Дорогой русский язык,

Мы давно не разговаривали! Как ты? Надеюсь, все хорошо.

В эти недели я продолжаю изучать азы русской грамматики. Я изучала родительный и винительный падежи множественного числа, но в последнее время я также изучаю глаголы движения. Надеюсь продолжать в том же духе, теперь увидимся в следующий раз.

С наилучшими пожеланиями

Твоя подруга!

Ok this was just a mere exercise with Russian writing and an excuse to practice with what I learnt and I keep learning in this period. And last time we left off with verbs of motion. Verbs of motions are one of the toughest part of Russian language along with plural genitive, that I mentioned in my fictional letter to Russian language, for those not used to such level of specificity that I personally love. In Russia you can't and don't simply "go"!

meme taken from: https://www.reddit.com/r/russian/comments/rk9boe/russian_verbs_of_motion/

I almost memorized all the verbs I've shown in the previous diary, conjugation is not a problem. Under this aspect Russian language has an easy way to conjugate verbs compared to Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian, not to mention that infernal hell that is Romance language conjugation system....

But what makes them more difficult to acquire is the way of thinking. Verbs of motions force you to think differently and expand your mind, quite literally in the semantic field since you have to use te right verb of movement to move, lol. And the ones I am studying are just the unprefixed verbs of motion, because there are prefixed verbs of motion which acquire a different meaning.

I have noticed two core elements that make verbs of motions challenging (but also fascinating from an anthropological point of view):

1) different way of seeing, thinking and reasoning behind them (this might have some anthropological roots that I have yet to discover, my research in the academic abstracts and papers still struggles to find an answer)

2) the way they are taught

In the first case we discover that there a languages that specify very much aspects of life, in this case the movement. Both in English and even worse in Italian there are few verbs to show movement. English has mainly "to go" that engulfs what Russian wants to convey with ИДТИ-ХОДИТЬ, ЛЕТЕТЬ-ЛЕТАТЬ, ПЛЫТЬ-ПЛАВАТЬ etc. Italian only has "andare/venire" that convey in a very generic way these semantic nuances.

In the second case the traditional way of conceptualizing and teaching UVoMs (unprefixed verbs of motion) is based on the rather ambiguous category "directionality" (cf. Isačenko, 1960). This traditional approach is deeply rooted in the tenets of European structural linguistics, which a priori considers any grammatical category as a privative opposition. Searching for universal semantic invariants associated with specific morphemes, structuralist linguistics abstracts from contextual factors and fails to provide an easily applicable guide to choosing the correct UVoM. And when you have to teach Russian as second language (L2) this becomes a problem.

We know that the relationship between “linguistic theories” and the way second/foreign language (L2) instruc-tors conceptualize and teach linguistic patterns under the guise of “pedagogical grammar” and “teaching methodology” is a subject of ongoing discussion and questioning. I've attended an entire course last year about Italian as second language and all theories linked to L2 teaching so I feel this ongoing discussion. All influential L2 teaching paradigms (seethe the Direct Method (cf. Besse, 2010, 9-11; Marchand, 1913;1914;1927) and the Neurolinguistics Approach (cf. Germain, 2018) just to cite a few) have been inspired by advances in theoretical and applied linguistics.

On the other hand, L2 pedagogy has always been guided by the grammar-as-a-tool-not-a-goal principle. The search for simple and intuitive tools to teach and process a second language makes L2 pedagogy very cautious regarding linguistic knowledge. I totally agree with the French pedagogue Louis Marchand when he used the metaphor of lever when teaching L2, I quote his sentence:

Like a lever we use to lift a weight should not be heavier than the weight itself, the grammar used as a tool helping L2 learners to cope with difficulties of the target language, should not be more difficult for learners and teachers than the material it helps acquire.”(cited in Puren, 1998, 52).

And it's interesting how this metaphor, manifesting the grammar-as-a-tool-not-a-goal claim, echoes the problem-solving principle known as Occam's razor, which recommends searching for the simplest possible explanations. I personally think that to evaluate whether a given teaching approach is the same awkward-to-use lever referred to by Marchand in 1920 one must take into account these elements:

• empirical research on comparative testing of teaching methods
• epistemological analysis of the linguistic knowledge underlying L2 pedagogical grammar 
• teaching methods

Considering that teachers tend to see teaching strategies they are familiar with as the only possible and correct way of presenting linguistic information to learners, it's quite clear that the current way to teach Russian verbs of motion is inefficient and only complicates things.

In the case of Russian verbs of motion (VoMs) and specifically unprefixed verbs of motion(UVoMs), the traditional way of teaching them is based on on the opposition between unidirectional vs. nondirectional (or multidirectional) motions. Linguistics such as Bernitskaїa, 2017-2019, Paškina, 2007 and Gepner in 2016 have criticized the traditional directionality-based conception of UVoMs, actualizing long-standing controversy surrounding the category of directionality in linguistics.

Russian language has a further layer of difficulty because apart from the four universal characteristics of motion–moving object, goal/location of motion, the path followed, and manner of motion –some (but not all) Russian verbs encoding motion are sensitive to the lexico-grammatical subcategory as part of the general category of verbal aspect.

This subcategory applies to a small group of imperfective verbs that have two distinct imperfective variations, each associated with one of two kinds of basic stems; think about ИДТИ-like and ХОДИТЬ-like stems. The issue is further complicated because the Russian language requires differentiation between motion on foot and by means of transportation (internally screaming). Even though there is no generic verb of motion in Russian, ИДТИ/ХОДИТЬ can be generalized for motion that does not take place on foot if it occurs within a locality or it is a fixed-route traffic and here, ИДТИ is used much more often in a metaphorical sense. I suggest to read works from Nesset, 2010; Raxtina, 2004; Nesset & Janda, 2022; Veličko, 2018, 611, and Nesset & Janda, 2022 to better grasp this.

All these complications lead to the fact that contextual meanings of different UVoMs are deter-mined by a complex combination of grammatical, pragmatic, and situational variables difficult to encapsulate in a one single “rule”. The concept направленностьдвижения (directionality of motion) has earned a reputation for being dominant in linguistics, but there is no universal consensus on the semantics of UVoMs like Paškina in 2007 noticed while analyzing and identifying 11 terminological pairs employed in Russian linguistics for this purpose. Paškina concluded that they are not very helpful in explaining them.

There is another problem to keep in mind: the definition of направленность. We don't have a single definition, for example  the Russian L2 pedagogical grammar Книга о грамматике defines it as spatial characteristic of motion. Some linguistics such as Forsyth, 1970 and Bernitskaїa, 2019 use the concept of пунктназначения/целенаправленность (destination), but again there is no universal consensus. Both Paškina (2007) and Bernitskaїa(2019) demon-strate that the directionality-based conception of UVoMs reduces the variety of factors influencing the natural human perception of motion to a single directionality without taking into account several others, such as space, time, and moving object's vs. observer's points of view.

