#I've got a bad habit of drawing without references

[miserable-something]

Sabo screenshot redraws, I'm trying to figure him (and his hat) out

I need to gnaw on his bones and suck on his marrow

[helluvathings]

Some thoughts on Ozzie's response at the trial

One moment that caught my attention, and I've seen a few reactors comment on it too, is that Ozzie's defense of Blitzø's right to a fair trial is lukewarm compared to Bee's. She gives a character reference, speaking about him almost fondly, while Ozzie offers one understated line.

He speaks lightly, but isn't that the kind of phrase usually accompanied by a side-eye and a pointed, "You do have a good explanation, right?" And I've seen a lot of Ozzie call outs for not just "sharing the truth," since he "knows what's really going on."

But the more I think about it, the more I feel like his slight involvement probably makes things look worse from his perspective. Tbf, the dialogue disparity could be timing constraints and wanting to make use of Kesha. Still, I honestly suspect Ozzie knowing more than Bee would make it likelier he'd be reluctant to outright vouch for Blitzø's character even if he supports a fair trial.

I do plan to touch on a few separate points. But the BIG thing I haven't seen brought up: Ozzie is the only person in that room who may know the extent to which Blitzø's use of the grimoire has actually, undeniably endangered Hell. I feel like this fact has sort of slid from people's minds, but as a reminder:

IMP obliterated part of Ozzie's ring directly outside his club. In a setting where there are likely security cameras, and at the very least, his bouncers were shown to be in the general vicinity. And there were cherubs with high tech battle suits visibly involved. Assuming Ozzie investigated this, his additional knowledge isn't actually in IMP, Stolas's, or Blitzø's favor at all.

Rewinding to touch on what Ozzie actually knows about Stolas and Blitzø's situation:

Ozzie is aware that Stolas has feelings for Blitzø.

He could guess, if he ever thought about it, that Blitzø must’ve been getting to earth a different way beforehand since his business precedes the crystal. However, he's never told this. Depending on how much he cared to look at the particulars, it possibly didn't occur to him at the time (though if he looked into the Lust Ring attack, he likely figured it out).

He also has no confirmation that Blitzø has feelings for Stolas. Fizz has probably speculated, maybe he shared Blitzø had come to Lust for toys—but Ozzie has only seen them together at Ozzie's, when he was more concerned with helping Fizz revenge-ruin their date than drawing any relationship analysis (except in the ways that helped him revenge-ruin their date).

Ozzie may also know about the anti-Blitzø parties, or at least that Blitzø has a poor history with relationships. Fizz knew his "love life [was] a pile of shit," and that giving the stage to Verosika during House of Asmodeus would get results, so at the very least, he seems familiar with Blitzø's bad habits. If Ozzie doesn't know Stolas is different, a very possible explanation might be that Blitzø had been using Stolas’s feelings to get the book. Not "forcing himself," but not really Lust King-approved.

I.e. Ozzie can assume “not forced,” but not “mutual feelings,” or “Blitzø did nothing wrong." Blitzø has also told him one of his skills is "killing things without giving fucks," so again, the background knowledge of Blitzø isn't necessarily a good thing here.

Then after Apology Tour, Blitzø went into a depression slump and probably cut off contact with friends, including Fizz. From Fizz and Ozzie's perspective, the day Blitzø got the crystal, his thing with Stolas outwardly ended, and he likely never shared much about what happened (if he didn't deflect outright). Fizz may have noticed and commented on Blitzø acting strange, but the circumstances are ambiguous.

To summarize: Ozzie can guess Andrealphus is full of shit, and that some sort of setup is happening. But he doesn't know "the truth," in the sense he could speak up and clarify everything.

What else he possibly knows:

IMP had a massive fight with well-armed heavenly beings in the middle of the Lust Ring.

This was shown to have caused substantial damage. Loona destroyed what looked like one of his buildings, on top of other property destruction, right in front of his club. If they had security cameras, Ozzie probably knows this. Like I mentioned before, two of his own bouncers were outside, alongside dozens of witnesses. If he investigated at all, there are ways he could piece together what happened.

A frequent reaction has been, “Ozzie knows everything Blitzø did was above board, he could’ve clarified.” But Ozzie has a lot of facts that actually look awful? Depending on what surveillance caught from that fight, Ozzie very well could've connected IMP to cherubs coming to Hell. To his ring specifically.

Two conclusions to be drawn from this:

If Ozzie has recognized as much, he hasn't said anything. Which is both him already covering for IMP, but it also means he's hiding something Satan would desperately want to know.

Ozzie has a legitimate reason to be upset at Blitzø and Stolas for bringing him into this. First because Stolas wasn't up-front about the formerly illegal details of Blitzø getting to earth (let alone moments like in Truthseekers where there's already been major transgression). Then afterward, when the spillover of their indiscretion caused damage to his ring and possibly got Lust Ring demons killed.

Ozzie is involved enough that all this could cause trouble for him if he's implicated

I've seen people say he'd be immune because of his rank. But while he'd physically be fine, Mammon was already going at him and Bee about their partners. Mammon has also threatened that Ozzie would "regret revealing" his love for Fizz, in pretty clear foreshadowing. Ozzie has a big, well-known weak point.

Also, Blitzø was on trial about unlawfully going to the human world (or doing it "unwittingly" as a pawn of the evil Mastermind Stolas). And this all happens while he has a registered Asmodean Crystal on his wrist. He even tries using it to get to Stolas while they're dragging him away. The more Ozzie speaks up, the more closely Blitzø is examined, and the clearer it is that Ozzie is involved with something illegal.

The legitimacy of Blitzø's behavior on Earth is a bit dodgy as well. Remember how Verosika let Blitzø win that bet because she was wary of getting into trouble for the conspicuous monster? They’re clearly supposed to keep a low profile. If Ozzie linked IMP to the Lust Ring incident and realized they've been stirring up trouble topside, his lack of interference may indicate he's already making allowances he legally shouldn't be.

Do I think the imagery of Ozzie and the other Sins falling in with Satan during the song may go complicated places? Possibly. And Ozzie clearly did want to help after Fizz’s text and seemed to feel he couldn’t. I don't think he's exactly blameless, in the sense he's aligned with a messed up system here. I also have no idea if the writers considered any of this, or if we're ever going to see Ozzie's thoughts or feelings about the attack on Lust. Maybe that was just a cool fight scene to set up the cherub/DHORKS threat, and it won't have further relevance.

But honestly, the fact that illegal use of the grimoire brought trouble to Ozzie's doorstep makes me more willing to shrug off his muted response at the trial. Even if Ozzie isn't aware, Blitzø and Stolas's lawbreaking led to an attack on his ring. If he is aware? It’s already iffy to expect he'd stick his neck out in a hopeless situation where it’d only get scrutiny turned his way. Wanting him to do so despite associating IMP with a heavenly threat and massive property damage? That's a big ask.

Maybe overthinking, especially if it’s revealed he doesn’t have much intel on the Lust Ring attack. But I feel like Ozzie knowing more about Blitzø's situation makes it harder for him to intervene, as opposed to easier. He may even have legitimate reason to feel like IMP has been endangering Hell, but has kept quiet for Fizz's sake.

Mostly, I wonder if it's coincidence that the show made that Lust fight visually, noticeably destructive, then next time we see Ozzie, it's Bee vouching for Blitzø's character, while Ozzie's statement focuses on getting an explanation. Her defense seems to be "he's cool, I don't think he'd do this." Ozzie's is more coded like, "It's fair to see what he has to say." Like maybe he's thinking it would be in character for Blitzø to have done something illegal and ill-advised that puts Hell at risk, so he'll stick with a safer defense. And honestly, I love Blitzø... but I also get why Ozzie might be ambivalent.

[murderofsomeone]

🖊 either one of the lemon dudes

for identification sake I'll refer to the asymmetrical eyed one as "lemon demon" and the sensible volume one as "baby lemon"

lemon demon's chosen weapon is a scimitar in reference to the song mold en mono, but gets a scythe from the angel of death post I've got some falling to do (how do you defeat death? by killing death of course)

lemon demon can be summoned by ritual like all demons. part of his "sacrifice" requires lemonade.

he's also capable of doing and understanding summoning circles, but other than those he's kinda bad at demon magic and defaults to physical means

I've talked about this but due to being a demon he can withstand hot temperatures better than most people. not super useful when you're living outside of hell, but it makes for funny situations in reference to using an oven.

due to the fact that he's a cartoon character, his height tends to look pretty exaggerated, but he's like 6'8" without the horns and 7' with them. I can imagine what this looks like because I see someone that tall every day

his parents are divorced and his mom hates him for religious reasons. he doesn't like either of his parents they both suck in their own unique ways

he's bisexual aromantic

the clown circus lemon demon and this one are the same guy. this is because Something Happened To Him

demon is his last name, not a title

baby lemon headcanons are a bit shorter, but:

he ages like every 5 years, which is pretty fast for a demon, but not one at his age. he's currently like. 14 (but most of the time when I'm drawing him he's still 12 due to the fact that the last lemon demon album was released in 2016) for no reason in particular I'll mention he was created in 2004, not born

he has a habit of chewing on pens, which stems from a habit of crayon cravings he doesn't know the origin of

he has another form

he secretly has wings under his sweater but he doesn't use them because, like regular lemon demon, he can float without them

the nature tapes/one weird tip character fucking hates him because he's "annoying" (deserved)

lemon demon is technically only his half brother

he's besties with view-monster and shares an age with goodsie

lemon demon is a title to him, his last name is not demon

[makoredeyes]

Getting to know your moots

Tagged by @tarakanpaintedpurple :3

•What's the origin of your blogs title?

