Hi, I'm me. I post personal stuff, art, memes and pointless rambles. As a note, all art I post will be around 600px width or less, anything bigger is LJ cut.
I keep this journal pretty public, save for the few rare friends-locked entire. I'm a pretty open person and have NO problems with new people, so feel free to add me.
Commission Status: Open Contact me via email, PM or IM if you would like to commission me.
There are concerning changes happening to Livejournal and I am begging you to archive and jump ship. More information on Rahaeli's Bluesky:
rahaeli (@rahaeli.bsky.social)
Okay, I will preface this with the GIGANTIC disclaimer that I promise I know how this looks, and I *swear* this is not personally motivated: If you have an old #LiveJournal account, and it has things you still care about in it, download it or import it to Dreamwidth SOON. Details:
So yeah, Ditch LiveJournal. Sooner, rather than later. I vastly prefer Dreamwidth (You can import your whole blog + comments, there.) but I also have an Insane Journal mirror (mostly for public posts)
If it's not become clear, I've moved my operations to dreamwidth ages ago. As of something around a month ago, LJ stopped allowing posts from DW to their service and are not communicating with DW devs to resolve this. And with everything going on, I'm glad I moved everything over to DW as I do not think this service is secure or safe in any sense of the word. Because of this I doubt I'll use LJ again.
On the 13th I made a post about the Northern Territories for Ertakar the things they did to survive in the winter and it's harshness. And then on the 14th a video essayist I like to watch named Jacob Geller posted a video on Fear of Cold. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp2wbyLoEtM Which goes into not so much fear but rather, the actual brutality of cold and contains both real and fictional accounts of death and/or injury from the cold. It was just kinda amusing to see something so timely that illustrates just why my Ertakar had developed such a rigid form of survival structure that colored their culture for centuries.
Back in 2019 around 71,000 VHS and Betamax from 1975 to 2012 that had been recorded by Archival Activist and Librarian, Marion Stokes, were digitized and placed on the Internet Archive for anyone to access. https://archive.org/details/marionstokesvideo Atlas Obscura article on the subject. One of the most fascinating recorded shows is one called Input, a cross discussion television series syndicated in Philadelphia, that was discussions of different social and political topics at the time when it aired. Something I think really important that gives a look into mindsets of the time stretched across all different groups and professions. Like, in the episode, Who Needs To Be Normal? It sure is fascinating to see in 1969 they have the same problems with job applications then as we do now, and if anything, it's gotten worse. Just things like that.
All of this would have been lost had not been the efforts of Marion Stokes. Just, how incredible is that? Archivists are modern-day heroes, honestly.
Also read this article about Berkeley Nutraceuticals (maker of Enzyte) https://www.businessinsider.com/natural-male-enhancement-privacy-case-2013-8 and it's absolutely unhinged business practices and the dubious practices that were involved with the case and a person's right to privacy in regard to email and other telecommunications. It was essentially because of this case that we got our full right to privacy with email, which we didn't have until 2009. It's a somber reflection on how long their method of retrieving this information could have gone on had the case not been this big and the defendant not have the means to contest it.
One thing that might pop up from time to time is that Tlakanok hails from a territory in the north, from one of the northern most territories for Ertakar. Going back to what I mentioned in the last info post, Ertkar have a slightly lower body temperature as compared to humans, and they don't tend to favor colder environments. Bundling up for the cold is difficult and cumbersome with their wings, and the cold impedes their ability to fly both due to bundling up and the high risk of frostbite on their wing membrane. Because of all this, the settlement of the north was one made in desperation, it wasn't what anyone could consider their 'first choice'. ( Further explanation on the territoryCollapse )
- Ertakar Body Temp Marsupials have lower body temps than other mammals because some of them have internal testes, which can range from 30℃ (86℉) to 35℃ (95℉). But sperm dies at 35℃ (95℉) so only Marsupials that keep their testicles externally would be that warm. Ertakar house all genitals internally which means that if their sperm also operates the same way other mammal sperm does, Ertkar would need to have a body temperature around 30℃ (86℉) to 34℃ (93℉) at the absolute most.
So with that in mind I'm going to cut it in half and say that Ertakar body temp averages around 32℃ (89.6℉), where a degree up or down isn't outside the norm.
