#But you're just not looking at it from the same flat perspective where you get to skip that waiting period!

[kettle-flakes]

k so slay the princess is rotting my brain but currently one big thought is chilling in my brain, and like- hear me out (sorry if my wording doesn't convey my thoughts well skskfjdjg)

but I don't think the damsel is entirely as shallow as some may see her as. HEAR ME OUT- compared to the other princesses, yes, she definitely more shallow. and she is also (at least when looking at deconstructed) poking fun at those trying to have an easy and work free romance route where the princess does whatever you like and loves you so, so much. i'm not saying she's supremely deep and that no one understands her but me, but I also don't think she exists solely to mock players with absolutely nothing to say about the nature of human permanence either.

does that make sense? more thoughts below- they're a bit disjointed though so warning ^^;

I personally think the damsel can also represent a very real form love, so to speak.

gimme a min to explain. I think what initially led me to this is a line from the narrator equating the smitten and the damsel to acting like teenagers in love. and that line sorta shifted my perspective a bit on her a little? seeing that kinda made me go "ohhhhhhh makes sense" like it really did remind me of two kids who don't entirely get what dating entails but still want to be together, and given the endgame sequence the damsel's section just kinda cemented this mindset for me.

for clarification the damsel has two(?) bits of dialog depending on whether she's deconstructed or not. If she isn't she says something along the lines of (iirc) "you had a desire and you set that desire free/not caring about what it took or costed you in the process" annnd?? like that's kinda wholesome to me?

like the damsel's love with the player isn't nearly as in depth, complicated, or complete as say the thorn, but it's a passionate love. it's also a naive love. the sort of love you'd find with, well, teenagers having a crush. of course when people get older they see those old crushes as frivolous and flat, but to the people experiencing them in the moment, it's real! it's serious! they were still willing to risk a lot just to be together. and at least at the start, you're willing to be killed by the princess if it means she's safe after having a battle of control against the narrator. it just reads as very human to me. they truly felt that their love could conquer anything.

I feel the thorn is a more 'adult' version of the damsel. it's that passionate love taking on a more mature form. it has more hardships to go through and way more pitfalls and mistakes that one can make compared to the more childish love like the damsel's. there's less theatrics and fanfare, and to me it feels more somber and quiet. it's a contrast between the high stakes emotion filled damsel, and the more intimate, tense, and self-aware thorn. ultimately in the end for both of them, they come to a realization that love is a powerful tool almost in a way that mirror each other.

some of the same occurrences leading up to the route are also shared between the two. like having the princess stab you in the prior route. I also think it's worth noting that in the thorn, the thistles can be seen as/can be referred to a prison of her own making. something she can leave if she was willing to make the effort to do so. it's similar to the damsel's shackles being easily slipped off her wrist. she could free herself.

also by extension, say what you will about the smitten but he loves the princess no matter what form she takes. even when she kills him he still adores her. he is content with being cooked alive by the princess if that's what she wants. i think he's a lot like the damsel in that sense. whatever she wants, she will have. if the damsel is molded to love the player, the smitten is absolutely molded to love the princess in the same way.

[s1llyalabaster]

Let Begones be Begones - Veritas Ratio

Where Ratio conceals his identity as a faceless and voiceless streamer, until he finally reveals himself to your surprise. College au! and also streamer au! Exes to lovers, reader is a bit sassy. ~1k words, SFW

a/n: i feel like i don't often write in ratio's perspective, so i wanted to give a go at it...

"FUCKING HELL!! I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU!!" The purple-haired man had heard through the thin walls separating your apartment flats. This had been the third time in probably an hour where your yells and screams had nearly broken Ratio's ears.

Yes, Ratio was a streamer himself, but at least he was courteous to his neighbours enough to use a text-to-speech application and an elaborately-designed model when streaming, so he didn't need to reveal his voice nor appearance. Hardly anyone knew about his job as someone who blabbers on the internet for money. Not his boring Architecture major classmates, nor his closest childhood friend, Aventurine.

One of the few people who knew about his side gig was the precisely the person living in the flat next to his. You see, you two shared the same passion for sciences and such, and ended up applying for the same major, which didn't end up very well, with a falling-out happening just months ago.

Ratio had seen you while throwing out the trash once, and upon his eyes meeting yours, his face morphed into a scowl that slowly spread across your face too. An eye roll was more than enough to show his dismissal of your existence, even after all the joyous times you two spent together. Or that time where holes were practically burning into his skull when he was presenting his "new idea of architectural geniusness".

He also knew that you two shared the same job, thinking nothing of it, as his method of earning money was too intelligent to not garner a few copycats here and there.

After a long day of studying and attending classes, turning his monitor on was the last thing Ratio wanted to do. Yet, he promised his viewers a "facecam" stream to celebrate his first year of streaming (which was also his first year of being stuck in ths terrible apartment complex). He did his usual routine of setting up his stream, with an additional flick of his bangs due to his first appearance as himself on stream.

Ratio went along with the stream as usual, doing his greetings, reading his donations, and throwing (jokingly) vile remarks at his chat. He wanted to get it over with as soon as possible, so with one last look at his phone camera, he turned off all his assets.

"Well, asides from me feeling extremely bare and upfront upon the eyes of you idiots, any thoughts?" Ratio spoke, his real voice unconcealed.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH- WHAT?!"

The man's head swiveled to the side in alert, eyebrows narrowing in annoyance. Your shrill shriek had once again assauted his ears. THE Veritas Ratio hadn't think this through enough, huh?

He sighed, shoulders slumping in defeat after the stream ended. Ears perking up at the loud knocks on his apartment door, Ratio dragged his tired body to the doorway, knowing full well that he would be bombardde with countless questions.

"What now?" He grumbled.

"YOU'RE TELLING ME YOU'VE BEEN HIDING THIS," your finger jabbed at your phone displaying his streamer profile, "FROM ME?" Ratio sighed, body practically slumping against the door frame. "Nobody said that being a streamer's exclusive to you. Now just- go back to your room before I slam the door in your face."

The realisation that you've been watching his streams was slowly dawning on his barely-function mind. Considering the type of content that he made which only appealed to a small audience compared to gamers or E-girls, he knew basically every recurring viewer.

Including the one who has been spitfireing snarky chat messages at him ever since the falling-out.

Oh.

It was comically ironic how Ratio was the one who ended up knocking on your door the next morning. He felt awkward, brain tingling from the predicament. This was the first time (not counting yesterday night) that he's talked to you personally in weeks, even months. His feet was tapping in impatience, hearing you stumble through your way to the door.

"Oh, it's you. What happened to wanting me to get out of your face?"

Ratio's fingers ran through his hair, strands of violet falling to his eyes. He was uncharacteristically silent, racking his brain for a proper reason that wouldn't make him lose his face.

"Well, I just- You know... Ugh! Why do you have to make this so difficult?!"

"I just... wanted to know why you decided to watch my streams."

You chuckled at his coy form, you wanted to burn it into your retinas. Not only because it was a very, very rare occurence, but also because you never wanted to let go in the first place. Ratio was the one who decided to break it off, saying that you were a distraction to becoming a greater scholar. You still remembered how hard you cried that night, and thinking back, he'd probably also remember due to how thin the walls were.

"Listen, it's not like I wanted to stalk you or something, I just happened to learn about it through a mutual friend. So if you're trying to manipulate me or hurt me again, today's not the day for it."

Ratio faltered. He didn't expect your sharp words to hurt this much. Each and every time he saw you in class, the deeper the hole in his heart would go. It's not like he wouldn't like to pursue you again, he was just incredibly scared. And knowing Ratio, he'd never admit to that.

You sighed, beginning to find the conversation pointless. You decided to turn back and return to your room to continue working on your essay. But before you could, a calloused hand grabbed your wrist firmly. You looked back to see Ratio with his head hung low.

"The things that you do to me... How come someone like me, someone who was born to use logic and reasoning, be so impulsive when it comes to dealing with you?"

You smiled, interlocking your fingers with his, gently rubbing your fingers on his callouses from writing and researching. He didn't disappoint you this time, and you knew that he wouldn't hurt you again.

You two shared a hug before you led him into your apartment.

"What's with all the mess? You'll never have a clear mind with such an unruly space."

Looks like he was back to his usual self.

[broodparasitism]

Everything I've Learned About Querying from Talking to Agents (And Traditionally Published Authors)

Disclaimer: I'm UK based, as was everyone I spoke to. I didn't include any country specific advice, just what I think is applicable regardless of where you live, put it might be useful to know this is from a UK lens.

As part of my course I was able to go to a lot of talks with literary agents (a mixture of literary, genre and nonfiction) and I picked up a lot of useful information - a lot of it not quite so bleak as I feared! - and thought it might be helpful to compile it for anyone looking to query agents in the future, so, here goes, under the readmore:

Querying

Remember that agents want to find and publish new authors. They're not at odds with/out to get aspiring authors. They want to work with us. This is someone you're working with, so don't pick an agent you won't get along with.

Manuscripts should be queried when they are as close to finished you are able to manage. There are a few agents that are open to incomplete manuscripts, yes, but many more that flat-out refuse unfinished work. Manuscripts generally go through about ~15 rounds of edits before landing an agent.

Send query letters in batches - around five or six at a time. There is no limit to how many agents you can contact, but you can't contact more than one agent from the same agency, so make sure you've selected the most suitable one from each.

In most cases you can't submit the same manuscript to the same agent twice - so having it be as finished as possible is all the more vital.

Some of them will take a long time to respond. Some never respond at all. If it's been three months of nothing, it's safe to assume that's a rejection.

One agent said she took on about two new authors a year, which likely isn't true for them all but is probably a reasonable average. For all of them, the amount of queries they get can be in the three digits a week. I can't emphasis enough just how many they get. I take a lot of authors to mean that means it's a 0.001% chance and despair, but that assumes each manuscript has an equal chance, and they don't. Correct spelling and grammar, writing in a genre that appeals to the agent, quality sample chapters and respecting the submission guidelines (more on this later) improve the odds by a significiant amount.

One agent said he rejected about half of his submissions from the first page due to spelling and grammar mistakes and cliches, for perspective.

You'll need to pitch your book. If your book cannot be pitched in three sentences, that's a sign it has too much going on and you'll need to do some pruning.

