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thefridayfive.1. What's one of the nicest things a friend has ever done for you?
My sister took me to see our favorite band (Pulp)!
2. What's one of the nicest things a stranger has ever done for you?
Bought me cigarettes when I was short on money.
3. What is a trait in another person that you instantly admire, and that draws you to them?
Authenticity.
4. What is a trait in another person that instantly repels you, and prevents you from forming a close relationship with them?
Vanity.
5. Time to vent: tell us about something rotten someone has done to you.
I'm not in the mood to vent, but there's been plenty!
tygerMoved the storage drawers I have at the back of my desk today! ( Moving rambles )
Other than that, played some solo Terraria. ( Terraria rambles )
Anyway somehow it's now 4:30 so I'm just gonna. Uh. Go the fuck to bed, you moron. Yes. That.
svgurlanimatedfanfiction is a community for posting any fanfiction based on animation, including any type of cartoons, animated films/shows, or anime.austenexchange is running a Jane Austen fest to celebrate her 250th birthday. Prompting for all her works is welcome until 8AM UTC on December 16th, when works will be revealed, but you can still posts fills after that. fandomtrees, a multi fandom gifting fest, is open for sign-ups until December 5th, 11:59PM UTC.smallfandombang, a big bang for small fandoms, has opened artist sign-ups until January 31st, 2026.womansplace is going to host Rec-Cember, an event where you can post meta and recs of fic, vids, art, podfic, meta, graphics, etc - any fannish endeavor you enjoy that are focused on women throughout the month of December.
holly_poly signups are now open.They will remain so until 11:00am UTC on 26 November.
Check the signup post here and the tagset here.
doodlemancycaveat that's probably obvious: even the "AI-free" big stock websites probably have at least some AI lurking in them, because people who litter don't give a shit about "no littering" signs. for maximum safety, if an image looks sus to you and has a post date of 2023 or later, it may be best to cast it aside.
istockphoto, getty images, & shutterstock
https://www.istockphoto.com/ & https://www.gettyimages.com/ & https://www.shutterstock.com
MIRACULOUSLY, these have not yet fallen to AI. they will advertise their stupid AI "tools" loudly at you, but those are for modifying images after-the-fact. they do not actually allow generated images to be uploaded for sale. their size and popularity, along with the fact that stock photo sites tend to be good about specific keywords and descriptions, makes them ideal places to search. ime these sites were like half of google image results pre-AI-boom anyway LOL
pexels
https://www.pexels.com
free stock photo site. large selection, pretty good search tools. explicitly does not allow generative AI uploads.
https://pixabay.com/
free stock photo site. requires AI images to be labeled and lets you filter for authentic images only. (unfortunately they aren't super diligent about moderating; be wary of images posted after about 2022. thanks for the heads up leigh)
unsplash
https://unsplash.com/
free stock photo site. explicitly does not allow generative AI uploads.
flickr
https://www.flickr.com/search/
not completely AI-free, but it hasn't been cool since yahoo instant messenger still existed, so the clankers mostly ignore it. GREAT search tools, lots of Creative Commons stuff, you can even use advanced search to narrow your search by date to pre-AI-boom times. heads up, this is one of the rare big long-standing gallery sites that still allows some NSFW images, so be warned if you don't use the filters DICKS WILL BE ON YOUR SCREEN. (i guess that probably also means you could find nude reference there.)
the wikimedia commons (thanks for the suggestion, pagodrink!)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/
huge, searchable database, and while it's not 100% AI-free, they're pretty strict about AI. (additional info here.) The vast majority of Wikimedia images are authentic. also fun because the images you'll get here usually have more context around them than a random stock photo. keep in mind: wikimedia is an educational resource that does not shy away from potentially upsetting content. graphic images of human and animal suffering/injury/corpses can easily turn up in searches, and there's not really a way to filter them out. (my test search for "mouse" returned some pretty gory photos of dead mice!) this isn't a criticism, just a warning for those who might be more sensitive.
https://archive.org/
can be a little tricky and clunky to use at times, but filters can often turn up interesting stuff you won't find in other places. definitely not AI-free but can be filtered by date to pre-AI-boom uploads.
smithsonian open access (thank you deramin for the suggestion!)
https://www.si.edu/openaccess
lots of content, lots of it copyright-free. since it's a museum, a lot of this is going to be more on the historical side. they have some 3D scans of things that are pretty neat and viewable in-browser-- look at this crab!
the base mesh
https://www.thebasemesh.com/
a fantastic growing archive of basic 3D models of common objects. easy to download and view an object at an angle.
