As you might or might not know, this site is in the midst of a recode right now! Mainly I wanted to recode the template so that it wouldn't be so ridiculously horrifyingly hard to maintain, which is going pretty well (1440 lines of code vs 3114 lines in the original template, to give you a rough idea; 1039 vs 2403 with all custom CSS cut out). Also, I wanted to make a theme that emphasised my current Stablehand project, instead of my old Tyrian project that I heavily backburnered a little while after making the old theme.
Since this theme will be gone in like three days, I figure I might as well add a couple screenshots here for reference
The nice thing about this new template is that I'm not going to have to load an external stablehand.css for the pages specifically about Stablehand any more (both because I'm reworking things and because I'll have to do less reskinning anyway with the style already in line with it :p), so they should load a little faster. Accordingly, I'll be lessening the boundary between the Stablehand section and the main site a lot, dumping the guidebook pages in with regular posts for one (they'll be clearly marked though), and overall grouping the site by big topics (main characters, side characters, world). My goal is to make it easier to find stuff if you have no idea what you're looking for.
Nice thing number two is that I stumbled into AddToAny on a google search, which unlike the default Blogger share buttons, actually looks pretty useful. I've also figured out how to (mis)use the title link field I never use to add my own share link so you can reblog things from my tumblr if I've already posted them there.
Oh, and nice thing number three is that it resizes like crazy. I'm going to have to test it in other browsers but right now it zooms to the window size beautifully in Firefox with just a little bit of CSS.
A WIP of the new template. Many things still need work, the background being one.
Spoiler alert: this site will be renamed when the template goes through. I like that when you abbreviate it to SNN it looks like a weird news network.
I feel like I need to share the inspiration for this character, because it's an odd little story.
So, there's this cartoon called Regular Show. I had never actually watched it, but apparently it's one of those things where a guy won a contest and just sort of put together a bunch of random characters and things lying around and wove a concept around them. Which was basically 'hey what if they were just sort of goofing around at college'.
So that's what Regular Show is.
Now here's what I thought it was.
You have this anthropomorphic blue jay and raccoon. They live in a world where pretty much everyone they run into on a daily basis is human, but they are not. For some weird reason, nobody can notice this, and thus everybody expects them to get up off their behinds and get jobs like responsible adults.
They refuse. They protest, reminding others of their respective species. They loiter around looking for food in yards and parking lots, only to be given stern warnings by police. But all to no avail. Their parents try to reassure them over the phone that it won't be so bad, that they'll get used to it, that things have been this way since they were that age at least. But they don't understand. This is a generation of jays and raccoons that unlike their parents, can't stand this insanity any more.
Wearily the two of them search the classifieds, looking for what feels like forever for some job that will let them put in a healthy minimum of work. But there's no easy way out in sight. Glancing at each other uneasily, they become ready to just give in like their parents and accept a bleak future of cursing capitalism. Finally, staff at the park they've been frequenting lately offer them a position (giving the reason that it's better they give them a chance to turn their lives around than just kick them out).
The two of them accept; that'll work well enough. Maybe they'll be able to stand it. But nevertheless, they try their best to sneakily avoid working in bizarre and entertaining ways.
It was this picture that made me realise I was subconsciously making up that whole narrative in the first place, because everything clicked into place when I saw that blue jay in the frame: the jay, Mordecai, was obviously somehow different from that bird. Maybe it was one of his old relatives or acquaintances or something rather than him, but in any case, something had happened to make him a new bird, unlike the bird he was before.
The best theory I could come up with was that he had never actually changed physically, and he was still actually a perfectly ordinary blue jay fluttering around awkwardly doing human-ish stuff, but the cartoon was just told the way it was because this was the way he saw everything since he'd surrendered to the concept of himself the humans had forced on him. Cameras, however, would still capture him as a regular bird.
I was pretty sure that when the frame was circled like that in the screenshot this was kind of an unexpected one-off and wasn't something the show ever actually addressed, but even so I wanted to imagine that every so often, there would be a little tiny hint like this of the story I just described, designed to jar you and make you go 'wait this isn't right, why can't they notice he's a blue jay'.
So, I knew it was unlikely, but I just really wanted to believe there was some kind of emotional drama going on in this show with the two of them grappling with the strain of being an adult in a society that just didn't understand them at all (read: was seemingly off its rocker) and maybe this idea of wanting to mature and grow but having to accept that as the cost of it.
As I learned more about Regular Show, I pretty quickly learned that it was really not about that (well, the part about the park staff seeing them as pretty much hopeless but giving them one last chance to turn their life around is almost accurate—they cause a ridiculous amount of trouble and are constantly getting last chances from their boss on a daily basis :p). But I really liked the story of a bird-man trying to wrestle with a world that wouldn't stop seeing him as a human, and so, I made Wings-07.
I'm not trying to suggest your memory is bad; this just made for a better flow. :p
Wings-07 (pronounced "Wings Seven") is an anthropomorphic waxwing, created by a team of scientists in a far-off locale as an experiment to see how birdpeople would do in the workforce (he's the seventh prototype; don't ask me what happened with the other prototypes, but they probably weren't very useful). Wings, much to the scientists' dismay, never had much enthusiasm in working, instead always wanting to go on adventures and take pictures. Eventually, they let him go on the condition that he had to find a job and send back detailed reports of how he was doing. (Ariana's storyline, which he will appear in as one of her miraculously-realised characters, will probably involve trying to help him find a job in spite of his unwillingness to work as one of the sidequests.)
For some reason, although people's eyes see him exactly as he is, their brains don't process the image as avian, and instead they see him as a vaguely-defined human with vaguely-defined clothes. As I tried to show, he basically has huge lightweight hands with wings over them, which have a weird mechanism where if he expands the hand out the feathers fold back, and if he contracts the hand the feathers expand. He can fly by making semi-fists and extending his arms, though to humans he looks like a person with expanded arms inexplicably drifting through the air.
