#Me when i finally remember that i saved all those color palettes to actually use them

[daily-amber]

Day 154: I believe we’re gonna make it

[nalyra-dreaming]

Hey Nalyra,

I wondered if you happened to recall exactly where it is in the books when Louis kills the artist who paints his portrait?

I feel like it must have been in Interview with the Vampire as I remember the description as being in Louis’ voice? I can picture the scene in my mind, but I can’t picture the chronological context of exactly when that was?!

If you can’t remember instinctively, no worries!

Hey dear!!

(Finally found it^^) It is in IWTV indeed, an artist who actually finds Louis (and leads him to his studio) to sketch him:

----

“Out of the mist which had followed the rain, a man was walking towards me. I can remember him as roaming on the landscape of a dream, because the night around me was dark and unreal. The hill might have been anywhere in the world, and the soft lights of Paris were an amorphous shimmering in the fog. And sharp-eyed and drunk, he was walking blindly into the arms of death itself, his pulsing fingers reaching out to touch the very bones of my face.

“I was not crazed yet, not desperate. I might have said to him, ‘Pass by.’ I believe my lips did form the word Armand had given me, ‘Beware.’ Yet I let him slip his bold, drunken arm around my waist; I yielded to his adoring eyes, to the voice that begged to paint me now and spoke of warmth, to the rich, sweet smell of the oils that streaked his loose shirt. I was following him, through Montmartre, and I whispered to him, ‘You are not a member of the dead.’ He was leading me through an overgrown garden, through the sweet, wet grasses, and he was laughing as I said, ‘Alive, alive,’ his hand touching my cheek, stroking my face, clasping finally my chin as he guided me into the light of the low doorway, his reddened face brilliantly illuminated by the oil lamps, the warmth seeping about us as the door closed.

“I saw the great sparkling orbs of his eyes, the tiny red veins that reached for the dark centers, that warm hand burning my cold hunger as he guided me to a chair. And then all around me I saw faces blazing, faces rising in the smoke of the lamps, in the shimmer of the burning stove, a wonderland of colors on canvases surrounding us beneath the small, sloped roof, a blaze of beauty that pulsed and throbbed. ‘Sit down, sit down...’ he said to me, those feverish hands against my chest, clasped by my hands, yet sliding away, my hunger rising in waves.

“And now I saw him at a distance, eyes intent, the palette in his hand, the huge canvas obscuring the arm that moved. And mindless and helpless, I sat there drifting with his paintings, drifting with those adoring eyes, letting it go on and on till Armand’s eyes were gone and Claudia was running down that stone passage with clicking heels away from me, away from me.

“ ‘You are alive...’ I whispered. ‘Bones,’ he answered me. ‘Bones...’ And I saw them in heaps, taken from those shallow graves in New Orleans as they are and put in chambers behind the sepulcher so that another can be laid in that narrow plot. I felt my eyes close; I felt my hunger become agony, my heart crying out for a living heart; and then I felt him moving forward, hands out to right my face—that fatal step, that fatal lurch. A sigh escaped my lips. ‘Save yourself,’ I whispered to him. ‘Beware.’

“And then something happened in the moist radiance of his face, something drained the broken vessels of his fragile skin. He backed away from me, the brush falling from his hands. And I rose over him, feeling my teeth against my lip, feeling my eyes ll

with the colors of his face, my ears ll with his struggling cry, my hands ll with that strong, ghting esh until I drew him up to me, helpless, and tore that esh and had the blood that gave it life. ‘Die,’ I whispered when I held him loose now, his head bowed against my coat, ‘die,’ and felt him struggle to look up at me. And again I drank and again he fought, until at last he slipped, limp and shocked and near to death, on the oor. Yet his eyes did not close.

“I settled before his canvas, weak, at peace, gazing down at him, at his vague, graying eyes, my own hands orid, my skin so luxuriously warm. ‘I am mortal again,’ I whispered to him. ‘I am alive. With your blood I am alive.’ His eyes closed. I sank back against the wall and found myself gazing at my own face.

“A sketch was all he’d done, a series of bold black lines that nevertheless made up my face and shoulders perfectly, and the color was already begun in dabs and splashes: the green of my eyes, the white of my cheek. But the horror, the horror of seeing my expression! For he had captured it perfectly, and there was nothing of horror in it. Those green eyes gazed at me from out of that loosely drawn shape with a mindless innocence, the expressionless wonder of that overpowering craving which he had not understood. Louis of a hundred years ago lost in listening to the sermon of the priest at Mass, lips parted and slack, hair careless, a hand curved in the lap and limp. A mortal Louis. I believe I was laughing, putting my hands to my face and laughing so that the tears nearly rose in my eyes; and when I took my ngers down, there was the stain of the tears, tinged with mortal blood. And already there was begun in me the tingling of the monster that had killed, and would kill again, who was gathering up the painting now and starting to ee with it from the small house.

“When suddenly, up from the oor, the man rose with an animal groan and clutched at my boot, his hands sliding o the leather. With some colossal spirit that deed me, he reached up for the painting and held fast to it with his whitening hands. ‘Give

it back!’ he growled at me. ‘Give it back!’ And we held fast, the two of us, I staring at him and at my own hands that held so easily what he sought so desperately to rescue, as if he would take it to heaven or hell; I the thing that his blood could not make human, he the man that my evil had not overcome. And then, as if I were not myself, I tore the painting loose from him and, wrenching him up to my lips with one arm, gashed his throat in rage.”

