velvetsunset

(crossposted from tumblr, tags included.)

on the Fire Emblem series' general trend towards marrying as a gameplay gimmick, at least beyond the "yeay"/"nay" polarization.

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it's fascinating reflecting back on my art situation and seeing how much has improved since 2020.

not even stylistically, i'm actually mostly thinking of project management and general peace of mind.

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crossposted fire emblem selfship meta from tumblr, see this post for context if none of those words mean anything to ya.

( i'm trying to be better about keeping everything-over-one-paragraph-i-write here. :P )

watching 'hackers' may have been a bad influence because i've spent the last three days on an unexpected clothes shopping spree that can only be described as 'krad will shortly look like an fashionable extra in cyberdelia'

(to be fair i haven't brought new clothes in uh. 5-10 years??? ;D;;; it's been a while. and it'll be a good time to rotate out of the same 3 tshirts i wear all the time.)

that plus some recent furniture window shopping for my office... it's nice to actually want stuff again, with the full intent of making it happen within a year. <3

helicoprion had a fun 'mini paragraph per book read' style of book reviews that rules and therefore I shall yoink shamelessly, but at least with credit. :P

I was sharing my list of books read/media seen with my doujin group this past weekend; while it's clocking at ~71 (out of 75) right now, I won't review them all, just the ones I remember my reaction to some degree, or haven't already reviewed. Will try to do this more regularly, maybe on a quarterly basis.

Close to the Machine  -  Ellen Ullman (Book)
DNF. This might be the first time I've read a book by a hacker talking about suits/middle managers and actually was a little weirded out at the condescending tone towards them. There are some horrible (both horrible people and horrible-at-their-job) managers out there, to be fair; but Ellen was specifically using "lack of curiosity" as a derogatory statement towards another VP and I thought it was a little, um ... myopic? hypocritical? when she wasn't even curious at the subtle art of people politicking at that level, especially when there was no stated reciprocal animosity. I think there's some unprocessed baggage there and I'd rather read a book about somebody talking about what they like versus hate.

Japanese Swordsmanship: Technique and Practice - Donn F. Draeger (Book)
I was brushing up on this topic for a doujin strip I'm doing right now and this is one of those "nicely covers the entire topic from a lot of different angles with lots of pictures although I'm sure the actual experts would probably argue about some details" tomes. :P It did what it needed to do, basically give me a few insights as to the history, some various body language pointers of how the blade's positioned while they sat, stood, slept, etc - and at least one brief layer of "why" beyond that.

Sekiro - Fromsoftware (Game)
DNF. A buddy of mine really loves Sekiro and I promise i gave it a try for the cute weathered bishies. :P But man, mastering the parrying system is a clear make-or-break moment for the game with absolutely no gameplay alternative (running away, sneaking, using arrows, magic, etc), and I was finding myself swiftly frustrated and resolving to stick to Elden Ring.

Trickster Makes This World  -  Lewis Hyde (Book)
Did I actually review Trickster? I know I quoted it here a few times. Very close to being my top favorite book of the year, if not outright the favorite, at least for nonfiction. I'd describe it loosely as myth-anthropology; the Trickster archetype is a real common one across the globe and one thing I really appreciated is even if the author had a Western background, there was a huge genuine respect towards Old Woo and any culture he interacted with; didn't feel exoticized at all. "The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell book-lovers would love this one.

Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader - Owlcat Games (Game)
Fire Emblem nerds should definitely try out RT because the strategy loop is also downright addictive here and it's not too far off from the general RPG premise of slowly accumulating your team, and learning about your allies (question mark?) before getting whammo'd by some worldbuilding twists. Good chunks of it remind me of Mass Effect 2 in tone; a little pulpy-dark, with some allies that outright hate each other in a cool 'oh y'all have your claws, nice :D' sense. Still malding that I "missed" the romance ending (....Henrix........I'm a basic bitch :P)  I was hoping to get after dumping a fair amount of effort into it, so if you're only playing it once want a real specific ending, definitely look up guides.