Though I actually came up this explanation way after the fact, I'd say now that the scientists probably intentionally gave him the human-appearance gimmick as a way of controlling variables, mainly so any employers/customers wouldn't treat him any differently from a regular human.
Stablehand is a libre universe which will begin around a visual gamebook I'm currently developing. The goal is to give you the first fandom in which fan stuff will be 100% legal by default, no caveats (ok, two if you wanna be technical), and on roughly equal footing with canon stuff. It's a little bit like a Wikipedia universe!
Now, the visual gamebook I just mentioned, of the same name.
It is, as a certain someone made me describe, a sort of "choose your own adventure with attributes". The story has a number of its own quirky mechanics, but one of the central ideas is that there are any number of ways to be and to approach things, aka attributes.
Some people are good at certain attributes, others are terrible at them, others may even use the same attribute differently! Every character is different, and characters can of course change what attributes they are good at and which define them, sometimes leading to them schematising into new forms.
Each character (there are 12) has a distinct theme, story, and background within the framework of a fairly vast world.
And speaking of world, it's a fantastical world with an aesthetic I call retrolark. I've described it as "retro-modern middle-fantasy surrealism".
^ The obligatory "retro lark" pun.
Basically, a "retrolark" world is one where everything is styled in a sort of avant-garde minimalistic style that looks "modern" in an abstract way, but with traces of the awkward charm of about the 70s-90s. Silly expressions like "rad" are common, and people often see the world with a strange open-minded optimism. More centrally, the the world is full of strange and unheard-of things to the point almost nothing is surprising to them. That's the "lark" part.
I don't like to think politically
Ceaseless quarrels are annoying to me
If only I could step off this reality
And stride out into the blankness of infinity
I'm a freely-floating entity
No container can encompass me
No matter how I might look for group unity
I'll still be slopping bog-mass mired in an oddity
I'm not full of red-orange sunset rays
Sometimes my grasp on my appearance frays
I'm not a dreamer on the mystic frequency
Nor they to lead your squad to victory
People may think I'm a waste of space
But I can only move at my own pace
I'm not a kettle to pour cups of tea
So why should I try to ought not be me?
I'm not a monster from the shadows
Nor could I soar on flawless swanlike wings
I find rules quite blah but anarchy Herr Straw
To fit the grain goes against my rings
You see I don't like sheep and I don't like foils
A shade of peach-orange-beige is for what I toil
My flag is a patchwork made of muddled countless skeins
In autonomy I see the only brains
Wheat or chaff, curd or whey
Why cannot it just be grey
Land or sea, day or night
Why must all be black or white
Tech or farms, earth or man
Who drew up this master plan
[Instrumental meanderings]
I'm not one for deep philosophy
Sides and platforms labyrinth endlessly
In my heart I just want to be free
To transcend the boiling deserts of futility
I'm not a saviour from the heavens
Nor could I scald with brands of burning flame
I think it's not that great to just deliberate
But crusading toward death's just lame
You see I don't like fists and I don't like clowns
A stew of lukewarm heat is for what I sound
My anthem is a medley made of myriad jumbled parts
In but neutrality I find the only start
Dogma, fact, now or then
How can we give one the ten
Deft or dumb, friend or jerk
How can we know what will work
Plebs or folk, fiends or kings
How can we divide all things
[Instrumental meanderings]
I don't like to think politically
I'm not one for deep philosophy
In my heart I just want to be free
In my heart I just want to be me
Finally got around to drawing a proper picture of an Abyssal.
This is one of those drawings where I drew exactly what I set out to draw, but don't feel like it quite captures what the subject is supposed to be and how it's supposed to "feel". Maybe if I had the energy to colour it with proper darkness/contrast/texture I could make it look better.
Abyssals are supposed to vary in shape some amount, and also, as I tried to show here, churn and shift a lot. This one is supposed to have scattered claws randomly forming out of nothing since as a creature of Nothing, I feel like they should have zero coherent limbs.
Some miscellaneous creatures that didn't quite work.
Shadow has been a character I've been consistently ambivalent about, and I've had thoughts of either dropping or revamping him a bunch. Remembering another (throwaway) character I'd created once with a vaguely interesting appearance and the fact I didn't exactly have an Esteemed character on the main cast I tried to revamp him to be Esteemed, and it looked pretty cool honestly, but after a little while I scrapped that idea, realising that nope, I just wasn't realising what the main idea of Esteem was before so there actually was one already, and also that this design was a little lacklustre in being too "standardly awesome". So I'm back to square one with him, but at least this misstep made me appreciate him a bit more.
A couple of "traditional" medieval creatures, which I'm not sure if I'll use or not. One was an "ermine" with a heraldic "ermine" pattern, the other was a very literal take on a leucrota (from Pliny the Elder's description).
Leijonœrns. Or, serious attempts at them that didn't quite work. Originally I wanted them to look a lot like hexarts (see: sideways one, stuff at the top), but more recently (many months after I'd drawn the sideways one) I decided it would be more interesting to give them shoulder arms and ground wings and make them visually different from hexarts, and do similar with the other six-limbed creatures. I'm probably going to stick with that, though it's the only thing I solidly liked about these.
The interval between these only gets longer, but at least this time it's mostly because I've actually been posting things as proper posts instead of in here. Still, there are a few things.
First, the Observers' colour is apparently called "atoll" as I found out on this neat website. Neat bit of trivia. I remember back when all MBs were going to be variations of that colour, a time this post still hasn't gotten out of.
My mind couldn't think of the word "papaya", so it tried to pull out the word "pomegranate", but it couldn't come up with that either, so I accidentally ended up noting that a bunch of "Portent seeds" had spilled all over the floor and for at least five minutes intermittently laughed about it while picking up "Portent seeds".