----

It's after a discussion with Armand, just before Louis encounters Madeleine.

[atonalginger]

I've got a title on ao3 that's about to reach quadruple digits and I'm in a touch of a panic.

I'm not used to that sort of....anything? Attention. Success? I'm feeling a similar feeling to back when I started more seriously watercoloring (which I realize I haven't done that in a long while. I should do that...)

See I started watercoloring more seriously back in late 2016 after my official fibromyalgia diagnosis and the severe reaction I suffered from a medication prescribed to help manage it. I put my feelings on paper with color and felt a great release. But more than that I felt a release, like I was in control of what I did with my art again...I should back up further...

When I was a kid I loved to paint and draw. And my mom always made sure I had some decent kid friendly supplies on hand and encouraged my creativity. And then when I was like 8 or 9 my aunt came to visit with pictures of fish she'd taken while scuba diving and some beautiful, professional watercolors of tropical fish from artists on the islands. And my mom loved them and wanted some copies of the photos. And then asked me, a child, to paint them with water colors.

I remember feeling immense pressure to create what those artists had done; there was no reassurance that the expectations were not that so I assumed she expected me to be able to do the same or similar thing to that. She even went to a specialty art store and picked up high quality water color paper for the finished product. I was to practice on my usual paper (printer...) and use my crayola palette and the one synthetic brush. A child with no formal art lessons was to create a scene of tropical saltwater fish in water color.

And maybe she wasn't actually expecting her 8-9 year old to do what I feared she expected but she never communicated that. And no longer did I have any desire to paint. Because if I was seen painting I was asked how that picture was going. And it wasn't. Because my fish were weird looking and wrong and my washes were uneven and messy.

I was 30 years old when I finally started painting scenes of fish in watercolor. and my fish were still wonky looking and the washes were still messy and uneven but they were mine. I made them for me. She'd never get them. She never got to ask that of me. And I felt free to finally do whatever I wanted with my watercolors.

(I don't have any of my fish saved on this computer but I have all these)

A lot of my other creative outlets went the same way over the years, it taking a decade or more for me to reclaim them and feel safe enough to share them again. She'd gift me sketchpads and colored pencils every christmas but then be super critical of any art she saw. When they learned I wrote fiction as a teen they wanted to see it so I destroyed it before they could find it because I knew if either parent read it I would be in trouble. When I got big into writing poetry my dad started insisting I share it with my uncle, who majored in English down at Baylor years ago, so again I stopped and destroyed much of my work to keep them from finding the vulnerable poetry about my life in that house. I couldn't even keep a simple journal without my mother digging it up and reading it.

And back in late November, with a lot of positive encouragement from some lovely souls I get to call friends now, I decided to share my writing. And I felt free to write what I wanted for once and know I wouldn't get in trouble. I felt supported. and now I see that looming big number and I'm overwhelmed....

It's a good overwhelming. but overwhelming all the same

[isitoctober212015yet]

MOB PSYCHO 100 WARRIOR CATS AU WHOOOOOO

I've been chugging along at these designs for ages and I am so proud of them and stoked to finally share them AA if you have any questions FEEL FREE to ask me I have been plotting and drawing this au so much (have many things still in the works to post!!)

AU Summary: A Long time ago a strange interloper claiming to be a Starclan warrior took over the clan (Dimple/Mosswish). He gave them a prophecy from the ancient times of a cat that would one day be destined to take his place as the True leader of the clan.

Years later, a stray (Reigen/Weaselflight) found two kittens (Mob & Ritsu/Sproutmask & Thistlestrike) abandoned in the trash and took them in. If anyone asked he would claim it was just so that he wouldn't have anyone's death on his conscience but nobody ever asked. He staked out a human neighborhood and left them on the doorstep and once he saw them get taken in went off on his way.

Almost a year after that Sprout and Thistle have no memories of the cat who saved them and they have both grown. Sprout is constantly wondering what lies beyond his yard.

He befriends a stay who just came back to town named Weasel that seems oddly familiar, who's been mentoring Sprout on the ways of the Clan. He uses Weasel's "true" stories as a springboard for all the things he wants to do someday and tells his brother all about (Thistle hides his concern about that) But there are clan cats who have been watching them convinced Sprout is the one chosen by Starclan to help them.

Eventually they come to him, offering him anything he wants if he will join them, permanently.

I have a lot more I'm keeping secret for now you'll have to find out >:3c

design and name notes under the cut!

First off: I started on these BEFORE the fursona plush actually ever got announced but about mid-way through plotting all this They Happened and I knew I could not use any aspect of them for these designs so if u want to know why they don't look like those. that's why. I ardently refused to use those designs. I love them!!! I have fanart in the works of them, but they're not part of this.

Mob - he was the first character I drew and the base off of which I drew everyone else because he's the default. He's the glass of water, the firestar, the plain chip, the True Neutral of design.

