#Anyways... not only was I able to draw a conceptual design of how I would look as a Koopa Troopa this past weekend...

[stardestroyer81]

Everyone knows that I usually depict myself as a sheep, but in light of recent hyperfixations... can I interest you in a Micah Koopa? 💙✨

[priest-of-the-fortunate]

OC infodump: Havens

So I never talked about this but lemme introduce you guys to the Havens :)

Basically there was this period of time where I could really only cope by listening to music I like. And since I have such a strong connection to the songs I love I thought- well, why not make these into coherent thoughts? So I made characters out of them. Big infodump under the cut ><

I call them "Havens". They are created when a specific type of memory or bond is made with a song, whether it be good or bad. They come with a small dimension-like space and a being. A Haven is both its place and its person. Each Haven is marked with a different symbol that indicates what type of bond or memory they have with their Holder. (Symbol designs are a wip) A Holder is a person who creates Havens- for example, I would be the Holder of my Havens. So far, there are four types of bonds. Favored, favored but bittersweet, not favored, and inexplicable. (Though, there is only one Haven in the inexplicable category so far.)

Havens, either good or bad memory, are supposed to be safe spaces that their Holder can go to when needed. What the theme of a Haven is is dictated by the Holder's personal perception of a song. If it is related to the song's source or not, that is what the Haven will look like. For both area and being. (For example, I have a Haven of the song Waterfall from Undertale. Their area is very similar to the Waterfall area in the game since that is what I relate the song to.)

A Haven is able to take form as its being or as its area- if that makes sense. They can either be their person or their place, basically.

How a Haven's area works is up to you. You don't need logic, for it's to help comfort you. Like I have a Haven that is underwater, but y'know- since we can't breathe underwater I conceptualized it to where I could.

Now, onto the people. Each Haven has its own distinct personality and way of helping their Holder cope. (For me, I usually like to sleep so a lot of my Havens help me fall asleep.) Their names are not dictated by anything, and you can name your Haven whatever you please. Their names work like this: "Haven (Name)". Haven is in their name to indicate what they are, and their name helps differentiate who is who. They also have titles. It is usually dictated by what their area is like or what their memory is attached to.

They are able to leave their area and visit other Havens if they'd like, but they instantly return if their Holder needs. I haven't conceptualized a way that multiple Havens could speak with their Holder at once quite yet. I'll get there soon, though.

Now I think I've explained enough to help you understand..? If not then feel free to ask questions, I love this concept dearly and will explain everything as many times as needed (with pleasure).

Anyways, here's all of them so far- in a list. I'll post descriptions or drawings if anyone wants to hear more about them. In order is their name and title, pronouns, song, and bond

(will be updated as more are formed!!)

Noah, The Haven of Forests - he/him - Heavens Tower by Naoshi Mizuta - favored

Abnus, The Haven of Lanterns - they/them - espial by Oliver Buckland - favored

Galene, The Haven of Sands - it/he - Eternal Hope by desert sand feels warm at night - favored

Endri, The Haven of Perception - he/they/it - Torvus Catacombs by Kenji Yamamoto - favored

Genesis, The Haven of Celestial Being - he/they - galva by Oliver Buckland - favored

Perpetua, The Haven of Production - they/them - Shop Menu by Saster - favored

Harbour, The Haven of Tides - they/them - Underwater Passage by Naoto Kubo, Shiho Fujii, and Koji Kondo - favored

Squall, The Haven of Zephyr - she/they/he - Uwa!! So Temperate♫ by Toby Fox - favored

Marrovil, The Haven of Bioluminescence - they/he - Hadopelagic Pressure by DM DOKURO - favored

Cascade, The Haven of Streams - they/he - Waterfall by Toby Fox - favored, but bittersweet

Hale, The Haven of Exhaustion - they/he - the insides of tears by Oliver Buckland - favored, but bittersweet

Tavarious, The Haven of Plumage - it/they/he - calc acerbia by Oliver Buckland - not favored

Minerva, The Haven of Neon - she/her - Relax by DanlyDaMusician - not favored

Vega, The Haven of Sinking - he/him - Break it off by PinkPantheress - not favored

Ottoline, The Haven of Malaise - he/it - Where Dreams Die by Leon Riskin - not favored

Rune, The Haven of Disorientation - he/him - Heretic by Oli XL - inexplicable

Thank you for reading <3

[supertrainstationh]

Well, here we go.

Y'all don't need to know when I wake up.

Anyway, its a clock. I have no interest in causing anyone to be excited about this so as to validate my purchase.

It's interesting to experience a physicalized piece of Nintendo interface in operating this clock, branding aside, it certainly feels VERY Nintendo.

My first morning I ironically woke up 10 minutes in advance, so I can't say for sure how the true wakeup experience is yet.

But I expect it will be effective.

Haven't set up all the networked and so on features yet, I'll mess with that tomorrow morning.

If you want an alarm clock, don't get this thing, much more practical and affordable solutions exist.

If you watch the reveal trailers and online impression videos of the product in use, and want a network Nintendo alarm clock with some interesting conceptual/design history more than you want 100 dollars, I don't expect you'll go wrong with this.

My impression of the fact that it exists in the first place…

there IS an actual market for higher end bedside sleep devices that incorporate alarm clock functions, of which Alarmo is one of the relatively cheaper options,

but the context as to why Nintendo would even BOTHER designing this let alone marketing it for this price…

I think Japan has a bit more of a cultural acceptance of stand alone single use devices made to perform a single job with a high level of proficiency, which would explain the continued existence of things like stand-alone digital word processors, when in the US, a laptop like device with no functionality other than word processing is an EXTREME niche interest being mass produced for the western market by only one boutique company at the moment.

I have a bit of an interest in horology and am willing to buy into the "story" of how this device came about, and how they came upon the solutions and compromises that resulted in the finished product, but I really wouldn't even pretend to argue that the average Nintendo fan would or should be interested.

The brightness of the screen does an impressive job of being visible and present in the room in displaying the current time, without being a distraction, whether during activities, or at night during sleep. Though the device design is striking, it doesn't draw a massive amount of attention any more so than any other bedside clock which would display the time at all moments.

My biggest complaint so far is that there dosen't seem to be a setting to have the alarm go off at a different time, or not at all, on the weekends, but the fact that it wants to know the actual calendar day of the year signals that this could come down the line with an update. That being said, I've done very little exploration outside of basic setup, this feature may have simply gone undiscovered by me.

I feel like I got my money's worth because I'm not contextualizing it in the sense of "how much entertainment will I get", as with a similarly priced Nintendo gaming product, but as a device I expect to use indefinitely. If sales numbers Nintendo down and they drop the price, I wouldn't mind more people being able to get this for less money, though I would be concerned that they would be discouraged from supporting it with additional themes, which have a lot of potential to add long term value to the machine.

I am concerned as to how long it will run if the power were to go out, one problem my smartphone doesn't have in terms of being able to wake me up. I haven't tried simulating a power loss yet to test it, though I know from the warnings it contains SOME kind of battery, but this absolutely intended to operate with persistent plug-in power.

My final score is: ITS A NINTENDO DESIGNED ALARM CLOCK out of 10.

[kiru-miru]

Attempting to make a board game....

So…. I tried to prototype my first board game! Keyword tried.

I’ve decided to title it River. Here’s a basic description of it. In the game each player will have pieces. I like to think of them as wolves and tigers. The goal is to get all of your pieces home to the other side of the board. In order to do so you must cross a river on river logs (hence the title river). If wolves and tigers are on the same log they will try to fight and push each other off. You’ll need to use cards to take a turn, battle and to move your pieces.

Design Process

There were three main phases that my game went through in the design process.

In the first phase the game was conceptualized and designed together with one of my classmates. We had about an hour to design and do a play test of it. In phase 2 I play tested the game with my brother and then changed the game based on his feedback. In the third phase and final phase I brought the game to class and play tested it with another classmate. After that play test I changed the rules yet again to what it is currently.

I will try to describe the rules when talking about the different phases so you can get a general sense of how to play and what changed through the iterations.

First Phase

I was paired up with a classmate to design a board game.

We first started off with the backgammon board. But, instead of using dice to determine how many spaces to move, we decided to use playing cards. We also wanted there to be a battling system where it's not guaranteed that you'll be able to take a turn. To do so you would draw 4 cards and then play 2. Whoever has the higher cards can then use the remaining two cards to move their pieces. If two pieces are on the same spot then you would draw a card and see who has the higher card.

While playtesting we decided to add joker cards that would automatically beat every other card (automatically win the turn or battle). This was added to make things more interesting, instead of only having number cards and adding up the totals. We also changed the battle so that instead of drawing just one card you would draw as many cards as you had pieces in the battle. We did this so that the player with less pieces could have a chance of knocking off the player with more pieces.

Below is what the board looked like while we were playtesting the game.

After that we were left to design the game by ourselves. I remember being pretty lost on how to change the game. I wanted more feedback so I would know which direction to take it. As a result I didn't really change the game that much. This is my mistake.

Second Phase

I asked (more like forced) my brother to playtest the game with me.

His feedback was that I needed a theme. He said a theme would make the board game more interesting then using the backgammon board. He also came up with the suggestion to draw 21 cards each and then use 3 cards at a time.

It was at this point that I wasted way too much time trying to design a different game with a theme of jousting. That game was eventually scrapped (after a playtest with my brother haha). That whole process could be a whole other post so I'll skip it here. Again, this is another mistake that I made. I should not have tried to make a Jousting game and wasted time.

So anyways, after that sidetrack I worked on my game (the one in this post) again. I took my brothers advice of adding a theme. I made a board in like a minute or two using Microsoft paint. I know we're not supposed to really put too much art into the paper prototype, but making the board made me feel much better. I was also able to get rid of the spots on the left that I didn't really like, and it also inspired my title. I did not take his advice of using 21 cards each.

Another change that I made was to the number of pieces. I found that with the 10 pieces we used originally, the game was taking way too long as it was hard to get all of the pieces to the other side. So, I reduced it down to 6.

I didn't make any other rule changes because again, I got sidetracked with the failed jousting game. Even though it was wasted time I did get to spend time with my brother so that was a plus! He's pretty creative and smart.

Below is what the board looked like during the third playtest. This is basically what the board looked like at the end of the second phase and after taking his feedback into consideration (ignoring the red checker pieces).

Third Phase

So, I brought my game to class and was paired with a different classmate for play testing.

While we were playing I had gotten lucky and had a hand of really high cards. As a result I won the turn and was also able to move my pieces very far. This happened for about 3 rounds as I kept getting high cards.

My classmate jokingly said that the game was rigged because of how cards are used to take the turn. They also said that the board was too small so we added checker pieces while playing to expand the board. After this I started to think about how I could change the rules in order to address what he said.

I ultimately decided to completely change how the game uses cards. Before the game was played with a deck of Aces to 10s. I then changed it so now the game used two decks, one for the turns and one for movement. The movement cards only go up to 4 while the turn cards are high. I did it this way to limit movement so you have to pick which piece to move more carefully. Which means the board wouldn’t seem as small. I made it so that instead of just playing 2 cards to take a turn, you could place between 1 and 3. Instead of drawing a card to battle you would need to use the cards already in your hand. I thought this would help fix being unlucky because you could play more cards to win the turn. I also in general just thought it would be more interesting to have two kinds of cards.

I think making this change adds more dynamics to the game like being able to bluff during the turn . For example pretending you have a joker or a really high card making the other player place more cards. Having to battle with the cards in your hand also means that you cant play too many cards or you’ll lose the battle.

I’m not sure…. :( I tried.

This is what the board looks like after making my final changes using feedback from my classmate.

After all that, I was left with my game River.

The Mechanics of River

In its current state, my game has a few mechanics with the core one being race. This one’s pretty self explanatory since the goal of the game is to get all of ur pieces to the other side of the board. It’s a race against your opponent to achieve that goal.

There’s also the mechanic of tracking movement since there is only one path across the river.

Okay, if I’m going to be honest I just looked at the boardgamegeek mechanics for backgammon while writing this since my game was based off of that in the first place. But! There is something unique I swear! That unique thing is that I believe another mechanic of my game is hand management.

Now, when you look up this mechanic on boardgamegeek its going to say that the cards need to be played in order or in a sequence. Then your going to look at my game and see that it doesn't really involve that. I’m well aware of this. The reason I say that hand management is a mechanic of the game is because of how taking a turn and battling rely on the use of the same red cards. So, if you played too many red cards while trying to take a turn and you don’t have any left to battle, then you’re going to lose your piece. This is the hand management that I’m referring too.

Conclusion

I’m not too sure how to feel about my game. If I’m being honest I think it’s really bad. But, I guess that’s how it is considering it’s the first actual game I’m prototyping. At least I made (or tried) to make something.

River definitely needs like 20 more play tests and 20 more iterations before I consider it decent or good. In fact I think I made a big mistake of not changing the rules enough between play tests. I also wonder how starting with just one game mechanic in the beginning would have worked out.

I will say though that I like each iteration more than the last. So, maybe in the future after many more iterations I will learn to like my game River.

Thanks for reading till the end.

[adobe-outdesign]

For the pokemon reviews would you be able to do the two sheep lines? Mareep line and wooloo line? :0

(Note: I'm going to split this ask across two days, as I have a lot to say about both lines and this is an easier way to handle things.)

Mareep is an anagram of ampere and I think that's wonderful, and I think the design's wonderful too.

While conceptually it's not much more than just an electric-type sheep (maybe with some static electricity influence), I love how interesting and different the design is; it's instantly recognizable as a sheep, yet also looks nothing like a sheep, with blue wool-less skin, cream-colored wool, striking black-and-yellow ears, and even a long tail with a glowing orb at the end of it.

I also like the markings because they're very striking, and do a good job of evoking electricity without literally shoving lightning bolts all over it (not that I'm saying that's a bad thing to do, just that it's nice to have variety).

My only complaint--and this is a nitpick--is that the orb probably could've just been blue or yellow instead of making it orange. That's it, though; this is otherwise a pretty perfect sheep.

Flaaffy almost falls into the dreaded middle evo trap of being an in-between and nothing else, but I actually think it avoids it. For one, the pink color differentiates it from both Mareep and Ampharos, and two, the drastic change not only means it needs to transition between the two, but it's also the only member of the line (ignoring the mega) that's bipedal and has wool, giving it its own unique flair by proxy.

The only thing I don't love about Flaaffy are the colors. Mareep is blue with black and yellow stripes, and Ampharos is yellow with black stripes. However, Flaaffy, for some reason, is all pink with no yellow on it. Not only does the yellow help convey the electric typing, but it was what helps connect the first and third stages, so to have the middle stage have no yellow is just weird. I'm not saying it can't be pink; just keep the body pink and make the stripes between the black yellow. I also would've preferred to see Mareep's cream-colored wool here, as the greyish color just looks kind of dirty. Other than that, however, Flaaffy does its job very well.

I know some people don't like how a sheep becomes whatever the hell this is, but honestly, I've always loved Ampharos. It's just personal preference, but having it become something other than just a regular sheep is just inherently more interesting to me, and it still does a good job at visually connecting to the others thanks to the similar body shape and the stripes.

I really like how carefully designed the stripes are especially; lots of Pokemon have stripes, but the way they just line the ears, tail, and neck creates such a nice pattern that really helps draw the eye through the design. The orbs also add a nice pop of additional color as well, and the underbelly keeps it from being too solid and plain below.

The only thing that I don't like here is that the limbs feel very misshapen. Those weird flipper-like arms are way less detailed than the rest of the body, and the single claws on the feet bother me as well. Flaaffy technically has this going on as well, but the arms were much shorter and the nails covering more of the foot there, so it wasn't as noticeable. I would've liked to see the line maybe retain Mareep's cloven hooves for the feet, and at least have proper elbows in their arms. Also, the sideways anime mouth; why isn't it under the head like it is on Flaaffy? However, I will acknowledge that this is personal preference and that most people wouldn't notice or care about this anyway.

Anyway, the point is that overall, Ampharos is great and I love it dearly.

What I don't love dearly is Ampharos' mega. I know some people like it because the ridiculous Finn-style hair is hilarious, and I get that, but I just feel like the design and concept just aren't that strong.

