boundaries, there's a nearly crazed kind of romance in the freedom it brings!

MC: And at the same time, it also represents one moving courageously forwards, pushing through until the very end!

MC: If you're alright with it, I want to go to the rest area for another—

Suddenly, I realized that I'd been going off on my own tangent and had literally info-dumped him with my thoughts. I hurriedly zipped my mouth shut, offering him an apologetic smile.

MC: Sorry. I want to go to the rest area to snap a couple more shots as reference material. Can I?

Osborn nodded with a smile.

Osborn: No problemo.

❖☆———————————★❖

It was already near noon by the time I finished taking all the photos I needed. My original plan was to head home, but Osborn said that he too, had something else on, so he had to leave and could spare me a ride back, asking me to wait for him.

Walking up to the entrance, I suddenly saw a thinly built man standing at a distance not too far away. He wore a hat, and his silhouette was a tad familiar.

MC: I feel like I've seen him somewhere before…

Just as I squinted in an attempt to better make out the identity of the person, a sound suddenly sounded from the grass by my feet.

??: Meow!

MC: !

I took a step back, only to see a small white cat looking up at me with its big round eyes. It immediately started circling my legs the moment I lowered my head, turning my attention to it.

MC: So it was you, little one. You nearly scared me half to death!

I knelt down, picking up a green foxtail to poke fun at it. The cat happily stood up, waving its two small forepaws in the air as it batted at it. Much to my astonishment, I found that it had deep gashes on its paws; and they were still bleeding.

Then, in the next moment, it let out a yowl, nabbing my finger and biting down before it quickly fled into the grass with lightning speed.

MC: Ah!

Small drops of blood beaded from the wound on my fingertips. I quickly took a tissue from my bag and pressed it against the wound to stop the bleeding.

MC: I'm glad I got that tetanus shot back then…

My heart gave a few uncomfortable lurches. I didn’t understand why the cat had suddenly gone all feral. Then, the sound of heavy and ragged breathing suddenly sounded in the direction that the cat had fled!

A shadow fell upon me, shrouding me within its shadowy cloak as a pair of feet, belonging to a man, entered my field of vision.

MC: !!

I raised my head. It was the man I was scrutinizing earlier! He looked very haggard, with messy hair covering his face and features.

I suddenly realized where I’d seen him beforeー He was the bodyguard who’d walked out of Lin Yao’s dressing room back at the studio the other day and bumped into the set! What’s he doing here?

An inexplicable sense of panic reared its ugly head. I turned around with the intent of fleeing, but the man swiftly reached out and lunged at me!

MC: Hel—

❖☆———————————★❖

My cry for help never left my throat, for he’d already constricted my airway. I struggled vehemently against him, but to no avail. My vision started growing blurry.

The man leaned greedily into my neck as if it was some sort of delectable delicacy.

Man: Finally… Finally, I can live…

In a flash, I suddenly recalled the “vampire attack” incidents that An’an had previously told me about!

My heart suddenly froze in my chest as the chills started to spread. It was getting increasingly harder to breathe, and I was running out of energy to even put up a fight, fast. No… I can’t give up! Never!

However, the terrifying blow of pain that I’d been expecting never came to pass. With a wail of pain, the man let go of me. Gone was the pressure that had been on my airway earlier.

I fell into the warm embrace of a pair of arms.

❖☆———————————★❖

Opening my eyes, my vision was enraptured by a clear blue light that I’d never seen before.

Osborn was hovering protectively about me, his eyes fixated on the back of the figure that made a break for it. Blue flames burned bright within the confines of his palm, flickering and swaying.

Osborn: You good?

I incredulously widened my eyes, thinking that everything I’d just experienced, and everything I was seeing right now, was just part of a dream.

However, the throbbing pain that lingered on my neck and the strange sight before me both told me that: No, this was not a dream. Not in the slightest.

MC: Blue… flames?

Something flashed within Osborn’s eyes. He was seemingly just as surprised by it as well. Then, the blue flames died down, disappearing from his open palm.

Osborn: Are you hurt?

MC: No… Thank you.

I raised my hand to touch my neck; the fear within my heart still lingering.