He was also the last one i colored and actually finished a design for LMAO. When it came to his name I knew I wanted -mask as his suffix because of the fact he is the most autistic character I have ever seen in my life (I am a professional autist, I know my own) and he is absolutely masking 95% of the time before the confession arc. I was stuck on what his suffix could be though, but my friend @cellulr suggested broccoli as a name and I remembered that OH YEAH he can make plants grow, which is how I got to Sprout, also it just sounds cute. He's a growing little sprout, it works.

Reigen - My design is very specifically based on the Least Weasel. I do not subscribe to fox headcanons under any circumstances. I don't care what reason people have for them he's not a fox. He's literally the quote "weaseling out of things is important to learn! It's what separates us from the animals...except the weasel." incarnate.

His name was the easiest one for me. He's a weasel, he loves to get out of Situations, Weaselflight. It's a winner.

Serizawa - He's a calico :3c I made him a calico because it matched the color palette of his pajamas and I just love his pajamas look because the blue suit is............kind of boring sorry <3.

I was really stuck on what to name him but i found out on the wiki that the zawa kanji of his name means Marsh and I really fell in love with that. -whisper was based on him being kinda shy when he first joins the clans but just like in actual canon he gets braver but is still a big gentle giant type guy

Dimple - I don't believe in realistic cat genetics for warrior cats content, these are a bunch of strays in the woods who have organized religion and superpowers. The cats can be green if I make them green. So Dimple's design was translated pretty literally but I made him very short and rounder than everyone else. And I gave him the same nicked ear that the claw security guard people draw him with/as all the time has. Also he's short and people keep thinking he's an apprentice I think that was a funny part of Scourge nobody used.

If you want to get realistic or something you could say maybe Dimple being green was proof enough to the clans he's otherworldly and therefore totally a real starclan warrior. His suffix Moss is pretty obvious but -wish has an in and out of universe explanation. In-universe it's about his own wishes of being important (godly perhaps?). Out of universe it's a reference to my favorite old timey warrior cats fansite warriors wish.

Teru - okay I will admit this is the only design that's loosely based on some fursona art. I saw art of him as a Pomeranian with the rest of the gang and I was obsessed I could not let him be a cat. He is a full respected warrior of the clan though do Not make any comments about him being a dog unless you wanna get killed. I love warriors aus or fanclans where non-cats are part of the clan too I think adding other animals adds a lot of fun elements to the world. In another clan of mine there's a pig. Reject canon. Add more animals to the clans.

As for his name I thought about naming giving him the Star prefix just to be annoying but theres certain lines I won't cross and that's one. So he's Suntuft. the -tuft is because he's a big fluffy dog lots of fur.

Toichirou - So like...in terms of structure Claw is basically just Bloodclan and guy who shows up out of nowhere with a huge army at the last second w/ plans to take over the world (forest)? that's so Scourge coded. Why does he have a clan name though? Secret For Later >:3c

In terms of design he's literally just a taller pointier Mob now in Red. Why he has the -claw suffix should be pretty obvious and I know in the anime his hair isnt quite red but i remembered it being pretty red when I was designing and Shou has red hair (im getting to him dw) so...red. I also thought it would be diabolical to give him the same name as the canon hero of the actual warriors books.

[disdaidal]

super late but i just saw the gif related asks in my likes that u rbed, so: 1, 8, 9, 32, 34, 36, 41, 49! i'm nosey as shit and love hearing u talk about ur gifmaking skills ���💝

Awww Melia 🥰🥰😍😍💖💖

1. What are your top 3 favorite sets you’ve made?

This is such a tough question because having to choose three sets out of everything that I've ever made?! I've made hundreds of gifsets in different fandoms, how could I possibly choose only three?

Okay, okay, here goes:

JJ/Emily from Skins UK. I thought they were so cute and I just really like my coloring here. :3 I really miss this show and I keep thinking about making new Skins (gen 2) gifs every once in a while.

Sarge/Cleo from Cleopatra 2525. This remains one of my all-time favorite sets because a) it took me several hours to make it b) it was actually my first 2-gifs-in-1-canvas set ever and c) again, I just really like my coloring here. :)

Billy in purple. My favorite boy in one of my favorite colors. :) I just really, really like this one.

8. What gif trend do you hate?

I can't exactly remember what year it was when people used to make those colorless/washed-out gifs all the time? 2014? 2015? Anyway. While I kind of liked the look of some of them (and I made a few myself so I'm not so innocent heh), when literally everybody was making them, it made my dashboard quickly look so fucking dull and lifeless. I kept asking: where are all the colorful gifs / why do you guys hate colors so much? Ugh.

Also some of the recent trends... You know when people make those transitional b&w glitchy gifs? I go back and forth about it. Like, in a way, I kind of like the look. I think the effect looks cool and I can tell it's taken a lot of time & effort to make it happen. But I also have this thing called astigmatism in my eyes, and that glitchy effect makes me go all 😵. So I'm not a huge fan of that trend because of that. I still think it's cool though.

9. What/who inspired you to start making gifs?

Honestly, I can't even 100% remember anymore. XD I think I always just thought that gifs are cool and I guess I was just hoping to see more gifs about X and Y and couldn't find them, so, I figured I gotta do it myself. I made my very first gifs in the J-rock fandom and later, as a fan of the Norwegian actor Kristoffer Joner (who has like 5 fans on Tumblr, including me haha), so, I'm guessing I got my original inspiration from there. And here we are.

