A Random Person Just Spreading Some Joy.

Anything helps. Thank you.

reminder that chibi bean commissions are open!

starfish pose, flat colour, simplified design

only 10 euros each!

can draw: you, your friends/family, real people, fanart, CCs, FCs, OCs, humanoids, furries, almost anything, just ask and I'm sure we can work something out :D

✨COMMISSIONS OPEN✨

Portfolio: https://www.artstation.com/sokodraws

Email: [email protected]

ToS: https://www.deviantart.com/sokoistrying/journal/Sokodraws-Commissions-Terms-and-Conditions-826056959?s=09

Anything outside of the provided sheets may be discussed, the price will vary

Payment only via paypal invoices 

Please DM if interested

COMMISSIONS DOS AND DONTS: 

Will do: you, real people, ocs, ships, furry, gore, nsfw, twitch assets 

Won’t do: mecha, overcomplicated designs

If you want to support me but don’t want a commission please consider getting something in my shop: https://www.redbubble.com/people/sokoprints/explore

or buying me a ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/sokodraws

or reblogging my commissions sheet 

Anything helps. Thank you.

A fandom group is no better nor more revolutionary than a knitting club. It can replicate any real world biases and discriminations and it can also be used to raise money/group people towards causes. It can foster connections that will turn to actual real political action or it can just be a gathering of people who don’t know much about each other outside of it.

It can be lovely to experience when you’re surrounded by a lovely group and it can be hell when the group is full of cattiness and pettiness . It can be inclusive or it can be exclusive when you’re surrounded by bigotry.

Because it’s a group of people - it’s going to have problems. And when there’s a conflict or people are pointing shit out, it needs to be solved so its members aren’t spit out in the sake of “avoiding drama”. Because it’s a group of people, it’s not automatically changing the world in a blaze of self grandeur. Because it’s a group of people with a common hobby, it can impact its members lives for the better and give them a space to express themselves.

Their stuff is cheap, they don’t really uphold their obligations for their productions; they’ve cheated numerous people out of their dice pledges and produced foggy, low quality dice — the dice making game has gotten so much better over the years and I have a list ( as a dice maker myself ) that you can support more independent and amazing dice makers!

DISPEL ( more bigger and mainstream but they have nice high quality dice with their own store opening late May 2022 )

GAMETEE ( they have all sorts of lovely stuff for table top in general, but a lot of beautiful themed, sharp edge and gemstone dice too! )

EVERYTHING DICE ( they’re about to have a Kickstarter for dice boxes and they have very beautiful sharp edge dice! )

JUICE BOX

KHOPPER DICE

SPELLCASTER DICE

ARTYDICE

THE DICE DJINN

DREAMYDICE

SLEIGHT OF HANDCRAFT ( they have dice commissions )

YANIIR ( less frequent updates, and more Patreon exclusive sales, but very beautiful high quality dice, jewelry, and tabletop accessories )

ALKONOST DICE

HELLA STRANGE DICE

DRUIDIC DICE

HADRIANS STALLAU

XOLOTL DICE

ASTRALNAUT DICE ( my dice work! I take requests in small batches and plan to make sets for sale soon! )

DARK ELF DICE (made my current fav dice which have little koi resin figures inside, theyre adorable)

Cities - go near water!  freshwater lakes and rivers (rivers especially) are the best places for cities because A) source of water and B) travel and trade is much easier cus you can put your boats like right there.  Basically ever relevant city ever was built on a lake or a river.

for rivers in general - because gravity, rivers run from mountains (forming from melting snow and ice (this is why they get fat in spring–more stuff melting)) to lakes/ocean where they can empty out (and even lakes will have rivers leading out that eventually get to the ocean), which can help when mapping out where those start and end.  rivers are also much thinner and faster in steeper elevations and very slow and wide when the land is flat

mountains - i like to think of what the tectonic plates look like because that’s what makes mountains!  mountains are also never standalone they’re always in mountain ranges (archipelagos are really just underwater mountain ranges babey).  a cool trick I like to do is occasionally separate mountain ranges across continents, because over time the tectonic plates shifted and literally split the range in half.  These mountains are really old tho so they’ve eroded and therefore it makes them smaller and rounder (like the appalachians) as opposed to relatively young mountain ranges like the rocky mountains which have taller and sharper peaks

Another mountain trick: if your mountains run along the ocean, the ocean side of the mountains will get a LOT of rain while the other side will be very dry–almost desert-like, in fact.  think of temperate rainforests in British Columbia vs the drier conditions in the canadian prairies

forests - depends on how warm the area might be.  coniferous forests are found further north (before you hit the tree line, and then it’s only tundra onwards) but as you head south you get leafier trees, and the leaves tend to get larger too

If you think about general elevation too, you’ll have places that might be swampy (wet + lower).  if your world has an ice age like we did, then glaciers may have carved the land, leaving piles of soil in the south that was left when the ice receded and places where the bedrock has been bared north of that (like the Canadian Shield in Canada–the reason we see that is because of the glaciers)

You might also have a land that’s dotted in a shitton of freshwater lakes as well because the meltwater filled the holes that the glaciers scraped out (this is why canada has so many goddamn lakes)

and if the ice age was more recent than it was in our world, then you might not even have the forest re-growth and it could be a lot of open plains

Though, for fantasy, you can make the world operate on entirely different principles:

With that done, the actual topic of city placement can be covered by videos like this:

Or

Once you have your places, if you want help naming them in realistic ways, this video can help:

This one is on architecture, which is definitely a subset of cities:

But for a more relevant practical guide on making settlements realistic:

Here’s a quick guide for making demographics:

this morning i was scrolling through the silly little reels on my instagram for you page, as one does, and about a good 45 minutes into this i got recommended a candle company that puts (supposedly) real diamonds in their candles.