Please don't panic if you cannot come up with an accurate pitch for your book on the fly - you're not supposed to be able to do that. A pitch takes many edits and drafts just like a manuscript.

Send your first three chapters and a synopsis (this should be a page, or two pages double spaced. It should not include every single plot point though, again, if major things end up not there at all, question if they're necessary for the manuscript).

Three chapters is the standard - as in, if the agent web page doesn't specify how many, that's what to opt for. If they say anything else, for the love of God listen. If there was a single piece of advice that the agents emphasised above all else, it was to just follow each submission requirement to a T.

There needs to be a strong hook in these chapters. If your manuscript is a bit of a slow burn, that's fine, but you can cheat a bit with a 'prologue' that's actually a very hook-y scene from later on.

Read the agent's bio page throughly and make a note of what they like, who they represent, and what they're looking for, and highlight this in the query letter.

Your query letter has to say a little about you. It doesn't have to be really personal information (but say if you're under 40, because that's rare for authors and they like that), and keep it professional but not stiff, they say. If you have any writing credentials, such as awards won or creative writing degrees, include them, as with any real life experiences that pertains to the content of your book. But no one will be rejected on the basis of not having had an interesting enough life.

Apparently one of the biggest mistakes for debut authors tend to be too many filler scenes.

In terms of looking for comparative titles, think about where you want your book to 'sit'. Often literally - go into bookstores and visualise where on the displays you could see it. It's really helpful if you can identify a specific marketing niche. Though you want to choose comparisons that sell well, but going for really obvious choices looks lazy. A TV or film comparison is fine - as long as it genuinely can be compared.

Do not call yourself the next Donna Tartt. Or JK Rowling. They are sick of this.

Don't trust agents who request exclusive submission.

Or any with a fee. Agents take a percentage of your advance/royalties - you never pay them directly.

In terms of trends (crowd booing), there's been a boom in uplifting, optimistic fiction, but more recently dark fiction has been rising in popularity and looks to have its moment. Fantasy and Gothic are both huge right now. Publishers also love what's called upmarket/book club fiction - books that toe the line between genre and literary.

But publishers aren't clairvoyant and writing to trends is a futile effort, so don't let them shape what you want to write. Some writing advice I got that I loved was to not even THINK about marketability until draft three or four.

If any agent requests your full manuscript - this is crucial - email every other agent you're waiting to hear back from and let them know. This will take your manuscript from the slush pile to the top, and you are more likely to get more offers of representation.

The agent that flatters you the most isn't necessarily the best. Be sure to ask them what their plan for the book is, and what publishers they're planning to send it to - you want them to have a precise vision. It might be that their vision misses the mark on what kind of book you wanted to write, and if so, they aren't the right agent for you.

Research like hell! A good place to start is finding out who represents authors you love (the acknowledgements pages are really helpful here). if you can, getting access to The Writer's and Artist's Yearbook is very helpful, as is The Bookseller, the lattr for checking up on specific agents. (I was warned the website search engine is awful, so google "[name] the Bookseller" to see what they've sold. That said, only the huge deals get reported, so it's not indicative of everyone they take on.

I also want to add Juliet Mushen's article on what makes a good query. I owe a lot to it, and I feel like it's a useful template!

Once Agented

Agents send a manuscript to about 18-25 publishers, typically. Most books will end up having more than one publisher interested.

It can be hard to move genres after publishing a debut novel, especially for book two, not only because it means it takes longer for you to establish yourself, but the agent that may be perfect for dealing with manuscripts for book one might not have the skills for book two.

Ask the agency/publisher about their translation rights, their rights to the US market, and film and TV rights. Ask also what time of year the book is going to come out, if being published.

It's less the book agents are interested in than it is you as an author. You will be asked what you're going to write next, so have an answer. Just an answer - you don't need another manuscript ready to go. One author said she flat-out made up a book idea on the spot, and she got away with it - just have an answer. (This is also useful to put on the query letter.)

Caveat that this is, of course, not a foolproof guide to getting a book deal, nor is it in any way unconditional endorsement of how the industry works - I just thought it would be useful to know.

[topaztimes]

Both of you wanted this so I made it a post lmao @etherealspacejelly @the-rat-1

ERM! I call this the Very Brief Guide To Human Faces (From A Furry Perspective)

Let's start with this guy.

This buddy is the absolute basics of the human face -- I guarantee that if you focused your camera on a version of it you drew, it'll recognise a face, because that's all a human is: neck, nose, under-lip, under-brows (which is also why I make the under-brow coloured darker in my style lol. Cheeky example below)

Anyways! Exaggerating and expanding outwards from these shadows are really important if you're trying to go for realism. But let's keep going with regular anatomy for now lol -- just, if you're stuck, make sure that those shapes are obvious. If they aren't, maybe that's the issue!

(That's what buddy looks like filled in. His brows are raised a bit lmao)

Mads Mikkelsen jumpscare:

(I chose him because his skull is SO OBVIOUS) Now, this is THE cheat code of all time: in the VAST majority of mammals, the inner corners of the eyes are exactly the same width as the widest part of the nose/nostrils. In humans, since we have bones in the front of our jaws, we have another sneaky thing with this same proportion: the CHIN. Wowie!

See? These two buddies have a very obvious line. It's amazing

More things that line up are: Top of ear: top of eye socket, bottom of ear: middle of upper lip Bottom of nose: top of earlobe (where the hole begins) Corner of the jaw: dip of the chin Aaaaand there's definitely more that I can't think of off the top of my head. Oh well

Here's a small turnaround of the head for you... which leads us onto the cranium (REMEMBER that the head isn't a perfect box! It's more like a trapezium prism; that's how you can see the tips of someone's opposite ear when they're facing 3/4 away from you)

THE CRANIUM!!!

This is what a white person's head would typically look like from the side -- they tend to have more flat craniums. I like to exaggerate the shape of the overhang because it makes me happy

Another thing to do with side profiles: the default human has the JAW and the FOREHEAD PARALLEL to each other. It's an epic cheat, because if you know the rough angle of the jaw, you know the angle of the forehead. It's saved me far too many times

This is closer to my own head shape, although it's still very exaggerated lol. In short: anything that isn't the xenomorph's level of head-dome is likely the shape of a real human. Everything can be customised; everything's connected

Last bit: customising the face. You know the default -- how do you change it while still looking realistic?

Remember the line I was talking about? Contains the nose, doesn't include the eyes? You change THAT. You make the nose wider than the corners of the eyes for a big nose, and you make it smaller for a little nose. That's how your brain can tell that someone's had plastic surgery lol (people often get nosejobs without also getting their chin shape changed. There's a lot of variation in eyes, so you don't often notice those if only 1/3 doesn't align)

Same thing with the forehead and jaw being parallel. You want a square jaw? Make the jaw more of a right angle while making the forehead rounder. That's how you build juxtaposition to draw attention to the 'striking' feature.

OKAY omg that was a lot but I hope it helped lmfaooo -- I also have a mini guide for the general body so let me know if you want that too

[childofhypno]

just some thoughts from sherlock and co. Mailbag episode

honestly I did this to myself and at 3am no less.

In an mailbag episode on the sherlock and co. patreon, answering a question on their favorite musicals, John answered Les Misèrables. And being the romantic we know our loveable doctor to be, I was perusing the songs from the 2013 movie album and came across On My Own.

Sung by Èpoine about her unrequited love for Marius. And that is sad in its own regard, there's a reason it's one of the musicals most popular songs and Samantha Barks does a great job of that crushing emotional weight of being so wrapped in someone, so ultimately dazzled by them and wanting to be near them. But knowing they will not look at you the same, will not place the same value on the time and proximity you share. And that is not their fault and it is hard to love someone and desire to be close and yet have them be the source of your greatest pain and rejection, even though they may wish you no harm.

It's been hinted at and out right stated (by Sherlock) that John wants to be liked. And given what we've heard about John's last relationship (the one whereby he gained ownership of Archie after the split) and perhaps some insecurities there, insecurities in his own capabilities, comparing himself to others, its understandable to read John as something of an insecure man. Not in a toxic manner but John definitely has a lot of self doubts about himself and his place in the world and what he can offer to others. Despite him so naturally being able to attune to people and their needs and being quite bloody smart and intuitive. All round just a decent person.

And John, as much as anyone, marvels at Sherlock Holmes. This almost mythical figure. John admires Sherlock and maybe envies him on some level. I think not in Sherlock's deduction skills or specific knowledge skillsets but maybe in Sherlock's apparent surety in himself and where he is in life and what he wants from it. Sherlock is plainly himself, even if it means not "fitting in " John often tries to mould himself to what others might like, and hey, as a people pleaser, oh boy do I understand that. Almost becomes like muscle memory.

Sherlock in turn, I think admires John's social prowess. His ability to express the complexity of emotions. Just because someone doesn't emote the typical way doesn't mean they don't feel the emotions. And that can be incredibly frustrating when you want to communicate with others. Sherlock cares about people. He's interested in people. And he can't always express or connect with them in the way he wants. Like a language barrier he mentioned in another mailbag episode. That is why Sherlock and John work. They draw out in each other and supplement for the qualities they lack or yearn to have more of. They're a balancing act. A good one. And I'm not the first to point that out.

All this to say, imagine when that act is separated. The Fall. Grown so comfortable to have the other's support, always by each others side and then, suddenly the other person isn't there. And you have to remember how you functioned without them before. But you can't go back. You're not the same person you were. But if they aren't there to remind you, to encourage you, it's easy to fall back into old habits.

And so the song. On My Own. From John's perspective, watching the man the myth the dazzling legend that is Sherlock Holmes, getting swept up in the adventures, feeling totally out of place but thrilled be along for the ride, participating, maybe growing in confidence all because of coincidental flat share with possibly the most brilliant and bizzare man he's ever met. The world is changing for John Watson. And Sherlock is seemingly at the center of it all. He's found purpose. Friends. A home. Maybe more. But John is as fallible in his assumptions as any of us are. And Sherlock appears to have no interest in such relationships and John, not confident enough to make the first move. So he can daydream. Of what it would be like to be with Sherlock. And what it would be like be without Sherlock.

