Kanaĝen

You know how, in musicals, when words no longer suffice to convey emotion or character, that's where you put the musical number? Like, yes, the musical number is the point of a musical, but it also serves a narrative purpose. It's a tension break. The gears shift and prose becomes poetry. The same story is being told in a different texture.

Sex in narrative is the same thing. When two characters fuck, that's "Make 'Em Laugh," that's "Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat", that's "Modern Major General." It's a break from what's been going on, the nature of the story shifts, but it's still a fundamental part of the story. Metaphor and imagery and suggestion take the place of statement and action. The physical release is the emotional release that's been building to this point. Try to imagine Singin' in the Rain without "Make 'Em Laugh," or The Pirates of Penzance without "Modern Major General." You've imagined something lesser, right?

Now here's the kicker: I don't particularly care for musicals. I never got the bug, and the singing and dancing has just never really been my thing. I can appreciate the music, yes. I can appreciate the choreography, yes. There's just some ineffable quality that doesn't reach into my brain and flip the switch that makes me lose my shit for Phantom of the Opera or whatever. Singin' in the Rain is probably the closest I've come to being "into" a musical and it's almost exclusively for Donald O'Connor's absolutely over-the-top performance in "Make 'Em Laugh." Call me gray-ace for musicals too, I guess.

But you can't have a musical without the song-and-dance number. And while you absolutely can tell a story without a sex scene, if it fits the story then by all means use it. Terminator needs that sex scene not just because John Connor's gotta come from somewhere, but because Sarah and Kyle have been through hell for the last sixty minutes of the film and it's about to go into the final sequence — the movie needs to breathe!

And I'm sure folks will say "Oh, but that's different," or "You don't need to write explicit sex," or what have you, and, you know, you don't: but if the situation calls for a particular tool and you don't use it, are you really creating your art at the top of your game? Not everything in art needs to perfectly align with your sense of the universe, and I would in fact argue that it's better if it doesn't. Art challenges. Art represents thought and emotion. Art is a force, and if it meets absolutely zero resistance when it encounters your mind, has it really touched you?

Nobody slips through the cracks, everybody gets the love and care they need, even when at first glance they seem to be very capable and held together. And there's no shame in it, just an understanding that the burdens you were expected to bear are too much for you.

There's also something very compelling about people who are meant to be your peers seeing that, despite how things seem at first glance, you actually aren't like them, you can't keep up with them, and they see past the facade of "I can do anything you can" and recognize that you can't, actually. That the things which come so naturally to them are hurting you, and even though it looks like you're keeping up, one peak behind the curtan reveals just how much you're struggling, and that's okay. You don't have to be this way if it's hurting you.

I find immense comfort in the idea of being told "hey it's okay, you don't have to be like us, you don't have to struggle to keep up just because it seems like you should be able to. You don't have to be one of us, and we won't jusge you for it."

At minimum about 4.5 thousand people liked this without reblogging it.

1. Do not do age verification.

Oh no I dropped my link, what a horrible thing! Sure hope this doesn't get reblogged until it reaches users from the UK and Brazil!

It isn't quite common yet but I have been noticing some newer restaurants reclaiming MSG as what it is (pure flavor crystals).

But think about it. Salt: Sodium Chloride. NaCl. One part sodium (Na), one part chlorine ion(Cl⁻). That chlorine ion has a molar mass of 35.45 g·mol⁻¹.

Now, MSG: Monosodium Glutamate. C₅H₈NO₄Na. That huge mess of letters and numbers in the front is our glutamate, and that monster has a molar mass of 147.130 g·mol⁻¹. That's four times the mass of the chlorine ion in sodium chloride! And, since both sodium chloride and monosodium glutamate have one sodium atom per, we can clearly see that any given molecule of MSG is going to dwarf, in mass terms, the salt molecule.

Now, MSG is not a 1:1 replacement for salt; it has a much more savory taste than salty (the chloride is what gives salt its sharp salty kick, which is why potassium chloride works as a salt replacement if you don't mind an often-overwhelming metallic flavor; the glutamate is what gives MSG the savory taste). In real terms, what this chemistry comes down to is that a teaspoon of Diamond kosher salt has 1120mg of sodium and a teaspoon of the MSG I have (that I've long since thrown away the box I got it in) has 800mg of sodium (the MSG is a lot finer; if I ground down the kosher salt, that teaspoon would have a LOT more sodium in it). I know these numbers because they're the ones I use for tracking my sodium intake when I season things, so you can see how much less the MSG adds (especially since you really don't need a lot of MSG to add its particular flavor to a recipe, it's very potent).

