#A lot of my more recent art posts have been more sketchy than anything

[shima-draws]

Me, sketching out charm designs: Fun!! Ehe! So fun!!

Me, lining charm designs: Why did god put me on this earth. Why was I put here only to suffer. Such a cruel fate has befallen me

Me, coloring and shading charm designs: Fun!! Ehe! So fun!!!

[jerich0two]

I adore ur art style, what are ur inspirations and what are your social media handles other than tumblr?? I’d love to follow you everywhere else :)

Ah, thank you - that's very kind! My earliest (and biggest) inspiration was definitely VivziePop, in terms of her art style and character design (I don't know all that much about her as a person), hence the Hazbin content on my blog! And more recently I've been taking inspiration from Tracy Butler and Fable Siegle of Lackadaisy fame. Apart from that, I couldn't give you a solid list of names, sadly. I mostly find inspiration on Pinterest, which has a bit of a crediting problem. But I like anything loose, sketchy and textured, so I have a lot of fun with digital brushes that try to emulate traditional media! Pencils and inks and all that jazz.

As for the second half of your ask, I’m touched, but I'm not online anywhere but Tumblr ^^” Posting to social media in general is a very new thing for me, and the same goes for making fan art. That Dr. Facilier / Husk fusion is the first drawing I’ve uploaded to the Net (and let stay up for more than a couple hours) in years! /lh

[nyrator]

Got the Rotten Nyan tumblr queued up with art I've neglected to post on there.. keeping a few more sketchy doodley art still on Twitter/the website, but should be all up a little after midnight my time~

... still feel really self conscious with the kind of content I've been making vent art of lately, please don't be afraid to message me with any concerns or criticisms... I tried tagging it all with a custom warning tag (that way it won't nuke the post, I think...) hopefully that's enough... if not hopefully people let me that as well

In other life news, I'm seeing a therapist, got a job, etc~ More in the cut

So, yeah. Life.

Still a vtuber, but feels like I've stalled lately... Not in terms of growth (if anything I keep growing), but in terms of motivation. I have a list of games to play, but I just can't focus on playing games anymore, it's rough.. mostly do zatsus, but even those are pretty hit or miss and sometimes I spiral into really dumb personal unprofessional rambles...

My art commissions are picking up- more than I can handle, honestly... My clients have gotten pretty big and it's getting me recognition, I have a few big offers in store once I can get around to them and I'm excited about it... but commissions are hard. I'm going to raise prices in January, and I try to accept five a month... but I can't keep up. I can't even do one a month it feels like... And yet I keep getting dozens of requests..

So in spite of this, because of my own doing and lack of doing, I've been bleeding a lot of money. I'm at a dangerous point of money... so I finally got a seasonal job at a local chocolate shop.

Haaaaaaaa.....

It's rough... I was in a huge depression over it, and I still don't want to work... The people are nice, the hours are light, and the pay is better than expected, but it's still so stressful... My social anxiety is terrible lately, it makes me want to curl into a ball and cry. I can't stand it, I can't stand being seen, I can't focus or memorize anything on the register, I can't handle dealing with customers or fast-paced environments...

They say the season lasts until Easter because of the nature of the store, but maybe I'll leave after Christmas time if it doesn't work out.. It's really a pain, and also could affect things like my food stamps and subsidized rent. Plus, the gas I have to spend, the clothes I had to buy, etc etc.. I wonder if it'll be worth it (probably, but nyeh)

I'm in need of money, though... one, my phone is on its last legs. The battery barely lasts an hour, it's very slow and unresponsive, and the 32 GB of storage is becoming more and more unwieldy.. Going to maybe buy one tonight...

My throat is also been a mess lately- I've had trouble swallowing, to the point I was unable to eat anything without a 50-50 chance of just choking on it. Drinking water was like waterboarding, it was like I was drowning. After raising my mattress, it's helped a lot, but not entirely, so I think it's something to do with scarring thanks to acid reflux- been trying to get an endoscopy for a year and finally have one scheduled in mid December. I'm worried how much it might cost.. hoping insurance covers it, but I still had to pay almost a thousand for my colonoscopy a few years back, which terrifies me...

Other small things- items I'd like to own, taking care of Bootsie (she's fine but overdue for a checkup and she's like 13 years old), etc.

But yeah, therapy. Also started taking that- we're trying to avoid me taking any medication, but I'm afraid I might need it.. I see her every week and I've been going since early October, and she seems like a decent therapist- she's the same age as me and understands a lot of internet culture, which.. is weird to talk to someone like that who "gets it" (she's a cosplayer, for example, and knows of vtubers), but it's nice.

Been reliving a lot of past stuffs... Been trying to improve, had some good phases, but fell back apart recently and not sure how far I can really get... keeping my apartment clean is hard, feeding myself is hard, drawing and doing anything is hard. I don't watch any media these days besides some indie vtubers I know, I don't really do much of anything but be depressed.

My biggest issue, as always, is my complex/trauma/whatever you want to call it... I've started trying to embrace it the past year. I've openly admitted to it, I made an alternate Twitter account for vent art of it, etc. But it makes me hate myself so much... It's become an addiction it feels like. Do I let it consume me and fully embrace it, even though it will push people away and make people think worse of me? Even though it will attract strange people who want creepy things from me? Even though it's expensive and gross and exhausting and uncomfortable to manage?

Or do I try to quit cold turkey? Get it all out of my system, and then never talk about it again. Delete the vent account, stop drawing it, stop being paranoid without things to take care of it, and just move on. I don't know. It's a part of me. But I hate it. And I really hate myself for it, it's my biggest tool to hate myself with.

But I've tried to embraced it, and that's what the RN update will have, and I apologize for it. I don't know how to move forward now. Therapy reopened a lot of thoughts about it- it really is a weird trauma, and a lot of it stems from my childhood... I want it gone. I want to be okay and not hurt myself mentally...

But such is life I supposeee. Again, I apologize that most of my art lately has been venting about it.. even if I embrace it, I don't want to be exclusively that kind of artist, you know? It's just one of many aspects. But it's invasive. And I don't want it to be invasive, but I don't know how to handle it.

The main goal of therapy is to get me drawing again. To give me what I've lost- a drive and motivation to continue. It feels like I just go through the motions when I draw. It's awful. I can't picture anything, no ideas. Rotten Nyan is completely stagnant lately. I don't know what to do about it. Life is just empty and depressing, it feels like. I gave up on myself, and now I don't know how to un-give up. But that's what therapy's for. Hopefully it helps... She brought up medication again, and I wonder if I should try it at this rate...

My anxiety is very bad. I end up relying on my complex trauma coping methods a lot when anxious. It's embarrassing and gross. And it just fuels my anxiety more using those things. I can't stand driving, or being around people, or crowded situations. I can't handle stress, or excitement, or being praised, or anything. My nerves are shot and I just have to curl into a ball. I don't know how I'm going to improve, but I have to try...

And then my focus, which I just can't focus at all anymore.. I don't know if it's depression/anxiety, ADHD, or what, but I just can't focus at all. It's awful. Very forgetful, very not-able-to-draw.

Otherwise, not much different. Got the new Nagata Kabi manga (I still worry about her a lot... she's so relatable though, she speaks to me, but she flares my anxiety like crazy too...) Still obsessed with my Disney anime boy gacha game, it's great, Vil's great. Vil, Cater, Lilia, Jade... so many good characters....

I guess that's all for now. Hope everyone has a happy thanksgiving- will keep doing what I can to try to improve.

And again, I'm really sorry about my art output and that most of it is just gross vent art about a gross personal trauma... I'm sorry...

[starlightiing]

Purely based off of what I see/the content they provide/what I know of them:

Alexandra- apparently works at an art gallery, had a private ig for agessss then suddenly made it public recently for some reason. Not really sure about her intentions maybe possibly trying to be more influencery but I think she does use Leo for clout a lot especially at races (but Charles isn’t much better)

Rebecca- is a model in her own right. (Not from Carlos). Not convinced on their rs, most videos I see of them together they look stiff

Lily M- pro golfer. Her and Alex are adorable together. Do I think they sometimes exaggerate for the cuteness clout? Yes. Do I still think they’re genuine? Yes.

Carmen- use to work in finance, been proven she doesn’t anymore even though she still tries to convince people she’s doing something in that area. Used to have private ig until George moved to Mercedes… is definitely one going down the wannabe influencer route. None of the content she posts of her and george looks genuine to me. It all looks to perfect and posed. I get weird feeling about her the most.

Lily Z- don’t know too much about her other than she’s studying engineering or something like that? Seems very introverted but sweet.

Kika- model in her own right. I know people are sketchy when it comes to Pierre and I think they’re a little performing sometimes but I also believe they’re genuine and they seem to have fun.

Tiff- pro cyclist. Is one of the few I’m not bothered by coming in the main entrance bc she doesn’t use it as a catwalk. She wears whatever the hell she wants and it’s very obvious she’s only there to support Valtteri which is sweet.

Flavy, Leila, any of the other wags I don’t really know much about/follow so can’t comment aha.

Interesting! I think Lily M was the only one who I knew the profession for. I wish I had like actual feedback to give you on this, but I don't know very much about them at all. Alex and Lily are super cute, I'd be heartbroken if they weren't genuine ahaha.

Why are people sketchy about Pierre? Does this go back to age again? I saw maybe a month ago a little video he put up in his Instagram and the way he looked at her, then down at her lips, and then back up at her eyes again and smiled and just,,,, it looked like she was his world. It was really sweet. That's all the experience I have with Kika really though. It was one of those looks where you know his stomach was absolutely fluttering and it was super cute.

Flavy I don't KNOW, I've just seen how passionately she seems to support Esteban, and how he supports her right back. I believe she is in the medical field or in school to be in the medical field? I am not super sure but she is kind and tends to interact with fans (shes interacted with me), and he's posted some videos of them being silly together. They're really cute!

I didn't think Carmen was too bad really! But again, I don't follow her or anything. Interesting that you get the bad vibes from her. Do you think George also isn't super into her? Cause to me he seems to love her but again all of this is just. They're in the public eye and everything is brushed over by PR so...

Anyway, just my thoughts. I really do not know them so it's hard for me to give you any good material to work with here.

Also their relationships are not my business so I tend to steer clear unless something pops up on my feed ahaha. It's very interesting to hear what people think about them!

[phoenix-is-the-hottest-thing]

I don't think you should take it personally?

Remember it's September now, people are busier from school starting up again (and during the holidays, they might have been busy being at the beach, yaknow?)

And that's just one thing, there's other factors like "people might reblog one thing but not the other posts they saw in a row", so if you post 4 art pieces at once, people might be self-conscious and only reblog one to not spam.

You also don't know people's motives, maybe some like HoV, but others might like birds, so if they see HoV not being a bird they won't care enough to reblog it.

Maybe they like a certain coloring you use, and when it's more sketchy, they're not interested.

Maybe they just like some of your drawings more than others and only reblog their favorites.

Maybe they're not as into Honkai anymore after Part 1 ended so they don't reblog Honkai stuff anymore.

Regarding your joke posts that get more notes specifically, that's a well-known phenomenon, people don't reblog based on your effort but based on how they felt about the art. If it's pretty, they might think "oh, pretty", and not think of it again.

If it's funny and makes them laugh, though? They are a lot more likely show it to their friends who'll laugh too, especially if the context, whether it's reblogging or spreading it via other means, and jokes can often transcend their fandom and spread much wider, too.

Other kinds of art that get this treatment tends to be especially creative concepts like the tuna tail that felt really novel (and also had jokes!)

The amount of notes you get is not a measure of your or your art's inherent value. You do not even get anything from it, at least on tumblr, it's just numbers that do not translate into money or anything like that. At most it might get used by corporations to measure your clout, which is... not a practice I find good but this isn't what this post is about.