My tag makoredeyes is a Final Fantasy 7 reference (see Vincent Valentine <3) ... "Feralwinter" came from a joke about me comparing Felwinter from Destiny to a stray cat about a year ago.

•Favorite fandoms

Presently ears-deep in Destiny/D2 but I am also a big Titanfall2 fan, LOVE Trigun, and Final Fantasy 7 and its derivatives will forever live in my heart. I also have a marriage and over 25 year relationship built on Star Wars and I've seen The Nightmare Before Christmas 109 times.

•OTPs+Ship name

I am a filthy multishipper <3

FFVII it's Cid Highwind x Vincent Valentine and I'm pretty confident I'm actually the one that got people using the Valenwind shipname waaaay back in the day.

Titanfall it's BTxJack or Jack xBlisk or if I'm feeling spicy I'll try to make all three of them work. :3

Destiny I think ya'll know but my favorites are Felwinter x Timur and/or Osiris in just about any permutation of the three, adding or subtracting a handful of wildcards for giggles, plot, or kink depending on the setting and timing. (I see you pervs choosing that Saint X Osiris X Felwinter XXX oneshot I did as my most popular fic alaksjd;fksdkf)

•Favourite colours Love deep amethyst purple, or red. or somewhere in between like a mauve.

•Favourite game

Presently Destiny 2 and/or ARK Evolution Evolved

•Weirdest habit/trait

Took me a minute but I reckon my tendency to impulsively collect bits of broken glass is probably pretty fucking weird.

•Hobbies

Obviously I write, and draw, but I also enjoy painting resin figures (I can't really call my preference for larger scale models 'minifgures' but like that). I'm a actively practicing and learning lapidary (I carve rocks) and rockhound (I go out and search for and collect rocks) and rock collector lol. I love rocks. XD I'm also big into plants and have a huge indoor houseplant collection, and a pretty robust garden, and start a lot of stuff by seed most years. Removing myself from the earth, I'm also a license pilot although I haven't flown in years due to both medical and financial restrictions. (renting an airplane is fucking expensive RIP lol) Flying isn't something I actively practice anymore but the knowledge, culture, and fascination and love of flying and airplanes is burned into my bones and I don't think it's ever going to go away. <3

•Something you're good at

I think I'm a pretty decent writer. I'd like to think I generally am pretty good at understanding people too. Like, seeing things from their perspectives and understanding their needs and wants and intentions and all that. It's what I like to write about too, fundamentally so they go hand in hand I guess.

•Something you're bad at

pffff most things. Adulting. My home is a constant mess. But I do my best.

•Something you excel at

I can't resist laughing and pointing out Microsoft Excel. I'm so autistic I actually like spreadsheets and am very good at them al;ksdjfshdfh. IDK. I think I'm getting pretty awesome at these model paintings. I don't think of myself like this.

•Something you love

Gentle rain. A good scented candle. Pretty lights. A mossy forest, the ocean, my damn cats even though one of them is bullying me right now. cozy things.

•Something you could talk about for hours without off the cuff

Truly, Destiny Lore. Character analysis and picking apart text, words used, context, setting, tracing threads. Swapping headcanons and worldbuilding based on what we already have. Conjecture. Let's ramble for the next 6 hours about why he would totally say that, or did say it, or could have because I think this lore card implies he did. I live for those meals and eat so grandly off of just...sharing the stories.

•Something you hate

I don't think this is what this question meant when someone first listed it but this is the only think rolling around in my head right now so Imma say it and you'll know some of the shadows and worries in my heart today: I fucking hate Nazis.

•Something you collect

Cobalt glass. I have a lot of vintage (and some not) cobalt things. I love that color.

•Something you forget

I always have a glass of water but 80% of the time I've forgotten it in another room. Husband teases me relentlessly. We're both very excited because I remembered to rescue it from his office tonight.

•What's your love language

Acts of service/gifts. I love writing ficlets or doing little drawings for my friends especially on request. Special little things I won't share otherwise unless you ask me to. Just for you. I am hugging you this way because I am not close enough to do it the conventional way.

•Favorite movie/show

Oh I forgot Transformers for fandoms. Transformers Prime is kind of old now but I just adored that show.

•Favorite food

Pho. 10/10 comfort food. Actually I just really love Vietnamese food in general but Pho is a gift from heaven.

•Favorite animal

Magpies

•Favorite subject in school

Yanno I'm not entirely sure because I'm struggling between my favorite teacher who taught my worst subject, art which was just fun but not challenging, English which I was GOOD at but not fun in any way, and Spanish which was engaging but too challenging to be fun.

I'm going to just go back and point at some of my aviation classes I took in college lol.

•Least favourite subject

Chemistry because we had a teacher who couldn't stay on topic and I already really struggled with the math of it.

•What's your best character trait?

I'd like to think I'm pretty open-minded usually. And generally friendly. I can be a little bit of an asshole sometimes but I'm really working on that so hopefully nobody has the opportunity to notice lol.

•If you could change any detail of your day right now, what would it be?

Well I had to go to work and I would have much rather been home all day doing creative stuff so that would have been a nice change.

•If you could travel in time, who would you like to meet?

My great-grandad who I apparently have a LOT in common with but I never really met.

•Recommend one of your favorite fanfics

Nah nah, we're not doing just ONE haha.

Please see all my husband's wonderfully lyrical Destiny fanfics but especially The Storm That Stalks featuring a look at the harder side to my favorite Stormtrancer

Besty Crafty Cooper aka @slavetomyheadcanon has some fantastic (and delightfully filthy) Overwatch and Titanfall fic as well as Destiny but PLEASE sample this entirely unexpectedly titillating experimental crackpair from a randomizer featuring Cayde-6 x Timur. Seriously trust me on this one. FPM: Cayde-6 + Timur + Shock Collar (*AO3 sign-in required. If anyone needs an invite DM me I have lots)

OK it's Timur hours apparently. @zalia wrote Subornation for me last spring and I just adore it. It's sweet and quirky and has some fantastic character insights. Then go and browse the other uhh... 145 Destiny fics in Zalia's portfolio if you haven't already because they're all bangers.

I usually don't tag people for this kind of stuff, but today I'm putting the squad on blast. @slavetomyheadcanon , @zalia , @vallaragna , @nearfromfar, @wendysketches , @heckin-sleeby & @sylenth-l if you do this kind of thing have at it.

[purplekoop]

Koop's 2024 Year of Art in Review

This year's been a strange one to be certain, going a whole year without a PC that can run the full suite of modern games and streaming I built a habit of using in 2023, but looking back it was a shockingly productive one in terms of art. Guess that's what not having OW on PC sucking away my attention span. I didn't get something made every month, but had a pretty substantial output anyways, so I wanted to recap the months I did have something.

January:

January got some notable additions to the War Bots cast with the polar opposites Nekross and Harmony, as well as some Kirby humanizations! Honestly a lot to revisit here, these WB characters need some polish and I've never been content with this as "my" Susie. Might give her another pass and try and also humanize the Mage Sisters, that's well overdue at this point.

February:

So this month brought Dredge, the most recent addition to my lineup of Splatoon OCs. Not much to say other than every day I haven't drawn these goofy splesbians weighs heavy on my soul.

March:

March brought the last Bot to get art this year, since Lyonn's only art is years old. Honestly pretty happy with Otto's art, cheaping out on some details aside I think this nails his unique look. at least until that Minion-lookin-ass-poser came around...

April:

Was busy with work, travel, device repairs, and Endless Ocean Blue World this month, so no art. Oops.

May:

Yeah this was all I made this month. Can't complain, this was fun to draw and got decent notes by my standards. I might come back to these two, this art is relatively on-model but I keep seeing people have too much fun being more creative with Queen and Tasque Manager's designs, especially with bigger poofier hair for the latter. Eh, I'll think of something when I have the time.

June:

The smell of artistic combat on the horizon... and also humanized Queen Sectonia is here for some reason. This was when I updated Mugie and Shadow Boxer too, the tip of the iceberg for DWS this year, though at the time it was just for the sake of Art Fight. And the peak of getting ready for the month was Grand Machino, one of my favorite original guys getting his best design yet. Of course, this month's output would look shallow compared to...

July:

Art Fight month is always a doozy, and after an underwhelming run last year and one final reference update in my DnD OC Zecanna, I'm much prouder of my output this year. Maybe not in terms of quantity, but I put out some high-effort individual pieces and really tried to push to go bigger and better... as demonstrated by the two attacks I chose to highlight here. I'm happy to report that the bottom art of my partner's DnD bad guy is proudly displayed in her bathroom in a custom frame, which is probably one of my highest honors.

August:

Not much out of my post Art Fight stupor and birthday month, but I did get a proper art for my current DnD character Lightspring. These always feel like special pieces, considering my DnD characters have a guaranteed fanbase of at least the 6 other people in the campaign.

September:

This was the only thing to come out of September and it was very clearly both an effort to get out of a slump in art and also an omen of things to come. The more big mario princesses I draw in a year the better that year thusly is.

October:

Darkworld-oween folks!! The only way for my output to rival any given July was for another month-long art endeavor, this one dedicated to my original seasonally-fitting fighting game project Darkworld Showdown. Extremely proud of how much I got done, and how well I managed to update a cast in desperate need of it. Obviously given how I got like 20 designs done, I only showcased some of my favorites from the earlier end of the month here.

November:

An oddly productive month for being right after a major month-long art project and on a month where I went out of town for about a week. These are only a couple of the big (in. a few senses.) pieces I got done, starting with a marginally late Halloween piece and ending with one of a couple Mario-themed pieces. er... Maria, as I later decided is the context these pieces take place in. I also dabbled in some Pokemon anthro characters to get in some more body type practice and sate the insatiable need for further avenues of yuri.

