This Unit Does Have A Soul

Blk//CisFemale//32//Bisexual/Queer//Artist//Los Angeleno Icon by Janis Joy

[nattousan]

ok so, I approached my local library with a proposal to donate a mural as a way to A: build portfolio/gain practical experience and B: give back to a beloved public institution. The director was very enthusiastic about it and i've been working on it since the beginning of March. Come with me as I endeavor to paint what is in all honesty an excessive amount of birds

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

and that was a whole week on it's own so next comes the paintin' >:)

[nattousan]

and now, the birds

Birds 1 and 2/14: Red Winged Blackbird, Male and female, Agelaius phoeniceus

[nattousan]

Bird 3/14, American Robin, Turdus migratorius

[nattousan]

hoo boy, ok *out of breath*

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

this guy took me about 4 days to completely finish, all of those freakingk coverts were a bear to render

[nattousan]

speaking of obnoxious coverts:

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

the friggin stripes almost got me chat, i may not make it

[nattousan]

Madam....

[nattousan]

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

pleasantly simple to paint! next is the flickerrrrr

[nattousan]

*melts into goo*

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

nothing but pain and suffering, i'm sure hope the next bird will be much easier and with FAR less barring :)

[nattousan]

in other news, I am losing my mind hairline

[nattousan]

SHE'S DONE!!

Bird number 9: Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on

this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏

[nattousan]

*does a little jig*

BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos

the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise

ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!

Also thank you everyone for your kind words and support throughout this whole process, it's been a genuine treat thinking there are potentially thousands of you out there cheering me on while I paint this 🥹

[nattousan]

aaaand another one bites the duck,

we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos

the 16th is looming in the distance so i'm trying to get thru these as quickly as i can so i can have as much time for the GBH as possible. i still need to do the names next to all of them so i've got about a week and a half to finish everything which is GREAT because i have adhd and nothing gets my ass in gear like a fuckin deadline, let me tell you

[nattousan]

power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,

the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis

and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day 😭😭) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.

Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp

[nattousan]

thanks for the reminder, kid

[nattousan]

at long last, we've reached the end...

Bird number 14 out of 14,

The Great blue heron, Ardea herodius

thank you to everyone who reached out or got excited about this project, it genuinely gave me the fuel i needed to keep going. In total, the 480+ total hrs it took me to cover this wall pales in comparison to how long its expected to spend on there, hopefully imparting a sense of beauty and love for the natural world to the next generation and here's hoping i'm only getting started with these.

i'll see y'all soon :')

[saintessinthegutter]

*sobbing* i love em

[krasnoarmeyets]

i bet it feels good as fuck to intend to do something and then actually do it

[sunshinebrightuponmypillow]

[s0ftpillow]

TIPPET!

tip jar

[thattrashbinoverthere]

Steven Universe designs for fun. Experimenting. Enjoy.🩷

[a-driftamongopenstars]

mass effect 2 is INSANE. you are a decorated soldier, special ops of the galaxy. you possess knowledge of the deadly future to come, no one believes you. you die. you die gruesomely. you are brought back to life by a terrorist organization you've been fighting against. you owe them your life. you use them. they use you. the future you knew would come is here. no one is safe.

is that still you, by the way? in that body? that died? is that still you? how do you know?

[shamebats]

Oh come on lady, you can't deny a man his gaycation

[shamebats]

You must surrender yourself mind, body and soul to the gaycation or be destroyed

[shamebats]

Someone on reddit already suggested a sapphibbatical

[the-haiku-bot]

Someone on reddit

already suggested a

sapphibbatical

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[mechanica1-hands]

how could you leave out the best part—the aquarium bit

[shamebats]

"become a fish" (gay)

[ladyananas]

men will jump through an entire circus' worth of hoops rather than admitting they're bi

[helpless--romantics]

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

The level of mental hoops that guy had to jump through to say to his wife, "No, honey! Of course I wouldn't be cheating on you! Sex during gaycations doesn't count!"

