The nice thing about returning to book 2 with my new micro-prism glasses is that I can actually read it without inducing a migraine, and it's really not as bad as I thought it was. Some of it's actually quite funny, sweet, and in some places, emotionally harrowing. (The Nathan protection squad are coming for me. I can already feel it.)

Sure, some significant chunks need to be rewritten, but it's not the absolute soul-sucking slog I remember trying to get through in 2022.

Like, no wonder I hated working on this before. The physical act of reading was causing me immense, debilitating pain. Of course, I was struggling with it. Of course some of the prose felt like pulling teeth. I was likely gritting mine the whole time because it felt like my head was splitting open for 215 days out of 365.

Wild.

Bookblr and Foyle's War fandom... Has anyone else read Nevil Shute's 'Pastoral'?

It's just such a wonderful book, and yet no-one seems to have heard of it.

I do wonder how it escaped being made into a film - it would have been so lovely 1950s style.

I'm trying to read all of Stephen & Owen King's Sleeping Beauties this week and fuck, I forgot how interesting this story was. Long and dense? Yeah, but fascinating.

I have determined that I am done with this for now :o)

Behold. Baby Gideon.

So when Harrow has a very bad time while traveling trough the River for the first time in Harrow the Ninth and sees the dead children of the Ninth House, including a baby Gideon with face-paint, the intensity of the moment was kind of dampened by the mental image that popped in my head.

Just the idea of Gideon with face-paint makes me think of her on the cover with the sunglasses. Ergo, baby Gideon with sunglasses.

I'm too tired and too sick rn to articulate this properly but I wish people put more thought into the way Signalis approaches communism and communist imagery and how it has a lot more to do with the spectre of memory and fear as it exists in the specific experiences of people who grew up in the ruins of the DDR than it does the vulgar anticommunism/red scare imagery that american players project onto it. Perhaps this is my own projection but the contrast between what to me is a clear degree of reverence and even Ostalgie next to ever present decay and degradation of those same images and concepts reads far more as bitterness and even betrayal than just "communism bad." The game has far more on it's mind regarding how the past bleeds through into the present and within that framing evoking the DDR is hauntological, not moralistic and certainly not triumphalist.

Do you have tips for drawing/designing Xeno styled inkfish? They’re so shaped

of course!

Generally when I draw xenos, I try to emphasise non-human traits as much as possible by incorporating in real-life cephalopod biology. Basically I try to make it extremely obvious that what you're looking at isn't human, but actually something else entirely.

A good start is to do away with joints/bones entirely, and to add spots/patterns to the skin to make it appear less mammalian. Suckers on the fingers and faintly-pigmented skin also help as well.

The eyes are also another important thing! Most pelagic squids have round pupils in real life, but I tend to draw inklings with horizontal pupils anyway as it helps achieve that creaturely effect I'm going for.

Of course everyone has their own unique approach to xeno inkfish, these are merely suggestions and not a ruleset or anything haha. It’s taken me a while to find a style I’ve found most comfortable, and even then I regularly change stuff as I learn more about cephalopods. The beauty of xeno designs is that it's entirely up to you where you decide to go with it. You don’t even have to be realistic, literally the only baseline is creature!

I hope this was helpful to you!

I don't mind headcanons that Bail and Obi-Wan were friends before the clone wars started (and I don't think we're told either way in current canon - as far as I'm aware), but the legends meeting -> near death Speedrun to being TOO close is still my favorite iteration.

Bail being like hey I have a spy who has information on the Sith/a Sith planet but we have to meet her in person to get the goods. Obi-Wan, recovering from a speeder crash, being like this feels like a trap but we really can't ignore this Intel can we. Them getting stuck on a small ship together. They both think each other is kind of stuck up. Bail watching Obi-Wan meditate shirtless.

Meets the spy only to immediately get caught in a firefight and Bail has to experience the realities of war for the first time and it changes his view on the conflict forever. They get to the Sith planet and it is immediately Obi-Whump time in the best way, they are both having the worst times of their lives. They still aren't really getting along. Obi-Wan has to get Bail to promise to kill him at one point if it gets to a certain point. They manage to make it out through the skin of their teeth with five million in jokes and a friendship so close that it makes literally everyone else uncomfortable. What could be better than this.

Personally I think the reason that the ending of HTTYD 3 just doesn't work, condensed and boiled down from the full essay in my brain, is that movie hiccup is far too cool and badass compared to book hiccup for them to wrap up the series in the same way.

the real 35 portland row is located on tumblr dot com btw

god gives his silliest of guys the heaviest of lores

SCOTT RESPONDEDDDDD

It's a 10th anniversary game!!!!

(The Promised Neverland Art Book World)

Ah yes, one of my favorite genres of baby full score trio pictures: Isabella being openly affectionate toward Emma and Norman in front of Ray while being hands off with him.

(Chapter 2 | Chapter 37 | Chapter 165 | Chapter 170 | Chapter 177)

SHE WAS SO CRAZY FOR THIS. there were so many ways she could have said this and I understand it was very spur-of-the-moment and ultimately it didn’t matter how she phrased it because the danger would have been the same, but I really really love the fact that she said it this way because she refused to classify her deepest most dangerous desire within the realms of the homophobic language they taught her. she didn't say she's a "tribadist" or that she has "unhygienic thoughts" about women, even though she has no problem using this language in daily life. when it's just between her and this secret-keeper who could destroy her, between her and a god, this thing that's been hinted at for the entire book thus far but never said outright is finally laid bare, no frills, no innuendo. I want to fuck women.

sleeping w weapons probably isn’t a good idea but they’re a little jumpy

Was the "Stranger in a Strange land" a reference to the book or no....

FIRST OFF. It must be said that I super hate Heinlein and I super hate his books. But yes. It was a very stupid reference.

I mean, "Pinepaw and the Forgotten World" is meant to be a title that invokes old science fiction stories. So I kind of had to reference at least some old sci fi stories!