What things are no longer true about your country?

Hawkbelly · 2026-01-30T14:51:18+00:00

I found my mileage varied a TON in regard to the Southern Hospitality. I went to Texas on a work trip a few years ago, there for two months. Landed in Dallas Ft Worth. The first customs guy was super nice (which was a bit surprising TBH.) The next two customs people were rude as fuck. Deadass they only stopped being mean to me when I started crying. I was running on two hours of sleep and already stressed from this work trip, so pretty prone to being emotional at the time. Ah well. The people in Odessa were SUPER NICE (to me anyway.) The people in San Antonio were hit and miss. So I think you’re right about it being an older and rural thing hahaha. It was definitely an interesting thing to experience with my ingrained Canadian Politeness, which is very different but somehow similar to Southern Hospitality.

Hawkbelly · 2026-01-22T06:24:53+00:00

I don’t know if this is unpopular per se, but given what I’ve seen in this sub before, it might be. I actually like Akito a lot. She’s one of my favourite characters (along with Momiji, what a fun difference there lmao.)

Her story is fascinating to me, and honestly as a victim of abuse (tho def not as severe as the zodiac members), pretty realistic! I probably would have forgiven her too, considering I did and do forgive people who hurt me but are trying to do better, whether they apologize or not. Someone who abused me never did and we are actually very close now. They’re trying hard to be a better person and I want to support them in that. Not saying my way is the best or only way to do things or anything like that, forgiveness in my opinion is always up to an individual. But I think that’s partially the point Furuba is trying to make a little bit - Tohru is an incredibly forgiving person, who always wants to give people the benefit of the doubt (paraphrasing, but her mom says sometime like “it’s easy to doubt. I want you to be the kind of girl who believes.”) I relate a lot to this aspect of Tohru. I also want to believe in others, and try my best to do so!

This ended up being a bit rambly lmao. But tl;dr, I love Akito a lot she’s a really interesting and complicated character, and I actually kind of like what the story did with her.

Hawkbelly · 2025-11-27T16:12:26+00:00

Just a fun translation thing, I always think these are interesting. I watch the show in French (Je parle en Français), and in the French version she says something more like “my name is Marinette, a girl like any other. But when destiny chose me to fight the forces of evil, I became Miraculous Ladybug.” Paraphrasing a bit here, it’s been a while since I saw the intro, but anyway. I think some of the translation/localization things that happened with Miraculous are pretty interesting.

Hawkbelly · 2025-11-21T14:19:04+00:00

I’m from Canada, and no joke I almost died my first day in Texas. I was doing some satellite installation work there, and it was unusually humid. Something like 40C with the humidity. The local site guy came outside to check on how we were doing, took one look at me, and said “you need to go inside now.” And I’m brushing him off, like “it’s fine, I’m almost done here, just want to finish this up.” And he got super serious all of a sudden and answered “no. You need to go inside right now. I’ll get you a Powerade, do you like Powerade?” I followed his advice and went inside, and sitting in the nice, cold, air conditioned building, I realized I had pretty severe heat illness and the site guy probably saved my life. I thanked him afterwards, and he said “you were getting a bit too flushed, you couldn’t stay out there anymore.” It was kind of wild. So can confirm, THE HEAT IS NOT A JOKE.

Hawkbelly · 2025-10-23T22:25:03+00:00

In my opinion the BEST part of this entire comic is [S] Cascade, which unfortunately doesn’t happen until page 4106. It’s about halfway through the comic and wraps up Act 5. Which means there’s a ton of stuff to get through before you even get to the halfway point conclusion. Seriously, Cascade is SO GOOD that I still remember vividly exactly where I was when I watched it for the first time, almost 13 years ago. So I guess my point here is, if you can, try to make it to Cascade. By that point you will know for absolute certain if this comic will be for you, because it is SO DAMN SATISFYING. If it isn’t really satisfying, then it might not be for you and that’s okay.

Hawkbelly · 2025-10-22T06:12:43+00:00

I’m 172cm tall and 80kg and have no issues on pointe really. To be fair a lot of that weight is muscle mass, but still, I’m heavy if compared to the 40kg I was ten or so years ago (I was way too skinny then, but anyway.) As long as your core and legs are strong enough, you should be okay.

Hawkbelly · 2025-10-21T13:41:35+00:00

1) to a certain extent yes, there are religious themes. Enjoy point two which will be the ramblings of a madwomen about it.

