@naan@sakurajima.moe
@naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

naan

@naan@sakurajima.moe

#PuertoRican creator of Legendary Beings Ara & Celi. #Comic creator, #polyglot language lover + believer in the Mister Ed Philosophy. Founder of the Aradia Collective for Magical Girl Comics https://socel.net/@aradiacollective

On occasion, some sort of graphic designer.

On another occasion, archiving stuff over at https://blorbo.social/@okilies

Speaks ENG/ESP/日本語はまだ初歩的です/DEU/RUS.

Additional tags: #linguistics #comics #webcomic #webcomics #AradiaCollective #design #graphicdesign #OC #OriginalCharacter #comicartist #comics #illustration #イラスト #オリキャラ #漫画 #fedi22 #VGEN #PuertoRico

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naan, to comics
@naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

I've updated my newsletter! Wherein I informed my subscribers very late about my TCAF digital booth oops, but I also went into a bit more detail about each of the new comics I have for sale!

https://buttondown.email/NAAN/archive/find-me-at-tcafs-digital-marketplace/

(And if wanting to see what I have at TCAF as a toot: https://sakurajima.moe/@naan/112406077843541942)

anianimalsmoe, to random
@anianimalsmoe@sakurajima.moe avatar

So the latest 'woke' issue in gaming is that in Hades II, Hermes looks Asian. I'm guessing it was a choice by the American studio to include more racial diversity in their latest game. The Greek Gods in the first game were designed more generically white.

I mean, an 'Asian deliveryman' as the Herald of the gods sounds totally racist when placed a different context too.

Sigh, all these kinds of decisions are beyond me. It kinda breaks the immersion a bit, but it's a fantasy game in an 'alternate Greek world', why can't people have fun race bending characters? It's not like being white was critical to the plot or gameplay. It's all just flavor text to the game.

naan,
@naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

@anianimalsmoe just wait till these people find out how Jesus is portrayed in different countries because the people see themselves in him, oh noooooo

Honestly, people are just wanting to complain about anything now for engagement bait or because they have friendless lives. (Or their mother never hugged them enough, idk.) Your Asian deliveryman small "crit" holds much more water, as it's thoughtful.

I thought the main character in the first one was some flavor of non-white too xD He didn't look white to me ^^;

naan, to random
@naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

Hey nice, I'm finally being "bridged" to Bsky!

Uh, too bad the post got cut off. Kinda makes it look really odd, and hashtags are poof. That's on Bsky's end though, with their limits.

At least the alt text passed over too, so that's good \ o / Baby steps.

naan,
@naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

@chikorita157 YEAH I was surprised by Bsky's word count limit when I heard that it was still less than Mastodon's, like 300 or so. Like???? Huh?????? xD Okay then...

But I agree, it's why I like this instance lol. Word count limiters had their place for some micro-blogging platforms, even Twitter, but overall, all they do is muck things up. I'm so glad I don't have to do a gazillion tweets in a thread on here.

naan, to comics
@naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

From May 3 to May 24, I'll be "exhibiting" at TCAF's Digital Marketplace! \ o / Besides my usual wares, I have a BRAND NEW SHORT COMIC (in color??!), a free crossover fancomic and a special collected edition of my webcomic!

Feel free to peruse my booth over here: https://tcaf-digital-marketplace.myshopify.com/en-us/collections/naan

(I will not be in Toronto physically, for the record, haha)

#TCAF #TCAF2024 #TorontoComics #comics #comic #webcomics #webcomic #conventions #convention #TorontoComicArtsFestival

