#I mainly made this for myself as inspiration for writing and so that the idea is out there somewhere on the internet if I never get around--

[red-moon-at-night]

Currently concocting the most self-indulgent 'normal' Milgram AU in the world right now... I am going to make these fuckers Found Family and give them a chance to come to terms with their situations and themselves... 

All through the power of a goddamn fish shop/aquatics store.

Hear me out okay:

So we know that from his interrogation questions, Kazui has a childhood friend who he looks up to, that has a boat and if the world ended tomorrow he would go fishing. He mentions to Mikoto in a timeline conversation that one of of his hobbies is trawling. I am taking these facts and running with them like my life depends on it.

In this AU everyone lives in relative proximity to each other (I will have to think about exactly where later) and are all in different stages of their ‘sins’, but notably no one has actually killed a person.

Kazui is a widower having a midlife crisis at 39 and taking time off of work/leaves his job altogether to pursue something new - like helping out his childhood friend with his fishing-store-come-fishkeeping-aquatics-shop. Yes it’s weird that it’s both but it brings in more footfall and more customers (is what his childhood friend tells him). It becomes a bit of a running gag. Kazui also starts running martial arts classes in the evenings because I can totally see that being something he wished he’d done instead of... whatever his old job was. Anyway, he’s depressed but somewhat happy doing the things he loves.

Meanwhile over to the left we have Haruka finally being discharged from a psychiatric unit on a community treatment order (yay!) Part of that community treatment order includes a program where individuals volunteer in the local community with partnered businesses... Haruka picks the fish shop, obviously. But he’s getting paid for it, because Kazui is not about to agree to free child labour. So Haruka gets a job!

Cue a journey of self-discovery in which Haruka learns he is actually not useless or a burden to society. He can do things? He’s been given responsibility? And he enjoys it?? Mind blown. Kazui is there to support and encourage along the way. Just wholesome all around (except for the trauma Haruka has to unpack about his mother and her fish tank ohoho-)

Haruka is the first kid Kazui ‘adopts’. The second kid is Muu who wanders in the shop one afternoon, missing a shoe and has a thousand-yard stare in her eyes. We then have this scene: Kazui asks if she’s okay and she eventually replies something along the lines of “yeah I’m fine I just tripped while trying to catch up with a... friend” and Kazui then asks if that’s why she’s only wearing one shoe and if she needs a spare and she says “no I just forgot to put it on until now thanks for reminding me” and takes a shoe out of her bag and puts it on. Kazui decides she’s exactly the right kind of person for Haruka to practice his social skills with and gets him to go over there and help her out. They awkwardly talk about the betta fish tank they’re standing next to. She leaves. She comes in the next day and says she’s decided to set up a new tank at home could she get some help with supplies. The rest is history.

Muu starts skipping school and hanging out at the fish shop, to get away from her... situation at school. She still hasn’t talked to Rei since that day in the bathroom. Kazui is slightly concerned but also isn’t a snitch and would’ve bunked off school as a youth so is pretty chill with it as long as she’s safe. The fish crew is born.

Some extra very important bits of lore:

Kazui takes Haruka on dad-and-son fishing trips.

At some point Kazui ‘adopts’ a third kid except it’s actually his child from a fling about two decades ago. It’s Yuno. He doesn't actually know he has a kid until her mother gets into contact with him, saying her daughter wants to meet her biological dad can she please come and see him. Kazui has an existential crisis. Kazui agrees. They set up a date and he's asking his fish shop crew about what kids their age like and learning very little because he’s taken in two very weird teenagers. Muu does end up telling him about brands of makeup/clothes/perfume/etc. that girls like, which of course is all expensive and possibly designer.

So yeah Kazui and Yuno meet and she runs circles around him. She's her wonderfully sweet but cold self. They talk about his dead wife and he is dying inside. They exchange contact numbers and emails. She wants to see him again which surprises Kazui because that's Not the vibe he was getting from her.

The university students exist and they all go to the same one. For now it’s mainly Kotoko and Mahiru lesbian hours. She’s a law student, and she’s a literature student, sharing a class (maybe linguistics) and slowly becoming aware of each other’s existence. Mahiru likes girls but she doesn’t know it yet. Mahiru sits on campus and does a bit of people watching, writing stories inspired by what she sees - and maybe one day she sees Kotoko doing her vigilante shenanigans and falls a little bit in love. Kotoko is oblivious to this (is what she tells herself). They end up working on a class project together and become weird friends. 

Kotoko is very much doing her side gig of apprehending criminals and punching the daylights out of them. No deaths... yet. She wants to improve her technique so starts going to the martial arts night classes run by Kazui. Mahiru eventually ropes into watching one time so she can make notes for action scenes she wants to write. She also ends up joining. It's fun!

Haruka also learns some martial arts with Kazui, having one to one sessions before classes start. It’s good for him, to get his pent up anger out in a non-destructive way, to redirect all that energy somewhere. He’s scarily good. This results in him building the courage somewhere down the line to join in on the actual classes, at least every now and then. He and Kotoko spar and it impresses her just a teeeeeny tiny bit.

[teehhhhhhhhhhh]

haha finally debuting my magical girl marvels au! i was thinking of a manga cover while making this; i really wanted it to have a kinda hyperpop and sailor moon style.

So! In my version of this AU, the Marvels travel through different dimensions to fight the forces of evil to balance the multiversal scale! They do this, via train! The train is usually a subway, but it magically adapts to the dimensions they are in. (Ex. Submarine Looking Train for a mainly water dimension, an old style train for a dimension with a earlier timeline.)

Billy Batson is a Train Conductor! I based his outfit on those train conductor uniforms and I really like it. His main base powers are, of course, lighting, and the ability to make portals! He uses the portals in his fighting style, dodging with portals instead of blocking attacks. Billy can only teleport to a mirror dimension without the aid of the train, so he actually teleports to the mirror dimension in fights when he dodges, then portals back to the og dimension. The train boosts his powers so his ability to travel to the mirror dimension is enhanced, and he can travel to other dimensions when using the train. (Other then that, its a basic portal power lol)

Mary’s design was inspired by fairy tale princes, which is actually really random but I made it work. I wanted the three of them to be different genres of magical girls, but still fit look like they are in the same style. Her base powers in this AU is basically charisma (yes, literal charms), and lightning. So, her charisma powers are pretty much just that people will be more inclined to do things her way; she lets off an aura of power + confidence that no one can say no to (besides Billy and Freddy, they are immune). She also will look extremely intimidating to people when she wants to. So in a nutshell, her power is to change the way people perceive her, and use that to her advantage. Mary often uses this to do undercover work, or info gathering about the dimension they are in.

Freddy, is a mermaid based magical girl. He can shift between having a mermaid tail and his legs. His base powers are hydrokinesis (ability to control water) and (can you guess it?) lightning! Though not shown here, Freddy actually uses water to float himself around. The water is thinly covered over his body and he uses that to get around without his crutches. He learned how to do this after seeing how he can float in the water when swimming. Freddy doesn’t do this all the time because it requires a lot of control and it can tire himself out. He used to do it all the time, but once in a battle, he shifted all his focus into the fight and lost control of the water that makes him float. Freddy learnt to not completely rely on his powers all the time after that. I’ll go more into this specific event later bc I think this scenario would really impact how Freddy sees his disability, and how he learns to accept it. I imagine this Freddy is more recently disabled and that he still has bitter feelings about it. The thing with Freddy’s dad in the boat still happened (they got attacked by one of Billy’s enemies), and that’s when he got his leg injury. He met Billy that way and got his powers. (Basically just how CM3 got his powers.. idk why im explaining it)

The thing is that I, myself, am not disabled so I need a bit of help understanding what that would be like to accurately write Freddy’s struggles with his disability. 😭

Another thing is that I’m not sure what their hero names would be? I tried doing those precure names like ‘Cure Marvel!’ but that would only work for one of them and I would still need names. Marvel *insert something here* or *something* Marvel is an idea but I wouldn’t know what to put.

yeah, theres my au lol maybe i’ll post more about it

edit: i did post more about it! heres the linked posts!

Next

[knightyoomyoui]

[SMUT] TWICE Nayeon x Male Reader - “Is There Someone Else?”

Surprise, surprise! This is my first full smut work that I will only be posting here in my Tumblr account knowing how strict Wattpad is currently with mature contents like this. I hope yall like this especially those readers of mine who are familiar enough reading smutty fanfic works. However, I wouldn’t consider this being my first time to attempt writing such completely out of my usual only fluffy/angsty one-shots formula and challenge myself on creating something different as I already did it with my other fic titled “Catching Feelings” ft. TWICE Jihyo from the Set 5 line-up of my TWICE: Book Of One-Shots X Reader book (look it up on my masterlist) although that is mainly fluff and the smut is only very short but please understood me if yall might find this boring since I’m still a beginner. Enjoy reading and have a nice day everyone! (A/N: This is inspired from the song "Is There Someone Else?" by one of my all time favorite artists The Weeknd from his awesome album ‘Dawn FM’.) WARNING: Contains mature R+18 content.

The cold, silent night just reached the 9:00 PM mark. You were sitting in the couch, legs crossed and sporting a strict demeanor staring at the door, waiting for your girlfriend who just knocked and made her way inside by opening it.

"I'm home." She said as she saw your figure already prepared to welcome her as she entered the house. Nayeon didn't even bother to notice at your strange aura at first, not until when she removed her shoes and shoulder bag off her body.

"Where did you go?" You asked her in a monotonous tone.

"I went out with friends, why?" She asked you while raising her brow.

"Plural. You sure there's more than you and whoever guy it may be that you're with earlier?" Now your arms crossed and glared at her weakly, shifting your presence to an authorative image.

"Jihyo and Jeongyeon were also with me and Junghee when we went strolling at the mall." She clarified, but that didn't satisfied you enough. You have another plan in mind to play with your rules, to ensure her glory of you believing her words.

"Oh okay then. But I assume that despite they are around, he's still stuck on your side through most of the time; isn't it?"

"YN, where are we heading with this? A-are you suspecting me?" She questioned confusingly, her brows are now knitted to one another.

"You won't answer my question?" You didn't responded to her own concern, throwing back the same treatment to her. Standing up from the couch that shortly became uncomfortable for the first time as you're facing her with all these worrying what ifs in your head, you slowly trailed across her.

"YN?"

Towering at her frame, inches close against each other; you pursed your head in her collar and sniffed. "I won't mind not receiving any answers from you, I already can tell it anyway based from his smell lingering your clothes.", you said; mentioning that familiar expensive perfume only suitable for men like you.

She stepped back, separating herself away from you with judgmental look in her face. "What the hell? So you really are thinking that I'm secretly meeting up with him without your knowing?"

"How can you blame me so, Nayeon?" You didn't circled the topic any longer, revealing your side and what urged you to confront her like this tonight. "It's been days since you keep on leaving the house with all your short and lacking excuses, and you just take my permissions I give to you as your advantage, without having any idea that I'm holding myself to beg you not to go Nayeon."

"Don't you see? We almost had a little amount of time to spend alone together, and I just want you to stay with me and enjoy having you on my side everyday but... what you're doing just starts to fill up these... doubts and uneasiness in me that you- you're hiding something from me that I don't wanna know." Nayeon frowned as she finally realized and understood why you suddenly became observative and moody with her. It was all her fault, she owned. She knows that she didn't do it with all intention or want to find ways not to have you moving around from her because of the thought that she maybe-

Oh no. She halted from processing your words in her mind, but it didn't prevented her for hearing additional question that you have in store for her.

"Nayeon, is there someone else? Was there a chance that this person is trying to take you away from me?" You asked her straightfully. Staring deep into her eyes that widened as she heard that huge question setting your relationship with her on line with it, she wandered at your pityful state. Eyes are droopy, lips curved in reverse, sadness visible in your face.

"N-no, no! YN! Never. Don't think of that, okay? I love you and only you! Ask Jeongyeon and Jihyo, they’ll tell you that I’m right!" She frantically said as she cupped your cheeks with both of her big, slender hands.

You remained unmovable with the entire view of Nayeon's beauty that you don't want to lose, desperately assuring you that she don't want the same either.

From the tone of her words, she is nearly getting you believe from it. But, you still don't want to disregard what you prepared for her to do tonight. Take it as something you and her definitely need. It has been a week that both you and her won't share any intimate moments together, and this is opportunity laid in front of you tonight to do so.

You gently removed her hands from pressing your cheeks, much to Nayeon's shock especially when she had contact from your head movement doing a disapproving shake.

Stepping away from her this time, Nayeon nervously hops in her feet as her body began to shiver in fear. "W-what? YN! No, please! What do I need to do for you to believe me?"