I had to settle on appropriate background colours for... shh, a super-secret thing, and went back to my swans to pick them, resulting in a new set of single "official" attribute colours. Later I had to re-pick a couple colours again, partly thanks to Clarity replacing Duplicity.
A number of process pics happened.
And also Fuchsia.
I may as well say a bit about Fuchsia [...]. She's one of a number of side characters that played important roles in Aluma's history; to be a bit more specific she was a superhero of sorts known as The Superpower, and the first of the Superpower archetype. In present times there's at least one comic about "The Superpower" very loosely based on her, but almost everybody forgets it was based on an actual person. Kris, one of the main characters, was greatly influenced by this comic.
I'd had the basic idea for her design with the big poofy wing-shaped hair and the "feathered" cape for some time but then recently I found out about SU and realised it would make way more sense if Kris with her vague mineral theme admired somebody who also had a connection to minerals... so I shamelessly gave her a dark pink topaz stone clasp as a rôle object. :p
(Fun fact: Fuchsia is supposed to represent Faith, so her original name was Fiducia [trust/confidence in Latin], but that sounded like Fuchsia so I decided she'd probably go by that more often, and then fuchsia became the colour of Faith, so her gem is meant to match both her attribute and her name)
[C]haracter logo sketches I plan to vectorise soon. Lance's, Ssiv's, Sleipnir's, and Ariana's in a counterclockwise circle around the Yanha shape I drew to draw markings on but didn't (:p), to be specific. There are also some attempts at Io's logo but I don't really like how any of them came out.
Yeah, the rest of the main character logos are going to be a post some time in the near future. Here's Ssiv's:
Lastly, some chroma scribbles (that post conflated them with genders because it was an early version):
Me quickly scribbling out the gender symbols used for each chroma.
The current version of this particular worldbuilding facet, if you're totally lost right now, is that mystery beings don't have a gender, but have something called a chroma, which is related to their behaviour and general nature and as such people see it as kind of like a gender. People also sometimes identify as "gender Zed" and "gender Xai", etc., sometimes while also identifying as a "traditional" gender, like Flash Karkira who is malezed.
From top left: Xai, Zed, Omega, Omicron. Omega is Zed + Xai, kinda the "Totality attribute" of chromas, and Omicron is sort of the "Nothing attribute" of chromas. If it looks familiar from Ssiv's logo, it’s because Ssiv is more or less gender Omicron. I should have mentioned that. :p
Two more MBs! Both of the still semi-new Clarity attribute.
Planestacks are a creature of both Synthesis and Clarity. They aren't well-known at all.
They're made out of many square planes of a strange glassy material, each taking on one of many colours. The stack of planes spirals and slides around dynamically as the creature moves, branching off into four similar but smaller stacks that form the limbs. They have a rather loosely-composed body; I drew the planes right up against each other but they can have varying amounts of space between them.
The Expurgator is a concept I'd had sitting around for a while. Basically I wanted an S-Clarity creature that erased things, and I joked about calling it the Eraser and making it a literal eraser. Well, I did the "literal eraser" part finally, but decided to name it the Expurgator because that sounded cooler.
Expurgators are really mysterious. They don't even have sensors unlike most MBs to sense their surroundings with, just random holes through their form that might somehow accomplish the same thing. Or maybe they just know. Either way, they worm around furtively, sometimes using their correction pen to white-out seemingly random objects, which then disappear, never to be seen again. Well, seemingly. Occasionally, they reappear.
At first I randomly tried to draw the Expurgator as a weird biohazard-symbol-like thing, before I came up with the idea of the correction pen and then decided to go for something different.
(I did indeed write "head look dumb". I am not sure why. Maybe I left it that way because I thought it was funny.)
Lastly here's a "tame" Abyssal I drew. (I forget why I drew it but I think it may have come from the idea of them eating missing socks.) It's difficult to see but its "toes" are supposed to just be a bunch of randomly-placed churning blobs, as is much of the rest of its body.
This post was supposed to post some time ago but I never got the Arbiter's design done so it just sat around instead until I had the good sense to take the Arbiter out and put it in a new post.
The Orienter (Synthesis + Desolation) is a kind of living compass, with eight floating arms that each "point" to one of the Directed attributes. It has a great directional sense, and will gladly give directions to whoever wants them, drawing from what seems to be an uncannily great knowledge of the layout of the universe. Despite this, though, it tends to wander around a single, fixed area giving off an odd sense it has no idea where it should be going.
Below their arms they appear to have a strange double armillary sphere. For them, it functions somewhat like an elaborate compass, and interestingly, some human Navigators have mastered the art of using similar spherical compasses to plot their courses.
(New development I didn't tell you about: Nassak and Portent Rider both lean toward the Navigator archetype, a new archetype I just added. Nassak probably doesn't use one of those, but PR has one.)
The Portensilisk is a frightful creature that seems to be able to conjure up dark and terrifying hallucinations just by showing people its eyes. It also has a very limited ability to make such things actually happen, but not to a much greater degree than typical cirque techniques. For instance, it can conjure up small, corrosive waves of darkness-fluid around itself temporarily in a very limited radius, or bend the landscape around it temporarily to make a large structure easier to knock over.
Portensilisks tend to be peaceful and withdrawn most of the time, a lot like ordinary snakes, but unlike ordinary snakes, at times they will seemingly just randomly decide to be destructive. The good news, though, is that they will just as capriciously decide to stop being destructive.
(This is hardly even a concept picture of the Portensilisk, I'll do a real one later)
Cragwings (Fantasy + H-Clarity) are literally just huge chunks of cliff rock with... wings and a tail. That's it. That's all they are. They fly around randomly in the air and seem to thrive in deserted places with a lack of coherent logic, like cloud islands with floating mountains (i.e.: not normal places). They also sort of have a theme song.
