HALCYON DAYS

those brooding and blissful .... librarian & artist

[library--fairy]

🎨🖌️ My 2025 art summary! 🎨🖌️

Thank you for supporting and inspiring me! I have quite a bit of a back log of art to share - a lot of this isn't posted anywhere.

Hit "More" for the alt text:

Alt text!

Library fairy's 2025 art summary. This video showcase my art from this year. There are two animations at the bottom and the rest are still images.

From right to left:

First we see a background depicting the sunset set against flowing clouds. The top illustration is of Errakis, an original character created by Niko. Next we have two rows of smaller illustrations for each month. January's illustration is of Yoshi and Agi, two Miqote characters created by Sara and Han. February showcases my character reference sheet of Zorion. March highlights an illustration of Zorion and Feadrin, a character created by Raine. In April, the illustration highlighted is of Fiadh, a character created by Jon. Next in May, another illustration of Zorion, this time cosplaying as Howl. In June, I created a character reference sheet for Styrnrael. In July, I did a ton of art for Art Fight and kept on with personal projects as well, including a ton of ship art. In August, I made stickers for the first time. This is a sticker of Badb, a dragon created by Jon. September highlights an illustration of Feadrin (Raine's character) and Zorion in a modern AU. In October, I started on a piece depicting a character from our D&D campaign, it's currently unfinished. In November, I made an illustration of Errakis (Niko's character) and Fiadh (Jon's character). And in December, I've highlighted a sketch of Fiadh (Jon's character.)

Text on the left side says: "This was the “Year of the OC” for sure! My most active month was July. Overall I did 369 pieces (including sketches) and made art every day of the year. I got out of my comfort zone by making some animation and stickers."

[maxinevee]

Bloom 🌸

[cowboyhatesithere]

Oh! There’s a cool animation when you like pride posts now!

[wisteriaphyte]

I've been slowly using dreamwidth again as a journaling platform and decided to go back to my roots and open a community for my icons posting again. The community is still a work - in - progress, but I recently made some FFXIV icons to share! These are 200x200px, but under the cut are smaller 100x100px sizes :D

100 x 100 icons

[wisteriaphyte]

It's officially posted onto dreamwidth now @ heartsaligned !

[kawuli]

random PSA, I know a lot of people use duckduckgo as a Google alternative search engine, but it always kind of annoyed me when I was using it because it felt like No Name Brand Google

I have switched to using Startpage.com and vastly prefer it. for one thing, instead of displaying an "AI summary" at the top of the search results (unless you turn it off, yes I know), it displays the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, with link, whenever it finds one that's relevant.

also a waaayyyyy better sense of design than duckduckgo

also private, European based, least annoying search I've used lately (RIP old "don't be evil" Google)

[yomikoreadsbooks]

Keeping a list of Google alternatives just in case…

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

i have one of those, scraped from multiple different rec posts:

Search Engines

Infinity Search is an alternative search engine with a special focus on privacy

DuckDuckGo is a popular search engine for those who value their privacy and are put off by the thought of their every query being tracked and logged. Uses bangs, ![site] for in-page search (sells your data to microsoft and draws from fucking bing)

WolframAlpha is a privately owned search engine that allows you to “compute expert-level answers using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase, and AI technology.” A data search engine.

Boardreader is a search engine for forums and message boards. It allows you to search forums and then filter down results by date and language.

Based in France, Qwant is a privacy-based search engine that won’t record your searches or use your personal details for advertising. Uses “&” as a bang search.

Another privacy-based search engine is Search Encrypt, which uses local encryption to ensure that users’ identifiable information cannot be tracked. Metasearch across multiple engines. 

Offering unbiased results from several sources, SearX is a metasearch engine that aims to present a free, decentralized view of the internet. Can be self-hosted. 

Gibiru’s tagline is “Unfiltered private search” and that’s exactly what it offers. Requires AnonymoX Firefox add-on for privacy. 

Disconnect allows you to conduct anonymous searches through a search engine of your choice.

Swisscows provides fully encrypted searches to protect your privacy and security. Built-in violence/porn filter cannot be overridden. 

MetaGer offers “Privacy Protected Search & Find” through its anonymised search. A plugin will allow it to be made a default.

Gigablast is a private search engine that indexes millions of websites and servers real-time information without tracking your data, keeping you hidden from marketers and spammers. Variety of filtration and refinement options for searching. 

Oscobo is a search engine that protects your privacy while you search the web. By not using any third-party tools or scripts, your data is protected from hacking and misuse. Has a Chrome extension to allow use in toolbar. 

https://search.marginalia.nu/ an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. Use old-school searching rather than query-based for the best results. 

https://www.mojeek.com/ 

https://wiby.me/ - It’s goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites. 

https://4get.ca/ it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesn’t have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think it’s the best for research, since it allows you to search for answers from different indexes, is easy to configure, add free, and avoids censorship as much as it can.

https://www.searchenginemap.com/ for more on how search engines relate to each other.

https://yep.com/ is a crawler

https://www.etools.ch/ retrieves from Google, Mojeek, Bing, and Yandex, like Searx

https://www.dogpile.com/ 

https://searxng.org/ (next gen Searx)

https://luxxle.com/ - possibly conservative?

https://presearch.com/ - good for academic?

https://kagi.com/smallweb - free/randomised Kagi.

Other Searchers

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free.https://cosine.club/ is an electronic music similarity search engine

[squidwithelbows]

I’ve always wanted to learn how to do more painting-style digital art so I started doing some impressionist / post-impressionist painting imitations with a Ghibli theme just for fun. This one’s Monet’s Woman with a Parasol, shout out your favorites or suggestions in the comments!