Personally? I love getting attention. I love knowing lots of people read my works, hell my memes too, especially if it prompted them to speak about it to their friends or think about something more deeply. I want my stuff to spread! I want it to be popular enough that people talk about it where I can see!

So yeah I know it's easy to feel bitter about your numbers, I've stopped watching ao3 numbers a long time ago because it stressed me out for no reason (I only have comment emails on, which is also why I strongly encourage people to comment on my work, that's the only way I know people cared! I still love attention, I want to talk about my work, I'm just watching my mental health by not caring for the actual numbers...)

It's alright to take pride in getting something popular, but the flip side of that is that when your expectations grow, you feel you're doing "worse" when you're still doing much better than the beginner you used to be.

Looking at the quality of my writing, I've made a lot of progress, and even my most read works are kinda old now. But did you or I get "worse" just coz the recent stuff got less attention? No. We just kept doing our thing, and whether it clicks with the invisible audience isn't up to the effort we put in.

Just gotta keep doing what we love. You draw HoV because you love her right? Not for little numbers.

my content just never gets much attention unless it's a shitpost does it

[queenlua]

hey, i started following you recently and ur bio says ur a hacker? any tips on where to start? hacking seems like a v cool/fun way to learn more abt coding and cybersecurity/infrastructure and i'd like to explore it but there's so much on the internet and like, i'm not trying to get into anything illegal. thanks!

huh, an interesting question, ty!

i can give more tailored advice if you hit me up on chat with more specifics on your background/interests.

given what you've written here, though, i'll just assume you don't have any immediate professional aspirations (e.g. you just want to learn some things, and you aren't necessarily trying to get A Cyber Security Job TM within the next three months or w/e), and that you don't know much about any specific programming/computering domain yet.

(stuff under cut because long)

first i'd probably just try to pick some interesting problem that you think you can solve with tech. this doesn't need to be a "hacking" project at first; i was just messing around with computers for ages before i did anything involving security/exploitation.

if you don't already know how to program, you should ideally pick a problem you can solve via programming. for instance: i learned a lot back in the 2000s, when play-by-post forum RPGs were in vogue.  see, i'd already been messing around, building my own personal sites, first just with HTML & CSS, and later on with Javascript and PHP.   and i knew the forum software everyone used (InvisionPowerBoard) was written in PHP.  so when one of the admins at my RPG complained that they'd like the ability to set multiple profile pictures, i was like, "hey i'm good at programming, want me to create a mod to do that," and then i just... did. so then they asked me to program more features, and i got all the sexy nerd cred for being Forum Mod Queen, and it was a good time, i learned a lot.

(i also got to be the person who was frantically IMed at 2am because wtf the forum is down and there's an inscrutable error, what do??? basically sysadmining! also, much less sexy! still, i learned a lot!)

the key thing is that it's gotta be a problem that's interesting to you: as much as i love making dorky sites in PHP, half the fun was seeing other people using my stuff, and i think the era of forum-based RPGs has passed. but maybe you can apply some programming talents to something that you are interested in—maybe you want to make a silly Chrome extension to make people laugh, a la Cloud to Butt, or maybe you'd like to make a program that converts pixel art into cross-stitching patterns, maybe you want to just make a cool adventure game on those annoying graphing calculators they make you use in class, or make a script for some online game you play, or make something silly with Arduino (i once made a trash can that rolled toward me when i clapped my hands; it was fun, and way easier than you'd think!), whatever.

i know a lot of hacker-types who got their start doing ROM hacking for video games—replacing the character art or animations or whatever in old NES games. that's probably more relevant than the PHP websites, at least, and is probably a solid place to get started; in my experience those communities tend to be reasonably friendly to questions. pick a small thing you want to do & ask how to do it.

also, a somewhat unconventional path, but—once i knew how to program a bit of Python, i started doing goofy junk, like, "hey can i implemented NamedTuple from scratch,” which tends to lead to Python metaprogramming, which leads to surprising shit like "oh, stack frames are literally just Python objects and you can manually edit them in the interpreter to do deliberately horrendous/silly things, my god this language allows too much reflection and i'm having too much fun"... since Python is a lot of folks' first language these days, i thought i'd point that out, since i think this is a pretty accessible start to thinking about How Programs Actually Work under the hood. allison kaptur has some specific recommendations on how to poke around, if you wanna go that route.

it's reasonably likely you'll end up doing something "hackery" in the natural course of just working on stuff. for instance, while i was working on the IPB forum software mods, i became distressed to learn that everyone was using an INSECURE version of the software! no one was patching their shit!! i yelled at the admins about it, and they were like "well we haven't been hacked yet so it's not a problem," so i uh, decided to demonstrate a proof of concept? i downloaded some sketchy perl script, kicked it until it worked, logged in as the admins, and shitposted a bit before i logged out, y'know, to prove my point.

(they responded by banning me for two weeks, and did not patch their software. which, y'know, rip to them; they got hacked by an unrelated Turkish group two months later, and those dudes just straight-up deleted the whole website. i was a merciful god by comparison!)

anyway, even though downloading a perl script and just pointing it at a website isn't really "hacking" (it's the literal definition of script kiddie, heh)—the point is i was just experimenting a lot and trying a lot of stuff, which meant i was getting comfortable with thinking of software as not just some immutable relic, but something you can touch and prod in unexpected ways.

this dovetails into the next thing, which is like, just learn a lot of stuff. a boring conventional computer science degree will teach you a lot (provided you take it seriously and actually try to learn shit); alternatively, just taking the same classes as a boring conventional computer science degree, via edX or whatever free online thingy, will also teach you a lot. ("contributing to open source" also teaches you a lot but... hngh... is a whole can of worms; send a follow-up ask if you want that rant.)

here's where i should note that "hacking" is an impossibly broad category: the kind of person who knows how to fuck with website authentication tokens is very different than someone who writes a fuzzer, who is often quite different than someone who looks at the bug a fuzzer produces and actually writes a program that can exploit that bug... so what you focus on depends on what you're interested in. i imagine classes with names like "compilers," "operating systems," and "networking" will teach you a lot. but, like, idk, all knowledge is god-breathed and good for teaching. hell, i hear some universities these days have actual computer security classes? that's probably a good thing to look at, just to get a sense of what's out there, if you already know how to program.

also be comfortable with not knowing everything, but also, learn as you go. the bulk of my security knowledge came when i got kinda airdropped into a work team that basically hired me entirely on "potential" (lmao), and uh, prior to joining i only had the faintest idea what a hypervisor was? or the whole protection ring concept? or ioctls or sandboxing or threat models or, fuck, anything? i mostly just pestered people with like 800 questions and slowly built up a knowledge base, and remember being surprised & delighted when i went to a security conference a year later and could follow most of the talks, and when i wound up at a bar with a guy on the xbox security team and we compared our security models a bunch, and so on.  there wasn't a magic moment when i "got it", i was just like, "okay huh this dude says he found a ring-0 exploit... what does that mean... okay i think i got that... why is that a big deal though... better ask somebody.." (also: reading an occasional dead tree book is a good idea. i owe my firstborn to Robert Love's Linux Kernel Development, as outdated as it is, and also O'Reilly's kookaburra book gave me a great overview of web programming back in the day, etc.  you can learn a lot by just clicking around random blogs, but you’ll often end up with a lot of random little facts and no good mental scaffolding for holding it together; often, a decent book will give you that scaffolding.)

(also, it's pretty useful if you can find a knowledgable someone to pepper with random questions as you go. finding someone who will actively mentor you is tricky, but most working computery folks are happy to tell you things like "what you're doing is actually impossible, here's why," or "here's a tutorial someone told me was good for learning how to write a linux kernel module," or "here's my vague understanding of this concept you know nothing about," or "here's how you automate something to click on a link on a webpage," which tends to be handier than just google on its own.)

if you're reading this and you're like "ok cool but where's the part where i'm handed a computer and i gotta break in while going all hacker typer”—that's not the bulk of the work, alas! like, for sure, we do have fun pranking each other by trying dumb ways of stealing each other's passwords or whatever (once i stuck a keylogger in a dude's keyboard, fun times). but a lot of my security jobs have involved stuff like, "stare at this disassembly a long fuckin' time to figure out how the program pointer got all fucked up," or, "write a fuzzer that feeds a lot of randomized input to some C++ program, watch the program crash because C++ is a horrible language for writing software, go fix all the bugs," or "think Really Hard TM about all the settings and doohickeys this OS/GPU/whatever has, think about all the awful things someone could do with it, threat model and sandbox accordingly." occasionally i have done cool proof-of-concept hacks but honestly writing exploits can kinda be tedious, lol, so like, i'm only doing that if it's the only way i can get people to believe that Yes This Is Actually A Problem, Fix Your Code

"lua that's cool and all but i wanted, like, actual links and recommendations and stuff" okay, fair. here's some ideas:

microcorruption: very fun embedded security CTF; teaches you everything you need to know as you're doing it.

cryptopals crypto challenges: very fun little programming exercises that teach you a lot of fundamental cryptography concepts as you're going along! you can do these even as a bit of a n00b; i did them in Python for the lulz

the binary bomb lab is hilariously copied by, like, so many CS programs, lol, but for good reason. it's accessible and fun and is the first time most people get to feel like a real hacker! (requires you know a bit of C beforehand)

ctftime is a good way to see when new CTFs ("capture the flag"s; security-focused competitions) are coming up. or, sometimes CTFs post their source code, so you can continue trying them after the CTF is over. i liked Stripe's CTFs when they were going, because they focused on "web stuff", and "web stuff" was all i really knew at the time. if you're more interested in staring at disassembly, there's CTFs focused on that sort of thing too.

azeria has good ARM assembly & exploitation tutorials

also, like, lots of good talks out there; just watching defcon/cansecwest/etc talks until something piques your interest is very fun. i'd die on a battlefield for any of Christopher Domas's talks, but he assumes a lot of specific x86/OS knowledge, lol, so maybe don’t start with that. oh, Julia Evans's blog is honestly probably pretty good for just learning a lot of stuff and really beginner-friendly?

oh and wrt legality... idk, i haven't addressed it here since it hasn't come up in my own work much, tbh. if you're just getting started you're kind of unlikely to Break The Law without, y'know, realizing maybe you're doing something a bit gray-area? and you can cross that bridge when you come to it? Real Hacking TM is way more of a pain-in-the-ass than doing CTFs and such, and you'll learn way more with the latter, so who cares lol just do the fun thing

[ettawritesnstudies]

My plan concerning the stolen posts problem

If you don’t know what’s going on in writeblr right now, there’s recently been a bit of a scare concerning original posts showing up on other websites that are not tumblr. At first a lot of people thought that tumblr got hacked, but upon further inspection it looks like these are essentially just bots grabbing every post off a blog and putting it on a sketchy site where anyone can read it without a login. If you want to read more about it, you can check out This Post that kind of started the whole thing and informed everyone of what’s going on.

I’m frustrated by this because reposting is never right and it’s not good to have to worry about hiding your work for the fear that it might be plagiarized, but I’m also not overly concerned about it. I’m staying on tumblr and probably will until they kick me off. 

Why?

Firstly, these sites are pretty obviously sketchy and it’s common sense to steer clear of them, so I doubt that they’re going to get very far with this. I’m infinitely grateful to all 324 of you who follow me and interact with my work, but I also know that I’m a tiny part of the entire internet so I’m not too worried about this stealing traffic from my blog in any way.

Secondly, your writing/art is copyrighted the minute you put words/lines on the page. If anyone seriously wanted to steal your work, you could have it taken down, and furthermore, if someone wanted to profit off your work, they’d have to go to all the extra effort of making a site/getting ad revenue/turning it into a book/publishing it/marketing it all for the sake of getting a few royalties. The chances of that happening are slim to none and I’m also skeptical that anyone actually cares about my writing enough to steal it. 

