#tl talks

[tiger-lily-55555]

So I somehow read all of 'The Property of Hate' today.

It is really good - the worldbuilding is super interesting and imaginative, but at the same time makes perfect sense if you stop and think about it. The artwork is so cool and I like how the style of the comic changes depending on place and time. It was especially interesting to see how the Hero changes over the course of the story, too. I definitely want to give this a re-read and try to piece a few mysteries together - I'm sure there's a few clues I missed, especially pertaining to RGB's backstory.

[tiger-lily-55555]

So I started watching Dungeon Meshi and I can totally see why this show's so popular. I'm only on the second episode, but I am really enjoying this. The scorpion and walking mushroom hot pot's my favourite recipe so far - I love eating mushrooms, and having the dried slime act as noodles was really unique. I really like how creative this show is. It's making me want to work on my own food-related worldbuilding!

[tiger-lily-55555]

A little victory doodle I did today after beating Grimm today! It was a really fun but tough fight - I still can't believe I actually managed to defeat him. Hopefully this means I actually have a change at beating Nightmare King Grimm, and keeping Grimmothy!

[tiger-lily-55555]

Bug Food Brainstorming:

I was working on the next chapter of Glass Half-Full the other day, and I got to this one scene with a quick description of different foods, and now I got bug food on the brain.

I wonder what different staple meals would be like between kingdoms or between species. In Hallownest I would imagine tiktiks, crawlids, and vengeflys would be pretty common sources of protein since they’re so abundant. I’m not too sure about foods in Pharloom, but the Moss Grotto has tons of plants/mosses in it, so that would be good for herbivorous species. I wonder how bugs with different diets would react to each others’ foods - would the smell of a crawlid sandwich make a weevil nauseous, while the idea of eating a mixed leaf salad make a spider lose their appetite? Or alternatively, would bugs be curious about each other’s foods, maybe asking their friends what it tastes like because they know they can’t actually eat it, but it does look pretty good. Maybe they’ll change recipes to suit their diets; a herbivore using the same spices for their roasted roots that are popular in meat-based dishes, or a carnivore deciding to try out a nectar dip with their next meal. The fact that many different species of bugs lived in and around Hallownest meant that their would be tons of opportunities for culinary cross-overs!

What sort of foods would people take when traveling between kingdoms? I can imagine salted or preserved meats for long journeys, maybe jams or jarred greens as well. Dried mushrooms would work well, too - they’re a great source of protein for herbivores, and shrink down a lot when dehydrated so you could pack a lot of them. Pollen has protein in it, too, so I wonder if places like the Hive or other places where bees live would have pollen protein bars or something similar. How would they keep water with them? Many foods that insects eat do contain water in it in real-life (nectar, leaves, other insects), but the preserving/drying process would remove a lot of that liquid. Moss holds a lot of water, so maybe they would use moss placed within a bag or container so that the water doesn’t evaporate. Though, would it be easier just to carry a container of water at that point? Or would preserving food for trips even be necessary? Depending on the area, there could be plenty of plant life or prey to sustain a bug when traveling. Even in areas that seem more desolate, most likely there would still be things to eat if you know what you’re looking for. The difficulties in that scenario is knowing what things are edible when traveling in a new area, or which things might instead decide to try and make you a meal!

[tiger-lily-55555]

I just beat Soul Master today!

Even though Hollow Knight is one of my favorite video games, I’m not really good at it. I’ve been determined to beat HK by myself (my sib beat it for me the first saveslot), but I haven’t made much progress. I wasn’t feeling that well today so I thought playing some HK would cheer me up. When I booted up the game I saw I had the charm combo I saw online (I think on Reddit?), so I thought, “Well, why not try Soul Master?” I didn’t have very high hopes with me being under the weather and all, but I made it through the first stage way better that I expected. I honesty though he was going to shatter my shell so quick, but it was actually a pretty fun fight. The second stage was a lot harder since I wasn’t expecting how fast Desolate Dive, but I got the rhythm of Soul Master’s attacks after a bit. Good thing I did, because I could find no time to heal and ended the fight with only two masks left. I’ve been hyping this guy up in my mind for months, but all in all he wasn’t really that bad. He, and the Mantis Lords, where the two bosses that were blocking my progress, so finally defeating him was great! Next up I’m going to explore with my new spell. After that, I’ll try to fight the Mantis Lords. But even before I can fight them, I’ll have to face my old enemy:

Platforming Challenges

[tiger-lily-55555]

So some stuff went down on AO3 - it looks like a bunch of fics got scraped for AI stuff, including my fics because they were public access.

To prevent this in the future, I'm putting my fics on AO3 account only settings as I really don't want this to happen again. Thankfully, the database is currently disabled but I'm not sure how long that will be for.

I just wanted to give a heads up to why the links to my fics might not be working anymore if you don't have an AO3 account.

[tiger-lily-55555]

Well, my first year of Art Fight is officially over!

It was so, so much fun to draw so many cool ocs. I think I improved a lot over the course of the past few months, not just in drawing other peoples' ocs, but also making proper reference sheets for my own ocs for the first time.

I'm really proud that I managed to get over 500 points - I think I'll try to go for the same or more next year! It would be really cool for my team to win for the first time I joined this amazing event, but what I'm most happy about is seeing so much amazing artwork and getting to be part of such a cool challenge!

I cannot wait for next year already!

[tiger-lily-55555]

Grimm Troupe Costume Update!

So I cut out the template and set it aside to flatten out a few days ago, and today I was ready to start tracing on and cutting the fabric! My plan was to figure out how to fit six panels on the fabric, trace them out one at a time, then cut the panels out.

I was looking forward to using these fabric pencils I bought a while ago, but both the white and the blue chalk pencils didn't show on the fabric. I don't know if it was just the fabric I was using or if they would work better on a harder surface, but I had to resort to a tried-and-true tool I've used for previous, smaller projects:

Regular chalk sticks to the rescue!

From there, I laid out the panel, rearranging it until I found positions that would allow me to use the least amount of room on the fabric. I also placed the panels in a way that minimizes the amount of cuts I needed to do, lining up the two sides together. Once I got the panel in a place I wanted, I pinned it down and then traced it with the chalk.

When laying them out, just three panels were placed first since they lined up neatly next to each other. They also didn't take up much room on the fabric, to my surprise. Originally I was afraid that I wouldn't have enough fabric for this project, but once the panels were being traced out I realized I have enough to make twice as many panels as I needed. Well, better safe then sorry, and now I have extra if I want to use this fabric for potential future projects.

Next up was cutting out the panels. First the sides were cut out, then the corners that separated the seam allowances from each other. This way the seams can fold along the main piece, hopefully keeping it looking neat. These little corners were a lot trickier to cut for me since I was so worried about cutting too deep.

After the first three panels were completely cut, I repeated everything with the next panels. Then all that was left was throwing out the scrapes and putting everything away.

And here's all of the panels cut out! While I only need six for the cloak, I cut out a seventh just in case. Next time I'll start hemming and attaching the panels together.