Wanyanszars (H-Incongruity) are fluid, springy, vaguely lizard-like beings that appear to be made of some kind of unusually violent and bright energy that tears through their surroundings. They thrive in ambiguous environments, which, apparently, they have the power to warp to their liking, as if certain types of environments inherently had loopholes (e.g.: environment appears to be a lake at night, Wanyanszar jumps onto it and reveals it's actually a tar pit in front of a blue hazy screen; sees sidewalk drawing and jumps onto it, turns fake illusion into actual hundred-foot-tall tower). If one thing's for sure, they definitely don't mind chaos at all, though they don't necessarily delight in inflicting confusion on others. They're just at home in a chaotic environment.
The rounded Wanyanszar would be called a Jianjianszar if/when I use it, but I don't even have any idea what that one would be like yet so... no cool description on that one. Sorry. :p
(The Wanyanszar was from my initial concept drawings before mystery beings were entirely a thing; I forgot to really give it background and a name and integrate it so now I'm finally doing that. I realised it was a lot like a creature named Wanyanxi ("zigzag lizard") I'd made for a parody of Chinese Pokémon bootlegs, so for its name I just took Wanyanxi and mashed it up with -szara, the ending equivalent to "-er/-or" in MB language. It's basically a crazy bootleg name that literally means "Zigzagger" but I'm using to mean "Contorter".)
Here we are! I wanted to make a more quality drawing of The Ingenious, and I did, but at the same time I also drew more updated versions of the two more common Observer forms. Those forms are now called the Yunia (Unity) and Vontada (Will) forms, and Ingenious' form is now called the Sinteszia (Synthesis) form; as it's a sort of combination of the two I felt like I needed to have a good reference of the other two to compare it to.
It's good I got to drawing the main two forms again, though, because their design has changed a bunch by now. In particular the Vontada form looks a lot more like a theropod dinosaur by accident; its arms could probably be a bit more substantial actually because I liked the ape-ish look on the colour palette test one. Another, actually intentional design element is that now, all forms' hands have exactly one clawed thumb but the rest of the digits unified into a single unit by default, which separates out into separate fingers (up to 7 counting the thumb) as needed. (That's my sneaky way of obeying the "MBs have either digits or claws reflecting their attribute number" rule while still giving them normal hands.)
Also this time I actually drew the sensors seriously instead of scribbling them, for the very first time. I'm not totally sure I won't change them the next time I have to draw these things but at least I have an actual design for the sensors now. :p
Okay so, I'd been thinking about what to do about a minor conundrum I've been having. Namely, what to do about stuff on this site I'd created that either mixed hints of non-libre content or that I'm not proud of enough to release formally under the CC-BY-SA. For one thing I wasn't sure what to do about the text of the site; I didn't think anything I'd written apart from Stablehand posts was quite awesome enough to just shout "everything here is a quality resource!", which is what the CC-BY-SA had usually evoked in my mind.
And, well... long story short, the answer I guess is ♡ copyheart.
So what's that? It's a "nicer" variant on the idea of a copyright notice, which instead of reminding readers that the law restricts every use by default, reminds them that the author is fundamentally okay with the diffusion of their ideas. This is my version of it:
♡ 2014 TAKUMI. Copying is an act of love. Please copy, adapt, and share.
Some people might complain that this is the most hippy-dippy "copyright" notice they've ever seen (indeed, I've seen that), and you know what? I absolutely agree. It makes me feel like the biggest dork ever to put that in the footer. But at the same time it makes me feel way less like a hypocrite than writing the "truth" (the gritty truth) that by not taking any action to liberate my stuff, I choose to censor people by leaving all rights reserved. Which would suggest that I'm okay with that, and I'm not.
A really cool thing about copyheart is that it really neatly solves the problem I'd been having with fan art, which is that it seems intuitive to feel one can't liberate it, but on the other hand, I honestly didn't care what happened to it, and felt like there was something especially wrong with "retaining the right to censor" on things that weren't even "mine". Now, without trying to use the CC-BY-SA and open the can of worms of what happens when people have to use a libre licence on fan works, I can communicate my intentions that they be used and that I not act as a second barrier (after the original creator) to using things.
When you stop and think about it, it's really rather elegant for a handful of corny-sounding words without any legal fortifications built up behind them. (Which, by the way is why nothing I've already made CC-BY-SA is going un-CC-BY-SA any time soon, nor am I going to stop using it for my more substantial original things. It's like an extra safeguard for things you really, really want to stay libre.)
Accordingly, I may start bringing some of my fan things back onto Sangkara when I make them and when they're "good enough", particularly stuff for this project called "RESTART" (a spin-off to OFF) that I'm thinking about making.
And by the way, if for whatever reason you need to type copyheart, and you're using Linux like me, it's really easy to add it to your compose key! Find your .XCompose file in your home directory and put in the following line to type copyheart as "o3":
<Multi_key> <o> <3> : "♡" U2661 # Copyheart
You'll need to have the XCompose file set up first but in my opinion it's the best way to type special characters (you can type practically anything) so it's worth it.
I finally thought about it and realised today why exactly that old "PIRACY. IT'S A CRIME" ad was so grating and stupid in the eyes of not just me but alotofotherpeople. (Trigger warning for Holocaust on the last one, but it's my favourite.)
And here's the reason it's stupid: it makes an improper logical leap.
It equates copyright infringement with theft metaphorically, then equates theft with crimes literally, and ignores that distinction to make the otherwise possibly reasonable assumption that if A → B and B → C, then A → C. That is:
Piracy is (metaphorically) theft.
Theft is (literally) a crime.
Piracy is (???) a crime.
And actually, to really make the argument it's making—that because there is a law you shouldn't break it—the ad also pretty much has to add an implied fourth term that because there is a law against something it must be inherently harmful/evil, so it's more like:
Piracy is (metaphorically) theft.
Theft is (literally) a crime.
