Before You Date Someone, Consider The Following: Would You Want Them In Your Party In A Jrpg?

@khepri-sunscale and I wanted to get started on Au Ra August early and put together a prompt list just in case! Feel free to use if you feel inspired!

in the latest cyber-news: the internet archive has lost their case against 4 major publishing houses (verge article). they’re going to appeal, but this is still a bad outcome. the fate of the internet is currently hanging in the balance because 4 multibillionare publishing groups missed out on like $15 of combined revenue during the pandemic because of the archive’s online library service. it’s so fucking stupid.

for those who don’t know what the internet archive is, it’s a virtual library full of media. books, magazines, recordings, visuals, flash games, websites - a lot of these things either don’t exist anymore or cannot be found & bought. heard of the wayback machine? that’s part of the internet archive. it is the most important website to exist, and i don’t say that lightly. if the internet archive goes down, the cultural loss will be immeasurable.

so how can you help?

boycott the publishing companies involved in this. they’re absolute ghouls, frankly, and don’t deserve a penny. the companies involved are harpercollins (imprints), wiley (imprints), penguin random house llc (imprints), and hachette book group (imprints). make sure the websites are set to your location as it may differ worldwide.

learn to torrent. download a torrent client (i recommend transmission), a vpn (i recommend protonvpn - sign up and choose the area that’s closest to your continent/country), and hit up /r/piracy on reddit for websites. with torrenting, you can get (almost) any media you want for free in high quality, with add-ons such as subtitles, and with no risks of loss. i would also recommend getting into the habit of watching stuff online for free. the less you can pay to a giant corporation, the better.

get into the habit of downloading and archiving materials. find a TB external hard drive, ideally the higher the better. it’ll probably cost around $60 for 1TB and continue to go up, but they’re so so useful. if you can’t afford a drive, look for any GB harddrives or memory sticks you have lying around and just fill them up. videos, pdfs, magazines, songs, movies, games - anything you can rip and download and fit on there, do it, because nothing is permanent.

donate to the internet archive. this is the most important option on the list. the IA relies entirely on funding, and it’s going to need more to fight this case. whatever you can donate, do it. i promise it’s helpful.

and finally…

Saw Spiderverse earlier and can’t stop thinking about it. I understand now.

(I sometimes just drop art here and run, but I’m lurking to read the tags! Would also like to apologize to new followers because I’m still getting an insane amount of spam bots!)

you may think you're a poser for spending your life struggling to imitate cool people you knew once in the hopes that the amalgamation of every funny quip and slice of good taste you've ever picked up from someone else will make you a millionth as cool and likeable as them, but really they're doing the same, and the people they're imitating are too. this chain goes on and on until it eventually ends at shadow the hedgehog

I’ve asked a few other places already and mentioned it in Twitter circles, but I figure asking here as well can’t hurt - I’ve been pretty much just studying faces for two months and it’s not going great!

I suspect that it’s an issue with vision / “perceiving” the 3D forms, rather than a lack of technical knowledge, but does anyone have ideas for what to do while I wait for the optometrist to call me back?

I did go back to doing very basic fundamentals / 3D shapes, but it didn’t really help. Google is only giving me “how to draw the other eye” tutorials, articles about Rembrandt, and aphantasia resources (none of which are it).

Also, I’m leaving my PJM art and memes up for now, but I’m distancing myself given recent events. I may archive them in the future, but I’m not quite sure for right now.

[oc] the tower

Hey if you’re new or returning to tumblr, a reminder for you on why the tags are great, from an artist’s perspective. You can reblog something and not only put it in neat boxes of “fandoms”, “characters”, “type of media” or whatever other way of categorizing you prefer on your blog, but also type whatever nonsense you feel like saying about that particular post, without sending a direct ping to op. If the op wants they check their activity for those sweet tags, and if they’re me, you make their day by leaving comments that way. Just felt like reminding since there’s a lot of new people and not a lot of those comments lately ;w;