And then the Fall. And he truly is without Sherlock and his world has dulled and greyed and blurred. The city has lost its glimmer. The flat is quiet. The words are meaningless. And John sits with his what ifs.

Don't think of John hearing this song. Of the heartbreak of knowing that you can ever be with the one you love. And knowing that taste of what brilliant technicolours the world is when you were with them, full of stimulating twinkling lights. And thinking it could never be that way again. Don't imagine John, sat in the flat, in the achingly quiet flat, as a woman sings for her never was love, head in his hands, Archie resting his head on John's knee. Don't think of John cursing himself for not being sure enough to tell Sherlock how he felt, for not being good enough again to save his friend. Don't think of John Watson, once again, on his own.

[jiminsinterlude]

Shamless | PJM

Pairing: Jimin x Reader

Summary: No matter how much you hate him, you always end up in bed with him.

“Maybe if you let me fuck you, I could give you a different perspective.”

-> Smut; Associates

Warnings: unprotected sex, oral sex(f.), fingering, teasing, overstimulation

-

I hate him. That was the constant thought that came to your head whenever Jimin was mentioned. But here you were, in his bed with your legs spread wide open for him.

Jimin held both of your legs open as he fucked you with his tongue. His tongue slipped in and out of your hole, pushing it as deep inside as it could go. The feeling made you a moaning mess.

One of your hands were tugging at his hair and the other gripping onto the bed sheets. "Shit Jimin, You're so good."

Did you really hate him? Maybe just him as a person. But you do love the pleasure he always brings you. Jimin slipped his tongue up to lick at your clit. He pressed down hard with the flat of it, licking and sucking. Your eyes rolled back even more, squeezing your legs shut around his head. That didn't last long though as Jimin pushed your legs together and up towards your stomach, holding them down with his left arm.

With his right hand, he brung it down to enter his fingers inside of you. His middle and ring finger circled around your hole before pushing in. You let out a soft gasp as they sunk inside. Jimin pumped his fingers slowly to get you adjusted to the feeling. He does this every time to tease you knowing you can definitely take whatever he does.

He began to pump them faster, listening to the moans you let out. Jimin enjoyed your noises and soft pleas of you moaning out how good he feels. He knew how much you so called 'hated him' and really found the whole situation amusing. You hate him but he has you screaming out to the top of your lungs almost every night. And there were days where Jimin would sit and think about how you guys started hooking up in the first place.

"Jimin go away." He only moved closer to you, closing you into a corner of the art class. He was curious and wanted some answers to a certain topic. Jimin wasn't going to ask the question straight up so he basically sugar coated it.

"Tell me Y/N, what's your problem with me exactly?" You turned around to face him. A smirk was placed across his lips. Was he really asking you that right now? But seeing how close he was made your body temperature rise.

"Back up Jimin." He closed the gap up in between the two of you. His body was basically on yours.

"Not until you answer me." You hitched a breath and pushed him away slightly but he gripped your wrist softly and held them. Jimin wasn't going to give up until he got his answer.

So you gave him the answer, the close proximity was making your blood rise. Only due to the fact that you couldn't figure out if you enjoyed being so close to him of not. Your body was telling you one thing but your head was indecisive. "You're very cocky Jimin. Rude and so fucking sassy."

"What if I make you change your mind about that Y/N?" The way he said your name made your heart drop. It was so—seductive. But you couldn't fall for it, you knew why you really hated Jimin. Nothing can make you change your mind.

"No matter what you do, I would still feel the same way."

"Maybe if you let me fuck you, I could give you a different perspective." He has to be kidding right?

"Oh you're so full of yourself Jimin, Like I would ever let you fuck me."

"Jimin! Oh Fuck." You clenched around his fingers as you felt yourself cum all over them. Jimin kept his pace fast, even with his tongue. He drove you to overstimulation and you felt yourself about to squirt.

That was until he pulled away from you completely. Jimin let go the hold of your legs and began to suck on the fingers that were once in you. You whined out at the empty feeling, missing how good he made you feel.

Jimin gazed over your naked body, watching you catch your breath. You opened your eyes and looked at him. His fingers were no longer in his mouth and were palming his hardened dick through his Calvin Klein underwear. What's taking him so long to fuck me already? You asked yourself, craving Jimin.

You watched him start to take his underwear off and toss them somewhere across the room. The adrenaline in your body rushed, you were getting excited.

"Look at you Y/N. So ready to be fucked." You could only nod your head. "Tell me how you want it."

You stayed laying on your back. Missionary, you wanted missionary. So you could be able to look at Jimin while he fucks you. To look at the person you "hate", while he fucks you. Something you said that would never even happen.

Jimin smirked at you as he moved closer to you. He began to align his dick with your hole. The second you felt his bare tip push against your hole, you were gripping onto the sheets. He noticed and shoved himself into you.

You screamed out in pleasure, rolling your eyes back. "Fuck Jimin." He started off slow, adjusting himself to your wet insides. You rubbed up his toned arms, digging your nails into them. Jimin leaned down, resting his body onto yours. His lips met yours the second he sped up his pace.

His thrusts were fast, basically drilling you into the bed. You had your arms wrapped around his neck, fingers tangled in his hair again. Moans were shared during the sloppy kiss. It was hard to keep up with the kiss but the two of you continue to smash your lips against each others.

The bed creaked underneath the two of you. It didn't do this the first few times the hooking up began. He must've been fucking you so hard that the bed was starting to be effected. Jimin slammed into you harder and harder and the kiss eventually broke.

The two of you stared at each other with low eyes, mouths hanging open, and moans leaving out. Your hands were roaming his back, feeling every inch of his warm skin. A tear slipped out of your eyes from the intense pleasure. Jimin was killing your pussy, you loved it.

Your back arched against the bed and your nails digged into his back. You began to get so caught up in pleasure that you stopped moaning and only focused on each of Jimin's rough thrust. He noticed your eyes fluttering and heavy breathing. As well as the clenching around his dick. You were going to cum soon.

Jimin pulled almost all the way out before slamming back in. He repeated this motion and it definitely brung back your moans. You yelped out each time his tip met your cervix.

"Jimin...You fuck me so good." He slightly smirked.

"I know I do." Your head turned and gazed at the lamp next to you, not wanting to look at his face after that cocky remark. Jimin didn't appreciate it and stopped moving. You immediately looked at him, begging him to keep going. "Look away from me again and I won't fuck you at all."

You didn't even get the chance to respond, Jimin was fucking into you again. Slowly but rough. The two of you kept eye contact, deep into the pleasure of each other. Your walls closed in on Jimin as you came on his dick. Jimin's thrust got sloppy and he was going to cum too.

"You know I hate you so much Jimin." You tried your best to say between the moans that left your mouth. He shut his eyes tightly and moaned out, cuming inside of you.

"I know you do." He responded before leaning down to kiss you again.

[pocketwei]

Hello !

As a fellow artist, I really admire your style, and would like to study it.

In that spirit, would you be OK to tell us a little bit about your process ?

I hope you have a great day and I look forward to seeing your future pieces !

Woah, this is high praise, thank you so much 🥹 And thank you for allowing me to nerd abt process hahaha, I love to talk abt this stuff! Drawing is so much fun honestly

For process, I'm not sure if you mean more the actual process of crafting the art, or rather the thought-process that goes into it, so I'll briefly cover both! I'll just talk abt my personal/fanart practice since I think this is what the "style" part refers to? As in, I won't mention process for, say, storyboards or backgrounds I make for animation.

Under the cut bc long answer!!

A piece usually begins with an idea, it's often inspired by something I see or hear, by something that comes up in a conversation with friends, by something I read in a fic, etc. And imo, the most crucial aspect of my creative practice is narration; it's the thing I strive to perfect and polish the most. What do I want to say with this piece, which story do I want to tell. Before I even start sketching, I usually have an idea of the intention I want for a piece, and with enough experience, at some point you start guessing what "visual devices" you should use to render that mood. E.g. if I have an idea that involves a really suffocating mood, a feeling of tension, one of the basic ways to go about it is to crowd your piece, have it more zoomed-in and in longer focal length so the perspective is flattened. Similarly, you'll often choose not to show your character whole (especially not their feet, with which they could flee!) or the floor (which is a way out for the character), you have many overlapping objects, etc. Knowledge of these "visual devices" honestly come with time, and sometimes they sound super basic, but they do the trick, and they're not hard to spice up and make more original when you keep your mood/intention in mind.

Then comes storyboarding/sketching! It's the most important part to me, because this is where you decide how you're going to tell your story. Sketching is the most exciting part, you can let your mind speak and find creative ways to spice up the "visual devices" you've figured out at the initial thinking step. I think one of the greatest advices I got, ever, was from my storyboard professor, who told us to always keep in mind that a picture (moving or not) is ALWAYS a 2D surface, and that it should be treated as such when storyboarding. I.e. when you board, think of your image as an arrangement of shapes on a flat surface, rather than a 3D scene. You can figure out the logistics and the perspective in lineart, but for storyboard, composition has to be prioritised over a well-constructed room, bc otherwise you'll just draw the same things over and over.

It depends on the pieces, but nowadays I prefer to just clean up the sketch rather than do a whole clean line on top of it, as not to lose the spontaneity and dynamism of the sketch. Lineart is about making things look pretty and nice to look at, but it's also a step where you can reinforce your initial intention with details. It can be details of anatomy (giving an expression, working on your characters' anatomy to make it expressive (what story does this body tell)), or of environment (what does this place mean for my characters, why are they here, what does it tell about them). For this I use truckloads of references!!!! Super important. Either from other artists, especially for anatomy details or line efficiency (matanai_ke, nisir0, nonebrainer on twt, whose styles I've been really digging recently), or from pictures/real life for enviros. No one's born with the ability to come up with a plausible baroque interior so get those refs! Lineart is honestly one of the steps I enjoy most, I spend the longest time on it because I need it to be perfect and tell exactly what I want to tell. I'm working on improving my linework quality because I feel terrible abt it ahjdsf

Then I do a coloursketch. My approach of colours is painterly (applying colours directly as they appear) rather than the neutral flats + coloured filters workflow, which do work great for beginners however, and I did my time in the mines with it as well asdjfh...... I usually apply an underpaint layer as shown below, usually then place lights first, and then work my way through all the elements.