Crimes are harmful and should not be done.
Therefore piracy is harmful and should not be done.
Now let's try that same idea with different things.
The government is a (metaphorical) octopus, extending its arms into everything
Therefore the government probably operates underwater
Government. It's a deep-sea operation.
Your brain is (metaphorically) your central computer
Computers are (literally) electronic computing devices
Electronic computing devices are usually made with plastic, metal, and silicon
Therefore your brain is probably made with plastic, metal, and silicon
Brains. They're a technological wonder.
Your body, according to the bible, is (metaphorically) a temple
Temples are a type of religious building.
Religious buildings in Christianity (or at least the statelier ones) often contain stained-glass windows, spires, and/or gargoyles.
Therefore you should be asking why your body doesn't have awesome gargoyles.
Bodies without gargoyles. It's a missed opportunity.
There could well be some little nuance I'm missing here since these sound a good deal more obviously absurd than the original, but I think this is the gist of it.
Finally, the flarefowl! This should have happened much, much sooner given how important these guys are supposed to be, but it's better late than never, I guess.
The flarefowl or hwnzj is Hinotoria's national bird, from which the country gets its name. It's known for an exceptionally beautiful, elaborate, and varied song, but it only sings these songs at any length in places it feels more or less completely safe. As such, the Hinotorians regard it as a symbol of deep, fundamental harmony, and portray it in stories as being common in times when civilisation is running smoothly and not appearing (or only speaking brief, harsh notes the few times it does appear) when there is a bad government, unrest, etc. In reality, the birds could care less what the government's doing, but they actually are sensitive to obviously hostile behaviour and prefer quiet over noise, making the part about unrest partly true.
Though I designed them to look like pheasant-family birds (tragopans and grouses in particular) I feel like the Hinotorians would probably not eat them as a general rule because, you know, if you outright kill The Bird Of Peace and eat it it makes you look really, really bad. That's probably one thing that separates them from the more Wilful Sengra nearby—it seems really probable some Sengra would just kill the bird without thinking and be like you silly Hinotorians, what's so sacred about a stupid chicken?. ...As you can guess the Hinotorians are at best rather neutral about the Sengra.
I haven't decided whether they are sexually dimorphic or not. At first they were supposed to not be and both be brightly-coloured the way macaws are, but then the way this came out it's honestly pretty crazy for a normal colouration, so I'm leaning toward this being the male colours and the female literally just having a bright head and a drab body like a male tragopan.
If I do that, I might make the female have a greater portion of yellow on the head and a yellowish-brown body so it looks more like the yellow emblems Hinotoria uses in official-insignia-type stuff and that people also use casually as a sort of common symbol of a shared culture (like Jinfèng's emblem).
There's a story of a man who had ambition like a whale
He might not've saved no maidens or put on no ornate mail
But the truth of it is that bloke was bravest of the brave
There's not and never ever will be none to trudge the road he paved
Now this man known as Kolonok had whiskers like a fox
And although they were a-grayin' he had mostly brownish locks
His colleagues all respected him until the day he said
"I'm gonna prove there's no true magic or I'm gonna end up dead."
Kolonok
Could not dream symbols came from naught
Or that things could just ups and be something other than what they aught
He knew what he'd do to set his scoffing colleagues right
He took his team above the parallel where brown bears yield to white
Now the story'd been since long ago the north was kind of odd
That for many many centuries but few had dared there trod
'Twas said that if you went there then your fate would be quite dark
But to the brave intrepid Kolonok that mostly seemed like bark
Kolonok
Was a man with a sense about his head
He knew the world had no true monsters and this was likely senseless dread
He knew what to do to set these gullible cowards right
He took his team above the parallel where winter has no light
Now up in the northlands there it's really not a breeze
Even the steel-muscled Kolonok was liable to freeze
His companions all complained there was no way they would succeed
But Kolonok told them to stuff it and build camp as they'd agreed
Kolonok
Sometimes took a somewhat hardened line
Although he did have some compassion 'twas for him like an antique wine
He knew what to do to set those weak complainers right
He took his team above the parallel where huskies show their might
Now for weeks and weeks and months and days all the team unearthed was snow
And ol' Kolonok's companions said, "You know, we should prob'ly go"
But ol' Kolonok just drove 'em all further into the night
He said
"I said I was gonna prove my point and I gotta do it right."
Kolonok
May've seemed like he didn't have a brain
He put his pride above his life and hardly knew that thing called pain
But he knew what to do to set the clueless public right
He took his team above the parallel where guillemots take flight
After what seemed like forever and a day one team came back not
To tell Kolonok the usual but that they'd hit the jackpot
When the boss heard that he leapt up and his whip flew to his hand
Said
"We're going there next morning! Prep the dogs, that's my command."