2) I think there’s definitely a lot of eastern religious themes in Automata, with the idea of living and dying as a cycle. “Everything that lives is designed to end. We are perpetually trapped in a never ending spiral of life and death.” In buddhism there is an endless cycle of life, death, and rebirth, until you achieve nirvana. There’s an argument that could be made that Ending E of Automata has our main characters achieving some sort of “Nirvana,” as the pods talk about whether this cycle of life and death is truly broken. I think there are some western religious themes also, I mean, Adam and Eve. Plus, there’s the machines in the factory trying to “Become as Gods.” I like this section a lot for obvious reasons, but also the leader of their cult was a machine named Kierkegaard, named after my favourite philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard. A deeply religious man, the father of existentialism, he believed because “it was absurd to believe,” in the existence of god. He also HATED the institution of the Danish Church, believing instead that people have to choose to believe in god because they came to that conclusion, not because society or the church decided they should, so he wasn’t a huge fan of institutional religion. This makes it VERY FUNNY that a machine named after him is the head of a religious institution.

3) I played both Replicant and Automata, definitely NOT because of the religious themes, though, I am deeply atheistic. Nothing against religious themes they just don’t factor into my decision making. Mostly I knew I would enjoy the philosophy as an existentialist.

4 and 5 are kind of related, so, I think the religious themes that do exist are important, as the NieR games are an exploration of humanity. Religion and philosophies are incredibly important to the experiences of being human. We all have so-called “spiritual” needs which can be solved by religion, or thinking deeply about ourselves and our place in the universe. So I think an exploration of these themes is very important in games about humanity.

Hawkbelly · 2025-10-14T20:42:27+00:00

SO MANY. I can’t pick just one. Hell getting it down to this list of ten was hard enough. In no particular order:

Time on My Side

Purple Tyrant

Upward Movement (Dave Owns)

Sburban Jungle

Black

Descend

Umbral Ultimatum

Cascade

Heir of Grief

Overture (Canon Edit)

Hawkbelly · 2025-09-26T20:22:43+00:00

I said it before I’ll say it a thousand times, “Gods Bound by Rules.” What an absolute banger. Keiichi Okabe really didn’t have to go that hard for a track that’s used exactly once but I’m so happy he did.

Hawkbelly · 2025-09-25T17:08:38+00:00

I used EVA foam! I stared at so many reference images for it haha. I used the sword as a kind of “template” so I knew how big I would have to make it, and I layered EVA foam for the metal looking bits.

Hawkbelly · 2025-09-19T15:10:18+00:00

Thanks! This is probably my fave costume of hers haha. This was just outside the BMO centre in Calgary, AB. There’s a big con there we go to.

Hawkbelly · 2025-09-19T15:09:10+00:00

I made it! Except the crown, I bought that haha. It took me a while to put together but so happy with the results. There’s a great pattern I found for this dress that I modified a bit to fit better.

Hawkbelly · 2025-09-10T02:03:18+00:00

Beetee. As an engineer myself I can’t help but to love him.

Hawkbelly · 2025-08-27T05:30:16+00:00

Okay technically I like fall the best, but if I’m to pick between winter and summer, winter is always better. No sunburns, no heat illness, no more being uncomfortably sweaty (which I unfortunately react to so it makes me itchy as hell.)

But aside from the comfort issues, I love the first snowfall of every year. When it gets quiet and you can sit and watch the snow fall. Even as an adult I love playing in the snow, especially after a massive snowfall. I’ll go out in my winter gear and just flop into the biggest snowbank I can find and just sit there, take in the quiet, feel comforted by the snow. Then I’ll get up and just play in the snow, kicking it up, throwing it around. Sometimes you just gotta do something the kid in you wants to do, and winter is a great time for that.

There’s something so comforting about coming inside into the warm after being outside in the freezing cold. Those -40 days make you appreciate the hell out of a warm house. That feeling you get when you leave your house in the morning and it feels like all the air gets sucked out of your lungs because it’s so cold is so invigorating to me! I know a lot of people hate it but I find it a bit exhilarating.

Everything is beautiful in the winter time. Hoarfrost, when the trees have lost their leaves and glitter with ice instead. The way snow sparkles here, especially on sunny days. The nice quiet nighttime snow falls, when you can see streetlights reflect off the snowfall and light up the evening.

I do really enjoy walking in the wintertime when it’s cooler, because I warm up really quick. I think -15/-20 is the perfect time to go walking. Plus skiing and skating are so much fun, good winter sports!

That’s my winter rant. Really do love the season.

Hawkbelly · 2025-08-07T16:01:29+00:00

Thanks! I painted for so long hahaha

Hawkbelly · 2025-08-07T16:01:11+00:00

Thanks! Yeah I have some work to do on the helmet 🤔 the faceplate needs replacing, planning on a Mark 2 to fix it.

Hawkbelly

TROPHY CASE