They tend to prefer warmer/temperate climates, and don't do as favorably in cold ones. This is why establishments in the north are more rare for Ertakar and often more difficult to live in. Wings are difficult to wrap and warm, like you can but they take time and effort to do and then render them unusable in times of extreme cold.
Soooo what about Talon? The human average body temp is 37℃ (98.6℉), so for her I'm going to say her resting body temp is 35℃ (95℉) regardless of form.
- Ertkar Practice Concept I mentioned this in one of my older world building entries about divination, I had an idea about a form of spiritual/divination practice that involved germinating a seed with blood and spit mixed with the soil. The idea was that either how the seed grows is used to divine one's future or, that doing so ties you to the tree and leads to a sort of spiritual symbioses. You take care of the tree, the tree enriches your life Both of those practices could exist depending on different splits if beliefs/culture. In general, practice can include more than trees, trees are just the most common as they have long lifespans that can keep up with the Ertkar's.
I wasn't sure where I was going to use it or what for I decided to use it for the culture/society Tlakanock hails from. It probably related to old practices cultivating the land. Being in the north, ensuring they had more trees to replace the ones brought down for goods and shelter. You don't want to cut down trees if they're tied to you, so you plant more that you can in addition to your personal tree.
This will probably be some significance here and there as there is a tree of this kind that Tlakanock planted on the property of the house that she and Talon lived in. Talon probably has a young tree there too, Xiktali might as well.
- Ertakar Living Arrangements For most cultures/societies, they never really got the idea of 'owning' land. This does change in a few locations, I don't know where just yet, but on the whole the common concept is that, if there is room, there is a place for you to live. In smaller colonies/towns this is a pretty casual process, some may have a large group/communal house for new members that they can rest before building their own housing. But in large cities the housing process is very different. The city the core story takes place in has a very rigorous process of application and sorting of who gets to live where. Ground floor and specialized housing are reserved for disabled and impaired that need the access, and multi-room housing for child raising and communal living. Those are just some examples. Combined housing/workshop for certain trade skills I think are also going to be common. (might be forms of communal housing?) This has it's own drawbacks as problems with application times, malicious actors both in those applying or those grading applications, as well as the long standing problems with human integration in Ertakar societies.
Tlakanock, lived originally in the far north. I have to write down that whole cultural variation, as it's a very different way of life. Its been in my head I just haven't put it to text.
The city the story takes place in is a coastal territory. Coastal locations in temperate territories often see the highest population of Ertakar and most mixed Ertakar populations, as the combination of sea and land prey are able to sustain the larger number Ertakar without wiping out the native prey species.
- Teotkoa Healing I think I'm going to go with something along the lines of 6x the average healing rate for humans.
- Talon Details She retains her mass no matter what form she takes, I've estimated she's potentially around 400 pounds when accounting for her Ertakar form height, wings, tail, and the increased mass density that comes with Teotkoa muscle enhancement.
Also
Being both a hybrid and Teotkoa means Talon probably isn't compatible with any other blood other than her own. This means any transfusions would have to be done with a store of her own blood, as she might not be compatible with even plasma of others, let alone the red blood cells themselves. This means she has to do regular drawing of her own blood, and I'm not sure how often Talon has to have her blood taken to be stored away on the regular in order to make sure there's enough on standby for emergency transfusions.
For humans they can replace the amount of blood taken in 24-48 hours, and the red blood cells are replaced within 10-12 weeks so it's recommended to wait 112 days between donations. If going by the 6x recovery rate, would be looking at probably about 19 days between donations.
Blood can only be stored safely for 42 days.. at least for us. It's possible that because of the unique issue it's motivated the development of some sort of artificial blood cycling system like an artificial heart cycle to keep the bloodcells from deteriorating as fast. But this would also require some detection to account for anything that might have 'gone bad' but I'm probably going to need to research this more specifically.
2021 has been an interesting year for me, and a mostly good one, especially toward the end of the year. First, have this little art summary meme for the year. ( Read more...Collapse )
I've been so preoccupied with things in my life I haven't sat down and really focused much. It's a good preoccupation though! So have a jumble of subjects and links.
First, Apple has been putting the pressure on Tumblr again to 'get rid of the porn' on the app, and it's lead to some of the most frustrating posts and wild accusations of people that clearly don't understand how the whole process works. Luckily, one former dev of Tumblr spoke up about the changes and why things are the way they are and I just love when devs talk about behind the scene stuff.
