Personal Likes, Advice, & Wall For Idea Bouncing

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

I've got a few ideas for BloodyMary and for rn i think I'm going to stick with just this fandom, and maybe expand to others later on if there's any interest. Here's the Aus and feel free to ask questions or suggest scenarios to put these sad men in.

Reverse Bloodymary ColtlandGentry Au (RBCGAU)

A very scared and confused and hostile Ryland Grace finds himself thrown at the mercy of his next set of interrogators. Except they both look waaaaay too much like him, sound like him, and for a minuet they act far too familiar with him. What kind of new age bullshit torture method is this? The COI did not have nearly enough resources to pull some psychological shit like this. Or... or did they? Either way, he's not saying shit.

Not-So-Meet-Cute (NSMCAU)

A fairly typical au, Simon arrives on the Hail Mary shortly before they meet Rocky. Grace now has to try juggling befriending an alien who shares no language with him, getting Simon to open up or at least stop being actively avoidant, deal with his memory issues, all on top of trying to save the stars. It's not an ideal situation and its not like he didn't already have enough on his plate, but hey, he's happy for the company, even if he is struggling. Oh, and Simon sometimes hears voices in his head, and they only agree on one thing.

It's Raining Bloody Men (IRBMAU)

I'll be considering this the companion to the ColtlandGentry reverse au (Ryland and Simon might not be able to have each other in their own universes but something out there (me) decides they might still be able to get their happy ending), Simon drops in (literally) on one of Graces classes, falling into the biodomes ocean. Oddly enough this stranger seems familiar, but he that's not important. Graces stable life on Erid just got a lot more interesting.

For @Sharkfiinn's post about being sick of seeing Bloodymary, but relevant enough for others to need to hear this too:

[CONTEXT]: A post from @Sharkfiinn about being frustrated about Bloodymary taking over the PHM tags - a frustration that is valid and 100% understandable. HOWEVER, in a stunning display of irony, some of the commenters immediately tried to frame the Bloodymary fans as racist and "Anti-black" for not shipping "the only black character" with "the only asian character" (actual words used. They have names, but who cares, right)...and using that as their deflecting argument.

When I, a Black fan, politely expressed my discomfort with this very bad faith approach, I was immediately blocked by the artist.

---

It's...a peculiar feeling, being blocked by (white) fans for being Black and having an opinion. Especially by an artist I admired.

Especially when that opinion was essentially "please refrain from using Black People (like me) as an excuse/scapegoat/talking point to win dumb fan arguments that have NOTHING TO DO WITH US." Because it is deeply uncomfortable and robs us of any thought or voice we might have had on the subject.

A mouth-watering fuck-ton of hand angle references.

Got one of the bots removed from tumblr, no clue how long until they make a new one but I recommend others report every one you find.

I reported them by going to Report Something Else, scrolling to the Spam option and filling in the information about what they were doing which the normal span report option doesn't let you do.

Example report below, using stolen work from Smol-ghosts (amazing bloodymary artist btw) to try and redirect people offside to porn and gambling sites.

I WISH I HAD TIME TO DRAW FOR THIS BUT I DID A QUICK POST TO TRY AND GET PEOPLE TO HELP OUR CAUSE!!

SIMON'S POLL

In past years I posted excerpts from the Declaration of Independence on July 4. But I’m not feeling it this year.

I am old enough to remember the Bicentennial observations in 1976. There were celebrations and commemorative events around the country, not just in Washington. Most notable was the flotilla of tall ships sailing into New York’s harbor. There were historical programs, “Bicentennial minutes” on TV, and decorations on local public buildings and fixtures, right down to red-white-and-blue fire hydrants. At noon on July 4 we went out on the streets and rang bells.

The mood of the country is different now. There are fewer events for America’s 250th birthday and the crowds are smaller.

That’s not to say things were better in the United States 50 years ago. The divisions of the Vietnam War years had not healed. There were plenty of people who thought that some Americans should be second-class citizens based on the color of their skin or their gender. Gay, lesbian, and bisexual people could rarely live their lives publicly. Transsexuals (the term used at the time) were even more oppressed.

But in some important ways things are worse today. There are many who maintain that some Americans shouldn’t be Americans at all, based on where their ancestors came from, how they speak, or how they worship. The gains that racial minorities, women, and LGBT people have made since 1976 are uncertain and under threat. And there are still those who think their wealth buys them more privileges than everyone else.

When I quote from the Declaration, I have to omit the slur against the so-called savage Indians, which decries their cruelty in warfare, when in fact everyone is cruel in war. And I have to talk around the fact that many of the men who signed it were slaveholders and the rest condoned slavery. When they said that all men are created equal, they really meant free white men, primarily landowners. But they used broad, general terms for their stirring rhetoric. Later generations found inspiration in what they wrote that went beyond what they really thought at the time.

So this year I am quoting from a later and much shorter document, the Pledge of Allegiance. Its last line, “with liberty and justice for all,” has never been a true description of what we actually have in America. But it is a plainly stated, unqualified goal that we should strive for.

Simon v. Gomez Adams

by the way, just so everyone knows what not to do, shift+r reblogs a post instantly