Like first, some parts of the design feel like they were changed just for the sake of changing them. Like I get making the claws black--it balance the colors--but the underbelly has changed Because, and the ears have changed Because. It honestly feels like the artist wasn't sure how to make it look different than regular Ampharos, so they just started changing elements for the sake of changing them. Same thing goes with the random orbs scattered throughout the tail.

And the wool... doesn't really work for me. The thing is that the line gets less wool over time because it loses wool and develops bald spots as it stores more and more electricity. Having it suddenly regain the wool the entire line slowly loses just feel like the concept regresses, rather than continues. If you were going to add wool, why not make it black? Black sheep are a thing, and it would compliment the stripes beautifully instead of off-balancing the design with too much white.

I think it might be going for an Eastern dragon-type thing, due to the fur and orbs, not to mention the new dragon typing it has (due to a pun in its Japanese name), but honestly, it doesn't really read to me that way at all, and I'm really only guessing that that's the concept.

It's a little hard to say what would work better without actually sketching, but here's some spitballing: lean more into the sheep thing in ways other than wool; I could easily see it sporting a lovely pair of striped ram horns, for example. Add more stripes. Its tail functions like a lighthouse (hence the name); maybe make it bigger and lean into that more. Give it black cloven hooves to match the stripes. Give it a few more vaguely dragon-like elements; maybe the wool runs down the back and on the tail tip, if you wanted to invoke an Eastern dragon more.

And if you really wanted to add wool that much, my suggestion: put it around the torso instead. Why? Because after sheering a sheep, you put a sweater on it.

At the end of the day, it's not like this is a terrible design or anything. But like I said, it just feels like it doesn't add anything to the line, and that elements were changed up in ways where they don't look better, they just look Different. Arbitrary is the key word all around here.

(Also, why is it skinnier than the original? I'm not the only one who sees that, right?)

But anyway, as a whole, I do love the original line quite a bit; the designs are striking, the progression from sheep to some kind of vaguely sheepish monster is an interesting direction for the line, and the designs are simple and easy to remember. The only thing I don't love is the mega, and even then, it's not terrible, it just doesn't add much. Overall, these are the electric sheep that dreams are made of.

[jingabitch]

Adhesion ch.1

SUMMARY: As a new stylist for Blackpink, you need to focus on doing your job well. If only your assigned idol weren’t so distracting.

PAIRING: dom!Jennie x sub!reader

GENRE: slow burn smut, idol AU

WARNINGS: D/s relationship dynamics and negotiation, sexual tension, smut in later chapters

WORD COUNT: 7.3k

A/N: major thanks to @mingyuistall​ for helping me go over this! 

series index

You swore under your breath as you struggled with the giant tote bag over your shoulder and the little suitcase you were rolling behind you. Being the new assistant stylist meant paying your dues and being put through your paces, and you understood that when you took the job, but this really sucked. This morning, you’d had to pick up all the clothes for the shoot from the various fashion houses and find your own way to the studio with all your things in tow.

Oh, and you had to get there earlier than everyone else, which was why you were carrying everything up the subway stairs before the sun had even risen.

It was all worth it, though, you reminded yourself as you almost rolled your suitcase over your foot, because you were working with Blackpink today, and it was going to kickstart your career in fashion.

Besides, you thought, trying to stay optimistic, at least since they were A-list celebrities you weren’t getting to the fashion houses and finding out that they’d already decided to loan out the pieces to someone else, which you’d definitely heard your less fortunate classmates complaining about.

Oh, and there might be the little issue of your giant celebrity crush on Jennie, but you were determined to stay professional anyway. This was your first time meeting the girls after the head stylist had deemed you ready for actual styling, and you needed to make a good impression.

Once the security let you into the building – and okay, you did enjoy the thrill of getting past security – you started setting up, laying all the makeup out and hanging up the clothes. The other assistants came in while you were doing that and started helping, and by the time the head stylist Jiyoon entered the prep area, everything was ready.

She barely looked at you as she tossed her handbag on the loveseat. You held back a cringe – that was a lambskin Chanel classic flap, infamously delicate and worth thousands of dollars. Then again, she’d probably gotten it for free and had dozens of others just like it. “Unnie, good morning,” you greeted, and it was only then that she turned to nod at you.

You shared a nervous glance with your fellow assistant stylists. Each of you was assigned to one member – although Jiyoon conceptualized everything, it was rare that she actually helped them get ready, and was mostly there just to supervise. She also had a temper that was known throughout the industry, but was one of the biggest names out there, so everyone wanted to work with her anyway. Honestly, you were lucky to have gotten this job.

When the girls filed in, still looking kind of sleepy and rumpled, you had to remind yourself again that you were a professional, and squealing and asking for autographs was not part of the job scope. Unlike Jiyoon, they zeroed in on you immediately, looking curious, and you almost squeaked nervously as you felt the full weight of their attention.

“Good morning,” you said, before clearing your throat. “I’m L/n Y/n, the new assistant stylist.” You bowed deeply, your hands folded in front of you politely.

As nervous as you’d been, it appeared that the members didn’t have the same concerns, since they just started getting ready. You looked over at the other assistant stylists, but they were already discussing outfits with their designated members, so you approached Jennie slightly hesitantly.

“Um, unnie, I have two possible options for you,” you started, biting your lip. As nervous as you were at the beginning, once you started discussing the looks and makeup, you were in the zone, and it all melted away. You didn’t even fully realize how easily it was coming to you as you compared the two outfits, pulling out a bunch of accessories from the giant box and letting her look at the completed styles.

Jennie, however, noticed the dichotomy between your earlier attitude and the way you were talking to her now, and it intrigued her. You were cute too, and she would have thought so even if you hadn’t made such an impression, but damn. It made her wonder what you were like normally. Were you shy and quiet, or were you passionate?

She was still watching you when she sat down in the chair for you to do her makeup. Again, there was that second of nervousness as you chewed your lip and your eyes flickered over her face, but then you turned to the table where all the products were laid out the way you liked, and it faded away again, almost like it had never been.

While you worked on her makeup, Jennie watched you. It may sound strange that you didn’t notice her intense gaze since you were working on her face, but you were so focused on what you were doing that it wasn’t until you were drawing back to look at your finished product that you realized, and instantly, you’d turned back into a sputtering mess, almost dropping the eyeliner from your suddenly nerveless fingers.

When you turned away to fuss over the makeup, Jennie let her lips curve up in a smirk. Her new stylist was ever so cute, and she couldn’t wait to see just how good you’d be for her.

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

To Jennie’s amusement and your horror, you didn’t grow out of the awkwardness. In fact, the more time you spent around her, the worse it became, until just a glance from her turned you into a bumbling mess. The only saving grace was that it didn’t much affect your work. It was almost like you were in a different headspace while dressing Jennie and getting her ready for her various photo shoots and performances, but once you were done…

God.

You couldn’t help it – it was like Jennie had cast a spell on you. As hard as you tried to deny it, your celebrity crush was getting worse, and you were the butt of much good-natured teasing from the other assistant stylists. She was just so pretty and charismatic, and having her full attention on you – all right, even her glancing in your direction – was enough to make your cheeks heat.

There was no way Jennie didn’t know of the effect she had on you, when you could barely stop yourself from stammering in her presence, but she was nice enough to not comment on it, so there was that.

Tonight, you were tasked with returning the clothes the girls had worn for their shoot, so when everyone had left, you packed everything up and headed for the subway station.

“Oh look, isn’t that Y/n?” Lisa, who was sitting next to the window looking out on the sidewalk, jabbed her finger against the glass.

Jennie, who was sitting on the other side, immediately unfastened her seat belt and got out of her seat to look, crushing Lisa against the side of the car in the process.

As Lisa squawked in indignation, Chaeyoung and Jisoo snickered. “You certainly aren’t interested in your stylist, Jennie-yah,” Jisoo said mockingly from the back.

“Yeah, unnie, this is a totally normal reaction for anyone to have,” Chaeyoung chimed in.

Sulking, Jennie returned to her seat. “I’m not interested in her,” she protested. “I just think it’s cute how nervous she gets around me.”

Lisa muttered something under her breath, and Jennie looked at her askance. “What was that?” she asked suspiciously.

“I said, I think it’s cute how you’re using ‘cute’ as a euphemism for ‘wet’!” Lisa enunciated overly clearly now, causing Chaeyoung and Jisoo to collapse against each other in fits of giggles. Jennie folded her arms across her chest and sulked.

“I should have been a solo artist,” she muttered petulantly, causing her other members to burst into fresh peals of laughter.

“Aw, don’t be like that, unnie,” Chaeyoung finally said once she’d sobered up. “Y/n’s super cute, it’s only normal that you’d be interested in her.”

Flushing, Jennie sank deeper into her seat and tucked her chin into her chest, refusing to look at anyone. She’d only just come to terms with her sexuality, and definitely wasn’t ready for you. Your nervous lip-biting and the way she’d catch you staring at her almost reverently when you thought she wasn’t looking were stirring up deep urges she hadn’t known she had. She wanted to ruin you, have you panting, splayed out and begging beneath her. Even the thought of it made her want to squirm in her seat.

What would it be like to have you on your knees for her?

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

The next time you saw Jennie, it was the dead of night.

Well, that might be an exaggeration, but five am was certainly not a pleasant time to be at a TV studio, and you’d had to wake up even earlier to be the first one there to set up with all the things. Thankfully, you’d been able to collect the clothes last night.

Dressed comfortably in a warm plaid shirt and leggings, your hair gathered into a haphazard bun on top of your head and glasses perched on your nose, you hardly looked like a professional stylist, but at five in the morning, you honestly didn’t give a rat’s ass.

You were halfway through your coffee when the girls filed in, looking equally out of it. There was no time for slowly waking up, though, because you had to work fast if you were to get them to the stage in time. At least Jennie could nap while you were working on her makeup. You didn’t mind, since her eyes being closed made it easier for you to work on her makeup.

You shook her awake before you applied her lipstick because she had to open her mouth slightly, and she blinked sleepily at you before yawning. “Want coffee,” she mumbled, and you felt your heart squeeze from how cute she was. Even half-asleep, however, she was magnetic and compelling, and you found yourself reacting immediately to obey her.

Reaching for your own cup, which you’d set on the dresser, you offered it to her. “Do you want some of mine?” you asked, holding it out to her. “I drank some already, but you can have the rest of it if you want…”

Without a word, she accepted the proffered cup, and you continued helping her get ready, running a flat iron through her hair after finishing her makeup. You had to touch up her lipstick again before she went onstage because some of it was smeared on the plastic lid of your cup.

At the time, neither of you thought much about it, since you’d both been sleepy and otherwise occupied, but later, it wouldn’t leave your minds.

Jennie went over that moment over and over again, where she’d told you what she wanted and you’d leapt to get it for her. There was no shortage of people who would bend to her every whim, of course – it was one of the perks of being an idol. But when you did it so naturally, it made heat stir in her. You obeyed so readily, like there was nothing you wouldn’t do for her, and she wanted to test the limits of that obedience in a way she’d never experienced before.

It was almost scary, and she didn’t quite know what to make of it. She didn’t think this was a crush – she’d had those before, and it had always involved a lot of dreaming about cute kisses and cuddles. This… was different, and she didn’t know if it was a good thing. Surely it wasn’t normal or healthy to think about bending someone else to your will?

You, on the other hand, couldn’t stop puzzling over the same thing. Jennie had a way of making you act strangely. First the way she was able to fluster you just by being around you, and now this? Despite how you’d been acting around her, you weren’t generally a docile person, and it was weird that she was able to bring out this side of you that you’d never even known existed.

After thinking about it more on one of your free days where Jennie didn’t have any official appearances, you figured it was probably just that she was a famous idol and your boss, so of course you wanted to do whatever it took to please her. It was only natural, being nice to the boss, right? The satisfaction you felt at doing what she said was just because you knew you were doing a good job at being her stylist, that’s all.

Satisfied that you’d figured it out, you returned to writing the article you’d been working on. Being an assistant stylist didn’t pay much, and even though you were living in a tiny studio apartment you needed the additional income from freelancing to pay the bills. It ate up most of your spare time, but then again, with the irregular hours you kept as a stylist, it wasn’t like you had much of a social life anyway.

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

Really, you thought as you waited for Jennie to get out of the changing area, Jiyoon might be a genius and visionary, but you really wished she would spare a thought for practical considerations. The boots she’d insisted on dressing Jennie in were stylish and all, but had the most ridiculously complex laces that you’d ever seen, and you’d literally had to practice tying them last night.

They were currently sitting innocuously by the screen, and you glared at them. It was going to take ages for Jennie to get them on, and you didn’t have that kind of time. Why did they have to be so gorgeous? As much as you wanted to, you couldn’t hate them – they were truly a work of art.

When Jennie came out from behind the screen, you bit your lip hard to keep any noises from escaping. Stay professional, you ordered yourself. It was hard, though, when she was in a white ruffled crop top and short shorts that showed off so much skin.

Clearing your throat awkwardly, you picked up the boots. “Here,” you said, handing them to her.

Jennie took them from you to sit down on the couch, bending over to tie the laces. She struggled with them – especially since Jiyoon had chosen a particularly intricate knot – and looked up at you for help.

“No, it goes over and then under, and you have to loop the other side through—” Your explanations fizzled out when Jennie started looking visibly annoyed. “Here, I’ll help,” you said, kneeling in front of her to tie them, thankful that you’d practiced last night so that you wouldn’t embarrass yourself by fiddling with them in front of her.

“Wait, I want to see how you do it,” Jennie interrupted, standing to move to the mirror. You followed her then knelt again, narrating what you were doing to her.

Despite her original intention of learning the complex knot you were performing with the boots, the moment Jennie looked down and saw you kneeling in front of her, all rationality fled her brain. You continued blathering on about the laces, completely oblivious to the hunger rising in her. Having you on your knees for her just felt so right, so hot, that she involuntarily clenched, barely holding back a shiver that would definitely have given her away.

Finishing up the second boot, you looked up, and the words on your lips faded away as you took in the intense stare on you. Your reaction was instantaneous, your eyes widening as your fingers fell away from her boots. You were completely speechless, spellbound and struck dumb, completely transfixed by her gaze as it seared into you.

Later, you couldn’t possibly say how long you’d been stuck like that, staring at each other, lost in your own world. Moving like she was possessed, Jennie reached out and petted the top of your head softly, and a tiny whimper escaped with the rush of air that left your lungs. The sound startled her into remembering where you were, in a small room with all the members and stylists watching, and she jerked her hand back. Just like that, the moment ended, and you squeaked as you ducked your head.

“Uh, yeah, so these are good to go,” you mumbled, patting the sides of her calf before standing up. Awkwardly, you both made your way to the makeup station, where you started working on her face.

Today, there was no lingering gaze while you did her makeup. Instead, Jennie wanted to crawl in a hole. To die of embarrassment, sure, but also, there was a lingering sense of arousal as she couldn’t get the image of you kneeling for her out of her mind, looking up at her with those wide eyes.

As you worked on her eyeshadow, Jennie daydreamed about that moment, about what she might have done if you’d been alone. As she thought about it, that fraught moment where your gazes had met took on different tones and nuances, and when she considered how good you could be for her, it was a struggle to keep from biting her lower lip.

Really, this was getting to be a problem, she thought as she stood up to join the other members for sound check. Lisa smirked at her and Jisoo winked, and all hope that no one had noticed that little slip-up was dashed. At least Chaeyoung, who was Jennie’s new favourite, just patted her on the arm and didn’t say anything about it. As they left the changing room, Jennie tried to ignore how slick her panties were.

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

Being the new hire anywhere was difficult, but it was even worse as a stylist, because the newest member of the team always got stuck with cleanup and all the admin work involved in getting and returning the borrowed pieces. Thankfully, Yuuki, the stylist who’d been hired before you, helped you out whenever she could.

As a result, the two of you had become close friends – it was almost inevitable when you spent almost every waking hour of every day together, either on location with the girls or in meetings with Jiyoon discussing future concepts and looks for events, shoots and performances. Tonight, Yuuki had asked you to go drinking with her because her mother was coming to visit and, given all the other stylist had done for you, you could hardly turn her down.

After she accompanied you back to the warehouse where you had to drop off the shoes and accessories, and then the Chanel, Dior and Gucci offices, she dragged you to a little restaurant where you had supper and drank soju.