The devs that works on Tumblr genuinely loved their service and they wanted so bad to provide something good but being acquired by Yahoo ate them from the inside. It makes me so angry when I see comments about how 'the staff doesn't care', because they do, they always do. The people that 'don't care' are usually one or two people at the top that aren't even in development, like accounts, shareholders, or the board that only want to know if something will give them money in the end. The people that make the staff posts, that try to manage the sea of tickets that can be anything from valid to reactionary, the people that are on the bottom of the chain, don't deserve the ire that people direct toward them when someone on the board made a decision to add/get rid of/change a feature.
It was honestly very sad to see the volume of people making comments like 'I always forget there are real people behind the site'. Like... How do you forget that!! (I know how, it just makes me sad.)
It makes me think about how most humans really do love to know how things are made and while we have so many videos about how things are physically constructed, there's very little out there that talk about things like, software development. Too many people have this assumption that things are made by popping in a few plugins, or having code auto-fills, and that's just the people that have the barest knowledge of coding but no real experience.
I really do wish more devs would speak up about the really stupid and inane issues they've had to deal with in changing or adding even the 'simplest' sounding things. Software runs so much of our lives and most people have no clue what all goes into it, giving people the wrong impression of what it is and we really need more accessible information about all of this u_u
Slightly adjacent in the scripting field, going to the subject of making websites.
There's this little search project someone is working on that is a search engine that tries to find text heavy websites to find things that might be ignored by your other search engines these days. https://search.marginalia.nu/ It is still in the works but I love projects like this so much!!
I searched 'how to make a website' and while there was a lot of unrelated hits as a new experimental service like this is meant to be, but I came across these two charming sites. https://www.thesitewizard.com/gettingstarted/startwebsite.shtml http://www.shira.net/web02-start.htm Still not exactly what I'm looking for but getting closer. They're just nice little spots frozen in time and I appreciate it.
Sometimes I wonder about making a 'how to make a website' documentation but I have no idea if I have the bandwidth for that. But I can at least make a few more fun Moyra's Web Jewels conversion templates for people to learn from because the best way to learn is to get some simple, easy to follow scripts and pull it apart yourself.
Me, idly one morning: 'I really need to figure out how to make an XML Site Map' 30 min later: Cool I have a sitemap now :O
After way too long I finally got around to throwing down something on the projects page that had been an empty link for ages. http://armaina.com/projects.html So now I have something in writing for real on my website that shows any stranger wandering onto my site that I'm doing more than just pretty drawings and there's a purpose and pointing people into directions based on my synopsis.
Also going to figure out how to make pages display specific custom details when in their link preview on things like Discord or Twitter. And I still need to make my favicons. I may not like the current state of web 3.0 social media nonsense, but I have to adapt to it, either way. Also going to try to brush up a bit on my CSS beautifying, I want to make it look just a little bit more 'sleek', something a bit less amateurish, if I can. I have my function down, it's easy to navigate, it works, and now that all my pages are in, it's time to see if I can get it a little fancy and learn something new.
I've been doing kinda NaNoWriMo this month. It's more so that I've made a promise to myself to open up my growing list of WIPs and text files and work on them to some degree. The point is less to write one thing or hit 50K, but just to make myself set aside the time to write more in general. It's a habit I need to do more often in general, just like I would with art, so that I can get my scripts rolling at a steady pace. Glad to say it's been going well and I'm at least writing something. And the sooner I have a lot of somethings, the sooner I have a finished product.
Apart from that, been busy with all the above and work. Work is still going great, and all my co-workers are just fantastic!
And now, have a stack of links to things I found interesting or cool.
A video of a test-concept of full-on artificial muscle structures on a robotic arm. While non-viable for real prosthetic work in this day and age, it's really cool to see functioning mechanisms like this for personal reference in super future robotics concept/design. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guDIwspRGJ8
Speaking of Oddities, I've really enjoyed the chill vibes of this old tech Videographer for a long time now, and I think more should too. He's got this fun Oddware series where he reviews Odd and Unique old hardware. I recommend pretty much everything he does but his Oddware is a nice place to start. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBtETkJeqmY&list=PLB9FA1979AB986522
I've been laying down for about 4 hours, had maybe about an hours worth of sleep and am not going to sleep soon so I'm rambling since I have some stuff on my mind. Stream of consciousness about personal favorite characters, women characters in media, character archetypes, and alienation for my preferences.
