Gracious Anthracite @anthracite@dragon.style

Is it #introduction time again? Sorta seems to be.

Hi, I'm Peggy, and I run dragon.style. If "paying $20/mo to keep it up, putting off updating it for a year, and occasionally opening the place up for new users" qualifies as "running" it.

I am a trans lady who spends most of her time drawing complicated sci-fi comics and sort of earning a living doing that via Patreon.

Adobe Illustrator has been my main medium since 2000, it's a pretty unusual choice but it works for me.

I used to do burlesque, then pole dance, as a hobby and a way to stay fit. I miss it and should find something similar again.

You may know me from elsewhere as Egypt Urnash.

@irisjaycomics eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs
.-''-.
.'_ _ \
/ ( ` ) '
. (_ o _) |
| (_,_)___|
' \ .---.
\ `-' /
\ /
`'-..-'
.-_'''-.
'_( )_ \
|(_ o _)| '
. (_,_)/___|
| | .-----.
' \ '- .'
\ `-'` |
\ /
`'-...-'
.-_'''-.
'_( )_ \
|(_ o _)| '
. (_,_)/___|
| | .-----.
' \ '- .'
\ `-'` |
\ /
`'-...-'
.-'''-.
/ _ \
(`' )/`--'
(_ o _).
(_,_). '.
.---. \ :
\ `-' |
\ /
`-...-'
eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs
.----.
| {_
| {__
`----'
.---.
/ __}
\ {_ }
`---'
.---.
/ __}
\ {_ }
`---'
.----.
{ {__
.-._} }
`----'
eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs
,---.
| .-'
| `-.
| .-'
| `--.
/( __.'
(__)
,--,
.' .'
| | __
\ \ ( _)
\ `-) )
)\____/
(__)
,--,
.' .'
| | __
\ \ ( _)
\ `-) )
)\____/
(__)
.---.
( .-._)
(_) \
_ \ \
( `-' )
`----'
eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs eggs

I think the reason I basically blew off today is because I know I need to do laundry and I really do not wanna do it. Maybe I should just throw a load in now before it’s too late to run the washer so I can get it out of the way and do *something* useful today.

I am clean.

This saucy little football was waiting on the railing when I went out with peanuts. They only flew as far as the power line in front of the building, and were flying down the moment I turned my back and went back in. The ravens are getting bolder.

Also I feel like I am noticing that ravens are generally a warmer black than crows - crows have some brown-black along with the blue-black, ravens are pretty much all brown-black.

birdsite

Hacker News: Here's a post about ActivityPub!

Top comment: grar Mastodon is terrible because filter bubbles/jerk admins who kick you off for any reason at all, you should never close yourself off from any other opinions ever!!!

Me: resisting the temptation to agree that Mastodon is terrible and nobody who thinks they have a God-given right to tell total strangers they suck and should kill themselves should go there, yes please stay on Twitter thank you sweetheart

I am sitting in the gardens by the Ballard Locks, watching the geese turning things that are not geese into more geese, and being careful not to step in the by-products of this process.

I just had a pretty tasty sandwich. It was called an “Electric Wizard” and was made by a guy wearing a shirt for the band of the same name.

My belly is happy and now I shall find a place to chill out with a cup of chai and draw comics.

Oh damn mapping these things out was DEFINITELY worth it, it really put the one bit that's weak into sharp relief and helped me and @zebratron2084 brainstorm ideas for how to fill it in a way that ties into the rest of the story. I feel like both sides of this story are gonna be a lot more solid because of this; we've made sure that pretty much every scene has something for the audience to care about, and I feel pretty confident that we're answering most of the narrative questions we raise, except for the ones we explicitly want to save for later chapters. The Mixolyne have a solid structure now, the Vx10 has a hole in the middle but we have a sense of its exact shape and some good ideas for how to fill it.

I brained a lot today and it may be bedtime now. Or very soon.

Interesting. The side of this story I mapped out this morning was mostly Dramatic beats for the first half, then Procedural beats for the second. So far the other side has mostly been Procedural and I'm already halfway through.

