More Of That Ai Shit: Calarts Poses For Sheridan As A Figure Model

PSA TO ANYONE BUYING A CAR!!!

I work as a BDC agent at a very large dealership and have a ton of experience in helping people buy a vehicle. This can be a huge purchase so I want to give advice to anyone in the market or thinking about it.

First time buyers and bad credit. Maybe you have bad credit or none at all and you really need a vehicle. To many dealerships, anything under 600 is considered challenged credit. If you don’t have a qualified co-signer, you are going to need 20-40% as a down payment, depending on the value/age/mileage of the vehicle. A lot of issues I see with buyers with challenged credit is repeated reported hits on their credit because they have applied to several different dealerships in desperation. Every time a dealership pulls and submits your credit, it’s a hard hit and you will lose 2-4 points off your credit score. Most dealerships will submit you to 3-4 banks before stopping, some may go higher. So if you have challenged credit, having two or more dealerships do this to you is damaging. Being fully prepared is important!

In my experience, different dealerships use different credit bureaus to pull credit, so be familiar with all three bureaus if possible.

MYTH! A cheaper car is easier to finance. This is INCORRECT! Usually cheap vehicles are older and have high mileage. Banks do not want to finance those kinds of vehicles, so you have to look at something considered “financeable.”

These requirements fall along the lines of:

1. The vehicle must be 7-10 years old or newer

2. It must have 80-100k miles or less

3. It cannot have a salvaged/branded title, odometer rollback, and sometimes structural/frame damage. Almost all reputable dealerships will have Carfax reports publicly accessible on their website or upon request. 

4. The car needs to book well. This means that the NADA value (basically the REAL value of the vehicle) is not too far off from the selling price. If a vehicle is worth $15,000 and they are selling it for $20,000, the banks will decline because the values are too far off. 

However, just because a vehicle books bad does not mean it’s “over priced”. Technically. Most dealerships now have market based pricing, so the prices fluctuate with the economy. Similar to how housing, gas, and grocery prices rise and fall, vehicles are the same way. It is nearly impossible to buy a new vehicle anymore. Due to a wide array of issues, most 2022+ models are order only. This makes used vehicles in high demand. If dealerships are paying more to get vehicles via trade and auctions, they will have to charge more to sell them.

There are many dealerships out there who don’t care about you and only want your money. It is important to not let them pressure you and do your research to shop when you’re ready. 

On a final side note, if you inquire by calling or going online and schedule a test drive, you will help workers like me. We are here to help answer questions, provide any and all information, without the pressure of salesman. (Yes we may call and bug you, but just say you’re no longer interested and we will stop!)

If you ever have any questions please ask me!!!

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And speaking of scurvy, I am eternally amused by the thing where some ancient form of healing that was born in a time where people didn't know exactly how the human body works, or what causes it to stop working sometimes, that still somehow worked. Like how so many old folk medicinal plants were listed as a cure for various ailments that - from a modern view - are clearly just symptoms of scurvy, and the plant itself is rich in vitamin C.

I recall reading some story, no recollection of the exact time or place, where the king of a large empire suffered from constant horrible headaches and was incapable of falling asleep unless drugged or blackout drunk. Sick of taking temporary fixes to dull the pain and having to be sedated every night, he called up some old sage healer who was said to know how to fix things nobody else could explain, and the healer heard his symptoms and went

"Hmm. You spend too much time being a king. Your skull is packed so full of kingly thoughts that they don't all fit in there and that's why your head is in pain. You need to spend time not being a king." And prescribed him to schedule three days every month where he must go to a peasant village where nobody knows he's the king, live with a family there under a fake name and identity, work in the rice fields with them, eating the same food and sleeping on the same mats. Absolutely nobody is allowed to address him as the king, speak to him of any royal or political matters, and he himself is not allowed to think any kingly thoughts or think of himself as the king.

And naturally, this worked. Taking a regular scheduled break from a highly stressful office desk job to completely decompress, paired with physical exercise in the form of hard but simple physical labour, plain and simple food and Just Not Thinking About Your Fucking Job All The Time does help chronic stress, which here was worded as "spending too much time being a king clogs your brain."