Sometimes my underpaint is bright and saturated, sometimes it's more muted and darker: again, it all depends on the intention of the piece! I do this to visualise better and to contextualise the colours I'll paint on top of this base. The yellow in the top-left screenshot gives a warm touch to the wood-browns, even though they're not actually super saturated! With the bottom-right, the pink gives a colder aspect to the teals/greens and makes them more "aggressive", as it's their complementary colour. It also bears a narrative purpose: on the bottom-right screenshot, I wanted pink to seep from the edges of every shape, and purposefully left the edges jagged and rough instead of cleaning up the painting perfectly. Bright pink like this is not only a crazed colour, but it also represents Doflamingo, and in this case, it fit the intention to have him and this madness as the backdrop of a scene that doesn't involve him, but to which he is the unspoken key and center (Monet is hallucinating/projecting that it's Dof looking down on her, when it's actually Law). As if his presence was underlying the very materiality of the scene.

God that was long. Then comes rendering, which I hate with my guts because I don't know how to do it and if I could get away with only colour sketches for the rest of my life I would!!!! I hate spending time on colour details and rendering materials and polishing brushwork I just hate this step :')

And finally, compositing!! Slap some grain* on this bad boy, slight chromatic aberration in the corners if we're feeling fancy, perhaps a bit of field blur... chromatic aberration is to mimic cameras! it's a physical effect of the lens, and having it on illustrations give them a more cinematographic quality.

*in a non-destructive way I BEG!!!! Quick grain tutorial for the poor souls who still merge everything -> filter -> noise!!! 1. Create a gray layer with HSV at 0, 0, 50 2. filter -> noise as you'd normally do 3. set blending mode to overlay so your grain is more visible the darker your colours are (like for a real camera! grain is an artifact created when there isn't enough light in your captor) (I won't get into the maths of overlay but it's quite fascinating, basically it multiplies the value of pixels that are V>50 and "divides" the value of pixels that are V<50, while pixels that are V=50 like our initial grey layer, it doesn't change the value of the pixel underneath it) and 4. set opacity to ~20% depending on what you want or need

and tadah! you have an illustration. how cool!! there are still many things I need to work on, but it's a very fun exploration everytime :'D I feel glad that I've reached a point where I somewhat know what I'm doing, it made drawing so much more fun in the past year. Good luck w your own endeavours!!!

[myrmica]

do you have any tips for getting better at drawing anatomy? your poses are always so fluid and realistic

first of all THANK YOU!!! that makes me happy to hear!

under the cut because i got long winded... i hope something in here is useful! some of it may stray from the point, and i have no idea what stuff you already know.

in my experience a lot of it is about paying attention to form/volume. at one point or another i realized i vastly prefer art that emphasizes this, as opposed to flatter more stylized anatomy, as far as things i want to emulate in my own work go (flat styles can be cool when other people do it; this is a huge thing with art i think, developing a sense of discernment when it comes to the art you Want To Make versus the art you like but wouldn't want to mimic...)

so i add contour lines to everything i draw as i sketch because it helps me figure out where the object is in space, in relation to the viewer. doing this immediately establishes where the subject is in relation to the "camera" because lines curving one way mean you're looking up at something, and vice versa. if you've ever seen the coil method of foreshortening before, it's the same principle.

while construction lines won't always be there in a finished piece, you can communicate form in the curves of your lines. the round end of a sleeve is a countour line, so are fabric folds (although they have their own volume too), etc.

the feeling of looking up at someone, or their arm moving towards you, or their back turned away from you, that's where a lot of tension and dynamism comes from--some of the "fluidity."

another thing is to focus on weight, and how things interact when they touch... if you grip someone's arm, how does the skin fold/warp under pressure? can you actually draw it doing that, instead of leaving the arm being grabbed unaffected? stuff like that. a huge inspiration for this (and i think it shows in some of the artistic choices i've been making lately) is margot maison's work. like, check out this panel from bora the brain:

or this one of mine, where i just grabbed my own arm like that to see how it felt and what the skin did...

these are both examples of smaller details but the same principle applies any time you're drawing two people touching, or even a bent leg where the thigh and calf meet. i'm more interested in how skin/fat moves around than i am in getting the nitty gritty details of muscle groups and bones right. knowing the muscles and bones certainly HELPS; my personal favorite bones are the radius and ulna in the forearm, and keeping the way they move in mind Is useful because it reminds you that the arm isn't a uniform tube shape, it's a flat rectangle type thing, and it'll look wider or narrower depending on the angle... etc. see pronation/supination gif below:

they get recomended all the time but the morpho books are my favorite reference for doing actual intentional anatomy practice & in redrawing stuff from them a ton of tricks for constructing bodies have stuck in my head. like, here i was focusing on how they simplify the shoulder/armpit in relation to the ribcage:

(you can download most of 'em for free off of libgen btw.)

you can also get something kinda special drawing bodies from life. if you don't have other people to draw, your own hands/legs work too, and it's good for foreshortening and perspective because you're always seeing them in relation to your own viewpoint:

granted both this and the morpho studies are things i find fun to do. on the off chance that you're someone who finds studies tedious or boring, rather than pushing through it you might want to paint a character you like onto the pose you're practicing or something like that to keep yourself invested?

i also use references gratuitously. usually many pictures at once, where i'm combining them to get the pose i want. either just referencing different photos as i draw different things or literally editing them together depending on what it is. over time, i've gotten better at coming up with dynamic and interesting poses without a ref, because using them has built up my understanding of the body (it's actually way easier IMO to draw a dynamic pose without a ref than it is to draw a dude just standing there without one ?!)

there's sort of a push and pull for me between accuracy/realism ("can the arm Actually bend that way???") and exageration/stylistic liscense ("if it doesn't, does it look cooler like that?") where it helps to KNOW if you're drawing something that isn't technically "anatomically correct."

there's also a lot to be said for tracing over photos for practice!

thank you for the question, i love to talk about these things ^_^

[rileys-battlecats]

tumblr kept eating my response to this ask so I'm making a separate post to see if that solves the problem!!

I recommend by starting with the technical aspects of perspective and environments! which does not sound fun. and I might even go so far as to say it is not fun at all. But!! It is important!! Once you get the hang of drawing things in perspective with Math™, you can start doing all this free-handed! So if you feel up to some extra art homework, get yourself a sheet of paper and a ruler >:)

There's two kinds of perspective that I can tell you about, one-point perspective and two-point perspective. I'll go with one-point cause it's easier to explain haha

Below I've provided a picture of some of my own drawing homework from a class I took a few years back!! Annotated for clarity lol

So here we've got your Horizon Line (HL) , your Measuring Line (ML), your Central Vanishing Point (CVP), your Vanishing Point Left (VPL), and your Vanishing Point Right (VPR)!

Your HL determines where your horizon is in your drawing, which in most cases will be about halfway up your page! You can adjust this to fit your needs though, depending on where you want your point of view to be :)

The CVP is where your HL and ML intersect! The VPL and VPR are the "edges of your canvas" as it were—anything past these points start to get distorted, perspective-wise.

Your ML is the mvp of Math Perspective Drawing, and you're gonna want a ruler/measuring stick for it! The ML is in the center of your paper. Make some marks at regular intervals (in my drawing here they are all 1 inch apart, but they can be larger or smaller on yours!) up and down your ML. Then, using the same measurement, make marks along the HL. At the bottom of your page, leaving a bit of room below, make those same marks (aligned with the ones on the HL, so that if you connected them, they would make straight vertical lines).

Next step is starting The Grid™

From each mark made on the bottom of your page, draw connecting lines to the CVP (shown in red below)

Now, make a line from the bottom right corner of your "canvas" to the VPL (shown below in purple). Where the purple line intersects with the red lines of our half-formed grid is what determines where our horizontal lines of The Grid™ are located (indicated by light blue x's)!

So now we have a grid!! Woo!! Things have started to get a little messy so I'm removing my homework from the background. goodbye homework o7

This grid is what enables us to start drawing in perspective! If you wanna skip all the set up feel free to just. Screenshot what I've got here and use that for drawing on lol

Now we can draw BOXES. cubes, even!! And by learning how to translate other shapes onto the faces of these boxes, you can learn how to draw other things in perspective, like cylinders (seen on the left in pink). There are specific methods for drawing other volumes in perspective, but this post is long enough as is without me going into it haha

Using this knowledge, you can make all sorts of backgrounds!! Here's a super simple example (plus kitty, of course)

Once you've practiced using perspective, here's a few other miscellaneous tips!

Think about the location you're drawing. What would you find there? Is it a forest, a city, a field? Should there be trees? Boulders? Buildings?

Practice drawing different locations from life (or from photos). I cannot overstate how much this helps lol

Make some objects to distinguish Foreground, Midground, and Background. This is where perspective helps you! Once you can clearly distinguish between these three, your backgrounds start to feel deeper, if that makes sense?

Think about ways to make the ground uneven. Dips or hills in the landscape, small ridges/ledges, whatever fits for the location! Even in places with flat ground like an urban landscape, try to distinguish different levels in the ground, like from the sidewalk to the road. A lot of times, it makes the background more interesting to look at!

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/soundly-proving-the-curvature-of-the-earth-at-lake-pontchartrain.8939/

A classic experiment to demonstrate the curvature of a body of water is to place markers (like flags) a fixed distance above the water in a straight line, and then view them along that line in a telescope. If the water surface is flat, then the markers will appear also in a straight line. If the surface of the water is curved (as it is here on Earth) then the markers in the middle will appear higher than the markers at the ends. Here's a highly exaggerated diagram of the effect by Alfred Russel Wallace in 1870:

This is a difficult experiment to do as you need a few miles for the curvature to be apparent. You also need the markers to be quite high above the surface of the water, as temperature differences between the water and the air tend to create significant refraction effects close to the water.

However, YouTuber Soundly has found a spot where there's a very long line of markers permanently fixed at constant heights above the water line, clearly demonstrating the curve. It's a line of power transmission towers at Lake Pontchartrain, near New Orleans, Louisiana.

The line of power lines is straight, and they are all the same size, and the same height above the water. They are also very tall and form a straight line nearly 16 miles long. Far better than any experiment one could set up on a canal or a lake. You just need to get into a position where you can see along the line of towers, and then use a powerful zoom lens to look along the line to make any curve apparent.