Been a couple weeks into my new job and I'm really enjoying it. The atmosphere is great, the job is chill, and my co-workers are wonderful. I can pick up shifts whenever I like and it's just dang nice. I had a bout of anxiety spirals because my brain was convinced that this good thing is fake and won't last but that seems to have leveled out, now. Also weather has been starting to slide into more manageable temperatures which means I can do stuff with a little more freedom.
In media/entertainment realm, recently watched all of Boardwalk Empire over the last few months. Was reminded why it's so difficult for me to watch live action shows: I cannot keep up with who's who because most of them look the same to me unless they have unique features. Everyone had suits and I could barely tell half the cast apart. Still, good watch. Also watched all of Squid Game, good but heavy series, also had the same problem of not being able to tell certain characters apart unless they were uniquely interesting in some way.
Watched Centaur World and it was delightfully genre subverting, extremely well animated, and an impressive amount of intrigue. To describe it without giving too much away, think of an Isekai, except the lead character is Just A Horse. Got into Lower Decks and Season Finale for season 3 actually made me tear up?? I've really been enjoying that series so much, I heard it was good and I was not expecting it to hit the right notes with me like it did.
Also apparently the Foundation trilogy has series now?? I started reading the first book some time ago and now I'm kinda curious how they'll portray things because there's some stuff about the concept that's so funny to me it's silly to think how they'll 'modernize' it but I could write a whole post about that..
Been playing games here and there, doing Destiny 2 stuff, made a new Minecraft map, pick at Valheim from time to time.
On the creative front I took a bit of a slowdown after the comic pages which I'm still very happy about and I've been doing a lot of personal mental work on the larger comic. I've got a WIP script that I worked on that I'm not sure if that's what will happen next or if I'm going to start somewhere else, but it was burning in my brain so I at least wrote it. Trying to keep myself writing whatever pops up instead of telling myself I 'can't' until I 'do the other thing first' because that just prevents me from making anything at all. But I'm working on it, even if there's not much obvious to be seen from it, yet.
For the last 4 weeks I've been working on and off on a short, 6 page comic to serve as a teaser to a more long-term comic I'm currently working on. This is my first real, serious effort to making a comic and I'm pretty happy with the end result for having no prior practice in making comics. I've learned a lot about using Clip Studio for this and I think I have most it's features figured out now, and it's been invaluable in painless paneling. I think I've more or less settled on my style but I'm still debating on if I'll color block my pages as it can add an extra hour or two to each page but I also like the look so this'll take some consideration. But otherwise, this is the most confident I've ever felt toward the idea of making comics, like it's a real and tangible possibility for me to achieve.
This little vignette this serves both as a form of foreshadowing and setting the stage for the world the comic will take place in and the conflicts that may be present in the story to come. Features characters Tlakanok and Xiktali.
Putting to words some of my digging about my title problem as I go.
I started out with reverberation, since that has the 'feel' that I'm going for, something carried out and also mirrored/found as it continues. And I stumbled across these two phrases that mean about the same thing.
concatenation of events causal nexus "A situation in which the solution to one problem creates a chain of problems, each making it more difficult to solve the original one"
Which this feels close but I need to figure out a way to convey this that doesn't mean that it's explicitly about problems. Sometimes there are problems but sometimes it's just.. a thing, neutral that becomes either a problem or a solution, later.
Though I could use concatenation or the Latin concatenātiō as a title for the 3 comics as a collective, like Concatenation Trilogy. Concatenation meaning "A series of links united; a series or order of things depending on each other, as if linked together; a chain, a succession." All the stories are interlinked because they take place in the same universe at different points in time, and all the choices made will show up in the other comics (Pretroians being the least as it's the oldest in the timeline)
But then I started thinking if the theme of all of them is going to be the ripple effect then I feel it's out of place to name Talon's story about that something related to that. So now I go back to naming the comic about her about the state of belonging in multiple states and yet neither and you'd think there'd be a word for this but for the life of me I can't find this.
So I thought of looking up dissonance and dissecting that like Dissonant Harmony or something to that effect, but that felt too flowery on it's own for a title and a little too abstract.
Then I thought, maybe I'll start with the word Hybrid and check out it's origins and see if I can dissect something from that. Latin is Hibrida, and has an alternate form of Ibrida And.... I really like Ibrida.