That question perfectly activated the go signal to do your plan. Slowly glancing at Nayeon who seems to be almost emotional in front of you, you tried to compose your bland expression to her. You want her to submit for you tonight, she is playing your game... and you're the one in charge of her.

You sat back from your couch. "Take off your clothes."

Nayeon looked at you puzzledly. "W-what?"

"Don't make me repeat again, I said, take off your clothes. Turn around as you do it."

Nayeon gulped at your unexpected request. If she's eager to earn your forgiveness and this is the solution you require, she won't protest at all to follow; you're her boyfriend anyways and to be honest, she's been wanting this to happen with you since from the start when you and her became official.

She turned around, her back figure is now facing you. Starting off with her belt, she began to unlock and dishevel it from her waist; hanging it at the back of the chair.

Her hands went to the zipper behind her rose designed red and white colored blouse and unzipped it, allowing the clothing to adjust for her to pull it upwards slowly from her top area. Her white laced bra aligning at the width of her gorgeous back is now open for you to witness and began enjoying it.

Half-naked, Nayeon proceeds with her skirt that matches with the apperance of her blouse; detaching the button and slip it down from her feet. She bended down, her brown hair fell and nearly reached the floor but you didn't cared that much when there's a more distracting part of hers that you have to focus on rather.

Her plump round ass hidden by her matching white panties effectively got you aroused. It would lose eventually compared to the other sight made by Nayeon when she turned around and present you her front side. You can definitely see her B-cup sized breasts encapsulated by her white bra which caused your dick to began harden on your shorts.

Nayeon saw the formation of tent done by your erected shaft, the lust in her barging to take control. She unawaringly grinds her thighs together as you stood up in front of her.

You wrapped your arm around her small waist, pushing her closer to you. Your hidden friend bumped at Nayeon's abdomen which made the woman whimper. "God, you're so heavenly attractive Nayeon."

You kissed Nayeon on the lips, tongue engaged on dancing to the rhythm with each other's movements. Breaking off your make-out session with her, you carried her up by lifting her ass; her legs locked around your waist.

Entering to your bedroom that is now willingly shared with your girlfriend, you entered and laid Nayeon on the bed; dropping her weight without care; as if it would hurt her crashing down to your bed's soft mattress.

Positioning on top of her, you kissed her again on the lips; caressing the locks of her hair from the side while she does the same from the back of your head.

"Tonight, I just want you to show me that I'm all yours."

Nayeon only nodded, she didn't want to speak for now. All she wants is to anticipate the incoming pleasure to be sent by you and her from each other's bodies.

You leaned away from her face before removing your shirt and throwing it aside. Lowering down and kneeled beside the bed, you began praising her godly sculptured body by showering kisses through her legs, knees, and those healthy thighs.

Nayeon huffed in the air as the sensation arises when you matched your kisses with gentle touches from your hands roaming in her smooth skin.

Your face meets her shielded treasure. Annoyed at the distraction, your fingers dug onto the bands and pulled her panties away as she helps you by raising both of her legs.

Her juicy, pink pussy that is now obviously desperate of your attention has now freed. Your thumb and the rest of your fingers first massaged the underside and the corners of her ass, thighs and her pussy to take your time teasing her.

"P-please eat me, baby. Don't tease me any longer, it needs you."

You obliged at her pleads. Your active hands paused for a while to hold her thighs open for you to comfortably move as you began licking her slit with your tongue, earning a sexy alluring moans and heavy breathing from your lover.

It continues as you savor the taste of her delicious pussy, biting and sucking off her flesh and nub before you entered your two fingers inside her walls as you stimulate her clit.

"Mmmhhh Y-YN yes, right there. Oohhh yeah keep eating me please."

Her hands leads to your hair as she gripped it to push your face closer on her needy and horny pussy, already dripping wet from the tongue and finger fucking you're giving to her.

You began increasing the speed of your fingers inserting in and out of her tight hole along with your flicking and wiggling of your tongue to her bloated clit.

"Ooohhh yesss Y-YN oh my god I'm cumming I'm cumming!!!"

Nayeon shouts as slimy and sticky juices of her sprayed all over your face in response to the orgasm you elicited on her. Her squirt took a little longer before it stopped, you tasted her own sweet fluid first before heading on next to other spots that deserves appreciation too.

You left a trail of kisses to her nicely built torso, over and under her belly button. She watches your head arises until it finally stops right in front of her cleavage.

In the assistance of your slick hands, you unclipped the front of her bra between the cups before taking it off, letting those small but handful and round breasts slightly jiggle in your eyes.

Licking your lips, you groped those mounds with every random directions, massaging those firm pillows as they gave a marshmallow feeling in your hands.

"Them also, YN. You can suck those tits, baby."

With regards to her command, you began sucking on her nipples and circle your tongue around those brown areolas. Giving those bosoms fair treatment, you switched side by side; one hand playing while the other being sucked carefully by you.

Nayeon moaned at how actually good it feels of your mouth tasting her delicious orbs. She begged more and more for you to keep doing it until you decided to finish worshipping her body by kissing her chest, shoulder, neck, cheeks until it brought you back again to her candy lips.

"You can't be the only one being pleasured, baby. Help me too with this. Hang your head at the edge of the bed for me."

She listened, pushing her body more to let her upsided head flailing out of the bed's surface. You get out from her and stood in front of her as you removed your short, making her gasp and sprung her eyes out at your engorged length of your big cock now escaped from your clothed prison.

Directing your shaft at her lips first to ready herself, you slowly pushed forward and successfully entered her mouth as you slowly fucked her upside down face with your pair of full balls dangling above her nose.

You moaned and whimpered at how awesome her mouth and that soft tongue rotating around your girth to add the satisfying sensation which encouraged you to got faster on your fucking.

Gurgles and slurps from Nayeon sucking your cock echoed in the bedroom. You grasped her bouncing breasts for attention as you continued drilling her mouth until you reach your end.

"Nayeon, I'm cumming! Take it all!!!"

Three last strokes is all it takes for you to gave up and release your streaks of pearly white cum to flood Nayeon's available mouth. You pumped your cock a little bit more to ride your orgasm before you slipped off, allowing Nayeon to easily swallow your cream.

Going back to business, you kneeled in front of Nayeon's body still laid on her back to the bed. Giving each other trusting nods, you inserted your dick inside her pussy. It made Nayeon's lower half shiver as she willingly takes all of your length until you're balls deep inside of her.

Slow and careful rhythm is what you gave Nayeon to let her indulge the feeling. You leaned forwards and kissed Nayeon passionately while you remained grinding on her.

Soon your pace became faster, her legs now encircled around your body not wanting to let you go. Her moans and groans gets louder to join you too as both were now in a midst of a wonderful sensation.

"Oh God, you're so tight Nayeon! You're gripping my cock so bad."

"Mmm ughhh yes yes YN pound me faster, harder! You're filling me up inside."

"I'm about to cum, Nayeon!"

"D-do it outside, babe. I'm not safe yet."

Her support and encouragement has what led you to chase the impending finish of your composure as you finally fired the shots of your second load straightly aimed on Nayeon's valley between her breasts, her torso and above her pulsing pussy.

The adrenaline cursing in your veins, pressure and efforts you poured in to assure that you are indeed pleasing your girlfriend's desires has what led you to tire yourself down, sending your body to lay beside Nayeon who is now resting after giving her a great missionary fucking.

"I'm still up for one last round. Care to join me, love?"

"Yeah me too. With you and this great sex were having? Always." She turned her head at you and smiled gracefully.

"She's indeed loyal to me. I have to apologize for her later."  You took a mental note for yourself. Those choice of words that she replied at you fulfilled the reassurance of your trust and safety of your current relationship with her.

Your happiness and gratitude outranked all emotions that the entire 2 years and counting of having Nayeon as your girlfriend won't get interrupted and ended up getting wasted because this woman beside you will remain sharing the same undeniable and unmatched love with you.

You kissed Nayeon again as a gesture on behalf of everything that fills in your heart solely because of her before turning her body sideways, her back is now facing you again as you slapped one of her asscheeks emitting a gasp and hisses from your pretty lady.

Groping her petite breasts while she reaches for your cock to harden again, it didn't last long for your wood to reaawakened before aligning it on the crack of her ass and inches by inches you managed to bury your dick inside Nayeon's rear.

You instinctively felt her move a little to adjust herself at your size so you remained frozen for seconds, not wanting to do it if it'll only result hurting Nayeon. Your main purpose was to have a good time and catch up with all those times you and her haven't got to enjoy being together as couple.

She gave you a few pats on your wrist to signal you that she's now okay, so you hold one of her legs and hooked it up while your other one went beneath on her curves and caressed her breast as you started fucking her in a spooning position.

Claps, moans, grunt and squeaks of the bed were the only noises audible inside the bedroom as you and Nayeon would perform one last make-love and vanilla sex in the middle of the young night.

Her ass was even tighter than her pussy, enveloping and pumps your entire length where at this point you don't know if you can last longer of pounding her from behind.

She reaches for your head and pulled it closer against her, kissing you head while you sync it with your fingers tugging her nipples, squeezing her soft flesh and increased pace of your cock jamming her occupied hole.

Few more strokes is what all it takes for you to meet the brim of your end as you released another batch of your load for the third time inside her reddened peach and fill it without dispute.

You slowly removed your beaten and throbbing cock stained with both of your fluids out of her used, gaped asshole that is now overflowing with a few amount of your cum, dripping down to her ass and thighs.

Nayeon is now cuddling beside you, still both naked in the bed, resting from the effects of engaging such great sex from both lovers. She looks up on you which you noticed from your peripheral vision.

"I really do love you, YN. I hope what we just had tonight speaks it all. D-do you believe me now?"

You looked back at her and flashed a timid smile. "I am. And I'm sorry that it crossed my mind to bring you into this. I-I just missed being close with you, Nayeon. I really thought there's a man out there that is now close to your heart as much as I do.

I got scared, Nayeon. I didn't want to lose my spot. I wanted to keep you close and I don't wanna be hurt and left alone. If ain't gonna be with you then I don't wanna be like that anymore."

Thankfully, Nayeon smiled at your understandable reason; caressing your chest then your hair. She was touched and softened at your frown knowing how sincere you were at your explaining.

"I'm sorry too if I made you feel like that, YN. I didn't meant to do it, I swear. Maybe I got too caught up on hanging out with my friends because I haven't seen them for months. For Junghee, I have no interest in him okay? In fact, he's already seeing another woman."

You looked at her in surprise. "Oh, wait. Really?"

She nodded innocently. "Yup. His smell that you noticed on me a while ago also, well we discussed it in dislike with Jeongie and Ji too that his perfume is very strong our noses couldn’t handle inhaling it too much whenever we get near to him. It kinda annoys me now that when he slipped on the mall and I catched him from his back, his smell passed onto me.”

"Damn it, now I even feel bad that I didn't even let you speak your side." You said with regret as you facepalmed.

Nayeon laughed and slapped your chest not so harshly. "I don't mind about it. Atleast you gave me a great first time sex with you tonight. That's what matters to me now."

"Can't wait for more of this next time." She added as a hot whisper to your ear. You smirked, remembering what she said and definitely you would love to share that level of intimacy with her all over again.

"Oh you don't know how much I look forward to it."

She squeezed herself more into your body, her breast is now compressed to your arm. "I love you, YN. Every single time. I would never look for other, why would I if I have the best man with me that I can cherish for the rest of my life. So please, I'm sorry and don't be afraid anymore babe. I'm staying with you until the end."

You kissed her in the forehead and hold her hand. "I know, and so am I. I forgive you, Nay. I love you too so much that I would literally want to be with you forever."

Both of you kissed again on the lips before none dared to speak after. You observed that Nayeon already slept within your arms.

Tracing the features of this exceptional beauty that chose you out of all the guys around in this world, you can help anymore but to release a few streams of your tears filled with joy based from what Nayeon entirely told you earlier.

There's really no someone else other than you. To think that you would gladly spend the rest of your life with Nayeon, her heart and soul in safe hands; you began to form a new plan in your mind that will place yourselves one step closer to the next chapter of your love story with Nayeon: prepare for your engagement ring and proposal that you will give to her soon.