Even the meaning of unidirectionality has not a clear definition but many researchers argue that unidirectional verbs encode the motion proceeding “in/from a single direction toward a goal”. As for nondirectional ХОДИТЬ-like verbs, their meaning is not easy to define either, so it's not an easy task^^'

Considering that most of what I said here is heavily based on this important study that I discovered these past days, I highly suggest you to give it a read to have a full grasp of what I said and think about the limits of the traditional approach that even my grammar book seems to use: https://dislaw.at/ds/article/view/106/104

Just know that the alternative approaches, such as Semantic Labeling (Bondarenko, 2023) seem to be able to make up for the shortcomings of the traditional approach and offer a more intuitive methodology for teaching UVoMs. They are situation based, item-focused, and experience-driven approaches and they converge with the principles of cognitive linguistics.

As last thing before closing this journal is that two Russia-born linguistics–Sergej (Serge) Karcevskij (1884-1955) and Alexandr Isačenko (1910-1978) –have credits for the concept of privative (asymmetrical) binary opposition (my Linguistics course memory is flooding here XD) which inextricably links to the idea of directionality.

I hope one day to find possible anthropological roots of why Slavic languages heavily rely on verbs of motions to describe space because I would like to talk about, in the meantime I salute you guys, see you next time!

I know I may sound boring by posting another blog about myself but seeing other people posting their art summaries made me want to do the same as way to reflect a bit on my art, and it's been ages since I last did one (I was still on DA when it happened). First I want to give credits to the artist who made this template, their name is glitchednotghosts and here the link to the template which is free to use:

https://glitchednotghosts.tumblr.com/post/705016877363216384/transparent-art-summary-template-free-to-use

I really liked this geometric shape and the sloped look each slot has; it gives them a very dynamic feel and I like it.

Here I put the works I loved the most during 2024:

I know the Valentine's Day card was drawn at the end of January but I consider it a piece for February. In my FA account it was posted on Valentine's day. It's very rare I say this but looking at this art summary I can say I am "proud" of what I did and what I accomplished in terms of techniques and variety of subjects. Once again I didn't manage to draw a piece for each month because as you can see three months are vacant due to intense study for exams. But I also noticed a pattern starting from July: a more intense artistic productivity, experimental pieces in terms of techniques (lineless subjects or out-of-comfort-zone subjects such as robots) and improved colouring technique.

I can finally say I like my art, after many years of relative tolerance for my works, I am now happy at looking my works. Of course I keep practicing, having fun and experiment so my eyes evolves with time and what I consider cool now it might not be that cool in future since I will acquire new skills. And speaking of skills I want to point out flaws I still need to work on:

• perspective
• colour theory
• geometric shapes
• robots and mechanical parts

For robots, perspective and geometric shapes in general using 2 point perspective is helping me to train my visual memory and wrist coordination. I am still in an embryonic phase but I am gradually seeing some changes in the way I perceive shapes. As for colour theory I will check some art threads (I'm looking at your posts, Skoops) to see if I can find useful resources and I think I will considering that if my art improved a lot was thanks to this website. Another flaw I've encountered when painting colours with "Bristles-3 Large Smooth" and "Bristle-4 Glaze" brushes in Krita is that I tend to give a soft pressure when stroking surfaces, giving a more dull look to the chromatic composition while I should aim at a more vivid one to make colours stand and stay harmoniously. I do this with traditional pieces but there I am learning to be more patient and add layer over layer to make the colour look more vibrant and make it stand on its own.

Why didn't I include backgrounds in my flaws? Because I am starting to love them, the only flaw I can pick up from them is the texture of environment elements (i.e. rocks, grass, wood, etc.). I also want to push further with dynamism in poses.

You can find each work here:

January

February

March-April-May

Nothing

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

I didn't include other artworks I would have liked to put so I will list them here by category:

runners-up fanarts:

runners-up OCs:

runners-up personal works:

I don't know what 2025 has in store for me, I just hope it will be dope like 2024. I don't care if I will make fewer or more posts, what matters is that I have fun and learn from my mistakes, critiques, and learn from others. For this year I won't be posting any more draws despite I am creating a new one for the Tankmas experience I had during this month, and I am starting to make sketches for the 6 fanart challenge.

Ok this is the last blog post for this year, let's see in the next one and again serene New Year everyone!

Hello Newgrounds and its people, I hope you are spending serene holidays these days. I know I have already written a recap on my profile and you can read it here: 1st Year on Newgrounds: recap

but here I would like to review this 2024 as whole so both here and outside NG because I would like to reflect on this year that is about to end in few days.

Photography

Some of you already know by my previous shutter-bug chronicles blogs that I developed a passion for photography. A passion that was born in September 2023 thanks to a dear University friend who offered to take me to Sardinia. This passion grew over the year, my favourite subjects are birds, reptiles, insects, spiders, nature in general. I hope one day to photograph wild endemic mammals too (now I only photographed a nutria), but I know it's more difficult than with birds because they are more elusive. I know that in "my" area there are many small rodents like common voles, Eurasian harvest mice, yellow-necked mice, short-tailed field voles, wooden mice, brown rats, black rats etc. then there are red foxes, common hares, roe deer, boars and ultimately even wolves. I will share here some of the shots I loved the most during this year:

-January

This is one of my favourite photos I took of this 'lil "bastard". I called him simply because he was the most difficult subject to photograph because he is so elusive and quick (I love these birds). He is not that different from wild Tamago in Tankmas ADVENTure XD you have to approach very slowly and not let him to see you or else he will fly away. Even blue tits, great tits, hooded crows, Eurasian jays and common redstarts were easier to photograph, lol. This is not the very first photo I took of this species though. The very first was in November 13th, 2023 and fun fact about that first pic: my TV was playing "Un bel di vedremo" while I managed to capture this bird in my camera. The music unironically fit perfectly the situation, lol.

-February

I just love how bright and vivid colours are and how they stand out the colours of my vegetable garden. They visit often my garden during winter time and I love feeding them.

-May

If you look carefully and with a bright screen you can see AR3664. So if you see a purple-violet trail-like hue, congratulations that's an aurora borealis I could see and photograph for the first time of my life. One of the largest sunspot groups in recent history is crossing the Sun right now and I have to thank Link4universe, an amazing Youtuber I follow, if I could not only get notified of this gem but also to witness it where I live and take some pics. I never imaged I could see an aurora. As you know auroras are the result of disturbances in the Earth's magnetosphere caused by the solar wind. Major disturbances result from enhancements in the speed of the solar wind from coronal holes and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). These disturbances alter the trajectories of charged particles in the magnetospheric plasma. These particles, mainly electrons and protons, precipitate into the upper atmosphere (thermosphere/exosphere). The resulting ionization and excitation of atmospheric constituents emit light of varying colour and complexity. The shape I could see was a mix of glow and arc, it was beautiful almost terrifying and sublime to me since I never saw one in real life and where I live they usually are not visible.

Auroras can have many colours from green, red, yellow, blue to ultraviolet and infrared. The one that got photographed in Italy were all reddish purple-violet. The colour red occurs at highest altitudes. Excited atomic oxygen emits at 630 nm; low concentration of atoms and lower sensitivity of eyes at this wavelength make this color visible only under more intense solar activity. The low number of oxygen atoms and their gradually diminishing concentration is responsible for the faint appearance of the top parts of the "curtains". Scarlet, crimson, and carmine are the most often-seen hues of red for the auroras. Auroras can make noise too. Aurora noise, similar to a crackling noise, begins about 70 m above Earth's surface and is caused by charged particles in an inversion layer of the atmosphere formed during a cold night. The charged particles discharge when particles from the Sun hit the inversion layer, creating the noise. Exposure time of this photo 30s.