Color cover. There is a hand at the top, extended, in white gloves with a golden bracelet. The hand us reaching out as if to save someone having fallen from the golden platform--and in fact, there is someone at the bottom right of the cover who is covering her face as she falls to lord knows where. There is giant text saying DEMIURGE, and small text saying "an excerpt whereupon Sara Ashton finds herself this time in Slumberland and learns about the effects of dreams upon your childhood and your Self."
Color cover, with the logo above saying "initialize to heal!", subtitle saying "a crossover fancomic with Corrector Yui and Magic Knight Rayearth" and the credits saying "Story and Art by NAAN" The cover has two rectangles against a collage of panels from the interior pages. The pink rectangle features a shot of Corrector Yui while the green rectangle features a shot of Fuu from Rayearth in her final form.
A young girl with lower twin tails against a starry galactic backdrop. She's smirking, full of confidence, wielding a sword with a mixed angel/devil wings design. Her stance is grounded, clearly ready for whatever comes her way. The logo of the comic is at the top with the subtitle being "Toronto Comics Art Festival Edition."

naan, to random
@naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

Bsky bridge is live :0

https://social.beaware.live/@BeAware/112371891172459739

Once I have time to deal with it, it's time to follow the people that are allergic to Fedi lol

(It's become a very short list in the past few months lol)

naan,
@naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

Actually nope, it really worked! I followed the account from here and look ma, I'm on the mall cop website!

naan,
@naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

@chikorita157 Absolutely! The only issue some have been finding is that unfortunately to be able to connect better with Bsky users is if they also opt in to the bridge. The site does explain how to do it (https://fed.brid.gy/) and how to follow Bsky users who've connected--but it's whether people know about it at all.

Considering how many dislike Mastodon (with the feeling being mutual from here towards Bsky), this might have a lot more growing pains than initially thought. :zerotwouhoh:

anianimalsmoe, (edited ) to random
@anianimalsmoe@sakurajima.moe avatar

In other news, I got my first tea certification.

First step in Wise Wolfing my way to a tea empire, nyahahahahaha. :leafeonmoney:

naan,
@naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

@anianimalsmoe Congrats on some fine tea learnin'! :heiterdrink:

batichi, to random
@batichi@masto.batichi.net avatar

Mastodon /= to the fediverse. Calm some tiddies folks. This is the whole point we're here... At least I thought it was.

naan,
@naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

@batichi Is this about the whole Gargron making a US non profit thing?

naan, to Podcast
@naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

Hoorah and hooray! My third appearance on Sparkleside Chats has been posted!

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sparkleside/episodes/Episode-184---Bewitched-Season-One-with-NAAN-e2iom1e

This is a magical girl podcast, hosted by Ayu! I've talked about my comic on there before as well as the third season of Symphogear. Now I've come back to talk about the grandmother of the magical genre, Bewitched!

Hope you enjoy it! :akko_listen: It's, uh, two hours, so yanno, maybe listen to it while you eat dinner or something :zerotwoevillaugh:

Cartoony self-portrait of me, with big ol glasses and my gremlin child Eternal Ara doing a V sign for the camera

CavoriteLizard, to Hololive
@CavoriteLizard@sakurajima.moe avatar

Exciting news: I joined an idol group!!! :mexcitedmiku: :mexcitedmiku: :mexcitedmiku: I'm now the Yohane / Hanayo / Ai / Mei / Megumi of Sora Idols!!! :mexcitedmiku: :mexcitedmiku: :mexcitedmiku:

A year ago, I didn't think I'd actually be doing idol dances myself, and I never imagined I'd ever share the stage with so many of the talented people in the Northeast idol community. But here we are. :nnezukolove56:

naan,
@naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

@CavoriteLizard congrats! :akko_listen:

naan, to webcomics
@naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

I still love this art I did back in 2012, of Miyara mid-transformation into Eternal Ara! Sometimes I look at art where I know I leveled up and go "man, why can't I draw like that anymore" :zerotwoevillaugh:

--> from my comic: https://ac.jadinerhinestudios.com <--

I did this for an Anime Iowa art showcase, iirc. I swore off the con after my first and only booth but I entered this showcase. I wasn't...expecting much, but it would have been nice to get something, if it did. Maybe like some comments getting back to me or something but that never happened.

Instead, most of the prizes ended up going to one person 🤣 It got to the point where even the forums got in a little tickle discussion about it...I remember folks pointing out the oddity of one person winning almost everything, and asking for reasons. I could have guessed myself based on my own experience, but it was nice to see I wasn't alone in feeling blah about the whole thing.