I don't often talk about this but I do truly love our community. The HDG community is so full of wonderfully creative and welcoming people. People who are always eager to help and collaborate. People who are always so excited about one another's ideas and creations. This community has introduced me to some of my best friends, to the love of my life, helped me discover so many new and important things about myself. It's changed so much over the years, having gone from a handful of people on a tiny private server to a community of thousands. And I'm really proud to have been one of the people that helped build it.

It hasn't always been smooth sailing. At times, there's been drama, arguments, hurt feelings. I've had my share of night crying over something someone said to me, or feeling like my feelings had gone disregarded, unheard, or like a crucial part of the community that I love had been lost, or changed beyond recognition. I've gained and lost valued friends. People I truly care about, love and respect have both as individuals and as creators have walked away from the community. Sometimes simply because they outgrew it, other times because of hurt. I've spent more hours than I can count mediating disagreements, trying to mend bridges, some of them fixable, others not so much.

But even through the worst of it, I love this community, I love the shared work that so many people have helped create. I love the promise of HDG, a living, breathing creative space built in collaboration with what is now hundreds of creators. Some, like myself have been creating for about as long as HDG has been a shared setting. Others are brand new. Nothing excites me more than seeing someone new come in and blow people away with a fresh take on the setting. Nothing excites me more than seeing my friends, and fellow respected creators gush over a new work (especially if it's one of mine :)). To me, HDG feels like it's in a renaissance. New ideas flourishing, new authors creating.

I really love hdg. I really love the axioms, and the versatile flexibility the narratives provide, as well as the unique challenges 'living in paradise' entails when the benevolent dorks that saved you are amazing and wonderful, but each have their own little flaws.

I really love the choice being taken from you, I love the care, the tender touch of vines on skin, I love the freedom that comes with entering its pages or penning them yourself.

What I love even more is the sophonts you get to work with when you make it. You can do so many cool things, like connecting different pieces of a lego set or building something with your friend. It feels like that wonder from so long ago that the simple act of creating felt good, unburdened by the pressures of anything else.

It's a sandbox, right? It's okay if your castle looks a little weird, mine fell over a few times.

I get sad when people leave the sandbox, but it's okay of course. The sand's kinda rough and sticky and that's not good sensory for everyone.

I really like making it, and genuinely if you've ever had an interest in the plampts I reccomend you take a peek at some works, and maybe write your own. I think something really special about the setting is how encouragement and love are its crowning jewels. There's no entry level position required, you can start from anywhere and build your own castle.

They want total control over you. Not just trans people. Not just queer people. You. Everyone.

Trans people are just a scapegoat. They want total control over everyone's self expression. They want the right to mold you into their perfect little cog in their dehumanizing machine.

The fun part is that you could do this extremely easily by just bundling a key with an item you can't buy unless you're 18. Like a beer that includes a PGP key, or a pornographic magazine with a page that's a randomly generated key.

The site/app doesn't need to know WHO you are, only that you have access to something you can only get by being 18. This way they're putting the burden of verifying your age onto someone else, someone else who is already legally required to do exactly that.

But no one is interested in developing this because the point of age verification has never been age verification. it's always been governments trying to tie a real-world ID to internet identities, and companies trying to get more private information on users so they can sell it to advertisers.

Any rigid solid object is extremely challenging for 2D artists to animate because if one stray line isn’t kept perfectly in check, the object will seem to wobble and shift unnaturally.

Even as early as the mid 80’s Disney was using a technique where they would animate a 3D object and then apply a 2D filter to it. This practice could be applied to any solid object a character interacts with: from lanterns a character is holding, to a book (like in Atlantis), or in the most extreme cases Cybernetic parts (like in Treasure Planet).

But 101 Dalmatians was made WAY before the advent of this technology. So how did they do the Cruella car chase sequence at the end of the film?

The answer is so simple I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me sooner:

They just BUILT the models and painted them white with black outlines 🤣

That was the trick. They’re not actually 2D animated, they’re stop motion. They were physical models painted white and filmed on a white background. The black outlines become the lineart lines and they just xeroxed the frame onto an animation cel and painted it like any other 2D animated frame.

That’s how they did it! Isn’t that amazing? It’s such a simple low tech solution but it looks so cool in the final product.