December:

Rounding out the year, December was extremely busy with work and holiday prep, so I only had time for a couple gift pieces to friends, one of which was a personal art for my partner, but this one here is of one of my friend's player characters in an upcoming superhero-themed TTRPG game I plan to run next year. We did a secret santa event in my one friend group, and I knew I had to go the extra mile with my friend's delightfully insane robot design who certainly deserves it. Certainly not a shabby way to end the year, I'd say.

I'm not sure what all 2025 holds in terms of what I hope to accomplish art-wise. For a basic and realistic goal I'd love to finish the War Bots cast with art for its final four characters, and perhaps take this October to do the same for Darkworld Showdown. I may also talk about my other major dream game project, City of Desos, though considering how far out any serious work on that is I'm not in a hurry. With my new PC I could even start on actually developing a game... maybe not a full-on platform fighter or team shooter to start, but it'd be nice to start working on those skills properly. The new PC also means streaming is back on the table, and while my setup isn't perfect for it I think I can figure out something. I do also have a whole dang TTRPG system to develop now, so. That might keep me busy. Either way, I'm looking forward to spending plenty of time with friends this year after a lot of plans got bottlenecked by not having a PC that could do half the stuff I wanted. But honestly, as much as anything I wanna have fun with art this year, something I'd say I did pretty good on in 2024. I chased a lot of ideas without any grander ambition besides it sounding fun, and it was refreshing. Maybe I'd like to set up commissions and hope to find an audience for the nonsense I got up to in November, or just have a side space to focus on that indulgent sort of thing more. That might mean spanning out to more social platforms, been putting off making a bluesky account for long enough maybe... maybe. I dunno, got a whole year ahead of me, and plenty more after that.

To anyone reading this far, thanks for indulging me. That goes even further for anyone who's been following for however much longer, or just checking a few posts. Sorry December's been quiet, hopefully I'm not too wrapped up in PC games and the rest of my holiday-gotten backlog to remember to do some art this year, maybe even enough to not need to skip any months next year. I still gotta do that New Donk City poll winner piece... the WIP of the first part is somewhere around here...

But all that said, here's to a bright 2025, let's make it as great as it can be! Happy New Year!!!!

[gamebunny-advance]

NSR + OCs Doodle Dumps

Some bad sketches from before *that* happened.

Notes under the cut.

Puella Mayday: Mayday dressed as Madoka Kaname + Kliffby. Just a silly doodle. Don't expect anymore characters in the crossover.

UPA B2J: The pose is based on some official keyart (I think it's the boxart). I wanted to finish this, but I'm just not feeling it anymore.

E.G. Sketch: I couldn't remember what he looked like, so I tried to draw him again. It looks off.

Young Kliff: Another idea for a younger Kliff. It's a lot different from my earliest interpretations of that prompt. This version is based more on some early concept sketches of him. I imagine young!Kliff as someone who was drawn to rock because he found belonging in the subculture, so he took it pretty badly when his "home" essentially crumbled around him the same way his "real" home did.

System & White: System is a "character" in Desynchronized that I've alluded to several times (especially in the Headcanons series), but has never made a proper appearance. In short, System (aka Orca) is the literal system which controls the 1010s thought process without being filtered through their individual personality cores. As such, it doesn't technically have its own body and exists in every 1010. If I ever needed to show it visually, it would manifest as a black haired version of whichever 1010 it was currently possessing.

DDMC Redraw: I started a sketch of a redraw of my Doki Doki Mermaid Club title screen. I lost interest in it at some point. I think the composition could be a lot more interesting.

[The original piece]

Kun3h0's Eye: Originally for that poll about Kun3h0's eye, I was just going to use a base and draw all the different answers before I eventually decided to do a unique drawing for each. Some unused sketches included a tentacle, a glitch, an invert colored eye, and an alternate design for the bunny eye patch.

Kun3h0's Things: I was trying to fill the page with various things that are important to Kun3h0, but I never quite finished it. There are more things I could have added, but these are the things I drew:

The GAB Nano: Kun3h0's transformation trinket, storage device, and remote to contact GAB. It's capable of producing various things including power-ups, snacks, toys, etc., granted that Kun3h0 has enough "credits" to purchase them.

Various Keychains (GAB, UFO, Octopus, Strawberry, and Bead Chain): Rather than save her credits for more useful things, Kun3h0 has a habit of cashing in her credits for various trinkets and keychains. The sailor octopus is of course a reference to E.G. while the rest are either in-universe references or based on real keychains I own.

Alien Mascot: The mascot of Kun3h0's favorite discontinued soda brand: Cosmic Caffeinators

White Rabbit Batteries: Kun3h0's preferred brand of batteries. They're modeled after white rabbit milk candies, a childhood favorite of mine.

Cosmic Caffeinators (Raspberry flavor): A soda so unfit for human consumption that it works better as coolant fluid. This is the pink stuff that colors Kun3h0's ears. Despite supposedly being discontinued, this stuff is available in abundance at the arcade Kun3h0 works for.

Detective Floats: Revisiting an old concept for a soda themed OC. He used to run a soda fountain, but I've tried reimagining him as a private investigator from a Strawberry Shortcake-esque world who teams up with a demon slaying bounty hunter from a Doom-esque world. He's cute, but I'm not totally sold on this design. I've got too many string-bean characters (and he is in fact my proto-string bean, but he's since been displaced by the likes of Kun3h0 and The Prince Formerly Known as Frog), so I may experiment with his body type a little more down the line.

[maidfrin]

hm okay real honest question then so from what youve said it sounds like youd consider your past and who you were at those times to be a different person from who you are right st this moment.

how do you be ok with that? with having everything about who you are just a collection of an unimaginably huge amount of tiny events ?

hm... see i've been thinking on the first part of this, ever since i got this ask, and honestly i think this is a case of "ship of theseus paradox is easily solved/described if you had the proper terms for it" if that makes sense at all. who i was in the past and who i am in the present are the same Person, but different People.

my past self and my present self are both Me but the Person i was two years ago is different from the Person i am today. this doesn't mean he's a different entity or thing entirely (even if i, typing that, instinctively wanted to refer to my old self as They as in a Different Person), but if you presented a younger version of Me to the current Me, i would go "that's not me anymore, but it was once and i carry them with me even if we've grown apart"

i guess one way i've thought of describing it is that i'm every version of me i've ever lived and ever Will live ^_^ alt. a post i think about often but don't have on hand, "i am a mosaic everyone who's ever loved me/everyone i have ever loved". i am one person but i am made up of many many tiny events that have compounded into making me the Me i am today and helped me grow beyond the Me i was years/months/weeks/days ago. some of these are bad events, some of these are good, i tend to think of myself as an optimist so i'm usually trying to focus on the good but i know i couldn't have been shaped and changed without the bad ones

i feel like... being okay with it, i'm not sure, it's not something i've ever really considered, it's just something i've accepted. people change me and i change them in turn, i like seeing and knowing how i impact people and vice versa. a lot of the things i enjoy today are because friends recommended them to me, some of my favorite games and bands i only found because my friends told me about them. i know i change people both in habit and likes and memory, from things as big as "this is their favorite show now, because we watched it together" to "this person i've never spoken to stopped me in a hallway to say that, in a large classroom where i've never actively seen or made a note of where they sit, they always enjoy seeing the earrings i wear to class".

i guess what i'm trying to say is that i know change is a natural part of life (the whole time i've been writing this stp has been in my brain specifically the "is a child the same as an infant?" conversation with the shifting mound) and that i will always change, sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better, sometimes it'll be in my control and sometimes it won't be. i'm still Me years later and even if i don't have the same mannerisms or things i did when i was younger, they're still part of me.

maybe part of this accepting this also has to do with knowing that other people are this way too! i am made of every day i've lived and every person i've met and loved even for brief moments, even if i don't realize it :]

smth also... change is inevitable and for me there is no reason fighting against it when that's the case. sure, not all change will be good, but i've found that knowing that and being prepared is better than trying to fight against an unstoppable force, and even in the case that you do try to prevent change, it usually won't work. you will change anyway, or you will stagnate and suffer. sometimes the act of trying to resist change itself will change you. without change i don't know who i am, i like routine in my day-to-day life, but without change i'll be the same Me forever, without experiences and new things to draw upon and think about, and i think that's a very boring and uncomfortable life to live.

i'm not sure if this is necessarily what you were asking, or if this makes sense at all, but if you have anything else i'd be happy to elaborate! identity and how it changes over time is something i think about a lot honestly ^_^ it's one of my favorite things to write about in regards to my ocs too so i think about it often!!

[rawrtriesagain]

Heya, same anon who asked you for art advice! First, I wanted to thank you for answer my questions and listing all that wonderful advice! I just have some followups. It’s really okay to just draw without even knowing how to put down a line? Won’t that just lead to bad habits or not learning the right techniques? And you mentioned learning how to draw the human body, will the sites you listed help, or are there other resources I should look up (like maybe on Pinterest?). Again, thanks!

Combining your asks into one. Thank you for the kind words! I'll be happy to continue helping where I can :)

So in terms of bad habits and practices, this is where my advice will fall flat haha because I myself don't know what's a good practice actually - I just do what I want to do even if its the worst way to do something anyone's ever seen! For example, my way of doing 'lineart' (just cleaning up my sketches) is to draw big fat lines and then slowly carve it with an eraser into a line I deem good enough. Someone who could grab a pen and draw a perfect line on the fly would probably be like wtf watching me meticulously erase my one fat line lol

But!

