Talon takes advantage of the fact that his little owl is still small to take him flying on top of him on the rooftops, at least that's what he tells the clueless Timmy, because he will always be able to carry him.
Hello! I was wondering what company you use for your sticker sheets? I bough one from your Ko-Fi shop and really like the quality, and the pricing you were able to sell at is waaaaaay more reasonable compared to any of the companies I've seen and used myself. Is it a POD company, or a mass purchase of them to sell on your own?
Thank you for your time if you're able to respond!
I'm really glad you like the quality, because I actually make them by hand at home! (Please forgive the lighting, my bedroom is my office lmao.)
I don't use a company (and Idk what a POD company is sorry!) but making them at home gives a lot more freedom of stock, just be wary it can be very time consuming depending on how many you need to make.
I've had other people ask before, so here's a rundown of how I make my stickers at home: At most you'll need:
Printer
Sticker paper (this is the type that I use)
Laminator and lamination paper (the lamination paper that I use.) You can also use adhesive non-heat lamination paper if you don't have a laminator, gives you the same result, just be careful of bubbles. You will get double your worth out of a pack because we are splitting the pouches to cover two sticker sheets.
Your choice of a sticker cutting machine or just using scissors.
First, I use Cricut's software to print out the sticker sheet with the guidelines around the corners so the machine can read it. If you do NOT have a Cricut machine, open up your art program, make a canvas of 2550x3300 and fill it up with your sticker design with some cutting space between them. This the 8.5x11 size for the sticker page.
I usually have bleed selected so the cut comes out cleaner. Tip for non-Cricut users below: Increase the border around your sticker design to fake the 'bleed' effect for a cleaner cut.
These are the print settings I use for my printer. I use the 'use system dialogue' to make sure I can adjust the settings otherwise it prints out low quality by default. Make sure if you're using the above paper that you have 'matte' selected, and 'best quality' selected, these aren't usually selected by default.
So you have your sticker sheet printed! Next is the lamination part. I use a hot laminator that was gifted to me, but there is no-heat types of lamination you can peel and stick on yourself if that's not an option.
(This is for protection and makes the colors pop, but if you prefer your stickers matte, you can skip to the cutting process.)
Important for Cricut users or those planning to get a Cricut: You're going to cut the lamination page to cover the stickers while also not covering the guidelines in the corners. First, take your lamination page and lay it over the sheet, take marker/pen and mark were the edges of your stickers are, and cut off the excess:
(I save the scrap to use for smaller stickers or bonuses later on)
After you've cut out your lamination rectangle, separate the two layers and lay one down on your sticker sheet over your stickers with matte side down, shiny side up. (Save the other sheet for another sticker page)
The gloss of the lamination will prevent the machine from reading the guidelines, so be careful not to lay it over them. It also helps to cut the corners afterwards to prevent accidentally interfering with the guidelines.
Now put that bad boy in the laminator! (Or self seal if you are using non-heat adhesive lamination)
Congrats! You now have a laminated page full of stickers.
For non-cricut/folks cutting them out by hand: this is the part where you start going ham on the page with scisscors. Have fun~
Cutting machine: I put the page on a cutting mat and keep it aligned in the corner, and feed it into the machine. For laminated pages I go between 'cardstock' and 'poster board' so that it cuts all the way through without any issues, but for non-laminated pages or thinner pages, I stick for 'vinyl' and 'light card stock'. Kinda test around.
Now I smash that go button:
You have a sticker now!
The pros of making stickers at home is that you save some cost, and you have more control of your stock and how soon you can make new designs. (I can't really afford to factory produce my stickers anyway)
However, this can be a very time consuming, tedious process especially if you have to make a lot of them. There is also a LOT chance for some errors (misprints, miscuts, lamination bubbles, ect) that will leave you with B-grade or otherwise not-so-perfect or damaged stickers. (Little note, if you have page mess up in printing and can't be fed into the cricut machine, you can still laminate it and cut it out by hand too.)
I have to do a lot of sticker cutting by hand, so if you don't have a cricut don't stress too much about it. I have an entire drawer filled to the top of miscuts/misprints. I keep them because I don't want to be wasteful, so maybe one day they'll find another home. Sucks for my hand though.