You were pretty sure you knew what was coming, but Yuuki at least had the grace to pretend, bitching about Jiyoon and the two more senior assistant stylists on the Blackpink team with you before zeroing in on you and Jennie.

She waited, a twinkle in her eye, for you to throw back your shot of soju before asking slyly, “So, you and Jennie, huh?” You choked on the clear liquid the moment you heard her, slamming the glass back onto the table and grabbing some napkins while you coughed helplessly.

“No,” you protested. “There’s nothing going on there.”

Yuuki rolled her eyes. “Don’t lie to your unnie.”

“I’m not! Really. I don’t even know what you’re talking about, I—” Excuses and justifications tumbled out as your mind burst into overdrive, your hands gesticulating wildly in an attempt to show her how sincere you were in your denials. Yuuki just propped her chin on the heel of her palm and waited you out patiently, her chopsticks in her other hand picking at the kimchi pancake you were sharing.

When you finally fizzled out, your shoulders slumping helplessly, Yuuki looked up at you again, her eyes glinting. “Really? So do you want to explain what happened earlier today?”

Fuck. You truly had no explanation for her. Your ears drew up around your shoulders uncomfortably, as you used the only card you had left to play. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No? Then let me refresh your memory.” Yuuki’s smirk made you regret every single choice that had led to this point. Why had you decided to go to fashion school? You should have just been an accountant like your parents wanted. “I’m talking about earlier today, when you were practically eye fucking Jennie while helping her get dressed.”

“Unnie!”

“I’m just saying, usually it goes the other way, yknow?” Yuuki continued in a faux-nonchalant tone, even though her facial expression made it clear that she was very aware of what she was saying and enjoying your distress.

“Please stop,” you begged, crumpling onto the table in embarrassment. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

“Aww,” Yuuki reached over to pet your head, and you didn’t even swat her hand away. “It’s okay, baby. We’ve all been there. You just need to be better at hiding your crush.”

What— “I don’t have a crush,” you denied immediately, your head popping up. Sure, Jennie might render you speechless once in a while, and you felt all jittery when she looked directly at you, but that wasn’t anything special. She was an idol, of course she had a magnetic and charismatic personality.

Yuuki took in your slightly confused frown and raised a brow at you. “Sweetie… you have the biggest crush I’ve ever seen. Don’t worry, though, she likes you back. Neither of you are subtle with all the staring.”

You felt like you were in freefall. “What—I don’t…” you stammered. “I don’t like girls.” You’d never even had an inkling of that. Every crush you’d ever had had been a guy. You’d only ever had boyfriends. There was no way you liked Jennie in the way that Yuuki was claiming you did.

“That’s not what it looks like to me,” Yuuki shrugged. Taking in the absolutely gobsmacked expression on your face, though, she backtracked a little, softening her words. “Sweetie, it’s okay,” she said, reaching over to squeeze your hand. “You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to.”

Your mind, however, was still buffering and you barely registered a word she said. “I like men,” you murmured almost forlornly, your brows knitting in confusion. Yuuki, just now realizing that she’d broken you, topped off your drink without a word, letting you process your thoughts quietly.

When you were finally ready to talk again, you looked up at her once more. “Do you really think I have a crush?”

Yuuki shrugged. “What do you feel when you think about Jennie?”

You hummed thoughtfully, your mind drifting for a moment as you recalled your previous interactions with her. Limited, sure, but every one was charged in some way, filling you with butterflies or nerves, making your mouth dry up sometimes and at others causing almost uncontrollable giggles to burst from you.

Watching the soft, dazed look in your eyes as you thought about her question, Yuuki couldn’t quite hold back the triumphant smirk. Your expression made it abundantly clear to her, even if you were taking your time coming to terms with it, that you weren’t as straight as you claimed to be.

“She’s just charismatic because she’s an idol,” you defended weakly as you finally came back to yourself.

“Do you feel the same way about the other members, then? They’re all idols too,” Yuuki pointed out.

You subsided into a pout.

“Well, what did you feel when you were with your last boyfriend?” Yuuki prompted after a second. “Like, at the beginning.”

“Like butterflies, and I was so excited to see him all the time, and when he looked at me in that way…” You bit your lip, remembering, then frowned as you realized how similar it was to your feelings about Jennie. “Oh, fuck.”

Reaching over, Yuuki petted your head again. “It’s okay, sweetie. It’s no big deal.”

“No big deal?! Unnie, how are you this calm? Does everyone know?” How were you the last person to realize?

“I’m sure Jiyoon-unnie didn’t notice – you know she rarely pays attention to the stylists.” You grimaced as you nodded – your boss was now established enough in the industry that she hardly needed to think about the nitty-gritty details of actually dressing the idols under her care. “But you guys are not subtle at all.”

“Jesus,” you muttered, lowering your head into your hands.

“Don’t worry, nobody cares. Half the people in the room are in entertainment and the other half are in fashion,” she said blithely.

You just reached for your soju.

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

If you’d thought that becoming aware of why Jennie had such a hold over you would make things easier, you were wrong. It was like once the denial was gone, the feelings came rushing in, and you were sure that you’d made an absolute fool of yourself in front of Jennie with your inability to construct complete sentences and the way you rushed to do her bidding.

Thankfully, Jennie was either completely oblivious or an angel, because she never laughed or became impatient with you. She thanked you sweetly when you brought her coffee or food, never said anything when you lost your train of thought or stared, and even complimented you on your own outfit once, which had shut your brain down for a while.

Of course, it wasn’t that Jennie hadn’t noticed – on the contrary, she was thoroughly enjoying it. Who wouldn’t like having the object of your affections fawning over you, she tried to convince herself as you fussed over her hair. Today she had a magazine shoot, so it was just the two of you, and you’d snuck her some tteokbokki from the street market nearby that you’d picked up on your way.

Once she was ready, you followed her out of the dressing room with her lipstick and powder in your hands, ready for touchups. Watching Jennie as she posed for shoots or did interviews was one of the perks of the job, you supposed. Working with her hadn’t made you any less of a fan – in fact, the opposite was true. You admired how pretty and poised she always looked (and okay, at least part of that was your handiwork) and the way she was so natural in front of the camera.

Since nothing in your life could ever be easy, today’s shoot was supposed to have some sort of sexy, seductress theme. The photographer kept telling Jennie to give him a more intense expression, and you weren’t quite sure what that meant, but Jennie sure did. She leaned forward, planting her hands between her thighs on the edge of the box she was sitting on as her eyes swept the room.

You gulped as she found you, standing behind and a little to the side of the camera. Her lips stretched into a half-smirk that the director nodded approvingly at, and her gaze took on a downright predatory quality. In that moment, trapped, you clenched your fists so hard you felt the hard edge of the lipstick tube bite into your skin, but you couldn’t find the coordination to let go.

Her eyes drifted over your body leisurely, and even though you were dressed fairly modestly, in an off-the-shoulder sweater and leggings, you felt exposed, like you were standing in front of her in just lingerie. Against your will, you felt yourself gush into your panties as you bit your lip to hold back a moan.

By the time they took a break to let you touch up her makeup, your knees were weak and you felt unsteady as you walked the short distance to Jennie, grimacing at the discomfort of your soaked panties sliding against your core. Jennie turned her face up towards you as you blotted the sweat gathering around her temples and on her upper lip with a tissue.

“Thank you,” she murmured as you finished, pulling the powder puff away from her face. Her hand shot up and encircled your wrist, stroking the tender skin on the inside gently before releasing it. The simple touch scrambled your brain, and you spent an embarrassingly long time searching for the words before you could say anything.

“No problem,” you squeaked before running off to safety, your skin tingling where she’d touched it.

Jennie watched you leave with a small, triumphant smirk on her face. She loved the effect she had on you. It made her feel so powerful, so sexy, like she could imprint her mark into your very existence. How cute you were when you became flustered was definitely another bonus.

For the rest of the shoot, Jennie floated off the adrenaline of teasing you constantly. Making you give her unnecessary help with her wardrobe changes like zipping and unzipping her clothes and adjusting her accessories, holding her hand that time the director of the shoot had insisted that she wear heels no human woman would be able to walk in, and, of course, continuing with the casual physical contact that skirted the edge of boundaries of appropriateness. The camera was eating it up, too, loving the way she posed and that slightly distracted, intense, far-off gaze while she was actually watching you.

By the time the shoot ended, both of you were so wound up that you could barely focus on anything. Even Jennie seemed to have reached her limit, hastily leaving before you when her manager came back around to pick her up with a mumbled goodbye. Even her manager was surprised by how quickly she got packed up.

Now alone in the dressing room, you were able to pack all the makeup and do inventory fairly quickly. Laying all the jewelry back in their respective cases, you frowned when you realized that there was one box that was empty.

“Shit,” you hissed as you looked around the room, reopening the makeup bag to see if the camellia lily pendant had slipped in somehow. It wasn’t there, and you started to get a little more frantic as you started checking in all the boxes and doing a sweep of the room.

“Oh, fuck,” you swore as despair started to settle in your belly, pressing your palm against your forehead as you fought back the tears pressing hotly against your eyes. You couldn’t lose a piece of jewelry from Chanel – you couldn’t afford to replace it, and you would definitely be fired if it wasn’t back there.

Taking deep breaths to calm yourself down as you paced the length of the small room, you tried to think about where it could be. Jennie had been wearing it for the second half the shoot; had she taken it off? Frantically, you dived for your phone, leaning against the wall as you called her.

Jennie had just entered the dorm when her phone rang. She fished it out of her handbag and looked at the screen, raising a brow when she saw that it was you.

“Hello?” she said with the phone to her ear, taking off her shoes and stepping out of the genkan.

“Unnie? Are you wearing the Chanel necklace?” you asked urgently, surging off the wall as you spoke.

“Uhh…” Jennie’s free hand went to her neck, where she was, indeed, wearing it. “Yeah, it’s with me.”

You sagged with relief. “Oh, thank God. I’ll come over and pick it up now.”

“You’re—you’re coming over?” Jennie sat on the edge of her bed, letting Kuma curl up in her lap. She was definitely not prepared for this, and she looked around in a panic.

“Yeah, I need to return the necklace tonight. I’ll just come pick it up, okay?”

“Uh, sure.” With that, you hung up, and Jennie picked Kuma up, petting him with her free hand. She knew it was no big deal, that you were just expecting her to hand the pendant to you at the door and she could be on her way, but somehow that didn’t feel like enough. She wanted more. This was such an unusual opportunity, and she had to make the most of it.

She spent the next half an hour going through her entire closet to find the perfect outfit – one that looked cute and chic, but that she could conceivably be lounging around the house in. Finally, she settled on a Chanel sweatshirt and denim shorts, tugging on the neckline so that it showed off more of her décolletage.

Just as she was putting her hair up in an artfully messy bun, she heard the bell ring, and before she could get to the door, one of the other members opened it.

“Jisoo-unnie, hi!” Your voice was slightly muffled because Jennie’s bedroom door was closed, but that didn’t stop her from listening attentively to your conversation with Jisoo. You chatted with her for a moment, and when she invited you in, you declined politely, saying you had to be on your way to return all the stuff.

Excitement made her slightly clumsy, but she forced herself to take a breath and walk instead of run down the hallway to the front door. Your eyes widened as you saw her coming up behind Jisoo, and your cheeks heated as you visibly lost your train of thought at the sight of her. Jennie gave herself a metaphorical pat on the back but didn’t let any of it show as she smiled at you.

“Unnie, hi,” you greeted. “Do you have the necklace?”

“Yeah,” she replied, coming to stand right on the edge of the step. The sideways glance she shot Jisoo let the older girl know she should make herself scarce quickly, and Jisoo, ever tactful, excused herself and returned to her own room.

You hesitated, wondering why Jennie wasn’t handing you the pendant so you could make yourself scarce. Standing on the step, she was literally looking down on you, something you found both titillating and intimidating.

“Well, here it is,” she said, reaching into the neckline of her sweatshirt and hooking her finger around the chain to pull the necklace out.

“Uhh…” Your eyes widened awkwardly, not sure what she wanted you to do.

“The clasp is a little finicky, can you help me out?” she asked, turning around.

“Yeah, sure,” you agreed immediately, your hands lifting almost of their own accord to do her bidding. You didn’t even question why she’d left it on for so long, or why she hadn’t gotten one of her members to help her out when she’d arrived at home. There was a moment of silence as you fiddled with the clasp, before you got it loose and drew it off her neck. She turned right before your hands dropped to your sides, and there was a moment where they were hovering near her collarbones as you made eye contact.

Swallowing, you looked away, biting your lip, and the moment was broken. With the necklace in your hand, you were about to grab your things and leave when Jennie stopped you with her hand on your sleeve. “Wait,” she said, and you turned back questioningly to look at her. “Let me give you a ride home,” she offered, looking down at the giant bags you’d lugged with you.

“You can drive?” was your skeptical reaction.

Jennie chuckled. “New CEO, new rules,” she explained. “I’ll go get my keys.”

“Wait, unnie, you don’t have to!” you called hastily. “I can take the subway, and you’ll probably be recognized…” She ignored you, though, and you trailed off in slight embarrassment as you realized that you were talking to no one.

She reemerged from her room a second later, holding her wallet and keys with one hand and dangling a mask from the other. “Let’s go,” she said, and you followed meekly, grabbing your bags as she passed you.

Jennie led you down to the underground carpark of the apartment complex, where her BMW was parked. She opened the boot for you to throw your stuff in it, then slid into the driver’s seat as you got into the passenger seat.

“So, uh, how long have you been driving?” you asked, buckling your seatbelt.

Jennie chuckled as she started the car. “Why, are you afraid?” she asked, swinging out of the lot.

“No, no,” you demurred hastily, not wanting to offend her. “I was just curious. I didn’t know you were allowed to.”

“Don’t worry,” Jennie reassured you. “Where do you need to go?”

“Uh, I have to drop off some stuff at the Chanel office, and the rest of it belongs to the YG vault.”

Nodding, Jennie set the GPS and drove off. While she was ferrying you around (and what a surreal experience, being driven by YG’s princess!) you chatted about nothing and everything. You were honestly surprised that Jennie was so easy to talk to, having thought, perhaps meanly, that there was no way she could react to your broke life of scraping by with a bunch of student debt and a full-time job that paid next to nothing. She was interested in your stories about growing up in a small town and coming to Seoul for fashion school, and in return told you about what it was like living in New Zealand and being a trainee.

Jennie entered the underground carpark of the YG headquarters and you unsnapped your seat belt, ready to hop off. “Thanks for the ride today, unnie. You really didn’t have to,” you said, starting to bid her farewell.

“Wait, how are you going to get home?” she asked as you were opening the door.

“Uh, I’ll take the subway?” Confused, your response came out as a question.

“It’s late, you shouldn’t be on the subway alone! I’ll drive you.”

“No, you don’t have to—” You started explaining that you did this almost every night and it wasn’t a big deal, but Jennie wasn’t having any of it, insisting that she would take you home tonight. Finally, you had no choice but to accept, although secretly you felt warm inside at the thought that she was so concerned about you. No one had fussed over you very much since you’d come to Seoul alone.

After you dropped off the items at the vault, you returned to the car, and Jennie took you home.

“Jeez, this is where you live?” Jennie muttered, looking up at the dilapidated building the GPS brought you to.

You grimaced at her tone. “Being a stylist doesn’t exactly pay a lot,” you said defensively, unbuckling your seat belt.

“No, I didn’t mean it that way,” Jennie backtracked quickly. “But this building doesn’t look that safe,” she added, peering up again in concern.

“It’s okay.” You shrugged. “It looks better on the inside. And it’s close to the subway, too.”

“That’s good,” Jennie said, smiling at you. “Well, good night.”

“Wait!” You surprised even yourself by blurting it out. “Do you… want to come in for some coffee? You’ve been driving me around all evening, I feel bad.”

“I’d love to!” Jennie eagerly accepted, then her brows knit together as she started second-guessing herself. “I wouldn’t want to impose, though…”

“Don’t worry about that,” you said, reaching over to pat her hand on the gear stick, before realizing what you’d done and retracting your hand, embarrassed. Jennie parked the car by the curb, and you led her up into your apartment.