If you really don't know how to put down a line at all yet, your best bet really is to just start. There's not really a trick or technique too it, its just practice. I think unless you were trying to go into art school or something and needed to work on a portfolio (btw again I am not the person to ask for that), there's not really a 'bad habit,' its just as long as you're having fun. In my earlier example about my 'lineart' I pretty much know I'm doing it in such a dumb way, but I actually find it really fun to carve away my line with an eraser haha. Yea I could put in the effort to actually learn how to do things properly, but I like wasting hours just nitpicking on this little thing just because its fun to me. (I do the same thing for coloring also. I'll scribble my entire screen and then use an eraser to start carving things out lmao)

Of course while you're drawing and you're doing something that makes you think "hey this actually sucks actually-" that's when you take the opportunity to grow and learn something new that you didn't know before. This is a digital art thing: but for the longest time I literally didn't know anything about layers and my thoughts were just "man there's got to be a better way to do this" which throws me into a rabbit hole of searching "how do I do This Thing"

If you're really into learning art techniques though it might be good to slowly go over all of the 'art fundamentals' especially when it comes to like shading and perspective. I looked at this blog post and it looks like it would help start you out with some links to other resources: link then of course you can look up the corresponding Youtube videos to see someone actually do the fundamental for real. I'd also honestly recommend like a beginners artist course in person if that's something affordable and accessible to you. It's been one of my dreams to go to like random art classes for fun haha but alas life happens so its just me and my tablet until I'm rich as hell I guess. I've never taken a digital course either, but if that's one of the ways you're able to learn that's great too and I'd recommend it!

Next on human body:

Sorry I should have talked about them more in depth at the time, but yes they will help but only if you're determined to use them correctly! So the sites I listed basically show a pose for 30 seconds, and the idea is you're supposed to just try to take in the shape/form of the pose and draw it without nitpicking over minor details. You can also set the timer higher if you need (I used to set it to at least 60 seconds just because I was just a slow ass artist). But basically it should help you break down the human body into simple shapes and lines.

Now what I mean by using the sites correctly: So there's two ways to approach drawing from references:

1. "eye tracing" which is where your eyes are kind of just following the outline of whatever you're drawing but you're not really processing what exactly you're doing to help you later down the line. I have a bad habit of doing this and I tend to struggle later again for the same pose.

2. Breaking down the reference into small chunks and shapes, and then morphing those shapes into your piece. And later down the line you should start to be able to think of things like "oh the Circle piece of the body normally goes Here!"

Here's a random google image I found to help illustrate what I'm kind of talking about:

So eye tracing would kind of be like a less refined version of #3. Just a blobby but like you can somewhat tell what it is and that's cool I guess, but its not very helpful for when you want to try drawing a variant of the pose above. Breaking down the reference is like steps #1 and #2, simple shapes and blocks that help guide and outline the final shape you want. #1 in particular is very easy to change around should you want to.

So while you're on the sites I linked, you should try to break down each pose into its shape instead of drawing exactly what you see. You should also keep in mind the 'line of action' while doing so:

It's definitely a lot to take in all at once, so I'd honestly recommend just loading up the site and doing your best to replicate the pose, 'eye tracing' or not. Once you get more used to the routine and flow, then try to branch into learning more appropriate techniques. I've seen around that some people also recommend removing the time limit on the poses, as some people learn better by taking their time on one thing and breaking things down even further from there, but that's definitely up to you. You could also go out and try drawing random people if that helps and if you're bold!

My experience with Pinterest has mostly been for inspiration or cool things I've never thought of before, though I'm sure others are able to use it better than I can haha. I'm sure there are step by step guides to help you out around there!

I think resources to learn how to draw better really do come down to what kind of learner you are in the first place. Lots of people learn really well from Youtube tutorials for example, or maybe reading and following along with a book about anatomy would work for you too. I have like the most god awful attention span ever, so what works for me is just raw trial and error and hoping for the best. tbh idk how I even got this far haha but i am happy that I've progressed at all

Let me know if you have more questions and I'll definitely do my best to answer them! If you're looking for more advice regarding traditional art learning fundamentals, I'm sure there are many other artists that would be happy to answer your questions as well!

Best of luck! :)

[novawritesthingsss]

Sketches (WIP I'm working on, pt.1)

TWs: Tell me if I need to add

[No link yet-]

Ivy sat flat on her bed, bored out of her mind. Ever since she had been reincarnated she had been too scared to write shit. She didn't have any more hobbies so now she was stuck without anything to do. 

Ivy heard a knock at her door. "Hello?" She called out. "It's Sunny, and Saturn. We just want to talk." Ivy sighed. "Why do I have to get up now…" she mumbled. She cracked open the door slightly, peering out of the opening. "We uh… got you some food." Saturn held up a bag of food. "Saturn, what is this about…" Ivy questioned. "I might have told Sunny about your… eating habits…" "Saturn what the heck-" Sunny cut her off. "Ivy, this isn't about that. But I do want you to eat this. I just have a question for you." Ivy moaned. "What is it?" Saturn cleared her throat "Why don't you write anymore?" Ivy paused. "Um… excuse me?"

"You used to write a lot— heck you wrote an entire book! What happened to that?" Saturn questioned.

"Trauma involving an axe to my neck."

"Oh… sorry."

"It's whatever I guess... What did you get me?" Ivy asked. Sunny looked inside the bag. "Um… Fries and a burger…" Ivy grumbled. "I'm not eating all of that." Sunny frowned. "I know. I was planning to split some of the burger with you…" Ivy raised her eyebrows.

"Oh."

Sunny gave Ivy the fries. Ivy began to snack on the fries. Unfortunately for Ivy, the only food she couldn't resist was fries, no matter how much salt was on it. It sickened her. 

"So, is that it? Are you just going to watch me eat?" She questioned. Sunny looked away from Ivy. "Well yes and no. We have an idea for you." That further confused Ivy. "An idea?" She echoed. "Yes, an idea. Saturn, give her the things." Saturn handed her a bag.

Ivy dug through the bag and pulled out a sketchbook. She set the book aside and peaked inside the bag. "Pencils? Erasers? Guys what is this about?" Sunny rested their hand on their neck. "Well… my therapist gave me an idea. She said that I should try things like drawing or writing instead of resorting to drinking or any other thing that would harm me. I thought that this could also work for you. Cus' Lunar told me you used to write in order to cope with your emotions."

"Like a replacement for writing," Saturn added. Ivy wiped her hands. "Lemme give it a try then." Ivy started sketching a picture of a ball. She then shaded the ball. "Is this good?" She turned the sketchbook towards the others. 

"Not bad."

"Oooh”

"Thanks."

Ivy started to sketch out a head. She looked up at Sunny for reference. She glided the pencil across the page until something similar to Sunny’s face appeared. She turned her sketchbook towards Sunny. Sunny hummed in confusion. "What— oh! Wait, that's pretty accurate. When did you learn to draw like that?" Ivy shrugged. "I've always liked doodling the creatures I researched… well used to. There wasn't enough paper to doodle on here." "Well now there is! Your sketchbook!" Saturn reminded.

"Oh— right!"

[nyrator]

I guess for a life update..

Overall doing okay, but just drifting it feels like

I've been working my chocolate shop job for almost a year now, they treat me pretty nice thankfully- my birthday was recently, they took me out to dinner and an amusement park, and they got me a lot of My Melody presents like a big pillow and a lamp and a Hello Kitty mug and a big tub of our store's peanut butter cups (the last one we had that they stored away for my birthday)

I'm still dirt broke and living in a subsidized senior apartment but still managing to break even somehow still..

I'm working on an October art challenge and so far I've managed to hit every day so far.. Might try to post them here when it's done somehow, 31 images is a decent amount of images though.. apparently Tumblr allegedly allows 30 images now at least? So hmm..

Been streaming a bit less- would like to stream more, but burnout is strong and lately it feels like I don't really have any kind of goal or dream or motivation to do anything.. just going through the motions, I guess.

I'm still in therapy every week, and I've also started taking medication recently... First Zoloft, which worked really well, but it might be causing liver damage according to my blood work, so my psychiatrist is having me swap to Wellbutrin.. at the moment I've been hitting some lows but hopefully that's just from the transition period

I have throat issues (EoE, my throat's basically allergic to random things that are hard to pinpoint) and still struggle to eat most foods without choking/vomiting, and I've gained a lot of weight lately with my current diet (apples+peanut butter and chocolate from work with the occasional protein shake/yogurt/gluten free pasta dinner), feeling really bleh about the weight gain and want to lose it..

Been a bit more open about the nyan issues, both personally and in art- even got a medical prescription related to it, though the prescription itself still hasn't come in yet and I don't trust it to work well to be honest.. it's just an expensive bad habit. But I'm more open about it, which I guess is the important thing.

In terms of art, I don't know what I want to do exactly... I have a few short term goals- update my stream a bit, do some updated console reference sheets, draw nyans, but otherwise not sure.. Rotten Nyan's on indefinite hiatus since I can't get myself to work on it anymore, but I'd like to go back someday. I want a big project to work on, though, I just don't know what.. I have Ren, my latest vent OC, but they're very weird and I still feel self conscious about them, and don't really know what to make with them.. at least I've been doing that October challenge with them though.

In short just in a mental space where I'm just drifting, no goals, no desires, nothing I want to watch or play or experience, no one I feel like hanging out with, just kinda drifting 24/7... but at least my menhera's gone down a lot since medication, I used to have some concerningly bad thoughts before I started taking them which thankfully have dissipated I think..

Also Twisted Wonderland is still good. Vil is good. Cater is good. Jade is good. Lilia and Epel and Leona and... Boys good.

Here Ny's current anime boy husbandos (I wanted to fit Hiiragi too but 7 is such a weird number to chart..)

[fineartsjournal]

213341 Art Studio IIIA ⋆ Week 11 - Back to the Drawing Board

With eyes on the street, I've noticed these small graffiti sculptures showing around town, appearing to be cement shapes mortared to concrete walls.