What stuck out to me was that it starts with an I just as Talon's last name does, Iskan, which was just... made up sounds and I didn't establish a meaning to it. Her last name has gone through like three different changes but that was the name I stuck with and could never seem to change even if I wasn't sure I liked it or not. Then I thought.. what if I made 'hybrid' or 'mongrel' the meaning of her last name all along.
I don't want to title the comic Iskan, but Ibrida sounds like it'd fit like a title...
When I started writing this I didn't think I'd actually find a solution but, this is being written 'live' as I dig through words. It feels really anti-climatic that I'm just kinda figuring out something so simple all along. But I may re-name all my instances of 'cycles' to Ibrida and see how I feel about it. But, this might finally stick for once.
I've always had difficulty with naming things. Naming characters usually takes me days, weeks after their creation, longest streak I've had was 6 years of a character unnamed even after being drawn and written. Because naming is committing something to them that, to me, is more permanent than a visual design. I know well and good I can change things if I wanted to but let's face it, it sure is a pain to go through all old instances of the thing and re-name it to prevent confusion. So when it comes to titles of things, it feels even more permanent than a character name and so the pressure to get the right name, escalates.
Of my Three comic concepts, 2 are named. One is Pretorians, the title comes from the name of the focus group, the units known as Pretorians, simple enough. The other is Starship Lollipop, the title of the ship the cast resides in, named after a joke of The Good Ship Lollipop (despite such a song not existing in the universe). These are easy enough names and I don't see them changing so I'm pretty committed to them, but it's the remaining story, the one I plan on releasing first that I find myself unable to put a title to. The comic that is supposed to be for Talon's story, the one I talk so dang much about, still doesn't have a title I can commit to.
Back when I first constructed the concept for it and was like 'yeah I'm gonna make this a story and not just an imagination in my head' I was like.. 13, and at the time I had picked the name 'Demon's Legacy' because oh ho ho, lead character is a berserker and a killer so people would call her a 'demon' and the story is about her legacy, the usual teenage cleverness. As I got older it felt more and more tacky and I kept it for a time because I had nothing else to name it but eventually I scrapped it. Ever since then I've not been able to think of a name that really.. fits. Right now if you look at my toyhouse or wiki, the information is categorized under the placeholder name of Cycles, but I definitely do not want it to be called that. So now I'm going to talk out-loud about what I'm trying to achieve with the title eventually.
The general theme of the story is supposed to be around the ramifications of choices made in the past and how they effect the future. The good, the bad, the malicious and well-intentioned. While the story's focus is on characters related to the Teotkoa project (another thing that took me years to name and was only named 2 years ago), I don't want to name it Teotkoa because the story is more than just that. Some themes in naming I wanted is something that had the same meaning as 'ripple effect' but I can't seem to find or create a word that I'm happy with that achieves this meaning. There are stories that explore this theme in a time travel sense, such as 'A Sound of Thunder' and 'The Butterfly Effect' and I don't want to get tangled up in either of these. It's not about changing the past, it's about living with the consequences of one's actions.
The other themes of the story have a lot to do with societal conflicts, there is heaps of social interpersonal conflicts peppered throughout the story. It's not just Humans vs Aliens social conflicts, there are social conflicts for the families of the victims of the previous war, social conflicts for the Ertakar's own social divides that existed long before the arrival of humans.
Finally of course, it is Talon's story. She is a culmination of all the themes I expressed above. Both victim of the choices made from the past war and privileged from it, both Human and Ertakar, and also none of those things. Technically I could just name the comic Talon, but that feels weird? Another theme of title might be the something that encapsulates this theme of being in two states but belonging to neither. Hybrid is too broad a term I think and doesn't convey the right thing. A word like Oxymoron, but a little more specific to an individual or experience. I could technically use the word 'Jal-Kar' as the title as that's the term used for the forcibly genetically altered Human/Ertakar hybrids that lived on after the war, but that still doesn't feel like that has the right kind of presence. Maybe the word I want exists out there but I have no idea how to look for it, or maybe if I can construct it. It doesn't even have to be a single word, if I could think of a phrase that encapsulated this state of being that'd likely work.