32. What is your favorite tool/adjustment layer in Photoshop?

Color Balance! :)

I nearly always use the same tools for my base coloring (curves, levels, b/c) and then finish it off with vibrance and curves. But obviously, coloring/color correction is my favorite part of gif-making. And I love Color Balance because you can make such powerful changes to your gifs with a minimum of fuss - also give them depth if you adjust Shadows and Highlights as well (and I nearly always do that).

I also like using Photo Filter, especially before Color Balance - especially when scenes are strongly tinted in yellow, blue, or green (ugh). It generally works great as a color neutralizer (or an emphasizer) and saves you from a lot of cursing and swearing most of the time.

34. A set that took you a long time/was really hard but you’re really proud of how it came out.

There are quite a few of those sets and some of them really didn't do quite well in the sense of popularity. XD

I would honestly say that most of my color palette, fake scenes, and lyrics edits all took a fair amount of time and most of them are something that I'm quite proud of.

In my less popular fandoms - Young Hercules, Hercules: the Legendary Journeys, Fear the Walking Dead, Z Nation - I spent hours, even days to rip them & convert them from my DVD/BR, not to mention the whole process of finally gifing them and all, so. They definitely took me a lot of time to make and I am still quite proud of them. Even if some of them are very old now and don't necessarily look as good anymore (thus why I've already started working on some fresh remakes :D).

36. Do you gif with something specific in mind or do you just wing it?

Both. Sometimes I have such detailed plans for gifsets (even now I have so many different projects in mind, just very little time or energy for all 🙃) and I spend so much time planning them and working on them (and then they get 30 likes and 2 reblogs, one from me lol). Then sometimes I just want to make something, fuck details and plans, I don't want to think about it all lmao. So I just make these simple character episode gifsets or random scenes that I liked etc.

41. What is your least favorite part about your gif making process?

Oh, let me see. Using software that requires at least 16GB RAM to run effectively, and my poor laptop only has 8GB, so. 🙃 Not always being able to run other programs (like Spotify) in the background - or having to restart PS - or occasionally having to wait for several minutes for it to even fucking import anything, then having to wait a few minutes more for it to crop and resize the goddamn thing - yeah, I love it so fucking much. 😎🤗 Not.

Not to mention how PS keeps crashing occasionally (especially CS5, which I no longer really use for that reason + crappy fonts and it's a shame because it actually works faster on my laptop so kjkgjkggk), plus countless other, lovely errors that may occasionally pop up with this otherwise lovely, "user-friendly" Adobe feature. Thus, I am so 🏴‍☠️☠️ this shit. Not sorry. 😇🤭

49. How much would you say you’ve improved since you first started giffing?

Some of the first gifs I've made (somewhere between 2012-2014 I think):

I think there's a clear improvement compared to my most recent ones 1 & 2. :) I try to pay more attention to the speed of my gifs now - I no longer try to make them slow or skip any frames if I have to. I also strive to use mostly HQ videos these days (albeit sometimes you really just can't find them anywhere and that's something you just gotta deal with 🙃😎).

Albeit I actually still do like even some of my older colorings, I no longer usually have to spend hours and hours (except on very rare occasions) fiddling with different coloring settings and feel depressed every five minutes because now I have more experience and knowledge with different PS tools. Of course, now that Tumblr also allows us to upload even bigger gifs (from 1MB to 10MB ftw), it's obviously given me more freedom to explore and improve myself as a gif maker. :D There's still much to learn ofc, but then again, there are still people who make such awesome gif tutorials here, so I love to take new tips from them whenever I can.

—

gifmaker questions 💜

[rhodeys]

✨ COLORING GIFS FOR RAINBOW SETS ✨

hello!! so this ask had just been sitting in my inbox for days, and since i finally got some free time (and an incentive) i thought i’d put together a general coloring tutorial - especially for those who are interested in rainbow sets, or just want to get freaky with their gifs, hehe.

photoshop: cc 2021, but tbh this tutorial is compatible with most versions of photoshop for: beginners / anyone with a basic understanding of adjustment layers and brush tool (optional)

the tutorial will show how you can: (1) enhance colors in a neutral/washed out scene (2) change the overall color of a shot (3) make the colors bolder/stronger (4) convert the dominant color to another color

in other words: i rarely save my psds so this is what we’re stuck with

1. 

usually, when i’m making a color set, the first thing i do is open the hues/saturation layer and pull the saturation to a 100. this gives me a pretty good idea of the colour palette i can work with. and since this shot is more on the dark side, i brightened the gif a bit, and then moved saturation to a 100. this is what i get:

now that i know the dominant colour is yellow, i can drag the saturation back to 0 and start working on the actual coloring! i go to curves, and brighten the gif a little. most of the time, the white and black points (the first and the third inkdropper) does wonders in color correcting your gif. buut, marking the white point of for this gif would remove what little yellow we have, so i just did a manual adjustment until i was happy with the result.  

