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Nightlife In A Cloak Of Feathers

@jackdaw-kraai

Hello and Welcome! My name is Jackdaw Kraai, Kraai if you're feeling particularly formal, Jack if you're not. Use pronouns as you wish, though I like to stick to the classic he/him, they/them. I'm the writer of the Guides Verse as well, and always welcome asks about it!
Unless specifically stated otherwise, I do not participate in ask games, @ games, or reblog fundraisers on request.
Icon by @eldritchjackalope

For everyone looking for more things related to me and my creations, I present to you: The Short List.

The Guides Discord Server, where you can join up with other fans and discuss all manner of things, as well as talk to me, and be privy to a whole host of behind-the-scenes stuff! Said stuff includes snippet previews from upcoming works, me rambling about lore and answering questions, and general tomfoolery.

The Guides Audiobooks, as recorded by Sam Gabriel. Do you ever just don’t feel like reading, but you still want to enjoy the Guides? Do you know someone who might like the Guides but isn’t interested in reading all those fucking words? Then this is the thing for you. Professional recordings by a professional voice actor, edited and with special effects and all. New recording sessions happen every Thursday in the discord server at roughly 6 PM UTC+1.

The Guides TvTropes Page, where fans work hard to index every bit of the series as best as possible. Check it out for a fun time, and join in if you feel like it! It’s a pride and joy of mine, even though I stay out of the actual work on the page as author.

My Patreon Page, where I post tons of extra lore articles, Karilaa dictionary entries, ramblings on world and narrative building, detailed descriptions of original characters, deep lore on the various deities, a rotating set of merchandise designs that come with every patron tier, and much, much more! Check it out if you’re interested in something like that, and even if you aren't, the tier descriptions are themselves a fragmented story of one of Lukkesh's many, many adventures as Keshiro.

My Kofi Page, where you can support me monetarily. Nothing is obligated and everything is voluntary, but with the time, effort, and heart that goes into producing stuff for you guys it’s nice to sometimes find a tip in the ol’ tip jar. 

If you want to send me stuff, I have a PO box as well. Feel free to DM me for the address, as well as the rules I put in place to ensure that packages reach their intended destination.

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Hey. Why isn’t the moon landing a national holiday in the US. Isn’t that fucked up? Does anyone else think that’s absurd?

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It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!

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It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.

Hey. Hey. Tumblr. Ides of March ppl. We can do this

Happy Moond Landing Day!

I HAVE A MASSIVE NEED FOR A NASA SYLE LOGO FOR THE "KOROK SPACE PROGRAM" THAT HAS A STRESSED BACKPACKED KOROK BEING LAUNCHED INTO ORBIT ON IT BUT I AM TOO SHIT AT DRAWING TO DO IT

Oh hey, I already have you covered! Sorry to my mutuals for double posting this but I am very proud of this HASA logo.

This is available on my Redbubble as a sticker or a magnet!

Zelda Heritage Post

A note to all creatives:

Right now, you have to be a team player. You cannot complain about AI being used to fuck over your industry and then turn around and use it on somebody else’s industry.

No AI book covers. No making funny little videos using deepfakes to make an actor say stuff they never did. No AI translation of your book. No AI audiobooks. No AI generated moodboards or fancasts or any of that shit. No feeding someone else’s unfinished work into Chat GPT “because you just want to know how it ends*” (what the fuck is wrong with you?). No playing around with AI generated 3D assets you can’t ascertain the origin of. None of it. And stop using AI filters on your selfies or ESPECIALLY using AI on somebody else’s photo or artwork.

We are at a crossroad and at a time of historically shitty conditions for working artists across ALL creative fields, and we gotta stick together. And you know what? Not only is standing up for other artists against exploitation and theft the morally correct thing to do, it’s also the professionally smartest thing to do, too. Because the corporations will fuck you over too, and then they do it’s your peers that will hold you up. And we have a long memory.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking “your peers” are only the people in your own industry. Writers can’t succeed without artists, editors, translators, etc making their books a reality. Illustrators depend on writers and editors for work. Video creators co-exist with voice actors and animators and people who do 3D rendering etc. If you piss off everyone else but the ones who do the exact same job you do, congratulations! You’ve just sunk your career.

Always remember: the artists who succeed in this career path, the ones who get hired or are sought after for commissions or collaboration, they aren’t the super talented “fuck you I got mine” types. They’re the one who show up to do the work and are easy to get along with.

And they especially are not scabs.