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

Holy fucking shit! It gets trippier!

I mean, I feel horrible for the OP and her SIL...but "surrender to the gaycation" made me laugh way more than I should have.

[emilynyaaa]

this is an insane story

[flickering-leaves]

“Some men never return”

Helpppppp 😭

[brightlotusmoon]

[harperhug]

Um…here’s the reddit link? I’m speechless.

[handageddon]

Don't worry honey, all the other men on gaycation aren't real people and they stop existing after. Hey, where's all the homophoboa coming from suddenly?

[mananabuffins]

That's the beauty of the gaycation!

[authoratmidnight]

It get wilder. I only found out about this b/c of a youtube video reading the Gaycation post but, this isn't even the first one.

7 years ago someone posted this-

And 5 years a different user posted this-

What is happening with these people??? What weird ass cult did they find??

[alexinatree]

Day 1 - 4

So, as some of you may know from other social media or my earlier post here, I have been fighting Pancreatic cancer for the last 18 months.

After 12 rounds of Folfirinox chemo, 4 weeks of daily Radiation + Gemcitabine and a Whipple procedure resulting in the total removal of my pancreas, as well as an affair ending my marriage of 21 years and having to deal with separation during all of this, I am finally starting to try and piece the life I have left ahead of me back together.

The plan is to try and post a now batch of doodles every day for 30 days. The idea here is to stop focusing on only posting a drawing if it is 'good' but to get back into the habit of drawing and sharing every day and stop being overly precious with what I am able to draw after over a year of working very little and life changing treatments.

The end game is to try and prepare myself for my return to the animation industry in July, and also get back to producing my own work and stories for the first time in nearly a decade.

The major snag here is that my contributions to my disability fund have been exhausted as of 2 weeks ago, and my work start date got pushed back from the start of June to the end of July, making a 2 week gap in pay into a nearly 8 weeks period with zero income.

As anyone who has followed me over this last year and a bit will know, I feel deeply uncomfortable with asking for help and raising funds, but between my medical expenses, over a year of not working during aggressive treatment and my separation I find myself in a bit of a bind.

If anyone is willing to share my situation and pass the message around, I have extended my go-fund me from last year to cover the costs I have accrued over the last 18ish months as well as to fill the gap while I get my strength and fitness back up to the level it needs to be to start working again come July:

Donate to Support Alex’s Fight Against Pancreatic Cancer, organized by Michael Bills

Our friend, Alex, is facing one of the toughest battles of his life… Michael Bills needs your support for Support Alex’s Fight Against

Thanks for everything guys, and if you want to follow along with my health and whats going on a little more closely, I talk about it a lot more over on my instagram here:

https://www.instagram.com/ahouseinatree/

Cheers,

-Alex

[burnt-biscuit]

Not to be controversial, but I’m chronically broke, so I just wait for a mod to be released to the public before I get it; while only thinking about the modder again when they release the next thing, or a YouTube video or some fan content use said mod.

Tagging so people can block if they don’t want to see discourse.

I am subbed on the free tier to many mod creators for Sims 4, because I really like some particular styles that EA has never made or made very poorly, and there are modders who make things in those styles/a particular niche—always at a higher quality mind you (in my experience). I have never paid for a mod outright. I do think permanent or excessively long wait periods are shitty, but painting every modder as a mustache twirling greedy goblin Mr. Morebucks is actually buck wild. Mods aren’t—if the devs are on their game/able—necessary for playing games and no one is forcing you to use them either. You don’t have to like anyone, especially if you feel like they’re taking advantage of people, but this discourse is getting out of pocket.