(since he’s a poc, i used a brush tool at 35% capacity over his face on the curves layer mask. it’s soft, and barely noticeable, but it stopped him from looking lighter, which would become a problem once we move on to the vibrance layers. basically, the lighter the subject, the more susceptible it is to being affected by color enhancing layers.)  

next, i go to the yellow hue/saturation option, and increase yellow saturation to 50. i usually don’t do this much, but the yellows are very very light in this scene, so we’re enhancing the colors wherever we can. i also lowered the intensity of the reds using these settings:

the reason i’m reducing red saturation is because - remember the dominant color on his face was red/yellow? - i don’t want my vibrance layers to end up reddening his skin too much. we already tackled a portion of this when we used the brush tool with curves, but this just ensures that the final product doesn’t have his skin looking too yellowy/funny, hehe. this is my gif after the saturation settings:

honestly, the difference is minimal, but now we have an actual color to work with. now it’s just a matter of enhancing that color. at this point, his skin may also look washed out, but the color will return once we get started with the vibrance/color layers. 

now, i open the vibrance layer, and - this is always dependent on the gif, btw - drag the sliders around until the colors are bolder. this is my gif now:

the yellows are much more evident now, and there’s a bit more color in his face - so yay! at this stage there’s really no need for selective coloring - so i’ll just add a brightness layer and another vibrance layer:

and voila!! mans lookin good

2. 

changing the overall color of the gif is a fairly easy process. i think one thing to look out for is if there are people/a lot of skin that would end up being affected by the coloring – unless there’s minimal movement that you can use a brush tool for. 

loki is more or less a silhouette in this shot, and all i’d need to do would be increase the contrast between him and the fog, and slap on a color. this can be done one of three ways: selective coloring, color balance, and gradient map. i’ll be using selective coloring here because i felt that worked best and it’s also an adjustment layer i’m most comfortable with. 

enhancing the contrast comes first, and since the brightness/contrast layer didn’t work as well as i’d hoped, i opened up the exposure layer and put in these settings:

and i get this:

now that loki is much more prominent against the fog, we can move on to the coloring. since i want it to be pink, i’m gonna open the neutral selective coloring, and use these settings:

just make sure your selective coloring is on “absolute” because it colors your gif independent of the original gif and makes your colors more strong, whereas ‘relative’ colors your gif relative to the original gif – which doesn’t work all that well for color sets. (read: makes it look ugly)

i got the color, but methinks its still a little too dull, so i’ll add a brightness/contrast layer to make the color pop

and done!!

3. 

animation gifs are much more easier to color because the colours are easily isolated, which is just chefs kiss when you use selective coloring. for this one, i just want to enhance the blues / reds, and remove the magenta tone so that the colours are more vivid. first, i increase the contrast:

it’s sharpened the colors a bit, and reduced the dullness:

now, because i want to enhance the blues/reds, and reduce the magenta, i’m going to use these settings in my selective coloring layer: 

i didn’t want to make the red too bright, since red has an annoying tendency to pixelate, and lowered the magentas just enough so that the three of them still have a bit of color on their face. now the blues: 

now that that’s done, all we need is to brighten up the gif. i’ll use curves for this:

i selected my white point (the white inkdropper) from the white part on baymax’s face (which i just realized makes no sense bc his entire face is white) which immediately brightened up the gif and erased the excess magenta. 

if you want, you could still make it brighter by selecting your white point a little towards the shadows in baymax’s face - but methinks this gif looks fine by itself ehehe 

4.

this one will be fairly easy - especially for a shot like this where it’s just blues and black - and will only require selective color and some brightness layers. so, i want to make this a violet gif. the very first thing i’ll do is open up selective coloring and enhance the blues:

idk if this is a thing others do djsajskl i feel like they do, but i do this because i’ve always found it easier to do color convert when the colors are enhanced - so, the more enhanced my blues are, the easier it is to convert to violet. this is what i have now:

now it’s time for violet!!! yee!!!

i increased the magenta in the whites because the highlights in the cloud were looking VERY white, and would end up looking very weird once i increased brightness. so this is just for…. consistency

now we can get on with brightening!! i open up the brightness/contrast layer and use these settings:

and another curves layer, where i’ve intense-ified the dark parts (the grey slider is at input: 27) and lightened the rest (the white slider is at input: 220) 

(i just feel like it makes the coloring look crispy)

and tada!!! 

i hope this helped! i’m still in the learning process when it comes to coloring, but if you have any questions/clarifications, please don’t hesitate to reach out! 

[swampgallows]

21, 30

21. Art styles nothing like your own but you like anyway frank frazetta and boris vallejo (and julie bell!). i think few people in the world are capable of their ethereal fantasy-realism, save for maybe gerald brom. all amazing works outta those folks. i also love norman lindsay though i think his work borders on illustrative enough to draw comparisons to my own. oh this is just becoming an inspiration list now. well some other influences are david b (who in turn influenced marjane satrapi), mike mignola, and as much as i hate to admit it, r crumb; all demonstrate a strong command over heavy block shadows and black and white media with limited, deliberate color palettes. as someone who fucking sucks with color and color theory, it helps to see examples of how sparse color is used well. the same goes for lynda barry and ai yazawa, who have wildly different styles, but their characterization and panel compositions made me think more about how to tell a story with pictures. kind of as an honorable mention, calvin and hobbes was the first time that i recognized bill watterson was actually an artist; drawing little cartoons was "easy", but many books and strips featured watercolor landscapes where, even as a little kid, i looked at them and thought "oh, these illustrations are simple, but they do require skill. calvin and hobbes is made by an artist. this isn't just 'cartoons', it's art." like, i recognized that the book wasn't just "pictures", it was something someone had made.