I guess if anyone knows words or phrases or even some way to construct a new word that conveys these themes you can give a suggestion, maybe something will give me a boost to figure out a title. (maybe with any luck I can figure out the title once and for all before my prelude comic is finished)
Firstly thank you all for the well wishes, I had way more response than I was expecting so I was admittedly a little surprised, so thank you.
Yesterday I decided to celebrate my good news by going out and just doing SOMETHING. Hung out at the library for a bit, sad that Think Spot isn't open to the public yet but it was nice to have a change of scenery even if I didn't DO much. Also discovered one of the shopping center buildings had been now filled with a small asian market on one side and a bunch of little Korean eateries on the other side. Had a very rich risotto with bulgogi that I couldn't finish but made for good leftovers today :O Really looking forward to having the money and means to get out more often and just do whatever the heck I want, even if it's nothing more than just walking around and having a bit of scenery change.
Today, I put some work into a small prelude comic that is meant to usher in the larger project I'm still chewing on. The script is 600 words, 36 lines of dialog, which has leveled out to 6 pages. It sets the concept for the catalyst that will be present in the story and manages, at least I think, to convey a complete thought without being too confusing (I hope) or spelling things out unnaturally.
Also it was nice to be able to have that dialog and be able to figure out where my panels are and to naturally have the last page have everything fall into place with the right pacing without feeling like I'm squishing too many panels to fit the final page or that I have too much empty space in the last page. It's that kind of long-term pacing that always makes me a little scared about comics. I felt really comfortable about working on it by the time I was done? That's a really nice feeling to have, and the first real inkling of saying to myself 'yeah you know what, I think I can do this.' Of course, this is just the thumbnails, not the pages, so we'll see how that goes. Also, this template has been a great help, I don't think it would have been nearly as easy to plot out without it.
When I have it all done I'll post it, but not until all the pages are done. (and hopefully working on it will get me brewing about how to start the actual comic itself. Not to mention, figure out what the heck I'm even going to title it.)
I've said this in random spaces to friends and in some servers but I think maybe I'll put into words in a singular place here, and that is, the concept that labels can be Culture just as much as Identity, and the two things are very different.
This thought first came to me way back when I was reading Erica Moen's Dar Comic some time in the mid-2000's (it ran between 2004-2009). She had recounted an experience where she goes through the experiences in her life and how a long time was spent being a lesbian, but when she fell in love with a man she had a personal crisis regarding what her identity was now and how she still felt about Lesbian and how it still felt applicable despite the new attraction. That was the first instance I personally had of the concept, 'maybe the identity doesn't resonate with you anymore but it still feels right because the culture of that identity was intrinsic to you'. I didn't talk about it much because being cishet having any insight on lesbian identity is often met with extreme hostility, (I know Erica herself received a lot of backlash at the time over it.) and just in general I didn't have many 'use cases' to formulate my thoughts.
As the years went on and I had more and more trans friends in my life, both people transitioned and others new to finding themselves, and in interacting with them I found more instances this disconnect between the identity and culture of a label. A few would mention feelings of crisis when they felt longing for spaces where they were a different gender, fearing it undermined or somehow canceled out their current identity. Things like "I still feel at home at the thought of girly sleepovers, does that mean I'm not really a boy?" an oversimplification of course but you get the idea. And I was thinking to myself 'no, those feelings of longing and comfort are not some sign that, that identity from the past is you, it's because they were good experiences in that culture and it is unrelated to your identity'. And this solidified my perception: Labels can be both identity and culture.
This experience most commonly happens when people go from having their formative experiences in one label's space and then flip to another label's space. If you had a good time, of course you're going to have a nostalgia, comfort, or fondness for those spaces, but that comfort and familiarity doesn't mean the identity that was associated with that space still applies to you, but the culture absolutely does. In more common experiences, growing up in certain religions might make you resonate with the religion's culture you grew up with (if your experiences were positive), even though you've long since left the faith and no longer ascribe to it. There's a lot about LDS culture I grew up with that I do miss, and sometimes I find myself still going 'we' when referring to Mormons or talking about the stuff I used to do, but it is very much not a part of my identity and hasn't been since I was about 17. But the culture? The culture is absolutely still there in my experiences and my inclination, it's still something I look back on with fondness and there are aspects about it that still hang around in my life to this day. *motions to the fact that she's been journaling since she was 8, an extremely Mormon culture thing*.