[ganondoodle]

Hello 👋

Swallowing my nerves at last to send you an ask! I was just wondering, what inspires your designs? Are their inspirations in stuff like movies or games? Or just things you come up with yourself?

i .. honestly its kinda hard to tell, sometimes i just randomly think of something, like some detail, or color combination and try to incorporate that into a design somehow; it can come from anywhere, like the color scheme of a pithaya/dragonfruit is something i have been wanting to make a design with for ages but havent come up with anything good in all those years ;O;

im a very easily fascinated by color, espeically in nature, like sometimes i just stop and stare at something like i froze in time bc i just woooooooooooooah color! i probably look like a weirdo doing that though

its really hard to pinpoint anything specifically, the most is probably .. other artists? i guess? which always makes me nervous bc my memory is shit in most areas of life and i worry myself to pieces whether i unintentionally "stole" an idea and just dont remember and think it was my own, it goes further that sometimes i see something that makes me want to draw a similar concept but dont bc i dont want to 'steal' even if that couldnt be further from my intention (have been accused of that before ..)

that said for my ocs specifically .. most are rather old and have just kinda evolved out of their awkward first iterations (shargons first iteration was a hauro-howl- copy that was really just some human covered in feathers .. another oc was once a hellboy copy but in green- havent drawn nor redeisgn them in ages lol), the biggest inspirations for them is a mix of animals, bonus if you dont see them often- im a big shark, whale and sea creatures in general nerd so i tend to take from them as a priority but always trying to be less directly animal and mostly just .. features that work together

Eadrya is one of the newer OCs- i started to write but then looked at my folders and oh they are from 2017 .., i even made a design timeline for them how much they, and my art, have changed back in 2020, so thats also way outdated now lol (they apparently started as a whale .. thing? its like a pokemon evolution lol)

this is them now (i like this sketch still, though shargons design is now also outdated lmao)

this ones from early 2023 so also outdated now but you get the point

for demons i try to be a bit more wild on shapes and colors while still adhering to the rules of how they work (humanoid form, demon form, animalistic, one element each and more or less made to fit that, 4 arms is very common, look to be bost scary and wild but also something that would make you stop in tracks and stare in awe and fear if you crossed paths)

often times designs just kinda .. happen, i have maybe the idea ok i wanna make something with a white and red pattern also moose or those big horned cows are cool and kinda scary so maybe sth akin to that (though this one is technically a redesign too- its also pretty much entirely different)

for non demons but still non human i go for a much more restrained design, mainly inspired directly by an animal and giving the color scheme a good spin, plus adding unconventional body shapes, like ki'ita is also a good example, her old idea was just orca anthro pirate and just by making the white green instead in her most recent redesign already adds that little spin to it

that can have its pitfalls though, as i often fall into the big arm small head small legs scheme over and over xD

alot of it is trial and error, deciding on the colors can take me hours bc im always searching for my little rule of having one contrast color that shows up in very few places to draw attention to it (like with Eadrya its those bright yellow eyes and thingy at their tail)

and that is all about myy own ocs, when its fandom stuff it works kinda similar though, either in the connections i wanna draw or just thinking it further- like how deities in destiny work also just kinda .. happened like an ever derailing train

like for demise i was at first really just im gonna give him horns bc horns are cool and he got those on the starting mural in the game- so how his hair work? well maybe it isnt hair actually and just unbound energy, im making him a deity too and fit hylias design to his so, yeah, then so how does it work, ok he gotta have a skeleton still, but what if his entire actual body is made up of pure magical energy with its core in the ribcage? with the core in the ribcage >:3c and the scales you see are just like cooled down lava as an armor bc his thing is fire and earth !! the normal blood? is a thin layer of skin imiated from mortals to keep the scales together and flexible so if he ACTUALLY gets hurt hed bleed magic that looks more like lava and any normal blood you see is just the armor- so why does he have a skeleton still instead of being just energy? maybe its gotta be bound to something OH and what if all of the deities started as mortals like a mirror to the trio later on and the gods cannot have direct influence to the worlds so they needed a right hand that is neither god nor mortal but both by killing a mortal by whatever their element will be (demise burned, hylia drowned etc) and their skeleton and spirit is kept but put into a body of magic- OH what if their spirit core is like almost piloting their bodies like a mech in a way bc if youd look close youd see that every strand of magic is actual a hand of their spirit so it makes it more weird and other bc hed be able to reach out with thousands of burning claws of all shapes and sizes like the beheaded forest god at the end of mononoke- SO if hed lose and arm or something all those strands would untangle and rearrange his bones back together-OH MY GOD the whole armor idea works so well for ghirahims dark armor so what if demise had two swords once and lost one and since has forged an armor similar to his own for ghirahim out fo fear of losing him t---

and that all is a process that happens over several weeks and months not rarely while i am drawing something mindlessly and suddendly *have a thought* and omg that makes so much sense-

so "what" inspires my designs? an ever derailing train of thought about making cool thick monsters that arent the evil thing to get rid of for once? cool color schemes? idk it just kinda happens??

[mgmm-shifts]

SHIFTER INTRO

⋅˚₊‧ ୨୧ ‧₊˚ ⋅

HELLO

I'm new to shiftblr, so I wanna introduce myself :)

PSA: If you stalk my account and see my past reposts and likes, no you didn't lol. This account is hello old and I'm trying to cleanse it. I had an intense sports phase when I was 14-16, dw bout it...

⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀:¨ ·.· ¨: ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ `· . ꔫ

About me:

☆General: I'm Melanie, but you could just call me Mel. 23 y/o, Leo, She/Her. I moved from shift tok to here! I want to find fellow shifters and continue my journey! I don't really have shifting friends so I figured here was a good place to find some mutuals :) ☆Shifting journey: The first time I shifted was in 2022 (or 2023, it was winter i don't remember which month) and it was by accident. I had no idea what shifting was oop. Since then I've, although I hate this term, "mini shifted" a few times since, but my mentally has definitely gotten better! I have been lucid dreaming since I was a kid, so when it happened I knew immediately it was different and I was so confused lol.

☆Main Dr: Attack on Titan (My script is pretty diff than canonverse, practically no titans left, no war, peacetime, much more modern times etc. I will explain script in a later post if ppl are interested) I had other DRs like JJK but lost interest in that (in the show in general tbh) and DBZ (the one I shifted for the first time ever to). Don't ask but it existed lol. Still love the show though, it was my first anime 🕺🏻. Tbh I'm just focused on my main one, I may make one with L Lawliet in some way eventually. Otherwise I haven't really been inspired to have anything different. ☆Hobbies: I love to draw! I haven't really began my dive into digital art (it's on my to do list) so I mainly stick to sketching and occasionally painting. I'm also trying to learn Japanese right now which is quite hard but I love it. I could already speak Italian and English and they're soooo different. Aside from that idk, I'm currently in school so I don't have time for much. I write some fanfics from time to time and read (manga/books) or play xbox occasionally. I also love to shop and collect anime shit lol. ☆Fav shows: -Grey's Anatomy -AOT -DBZ -Death note -Chainsaw Man -Nana -Gossip Girl -Spy x Family (I'm currently watching but still at the beginning, so spoilers pls) -Demon Slayer -The Vampire Diaries (a good fall classic) -Friends -Alice in Borderlands (where tf is s3 oml) -JJK (I've watched, used to be obsessed with, now I'm pretty disinterested but always love me some Toji lol) -Jersey Shore (a true italian-american classic 😩) -JoJo's (also still at beginning oop) -Hunter x Hunter (i stopped mid way) -Black Clover (there seems to be a theme here... stopped mid way) There's prob more I just can't think rn ☆Why I shift?: Tbh, since I was a kid I would make DRs without even understanding what that was. I am a very creative person with a huge imagination (thanks ADHD woo) so I've always wanted to be a part of these realities I would make as one does. I've also struggled with a history of depression and to be candid, my home life sucks. I've done a lot of maturing and mental work on myself so I'm a lot better now, so my reason is not necessarily for an "escape" but like yeah. I don't like wording it that way because I feel as though it's a bit dangerous to just completely toss your CR aside and rely on shifting as a end all be all fix, but if that's not the case then escape away :) I've been on the other end of that journey before so I'm speaking on behalf of my experience, but that's just what has worked for me and my mental health personally. As long as you are happy and healthy, do your thing <3

Okay this is already long af but if you made it this far, thank you🥹. Now that I have started up this page, I hope to interact with you guys and post about my DR and shifiting journey! Also most importantly...

WE WILL ALL SHIFT TONIGHT :)

[letteredlettered]

Since people expressed interest in the comments about the music I used to write my current fic, I wanted to share some of what I explored to write it. I don't think that you need to know this canon or have read this fic to read this post, though I do spend a bit of time talking about how canon influenced the choices I made. Anyone who has been following this fic knows that it was supposed to be porn, and largely, it really still is for the most part a fic about sex. But I did do a lot of research on music with which I'm frankly not very familiar, and the process was really rewarding.

The fic is Time Signature, if you're interested. This post has a lot about music, electronic music, Chinese music, and music theory, as well as some links to music that interests me and inspired portions of the fic. I don't expect anyone to read anything this long, but it was nice to write it.

Canon. One of my favorite things about both book and drama canon is how in synch WWX/LWJ are cultivation-wise. It’s not just that they can predict the talisman the other will use or the seal the other will cast; they also have the same hunches solving mysteries, the same instincts protecting others, the same ideas about where to go. When writing an AU, it’s important to me to show that synchronization (beyond physical attraction and sex), mostly because I think it’s hot.

In canon, however, WWX revolutionizes cultivation, inventing a whole new method when no one ever thought that possible. I also think this is hot. I also think it’s hot if LWJ thinks it’s hot. Look, canonically, LWJ disapproves of demonic cultivation because it will injure WWX’s spirit and body, but imo there is a reason LWJ is so into WWX, and it’s not just because WWX bugs him. It’s not even just because WWX is really cute and happy and exuberant and everything that’s the opposite of his upbringing. I also like to think that it’s because WWX is a fucking genius, and LWJ doesn't mind the idea of upending tradition and the entire cultivation world as much as it really seems at first that he would; he just struggles with anything that could hurt WWX. So anyway, WWX being revolutionary, in basically a technological sense, is important to me.

Wangxian both play music canonically. LWJ’s playing is noted to be particularly powerful, and WWX’s chosen music is at least one part of his revolutionary cultivation method. Additionally, the song LWJ writes for them is an important plot point. It makes sense that in a modern AU, music is a point of connection, so that is what I chose for their careers.

The final point about canon I want to make in connection to the music for this fic is that this is a Chinese canon with Chinese characters set in China. I don’t think it’s wrong to write AUs set in the west. I have done so, and I think there is value in examining a Chinese canon that has become very popular in the west through the lens of the Chinese diaspora. But I also think that there is a lot of value in a western person such as myself trying to learn and understand the cultural context for a canon that I really like, even if I sometimes get it wrong.

I had decided to set this fic in China because I thought the setting would not strongly feature, which would give me an easy “in” to write something set in a place I don’t know much about. Directly after choosing the setting I chose their careers, which made me realize I needed to do a lot more research—both about the careers but also about the setting--than a fic that was supposed to be mainly porn should have really required.

Music genre choice. Lots of AUs I’ve read have Wangxian’s mutual interest be that they both play western classical instruments. This baffles me, but it’s what I’ve seen, so I loosely started there—ie, I spent some time thinking about what would be revolutionary in western instrumental music, which entailed doing some research on contemporary classical music. There are obviously pioneers in any music genre, folks doing new things, but it turned out I just did not know enough about this genre to really understand what would be truly avant-garde.

I took a step back and thought about the instrumental music I have personally heard that feels really new and different, and Philip Glass was the first thing that came to mind. I first heard of Philip Glass when I saw The Hours, for which he wrote the soundtrack. I still think that soundtrack is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard, and I did use it as inspiration for music in this fic, particularly LWJ’s. More on that later.

Philip Glass is great, but for all his eastern minimalist influences, he is a strong figure in the western paradigm. I did some research on Chinese contemporary instrumental music, but most of what I found had a really western flavor. I think there are two reasons for this—one is that I am in the west searching for articles in English; for all that we like to imagine the internet is universal, search algorithms and search history is actually making it far harder than it used to be to find material with which you are completely unfamiliar. Secondly, western music did in fact have a notable impact on Chinese music, which is fine, it’s still Chinese, but I worried about everything I wrote just sounding like it was about western classical, which is a concern of mine I’ll address more later.