*that’s not even how it ends that’s a statistically likely and creatively boring way for it to end. Why would you even want to read that.

during the wga/sag-aftra strike, we may see:

  • film in other countries continuing as usual, but those actors/writers are NOT crossing picket lines! other countries unions often have rules where they can’t strike in solidarity with american unions.
  • new indie movies separate from hollywood studios. indie movies can continue as usual too, and may even use union actors if they follow certain guidelines and/or get permission from the union.
  • awards shows, although they might look different and may be postponed. if there are award shows during the strike, there’s a chance they will just be live conferences announcing winners with no celebrations attached.
  • celebrities will not be promoting their work during this time— that WOULD be crossing the picket line! yes, this includes social media. they can still post on social media, as long as it doesn’t pertain to their work.
  • a lot more reality tv. this happened the last time there was a writers strike, and it will certainly happen again.
  • actors will also not be able to campaign for awards. this awards season is going to be a strange one.
  • propaganda from hollywood. they are already trying to flip the narrative by claiming they can break the unions, but they can’t. the strikers have the power. stand with them for however long this takes!

kill the shift manager in your brain

you are not wasting time you are vibing. you are not being unproductive you are literally chilling. make a grill cheese with cheddar cheese and slather a piece of the bread with some honey and maybe you'll relax

Innes Keeper's Formula For Fantastic Grilled Cheeses (for nearly no extra spoons!)

Are you hungry? Do you have a hankering for grilled cheese sandwiches like, way more than a normal person maybe? Great news! I am about to give you the secret knowledge I stole, like Prometheus himself, from the Akashic Records—to bring back to Prudencia! And I’m even doing it without a ten hour long lecture about how the Akashic Records makes me think of idfk, 9/11, and how that relates to sandwiches.

I will, however, briefly say this: You gotta trust me when I say cooking grilled cheeses via this formula WILL grant you Bloodborne Insight. There is no fucking reason that making a grilled cheese this fucking delicious should be this fucking easy. I feel like I’m cheating God every time I do it because it takes (nearly) no extra spoons. And here’s where I show you why.

Scientifically Proven Perfect Extremely Easy Grilled Cheese

INGREDIENTS — SEASONINGS -butter, i usually use 2 or 3 tablespoons per sandwich -garlic cloves, I use 3 usually -a source of heat, like red pepper flakes, or szechuan peppers -a source of spice OR a source of sweetness, such as dijon mustard or honey. slather that motherfucker on a slice of your bread. -a source of herbiness, such as oregano, thyme, sage, rosemary, etc in any combination that goes well together or on its own. if someone tries to tell you that you need it fresh, they’re fucking lying, the 2$ crushed powdered sage is fucking great. experiment with other spices such as ground turmeric if you're spicy

INGREDIENTS - THE METAPHORICAL MEAT OF THE SANDWICH -two slices of bread per sandwich. this is actually a massive influence on your sandwich taste and texture as a whole. a basic white or wheat will still be fucking delicious because like I said, I stole this from the Akashic Records cookbook section and found it under “fucking perfect grilled cheeses forever”. However, if you CAN—getting bread like brioche, texas toast, brown bread, rye, or sourdough will make a sandwich already being elevated super easily to “pay 23 dollars at a fancy restaurant” level of elevation.

-one to three types of cheese per sandwich. you can get away with one type but really try for two or three if you can swing it. this is also one of those massive influences over the sandwich—listen, i know, that’s obvious, but stay with me—what matters isn’t the SPECIES of cheese, it’s the TYPE of cheese. getting the deli at your local Safeway or Walmart or whatever and asking for the cheese they gotta cut (or just in general the fancier, better-quality cheeses) is literally the only major requirement that I ask of you. If you are on SNAP/EBT programs, me too, and I promise you: Please do this. Please trust me when I say do not get the cheap Kraft-type cheese because it’s less money. I know it’s a bit extra but it’s only a bit to get like 1/4 or 1/3lb and you have no idea how much I’m actually getting a little emotional about this, because the “rice with butter and beans or top ramen every single day” life is soulsucking and sickening and it is genuinely one of the greatest sources of suffering to human beings I can imagine, I’m serious. Following this formula will genuinely change your life/mental health just a bit because you know that you have one meal that is super delicious, super filling, pretty damn cheap when it comes to how much you get, and super easy to make on days where the idea of doing more than just 15 minutes MAX is gonna make you wanna die.

super sorry for that paragraph btw i just really cannot overstate how this is a lifechanger especially when youre poor/low spoons/depressed. delicious food makes me not be as depressed. this is that.