But yeah! This is how I make my stickers at home! Hope this is helpful to anyone curious
I got a laptop with Windows 11 for an IT course so I can get certified, and doing the first time device set-up for it made me want to commit unspeakable violence
Windows 11 should not exist, no one should use it for any reason, it puts ads in the file explorer and has made it so file searches are also web searches and this cannot be turned off except through registry editing. Whoever is responsible for those decisions should be killed, full stop.
u r absolutely right I have SO many complaints about Windows omg.
For anyone who'd like to follow along, I'm gonna share how to get around those things with group policies bc they're more user friendly and descriptive than registry editor imo :3 I'll also show how to get around needing a Microsoft account to get setup.
For the Device Setup
"OOBE" stands for Out Of Box Experience which is what that setup workflow is. But it also happens to be a folder with a little program in it that'll let you skip connecting to the internet; this makes it so you don't have to sign up with a Microsoft account and can just use a normal local one instead. And it already comes preinstalled! Here's how you get to it:
Hold Shift + F10, or Shift + Fn + F10 depending on your keyboard.
Click inside the window that pops up, type the following and press enter afterwards to run it: OOBE\BypassNRO
I believe it should restart your computer automatically, but if not then restart your computer or type: shutdown /r /t 0 /f
Now when you're brought back to the setup workflow, the page where you connect to the internet will have a new button on it that lets you say you don't have internet. Clicking that and proceeding through the rest of the setup lets you get around the Microsoft account thing.
Group Policies
You don't have to know much about them, these are just a bunch of specific settings for what your computer can or can't do that lets you decide how it works in different ways.
I'm gonna show you how to turn off the recommendations and internet stuff basically. For now bring up search and type gpedit, pick this
It'll open up to Local Group Policy Editor and we can get started :3c
Start Recommendations
In the side menu, go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar. Click on Settings to sort them with all the "Turn off" ones bumped to the top.
Here's what you should set:
Turn off user tracking: enabled
Turn off feature advertisement balloon notifications: enabled
Remove Recommended section from Start Menu: enabled
Remove Personalized Website Recommendations from the Recommended section in the Start Menu: enabled
Do not search Internet: enabled
Windows Spotlight
Back in the side menu, go down to Windows Components > Cloud Content
Turn off all Windows spotlight features: enabled
Do not use diagnostic data for tailored experiences: enabled
Cortana
In the side menu, this one's back at the top under Computer Configuration. You're gonna want to go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Search
Allow Cortana: disabled
Don't search the web or display web results in Search: enabled
News and Interests
In the side menu go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > News and interests.
Enable news and interests on the taskbar: disabled
Microsoft Account Login Nudges
When you don't use a Microsoft account they'll nudge you repeatedly to sign in so you can "get the most out of your experience" *gag*. The group policy for turning that off has a note that suggests it might not work with Windows 11 though (implicitly), so you can close the group policy editor window now and for this last one let's just open up the regular settings.
Go to System > Notifications > Additional settings, then uncheck all the boxes. And there ya go! (âżâ âżâ )ïŸ u are done.
Group policies are kind of a rabbit hole so while there is a lot more you could change or read into, for your own sanity's sake I would advise against it and say call it a day lol
I endorse this as an IT technician. I do this to every new Win11 device I set up.
As a bonus, run Chris Titus Tech's debloat tool on it.
Having Fun with Technology
It allows you to add tools, remove/disable shitty parts of windows, and easily change some settings. My default is running the preset for a desktop/laptop and applying security update settings, but there are so many options to customize. I used it on my personal laptop.
@iwritenarrativesandstuff was my partner for this event and wrote a fantastic fic set post-Dragon's Head Conflict of 17-year-old skk having their first forced sleepover together... with action, mystery, looming horrors and everything! :D
Hello! Hope you don't mind the random ask đ„ș You said after the newest episode that Mushitarou is one of your favorite BSD characters; could you talk a little about your thoughts on him/why you love him/his arc? He's one of my favorites too, and it makes me so so sad how underrated he is, because imo he's one of the most well-written and tragic characters in the entire series, despite how little screentime (pagetime?) he gets :' ) I wish more people would talk about him. Really hope that changes after the next episode đ
I honestly almost screamed when I got this ask YES I CAN TALK ABOUT MUSHITARO. I CAN TALK ABOUT HIM ALL DAY.
Ok well first of all he is the poor little meow meow. Pathetic scrunkly man. I'm sorry but you can't deny that it's true. Even in-universe, it's like he's the BSD world's chew toy. He keeps getting kidnapped by different organizations with like. No breathing room in between. Give him a BREAK. Funnily enough, I enjoy and usually like to poke fun at these kinds of characters, but they're not typically my favourites. Mushitaro is, by far, an exception to my usual favourite character types.
