#long winded post

[macravishedbymactavish]

I used to be embarrassed about writing fanfiction. I gave myself this stigma that only applied to me. My twenty something year old mind focusing on fan fiction.

Not only that, but Call of Duty fan fiction.

I used to be so embarrassed, so ashamed for thinking of plots and eventually writing. It took months for me to admit to my husband that I started writing again (and that confession was drunk at a campfire).

But I got thinking tonight, curled up in bed reflecting on the hell week it's been with the holidays and what felt like constant company and chaos -- writing fan fiction is cheaper than therapy.

Jokes aside, I pour my heart and soul into the words I type. Plots effected by and based on my personal experiences, the skeletons I can't find words to describe when the context is my life.

Change a few details, put it into a different universe. Humanize characters who's life outside work is unknown and suddenly I feel better by writing it out. I feel amazing when others can relate, or enjoy the work.

Not that I've been active in this department. I've all but banged my head off a wall trying to replace "F I L L E R" with actual scenes in my drafts. Been trying to construct the inbetween chapters for unpublished fics. It hasn't been going well.

But I wrote and rewrote this post about 100 different times. Deleting it all because

A). As amazing as my mutuals and followers are, nobody really cares about my past midnight rambling

B). Opening myself and my life like an open book I'd what my mother did my whole life and still does -- I'd rather die than turn out anything like her.

But it feels good to write it down. I'll be investing in a burn after writing notebook soon

[rraaaarrl]

Marvel Masterworks Fantastic Four vs The Fantastic Four Annual #2

Side by Side, Part 1

Side by Side, Part 2

As I continue, I should point out: with these comparisons, I have to take into account the condition of my copy of the FF Annual 2, and also the lighting. Through these panels I did minor color correction to compensate for the ambient warm lighting, as well as some sharpening to increase detail.

Anywho. Is it my imagination or does Victor look high in the restored panel?! Note the detail of his brown lovely locks in the original, drawn out with Kirby's broad, expressive strokes.

If you’re an average Doctor Doom enjoyer such as myself, chances are high that you’ve seen all these iconic origin story panels before, but which versions have you seen? (Note: in this case, the original has a little blurring because it’s so close to the spine, hard to photograph 😭)

Another example...which do you think has more atmosphere?

Such a difference, especially when the background is a solid color. Note the vast flatness of the background. Meanwhile, in the original: the lines appear stronger, with more character. It works with the potential inconsistencies of plate/roller pressure, and registration. The lines have been rendered more uniform in the restored version, which become downright anemic when placed on glaringly bright color, it can't compete with it.

(Part 3, coming up soon!!)

[asktheghosthost]

4, 7, and 13 for the haunted mansion ask

4. Favorite stretching portrait?

Ooh, I'll go in order, even though that wasn't part of the question.

Tightrope Walker... which is everyone's favorite, I know, but it's so perfectly executed. Going from a beautiful subject, to a dangerous creature... That frayed bit of rope that might take you a second of notice... That feeling of dread you get looking at it... This woman is young and pretty and talented, so intrinsically you don't want anything bad to happen to her. Everything about it is perfect. It's a masterpiece.

Honorable mention goes to the widow. That's a good gag. Straightforward. Simple.

Quicksand guys don't get a lot of love, which is a shame, because it's not a bad idea. But the more you think about it, the more questions you have to ask. "If they were all trapped, how were they able to even get in that formation? If the top two scrambled up after, how are their shoes and pants clean? Couldn't the top guy have just jumped out?" (And before you say anything, I know it's had explanations in the SLG comic and fanfics.)

Dynamite guy... People only remember him because he's not wearing any pants. Why no pants? We don't know. He's a politician. Maybe it's a low-key sex scandal joke? Why just stand on a keg of dynamite with a slowly burning wick? This is an easily avoidable situation. The underpants are really the main focus of this gag. Weaksauce. Gets a giggle when you're a kid. 5/10.

7. Albert or the raven as a pet?

That's a tough call. I love Albert so much. He's so cute. But I couldn't take him away from Lord Henry Mystic--they'd be sad. They're a package deal. Plus he might be a poo flinger. You never know with monkeys.

So it has to be the raven. Corvids in general are exceptionally intelligent birds, with the raven as one of the best examples. This one can be a little judgmental, though, if it's anything like the Song and Story raven. Before the whole "Coward's way!" screeching, it was probably saying, "Do a back flip!" That'd be something to work on.

13. IRL ghost experience

When anyone else tells me their ghost stories, I'm like "That's so cool!" However, when it comes to my own potentially paranormal experiences, (or when I'm watching Slapped Ham), I am a hardline skeptic. Explanation for everything. And usually things do have a logical explanation. I have bouts of sleep paralysis, and sometimes nighttime hallucinations. Until I got LASIK surgery a few years ago, my vision was horrendous. 90/100. So everything spooky that happens to me, I take with a massive grain of salt and a lot of self- reflection. That said, on with the regaling.