“Um, here it is,” you said slightly awkwardly as you opened the front door, stepping in and turning on the lights. You hadn’t thought about actually having Jennie in your space, looking at your apartment, even as you were issuing the invitation, and you couldn’t help but feel a little self-conscious now, especially knowing what Jennie’s own home looked like.

With a critical eye, you looked over your tiny studio. The queen-sized bed dominated the space, pushed up against the far wall and under the window. You kept a few small succulents on the windowsill because they were the only things you could keep alive. Your closets were overflowing with clothes, to the extent that you’d had to buy extra racks to hang some items off, and your vanity was cluttered with jewelry organizers that were bursting with accessories. (In your defense, you’d gone into fashion because you liked fashion!)

The sink in the kitchenette was piled high with dishes, and your bin was filled with empty takeout containers. Some clothes were strewn on your bed over your bedspread, and your desk was filled with papers and notes, your laptop sitting in the middle of it all.

“Sorry it’s such a mess,” you apologized. For the last week or so you’d only been sleeping in your apartment and rushing out in the morning for long days.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jennie said, waving her hand dismissively as she took off her shoes. “You should see our apartment.” Jennie, taking in your living quarters, noted very different details – the pretty, whimsical patterned bedspread you had bought, the post cards and photos you had on your fridge, and the dizzying array of clothes you’d amassed.

You puttered around the kitchen, setting up your percolator for freshly brewed coffee. It was only clean because you went with instant most mornings to save some time, but you found yourself being grateful for it nonetheless. You only had the one desk chair, so you directed Jennie to sit on the bed, taking out the little foldable table you kept for when guests came over and setting it up.

“Thank you,” Jennie said gratefully, taking the mug you held out for her, before you sat down next to her with your own cup of coffee.

“Cheers,” you muttered awkwardly, bumping your mug against hers, before taking a deep, long sip to hide how embarrassed you were. What the hell was wrong with you?

Jennie, surprised and charmed, blinked at you for a second before drinking her own coffee. You continued chatting about everything and nothing, even when you started stifling yawns and blinking the sleepy tears out of your eyes stubbornly, not wanting this night to end. Eventually, feeling half-drunk from tiredness, you fell back onto the bed, looking up at the ceiling.

“Unnie,” you murmured, and she lay down beside you on her side, continuing to watch you. The quiet intimacy of this moment made her heart flutter as she admired the way your lashes made little shadows on your cheekbones.

“What is it?” she asked, shifting infinitesimally closer.

“You’re so pretty,” you said around a yawn, turning your head to look at her.

“Thank you, sweetie.” She reached out to caress the side of your face, leaning in slightly.

A tense second passed as your gaze flickered down to her lips, then you closed the distance between the two of you, pressing your lips to hers. Your fingers curled around her hand, which was still resting against your face, stroking her palm with your fingertips. It was chaste, tender and sweet – the opposite of every desire Jennie had ever had about you, and she found that she loved it all the same.

When she broke away, you looked down shyly and she leaned her forehead against yours, seeking your gaze. A second later, she realized that you’d actually closed your eyes and fallen asleep instead of acting coy like she’d thought, and she chuckled to herself before she was seized by her own jaw-cracking yawn.

As she settled in next to you, Jennie promised herself that she was just going to rest her eyes for ten minutes before getting up and driving home.

[mixelation]

A thread you may have picked up from following this blog: I am lowkey obsessed with trying to make a dynamic that makes a Sasori ship work, the best take of which i’ve seen is Flesh and Blood (which is SasoDei; OP has not really marked for many content warnings and I don’t really remember enough to give all the specifics... I DO highly recommend this fic but anything Sasori-adjacent and IC is gonna be pretty fucked up and filled with violations of personal autonomy). (cut bc this ended up long)

Anyway, the point of this is that I recently realized one reason my brain has a hard time making most Sasori ships work is that I can’t really see most non-Deidara ninja appreciating art? Sasori’s mastery of puppetry and poisons, yes. Art? Nope, can’t see most shinobi into it. The only other artists we see are Deidara (whose views on art are opposed to Sasori’s by design, but DOES seem to show interest in Sasori and appreciate his work even if canon makes it seem like Sasori doesn’t reciprocate) and Sai (who seems to mostly just draw as part of a coping mechanism and doesn’t really conceptualize himself as an artist? idk i haven’t put that much thought into Sai). 

By this I mean: I don’t think ninja are really brought up to appreciate art. 

In most OC/Sasori fics I’ve read, the OC is not an artist and simply thinks Sasori’s puppets are cool. These stories mostly fall flat to me because while I don’t think Sasori’s love interest needs to be an artist, I do think they have to appreciate (or learn to appreciate) his puppets as art, not just cool weapons. This trend is interesting to me, because I’ve read lots of fics where an OC is an artist who earns Sasori’s and/or Deidara’s respect, but are not paired with them. (I’m not saying that artist!OCs SHOULD be paired with Sasori or Deidara, just that it’s not like there’s a dearth of interest in artist OCs.)

Okay, so, what if your preferred Sasori partner is not an artist? Sasori/Sakura is the #2 Sasori ship on AO3, after all! I do think this one has potential because 1) Sasori shows an interest in her in canon, based purely on her skills (and i am a sucker for Sakura ships where the other half appreciates how badass she is), and then 2) Sakura is built up as an “”intellectual”” type of character, so there’s room there for her to look into art and then develop her own opinion on it.* But, in my limited experience, people skip this step? Or! They have her entire art education be via Sasori and I just don’t like this as a ship dynamic, because 1) it feels “mansplainy” and then 2) I don’t think Sasori would actually be all that intellectually interested in someone who doesn’t mentally challenge him. 

*You don’t have to be an “”intellectual”” character to get Sasori. I can see more empathy-driven characters being able to look at Sasori’s art and get him.... but for me, personally, “Sakura goes and looks up some books on art” rings more true. 

(This is NOT to say that any ship should hinge entirely on one side trying to figure out Sasori. Sasori also needs to reciprocate interest in his partner’s hobbies/skills/career! I’m just not complaining about this one because usually authors do think to address this.)

I also think that... in order to be IC, Sasori does need to struggle with the urge to turn his romantic partner into a puppet. Flesh and Blood, in my opinion, does an excellent job of developing Sasori’s attachment to Deidara enough that he ultimately concludes that Deidara is worth more to him as a flesh and blood person than as a puppet. I would be interested to see a fic where Sasori succeeds in convincing a romantic partner to become a puppet? (I have seen a couple of OC/Sasori fics where becoming a puppet is the OC’s goal, although I don’t think this would particularly interest Sasori unless you were bringing more to the table.) But mostly I want to see character & relationship development to the point where Sasori recognizes another human being as worth more as a human being than as one of his puppets. 

So! What does all this rambling ultimately mean? It means that my personal preferences are:

For SasoDei: a lot of the work is already done by canon; you just have to develop their relationship so they value each other’s take on art enough that Deidara doesn’t want to blow up Sasori and Sasori doesn’t want to skin Deidara alive (or,... you could write a wildly unhealthy relationship where they’re BOTH trying to do this and I’d be okay with it because it’d be IC)

For SasoSaku: Part of the work has already been done by canon, but Sakura’s relationship with art DOES need to be developed. I don’t think she even has to be that into art; she just needs to show interest in Sasori’s hobbies?

For any other Sasori ship (including OCs but maybe excluding someone with a canon relationship with him like the Third Kazekage or Orochimaru): Why does he like them? I do feel like Sasori is a very picky man, so they’d have to be very good at some ninja skill he respects, or have some very compelling art opinions. Or like.... just be really attractive? XD 

I am FULLY open to an OC being compelling to Sasori for deeply silly reasons, like a plot contrivance making it so that he can’t kill them for Reasons even though they’re deeply annoying.... and then coming to like and respect them as humans u.u

Fuck it, you can apply this one to Sakura and Deidara too because I love crack

And then YES, my ideal is leaning into the “Sasori kidnaps people and then relieves them of their organs” aesthetic. Like, there’s no way to accurately depict Sasori and not make it Problematique. His romantic partner is going to have to accept this about him somehow. There might be a way to move him away from this, but it would take a lot of character work and like... a lot of words in a story.....? BUT THEN ALSO. With Sasori I think there’s a danger in people getting caught up in the aesthetic of making human dolls and forgetting the art. And you gotta... you gotta balance BOTH. 

(And then, a side note because if you’ve ever read my takes on Sasori, you may have noticed: I do headcanon Sasori as being compelled to treat people he vaguely likes as dolls. This is very “why is your make-up ugly? Here are my suggestions--” and “let me pick your wardrobe--” I like this HC (obviously, because it is mine) so I’m throwing it out here, BUT ALSO you do not have to conform to my headcanons.)

Or..... don’t do any of this. The above is really just my personal preference and opinions, so if you disagree, I still support you writing about Sasori! March is multi-sasori month if you wanna go all in. :3

........but yes I do like my own opinions and hope they inspire others XD

[ask-artsy-oncie]

So I’m kinda in a meh/apathetic headspace in regards to my mental health right now. Maybe it would be best to just let some thoughts out. 

Firstly, I do want to apologize for making stupid, borderline inflammatory posts and throwing them out there onto tumblr dot com, I know that’s never the best course of action. However, I really, really do not appreciate anons sending vague “are you okay”s at me. If you’re not close enough to me where you can’t PM me (relatively) face-to-face, then I really wouldn’t like random inquiries about my mental health from you. Maybe it’s just because I don’t 100% trust anons (I’ve been here for a decade, I’ve seen some shit, can you really blame me?) but I think I ought to make myself clear on that. Are we clear on that? cool. 

I don’t know... I’ve felt so lost and tired recently, moreso than usual.

I’ve always had a massive complex about annoying people, being too self-indulgent, not having good ideas or opinions or what-have-you. People who have known me for a while almost definitely know that. I don’t think it all necessarily exists in a vacuum, either I have a genuinely hard time coming up with objectively good ideas. Sometimes I’m just straight-up “head empty” mode. I’m also often really opinionated and sometimes intend to die on hills that people aren’t really meant to die on (or are even necessarily worth dying on). I can get way too wrapped up on meaningless things because my brain is too hyperfocused on this one thing, or maybe something I rely too heavily on for comfort is... I don’t know how to put it.... put at risk? Challenged? I have a lot of mental issues and real life issues, though I’m not claiming to be massively oppressed or anything, but I tend to cling to comforts a little too desperately. And I’m not just talking about like. Media. Just comforts in general. Sometimes I’ll spend too much of the day laying in bed. Sometimes I cling to old relationships or old forms of relationships or I constantly worry about the day I’ll inevitably no longer have the same relationships I have now. 

I’ve known I needed therapy for a while now. I’m waitlisted and everything, but I need to go about actually choosing a therapist to see and I’ve been dragging my feet on that so I guess that’s my bad. I’ll get to it. Shit’s overwhelming, yknow? 

Anyways I know I have a lot of these flaws and problems and I think my horrible anxieties about being too annoying and whatnot is just a really extreme form of self-reflection. Maybe. Not entirely sure. Maybe a therapist could tell me.

I get way too passionate, way too easily, and it’s almost always followed by a super intense period of shame, like, to the point where I’m desperate to isolate myself and destroy my relationships with other people, because then at least I’m actually trying to destroy a relationship by being a bad person, rather than someone leaving me for... I don’t know, being too happy? Caring too much? Talking too much? Just. Shit I have less control over. 

I’ve tried putting a cap on it, suppressing everything. Trying not to indulge too much, trying not to be so happy and talkative, straight-up deleting messages I think might be too annoying the second I send them. Trying to be inoffensive through being unnoticeable. I’m trying to do that now, honestly. It’s why I joked about deleting my blog. All it does is hurt and make me go fucking nuts because I’m bottling up a lot in doing that, I know. I’m just not fully convinced I don’t just deserve to feel that way.

There are a lot of points in my life where I’m convinced that my best course of action in succeeding or keeping people from being put-off by me is to just sit down and shut up and draw what I’m told to draw. To just completely lose my agency in drawing. It makes sense, when you feel like you don’t have any good ideas of your own, you just illustrate others’. And there are many, many points where I have done this out of a place of love. Fuck, most of what I’ve drawn for Lolly’s writing has come out of a place of genuine love, not just for her work, but for her. A lot of what I’ve drawn for Bethany (for any REAL long-time followers reading this) has been like that, too. But there are also points where it honestly just feels like my only purpose is to be a tool through which others may visualize their whims. That if I dare inject too much of myself into things, they’ll be permanently ruined. And then there’s the shame I feel in having wanted to impart a piece of myself into a work - a demerit for being too selfish or self-important to deem my whims anywhere near good or important enough to be included. 

I have so many ideas. So many opinions and thoughts and feelings and genuine insight that I’ve suppressed or deleted because I either feel like that’s what’s expected of me, or I’m straight-up told that my thoughts and opinions are bad and wrong. Like. Fuck me for having opinions on animated media levels of being shut-down. And you know, I’ve noticed something in the past decade of being an insufferable opinionated prick about things like that - that it’s actually easier for me to enjoy media when I’m allowed to be negative and critical of it. When I am allowed to just share my thoughts. And I don’t mean like, without being disagreed with, I mean like, in an environment where I’m made to feel like I actually can share these thoughts. When I can pinpoint and analyze what I didn’t like or what made me upset, it can be a lot easier for me to then move on and be able to focus on aspects that I genuinely do like. Like, holy fuck, it is SO much easier for me to pick-and-choose aspects of a certain sequel film that I actually like and feel comfortable saying I like than it was for me to do with the original, because I no longer have an incredibly toxic person in my life (or at least, in my life as much).

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had this kind of experience since then, like. There are STILL things I struggle to move past because I have been made to feel like I just can’t fucking talk about them without being insufferable (sorry if I’m overusing that word - it just feels like the best word the feeling I’m trying to describe) or just straight-up ruining something for someone I care about. Keeping shit like this in does crazy shit to me, for real, and there’s still a large part of me that tells me “Fuck you. Suck it up. None of this shit matters.” Y’know? Because in the grand scheme of things, I know it doesn’t. And then there’s the shame that comes from having cared so much in the first place. It’s a fucking cycle. There’s some shit that’s just irreparable ruined for me because of this and that SUCKS.

I don’t like losing comforts. Fuck, I hate it, really. And I’m not talking about new comforts coming along and catching my attention as an old comfort begins to wane, I’m talking like. Destroying relationships, feeling SO MUCH shame surrounding a comfort media that it’s too difficult to enjoy it no matter how hard I try, or having too hard of a time disassociating a comfort with a horrible event or person. And it’s feeling like at LEAST one of these is starting to happen to me again and Good Gods it’s just. It’s so terrifying. 

But who do I tell? When my primary worry is annoying or offending or hurting people? Y’know? I can’t just vent to one single person to this all the time, that isn’t fair. But it gets to a point where my brain tells me “No, you can’t talk to ANYONE about this because that’s rude and wrong and a true friend wouldn’t do that. There’s a reason why you can make any number of concerning posts, messages, private ramblings, whatever, and the people you’re closest to won’t ask you what’s wrong.” 

And, yeah, honestly, I do think it’s true that the people I consider my closest friends won’t read this. I actually don’t believe the average person will read this, or at least get this far. I genuinely do just talk too much and it’s a lot for most people to deal with. Otherwise, I talk too little, and probably enter the “you should be able to read my MIND” level of expectations, which, of course, isn’t far. I understand, I swear I do, it just takes some time to come to terms with every time I get wrapped up in my stupid mental stuff. And I also promise that I try to give these people the same kind of response I want, y’know? I try to look out for any worrying behavior and try to offer an ear and help in any way that I can. I don’t think expecting the same in return is fair, I just worry about any of them being like me, and I’m willing to play to that if it’s necessary. I’ll break quiet streaks for that shit, y’know?

Honestly, these stupid quiet streaks are probably more unbearable for me than they are even noticeable for most people. It sucks. I just wish my mind was normal so I A) wouldn’t have these insecurities to begin with, because B) I would never end up exhibiting the behavior to warrant such insecurities.