Since I wasn’t finding what I wanted, particularly for WWX, in the “art music” (aka, lowercase “c” classical music, which Wikipedia says is also known as “cultivated music, serious music, or canonical music”—ie, instrumental music with strings, winds, percussion) scene, I realized I needed to examine the other contemporary music, by which I mean everything else. Since I am most familiar with rock, Radiohead immediately came to mind, but Radiohead is a band, and there are lyrics. Though the lyrics are not where the meaning of Radiohead songs lie (the vocals are treated as largely instrumental), if there were lyrics, I’d need to write about them, and I didn’t want to. More importantly, Radiohead is singular in what they do, which makes them difficult to categorize, and this makes them difficult to describe textually. You can say that Radiohead revolutionized rock, or even reinvented it, but that is not really addressing how fundamentally avant-gardeRadiohead is. Describing how revolutionary Radiohead is on paper really is just saying “but they’re different!” over and over again.

What I needed for WWX was a music genre that was revolutionary, an entire school of music that felt cutting edge and frankly, unfamiliar, and for that, I realized I needed my brother.

Some stories about my family. My brother is a music artist who creates electronic music. If you want to understand why it took me this long to get to my brother in this thought process, you should understand a few things about him. First, I love him a lot, but we’re not very close. Second, my brother is probably the quietest person I know—like, idk, LWJ levels of non-talking. Last, I do not understand my brother’s music. I’ve tried! I listened to it a lot! But when I didn’t understand, I asked questions, and my brother cannot explain any of it. He’s an expressive guy! Just not verbally, and as a very verbal person, I have a tough time when people cannot use their words. Like, even asking him what type of music he plays, he’ll say something like, “It’s complicated.” (This is a lie. He’ll look at me and say, “Type?” And I’ll try to explain what I mean. And he’ll say, “I don’t know.” And if I said, “Okay, but if you had to label it?” He’d laugh and say, “Why?” And if I said, “So I can better understand your music,” he’d think for a long time, then look very frustrated, and laugh, and say, “I don’t know?” I think we’ve literally had this exact conversation).

Anyway, possibly through one of these type of exchanges, where I’m grilling him like a school marm and he’s acting like I’m making him take a standardized test he hates (I’m his little sister. Would it be easier to subject him to these horrors if he was my little brother?), I learned that one of my brother’s influences is Aphex Twin. My brother loves Aphex Twin. I . . . don’t. I’ve listened to a lot of him (in order to understand my brother better); I do not like it, and I do not understand it. My brother talks about Aphex Twin like he’s a genius (if and when my brother talks at all). Now, my brother is a very smart guy; it’s not that I didn’t believe him when he said Aphex Twin was a genius, but he also gets . . . swept up by things, and as previously discussed, he doesn’t talk a lot, so I didn’t really understand what my brother meant by this. It took hearing about Aphex Twin randomly, in a couple other places, for me to realize Aphex Twin is a Big Deal. When I looked up Aphex Twin at some point in order to better understand the music my brother makes, I found that Aphex Twin is considered by many to be a genius and also a pioneer. Apologies to all of you who already knew that about Aphex Twin.

Sidenote, my brother’s wife is also a musician, though not professionally. She could have been, considering that she was ranked as one of the top flute players in Texas, and Texas is fucking huge. But no, professionally, my sister-in-law is in cognitive science and linguistics, which you may remember was the career LWJ had in Say More (my fiancée is also a linguist. I also know a few other linguists. My life is convenient for my Wangxian AUs, I gotta say). I mention my sister-in-law because my sister-in-law has enough musical acuity to also recognize that both my brother and Aphex Twin are geniuses, which really helped me to understand that even though I’m not really into this music at all, it really is a Big Deal.

So, I researched Aphex Twin and also went to my brother’s website for his music to find out what the hell this type of music is called, and it turns out there’s not a good name. IDM, which stands for intelligent dance music, is a label Aphex Twin himself famously does not like, and my brother labeled his own music as “acid, techno, house, electro.” Wikipedia said that Aphex Twin is known for techno, ambient, and jungle.

Anyway, into this confusing morass of electronic revolutionary music is where I decided to plunk Wei Ying.

Electronic music. Note for this section that I know nothing about electronic music. I’m writing this post partly to document the journey of discovery I went on to write this porn. I’m not really trying to educate anyone so much as I’m trying to provide insight as to what I researched for this fic and what the references are, in case the fic interested you.

When you really get down to it, music made with electronics has as many genres and styes as music made with more traditional instruments, and the labels are just as confusing (see this Wikipedia list of electronic music genres). For instance, “electronica” just means music made with electronics to some people, but to others it’s more specific. You’ve also got a bunch of other terms: ambient, EDM, techno, house, IDM.

This is all based on what I learned from Wikipedia, but here are some loose definitions as I understand them: There’s ambient, which is really made for background listening, and then there’s EDM (electronic dance music), which is made for active listening—ie, dancing. Within EDM you have lots of genres, such as techno; techno is usually characterized by a specific tempo and repeating structure, and house, which . . . is also characterized by a specific tempo and repeating structure, but the tempo is different. From what I can gather, house is also a bigger tent than techno; ie, many different genres and styles can be house, but techno is more often just techno. (Note that part of the reason all of this terminology has so much overlap is that it originated in different places; techno was invented in Berlin, house in Chicago.) Meanwhile, the list of genres of house is so big that it also has its own Wikipedia page, which is almost as large as the list of electronic music genres.

Note that there is such a thing as “house ambient”, which explodes the entire concept of ambient vs EDM. To aid in that explosion, IDM is described on Wikipedia as including styles such as ambient techo, and “is regarded as better suited to home listening rather than dancing.” What stands out about IDM, and the reason it is featured in the fic, is that it’s known for being experimental. (I’ll add that it emerged in the 90s, which isn’t great for my fic. Whatever WWX is doing, he is on the edge, and 90s music already old to him, even if he’s Aphex Twin’s biggest fan! But alas, my research could not tell me what is happening right now, because you really have to be involved in The Scene to understand what’s new. By the time it’s documented, it’s already really a little old.)

If you are researching electronic music and how it is revolutionary, you’re probably going to get into its evolution and history, since this is a new style of music. And if you are looking into the origins of this kind of music, you’re going to find Brian Eno. And if you’re looking into Brian Eno, you’re going to find minimalism.

Minimalism. Brian Eno is an extremely famous dude. I’d probably heard of him before, but I am very good with big concepts and pretty bad with details, so because I didn’t know anything about the bigger concepts behind ambient/electronic music/minimalism, I never paid attention. Now I’m hearing about him literally everywhere, which is funny, since it’s not like he’s new news. Ezra Klein was literally waxing poetic about Music for Airports just a month ago.

Eno is famous for his pioneering work in ambient music and electronic music, and, as one might expect, electronic ambient. Eno was always doing experimental, avant-garde stuff, and early on he embraced a minimal style. He later coined the term “ambient music.”

What’s interesting about this is that around the same time as Eno was doing this in later 1960s/early 1970s, a new kind of art music was being born in classical circles. This is the capital “M” Minimal music, for which—you guessed it—Philip Glass is really famous. And when you look at Philip Glass’s influences, he was deeply influenced by the minimalism of eastern music, especially Indian and Tibetan music. I couldn’t really find anything saying that Brian Eno was directly influenced by traditional eastern music, but Eno is definitely a fan of Glass and vice versa; they really build on each other.

This ended up just being a very cool intersection for the fic that I didn’t plan. I didn’t end up using it very much, but I must say I was stupidly pleased that the kind of music I was looking into for both of these characters has such deep roots in eastern music traditions. So now let’s talk a little bit about eastern music, specifically Chinese music, since that’s where this fic is based.

Chinese music. I did read a bit about Chinese music for this fic, and I have to say that I still don’t know a lot about it. As stated above, I’m in the west, using my western search techniques, looking for primarily articles in English (though I get Google to translate some things). I also just have a western understanding of music and music history, and it turns out, surprise, different cultures are different, and my entire paradigm for understanding music does not really apply to music from other cultures.

I, and many of us, want music to be a universal language, something that can move through all barriers and touch us in our souls. And it is! I have listened to and loved music not from my culture! But thinking of music as something intrinsically universal and therefore immediately moving to everyone really collapses the rich history of musical tradition all cultures have. Music really is like a language, in that it is built on the culture that creates it; it has its own internal logic; it has style and meaning that depend on the history of that tradition and the understanding of its audience. The brief reading I’m going to do to write some porn will not give me to understand the deep and rich tradition of Chinese music, but also, frankly, even if I turned all my efforts and career to learning and understanding this right now, I still would not have the best comprehension. I don’t even comprehend western music, and I grew up with it. So, forgive me for the paucity of my understanding and knowledge, and please correct me if I make mistakes.

When I think about Chinese music that I know about, I think of two things: modern and traditional. The modern stuff I’m thinking of is stuff like C-pop, but also the things you might hear on the soundtrack for a drama or movie. To me, none of this music sounds that different than western pop or western soundtracks. There are a few reasons for this: one, there are tons of Chinese music that is not reaching me. Two, maybe I just think it doesn’t sound that different because I can only really process what I recognize. Three, in a similar vein, maybe I’m thinking “that sounds like what I know” when really what I know sounds like what I’m hearing. Globalization is definitely doing things to music; if you’re telling me that Asian pop is not influencing western pop right now, I’m going to think you’re crazy, considering the influence and popularity Asian pop has in the US and Europe right now. And four, western music did have an impact on Chinese music, so there’s that.

Obviously, the music genre I chose for Wei Ying falls into the modern sphere, and I certainly looked into the techno/EDM/IDM/electronic/ambient/house scene in China. Articles I found stated it took a little longer for EDM to pick up steam in China, but now it’s definitely going strong. There are some great electronic music festivals, EDM clubs, underground EDM scenes, and EDM music artists (composers and DJs!) in China. Researching these artists was pretty difficult, especially because I wanted Wangxian’s musical discussions to be highly technical, and for highly technical discussions about EDM you are wandering into some very niche spaces. I’m sure such spaces about EDM in China exist, but they’re most likely to be in Chinese.

As I’ve said, globalization is a factor when it comes to cultural difference in music, and I’d add here that because this genre of music is so new, globalization has even more influence, from what I can tell. That said, I do not want to diminish how much influence very specific locations have to do with this type of music. EDM is very tied to clubs (because of the dancing) and performance (because of deejaying, and also because of things like live coding/algorave), which is probably why we get so many granular genres of house—Chicago house is different from Detroit, just for example. Regardless, I stuck with researching a lot of western artists for both the music and musical discussions in the fic, mostly because the music is supposed to be so new and avant-garde that is should not be something overly familiar to the reader, even if they’re steeped in electronic music genres.

Then there’s traditional music.

Traditional music. Traditional music obviously had a huge influence on Chinese modern music. The influence of traditional eastern music on modern eastern music, as well as traditional eastern music itself, is what really influenced a lot of western minimalism of the 1960s and 70s (and onward). To be clear, not all “eastern” traditional music is the same. It’s just as richly diverse regionally as traditional western music, if not more so, given “the east” is fucking huge—though I will say that a lot of people think of western music as pretty monolithic, because folk is characterized as a separate tradition than classical. When you consider ancient western folk, there’s a shit ton of it, and it’s quite diverse. There is also folk music in eastern music traditions, and this is different than music that would have been played in courts and palaces, so there’s really a ton going on.

Traditional music is what people think of when they think of eastern music being “weird,” which is something I really hate. Look, I love being weird; I think weird is cool; it’s great. But weird means unusual, and traditional music is very usual; people who say that just mean it’s unusual for them, and they should think about their words. What they’re trying to say is that traditional eastern music will sound very different for many western listeners, even though, again, we like to think of music as so universal, actually!, because it’s based on math, actually!, and math is so universal!!! The truth is that math is patterns, and patterns are things that your brain recognizes when there are familiar elements, and when there are unfamiliar elements your brain has trouble recognizing the pattern. So, again, music is a way to communicate across all kinds of boundaries, but it is not a universal translator. (But it does make you wonder . . . if Lan Zhan played Inquiry, could Aeneas answer???)

Regarding the unfamiliar math, what we’re talking about is scales. I think most people know this part. Eastern scales are based on math, just like western scales, but the frequencies are divided up differently. Among other things, traditional Chinese music did not use equal temperament, which means depending on what note you start with, the intervals for all the notes on the scale were be different. A way of thinking about this, at least as I understand it, is that a piano is even tempered. All the notes are always the same whether you’re playing in C major or B flat, because you have no control over the frequency produced when you press the key. But if you’re using just intonation—say you’re using an instrument with just a few strings—you’re adjusting the frequency of the note to match your scale. It requires extremely precise hearing and playing ability.

Notation for traditional Chinese music was really different than how I as a westerner understand it. For one thing, it didn’t include rhythm, and for another, it represented more a framework for improvisation than every single precise note. (See Gongche notation, Wikipedia.)