reference angle
http://referenceangle.com/
a much more specific tool. pose the 3D head, search, get photos of real humans at the angle of the head. try it out. shit rocks
same energy (thanks for the suggest, animtrash!)
https://same.energy
works a lot like pinterest's previously excellent visual search and doesn't seem to turn up heinous amounts of slop (i tested with some keywords: beautiful girl, castle, scifi city, etc. and didn't really see anything that set off the alarms). you can upload an image or keyword search. left click on an image to get more results similar. right-click to see the source and enlarge the image. to be totally clear, this does use machine learning-- it would have to! but it's the kind of machine learning stuff that was in use and actually useful before the Besloppening of All Things.
zerochan & safebooru
https://www.zerochan.net/ & https://safebooru.org/
these aren't without problems and i do not post them uncritically; unsourced posting (and reposting without permission, usually from JP artists on pixiv and twitter) are long-standing problems on these sites. BUT they also house a lot of official/promo art from various anime and games, and they have pretty meticulously detailed tagging. if you're looking to figure out how to stylize a specific thing, they can help. zerochan forbids slop, safebooru allows it (put -ai_generated in your search to exclude most of it). try searching "official art" on both if you want to exclude stuff yoinked from pixiv and twitter with dubious permission. as an aside, i also highly recommend the Character Design References Visual Library for finding all sorts of examples of how professional artists do their thing.
animal photo references (ty epsi for the suggestion)
https://www.animal-photo-references.com
repository of photos of lots of different kinds of animals! nothing here is generative. "Artists creating derivative or transformative works without Generative AI have blanket permission to reference these photos." (look at theeeeeeeeese...)
iNaturalist (ty for the suggestion Luna!)
https://www.inaturalist.org/
tons of photos of animals, easily narrowed down to specific species. great search tools. heads up: includes dead animals! but if you absolutely don't wanna accidentally see a dead animal, you'll want to narrow your searches to "alive". if you DO need to see a dead one you can narrow to that too. (horror artists, rejoice.)
suggestions welcome (comments on this blog entry are open even if you don't have a dreamwidth account). keep in mind i'm not looking to make a full list of all the art resources online; the goal here is google images substitutes. some ideal critera:
- free
- low friction (no barriers to entry, ideally about as quick and easy to use as google)
- AI shit not allowed OR easy to avoid/exclude from search
- images should have sources
- good search narrowing tools/categorization/etc.
- broad range of content; likely to return a lot of varied images, rather than just one or two pictures of something
- lots of creative commons/public domain stuff is a huge bonus
tygerToday I just... did not do any moving. Probably shoulda, but ehhh. I DID go to the shop and get meds, and played Terraria both with people and by myself, which is... something? Probably no multiplayer Terraria for a few days though, the host has houseguests. Including at least one of the other players, though maybe two? Not sure. Anyway, should be fun for them!
Other than that, uh. Not much. I napped a LOT today, not entirely on purpose. And now I'm up late because fiiiic, sigh. Self, just. Stoppit. But bed now yes! >:
piyavkingСекции "Navigation on page" (не по хистори)... нет. Я не знаю, каким даунами надо быть, чтобы просто этого не сделать.
cimoreneSo that was Monday, and I called at 8:05 (5 minutes after opening) and put my message in their automatic callback queue. I didn't get called until after 11:00 and I could hear the receptionist's voice trembling with stress as she tried to gently and politely apologize because "It was so good that you called at eight, but unfortunately all the doctor slots were already full again!"
She asked again how soon I will run out of meds, and since I will not run out in the next two weeks, she told me to try calling back at eight am again on December first.
!!!!!!!
"Really really sorry, it's so unfortunate."
"Well, it's not your fault, I know," I said.
"Even so... yeah."
So. Two weeks. If I call at 8 on the dot, maybe I'll be early enough in the queue... or maybe I can't get an appointment until I'm about to run out and they therefore have to promote me to the 'urgent' (or semi-urgent) queue.
Wow... I'm so mad about this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Remember that this was actually my third call because the first time I didn't call on the Appointment Day at all and had to be redirected (but unfortunately, even though she said they might fill up, I didn't realize it was like, CALL WITHIN FIVE MINUTES).
erinptahThe Switch is a tiny little 1-season, 6-episode comedy about a trans woman living in Vancouver. It’s part quirky workplace comedy, part quirky roommate comedy, and part “she moves in with her ex who’s secretly an assassin, who spends the whole season trying to dodge the investigation for an executive they recently killed, but, like, in a funny way.”