❖☆————— ⊹ For Light & Night⊹ —————★❖

Previous Part: (Chapter 3-3) | Next Part: (Chapter 3-8)

#光与夜之恋 #Light and Night #Otome #Translations #Tencent #萧逸 #Osborn #齐司礼 #Sariel #陆沉 #Evan #查理苏 #Charlie #夏鸣星 #Jesse #For Light and Night

[domakconix-blog]

Welcome to me camp!

My attempt at making a blog.

What do you even do in a blog? I don’t know what to do or what to write in it, but I do really want to create one, so here she is! I would want to make this chill-n-informal as possible and just type whatever I’d like to clack on my keyboard.

Shaving the Ice

Maybe typing in an introduction could be a good place to start. I could share a lot of sh’tuff about myself, but I don’t think knowing my favorite color is not really interesting. Knowing the amount of teriyaki and oyster sauce I pour into my cup of noodles in a kiosk near the campus library is too specific. By the way, its six and eight tablespoons respectively. I like’m salty like my sweat during a hot day doing fieldwork.

Anyway, let’s start with my name. Hi, I am Dominic! Yes, I let people know my first name, whatevs. I am a college student trying to understand what the heck emm doing. No, seriously. I entered university under a degree that I am not really quite familiar with. Even though I am treading in uncharted territory here, I could somewhat easily say that I am enjoying myself.

I know that no one would read these post-clackers of mine but doing stuff like this would help me cope up. We all know that there is this pandemic crisis going on and being in the house all day is not really something that could make anyone stay sane, so I though that I could do something like this and just type my thoughts and stuff.

Sketch-n-Shtuff

I do have a Twitter account going under the handle @domblerone! (Follow me there for real good shit!) I don’t even enjoy Toblerone. I just thought that it sounds cool but I guess it’s just meh like a Toblerone. If you taken a peek and see what’s over there, I do digital art! (and maybe some kvetchin’ here and there) 

Ever since I convinced my grandmother to buy me a Wacom tablet that’s on sale for around a hundred bucks, I have been collecting a bunch of .SAI files of unfinished work. They range from random scribbles of something that I don’t even recognize to files with around a hundred plus layers. I don’t even know how people can create amazing works of art with only a few layers. Like, what the fuck? To be fair, I abuse my blending modes.

My pen and tablet have always been my sword and shield in many fights and the scratches on it are the reminders that I should change my nib already, but my cheap-ass says that I should just use sandpaper to smooth it up. I don’t even know where I can buy nibs. Again, I just use sandpaper like using water for cleaning your paintbrush.

Other than making digital paintings, I do nothing. Heck, no. I know that I am boring, but emm not that boring! (No offense to people who just sit and do art all day. Kudos to you peeps!) I usually just relax’n with me Switch and play Animal Crossing or just a quick game of Mahjong on the new Clubhouse Games. I am also trying to learn Russian through Duolingo and by reading reference books and such. (I forgot to play today, oh menn. I am dead). I also binge watch on YouTube and listen to MrCreepyPasta or Blue_Spooky for my daily dose of nosleep or LetsNotMeet. I don’t really like watching series or movies, so Netflix isn’t really my cup of tea. I can’t stand to sit all day and marathoning a whole season. Well, sometimes, I do watch a movie or two of whatever my mother is watching at the moment and do get invested in it.

Of course, my favorite hobby, sleeping.

Diving in REM Land

This is the part I am quite excited to type in about. Along with my favorite hobby, I do like to recall or even write down what happened in my dreams. I want to share more of me traversing REM Land, but I guess an introduction to it would be fine for now. I am no means an expert in dreams or the thought behind them, but I do like to share some of my experiences with them. Sometimes, I like to tell a tale or two to my friends when this topic arises because menn, dreams are like some sort of acid trip (No, I don’t do drugs, lol).

After crying and having a breakdown due to the stress due to the exquisite life of schooling, I tend to have sleep paralysis. I do have this sleep demon that always shows up when I have these episodes. He just stands there by my side and does nothing. Can’t really take note of any physical details (well of course, he ain’t physical) because he is just some humanoid shadow. Regardless, he is there, looming. I’ll call him Fred. Just thought of it right now while typing. Fred the Sleep Demon, Something, or Other.

I do have this recurring dream, err nightmare, when I was a child. I can’t remember anything about it. My memory of it is just a blank void, but the feeling is pretty nausea-inducing. Every time I have this dream, I just jolt upwards and head straight to the bathroom to vomit my dinner. It’s weird. I really have no word for it other than it’s sickening as fuck.