One night, when I was ten, I randomly woke up and looked at my doorway. I always kept the door wide open so the cats could come and go. I remember this vividly. There was a man standing there. He had shoulder length hair. Average build. Probably a smidgen under six feet. Long sleeve plaid shirt, which looked like flannel. He was staring at me, unblinking.

I hesitantly called out, "Mom?" thinking it may have been her checking in on me. Bad eyesight, after all.

Not a word. Just silently staring.

I pulled the blanket over my head and didn't peek out until the sun came up.

[pinkaxolotl855]

Cybertronian Music

Okay so I have no idea how to start this little blog of mine but I might as well start here.

Our first post shall be on Cybertronian music.

I have five headcanons on what Cybertronian music would sound like, how it would be created and what purpose it served.

1)      Artificially created.

Okay so this is probably the most human sounding one on the list, but it still sounds pretty mechanical. This idea was one of the last I thought up but definitely the most unique.

Cybertronians don’t ‘sing’ sure they can pitch their vocalisers but that’s not singing for them that’s just talking with a musical tone, huge difference. Because of this no Cybertronian really has a talent for singing apart from the ones who were specially created for it, so ‘pure from the Cybertronian’ music would be a rare thing to hear, especially midway through and after the war. The A.I system needed to pitch the music, pitch the lyrics, know how to put both together and make it sound pleasant was really complex and really big.

Songs would be created through a specific computer module that had no other purpose that to basically remix voice clips of Cybertronians. It would drastically pitch and mix these voice clips together to create words, sentences, and lyrics. Sometimes the lyrics would mean something, but often they wouldn’t and they’d just be random clips pitched right to flow together. It would also create music or tones that were complimentary to the pitched lyrics.

So, what was created wouldn’t really be music it would be complimentary tones and pitches with words melded in. This would be where culturally different and personally different music opinions came from in Cybertronian society. Seeker’s whose language is much higher pitched would find lower tones ‘not nice’ to listen to, so their complimentary tones would be much higher and clipped than that of Polyhex music that used much wider pitches.

Personal preferences would be different because many Cybertronians auditory systems are hooked up differently for different jobs. Because of this personal preference could easily be predicted if you knew what the auditory systems were for each job. So, Praxian officers had a much lower pitch range so they could access the enforcer ‘radio’ sort of thing, so in turn, lower pitches would be preferred and Vosvian level ones would hurt.

What would sound ‘nice’ and ‘pleasant’ to a Cybertronian though would not sound like anything bearable to a human. Luckily most of the song would be above and below the human sound range, doesn’t mean what can be heard doesn’t sound bloody eerie though. Look up a song called ‘Mr Shadow: a song composed by Artificial Intelligence’ on YouTube and this is sort of what I imagine for this type of music. (Warning, creepy, especially the last twenty seconds.)

2)      Quick beat, quick step.

Next would be the much more robotic sounding (???) seriously I have no idea. Its human counterpart would be Extratone by the way. (It’s an incredibly acquired taste, so don’t look it up if don’t want a headache.) Look up ‘Diabarha - Crazy Beauties’ , ‘Diabarha - Uranoid (Extratone)’ or ‘7!cHO - Murder EXTRATONE’ to see what I mean. This would be the slowest their songs would go since Vosvian ones would speed up so fast it would just sound like one long high pitched or pulsating tone to a human.

This one, in all honesty, sounds a lot more mechanical and sequenced, with the beats fast and the lyrics are far and few in-between. Since the Cybertronian language (or at least my version of it) is quick, harsh and computerized the music would be equal to this. Like the artificially created music, it would be easiest and most reasonable to create it with a whole system, not just one installed on a Cybertronian.

But unlike the other music type, it would be much easier to perform with installed frame tech, it’s not running hundreds of algorithms to get pitching and timing just right the Cybertronian in question would just need to know how to create a beat and mix it with light background music. It wouldn’t be that hard and wouldn’t take up ‘cpu’ space.

The music is mainly hard and quick beats with most songs not even having music behind it. The pitches would go up and down and once again follow to pitch rules of the above type. With Vosvian pitches reaching incredibly high but Kaon incredibly low. Vosvian song would generally be faster too as they had the processing power to keep up with the 5000+ beats their songs often used.

There was the synthetic beat music, and the Cybertronian made music. Synthetic would be made from a specialised computer that wouldn’t burn out and was created only for creating the synthetic beat songs. Cybertronian made songs were forced to be slower since they had to manually input commands to hit a beat in the sound system they had installed for this. Each beat had to be pre-coded with the backing sound and a CPU could only take so much.

The Cybertronian society that used this music would’ve used it for much at all and had little cultural meaning or ‘words’ behind any of it. It was mostly made for fun by mecha that had the time to pitch code and had the systems to support the harsh sounds. Teenagers would sometimes have these sound systems installed in them and would create these songs on the go up against one another on stage. They would see who could get the fastest and coherent beat without burning out something important from exertion.