-June

These two are my favourite photos not only of June month but of all 2024, especially the juvenile hooded crow. That day (it was June 5th) I went visiting a park of a city near where I live to have opportunity to take some bird pics and other stuff. I know that area is visited by hooded crow, my favourite bird species of the area where I live. Sadly they are pretty shy and it's difficult to take good quality photo but in this area they are quite common and I love listening to their contact calls to locate them and know what they are up. When I was walking I noticed a crow head and I immediately stopped not to disturb him/her but the bird didn't fly away and soon I realized he/she was a juvenile hooded crow. First time of my life I could see one and take several pics of him/her. Parents were perching on a tree near the area the little crow was in. I could listen to one of his/her parent's call, they were probably telling him/her not to go too far from where they could watch him/her. I discretely took several pics and then took a different turn because I didn't want to disturb or stress both the juvenile and parents. Just because I love photography it doesn't mean I have the right to annoy animals if they don't want to be disturbed. Respect is one of lessons true photography one learns. I don't consider myself a true photographer, I have a lot to learn in terms of technique but many times I see some people annoy animals or put themselves at risk just for a photo.

After I returned in the area I didn't see him/her anymore but I could immediately listen to his/her call. It looked like to me that he/she was practicing his/her calling skills because I didn't hear the typical voice they make when they are fed (at this stage they can still beg for food) and I couldn't notice that first notes of the call barely resembled that of a crow but then the following ones sounded more crow-like.

The second photo is this lovely lil fella I met during my walk in the park, an Italian wall lizard (Podarcis siculus). This is also the first reptile photo I post here, yayyyy :D The lizard was very chill while sunbathing (horrible pun I know XD) so I took opportunity to take a pic of him. He didn't feel annoyed or bothered by my presence, but I wanted to take only two pics because I wanted to leave him alone while warming up.

The snout–vent length of P. siculus is 150–250 mm on average. P. siculus is characterized by a green or brown back with a white or green belly. There is variation in length and color diversity due to the many subspecies and populations of P. siculus. The trademark of this species is the characteristic of having many subspecies within its large range. Studies evidence how rapidly P. siculus subspecies can become distinguishable from larger populations given geographic isolation. A 2008 study detailed distinct morphological and behavioral changes in a P. siculus population indicative of "rapid evolution":

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releas.....0417112433.htm

https://web.archive.org/web/2008042.....evolution.html

If you want to know the many subspecies it has here a link:

https://web.archive.org/web/2008061.....acertids2s.htm

It has so many subspecies that Henle and Klaver (1986) described 52 subspecies of P. siculus. Podnar et al (2005) described 6 groupings of P. siculus in the species' native range: Sicula clade (Southwestern Calabria, Sardinia, and Sicily), Monesterace clade (Istrian coast), Catanzaro clade ( central Calabria), Suzac clade (islands in southern and central Dalmatia), Tuscany clade (Western Italy) and finally Campestris-sicula clade (Northern Italy and the Adriatic Islands).

The species can develop different dorsal patterns (campestris, calabresiae, intermediate 1, intermediate 2, reticulated, concolor etc.) and morphs, for example Podarcis siculus klemmeri is a blue morph found exclusively on the small island of Licosa (province of Salerno, Campania). Take a look a this morph:

https://www.zoochat.com/community/m.....emmeri.466971/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:.....89-1d-left.png

Another pic I loved of this month was this:

Last time I saw these birds I was still in high school. They are by far the most difficult to spot and photograph because how rarely I see them, mostly because the area is already occupied by other birds and they don't like foreign birds. The European goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis) is a small passerine bird in the finch family that is native to Europe, North Africa and western and central Asia. The subspecies of the European goldfinch are divided into two major groups. These intergrade at their boundary, so the groups are not recognized as distinct species despite their readily distinguishable plumage. Subspecies in the carduelis (black-crowned) group occupy the western part of the range and have black crowns; subspecies in the caniceps (grey-headed) group occupy the eastern part of the range and have grey heads. The bird is 12–13 cm long with a wingspan of 21–25 cm and a weight of 14 to 19 g. The sexes are broadly similar, with a red face, black and white head, warm brown upper parts, white underparts with buff flanks and breast patches, and black and yellow wings. The bird's preferred food is small seeds such as those from thistles (the Latin name is from Carduus, a genus of thistles), cornflowers, and teasels, but insects are also taken when feeding young. It also regularly visits bird feeders in winter. In the winter, European goldfinches group together to form flocks of up to 40, occasionally more. Insects, including bugs, moths, beetles and flies, form a smaller part of a goldfinch’s diet, particularly during early spring and in the breeding season. Spiders and larvae are also eaten.

Males have on average, more extensive red on the head, black nasal hairs and lesser coverts that are black or brown black, sometimes narrowly tipped brown. While females are described as having, on average, less extensive red on the head, grey or blackish grey nasal hairs and lesser coverts that are broadly tipped brown although occasionally as narrowly as some males. From: https://two-in-a-bush.blogspot.com/.....hic-study.html

I suggest to give it a read as it's extremely interesting and shows limits of this type of sexing. Juveniles have a plain head and a greyer back but are unmistakable due to the yellow wing stripe. Birds in central Asia (the caniceps group) have a plain grey head behind the red face, lacking the black and white head pattern of European and western Asian birds. The nest is built entirely by the female and is generally completed within a week. The male accompanies the female, but does not contribute. Common nesting spots for goldfinches are usually found tucked in between branches of a bush or tree, particularly fruit trees. Nests are built up to 6 m off the ground, with higher nests occasionally used. Eggs measure around 17 mm by 13 mm and are shades of pale blue-white to grey-violet, spotted with purple-reddish brown markings. The clutch consists of between 4 and 6 eggs, which are incubated for 13 to 15 days by the female alone. At least one brood is raised each year, often two, and sometimes as many as three. Goldfinches do not usually mate for life, but they are seasonally monogamous, and stay together throughout the breeding season, raising their young together before going their separate ways. Pairs form in late winter, and it’s unlikely that the same pair will reunite and raise young together again. European goldfinches are commonly kept and bred in captivity around the world because of their distinctive appearance and pleasant song. I personally highly disagree trapping a wild animal to keep as a pet just because it elicits you an egoistical attachment to positive sensory stimuli (pretty look and pleasant call). Leave them alone. In Great Britain during the 19th century, many thousands of European goldfinches were trapped each year to be sold as cage birds. One of the earliest campaigns of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds was directed against this trade. Wildlife conservation attempts to limit bird trapping and the destruction of the open space habitats of European goldfinches.

Fun fact: if European goldfinches are kept with domestic canaries, they tend to lose their native song and call in favour of their cagemates' songs.

-November

A beautiful black cat that visited my garden. I love black cats, they are my favourite cats.