Kolonok
Didn't know what lay out far beyond
But then to him that made it better as of darkness he was fond
He knew what to do to set the sceptics back home right
He took his team above the parallel where starlights twinkle bright
When they got there sure enough it was a sure sight to behold
The air was churning with auroras far below the dawn sky's fold
The group was both aghast and mesmerised to the very core
But when their boss said "Now let's probe this" they recoiled in horror
Kolonok
Wasn't one to ever stop midway
If he had gone this far he'd not be back without a strict assay
He knew what to do to set those distant doubters right
He took his team above the parallel where most would die of fright
Now they were face to face in front of it, and seemingly third base
And their boss had him a vial to take back to their camping place
Why, it seemed as if their mission might go through without a hitch
Until a being made of prism glass emerged from who-knows-which
Kolonok
As a man was honest, brave and true
But it was really not unlike him to bite off more than he could chew
Still, he knew what to do to set those craven sissies right
He took his team above that parallel and he was gonna fight
Now the being was a hexart with a heart of rainbow quartz
And it didn't seem as violent as a mouse from souther parts
But when it closed its eyes and opened them the explorers filled with dread
They couldn't say exactly why but knew it'd be best if they fled
Kolonok
Was secure as steel 'round a spool
He'd not unravel for a hurricane and thus he kept his cool
He knew what to do to set this crazy mad world right
He took his team above that parallel where naught could really bite
Oh, the hexart dropped its lids again and spread on out its wings
And the auroras slowed and darkened, seeming to bring bad tidings
The entire world around them seemed dark as the ocean floor
And Kolonok's poor group of followers could not take any more
Kolonok
Was one of the hardiest of men
But when his comrades started running he began to think again
He knew what to do but was no longer sure if it was right
When he took his team above that parallel into a thorny plight
Now the dogs were going crazy and the men were running fast
And some harnesses were tangling and some mushers were getting cast
But their boss just kept on standing there and gently reached ahead
"If you know what's good for you, my friend, you'll quit this now" he said
Kolonok
Knew things were getting out of hand
But at the same time couldn't stand to waste a moment not being grand
He knew what to do to prove his intuitions right
He set his hand upon the hexart and he firmly held it tight
At that the beast seemed now contented and the darkness seemed to calm
But there was still something amiss he felt that slightly shook his palm
So he took a gander backward thinking naught much he'd find there
And caught a halfways-vanished team dissolving into empty air
Kolonok
As you know would trudge through rain or sleet
But when he saw this thing occur why then his heart 'bout skipped a beat
He had no clue what to do and so he pleaded for his life
"Please now sweet dragon don't destroy me and remove me from this strife!"
Kolonok was looking hopeful when the hexart blinked again
Thought now maybe now just maybe it might even be his friend
But soon enough it faded out into the Arctic air
And he only felt more shaky with each second he stayed there
Kolonok
Was really fairly sturdily built
But now his knees began to wobble with a crushing sense of guilt
He knew of but one thing to do to set this awful setback right
He packed his tools and last three dogs up and he slunk into the night
Kolonok
Could not dream symbols came from naught
Or that things could just ups and be something other than what they aught
He knew what he'd do to set his scoffing colleagues right
He took his team above the parallel where brown bears yield to white
Kolonok
Could not dream symbols came from naught
Or that things could just ups and be something other than what they aught
He knew what he'd do to set the clueless public right
He took his team above the parallel where winter has no light
Kolonok
Could not dream symbols came from naught
Or that things could just ups and be something other than what they aught
He knew what he'd do to set the sceptics back home right
He took his team above the parallel where huskies show their might
Although he had his ship and dogs still Kolonok had naught to show
Devoid of pride and empty-handed he had almost nowhere to go
So he weaseled on into his den and whiled the days away
And if his heart pained on forever well no one could really say
Kolonok
Could not dream symbols came from naught
Or that things could just ups and be something other than what they aught
He knew what he'd do to set his scoffing colleagues right
He took his team above the parallel where guillemots take flight
Kolonok
Could not dream symbols came from naught
Or that things could just ups and be something other than what they aught
He knew what he'd do to set the his scoffing colleagues right
He took his team above the parallel where starlights twinkle bright
Kolonok
Could not dream symbols came from naught
Or that things could just ups and be something other than what they aught
He knew what he'd do to set his scoffing colleagues right
He took his team above the parallel where brown bears yield to white
Alone (Girders baulk at the sun)
Unknown (Them frogs ain't singin' yer mead)
On my own (Dustbrooms fight for blue skies)
Tempest-blown (Axes grindin' the lead)
I've no name to my name (When I catch 'em cornhusks twinklin' in the night)
And no face to my frame (When I set 'em peaks of deep-fried melodies right)
If I could just get a gasp within my grasp (For a day when grates can fly like crows!)
To tag this seamless vault without a clasp (When fir trees's sproutin' feet and toes)
Would I at long last have the code to self-reclaim?
Only one (If this one fine rooster don't count)
On the run (Vetch sprigs whistle the blues)
Never done (Dial 'dirt' for earthworm buffets)
Helped by none (As all the roads depart on a cruise)
I've no face to my space (When I see 'em crystals myanderin' in the morn')
But much race to my pace (When I fly like a madjay from the cattails' thorns)
If I could just fill a bill of will (If bats could dive and snakes could fly)
Could I kill every last urge to do ill? (A flightless teacup's gotta try)
Or would I still be a coaster made of sin-pierced lace?
[Instrumental meanderings]
I've no name to my name (If an eight-legged horse ain't gonna make the cut)
And no face to my frame (Honey, would you move my tractor outta this rut)
If I could just find the zeal to get a reel ('Cause these wily leaves won't count themselves)
On this shifting self I cannot feel (Only the swallows' paths could tell)
But when I don't have a self to know as me (And an unmarked dishrag buys no hay)
How could I rise out of obscurity? (A speechless vase could hardly say)
If I could only just out my true face ('Fore the key fobs blot the light of day)
Could I pull myself out of disgrace (With the pea pods singin' yippee-kai-yay)
But when I don't have a self to know as me (And the misplaced tribrachs cannot scream)
Where would I put my new integrity? (Would it just leak out like a tea kettle's steam)
Praise be to Haru of the heavens
The beaked defender of this sphere
For to Him I owe all I have wrought below
The height of which none will ever near!
I'm Arkturuse Miraharu
A bird much like a darkened swan
Between my worldly wits and this unfailing team
We could carve towers to the dawn
Some may call me prideful and bombastic
But is that not all just a part of being grand?
A person of my quality should escalate
Until the skies rain tears of sand
Hail Haru of the desert skies (An example for all)
Hail Him above the jess (Yet I fear I may fall)
Hail Haru of all-seeing eyes (Though I crow and I cheep)
Which I do not possess (Deep within I just weep)
My doormat spells the name of Haru
A falcon rests upon my head
My faith spans greater than this boundless void
And that's quite a thing to be said!