The approach I've been veering towards with my work has been of free-for-all interaction, and expressing my work through a structural statement might be just what I need.

At work, I came up with Pop Concrète, a square concrete vessel containing an embedded MP3 player, and a headphone outlet. The title a reference to Musique Concrète, the looping mix would contain the same sensibilities, with plunderphonic pop samples so dense that they'd only warrant a brief listen.

The audience interaction with this piece would reflect this, with the block - in later redesign hollowed out brick - being placed on a table, with a chair implying a one-at-a-time listening experience. This would be inspired by the presentation of Em's 'overstimulation' sound collage last year, where audience members would individually come up and listening, the overbearing soundscape being too much to bear for more than a couple seconds at a time.

Likewise, Pop Concrète, its presentation a literal reflection of the sound, would be just as dense; one brief earful and you've already got the full digest - a brick of pop!!

A chat with Bryce made me realise that I could keep further with the times, and bring the subversive distribution element back in with the addition of QR codes. By just pasting these to a brick, and leaving multiple around campus, I'd also be working smarter.

Grabbing hip by the handful, I chose the following songs from the Billboard charts:

Tommy Richman - MILLION DOLLAR BABY

Ne-Yo - Closer

The Weeknd - Blinding Lights

Gwen Stefani - Sweet Escape

Sabrina Carpenter - Espresso

Miley Cyrus - Flowers

Benson Boone - Slow It Down

Djo - End of Beginning

Laila! - Like That!

Doja Cat - Paint The Town Red

Billie Eilish - LUNCH

Tyla - Water

SZA - Snooze

Jack Harlow - Lovin on Me

Sean Kingston - Beautiful Girls

Maroon 5 - Sugar

Steve Lacy - Bad Habit

Koi Leray - Players

Lay Bankz - Tell Ur Girlfriend

Some I like, some I don't like, I'm painting with as broad a stroke here.

I created a test track sampling Sabrina Carpenter's Espresso, but deleted the file on accident. Just imagine a skipping CD and you'll get the feel.

I also set up a Bandcamp page for the project, which the QR codes would link to.

I put the sampler on the backburner for this one as I was mainly mixing the track on campus via Audacity.

Everything was done by hand. To get a sample sounding extra choppy, I'd cut, loop, reverse, cut again, copy and truncate until the sound was recogniseable only by timbre.

Before long, I had a couple seconds to build upon. The idea would be for a short, track. With something so sonically dense and chock-full of samples, I would be putting all my time into someone only a minute or so in length regardless.

There were so many tracks and small clip edits that I had to split the file project into two parts!

I would import the mixed MP3 file into the program, and then pick up where it left off, allowing for easy editing without breaking my hard drive.

The whole process felt very automatic - keeping my brain stimulated meant having some parts being incomprehensibly complicated, and others being legible, coming up for fresh air with a danceable beat, if so for a couple seconds. I'm happy I took this approach, as it lends itself to a well-flowing listening experience, rather than the audible screams of a dying record player.

After a day's work, I was happy enough to call it. I realized it wasn't a necessity for the piece to loop, but it did anyway. The whole thing was only 1.5 minutes, but hey, Plexure took Oswald a year (At this point, I should give him writing credits).

While I have no doubt that any amount of listening will be small-scale, under the small-but-non-negligible-off-chance that I could be in any legal trouble, I selected the following Creative Commons license for publishing:

I also credited, in alphabetical order, all sampled artists. I spruced up the Bandcamp page, uploaded the file, and BAM. It was done.

Part of it, at least. I still had the whole 'presentation' side of things to get to. I was able to turn the link into a QR Code online, and from there, created a little graphic that I could print out.

I chose to include a little 'player' at the bottom to serve as a visual indicator of the link, song and associated website without being sketchy or vague. I tested the link with my phone, and got to printing.

I then mixed up some glue, and dusted off the bricks for pasting.

I left five bricks in total around campus, all positively slathered in QR codes for all to see. I was initially planning to leave one in a gallery space, but chose to further commit to public interaction/distribution, leaving them alongside places of foot traffic.

As well as outside the music block, because I thought it would be funny.

Come the next day, and inbetween showcases, my rōpū walked by one of the bricks, and we all stopped to give it a scan and a listen.

I thought most people would just save the link for playing in their own time, but instead, a bunch decided to play it all off their phone speakers all at once!

The resulting cacophony was brilliant, the dense sound coming out of tinny phone speakers, layered over itself - I couldn't have asked for a better presentation. And people enjoyed it! Scanned it at their own volition!

I was glad to see the turnaround in sentiment from my previous work, and hopefully, as these concrete bricks sit around campus for the next couple weeks, more passers-by can enjoy it all the same.

[ufoparty]

How did you get into art and what's the best way for people to get into it?

being bad at video games

GENUINELY i got the kingdom hearts manga because i couldn't get very far in the game and as i looked at the art i thought "i want to make stuff that looks like this." so i began with copying and then started drawing freely with obvious references to KH art (eyes mainly lol). pretty much every skill leap i've experienced since then has also happened once i discovered an art style i wanted to borrow something from. plus series with very engaging characters+plot makes me want to explore it more (i.e. i get hyperfixated) so i've ended up practicing a TON with little frustration because it's usually catharsis/Jokes™ that are the driving force rather than making something that looks good.

(not to say i don't ever doubt myself, because there are pieces in my head i wanted to make years ago but didn't because i lacked the technical skill)

i can only really give advice about getting into character art, because i've never been very interested in making abstract or photorealistic art or whatever. they definitely have their place but that's just my preference. that being said:

being super invested in something whether it's your own story ideas or someone else's is a great gateway to art. if you ever have the thought "haha it would be funny/cool if this happened" and the imagery/expressions stick with you moreso than like, Phrasing (personally different ideas i've had have struck me as being more suited to written work vs. drawn, or vice versa), just go ahead and draw it. and do it every time you think of something else. you don't have to show anybody. i drew fruits basket comics in 6th grade and never showed a soul. those drawings are for You

looking at other people's work.. novels, manga, cartoons, paintings, design, typography.. even if the work as a whole is something you're not that into, if there are stylistic choices you appreciate then take them. you can just straight up redraw someone else's art if you want to get a feel for how it all fits together, as long as you don't post it/claim it as your own (my rule is: no posting copies of a peer's art without permission, but yes to a famous/dead artist as long as credit is given). when you mash influences together it becomes something unique to you very quickly because no one else is going to be drawn to the exact same things as you

a major DON'T is second-guessing yourself. it's super easy to compare yourself to others especially as you get older, because if you start making art at like. 45 you may think you need to be at the same skill level as another 45-year-old who's been doing it for 30 years. it can be hard not to think this way especially if you're looking at other people's art like i suggested lol but get in the habit of hyping up your own ideas to yourself. "this such a good idea." "wow i'm so funny." "this is silly but no one has done it before so it's my job to make it."

there are people who could say all of this more eloquently and succinctly, and who follow their own advice more often--i haven't followed the third bullet in a while :o) but when i think of the most productive periods in my life these are the things that stand out the most. so i hope even just like one sentence is useful. also having adhd or autism can make this easier so try that too 👍

[sanstropfremir]

ok this took way longer than i expected because i got sidetracked looking at paintings and reading poetry and just admiring the mv, but it's finally finished!! let's talk about

higher

✨

i'm going to draw your attention to a few things.

firstly, these verses from rime of the ancient mariner by samuel taylor coleridge, published 1834:

The harbour-bay was clear as glass,

So smoothly it was strewn!

And on the bay the moonlight lay,

And the shadow of the Moon.

The rock shone bright, the kirk no less,

That stands above the rock:

The moonlight steeped in silentness

The steady weathercock.

And the bay was white with silent light,

Till rising from the same,

Full many shapes, that shadows were,

In crimson colours came.

A little distance from the prow

Those crimson shadows were:

I turned my eyes upon the deck—

Oh, Christ! what saw I there!

Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat,

And, by the holy rood!

A man all light, a seraph-man,

On every corse there stood.

This seraph-band, each waved his hand:

It was a heavenly sight!

They stood as signals to the land,

Each one a lovely light;

This seraph-band, each waved his hand,

No voice did they impart—

No voice; but oh! the silence sank

Like music on my heart.

secondly, this ivan aivazovsky painting, chaos (the creation), c. 1841:

and thirdly, the memorial of percy shelley, who drowned in a boating accident at age 29, in 1822:

there's a common conflation between the romantic and the pastoral in the general cultural consensus because the pastoral a) has been around as an art term longer than romantic, and b) romanticism does use some similar imagery. but there is a key difference: the pastoral is specfically an idealization of 'the simple shepherding life,' often for high class and urban audiences who have no conception of the details of this life includes. one of the more famous examples is christopher marlowe's a passionate shepherd to his love, published in 1599:

Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove,

That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,

Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the Rocks,

Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks,

By shallow Rivers to whose falls

Melodious birds sing Madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of Roses

And a thousand fragrant posies,

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle

Embroidered all with leaves of Myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool

Which from our pretty Lambs we pull;

Fair lined slippers for the cold,

With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and Ivy buds,

With Coral clasps and Amber studs:

And if these pleasures may thee move,

Come live with me, and be my love.