Second, I am a lover of bittersweet tragic storylines. Yeah. Honestly, the way the storyline built to the slow reveal - I knew immediately after Poe mentioned the water droplets that they were his tears, and I was starting to suspect what was really going on, but the way it was unraveled was so, so painful and beautifully done. Even knowing it was coming today when I watched the episode, it still hurt.
Thirdly, Mushitaro's circumstances raise some intriguing questions we still don't have answered. He was captured by the Seventh Agency and made to work for them with his ability - he considers them a worse alternative to Dostoevsky and refers to them as tyrants. (We also know of another shadowy organization that takes on ability users with useful skills for nefarious purposes, V. V also somehow managed to not be discovered by either the government or Ranpo in 13 years. I'm not saying there's a connection there but... but... there might be. đ) Anyways, point is, there's stuff goin' on there. And I wanna know. (Also I like the motivation parallels with Ango very much.)
But most of all, I fully agree with you - he is very well-written. What I love most about his character is actually the way his narrative showcases what I believe to be some of the series' character writing's biggest strengths - to excellent (and heartbreaking) effect.
Characters are often revealed to be quite different than what their initial introductions would suggest. Later revelations serve to recontextualize earlier character cues - these early cues are often misleading but not outright lies.
To be clear, this isn't a hard or particularly unique thing in character writing - in fact, this is... kind of a minimum requirement. Your audience should be able to go back after the fact and notice new things about characters that you only get on re-read. But I find BSD is interesting for this because these initial impressions don't frequently tell you what these characters actually value - the "establishing moments" are often incredibly misleading. Mushitaro is an excellent example of this.
The best part of the perfect murder arc is the way it slowly unravels piece by piece - and as it unravels, more and more, we get to see the real Mushitaro. He starts off with these terrifying facial expressions, bragging and boasting about how he is the "detective killer" and how none stand in his way, cackling like a shallow cartoon villain. There's not much there to suggest a deeper character. Then there's the first flash to Yokomizo's murder, and Mushitaro appears to revel in it and the idea that he can't be caught. Another flashback shows him making these arrogant demands of a literal terrorist, like all his tableware being silver and porcelain and having access to a library of occult books for his study. Ok dude. This all paints the picture of a selfish individual, primarily concerned with expensive things and money and image - all things that perfectly fit Ranpo's initial conjecture as to the kind of person behind the Kindaichi murder. And just like Ranpo later says, it's a little too perfect.
The reveal builds slowly but surely, and Mushitaro's built-up image as a dramatic, remorseless murderer crumbles. Because he didn't kill out of hatred at all. He killed Yokomizo because Yokomizo asked him to do so. Because this, and the legacy of a mystery that transcended fiction into reality, was his only friend's dying wish. It was enough for Mushitaro to delay his escape just to fulfill it - what Ranpo refers to as a kind of willing self-destruction.
What Mushitaro ultimately values then is honouring the wishes of those he cares about and repaying those he owes. He will take the secret of Yokomizo's ultimate mystery to his grave. He used what he likely thought were his last moments alive to grab the transceiver and warn Ranpo about the danger the Agency was in. He only decided to trust Ango after Ango admitted his use of the Seventh Agency was to honour Oda's memory and wishes.
So, going back and re-reading his intro again, it becomes more clear that he was suffering from a kind of cognitive dissonance. "But wasn't he just playing the role he was supposed to?" No. He wasn't. The first flashback to Yokomizo's murder is much more violent and ends with Mushitaro cackling and going into a full villain monologue when there is no one else around but him. There's no one to perform this role for - except Mushitaro himself.
Both the killing and the ensuing grief stemmed from the exact same source - Mushitaro loved his friend deeply. But there is, I believe, no small amount of bitterness too, for the way they argued frequently, and the way his friend asked this of him. It's practically irreconcilable in his mind, and so Mushitaro leans into his role as the evil perpetrator who hated Yokomizo to such a degree that I honestly think he started to believe it - Mushitaro, with two narratives in his mind running parallel to each other that are fundamentally conflicting, tried to make a monster of himself. Insisted on being the monster, at least until Ranpo made it impossible for him to deny the true motive behind his actions - protecting his friend's last wish.