If I did have disposable income I’d be in line to buy from some of my fav fanartists, who make cool t-shirts/merch that the official store for some of the things I’m a fan of have never offered. I don’t think those people are leeches for offering work based on an existing property, or telling others to not copy their designs for bootleg versions. People already don’t want to pay to commission artists for things like that, not even for stuff like a mod that they’re actively going to use, but modders who do early release as a perk for people who voluntarily give them $1-5 a month are biblically greedy because some of them have huge followings? They’re lying liars who lie about playing the game/actually liking the thing? What are we talking about here? It’s against your moral code to make money from something that’s only a stress relief hobby for you, and I respect that personally. That’s not true for everyone though. It just feels very weirdly entitled to say something someone else made should be free—when it literally will be free mind you—but they’re demonic if it’s not free immediately right now today/when you want it. It’s very typical for other kinds of artists to paywall early access to/WIPs of their work, hell for the majority of nsfw artists I follow it’s common to permapaywall their uncensored illustrations/comics/etc. Maybe this is my opinion as someone who views mods like other kinds of art, especially fanart? The vitriol is pretty intense.

I feel like there’s a certain undertone of envy towards these big creators too, which is understandable if they’re making a lot of money, but there are also a bunch of creators who have small or moderate followings who do early access then public release—who are consistently updating their mods for every patch—and make base game versions of their mods, who are not swimming in cash. It feels like religious people who get mad if you don’t follow the rules of their religion. Like, I never agreed to those things in the first place, but I’m going to hell somehow?! I see some advocating for paying and then pirating a modders work, as if it’s not going to be free anyways??? I’d get the anger more if this stuff wasn’t destined to be publically available anyways, but the majority of the creators I follow do not engage in “forgetting” to release their work. I’m sorry that’s apparently happened to some folks, but to put that on all modders who do EA seems disingenuous, at best.

In the case of someone like TwistedMexi, they’re making stuff that’s actually mechanically useful to most players. Again, I don’t think you have to like these people, or support them, but acting like he hasn’t made some genuinely game changing mods for improving the gameplay of The Sims/isn’t offering value to players with his mods is just wild. You can just say you don’t think he deserves the money, or that it’s chicanery to have long wait times for public access—or EA for an EA game like Paralives—, or even that he seems a bit annoying/self-involved because of what the tone of some of his responses feels like they give off (in your opinion). Frankly, I’d agree more with you on any of these than that it’s pure villainy to do EA for mods in general.

Feeling like you have to monetize all your hobbies because capitalism is hell is not the same as deciding to monetize some of your skills applied to one of your hobbies if people have it to spare for you/optionally. If you had to pay $ for every mod, it never got released to the public, you weren’t actually into the hobby recreationally anymore/at all, and it fixed some bug so actually people did kind of need it to play, then yeah you’re in hell actually/check for horn nubs. Deciding that if people like that you make ceramic home goods for their digital dolls to use and decorate their house with, and that they can optionally give you a $1 a month to encourage you to continue to do so, while getting the new Halloween themed set early, is just not the same thing, to me. In the case of video games, modders are encouraging more people to buy and continue to play the game, because they have a following because of making work related to the game, whether I like them/use their mods or not.

I’ve seen the counter argument that if people want to monetize their work (you wouldn’t if you were a true fan enjoying Thing correctly/you actually understood what a hobby is :) ) then they should just release their mods with a tip jar on a platform like itch that has PWYW/pay what you want options. I think this is both fair and juvenile at the same time. Fair, because it allows people to support you if they want and still get the mod at the same time as everyone else. Juvenile, because why should a rando get to decide how you get to share your art, and the conditions by which you might receive support for your skills? There’s also of course the fact that people do not fucking tip artists. They complain about paying artists when they are the ones to approach an artist! We live in a society globally where an unfortunately large amount of people do not value other people’s work at all. Telling people they are moral failures for not wanting to monetize in a way you can stomach feels weird to me, especially when the thing they’ve made will be free anyways and it’s not like using a funding Orphan Crushing Machines or something 😭

As an aside, I also understand that pocket watching non-billionaires/centimillionares on tumblr.com does absolutely nothing for me materially. It’s not going to unionize tech workers as a whole. It’s not going to independently add to the games funding. It’s not going to stop crunch in the games industry. This is maybe 10 times true for random niche modders? Like, let’s be for real.