and in my still somewhat half asleep glory i thought "this sounds absolutely ridiculous, what do i have to lose" and clicked on the website.

upon clicking on said website i was given a 10% off code that i had to use within 15 minutes so basically my mind was already made up and i decided to text brad.

so with what was probably brads approval i scrolled through the silly little website as fast as i could and decided to stick to the more classic scents since i didnt want to be stuck with something that smelled bad (although "wap" and "i hate my boss" did intrigue me briefly) and i went with "tobacco bourbon" because thats always a decent combo.

and then in a last minute decision i decided to also get "chai tea" because it sounded interesting and who knows maybe the diamonds are real.

the court should note that i did absolutely zero research on this company.

and with my 10% off on top of whatever massive sale they were having the total plus shipping came to $63.86.

brad was also very excited about this purchase and said that if the diamonds were real he may put them in my engagement ring.

candles have been retrieved

they were shipped in this very nondescript box with branded tape

*for legal reasons, these candles were never in my dorm room or were burned in my dorm room*

@undercover-vampire and i unboxed the candles

the tobacco bourbon candle smelled very good actually but the chai one smelled like a craft store from september-december, which is to say, very strongly of artificial cinnamon

the candles are pretty large, about 3 inches across and 4 inches high and are in good quality glass jars

the chai one had melted a little in transit because there was melted (and still melted) wax all over the outside of the jar. but it’s been ridiculously hot so i wouldn’t put that on the company.

the tobacco candle (on bottom) had a very off center wick (tho both were off centered). this happens sometimes with hand poured candles, but it was still odd

each candle comes with this scratch off code thing that links to a certificate of the diamond inside, which is cool

i decided to put the chai candle in the freezer and freeze the wax out of it because i hated the smell and burn the tobacco one.

i burned the tobacco bourbon candle for around 10 hours and it has a very clean burn, no exploding, but it did pop a little bit ( that was my fault tho cause i didn’t trim the wick ) and if the wick wasn’t off center it would be a 10/10 candle. no sign of the diamond yet

the chai tea candle was in the freezer for about 24 hours and i was able to tap the bottom of it twice and the candle popped out of the glass and revealed the wrapped diamond

i attacked the wax with a pair of scissors for a few minutes to get the vial out

and then i washed off the vial cause it was covered in wax

the diamond is in that little plastic bag. and yes, it is a little diamond.

i scratched off the code on the side of the candle to get the certificate

i have been burning the tobacco bourbon candle for three days at minimum 5 hours per day. the candle claims to be 100% soy wax, but brad is very sensitive to paraffin and other artificial waxes and started coughing pretty badly every time he was in my room for an extended period of time. we deduced that it was caused by the candle not being 100% soy wax.

he is upset that i “tried to poison him” (which is understandable and i put on my diffuser and humidifier with air cleaning solution and opened the window and gave him cough syrup so he’s definitely fine, but still holding my questionable candle purchasing over me head and rightfully so). so if you’re sensitive to artificial wax i don’t recommend this

it has been 2 days and brad is still coughing from the candle (and no its not the plague he took three covid tests and they were all negative)

also the package does not say 100% soy wax it says premium soy wax (which is definitely a lie. brad has several soy wax candles and does not have a reaction to them. this one is definitely made of paraffin or something else synthetic because apparently he gets severe reactions to that kind of wax) (also i would not have bought the candle if it said it was made from synthetic wax)

after listening to brad cough for what is now probably 4-5 days and having scoured a sketchy gas station for cough drops, i have decided it would be a bad idea to continue burning the candle. but i would not abandon my diamond experiment so quickly. so i texted the one person i know that has little regard for their general health and safety: @undercover-vampire

and so it was decided. katya will take the candle and when diamond appears i will get them something slutty in return. you see kids, this is why you accidently get your tumblr mutuals to come to your college.

we went to brads house this weekend and his mom was upset by the fact that he is coughing, tho she didnt necessarily think it was from a candle. she did give him about 65 remedies tho, including tea, gargling with salt water and nyquill. he is still coughing and in his stubborn glory refuses to do anything more about it.

@undercover-vampire is coming to get the candle tonight to finish burning it

i have still been airing out my room because being in my room makes brad cough more

i emailed the company's customer service

brad went to the health center on campus and they tested him for covid, strep, bronchitis and mono and it was none of those things. they think its a viral infection from the candle and he could be fucked for up to 2 more weeks. if it gets worse then hes really fucked. we do not want him to be really fucked.

at the end of my night class i convinced my friend to take me to target, except my professor held me 25 minutes late because he has terrible time management and we had to target speedrun before they closed. I was so stressed that i left my phone in my friends car when we went in but i got brad all kinds of stuff to make the cough not as coughy (because he is too stubborn to do it himself). and, fellow romans, my friend was mildly (or perhaps severely) concerned about me cause i was mid break down looking frantically for lemon juice, and saying that this was the only time ive ever gone to target and not looked at the price of anything. then i got carded for buying vicks spray and almost accidentally stole some lemons.

@undercover-vampire came to my room to get rid of the accursed candle and said that if they start to die from it then we will be forced to freeze the wax out. this seems like a very good compromise.

i gave brad his stuff and he only insisted we return 4 of the things (which is decent) and he nearly cried over the soup i got him. this candle has put me through the 5 stages of grief.

then i vaccumed the entire box of baking soda that i had sprinkled off my carpet and swiffered and febreezed the fuck out my room. its really good that it worked cause my carpet looked like i had dumped crack all over it and i dont want to have to do that again.

and it paid off cause brad came in and sniffed my room and didnt immediately die of coughs