30. What piece of yours do you think is underrated not up to me what gets attention or not or to determine the quality of anything but i always did like how my lyndras piece turned out. guess he wasnt found to be as sympathetic of a character as runas because his storyline was limited to tailors, but i remember feeling so crushed when i had to put him down in the violet hold :( as for the drawing, doing the stippling and hatching is always fun. i also like the one i did of the ever-lovely fffrangipani, although it doesnt reflect their current appearance. it took a lot of tries for me to get it right (only two are pictured; there were dozens before the final product) but it was such a captivating image i wanted to do it justice

[smellycinnamonthundahfudge]

fuck it. have the five page essay-ish thing i wrote on hoax.

it's so underrated and contains so many references to taylor's one great true love... that she lost.

(but there's also a bit about what the album cover means since i just think it adds to the evidence of something)

Let me take you on a journey, more specifically, the journey taylor’s music brought me to.

But fine for irl context, and disclaimer as well, I’m a new swiftie.

Yes, folklore was the one that really really pulled me in.

I’ve always loved her music, those that I knew of anyways, and she’s always held a special place in my heart and some part of me always knew that I was always going to explore her discography someday… and those days and months of exploring aforementioned music finally arrived.

So, for context, I’ll say that I mostly loved her bops. I always knew and loved her as that teenage girl feeling of wanderlust, and just wonder, and sweetness, and love…

That was what taylor was to me, the feeling of love.

It’s only when I very quite recently really really grew up and at the same time, taylor’s most popular music at the time, folklore, also happened to be really grown up, is when I realized and found out that taylor always had this depth to her.

So, for me, debut to speak now and half of red will always have that child-like wanderstruck look of awe and love vibe and feeling to me, cause nostalgia, it’s what I spent my life thinking of it and her as.

Also it’s been some time since I fully listened to those albums, so the journey/throughline narrative that I see from taylor’s discography is

Debut – young kid figuring it all out, emotional but sweet

Fearless – growth, ambition, dreams, complexity of wanting someone you know you’re not supposed to

Speak now – cinematic movie like quality of storytelling, these are fantasies, epics, novels all on their own, legend

Red – reckless abandon, intense extreme adult love, and also growth

1989 – true love, actual adulthood, scandal, gossip, hiding, protecting what’s important, dwindling mercurial highs

Rep - …

One thing that I started to notice only on 1989 and then it looked to be the case for the ff albums too, is that the latter half of one album oft bleeds onto the next one

So like the sound of I know places and even kinda wonderland to some extent, is very similar to reputation’s sound.

Then idk, new year’s day being a really sweet love song transitioning into lover

And then it’s nice to have a friend’s simple acoustic nostalgia & daylight’s nature imagery transitioning into folklore

And theeenn I’m betting the lakes as a positive song is a foreshadowing for the more softer positive outlook evermore is going to have, compared to folklore at least

But I honestly believe that if you look at the albums themselves, debut to speak now and red all seem to be about fleeting romances that pass and go

But 1989, that’s when things start to get real, and I believe, that’s when taylor really starts to get her muse…

Cause if you look at from 1989 to folklore evermore heck even to the rerelease of fearless and red…

These songs seem to be stemming from one relationship

A relationship that’s secret, that’s fragile and delicate, and complicated and complex

And correct me if I’m wrong, but…

Is king of my heart the first time taylor ever used the term, the one???

The one real thing you’ve ever known?? All too well

One touch you are in love??? One step one night

Point is, I think starting from 1989, most of the songs taylor wrote and sung about could all be attributed to just one person.

A tumultuous complex but nevertheless real and true love.

And I bring up the one connection because the one clearly parallels king of my heart

And all at once, YOU ARE THE ONE I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR

why would taylor write about losing someone that she thought she was the one if the person you think it’s about is still supposedly with her when she wrote it?

And finally, in taylor’s announcement of folklore, she wrote about an exiled man walking the bluffs of a land that isn’t his own, wondering how it all went so terribly, terribly wrong.

And in its music video, you get the same imagery?

…

…

…

You know where, … you… also… get… the same… exact… imagery…?

The folklore album cover.

Where it’s taylor, walking, in the middle, so small in the grand vast bluffs of a land that wasn’t her own.

In every single music video for every folklore song, the only ONE, THE ONLY ONE, where you get the same imagery, the same color palette as the album cover, is exile.

Which is about someone, a man walking the bluffs of a land that isn’t his own.

So if taylor is the man, then she’s

I can see you standing, honey

With his arms around your body

Guess who she has a close relationship with, who betrayed her, who got married to someone else?

*regina george anger screaming*

Me is a breakup song.

Taylor rereleasing red second has so much more weight to it now.

“In the land of heartbreak, moments of strength, independence, and devil-may-care rebellion are intricately woven together with grief, paralyzing vulnerability and hopelessness.”

moments of strength, independence, and devil-may-care rebellion – me, I PROMISE THAT YOU’LL NEVER FIND ANOTHER LIKE ME.