[burnt-biscuit]

I love regenerative farming, syntropic farming, rotational grazing, hydroponics, and permaculture. I think it should literally be law that you must use these methodologies. I am a fan of seizing the land from corporate farmers, redistributing it, and making all farming operations into cooperatives. Monocultures should be abolished. Agrivoltaics is the way of the future. Gardening space/plots for “victory gardens”, in the war for the souls of humanity, should be standard issued to all residents after they hit 12. It should be opt-out not opt in. I am green-pilled.

[depsidase]

[gvbesims]

[PSA] PARALIVES MODS LIMIT INFO

Apparently there's a limit of 50 mods (downloaded from the workshop) to be loaded at a time by Paralives. Downloaded Households and Lots count to that limit unfortunately. So if you have mods disappearing from the game and not showing up in the "Mods" list, that's probably why (it was happening to me and was driving me CRAZY).

EDIT:

Someone made a plugin where you can install plugin mods for the game, including one to REMOVE the 50 limit for workshop downloads! Here (click) is the link for the plugin!

From inside the game, on the main menu go to Mods > Plugin Hub and there you'll find the option to install the Workshop mods limit fix.

Thanks @honowo for sharing! 🫶

Below the cut is the previous workaround I had posted.

Here's a workaround:

I'd recommend doing this just to Households & Lots only. DON'T DO IT TO MODS and custom content, in case the creator updates their mods you won't receive them.

The folder for items downloaded from the Workshop for Paralives is this one:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\1118520

To find the AppData/LocalLow/Paralives folder do the following:

Press Win+R in your keyboard

Type %appdata% > enter

It'll open the Roaming folder, go back to "AppData" by clicking it on the top bar

Open the LocalLow folder

Go to the Paralives > Paralives folder, it'll look like this:

I did it to all lots and households I had downloaded, then unsubscribed them on the Workshop. And now you have more space for mods 😌🫶

Do show love to the stuff you download on the Workshop, rate them & leave a comment if you really liked it. Let's lift everyone up!

[portelan]

Slumber was a performance/installation: whenever it was shown, the artist lived in the gallery, weaving during the day and sleeping with an EEG machine recording her Rapid Eye Movement (REM) at night. The REM is an analogue to Antoni’s dreams, and she weaves this pattern into the blanket that covers her bed while she sleeps. In this piece, an uneasy truce exists between contemporary medical technology, ancient myths of weaving and the mysterious world of dreams.

[vnapologeticapathy]

it sickens me that there are so many men that simply never engage with anything made by women and they don't question it and they aren't questioned about it. they don't listen to music by women or read books written by women or watch movies written and directed by women or stop to look at paintings by women at museums and they're just allowed to go thru life never considering women as artists with no challenge or criticism whatsoever. meanwhile as a woman it's impossible to escape the male artistic point of view

[sicklyseraphnsuch]

honestly, on an ideal scenario, thaisha would be with azune facing the einfasen

bc thaisha has pull with the einfasen, her statement that her circle would not be involved - that held so much weight with otto

if she walks into that conversation with azune, to discuss matters re Tachonis, and she tells the einfasen, "i have conferred with other circles to emphasize the importance and relevance of tachonis machinations as a threat to our circles and the Old Path, and we will be getting involved"

that could swing A Lot for the Einfasen. right now the Einfasen are operating on the idea that the druids are neutral. if they hear that this position has changed, theyre gonna redo their math

thaisha is soooo politically signifcant among the rebel houses. and i truly feel she must be included in this conversation. bc if the einfasen truly revere the Old Path and its guardians, they wouldnt side with any house seeking to destroy it

[navpike]

so i have been very curious about tyranny’s knife and what it can do since she got it and with this week’s episode i am delighted to learn more about it, HOWEVER i am mentally fucking ill about the fact that the knife was made to punish those who hurt those they love and KATTIGAN FUCKING MADE IT