I don't remember if the showcase happened again, since I stopped paying attention to anything Anime Iowa after that ^^;

mekkaokereke, to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

People on Twitter are debating whether a person using uncommon words like "delve" are trying to sound smarter than they are, or worse, are ChatGPT bots, because "normal" people don't talk like that.

You don't have to get upset, or embroiled in the debate. Not worth the time or attention. But I'll share some important context as your friendly neighborhood Nigerian 🙋🏿‍♂️

Many Nigerians have bigger English language vocabularies and better command of grammar than the typical American or English person

naan,
@naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

@mekkaokereke I feel this thread a lot and I'm not Nigerian/Nigerian descent but Puerto Rican. I recently had a thing where someone thought I was using a translator because...idk apparently my writing didn't appear to be that of "a native speaker."

Meanwhile in grad school, some of my evaluations had design students offended that I was so rude and arrogant enough to take time to teach the class of college seniors how verb tenses work. Because I had way too many Americans not knowing how tf they work in their essays.

It's not my fault that not only am I a native speaker of English (and Spanish at the same time, it's complicated) from a little small island, but that I know English better than you :ai_niyari:

I've had other moments where folks are impressed I know "old" words :akko_aah:

chikorita157, to random
@chikorita157@sakurajima.moe avatar

Under the radar, DLSite has temporary suspended the use of Visa, Mastercard, and Amex, although you can still buy points with their other service.

This is a worrying trend as payment processors like Visa and Mastercard is cracking down on NSFW content, which affect the livihoods of those who create such content.

(I only use DLSite to buy a bunch of TTS tools and a few yuri visual novels, but nothing NSFW)

https://info.eisys.co.jp/dlsite/69dd17c1c4b21c06?locale=en_US

naan,
@naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

@chikorita157 Even DLSite...this is beyond parody now :ai_blink:

rolle, to random
@rolle@mementomori.social avatar

This week I held the first week of work orientation and briefing for our new trainee who is originally from Wisconsin, US. Our spoken work language is Finnish and it seems she handles it brilliantly as she has been living in Finland for some time now. But I've noticed for me it's intriguing to have another spoken language in my world once again. All our docs and coding is naturally in English so it's not much of a stretch to actually speak English out loud, to me at least.

Despite this we have decided that it is good to use Finnish at work, because she wants to learn more and it's difficult otherwise, if we all keep speaking English. We Finnish people are funny that way, we don't really speak Finnish if the other person is not fluent with it, we switch to English too easily, because of our natural hospitability and because most of the Finns like to make the other person comfortable instead and we generally know English well.

I actually have some family from Australia from my mothers side, some of my cousins don't even know Finnish even though they have Finnish names, as they have lived most of their lives in Australia. I've never been there, but kinda through my special interest in languages I've learned to speak English pretty fluently and it comes naturally to me.

Anyway, solely the fact she is American living in Finland is kinda awesome in my world. After everyone has left the office we often get stuck in these long discussion about cultural differences, metal music and life in general. We have a lot in common and this week seems like a good start. I'm hopeful this will give birth to something great in our work community.

naan,
@naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

@rolle When I went to Oulu for a residency in 2019, I tried my best to learn at least basic Finnish. I always want to try to learn the language of a place if I intend on staying a while, plus at least in previous times in Europe, sometimes (or often?) not knowing the language was considered bothersome by residents. (Understandable but it made my anxiety spike when I would say something wrong and suddenly blamed for it lol)

I obviously failed at Finnish because it was much harder than I thought :zerotwo: Only managed to learn Terve (and in turn Tervetuola because of shared root word), and I already knew Kiitos for many years thanks to...Nightwish LOL. But when I arrived, it was made very clear that was it absolutely fine to not know Finnish, but that even Finns know how hard it is! It made me feel a lot more comfortable being "stupid", even though I still felt bad about not having been able to learn it.