-Curious phenomena

The first pic is easily explainable: it's ballooning. It is a process by which spiders, and some other small invertebrates, move through the air by releasing one or more gossamer threads to catch the wind, causing them to become airborne at the mercy of air currents and electric fields. A 2018 study concluded that electric fields provide enough force to lift spiders in the air, and possibly elicit ballooning behavior:

Electric Fields Elicit Ballooning in Spiders

This is primarily used by spiderlings to disperse; however, larger individuals have been observed doing so as well. The spider climbs to a high point and takes a stance with its abdomen to the sky, releasing fine silk threads from its spinneret until it becomes aloft. Journeys achieved vary from a few metres to hundreds of kilometers. Even atmospheric samples collected from balloons at five kilometers altitude and ships mid-ocean have reported spider landings. Ballooning can be dangerous (due to predators, and due to the unpredictable nature of long-distance ballooning, which may bring individuals to an unfavorable environment). Species such as Erigone atra, Cyclosa turbinata, as well as in spider mites (Tetranychidae) and 31 species of lepidoptera, distributed in 8 suborders, display this behaviour. First time I witnessed this phenomenon. In other areas fields were covered with a blanket of spider web, giving the feeling a delicate snow fell down.

The second photo was taken at the beginning of this month and it was the first I saw a huge flock of pigeons. The funny thing is the symmetry in which they positioned themselves. I have another pic with fewer pigeons but you can see how aligned they were on the roof. This photo shows other pigeons who came later. Pigeons are social creatures and tend to flock together, especially during the winter months. Large flocks provide warmth and safety, as pigeons huddle together to share body heat and conserve energy. They create a "warm bubble" around them to keep them warm and this is fantastic because it shows the versatility of this cool species.

-Christmas Gift

This is a gift (various meat scraps) I gave to magpies who visit my garden during Christmas day. I love feeding birds of "my" area especially during winter time. I offer nuts, seeds, grains to other birds in order to help them a bit with cold temperatures. A spell of very low temperature in winter can result in high mortality among small passerines and this is why I try to help them a bit. After listening to magpies over and over I can distinguish each individual by their voice and I know the typical call they make when they see food that catches their interest. It's a call aimed at warning other magpies (familiar ones) of potential food and during winter they prefer meat over plant-based foods.

Academic Life

On the university side, 2024 was a year full of satisfactions in terms of exams because I managed to pass most of them. Now only three exams before I end my journey even if it will take some time because Spanish was a waste of time and changing for Russian only occurred in November. What matters is getting the degree with formed skills and this university is giving me such cool skills that will be used for future jobs. Spanish was the only taint of this year because this language isn't for me. I prefer to study a harder language that gives me challenges but I enjoy it rather something similar to my second mother tongue but I can't fully like. Besides this I enjoyed this other university year, courses I enjoyed the most were Comparative Literatures, German Literature III and Germanic Philology. I plan to present a dissertation about Scandinavian literature and aspects of cultural anthropology with German Philology teacher since I would like to explore lesser know aspects. Why Scandinavian literature? Because it shows more aspects of Scandinavian culture and society than Anglo-Saxon literature that was made by warrior class for warrior class, so ignoring the rest of society. Now I am focusing on Russian language because I prefer to have a target-oriented mind on simple goals. Let's see what 2025 will give me.

Personal Life

This year was overall decent for the most part due to academic life and experience on NG. But on a more personal level there were some things that tainted a bit this year and it started from September where an someone started throwing litter and cigarette butts in my garden. This is an individual that my father knows because he is a visitor of the bar my father hangs out. It is not a mentally stable person, he comes from a dysfunctional family, has a brother who screams every time he goes for a walk disturbing both people and animals, and has problems with alcohol. People like that can interpret everyone others do or say as a personal attack, and because my father has this tendency to speak with everyone something must have upset this person. So he started for a month and a half throwing litter in my garden. I hate everyone who pollutes the environment, especially if you throw cigarettes then you are in my naughty list (Christmas pun :P). We filmed every night and finally caught him. My father spoke to him and now things seem sorted out BUT I didn't forget nor forgive. I hate this person with a burning passion for what he did towards my garden who smelled like cigarette even after he stopped, plus you polluted a piece of environment and Nature. Another element that is giving me some worries are some family problems but studying and browsing here on NG has a therapeutic effect on me.

And I take this opportunity to thank Newgrounds and the people I interacted with if my Christmas was one of the most serene Christmas I ever had in ages. Most of them were tranquil at best, but this one had the kind of serenity and creativity I search for during this period. I want to personally thank ChronoNG  if I had the mental energy to keep drawing during Christmas after the previous bad day I had with my family. I know it may be small and even insignificant but his will to see what I was about to draw gave me the strength to draw not one but two artworks that day so from the bottom of my heart thank you!

Another thing that made me happy during Christmas was the surge of new fans who decided to follow me, thank you! I didn't expect such nice Christmas gift here^^ I am deeply honoured to be followed by so many cool artists (even people with a larger following base than me, it never happened on other sites like DA or FA) and this shows how the community can build strong bonds through Art whether it's voice acting, music, art, games or flash movies. You are all fantastic, keep being awesome and may have serene Christmas/winter holidays!

I want to take advantage of this part to promote again the journal made by SheepSLAPS, even if you can't help her, just a spread can help too.

Newgrounds

2024 on Newgrounds was great in every aspect even though my activity surged during mid July after I finished most third year exams. The first thing that made it great was the huge number of collabs I participated, here the folder about them:

This is not the first time I participate in collabs, my very first was on DeviantART back in 2015 and it was Pokemon-themed collab about flying Pokemon racing together. But after this and other two collabs on DA, I didn't contribute to any future collab. Until I joined NG...and it was the best choice ever because I could push my limits further and experiment new things that helped me to gradually come out my comfort zones. I think my biggest achievement, that I plan to continue pursuing, was creating and painting backgrounds and environments for my subjects. And this will lead me to learn more about them especially when it comes to textures. In my last artwork (it will be my last artwork for this year too):

I've noticed that I still have to work a lot on rocks and their textures. I know the artwork is meant to be simple with a simple graphic but this doesn't change the fact that I aim at more realistic-looking rocks. This applies to grass, forestscapes etc.

Another important noteworthy thing for my artistic skills growth, that happened in this year, was the creation of an art thread:

Shang's art cave [art thread]

This is not an art-dump thread, I don't aim at this and I don't like showcasing my stuff this way, it's superficial and I want to give a more in depth look at how I learn and draw. I already have my gallery with even my personal playlist where people can navigate easily what I make (fanarts, personal works or OCs) since the infinite scrolling can make them lost in a sea of artworks if I reach big numbers (this is the only thing I criticize: why not adding the option to choose between infinite scrolling and pages?). In this thread I try to talk about the learning process about my artistic creation, I try to study myself while studying art so it has a meta-artistic nature this thread. I also like to criticize my own artworks (in future I will do it) and I would like to hear some constructive criticism and feedback but don't feel obliged to comment. If you want that's fine, it don't want that's fine too. With time this thread will expand more and more but I prefer baby-steps so for now you will see boring 2 point perspective exercises. I hope to help others with my thread so it's not entirely egoistical^^'

Another small accomplishment in this year was drawing robot characters:

These are the first three fanarts where robotic characters appear and I am liking the idea of drawing something that is completely out of my comfort zone like robots. I hope to practice more for the next year Robot Day. If we consider the Wanted! - Pixel Art Collab I am participating then the number of works featuring robots increases to four robot characters drawn this year.

