I’m so proud of senshi for making it so far in the tumblr sexyman poll. I think it’s so beautiful that tumblr has reached a point where a short fat hairy bearded man is the pinnacle of sexuality for a large swath of this userbase. it’s like when you see before & after pictures of a rainforest recovering from deforestation. nature is healing and we can fight god
My sycamore tree began life in the gravel at the edge of a parking lot. If trees can feel pain, that is a painful, unlucky death. I carefully dug it up and put it in a pot I made out of a disposable cup.
Hello small one. This world may be cruel, but I will not be.
I decided to take care of it, not expecting it to survive, and when my sycamore tree unfurled one tiny leaf and then another, it chiseled a tiny foothold in my terrified brain, the kind of brain that doesn't remember a world before the atomic bomb and before 9/11.
I googled the lifespans of trees. My neurons had to stretch and expand to accommodate what I learned: My sycamore tree may live five hundred years. It's hard to think something so big. In twenty years, my baby sycamore tree will be three stories tall, and the home of many creatures. In five years, my sycamore tree will be taller than I am. In one year, it will be summer.
There's this concept called sense of foreshortened future where people who have lived through trauma can't conceptualize a future for themselves because deep down they don't expect to survive, When I look forward, all I see is fire and death, melting ice and burning sky. We were raised Evangelical. All we see is Judgment Day, except there is no heaven.
But now there is a tiny gap in the wall, a crack in the door of my cell
and on the other side, I see a tree
There is, in the future, a great old sycamore tree, full of clean winds and the stir of a thousand wings. A hundred years from now. Fifty years from now. There will be forests in that world. There will be a world.
It takes courage, but we have to imagine it.
Most tree species can live in excess of three or four hundred years. I think I'm learning something. I think there are ancient voices saying hello small one, touch the dirt and the leaves, for now you are part of something that cannot die
in 2030 I will be thirty years old and the world will not have ended and there will still be hummingbirds, and we will have photos of the stars more beautiful than we can now imagine.
I planted an Eastern Redcedar; they may live nine hundred years. There will be nine hundred years. The people in that time will remember us. Maybe we will meet the aliens (hi aliens!).
I will blow out the candles on many birthday cakes in a world where there are wolves in dark forests far from home. I am learning to imagine the future. I learned recently that elk were reintroduced to the Appalachian Mountains after over a hundred years of extirpation, and that they are expanding their range.
That tiny crack I can see through now opens a tiny bit more:
Maybe elk will pass through my hometown, maybe there will be a forest where the pasture is on the high hill that I can see from my home
say it, say it, say it: ten years, thirty years, a hundred years from now
I am learning to imagine the future. There is a crack in the wall of this prison, of this machine, of this darkness, and through it, I see a tree.
Fun little math trick I find really helpful: the ratio of a mile to a kilometer is within 1% of the Golden Ratio. That means that if you have a good memory for Fibonacci numbers (1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89) you can convert pretty accurately by taking consecutive Fibonacci numbers.
For example, 89 kilometers is really close to 55 miles (55.3). Or, say you need to convert 26 miles to kilometers: 26 can be written as 21 plus 5, so taking the next Fibonacci number up gives 34 and 8, meaning it should be around 42 kilometers. Sure enough, it's 41.8 km!
Went to take this picture of this insane bigfoot sex sign and only after opening my camera did i notice the entire flock of little chickens chilling in the dirt. life is good again
Fiore the Performer
(this will be edited over time as the game updates and as I add more to her story!)
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Fiore, a mysterious woman from the Capital, is Mistria's very own street performer! She performs every Saturday in front of the manor, and later at Wheedle's stall, easily drawing eyes to her daring and mystifying performances. Though she does have skill where it's necessary, she's certainly not above lying and tricking the audience to gain more favor and tips.
Her past is not something Fiore divulges with others. She prefers that someone think she simply appeared in Mistria for no real rhyme or reason. Her past at the opera house and her experience as a singer is something she holds close to her chest, refusing to sing in the presence of others. In her mind, it's exactly what brought tragedy and exploitation into her life, so she believes singing would simply risk that again. She does miss it.
████ grew up in the Capital's opera house and was on her way to becoming a household name with her performances. She was very studious and took her singing seriously, despite how stressful it could be. Friendships and relationships were seen as distractions from her studies, so they were discouraged by her parents. This did upset her, as she believed herself to be a romantic at heart. By her early 20s, she was performing in smaller, supportive roles. There was intrigue in her after only a few performances. Her parents wondered where she was getting so many roses from. She started wearing a silver locket, but she never would open it to show what was inside. At age 24, she disappeared one day.