That being said, Tumblr is also a dying site. Any authors platform that I build up here is going to have to migrate to a personal authors website and other social media sites at some point if I ever want to publish/market my books. So that being said, I’m planning to branch out into making an author’s website/mailing list more because I just want to start exploring other corners of the internet than anything else. I’ll primarily still be on tumblr but that way I’ll at least have a backup in case the website crashes overnight or something. I haven’t started this yet, but updates are to come.

I also know this is the final push a lot of people need to jump ship and move their writing elsewhere and I don’t want to lose the community of wonderful people I’ve met here in the past year. If you’re moving your writing elsewhere, feel free to drop a link in the notes of this post and I’ll make sure to save it! I know it can be hard to get traction on a new platform after a move, so I want to help if I can, and hopefully this post can become a library where you can find other writers too! 

[sharkflip]

Scenes from the CHAZ

I visited Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone this afternoon to show solidarity with occupiers and residents, to see for myself, and to share photos and impressions with y’all. Reminder: myself and Spouse are white cishet thirty-somethings living in North Seattle who believe that Black Lives Matter and agree with the broad set of civic action summarized by “Defund the Police.”

Short version: this is the calmest, quietest event I’ve ever attended on Seattle’s Cap Hill, which is known for big loud music festivals and nightlife and Pride and such.

Six pm on a Thursday night held a decent meandering crowd. We saw lots of street art (different from graffiti; see photos), a couple organizers with megaphones reminding people to keep up the movement, an amplified Black Lives Matter podcast, and generally people hanging out. There was a shrine (for lack of a better word) to some recent victims of police brutality, with “say their names” and their names on signs, candles, and an icon-style painting of Dr. King. I did not take a photo of that out of respect; instead, I read their names and tried to feel their loss.

There were several well-stocked med tends and co-op tents, with lists of what supplies were needed and also Venmo addresses for cash donations. We brought two cases of bottled water and two bulk-sized bottles of sunblock to donate to the cause, but the med tents were already so well-stocked that we just added the bottled water to a pyramid built by similar-minded folks. There was also a handful of sort of alt-vendor tents, most notably (to me) one with two white girls and a screen press with a sign saying “we’ll print ‘black lives matter’ on anything!” and doing just that. They were using black ink and I was wearing a navy-blue top, otherwise I’d have had them print my tank for me. No prices, no mention of money, which was slightly disorienting to since Seattle has so many open-air festivals and markets with a vendor row. One of the co-ops with food and supplies had a “free sticker if you put them in public places” bin in front of it, which I rifled through.

All the “barricades” at the street entrances were construction barriers and concrete barriers placed on the asphalt. One or two of them also had a car parked across the street as well. NONE of them had ANYTHING even resembling a checkpoint. People “staffing” the checkpoints were chatting with each other and passersby. Neither Spouse nor I interacted with anyone at any of the barricaded streets, and none of them had any kind of visible weapon or anything. They were just people who happened to be chilling by a concrete or plastic construction barrier. 

The East Precinct Police building was boarded up and surrounded by a chain link fence, which, sidebar, is a very common sight in Seattle, with all the new construction going on these days. There was some graffiti and some messaging on the fence, but most of the activity around it was people like me: taking iphone photos of this “abandoned” police precinct. Incidentally, this was where I decided to leave my grocery bag full of sage cuttings I brought from my garden (because what do you bring to celebrate a neighborhood milestone? I hope some people make smudges from it and some people make sauce from it and some people put a sprig in a vase because the purple flowers are pretty). I stapled two signs to the bag, one reading “we see you, we hear you, #blacklivesmatter” and the other reading “hello from [tiny neighborhood], please enjoy this fresh organic sage from my garden,” and just left it by the fence there by the boarded-up police station. Spouse didn’t get it, and all I can say is that it felt right to bring something I grew, and let people take it to do what they want with it.

The crowd in general was what I typically expect from Cap Hill: mostly twenties to forties, mostly white, lots of potheads, lots of calm dogs on leashes. The covid “sanitary” cloth mask compliance was higher here than in most other public spaces I’ve been in recently, with people trying to maintain that six-foot courtesy/transmission space. Most people “featured” -- those painting street murals, those with megaphones -- were POC who looked like they were of majority African descent. Most people staffing the different booths (med tents, co-op tents) fell into the general category of white, and much of the observing crowd were also white, which again, is about the racial proportions I usually anticipate from Cap Hill and Seattle north of Downtown. Proportionately few rainbow signs/iconography present, other than the rainbow crosswalks that a previous mayor had painted in this weird publicity stunt thing. The feeling I got from it was that the LGBTQIA+ pride crowd was deferring to/supporting the BLM crowd, in force, but I can’t speak for them.

What was surprising to me was how... safe it felt. This part of Cap Hill (the southwest corner, closest to downtown) has a reputation for being a little sketchy sometimes, but today it felt... “welcoming” is the wrong word, and “standing in solidarity” is too profound for what could be called a protest tourism visit on my part. There’s a different post I want to make about “’high crime’ areas actually equal high police response to incidents that would better be handled by a social service team, so is it really a ‘high crime’ neighborhood or is it just a neighborhood that needs more help?” so just stick that in your mind for now. But Spouse actually went to high school about two blocks downhill from the CHAZ, and he too said it felt safer than usual. For reference, Spouse is not a crowd person and is a little paranoid about personal safety, and both he and I were surprised that he was getting that vibe.

In particular, there was one “crazy homeless dude,” who was sort of dancing around shouting nonsense, which is unfortunately common. But rather than feel scared by him -- and those of you who have been following me for long enough may recall when I was literally punched in the face by a “crazy homeless dude” hard enough to shatter my maxilla and result in a second-degree assault charge -- and it was just like “well, this dude is doing his thing, and if he gets violent, we’ll handle it, but right now, he’s doing his thing.”

So, there’s some kind of planned protest/showing/whatever the current term for these things is tomorrow night, which I plan on attending, and I’ll tell you about that, too.

[residentanchor]

So where do u stand on the racist drama with Cat

EDIT: It’s the next day and I’ve read through what happened and realized I did miss a lot and something big did happen. I want to be transparent and it seems kind of sketchy to delete this post even though my feelings have changed on the matter. My follow up post is here. Gonna be honest, I got this ask and had zero idea what you were talking about. I’ve been working so much lately I’ve barely talked to Cat much the past two weeks. (Just checked--I haven’t even messaged her the past week at all) So, I looked and saw everything that apparently went down today and I’m just gonna answer this as short and sweet as I can so I can sleep and not think about it all night. It was just a quick glance so I’m sure I’m missing a LOT but from what I can see, there’s been an apology so I know I probably don’t have to answer this probably. 

Also, this is more my conscious stream of thoughts and not something thought out, so I do apologize if it comes off rude or anything. I don’t mean it but I’m tired from work. :) Also, if you expect me to write off Cat and stop being friends with her? Unless I missed something big, not gonna happen. She’s learned her lesson after this I’m sure. And I’ll make sure it stays that way. (Though I’m 1000% sure I don’t have to, but still)

From what I glanced at, it’s about her Despicable Dee story. Honestly, not a big fan of found family aus so I don’t really remember much about the story itself. It’s been a while, but I do remember a little bit. I know a lot of people are angry and I can understand why when reading their points. But that’s just the catalyst for what I need to talk about.

But I will answer your question with this--I don’t really stand anywhere. There are no sides to this. Cat is a dear friend of mine, absolutely. I cherish our friendship. But if she made a mistake, she can be criticized for it. She can be called out and held responsible for it, absolutely. We’re all human, we all make mistakes and we’re all learning to better ourselves. We are all responsible for our own actions. In this instance, POC fanders saw a problem and tried to stop it. Again. (For which I’m sorry you guys have to keep doing this.) It wasn’t until more recently that we could all feel comfortable TALKING about these things white people don’t realize are extremely harmful without fear of backlash. (Which I know that fear is still there for a lot of people)

Now, I’ve only skimmed over things, but I can pretty much fill in the blanks. In an attempt to be inclusive, she made mistakes and made characters in racist/stereotypical situations. The end goal was for a happy ending for these characters, but that doesn’t matter. Good intentions or not, people were hurt by this portrayal. However, Cat’s a teacher. She is open to learning. She cares about this fandom. That’s why she creates free art for it be it in writing or drawing. So all we can do is hope she takes what she’s learned and uses it for the future to better herself. (Which I’m sure this is something she’ll never forget) That said, I saw points were made to her and a discussion was had and she has recognized her wrongdoing and apologized. 

The problem is that I don’t feel like I can really add much. I’m also a privileged white person in ways I probably don’t realize. I’ve spent a lot of time sitting back and listening to the POC fanders these last few months and the biggest thing I’ve learned is that if they are speaking up, listen and use your voice to make theirs louder. So, if they say something/someone was being racist or problematic, then all I can do is listen and learn. THAT is the only reason I’m answering this ask. 

So, what does this mean for me? Not much, since none of this was about me. (Did you send this ask to any POC fanders I wonder? Their opinion matters 10000x more than mine so...) I know I was probably only asked because Cat and I are friends. And despite this, we still are friends. I know she’ll turn to her POC friends more for things in the future to make sure she’s taking the right steps to prevent this from happening again. I’m sorry if that’s not what you wanted to hear. If you don’t like someone, block them and move on.  I don’t think I have much else to add to this. I don’t really know why I was asked this in the first place, I don’t know what you wanted to hear from me. Hate will get us nowhere. So being kind and helping people recognize their mistakes and help them improve seems like the best option in this situation. And yes, I know I’m saying ‘mistakes’ but I don’t take this lightly. Trust me on that.

I love Cat and I love you guys for being strong enough to stand up for yourselves. If someone (myself included) does something harmful like this, please try reaching out (preferably in private first) and trying to explain what they’re doing is wrong and why. Help others understand and improve. Shouting it into someone’s ask box with no explanation or context is just going to make them go defensive and start drama. You don’t want them to have to feel like they need to defend themselves, you want them to sit back and listen and learn. (this is not me defending anything) Because we all do need to learn from POC still as we move forward. We have hundreds of years of ingrained racism and prejudice and privilege that we need to sort through and fix and it won’t happen over a few years. 

IDK I’m half asleep at this point. I made my case, I explained how I feel (which is bad, everyone both wins and loses in these situations) but all we can do is hope for better in the future. I’m sorry this is how some of you spent your day and if anyone wants to talk or has any words to say, my ask box is open. I’ll happily listen. (My discord is also open if you want to have a longer/more private conversation) Thank you to those who spoke out about this and reminded us to check our privilege and that we should be listening to POC when they say things. 

tldr; It was racist and she has apologized with promise to improve. IDK what you want me to say about all this other than ‘it sucks, I’m sorry it happened, I hope we can learn from this and better ourselves’.

[peace-coast-island]

Diary of a Junebug

Rock and roll the night away!

What better way to escape than getting lost in music? Headphones on, thoughts off - nothing like some good bops to help get you through the day.

KK Slider's been looking into expanding his musical repertoire so he's been playing around with different genres in hopes of creating a brand new sound. And that's how rock and roll night came to be!

Joining us on this musical adventure are Sonja, with her siblings Robbie and Tiffy, and cousin Bubba. It's been ages since Daisy Jane and I have last hung out with Sonja so it's nice that she and her fam dropped by for a visit. I've hung out with Robbie and Bubba a handful of times while this is the first time I've met Tiffy.

Sonja's been meaning to stop by the camp for a while but life has gotten busy. She also wanted her dad and stepmom to come along too but then something came up so they were unable to make it at the last minute. Same thing for her grandma, though to be honest, camping isn't really her thing so it's probably for the best that she didn't come.

Old Thelma Lou may come across as a cantankerous old lady but she really is a nice person once you get to know her. Underneath that rough exterior is a protective, dedicated, and tough mother figure who wants what's best for you, even if she kinda has a hard time showing how much she cares about you. We video chatted with her before the concert and she's still the same old Thelma Lou, keeping an eye on her children, grandchildren, and their friends in her own unconventional ways.