One can see quite clearly in the video and photos that there's a curve. Soundly has gone to great lengths to provide multiple videos and photos of the curve from multiple perspectives. They all show the same thing: a curve.

==

Flerfers also do this thing where they wave left to right, or even 360 degrees all the way around and say, "wHeRe'S tHe cUrVe?" Right in front of you.

You're standing on a ball. Looking around laterally is seeing the points of a cross-section.

The curve is away from you, not around you.

[theratandcatshow]

Episode 3: Catch The Rainbow

You had shown yourself to the Smillimng Critters and thus fulfilled the first mission. However... You are now being Followed by Bubba Bubbaphant. This not only brings problems, but also a new perspective on the whole situation.

---

Ta-Daaaaaa: A new chapter! Have fun reading!

---

Being chased is not what you imagined. In a dark alley on a winter's night, cold wind hitting every open skin of yours and of course the human slowly swinging up behind you, making every cell of your body scream out of fear and panic.

But here? No, you never expected this. The bright fields, overflowing with the rays of light streaming from the false sky and the fresh air wafting past you. Hills, trees and a lush landscape are all in your sight...but not in your ears.

You heard him, Bubba Bubbaphant. The fine vibrations on the ground, you almost missed them, but you heard it. How the Fine Grass helmets buckle on the ground and a blunt, large footprint burns the flat.

Do rats have good hearing?  Why do I hear him even though he's further away?

But I'm not a rat, am I?

I am...

What am I?

No, you shouldn't be thinking about that right now. After all, you're being chased by one of the Damned Smilling Critters, the smartest of them all, Bubba Bubbaphant. You are still running across the fields, but you have an idea.

In 40 meters there is a large stone wall right next to CatNap's house. You saw it on the map, a big purple house on top of a cat tree. That wasn't important at first, the stone wall was important. If you tightened your fingers, you could use your claws, even better, it was the perfect way to win a confrontation. You could get close to Bubba and, if in doubt, end it all.

At the same time, you still have the big backpack on your back, and Bubba has probably seen it. Maybe it's not a bad idea to attack him, you could just say he's lost or something.

Of course you wouldn't tell them, you won't show your face for the time being and you'll watch everything from afar. You first need to know how much they know about all this.

I'm not allowed to turn around, that would be far too suspicious.

Your legs feel heavier than before, even though you are still running through the great grasses. But in a few steps you'll be there, and you'll win the first confrontation with Bubba.

Genius? You are nothing.

You would definitely win in a fight. Not just because it's a one-on-one fight. You're faster, more agile and more adaptable than Bubba. He might be better in terms of pure body strength, but even if he's wider, it wouldn't do him any good. A long cut on his belly with your claws and he would have already lost.

There you were, the huge house of CatNap and the stone wall on your left. You had about thirty seconds until Bubba was within five meters of you. Until then, you still had...

What?

You notice it immediately, even if you are still standing in the grass.

The scales on the map were wrong.

The stone wall was further away from the house, and therefore an extra distance without cover from Bubba's eyes. He would certainly see you if you went as far as the stone wall, even more so if you went around the corner. You have to act, faster than ever before.

What should I do? It'll take too long to get to the stone wall, he'll see me. It would be risky at CatNap's house, I would leave traces.

You decide, CatNap's house.

A small jump to the left, a sprint and another jump. Tighten your fingers on both hands so that you can literally feel the claws. Then you stand cross-legged, keeping your left leg on the ground while you slightly raise your right leg into the air. Take a look at the purple wall of CatNap's house and you know which area you can claw at. Now, push off once with your feet, keep your eyes up and you're stuck to the wall, the strange fabric feeling funny against your claws.

Where is the Fat Blue Elephant?

You wait.

10 seconds.

15 seconds.

20-

That's when you heard it. Damn quiet, but you heard it.

It was him, Bubba Bubbaphant. The way he quietly and carefully put one leg in front of the other and ran on. His blue form didn't stand out as much in the green grass as you thought, but he also ran crouched to make it better.

Then something happened that you hadn't expected.

He stood directly beneath you against the wall of CatNap's house.

He took a camera out of a bag that you only now notice. Small and silver, it's even shiny, reflecting a tiny bit of light as it leaves his pouch. He angles his body harder against the wall, and you quickly and precisely yank your claws out of position, stand a little higher, and quietly ram them back into the purple wall.

"Damn, he just disappeared behind the stone wall...I have to tell the others...Who knows how much he knows"

He's right below you, standing there, camera in hand and talking to himself.

This is the last time that you'll be able to come within 2 meters of me... Come near me again and I'll rip you apart.

You would do it, for sure.

Tighten your claws and end his life with a horizontal cut through his belly. If that's what you were asked to do, you would do it. You would kill him and none of his friends can do anything about it.

"Fuck-fuck-fuck...I need to take a better look at the footprints"

What?

Bubba moves away from the wall, stands in the middle of the grass and holds out the camera. You continue to watch him as he stands there and takes pictures of your prints in the tall grass.

He has a camera? From where? But that doesn't make any sense? A camera but nothing else digital like a cell phone or something? Or did he assemble the camera himself? No, he won't be that clever.

Click

Ah, an analog camera.

Click

Shit, he takes so many pictures of my footprints so he can compare them.

Then you remember.

Shit! I didn't cover my tracks on the way from the Dark Forest to the picnic table.

If he was really as obsessed as you thought, he'd probably search all of Critter Valley. Just to make sense of your appearance, this guy is crazy.

Damn him... To think that one of the Smilling Critters is so obsessed with finding out everything about me!

In contrast to CatNap and DogDay, Bubba ended up in first place. First place in the sense of critters that you should definitely avoid, and in the event that something goes wrong, kill directly.

You would win the fight, it might weigh more, but as long as the fight doesn't take place in a small room, you would win. Lure it out into the meadow once, tighten your claws and you would only need a few seconds.

With that he disappeared. He walked along the grass, his head on the ground and his camera on the prints in the grass.

And with that you start to think, still with your claws on CatNap's house wall, hanging over several meters.

Bubba Bubbaphant, the brains of the group. He's not physically superior to me, nor mentally. He would never hurt anyone, not even kill them if in doubt.

[ "Bubba Bubbaphant is the brains of the critters. Bright and attentive, he keeps his friends steady and always steers them to make smart choices, that way they all might grow up to be bright and brilliant, each in their own right." ]

If he always suggests better choices to the others, it means he is almost always with them. This makes it harder, he's already on your back and is always with the other Smilling Critters.

Spying on the others while he is always with them will be difficult.

You decided this encounter for yourself. And you will do so again.

---

So you were back in the forest, leaning against a tree with your notebook in your hand.

Let me correct you, you weren't just leaning against a tree, you were climbing up. Fingers tensed, claws along the tree bark and one leg against the other. With every vertical step you took up the giant tree, you thought your claws were about to break off and you would fall to your certain death.

And now you were here. At the very top of the second largest tree in the Great Forest, which was also just before the Dark Forest. You were sitting on a branch, ten meters long and really stable. So stable that you had your rucksack right behind your bent feet.

It is already late, the sun is slowly falling and the whole valley is shrouded in darkness. From a distance you can see the whole landscape, mostly just meadows, hills and the huge forest that surrounds everything. However, in some places you can also see the houses of the Smilling Critters, but from a distance they are just small specks in your view along the Victory.

However, questions always arise in your mind.

Who am I really?

Why exactly am I being sent here?

Who are the people in the lab coats?

Why are so many resources being poured into this false world?

Was I once...a human being?

Did the Smilling Critters used to be people? Or maybe even children?

You didn't even notice it, the page where you wanted to document the whole day, you drew on it. A rat with a long tail filled with metal pieces. The tail was lying motionless on the ground behind the figure and was actually just being dragged along. The rat is not particularly large, not particularly wide and doesn't look particularly good, brown fur that looks as if it has been partially burnt off and no grin on its face like the Smilling Critters. An outsider.

That was you. Nothing more and nothing less.

But you can't think about that now, one day you'll really find out who you are, until then you do your job and write the documentation.

Today is the first day of my observation.

That's where you start writing.

As agreed, I made an appearance at the Smilling Critters, today was the picnic like every Thursday. DogDay and CatNap most probably have a relationship-

No.

What was that pinch in your brain?

Shouldn't you put it in your report?

It's not really any of the people out there's business, is it?

You cross it out and carry on writing.

All the Smilling Critters were there, none of them behaved in any way conspicuously or suspiciously. I'm sticking to my assignment, starting tomorrow I'll be watching DogDay and Bubba in particular and will include my findings in the report.

So you stop writing, your writing was big and spidery, filling the whole page. Why should you actually write on a sheet of paper? Why not write in some digital device, send the data directly and then you wouldn't have to go into the dark forest every day to hand in your report.

What did stalkers do before the internet?

Would you really spend every single day hiding in the shadows just to track, watch and, if in doubt, kill the Smilling Critters?

That was your life now, come to terms with it.

You are about to tear the page out of the notebook, but then you have a better idea.

You tighten the fingers of your right hand and with a quick clean cut along the book you have the page in your hand. Your claws are incredibly sharp and confirm your suspicions, which you have been thinking about all along.

I can easily get through the skin of other Smilling Critters with my claws.

At the same time, it's also a problem. Your claws are visible. They are your greatest strength and at the same time your greatest weakness.

You drop the cut-out side from the tree and watch it glide slowly through the air before it hits the ground. You climb back down from the tree, leave the rucksack on the stable branch and don't look up again. The tree was about 15 meters high and you only need one minute, claw in, step down, claw out, aim low, claw in and repeat.

You look around, the already darkened valley is somehow...Beautiful. Aside from the fact that this world was created for Eight creatures who have no idea about the real world, this world is beautiful. No wonder they don't worry about the Smilling Critter escaping, who would voluntarily leave a world like this?

Then you see something, it lies just before the forest goes completely dark. Just before you bring your report into the dark forest you look at it, it is lying on the ground, an object, not as big as a child's arm.

Gloves.

You step closer and bend down towards her.

Mid-forearm-length gloves in a warm, golden yellow tone.

They looked like an autumn leaf that had fallen and was not moved by the wind. Or ripe grain that would make a damn good loaf of bread...