After two years, in the dead of winter, she made her way back home - pallid and freezing - her once-long, flowing hair now reduced to a choppy mess. After an undesirable interaction with her family in the foyer when she tried to explain where she had been, she took her father's fur-lined coat hanging by the door, and then turned right around to leave one final time. ████ shed her old role as opera singer, and re-emerged as Fiore, the charismatic, orange-haired street performer. Despite not having a home, she was able to get by through quick thinking and swindling - the theater lifestyle had sufficiently prepared her ability to act. She was cautious, she was fearful, she expected to be found and dragged back to where she was before, but she was at least free in the moment to make her own decisions. Nearly one year into street performing, she found a torn flyer on the ground for a place called Mistria. It advertised a free home along with free land. If she was going to continue existing under a new identity, having a place to live would certainly be the safest option.
The truth is, Fiore lied on every question when being considered for a place in Mistria. A simple questionnaire was no different than a stage or street performance.
Due to a mix up during the processing, both her and a woman named Rena showed up to Mistria, their entire lives packed into their bags. Adeline didn't have the heart to send one of them home, so she arranged a co-living situation. Fiore and Rena fought every step of the way while trying to adjust to their new life in Mistria. They even split their one-room house right down the middle, not allowing the other to cross the line. Over time, they were able to adapt to each other and even get along sometimes. By Year 2, they consider each other their best friend (though Fiore would not directly tell Rena this). They bounce off of each other well, and have many traits that compliment the other. Rena keeps Fiore from retreating in on herself, and Fiore looks out for Rena. Rena will sometimes help Fiore with her performances. Fiore doesn't help at all with any of the farm work, but Rena doesn't mind it, as farming is her passion.
Though Fiore does not have many friends, she does have a few people in Mistria that she interacts with regularly, for better or for worse:
⊱⋆ Every week, she has a wine night with Elsie where the two of them discuss their week and anything interesting happening in town. By late Year 2, Elsie knows of Fiore's background and the two of them sing together in private. Elsie over time had taken Fiore under her wing, guiding her to be more social and encouraging her to put herself out there more, especially with Rena. Fiore looks up to Elsie, and hopes to be like her when she reaches that age.
⊱⋆ Though Juniper is not someone she would dare consider a friend, working at the bathhouse once every week with Rena has forced her to interact with Juniper more. Fiore is displeased to admit that she and Juniper have more in common than she would admit - mostly the pride and stubbornness. She finds displeasure in how Juniper treats Rena sometimes, which leads to herself and Juniper butting heads. Sometimes Rena will drag them both along for group outings as a trio, which often has mixed results.
⊱⋆ Due to her connections to Wheedle, Balor thought well enough to warn Fiore of Wheedle's nature. Herself and Balor hadn't spoken much before this, so she found his repeated suggestion to cut ties to be a severe overstep. After releasing crickets into his room and setting a bucket of water atop his door - encouraged by Wheedle, who was quite bothered by the 'warning' - Balor felt like he had no choice but to retaliate. From then on, they both sought to make each other's lives more inconvenient through pranking. Over time, they both do find some fun and sportsmanship in it.
⊱⋆ Fiore and March don't start off very close, but they are brought together by Rena, who is dating March. Rena often jokes about how alike the two are, pointing out even the similar hair color as well. Fiore and March both have a soft spot for Rena, though March is the only one of the two to admit it. She sometimes fears losing Rena to March, but she sees him as a good fit that would take care of her in life. Rena arranges double dates with herself and March along with Wheedle and Fiore. The dates are very awkward. March doesn't like being around Wheedle, and Wheedle dreads them, as he feels more like a chaperone.
⊱⋆ Her and Wheedle start out as rivals due to their shared space and similar street hawking behaviors. What started as stealing customers and escalating peacockery, eventually leads to a 'business merge' where Fiore performs at Wheedle's stall instead, and then an ambiguously romantic back-and-forth, of which there was never a true 'confession'. The two of them simply assumed they were dating and carried on. They eventually marry one year after the initial business merge - for the legal benefits, as Wheedle would put it - and then start a family after a few more years.
More can be read about their dynamic here!
Over time, Fiore does change. She enters Mistria with a deep spiritual loneliness, unsure if she will ever find the thing she secretly sought most - real connection. After her restrictive life in the opera house, as well as her situation while she was disappeared, she had learned that closing herself off was the safest option. Everyone in Mistria was kept at arm's length. Elsie was really the only one capable of breaking her barrier and seeing what was actually underneath - a scared woman. Throughout her story, it is proven to Fiore that there is true connection out there, but she has to overcome her past and reach out for it too. Yet still, she retains her ambiguous morality, still choosing to live how she believes is best for herself.