I want to share more of this, but I guess having a separate entry for this is better.

Lightning Round

Let’s do an info dump here, because I want to do something else now that I can’t think of anything to talk about, ahe.

Favorite Color (LOL): Red or Maroon. I do something like cyan.

Something to munch on: I like sushi or sashimi. Not a weeb, I just like the taste of dead fish.

Something to push munch: Coffee float is my go-to beverage. It tastes like heaven if heaven was coffee and chocolate mixed with ice to keep it as cool as winters in Yakutsk.

Have a pet?: I do have a fish as a pet and its name is Bloop. Creative, ‘mright?

My jam: I listen to Indie Folk, Folktronica, and Alternative Rock.

Games I play: I like horror games like Silent Hill or Fatal Frame. I also play Pokemon, Animal Crossing, and anything I find quite interesting.

Hotel?: Trivago.

Anyway, I am all out of time now (says who?). I am now going to have a snack break. I haven’t tried eating cereal with coffee as a substitute for milk so that’s what emm going to do next! Thanks for reading me random typing. I’ll try to keep this blog aflame, don’t worry. This won’t be like my Instagram that fell into the depths of hell. I’ll also post some art here so that this won’t be just seas of grey.

Thanks for coming to my Fire Talk. See you next time!

[beneaththetangles]

First Impression: Fantasia Sango – Realm of Legends

The episode opens with a mighty yell as a beast with glowing horns runs rampant and a musician tries in vain to reason with it. Death is the only language this monster speaks. Cut to an info dump explaining that this is a land where the gods or Tinyuan have created super-powered Hunters to deal with a fearsome demonic threat that materializes wherever miasma is thick. This miasma seems to be essentially “bad energy” that gathers and accumulates wherever dark emotions have taken root in people and places. I think. Anyhow, the important point is that this evil miasma possesses people so that they manifest as demons called wangliang. One band of Hunters, the Sixth, has recently been wiped out—all except for one young girl—and so it’s recruiting time. A busty, half-bespectacled goddess/Tinyuan named Lady Luozhin oversees the process, so that by the end of about ten minutes we have a new crew of Hunters: there’s the girl that survived, Xiao Ling, who is this world’s equivalent of a sin-eater that can consume the miasma demons once they are in their purple gaseous form, while also packing a killer punch with her demon arm; there’s the buxom exorcist Xun Qiao, who draws the demons out of people with her evocative erhu (Chinese violin); also, the tough-looking scaredy-cat Ding Yan, who just wants to be a chef but whose dreams have so far been hampered by the fact that he really can’t cook, although he can, when under pressure in a battle situation, throw knives and ribbons from his sleeves and so foil the enemy; and also the team mascot, Ding Yan’s cheeky pet parrot who perches on his shoulder. No wait—that isn’t a parrot! It’s…a walking, talking tea caddy with a rural accent? *Shrugs.* And finally, rounding off the team, there’s of course the main lead, the pretty boy Tanjiro wannabe, Ying Ji (he even has the facial scar from a childhood brush 9with death), who has lightning fast magical calligraphy skills and a heart full of empathy for those possessed by demons such that he wants to save them rather than kill them. All their individual skills work together seamlessly as they battle a demon-possessed farmer that morphs into purple gas and then into a giant tiger-man-beast with a third eye before Xiao Ling morphs into her true form and brings the fight, stunning everyone into silence. Maybe the rumors that she was the one who wiped out the previous iteration of the Sixth are true after all…

Hero Leader material right here!

Fantasia Sango – Realm of Legends is…not legendary. The one thing it has going for it is the use of a fantasy Chinese setting. Though the Chinese zodiac shows up pretty regularly, it’s not so often that you see a Japanese series inspired by Chinese lore on a deeper level (remember The Twelve Kingdoms? So good!), and it makes me curious to know how the show will be received among Chinese anime fans. The super-skills of the Hunters deserve a nod for their attempt to engage the source culture rather than defaulting to the usual historical fantasy powers. And the opening sequence did a good job of building a sense of mystery. But even so, this episode was pretty run-of-the-mill, and despite the attempt to stand out through its setting and lots of new Chinese vocab for viewers to master, we’ve seen this before, and done much better (in Demon Slayer, or my favorite in this genre, Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, or indeed, the aforementioned Twelve Kingdoms). That said, it’s not a train wreck; but that just means that it isn’t even good for a laugh or some spectacular fireworks as it crashes and burns. Because it doesn’t crash and burn, it just glides gently into the ocean of other merry band of heroes anime out there. Not even Xun Qiao’s erhu playing is enough to get me tuning in next week. I’ll just go listen to Jeremy Zuckerman’s scores to Avatar: the Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra instead.