The Shepherds’ Swains shall dance and sing

For thy delight each May-morning:

If these delights thy mind may move,

Then live with me, and be my love.

whereas romanticism is a more pointedly specific movement that was active from around 1800 to 1850, primarily focused on intense emotion and catharsis as the primary experiential output of an artwork. which most prominently manifested in a deep fascination and glorification of the natural environment and historical nostalgia. the movement sprung from the german sturm und drang (literally storm and drive/stress) period of the late 1760s to early 1780s, which was a direct reaction to rationalism and enlightenment. romanticism had similar impulses; it was also a revival of medievalism and a reaction against the looming urban sprawl and mechanization of the industrial revolution. a typical romantic poem from one of the originators of the english movment william wordsworth, composed upon westminster bridge, september 3, 1802, originally published 1807:

Earth has not any thing to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

this romantic fascination with nature was underpinned by the philosophy of the sublime, generally agreed to be first treatised by edmund burke in 1756, the theory was also written about by kant and hegel. in the simplest of terms, the sublime is a quality of greatness beyond calculation, imitation, and human comprehension. the sublime is twofold; the greatness of the ocean is beautiful, but its power is also terrifying, and the experience of the sublime is to feel those two at once. to be in awe and also to be horrified of its ability to sink ships and drown a life in a tempermental change of tide.

let's take a quick detour to talk about

clothing

in the present day we have become much more lax thanks to the aesthetic movement in the late nineteenth century, but back in the early victorian period there are still highly structured rules about when and what clothing one can wear in public. and the clothing itself is also highly structured. anyone with a passing understanding of the victorian era knows about the whole flashing of the ankle thing and corsets galore, and it is true that the general day to day garments cover a lot of area. for men in particular, this manifests in no less than three layers in public at all times: shirt, waistcoat, and suit jacket, with a coat or mantle overtop in colder temperatures. this also includes a variation of a neck tie (depending on what year), hat, gloves, and any other decided upon accessories (this can also include a corset and other padded structural underpinnings). an important tangent to mention here is that this is the uniform of the upper classes, although the rules do apply to the lower classes if they wanted to appear 'sophisticated.' the working man's uniform was also shirt, waistcoat, trousers, but the difference here is in the textiles themselves; the colours tended to be much more drab, with less complicated patterns. obviously due to the price fabric itself, but also due to the labour of laundry. an indicator of class here is the white shirt itself and its pristine implications. (there is a longer conversation here about the invention of neckties and detachable collars and cuffs, but that's for another day). the silhouettes are very important to note here in the higher mv, as they are directly referential to the 'romantic poet' archetype of loose shirt and tight pants that we see in popular culture. but as i've just said, the reality is that men of the era were not dressed like this out in public. this look is essentially underwear; the implications are salacious. so where did this come from? well, we can blame it mostly on lord byron, who by all accounts was the first western 'rockstar.' notoriously called 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' by lady caroline lamb (a married women he publically had an affair with), byron was openly bisexual and deeply hedonistic with a lot of questionable habits, but his poetry was so popular that he was known to have women following him in the street and gathering in large quanities to see him at salons. and this was close to three decades before lizstomania. his close friends and contemporaries included percy and mary shelley, with whom he lived with abroad in italy for some time (this living arrangement resulted in the writing of both frankenstein and john polidori's the vampyre). byron's reputation was so eclipsing that the image of the lush poet lazing in his undergarments has become its own genre of romantic, slightly removed from the movement byron was writing in. it's also worth it to point out that there are no official portraits of byron dressed like this from the time. the visual assumption is somewhat apochryphal. now let's get into some specifics. a.c.e is not unfamiliar to this silhouette; as previously mentioned in this post i wrote about their styling, the boxy loose upper and fitted lower is their general mode for their styling because of its emphasis on legs. cactus was the most extreme example of this, and to prove my point, this specific silhouette is extremely common in classical ballet:

1. vaslav nijinsky, giselle, 1911 2. nehemiah kish, george balanchine's ballo della regina, 2011/12

higher fits very neatly into this same category: we have an emphasis on the legs through tightly fitted garments and also through light reflective textile, as well as a secondary emphasis on arm and shoulder movements with looser fit shirts. plus, the shirts are made from fabrics that have good drape and flow, and mimic the visual effects of water:

there are also several instances of scale patterning and wetlook hair styles, further elabourating on the siren theme. and the jewelry is the same, purposefully cut clear stones for oceanic sparkle or pearls, the gem directly born from water, as highlighting accents to specific parts of the body - namely eyes, hands, and torso:

the body jewelry also serves a double purpose in addition to being sparkly; it gives a semblance of shape to their torsos so their movements aren't totally lost in the shroud of their shirts, and it also invokes some of that salacious element that us as a modern audience doesn't necessarily perceive in the same way when we see a man wearing only a shirt. all of these points are especially prominent in the stage costuming. concerning the veils, these are an aesthetic choice following the theme of depicting water without actually using water. the song has a very breathless quality to it, and the lyrics directly make reference to water and breathlessness, so it only makes sense to have a physical manifestation of struggling to breathe.

now let's talk about

mise-en-scène

unlike most kpop mvs, I would argue that higher is not a spectacle in what we normally see spectacle to be. the overwhelming visual saturation of goblin (and the goblin remix) is more in line with what we expect, but how do you follow that, top it? the answer is that you don't. you aim for something with a completely different feel, which is exact what they did with higher.

the performing arts did not escape romanticism. the very start of the movement, sturm und drang, is actually named from a specific play written by friedrich maximilian klinger that premiered in 1777. the plays of the brief period are characterized by extreme and passionate emotions, and were siblings to one of the most famous genres of theatre, the melodrama. meant to appeal directly to the emotions of the audience using sensationalist plots and stock characters, the melodrama was the predominent form of entertainment in victorian england and gradually developed a specific form of its own. in this period we also start to see the development of 'stagecraft' into the recognizable form that it takes today. footlights, limelight/spotlighting, the separation of house and stage lighting, fly galleries, elevator platform mechanics, and the first (purported) western use of rear projection are all innovations of the late 18th and 19th centuries, as melodramas were known to have very intricate and spectacular stagings. and to go along with these stagecraft mechanics we see the rise in designated stage crews, which were predominantly off-duty sailors looking to make money. the rope systems that made up the fly galleries were very similar to that on ships, and much of the terminology and supersitions crossed over: this is the origin of the term 'rigging' being used for suspending set elements, and also the origin of the 'don't whistle in a theatre' superstition. as sailors communicated with whistle patterns on ships, the same system was adopted for changing scenery, and therefore whistling a random pattern could potentially drop a setpiece on an unsuspecting victim.

so with all this backstory out of the way, what is the very first full location we see? a stage, complete with forced perspective via the painted fabric legs (the side panels) and borders (the wavy upper panels). we even have a flat painted backdrop with a projection screen and hanging overhead lamps. there's also a second interior set, a desk in what looks to be a study of some kind. bit self explanatory on this one, taking the poet notion on the nose.

the locations have a bit of an obtuse arc, but it's there when you look for it. it starts interior spaces, where the ideas of sublime attempted to be recreated for the viewer. then it moves to transitory spaces; portions of nature isolated from a whole environment, interjections of human architecture into natural spaces:

(the white hut structure in the greenhouse is reminiscent of a skene (literally hut/tent), which is the structure at the back of the stage in ancient greek theatre used for the actors to change their masks and costumes. it was originally temporary, but slowly transformed into permanent stage architecture)

and then finally outdoors, into the sublime itself:

jwm turner, crossing the bridge, 1815

lastly,

lighting

there's a very clear lighting pattern here, primarily in light and dark. the base colour story is fairly simple complementary pairs; there's a lot of purple/red and green, and blue and yellow/amber, with everything relatively on the same tonal level. there are deliberate interjections of heavily saturated red for specific effect. there are also, most notably, a 'dark' version of all the sets. obviously as a reference to the eclipse that we see in the mv and in the concept photo series, but also as a reference to that darker undercurrent of the sublime, the upsetting, the uncanny, and the terrifying:

And the bay was white with silent light/Till rising from the same/Full many shapes, that shadows were/In crimson colours came.

[atsuwiee]

hello! congrats on 600 :) i'll be requesting matchups for 2 fandoms, if that's okay with you! take your time on making this request :) call me sleepy anon if you'd like,, ( fandom is tokyo revengers and twisted wonderland. if you want to just choose one, you can choose either of those two ) I use any pronouns, so you can legit just call me anything you want, i don't really mind~! i'm also asexual, if you needed to know my sexuality. I'm a very sleepy person, since day 1. I've been pretty used to sleeping, to the point where i can be in any position and sleep comfortably in it. Many people either was amazed or weirded off by it (namely my teachers, I used to sleep on class a few times. Sometimes i got away with it, sometimes i didn't lol). This habit of mine can be a flaw too, my parents usually comment that i just sleep a lot, to the point that i skipped meals and didn't take care of myself anymore. till this day, i'm working on that so that i wont cause worry to my parents anymore :) I guess you can say i'm awkward. I mean, i can start a conversation like "hello" or something, but keeping the conversation going or finding a topic to talk about with someone is pretty difficult for me since i overthink too much on what i have to say and always think 'oh no what if they don't like talking to me' or 'whoops, that was NOT good impression me.' so that's why i pretty much just avoid talking to people since it's a bit of a hectic ride for me. I am a bit of a daydreamer, if i say so myself. I love to daydream a lot of things, especially in a window seat, looking at the window while the car drives and my favorite music playing in my earphones. Are you bored yet by wallows and clairo is currently my favorite song. My current favorite hobbies are writing and drawing. I've been writing for 2 years now, and i'm pretty proud of my improvement. Although, currently, i know and i think i have to do much more better than my current writing and i have lots of time doing that. I just started drawing last year, because of quarantine and drawing is harder than i thought it would. Like I have this image on my head that i wanna draw and i place it on a paper and when i try drawing it on paper, it looks like garbage compared on what i see on my imagination. I think i should start using references to improve art haha. I dislike not being able to sleep. Pretty self explanatory. I dislike being forced to do things i don't wanna do. I dream of being carefree and just doing things i wanna do without overthinking and stressing out. Well, those are the current things that i can think of, Sorry if it's too long. I'm used to writing long stuff LOL. Take your time on doing my request, no rush is needed :) TL;DR : I am a sleepy and awkward daydreamer who's been writing for 2 years and just started drawing last year. Still in development of improving the two of those and i hate not being able to sleep and being forced to do stuff. :)

i match you with... leona kingscholar!

i just feel like days with him for the both of you will just be lounging around or falling asleep, since leona loves sleep as well.

at first he actually laughed a bit if you're being awkward but then he'll actually realize that he shouldn't be laughing so he'll actually comfort you if you're having thoughts. especially when you overthink- leona is kinda sh!t at words but he tries his best to calm you down or to reassure you ykyk.