Authorship was also thought of pretty differently. When I googled “great Chinese composers,” the only results I was getting were twentieth century. There are some great ancient Chinese composers, but I had to do a lot of digging to find them, and trying to find someone like the Chinese equivalent of Beethoven is just the wrong approach. When you get right down to it, this really seems to be about the fundamental difference between western individualism vs eastern collectivism and community-based thinking. The individual artist is not the hero of the story. That said, the tradition of the music is very heroic. For instance, the notation allows such variation that the same piece can really build and grow through different artists, much like a story through oral tradition. Additionally, for an artist in an ensemble piece to stand out would really be quite rude; the point is not the individual talent of the musicians but the fundamental beauty of the piece. (This was a particularly hard thing to research, and I mostly found out what I laid out above from various folks answering questions in forums. The best one I found is here.)

Another thing is that harmony, as we think of it, was just not really a thing in traditional Chinese music. The focus was on a melody, which is where minimalism comes in. I’d add here that the “as we think of it” is pretty important, because the western paradigm, including western music language, is not super great at really capturing the nuance of Chinese music. I am terrible at tracking my sources when I research stuff for fic, so I was trying to find some of them now, and I came across this article, which examines the harmony that did exist, but how different it is from what we think of when we think of western harmony.

Despite the reading I did on this subject, very little about Chinese traditional music made it into the fic. I do have Lan Zhan reading a book on traditional music that he hates. This isn’t based on a book I found, but rather to show that Lan Zhan isn’t really into the idea of musical “purity,” that is, ideas of what you should and shouldn’t do with music. That said, I’m not really aware of what strictures around traditional Chinese music are like, or what the Chinese thought is on that. I am aware of how deeply restrictive western thought is regarding music theory, and that’s really where that part of the fic was coming from.

I’d originally had Lan Zhan reading a book on western music theory and very deeply hating it, but I also felt like having him read a book on western theory could reinforce the idea that he’s working within a western paradigm, when really the whole point is that this Lan Zhan very intentionally uses traditional music values. Due to his inspiration from Wei Ying, he’s breaking the norms of how that music works, but he's not necessarily making it western; he’s making it avant-garde. Basically, my inspiration was a Chinese Philip Glass, but I didn’t want to say that because as mentioned above, Glass is still western, no matter his influences. That said, Wei Ying does compare Lan Zhan to Philip Glass and also Tan Dun, who you might recognize as the guy who did the soundtrack for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, among many other very famous projects.

Tan Dun has in fact been called the Chinese Philip Glass, which is probably not very respectful to Tan Dun, who is himself an incredible (and experimental!) composer. I should note, however, that Tan Dun is Chinese American—he was born in China, but got a degree at Columbia and has lived in New York since. Also, he is particularly famous for marrying Eastern traditionalism with western style, and that really wasn’t what I wanted for Lan Zhan. I didn’t want Lan Zhan to be incredible because he was using western traditions, though he is familiar with them and can make very talented use of them. A lot of very famous Chinese modern composer are famous for that, and that music is still very Chinese. That said, I felt that if I made that Lan Zhan’s style, it would feel like I was saying Lan Zhan’s music is special because it’s western, and that was something I really wasn’t keen on.

In the end, I possibly did the fic and traditional Chinese music a disservice by having Lan Zhan read his book and hate on it. One of the whole reasons western music theory sucks is it can be pretty racist, and that’s what I was trying to avoid, but by conflating my rage at western music theory with eastern, I didn’t really help things much. But anyway, since I’ve now mentioned it, let’s just take a slight detour to talk about what I mean by racist music theory.

Western music theory racism. There’s a scene in the movie Tár that really solidified my feelings on the subject. In it, a student who identifies as BIPOC and pangender, says they don’t really have much use for Bach because of Bach’s misogynist history. The extremely famous director, Tár, played by Cate Blanchett, lambasts the student for “cancelling” Bach because of Bach’s personal life. The student goes on to say that they really just don’t have much interest in cis male white composers, and Tár continues to lambast the student for considering things like gender and race in conjunction with the art.

My understanding of this scene was that it was demonstrating that Tár is a jerk, so full of herself that she can’t listen to other voices, and so steeped in her 18th century western ideas of genius that she’s literally silencing the music voices she’s supposed to support. That was not most people’s reading of the scene, and in retrospect, possibly not the intention of the film. It seems rather telling that not a lot is known about Bach’s misogyny or lack thereof; there are plenty of other “great” western composers that are known to be worse in terms of misogyny and abuse, and yet the film did not make this scene about them. In retrospect, maybe that scene wanted to paint this student as kind of ignorant for cancelling Bach, and Tár really puts them in their place when she describes how art is more important than the artist.

Fuck that. I certainly believe that art is more important than the artist. JK Rowling sucks; that doesn’t mean I will stop loving HP fic and the part it’s played in my life. But the ugliness of the scene is that it hinges on importance of Bach, and look here, shocker, Bach is not essential, just as JKR is not essential if you decide you don’t ever want to familiarize yourself with the literature of TERFs. Even if you want to be a musician and create or conduct music, Bach is just not essential.

He’s pretty important if you want to be a western music historian, true, but when we talk about music there are many, many music traditions that are incredibly worthwhile and important that not only weren’t created by cis white men, but also weren’t ever derived or influenced by cis white men. If you think that you need Bach to know and love and create and perform and conduct music, it’s because you’re operating in a single paradigm that has become yes, universally known, but also for that reason oppressive and imperialist. I am not saying western classical music is bad because it’s imperialist, just to be clear. Bach’s great! Hate ‘im, but I do love me some Beethoven and he was also very cis and male and white and also a complete douche! What I’m saying is that forcing this music tradition on others is deeply imperialist, and it happens all the time.

Anyway, this is really a tangent, because despite my very good intentions to write about Chinese music, as I have stated, almost everything I used for reference was western, even a lot of the stuff I listened to. Maybe I just wanted to acknowledge that that’s a little racist, even though I tried not to be. Maybe I also wanted to hate on Tár and leave you with this interesting video about white supremacy in music theory.

References. Finally, we’ve reached the part I had originally intended to post, which is why I started writing this. Below are the essays and articles I used to write this fic. They were used in three ways: 1) to describe the music (though I also listened to things, see next section), 2) to inform Lan Zhan’s critiques and Wei Ying’s ideas—though I read a lot of essays to do that, just a crazy amount considering how little of the fic is actually about that, and 3) to describe the reading material Wei Ying and Lan Zhan exchange.

Music Beyond Airports – Appraising Ambient Music

This is a series of essays largely focused around Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, though there’s a lot of other stuff as well. I didn’t read everything in here, but the collection is absolutely fascinating. “Ambient House: “Little Fluffy Clouds” And The Sampler As Time Machine” is one of the “articles” Wei Ying sends Lan Zhan; meanwhile, the collection as whole is what Lan Zhan sends Wei Ying when he says he’s been reading about ambient house. Additionally, “Adaptive Game Scoring With Ambient Music” really influenced Lan Zhan’s commentary about arpeggiation, the first time he comments on Wei Ying’s music.

Counterpoint - Tracking in the Music of Aphex Twin

I have some embarrassment about this, given that the article is about counterpoint, and as I have discussed above, eastern traditional music doesn’t really employ that in the way westerners think about it. However, it’s also pretty backwards to restrict Wei Ying to traditional eastern music, as modern Chinese music includes plenty of counterpoint, and part of the point of the fic is that Wei Ying is doing entirely new things that haven’t been done before. Well. They’ve been done by Aphex Twin, as described in this piece, which also describes the first piece that Wei Ying plays for Lan Zhan in the fic, in the car. I did lift the phrase “pedagogy of counterpoint,” and could not decide whether it was long enough or significant enough to credit in the fic.

Unequal Temperament: A Review of Aphex Twin’s SYRO

I can’t remember what I used this article for. It’s an interesting read.

Reverb Machine (the entire website)

This is the site I kept returning to over and over and over again. Most of the articles about electronic really focus on either the equipment used or chords. In the fic, Lan Zhan isn’t supposed to know much about equipment or how any of it is used, because he does not do electronic music. Also, I didn’t really want to talk much about chord progressions, because those discussions are steeped in western music theory, and I wanted it to be possible for Wei Ying to be using the kind of scales traditional Chinese music used, even if a lot of modern Chinese music does use an even-tempered 12-tone scale. However, this site has a lot, and I ended up returning to it again and again so Wei Ying could say an offhand thing about reverb, and to describe certain things.

Notably, Wei Ying’s track, sex.mp3 is loosely based around Trent Reznor’s and Atticus Ross’s soundtrack to The Social Network. I haven’t even talked about Trent Reznor, but he was also someone I considered deeply when I started thinking about making Wei Ying do electronic music. In case you don’t know, Reznor was the artist behind Nine Inch Nails, but in later years he moved on to more experimental things, including movie soundtracks. Side note, movie soundtracks and video games is where a lot of these experimental artists doing either minimalism, ambient, or electronica, or a combination of all three end up, and I ended up reading a lot about video game music.

But anyway, when I saw the Social Network, I came out of it 1) admiring Aaron Sorkin and wishing I didn’t admire Aaron Sorkin because he’s kind of a douche, 2) shipping Mark and Eduardo way too much for my comfort, 3) going HOLY SHIT THAT SOUNDTRACK. Turns out I was not alone in finding that soundtrack totally different and new compared to anything I have ever heard, because as it turns out, it really was—wait for it—revolutionary. I understand that I have now said that about Glass, Eno, Radiohead, and Aphex Twin, but hey, people are doing things in music. Like I get that pop and hiphop artists are revolutionizing their genres all the time, but also it is possible for music as we know it to be redefined, and it’s not just the weird shit you hear that sounds like noise (there is a place for the weird shit that sounds like noise, and Brian Eno is closer to it than any of the above mentioned; I am not dissing weird shit that sounds like noise, because it is part of how we get where we are going).

Anyway, I used this website’s essay about The Social Network’s piece, “In Motion” to describe some of the music and inform some commentary on it.

“East Meets West: A Musical Analysis of Chinese Sights and Sounds, by Yuankai BaoSounds, by Yuankai Bao” by Jiazi Shi

This was the only essay I found that really had the extremely niche technical jargon that I really wanted for the fic that was also about Chinese music. You’ll note that it’s about a Chinese composer who is, again, famous for marrying eastern and western tradition, but this was what I could find in English, and I searched a lot. You’ll note that Lan Zhan’s very specific comment about the key change is something very directly inspired by this grad school dissertation. You’ll also note that this is where I found “Flowing Stream,” including a description of the song and the lyrics.

Music. A lot of fics like this one will link you to a specific piece that the character is playing. I could not do that, because the music in my fic is very intentionally made up. As I have been saying, the whole point is that Wei Ying is pushing the boundaries, inventing music that does not exist. So is Lan Zhan, by the end. I listened to music to inspire the descriptions, but it is not what they are playing, and almost none of it is Chinese. I’d be very interested in finding some Chinese music that is working on some of the principles of minimalism and electronic that these pieces employ.

Aphex Twin – Stone In Focus

Now you’ve come to the climax—this is really the story of how I learned to love Aphex Twin. This piece makes me cry. It’s what I used to describe the piece that has the remix of Lan Zhan’s guqin piece from 12 years ago. Obviously, the guqin piece mentioned in the fic is the canonical piece, Wangxian, but I find Wangian in the drama cheesier than I want it to be, and this Aphex Twin piece doesn’t have the Wangxian part. It’s just the sad longing part before Wangxian enters, but you’ll also notice that there are no flutes! Again, this is not the piece Wei Ying wrote; it’s just what I used for the description.

I didn’t link to the YouTube video I was watching, because the video was a collection and this didn’t come on until after minute thirteen. But that video just has this very sad tunnel that looks like maybe it’s for a train, and the rain is falling, and that makes me cry as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHl4NVytGpo&t=1074s

Book featuring Ndidi O - Hold On, I'm Coming

Wait, you’re saying, this is not electronic/house/ambient at all; this is just a trick to get me to watch one of your favorite wangxian vids! You’re right! But frankly, I was not focused on the genre when describing the music; I was focused on getting the feel of it that I wanted. The opening sequence to this was what I used to describe the track they make love to. (Lan Zhan starts making out with him and kind of slowly humping him to the track with the wangxian remix, but then Lan Zhan demands he plays something else, and this is what I listened to to get the feel for it.)