Ah, the sound of Ding Yan’s dream dying…

=====

Fantasia Sango – Realm of Legends can be streamed on Funimation.

#Anime #First Impressions #Fantasia Sango: Realm of Legends #Gensou Sangokushi: Tengen Reishinki #Winter Anime 2022 #Articles #Author: Claire

[apieters]

The clash of steel rang on the streets of the Magic Kingdom as a furious duel erupted in New Orleans Square. In the midst of a band of soldiers all the way from Agrabah, lead by Captain Razoul, two swordsman stood their ground, slashing and thrusting back-to-back against superior odds—in other words, it was a fairly average Friday afternoon for Christopher “Chris” Carnovo and André Caron, the Swashbucklers of the Magic Kingdom.

A stranger duo couldn’t be found from the Frozen lands of Arendelle to the Primeval World. Chris was a young, greyish-blue tyrannosaur, dressed in a blue pirate’s coat belted with a white sash, wielding a rapier with lightning-fast thrusts. André was a young man with shaggy brown hair and a black padded jacket, slashing violently at his foes with a sabre. The soldiers of Agrabah pressed hard on every side, but the odd pair had two things in their favor—they were both masters in the art of swordsmanship, and they had been fighting together since childhood.

Chris and André had a long and colorful career—starting as privateers in their youth, the two had almost single-handedly cleared the seas of pirates such as the notorious Captains Nathaniel Flint, Henry Morgan and “Black Bart” Roberts, before taking up service as fight choreographers in their young adult years. The two friends had choreographed almost every fight scene in almost every movie made in the Magic Kingdom, a land of princes and princesses, wizards and witches, pirates and knights, talking animals and other motley characters. Under the leadership of Mickey Mouse, the protégé of the late Good King Walt, the Magic Kingdom was a land of art, culture, and storytelling, producing some of the finest movies in the world. But while some made their names on the silver screen as actors or served the Kingdom as statesmen and captains of industry (often all three), others made their names behind the scenes. Chris and André belonged to the latter category, but their work had made them many friends all over the Magic Kingdom—friends that sometimes had need of their special set of skills.

“Just once, I’d like to be called in for a favor that doesn’t involve the risk of getting stabbed!” André Caron snapped at the tyrannosaur as he slashed up, knocking a sword out of a soldier’s hand.

“We’re professional swordsmen, André,” Chris shot back as he spiraled his rapier, sending another scimitar flying out of a soldier’s grip. “What kinds of favors do you expect people need from us?” He lunged to the side just as a soldier was trying to flank his friend, arresting the attack. The two shifted positions effortlessly, their efforts coordinated like a dance. “Besides,” he smirked, parrying a wild cut from another soldier, “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“I left it at home with the good book I was reading!” André shouted. A soldier rushed him and he grabbed the soldier’s wrist, wrenching his arm back before kicking him into his comrades.

“So, you don’t think we should be out here rescuing our friend?” Chris asked, spiraling his blade to intercept a cut and slashing at a second swordsman before thrusting over his shoulder at the first.

“I never said we shouldn’t be here,” André said, smashing his guard into a soldier’s forehead before parrying another incoming strike. “Just don’t expect me to be happy about it!” He swiped wide, left and right, whirling his sword in a dangerous dance of steel. He plowed through the soldiers, knocking them this way and that, clearing a way for the tyrannosaur. “Alright, Chris, I’m holding off as many as I can. Find Razoul and work your magic.”

This is the opening scene of a Disney fan-fiction story I’m rewriting. I started writing it for a couple reasons:

1) Chris needed a home. I’ve been drawing this swashbuckling tyrannosaur and his human companion (yes, André is named after me—there aren’t enough characters with my name, and that needs to be fixed) for just about 20 years now, and figured he needed a proper story. But what kind? Well, as I looked back, I realized that he was always sort of inserting himself into whatever I was interested in or reading at the time—piracy, Disney movies, books, etc. He was always a fan-fic character. So he needed to be in a fanfiction story. And as I tend to prefer a Disney-esque/traditional Western cartoon style, I decided he needed to be a Disney character—just one who works off-screen.