I always conduct myself with honour
I bow my beak unto my guests
I have the breeding of a gentleman
And I never give but my best!
My comrades are only but the finest
My haunt is lavishly with jewels clad
My vast wings can carry me through anything
But yet I still cannot be glad
Hail Haru of the blazing sun (When I'm cornered, I fly)
Hail Him of evening shade (When I boast, I just lie)
Hail Haru who sees everyone (Oh, my heart may be wide)
On every landmass ever made (But there's nothing inside)
A warm flame stirs below the mantle
The walls pour aeons of ordeal
I will never forget those who died for me
Even if they weren't even real
The papers gush about my grandeur
I'm known quite far throughout this space
There's no one without awe that my likeness saw
And as such I must keep my pace
My heart spans greater than a empire
And beats sonorous as a horde of lovesick swans
Our spirits blaze as part of one great gleaming fire
But how long can we pressure on?
Hail Haru of the golden throne (In the end, I'm just one)
Hail Him of truth and right (And there's nowhere to run)
Hail Haru who holds chaos back (Should my form turn petard)
And never falters in His fight (Would no one mend my shards?)
Praise be to Haru of the heavens
The beaked defender of this sphere
For to Him I owe all I have wrought below
The height of which none will ever near!
I'm Arkturuse Miraharu
A sir in which you can confide
Although I can't see what's in front of me,
My aspirations are ten leagues wide
Hail Haru of the desert skies (At the top I reign strong)
Hail Him above the jess (But can I stay here for long?)
All have weathered my pride (Hail Haru of all-seeing eyes)
But how long will that slide? (Which I do not possess)
An example for all (When I'm cornered, I fly)
Yet I fear I may fall (When I boast, I just lie)
Though I crow and I cheep (Oh, my heart may be wide)
Deep within I just weep (But there's nothing inside)
At the top I reign strong (In the end, I'm just one)
But can I stay here for long? (And there's nowhere to run)
All have weathered my pride (Should my form turn petard)
But how long will that slide? (Would no one mend my shards?)
To stand without weight in a blackness so great
The age of which no one remembers...
A falcon must vie in this chasm so dry,
Lest its wings dissolve to embers...
An example for all (When I'm cornered, I fly)
Yet I fear I may fall (When I boast, I just lie)
Though I crow and I cheep (Oh, my heart may be wide)
Deep within I just weep (But there's nothing inside)
At the top I reign strong (In the end, I'm just one)
But can I stay here for long? (And there's nowhere to run)
All have weathered my pride (Should my form turn petard)
But how long will that slide? (Would no one mend my shards?)
There is something that passes through though I can't and shan't just call it "true"
It gleams at the seams from long afar and it pulses like the tears of stars
Though I've never seen or heard its kind I can only dream it will blow my mind
Though I can't touch its form or see its hue if I could just grasp its essence I'd know what to do!
I'm Arkturuse Miraharu
A bird much like a darkened swan
Though my handsome façade has a thousand awed
'Tis a thin ridge I tread upon
Pray to Haru we can stand as one
Pray my stately flair can bear us through
Should the winds be willing I may yet prevail
But if I can't what will we do?
Hail Haru of the desert skies
Hail Him above the jess
Hail Haru of all-seeing eyes
Which I do not possess...
Hakan Anapa of the balance of eternity
What am I but just a fractured dark humanity
A faceless halo filled with nothing and hypocrisy
A ripple's ripple on the murky pond of memory
NOW
HOW
CAN I HOLD
Of how tough
Of a stuff
Am I rolled?
How long (how strong)
Will it take (is my make)
Before I keel over and break
Till my shards
Fill the sky
In the cold?
Although I may be capable of pressuring my cheeks to turn
The space around my heartless void is twinging like an acid burn
As much as everyone may try to tell me everything's okay
Will I live? Will I live to face another day?
The day
is greyer than the Nile on a clouded day
The rain
is rain-like as it comes down on the outer bay
I spread my wings into the chasm just outside the gate
I stare out into the unfeatured dark expanse of fate
BUT
WHAT
IS MY GOAL?
Do I know
How to grow
To my role?
How far (from subpar)
Can I strain (through the rain)
Before I join the aether again
How far
Can I tote
This great hole?
I cannot know the meaning of the feelings known as joy or dread
I only know the spacious space that somehow occupies my head
Just ask me if the air is nice, if starlight fills my heart with glee
And I can only answer that it feels like a day to me
The blackness changes to an aura of a shifting type
Some airlike currents whistle windlike through the ceiling pipe
My ears flick upward as the vapours twist uneasily
I climb the dais as the restless aether calls to me
WHY
WHEREBY
DOES IT RING?
Is there purpose
Inside
Of nothing?
How deep (or how steep)
Can I reach (can I breach)
In this void immersed in black bleach
Till I find
The one source
Of this ding?
I know that half of what I think is likely just hyperbole
But it simply doesn't feel right that everything's the same to me
The blackish void the airish air the doorish door that leads nowhere
How can I even stand here in this state-like state of disrepair?
Hakan Anapa of the balance of eternity
What am I but just a fractured dark humanity
A faceless halo filled with nothing and hypocrisy
A ripple's ripple on the murky pond of memory
I cannot know the meaning of the feelings known as joy or dread
I only know the spacious space that somehow occupies my head
Just ask me if the air is nice, if starlight fills my heart with glee
And I can only answer that it feels like a day to me
Hakan Anapa of the balance of eternity
What am I but just a shadow of an entity?
A nameless figure cloaked in meaningless mythology
A shadow's shadow on the shaky tides of history
Although I may be capable of pressuring my cheeks to turn
The space around my heartless void is twinging like an acid burn
As much as everyone may try to tell me everything's okay
Will I live? Will I live to face another day?