There’s so much shit I want to talk about, to analyze, or explore, that I want to share with the world, or at least with people I love, that I probably never will because my stupid brain has already decided that all this stupid shit is better kept to myself where it can rot and be forgotten eventually. Which is fine, in the grand scheme of things, I guess, because I functionally have never really been the guy who comes up with ideas (at least, good ideas) I’m just the pencil, the one who I guess makes things visual? I can’t even bring myself to say “I bring the ideas to life” because that’s pretentious and untrue. These ideas are already alive because they come from brilliant minds. 

I don’t even think it’s fair for me to call myself a character designer unless the characters are my own. Otherwise, I’m just following the directions of a much more competent conceptualizer (there’s a reason my characters barely have any... well, character). That’s the reason why I removed my unearned credit as the character designer for Ty from Swindle’s description, because I really don’t deserve that kind of credit. It’s why the asks about the designing process of Ty have been left unanswered, because, fuck, what do I even say? “I just did what Lolly told me to do, just like I did with all of Swindle. Please don’t give me that kind of credit, I know I falsely ascribed it to myself earlier, and I want to rectify that”? I guess I could have, actually, now that I’m typing this. But people always get fucking upset with me when I try not to take credit, even when it’s shit that isn’t mine!! So I don’t know what to do!! I don’t know what to fucking do!!! Because I just don’t fucking want to make people upset or unhappy!!!!!!!

I’m sorry, this post is too long and I’ve worked myself up and I’m no longer apathetic. I’m gonna go cry myself to sleep so big win for my complexion, honestly. 

Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. I guess getting this shit out of my system is probably best to do in a big tumblr post no one will read. 

I don’t want anons about this. If I can just ask one thing. Please.

[alfhildr-the-word-weaver]

So I decided to give myself a sharpie tattoo tonight :) I’ve been vaguely imagining having a “God is Love” (1 John 4:8) tattoo for quite a long time, but I’m afraid of both needles and decisions and thus have not done so as yet. 

But I’ve been seeing these pictures of Gerard Way with sharpie tattoos and I was just like “there is no reason I should not give myself a sharpie tattoo right now” and so... I did. 

See beneath the cut for step by step pictures and general rambling :)

I put it in the spot where I would get a real tattoo if I ever get around to getting one; I have a big weird scar about halfway up the outside of my left calf and I figure if I were to get a proper tattoo, that’s kind of an ideal spot for a tattoo anyways and I might as well cover my scar with one. 

As with any good scar, there’s a long story to it, but (gross-out warning, mild medical violence warning) basically I had a spider bite that got infected and it swelled up into this big nasty boil-ish, welt-ish thing that lasted for an uncomfortably long time. When I went to the doctor with it, they pretty much just stabbed it twice to get it to drain and it left me with this. It’s hard to get it to show up very well but it’s basically two deep divots in a patch of pale, off-texture skin, a bit bigger around than a quarter. 

So I knelt on my bed with my leg at an awkward angle, whipped out my treasured 30 pack of rainbow sharpies (minus like 3, because sharpies like to run away), and went to work. It was kind of a weird angle to draw at not only because of how I had to bend my knee but also because everything I was drawing was sideways, but the heart turned out fairly nicely, if a bit lopsided. 

I didn’t make the heart quite big enough to fit “God is Love” inside of it so I wound up with the love bit underneath. I’m fairly pleased with how it looks, although you can definitely tell from the “e” that I was working sideways. 

I liked it well enough, but I wanted more color, and so I decided to add a butterfly wing to the left--or perhaps a flower. I have a tendency to draw those rather similarly so it’s basically both. One flower lead to another, then another, plus a couple of vines; I have progress pictures with each individual piece I added, but to prevent this post from going on for too long, I’ll just jump back to the final design. 

Also, side note, my knee was stiff as all heck after sitting like that for all the time I was drawing, and I had to limp around the house a bit to get my leg to straighten back out. In hindsight I would advise taking more breaks during the drawing process when sitting with one’s leg at such a weird angle.

The main picture at the top is from that stage as well, but then I went and googled “sharpie tattoo” because I remembered something about there being a way to make them last longer. I found this, which said to cover it in baby powder and spray it with hairspray. I don’t really use hair spray regularly, but I was pretty sure I had some around somewhere; the first stuff I found actually turned out to be a spray can of hair mousse, though, so I just patted it around on top of the baby powder. I didn’t quite get the whole thing covered because I was worried about smudging it if I rubbed it around. 

I was fairly certain I had some actual hairspray somewhere; eventually it occured to me to look in my old dance bag, because the last time I used hair spray was probably my 9th grade dance recital. I was correct, and upon locating said dance bag, I found both hairspray and an abundance of nostalgia. I reapplied baby powder and sprayed it on. Having not been used in nearly a decade, the hairspray came out in a confused trickle rather than a spray, and the whole area became very wet as I tried to pour out enough spray to cover the design in its entirety. The ink started to bleed and, while pretty, I was worried that rather than preserving my sharpie tattoo I was going to rinse it off prematurely in a flood of aged hairspray. 

I quickly dabbed at the flow with a bit of toilet paper, and in doing so accidentally made a rather lovely watercolor on the paper. 

So, this is where things are at now. The baby powder did leave quite a bit of texture on my leg. I imagine it will rinse off, but I think for tonight I’ll let things ‘set’ before I try and rinse it. Perhaps it would’ve been better if I’d left the initial design without putting any of this on it, but hopefully this will help it last longer. It’s just fun to have something bright, colorful, and meaningful on my leg. 

I’ve been really digging Killjoy aesthetics lately and I love the whole culture of being bright and colorful and unique that they have, and as I’ve been conceptualizing my Killjoy OC (cosplay to come, if I ever get around to it), I’ve found myself thinking about how I’d want to ideally design... well, myself, and so I guess this sharpie tattoo was really born from that. 

Along those same lines, I’ve also been revisiting the idea of dyeing my hair. It’s something I’ve contemplated since middle school but never done, but now I really think I would like to. Again I’m at least partly inspired by Gerard Way, both in the sense of the bold hair colors of the Killjoy universe and from seeing how many great hair styles and colors Gerard’s had over the years. I’m not fond of the idea of cutting my hair, but I like the thought of mixing it up by dyeing it. 

The wrench in my plans right now, though, is the way that everything is just on hold at the moment. Specifically, I’ve been in rehearsals for a play, but with this whole pandemic business, our rehearsals are suspended and our play is postponed for an unknown period of time. The play is the Crucible, and unfortunately, neon red violet hair would not fly in puritan Salem. My plan initially was to dye my hair as soon as the play was over in early April, but now, well... who knows how long it’ll be until the show happens and I’m in the clear to mess with my hair. So, stay tuned for that I guess. I don’t know if I’ll wait to do my Killjoy cosplay until I’m able to dye my hair; I would like to have both this sharpie tattoo and dyed hair at the time of said cosplay, but I’m not certain whether those time frames we’ll overlap. We’ll see. 

Anyways, if anyone’s still reading this, thanks for sticking with me through my rambling! I hope you have enjoyed this episode of Violet’s adventures in sharpie tattoos.

[0poole]

An idea for a Poke-clone

So since Pokemon day just passed, I started to think about a kind of Poke-clone type of game/series of my own, since that seems to be an upcoming trend. I already thought up the base idea for my own Pokemon region before, and I’m not sure if I’ll eventually combine that idea with this one, but anyways…

The very broad idea is that it’s sort of the best of Pokemon, mixed with the best of Digimon, and I guess for fun’s sake we could say it’s sort of got a Bionicle flair to it a bit too. 

I feel like there are some conceptual pitfalls in Pokemon that they’ve sort of tried to step across over time, that obviously aren’t too big a deal but I can probably fix with this idea. The big one that hurts them in the real world is that, by the Pokemon being presented like animals or pets, it makes battles feel like some kind of unethical dog fighting at first glance. Obviously they make it seem like Pokemon have personalities and minds like humans, in that they do genuinely want to battle, and that they genuinely like and want to fight with their trainers, which is fair, but it also begs into question other things, like why they’d want to sit on the floor and eat brown pellets out of bowls instead of on plates with actual food like the humans. Also, it makes you wonder why they even want humans to tell them what to do. In the wild, they can clearly fight on their own, so why do they instantly do what humans say when they’re caught? I guess the assumption is that humans are better with strategy, but even better than Pokemon like Alakazam or Metagross, who are supposed to have superior intelligence? Also, when a Pokemon is given to another trainer, like in the opening of the Deoxys movie, why does it not do anything and wait for its new trainer to tell it what to do, even when it’s being bombarded with attacks, and with its trainer clearly frozen in shock? 

Also, back to the idea of catching, what makes the Pokemon want to obey the trainer? At first it almost seems like Pokeballs brainwash the Pokemon into liking whoever catches it, but what about Pokemon like Ash’s Charizard, who don't obey trainers? In the games it’s related to badges, but then why would any Pokemon obey a trainer without any badges? Do they just accept that it’s their lot in life to be caught by a human, and when that happens, you just obey them if you’re not good enough yourself? Obviously a decent amount of Pokemon just become friends with a human, and then they catch them just out of a formality. But, what about Go in the most recent season of the anime? He just catches anything he sees instantly, without much of a fight at all, and he has no badges, so how can he just instantly use anything he catches? Surely not every single Pokemon they come across just wants to bow down to him instantly. Obviously a lot of this lore stuff is just in the background, since the primary purpose is gameplay and whatnot, like Go just sort of representing the catching style of Pokemon Go, and with badges being a logical progression that keeps you from just using the strongest Pokemon traded from a friend and wiping the game clean. Still, even if you just accept it, it’d be nice to just not have to accept it, you know?

Then in terms of design, I kind of like the prospects of Digimon a bit more. Visually, though, I think Digimon are universally worse looking than Pokemon, but the fact that they seem more like friends than pets solves so many problems. First, that they’re made out to be actual sentient (sapient if you want to be pedantic about it) beings, instead of animals. This makes it so much easier to understand why they’d want to fight and protect their less-than-capable humans, and why they’d be willing to fight at all. They’d just understand it’s basically a sparring match or a sport. Also, it makes the humanoid designs so much easier to think about. When you see that classic image of Mimey sitting on the floor picking at the “Pokemon food” from a dog bowl alongside the rest of the Pokemon, it just doesn’t feel right. 

Also, what the hell are humans in this world? Why are Pokemon regarded as such special beings in the world? They always say “Welcome to the world of Pokemon” like they know of a different world full of non-Pokemon, and that Pokemon aren’t just animals. It almost made more sense in the first few seasons of the anime, where you’d just see some random fish swim alongside Magikarp or whatever. That made it clear that there are normal animals as well, showing that Pokemon are separate things entirely. But, now, they’ve retconned that, and I don’t think that was how the games worked in the first place at all. Then, the age-old question that all the Youtube game theorists try to answer: Are humans Pokemon? They sure seem resilient to Pokemon attacks, but don’t have any themselves, apart from like Tackle or whatever. It feels like animals were a thing way back when, but through natural selection the animals that developed supernatural power obviously became the dominant species, and over time the supernatural animals were called “Pokemon,” and humans with their technology/taming abilities managed to survive the onslaught of dangerous creatures by using them as protection from others. Then, I guess way down the line humans can’t keep up and die out, creating the Mystery Dungeon series, since it’s strange how the Pokemon there seem to know what humans are despite them never existing in the series. That, or maybe Mewtwo just fuses people with Pokemon like he did in the Detective Pikachu movie. 

Anyway, enough of me talking about stuff probably explained in the manga or whatever. Here’s the Poke-clone idea:

The creatures were there first, and at least most of them have human-level intelligence, if not higher-level intelligence. There are some supernatural animals around, alongside supernatural people and monsters, and there are 7 primary elements they can have: Earth, Fire, Water, Electricity, Air, Light, and Dark. Earth is basically Earth in Temtem, Fire/Water/Electricity/Air are all self-explanatory, Light is basically a more generalized Fairy type, and Dark is like Dark but with also including Ghost. These creatures can be born with any of these types, and can naturally wield them, getting better at it as they grow. But, these types can be combined using elemental essences, creating new types. Earth and Fire creates Metal (because smelting), Light and Earth creates Crystal (Again think Temtem, just can’t get enough of it) Water and Dark create Ice (because ice does feel different enough to be separated from water elementally imo) Fire and Water creates Air again (“steam” doesn’t feel special enough) and Electricity and Fire creates Plasma (basically generic magic). Chances are I’ll think of more combinations but whatever. There are different areas themed after these elements, and in these areas a specific element is boosted in power, so the “gym” equivalent will reside in these places, and “badges” will prove that you can defeat an element at its strongest level. Also, the areas that connect the main areas either double up types or use the secondary type which they combine into, so not all “gyms” would be super straightforward. 

Here’s where humans come in, though. They’re not just “humans.” They’re actually a species of these creatures called “Humans” (capital) and are mythical beings which did not originally exist on the world. Originally, it was just the other creatures. At that point, humans were only a myth spread around as myths do, and they were said to be creatures with the ability to combine every primary type and use them simultaneously, being the most powerful species of creature of them all. However, when they did magically appear on Earth, they seemed awfully weak. In fact, they couldn’t wield any element naturally, but could by using elemental essence, which is just normal for creatures. Some thought they just needed to be trained and grow like the rest of them, but others just saw the myths as being dramatic. It was especially troubling to see Humans grow and die of old age without being able to use that mythical power. Regardless, many Humans were highly respected, and many teams of these creatures would look to them for guidance during battle, even though there are many teams that don’t even have a Human on them. Humans, of course, are expected to battle alongside their teammates, even if they’re not quite as capable, because that’s how their society is expected to work. 

Over time, everyone sort of let go of the idea that Humans are somehow superior and they just became equals, although the trend of Humans advising a team stuck for the most part (partially because they can’t do much else, they wanted to feel inclusive). Even with their normal social standing, though, some creatures scoffed at them claiming they’re not even worth having on a team at all. Others tried their best to draw out the mythical Human power, sometimes by capturing and experimenting on them in less-than-ethical ways. Some of them claim it’s helping them draw out their full potential, but others unabashedly say that they want to harness the Human power for their own good.

So yeah, that’s basically the lore of the idea. I’ll probably think of a specific Pokemon-Digimon-Temtem-esque name equivalent for them eventually, but for now let’s just call everything a “creature.” 

The overall design prospects of the creatures are basically at the same level as Pokemon, where some of them are clearly inspired by animals but others are just general monsters/humanoids. I’m not entirely sure if I want them to all be intelligent or if some should still be animal-like in behavior, but the latter definitely makes more sense world-wise. The areas the creatures live in are built up using the elements they wield, obviously. I could imagine the general usage of the elements being more like Avatar in a way, but obviously with more than the base four elements.

As for the elements, any individual creature would start out in only one of the primary elements, and I guess if you beat a “gym” you’d get the essence for that gym element, essentially unlocking new types for your team. You can use each essence infinitely, and outside of battle the form of the creature you use it on would permanently change if it creates a secondary type (until you use another one). However, in a battle, you can switch them on the fly, and they will revert back to however they were before the battle. I’m also thinking that they could only be used on a creature if they create a secondary type, and I’d just add more of those in so it’s less limited, and so not every creature has the exact same potential, which would make recruiting different ones just pointless (although I can see it being useful for just choosing your favorite creatures to fight with, so no loss either way). Maybe the effects could just be timed in a battle. Also, secondary typed creatures would be a different form entirely. So, if an Earth creature was given Fire essence, they’d go from looking like they’re made of stone to being made of steel, etc and etc. Think of it sort of like character customization. For the Human you’d inevitably play as, I guess you could just change their hair/eye color depending on the essence, maybe add some special particle effects or light textures on the skin.

Thematically, this is more like a tag-team sport than a battle. In a 1v1 or 2v2 scenario, you’d tag out with your teammates, since the term “tag” makes for a good reminder that everyone involved is working at the same level as you pretty much. You could also name your team as well, making it even more sport-like. Also, instead of “capturing” teammates, you’d just recruit them, logically by proving yourself in a battle. Maybe you’d have to fight them only with you as a Human so it’s much better proof that you’re a worthy leader. It also opens the possibility to just talk with NPCs and recruit them that way. Maybe you could even recruit different Humans with different body types, and therefore different stats. I guess the trouble would be how you’d keep them all by your side at all times. Maybe there could be some Telefang-esque communication device you’d use to call in the specific members of your team you’d want in your battle.