(probably) is used to you daydreaming- like there are moments where you just stare blankly(?) while you have some music plugged into your ears so sometimes he waves his hand across your face to check if you're alright lol

i match you with... manjiro sano (mikey)!

ok but like-

mikey sleeps a lot too so that's something you could both get along with ? DJHDKJH like there will be times where both of you are bored and you both sleep beside each other peacefully-

he's also shit with words too, but he tries his best to comfort you whether you have bad thoughts due to overthinking. he also finds it amazing that you draw, sometimes he likes staying beside you while you try to draw (its also guaranteed that he'll actually annoy you a bit while you're working lmao)

i hope you liked this<3 !

[oneboxofmatches]

Hi!!! May I request a HP romantic and friendship matchup on both eras? (Preferably male), thanks in advance! 💞

𝗕𝗔𝗦𝗜𝗖𝗦 + 𝗔𝗣𝗣𝗘𝗔𝗥𝗔𝗡𝗖𝗘

19, Libra, Neutral Good, enneagram is 4w5, Ravenclaw, and my patronus spirit is swan. Bi Pan Genderfluid girl using pronouns of She/Her or He/Him. A friend of mine told me that I (kinda) look like Marinette from 𝗠𝗶𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘂𝗹𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗟𝗮𝗱𝘆𝗯𝘂𝗴, Musa from 𝗪𝗶𝗻𝘅 𝗖𝗹𝘂𝗯, and Alexandra Trese from 𝗧𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲 (a Netflix animated series), but the exception is I'm short (5'1.2") plus sized Southeast Asian woman with Spanish descent that has messy/wavy brunette medium hair, chocolate brown eyes, oriental skin and a small beauty mark on the forehead. My sense of fashion is in between emo and boyish plus korean glam.

𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗦𝗢𝗡𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗬

Distant and shy at first cause' I dunno how to initiate a conversation, but a total opposite if I open up---friendly, ambivert, witty, laughing loudly on a daily basis, talkative, awkward, daydreamer (I got embarrassed from knocking at the door even I'm inside the classroom 😂), EXTREMELY clumsy, secretly likes affection, easily overwhelmed, prone to melt over any wholesomeness, flusters on compliments, lightly blushes on cheesy banters, sarcastic person with a lowkey crackhead energy citing meme references, and talented girl who can be your no. 1 supporter and unashamed to be true to myself. In terms of leadership, I only educate and guide than being a prefect (I might take the role seriously), and will lift my group when there's lacking/incompleteness. About doing projects in school, I become too extra and prepared for efforts, but I'll forget the process in the end.

People thought I'm a demure self-effacing woman that looks "idealistic" or "one of a kind," (due to my protective parents, a reason why I've never been in a relationship) but the truth is, I'm eloquent, warm-hearted, willig to help, kind, intelligent, supportive, nice, creative, enthusiastic, determined, tough, competitive, and feisty outside, but a real softie that can be childish and dramatic crybaby filled with doubts, frustrations, and insecurities with fear of failure that pushes off the limits to to please everyone, yet I still managed to be stronger than ever, even it's a slow burn process. I can be intimidating, sassy, and a douchebag if I receive ends. Immature, headstrong, perfectionist, demanding, hesitant, jumpy, very indecisive, overthinker, quick-tempered, sensitive, and anxious (no joke, my nervousness makes me think worse scenario will arrive or I might break a belonging due to my carelessness). Though can be procrastinator and arrogant, I raised as a religious 𝖺𝗇𝖽 diplomatic person, willing to fight what I believe (including my dreams) 𝖺𝗇𝖽 what is right. In addition, I have a habit of staying up late and doing sign of the cross to ease nervousness.

Blunt but the loudest idiotic feeling-brokenhearted and bitter friend in the group who fangirl a lot, swears like sailor, will act like a silent backstabber on people that we loathe, will crack up over your stupid antics before helping, and bring gossips, but a hopeless romantic who tends to banter with sarcasms or pick up lines as an endearment (but gets grumpy if I received sappy or offensive one), still generous and concerned in a subtle way.

𝗛𝗢𝗕𝗕𝗜𝗘𝗦

My hobbies are singing, drawing, roleplaying, listening to music, chatting/browsing on social media, conceptualizing, writing, and reading some stuffs. 𝖨'𝗅𝗅 𝗂𝗇𝖼𝗅𝗎𝖽𝖾 making corniest jokes/puns, 𝗌𝗅𝖾𝖾𝗉𝗂𝗇𝗀, and dancing when nobody's around or walking like a model if I feel so bold (even I'm terrible at both xD).

𝗟𝗜𝗞𝗘𝗦

Loves kittens, eating a lot, cartoons, watching YouTube videos (mostly pageants, ASMR, edit audios, and mukbangs), also enjoys playing games on my sister's PSP. Sucker for arts, choir, night sky, makeup, fun/deep/dumb conversations, Christianity, documentaries (about saints, real crime stories, and inspirational people), reading interesting stuffs, talking about social issues, and writings, chilling both indoors and outdoors. Beside that, my music taste are like late 90s-2000s songs (mostly rock, pop, and country) sometimes kpop and ppop, chocoholic, and a sweetooth as well.

𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗟𝗜𝗞𝗘𝗦

Things that I hate are stereotyping, HUGE creepy crawlies (spiders, toads, snakes, and cockroaches), firecracker sounds, being left out, loneliness, heart break, blackout, and judgemental people. One random fact about me is, I 𝗐𝗂𝗅𝗅 vent out EVERYTHING I despise in my entire existence---from bad soap operas to toxicity and worse scenarios in real life, because it's a big deal for me, and I consider forcing me to do what I'm not into and manipulating me as my major pet peeves.

𝗧𝗥𝗜𝗚𝗚𝗘𝗥𝗦

In terms of triggers...I only have two which are ta𝖨king about divorce/annullment/separation because I came from a generational broken family and religion/beliefs discrimination, cause' there are reasonings that doesn't makes sense because some are too hypocritical.

𝗧𝗥𝗜𝗩𝗜𝗔

My best assets are smile, eyes, personality, singing voice, artistic skills, writings, intelligence, and oratorical skills...so I can consider myself as a singer, artist, orator, and a top student who's a former active campus ministry member with three roles (choir leader, psalm singer, and reader). Currently an incoming college freshman, learning how to cook and have so many interests, to the point I don't know what I'm into because of my dreams to become a popular Filipino YouTuber, a novelist, and being part of a successful chorale competing internationally...I also consider joining pageants at school too once the pandemic ends, but maybe.

Thank you so, so much for requesting! I had a lot of fun with this one (as you can tell by some of the really long answers lol) and I hope you enjoy!!

In the Golden Trio era, I romantically pair you with…

CEDRIC DIGGORY

One of the most beautiful things about Cedric is that although he may show some introverted tendencies, he still manages to have a natural gift for connecting to others and allowing them to feel comfortable enough to open up. Really, your initial distance and shyness don't last nearly as long towards Cedric as they would with most other people.

Hearing your laughter brings the widest, cheesiest grin to Cedric’s face. Not only does he adore seeing you happy, but he also recognizes that your anxiety, insecurities, and strong emotions can sometimes cloud up your demeanor. Therefore, it brings him comfort knowing that (for the moment) you’re finding joy. He thrives when you thrive!

However, as much as he loves seeing your more energetic and happier self, it goes without saying that he’s the best comfort for when you’re not having the best day.

Cedric is an excellent listener, so he’ll most likely let you talk without interruption for as long as you need before even saying a word. He wants to make sure he truly understands your current state before acting. He may take a few seconds to process everything after you finish speaking, but then he’ll help you tackle whatever problems you’re facing. He’s especially talented at giving words of affirmation.

Cedric’s listening also comes in handy whenever you talk about your interests! He genuinely loves hearing about the things you’re interested in solely for the fact that you’re interested in them. Side note: you can count on him to be at any music performances, pageants, etc. you may have -- this guy is truly your #1 supporter.

Cedric’s a very good student (though I suspect he’s somewhat of a procrastinator himself), so I can also see you two supporting each other through schoolwork and celebrating each other’s successes.

Like you, Cedric has a strong urge to do the right thing. Talking to him about social issues stirs up a need to help, and I could see you two doing volunteer work together in your spare time.

I like to believe one of Cedric’s biggest love languages is quality time. Don’t get me wrong, this guy loves staying involved and busy. But taking a couple hours to be with you in small ways (even if that means just being in the same room while you scroll through social media) gives him a nice balance.

Overall, this kind boy will be there unwaveringly through the bad times and will laugh just as loud as you through the good!

As a friend, I think you’d best be matched with…

LUNA LOVEGOOD

You wanna talk about the best conversations, relentless support, and overall the most wholesome friendship you could ask for? Luna’s your girl.

Being unashamed to be true to yourself is one of the biggest reasons why Luna is so drawn to you. While she’s very friendly and insightful towards everyone she meets, it can get a bit repetitive for her to constantly interact with people who try to shelter their unique characteristics from the world. In her mind, these unique characteristics are what make people so fascinating! Why should anyone hide who they are?

Luna’s creativity is endless, and I can see it blending well with yours. Collaborating on a personal project outside of school (ex: novel, blog, etc.) together is definitely something I could see you two doing.