Half the cast is trans, a ton of the crew is trans, so it’s a big part of the show in a way that feels genuine and natural. Even though the show in general has a fun heightened-reality vibe. (The original Kickstarter campaign mentions a sorceress character. She’s not in the final cut at all, which I kinda suspect was a broader “oops, we’re trying to stuff too much in 6 episodes, we need to cut the magic subplot” decision. But, listen, if they had made a second season where Sabrina the Teenage Witch moved in down the hall, it wouldn’t feel out-of-place.)
I watched the whole thing for free on Tubi! There are some other streaming options on their official website. They also just straight-up tell you “want to be a pirate? here are the torrents” — but give them some ad revenue, if you can.
—
So I guess I’m a Hazbin Hotel fan now, huh?
FFA did a rewatch of season 1 in the leadup to season 2, so I rewatched it along with that. Then ended up watching S2 as it came out (dropping two episodes a week), because now I’m invested enough that I didn’t want spoilers.
(Couldn’t totally avoid them, because…listen, there is a deep vault of Fandom Lore here, which I have never actually looked at. So there were regular comments like “sure, we already basically knows Plot Point X, because of the leaks/interviews/character designs posted on DA in 2012” where I had no idea about X at all. It worked out fine, though, because sometimes the fandom was wrong! And I had no way to predict when.)
All the music is good, and some of it is great. Their animation budget must be incredible, and you can see it paying off — Vox Populi showcases some amazing dynamic tracking shots, and the reprise Vox Dei has them just showing off. It has the same overstuffed pacing as S1, where they’re trying to pack about a thousand different character beats into eight episodes — there are setups that never get payoffs, and payoffs to things that weren’t actually set up — but the central arc of the season does hold together, and all the individual moments are fun to watch.
There’s a recurring theme of “look, this is shameless pandering to the iddiest of fandom desires” that goes so hard, you have to respect it. The saddest woobie with the softest vulnerable heart gets manhandled in all-new ways!
The most Tumblr Sexyman spends multiple episodes tied up and gagged, strapped to a chair, in his jealous rival’s bedroom!
There are moments that honestly feel like “the show won’t bother going too deep into this, because they know they can just toss the idea in front of their audience, and wait for a million fics to fill in the gaps.” And given the size of the fandom, I don’t think they’re wrong, either.
…The size of the fandom means there’s an overwhelming number of Youtube videos. But a lot of the ones I’ve watched are, well. Bad? Like “hidden details you missed” but it just lists basic plot points, or “fixing the character designs” but it’s fixating on things that aren’t problems.
Have a few recs, because these deserve to be watched without viewers having to dig them out of the heap first:
- An Exhausted Defense Of Angel Dust (posted before S2, has some heavy discussion about sexual assault)
- The Character Design of Hazbin Hotel (also posted before S2, the only video about the designs where I haven’t gotten exasperated and stopped watching)
- Collider Ladies Night interview with Vivziepop (released after S2, plenty of spoilers)
lumemiruuuuuuuuuuu𓏲ּ𝄢 the umbrellas of cherbourg (1964)
𓏲ּ𝄢 no heaven but love (2023) (the review will contain mentions of homophobia, child(?) abuse and violence. please also wary of the film if you’re curious, as for some reason everyone paints it as simply a girl’s love in the middle of “rampant violence”, but actually handles themes like the ones previously mentioned alongside bullying, implied homophobia and sexual abuse. please take this into account if you mean to watch the film :3)
so yeah here are my shitty reviews:
( Read more... )
tygerOkay so technically I started yesterday, but it really FEELS like I started today, because I moved out the tea trolley I used as a work desk AND the bookshelf, so there's a biiiig gap where are whole lot of stuff now isn't.
It is, of course, the easiest of the furniture to move, but still! It's moved!!! And I can use the bookshelf for storage of stuff from my desk, which is also very important! :3
Other than that, A was in the area, so she dropped in for a couple of hours, so that was super fun! :D She was very impressed with the blanket, too, which given she's a MUCH bigger sewer than Mama or I are, is nice. :D And she said that the one time she did some quilting doing it by machine didn't actually take much less time than handsewing would've, which is uh. Slightly terrifying - h o w - but also nice to know I didn't waste a lot of time, really. (Thought I'd have the brain to post pictures today, but alas, moving shit ate it all.)
Played some Terraria, but the (extremely long) fic I was rereading got up to The Grand Finale and I got a little transfixed, thus... still awake. Yeah. >>;; But bed now!