We also chatted with Buzz and Skeeter, both who are doing well. The reason why they weren't able to join us at the camp is because Skeeter's pregnant again. She and Buzz were going to have a boy last fall but there were complications and the baby was stillborn. So far things are moving along smoothly, but to be safe, Skeeter's on strict bed rest. In about four months, Sonja, Robbie, and Tiffy will have a little sister!

Sonja has been busy working on her graphic novel, which she plans to release in the fall. She's a freelance graphic designer and illustrator, known for posting relatable and funny comics online. I love her art - it's got a sketchy and loose style that's sorta minimal yet super expressive. When I got into digital art, I took some inspiration from Sonja's work by using pencil brushes for line art and the gouache brush for coloring.

After working in the studio for hours on the book over the past several weeks, Sonja felt she could use a change of scenery - which was the main reason why she wanted to come to the camp. She also wants to get back into using traditional mediums like painting so she brought along some canvases and paints. The great outdoors is perfect for finding inspiration when you're in a rut!

Robbie runs a fix-it shop in Elmstown with two of his friends. His specialties are clocks and anything that has a lock thanks to his grandma and dad - Thelma Lou likes collecting clocks and Buzz's a locksmith. He's the reason why the family saves so much on repairs - Robbie and his friends can pretty much fix anything! Elmstown is pretty far but I'm keeping his business card in case I need something fixed like my computer since that'll be more cost effective than sending it to the store where I'll probably get overcharged.

It's a good thing we have Robbie here to help KK Slider with the equipment. He had some old amps and guitars that he'd been meaning to get fixed but since they were custom made, it's hard to find parts that need replacement. Thankfully, Robbie never leaves home without his toolbox and with his magic, we were able to improve the stage setup.

Bubba's still living with Thelma Lou, though he's in the process of moving out to his own place. He's not leaving Rayetown though, just moving to the other side of town so he can be closer to the post office. Along with delivering packages for the citizens of Rayetown, Bubba's also a drummer and occasional lead singer for The Cogwheels, a local band that regularly performs at the Chili Bowl.

Thelma Lou and Bubba have a sweet relationship. He's the oldest of the Harp grandchildren through Thelma Lou's daughter. His parents pretty dumped him on Thelma Lou's doorstep when they moved halfway across the country, which wasn't very nice of them. His mom and grandma have a stormy relationship so that explains why Thelma Lou's kinda overprotective of him, and in return he respects her a lot. Recently though, Bubba and his mom have been keeping in touch sporadically - thanks to Uncle Buzz and Aunt Skeeter. As for his dad though, since he walked out on his mom, he hasn't heard from him in years, which he feels is probably for the best.

And there's Tiffy, the youngest (so far) of the grandchildren. She's seven and a half years old and likes to sing and dance. This is her first time being away from home for a couple days so she's pretty excited about it. Plus, she gets to spend time with her siblings, something she always looks forward to since they live far from home. By the time she was born, Sonja and Robbie had already long moved out of Rayetown. Up until Tiffy came along, Sonja and Robbie rarely visited home, a deliberate choice that they both kinda regretted but at the same time felt it was necessary.

Tiffy's looking forward to the new baby - and she's absolutely certain that things will work out this time. She was really bummed about what happened with her brother, especially since she always wanted a little sibling. Buzz and Skeeter had been trying for years to have another kid - they didn't have Tiffy until about six years into their marriage - and that was after being told many times that they missed the boat. It's a good thing they didn't give up or else Tiffy wouldn't be here today!

While helping KK Slider set up for the concert, we also went sightseeing outside the camp. Now that the weather's warming up and the sun's staying out longer, we can venture further out. The first place we went was the mountains, where Sonja was inspired to pull out her canvases and paints. She's been working on landscapes and backgrounds so it was the perfect opportunity. Since she had a lot of fun doing that, I figured we could do the same in other places outside the camp like the woods or the meadows.

As they were testing out the equipment, KK and Bubba were jamming out while Tiffy danced. She definitely inherited Buzz and Skeeter's dance skills! Tap dancing and ballet are her favorites and she definitely wants to branch out to other forms of dance. Her parents are looking into more dance classes for Tiffy, which she's excited for. One of the reasons why she's looking forward to having another sibling is so she can have a dance partner in the future. Imagine, Tiffy and her little sister, dancing together!

Later, Robbie joined in on the jam session, playing the bass. Apollo, Static, and Cherry joined in as well, and before we knew it, all of them were writing new songs that eventually became the setlist for the concert! Sonja later got into the jam session after Daisy Jane showed her around the cabin and her studio. I sense a collaboration between the two in the near future...

Around 5 we finished setting up for the concert and began preparing for a barbecue dinner. By the time all the food was set up, it was time to rock and roll! I have to say, KK and the campers really outdid themselves with the stage setup. It was a mix of performances by KK Slider and jam sessions by us. The concert was an awesome experience!

In the span of one hour, Bubba and KK wrote Road Ode. KK came up with the intricate melody that's a perfect fusion of his signature sound along with elements of classic rock. Bubba came up with the lyrics, taking inspiration from his relationships with his mother and grandma. Easily one of the highlights of the night.

Apollo sang lead on a number he co-authored with KK Slider titled Old Man Blues. It's a bluesy rock and roll tune with a catchy guitar riff that's stuck in my head as I write this. The light show visuals really add to the vibe of this song, elevating it to another level.

Static and Cherry performed Heavy Metal Ballad as a trio with KK Slider - another song that was just finished today. The song was actually three different compositions that merged into one. Cherry has been playing around with a cool heavy metal beat for a while. She had a good thing going on but had trouble turning it into something, so she put it aside in hopes of finding the right spark to kick it off. Static came up with lyrics for the chorus, originally through a little ditty he called Lightning Muses. And like Cherry, he had something but couldn't figure out what direction he wanted to take it. Then along comes KK Slider, who saw the potential in these two wildly different compositions. Somehow, with his verses and additional melodies, he created an instant hit!

In an unexpected surprise, KK Slider got Daisy Jane and I on to perform a new KK original as well as a couple songs from Lilac and the Cadillacs. The new song, Sky Blue Twilight, is a collaboration between me, Daisy Jane, and KK Slider. It was something we came up with a while back, and I had almost forgotten about it until today. I'm pretty rusty from songwriting but working on this piece was pretty fun! I really should get back into writing music...

Sonja, Robbie, and Tiffy also joined Bubba on stage for another new song, titled All That Rock 'n' Roll. Tiffy sang lead vocals with Sonja on the keys and Robbie on bass. Along with being a fantastic dancer, Tiffy's a great singer! I filmed the whole thing for Bubba so he can send it to Thelma Lou, Buzz, and Skeeter. I have to say, KK Slider and Bubba make a great songwriting team!

Another fun song is Violet Blaze, an upbeat rock and roll tune by KK Slider, Candi, Kabuki, and Spike. KK Slider really outdid himself on that guitar solo! With riffs like that, there's no other song fitting to be titled Violet Blaze. What one can't put into words, music expresses it - one just has to listen and feel.

And of course, in between the new songs were KK Slider classics, but remixed. It's amazing how changing up the genre can give well known songs a fresh makeover! That's what I love about KK Slider's music - the versatility. In terms of reinventing his sound while staying true to himself, I'd say KK Slider succeeded with flying colors!

Aside from Tiffy and the early risers, the rest of us have been rocking and rolling way past midnight. I'm still a bit buzzed from the concert, which just ended less than an hour ago, so I'm gonna unwind for a bit before going to bed.

[hansketchbook]

5 INSTAGRAM ARTISTS SHOWCASE (OCTOBER 2020)

Hello beautiful and fabulous people! so I decided to do a list of Instagram artists that I‘m a fan of. Now, one thing I want to note is that this list is not exactly a ‘top 5’ list or anything, in other words, it is not in any particular order, so the artist that is on the very top of the list doesn’t necessarily mean that he/she is my most favourite or anything like that. Basically, I love these guys’ work, I don’t like picking favourites mostly cause it’s a headache to have to pick one or two favourites when all of them are awesome in their own way (or maybe I’m just lazy and tired to figure them out heheh). Alright! Let’s begin!

1. Patrick Brown (@patrickbrownart)

Alright! First on the list is Patrick Brown. Now, he’s not necessarily an Instagram artist (not initially anyway) He has an Instagram account now which is nice, but I actually found out about him on Youtube where he actually did this tutorial thing many, many years back. He was actually in the back of my mind for quite some time, until I rediscovered his work on Instagram recently. 

His work is AWESOME! And surely to a lot of other cartoonists or illustrators out there as well, especially if you’re into character/comic book illustrations. Now, I know it’s subjective, like all things, but I do believe his work is awesome for one, the way he poses the characters are really fluid and dynamic, which I love. Second, his digital coloring and environment illustrations are also amazing! I mean, if you take out the coloring, and just keep the line art, it’s not going to pop off as much (to me at least), so it’s the way he digitally colors(shading and lighting) his characters and environments that boosts the quality of his work significantly. I specifically ADORE his splash pages/illustrations where there’s like tons of characters in one scene.

2. Roosh (@koteri.ink)

Next on the list! Koteri.ink. I found his work on Instagram, I think probably over a year ago? And I have loved his work ever since. There’s something about his art style that I'm diggin’ so much. I especially love it when he draws humanoid animals (?) not sure if that’s the right way to describe it. 

He has this successful Kickstarter comic (Kings of Nowhere) he’s doing and still producing new chapters at the moment. I haven’t read it but from what I’ve seen so far, and from the comic’s synopsis, it’s a pretty interesting concept! Really love the way he designed animals, and his anatomy game is freakin’ strong! Check out his work!

3. Clayton Henry (@claytonhenryart)

Third on the list! Clayton Henry. He’s an illustrator/comic book artist, at the moment he mostly does commission work for DC. If you check out his Instagram, his feed is filled with DC superhero illustrations like Batman, Superman, the Flash, etc. So, it may not be your cup of tea but he does post other works as well occasionally. 

What I really love about his work is his art style and line work- especially his line work. Honestly, my own inking or linework is heavily inspired by this guy. Or at least, AT THE MOMENT (that’s why I don’t like picking favourites, cause it’s changing all the time xD). But I also love the way he traditionally colors his stuff using colored pencils. Something about it is just freakin’ great. I wish I could color my work traditionally like that. Maybe I can, I just need to start…maybe tomorrow.

4.  Ashley Wood (@ashleywoodart)

Next up, Ashley Wood. His work is… it’s hard for me to describe it. It’s really paintery, consisting of brushes or strokes, it seems very conceptual sometimes - like they are unfinished but still looks f*cking amazing! 

Besides oil painting, he also does sketches in the form of inks. I mean, it LOOKS like sketches, but they are not really? Again, it looks unfinished but I would still put it up on the wall, y’know. I actually found out about Ashley Wood from the work that he did on one of my favourite video game series - Metal Gear Solid. He did the graphic novel for MGS and his work was also showcased as an in-game comic-ish animation for the Playstation Portable’s MGS game called Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops (not the best MGS game, but pretty good for a handheld). I was really digging the whole conceptual or ‘sketchy’ art style that I looked him up online - and ever since then I’ve been a fan of his work. Seriously, check out his work! They are amazing.

5.  Seung Eun Kim (@kse332)

Finally, Seung Eun Kim. Man, going through this list just makes me feel bad about myself cause I have to look up their stuff and I keep thinking’ I probably won’t be this good. If this list is actually in order of the top being my ‘favourite’, Seung Eun Kim will be among the very TOP of this list. Just check out his work, this guy is among the greats when it comes to working in the visual development or concept artist industry. 

