NO-SoupForYou

Be It Known For the Benefit of All

... foremost his own, and those who would prey upon him by means of fraud...

that the DeviantArt user known as NO-SoupForYou does under no circumstance that one is likely to encounter or provide engage in art trades, commissions, or similar transactions. The reasons, being sundry, include such things as:

• personal anxieties caused by such affairs

• difficulty arranging feasible payment method

• his poor ability to meet deadlines or persevere in the face of difficulty

• a preponderance of confidence criminals who insult his intelligence and wound his pride through inept and unoriginal attempts at flattery.

This notice having expressed his firm sincere will, and been affixed in clear view on his home profile page,

Henceforth those who submit such proposals and inquiries unencouraged risk being treated with a measure of mixed irritation, suspicion and possible hostility.... except a convincing case be made to him that they were unaware of its existence, or that there are unusual circumstances.

His hand and seal being set to this document this day August the Twenty-Eighth, in the year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty-Three,

NO-SoupForYou

Yea, verily. Forsooth.

Yeah, um.... so.....

My face is a bit red here. It turns out I'd been operating off some false, unchallenged assumptions and could've had more true-to-life graphics in my Hero Forge workspace and screenshots since about CHRISTMAS.

Whoops.

The site settings for my Samsung Galaxy have been adjusted. I think it can only manage one setting higher, but that's enough. Some color is better than I ever hoped, some stuff could use adjusting. I'll be getting on those, and updating the captures of everything.

The last real update I recall giving everyone about my life was months ago. I don't have a very eventful life, but stuff has happened which is well worth mentioning. And in a nice change of pace, none of it makes me feel like griping!

I think at last report, I'd broken ties with the charity I volunteered at... enraged at my boss's management style, a bobbled fundraising event that it made worse, and the retaliatory attitude she adopted when she discovered some of us might file a grievance with the board of directors. I seethed and internally demonized her for weeks. But you know something? After two months during which

• I and a few other veteran volunteers vanished from her roster,

• The unknown state of things which could have resulted there had me worried sick, and

• both of us were scared to death to even be in line-of-sight with each other every Sunday at church

we admitted to ourselves and each other what petty controlling assholes we'd both been. We were both so tired of having to avoid each other over this, and wanted to do work together again.

We treat each other with a lot more respect and forgiveness now, and she does the same with the rest of the volunteers too.

I had a moment or two of connection with my sister over the holidays. We live a fifteen-minute walk apart, but have a strained relationship and she usually seems disinterested in improving it. It was nice to discuss each other's interests with genuine involvement and enjoyment, not feeling a sense it was transactional or that our behavior was just born of politeness. We even swapped books we enjoyed... it's been a long time since she allowed herself to be so openly receptive to some new thing I was recommending! I miss the days when we used to be like that all the time.

The four-day Christmas giveaway event at the charity came and went remarkably complication-free. There are always volunteers who drop the ball composing and organizing the orders, abusive or entitled clients, traffic snarls in the parking area, people who try to wheedle extra things or complain because we couldn't get everything they asked for, or idiots who request three bikes and then arrive to pick them up in a small sedan carrying nonessential cargo and multiple passengers. On balance, though, this ran like clockwork.

I was there for both the heavy days, almost the entire time on both of them. There were only one or two people who tried to cause a scene, no bags I know of that were lost or given to wrong people, only a handful people who tried to work us for extras, and a single woman whose car couldn't carry her entire order in one trip. She gave us a time she'd come back to pick up the rest, and was true to her word. Oh, and the several dozen nice fleece hats my mom made for peoples' winterwear selections proved very popular... that made me feel proud.

Which brings me to the subject of my mom. She has several minor but troublesome skeletal anomalies. a result of her mother having had rheumatic fever when pregnant with her. (I think new type of neck brace was invented to hold her badly interlocking neck vertebrae properly in place until corrective surgery could fix them.) One of those anomalies is a set of legs which aren't quite the same length. She assumed over the last years the pain in her shorter leg's hip (which, BTW, she could only take Tylenol for because of allergies) was mere arthritis. A few weeks ago, a doctor's visit revealed she was grinding bone and needed it replaced.