Fittingly for the climactic reveal of a mystery storyline that blurs fiction and reality, Mushitaro's real-life grief was his perfect fictional role's undoing.
Is he boastful? Arrogant? A bit of a coward? Absolutely. But Mushitaro is no monstrous villain - he is a man unable to confront his grief over his friend's death, and who, ultimately, doesn't intend any real harm.
Because other than Yokomizo, revealed as an agreed upon assisted suicide - Mushitaro never murdered anyone.
2. Characters are not cured of their pain and trauma. They continue to struggle with it during their development and it actively impacts the way they view and interact with the world around them.
Mushitaro's story is heavily themed around grief and his consistent denial of it's effects on him. At first, he denies by embodying the role Yokomizo wanted him to play - it seems to the point where he legitimately started to lose it. He's slipping when we first meet him. In a weird way, for as much as Ranpo tore his perfect crime apart... I feel like he also saved him, in a sense. The dissonance he was experiencing likely only would've gotten worse if he had not been forced to speak the truth aloud.
After that point... the denial focuses solely on the idea that Mushitaro doesn't miss Yokomizo at all. That he's doing just fine and Yokomizo should be jealous (he's far from fine; he doesn't even see a point in going outside anymore now that he won't be able to see his friend) and that he hated him (he doesn't. he never did. but he has to. he can't deal with it.).
Another thing I really like about his arc is that Mushitaro's grief also clearly stems from the entire thing being traumatic for him - but neither Yokomizo nor Mushitaro are demonized or victimized for this; rather the situation is just shown as it is. It's nice, that the story allows the reader/viewer to draw their own judgements. Both had their reasons for their actions - Yokomizo was already dying and wanted to go out in a way that was meaningful to him, while Mushitaro chose to fulfill this wish in spite of the cost to him. They both mutually self-destructed, in a way.
The narrative doesn't frame either as the villain. It doesn't fully frame either in victimhood either. It's a tragedy all the same.
Mushitaro continues to see and hear Yokomizo wherever he goes, not because he can't get rid of him... but because he never wanted him to be gone in the first place. Stabbing me would hurt less I think. :/
3. Characters often grow and change before they consciously realize it or have any sort of "epiphany".
This ties in a lot with the ongoing theme of uncertainty, and I above all really like this aspect of the series. BSD has characters grow and change and try to be better, do better by themselves and others... without being sure of the outcome. Sometimes before they're ready to consciously admit a change is necessary. There are few epiphanies. The characters are forced to slog through hardship and only then suddenly realize how far they've come - for better or for worse.
Mushitaro does change, even in the short span of time he is a focus character. I love the first little signs of it too - Mushitaro, who doesn't even like mystery novels, uses a trick Yokomizo told him about to help himself, Atsushi and Kyouka escape. Look at him :')
Afterwards, he starts to wonder if he can see Yokomizo whenever he enters a locked room - as in, if connecting to the memory of his friend through what he loved in life will mean that he keeps that memory alive.
And as annoyed as he is with Poe's attempts to get him to write a mystery... a part of him is happy to be around people that he could start to consider his friends. Enough that the Yokomizo he hallucinates wonders if maybe he doesn't need him there anymore. And finally Mushitaro bursts.
But this is actually good. He's finally past that denial phase, the part that had him talking about hate when really he missed him all along. Thing is, he'd already been developing and changing by this point, in that he needed the growth to come to terms with this truth, and it was not the truth that drove the growth.
In a sense, Mushitaro working through his grief and uncertainty led him to a brighter outcome, one where he has more friends and can start anew. He lost the closest person in his life. But his arc continuously asserts that in spite of the fact that he will always miss his friend, Mushitaro himself is still alive. And he should live that life - both moving forward and keeping the memory of his friend with him.
Odasaku believed that writing a novel was to write people. Poe was so insistent on getting him to write because it's a way of seeing the people we want to see anytime we want.
What a beautiful character arc, that began with fiction as an escape from real-life pain, and concluded with fiction as a means to work through it and with it instead.
Reminder that the OTW election is coming up and if you are eligible to vote you should vote.
I am voting because there is a person running who in the chat transcripts really concerns me because it is anti language and I do not fucking want that anywhere near the board.