He works on animation, he was a former principal artist at Riot games (yes, THE riot games), he worked with Sony Pictures - if you look at his stuff, you can see him working on storyboards and stills of scenes from films. He can do realism as well as cartoon-ish art style but he mostly does realistic style than cartoons. He probably only does cartoon-style when he needs to (like if he’s part of a project that requires him to make them). If you want to get a taste of his work, just hop onto his Instagram page, it has everything from character illustrations, portraits, storyboarding, visual development/concept arts and more! I just… I can’t… I really love his work!

And that’s it for this October Instagram artist showcase list! 

These are just among MANY other AMAZING artists on Instagram. There are a lot of amazing artists out there, I’m glad the internet exists so I could look them up and get inspired by them… or feel like shit cause they’re too good. But hey, you’re terrible until you’re not, so.

Thanks for stopping by!

[songbird-musing]

Virtuoso: Chapter One - Exposition

Enjolras is Saint-Michel Academy's brightest young composer. He runs the orchestra, the Musician's Rights board, chairs the scholarship program, teaches free classical music to children, and is in the middle of his dissertation. He has never been anything less than a prodigy, until his teacher forces him to write a pop song.

Enter the effortlessly cool Grantaire, with his smudged eyeliner and lovely guitar-playing fingers. He really digs Enjolras' "vibe," whatever that means.

Exposition

“Got a light?”

Enjolras blinked, staring at his own hands. He had three flutes in his left, two violins in his right, and a cello strapped precariously to his back.

“Um,” he answered, arching an eyebrow, “I don’t smoke.”

The stranger half-smiled, rolling his unlit cigarette between long fingers. Good fingers to play piano with, Enjolras noted.

Enjolras half-smiled back, pressing his lips together, hoisting his cello strap, he glanced up to the heights of the campus building.  

“Hang on... you’re that third year that conducted that concert last Friday, right?”

He faltered, and re-examined the boy in front of him. A sketchy mess of ink-black curls and inked arms. He was a dark smudge against the dazzling marble school. Enjolras had been to a lot of classical concerts, and people that looked like the stranger in front of him did not tend to frequent them. With the shadowy smear of eyeliner around wild eyes, and a glint of metal pierced through his nose, the boy looked like he belonged at the underground concert of a band no one had heard of. Enjolras smiled.

“That’s right. I’m Enjolras.”

“I really dig your...” the boy made a vague swishing motion with his hands, “vibe.”

Enjolras didn’t know how to react.

What was his vibe?

“I’m Grantaire. Second year.”

Enjolras’ gaze traced the trajectory of a gemstone looped around Grantaire’s neck and the stark, sharp lines of tattoo ink, which bled into the collar of his shirt.

“Well, thank you very much, Grantaire.” Enjolras looked unhurriedly into the eyes across from him, a little taken aback by their returned steadfastness. He smiled widely. “I appreciate the stroke to the ego.”

Grantaire grinned and kicked one ankle over the other. “See you around,” he said, oozing with easy grace. His vibe was pretty enviable, to Enjolras’ tightly wound, deeply engrained stiffened etiquette.

Enjolras smiled his rehearsed showman’s smile and strode into Paris’ finest institution of the arts: Saint-Michel Academy.  

~*~

“Courf,” Enjolras called, not allowing the figure sneaking up the edge of the grand staircase to escape.

The boy turned deliberately slowly, resting an arm on the banister. “Enjolras!” he beamed, “My dearest, dearest friend.”

“Your dearest, dearest luggage rack,” Enjolras said, blue eyes narrowing. “I bought your flute and your violin.”

“And my trombone?” Courfeyrac asked hopefully. Enjolras fixed him with a dead stare. “See, if you were my dearest, dearest luggage rack you would have bought my trombone. Combeferre is much better trained than you.”

“I’ll bring you a set of spare clothes, next time, as well, because you’re still wearing yesterday’s.” Enjolras retorted, offloading two instruments into his friend’s hands.

Courfeyrac didn’t look bashful in the slightest. Enjolras didn’t expect him to. He winked scandalously, the action seductive and over-dramatic. “Did you miss me last night?”

“Do you even still live with us?” Enjolras laughed, “Combeferre’s getting moody because you keep missing movie night.”

“I’m not going to be twenty-one forever; gotta get the most use out of this flesh prison as I can.”

Enjolras grimaced. “Please never recount your sexual exploits as getting use out of your flesh prison again.”

“Enjolras, my man,” Courf grinned, “That is how I will exclusively refer to it now. Laters!”

“You’re in my lecture now.”  

“Uh... Tell Johnny-boy I’m tuning up. Gotta have a quick smoke,” he mimed taking a drag of a cigarette and bounced down a couple of stairs.

“Are you high?” Enjolras asked mildly, looking past Courfeyrac’s morning-after scruffiness to his blown pupils.

“A teeny, tiny bit,” he laughed, holding two fingers together, “Last night hasn’t quite worn off, but, hey, don’t tell Johnny-boy that.”

“Every time you call him that I die a little inside,” Enjolras said drily.

“Love you!” Courfeyrac dashed away, leaving Enjolras to go into Jean Valjean’s theory lecture alone.

~*~

“Ah, Enjolras, good morning!” the professor said, glancing up from his laptop. “I said it at the time, but well done again for Friday. The faculty couldn’t have chosen anyone better for the role.”

Jean Valjean wasn’t a man quick to praise, but he had always liked Enjolras. Secretly, all the professors hoped for Enjolras on their register, longing for his ambition and determinedness and his almost prodigal writing.  

“Thanks sir,” he said, making his way to his unassigned seat in the front row. He couldn’t help but blister with pride.

A few minutes passed. Valjean looked around at the half dozen students and sighed through his nose. “Where is the rest of the class on this delightful Monday morning?”

“Still in bed?” offered a voice.

“Still in bed when they could be learning about the delights of atonal counterpoint?” Valjean tutted, turning on the projector.

“Courf is tuning up,” Enjolras said.

“Well text him to hurry, if he’s not in the room in two and a half minutes I’m locking the doors,” Valjean said.

Courfeyrac had been on the wrong side of a locked door a few too many times.

Enjolras hastily texted his roommate.

After a couple of hours of relentless note taking, the class broke apart, each student working on their own personal projects, buried in manuscript paper and notation software.

“Oh, Enjolras,” said Valjean after listening to the orchestral piece he had composed through the night.

“What?” Enjolras panicked, noticing the slight quirk to his professor’s eyebrows. He looked at the score and saw nothing out of place, “What’s wrong?”

The professor took too long to respond.

“It’s perfectly fine,” Valjean said.

Enjolras frowned, the usual marble finesse of his forehead tarnished with worry. “What’s wrong with it?” he repeated, fingers clawing into his palms.

“No, Enjolras, it’s fine. It’s lovely. It’s as proficient and melodically satisfying as your works always are. You have your unwavering grasp of harmony and you’ve handled all the instruments with your usual precision.”

“But...?”

“But...” Valjean echoed, “You’ve shown this kind of work consistently recently...”

“I know. I’ve been trying to focus on a post-Classical, pre-Romantic period to truly master it. I could compose in a more Bach-style arrangement if you want,” he said, words tripping over themselves in their haste to be known. Enjolras had never really had much criticism in any field; a slither of it sent him reeling.

“I’d actually be more interested to hear more modern influences.”

“I could use some 20th Century techniques, yes,” Enjolras nodded seriously.

“No, no... I want to see you write a pop-song,” Valjean suddenly smiled widely. “Yes, that’s what you need to do. I want a pop song.”

Enjolras’ toes curled.  

“And true commercial pop,” Valjean’s eyes were alight, and Enjolras knew he would not be dissuaded. “None of the jazz pop I know you’re already planning to write.”

Enjolras gulped, the litter of extended chords that had crept into his mind, dispelled.

“Don’t look so terrified,” Valjean said with a laugh.

“But that’s going to be so horribly boring!”

“It doesn’t have to be boring; I just want you out of your comfort zone.” Valjean kindly tapped the top of Enjolras’ laptop. “Brilliant work, as always, but let’s see something different next week, alright?”

“Alright, sir,” Enjolras said, holding back a groan.

Approximately two seconds later, he received a Facebook message from Courfeyrac. Courfeyrac always commanded words so succinctly, and had sent a gif of someone laughing hysterically. Enjolras turned to scowl at his friend, who was sniggering over his scrawled sheet of manuscript paper.  

Throughout the next hour, he composed an extremely angry 20th Century piece, full to the brim of staccato, discords and intense crescendo. He tried not to be elitist, but...pop music! The hazy glow of Valjean’s compliments had quickly worn off.  

The next class held no respite.  

“Typical Johnny-boy!” cawed Combeferre upon hearing the news, his glasses knocked from the bridge of his nose.

“Ugh,” Enjolras said, “Don’t call him that.”

Jehan was an explosion of colour in the room: vividly patterned cloth trousers, a clashing equally ornate shirt, a jumble of too much jewellery, and slowly dying fresh flowers in their dreadlocks. “Are you going to write the lyrics?” they asked, voice lovely and mellow with the notes of laughter still ringing there.

Enjolras died a little more inside. “I’ve only written lyrics in Italian before... And besides! Lyrics are an easy way out. A good composer should be able to convey every story without explaining it needlessly with words.”

“You’re gonna need to write lyrics, mate.” Combeferre snorted, “Oh god, I didn’t realise how much I needed this news today. My skin has cleared, my student debts have been paid off.”

“Just wondering... do either of you know of anyone interested in joining the orchestra?” Enjolras asked, scowling. “I have two new positions to fill. Two ex-members just got expelled for being terrible friends.”

Jehan tried to look sympathetic, rolling a bead across their palm. “Oh!” they exclaimed, “Have you met Grantaire?”

“No,” said Enjolras, bottom lip exaggeratedly pouted. An image of the smoker on the steps of the university wafted into his consciousness. “Wait... does he have black hair... and like...” Enjolras gestured to his face, “A crooked nose?”

“Oh man,” Jehan beamed with a nod, “He is such a cool guy. What a character! He has this energy that is just so eclectic –”

“And?” Enjolras interrupted, sharing a glance with Combeferre, who snorted. Jehan’s ramblings on energies had been timed to last hours.

“He has this really awesome vibe going on, like, he’s been writing this indie-pop stuff built on classical conventions. It’s actually amazing... I could try and hook you up... he’s like the only one I know here who writes pop...” Jehan pondered, eyes drifting away from the conversation, “Oh Enj, are you coming to that gig tonight?”

“What gig?” Enjolras unloaded his notepad from his bag and scribbled ‘music historical context’ across the top of the sheet.

“Enjolras only goes to concerts not gigs, darling,” Combeferre said in an over-dramatically refined voice.

“You totally should come. It’s this student band I’m totally into at the moment. It’s like this psychedelic, contemplative, indie, punky folk music.” Prouvaire said, “R will be there, he’s roommates with the singer. They’re both really chill. You can discuss the pop thing with him. It’s at the Musain.”

“Oh, the Musain is cool,” Enjolras said tiredly. “That’s a good venue.”

“Yeah, well, they’re really good. Just get there for about eightish.” They smiled, long eyelashes curling across their cheeks, in a lazy sort of bliss that only Jehan could achieve. “I’d offer to help with lyrics but I’ve challenged myself to only write in abstract Latin for a month, so...”

The fact that this news didn’t faze Combeferre or Enjolras in the slightest summed up Jehan Prouvaire perfectly.

~*~

“Enjolras!” Jehan cheered, looking even more luxuriated than usual. “You made it!”

The Musain was a good venue, but Enjolras hadn’t seen it much in the dark. He had usually spent afternoons there, drowning in sheet music and coffee.

“Jehan Prouvaire!” Courfeyrac whooped, embracing Jehan, in his usual, all-encompassing style.

“Are you alright after last night?” Jehan questioned, glint in their eye, “You looked absolutely out of it.”

“Yeah, I was.” Courfeyrac laughed wildly, “I’m being well-behaved tonight, though...” he paused for, what Enjolras knew to be, a well-practised dramatic effect, “No Class A’s, at least.”  

