And there you have it. This kind of thing (multiplied many times over) is why the WGA is striking. :/
The article to which it refers (for a more in-depth read) is here.
uh so i never do this but maui is quite literally on fire and there isn't nearly enough care or consideration for. you know. Native Hawaiians who live here being displaced and the land (and cultural relevance) that's being eaten up by the fire. so if ya'll wanna help, here's some links:
maui food bank: https://mauifoodbank.org/
maui humane society: https://www.mauihumanesociety.org/
center for native hawaiian advancement: https://www.memberplanet.com/campaign/cnhamembers/kakoomaui
hawai'i red cross: https://www.redcross.org/local/hawaii/ways-to-donate.html
please reblog and spread the word if you can't donate.
All 15 issues of The Nib magazine are available to download for free. 1,600 pages of comics.
a king is drowning in piss. can you match 3 hard enough to save his wretched live
My guess?
#there was a coup
#new leadership is just as inept as the old leadership, but maybe more bloodthirsty
#however, for political reasons, the villain is the acting regent. New heir is probably a four-year-old nephew being raised in obscurity. The king, it is heavily implied, is ailing mentally, but everyone is holding out hope for his recovery
#the king has been essentially immured in one wing of the castle, with but one servant and without a way to escape. Food is delivered daily through an elaborate pulley system
#it would be bad form to poison him, but if he were accidentally felled by the dragon living in a pit trap that, uh, he obviously ordered built during one of his "spells" and wasn't constructed like three weeks ago by a suspicious alchemist and a bunch of servants who were never seen again because they've been "transferred to staff the hunting lodge," well, that's tragic but not unexpected
#oops
Flash Fiction February - Collected (Better Late Than Never)
I have finally edited and collected faves (both mine and those of folks on Patreon/Comradery) from Flash Fiction February 2023 and they’re available as a collection on Itch.io. Ten stories! For a dollar! That’s… ten cents a story? That seems like Not A Bad Deal. Just click this handy link to get ‘em get 'em Ten flash fiction pieces collected together with illustrations for each. There’s the gentle everyday,
After Michele went to bed, it was Ruby’s time… Just as Michele had his impenetrable little rituals, so did Ruby have a method for how she began her nights.
a smidgen of sci-fi,
The worst thing about probably falling for eternity is that she remembered an incredibly mediocre short story she’d read once. Before she’d remembered the story, her main concern had been what her options were going to be if she needed to go to the bathroom.
and even a little lightly monstrous.
Death cupped her hands around the steaming mug of tea and looked at her daughter. “I know you hate conversations like this.”
This 5k+ word flash fiction collection is available as epub and pdf files.
#goforthandread
My flash piece "You Must be Looking for the Manual" will be part of Strange Machines: An Anthology of Dark User Manuals, forthcoming from Apex Books.
It's a small homage to Hayao Miyazaki.
I'm looking forward to seeing the other cryptic and ominous instructions left lying around apparently unguarded.
ALT
don’t forget during the WGA strike that animation is not covered under the WGA deals and as a result animation has gotten the shortest possible end of the stick in under-staffing, under-paying, and generally turning the field into gig employment.
please sign the petition here for Disney to recognize animation production workers as a union and reblog this post!
It's time for the story (Fox Curio's Floating Bookstore) to open.
Each season in the game is set up with its own calendar depicting holidays and the full moon (and a season heading image drawn by Linnea Starte); a weather chart (you shuffle and draw from a deck of playing cards to determine the weather); and tables of daily tasks, books sold and earnings, which you determine by rolling a D20 or a D6, depending. It's an easy system. At the end of the day, you have the option to encounter more customers, the number determined by you rolling a D20. 1-10, you don't have any extra customers, 11-15, you have one, etc.
Each town, likewise, has special features: characters who live there, shops where you can buy things, and each town has a book or two that is only printed there.
I reproduced the text describing Bloom on the verso page here, and did a free-hand imitation of Sterte's beautiful season header. Green-black diamante ink in my LAMY safari pen, I think the medium nib.
Text of the recto page is reproduced in the image description.
#solorpg #playthrough
My character is Luster Greenwillow. I've never thought about drawing pants on otters before, and it turns out that it's difficult.
Anyway, Luster is taking over the bookshop owned by Uncle Revere, who is retiring to a cottage in the middle of Rueberry, not too far from the docks. Luster's committed to a great deal of ambiguity about setting out on a new trade, but after failing at pottery and some other occupations, this seems like something suited to their disposition. #foxcuriofloatingbookshop #solorpg
Every pride, you must reblog this. No exceptions
I love that four different people on my feed scheduled this joyous person to reblog by 8am on June 1. I look forward to seeing this a dozen more times today.