METHOD

  1. Take garlic cloves and crush them either with the meat of your palm or the flat of a knife or literally anything that would crush good. Take bread slices and put a source of spice or sweetness if you are using one. take a pan and put it on the stove on low-medium heat (aka a 2 out of 10).
  2. Place the butter in the pan, as well as the garlic cloves, the source of heat, and the source of herbiness. Congratulations you have now literally done ALL the extra effort that you need to make a grilled cheese like this. That’s it. No extra dishes. No fussing with amounts or chopping or whatever. That’s it.
  3. The butter will melt in the pan and soak up the delicious ingredients that you also put into the pan. Take each slice of bread and place it in the pan to butter it, OR just take one slice, place the cheese on it, and then put the other bread on. It’s really just a matter of extra effort.
  4. When the bread is in the pan, turn it up to medium heat (5 out of 10) and just sorta let it sit for a bit. When you can see the cheese start to get visibly melty—or when you vibecheck it—flip it once and just do the same thing.
  5. When you’ve grilled your cheese on both sides, take it out of the pan and put it on a plate (or just a paper towel to save on dish spoons. btw paper plates and plastic utensils are a fucking godsend if you hate dishes and/or can’t do them very easily/takes a lot of effort.)

That’s literally it. I really hope this helps.

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outta my way gayboy im making this sandwich

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oh. oh my god. holy fuck. what. how. why. this is delicious. i kinda burned my bread and my cheese didnt melt all the way but it's still the best thing ive ever tasted?????

oh my god. this is so fucking good. the butter melting and absorbing the spices and herbs already smelled amazing, but then i threw the bread on and it started smelling EVEN BETTER. then i took a bite. holy FUCK this is better than sex. i legitimately believe that Innes Keeper stole this shit from Prometheus, there's no other way to explain why this is so easy to make, yet so FUCKING good, other than cheating a god.

I didn't steal it from Prometheus he's my trophy husband!

ok me and my partner went back and made this. exact words upon eating were “we’ve cheated god” and “i feel like my world just got rocked” and then we were both energized to get back to drawing. proof:

please make innes keeper’s scientifically proven perfect extremely easy grilled cheese

I'M PUTTING THIS ON THE FRIDGE (WHERE I KEEP ALL MY CHEESE)

“the sea doesn’t care about you!!” ok well just because the ocean is unspeakably powerful and can’t stop the rhythm she’s held for uncountable eons just for one person doesn’t mean she can’t love you. loving and changing are two different things. we wouldn’t have life without the ocean…. and yeah, if you don’t respect her and treat her cavalierly, you’ll perish. but how can anyone say the sea doesn’t mourn when she holds so much life and beautiful secrets in her belly? why are we putting atheism on the ocean that loves us?

you want the ocean to change for YOU? you think that being tamed is the only way for her to prove her love??? go sit on a rock by the seaside and listen to the tide. find some gratitude for one of the only things in existence that always keeps its promise to come back

It’s already happening. Like guys I cannot emphasize this enough the studios are going to make content creators the deal of a lifetime because they have a void to fill and those content creators will then be on the do not work list for the rest of their professional lives.

Do not scab. Seriously, if anyone following this blog works in any kind of creative sector right now, and honestly in any kind of sector at all: do not scab. Never scab. No matter how tempting the offer is.

Even aside any moral and solidarity issues, it will ruin your career, because not only did you show your potential future colleagues that you are fundamentally not on the same side and that your principles do not extend to protecting or supporting them, which will be relevant, you've also shown corporations that you can be bought. There is a price on your principles, and they've just found it.

By all that's good and holy and just, even if that's true, even if you have no shame in having a monetary limit to your loyalty to a cause, organization, or people, (which... you should, you should have at least a little shame, but if you're already are at that point, I am pretty sure you're not available for debate, so far be it from me to comment) you do not want corporations to have that information. You absolutely don't.

Because they will hold that shit over your head forever.

Laika: 1954-1957

Opportunity Rover: 2004-2019

I THOUGHT I WAS DONE BEING HURT BY THIS BUT NOPE. I WAS WRONG.

the idea behind a grim (a big friendly ghost dog) is that because the first soul buried in a burial yard would be its guardian they would bury a Very Good Boy there first so a human wouldn’t be stuck at the gate so to speak. so in that way Laika is continuing an ancient tradition of a guardian spirit protecting the souls of everyone who passes after her.

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no

Anonymous asked:

au where stars are watching humans

 observer effect

i. stars get it wrong, of course–they assume too much phosphorus and not enough fear of death, pulsar instead of pulse. They leave out uncertainty, not knowing what it was above the subatomic level; the softer shades of melancholy and the gentler warmths. But they get the shape right, the brighthot of blood. They get that right too.

ii. all their metaphors are for burning, and they ascribe to soft tongues a taste for sulfur, fingers at the ends of spiral arms. They drink liquid helium from a cracked Dewar flask and wonder aloud if humanity is looking up, looking back.