Jehan turned their gaze to Enjolras and crushed an arm around his tall frame. “R is hanging out with Éponine at the front, I’ll introduce you later.” Enjolras couldn’t see Grantaire amidst the mass of swaying heads. “The band playing now is called Chakrafied and they’re really deep,” Jehan said, letting their shoulders drift in time to the spacey sound.“ Don’t look so horrified, Enjolras, I’ve lured you over to the hippie side. Listen to Chakrafied and enjoy it!”

And Enjolras actually, kind of, did.  

~*~

The second band was made up of five members: four imposing gentlemen and an even scarier looking girl with eyeliner smeared across her face.

“I’m Éponine and we’re Patron-Minette,” she purred into the microphone, basking in the onstage lights, “We’re the scoundrels and ruffians of the Musain tonight.” Her smile was vicious. She nodded to her drummer, who sped into a series of counter rhythms that Enjolras was entirely not expecting.

Their music was wild and aggressive but threaded with a lull of tender despair at the world’s injustice. It was surprisingly melodic and Enjolras, who was a master of piano, still found himself drawn to the keyboardists techniques, which were messily executed by tattooed fingers adorned with a clatter of rings, but with a bit of refinement, could fit into a Saint-Michel’s classroom with ease.  

Courfeyrac was already in a bit of a state, giggly and flushed, dancing erratically. “Dance with me, Enjolras!” he said and Enjolras obliged. “Drink with me!”

And once more Enjolras obliged.  

When Enjolras drank, which was a very rare occasion, the usual tight coil of his body unwound into a loose end; he blushed a lot and for once stopped mentally composing symphonies.

Prouvaire reappeared when the music finished, looping long arms around Enjolras and Courfeyrac’s necks, “My boys!” they said over the hubbub, “Wanna hang in the dressing room? That’s where the real party is!”

The four walls of the dressing room were packed with limbs, the sound of loud celebrations and smoke.

“Hey, dude, quit it,” snapped a voice, “You’re going to get us thrown out.” The keys player stubbed out the drummers cigarette with his thumb. The drummer rolled his eyes and exhaled his breath of smoke into the other man’s face.

“Chill out, ‘Parnasse,” the drummer laughed, his voice far more velvety than expected. “I’m the bodyguard’s dealer, he won’t say anything.”

“Just smoke outside the fire exit door,” ‘Parnasse commanded, kicking the door open with a boot, allowing a rush of cold air into the room.

“Yeah, get out, G,” Éponine said mildly, fixing her tangle of hair in the mirror.

“Éponine!” Prouvaire said loudly, almost knocking the singer off her feet with a hug.

“Prouvaire, my dear! I didn’t know you were here!”

“Of course I was. I wouldn’t miss you guys for the world!”

Éponine preened at Jehan’s response and threw her head back in laughter. “You sweetheart,” she said, “What’s your next gig?”

“I have a poetry slam next week but the poems are read syllabically to the sound of Bach. It’s this new project I’m working on at the moment.”

“Sounds weird,” Éponine said, “I’d love to come!”

“These are my friends Courfeyrac and Enjolras,” Jehan introduced, smiling fondly at the gangly pair, “From Saint-Michel’s... this is Éponine, Montparnasse, Babet, the bassist... The weirdo in the mask is Claquesous and Gueulemer just got kicked out.”

Éponine hugged them both, much smaller in person than she had appeared onstage. Montparnasse gave a flutter of his ringed fingers. Enjolras was usually aware how much taller he was than a room full of people, but even Montparnasse towered above him. Built like a ballerina, the keyboardist was slender and wraith-like, expression not unfriendly, but not particularly inviting either: as though rearranging his face into a smile would take too much effort.  

Babet was also tall and unhealthily pale. “Nice to meet you, but I have places to be,” he said mysteriously, translucent eyes flicking quickly across the room. “Text me the next rehearsal dates, Ép. See you.”

Claquesous, or ‘the weirdo in the mask’, didn’t say anything, but huddled over his guitar, fingers dancing over the fret boards effortlessly.

“Are you alright, darling?” Éponine asked Enjolras a while later when they were all lounging on the few sofas, the sounds of other bands dancing through the walls. Her brash accent was so unlike the silken tones of her singing voice.

“Huh?” Enjolras replied, blushing, because he was a little bit drunk.

“This isn’t usually Enj’s scene,” Jehan interjected, “He doesn’t usually enter an establishment unless it has a guaranteed string quartet, at the very least.”

Éponine laughed, and ruffled Enjolras’ hair, which was a very bold move. Enjolras’ hair had never been ruffled before. “Bless your Saint-Michel heart. What do you play? Wait – let me guess...Harp?”

“Yes, actually,” said Enjolras.

“Oh, I bet you get minted doing corporate gigs... How many weddings want a pretty boy harpist? What a genius career move...” Éponine mused aloud.

“He doesn’t just play harp,” Courfeyrac added, “I haven’t found an instrument that Enjolras can’t play...” Courf snorted into his drink, eyes lost in memory. “Actually, you’re terrible at standard pop drumming, like horrifically bad,” he said, resting his head on Enjolras’ shoulder. “Sorry,” he added.

Jehan suddenly sat upright, looking around the room comically. “Where’s R?” they asked.

“Uh,” Éponine smirked and looked at Montparnasse, “Was that girl coming tonight?”

“No,” said Montparnasse fixing an eyebrow. “But I saw him talking to a different blonde girl by the side of the stage.”

“Oh,” said Éponine, looking to Jehan, “He’ll be busy, then.”

“The boy has more game than me and he isn’t even in a band,” Gueulemer complained, “That was the only reason I learned guitar.”

“Grantaire’s uglier than you, by far, and he still has more game than you,” Montparnasse said with an amused sneer.

“I should give being bisexual a try,” Guelulemer laughed.

“Not funny,” Éponine flicked her drummer’s upper arm. “Also, don’t be awful ‘Parnasse. You pride yourself on being the hottest in the band and you still don’t get laid as much as R.”

Montparnasse scowled and gestured rudely at his band mate.

~*~

When Grantaire arrived into the dressing room a while later, he appeared smudged, ruffled, and incredibly smug: the image of an utter rock star. Enjolras had to remind himself that Grantaire went to Saint-Michel’s, which made him, in at least some degree, an enormous classical music nerd.

He received a chorus of catcalls and cheers as he walked through and merely shot a wink before collapsing beside Éponine.

“You rocked it, as always,” he said, bumping shoulders with her. “Oh!” he looked at Enjolras and beamed, “Composer boy! I didn’t picture you as an avid Patron-Minette fan!”

“It’s Enjolras,” Enjolras said, ears tinged pink.

“We’re gonna get kicked out soon,” Éponine interrupted, “It’s nearly curfew. After party at ours?”

“I have class tomorrow,” Grantaire sighed.

“Go to bed then,” Éponine said, sounding bored, as she collected some leads and equipment. “Come on squad, we should get going.”

~*~

When they were outside, huddling under the lip of the building to shelter from rain, Courfeyrac passed his lighter around, minute flickers of deep orange lighting up the night.

“Are you coming to the after party?” Courf asked Enjolras, curled around his cigarette as if it would warm him up.

“I have 9am class,” Enjolras said, though he probably wouldn’t have gone anyway.

“That is such a Combeferre thing to say,” Jehan piped up, “You’ve been hanging out too much.”

“We are roommates,” Enjolras laughed, increasingly awkward without a matching cigarette in hand. “Anyway, he’s probably getting worried; I don’t usually stay out past midnight.”

“Oh, god!” Courfeyrac suddenly exclaimed, “I think he said he had something really important to discuss with you about Bach and maths or something.”

“Yeah that sounds like ‘Ferre,” Enjolras smiled, “I should head off. Nice show, everyone. See you around.”

Éponine pulled him into a hug because she was closest, and the boy sculpted from marble and gold weaved his way into the night, leaving the bubble of chatter far behind him.

A/N:

Hey yall this is a fic from my ao3 account, it’s a long one! If you want to see enjolras and grantaire bond over classical music then this is the fic for you! probs one of my favourite things I’ve ever written, so hope you enjoy! let me know what ya think! I’m songbird-musing on ao3 too so give me a shout!

[fliipclaw]

Longer Commissions Update

Hi everyone! So I’ve been reblogging my commissions post a lot recently, and that’s because I need £600 by September. For those that don’t know, I’m a university student going into my second year, and my student loan won’t cover my accommodation cost. The first payment is due in September, and I’m £660 short. While my family will be able to chip in, £600 is a lot, and it’s only the first of three payments, the others of which I’ll be similarly short on. I won’t be able to work this summer, and while I can try and get a job when I’m back in town for uni, it’s not guaranteed, and I wouldn’t be able to earn enough to cover the first payment before it’s due.

So! Commissions are, at this point in time, the only way I can earn any money to put towards that payment. I’m expanding my offers a little so that, alongside art commissions, I’m also offering writing and editing. Details can be found under the cut; everyone interested, please email me at beevilarts@gmail.com in order to discuss it. 

Even if you can’t commission me, I’d really appreciate it if you could circulate either this post or my other commissions post! 

ART COMMISSIONS

All art comes with full colour and shading and sketchy lineart.

level 1 | £20-30 (Approx. US$26-39)

These are simple, full-body single character portraits with either a plain or transparent background.

level 2 | £22-35 (Approx. $28-44)

These are simple, full or partial-body character art with a simple background. (Note: the price on the image is an error)

level 3 | £30-40 (Approx. US$39-58)

These are simple, full or partial-body character art featuring two characters and a simple background.

level 4 | £40+ (Approx. US$52+)

These are anything more complex than listed in the above three tiers; pieces featuring multiple characters or complex backgrounds.

As well as these four levels, you can also contact me to discuss a cheaper piece! If you only want a headshot or half-body character portrait, for example, or something along those lines, I’m absolutely willing to negotiate a price with you. 

WRITING COMMISSIONS

For writing commissions, I’m willing to work on both fanfiction and original fiction; however, I won’t write for fandoms I’m unfamiliar with, so you’re best off running a search of my blog to see if I’m at all familiar with what you’re requesting first (though, if you don’t see what you’re looking for, it’s worth shooting an email or even an ask/dm just to check). You can find some of my writing on my AO3, though it’s a little out of date. If you want some more recent examples of my writing, feel free to send a message, and I’ll happily provide you with samples.

short one-shot | £10-15 (Approx. US$13-19)

A short one-shot will be anywhere between 500-1000 words.

medium one-shot | £15-25 (Approx. US$19-32)

A one-shot from 1500-4000 words. 

long one-shot | £25-40 (Approx. US$32-51)

A one-shot between 5000-10000 words.  

multichapter | £30+ (Approx. US$38+)

A multichapter fic’s price varies on the number of chapters and the chapter lengths. These days my average chapters come out around 4k, but I can write longer/shorter chapters if requested. 

| scripts | £20+ (Approx. US$25+)

I have a little experience in writing scripts for audio dramas, so if you’re looking for a scriptwriter for a similar project, feel free to contact me! Here is the podcast I script for, and I’m willing to provide examples of the scripts to those who ask.

A note on writing commissions: while I am willing to include background romance, I’m not comfortable with writing anything focused on a romantic relationship, nor will I write anything sexual in nature. 

EDITING COMMISSIONS

I’ve a little experience with video and audio editing. If you provide footage, I can do video editing like this. Here’s an example of my audio editing. If you’d like to commission me to edit something for you, email me, as the price will vary depending on the length and complexity of what you’re asking me to edit. 

VA COMMISSIONS 

I also dabble in a little voice acting if you’re at all in need of that! Here’s a podfic read I did, and a podcast in which I narrate, for an example of my narration; and you can also check my CCC for auditions I’ve previously submitted. 

----

If you’re interested in anything here, please, feel free to shoot me an email beevilarts@gmail.com! You can also contact me via DM or ask here if you’d like, though I’m not guaranteed to respond as quickly. 