2) I really want to write original stories. I have at least 3 or 4 solid concepts, but when I decided in college that I wanted to write, I figured out I SUCKED at dialogue. And pretty much everything else. I had some raw talent, but of course that’s never enough—and being a perfectionist, I wasn’t going to waste an original story as my first attempt at learning the craft of writing. So I started exploring blogs about writing fantasy and credible, published authors all said the same thing: they started by writing fan-fiction. The reason they gave was that it was motivating because you already love the characters, and the world building and character creation is done for you (you can learn those skills later), leaving you free to focus on more fundamental aspects of writing craft—things like dialogue, pacing, plotting, planning, description, active vs. passive voice, all that jazz. So I decided to follow their advice.

I said earlier I was rewriting it—well, I got a little more than halfway through and the story just ran out of gas. The characters, I realized, would never and could never do the things necessary to advance the plot without breaking character, getting themselves killed, or using a dues ex machina. There were too many dangling plot threads, too many unnecessary characters, and after five years of intermittent drafting (I was in college, then I’ve had a day job or been job hunting ever since—I’m busy) I had gotten to know my characters (or my interpretations of several preexisting Disney characters) well enough that I could see major inconsistencies across the 200+ pages I had written. So I decided to go back to the beginning and rework the plot, making it a lot more consistent and focusing on a tighter core of characters. This scene was not in the original draft, and I think it establishes my characters far better than what I’d written before (which was essentially an info-dump of exposition—classic mistake).

Artist Behind the Scenes

Illustrating the picture presented several difficulties—one, I absolutely loathe myself for constantly choosing ground like grass or—in this case—cobblestones, which require a lot of repetitive, regular shapes. But that’s what the picture required, so I decided to make the cobblestones a little scribbled and blurry, and made the background lines thicker and fuzzier too. The biggest challenge was drawing multiple opponents—each guardsman is a unique person and requires individual attention to meet my minimum visual quality standards, and I can’t get away with vaguely soldier-looking blobs (as I’ve done in other pictures) since they are an integral part of the action that is the main focus of the piece.

The solution was to remember the adage, “the essence of the picture is the frame.” By positioning Chris and André just right in the frame and filling up as much space as I could using them, I could get away with only drawing parts of most of the guardsmen to give the effect of an outnumbered, chaotic street duel. I ended up framing the two characters with a ring of enemies, with Razoul appearing in the back to round out the impression of being surrounded on all sides.

The scimitar sabres (“scimitar” is a European butchering of the Persian shamshir) were a compromise between the way the Agrabah guards’ weapons appear in the movie Aladdin (where they are comically short and fat and have a clipped point) and real weapons. No actual Middle Eastern sword, to my knowledge, ever had a clipped point, which was actually a common feature of European single-edged swords like falchions and messers (which probably were the real inspiration behind Western artwork’s depictions of Eastern sabres); few sabres were ever as fat as the cartoons make them out to be; and most Middle Eastern sabres have straight, not recurved quillons. Most real sabres were relatively narrow, light swords meant for slashing/draw-cutting from horseback, not percussive chopping, and instead of a clipped point Turkish sabres often had a flared, double-edged tip called a yelman. I was thus faced with an artistic dilemma: integrity to reality or integrity to the source I was emulating. These are supposed to be the same guards as appeared in the “One Jump Ahead of the Breadline” musical number in Aladdin, armed with the same weapons; yet the action is taking place in “real life,” off-camera. I ultimately decided on a compromise: the scimitars would retain the same shape and features as in the movie, but I edited the dimensions to look a little more like real swords instead of meat cleavers.

(Disclaimer: Chris and André belong to me—everything else belongs to Disney).