I finished two more portraits for Cheri recently (because the Nexus mod page editor is janky as hell and it's annoying) - revamped the iaido gear portrait, and designed a whole new outfit for the Shooting Star Festival date. This is the first time I designed an outfit directly on the pixel portrait itself instead of drawing one in my regular art, and a lot of that time was spent agonizing over how to tie/decorate the obiage.
These portraits are the edge-most of all edge use cases for a unique outfit. Cheri's schedule has her do practice only from 6-7AM every day. She starts at 5AM actually, but the player wakes up at 6, so there's only a short window of time to catch her in this outfit and read related dialogue. The date outfit is, well, only for the Shooting Star date, and this outfit is designed for an unmarried woman in mind (see the heavily decorated obi and the elaborate obiage design), so I imagine post-marriage she wears a different outfit instead. To be fair, I wanted post-marriage Cheri to have a unique Shooting Star date event where she takes you out riding for a picnic with Snow White, so she would have to wear equestrian gear, which her new summer outfit qualifies as.
For the iaido outfit revamp, I have once again bested kimono sleeves in single combat and came out victorious. Aside from the new base giving a better silhouette, I simplified the rendering on the sword, especially the grip, which in my opinion is the biggest quality improvement for the revamped portrait.
I've got some more thoughts about these two outfits, more design yap under the cut:
In some ways, these two outfits are diametrically opposite of each other. Cheri's iaido outfit is one of the most masc-presenting ones (with the low waistline and a men's hakama, while the date outfit is very strongly femme from its colors to its silhouette and accessories. In fact, it's so femme that it's a major outlier compared to the rest of her outfits, because Cheri is uncomfortable with wearing something so obviously feminine.
More importantly, the date outfit is also an outlier because Cheri does not wear blue, much less in softer shades, for her tops. Her tops are always either red, pink, or white, and blue is almost always reserved for outerwear or bottoms:
Red is Cheri's color motif, not just from what red represents as a color in general, but also because it's her province's color - something reserved for nobility (her Master is often seen in red or wearing red accessories). In fact, it's a not-so-subtle hint of how favored she is by her Master, because she wears a lot of red for a peasant and her sword is also very much red-accented as it's the clan heirloom sword that unofficially marked her as his successor.
There is always some amount of (dark) blue in Cheri's outfits, which for the present day is a hint of her connection with Balor. However, the iaido outfit is notable for being the only outfit Cheri has that entirely lacks any blue elements. It's monochrome with red as the accent color, which is also how I render all art related to/set in Cheri's childhood. It's my way of saying that Cheri in her practice gear, wearing dark red, is her expressing the core of her self: her Master's favored student, the bearer of his legacy, and an embodiment of the violence she lives and breathes. The unrepentant Blood-Red Swordsman.
Cheri may not be actively (or openly) committing the kind of violence she used to in Mistria, but that part of her never left either, no matter how she tries to pass her sword practice as one of the ways she meditates. She's a creature of habit, and she still does her sword practice out of fear of losing her edge; still someone who never really quit living in survival mode.
On the other hand, her date outfit has a very soft color palette with blue as the main color. I've yet to have 'proper' art for this part, but the date outfit's color palette is actually the most similar to the colors she used to wear while travelling with Balor and their friends as a teenager. Cheri still wore red accessories, but she also wears soft or desaturated blues as the main color. This is significant, because Cheri (or at least herself prior to living in Mistria) has come to view this part of her own life with deep contempt. She blames herself a lot for the incident that drove their little ragtag band of misfits apart and killed their friends. This separation from Balor, too, is the biggest cause of her incredibly poor mental state in the present day.
So the fact that Cheri goes on a date wearing these colors and an outfit that is pretty, soft, and absolutely not practical to fight in whatsoever is my way of conveying that it's a moment of both physical and emotional vulnerability for her. She's dropped her guard down, wearing something that she normally is uncomfortable in, just for the occasion... which is significant because I plan to make Cheri only truly romanceable after you hit 8 hearts, and to reach that point, she has to reconcile with Balor, too (i.e. you have to finish their special story arc).
The patterns for the date outfit are kawa (river), koi fish on the obi, and lotus as the flower motif. Many of these are symbols of perseverance and resilience. Lotus is also a deeply Buddhist flower, which I think is an appropriate motif because at this point in her character arc, Cheri has gone a long way into her personal path of enlightenment - she's moved on from or reconciled with many parts of her past.
So the TL;DR is that 'the curtains are just blue' is absolutely not applicable for Cheri in all aspects, because I'm very fond of symbolism and like putting many hours into thinking about them. As a bonus for reading this far, have these designs that I drafted for a younger Balor and Cheri! He's in his early 20s and Cheri is about 14 years old here.
(I personally headcanon Balor as Very Tall, which is unfortunate because he's canonically average height. At the same time, Cheri was also comically short as a teenager, so she would be a lot tinier than him regardless.)