I've started playing Fox Curio's Floating Bookshop, which you can pick up on itch.io: https://lostwaysclub.itch.io/floating-bookshop
As per my usual, I'll show off spreads that I really enjoyed working on. This includes ones with random stickers, because I have to justify my extensive sticker collection (my childhood, vindicated) by showing it to the world, right? (No.)
Hey all! I’m the lead artist on a new high-fantasy mecha-pilot ttrpg called Aether Nexus! It launched on Kickstarter yesterday, and just hit its initial funding goal. Check it out if this sort of thing sounds like your jam.
I’m hoping we can hit some of those stretch goals, so I can draw things like A Very Edgelord Mecha and A Mushroom with a Gun.
I... need... more... floating cities...
Today I went out at low tide to poke around rocks and in the shallow pools on the beach, where I befriended this nudibranch (for the variety of friendship that means "hang out nearby and watch clams spit while seaweed rises and falls in the slow waves just past my reach"). I've never seen one in a shallow pool before.
Today I also learned that you can sunburn the tops of your feet if you aren't careful. Oops.
I'm still working my mind around markers as a medium. These are brush tip/conventional broad tip markers, so they don't have the delicacy of the brushes and pens I'm used to. It makes me feel like I've lost a lot of fine motor control, and maybe I'm back to clenching a crayon in my fist again. Working with them probably means finding bigger sheets of paper.
(I also need to work on my blending: how do people get smoothly shaded backgrounds? How?)
I really love this piece. It's the ultimate quest map.
Everyone saw Train to Busan before me, but I need the internet to know that I am here for Korean zombie shows in a way I will never be for American zombie shows. American directors shamble around their architectural critiques of capitalism; Korean directors just say, "Let's have the four-year-old call out financial trading. You suck, daddy."
Also, life goal: be Ma Dong-seok's character when I grow up.
My other favorite is Kingdom. Most shows overlook historical costuming when they design their zombie set, but this story is just as much costume as it is running and screaming and trying to avoid being bitten.
Goodreads giveaway for Translation State! It's probably US only, I haven't checked.
So a large cat, a rat, a spider and a hummingbird stroll into town...
I ran The Witch is Dead a bit ago, and it was a delightful success. My players did it: they found the killer's corpse, retrieved the eyes, and revived their witch. Which I'd initially meant to leave as a cliffhanger, but they successfully evaded chase by an enormous spectral owl that bled floating ichor, so they deserved something.
My first post about this, I noted that I was planning a little more than the game rules called for. I drew two maps, as you can see: the witchwood and the nameless town where this adorable crew of woodland animals went on a rampage.
They were mobbed by chickens. Baffled by a goat that walked on its hind legs. Helped by a pair of not-very-bright pigeons. Menaced by a little girl who wanted to have a tea party.
Rules changes
- Instead of going with the pre-established stats, I gave everyone six points to drop into whatever they wanted; they just had to make an argument for how it was justified. This was driven in part because I was morally outraged by the idea that an owl would have a higher understanding of humans than a domesticated animal like a dog or cat.
2. I had some opposing rolls, all GM discretion, for some challenges.
3. I introduced the ability for everyone to communicate, mostly because I didn't have the bandwidth to pantomime. The ability was caused by the witch's magic, which was environmental and would have faded over time with her death.
Story
I went with "there is a rival witch" but added a twist: the old witch-hunter in town had a detente with our witch, but he had been killed and possessed by the interloper, who specializes in summonings. So the tracks back into town belonged to his corpse. A new witch-hunter had arrived in town and was just setting up, confusing the trail. A very concerned priest was skulking around trying to figure out why the deceased witch-hunter had fresh blood on him.
The rival witch is, primarily, a necromancer and negotiator with spirits, while OUR beautiful, dead witch (with her nails that could pierce a dragon's heart! Her legs like treetrunks! Her hair like a cloud of brambles!) was concerned mostly with the living heart of the forest. So although our intrepid band of tiny, scurrying creatures evaded a direct confrontation with her, she sicced a spirit owl on them.
It worked really well. Players were engaged, delighted, and challenged, and it was easy enough to bluff when I needed to. I don't have much experience running sessions and it was a good system for the bandwidth I have had lately.
What did I do this weekend? Oh, you know, I suspended an axolotl from my wall, as one does, so some day no doubt it will suddenly drop from the ceiling and shock the unsuspecting.