The only two things that made me sad were:

-not being able to attend Pico Day meetup (I hope one day to be able to see in person the many amazing people that make this site so awesome) not even the one in Dublin. It would be nice a NG event in continental Europe, I would go immediately if conditions are favourable.

-not being able to draw something for Pico Day because I was busy af with exams

Despite these two things I do really hope 2025 will blast off and on a personal level it already started since I have already sent my entry for the first 2025 collab (Petri Pals Collab) I will participate, you must be scouted to participate though. Thanks to that entry I learnt the importance of symmetry in pixel art when drawing frontal facing subjects and I could experiment with colours too.

Resolutions

Frankly I don't have any except for two:

-real life

Getting HPV vaccine. Yes, I keep forgetting because of university life and other stuff that keep me busy and forgetful.

-NG life

Getting better at pixel art

Final Thoughts

Ok, I have nothing more to add to this extremely long journal and I will thank everyone who will reach the end of this walltext XD

I wish you serene New Year and may all your dreams come true!

Hello everyone, sorry if I write a second journal the same day I posted another one but while I was browsing the artists news I stumbled across SheepSLAPS's journal and reading what happened broke my heart since I know her works and I enjoy a lot her art which I find highly inspirational to me. He art is fantastic, superb use of lighting, shades, the poses are dynamic and give a sense of strength, colours are very pleasant to look at and overall the level of creativity is neat as heck. Here the journal:

https://sheepslaps.newgrounds.com/news/post/1496891

Sadly I can't directly help because my family and I are living a delicate financial moment in which we have to decide some stuff linked to things we have, but I feel the necessity to help in a different way by spreading her journal. I know she has more fans than me, but this doesn't prevent a very small artist like me to try to attract the interest of those who follow me and might be able to help more incisively. So if you can help, or even spread her journal feel free to visit the link I posted. Thank you for reading and again sorry if I wrote another journal. Have a serene day/evening.

Hello everyone, I hope you are doing great here and irl. While I was browsing the art forum threads I stumbled across a thread called "Your most *controversial* art? in which people are encouraged to share their most controversial works or talk about their past experiences with their controversial works. One of the comments caught my interest because it showed a clear examples of effects of parasocial interactions that can turn into parasocial relationships.

What are parasocial interactions? They are a kind of psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated encounters with performers in the mass media, particularly on television and on online platforms. Viewers or listeners come to consider media personalities as friends, despite having no or limited interactions with them. With social media this is enhanced because, social media introduces additional opportunities for parasocial relationships to intensify due to the more opportunities for intimate, reciprocal, and frequent interactions between the user and persona.

The term was first described from the perspective of media and communication studies. In 1956, Horton and Wohl explored the different interactions between mass media users and media figures and determined the existence of a parasocial relationship (PSR), where the user acts as though they are involved in a typical social relationship (1).

However do not think that PSI were born with mass media, they trace back in ancient times, when a person would establish a bond with political figures, gods or even spirits:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190307223332/http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e7dc/325264aed0fedb0205e1242724b8cb7d7200.pdf

Since then, the term has been adopted by psychologists in furthering their studies of the social relationships that emerge between consumers of mass media and the figures they see represented there. Horton and Wohl suggested that for most people, parasocial interactions with personae complement their current social interactions, while also suggesting that there are some individuals who exhibit extreme parasociality, or they substitute parasocial interactions for actual social interactions (2).

However Perse and Rubin, in 1989, contested this idea, finding that parasocial interactions occurred as a natural byproduct of time spent with media figures (3).

Don't get me wrong parasocial interactions can have positive consequences such as identity formation and learning through media, but they do have negative consequences:

body image

A study was conducted to examine the relationship between media exposure and adolescents' body image. Specifically, researchers looked at parasocial relationships and the different motivations for self-comparison with a character. This study surveyed 391 7th and 8th grade students and found that media exposure negatively predicted body image. In addition to the direct negative impact, the study indicated that parasocial relationships with favorite characters, motivations to self-compare, and engagement in social comparison with characters amplified the negative effects on kids' body images. Furthermore, the researchers found that making social comparisons with favorite characters distorted actual, or ideal, body image and self-perception. Studies have been done exploring these effects of negative self-perception and body image across both male and female students:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320069675_Body_Image_Perceptions_Do_Gender_Differences_Exist

another study examined the parasocial relationships between men and superheroes; the study looked at muscular versus non-muscular superheroes and men who either did or did not develop a one-sided psychological bond with a superhero character. The results from this study indicated a significant impact on body image, particularly when exposed to muscular superhero characters. Research conducted by Ariana F. Young, Shira Gabriel, and Jordan L. Hollar in 2013 showed that men who did not form a parasocial relationship with a muscular superhero had poor self-perception and felt negative about their bodies after exposure to the muscular character. However, if the men had a PSR with the superhero, the negative effects on body satisfaction were eliminated (4).

And don't get me start with beauty filters on social media

unrealistic life expectations

There is research that has been done that highlights the negative role that parasocial relationships play in a person's own self esteem about their personal life. Often times, a person forms a parasocial relationship with a celebrity or influencer because of their personality and the seemingly appealing life that the person lives. Studies show that depression and a decrease in self-esteem can often occur in these relationships due to the person comparing their own life to the potentially unrealistic portrayal of the celebrity's life. This makes me think about the importance of thinking not twice but 1000 times before posting stuff that can affect negatively others if you are an influencer or celebrity...

People ignore that most celebrities and influencers hide the negative aspects of their life from public view.

aggression

A study done by Keren Eyal and Alan M. Rubin examined aggressive and violent television characters and the potential negative impacts they may have on viewers. The study was based on social cognitive theory and looked at trait aggression in viewers and identification and parasocial interaction with aggressive characters. The researchers measured trait aggression in each of the participants and compared that to the level of identification with aggressive characters. The study found that more aggressive viewers were more likely to identify with aggressive characters and further develop parasocial relationships with the aggressive characters (5).

Parasocial interaction has been linked to psychological attachment theory and its consequences have seen the same dramatic effects as real relationship breakups. In considering the relationship between parasocial interaction and attachment styles, Jonathan Cohen found that individuals who were more attached to certain television and media programs tended to be more invested in parasocial relationships. These parasocial interactions use similar psychological thought processes that are often used in real-life personal relationships.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0265407504041374?journalCode=spra

It is a very one-sided relationship. But despite the distress that media consumers experienced after a parasocial breakup was quite similar to that of a social relationship, the emotional distress experienced after the parasocial breakup was weaker than that of the real life interpersonal relationship.

Social media is designed to be a new channel through which parasocial interaction/relationship can be formed. Research has shown that interacting with individuals through blogs and social media can influence the perceptions of those individuals. As Internet users become more active on social media platforms, followers often feel more engaged with them, making the parasocial relationships stronger. And this leads to another problem that arises with parasocial interactions: the fake image a person creates around the person they think to have a relationship with.