You were hungry

What do rats eat?

No . What am I thinking? I am a human being...

Right?

You can worry about that later, but first you have to do your duty.

The gloves fit you perfectly, as if they were made for you. The fabric is soft and the length extends to your wrist. The most important thing: you can't see it when you use your claws, they were the ideal protection.

You take steps into the now dark surroundings. You can't see anything, at least until you pick up the small flashlight from the ground and clear the path in front of you.

Why was the flashlight here at the beginning of the Dark Forest and not in your rucksack?

Quite simply, you had left them right here. Even if one of the critters found your backpack, they wouldn't make it through the Dark Forest. How bad would that be? To know that someone around you is giving their life to watch you and you can't do anything about it? You can't leave this fake world, and you don't have protection from the person...the rat, either.

So you were there, still in thought, but you had arrived in the physical world. The door was there, closed and barely recognizable even in the light. You take a step closer, place the notebook page on the floor in front of it and turn around. But then-

Clack

You turned around faster than ever before.

But there was nothing, apart from the fact that your report was gone. It had been replaced by something else... a tin of food. It was just there, placed on the floor in the dark. You walk closer and look at it. A small tin with nothing on it, no label, no picture, just nothing. A silver tin.

You pick it up. The can is light and not really big, but it fills your hand when you stand upright.

Hand surface? Or rather paw surface?

No, you are a human being!

You are...

No matter.

You grip the flashlight a little harder and walk back through the dark forest. The way back is longer and more boring in a way. You hardly think, although there is an objection to that. Who were you? What exactly were you? Did you have a family? Were you alone?

Did you work for the people in the lab coats?

There you were again, the tall tree with the claw marks on the tree bark. You waste no time, drop your flashlight and start climbing up the tree. You open your mouth and bite into the edge of the silver can, so it wouldn't fall off, while you need both hands to climb up.

So you sat again, with the can in your hand and your legs on the bag as a couch. The can had a small tab, but you had claws, so it wasn't a problem. Inside the can was...meat? As far as you could tell, it was some kind of meat-like pieces in a brown sauce. Did you have a spoon? No. Did you have a fork? No.

You lift the can to your lower lip and then drink slowly. The first sip is strange, it's neither cold nor warm, but at the same time it doesn't have a strong taste. It tastes like a sauce thickener or some kind of cream and the meat? It's a complete disappointment, it tastes like nothing. But it's no wonder, as if you were worth real meat. You're a rat.

You're about to start drinking/eating again. But then...

It starts to rain.

The view is perfect. The whole valley beneath your feet, you were far above everything else. The drops of water were full and dark blue, they fell incredibly fast and colored everything they touched dark.

Then you notice it.

The rain didn't hit you.

It's not that the tree really protects you...

The rain is everywhere except right above you.

The Sound of the Rain changed.

Is that the sign that the report was good?

Yes, one look down into the valley and you knew you were right. Everything was drenched in rain, the Smilling Critters will be careful from now on and won't do anything stupid that could put them in difficult situations. And they only have you to thank for that.

So you want to uncover this conspiracy?

Then "Catch The Rainbow".

[thelazyecrivain]

Fluffbruary - Day 7 (Energy)

Seventh day of @fluffbruary, using the prompt "energy"

I'm late, I know. Now shut up and read

Read on AO3

French version

-----

"How energetic she is." Said Lestrade

"I wonder where she gets that from." John replied, feigning exasperation.

Greg laid a hand on his shoulder in friendship. "Must keep your days busy between her and the big kid."

John sighed heavily, and Greg laughed.

They were due to leave for the park when Greg arrived. Rosie was desperate to go so Greg had offered to follow them and that he would talk to them when they got there. John had sent him a relieved look, he knew it would be impossible to keep her in the flat when he had promised a trip to the park.

"What did you want to talk to us about?" John finally asked once they had sat down on a free bench.

"A paperwork thing, a quick thing to do but I knew Sherlock would grumble about coming all the way to NSY." Explains Greg. "I have the papers with me for you to sign and we'll all be out of your hair." 

John took the famous papers that Greg brandished out of his satchel that he has with him. He signs while keeping an eye on Rosie playing among the bushes.

"How's it going?" Greg asked, before clarifying when John frowned. "With Sherlock? He's not a patient person, so seeing him play with a child is something I wouldn't think I'd ever see."

"I was thinking the same thing." He glanced toward Sherlock and his daughter studying a sheet of paper. When he'd offered to come back to Baker Street, he'd never said yes so quickly. "I was afraid he'd go back on his decision after we moved in."

Greg nodded, understanding what he meant. "Rosie may be cute, but she's very energetic." He saw her often and every time, the little girl was happy to see him and let everyone in the apartment, but also in the building, know it.

At the same time, Rosie squealed with joy when Sherlock took her on his shoulders, allowing her to see the world from a higher perspective. Greg sees his detective friend's eyes shine. 

"Amazingly, Sherlock can handle her energy waves," John continues, "He's so caring with her. I've never seen him like that with anyone else."

"I have."

John turned his head toward his friend. He waited for him to explain.

"With you. And yes," Greg continued when John wanted to contradict him, "I'm serious. Especially since he came back from his two-year absence. He was always careful with what you wanted."

"If he had been careful with what I wanted, he wouldn't have lied to me."

"That's bullshit and you know it." Greg replied coldly. He likes John, he's been a good friend since they've known each other but sometimes he infuriates him. "He had no choice, it was either this or our death to Mrs. Hudson, you or me. You know Sherlock cares too much about the three of us to put our lives at risk."

John says nothing. He knows Greg is right, he has even forgiven Sherlock, but the betrayal he felt sticks in his throat.

Greg sighed. There's no point in going down this road. "Anyway, you're catching the eye of all the women with Rosie." Greg joked.

John smiled, happy that they start again on a lighter subject. He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know, I don't pay attention."

Greg slapped his arm. "Don't be coy! I saw all the stares turn to you when you had the stroller to come here."

"If you say so."

"How !? John-three-continents-Watson, the man who shunned bachelorhood, doesn't notice when he's getting in women's eyes ? I must be dreaming !"

John laughs and tells Greg to lower his voice, like two teenage girls talking about a boy.

"Tell me you're kidding." 

John nods. "Really ! I'm not interested anymore."

"Okay, you lost me. What made you change your mind ?"

At the same time, Rosie started running toward them, Sherlock behind her. She began to quickly explain what she had just learned about the leaves and trees in the park, and John had a hard time understanding it all with her rapid speech rate despite her young age and lack of vocabulary. 

Sherlock sat down next to John and kissed his cheek. Greg's jaw dropped.

"You should shut your mouth Lestrade, the flies don't come to your stomach by themselves." Sherlock mocked with a sneer. John pinched his thigh. Be kind.

"You...you..." He stutters, pointing at them in turn. Then he begins to laugh. "We've been waiting for this for so long !" exclaimed Greg before leaning over to John to tell him. "I understand better now why you're not interested anymore."

Sherlock frowned. "What are you talking about ?"

"Nothing." Said John innocently, "Just that I live with two energetic kids."

Sherlock looked even more confused. "But... you only have Rosie." John and Greg smiled at the observation genius' lack of understanding. The latter seemed to understand several seconds later. "This is a joke about me, right?"

John and Greg explode with laughter.

(tell me if you want to be tagged) @topsyturvy-turtely

[wishful-seeker]

As a real artist i can easily tell when art is real or ai generated no matter how "good" it looks because, ya know, I've literally studied art and the world around me for over 15 years.

It cannot even look like art. You could show many any ai photo that exists and i could tell you with 100% accuracy that a human didn't make it. The skin looks uncanny, like plastic, the hair goes no where, not to mention the hands, even the lighting is wrong.

Art has human imperfections, the skin isn't flat, the colors all have a purpose, EVERY SINGLE STROKE WAS PLANNED AND THOUGHT ABOUT, and layering thousands of strokes over the course of hours finally creates a masterpiece.

How tf can any of you think ai art is art?

Arts purpose is to express HUMAN emotion, and a machine CANNOT express your emotions for you. The emotion is literally translated by the artist onto paper, and every artist has a completely unique language that takes years to even create.

Taking random photos you like and putting them into ai is not a new style. Part of an artists style is literally the way they hold a brush or pen, which direction they make their strokes in and how they blend and choose color. Style is not a look ITS A LANGUAGE and you ai fuckers think you're doing something on the same level and its just not fucking true.

I remember in high-school i took notes on what i liked about other art styles as i tried to blend them together to make my own, but its not just the artists you take inspiration from, its the way my strokes always curve to the right, its the way i use turquoise paint every chance i get, its the way i choose to give all my characters different shaped eyes, its the way i use sparkle paints on top of gouache, ITS MY LANGUAGE, ITS ME, ITS MY EXISTENCE AND PERSONALITY TRANSLATED ONTO AN OBJECT. And only i can draw that style in that way. If anyone tried to copy my style it would ultimately become their own through their own physical quirks and the way their body moves and the way their brain thinks.

Do you wanna know why everyone is okay with people drawing and painting recreations of the stary night painting and it's not okay to put it in ai? Because no matter who you are or how skilled you are the way you paint, Draw, whatever, AND THE WAY YOUR BODY PHYSICALLY MOVES WHEN YOU DO IT, AND THE WAY YOUR BRAIN LITERALLY PROCESSES EVERY INDIVIDUAL STROKE, MAKES THE ART YOUR OWN.

With AI you cannot do any of those things. It is not human expression, It is not your style, It is not your language, It is not you. Therefore it is not your art. And because a human did not create it, It is not art at all.

Art is a goddamn spiritual experience, It is looking inward and understanding your own body and mind, It is refining something for decades, It is learning what matters most to you, What is most beautiful to you, And why. And this isn't just with painting or drawing this is with writing and photography too. This is with carpentry and welding, cosplaying, and sewing, leather working and crochet! This is in every form of human creation!

But not AI.

I genuinely hate you ai mother fuckers because if you are anything, its IGNORANT. You think you know about art when you've never touched any of these art forms before. And I have never met in "ai artist" That does anything else when it comes to creating. They don't draw or paint or write, They see creative people around them and want to be like them without putting in any of the work, And when they found their shortcut they acted like they knew more than us. More than people who have studied art their entire lives. I bet if you ask any of these ai artists, How does perspective work? How does anatomy work? Color theory? Lighting? They. Wouldn't. Know. Shit. And they still have the audacity to say they know more about art than we do.