Hakan Anapa of the balance of eternity
Help me rise above this empty state of tragedy
Show me how to bind my fractures for solidity
Give me strength to salt my shrivelling identity
NOW
HOW
CAN I HOLD
Of how tough
Of a stuff
Am I rolled?
How long (how strong)
Will it take (is my make)
Before I keel over and break
Till my shards
Fill the sky
In the cold?
I cannot know the meaning of Ma'at for all my fatal flaws
How can I wield the scale of Anapa in unworthy paws
If I could only know why people press through day and night and troubled air
Would I be worth my aethereal weight in decent-quality Ammut fare?
The blackish void the airish air the doorish door that leads nowhere
How can I even stand here in this state-like state of disrepair?
As much as everyone may try to tell me everything's okay
Outside the lift
Is it a rift?
Will I be miffed?
Is it a fifth?
Of my expectations?
On the lift
On the lift
On the lift to Ruin
What a gift
What a gift
What a gift awaits within
Outside the lift
Is it a rift?
Will I be miffed?
Is it a fifth?
Of my premonitions?
The world
Will yield
Its secrets forth to me
Not one
Concealed
Remaining mystery
If I have to break some doors
If I have to crack some floors
This sphere will bask in my eternal victory
The
Hawks the bats the oaks the roses and the skies
Can one not wonder on the hows the whats and too the whys?
To know
To see
To soar about all free
On a thermal with a raptor's piercing watchful eyes
In truth I may not be a real superpowered girl
But at the least I can still dream of giving it a whirl
You see?
You see?
How awesome I can be?
Don't know about you three but I can take anything the world can hurl
To all all creatures thousandfold possess links which extend
Of stuffs not all unlike our spirits forge a mighty blend
Of dark
Of light
Of black
Of white
Within your enemy in truth may be your greatest friend
On the lift
On the lift
On the lift to Ruin
What a gift
What a gift
What a gift awaits within
Outside the lift
Is it a rift?
Will I be miffed?
Is it a fifth?
Of my expectations?
On the lift
On the lift
On the lift to Ruin
What a shift
What a shift
What a shift will soon begin?
Outside the lift
What sort of drift
Is it a gift?
Is it a grift?
Beyond the lift to Ruin
That means my user scripts will be temporarily relocating here, to Sangkara! I can't decide whether archive.org is a better idea or not so I'll just keep them here and update via Dropbox. At the very least I can really, really easily upload updates that way.
I've decided that with songs I'm going to start just posting the lyrics on Sangkara instead of my dA, with the song on archive.org embedded inside. It might mean I basically stop using the dA for pretty much everything other than silly dream drawings, but unfortunately, sometimes you've just gotta leave redundant things behind and move on to more convenient systems. And I feel doing things this way will overall be way more convenient and organised even than my tumblr, which is a slight mess with music WIPs and such all over the place.
So! Neutrality, Ssivyin's song, will be the first, to arrive shortly.
This is an example of an idea I just really randomly got and then created on paper in probably less than ten minutes. It's the brownnose! Its... nose is brown. And it's incredibly cute, but once it starts following you, it's never going to leave.
I see Mega-Mierundaro as having a very uneasy relationship with them, with them making Arkturuse look like some kind of crazy cat lady as they just kind of wander in and he doesn't want to cast any of them out because they're just so cute! but everyone else alternates between welcoming them and finding them super-annoying. :p
And before you make fun of it, I've already got you covered:
(Actually, I made this picture when a random verb generator was giving me terrible suggestions for MB names.)
Also, here are some renders of a basically finished Obtruder model:
Hoo boy, another mess. Let's start with the Infiltrator.
Yesterday River Monsters reminded me that skates existed, so I looked them up and I was just like whoa look at these things they're so crazy. They almost look like an MB already, haha.
So, I thought, why not turn them into one? And I started designing this skate/ray MB that can flatten and extend its body seemingly endlessly in order to eavesdrop on everyone and everything (yeah, somehow its skin can just kinda hear I guess. MBs are weird :p).
A little later, I was thinking about how with the Nebuliser and Observer and Eventuator and Seuwayote and shoǔshi there were a bunch of cats and dogs already, so the Infiltrator might be adding a bit of needed diversity. And I thought about Commander, this creature I'd come up with really recently that was just going to be a really exotic big cat basically. (Commander is an individual, not a species by the way, just so you don't get confused. :p)
Then I got the stupid but neat idea to turn Commander into a big cat with skate-mantle-wings that looked like the Infiltrator's body on top. It was a really weird idea but on the other hand, oddly awesome. By the way, the word "skate" kept making me think of ice skates so I added some vague ice-skate-like shapes to Commander's design and I think it actually looks kinda cool that way.
Also on this page are my early concepts for the Obtruder (I drew the Machination parody first and turned it into a creature second), a flaredrakeicorn doodle, and early attempts to figure out how the heck to design a creature called the Orienter (it's supposed to look like a compass but with eight floating arms pointing to attributes instead of directions).
On a sidenote, the Orienter and Infiltrator both are a type of MB I wasn't intending to design originally. Believe it or not, I've expanded out my MB table AGAIN, separating the more "purposeful" creatures (whose names end in -er or -or) from the creatures based on attribute symbols and random things like the lightray eel I just tossed in there.
Part of this is because I was just wary of all my MBs looking like regular animals rather than weird abstract things like the Insulator and Adumbrator, a problem that was pretty widespread in the creatures in the second table. The other part was that there wasn't really a place for the Orienter or another thing tentatively called the Incenser (which I haven't drawn yet) in the table if I didn't do this. So, I feel like it was necessary.
Finally the thing in the upper left-hand corner is my first doodle of a character called Sonata. She's not for Stablehand, but rather an odd little side story idea called "Song of the Refugees".
(archive.org's edit page is doing weird things today, so the images I put there aren't showing up right now, sorry. They're just crops that show each thing a little cleaner though, so you're not really missing anything.) Ah, finally.
