Doodletober day 27: Stitches

Was poking around AO3 for kicks and giggles, and I find it fascinating how so many folks can just go ah, yes, this story Inspires me to Create, while this…not so much.

I know this isn’t entirely fair given the discrepancy in the amount of media per franchise, but here are the AO3 works counts for Dune, Star Wars, and Star Trek, all sci-fi classics that also have new additions to their respective franchises.

Especially given how Star Wars itself draws heavy inspiration from Dune, I just find the differences in these numbers interesting! And I feel the same! SW does appeal to me a lot more than the bloodline obsession/freaky eugenics/religious manipulation themes of Dune, which also exists in SW but far less.

(Also, while I really loved Chani in the new film, I definitely personally did not feel any shipping sparks between her and Paul, I just wanted her to get away. The guy does NOT deserve her in any way. (then again, I also felt no shipping sparks between Padmé and Anakin, so this could just be a me thing…))

This also reminds me of how the James Cameron Avatar films are a huge fandom flop, despite the budget and blockbustery fanfare they got.

To be clear, I don't necessary think media needs to spark fandom creativity in order to be good or worthwhile, and there's plenty of stuff I enjoy without feeling the need to create, so this isn't meant to be a criticism per se.

But I was just contemplating about different media and themes that inspire me and makes me want to engage in a community, versus stuff that doesn't.

If you have any thoughts, feel free to share!

Will you trust him?

Character by @friendly-neighborhood-furry :3

Version without the text

I find comparing Flynn to Penders just asilly. Don't get me wrong Flymm fumbled the bag quite a lot. But his megaman and transformers work was just okay not terrible And Flynn does an okay job with classic Sonic. Penders doesn't have a thing that could be considered decent. His original works sucks ass, ever tried reading The Lost Ones? That and the Penders claims he's the one who saved Sonic from losing popularity And just now traces art from actual good artist.

From what I know of Penders, you're right that he's still on a lower level than Flynn: dude genuinely comes off as a sleaze. But I personally don't care about comparing them, aside from the fact that I want to be as ignorant of Archie as possible, because Penders is no longer relevant while Flynn very much is.

Whether Penders is an absolute travesty of a writer or not honestly doesn't concern me. He's the laughingstock of the fandom. He's notorious even outside of the Sonic circle. He's been reduced to promote his original artwork still featuring his monsters pretending to be echidnas. Flynn is the one who gained so much popularity in the fandom that his hands are now in every single Sonic related product except the movies, so he's the writer I'm forced to judge. I wish I wasn't, but I'm not kidding when I say he is literally everywhere, and hyped to high heavens.

Those were the big things, but I--OH MY GOD WAIT! Also, the way The Last Wish very plainly but not obnoxiously talked about toxic masculinity and how it’s good and okay to be vulnerable with other people and ask for help and be scared. Like! Oh My God!

HESITANT COVENANT

You've been waiting on your food at Femboy Hooters™️ for over a hour, but when u see your waiter pass by, he's looking...significantly rounder... than he did when he took your order...wdyd?

Don't worry about posting, just draw whatever you want.

If you can't think of something to draw, practice some skill you want to get better at (I like those posing sites with a timer, like reference.sketchdaily.net, but that's because I still struggle with bodies in perspective) or just draw your favorite character.

I love your art, but it's yours and you should have fun 💜

sobs and cries anon wtafdgjlh

whenever i’m thinking about reading a new nonfiction/history book, i always like to check the index to see if ronald reagan is mentioned in it.

i got this one today and he’s referenced NINE TIMES

me: a loveless aro

me: introduced to the End Poem of minecraft for the first time literally this week

me: and the universe said i love you because you are love *starts sobbing*

silly chara x self comic thing. um. because i love him (more keisuke. as well. bc he deserves it)

man.

something midosena never prepared me for was just how comfortable the train seats are

hmmm, always the artist, never the muse...

Alright, I'm gonna ask it. O Great Skulk Lord, what wisdom hath been released unto this world by way of the latest update of Mined Craft?

hehehe WELL first of all, since a not-insignificant part of my thesis here is "ha called it" i'm gonna go ahead and link to the two sculkposts i can find from back in december, here and here, bc even though they don't go into detail about echo shards i HAD already formed this theory at the time and you can sorta tell

so in the new update, which i just found out about today via an upload by mr. mumbo killsalot jumbo himself, players now have the ability to combine amethyst and sculk sensors to create *calibrated* sculk sensors capable of singling out and relaying redstone signals only in response to *specific* vibrations, as well as wirelessly relay those specific vibrations over long distances using amethyst blocks, which has probably a lot of cool implications for redstone that i cannot begin to understand.

in the context of the in-game lore, this strongly supports my already stated theory that sculk uses the impressions of souls it's consumed to calibrate itself, likely because sentient creatures (players) are the only things either dangerous enough or nutritious enough to actually be worth the energy to hunt.

but an extension of this theory which i didn't go into on here is that since naturally generated sculk as an organism is capable of tracking the sound a specific soul makes, and more importantly storing impressions of dead ones for comparison, it makes complete sense that it would be a key componenent in crafting the recovery compass, hence the echo shards.

the only problem is, you can't pick up sculk to use as a crafting ingredient without 'killing' it. even silk-touch harvested sculk is damaged; harvested shriekers or even shriekers generated by feeding a harvested catalyst can't summon the warden (they look different too, the souls inside are dimmer and spin the other way). my theory is and was that echo shards are a fusion of sculk and something to amplify/preserve its ability to 'remember' what souls sound like. amethyst shards seemed like the obvious choice, both because of the name and because minecraft amethyst is sorta the designated Sound Mineral, plus all the amethyst shards in ancient city loot chests.

on a morbid but relevant note, i think the shriekers sound like that for an in-universe reason, and it's the reason the recovery compass points not just to other players but specifically to your most recent death: sculk probably 'records' only the information it finds important about the things it eats and it doesn't eat the living, so the impressions it has stored of previous souls were recorded at the moment they died. the shriekers are just playing back audio. or possibly forcing the souls trapped inside to relive their deaths over and over. depends on how much of a soul it keeps around after it's done eating it

basically what i think, and i think the update strongly supports this, is that disconnecting sculk from its Sculk Colony messes with its ability to record and relay specific signals. amethyst, due to way it interacts with sound, can partially compensate for this, and this is likely a key mechanism behind how echo shards work. sculk sensors, which are simpler and more durable than the other sculk blocks, are also the easiest to work with, which is why calibrated sensors are possible to craft but echo shards (which have properties of both shriekers and catalysts) are not

can gabe saporta just stop talking please

actually reading the fic has been kinda interesting because there's a separatist party plot thread, and while the flavour of the separatism is much more 'England leaving the EU' than 'national identity that's literally getting killed because centralism', it still has some national identity undertones (that sure are being used as a political weapon for the us vs them but still they are there)

and also !!!! the author pretty much said they focused on the political events of recent years pre fic more than any actual history for the whole modern au (which. super fair of them) but !!!!!!! my guy history is like. a big chunk of why people wanna leave usually. and the language aspect !!!!!!! it could be explored so much more (also a big part of nationalism)

difficult to put into words but basically it's like sure (? but also... it just isn't like that ??? (and maybe that's the point that the whole separatism party is more for personal ego than. an actual feeling ????)

idk