Bisexual Married Men - Robert Brooks Cohen (Book)
Like "Swordsmanship", another one of those for research reads, though I was talking with the doujin gang a while back about how I was surprised there's not more nonfiction out there on bisexual men in comparison to other queer communities. There's some nuanced (and sad) reasons on why that's the case; a lot of it having to do with the invisible isolation of being rejected by both gay & straight social support circles. The structure of the book was ~10 or so personal interviews the author did of bisexual married men (mostly Western-based, though he did pretty good with the variety of demographics within that), and it was fascinating seeing some patterns occur (a mix of happy marriages but a lingering slight tension with trust especially if the other person was insecure, and wondering if they "settled down" too quickly.

No strong feelings about this one, but still glad I read it for research and first-hand accounts.

A Stepmother's Marchen - ORKA (Manga)
I kinda did a mini review in an earlier post & a liveblog on tumblr, but to recap so it doesn't get buried: like crorrin's hentai manga short stories, ASM is the story that convinced me that webtoons as a genre can be legitimately art, versus shovelware. put simply it's about a stepmother who somehow time travels back to the time right after her husband (head of the house in a vaguely medieval-vatican world) died, and she's able to fix her mistakes in slowly endearing his family to her. the way the story handled issues like grooming, domestic abuse of spouses, incest, flawed people trying to genuinely do better for each other, women being schemers and loving people at the same time.... i have not been that impressed in a very long time. lots of it reminded me of the highs of Utena and of Kuroshitsuji; that kind of old gritty manga while being absurdly gorgeous. some of ASM's panels look like it could be animated by the same studio that did violet evergarden.

Only Lovers Left Alive - Jim Jarmusch (Movie)
So, so so so so so good <3 <3 <3 grinning and very tempted to rewatch it for like, the third time just by THINKING of this; I'm starting to realize I watch movies almost solely for actor/character chemistry (doesn't have to be romantic) and while there's other parts of the film to adore (it LOOKS real and like a pre-2002 movie!!!) banger soundtrack, deceptively clever if chill take on vampires, a fun mix of a drama/comedy/established romance film where the romance feels genuine - but the very unique chemistry genuinely grabbed me by the throat. (It's not quote unquote "femdom"" or overtly kinky but kinky folks will feel at home here tbh.) Also possibly the one film that made me go 'oh that's why everyone was obsessed with Tom Hiddleston.'. I didn't even like the dude lol, but damn he can act even though Tilda Swinton / Eve actually outshone him imo.

it's not funny, but it is a little funny how some adults turn into actual children when they're the ones who have to be taken care of, lol.

my mom had to get stitches after slicing the web of muscle/skin between the thumb and pointer finger (it's been a weird hospital-for-other-people-full thanksgiving) and ohhh my goooood. ay yi yi she's so stubborn. we can pin most of that on being a surgeon's daughter. :P

[stares at the open wound] 'can we take you to the ER now?'
'[petulantly] no. >:('
'would you go tomorrow if i scheduled an appointment and it still hurts?' (duh)
'..........maybe.'

and

[sees her about to cut a pizza/hold scissors/etc IN THE BAD HAND with a determined look and gently takes the device] 'mom let me do that for you.'

etc.

she's earned the nickname of the 'honey badger' for being very protective; very generous, but oh my god when she gets stubborn about something especially Being Well. you know that old joke about farmers refusing to go to the hospital unless they're on death's literal doorstep? yeah. one of those cases.

I know I already did this for November, consider this a freebie since I didn't do these over the summer. :)

* instagram's been impossible to view for those without an account for ages, but imginn.com seems to be doing the trick! not RSS-able, but good to bookmark for the handful of artists only on there. in addition to xcancel that I've mentioned in an earlier roundup, twstalker is another "view twitter without an account" wrapper; the latter lets you see who people follow which is useful when finding new artists/animators, but the former has a better media tab.

* "good places to find photo references (and more) without AI" - not just photo resources, but modeling, film screencaps, clothing, etc! I even found a really cool RSS-able film screencap archive that I didn't know about from there. was awesome seeing the list made by another dreamwidth user :D

* a different kind of cult intervention - fascinating article on a more subtle kind of cult intervention; personally resonated with this because it mirrors how I approach deradicalization in general.

* "Like That" - a good blog post that resonated, on why it feels easier to watch some movies than others.

* xkcd.com/3172

* interesting postmortem on a korean fellow who DM'd a presidential candidate and built his campaign; was fun to read for what it is and also culturally; there's some further links to follow up on.

* hackers (1995) soundtrack - a great EBM/techno blast from the past from that era

* 74 pdf scans of gay/leather mag Honcho on archive.org!