Gameplay-wise, it would definitely be cool if it were a much more live battle like Kindred Fates, where you’re controlling the active creature and using their moves on the fly. It would also make for fun multiplayer battles, where you could even have a full team go against another all at once, in a sort of battle royale. Maybe even have a true BR. Even though visually I’d love for it to be like Pokken Tournament with the circular battlefield and movement (no switching, just normal movement all the time), I definitely think having super limited and easily understandable movesets is better for having multiple teammates. 

The main story of the game is sort of set out by the lore, too. Naturally it kind of has a “chosen one” protagonist who’d inevitably bring out the mythical Human power over the course of the story, with the people trying to capture you and stuff for that power being the evil team analog. Also, for those Pokemon fans anal about having an asshole rival, they could easily be a team of only creatures that doubts Human abilities. The “gyms” being for each type is pretty standard, and having combo “gyms” definitely makes things more challenging. Maybe you could enter the “league” at the end only once you get all the essences, and the secondary type “gyms” are just for a challenge. 

I’m not sure if I want the overall age of the world to be more modern, but there would definitely be certain areas that are more ancient-looking. That’s basically why I thought the idea was a little Bionicle-like, because they have super ancient-looking areas that are themed but also have a weirdly cool degree of technology in them. It’s a seriously cool aesthetic that I want more of, but I guess certain towns and cities could keep a modern structure (roads, buildings, shops, etc) but with drastically different building designs based on the relevant element. Surely with such crazy elemental powers they wouldn’t need crazy technological transportation, but maybe that would be for the Electric elemental cities. Surely some Humans would need something to be proud of.

Obviously the biggest selling point for Pokemon (at least for me) is the monster designs, so I’ll probably put some stuff together in the future. Right now I can see there being some sort of tall Metal knight-like lady character who carries their Human around like a baby. That is, it’d be her character, and not a thing of the species. Also, I drew a cute fur seal pup recently that could easily be worked into one of these creatures. Designing monsters is too fun as is so giving me a good reason to do it is just perfect.

Of course, as is common with ideas that literally were thought up yesterday this isn’t going to be a thing unless some millionaire game designer contacts me right after posting this so yeah, I’m just spitballing right now. Spitballing is fun, though.

[juniorformulamotorsport]

Wednesday, 17th September 2019 – Illkirchen, Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg, Colmar

Wednesday morning, with even more insect bites decorating both of us, we got ready to check out and move on. I’d been for a run before breakfast and stopped off at the rather odd park near one of the tram stops. For reasons I couldn’t begin to fathom, the park contained a number of “Easter Island” heads. No. I have no idea. Apparently Place Malraux contains an Armenian Oak, which counts as a remarkable tree, but there’s no connection there that I can find. And the really weird thing was that they wouldn’t be the only Easter Island head style sculptures we would encounter, we would find more on the penultimate day of our holiday.

Anyway, they amused me. By 10:30 we’d got the car packed and were ready to go. Our landlady turned up on time, despite us not having done so on check-in and we were soon on our way to  Robert Blanck to buy the wines we’d decided on. That was easily achieved, and the lovely lady serving us insisted on slipping a few extra goodies in (a couple of “top hat” Champagne bottle stoppers), especially after we bought a creme de peche as well (made from vineyard peaches) and we wended our way onwards to Famille Hauller, but could find no one around, despite Ludovic having suggested he would be there between 11 and 12. We decided to save Domain Sylvie Spielmann for later in the afternoon and thus headed for Chateau Haut-Koenigsbourg. We’d heard more about it on our wine tour, when Olivier asked if anyone on the tour was a “Lord of the Rings” fan, because if so we needed to visit the castle. Apparently “some guy” had used it as inspiration for some of the set design. Given our proximity to Switzerland, Lynne and I put two and two together and figured he was probably talking about John Howe, the Canadian artist who lives in Switzerland and who was one of the two artists deeply involved in the look of Peter Jackson’s films. A minimal amount of research later and I’d confirmed this was indeed the case, and that there’d even been an exhibition there last year. We had to go. There was no choice, not when the information I’d found said: “Several decades later, John Howe, the famous illustrator of Heroic Fantasy publications, fell in love with the château’s mysterious atmosphere on his first visit here during the 1980s. He used it as the inspiration for the design of the Citadel of Minas Tirith after he was appointed to the post of Conceptual Designer for Peter Jackson’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy”. Just for good measure it also appears in its real form in Jean Renoir’s 1930s masterpiece, “La Grande Illusion”, and the considerably less famous “Les aventures d’Arsène Lupin” in 1956, but to keep the masterpiece theme going, it can also been seen in the animated classic “Howl’s Moving Castle”. 3 out of 4 then!

We drove up a winding and slightly white-knuckled road and eventually found ourselves on the loop in the road that leads up to the castle and then back down again. It was very, very busy and we decided that we’d try and get a good parking space rather than having to flog up the hill on what was another hot day. As we passed the apex and started to drop back down again we found a space that was actually big enough for my car (and it’s not a big car). And then we looked up! The castle is a monster of a structure, and looks just like you think a medieval castle should, looming massively against the skyline.

Its history, however, is slightly different to what you might expect, as with so many things in this part of the world. There’s mention of the Buntsandstein rock as Stophanberch (Staufenberg) in a 774 deed issued by Charlemagne, and it crops up again in 854, by which time it belonged to the Basilica of St Denis and may have been the site of a monastery. It all goes quiet again until 1147, when there is a record of a castle built by the Duke Frederick II of Swabia, one of the Hohenstaufens and called Castrum Estuphin, something the monks were not happy about as the record is a complaint to King Louis VII of France about it. The offending builder’s younger brother Conrad was elected King of the Romans in 1138, and was succeeded by his nephew, Frederick’s son, Frederick Barbarossa in 1152 and it wasn’t long before the name of this commanding fortress changed to Koenigsburg (king’s castle) or Kinzburg.

Eventually it passed to the Dukes of Lorraine, who entrusted it to the local Rathsamhausen knightly family and the Lords of Hohenstein, but the behaviour of a gang of robber barons who used the castle as a hideout so enraged the neighbours that it was occupied by the Elector Palatine in 1454, and less than a decade later it was set ablaze by the unified forces of the cities of Colmar, Strasbourg, and Basel. The Habsburgs handed the ruins over to the Tiersteins who rebuilt and enlarged the castle, supposedly in a way that meant it would be able to withstand modern artillery fire. No one told the Swedish artillery forces who broke through and overran the castle during the Thirty Years War and it was finally burnt to the ground in 1633 and left to fall into ruin for a couple of centuries. You wouldn’t know it though.

It was classified as an historical monument in 1862, and in 1865 it was bought by the town of Sélestat. There were plans to restore the place, but there were no funds to complete the work. Alsace was in one of its phases of being part of Germany, so the ruins of the castle were offered to Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1899. Having abandoned his plan to restore Schloss Rheinfels, he must have pretty much snapped their hands off. What followed was a remarkable 8-year long building project, where money was no object, and the most modern techniques were used. The castle would be completely restored, with the emphasis on as much historical accuracy as possible. To that end, a young architect, Bodo Ebhardt was put in charge. It helped that he was also an architectural historian, a castle explorer, and the founder and longtime president of the German Castles Association (Deutsche Burgenvereinigung). He was very thorough and after he had analysed the remaining ruins and façades, he read up as much as he could in old documents and records, and looked at other castles to draw comparisons.

He even made sure that those who came after would be able to easily identify the new parts of the walls, creating a new set of ‘mason’s marks’ to be used on any replacement stones, and gave different marks to different years. You can still see the marks if you know what to look for. It’s a fabulous place with some startling detail and although much of it is not authentic, you can completely forget that as you go round.

After an 8-year build, on May 13th 1908 the château was unveiled to the public with a parade and pageant involving five hundred performers in period dress. Of course after World War I it reverted back to being French, and became a tourist attraction, though apparently the French visitors would regularly criticise the restoration work because it had been carried out by the enemy. Surviving both World Wars undamaged the building was classified as a Monument historique (listed building) in 1993 and is now owned by the Conseil Départemental du Bas-Rhin.

As we wandered around, the views were staggering. You could see just why anyone with an ounce of strategic sense would want to build a fortress on just this spot. No one is going to be able to sneak up on you, that’s for sure.

After a couple of hours poking into all the nooks and crannies, we reckoned we needed a refreshment stop. The Library restaurant offered all sorts of options including some and cake. We were booked for dinner at our hotel that night and really didn’t need any more than a light snack. As there weren’t any of those on offer (Alsacian cuisine really does lean towards German sized portions, or at least ravenous vineyard worker sized portions alongside French refinement) I had a slice of mirabelle cake, and a bottle of cold water.

We had a look around the medieval garden that had been set up outside, but it had somewhat gone over due to the extremely hot weather and a general lack of care. Afterwards, we sauntered back to the car and headed over to Sylvie Spielmann, where we made a massive dent in our wine buying budget. We also made a massive dent in the bottom of my car when we collected a piece of ironwork that was sticking up out of the sandy base level that a road under reconstruction had been reduced to. It got stuck, dragged along for several feet, and I was only able to get off it by reversing and then rocking forward a couple of time. I’ve yet to figure out what damage has been done precisely, but it is going to need looking at.

From there we reloaded the car again, shuffling everything round as best we could to keep the next night’s bags at the top of the luggage pile, and headed to Colmar and the our hotel for the next three nights, the Hostellerie Le Maréchal. We arrived in good time, and unloaded. I then had to drive the car to the nearby underground car park, because a hotel built in 1595 isn’t going to have built in car parking! It was a hot walk back and I annoyed myself by leaving my handbag in the car and having to walk back again almost immediately. Once in though, we were able to get ourselves organised and cleaned up and then investigate the possibility of an aperitif in the hotel bar prior to dinner in their restaurant a l’Echevin.

We had a lovely view from our window of the canal and some of the typical local barques which were the only vessels shallow enough to navigate from the market garden areas to the market hall back in the day, and which now carry tourists up and down.

Colmar looked lovely, the hotel was glorious, we had one of the suites with a “Little Venice” view, and we looked to be in for a lovely stay. As we had dinner at the hotel twice, I shall write about that elsewhere.

Travel 2019 – Alsace and Baden, Day 6, Illkirchen, Orschwiller, Colmar Wednesday, 17th September 2019 - Illkirchen, Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg, Colmar Wednesday morning, with even more insect bites decorating both of us, we got ready to check out and move on.

[amamblog]

Jean Kondo Weigl, Untitled, 1974, Gouache collage, Art Rental Collection Fund RC 1974.3.

Elka Lee-Shapiro ‘18, former curatorial assistant in Asian art, conducted this interview with artist Jean Kondo Weigl in July of 2018 as part of her exhibition, Centripetal/Centrifugal: Calibrating an Asian American Art.

On March 12th at 3:00 p.m., Lee-Shapiro will return to Oberlin to give a Tuesday Tea lecture on the exhibition. For more information, visit the event page on the Allen’s Facebook.

EL: I was thinking that we could start by talking about the work we have of yours in the AMAM's collection. It was created in 1974 and you mentioned that you were working with hard-edge abstraction at the time.

JKW: Right, after completing the MA program in Studio Art at Oberlin I was working as Assistant to the curators at the Allen Art Museum.  At the time, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Conceptualism and Pop art were primary avenues in the New York art scene.  I had studied those movements as an undergraduate in a contemporary art seminar at Scripps College while also taking classes in figure drawing and painting, and wanted to explore acrylics and non-figurative or formal compositions, probably influenced by artists such as Frank Stella. I’m not sure if I was aware of Sol LeWitt at that point, but there were a lot of artists, painters, and printmakers working with the grid format.

I chose to use the format of the grid in this work because of the regularity and the rationality of the grid, which could be juxtaposed with something else—something freer, looser, more subjective, more organic -- while still retaining the organized structure of the grid. I experimented with some loosely conceptualist formats where I might, for instance, devise a sequential order for what was going to go in each unit of the grid, and so on.

EL: The work we have in the Allen’s collection has a repeated pattern like that… is that where that idea comes from?

JKW: Yes, I began with an abstract design painted in gouache on paper that I cut up into sixty equal squares. Next, I cut the squares, four at a time, into curved strips, which I then recombined to form new squares that I then arranged in the final composition.  I couldn’t have foreseen or visualized the end product of my process the first time I tried it, and was surprised to find the resulting sense of rhythmic movement, advancing and receding space and lively qualities of color and light to be so effective. You never know what's going to happen when you try out an idea.

EL: What was it like doing this type of work in Oberlin, because a lot of the discourse surrounding formalist painting was rooted in New York City? How was it being in Oberlin engaging with these types of investigations surrounding painting?

JKW: Becoming interested in a more formalist approach to painting was a natural response to the influences I encountered at Oberlin as a graduate student and as a member of the staff at the AMAM.  Ellen Johnson, Professor of Modern Art, and Athena Tacha, Curator of Art since 1800, were powerful forces in promoting current trends in art from New York in Oberlin through their scholarship and involvement with regard to the museum’s acquisitions, exhibitions and visiting artists program.

Also, as a Graduate Assistant, I worked under Forbes Whiteside, Professor of Painting, assisting in his painting and color theory classes. In Mr. Whiteside’s color theory class, I learned a lot about color relationships and color interaction, and wanted to explore some of the ideas that I was learning in my own work. I think that's what pushed me towards nonobjective imagery, so that I could focus on color schemes and variations on the different characteristics of color. I probably know one hundredth of one thousandth of what there is to know about color theory, but I can get deeply engaged with what little I know, experimenting with all the different possibilities and variations.

EL: You mentioned the idea of objective and subjective painting in relation to the grid. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that, especially because your recent work does incorporate more narrative or figural elements.

JKW: I'm really equally interested in formalism and narrative or figurative art, and equally emotionally moved by both. Even with narrative art, the story is definitely part of what I respond to, but a large part of what I respond to are the formal elements of the work—the paint, color, and surface—and the power and skill of the artists. I remember before I ever cried to a painting, the only kind of art that I would respond to emotionally would be film or music—I can easily cry when I see a sentimental commercial on television—but I was never moved to tears by a painting until I saw a Pierre Bonnard painting. It was a small landscape of a spring day and I was overwhelmed.  I don't know how you identify the core idea of a single work of art or a body of works of art when there are multiple elements that are constant throughout. The meaning of a work has a little bit to do with the imagery and a whole lot to do with the composition and the treatment of form—but you can't have the imagery without that. So, you can't separate them.

EL: We touched on this a little bit but I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about how your personal background influences your work, and whether biographical or politicized identity comes into your work?

JKW: Well, how can we separate one’s background and identity from one’s work, either? That's another thing, right? You are what you are. I am what I am because of my background. So, it’s impossible to ignore it, but I don't think you have to worry about making it clear, because it is clear. It just comes out anyway. Everything that’s influenced me as an artist is because of my background.

I'm probably drawn to Asian art and the history of Asian art for that reason. I might not have taken courses in the history of Japanese art at the University of Utah, but in a way I felt obligated to know more about it. I might have been interested in Asian art as an undergraduate but it’s my memory that, at that time, we didn't have a lot of exposure to Asian or other non-Western art history; it wasn't automatically built in to your art education. For example, I knew that I liked ukiyo-e, but the topic of 19th century Japanese art was mainly touched upon in the context of its influence on 19th century French art.  Today, if I get stuck in the process of sketching or painting, one source that I may turn to for direction is 19th century Japanese art.  I really relate to that period as did many 19th century artists in Europe who were being exposed for the first time to a lot of Japanese and Chinese art.

EL: Do you think of the Asian influences in your work as relating to your personal identity?

JKW: Sure, not consciously, just automatically.

EL: Thinking about your identity, would you identify as say, an Asian American artist, or a woman artist, and does that play into your work at all?

JKW: Asian American over woman artist?

EL: Or Asian American woman artist... I guess in terms of these labels.

JKW: That's an appropriate question because the women’s movement was in full bloom in the seventies which is when I was at Oberlin working on as master’s degree and coming of age as an artist. Oberlin’s master’s program required a written thesis and an exhibition, and I wrote my thesis on the women's movement in art.  I was reading Linda Nochlin, Simone de Beauvoir, Shulamith Firestone, Judy Chicago, and anyone I could find who wrote about the role of women as artists or the image of women in art.  I joined the women's caucus of the College Art Association and participated in a couple of their collaborative projects. They organized a book project and a box project, and my work was included in their traveling shows. But I don't put gender at the front of how I identify myself as an artist. And the Japanese part, well, both the Japanese and the female parts were given to me, but I don't necessarily feel that I put myself in either category, as much as lot of other people need to or choose to.