I did take one class of Sami thanks to a student who invited me for one day (as she was taking Sami) and it was fun to talk to her, as her husband was from the US and her husband and I shared POVs on Finland when talking, and how he manages to survive while learning Finnish slowly.

One thing I remember my students saying is that for many young people, they speak English way more than Finnish, just because of the global world, and sometimes even prefer it--and how some older folk don't like that tendency. I thought that was super interesting. And yes, I was told confidently that, with exception of some rural places of course, you can survive with English!

Being from Puerto Rico as well, I ended up having discussions and shared similarities about "small country" issues or outlooks. Including our style of sarcasm and dark humor!

Overall, I felt very much like I could be myself in Finland and sometimes wish I could move there. Alas, not in the cards anytime soon.

Anyway, I only ended up learning 5 new words, only remembering two: one because it's chocolate (suklaa!) and the other is "joo." Oh, and learning how to pronounce "sorry" the Finnish way XD

anianimalsmoe, to Anime
@anianimalsmoe@sakurajima.moe avatar

Very 3d cat in Girls Band Cry. Actually, very 3d anime everything.

naan,
@naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

@anianimalsmoe Gosh, it sure says a lot about the state of things and my brain at this point that I thought this was AI at first :akko_wtf2: Is the 3D fluid or...typical for an anime?

naan, to CrystalsHashtags
@naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

Does anyone know of a program or a website (that doesn't look like it's from the 1990s and sketchy) that can compress PDFs?

I've been trying to compress them myself and man, the images all turn out looking like modem downloadable quality. Super pixelated and jaggy artifacts. I've tried for 144 dpi thinking it'll be fine and it's the same issue.

To be clearer, I want to compress the file size as opposed to the images (I've already optimized/compressed them as best as I can to minimize the size).

For added details: the PDFs in question are exported from InDesign CS5, so I can't "pick" a custom resolution like I can in Affinity Publisher. I've tried Adobe Acrobat Pro (a very old version lol) and that...kinda didn't work either.

Any help appreciated, thank you!

(since it's comics lol)

chikorita157, to random
@chikorita157@sakurajima.moe avatar

Not so sure how to feel about this.

(BTW, I own a license to the Affinity Suite 2,)

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/26/canva-acquires-affinity-apps/

naan,
@naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

@chikorita157 Welp, Serif lasting 10-12 years, great run, RIP everyone.

(I saw another comment about Serif's intention with Canva and I'll believe it when I see it. /snort)

anianimalsmoe, to random
@anianimalsmoe@sakurajima.moe avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    naan,
    @naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

    @anianimalsmoe Also makes it fun when you find serendipity. An animator friend from Zimbabwe brought once to one of the grad school lounges a dish that's rice with chicken, and the broth is used to mix with rice. (It was a late night.) My eyes almost fell out because I got hungry lol while also going WTF YO THAT'S A PUERTO RICAN DISH

    (https://www.ambitiouskitchen.com/puerto-rican-chicken-and-rice-arroz-con-pollo/)

    Turns out it's normal in Zimbabwe lol. But given that uh African slaves were brought to Puerto Rico, it likely means that perhaps that dish was "brought over" and made local by descendants \ o / (Though "ours" came from Cameroon, Nigeria and/or Ghana, so it's possible it may be a shared dish? I haven't looked into this much, so mind the stupidity :blobfoxlaughsweat: )

    Puerto Rico's "main" influences are Spanish, African and Indigenous, so sometimes it's hard to tell what came from what. Being an ex-Spanish colony, however, we do share some stuff with other ex-colonies, like lechón with the Philippines. :meow_hungry_anim: Like Native Americans in the US, our tribes used lots of native food like corn, cassava (yuca) and malanga (which we call yautia) which are of course still used today by PRicans. Malanga's interesting too, because the only place that sells in the American town I live in is a grocery founded and staffed by Arab folk \ o /

    Unfortunately, as wont to happen, I don't have English links but here are some about the foods derived from African and Indigenous ancestors :fernhappy:

    https://dialogo.upr.edu/conocen-los-puertorriquenos-el-origen-de-su-comida-tipica-6/

    https://wp.chefcarlosestevez.com/?p=1475

    https://www.aarp.org/espanol/cocina/recetas/info-2016/fotos-comida-latina-africana.html

    anianimalsmoe, to Anime
    @anianimalsmoe@sakurajima.moe avatar

    Sigh, the chief character designer for Re:Zero season 3 paused their xitter :deadbird: after being attacked for un-lewding the lolis.