#sketch #cartoon #cartoon characters #cartoon tyrannosaur #chris #chris carnovo #André #andre caron #swashbuckler #sabre #rapier #scimitar #disney #disney fanfiction #swashbucklers of the Magic Kingdom #new orleans square #Razoul #agrabah #duel #fencing #sword #swords #swordfighting #sword fighting #sword fight #fanfic #anthropomorphic tyrannosaur #tyrannosaur #anthro tyrannosaur

[tak4hir0]

Some of you may have been wondering what has happened to Mike and even Chris, why such a long hiatus? There is no single reason or easy explanation other than life. Let’s just say various life challenges converged. As part of tackling life’s challenges, I’ve been looking at ways to be more productive with my daily work routine. One tool which I use daily, and I do mean daily is VSCode. VSCode is Microsoft’s free open-source integrated development environment (IDE). What makes the tool so addictive and useful is the community around extensions. Extensions are nifty ways for the developer to add and customise the VSCode experience with things like themes, icons to new services opening up limitless customisation possibilities for the developer and Salesforce for that matter! Salesforce a few years back announced they would no longer be supporting Eclipse and the force.com IDE, and started the migration to VSCode. Steadily this shift has evolved and matured. Hence the title of this blog post! Here we go – starting with the most obvious extension of the pack 1.) Salesforce Extensions for Visual Studio Code What does it do? – It makes interacting with our beloved Salesforce Platform a breeze. It allows you to work with all the programmatic metadata types like Apex Class, Apex Triggers, Aura and Lightning Web Components. Diving into the Developer Console to run tests was and a pain in the you know what. Salesforce Extensions allows you to quickly run all test and debug from right within VSCode! How cool is that? Lastly, it’s always and still is difficult to get at all of your metadata which is where “Org Browser” comes in handy for interacting with all the different types of metadata. 2.) Salesforce Documenter Hey, nothing speaks productivity more than elegant code comments reminding your peers and you what the hell this class was designed to do… This extension adds a layer of consistency which only a computer can provide – this will inject perfect comments for you into Class and methods, leaving you only to fill in WHAT! 3.) Apex PMD What’s worse than no comments in code? Trying to debug code which is overly complex and fall of anti-patterns. Apex PMD is like your own personal Code Guru, analysing your code as you type. Important to note though it cannot write the code for you nor a substitute for learning, it can indicate when you start to veer off the happy path towards spaghetti hell. 32K Salesforce developers think this extension can help, nobody can argue with that. 4.) Apex Code Coverage Visualiser Sometimes when you spend a lot of time coding, nothing jumps out more than some bright visuals confirming something as dry as Apex Code Coverage. 5.) Salesforce Toolkit This is the last Salesforce centric extension before we head into non-Salesforce extensions. Rounding out our Salesforce productivity-boosting extensions, this one is a recent addition to my VSCode setup. When I start a new project, after setting my password and logging in, the next thing I do is authenticate that org with the Salesforce cli. I do this so I can leverage sfdx cli open org command which opens that Org in the currently focused Chrome Window. Nothing is more frustrating than fumbling about trying to remember your user name and password. The extension really shines with it’s Org Info panel when you open an authenticate Org you get a wealth of information about the connected Org. We promised 10, so the next 5 extensions are general VSCode Extensions. 6.) Markdown All in One Other than your programme language of choice, the most other popular language (syntax) in the developer world is markdown. All code can benefit from a well written README – this extension smooths out the process of creating and maintaining markdown! 7.) Live Server Spinning up a local Web Server can be difficult, this gives you an instant local Web Server with a single click. If you have an HTML page or similar in focus within VSCode – hit Go Live and it will pop open a browser session for you. Salesforce TIP – Live Server can help you easily test and build external Embedded Chat Widget solutions 8.) Edit CSV Like it says on the tin “Edit CSV”, these days it’s easy to interact with Salesforce data using a suite of cli commands, perform queries and dumping the results out to CSV. For all the those quick data edits, now it’s easy to edit directly within VSCode! 9.) Bash Beautify One of the significant benefits of VSCode is it has Terminal baked right into the IDE, it’s easy to pop open Terminal and execute commands. Once you move past novice level with the cli, you start thinking along these lines… I keep running these same commands how can I run these all at once – Hello BASH scripting, yep more code, but opens the door to some serious automation and huge productivity gains for developer. Now what If VSCode just took you script bashing and made it look beautiful – of course it still may not work, but it sure would look pretty! 10.) Peacock Rounding out the post; and sticking with our consistent theme here – which is all about being productivity while looking good!!! And Peacock is no exception to that, bringing a warm rainbow of colours to your different VSCode workspaces. Peacock adds just about the right amount of colour to the common beloved dark theme and making these dark times for all of us, seem well a lot less dark! Hopefully this post brights up your day and boosts your VSCode productivity – have a great week!

#Salesforce Weekly