Tiffany is clearly very new to all of this and I think she is very VERY inexperienced in fandom places and fandom in general and doesnt seem to understand what the OTW is doing/what fandom really is/ how AO3 works, and why. She has no place on the OTW.
i am not joking we need to force teach cooking in schools. like. it is an essential thing for survival. do you know how easy it is to make things if you know even the bare bones shit about how cooking works. we need to teach teenagers how far you can take an onion and some other veggies itââs sad that people grow up not knowing how to prepare literally anything. and iâm not talking about oh this home ed class taught me how to make chicken nuggets at home iâm talking about learning the balancing of sweetness and acidity and saltiness and bitterness and shit like that and techniques and oil temperatures and how meats cook. it needs to be taught because itâs literally not even that difficult and it matters so much
i truly believe that knowing how to cook is a basic survival concept and the fact that so many people canât even make simple dishes is depressing as hell this is the sorta thing that should be taught at a young age. being able to take the ingredients you have around your home and turn them into a meal is like, essential and will make life so much better. you donât need to be a high end chef you just need to understand some things that can be easily taught⊠but then again maybe the education system is playing a roll against this and ultimately they want you to grow up to rely on mcdonalds for dinner. i donât know. please learn how to cook for yourself if youâre able. iâm not asking you to hunt for specific ingredients to make some expensive youtuberâs âbestâ recipe but if you know the basics of cooking you can do a lot with cheap canned ingredients. cooking can be affordable i promise you just need to learn how to make do with what you can get
using & storing vegetables with recipes in the description (this one has a bit of Sassiness directed at people who dont like vegetables but the content is solid)
food safety + a recipe to demonstrate
how to learn to cook (just a list of subtopics, no actual tips)
cooking techniques playlist
how to cut x
basics with babish s1 & 2, but particularly:
freezer meals,
weeknight meals,
kitchen tools (although the specific suggestions are pretty expensive even with the lower end scale items the basic categories are solid, and you can evaluate what items you will realistcially need - eg. if you dont need to read temp for steaks etc the temp reader will not be relevant) &
kitchen care (mid-high advanced home cooking)
basic knife skills
picking the right pan for each recipe
j. kenji lopez-altâs tips and tricks playlist
egg recipes
a little more complicated, involved, and longer than any of the rest of these but good breakdown of flavor & how and why to use the basic seasoning/flavor profiles
and then recipe channels representing various cuisines:
j. kenji lopez-alt (various)
marionâs kitchen (southeast & east asian, western/asian fusion)
maangchi (korean)
future neighbor (mostly korean)
the western supermarket playlist of chinese cooking demystified (more recipes available but these are accessible if you dont have âspecialtyâ ingredients)
family recipes playlist by made with lau (chinese)
not another cooking show (various)
cooking with boris (bear with me here i know he does it exaggeratedly humorously but a lot of them are actually solid and beginner cook friendly. mostly slavic/russian)
you suck at cooking (also falls into the intentionally humorous category but most of the recipes are pretty solid anyway)
how to cook that (baking, also does debunking videos of viral cooking hacks - breaks down the reasons the hacks dont work, pretty important to understand those basics imo)
internet shaquille (various)
babish culinary universe (various)
i REFUSE to recommended joshua weissman because he is fucking insufferable but if you want you can try if you can deal with it, the techniques/recipes seem fine for the most part
again definitely not a comprehensive list but it touches on most of the basics
I honestly recommend cookbooks for beginner cooks (they cost more than internet recipes, but you can get them used without too much agony.
Internet recipes are great, but they vary widely in explanation quality, which is fine if you know most of the techniques, but less so if youâre still learning. Thereâs an extra level of overall organization in edited cookbooks that I take for granted but that can be a lot of help if youâre starting out.
Thereâs a whole genre of cookbooks that are âfor teensâ or âfor college studentsâ which are specifically focused on new cooks without too many tools. Donât be embarrassed to get one even if you are no longer a teen or a student. Theyâre just really useful.
My favourite is âClueless in the Kitchenâ by Evelyn Raab. It leads with a whole section on cooking and kitchen maintenence and it gives the recipes with minimal spices but with instructions about how to add or alter spices in a recipe, so you donât get pummelled with huge numbers of herbs and spices to buy all at once. This copy is $4.
I once won a giveaway for a digital copy of Cooking Is Terrible by Mischa Fletcher, so I feel kind of obliged to try and convince people to buy a copy, but honestly itâs fun to read even if youâre not using it for its intended purpose: learning how to make a decently nutritious meal for not a lot of time, energy, or money.
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