Man, I Was Expecting, Like, No Beta We Die Like Men Or Something, Not Fucking This! Not The One Kind

An aroace pride flag?

PERRY THE AROACE PRIDE FLAG??

When I was younger and researching the autism diagnosis criteria and symptoms, I thought “oh I couldn’t POSSIBLY be autistic.” Because when I read “takes everything literally” I thought it literally meant EVERYTHING and I was like “I don’t take EVERYTHING literally, just most things!” And I just realized the other day that it didn’t actually mean EVERYTHING and that was an overstatement.

So, over the course of four-ish hours, I just handwrote 38 pages of a short story... My hand is going to fall off 😭😭😭

But I'm going to type it up soon, and I might link it to my profile... I'm not sure though.

It's a prequel to my long-term novel I'm currently writing. The short story is nameless so far, but the novel is called The Ones who Hurt, and it just recently hit 100 pages! It's a high fantasy novel about a cowardly superhero, an empathetic ex-villain, a bisexual human, a very sapphic queen, three undead-ish assassins, Fae royalty, a historic mystery, a suspicious cult, and a whole lot of family drama.

If anyone would be interested in reading the short story and potentially excerpts from the novel as it gets written, please comment or DM me. Please reblog this and interact with it, I really would love more author and reading friends! :]

@unmellowyellowfellow @queen-of-hobgobblers @deadandgaysetanta

😍😍😍😍😍😍

GIVE ME THE FORECAST ⚡⚡

@bovineblogger

the wretched abomination known as the minotaur has discovered some chalk

Reblog this if it’s okay to DM you and shoot the friendship shot.

My wife and I have a little game we play called "Speaking From Ignorance."

To play Speaking From Ignorance, all you need is a phone with a voice recorder, and another person who knows considerably more or considerably less about a topic than you do. The topic can be anything: from "how to bake a quiche" to "what happens in the Peter Jackson Hobbit movies" to "who is Florence Pugh" to "how does the traveling salesman problem work." All that matters is that one of you has a firm grasp on the material, and one of you absolutely the fuck does not.

Then the person who knows about the topic turns on the recorder, and says to the person who knows barely anything: "Hey - tell me everything you think you know about [X]."

The speaker is then not allowed to ask any questions. Nor is the expert allowed to volunteer any information. The expert is allowed to pipe up with a faintly incredulous "Oh--really? Do you--do you think so?" from time to time, but for the most part, the expert's job is just to sit there and make encouraging sounds while the speaker digs their own grave.

This is never not funny.

The reason you record it is because, very often, the first thing the speaker wants to do after finishing the recording is find out how you actually make a quiche, or whatever. Then you both get to go back and listen to how wrong they were.

We have a small library now of Speaking From Ignorance recordings, and I'm going to be listening to them until I'm eighty.

So, I saw this image on Facebook, and it was supposedly showing what Queen Nefertiti would have looked like in real life:

Now, I thought this AI generated garbage was just truly terrible on a number of levels; first off, she looks wayyyyyy too modern - her makeup is very “Hollywood glamour”, she looks airbrushed and de-aged, and as far as I’m aware, Ancient Egyptians didn’t have mascara, glitter-based eyeshadows and lip gloss. Secondly, her features are exceptionally whitewashed in every sense - this is pretty standard for AI as racial bias is prevalent in feeding AI algorithms, but I genuinely thought a depiction of such a known individual would not exhibit such euro-centric features. Thirdly, the outfit was massively desaturated and didn’t take pigment loss into consideration, and while I *do* like the look of the neck attire, it's not at all accurate (plus, again, AI confusion on the detailing is evident).

So, this inspired me to alter the image on the left to be more accurate based off the sculpture’s features. I looked into Ancient Egyptian makeup and looked at references for kohl eyeliner and clay-based facial pigment (rouge was used on cheeks, charcoal-based powder/paste was used to darken and elongate eyebrows), and I looked at pre-existing images of Nefertiti, both her mummy and other reconstructions. While doing this, I found photos of a 3D scanned sculpture made by scientists at the University of Bristol and chose to collage the neck jewellery over the painting (and edited the lighting and shadows as best as I could).

Something I see a lot of in facial recreations of mummies is maintaining the elongated and skinny facial features as seen on preserved bodies - however, fat, muscle and cartilage shrink/disappear post mortem, regardless of preservation quality; Queen Nefertiti had art created of her in life, and these pieces are invaluable to developing an accurate portrayal of her, whether stylistic or realistic in nature.

And hey, while I don't think my adjustments are perfect (especially the neck area), I *do* believe it is a huge improvement to the original image I chose to work on top of.

I really liked working on this project for the last few days, and I think I may continue to work on it further to perfect it. But, until then, I hope you enjoy!

Remember, likes don't help artists but reblogs do!

“Why does Batman need to be a billionaire?”

“He has to fund the Justice League. They often have a space program.”

“But couldn’t he do more good if he just invested-”

“The Earth is routinely invaded by aliens, gods, and the forces of an extraterrestrial god of tyranny.”