A child, scribbling on the wall is more of an artist, and more spiritually connected with art than any of you ai fuckers will ever be.

[welcometoteyvat]

i am very curious (and i'm asking this not with any malicious intent) but what ages do you see the genshin characters! i personally see them (most of them) as adults, even collei. even if they were teenagers, time passes in-game (i.e. lantern rite happens every year and we already had 2 lantern rites in-game) so they'll eventually grow to be adults.

tldr: I have schrodinger's age headcanons

long answer: if they're in a ship with a ""clearly"" adult character, I'll assume they're young adults; idk I feel like there's some blurring of age and what growth stage you're in when people are around 17 to 20 (from my experience) so I think it's vague-ish enough that you could probably do what you want.

If they're not in a ship I see some of them as adults and some as still teens/underage. as a general rule of thumb a character's age is solely dependent on what I want at the moment, although I do think the way some characters are written (ie character arcs, character stories and general personality) pushes me to view them as underage (will explain more but the character I'm thinking about most w this is Xingqiu). Some of them read to me as clear adults, and then there are some in-betweens where I just have "vaguely young looking" in my hcs LOL

you bring up a good point that time is passing in game although we don't see it reflected in the character models—everyone points out that Xiao opens up a bit more every lantern rite, but fandom (and genshin devs too ig 💀) definitely forgets that all the other characters are also growing/changing. w/ 4.1 around the corner my personal wish is for hu tao, xingqiu, and chongyun's relationships to each other get developed more so that their relationships (as described through their voicelines abt each other) don't feel so flat,,,,,, it would also help with the sense of "time is passing in game for ALL characters", since we almost never get this kind of evolving relationship portrayed between 4*s/non endgame important charas.

I have too much time on my hands so I'll also just run through all the teen/short models there are for each region and list whether my personal headcanons are adult or minor (at least their ages when we "meet" them in canon):

liyue (mortal/mortal adjacent characters): yanfei, chongyun, xingqiu, hu tao, xiangling, xinyan, yun jin, keqing

yanfei and keqing are solidly adults to me, yanfei's a lawyer and keqing's also in a govt job so both of them feel around like 25-27 to me. Definitely somewhere around their mid-20s, although I can also see them as younger, especially Keqing, because of her overall attitude/perspective on life and the gods. iirc her character stories show how her worldview's grown/broadened to be not as naive/black and white, so I feel like she's still in the process of maturing. If you told me Yanfei was like 23 (appearance wise) I guess I'd believe you too, since she's a very peppy person who seems to be running all over the place all the time, doing errands for madame ping, checking on her clients, taking new cases etc. I feel like it gives her youthful energy, so I can see it if people hc her on the younger side of her 20s (in human years I forgot how her half-adeptal blood works).

I see the other 6 as a friend group (liyue 6ang let's go) so they're either all teens or all adults depending on the portrayal. You can obviously view them as adults all the time, but I don't get those vibes. Xinyan and Yun Jin might be like 18-19, but if that's the case, I can't see the other 4 being any younger than 17, just because I think they're all almost the same age or 1-2 years apart maximum. For some reason so many people view Hu Tao and Yun Jin as adults but at the same time think the others are minors? Idk about that.. genshin has shown that Xiangling, Xinyan, and Yun Jin are pretty close friends, and then always put Xingqiu and Chongyun together for the ship bait, so maybe that's the root of fanon's age hcs. However, I think if some of them are young adults, then all of them are. There's a max 2 year age gap between all 6 of them idk idk I really can't see it otherwise.

To me, Xingqiu's arc reads like a 16 year old finding his footing in the world. Hiding martial arts novels under his bed, tired of playing dutiful 2nd son and sneaking out to live out his idealized wuxia dreams, his multiple voicelines where he's implied to be super worried about us giving away his involvings in the Guhua sect, they all read like he's still trying to figure out his role in his family (what he wants it to be, and what his parents want it to be). He's also very naive about the world, but learning. He just feels a lot like how (chinese) teenagers grow up and like. growing into or out of the paths given to us by our parents. ... or i could just be projecting! Anyways, in my no ships world, he's a 16-17 yr old. Chongyun's clan and family play a not-insignificant role in his backstory, so I think he's the same age as Xingqiu, just older by a month for the flex. Lowkey I don't have as much reason for him as the others, but I think they're in the same age range by association; probably almost 18 at most. Hu Tao's character stories explicitly state she's 13 when her grandfather passed away, and I think she becomes Director not long after this, so I would say she's also around 16-17 when the game starts. @.acatoner who draws quite possibly my favorite interpretations of the gang(TM) once mentioned they see her with spoiled younger sister energy and honestly yeah. she's an only child but has the strongest solidarity with Xingqiu (they're the bratty younger siblings of the friendgroup). Out of all of them, Xiangling is the one with the most plausible job if she was like, young: being a chef apprentice with her dad to continue the family business is pretty reasonable. Middle child energy, probably 17. We did meet her when she was in Mondstadt foraging ingredients, so I'd say she's not very young, but still young enough for her dad to chew her out during moonchase for being like messy or clumsy or smth? Xinyan and Yun Jin.... I think Yun Jin is at least almost 18—running a well acclaimed opera troupe is a pretty big undertaking imo, even if her parents are there to like guide her and whatnot. Same with Xinyan, 17-18 range, although she def started playing rock publicly when she was way younger.

inazuma: shinobu, heizou, kazuha, kirara, gorou, kokomi, ayaka, yoimiya

Disclaimer I have not read the Lore and don't know whether actual ages are given for Ayaka and Ayato (specifically pointing them out because iirc their and Thoma's character stories are the most specific ones wrt the timeline).

I see basically all of them as adults, ayaka might be an exception but she's like 17 minimum in my head. That's pretty interesting considering I labeled almost all the liyue short models as teens. From what I can remember of their character stories, the Inazuman characters seem to be portrayed as having their formative struggles set In the Past (probably a couple years before we meet them) so perhaps that's why I see them as solidly young adults. Additionally, Inazuma's arc and its war pushes me to see all of them as adults, even if they're still obscenely young to be generals and strategicians. The exceptions I can see to this are only Yoimiya (smaller role in archon quest and not related to the government), and Shinobu + Heizou, who were released later. Yoimiya's maturity really stands out to me—from the way her neighbors and old people converse with her, and her overall character arc + second story quest, I cannot see her as below like 19 at least. Shinobu manages an entire unofficial gang and has countless certifications under her belt plus ex-shrine maiden stint—she probably isn't less than 23. It would be cute if she were the same age as Yanfei but just started law school later, so Yanfei's still her senior. I think there's not much to say on Heizou either, he's friends with Kazuha and has a real job, so I can't read him below 20-21. I don't know anything about Kirara (don't have her, haven't read her stories) but I also just get the vibes of like 20-something errand girl SDFDSSKDFJS in a modern au she'd deliver to teyvat/inazuma's college campus for sure

mondstadt (humans): barbara, razor, bennett, fischl, mika, amber, noelle, sucrose

this is a mix again, for Barbara Razor Bennett and Fischl they give me kid vibes, like little adventure gang things. Reddit apparently cites Mona called Fischl an adult in the 2.8 Midsummer Fantasia GAA event, so I mean. I guess she's 18 there—might've been 16 when we met in game the first time (1.2?? scaramouche fake stars event or something?) Idk really. Their group collectively gives me 16 year old vibes, at least when we start the game. I can see it if all of them have aged to 18 now—it just makes sense in my head lol. Mika feels like an 18 year old; mostly because of his relationship with Huffman. Amber seems vaguely adult-ish, I'd say 19 or so, maybe 20 during shadows amidst snowstorms in 2.3. there's some logic behind this that ties into her search for her grandfather but it's like vague and hazy in my head. I haven't given much thought to Noelle and Sucrose— Sucrose also gives "vaguely adult" vibes, idk if her character story about wanting to make a wonderland to meet her past friends in has any relevance to timeline estimation. I'd say Noelle also falls into the vague adult age range, but to me she's a puzzle, because her personality seems incongruent to how I thought she might act if she's like 23 or so.

anyways, anon if you read all this i will declare my love for you. thanks for giving me an excuse to genuinely think on this and then dump my thoughts out for the internet. you can clearly see none of my braincells really go towards Mondstadt headcanons but I hope you're happy w my response ehe

[cardanfckinggreenbriar]

the stolen heir thoughts

so apparently people are not liking this book. which icl is a little bit WILD to me because i thought it was brilliant.

but here are my thoughts on why that *might* (emphasis on MIGHT don't come at me if you have some ✨quirky✨ reason for why you didn't like it i literally don't care) be the case.

there will be some spoilers ahead, i will try to limit them, but you guys are pretty unpredictable anyway, just don't say i didn't warn you.

most people reading this duology have come straight from tfota (and if you're not wtf are you doing here, go sit your ass down and read tcp, you demon) and if that's the case, there is a high likelihood you are a reader who idolises jude and cardan and puts them on a pedestal (AS THEY DESERVE ABSOLUTE BEAUTIFUL ICONS.) and you know, although we were warned by holly that this first book would be in suren's perspective, it's not so comfortable to not only be so tantalisingly close to them and not see them (we want our babies back), but to see them, to see this world, to see other characters, too (like oak), through a completely different lens.

i've heard people saying it's flat for that, and i get we're returning to a world, it might feel like holly is just doing some recycling but icl i kinda really love the book for that, and it also seems like a really holly thing to do.

i mean sure, i could have maybe lived without madoc's return, but i also think that it really works.

back to the point tho, for suren, this is a very different world, her relationship with it is different, and the people in it, though familiar to us, are not to her, and i think the main thing to take away from this is to remember that not one of these characters are clear cut heroes or villains. they're people.

jude, to suren, is just a cold, harsh, strategic mortal queen — funnily enough, suren probably didn't get to read tfota, so hasn't experienced jude the way that we have, and the same for other characters that we are familiar with.