[fourteenthz]

FEEL THAT IN THE AIR, FRIEND?

Another lovely summer is upon us, and that means it's time to celebrate with yet another xiv event!!

Since the plan is to stretch it throughout summer, I’m doing a longer “deadline” for each prompt + an opening and closing day. This way, we can star/end together but still have our own pace in betweens <3

MAKE SURE TO USE: #XIV HEATWAVE FESTIVAL

As always with my prompts: you will get a theme + a specific prompt + a quote. This time, since it's weekly prompts, you can use any of the 3 prompts any time during that week. Be it just one or multiple posts per week, mix and match some of them, skip others entirely - you do you!

— GUIDELINES:

this list is intended for every medium! I once again made sure to add quote prompts to make it easier for writers, but feel free to pick and choose whatever you want: gpose, art, gifs, writing, anything goes!

none of the prompts are mandatory, specially not this time. you have 3 prompts every week to use them as you please!

NSFT works are welcome. You know me by now and know some of those are purposefully suggestive, but feel free to go crazy with any of them! just remember to tag and label them accordingly to those who don't wish to see this type of content.

It starts in JULY, so we have a month to prepare + during the weeks.

Still, if you can't make it on those dates, trust me, there's no real deadline. This is intended for all summer but if you ever feel like following it later, feel free to join!!

Make sure to use and lurk the hashtag: #XIV HEATWAVE FESTIVAL to support your fellow creators and DRINK WATER!

— WRITTEN PROMPT LIST:

JULY 01: heatwave, melting, “it's too hot...”

JULY 02 - 05: water, swimming, “come on.”

JULY 06 - 12: fun, competition, “there are no rules.”

JULY 13 - 19: sunkissed, golden hour, “look at you.”

JULY 20 - 26: beach, bonfire, “don't touch that-”

JULY 27 - AUGUST 02: wander, drifting, “where are we/you?”

AUGUST 03 - 09: fresh, camping/hiking, “try some!”

AUGUST 10 - 16: sweat, bathing, “turn around.”

AUGUST 17 - 22: glow, stargazing, “what was that?”

AUGUST 23: chill, moonfire, “look up!”

[silkentine]

In honor of my original meme hitting over 99k notes on tumblr dot com, I’ve made a sequel nearly 4 years later!

(original below)

[normal-horoscopes]

Y'all. "Hell is empty and the devil's are here" is not one of those epic Tumblr quotes. It's from The Tempest. The Shakespeare one.

[apolloendymion]

remember when that furry post went around with "you have nothing to lose but your chains" and people were saying "this is such a raw ass line and it's from a furry post" but it's literally karl marx

[mercymorns]

reading waiting for godot for class and finding out that’s where that “that’s how it is on this bitch of an earth” meme is from ruined me i think

[astraltrickster]

new game: "classic or shitpost?" in which we give you a raw-ass quote and you have to determine whether it came from an internet shitpost or classic literature

[headspace-hotel]

"I will face god and walk backward into hell" that one on the other hand is actually from a dril tweet

[evelynmooreartt]

"A Thread of Stillness"

One of my three latest paintings from a connected series, available on my website

Each piece feels like part of the same quiet passage, tied together by light, water, atmosphere, and a subtle sense of transition.

Oil on canvas, 18x14" #oilpainting #art #artlovers #sunset #paintingprocess

[qwertgfx]

[hellenhighwater]

This whole project was heavily inspired by the work of Lina Shamoon/ Mirrors by Lina (website here, check out her very cool and much higher quality work). My spin on things is definitely not made as well as her stuff, but I'm still loving the effect.

[sergle]

super quick 30 minute mermay before i nap. happy mermay!!

[littlestpersimmon]

cave angel fish

[soymoss]

starling

[bark-barkley]

I WANT TO LOOK AT THINGS MADE BY HUMAN BEINGS

[softwetmoss]

And also occasionally by pufferfish

[the-prairies-calling-out]

"Why do you buy books when the library is right there?"

Because publishing houses will not continue printing paper books if libraries are their only customers.

Also, I like being able to read at my leisure and generally have books at hand.

[its-the-blob]

#public libraries are good because they let people access books they might never otherwise read#private book ownership is good because it's Yours#physical books are good because they last a long time and again it's Yours#ebooks are good because you can fit a whole library into the physical space of a single book and they're cheaper to produce#audiobooks are good because they're accessible to people with eyesight or visual reading issues and leave your hands free#in conclusion: all books are good and people should enjoy them however and whenever they can#(lest it be misunderstood I agree with you completely OP I just also really like books in general and it got away from me)

YES. all books. every kind

[adibkhorram]

Yes to all this but I would like to add some extra context...

Publishers make a ton of money from selling paper books (and ebooks) to libraries. Public libraries, university libraries, K-12 school libraries...every major publisher has school and library marketing teams, school and library sales teams, school and library imprints...Libraries are a HUGE chunk of the market. Especially for children's literature, where, historically, school and library purchases accounted for around 75% of a book's earnings.

So the concerted attacks on books in schools and libraries since 2021 has had a devastating effect. Authors who used to make a living writing books that schools and libraries bought in large quantities (and then would go visit those schools and libraries to talk about books with kids) have seen their income plummet. Publishers have shuttered entire school and library imprints—one of which was 65 years old and had won every major award for children's literature multiple times. (Full disclosure they published MY award winning children's books!)

AND did you know right now the house is considering HR2616, which would ban books that have any mention of "gender ideology" from schools? That means any book written by or including trans people.

Call your reps!