WATCH MISS AMERICANA AND I DARE YOU TO NOT SEE ME AS A SPITEFUL/VINDICTIVE/REBELLIOUS BREAK UP SONG

grief, paralyzing vulnerability and hopelessness – FOLKLORE.

Then I guess, fine… we’ll get to why hoax is so fucking meaningful yet you don’t understand why it is.

Yes, my only one.

Smoking gun.

I saw someone call this a reference to the fire and ash in mtr, but I also think of this as someone being your one weakness…

Think about it like this, in reputation

And what if the one person who kept you alive through all that

Betrayed you too.

Taylor talks so deeply and passionately over how much this person matters, they were her smoking gun.

Because they were what kept her going through the death of her reputation.

When no one trusted her that one person did.

They were her smoking gun.

My eclipsed sun.

Lover ended with daylight.

Taylor called reputation as night time.

And now what once was daylight has now been eclipsed over, by betrayal grief sadness desolation.

(darling this was just as hard as when they pulled me apart, folklore is as dark as rep)

Winless fight – ma & thp, fight that someday we’re gonna win.

They or she didn’t.

Frozen ground brings me back to holy ground and to doht, my love had been frozen

The imagery of hoax’s lv, is of a cliffside overlooking an ocean

Which brings me back to gorgeous, of OCEAN blue eyes looking in mine, I feel like I might sink and drown and die

Screaming, similar to mtr’s I still talk to you when I’m screaming at the sky

(sidenote might not related to taylor references, but that line gives me hopelessness give me a reason to live vibes, and what with gorgeous’ line of sink and drown and die and this is me trying’s Pulled the car off the road to the lookout Could've followed my fears all the way down…

Anw… the sidenote is cause that feeling of hopelessness just really resonates with me personally, kind of the type screaming at the universe, at whatever’s out there why… sigh…)

Faithless love – false god

Hoax – illicit afairs

Blue… rep (delicate)

Best laid plan – dbatc, paper cut stings from our paper thin plans

Sleight of hand???

Five whole minutes pack us up leave me with it???

Could barren land also be bluffs of a land that isn’t his own?? Idk… *shruggie*

Ash from your fire mtr

New york, DBATC, 1989, false god, cornelia street

Hero died, remember when I said I’d die for you? False god

What’s the movie for, exile, I think I’ve seen this film before

You knew it still hurts underneath my scars from when they pulled me apart

Like I said, reputation… who was her saving grace/smoking gun from all that

THEY WERE THE ONE, THE ONLY ONE, TAYLOR HAD WHEN SHE WAS PULLED APART

SO THEY KNEW, THEY KNEW HOW MUCH IT HURT HER

BUT THEY BETRAYED HER ANYWAYS.

Password let you in the door, I knew you’d come back to me, front porch light cardigan

What you did was just as dark, just as hard

Why wouldn’t it be?

They were the one she had throughout all that turmoil… yet they betrayed her too…

Kingdom come undone – komh, we rule the kingdome inside my room

Beaten my heart – KOMH, dbatc

The feeling of thinking you found the one, the one you’re going to spend the rest of your life with… the one you would throw away all of this for…

Don’t want no other shade of blue but you, no other sadness in the world would do

You don’t want anyone else but them if they were the one you were going to throw it all away for…

You don’t wanna say goodbye…

You just wanna keep feeling the pain, the love, the conflict that you had with them…

You don’t wanna say goodbye

[chalkrevelations]

Episode 32 of Word of Honor, and once again, this is just. A LOT. A LOT is happening, and all of it is A LOT. Also, show, what is even happening? I have questions. A LOT of questions.

(Spoilers. Go ahead and scroll on by, then come back later, if you want to watch it unspoiled.)

BUT FIRST, before anything else, you know I have to yell about this for a minute because we once again see that the Gu Xiang/Cao Weining relationship and the Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishou relationship are the same relationship. We get the same scene with A-Xiang and Cao Weining – again – that we’ve already seen with Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu, this time from Ep 27, with Fan Shishu in the role of Ye Baiyi. Fan Shishu (YBY) asks “Do you know who she (he) is?” and this time, Cao Weining knows, just as ZZS knew in Ep 27. Cao Weining (ZZS) literally throws himself in front of A-Xiang (WKX) to protect her (him). “Kill us both” (Ep 27). “If you’re going to hurt her, kill me first” (Ep 32). Fan Shishu, like YBY, eventually lets A-Xiang and Cao Weining go, despite having them in a position where he could do them in. Color palettes between the two couples in these scenes match again, with the younger couple being more intense this time – A-Xiang and Wen Kexing in pinks, Cao Weining and Zhou Zishu in blue. (ZZS is mainly in creams and grey, but the piping on his robes is a very light blue, I think the greys have a blue undertone to them, and when you stand him next to Chengling in more intense blue while he’s wearing that particular outfit, it really starts to pull out the blue of ZZS’s outside robe – you can see this at the end of Ep 26.) Between the way these relationships continue to mirror each other and the hairpin scene from the last ep, I honestly don’t know what our takeaway is supposed to be, other than that WKX and ZZS are essentially married.

I also find it interesting - although this almost seems like too much of a stretch to be anything other than coincidence - that we get a specific callback to Ep 27 in this episode, as Ep 27 is also when WKX talks about not wanting to lie to Chengling about who he is anymore, and this ep is when they finally (apparently) meet again after Chengling learns the truth.