This pieces is a cover, and frankly, I can’t find out much about it. But just thinking about it turns me on and makes me cry and makes me feel so much, I can’t do it too often.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – “In Motion,” from soundtrack to The Social Network

As noted above, this piece inspired sex.mp3, but I will say that the article I linked above about this piece, as well as the memory of the soundtrack itself, inspired descriptions more than listening to the piece itself. In the fic, sex.mp3 is initially described as “violent.” This was because I didn’t know if the track would play a big part in the fic, and then when it did, I really had to change to both to fit the meaning and the flavor I wanted; it became “anxiety inducing,” and that’s when it became “In Motion.” “In Motion,” however, is kind of too bright and peppy to really be sex.mp3, though I will say I was trying to listen to it just to write this section of the post, and I had to turn it off. It makes me SO anxious.

Philip Glass – soundtrack to The Hours

I’m linking the whole soundtrack, because in the fic Lan Zhan writes several related pieces, which is what this soundtrack is. I can’t even recommend one piece on this soundtrack, because it’s the thing as a whole that really makes you cry, and I can’t say I listened to a specific part of it to describe Lan Zhan’s music, because I know it so well that I only have to listen to a small piece to get all of it.  

Flowing Water, played by Chen Leiji

The part this played in the fic is obvious. I listened to at least five versions of Flowing Stream/Flowing Water, and this is the one that I like the best. However, like all the renditions I listened to, the piece eventually becomes pretty complex and different than I wanted for Lan Zhan. In fact, what the narration describes as “showing off technique” is what I found in all recordings of this piece. I guess if you’re going to play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” on YouTube you’re going to do something impressive with it, but I will say this piece is still very close to what I wanted.

I will also say that when I searched for this piece, as well as several other traditional songs, the search results had a lost of stuff that said you can listen to these pieces for tranquility and calm and meditation. I suggest listening to this one as extremely passionate and longing, and you’re going to get a lot more from it. If you resign it to the background, yeah, it’s kind of nice. If you let each note really speak to you, you’re going to really ache in a beautiful way.

Brian Eno – Ambient 1, Music for Airports

After hearing so much about Eno and Music for Airports, I was a little afraid I wouldn’t like it. After all, this isn’t really my genre, and witness how long it took me to find something I liked by Aphex Twin. However, I really needed some inspiration for the piece Wei Ying composes after Lan Zhan breaks them up, so I started listening to it.

The opening to this album is not the heartbreaking thing that the fic describes. It in fact does break my heart, but that is because there is something so sweet about it, lonely and sweet, but also perfectly fine being by itself. This piece is like a child alone in a room, figuring out blocks. This piece is like a cat on a piano, content with its nonsense noise. This piece is what it’s like to be alone and to be fine with that, to love from afar and be fine with that. It still brings me to tears, listening to it.

Radiohead – Everything in its Right Place

Apparently I did not succeed in writing all the music without Radiohead. I will say it happened because I happened to be watching a TV show that just happened to use this song right when I needed something powerful. I was already thinking about them, because my BFF was listening to a podcast about In Rainbows, which explains the children shouting “Yay!” in 15 Step. I really wanted something other than rain to get sampled in Wei Ying’s music, and my brother has specifically used his children talking or his babies crying as samples. Once Lan Zhan knows about A-Yuan, I wanted to use that idea, so I listened to 15 Step again, which is far too peppy for what I needed. But then Everything In Its Right Place came on, and it’s actually way too melancholy for what I needed, but that doesn’t really matter; I just needed to get a few notes described, so this is what I used for inspiration for what Wei Ying plays Lan Zhan after he admits to being in love with him. I will just say that re-listening to this song really does remind me of just how much Kid A means to me, but also how much it means to, like, music. There was really nothing like it at the time.

-

I will end this post by saying that I am not, in fact, a "music" person. So many people need and rely on music to get them through tough times. I mostly don't care about it. I don't have a Spotify account, and I can't imagine taking the time to really curate playlists.

But one thing I can say about me and my tastes is that I'm interested in learning. I want to try new things and hear things that I haven't heard before. To be a little self-aggrandizing, I think that that's a good thing. I think it makes me a better person to work on listening to things that I'm a little unfamiliar with and learn what's great about them. I think I got to do that quite a bit writing this, even though in the end I used a lot of pieces I was familiar with to do the actual writing. I hope that maybe someone reads this and decides to listen to something new, just like I did.

[karen360-x3]

...Yeah this was inevitable since I absolutely love those 2 games....

Sooo here's my attempt at a Hollow Knight x Ultrakill crossover

But instead of giving you all the design and calling it a day like I usually do, imma go ahead and do a section below to explain my design choices cuz why not :

Starting with V1's design:

-Since we know that V1's a robot, it was the logical thing to do to give them a similar design to Steel Soul Jinn, considering she has the same speech patern and design as a robot (also there's a type of enemy in silksong who is similar but i'm not gonna show pics of them cuz spoilers and stuff). Plus I tried adding elements that would make V1's recognizable

-Since there's no firearms in Hollow knight (...yet), I just went with "V1 has different types of magics."

-Also, bug's blood (or soul idk) is white in the game, so they can harnest it with the gems on their chest (gem that is seen on Jinn too)

Next our fav babygirl, Gabriel: (gotta admit, it wasn't easy)

-So again with light spoilers for silksong: there a boss at the top of the citadelle that more or less has the same vibes as gabriel in terms of design (they have 2 sword, they're mainly golden, black and white, they're some sort of skilled guardian according to speculations), so I decided to inspire myself from this one abit (mainly for the bodyshape)

-Also, something I wanted to avoid was just slaping Gabriels armor on the base and call it a day...So I decided to give him fur to give this idea of a godly power (cuz Radiance's fluffy and moth are linked to some mystic powers)

-Modified his wings to be more fitting for a bug (like I did with V1 haha) and tried to write alphabet to replace the letters on gabe's halo and wings.

-And finally, modified his weapons too so they fit better ^^

Oh and if you made it this far, you can drop a request in my inbox and tell me which Ultrakill character should I turn into a hollow knight character next (I mean, there's gonna be Minos and Sisyphus first, but I can still see witch one should I do next)

Anyways, I think that's it!

See y'all later <3

[joycew-art]

Someone asked what my process was to make the Rickbot comic, so I thought I'd make a separate post to show it. The process was kinda all over the place and spread over many months from December 2022 up till June 2023, so I'll try my best to make it understandable. And if you have any questions feel free to ask them!

The idea

So it all started with the idea of; What if Rickbot came back? And then the idea immediately made me think of two things;

How would Rickbot react?

Why is he brought back?

Which ended up with these two scenarios in my mind;

A. Rickbot awakens and he's not happy B. Rick tells the reason he's activated again

These were the very first scenes that started it all.

So then the question became, how do I go from point A to point B?

I would take moments from the show as reference for how they would act in these scenarios. And I'd take inspiration from manga and other comics of how I wanted the dialogue to flow and what the comic layouts would look like. In this case I knew a lot of dialogue would be involved cause these guys talk a lot! But I also didn't want the panels to feel too crowded and rushed so I limited myself to the amount of dialogue per panel.

Right now I'm writing it down like it was very planned, but for me this was often a very subconscious thing I did. I just thought up scenarios while I was taking walks or daydreaming in the shower etc. And sometimes these very specific moments would pop up that I would write down or draw out later.

I would make mini thumbnails of how I wanted the pages to go and write the dialogue next to it. At this point I'm mainly thinking of what I want characters to say and how I want the story to flow. Sometimes I make multiple versions of the same scenario to see how it flows better.

At times I even only write down dialogue and then make the thumbnails for them later. I have a tiny a6 sketchbook for little thumbnails and ideas like this. These were often moments were I didn't know where I wanted to take the comic yet, so I would separate the two to keep it more organized for myself.

As you might have noticed, not everything is the same in the final comic. I always fine-tune or change stuff up as I go. Sometimes things don't flow as well as I thought they did or some dialogue feels awkward or unnecessary.

Sketching

Once all the pages were planned and I have a good idea of how the story would go I opened a new Clip Studio Paint file and used the comic feature to set that up.

I would then copy the thumbnails I made in the page files and exported a thumbnail draft of the whole comic and 'read' through it to see how it flowed.

After I was satisfied I finally started sketching the pages.

Most of the pages stayed the same from the thumbnail, aside from some poses or expressions here and there. But I would also change up stuff I wasn't satisfied with.

For example, initially the Prime panel looked like the left one, but I didn't like how the pose flowed with the text balloons. There was a lot of empty space as well. So I decided to redo it to the one on the right.

Even now for the final version I'm thinking of resizing Rick a bit more. These kind of changes just happen throughout the process.

The backgrounds

I knew the comic would only take place in the garage, so to save myself a lot of time I decided to make it in 3d.

First I decided to sketch out the four walls of the garage as planes;

Then I imported those in Blender. I did some simple 3d modeling to get the basic shapes for the counters and the cabinet et voila! 3d sketch version of the garage!

I know this is a very watered down explanation, but trying to explain how I did it would take a whole new tutorial. And there are many other ones out there that explain it much better than I could. I was lucky that I already have some Blender experience cause of past works I've done for school and stuff.

But if you got the time to delve into it I would recommend it! For this here you only need to know the basics. Also Blender is free to download :)

This has saved me a lotttt of time drawing the same backgrounds over and over again!

Cover

Lastly I did the cover. That one has also gone through multiple versions. I had a vague idea of what I wanted, but I wasn't happy with the execution so I redrew that one as well.

So that's the whole process so far. I do I wanna continue the comic once I got the energy to work on it again. Gonna do some test pages first to see what kind of rendering I wanna go for. Not sure if'll be in black and white, color or a combo...we'll see.

I hope this helps! And if you have any questions don't be afraid to ask them.

[amerricanartwork]

More Love for Lilypad

Hi! To be honest, I don’t know why I’m writing this, I guess because reading everything has moved me more than I probably thought.

I don’t know how much text he let me put

I have read the current Lilypad publication and I honestly loved it, otherwise I would be here writing like an excited silly girl.

How do you connect the story of Luna and No Harassment with Sleeping Beauty (From the Disney movie because the original story is horrible, believe me, you wouldn’t want to use it if it were the original), it’s so beautiful that it moved me and connected me more with the ships. how much I love them and lilypad mainly sadly for my part I don’t see much art from them (I think it happens to me with ships that generally are not so popular or so loved, it happens to me with the message of love from SpearmasterXHunter, Godmode SaintXEnot, lilypad and PebblesXSun )

The topic, I loved reading these ideas that come from your ingenious and beautiful imagination, I want to read more of this and that would be all! Nice day/night :3!

PD: As a warning, I don’t know where I had to send this and I’m sorry if I didn’t have to send it here, and I take this opportunity to say that your ArtiXGourmand is simply beautiful and I adore it!

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Oh my, @amaerumeru, thank you so much for this submission!!

I’m so glad to see someone enjoy those ideas so much, and to hear my essay has inspired some more love for these two sweethearts! Seeing people sympathize at least with the fairytale stuff is a very pleasant surprise!

Regarding the lack of content, I feel you, I’ve had my fair share of rarepairs across my fandoms too (heck, I’m even considering adopting a super rare RW ship right now...), and not being able to find content of them is always pretty rough! Although for me, the struggle doesn’t always come from lacking any content of the ship, but lacking the specific kind of content I want for it. 

Part of the reason why I began that extension of the Lilypad essay by listing the ship tropes I love and particularly explaining the main two was because, to me, how a ship is depicted is just as important as which ship is depicted. It’s so much so I actually won’t like content of a ship I normally love if I don’t like the way the characters are and act within it, or if I don’t like the ideas being shown through the characters enough. 

Both situations exist with Lilypad, and although I can excuse the lack of content as Rain World generally not having much canon ship potential, the portrayal struggle is one I have faced in basically every fandom I’ve been in, where no one seems to really appreciate those traditional dynamics I love with the ships I enjoy the most. Most of the time I still enjoy the content because it’s pretty cute and romantic, and I don’t dislike anything about it enough to cancel out that cuteness/romance factor, but it’s still not what I love most, tailored to what I identify with the greatest; I’ll eat it, but it’s not my favorite flavor. And with the New Year and self-improvement being a common focus this time of year, I figured I’d finally get the courage to take my classic art approach with these themes now; if I can’t find someone else who’s made the content I want, I’ll make it myself (like this sketch I drew up for this post), and just maybe they’ll find me!

And find someone I have! Once again, I’m so glad someone appreciates these older fairytale tropes, and I really do feel inspired to openly make more content including these ideas! I’ve always had a habit of thinking about not just ships, but fiction in general through the lens of the poetic significance characters, scenes, and plot points do or can have, and recently I’ve developed a habit of linking characters and ships back to songs and previous characters from other cartoons (like I did with Sleeping Beauty here), and trust me, if you want more content of this sort, I could both write similar essays deriving these themes within other ships AND make a lot more Lilypad content like this! I mean, after posting that addition I realized somehow forgot to talk about “Once Upon a Dream” specifically and how it so perfectly fits this ship, so I’m already probably gonna do a post and drawing on that sometime soon — !