I'm aware of my race and gender on a certain level.  My race and gender are important aspects of my identity, but my identity and how it plays into my work is more just individual—having to do with my personal experience and relationships.  One key to how I identify as an Asian American woman artist may be how I identify with other Asian American women artists; if it’s difficult for me to relate to another Asian American woman artist on some level of aesthetics or politics, I think it would be difficult for me to put myself under the same label as her.  On the other hand, I would probably relate more completely to an Asian American woman artist, compared to a non-Asian, non-American, male artist, if her art and politics were aligned with mine.

EL: We probably have time for maybe one more question. I'd love to hear more about your approach to teaching and what teaching is like for you.

JKW: I don't think of myself as being really articulate or able to explain some more complex issues or concepts in a particularly clear or elegant way, but sometimes in the classroom I find myself getting really excited and at no loss for words.  Especially when I’m talking about the process and how it’s important to let go and not be afraid—I’m trying to encourage students to let go, loosen up, and not worry about whether their assignments are going to be successful. I work very hard to be the best teacher, but some students stand out as being so talented, perceptive and intuitive that I can only step back and admire them, deserving little credit for their achievement.  

[lazywonderlnds-blog]

this has no name for the moment bc i’m a) lazy b) bad at titles c) @l0vegl0wsinthedark whom this is for is 2 milliseconds from falling asleep and she deserves this fluffy little thing to cheer her up a lil bit before that happens !!!! ily my angel !!! 💞💖✨

rating: pg word count: ~1500

Most scars, like the ones on Draco’s chest, fade eventually to white. Harry’s is different, though — its lines are thin and imprecise and faintly pink against his dark skin, starting at his hairline and branching out into hectic patterns that take up half his forehead like a bolt of lightning. 

Most scars, like Draco’s, are raised but smooth to the touch. Harry’s is different in this way as well — its jagged lines are a little bit rough against the pads of Draco’s fingers, distinct in their shape. Appropriate, perhaps. It’s where he was once touched by a curse that should have killed him.

Draco’s fascination is something of which he is very much aware, but has never been able to put into words. Not ones that make sense, anyway. All he knows is that to him, like to the rest of the world, Harry’s scar has taken on a legendary sort of significance, and it gives Draco the chills just to look at it, and to know what it is. What it means.

Harry had told him once that he’s a light sleeper because of the Muggle family who raised him. Draco had seen the proof of this early on in their relationship, when they had first begun using Harry’s Invisibility Cloak to sneak into one another’s beds at night. Harry would wake at the slightest provocation, from the most minor shift of Draco’s leg, or a warm breath on his skin.

Nearly eight months later, this isn’t the case any longer.

Harry sleeps now. Deeply. His body has finally learned it doesn’t need to be on high alert anymore, and his mind is healing, little by little, letting him find peace for perhaps the first time in his life. On one or two occasions, Draco swears he’s heard Harry laughing in his sleep.

These days, when he wakes up first, he has time to look. And he does look — obsessively, even. He traces the lines of that beautiful, terrifying scar with the pads of his fingers, and commits the shapes to memory, and knows that he could draw it with his eyes closed if he wanted to.

This morning, Harry doesn’t wake up until Draco kisses him. It’s a soft brush of lips, a delicate gesture that exists only within the confines of their bed.

Harry’s eyes are greenest when he’s just woken up. They are completely unguarded and so vivid they shouldn’t be real. Draco’s seen pictures of Harry’s mother, knows he’s supposed to have gotten that colour from her, but thinks privately that no one who’s ever lived could have exactly the same eyes as Harry. They are precisely the same shade of green as the Killing Curse, and Draco thinks sometimes that maybe that’s not a coincidence.

Usually when Draco wakes him up, Harry gives him one of those charmingly loose grins and says something stupid like “good morning, love” or “how did you sleep?”.

This morning, the smile is different. It’s thoughtful, and Draco thinks that perhaps Harry can tell he’s spent the last half hour in deep contemplation of their relationship. The other difference is that he doesn’t say anything — he watches Draco silently, almost as though he’s getting more this way than if he were to ask.

“Good morning,” Draco says finally, when the silence stretches on too long, and he can no longer maintain eye contact.

Harry’s good at that: eye contact. Maybe because he’s not afraid of his feelings.

Sometimes Draco wonders whether Harry’s afraid of anything at all.

Harry doesn’t answer, though — slowly, like he expects no resistance anyway, he flips Draco onto his back and traps him between sturdy arms. His hair is an atrocity, thick black strands of it falling in his face or sticking up at bizarre angles on the back of his head.

He is without a doubt the most beautiful man Draco has ever seen.

“All I said was good morning, heathen,” he says. Harry’s smile grows. “Isn’t it early for the asserting-your-dominance routine? I’ve only just woken up.”

“You’ve been up for a while,” Harry says. Draco narrows his eyes and knocks the side of his fist into Harry’s bicep.

“Cretin,” he says. “How long have you been awake?”

“I was in and out for the last hour.”

Draco splutters, going instantly red. It’s not as though he thinks Harry doesn’t know he has a bit of a fascination with his scar, because he does know. It’s just that he’s never questioned Draco about it, he’s always just sort of ... pretended not to notice. And for that, Draco has always been grateful, because really. It’s just a scar.

“It felt nice,” Harry says, and doesn’t have to clarify, because Draco knows he’s talking about his scar. His face has gone soft, like he’s already figured out what Draco’s thinking. Perhaps he has, at that. “I don’t usually like when people touch it.”

“I know you don’t.” Draco’s throat clicks when he swallows. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I don’t mind when you do,” Harry says gently. “Just tell me why you like it.”

Draco scowls. Harry has a knack for putting him on the spot, probably because he’s figured out it’s the only way to get Draco to talk. What he doesn’t know is that those preposterously green eyes usually have a lot to do with loosening Draco’s tongue.

Before he can answer, Harry leans down and kisses him, slow and soft and sweet, and he pulls back just as Draco gets his hands on Harry’s face and opens his mouth.

“Tell me,” Harry says again.

“I don’t know.” Draco huffs out a frustrated breath. “I think it looks nice. The ... design of it, you know? It’s pretty.” The blush from his face has reached his neck.

“You used to say it was ugly.”

“I was a child,” Draco says tightly. “I don’t think it’s ugly. I think it’s ...” He lifts a hand, skims his fingers across the scar. “It’s intricate. And beautiful. And it’s, y’know ... it’s a symbol.”

Harry’s eyebrows draw together. He wasn’t expecting this.

“What do you mean, a symbol?”

“A symbol,” he says again, and shrugs. “Of hope. For the Wizarding world. As far as scars go, this one’s pretty legendary, Potter.” And even as Harry rolls his eyes good-naturedly, an emotion Draco often tries to repress pops into existence with all the subtlety of an exploding Erumpent horn. His next words come out quiet and vaguely unsteady: “It’s just crazy to me sometimes that it’s you, I guess.”

Harry’s hand has migrated to Draco’s waist, and his fingers are delightfully warm where he’s snaked them under Draco’s shirt.

“That what’s me?”

“That it’s you, Potter,” Draco says, hiding his rampant emotions beneath a flimsy facade of irritation. “In bed with me. Touching me. You’re the hero of the age, a living, breathing symbol of hope, and for some reason you want me?” He clicks his teeth shut, glowing with embarrassment. “That’s why your scar fascinates me. Okay? Because it reminds me it’s you.”

For a moment, Harry doesn’t do anything. He just looks down at Draco, eyebrows furrowed, thinking deeply. When he does finally move, it’s to wrap his fingers around the back of Draco’s neck and pull him into a kiss that’s slow and yet anything but soft. It sends tendrils of fire creeping along Draco’s veins, sparking his nerve-endings and turning his skin into goose flesh.

“I love you,” Harry says, breaking from his mouth to trail his lips down the line of Draco’s jaw. Then he pulls back entirely, and his hand is large enough that when he cups Draco’s cheek, it covers the whole side of his face. “I love you more than I know how to put into words, more than I can figure out how to conceptualize to try and explain it to you. I don’t care who I am to anybody else. Of course I’m here.”

“You might not feel that way one day,” he tries to joke, but it comes out sounding weak and, worst of all, truthful. His insecurities are, for the moment, spelled out on his forehead. “I have to enjoy you while you’re here. While it is you.”

“It’s always going to be me,” Harry says. His voice has dropped a register. He leans down again, and this time he kisses the apple of Draco’s cheek. “You’d better get used to the idea, because I am going to ask you to marry me one day.”

Draco’s breath gets caught somewhere in his throat, and Harry laughs.

“Don’t joke about things like that!” Draco scoffs, swatting Harry’s arm.

“I have never been so completely serious about something in my life,” Harry says, laughing and catching Draco’s wrist on his next swipe. “You’ll have plenty of time to get sick of me.”

Draco furiously continues fighting back any telltale sighs of emotion on his face, and he knows Harry sees this, because he rolls his eyes and bends to kiss Draco again, this time on the mouth.

He doesn’t say it out loud, thinks that maybe he never will, but he knows privately, way deep down inside his own mind, that he’ll never get used to being loved the way that Harry loves him.

[md3artjournal]

venting angst productivity failure time sleep practice progression

12:10 AM 3/25/2019

My daily figure photo series "Waiting for Ryuji" plus the daily/monthly drawing challenges I keep doing, are both destroying my days.  x____x;  It's been more than a week, and I haven't even finished the 23 paopu halves plushies I was supposed to do within 1-2 days!  I have so many projects to do for artist alley in early July!  ;O;  So many new products I want to make, but I have no energy!  It's becoming clearer that I only have energy for 1 (maybe 2) projects per day!  ;O;  That's just the 2 daily art projects/challenges to keep my art muscle in shape!  ;~;  Aughhhhh!  ;o;!  

Thank goodness I take notes for how long it takes me to draw different stages of a drawing, or else I would never have noticed I've been taking 3 hours per sketch.  O~o?!!!!  How is that?!  I'm not trying to be polished with those!  That was supposed to save time!  I mean, I'm not doing all-nighters anymore, like I did for Inktober 2017, so that's an improvement.  But 3 hours?!?????????  It takes me 10 minutes to do the primary sketch.  I know I can have problems designing a costume or conceptualizing a monster design, but 2 hours and 50 minutes?!?!?!??????  Omg...  I'm so hopeless.  Is this worth keeping my illustration muscles/skills in shape?  I've already accepted that I'm not an illustrator.  I suck too much.  I usually call myself a crafter, a jewelery, or a clay sculptor...Even though I've been drawing more frequently than ANY of those in a LONG time.  x~x;;;;  Is all this time really worth just TRYING to become better at drawing?  ;~;  I wanted to be able to nurture this skill so I could express myself with drawings, whenever I needed to express something.  But today was "Kiss Ryuji Day" and I was still too intimidated to draw anything for it, because I'm too afraid of how bad my attempts always turn out.  I couldn't even draw a good hug between Ryuji and Akira during OTPtember2018!  (It was such a bad drawing...That I tried SO hard on! ;_; )  I mean, I have to admit that I could turn some of my Magical March and MerMay challenge drawings into merch for artist alley, but objectively, none of it is good.  It's good *for me*, but compared to the competition in artist alley...What am I even doing there?!?  Looking at my sales data, the answer is I'm selling polymer clay sculptures, so again the question becomes, why am I using so much time to learn to draw, just so I can express myself, when it eats all my time away from making more clay sculptures that actually sell?  Is being able to express myself such a hang-up for me?  ...Yeah.  ~.~;  

So what about the figure photography?  I'll admit that those answers are simple.  It's a good way to practice an "eye" for composition, lighting, posing, etc.  I suck at it, and I don't put much effort into my lighting to mean anything against such greats as Kixkillradio, Love Pink Cheeks, Nendo Stories, etc.  When I look at their stuff, I can recognize how little I'm trying, and I have to ask myself "why am I even trying?".  Considering my self-expression fixation, figure photography is a good fill-in medium until I can better develop my drawing skills.  And I did originally start collecting figures to use as drawing models, which unavoidably funnels me into figure photography, so it's not like it's something I'll fully stop doing even if I stop setting up photoshoots and dioramas.  But I also really like making miniatures, figure accessories, diorama props, etc.  My sister said something like that if something makes me happy I shouldn't feel guilty about it and I should pursue it.  Whether I vent about how terrible I am for spending so much money on Nendoroids or when I refrain from buying supplies that could make my life less irritating out of frugality.  Maybe just feeling happy from doing figure photography is enough to justify it.  So maybe I shouldn't stop.  ...But I need to stop spending hours on Photoshop elements for figure comics.  That needs to seriously cut down, especially for a daily photo project.  

I know it never works when I resolve to stick to a schedule, but I really need to cut down how much time I use for these daily art projects, when artist alley is in a few months.  I don't outsource my products.  I have to make each and every one by hand.  That's the curse of the crafter.  I need to use more time for these crafts.  Jewelry, sculpting, designing, problem solving fabrication, etc...It's all stuff I love to do and once I start I don't want to stop...  But at this rate, I'm never going to get to it.  And then it'll just be a repeat of my horrible history.  Sure, last year I was able to finally make enough polymer clay Wayfinders to not sell-out my entire stock, half-way through Anime Expo---for once!  But it was still a situation of crunch time focused only towards my essential products and past best sellers, vs the thing I really wanted to do, which is making new products as well.  I waste so much time watching productivity videos, trying gameified motivation apps, and so much time wasted trying bullet journal techniques, thinking that if I just use this tracker or try this analog gameification technique, I'll finally stick to a schedule and thus be able to do everything I need and want to do....  But it always fails.  I really can't do more than 1 thing reliably per day.  And I have to practice daily to keep my skills up---my skills are too low to keep it to a once-per-week practice session.  

And it's started to wear down on me how much all these attempts and failures at a schedule are ruining my sleep cycle.  Everyday, there's a midnight I don't manage to get into bed on time, or a midnight in which I don't manage to be truly productive before midnight, so I have to stay up to get something done so I can go to bed, feeling good about myself as a person.  It's not as bad as school, but it is still a daily sense of failure, like school.  I recall the months (years?) that I resolved to no longer try to have a normal person's sleep schedule and just simply work on my projects as long as I have the will for, and than collapse into bed whenever.  I worked hard to have no social life, to have no one in my life vying for my time, so I should have no need to live in the same Time as anyone else.  But I had a breakdown last year, where I had to accept that I wanted the revive the good relationship I used to have with my mom, and I had to resolve to put some effort towards that.  So now I guess I have to live in the same Time as other people.  So I can't just be noctural and asleep while everyone else in my life is awake.  Yesterday, I think they tried to wake me to go to my uncle's birthday party/luncheon/dinner, but I sleep during the day and wake at night now.  I don't have FOMO for parties, being an introvert, but the next time---or rather how many times has my mom wanted to spend time together and I'm just in a different Time than her?  They go to movies every Tuesday sometimes invite me, haven't mentioned it in a long while, and for the past 2 weeks, I haven't even been able to be awake enough to go to two movies I've wanted to watch during the Tuesday-discounts.  Even right now, I'm staying up late again because I got sleepy during the day, and had to nap (and quite frankly I get better quality and more productive recuperation during daytime naps) so now I'm all rested to be awake...and it's past midnight.  Last week I finally got to a place where my sleep cycle more resembled a normal person's pattern, after 2+ weeks of work towards that.  And then one or 2 projects that went into the night, and all that progress was gone.  Sleeping like a normal person wouldn't be such an issue for me if I would actually be rested enough to be awake for when I want to get to work.  But I can't sleep even when I'm trying to sleep.  I'm amazed how spectacularly my attempts to sleep fail whenever I get to bed early ("early" as in a normal person's sleep pattern).  Is this all a lost cause?  Just like the rest of my life?  

Ugh.  I need to eat and sleep.  