And again, even if you can’t commission me, spreading this post around would help a lot!

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Spider-Girls #1 Thoughts

FINALLY I’ve gotten to the series I was most anticipating!

 Just about the ONLY thing I was remotely interested in Spider-Geddon for was this mini-series.

My hype was strong because even though at the time I’d not finished RYV proper the prospect of seeing Mayday again, in her proper outfit (we’ll talk about that) and interacting with Annie was a fanservice dream, especially after Houser established that in the RYV universe (though this didn’t exactly make sense with the original RYV mini from Secret Wars) that Mayday was miscarried in this universe.

So how did this issue measure up in delivering on that enticing prospect?

Well in short it did a good job.

Let’s get the negatives out of the way.

Mayday’s costume is off model on both the cover and interior of the comic, albeit in different ways. On the cover she has webpits which she never had outside of her redesigned costume from Secret Wars: Spider Island and Web Warriors. In the interior the artist neglects to draw the red on her boots. At first I thought it was just because she was being drawn in motion or a mistake but no the art is consistent. Then I thought maybe in the prior issues of Spider-Geddon she also had no red on her boots but no, she did. So this artist just screwed up.

A nitpick? Perhaps but given how contentious the issue of Mayday wearing her true costume has been ever since Spider-Verse it’s worth talking about.

A more significant problem where Houser, much as I have liked her work in the past, really didn’t do her homework, was presenting Peter a(and arguably MJ) as wholly unaware of the Inheritors.

Why is this a problem. Because this version of Peter Parker literally debuted during Spider-Verse, specifically Spider-Verse #2, an anthology comic which was written with the explicit intention of teasing Renew Your Vows during Secret Wars. So he should absolutely know about the Inheritors. The only way this makes sense is if the RYV Peter of Secret Wars and the one of RYV the ongoing are in fact not one and the same. Which was a theory some held when Conway’s run began because of how much it didn’t line up with the Secret Wars mini-series.

Another little nitpick is the Vulture gang. They were pretty lame although I suppose that may have been the point and it echoes Spider-Geddon #1 where Miles fights the equally lame Vulturions.

A more significant problem which I grant you may be addressed in future issues is that Peter’s reaction to Mayday is simply the initial shock of her reveal and then he seems relatively non-chalant. Mary Jane, in a brief yet heartbreakingly brilliant scene, goes off on her own to be upset, but Peter doesn’t do anything like that or show signs of being that thrown for a loop from seeing his dead daughter alive and well.

Now look I’m going to be very harsh. Maybe extremely controversial here. Call me out if I am because I’ve never been through a tragedy like a miscarriage. In such a situation from what little I know, a mother being more upset than the father wouldn’t be unrealistic or unreasonable. Buuuuuuut...unless RYV Peter is way more different than the Peter we know and love from 616 seeing Mayday (let alone finding out her Dad is dead) should get under his skin and we should see that. In 616 after the Clone Saga there was more than one scene depicting Peter being upset about MJ’s miscarriage.

Another problem is that Mayday and Anya comment that it’s nice seeing the city so normal. I didn’t understand that exchange and can only summise that Houser is implying being with the |Web Warriors they haven’t seen a normal (for them) version NYC in awhile. This doesn’t really make sense because the Web Warriors isn’t Mayday’s day job, she still operates in her version of NYC regularly last we checked. Unless this series takes place REALLY soon after Web Warriors and Mayday has changed back to her old outfit and then just helped monitor the Inheritors leading into Spider-Geddon and little else. But that’s not the implication of the prior issues of this event.

Also, though this is more a problem with Spider-Geddon #1-2 I admit but i’m only just realizing it now, where was Anya until now? In Web Warriors she lives on Loomworld with Spidey-UK who is her (most recent) mentor. But she wasn’t around in any of the prior issues of this event until now. And for a girl who just lost her mentor (again) she seems nonchalant. Sure as a someone who at best is lukewarm to her character I don’t care about seeing her reaction. Heck I’d rather she be outright absent from this series and it be all about Annie and Mayday. But from a writing POV she should have a reaction to Billy’s death.

Finally Houser continues to insist Annie’s hyper Spider Sense was something her parents only recently learned of.

That’s about it for the negatives.

Pretty much everything else about the story was GREAT.

Do not mistake my above negatives for me disliking the story.

I didn’t.

I LOVED it.

Where it succeeded it really succeeded.

After the bitter disappointment of the last arc of RYV this was Houser very much back on form.

In a lot of ways this issue feels like RYV #24. But because it isn’t an issue of that series I can’t hold it against the story for again focussing on Annie. In this series Annie, Ayna and Mayday are the leads, Peter and MJ are the supporting characters and there is no pretense of that.

Now for sure, as is typical with most of Houser’s issues, Annie is more centre stage than everyone else, being the only character afforded an inner monologue. Now I’m actually okay with this for now because Spider-Girls seems to be to Spider-Geddon what Scarlet Spiders was to Spider-Verse (ironically including ‘siblings’ one of which sports the Spider-Ben outfit) and in that series every issue gave focus to a different lead. If that is the case then this was simply Annie’s turn and the next two issues will give the focus to Mayday and Anya. If that isn’t the case then...that might be a problem.

That all being said this wasn’t BAD focus for Annie. Throughout Houser’s run the main tension for Annie has been between wanting more independence and adult responsibility vs. her being able to live up to that. Case in point she does need her parents help in this story.

In that sense I suppose this issue was a little repetitive of themes we’ve hit on before. But no one said she finished that arc by RYV #23 nor that it should be over by that point anyway. She’s a kid so for her to get that independence and responsibility within like 10 issues would feel unrealistic and unearned. What’s nice about this issue is that the situation organically confers onto her that sense of independence, trust and responsibility. We just need to see if she’ll be able to handle it now.

We also get more expansion on her ‘unique’ Spider Sense. It’s a little inconsistent in this story because prior to this she got outright visions but the impression given at the start of this issue is that her latest vision is more vague. Now of course Mayday’s spider sense to a lesser extent was capable of seeing the future as was Kaine’s. I don’t mind her borrowing from the latter but given the similarities between Annie and Mayday already it was a problem; having such visions more frequently didn’t help that much. This issue does rectify this issue a little by connecting her more directly to the Web of Life and Destiny giving her Spider Sense a greater root in magic.

Love or hate that it’s certainly more unique. I typically dislike magic in Spider-Man, but given how RYV has ended and this may well be the last hurrah for the RYV characters there ain’t much to lose in going this direction.

On Mayday’s side (yeah heads up Anya is just kinda just there so I have little to say about her) Houser does little but what little she does goes a long way; more is less in this case.

Unlike Slott, Costa or Gage who either wrote Mayday out of character, generically or the way a human being wouoldn’t react, Houser seems to have enough knowledge of basic human emotion to get that you know, seeing her Dad alive and with a daughter who isn’t her would upset Mayday.

Rather than rearing to tear the Inheritors a new one like In Spider-Geddon #2 or Spider-Verse, Mayday here just vents a little too hard on the Vulture gang and is a little more distracted and quiet than she normally would be. It’s subtle. It’s in character. It’s well done.

I also appreciate that Mayday was able to one hit K.O. two Vultures at once. Mayday in that moment became the most bad ass character in the issue. It also created a nice subtle parallel with Annie. At the start of the issue Annie tells and shows off how being a hero for a long time has made her such a competent fighter. Mayday’s prowess in the previously mentioned moment shows that off too. Realistically Annie may well be a more competent and effective fighter than Mayday given how she’s been doing it for longer and has had extensive X-Men training. Although Mayday has had more direct training from Peter, the Avengers (including American Dream), Phil Urich and noticeably Elektra. I’d like for this angle to be explored going forward. Seeing how Mayday sigs where Annie zags is surely one of the most obviously interesting prospects of a series like this.

Apart from the great MJ scene where she is sad by seeing Mayday, the only other positive I have is the art.

Now I was less than thrilled by the post-time skip RYV art to be honest. I felt a lot of the time it felt sketchy, unfinished even.

Here Genolet, whilst not being s slam dunk super star Spidey artist like Ottley or Stegman, delivers smooth, clean, effective artwork that serves the story and has a dash of Phil Noto to it in my eyes.

So yes.

There are problems with this issue but so far it has a lot of greatness to it and I’m very interested to read on!

[mysticsparklewings]

Sweet Ohuhu Snail

This artwork is now available as a free Coloring Page!

____

Finally, some hints of new supplies I was mentioning a while ago have manifested into a piece of art. :D

This is sort of a follow-up to my Ohuhu Brush Marker Review, as back in October, Ohuhu released a 72 set of the brush markers, and naturally, I was very curious to see the 24 new colors for myself. (And I have a bit of a story about how this set arrived to me that I'll get into momentarily.)

Spoiler alert that my thoughts on the markers themselves as a product haven't changed; they're still really nice alcohol markers for the roughly $1 per marker price tag. I'd still love to see yet more colors and additional consumer features like open-stock markers, refills, replacement nibs, etc. But overall, as I said last time and I will continue to say, I really wish these had been around a few years ago when I was first getting into alcohol markers, despite the few shortcomings they have. Aside from color selection (which I'll address further later), they're an excellent beginner alcohol marker set if you want brush tips.

But before I get into the specifics of this set and the foreseeable future (as Ohuhu just recently announced another brush tip set on the horizon), I shall tell you the (long-ish) story of how I ended up with the 72 set in the first place:

Back in November, Ohuhu put a post up in their "Top Fan Group" on Facebook, which I joined on a whim after being recognized as a Top Fan a few times by that point. This post said the following:

Hi Ohuhu Friends, Ohuhu.com is going to open the SHOP function to several products soon, so you can buy the products directly on www.ohuhu.com then. Before the shopping cart is officially public to the customers, we need 3-5 volunteers to help us test this SHOP function. 🗒️What we need are some inputs regarding How is your experience with our website, and Is the purchase process smooth? What problems have you encountered while shopping on the website etc？(We will have the conversation by DM.) 🚨The tester should be based within the continental USA. As a thank you, we will give you a free set of markers, just let us know which pack do you want via DM.📷 Thank you! Put your hands up if you would like to help us with this in the comment zone! (We will randomly choose 3-5 person within a week.)