(how cold they must be, the stars’ carbon cousins–wet and cold, and can humanity do arithmetic in parallax, do you think, counting parsecs between two stars in inexorable collision?

it’s called a kiss, cygnus X-1 says quietly. they call it a kiss.)

iii. they say when you feel your child’s protoplanetary disc first differentiate, you will cry tears of methane.

iv. it’s called the Kindling, when the faint sheen of protostellar mass catches alight, and burns with all the brightness of adulthood. Protostars of thirteen stand around bathroom mirrors, examining their helium layer for bright spots, looking for stray molecular clouds in their nail beds. All of them are in love with the astrophysics teacher, whose stellar wind sends flickers of light across the meteor fields.

late at night (but what is night to a star?) they trace the spiral arms of their evolving galaxies, and dream dry dreams of neutron star collisions hotter than blue hypergiants.

v. we are made of starstuff, says a man, craning his thread-slender neck, looking up into the abyss of wind and fire of the universe.

oh, breathes a star, squinting down at the infinitesimal speck of rock, turning and turning in the vastness of space. oh. 

we didn’t have a name for us, before.

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Hollywood Studios’ WGA Strike Endgame Is To Let Writers Go Broke Before Resuming Talks In Fall

Regardless of whether SAG-AFTRA goes on strike this week, the studios have no intention of sitting down with the Writers Guild for several more months.

“I think we’re in for a long strike, and they’re going to let it bleed out,said one industry veteran intimate with the POV of studio CEOs.

While some dismiss this as just “cynical strike talk,” studio and streamer sources around town confirm the strategy. They also confirm that the plan to grind down the guild has long been in the works for a labor cycle that all sides agree is a game-changer one way or another for Hollywood.

“It’s been agreed to for months, even before the WGA went out,” one executive said. “Nobody wanted a strike, but everybody knew this was make or break.”

Receiving positive feedback from Wall Street since the WGA went on strike May 2, Warner Bros Discovery, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Paramount and others have become determined to “break the WGA,” as one studio exec blatantly put it.

To do so, the studios and the AMPTP believe that by October most writers will be running out of money after five months on the picket lines and no work.

“The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” a studio executive told Deadline. Acknowledging the cold-as-ice approach, several other sources reiterated the statement. One insider called it “a cruel but necessary evil.”

The studios and streamers’ next think financially strapped writers would go to WGA leadership and demand they restart talks before what could be a very cold Christmas. In that context, the studios and streamers feel they would be in a position to dictate most of the terms of any possible deal.

this is why ongoing support for strike funds is super important — taking care of each other is the only way to prevent corporations from being able to starve out their workers to force them to give in to unfair working conditions!

here's a link to donate to the entertainment community fund, which the WGA website says will assist all entertainment workers affected by the strike. if you've got spare cash, definitely consider donating!

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thanks for this addition!

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I watched the live with the CEO, here is the tl;dr

The good news:

  • Chronological dash is here to stay! Whether you have to toggle it weekly or new users default to “For you” was not elaborated on but at least that’s confirmed.
  • Custom themes are here to stay! Once again, may be buried for all I know but, for sure will remain an option.
  • Search updates are in the works!!!!

The neutral news:

  • Tumblr is seriously in the red financially and needs more support, Ad-free for example is not widely used
  • They would not comment on the suggestion to bring back NSFW behind a paywall (which we all know would get them a boatload of money)
  • They’re possibly going to add a donation system like Ao3 and Wikipedia.
  • They would “rather not” sell data to make up the costs
  • Most of staff are pre-2010 tumblr users including the CEO who joined in 2007, so they do actually use the site and have for a long time

The bad news:

  • Condensed reblogs/removing reblog chains is going forward. The reason cited was to meet “certain expectations” of users coming from other social media, which isn’t good.
  • Disability features (specifically turning off flashing ads for epileptics) was met with a request to purchase Ad-free

Overall it was more chill than I expected, @photomatt and @zingring seem to be far more in tune with the userbase than u/spez.

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Under the bad news column:

I did ask our ads team to investigate any kind of vibrancy or flashing on ads - we do not want to accidentally trigger seizures or cause distress with flashing etc. Buying ad-free (or gifting ad-free to someone else) is always an option, but that is not the solution (and of course, some folks simply can't afford it). Sorry that it sounded dismissive in the session! That was not my intent.

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Condensed reblogs/removing reblog chains is going forward.

Depending on how that looks/if it can be turned off, that could kill the site as surely as removing chronological following only feeds would...

We want reblogs, not rooted posts with comments under them. At that point you are just Facebook...

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If you can, just a reminder to throw some money at the sites you like and use. I have bought ad free ive bought the rainbow checks and I can't do much more than that but if you want this site to stay around in its current form you need to support it.

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When censoring information out of pictures, do NOT use the marker tool. Block it out with a full filled in square, or use a mosiac filter. Marker tools are not fully opaque and are slightly off from black, which makes it possible to alter the levels and reveal the information underneath.