And one last thing, thanks for liking the Artimand stuff too! Artimand is probably a better example of my “I like this ship in general, but I really wanna see more of these traditional themes in content for it“ attitude, so it’s nice to see that’s enjoyable to other people on some level too!

 Big thanks for the submission, a reason to ramble even more about Lilypad and my favorite ship tropes, and inspiration to make that drawing, Meru! And hey, I love hearing the deeper reasons why other people ship what they do too, so if you ever wanna ramble about your own ships, I’m all ears!

[kozachenko]

I've crawled out of my cave after playing Final Fantasy IX for a long ass time what have I missed?

Artist's Notes:

I'M BACK BABY! A while back I made a post with a new style experimentation thingy but I ended up deleting it because it was just kind of a boring face thing, I was planning on doing more art but then I started playing Final Fantasy IX and uhhhh yeah so that game has kind of taken of my brain for the past two weeks and I am 20 hours into the game because I love it so much. I wanted to draw Vivi because Vivi is just really fun to draw ok? I've kinda been feeling really burnt out with my lineless style, mainly because of how hard it was to do lighting. I'll show one of my initial art style tests on the bottom of this post. Again, used to have it be an individual post but it was just one face so it was kinda boring, so might as well include with this one on the subject of art styles. I wanted to kinda mix some aspects of my older style with the sketchy shading lines with a more painterly way of doing the lighting (mainly in the shadows). All in all, I think that's my favourite part about this drawing, it feels nice to finally be able to do some proper lighting again, and I want to experiment even more with my lighting and rendering in future pieces. Also, part of the pant shading got kinda lost in the sketchiness, so for next time I'll probably focus on the clarity of the more sketchy parts of the drawing, since I did go with my initial sketch for the final drawing. I also gave up on the background since I had no idea what to do for it, and I didn't put too much detail into the staff as I forgot which one I gave him in my current playthrough and I didn't want to risk spoiling myself via looking up references, but that's ok I like how the singular yellow circle on it matches Vivi's eyes. Also I was having a bit of trouble figuring out how to draw his body and how to pose him, but I like how the pose turned out a lot. It was inspired by his idle animation when in a battle in game where he does a little shimmy.

Ok I need to talk about Vivi's design because I love it so fucking much oh my god-

I absolutely love how his face is just in complete shadow and only his eyes stand out, it's so cool and unique and I love how they recontextualized the original black mage design from the classic Final Fantasy games. How they did it I won't say because I don't wanna spoil the game, but someone give this poor baby a therapist because he goes through a lot. Actually, same can be said for all of the FFIX cast, they all need therapy (again, I won't spoil anything, please go play the game for yourself).

While I do love almost all the characters in the game, even though Vivi is most fun to draw, my favourite character has to be Zidane (the main protagonist of the game). He's a really fun protagonist, and they could have easily written him as a misogynistic jerk who doesn't respect women but they didn't, and I really appreciate that. He's just an overall cool dude who's a really nice older brother figure to Vivi and also just has a cool character design (who I also want to draw eventually). Initially in the game I was planning on grinding levels for Vivi to make him the tactical nuke of the party, but then that title went to a different character (who was initially multiple levels behind the group since I grinded the party in the starting area way to much before they joined, but now they are two levels ahead of everyone and have pulled the team through a lot of tough battles, again I won't say who it is because it is kind of a spoiler and the way the gameplay actually ties into their character arc is just so good omfg). Once I eventually finish the game I'll probably write a full review on here, so no spoilers until then lol

Also, I've kinda been burning out a bit with making Touhou art, which also made me a bit burnt out with Touhou stuff in general (although I will continue keeping up with the manga) so getting into other things (i.e. Final Fantasy and even Fallout since I've watched the first season of the TV show which is a whole other post for another day) has helped me refresh and given me something new to think about. I've ended up in the exact place I feared ending up, where I would start drawing fanart for it not because I wanted to but because I felt like I had to, so I'm taking a bit of a break. When I do draw Touhou fanart again I'll try to draw for the sake of myself, and to all the other artists and fanartists on this platform (and on any social media for that matter), take care of yourself and don't forget to take breaks when you need to!

(Ok part of that last paragraph was definitley influenced by the good ol' "it's 9:00pm and I need sleeb, but the message at the end still holds up, always take care of yourself)

Oh yeah, and here is that one style experiment I did btw

Man I really fell down the "Yoshitaka Amano art enjoyer" to "Final Fantasy fan" pipe line didn't I?

[cookieeks-art]

Here’s a little project I worked on last year, but kinda, forgot to post? It’s a fake Red shoes art book spread for Edda! The composition, and art styles used, is mainly based on Snow White first page, and Arthur's second page from the actual art book, including of course the artist featured in them (aka Jeon Mi-jin (전미진) who drew the art that the art on the first page and the drawing to the top right on the second page is based on, Kim Sang-jin (김상진) aka Jin Kim who drew the art that the first drawing and the four lower drawings in the second page are based on, and Choi Minjeong (최민정) who drew the the art that the top middle drawing on the second page is based on.) (I had to use Google translate to get the names in the Latin alphabet, so I apologise if there’s any mistakes, I tried to keep the Korean name order for all the names, with the exception of Jin Kim.) [EDIT: I took a closer look Arthur’s first page today and realised that it served as a bigger inspiration for the first page that I drew then I remembered when first posting this, so shout out to that page as well which have two drawings made by Jeon Mi-jin and Choi Minjeong respectively.]

If you’ve been around for a bit you might also notice that two of the drawings on the second page are redraws of older sketches, which I mostly did as a fun treat for myself, since I find redrawing old art pretty fun. I also took this opportunity to give Harriet’s clothes a small makeover, taking some inspiration from Snow herself, a bit from the shapes of Drottning Kristinas gowns (like the drape around her shoulders and how puffy their arms are, and the general shape of the collar), and most likely from looking at details of other dresses I can’t recall at the moment (I do specifically remember looking up images of historical lace collars to get an idea of how they could look, but I don’t remember if I looked at a specific site or what sites I could have looked at in that case). I tried to keep it relatively simple with some spots for details, but looking at it now I’m not entirely sure how well it would fit the movies vine fashion wise (both Regina’s and Snow’s dresses both feel pretty modern to my amateur eyes looking at the cuts and shapes), then again I guess I can always say that the fashion is different kingdom to kingdom I suppose.

Also small shout out to Kay @the-moonlightknight who was someone who helped years ago to actually put words to Eddas personality back when I had to make a reference sheet for a discords event, which is the reference I went back to and used small parts of when writing the text for the first page.

(ID in alt and under the cut)

[ID:

Two fake Red shoes art-book pages depicting my oc Edda and Harriet (A pale chubby woman, with deep eyebags, brown hair and grey eyes).

The first shows Harriet, dressed in a blue dress with lace and snowflake themed embroidery, wearing a crown and matching necklace, with her hair up in a ponytail, is looking forlornly at the viewer, her hands held before her. Edda, dressed in her casual while fluffy shirt, dark muddy red skirt and bodice, and brown leather boots, is looking to the side with a lopsided smile and holding out her knife. Cookieek is written under both of them. Behind them is a wavy dark red graphic with a pattern of thin leaves. In the bottom right corner is two patterns running side by side, one of simple tight stitches, and a more detailed snowflake inspired embroidery pattern. To the upper right of the page is a block of text titled “Edda & Harriet”, and reading: “Edda is a wise woman in the woods that Arthur stumbles upon after entering Frode kingdom to search for it’s missing princess. Edda is also the identity taken on by said missing Princess Harriet after she was able to leave the castle behind. Her life as a mistreated princess has left her jaded and with a distain for nobility and royalty, but her escape has given her hope for a better life. In leaving the identity as Harriet Edda has made a big change in her way of dress, as well as letting the mask she’d been forced into as a royal slip. She’s determined, eccentric, and considerate, with a hunger for magic knowledge. At first she doesn’t realise she’s falling for Arthur, taken in by his ridiculous yet sensitive personality and his way of smiling, but when she does she’s sure she can’t tell him at risk of making things uncomfortable between them. She doesn’t realise that a lot of the ridiculous things Arthur has done has been to show love for her, and that they are both just as willing to sacrifice themselves for the other.”

The second is a page with drawings of Edda and Harriet. The first is a grey scale drawing Harriet looking mentally exhausted, with a thousand yard stare in a profile view. Second is a head shot of Harriet crying in a blue frilly nightgown as pale hands with long nails grip the sides of her face, tips of light brown hair hovering above her. Third is a drawing of Edda sitting and talking to someone while smiling as if she’s about to laugh. Fourth is a collection of greyscale drawings of Edda making a few expressions, such as: 1, looking intrigued while grinning sinisterly with a shadow over her eyes as she holds her chin, 2, looking in awe of something with shine in her eyes, her hands hovering in front of her, 3, looking embarrassed and startled, a blush across her face and her fist held to her chest, 4, scowling deeply with a dark shadow over her eyes. Cookieek is written under all of the images.

End of ID]

[cilil]

Hi, I come to seek your wisdom: how does one start writing smut without instantly combusting from embarrassment? I have a few Ideas (Uinen/Ossë anyone?) I tried to write and, while the scenario works very well in my head, I forget what words are the moment I try to write it down and start feeling so awkward even if I’m alone. (Also I’m ace and never had sex in my life so… that’s not helpful)

Thank you for any advice you’d have, o wise one 🫶

Hi anon! Ossë and Uinen, huh? Sounds lovely!😁 Anyway I gave this some thought and hopefully came up with something helpful.

Get in the zone. Now this may sound a bit redundant since you already said you still have trouble if you're alone, but something worth figuring out in general for all sorts of writing is "how is writing comfortable for me", "how can I stay focused" and "how can I set myself up physically to give myself the best mental space". This is different for everyone. Most people will prefer to be alone, for starters. Then there are other "environmental factors" you could consider, to name a few examples:

Does sitting at a desk or a table maybe feel too "formal"? Would sitting on a couch or your bed be better? Or lounging/lying down/standing/walking?

Does the writing program and device you use vibe with you? Maybe writing on phone is too strenuous or writing on a laptop leads to this big empty sheet that makes it hard to start, especially with "trickier" things like smut?

Does having a drink or a snack distract you or would the chewing/drinking actually help you keep your thoughts in motion?

These are going to vary wildly between individuals and also between genres you write, but heightening your general comfort with writing and/or looking to make changes to adapt to smut writing in particular can help with your ability to do so.

Take notes. I know, this sounds very... unsexy, but hear me out. Writing a scene from beginning to end, even if you have the scenario in your head already, can be daunting and at least for me personally it helps a lot when I let the scene play out first, take some fairly basic notes and then use them alongside the scene I'm picturing to write it all out. It will also help if you prefer to write non-chronologically because then there's less of a mess to put together later.

Watch & read smut. While this is something you'd normally think is mainly for inspiration (which, as I understand, is not the problem here) it can also help with getting you into the mindset, the mood and overall more used to the material. Maybe there are a few fics you read that you liked and didn't make you feel awkward about engaging with smut? Maybe there's a hot piece of art that makes your fingers itch to write?

Since I'm already at it, a few words about porn: It can help a lot with visualizing scenes and thus also make them easier to write, but I want to acknowledge that a lot of porn is made for and catering specifically to allosexual straight cis men which can make it not as palpable or enjoyable for everyone who is, well, not that (women, non-binary, ace, lesbian, gay, etc etc). It would be nice if there was more for us and I'm certain some awesome creators and sex workers out there are working on it, but... you know. Just wanted to say it's not for everyone and that is very okay and understandable.

No experience? No problem. To briefly get this out of the way: Is having real life sexual experience helpful for writing smut? It can be. You can absolutely draw from your experience to describe certain acts or sensations or emotions. But will it make or break your smut fic? Absolutely not and no worries! Not to rain on anyone's parade, but a lot of real life sex can be bad, boring or just... super casual so it's not very useful as smut material.

If you feel like this is an issue, treat it like every other aspect of writing where you lack personal experience and do some research and/or talk to someone you trust and feel comfortable discussing the topic with to get their input. Let things you enjoyed elsewhere inspire you (see above) and especially in this case feel free to just trust your imagination because:

About Ainur sex. Conveniently, we're talking about two Ainur having sex here which essentially eliminates any sort of necessity to stay true to the standard human sexual experience. Whatever you imagine, it pretty much can't be wrong because who knows how two married angelic spirit beings have sex. Go with your imagination and don't worry about accuracy or describing every single detail; in general you are free to adapt your smut writing to your level of comfort (the spectrum goes from fade to black to every single gross and nasty detail being put on display). Don't let audience expectations pressure you into anything either - there will be someone out there who will enjoy your take and your style.