[For context, previously you could only purchase Ohuhu's products through Amazon.com] Me, being both the frugally minded and skeptical person that I am, saw the post and immediately latched on to the "free set of markers" mentioned. (My instinct said it was probably a choice from a pre-selected list of some kind.) I was curious and figured, based on what was said, that 1. I might not even get chosen, 2. Even if I did, surely they would explain the process to me and I could then gracefully bow out if it didn't sound right to me. And so I cautiously commented as instructed. Within a few days, I was contacted by a representative and I found out through communication with them that the way this would work is that us volunteers would place orders through the website for any product, let them know of any issues or feedback we had during the process, and then once the order was placed we would provide the representative with our order number and be refunded. Likewise, if all did indeed go according to plan, this sounded like a great way to get my hands on the new 72 brush marker set, which previously I had figured I wouldn't get for a while as my 48 set has been serving me very well since August with no issues. (And it kinda didn't make sense to me to turn around and order a new set that would give me 48 duplicate colors so quickly.) I've seen a LOT of horror stories about shopping online, I watch too many "drama community" videos on Youtube that often talk about sketchy websites and scams, and so throughout this entire process I was nervous, saving "receipts" (screenshots and the like to the uninformed) where I could, and generally expecting something, anything to go horribly wrong at any second. Despite Ohuhu being a fairly reputable company at this point and having only ever heard good things about their customer service. Still, Ohuhu has made enough of a name for themselves that I hoped they'd know better than to intentionally scam their customers. If word got out to the many YouTubers covering their products, they'd have a PR nightmare on their hands. (And I also had to remind myself that the art community as a whole is not the Youtube Makeup Community; generally speaking, the art community isn't as...well, dramatic. At least not when it comes to art supply companies and scamming costumers. I'm not saying it never happens, I'm just saying I don't think it happens nearly as often as when shiz goes down in the YMC.) Naturally, this means I had some questions I wanted to be crystal clear about before making any purchases of any kind. Namely, I specifically asked to make sure I was reading correctly that once the order was placed and I gave my order number that I would be receiving a refund, and if said refund would be just for the purchase price of the product ($69.99 in this case) or if it would include the shipping cost (about $5-$6 dollars) as well. The answers to which were yes and the refund would be for the total cost including shipping. I also wanted to know approximately how long it would take for the refund to go through. The answer was within 5 days. So everything up to this point seemed to check out. I was still skeptical (this is what the internet has done to me) but I was 80% sure it would be okay, and the payment would be through PayPal, so if something went wrong I could file a claim over there and provide my evidence and hopefully at least get the money back if nothing else. I'll also note that I did notice 1-2 minor bugs on the website while in the checkout process, which I informed the representative of as I was supposed to, but I honestly wouldn't have noticed them if I hadn't been trying my best to really test the website and live up to my "job" in this situation. If I had just gone through the checkout process as I normally would have with no hesitation, I wouldn't have seen the bugs at all. I was genuinely surprised by how smooth and polished the website experience was; I was expecting much buggy/glitchier, considering that they were asking for test volunteers. And the two bugs I did notice were pretty minor things that really don't break or ruin the shopping experience. So I went through with the purchase, gave the representative my order number, and hoped for the best. I immediately received an order confirmation email that told me I'd be able to track the shipment within 1-3 business days. The order was placed late on a Thursday night, so I figured I wouldn't be hearing anything else until Monday at the very earliest. (As here in the States, Saturday and Sunday usually don't count as "business days") Much to my surprise though, that Sunday the representative I'd previously spoken with reached out to me asking if I'd been able to check out the tracking feature yet. So I explained that I'd gotten the confirmation email but no tracking email yet, and that I also didn't see a way to enter my order number on the website to track the order if I (as I had) checked out as a guest. (It did appear if I had made an account that the order number would've been saved to my account and I could've potentially tracked it that way.) But again, I hadn't expected anything until Monday, so I wasn't too concerned anyway. Sure enough, the next morning I had my tracking email and everything seemed to be in order; it even baffled me by saying the shipment was expected to arrive the very next day. I thought I was surely reading something wrong or maybe it needed a little while to re-calculate or something, but I kept an eye on and it didn't change its mind. And low and behold, it was a little later in the day, but the markers were indeed delivered that Tuesday! I eagerly got them open and gave them a good once-over just to make sure everything seemed right at first glance, as I knew to swatch them all out and get a more in-depth look was going to take at least a few hours. But I was quite relieved; we'd made it this far with no hiccups, now I just needed the refund to come through and we'd be right as rain. Miraculously, two days later the representative reached out to me yet again to tell me that the refund had been sent. And wouldn't you know it; the official PayPal email was sitting in my inbox waiting to tell me so! So in the end, things turned out pretty great. Ohuhu got their website tested, and I got my markers without a hitch. It did seem a little weird to me, the whole premise, but I assume they budgeted for this in the same way a company might do giveaways or budget for advertising, maybe even like some companies do for PR packages to influencers. And, realistically, it does kind of make sense that the best way to test your online shop (and by extension, in this case, the refund process) would be to have actual customers do it. Either way, it worked out well for me, so I can't really complain.

Once the markers arrived to me, I was very happy to see that Ohuhu is now including a colorless blender in their sets, in addition to the 48 or 72 colors. A colorless blender is one of the things that I said last time would've been nice to have (though not a necessity as you could easily go out and purchase say a Copic, Prismacolor, or another brand of Colorless Blender to compensate) and personally I love that it's 48 + the CB or 72 + CB, instead of counting the colorless blender as one of the colors you get, which is what I've most commonly seen other brands do. It's a small detail, but for some reason, I can't seem to get over it.

One of the things I was most curious about in swatching though was that, I assume as a response to me and many others that mentioned we wanted them, in the marketing for the 72 set Ohuhu seemed to really be trying to push that there were more pastel colors.

After actually having and swatching the markers for myself, I'd say about 7-8 of the colors are what I'd call true pastels. There are some beautiful new colors (R13 Clematis, in particular, might be my favorite Ohuhu color now and I LOVE the Green Grays they added) but there weren't as many pastels as I was hoping for, and personally I was hoping for some more pale pinks/peaches that would work well for lighter skin tones. Maybe some yellows since I felt we were kind of lacking those too.

And originally, I was a little...disappointed isn't totally accurate, but it's the best word I have.

However! I'm inclined to be a little more forgiving as just last week, Ohuhu announced they'd be releasing a 24-color skin tone set, which (although I'm withholding major judgment until I have the markers in-hand just like last time) is looking to hopefully be some of the pale pinks and light skin tone colors, maybe even a few yellows, that I was hoping for. We'll have to wait to see the colors in person, but using their digital swatches as a [very] rough guideline, the new colors look like they could be pretty promising.

The only thing I'm a little disappointed about at this point is that 5 of the skin tone colors will be duplicates, but at the same time, after seeing which colors are duplicates, it kind of makes sense just in case someone wants to buy the skin tones and doesn't have the 48 or 72 set, which I'm sure does happen. Just like I'm sure people buy, for example, the skin tone sets from Copic or Winsor and Newton to supplement other sets.

Still, though, this continues to support the idea to me that Ohuhu is really trying to listen to what fans of the brand are asking for; People asked for brush nibs and took a little while but we got them, we asked for pastel colors and they at least tried to address that, and now we've asked for skin tones and it looks like they're going to address that, too.

Naturally, after all of the above, I had to make some art to give the markers a go beyond swatching and to talk about all of this with you, my lovely Sparklers.

So I ended up drawing this cute little snail inspired by a picture I saw over on Pinterest.

I don't know if he thinks he's going to eat that berry or if he's just smelling it, or maybe he thinks it's just pretty (I used the aforementioned R13 in the shading for the berries), but it makes me happy to look at all the same.

Originally I had planned to try and only use the new colors to really show them off, and I did use a fair amount of them, but I felt just a little too limited so I did open up to the full 72 set. But I did use all only my new markers and not the markers from the 48 set I already had, so...

Maybe it's still fair?

I also tried some texturing on the...mushroom? branch? rock? he's sitting on, and while I don't think it looks the best close-up, from further away I think it worked out pretty well.

Similarly to the crab I drew for the 48 marker set though, I wanted a more interesting background than just plain white. After some consideration, I decided my best option would be to mix my green and yellow PanPastels. So I did.

Unfortunately, I exposed a couple of very noticeable fingerprints doing that and I ended up getting pastel dust all over the drawing so my black lines got greyed out a bit.

I fixed the fingerprints by adding some intentional ones for the sake of balance and in the name of visual texture, and I fixed the lines by going back over most of them and a little post-editing after I scanned the drawing in.

Other than that, my observations about the Ohuhu markers remain the same as last time. They blend and layer really nicely (especially, as I've observed recently is the case with most alcohol markers, with thicker paper) and the colors they do provide are really vibrant and fun.

I do still hope the new skin tone colors live up, that yet even more colors are coming, and I'll repeat that I'd still love to seem them add consumer comforts of being able to buy individual markers, refill inks, and replacement nibs. But all of that may come in time, and even so, I think they're very recommendable for alcohol markers.

I'm also really happy with how my little snail turned out just as an art piece; this whole thing is just really really cute to me.

Now I just have to wait with bated breath for the USA launch (they've already launched in Canada) of those skin tone markers and hope they're not too expensive so I can get them right away :P

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Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings

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Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble | Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

[dotzines]

Artist spotlight: aaron!

✿ Commissions ✿ Ko-fi Tumblr ✿ Tumblr ✿ Instagram

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Introduce yourself I'm aaron and I'm a filipino artist in California! Tokyo Mew Mew was the first manga I ever owned, and my favorites are Ichigo and Lettuce!  I also love Kiyotaka Ishimaru from danganronpa, musicals, and the color yellow. When did you start drawing? Are you a digital or traditional artist? I've been drawing ever since I can remember! I used to draw random people, teen titans, or inuyasha. In high school, I got a hand-me-down wacom tablet from a friend and from there, I started creating my own ocs with backstories. I've been a digital artist since then. Do you use any traditional mediums? If so, which are your favorites? I use mechanical pencils and ballpoint pens. I really like using pink, blue, and purple highlighters to color in values, but recently I've been trying to collect actual artistic markers. I think they're calligraphy markers tbh, but they're double sided and they give me more colors so idc XD Why do you prefer traditional over digital? (or viceversa) I really like the accessibility of traditional- I can draw wherever I want, as long as I have a pen and paper. But for showing off my work, I'd much rather it be digital. Digital gives me access to so many colors and I can zoom in to create more details. It's also a lot cleaner than taking a picture with my shaky phone quality. What do you think is the most challenging part about being a traditional/digital artist? It's difficult for me to choose the correct colors. When I only did traditional, I'd only color in greyscale because that's what mangas did and that's all the colors I had. I can't really work with more than 3-5 tones/colors or else it'll get scared it'll look too busy. I always have to filter my colors to give them a little more life, because the first ones I choose are usually washed out. What inspires your pieces? I draw my ocs a lot! Drawing them in different ways and scenarios helps me solidify their designs and personalities. I will often have phases where I'll draw a LOT of my current favorite oc. Explain your "everyday" drawing process I'll either draw one single character in a flowy pose, or two characters interacting/posing together. I'll digitally sketch something out and keep erasing and re-drawing the lines on the same layer until I have my line art. I block out colors with a binary pen so that my basic color palette looks good and then select each color so I can put detail in it. Depending on how much energy I have, I'll do simple shading or I'll keep the lineart layer a little sketchy and just color over it for a lineless piece. I don't have a lot of practice with lineless because it takes a lot out of me, but sometimes I get really into it

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Do you have an artist you admire (or more than one)?

https://www.instagram.com/treindraws/ (lines/ colors)

https://www.instagram.com/pimikyuu/ (THICK lines, very cartoony)

https://www.instagram.com/thronekin/ (plush shaped characters, cute blush)

https://www.instagram.com/robobogart/ (designs)

https://www.instagram.com/fukashi_gimmick/ (recently followed, bright colors. interesting shapes/flow)

Is there an artwork you are most proud of? Why?

https://ubetaro.tumblr.com/post/182234099603/ubetaro-oh-mom-this-might-be-as-far-as-i-go

I really like this one because it's lineless and I put a lot of effort into the hair and giving it different colors

https://ubetaro.tumblr.com/post/181532773553/1shimaru-danganronpa-secretsanta

I am also proud of this one because it's TWO full body characters with a background and soft lighting. It took a lot of effort out of me but it was really satisfying to finish!"

Do you listen to music (or tv shows/films/anything else) when drawing? Yes! I listen to musicals, chill beats, or 80's/90's music. I can't hear what I'm thinking when the music is too jumpy and fun. I also get distracted when there are people talking, so I can't listen to films or letsplays when I draw

Johnny Balik - Honey khai dreams - through and through NIKI - I Like U Forrest. – Your Soul Lemon Boy - Cavetown Lyin' Eyes- Eagles Billy Joel- For The Longest Time Bee Gees - How Deep Is Your Love

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What makes art interesting for you? I like making things! I like how my brain comes up with things and i can make those things become a reality through my art. What do you do when art block strikes? If I want to draw, and my art is looking Ugly, then I draw big and messy. Whatever comes to mind naturally, I'll just put it down. I'll draw random people, or big anime eyes. I'll redraw something with a premade design so I don't have to think of the designs myself, or I'll draw someone in a spine-breaking pose and over-exaggerate the features. What’s the most valuable art advice you’ve ever received?

Experience things! When you experience things, it gives you a personal connection to use in your art.