3)      Scare

This once less its own idea and more of an extension to quick beat, quick step and would be the only type of music here to require an instrument. This music would be constant wavering tones normally with shrieks or cutting metal in the background, it wasn’t really a music for anything and was supposed to be sat down and listened to.

Most of the music would be made personally and with an original touch on each one. It was designed to ‘twang’ certain audio cords of very specific mecha so there were ones attuned to maybe one or two different types of frame and sub-frame, but the tones couldn’t be enjoyed by any other frame as it would hit the wrong personal pitches and ‘hurt.’

It could be played live if one collected enough mecha of the chosen chord, the song itself would mix the musical instruments sound and personal sounds made by the composer up on stage. It wasn’t a thing ‘just anybody’ could do either, the spark had to be able to ‘attune’ certain pitches and sounds through the E.M field and it was an incredibly rare skill.

‘Merzbow-Requiem’ Just turn the audio down as low as it can go, it’s an even more required taste than Extracore and in all honesty, I can’t listen to it for that long. But it’s an incredibly interesting feat in human music so, yea…

4)      Tonal

Seriously this would be the most alien one on here and is personally my favorite one and the one I think would be most plausible. I’m not even going to explain what this is but look up the song called ‘Maxwell’s Demon [Lowercase/Field Recording/Drone] ~ Gen Thalz’ and listen to all of it, it will be a weird experience, I promise.

It would truly be an alien concept of music and Cybertronians would dig this sh!t. The music would be created personally by recording the world around them and once again messing with the pitches. It would never have any sort of lyrics to it as Cybertronians weren’t designed to be ‘singers.’ The more odd and indecipherable the sound the more ‘out there’ and ‘cool’ the song would be.

Vosvians would have recordings of engines and morphed beyond reason sounds of the wind and acidic rain. Polyhexian’s would have the least morphed sound usually consisting of clangs of metal and skidding wheels. Praxians would just have morphed sound of cogs and mechanics turning and clashing.

All of these would be smooshed together with complimentary higher and lower tones, once again going from the tone preferences above. Warbles, harsh buzzes, and screeches would occasionally accompany the ‘music’ too, but that was for the younger generation. Old mecha like Ratchet would just prefer to listen to music when the music was ‘normal’ and low tones were accompanied with only things like smashing glass and breaking cogs. Like it should be.

5)      Silence

No, no, honestly, I’m being serious here. When I say that silence to a Cybertronian *is*, in fact, their music I mean it. I doubt you need an example.

A Cybertronians life would’ve been consumed with regular city sounds or building and the constant sound of cars. In ships, it would’ve been the constant hum of engines and everywhere else on Cybertron there would have been constant sound, constant loud, unbearable sound. Even in ‘silence’ the hum of their own engines and workings would accompany them.

True silence would have been bliss and literal music to their ears. True silence would be enjoyed by a mecha alone, preferably in their quarters with their entire audio systems down, in this time they truly ‘listen’ to the world around them.

 —

Anyway, hope you liked this, even though I kind of expect you to have only skimmed it. Culture and stuff seem to only interest me and a few others nowadays. Anyway, expect sort of regular updates. xxx

[kleinufr]

I need to write a story about a harpy prince that has a thing going with a centaur from an allied clan and he ends up running away because screw being forced to reproduce and someone in my clan finds him injured and takes him in and the centuar, worried out of his mind, thinks the dragons are holding him hostage so he infiltrates the clan (since we're allied with centuars) and tries to get the prince to come back but he's like "no I'm never going back." Yeah.

[sanguinedragonsden]

Heyyy Guys!!

So I'm feeling much better now thanks to a couple friends. I guess I just needed a little cool down time. Aaaanyway, so I've been feeling a little lonesome on here and Kik. If anybody wants to chat, feel free to! I don't bite ^_^ I love role playing and I'll role play a lot of things. Just tell me what you'd like to do and I'll see what I can do! I don't have a muse on here though (not yet at least. Hint hint) but I do have one in mind that I use to role play with a friend. If you're interested, my Kik is Sparrow Nightfall. I change my screen name a lot but right now it's Spar Windfall. Ask me anything and, if you aren't sure about something, I'm here to help. See ya later!

[an-actual-dragon]

Hello all my followers

I appreciate all of you following me, I do, it means that there are at least 35 people out there that actually find me interesting, and that makes me feel loads better. However, I am having a difficult time with myself as of right now, and the glue that is barely holding me together, had begun to falter, I apologize if you do not qish to be around my negativity right now, in fact I would not be upset if you left, I dont want to drag you down with me. Otherwise, im going to be doing a lot of depressing rants and venting, as it is a simple way to clear my mind. Once again I love all of you following me, feel free to talk to me at any time.