Words not wording. Another big pitfall of smut writing is the, let's say, naughty vocabulary. It can feel awkward, cringe or generally uncomfortable to use certain words (for example for genitalia) and then there's also the matter of choosing which one feels right and hopefully doesn't make readers cringe. While there's never one right and perfect answer to this question, I offer you this survey as a resource. In it, preferred vocabulary choices for various body parts and actions are shown. I hope it helps with the writing process!

Lastly: Let it cook. I don't know what the scene you had in mind entails so this bit may be redundant, but if you don't feel comfortable jumping right into the smutty part you can have a sort of "prelude" to it and yes, it can be as long as you want it to be. Maybe writing a bit of talking and cuddling or whatever else you have in mind first will ease you into the writing itself and make it easier to write the smut because you're already in flow state; but that too depends on what kind of writer you are in general.

Sorry for talking so much, I just wanted to cover as many bases as I thought of over the last few days and add as many points as I can so hopefully this helps you and maybe other people as well. Wishing you all the best and lots of fun with your writing!💙

[thisaintascenereviews]

What I’ve Been Listening To During Spooky Season: 2024 Edition

Ah, yes, Halloween season is upon us again. I started a tradition a few years ago where I’d talk about Halloween-themed or Halloween adjacent music, and it was pretty fun! I always love writing these types of pieces, because I try to listen to different stuff with a spooky theme each year, and this year is no different. Each year I’ll try to have a theme, and from looking back to see what theme I had last year, I didn’t even post one last year. I thought I did, but I was going to write about the last couple of albums from Clipping, an experimental rap group fronted by Daveed Diggs. I’ll still talk about those albums at some point, but I really thought I did that.

My first theme was spooky-themed rock and metal bands, Alice Cooper, Rob Zombie, and a few other bands, but I don’t want to repeat myself twice. Nonetheless, I wanted to bring this series back this year, especially when this year caught me by surprise. It all started by the first thing I’ll talk about here in a minute, but it made me remember a couple of other things I found last year and never spent that much time with, so I got a bit of an interesting theme with this year. What is that theme, you may be asking? Why, my theme is 1960s surf-rock, bubblegum pop, and novelty albums! The first album I’ll talk about isn’t from the 1960s, but it’s very much inspired by it, which is…

The Boulet Brothers - Halloween House Party EP

If you read the newest piece I wrote with my buddy Jake, where we cut it up about the newest stuff we’ve been enjoying over the last couple months, I talked about the drag competition show Dragula, which is Drag Race for horror fans, basically, that’s in its sixth season currently. It’s a show that’s more so about horror, versus standard drag, so there is a lot of VFX and makeup, as well as performing and acting. The show was created by legendary drag duo, The Boulet Brothers, and aside from Dragula, they also have veered into music. I haven’t liked much they’ve done, but this new Halloween EP they put out is a lot of fun. It’s very short, sweet, and to the point. There’s a 1960s surf-rock and doo-woo feel throughout it, and despite the EP having a similar sound, all the songs are catchy enough, and they manage to make each song interesting enough, considering the ideas they have to work with.

As a side bar, music that is specifically Halloween-themed, versus just being spooky in general, is way more niche than Christmas music. Fun fact: I’ve already got some Christmas music on deck, and I may talk about it in some way this year, although, despite already talking about a Christmas album last year in the vein of Seth MacFarlane and Liz Gillies’ newly released Christmas album, We Wish You The Merriest. Halloween music has its place, but at the same time, there aren’t many things to really talk about that hold up for a whole season. Christmas music, especially the more secular stuff, can be about wintertime, versus Halloween is mainly about monsters, trick or treating, and just being overall spooky and stuff. Music that is Halloween-adjacent holds up because it has more to talk about, versus specifically Halloween-themed music.

The Deadly Ones - It’s Monster Surfing Time

During the early 1960s, surf-rock was all the rage, especially with Dick Dale, Duane Eddy, The Beach Boys, The Trashmen, and many other acts having that sound, so what’s the most logical thing to do? Combine Halloween and surf-rock to make for one of the most niche and interesting albums I’ve heard in a long time. Released in 1964, It’s Monster Surfing Time is the only album from The Deadly Ones, and the kicker is, no one knows who played on this. They seem to be session musicians from their label, Vee-Jay, but that’s it. I couldn’t find much about this album at all, but in a way, the mystery is that much more fun. This is a mainly instrumental album that has surf-rock with some spooky sounds thrown in. It’s fun, despite being relatively generic, as well as niche as all hell, but I’ve been having some fun with it.

Bobby “Boris” Pickett - The Original Monster Mash

If there is one “essential” Halloween song, it has to be “Monster Mash.” While it’s a novelty hit that comes back for a bit each year, Pickett released a whole album in 1962 with a lot of Halloween songs. The album has its name for a funny reason — another artist released a cover version of the “Monster Mash,” and put out a whole record before Pickett could, hence the “original” moniker. I’ve been wanting to really sink my teeth into this album for the last couple of years, and I finally have. It’s been a fun little listen, despite the songs being of the novelty and cheesy variety. Most of these songs are in line with a popular trend of the time, not including the title track, but they take advantage of the popularity of certain things at that time, and it can be either pretty cheesy or pretty fun, depending on who you are. I might add this to my yearly rotation, at least for a bit, anyway.

The Munsters - S/T

The last thing I wanted to talk about is one of the most niche and cash grabby things I’ve ever heard, and it’s The Munsters 1964 self-titled album. This album doesn’t have much information about it, but it’s a surf-rock album that’s touted as being performed by The Munsters, who were in their prime at the time, but it’s really just some session musicians. This record is pretty fun, albeit very gimmicky and silly, because it’s just songs about The Munsters, so if you don’t like The Munsters, I can’t help you. If you do, though, this album should be a lot of fun and get some chuckles out of you. I’ve listened to it a handful of times, but it’s a good little record that admittedly sounds dated and niche. I still enjoy this, though, at least for what it is.

[gothamsaved]

` ＊ PERMANENT INTERACTION CALL.

To keep this as short as I can — as someone with bad anxiety but a stronger want to start poking Mutuals more, I figured putting something like this out there helps a ton to know who is alright with me being a friendly pest. It’s meant to reassure me people are alright with me kicking their doors in with my muses.

` ＊ INTERACTING WITH THIS POST LETS ME KNOW YOU’RE OKAY WITH THE FOLLOWING …

↳ You’re alright with me sending you *Askmemes as soon as I see they’ve been reblogged along with sending the occasional *Unprompted Ask or *Surprise Short Starter. Sometimes they’ll just be Bruce commenting on ongoing threads — think dash-commentary style. Others are just *IC / OOC Questions. Basically this just gives me permission to be a menace to your inbox without feeling guilty.

↳ You’re alright with me replying to any *Open Starters I spot, even if we already have one or more threads ongoing. Just a heads up I will aim to keep these short since they’re usually spontaneous threads done for fun. If they happen to get longer? I’m here for it!

↳ You’re alright with me tagging you in *Dashgames when I do come across them. Along with tag you in *Musings, Aesthetics &&. *Muse Song Posts if they remind me of your muse &&. our interactions.

↳ Piggy backing off the last point, there are no promises made, but if it’s alright that I make the occasional *Edit through *Gifsets of your muse or our muses dynamic, *Aesthetic Edit Posts or *Web Weavings. Even the occasional *Drawing / Doodle. Chances are, if I’m inspired or invested enough &&. have the time to spare, I do enjoy doing these for close Mutuals!

↳ You’re alright with me making *Headcanon Posts as our muses dynamics develop through ongoing interactions. This is a recent thing I’m trying to start doing more of, where I make headcanon *Directories for muses on my end to better keep track &&. document HC’s. I heavily value developing bonds between me &&. my writing partners muses so if it is alright with Mutuals that their muse is *mentioned in posts like this?

Please let me know in a comment or DMs! Usually I will ask permission to write these out beforehand.

↳ You’re alright with me giving you my *Discord so we can talk more OOC to chat or to discuss ideas &&. our current threads / plot possible future ones. I struggle with this, but I would really love to discuss headcanons more when they crop up, along with just getting more used to screeching to partners about how much I loved recent replies. Just a warning is I am a little shy &&. my social battery can vary between extra outgoing to having no energy to respond back, so as long as that’s alright! I am making grabby hands!

＊ Please note that interacting with this post also gives you permission to do any of these things right back. If you want me to do only some of these things but not others, please, feel free to comment in the notes or let me know in private.

↳ Lastly, if you have yet to fill out my *Interest Tracker — I highly urge you to so I know how best to approach you in the future along with what dynamics you’re interested in pursuing! It’s not mandatory but it helps so so much.

The purpose of this post is simply meant to reassure that there is a shared interest in interacting more in the future, mainly for my own anxiety since I do struggle a lot with pushing myself to poke new folks without feeling like I’m being a bit of a bother. It’s usually why I rely heavily on starter calls &&. inbox calls so I have that known permission to toss my muses people’s way.

[marshbarks]

what inspired the bb au!! where's your brain coming from/any dev thoughts you'd like to share :D

here's a doodle of cartman, stan, and kenny for funsies so i can ramble :3

so a lot of it was "i'm awake in the middle of the night and had a vaguely unpleasant social experience in a dream, so i need to write something to prove myself." initially i sat down and my goal was just "well, do anything" which resulted in me going 'ok. outline? whats this gonna be', and that's where the summary came from!

A study in everything that could go wrong, and how one right thing makes such a small difference. Still, it’s worth fighting for. That’s what he said.

and i think the fun part about this is not knowing who the "he" is, really. because it isn't supposed to be specific. i could've made it even broader and made it 'they' but ill be honest. i wrote it from 1 am - 4 am so i wasn't the most caring about Properly Mystifying My Summary.

as soon as i actually got down into Writing it, i knew it wasn't my typical stan. he didn't feel the same, so then i had to do a little exploration to figure out where he differed. which isn't like... if you put my normal stan and this stan side by side, you might not be able to TELL there's a huge difference immediately- but there is. this one is based a lot on the idea of "well, what if everyone did stay in south park, forever?" because i know a lot of future stuff hinges on SOMEONE leaving. or else we get pcov good ending, which makes me sad for cartman.

so im also taking this opportunity to really delve into the interpersonal relationships everyone has, mainly with stan because he's the focus- but i think it's really interesting how, even though we've got quotes from kids like craig saying everyone hates the main four/five, they honestly have a lot of social connections?

so BB is like.. a summary of everyone and everything that has made someone how they are. all the pieces, the building blocks, that created you. all the little social interactions that mean that you're more than a face in a crowd. that's a HUGE part of it, just knowing that you and everyone around you is alive and breathing. honestly i have SO many scenes in my head that are just... not really "plot" relevant because it's more about just being alive with someone else

[thebramblewood]

🌈 What inspired you to write Helena Zhao is Dead?

Hi! I think I've talked about this a couple times before, so apologies if I'm repeating myself. It truly was just kind of born out of thin air. Around the same time I made my Simblr, I also bought the Vampires pack after holding out on it forever. Occult play never used to be my favorite, but I'd just finished playing through a couple generations of spellcasters and had a lot of fun so figured why not? I made Helena in her peak vampire form (which she hasn't even properly evolved into yet!) just to test it out. I asked myself how she would have gotten to that point, and, well, it all spiraled from there.

The reason I joined Simblr in the first place was because I wanted to stretch my legs more with storytelling and thought maybe it'd feel more fulfilling if I were sharing it with someone other than myself. I was mainly looking for a way to experiment with posing and Reshade and editing when I started playing Helena as a human, and my head just kept extrapolating and extrapolating until it became what it is now. I never could have predicted it back then! I think it helps a lot that I've been into writing creative fiction since I was a kid, so I've done enough of it that when it's going well, it feels like my brain just comes up with the ideas without any involvement from me at all (even though my brain is... literally just me).

On a subconscious level, I think I must have been inspired by my brief but intense obsession with Twilight (which I still love now but more for the accidental comedic genius of it all). Also Interview with the Vampire (specifically the AMC series), which I was only somewhat into at the time but I've been watching more closely with HZID in mind lately. And in the beginning especially I tried to use gameplay mechanics whenever possible to inspire the world-building and plot development, which is still true to an extent, but it's obviously become much bigger!