some siffrins i drew recently

(the star freckles are actually related to a fic I'm working on! i will post that... at some point. it's long and i have a lot of planning i need to do)

♾️✨OUR MODERATOR APPLICATIONS ARE NOW OPEN!♾️✨

We need hardworking Administrators of Order to grayscal- I MEAN to excitedly join our team! Visit the link below or in our pinned to apply.✨♾️

I'm taking away the word empathy from the NTs until they discover it isn't a synonym for "giving a shit about people"

In an attempt to be less of a dick:

empathy is a brain function that some people (including me!) struggle with.

There are three types! Affective empathy, which is basically the ability to read other people's emotions, Somatic empathy, the classic "I feel sad because you're sad" and Cognitive empathy, which is the ability to accurately guess what people are thinking and feeling.

If you use empathy to mean "caring about other people" when you could use words like compassion, you're implying a large subsection of the population (including people you may know) are heartless and bad simply because of the way they were born!

Not cool!

After a month worth of procrastination…. It is done… Side order Pearlina🥰

I kept thinking about the superficial similarities between Shahra and Blaze, so I made an AU out of it.

In this AU, Shahra doesn't go to Sonic to ask him for help; she is betrayed by Erazor earlier on and gets trapped by him, leaving her younger sister, Dunyazad, to stop Erazor and save the Arabian Nights. Dunyazad is much more closed-off than Shahra, and she is determined to save Shahra on her own. However, The Narrative mandates that she seek out an external Hero to aid her, so she (extremely reluctantly) seeks out the famed blue hedgehog.

Like Blaze in Sonic Rush, Dunyazad is resentful of and antagonistic towards Sonic at first, as she sees him as someone meddling in things that don't concern him. Over time, however, she learns that she is allowed to exist as a person outside of her supporting role as "Shahra's devoted sister," and as such, is entitled to her own feelings and desires.

As for Sonic... Because of Dunyazad's visual and narrative resemblance to Blaze, Sonic comes to terms with some feelings of his own... :)

About the AO3 "No Guest Comments for a while" warning

If you're not following any of AO3's social media accounts you might be in the dark as to what kind of "spam comments" have engendered this banner at the top of the site:

These spam comments have been posted about a great deal on the AO3 subreddit for the past couple of days. Initially they comprised a bunch of guest (logged out users) bot comments that insulted authors by suggesting they were using AI and not writing their own fics. Some examples, from the subreddit:

But it then escalated to outright graphic porn images and gifs being posted in comments, again by logged out 'Guest' accounts. Obviously, I'm not going to give examples of those, but between these two bot infestations, AO3 has clearly decided to act and has temporarily closed the ability to post comments for users who are not logged in with an AO3 account.

Unfortunately, this means that genuine readers who don't have an AO3 account won't be able to leave comments on fics that they enjoy.

If you are a genuine reader who doesn't yet have an AO3 account, I strongly suggest getting yourself on the waiting list for one. More and more AO3 authors are now locking their fics down to registered users only - either due to these bot comments or concerns about AI scraping their work - which means you're probably missing out on a lot of great stuff.

Hopefully guest commenting will be enabled again at some point soon, but I suggest not waiting until then. Get yourself on that list.

Wait times are going to be longer than usual at the moment, due to the current Wattpad purge [info on Fanlore | Wattpad subreddit thread], but if you're in line, then your invite will come through eventually.

Update: There's now a Megathread about this on the AO3 subreddit.

Aaaand we’re live again, left over sales are now open!

There are only a handful of bundles remaining, but we are also selling individual merch!

Don’t get cooked, stay off the hook!

Link: https://pearlinazine.bigcartel.com

t-t-ten (10) minutes to go!!!!!!!!!!!!

All i wish for 2024 is every creator to start that project they’ve been thinking about, write those fics they have been planning, make messy art, and to have as little burnout as possible.

The social attitude regarding age is consistently getting weirder. You’re not ‘pushing 30’ you’re just in your late 20s. 30 is not old and neither is 40 while I’m at it. Growing older is an enormous privilege and displaying that age is a gorgeous component of life. Spending your days trying to reverse that grace breeds an eternally wasted life.

Go read @theashemarie 's story Sequencing!

Summary:

I really enjoyed drawing all these sketches, especially that shot of Marina absolutely decking that poor Octoling in the face (beacuse I love giving her muscles) and Pearl with her entourage! Hopefully this entices people to read this and other stories by her. They're all really good and made me go down the Pearlina hole!!!

HELLO??? WHAT!!! I saw this last night when I was at a work thing so I didn’t have time to respond but trust when I tell you I kept looking back at these images all night I MEAN it! Everything is just so so perfect!!

PEARL’S OCTO POSSE!! MARINA’S HAYMAKER!!! CALLIE AND MARIE TRYING THEIR BEST AND PEARL HAVING NONE OF IT!! And the way you captured the moment when Pearl broke Marina free??? Breathtaking, astounding, no notes, perfect—especially Marina’s soft, tender expression… I am enthralled.

THANK YOU so so much!! 😭😭😭❤️