Labels are both Identity and Culture. A label can be used to signify to yourself and to others what you are, it can be affirming things that are intrinsic to you so that you can share them easily with others. But, a label might resonate with you not just because of the identity others associate with it, but because the space and culture it provided were things that either meant something to you, or fit exactly the kind of space and culture you had been looking for, even if the identity it's supposed to represent, didn't line up. And in the inverse, a label's meaning might be exactly you, but the culture might not be what you're looking for and that's not an indication that you can't have that label but rather that you don't fit the culture of the label, but that doesn't mean you have to avoid the label if it really resonates with you, and it's fine to admit Yes to the label, and No to the culture. That can often feel hollow, of course, people often look for camaraderie in their labels and find distress when there is none, but it's an option that is available for those that it makes sense to.
I think recognizing that disconnect between Label the Identity and Label the Culture, would to a lot of good for people finding themselves and really identify what they're looking for both in themselves, what they want to represent themselves, and what culture is comfortable to them. As well as acknowledge the complicated and varied experiences we all have as people and why even though there are Majority Agreed-Upon Words That Represents Something, it does not apply to all people in the same way.
ContraPoint's Envy. It's almost 2 hours long, but it's so worth watching through. It really does cover a lot of important topics and perceptions that are getting worse in the modern day and it really does line up to my statements that the Publicness of us with social media is what has made us all for the worse. While I had not pinned envy as one of the potential vector points when I talked about it, I agree now that it's part of it.
One quote that's real important: "I wish more people could feel things, without rushing to a 'rational' defense of the feeling."
I feel this sentiment so much. The whole reason I'm as emotionally healthy as I am is because I permitted myself to feel every ugly feeling I got as well as identify it. I was fully aware there were some petty and spiteful feelings I had, but I allowed myself to feel them rather than beat myself down because I felt them or try to justify them. They were just A Thing I was feeling and I needed to let myself feel it out until it leveled and I could go back to the problem and address it, rather than address the feeling. And I agree that I wish more people would just accept that they're going to feel things they don't like, and it's just the experience of Being.
Been reading peoples rants/thoughts/posts on the elevation of children's media over adult media and I've been thinking about something lacking in a lot of Mainstream adult media, specifically in western adult media.
If you aren't already aware I'm a lover of cartoons, I watch vast amounts of cartoon media, I often prefer it over live action things, even when it comes to adult media and admittedly, I do find a lot of content aimed at children to be more interesting and engaging than content aimed at adults. This is not because I find children's content to be 'better' than adult content, but because the move to adult content for the west often leaves behind something present in most children's cartoons today: long-term plots.
It should be said that this trend in children's cartoons did not used to be the standard. They used to be one off goof with a vaguely connecting thread, it wasn't until the late 90's and early 2000's did bigger shows like Beast Wars and Gargoyles begin to shift the format of children's programming. Gargyoles especially, for me, was the first time I had seen such takes on story telling and I was hungry for it. Then with the introduction to anime it only grew from there, and the western producers saw that influence as well and began to emulate it. Shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender is a culmination of these changes in media in the early 2000's not just in style but in story-telling.
When you start dipping into western adult media you find less and less that have over-arching plots and more singular episodes with the occasional throwback to past event. Adults that grew up with the slapstick of Loony Toons and Hana-Barbara for their media went on to make Sitcoms and Case a Day crime TV shows. I know this was partly because at the time television standards intentionally wanted each episode to be watched without context. It's really sad to think about how the generation before television was perfectly fine with radio dramas that arced over several episode, then that form of story telling evaporated as radio dramas died off.
I think the closest we've gotten with adult media in the west are things a few stand out shows like Stargate, Lost, Heroes. HBO and Stars began making more series with over-arching plots like Boardwalk Empire or Game of Thrones, but it feels like shows of that caliber are few and far between. And too often they find themselves ruined by trying to be as shocking as possible. Either that or they get so caught up in being 'realistic', paired with seeing live action as the more 'mature' form of story telling. I admittedly prefer cartoons because it's easier to suspend disbelief in a fantasy setting as a cartoon, but cartoons are often regarded as frivolous, intended for comedy. And for the adult cartoons that aren't comedy it's like they try to go off the deep end in gratuity, they don't feel like they even want to have fun. The Castlevania Netflix series has been the closest I've seen to a western adult comic series that while gory, still manages to be fun and isn't full of dread.