i mean think about it, when we read tfota and suren was described as 'creepy' and all that, did we bat an eyelid? no, we accepted it, mainly because we were seeing suren the way that jude and her family were, as a monster girl, whose parents wanted her to marry oak, and we didn't want that. we see it politically, also. when we see this through suren's eyes, all of a sudden, it's heartbreaking, and ofc it is, because she was a child, and she was being manipulated and used, she wasn't saved, she wasn't treated with any sort of love, from anyone.

but jude couldn't give her that love. for so many reasons. but still, that makes her seem like less of a hero (again, not that she was one to begin with.)

and if they're not the heroes anymore, if our way of seeing things suddenly becomes blurrier and less defined, where does that leave them? we feel like everything becomes less stable, because in most books, we're used to the protagonist telling us how we should feel.

so it feels like the possibility of things going south for our favourite characters is all too real, and no one likes that. i hate the idea of jude and cardan not getting their perfect happy ending, whatever that looks like... but i'm not too sure that i want it to look any different to how we expected it: them being in love, high king and queen forever and ever and having lots of children, until they get too old and tired and decide to retire together.

of course, the plot itself also destabilises the chances of this, but i won't go into that in detail here just in case someone with a taste for chaos has decided to read this far (!! i said begone, demon !!)

but here's the thing, like i said, in holly's books, the characters are first and foremost people. jude makes mistakes, does so many horrible things, and tbf in the reading community, we have a bit of a nasty habit of glorifying that, and just saying slay, she's a badass (which she IS, but also guys... murder... bad...?), especially when it's the main character (see the way people still villainize taryn... but that's a whole other discussion.) and what does that mean? it means independence. yes there's mention of fate in the books, but there is independence and true character growth.

now here's the thing. we have a whole other book to come. i doubt that holly is going to leave suren where she is (unless she does which could also be so cool and open up a whole new universe of opportunity for the direction in which elfhame goes and whilst this might be completely evil, i could so get behind that. ANYWAY) why is holly writing suren? what are suren's fears? what is suren's motivation rn? if we examine all of these things, we see that wren is still grappling with all of these things, and that the position she is in right now isn't going to help her or satisfy her.

suren's whole life has been dictated by the greed and megalomania of the people around her. she is suffering because of that exact greed and megalomania. power will not heal her, not like this, at least.

and finally, coming to oak. holly has already played the 'i-don't-want-to-be-king-but-ends-up-being-one-and-a-really-good-one-because-i-didn't-want-to-be-one-in-the-first-place' card with cardan. i don't personally think she's planning on playing it again with oak. i think it's a really clever way of suggesting at it, and reminding us, and showing us what we're used to, but i think oak is being honest. ofc, i also HOPE he is being honest.

there is also the next book's title to think about (the prisoner's throne) but in all honesty, i don't think speculating on that will be worthwhile. holly really could throw anything at us.

i have a couple of other thoughts, about jude and cardan and what might be going on there, but those thoughts don't really sit right with me and aren't really constructive to the happy endings lol so i don't like them and will not be sharing bc i do not have to !! 🥰

all in all, if you didn't like it because of what it suggests for our favourite high king and queen... anything could happen. i trust holly to write a book that truly devastates us all. but i hope that i've also shown you that what she has written is not unjustified. i'm not going to conclude with a what i think will happen, even though i have very strongly suggested it because i don't want to jinx anything... if i'm wrong, i'm wrong, and i'll happily be wrong, though i know my happiness isn't guaranteed...

[animehouse-moe]

Heavenly Delusion Episode 10 Part 1: The Walled City

God, where to even start? I mean, really, when it's always perfect and outstanding and you want to talk about every scene, where can you start? Of course, there's loads of info in regards to theories and the story, but at the same time, as a manga reader I'm just absolutely obsessed with the level of polish and execution that this adaptation is on. Though, I guess it's better to get started somewhere than to waffle on where to begin.

⚠️Note: This is only the first half of the episode, as there's so much to talk about and so much to share, I've hit the image limit before finishing the post. If you're looking for part 2 of this episode, you can find it right here.⚠️

I absolutely love the anime original cold open they use for this episode. It's similar to what we experience in the manga, but it shares almost no similar scenes. It's an incredibly bold change for that matter, but I love the flow that they provide with the anime's rendition of the journey to Ibaraki.

And I think the first thing to stand out is the character designs.

The proportions are different from usual, the placement and overall design of features differs ever so slightly. And I love it. I love how well it works with how malleable the characters are in this episode. It sets the tone right from the opening, and lets viewers know what they're in for. How wide the episode is in terms of expression and acting and art styles and animation.

Similarly, the use of reflections and mirrors and such finds its beginnings early on as well, as Juichi is largely seen only partially through his reflection in the car's rear view mirror. It's a really nice touch, and I love how they use it in concert with the overall focus on allowing character in frame during conversation without making them easy to see constantly. It really adds to the feel of the world as we view it more passively, and even through a first person perspective in this episode.

In terms of just pretty looking stuff though, I love this set distance framing they use on the car during the drive to Ibaraki. It just looks so pretty, and is a really nice change versus the static interior of the car.

Also, during this night sequence, we get our first exposure to the first person perspective that appears sparingly throughout the episode. I love FPP, but I do also think that it's better used in moderation, and with specific purposes in mind. Heavenly Delusion seems well aware of that as a fact.

This driving sequence really just establishes a world of directive style. Within it we also get our first instances of the slideshow approach, which I think is really interesting because of one little choice. You can't tell because of the gif, but the framing/scale of the slideshow is actually smaller than the full frame. Similar to how widescreen ratios will crate black bars on the top and bottom of a screen, this sequence has a thick border of black space around it as well, making it smaller. I think it's a really great piece that helps separate these flashbacks from the other uses of this technique during the present time of the episodes.

Finally though, as it turns to day, we begin to further explore the fluidity and creativity of the character designs and acting. It's pretty incredible, really. They use comedy to establish how malleable the designs are, and then play with the serious designs little by little. It's not "off-model" like you might hear people saying all the time about something like Hells Paradise. No, this is an explicit creative decision to play into a desired style for the episode. And I think it's flat out amazing. They're simple character designs to start with! They're close to a blank canvas, they're meant to be played with.

In particular I really enjoy this first one for how interesting Juichi's design is here. His head is entirely disproportionate to his hand, which I thought was an interesting decision.

Anyways, here's girl Maru.

But yeah, this whole sequence is just really great at bending the characters to the will of their designers and animators, and you can really feel the differences in energy and approach from cut to cut. It's really impressive patchwork that comes together under a single creative vision. It doesn't feel choppy or out of place, but rather loose and very smooth.

Now, back to Juichi. I absolutely love how they approach his character through this episode. His story is explicitly flashbacks, and remain largely grayscale aside from the color red. It's a nod to his charm that denoted his brotherhood when he was in the facility. Alongside that grayscale though, we only see the front of Juichi during these flashbacks. We never looking at him from behind, but rather in front. And this scene illustrates that reasoning perfectly. He's returning to that hell of a life, and reliving those experiences as he retraces his steps. It's a very simple thing, but I love the detail and emotion it gives them.

Finally, we get to visit this 'walled city' with Kiruko and Maru, and as you'd expect they keep that feeling of voyeurism throughout thanks to spacious shots that focus on the character's movement through the scene. Speaking of that, I absolutely love this specific technique in today's episode: the panning shot through the environment that follows Kiruko. Incredible simple, but it adds to that sense of watching Kiruko wander through the abandoned building.

Right about now is when I'm bemoaning the image limit on Tumblr. There's a lovely scene of Maru being reflected in a puddle of water, which is exactly what I was talking about earlier on in this post as they use reflections and mirrors quite frequently to present characters to us in a way that doesn't feel manufactured for the express purpose of exposition.

Right here though is where things get amazing. A Hiruko sets its sights upon Kiruko and Maru, with the ability to freeze things. It gets dire real fast, but that's not really what I'm after here. It's the art style. The whole thing changes to reflect the freezing temperature brought on by the Hiruko. Colors change, the line art shifts, even the character designs are different. It's incredible, and I absolutely love it. Similarly, there's a cut of a closeup of Kiruko's eye as she looks around desperately for the Hiruko, and I think it's an outstanding piece (we also get more first person perspective here to mirror the closeup). The whole sequence tightens the focus on specific parts of Kiruko, as they're the only pieces that can move through that frigid cold. Expertly done, and provides a great sense of tension as well.

And then after the Hiruko skitters away, we get treated to another art style that focuses on the warmth and light that returns after the freezing temperatures dissipate. Just incredible stuff.

Also, these anime original scenes are really good at providing more information and context to viewers. Very simple pieces, but add a lot of information for connecting the dots through them.

As Kiruko and Maru turn the tables and hunt down the Kiruko though, we get another incredible first person shot of Kiruko walking down a hallway. You know it's CGI, but you refuse to believe it. The details, the compositing, it looks far too good when static (and even in motion) to truly be CGI.

Of course, the tension remains high through this sequence thanks to the slow draw forward, and a dolly zoom on Hiruko in the following scene. This series just has an incredible grasp on tension and horror, as it doesn't rely on jumpscares, but rather rising tension and discomfort through lack of sight. We hardly see the Hiruko through this sequence, but nonetheless we feel its presence, we understand that exists, lurking behind that corner.

And it comes to a head in such a kickass way. Remember what I said about the slideshows and how they differ based on black space in the frame? We get a full one here and it's incredible. Rather than focusing on providing some form of character acting through it, it's all about posing and incredible fidelity through the sequence. I love the aggression that's conveyed through the camera angle and the FOV. It perfectly depicts Kiruko's resolve, confidence, and aggression as she meets the Hiruko head on. And the black frames between? The icing on the cake, really. It further builds that tension, as it accentuates the pause between each frame.

And to finish off this half of the episode, we've got another incredible panning shot that actually follows Kiruko this time. Incredible effort, and the expertise to pull it off while looking so smooth is unfathomable.

So, the end of the first half of the episode. If I could, I would break down every last frame of it. Kai Ikarashi's storyboarding is just incredible, and the direction to match that is wonderful. It speaks to their time at Trigger, as we receive unparalleled fluidity in character designs and acting, alongside very stylized FOV and camera angles, but they're able to bring it perfectly under Hirotaka's incredible vision for the series.

If you're looking for the second post, just click on this link to get redirected to it.