Speaking of creativity, finding creative solutions to everyday problems (both in school and in life) is your specialty as friends.

Admittedly, Luna isn’t usually drawn to louder individuals. However, the complexity behind your personality makes it easier for her to know you are much more than what meets the eye.

Speaking of, Luna has a difficult time standing up for herself -- whether it’s because she doesn’t feel a need to or she just doesn’t recognize the meaning behind certain phrases. She NEEDS a friend like you to stand up for her sometimes, and I know you wouldn’t hesitate!

Ranting to Luna is therapeutic to say the least. While her aloofness at times may make it seem as if she isn’t fully paying attention, that couldn’t be further from the truth. She’s actually catching every word, and once you’re done she’ll leave you with a philosophical solution that may seem borderline insane/irrelevant when you first hear it, but it strangely makes sense.

Overall, the lack of judgment from either of you is what draws you together. As a result, you build a unique bond that couldn’t be broken even if either of you wanted it to.

In the Marauders era, I romantically pair you with…

REMUS LUPIN

Let’s be honest, it would take you two so long to ask each other out. You were probably already really close friends, but the insecurities and “what if?” questions from both of you delayed an actual relationship.

When you finally started dating, you were both so relieved. You still share a laugh at how almost nothing changed in the way you interacted with each other.

While with mutual friends, Remus sometimes likes to sit back and just watch you, especially when you get really talkative because this is when you become the most expressive. He has the softest smile when you’re actively cracking jokes, discussing something you’re passionate about, or even calling someone out. Sometimes you may be too distracted to notice, but other times you’ll catch him.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing.” (While that same soft smile never leaves his face.)

You both hold really high standards for yourself in terms of school, so expect late-night study/work sessions to be your best bet for quality time.

Though the occasional instance of walking through/lying on the grounds becomes a favorite for both of you.

Remus listens when you’re particularly struggling through anxiety or strong emotions, but he has to consciously stop himself from interrupting because he can’t stand how he feels knowing you’re going through a tough time.

All he wants to do is soothe you during these moments. If you’re comfortable, he’ll hold you while speaking to you in a soft voice. Remus, the intellectual that he is, is also your best chance at finding a reasonable solution. So if you're not in the mood for calming words, he's also a great person to turn to for answers.

As for your ambitions, no matter what you choose to pursue, you already know Remus is going to be your biggest source of support every step of the way. He’s more than happy to help in any way he can!

Overall, Remus appreciates you, and he’s always going to make sure you know it.

As a friend, I think you’d best be matched with…

LILY EVANS

Lily especially connects to you because you manage to be determined, competitive, and intelligent without sacrificing your kindness, which is something she can relate to.

You and Lily are the C.E.O.s of doing the right thing. Neither of you hesitates to back the other up when it comes to confronting someone because you know it’s justified.

As perceptive as Lily is, you never need to tell her when something is bothering you. All it takes is a quick glance before she puts whatever she’s doing on hold to check in with you.

The reverse works as well. Typically, Lily really doesn’t internally struggle too much, and when she does she tries to hide it. You’re one of the only people who can see right through whatever she tries to pull.

The constant banter between you two is unmatched, but you both know it's because you really care about each other.

Overall, you and Lily have each other’s backs through anything, even when the other isn’t actively asking for help.

[phasesofpencilsmain]

Study Break

Things are slowly getting back to normal after Steven's break down. But he still has some bad habits he needs to learn how to let go.

It had been just over a month since Steven had, What he's referring to as "his meltdown". Guess that's about as apt of a name you can give to turning into a giant pink kaiju over your mental turmoil.

Steven had just started therapy almost 2 weeks ago. After some convincing and a few trial and errors they had managed to find a therapist that worked with him, and didn't just ask endless questions about gem stuff.

They could tell Steven was trying with this, but they could also tell it was hard for him. You can't break bad habits in a day, and shoving his feelings aside for the sake of others was definitely a bad habit he needed to kick. Fast.

It was a nice day for Connie. After cram school her and her friends had decided to go to her house for some group studying and hang out time. They cracked jokes about the topics they studied and talked about their lives.

Then Connie's phone rang, the tune she had applied specifically for Steven cheerfully sang and broke up the laughter and talking. Connie took the phone out of her pocket.

"Who's that?" Patricia asked, looking smug like she already knew the answer. "That your booyfriend?"

"As a matter of fact, yes." Connie admitted, holding out her hand to silence any snarky remarks from her friend. "Now hush, i gotta take this."

"Sure you do." She teased one last time before Connie gave her a look that told her she was being serious. Throwing her hands in the air in silent defeat while she let Connie answer her phone in peace.

"Steven!" Connie answered. She tried to sound cheerful but it sounded forced. She was happy to hear from him, but there was still a deep worry that sat in her heart when she saw his name. "Everything okay?"

There was a pause, too long to let it stand.

"Hey, Steven?" She urged, she could hear him shuffling around. But still he said nothing. "Talk to me. Please."

Finally there was a sigh and Steven's voice came through. "Uh, hey Connie."

"Hello Steven. What'd you call about? Everything okay?"

"Uh, heh, can't a guy just call his girlfriend to ask how her day is?"

Connie squinted at the space in front of her, hoping Steven could see her disbelief with his astral projection power. "Steven, you know you're a horrible liar right?"

There came a tense chuckle on the other line. "I'm not that bad, am i?"

"Steven. Come on."

There was another stretch of silence.

"Hey, is everything okay?" Daniel asked but was met with a finger that told him to wait until Connie knew too.

"I uh.." Steven started after a moment. "I just, i needed to talk to you. But uh, i-it can wait until you're on your study break. I uh, heard you had your cram school friends over. Say hi to them for me!"

"Steven. Studying can wait." Her statement, made with such finality and assuredness made Daniel and Patricia stare in shock. But she continued. "You are more important to me than a grade."

"But...what about your friends?" Steven was trying hard to deflect attention off himself but Connie was having none of it.

"You're my friend too you know. Now please, talk to me."

"Okay, okay. Uh....I...I uh..." Connie could hear his voice cracking, struggling to find the words and trying to keep it together so as not to worry her. "It's..it's happening again."

"What is?" She had a sinking feeling she knew what, but she needed to hear him say it.

"The...ya know...the uh...pink swelling stuff." He had nearly whispered the last part, sounding ashamed. Connie only nodded.

"I'll come over as soon as i can." She assured.

"No, Connie really I-it's ok-"

"Steven, stop. Stop lying to me. You lying to me isn't helping me, and it certainly isn't helping you. Just let me be there for you Steven. Just let yourself be helped."

"..okay."

"Send Lion over. I'll be there soon."

"Okay.. uh Connie?"

"Yeah?"

"...Thank you."

She smiled. "Of course. I'll see you in a sec."

Connie hung up and started to close her books. Putting them away on a nearby desk. "Sorry guys, i gotta go."

"Is everything alright?" Daniel asked again, this time recieving a proper answer.

"Steven's been uh.. going through some tough times recently. I gotta be there for him."

"Steven? The kid from the roller rink you were with?" Patricia asked.

"Yeah. That's him."

"Is he okay?" Daniel asked.

"He didn't sound okay at the rink to be honest. What was he even talking about with that "White Diamond" stuff-"

"HEY!" Connie snapped, drawing the attention to her. She hadn't meant to yell, but it was as sensitive a topic for her as it was for Steven. "Sorry. I just, it's his personal stuff okay? Don't try to make fun of it or something."

"Sorry...I wasn't trying to.." Patricia stood up and put a comforting hand on Connie's arm. "Really, I'm just still confused about this.."gem stuff"."

Connie pulled her in for a quick embrace. "I know, I'll try to explain more some other time. Just be sensitive about that stuff he told you at the rink. It's a..bit of a sore spot for him, and me."

"Got it." Patricia nodded. "I won't even bring it up again!"

"Thanks." Connie smiled.

"But wait, if you're leaving then what are we supposed to do?" Daniel asked, still sitting by his books. Determined to still get some studying in during this to ease his mother's wrath.

"You can stay here and finish studying if you want. Or you can call your parents to pick you up."

"How long are you gonna be gone for?" Daniel asked after finishing reading another line of text. Connie paused to consider.

"I'm not sure. I could be a while. I'm going to stay there for as long as Steven needs me there."

"Take your time." Patricia assured. "And tell Steven we said hi."

Connie smiled and nodded. "Sure, I think he'd like that."

Daniel finally stood up to hug Connie goodbye. "Yeah, we all gotta hang out together again! This time we can pick something we can all do without falling on our butts the half the time."

The mood lightened, some light laughter shared among them.

"Definitely." Connie agreed. She called out to her dad making dinner in the kitchen. "DAD! I'M GONNA SEE STEVEN! I'LL BE BACK LATER!"

"Okay! Text your mother!"

"I will!"

"Wait, don't you need your dad to drive you there?" Patricia asked, confused.

Connie shook her head and opened the front door while her friends followed her out. "I've got something faster than a car." She continued just as Lion had ran out of a portal he had made on their lawn and waited for her. "Well, technically Steven does."

Her friends stammered, confused and in awe and a little terrified by Lion. Connie had almost forgotten that Lion was anything but normal and friendly to other people not in the know, but seeing her friends stumble on their words looking at him reminded her of just how much she still has to tell them about gem stuff.

"I'll explain this later too!" She called out, hopping on Lion's back. She smoothed Lion's mane. "Thanks for the lift Lion. Now let's go see Steven!" Lion gave a low growl like an agreement and let out roar opening a portal letting him take her away before her friends could finally form a sentence. As the light warped around the two Connie closed her eyes and whispered. "I'll be there soon Steven, it's gonna be okay."