Sometimes it feels like that soon as the gate is lifted to make something for adults, there's a need to saturate it in as much death and sex as possible. Like someone binging on alcohol the first time they're allowed to have it, and in doing so the drive for nuance in other forms of conflicts and complexities of life gets lost. This doesn't happen with all adult western media, of course, but the ones out there that tackle complications like moral greys and trauma with both nuance and optimism are few and far between. It's why Anime is still so sought after, it has a wider gamut topics covered at different target groups so there ends up being more variety.
I don't gravitate toward children's media more because I think it's inherently 'better' because it's aimed at children, I gravitate toward it because there's a vacuum in the kind of story telling I'm looking for in adult media. A good example of what I'd like to see would be something like, bringing back Batman Beyond for another season but on adult swim so they don't have to shy away from topics like processing grief of death, trauma, and intimacy, while still having an underpinning of hope and humor present in the original series. I'd like more western cartoons aimed at adults that dive into nature of existence and philosophy like Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex. I'd like more adult media that still knows how to have fun and doesn't find shock value the only value of being an adult. I want more adult media to tell stories.
Now that July and thus ArtFight is over, here is the full completed range of images like I promised. The links to the character owners are to artfight which takes an account to see, but this is more for credit references.
I don't know why this took me long to consider but I realize with how she can be patched up to a pretty 'normal' state after injury, (as explained in a previous entry) this would also mean she could add and remove any piercings or body mods at any time with practically no consequence.
There are practical applications for this, such as getting piercings/mods if under-cover to use them as identifying marks that can be removed after the fact and throw off anyone trying to find her after the fact, but also just to experiment and have them for fun if she wanted. Could even get wing membrane piercing for fashion attire reasons but I don't think she'd go through the effort much. I don't think tattoos would really work tho, there may be rejection issues with the ink, I'd have to do more research on that to see if ink triggering an immune response, I think it does because you can be allergic to it. But like if she doesn't have a problem accepting the ink, getting rid of tattoos is just a matter of.. removing epidermal and re-grafting. Not exactly fun, but you'd never know there was anything there after all said and done. But that would be so much more time consuming than piercings.
And a slight note to add to this: She can't have metal in the pierce sites when they're healing as her body will reject even surgical steel, there is specific material that are tooled for her specifically to be supports that won't be rejected by her body. Once it's healed over it's fine, she doesn't have a metal allergy, the issue is specifically related to her aggressive immune system.
A lot of people I know are already familiar with this concept, but if anyone has ever heard the phrase Social Construct and never really understood it, I recommend watching the video.
I'm admittedly a little self-satisfied in that a lot of the things discussed are things I've been aware of and deliberately want to play with in world building. As I stated before, Worldbuilding for my Ertakar was how I really self-actualized just the depths of how much a construct everything is, so I'm a little chuffed a world building exercise in the form of Earth AU's was used to help teach the concept.
I thought I posted this ages ago, but I didn't so now I am. Over the past year I finally put together reference sheets for my oldest character. I've had her for far too long and I had not a single ref sheet for her ever completed, and for the first time I actually have completed ref sheets.
There was a very popular thing to do back in the mid 90's that was only possible because of the fact that almost all monitors were 800x600 for a long time. It was a trick where you used a background that would be the perfect size to make it look like your web-page had borders on each side.
This specific technique is, of course, not possible to do anymore now with how monitors are getting up into the 4K side of things, and for a while I've wanted to re-create this look, using more modern scripts and techniques. So naturally I had to find a page using one of Moyra's old backgrounds and re-tool it.
http://armaina.com/layouts/greekborder/ And after spending a few hours in it today, this is my final result. I cut up the image, made PNGs with transparent shadows for each of the boarders, then made the textured background it's own element to tile. The rest is, of course, just me messing around and spending more time making the elements prettier than I needed them to be.
All in all I'm pretty happy with the result, learned some new things on a personal level in the process. (my code gets a little nicer looking every time I try digging into these things) I would like to find more of Moyra's old stuff like this to splice up and script them into little things like this for people to be able to download and use for themselves if they so want. Will make little layouts of my own, eventually, but this is a fun endeavor, and I'd like her work to live-on... (unless she ever comes back..)
*longingly looks in the direction of Moyra's Web Jewels archive* "I just want her back"
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