Sometimes you do have ghosts in your blood, though I'm not entirely sure whether you should do cocaine about it.

things I wish I’d known when I started writing fic on ao3

use & for friendships, colleagues, familial relationships and use / for romantic or sexual relationships (or encounters)

not everyone reads fic. Lots of people use screen readers, and screen readers can’t see what’s on images. use descriptive text to help them out.

lots of people download fic to read on other devices, not all downloads capture images too.

there’s a big difference between No Archive Warnings Apply (NAWA) and Author Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings (CNTW). NAWA means that there’s nothing in the fic that needs to be warned for using the official Archive Warning system. CNTW means there might be something that requires a warning and the author is either avoiding giving out spoilers or they are unsure how to interpret their plot point with respect to the official Warnings. (in both cases, additional tags are where it’s at - you can explain yourself there) 

the reason why the number of bookmarks in the fic is different from the number of bookmarks on your stats page is because your stats page number includes bookmarks that are hidden

there’s a preference setting where you can receive emails with your own comments/replies.

there’s a site skin that hides stats so you don’t have to see them

writing in rich text format makes my life easier

knowing html allows me to do fun things in the comments section like comment/reply with reaction gifs

knowing html also allows me to do interesting formatting in my fics that I can’t do with rich text alone

those little blue bubbles with the question marks in them will answer my questions a lot of the time - and also teach me something new

the FAQ is linked under the word About in the header

if you write your fic in the draft window, you might end up losing it so make sure you copy the text before you hit Post, just in case

they aren’t kidding when they say drafts are deleted after 30 days

It’s Friday Fred! You made it! TGIF

Clam's Quick Tips for Starting Your Very First Webcomic

Howdy! Here are the three bits of advice I tend to give people who ask me about getting into webcomic-making. Maybe they can help you jump into the fray with a little less fear.

1) Make Your First Chapter a Pilot Episode

You will be told by webcomic veterans to start with a short, simple comic idea first - which is wise - but if all you can think about is your big magnum opus, then you might as well hop in, right? Otherwise you'll just be glancing back at the other cooler project forever.

But if you can't start with a small simple story, start on a small, simple part of that larger story. Your first chapter should be a snapshot of the main conflict - show us a simple scene with few characters, ease us in slowly, keep things clear and focus on emotion/impact/clarity. Get the audience to care by offering something easily digested, but full of promise.

Once you're done with that 'pilot' chapter, and you're feeling more comfortable with the whole comic process, you can open the gates and show us the larger world. At that point, you'll be way more ready.

2) Simplify Your Art Style For Your Own Sanity

Always try to make your webcomic's art style as simple as possible - the standard rule is to use only 75% of your artistic skill for every comic page you make. Otherwise you will burn out quickly and terribly.

But you also need to be PROUD of your art style. If you're really feeling itchy, add a couple bells and whistles to your style so you can look at the finished page and say "Yeah, looks cool." You'll find the right balance the more you draw.

Also, don't be afraid to change your art style as you go along. Ultimate consistency is often impossible in webcomics anyway - so embrace your desire to try new things, streamline your work, whatever you feel needs to happen to be happiest. Sometimes the coolest part of reading a webcomic is noticing that style change - so don't hesitate to embrace it!

3) Resist the Reboot! RESIST!

The curse/blessing of drawing the same things over and over is that you'll inevitably get better at drawing those things. The trouble comes when you look back at old stuff and start thinking "Damn, I could draw that way better now."

You must recognize that this feeling never goes away. Not after a hundred pages. Not after three hundred. Not after a thousand.

I think everyone should be allowed one soft reboot for their first webcomic. Redraw some panels that bother you. Change up some dialogue if it doesn't make sense with your new story ideas. Do maintenance, basically. One of the beauties of webcomics is that they can be easily edited, without reprinting a whole book or remaking a whole game.

But if the ultimate purpose of a webcomic is to tell a story, then constant reboots will just be retelling the same story - slightly better each time, but the same at its core. We've heard it before. Most audiences would rather you save your strength and just keep going, rather than circling back year after year and going "Wait wait wait! I'll do it better this time."

Reboot early, not often, and only when you absolutely must! You're a storyteller, and you're constantly getting better at telling your story. Don't be ashamed of it - look back how much ground you've covered, and keep walking!

---

That's a good start. Happy webcomicking - don't be afraid to jump in, but be prepared to learn a lot very quickly. And if this advice doesn't work for you or adhere to how you did it, that's absolutely fine - webcomics are diverse by nature, and so are their creation processes. Feel out what works best for you, and good luck!

Howdy newbies and welcome to Tumblr, it takes a bit of setup to get this site running well so here’s what works for me. One of the neat things about this site is that its a different experience for everyone, so tailor these settings towards what you want from this site. 

New XKit 

Mr. Sheridan probably likes sleeping in his underwear because he likes his groin-noodle to breathe. Calarts hates this because it makes the tentpoles even more noticeable when he has to share a bed with him.

May I humbly request to joy yer crew as a lowly ship rat my good sire I can offer my excellent services of crumb recycling and strange and slightly vexing mystery noises at night

I'm starting a pirate crew

HOW THE FUCK DOES THIS GAME WORK