This is what happened to the person who commented on the thread. People who follow her fabricated a mental image of her and her art as innocent and innocent-looking, they attached her a sticker, a category from which she cannot escape or she will ruin their fake images of her and her art.

Her art is mostly everyone-oriented but this doesn't prevent her from drawing more adult oriented stuff and she has all the right to do so, she explained it well in the forum thread. This is a clear example of negative effects of parasocial interactions, just because a person mainly draws a specific theme or themes, it doesn't mean they are not allowed to go out their usual zone.

And this brings to what made me want to write this journal. Now that you briefly know what parasocial interactions are and their effects (I don't want to dig in depth not to make this blog too long), I want to clarify what I want to do with my art here. The first thing I did was to create personal collections of my own works to make navigation of my artworks more easily accessible to the viewer and follower, and to help myself to keep track of what I do in order not get lost in my creations one I hit big numbers (+200 works i.e.):

As you may have noticed my art tend to be for most part E-rated with innocent-looking characters but I also have pieces that are marked as T or even M because I love exploring darker themes and I like drawing gore stuff sometimes as way to both study blood and how it works on different materials and surfaces, and to sublime negative emotions I may experience due to real life stuff. So to everyone who follows me, especially minors, be prepared that I can post bloody pieces, delicate topics or dark themes along with my more light-hearted and silly content.

This artwork for example was a huge emotional relief because I was experiencing a really annoying event that even made me lose appetite for four days straight:

This piece is also tame compared to what I can draw, but I tend to mark as T blood pieces, weapons used in combat situations, minor violence, light-themed innuendos and trivial language while I mark as M everything that is more extreme. Now I don't think I will post A stuff and by A I mean everything marked as M but ten thousand heavy in terms of themes. I won't post sexual NSFW stuff because it's not my thing and it would be very tame (sorry to disappoint all horny people here ;P, jk), similar to Kunaigirl's adult-oriented works because those times I drew sexual works it always involved tenderness, affection, cuddles, kisses and never vulgar horniness. Only exception to this personal rule of mine are artistic nudes because I consider them works of art since the human body is a natural work of art to admire and appreciate.

So yeah, you have been warned about what you are about to see here, mostly SFW stuff but sometimes I need to explore more dark waters. And remember that you can toggle filters in order to avoid seeing more mature stuff, so if you see something you don't want and you didn't even pay attention to disable said filter, it's all your fault then. I always turn off adult filter when I want to enjoy some fanarts or movies in the Portal. See you next time and have a nice day/evening!

References and footnotes

(1) Horton, D.; Wohl, R. (1956). "Mass communication and para-social interaction: Observation on intimacy at a distance". Psychiatry. 19 (3): 215–229. doi:10.1080/00332747.1956.11023049. PMID 13359569

(2) Ibidem

(3) Perse, Elizabeth; Rubin, Rebecca (1989). "Attribution in social and parasocial relationships". Communication Research. 16 (1): 59–77. doi:10.1177/009365089016001003. S2CID 145109069

(4) Young, Ariana F.; Gabriel, Shira; Hollar, Jordan L. (January 2013). "Batman to the rescue! The protective effects of parasocial relationships with muscular superheroes on men's body image". Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 49 (1): 173–177. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2012.08.003

(5) Eyal, Keren; Rubin, Alan M. (January 2003). "Viewer Aggression and Homophily, Identification, and Parasocial Relationships With Television Characters". Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. 47 (1): 77–98. doi:10.1207/s15506878jobem4701_5. S2CID 143790982

In this post I mentioned that I would have started talking about the original Journey to the West that will inspire works such as Saiyuki by Minekura and Dragon Ball series by Toriyama (rest in peace). Journey to the West has strong roots in Chinese folk religion, Chinese mythology, Chinese Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoist and Buddhist folklore, and the pantheon of Taoist immortals and Buddhist bodhisattvas are still reflective of certain Chinese religious attitudes today, while being the inspiration of many modern manhwa, manhua, manga and anime series. The novel is at once a comic adventure story, a humorous satire of Chinese bureaucracy, a source of spiritual insight, and an extended allegory. This won't be a fresh post because it will be mostly based on these posts I wrote years ago and posted in my Tumblr account that is dedicated to Saiyuki (one of my favourite Anime), but at the same time I will add further info I gained over the years and it will be improved in terms of writing after I learned some basics of academic writing even though I don't label my posts as "academic", more like hybrid ones. This also means I will cut in six parts these posts in order to respect the original ones in terms of number. So, without further ado, let's start.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Let's start by saying that Saiyuki is a Japanese word, specifically it is the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word (西遊記) Xijou Ji and means "Journey to the West". It is the name of one of the great Chinese novels, belonging to the group of the great classical novels. The group usually includes the following works: Ming dynasty novels Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West, and The Plum in the Golden Vase; and Qing dynasty novels Dream of the Red Chamber and The Scholars. 

There have been a number of groupings. Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, Water Margin and The Plum in the Golden Vase were grouped by publishers in the early Qing and promoted as Four Masterworks. Because of its explicit descriptions of sex, The Plum in the Golden Vase was banned for most of its existence. Despite this, Lu Xun, like many if not most scholars and writers, place it among the top Chinese novels (1).

These pillars of Chinese literature have influenced not only the literature, but also other arts such as the theatre, the cinema not just in China, but also in other countries such as Vietnam, Korea, Taiwan and Japan.

The modern 100-chapter form of Journey to the West dates from the 16th century (2). Embellished stories based on Xuanzang's journey to India had circulated through oral storytelling for centuries. They appeared in book form as early as the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279) (3). The Yongle Encyclopedia, completed in 1408, contains excerpts of a version of the story written in colloquial Chinese, and a Korean book from 1423 also includes a fragment of that story (4). The earliest surviving edition of Journey to the West was published in Nanjing in 1592. Two earlier editions were published between 1522 and 1566, but no copies of them survived (5). The authorship of Journey to the West is traditionally ascribed to Wu Cheng'en, but the question is complicated by the fact that much of the novel's material originated from folk tales (6).

I don't want to go too in depth on the work's authorship because it's not the purpose of this blog and it would become very long and maybe too academic for some readers, so let's continue with the story.

The novel has 100 chapters that can be divided into four unequal parts. For the purposes of these posts I will only focus on the second part which talks about the adventures of the Buddhist monk Xuanzang (actually inspired by a monk, Xuanzang/Tang Sanzang (唐三藏) of the Tang dynasty) who must take a dangerous journey from China to India to retrieve important sutras not available in China. As journey companions of this fantastic journey (in every sense) we have the Monkey King Sun Wukong (孫悟空), the pig Zhu Bajie (豬八戒) and the sand demon Zha Wujing (沙悟淨) and the horse Yu Long (玉龍) or Bai Long Ma (白龍馬) who is none other than the third son of the Dragon King of the South Sea and he is specifically a dragon prince.

from: https://bangqu.com/wVz7gN.html

As I said, the story is inspired by a real character who actually traveled to India to recover some sutras, since the various translations of some Buddhist texts in China said everything and its opposite, and also certain words were not translatable. So Wu Cheng'en was inspired by another text known as Great Tang Records on the Western Regions.