Also it is hard to decide how to chop this important sequence in the middle into beats. Lots of stuff going on in it.

Fact: Most brightly colored animals are either very poisonous, very venomous, or mimicking animals that are very poisonous or venomous.

Fact: A whole lot of fursonas have brightly colored pawpads, mouths, and, uh, other parts.

Theory: Most fursonas are highly toxic, or mimicking creatures that are. Good luck figuring out which one the fursona at hand is!

Okay I am definitely glad @arthurwyatt recommended "Beating The Story", using it to map out one of the existing Parallax scripts helped me figure out where we lacked tension and make sure we wouldn't lose track of all the weird stuff that demanded answers. So yay!

Next up: map out the other side? Or maybe pass the book off to @zebratron2084, let him get a sense for it, and map out the other side?

Huh, interesting. @sunil has built a Mastodon instance with a sort of plugin interface for filtering toots based on content. I haven't tried making an account on their instance to play around with it and see how it looks in action, but I'm definitely curious about this.

I'm not *entirely* sure I think passing every toot I might see through a web service built by yet *another* person who I have to trust to not do anything malicious is a good idea, but that's one implementation detail out of many, and *how* many third parties do I trust via the plugins I have on my personal Wordpress site?

https://feedseer.com/about/more - the 'source code' link goes to their own github, presumably with the same code running on the instance.

For once I was close enough to the window with a camera at hand to photograph the crowbs when they came down for the morning’s peanubs.

I think the big shaggy bird in the first photo is a raven? The other ones wait for it to take its turn, then cluster around and share the rest.

I have had up to seven crows hanging around sharing the peanuts at one time. Today I think the count was five plus raven; it’s hard to count them while I’m holding up the tablet to take photos.

Oh geez I got to the castle in Dead Cells again and it is a serious set of complications. Dual bow + quick bow got enemies pretty well though, especially in combination with heavy turret and summoning fricking *tornados* to carry enemies around while damaging them. Plus a generally good set of effects (set things on fire with one, do double damage to burning things with everything else).

I should go actually do something with the rest of today I guess.

Saturday Morning Story Clinic Time!

http://egypt.urnash.com/blog/2018/09/15/story-clinic-mornings/

okay the force-cw-on-long-toots thing definitely got broken in the update, adding one line in app/validators/status_length_validator.rb should fix it

ugh why has my local dev instance stopped booting, again, guess i'll try updating the node and ruby packages, that usually does it

why does updating the ruby gems fail with an ssl error

why do the troubleshooting guides I end up on after duckgoing this error look like incredible amounts of hard work to deal with

Why haven't I eaten anything yet

(at least I am smart enough to know that "oh it's just a one line fix, I'll just push it to the server and see what happens" is a Very Bad Idea...)

I think the “you must cw anything over 777 characters” thing got broken, I am pretty sure that was more than that. Guess I’m digging into the code this weekend.

Lying in bed failing to go to sleep because my brain is turning over the various books on How To A Story I’ve been been reading along with the Prydian books and thinking about stuff like how casually Alexander ignores stuff we now tend to teach as Nigh-Immutable like the Campbellian Hero’s Journey and how it’s themes evolve.

1. Here’s Taran, a boy of uncertain parentage who thirsts for glory and honor.
2. Taran meets a prince who is even thirstier for glory and has absolutely no honor, who comes to a bad end.
3. Taran meets a prince who has no desire for honor or glory, and is kind of charmingly useless, and is his rival for the hand of Princess Eilonwy. Taran grits his teeth and behaves honorably while they both learn something about the obligations of a King to a Kingdom.
4. Taran goes questing for his history. Along the way he meets a bandit who has no honor and little glory; ultimately he defeats him in front of a pool known as “the Mirror of Llunet*”, hammering home the idea that he’s been meeting a series of reflections of his primary virtues as a character.
5. Here’s Taran, a young man of uncertain parentage who is generally pretty honorable. And here we go with the same adventure he had the training version of back in book 1. Who will be his mirror this time, if anyone? I dunno, I just started it and am only like three chapters in.