    I mean, the original designs were bikinis showing underboob and sideboob godammit, that's not broadcastable in many places. They got changed to croptops and short shorts to un-lewd them, so should be fine, right? It's not like they were changed to full burqas. The lewdness was never part of the characters anyway, it was purely unnecessary fanservice. People go crazy over ankles and armpits anyway cough Ubel cough Serie.

    Video about news:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Eyrr6dyC_g

    naan,
    @naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

    @anianimalsmoe Weebs don't care about broadcast issues. It's why e.g. too American fans constantly demean and insult all the TV broadcast anime* from before 2010 and call it "censorship!!!111", never caring or not knowing that broadcast dubs were a gateway for many anime fans + dubs generally were done to follow the FCC rules. Heck, many make 4kids jokes and it's always the people who weren't there, and only know like the 5th generation VHS copy of the history lol. (No, this does not mean we can't critique them but I'll take a reasonable critique vs "hur durr all anime dubs are cringe because everything was censored")

    *Unless you're Dragon Ball, I guess.

    Kinda sucks that this is the only source for the news though, aside from the character designer's tweets. I'm not surprised people were mad at Sagawa; folks always love to harm the person who had no choice in the matter, instead of the big guns.

    CavoriteLizard, to JapaneseMusic
    @CavoriteLizard@sakurajima.moe avatar

    Ooh JMusicFriday's theme this week is Covers!

    I love this cover of My Boyfriend Is A Pilot by Ali Project from Macross the Tribute (that sentence alone is the stuff that 13 year old me's dreams were made of)- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmwZ1BvB8W4

    naan,
    @naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

    @CavoriteLizard that entire album had some great covers!

    oceaniceternity, to random
    @oceaniceternity@sakurajima.moe avatar

    @chikorita157 May I ask why we are limited to one emoji per post? I want to be able to do the triple Kanna...

    naan,
    @naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

    @chikorita157 @oceaniceternity ...So it turns out I never noticed that Vanilla and Glitch-soc were separated LOL. No wonder. :akko_badday: I'm stupid, sorry for the intrusion!

    NaraMoore, to random
    @NaraMoore@sakurajima.moe avatar

    Quire about shipping forwarding from Japan.

    Has anyone had experience with ZenMarket? The prices look more reasonable for small stuff than Tenso.

    I tried Buyee in the past and couldn't figure it out and White Rabbit seems to be hiding its fees.

    Right now all I need is someone to hand small light stuff from vendors who will not ship internationally.

    naan,
    @naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

    @NaraMoore Hate Buyee (a little, how we say, scammy), and White Rabbit fees are weird (they have a little page calculator)--love Zenmarket.

    They have different types of shipping and the cheapest ones are 2 weeks of waiting (Zen Express) and the airmail one where it's months of waiting. Now, I should say, WERE because when they first announced Zen Express, it really was super cheap, because it was Zen sending it to a distributor in the US and then shipping would be cheap/easy...but the last two times I've used that option, it was almost as expensive as EMS. My only theory is that they used to ship from California, and then switched to New York, because the expensive packages had been from NY. Don't have an actual answer as to why the shipping price changed.

    naan,
    @naan@sakurajima.moe avatar

    @NaraMoore No problem. Just now I visited the site to get you the shipping charts and noticed they have a sale: https://zenmarket.jp/en/static/shipping-sale-sakura24?topbanner=en The parcel price condition is high, BUT they do often do coupons like this once in a while.

    Also, when you sign up, you get some points to use as a bonus.

    Now here's the shipping page: https://zenmarket.jp/shipping.aspx

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