I stop for now, next time I would like to talk more about Great Tang Records on the Western Regions.

References and footnotes

(1) Lu Xun, A Brief History of Chinese Fiction (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1959), pp. 232–234

(2) Chang, Kang-i Sun (2010). "Literature of the early Ming to mid-Ming (1375–1572)". In Chang, Kang-i Sun (ed.). The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, Volume II: From 1375. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–62. ISBN 978-0-521-85559-4.

(3) Ibidem

(4) Ibidem

(5) Ibidem

(6) Jenner, William John Francis (1984). "Translator's Afterword". Journey to the West. Vol. 4 (Seventh ed.). Beijing: Foreign Languages Press. pp. 2341–2343

https://bangqu.com/wVz7gN.html

Hello everyone and serene holiday month to all people who follow me or simply stumbled across this journal. This journal will be a bit different from the rest I tend to write because it's a very personal journal about my adventure in this site after an entire year. Yes, that's it! Today is the first anniversary I decided to create an account here after DA screwed everything up with AI.

Hahahahaha, I still remember the first blog I posted here:

https://shangxian.newgrounds.com/news/4

I had yet to discover the site and its full potential as user-generated content website, in that journal I felt like a toddler who took their first steps in a world that would soon unfold before them. Many thoughts changed from the first time I wrote that journal because I originally planned to post stuff from FA (I went to that site as DA alternative due to their stance against AI but the site never truly appealed me despite the cool people I met there) and stuff only for NG in order to have a varied art gallery across the profiles. And this is well shown in the first artwork I posted since it's still in my FA page (I have yet to migrate photos and save some descriptions before I delete that account):

It's still one of my favourite piece I made there since it was inspired by a video I watched on YT and you can see it from the link posted in the description. 2023 wasn't a particularly fruitful year in artistic terms because I had joined the site practically at the end of the year, end of the year characterized by a hacker attack which I was unaware of (I will discover it months later) plus I was inactive for a good chunk of December month. Demonic Wolf was the last drawing of December, made ten days after the creation of my account.

The first drawing of 2024 is this:

Another drawing I posted on FA featuring one of major bird species I photographed in 2023 when my passion for photography arose thanks to a dear University friend, named Drugo from друг which means "friend" in Russian (it's not his real name ofc, it's how my friends and I nickname him^^), thank you and stay awesome, dear Friend!

Besides this my very first milestone on Newgrounds was this small and simple pixel art I drew from the Pixel Day:

this work was inspired by this amazing pixel artwork:

Why milestone? Because it was the work that had me scouted and gave me the very first Frontpage. I will never forget the joy of seeing it frontpaged even thought I had yet to fully grasp this concept, hence I spent lots of time reading guides like these ones to better understand it:

https://ornery.newgrounds.com/news/post/388624

https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1418778

https://lost-psyren.newgrounds.com/news/post/1461364

Ofc scouting is not everything, and I don't live for it. I live to improve my art and enjoy my stay here. I acknowledge that scouting is a good positive reinforcement tool to stimulate artists in general though, the important thing is to not become obsessive about it as I saw some people thinking only about it with the risk of sacrificing fun and confrontation with others.

With the Valentine's Day Art Collab:

my journey in this site started to take a different turn in terms of things I wanted to post because I focused more on this site and less on FA even though I still posted consistently there too but February was also the month second semester started and so my activity here dropped drastically because I had to focus on 5-6 exams in a row. I couldn't even participate in Pico Day, I hope to be able to enjoy it the next year.

Only now I realize that this piece marks the beginning of my new activity on the site:

That was first time I drew a celebrative piece for a personal accomplishment I achieved but I felt necessity to fully and finally channel what I experienced in those last summer months. Those months were an emotional roller coaster in terms of stress both with exams and real life problems of my parents. On July 11th I took the exam in German literature 3 completely in German, which went very well but my fears, anxieties and panic, generated by frustrations from past years, complicated things. I had to deal with strong anxiety attacks and even a panic attack which I controlled by focusing on breathing and mental visualization (a raven/crow feather and that's the feather you see in the composition which symbolizes my control over those fears). My mother greatly helped me a lot to find a strategy to better optimize the study and my University friends emotionally supported me, so I deeply thank you all for guiding me through this journey that felt like a Bildungsroman. You are the best!

I still want to thank the teacher who showed to be very understanding of my situation and didn't put me pressure when I spoke a language I still have to master but I love to death. Seriously I find German a beautiful language, highly poetic and intriguing that demands a lot but at the same time gives you a lot. I strongly suggest it as first fusional language since its case system is a lot easier compared to other fusional languages like Icelandic, Norwegian or Slavic languages.

The black canid-like figure represents my anxieties and fears that tried to jeopardize my exam but failed because I managed to recognize I have them but at the same time I didn't listen to them and their imaginary failure scenarios. Breathing exercises helped me to subside and eventually calm down the panic attack. The past tried to attack me but this time I didn't let it define who I am. I just accepted that I have these guys inside me and I know they will return in future in different contexts but at least now I know how to defend myself. Maybe in future I will develop further weapons to fend off them.

On NG this work was posted eight days after my exam while on FA it was posted the same day I took the exam as personal trophy^^

This work was a more personal emotional accomplishment:

because it was the first time in years I genuinely felt happy with my art, I was starting to love Newgrounds as source of inspiration and artistic growth. July-August were the months in which I joined several collabs and although I participated in collabs during my DeviantART years, NG was the first site where I actively participated in many of them, even at the same time. In August I discovered the Clock Day that gave me the second FP but what I really loved about August was The Great Homer Collab, the best collab of all collabs I took part for this year, here all the Homers I drew:

I don't want to repeat myself about how much I loved this collab, I suggest you to visit my last Homer to know more about my feelings about this event. Just know that if DioShiba wants to make future art collabs and I have spare time, I will participate again because the level of inspiration and creativity it gave me this experience will always make me cherish this collab. I just want to add that I think collabs, regardless of their nature (art, game, movie, etc.) should be like the Homer Collab: a place to have fun, get inspired, create and meet new people^^

September was the month in which I participated to some art contest like Madness Day and Brazilian Art Contest. I had fun at creating something different from what others tended to do, don't get me wrong everyone did an amazing job and showed clear superior technique to mine but I wanted to focus on more cultural aspects of Brazil, you can read about' em here:

Other cool collabs happened like the Black and Orange Collab, the Mexican Independence Day Art Collab, the Newgrounds Original Characters Cards Collab, the Ugly Cat Collab, the Halloween Collab, the OC's By Night Collab, the Alien Collab and the lovely and adorable STG 2024 NG Halloween Collab (I liked the idea of making something calm and family-friendly that would act as counterpart of the more eerie and creepy entry for the OC's By Night Collab).

Right now I am also participating in Pico-Cross Collab and Tankmas ADVENTure (my drawing will appear on December 25th), in the meantime I am enjoying playing the game:

and I took some screenshots, notably when I could see a wild Tom Fulp appearing during the first day the game was launched:

The last one is pretty funny to me because it looks like Tom offered me a burnt marshmallow XD, this might even gave me the idea of drawing something related to this funny pic.