As an aside, this whole thing made me sheepish. I'm often impatient and judgmental.... and had no idea the reason my mother had so little focus, mental energy, or interest in activities was because she was toughing out heavy arthritis-like pain 24/7.

She just had her surgery last afternoon, an event which contains two ironies.

The first is that a side effect of the procedure corrects the imbalance which caused her bad hip in the first place: hip replacements add a tiny amount of length to the affected leg. The second is that despite my dad tying himself in knots, the outpatient operation went smoothly and there have been no complications... but a shoulder getting inexplicably wrenched during the appointment has her staying overnight at the hospital.

Did I mention that my roommate quit his job months ago because although it was work he enjoyed, it wasn't paying out enough for how much of his life it demanded? It's been good for him, because now he can do as he pleased with his day. It's also been good for me, because he recognizes by habit of becoming a shut-in and invites me along on his daily wanders through town. I see a lot of my own couch-potato lifestyle now being mirrored in him, though, and wonder how many irons he's putting in the fire searching for new income. (He habitually keeps info like that to himself.)

So to recap-- I got over my temper tantrum, things are better than ever at the charity, we managed the Christmas giveaway properly, I had some nice (if fleeting) times with my sister, and my mom's soon gonna be much more active and alert company.

You remember that plague of scammers who hijacked and hollowed out actual, old accounts to use as platforms trying to make us click phishing links? Folks are trying something like that again, before the current 'muse for my mural' wave has even fully died down. This time they're bringing the links to us with B.S. Notes that make claims like "I'm with Disney, and we want to hire you."

Even if Disney was somehow interested enough in my unpolished garbage to take the initiative seeking me out... that's not The Mouse's headhunting MO. They don't maintain DA accounts which remain activity-free and utterly empty across years, to contact you via Notes with embedded links whose explanations suggest an oddly incompetent IT staff.

But it looks like the admins are as pissed with these guys as we are. The account which just tossed one of those Notes my way had only accumulated 17 pageviews and three watchers, had none of those "Thanks" comments in the sidebar which such accounts tend to gather, and only lasted 35 more minutes before getting shut down.

I have to admit.... there was a long cruel chuckle of satisfaction when I discovered that.

I have a nearly-complete, inked-over 3/4 body sketch of my OC Dunebug singing his metal heart out with a Christmas song. I really like it, considering it a sort of landmark. I finally managed to do a few things with him I've always either failed to do, or been too scared to seriously attempt. This one gave me almost exactly what I was aiming for, with refreshing ease and speed.

I hope to upload it in time for Christmas, but that may get sandbagged by an absurd and tiny detail. There's a troublesome outstretched hand I can't get done right, but that can be fixed by setting aside time to experiment and/or get a good reference photo. The real problem is that I don't remember enough about the song that I've selected to have him sing any lyrics! And off-hand, I can't think of a suitable substitute.

That song tries to beat a hasty retreat into the shadowy disorganized corners of my memory almost any time I'm not actually hearing it; I quickly forget almost anything I know how to use for research. A mellow pop piece with a feel that seems from the 1990s or later, chipper sound and attitude, non-religious lyrics focused on a comforting, satisfying holiday experience, male vocalists. That's what I can describe and be sure of, and I have no idea how to use it.

For once I've dared, persevered, and have been well rewarded... only for holiday-themed pop music to hold things hostage by playing Rumplestiltskin with me! 🤣

In other DA-related news, a Hero Forge TFP Airachnid is nearly ready. She just needs a twinned set of Tail parts wrestled into position, and for me to give an appropriate pose. (Between that gold area on top of her skull and those chevron-shaped spars that frame her lower face, her head was a lot harder to create than I thought it'd be.)