2:13 AM 3/25/2019 Earlier today, my mom seemed to imply we could watch a movie on cable together, but I was in the moddle of a project.  I was fixated on a project instead, since sleep/fatigue had taken all my time, so the rare moments of productive will I have, I don't like to let go of it whenever I happen to have it.  It may ruin me, but in the end, I'd rather pay the cost of an all-nighter to get a good piece done, and have something as proof that I can be proud of myself (as well as use for artist alley for years to come), vs getting sleep on a normal person's pattern and have done nothing that stretched me beyond the limitations I thought I had. I like that proof of worth. (I've been seeing posts lately about "your productivity/skill is not your self worth" but I can't completely buy into that for myself anyway.) With my lack of memory and sense of self disappearing along with it, having artwork left along the way, as proof of who I was, what I'm capable of, and as concrete encouragement, proving that I can do great things, I have that inside me, even if those "great" things are just stretching beyond my subjective limitations by only milimeters...those are memories and senses of myself that I want and value.  ...And having new pieces in stock, ready to be turned into new artist alley products at the last minute, while I'm feeling bad that I hadn't had time to make anything new, is also great.  

[synthaphone]

thinkin about stuff

i’m very glad that people are exposing abusive people in music, that is always the highest priority

but dear god its so emotionally taxing to have to, every three weeks or so, go through my music library and delete a different artist’s music because i can’t listen to them anymore without the specter of whatever awful fuckin shit they did looming over it

like, i only had two songs by grimes, and she’s technically not a sexual predator as far as we know, but i can’t fuckin listen to those anymore!!! like, its not a matter of ‘if i listen to these, i will be doing a morally bankrupt thing’, its a matter of ‘i can’t fucking hear these without thinking about how much of a stupid asshole grimes turned out to be’

said goodbye to fall out boy ages ago because of their pedophile bassist

in an incredibly ironic twist, i had just watched that feature length video essay about parasocial relationships, which reminded me that i hadn’t listened to the rest of The Mountain Goats’ Beat the Champ, was enjoying that, and then 5 days later it turns out that the dude emotionally preys upon his young queer fans- cool!!!! i liked a lot of their music for like, a couple years, but now listening to it feels like i’m listening to some creep’s carefully curated trauma in order to garner sympathy and approval from people a third his age!!!! fuck!!!

also i briefly was enjoying that new carseat headrest album, but then there was

the whole shit that went down regarding 4l*ng and discovering that the cr*wcillers person, who Mr. Carseatheadrest is a big fan of, is ALSO a b*byfur

i kept listening to his music after that like ‘well maybe he doesn’t approve??’ but i know that was bullshit- when i found out two weeks later or so that he was an ass about how sufjan stevens’ album about his mother’s death was ‘trying too hard to be sad’, i finally just gave up on his music. the second thing is much smaller than the first, but convinced me that if he’s a dick he probably doesn’t give a shit about the first thing and so now i can’t listen to that album either

i still listen to paul simon/simon & garfunkel occasionally, because the dude is dead, i’ve listened to it since i was very little, and it reminds me of good times i’ve spent with my dad, but he definitely got into physical altercations with at least one of his partners.

my dad also played a lot of moby in the car when he drove me to school as a kid, and i loved that dude’s boring electronic music for a very long time as a result (a few songs in particular i listened to when i went to japan for a week in 9th grade, and listening to them can remind me vividly about that trip), but moby’s an absolute fucking dumbass and i know that his music is widely regarded to be terrible, so that’s hard to listen to as well.

i dunno, i guess it just feels like... i mean, with artists like falloutboy or whatever, i’m REALLY glad that they were called out for what they did, and they deserve to be buried from public consciousness. their songs were often about the subject of that dude’s abuse, its super fucked up, and i’m really glad that we know now. but man, for some of the smaller stuff, i can’t say there isn’t a part of me that envies people who listened to music before the internet, and didn’t have to know every dumbass thing about the stupid people who make it, and when the musicians didn’t have a massive platform that allows them so many opportunities to fuck up publically

anyway, that’s a pretty selfish envy when it comes down to it. a lot of the artists that my brain reacts to like ‘well, if john darnielle and grimes and carseat headrest didn’t have the internet, they maybe never would have had the opportunity to do anything shitty’, are like... people who maybe wouldn’t even be making music or famous in the first place without the internet. or people who would have done shitty things anyway, but we wouldn’t know about it, and then their victims would have maybe never found a way to expose their abusers.

i think i’m just tired, like emotionally. a huge part of me kind of just doesn’t trust musicians (especially dudes) who make ‘deeply personal’ music anymore- like, when does it cross the line from creating media to help yourself and other people who experienced similar things cope, into exploiting other people who are hurting into worshipping and validating you and your pain?

i have a renewed appreciation in TMBG for making mostly character or conceptual songs and keeping a personal distance from their fanbase- i mean, i know they’re not beyond fucking up too, but i’m just so tired. i was so paranoid that when the aquabats made their kickstarter, as much as i’ve loved that band in the past, part of me doesn’t trust them not to fuck up so badly in the future that i’d have to trash all of their music?? i still haven’t donated, either to the first failed one or the relaunch- i’m tempted to, especially since they broke down where they planned to spend all the money they were looking for, but between the fear of betrayal and the fact that i probably shouldn’t be spending much money frivolously right now, its hard to justify it. i want the stickers, especially if any of them feature lil bat, but again: what if they turn out to be awful people?? does the fact that i’m so paranoid about it with the aquabats but not with a lot of other bands i listen to mean i’m on to something, or is that extremely unfair of me??

i need to open commissions and don’t have any excuse for not doing it anymore- i’m honest to god just scared. i’m scared that i’ll either price my artwork too low, or too high, or that i’ll get a commission and discover that i can’t draw what the commissioner wants, or that i’ll mess up the payment process or the taxes involved with doing freelance...

i’ll be honest, i keep doing those centibyte colors because there’s like, a clear end goal. finish all the colors! very simple. don’t know what to do? work on another color!! nothing to worry about, i can zone out and listen to music... but shit like, buying a new laptop, finding a job, opening commissions, personal projects... changing my residency to georgia (i think i missed the driver’s license transfer window and now i’m just... trying not to think about that. denial, heyy)

and i’d be lying if i said a big part of my incentive for making artwork isn’t for validation. one of the problems i have when i consider applying for a job is that i can’t sell myself- i simultaneously KNOW i’m qualified for jobs, like, i’m a fairly talented animator, if inexperienced, and i can draw appealing illustrations and creatures- but my insecurities kind of prevent me from being able to say ‘i’m an illustrator’ or ‘i would be a good fit for your company’. like, i’ve broken down and cried in college on multiple occassions- i really don’t want that to happen at a job??? plus, there aren’t a lot of positions open near me that i’m interested in, or that fit the criteria of what i can do, and combined with my fear to check for new ones...

so posting neopets fanart (or any fanart, really) on the internet is easy validation- i’m obsessed with seeing people enjoy my work, and that’s one of the other reasons i haven’t started my personal project. i want to tell a story, but i really want to tell it for me, without obsessing over how other people will react to it or if other people will like it. i kind of know that it isn’t a very good story?? i just want to put it into physical form, as a sort of emotional fulfillment to myself. i feel like i can only do that if i promise never to post it, but then in the back of my mind, there’s always a voice saying shit like “but if it turns out good... you could eventually post it”, sort of poisoning the whole thing. i haven’t even started. 

i improved so much at art after i started posting my art to the internet in high school, but i do miss how i would just draw and make stuff up for myself and my sisters when i was in middle school. some of my incentive WAS for people to eventually see it and enjoy it, in the case of when i was obsessed with designing toys, or writing a fantasy novel, but that kind of feedback was set in the distant future, and some of it was just for me, or for games i was playing with my sisters and friends. i want to figure out how to make stuff for me again

[schraubd]

On the Latest Academic Hoax

A new academic hoax story has broken, and it's bigger than ever before. Three scholars wrote twenty papers, none of which contained the arguments the authors believed (and all of which contained arguments the authors considered to be ridiculous) and sent them off to journals in the "grievance studies" set. By the time they had to pull the plug on the hoax, seven had been accepted, six were either still under review or under some form of "revise and resubmit", and six were rejected outright. This project was an expansion on an earlier hoax where a gibberish paper called "The Conceptual Penis" was published in a pay-to-publish journal. The present effort distinguished itself both in the number of papers written and in the decision to submit to what the authors called highly-ranked journals in their disciplines. On that latter note, it's hard to assess -- once you start getting into the sub(-sub-sub)field weeds, what really counts as "highly-ranked" -- but at least a couple of the journals they scored with are recognizable names (Hypatia, in particular, was a good get). It's also true, as any observer of peer-reviewed scholarly literature can tell you, that a lot of peer-reviewed scholarly literature even in top journals is dreck. So the fact that the authors were able to get arguments that are (or they viewed as, anyway) dreck published is not itself surprising; though perhaps it gives insight into exactly what and how dreck gets through the process. Nonetheless, I think there are some important limitations on what one can draw from this "study", including significant ethical ramifications in how the "data" was presented. One might say I'm being overly credulous in even treating this project as one that seeks to earnestly improve the quality of academic publishing standards (hint: if that's your goal, sneeringly referring to your targeted disciplines as "grievance studies" is a bad way to start). But, in part we should be self-reflective about the quality of writing and reasoning in academia, I'll take it on its terms. First, the limits on the conclusion. The authors methodology was to take arguments that they figured would be appealing to the editorial staff of a given journal but which they, personally, found to be outlandish, and see if they could get them published. They say that proves a serious malfunction in the peer-review process. I say "haven't they just passed an ideological Turing test?" An ideological Turing test measures one's ability to mimic the beliefs of the "other side". You "pass" if you successfully convince members of that side that you really are one of them. So let's say I, a liberal, adopt a pseudonym and submit an article to Breitbart. I do my best to make it look, feel, and sound like a Breitbart-style conservative article. Now clearly, I wouldn't believe what I was writing about them. The key question is whether they'd recognize the sham: would they say "this sounds like what a liberal thinks a conservative sounds like" (which is, indeed, what it actually is) or would they believe that this is an actual conservative writing? If the latter, then I've passed the test. The thing is, nothing about passing the Turing test, on its own, demonstrates the falsity of the beliefs or arguments successfully mimicked. Someone on Twitter (I can't remember who) suggested the case of a young-Earth Creationist who submits an article to a biology journal that "mimics" tenets and presumptions of mainstream biological science. If his "hoax" succeeds, would we say "aha! The biological sciences are hopelessly corrupted, to be taken in by this prankster!" No -- we'd say that the author has, albeit disingenuously, written an actual good argument (that he happens not to believe). Likewise, if I successfully spoof Breitbart, I doubt they'd take that as decisive evidence that they've gone off the rails. The case for why these papers are different, then, can't simply turn on the fact that (a) the authors don't believe the arguments they made and (b) they were nonetheless accepted. There has to be something else in the argument that makes them objectively bad, such that it represents a failure (beyond the fact of the disingenuous motives of the author) for the journal to have accepted it. So what might these be? This is hard to assess, because the authors don't link to the full papers (the accepted versions have, unsurprisingly, now all been retracted) and because their summaries are by design written to make their claims sound as outlandish as possible. But at least in some cases this isn't facially self-evident. Take the paper they got into Hypatia. Its thesis is "That academic hoaxes or other forms of satirical or ironic critique of social justice scholarship are unethical, characterized by ignorance and rooted in a desire to preserve privilege." One certainly understands the extra-dose of gleeful "gotcha-ness" the hoaxers enjoyed in getting this paper into Hypatia. But it's hardly the sort of article whose "wrongness" transparently stands out such that reviewers should have obviously known, on face, that it was ridiculous. After all, one could absolutely believe that satirical critiques of this sort of scholarship are unethical and rooted in a desire to preserve privilege (the "characterized by ignorance" is, I concede, at least arguably performatively contradicted by the ability of the authors to sufficiently effectively mimic these arguments such that they got their papers published. But even then, that would just show that one prong of the element was, after the fact, demonstrated to be falsified). Ditto their Fat Studies paper on fat bodybuilding. Again, the article isn't accessible anymore, but if the basic thesis is that there could be various ways to present "fat" bodies as (in the authors' words "legitimately-built bodies") worthy of attention and praise, even now I won't say that isn't a transparently ridiculous assertion. Think of what the ESPN Body Issue has done on this score, for example -- quite a few of its models, at the very least, undermine the notion that "fat" and "athletic" (or even "muscular") are mutually exclusively categories (quoth one of the athletes, a Major League pitcher: "As a baseball player, if I'm pitching 35 times a season, seven innings a pop, 100 pitches a game, I need some fat. I need some extra meat on my body."). And to the extent the "obvious wrongness" is based on the thesis being "positively dangerous to health", I call foul both because it oversimplifies what the research actually shows regarding the linkage between health and what is deemed "fat" in contemporary American society, and because "mainstream" bodybuilding very obviously also doesn't represent the apogee of healthy living either. Again, I'm not saying that either of these claims are clearly right. But they're not, at least as presented, transparently wrong such that nobody (not just not-the-authors) could find them believable or worth engaging with. Another potential reason why we could say that reviewers "failed" in not recognizing the wrongness of the article is where there is outright falsification of data. This is something they (apparently) did in the "Portland dog park" paper (they claim to have "tactfully inspected the genitals of slightly fewer than 10,000 dogs whilst interrogating owners as to their sexuality"). Maybe a good reviewer should have recognized that this seemed suspicious. But here I'd say that peer review is actually quite bad at catching this sort of outright fabrication (political science had it's own scandal on this score not too long ago). Perhaps unsurprisingly, peer review works best on the presumption that the author is earnestly presenting genuine arguments obtained by honest means. Our peer-review system would be even more dysfunctional than it already is if the first question reviewers asked is "is this paper lying to me?" And that moves me to the ethical qualms I have in how the hoax authors have presented their findings -- most notably, in how they treat the peer reviewer comments. Each of the papers they submitted -- including those which were rejected -- comes with a selection of peer review comments, all of which are positive. The idea, presumably, is to demonstrate that even their worst papers that didn't get accepted nonetheless were not treated with the sneering dismissal they deserved. There are two problems with this presentation. First, I think it is actually capturing trends in peer-review to be more constructive, charitable, and supportive towards the papers under consideration -- all good things. One of the reviewers quoted (who had recommended rejecting the article) explained his more positive feedback as an attempt to "buy in" to the paper and provide constructive comments explaining why the article itself didn't work without discouraging the author from the field entirely. It is, I think, a good thing to read articles in their strongest possible light -- to try to think of the best interpretation of the claims the authors are trying to make rather than the most nefarious. This is a practice that hoaxes, in particular, exploit -- they gain their force precisely in the knowledge that their readers will commit the terrible sin of trying to take them seriously. The second problem with the way the reviewer comments were presented is simultaneously more and less serious. Simply put: if the hoaxer's goal really was to provide a pathway for identifying what is and isn't "working" in these academic disciplines (and I concede that may be far too optimistic), then there is no justification for not including the negative or critical reviewer comments that (presumably) explained why papers were not accepted. Partially, this is simply a matter of misrepresentation -- only giving the positive comments but not the negative ones oversells how receptive readers were to these pieces. But more importantly, the part of me that wanted to earnestly take this hoax seriously as a genuine effort to constructively critique certain academic disciplines was the most thirsty for learning the content of the negative reviews. What is it that gets a paper rejected in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity (or what have you)? Clearly, it isn't a wild west where anything goes so long as you mimic the right politics (the authors -- somewhat begrudgingly -- admit that their project conclusively falsified that hypothesis). Consequently, figuring out where the borders are, what raises flags and what doesn't, is actually incredibly important to the extent the project is actually meant to have any sort of constructive edge. That these weren't included is powerful evidence about what the ambitions of the hoaxers really were. So it's a more serious critique to the extent I take the hoaxers seriously as trying to have a constructive impact on academic publishing; and a less serious critique to the extent that ascribing such seriousness of purpose is absurd. In any event. I don't need persuading that academic publishing includes a lot of terrible work, and I don't need persuading that there are certain common markers as to what gets terrible work published. But this hoax overshoots the mark -- mostly because its goal isn't really to build a better scholarly mousetrap but rather to grind certain ideological axes. My recommendation, therefore, is revise and resubmit. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2Nl8iPv