Today I could also meet another user I see across people's blogs and I like reading his supportive words to help new users explore and use the site better, I am referring to @Gekkotsuki:

He, @Tyhond, @Aalasteir (again thank you for the support you gave me!) and @Yatsufusa are probably the best persons I ever met here on NG in terms of emotional support, help in general and depth of comments across NG, notably Yatsufusa in forum threads (I spend lots of time reading their comments and I love how deep, well thought they are; a true gem for this website) and people' blogs. The ending part of this comment they left under a user's journal deeply touched me as artist:

I will always cherish this comment, I find it the most positive thing I ever read on Internet in these last months. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

I also met other cool and fantastic people like PLJerry, Simoes1000, ElRandomGMD, Charlie57913 (thank you so much for the BBS Awards 2024 nomination^^ I think other people deserve that nomination like Yatsufusa, Gekkotsuki and Tyhond but it made me surprised and happy nonetheless, so again thank you!), SkilledFella, SchockAbe, DioShiba and many, many others that made my experience here joyful and full of happiness! Thank you too! May your dreams come true and stay always awesome!

And once I'm done with collabs (I have another to start for December 13th and December 31st) I will start the first part of the Six Fanart Challenge since I haven't forgotten some people suggested me some cool and unknown characters to me.

I also noticed that initially my journals were a lot more random but starting from the first photography journal, which is part of the Shutter-bug Chronicles journal series where I share my photos, things started to shape in a way I want for my journals: sharing my passions, limited knowledge and funny stuff.

Here the first photography journals:

https://shangxian.newgrounds.com/news/post/1475580

https://shangxian.newgrounds.com/news/post/1482125

(tw: spiders) https://shangxian.newgrounds.com/news/post/1482447

https://shangxian.newgrounds.com/news/post/1488876

And I also started other two series, the Promoting and Supporting series where I try with my small influence to promote things or people deserving to be discovered:

Promoting and Supporting: Astro Collab

Promoting and Supporting: Naruto 25th Anniversary Collab

and the Russian Diaries where in a funny and non-sensical way I talk to the Russian language as if it were a person in order to analyze my relationship with the language in a similar way I did for University when I started with English. The teacher suggested us to write down a diary where we recorded our improvement and interaction with English language. I liked the idea so much that I wanted to apply to Russian, so here the first diaries:

Russian language, here I come!

Russian diaries 1

Russian diaries 2

After I'm done with collabs for a while I want to focus on the Six Fanart Challenge, as I mentioned before, and on two sketches I plan to gradually start, the Sardinian and Kyrgyz sketches. Art is also a tool to share what I know with others, I always did and I will always do because I want to enrich my creations and not limit myself to just draw stuff. I want to give them life and meaning. In future I would like to draw even more symbolic pieces, I still have in my mind an alchemist-like piece I had in mind while reading some grimoires during October back in 2017.

I don't know what the future holds but I hope next year will be as amazing as this one in terms of interactions, art and inspiration. This website was the best thing ever happened to me in ages when it comes to Internet and I must thank Tom Fulp for making all of this possible since 1995 along with staff who helped this site to become one of the pillars of Internet culture, thank you for existing, Tom! Never change and stay awesome, guys!

Well, if you have reached the end of this loooooooooooooooooooooooooong and boring journal, thank you from the bottom of my heart! I hope you enjoyed reading the personal experience of this crazy user who decided to be part of this big family called Newgrounds, because in less than a year I already feel part of this community^^

I will leave you with this beautiful musical piece made by syphonmax

See you next time with another Russian diary, bye!

Hello everybody! Another promotion journal here and it's about one of the best-selling manga series of all time, having 250 million copies in circulation worldwide in 47 countries and regions, with 153 million copies in Japan alone and remaining 97 million copies elsewhere: I am referring to Naruto.

Cover art of the first volume of the manga series Naruto, released in Japan by Shueisha on March 3, 2000 [1]. 

Source: Shueisha

This is the 25th anniversary of this series that makes use of cultural references from Japanese mythology, Buddhism and Confucianism, and to celebrate this @MBY98 started a nice collab in which you have to choose among the 72 volumes that make the manga series in order to create this collage of artworks. The collab is inspired by 40th Anniversary “Dragon Ball Super Gallery” in which various artists from the Japanese comic industry redrew volume covers of the Dragon Ball book series.

Only ONE cover per USER, meaning that you can only draw one cover, choose from the following list:

As you can see there are still plenty of vacant covers to draw, so if you love this series and want to participate to this collab check this link below to the forum thread:

https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1536106/1

You will find more info about it and the rules to follow, now go, participate (if you want) and have fun! Believe it!

Copyright note [1]

This image is from a comic strip, webcomic or from the cover or interior of a comic book. The copyright for this image is most likely owned by either the publisher of the comic or the writer(s) and/or artist(s) which produced the comic in question. It is believed that:

the use of low-resolution images of the cover of a comic book to illustrate:

-the issue of the comic book in question

-the periodical comic book series of which this issue is a part; or

-the copyrighted comic book character(s) or group(s) on the cover of the issue in question

or the use of low-resolution images of a single panel from a comic strip or an interior page of a comic book to illustrate:

-the scene or storyline depicted, or

-the copyrighted character(s) or group(s) depicted on the excerpted panel in question;

where no free alternative exists or can be created,

qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law. 

Thank you for understanding why I used the cover art of the first volume here in this blog.

Hello everybody! I'm finally back after these days without Internet. I missed this place a lot because it has become a second home to me and an extension of my creativity. In the end the problem was mine because my modem couldn't connect so Friday I had to contact my ISP and after a clumsy conversation with a bot I could contact the technician who told me a sms about problem fixing would have been sent in case of successful solving. Just a few minutes ago I got the sms and I could connect Internet. If there are other problems I can always re-call the technician, but it should be fine now.

What frustrated me the most was the potential missing of the next Takeover Tuesday because I LOVE supporting other creators and this will be the main reason I will be a supporter in future. And btw, go check the playlist I made with the artists who made wonderful creations, give them some love:

Besides this I am extremely happy I can participate collabs with calm and fun. See you next time!

Hello everyone! I hope you are doing well. As for me I write this journal to say that I won't be active until I have internet again. I haven't had it for days and it's getting frustrating since I'm participating in various collabs and I want to keep the people who kindly allowed me to be part of them updated. Unfortunately the problem is not mine, the router is fine and there is wi-fi, the problem seems to come from my internet service provider due to weather problems. My irl friend told me that she saw some work in progress in the street where the repeater is located.

Right now I'm writing from the University. I hate having to use the faculty's public wi-fi but I have no other way since I also had to deliver my piece on time for the Pico-Cross collab. I would have posted it much earlier on the server but the internet decided to flip the bird at me and not the type of bird I would like to see <.<'

I am also taking advantage of this opportunity to check some stuff for University since the change of Study Plan is getting pretty annoying since student secretary is not well organized and they have to approve my plan before 6th December or I have to wait for second semester to enroll Russian writing exam and I plan to enroll this January. So this is another element that adds anxiety to frustration.

So if you don't see me active, you know the reason. I hate writing journals like these because I want to share fun and culture not annoying problems that ruin the fun for me in this website. Oh well, see you next time I have internet connection. Bye!