Aaaand now A-Xiang is crying, so of course I’m crying. Aaaand then we have the mournful montage. Give me a minute. And some tissues. I notice how much of this mournful drunken montage is ZZS remembering all the times he was cranky with WKX. Oh, honey. No. That’s what you’re remembering, because you feel bad, but it’s not what he would remember at all, if he was looking back over his time with you. And even if he did, it would be with great fondness.

Yeah, so, if I haven’t mentioned, this episode is a LOT. We get a big confrontation between WKX and half the jianghu/the Scorpions/some of the Ghost Valley contingent, ZZS showing up to support his man, Fantastic Cranky Grandpa of my heart getting in his eleven cents, Chengling shooting one of his dads, and two yeets off a cliff. And that’s only 15 minutes into the episode. This is too much, show. And I have too many questions. Also some observations. Also some wild speculation, not just about the fact that Wen Kexing is not dead but also about how he may have (not) got that way. And not just because there’s still four episodes left, and it’s too early for him to be dead.

First a small observation but pretty significant, I think: WKX is NOT in his blood-red Ghost Valley master robes during this confrontation. In fact, I think we’ve seen this set of robes in happier days with Zhou Zishou and Chengling. Just noticing this. Also noticing WKX’s face when Shen Shen starts going on about WKX’s parents and how omg if they could see WKX now they’d die all over from the shame, and WKX’S expression is like, the fucking audacity of Shen Shen saying this, and if he could actually kill people with the power of his mind, Shen Shen would be twitching and frothing on the ground. Also noticing the complete change when WKX sees Chengling – it’s like Shen Shen ceases to even exist for him. Gong Jun, your face, it’s killing me. Anyway, I’m going to start wildly speculating here for a minute, because WKX is willing to let Chengling kill him, because he’s so tired and wants to stop fighting, but he’s going to kick everyone else’s ass who even tries it? And then Chengling is actually the one who shoots him and yeets him off the cliff? Is this a set up? Is Chengling in on this? Is he the one who’s supposed to “kill” WKX? If so, at what point did we get Chengling in on this? And who did it? Did Chengling send what’s his name, Jing Beiyuan’s guard, away on purpose at this particular point, because he knew ZZS would show up in time for this confrontation if he heard about Chengling’s reaction to the news about WKX? And do I actually believe Chengling is smart enough – and a good enough actor – to pull off any of this? (Look, I love our little goldbean plenty, but let’s face it, he’s not the brightest kid running around here.)

Also, my dudes. My clever little killers. Xie Wang and Wen Kexing. I am unwilling to believe that you two aren’t somehow still together on this in some way in order to fuck over Awful Yifu. Your antagonistic back and forth seems a little bit like playing roles. Xie Wang gives Awful Yifu a weird side-eye a few times when Awful Yifu talks about how tricksy and cunning WKX is, like maybe he’s reconsidering, and do not tell me you’re questioning and reconsidering whatever deal you’ve made with WKX, little gambler. Why does your Awful Yifu’s bs always work on you? This is really not the time to roll the dice again. I’m assuming A-Xiang is still the only one who knows about their tete-a-tete? If so, this is a side-take I never would have expected on “you don’t fail me, and I won’t fail you.” Honor among thieves? Stick to the plan, Xie’er, whatever the hell it is. Do not blink.

So then, Ye Baiyi shows up, and my immediate reaction is NO. My beloved cranky grandpa, don’t fuck this up, because whatever is going on seems to already have a lot of moving parts with a lot of places for things to go wrong! But … are you in on it, too? Have YOU coordinated with Chengling? (If so, maybe you should have warned him to expect ZZS’s wild-card self-yeet over the cliff’s edge, since you’ve already seen how self-destructive self-sacrificing these two can get over each other.) Making me even more suspicious, Ye Baiyi later proceeds to walk out of a banquet before even eating anything. This guy is walking away from food? There is no clearer sign in this ep that something is up.

Also, while we’re on the banquets, listen. I cannot be the only one who wants to punch Zhao Jing in the face during his interminable yapping during both post-fight banquets. This is one of those places where the show and the actor have done their job too well, because he is so dislikeable and so off-putting that I almost can’t bear to actually watch him. And yet, I can’t fast-forward, because what if I miss some info? Like the fact that … you know, I went back to watch this bit three times, and that is a very … interesting series of camera shots during the second banquet - after the toasts, just as a couple of randoms start advocating for Zhao Jing as head of the Five Lakes Alliance, and we move from Xie’er to Shen Shen to Chengling, all of them still standing, facing Zhao Jing after their individual toasts, all of them in a formation that’s almost caging him in from the front and both sides. It gets more interesting every time I watch it. Is … is Shen Shen also in on this, somehow?

See, I know that is a lot of wild speculation. I know Wen Kexing got yeeted off a cliff, and Ye Baiyi was busy catching Zhou Zishu. And we saw a body. And ZZS set that body on fire. But I also know that Liu Qianqiao was the person holding vigil outside the shed where the body was being held. And I know she’s the other person, besides ZZS, who we know of that knows the facemask disguise technique (in fact, didn’t she learn it from ZZS’s shifu?) We actually get reminded of this later on in this very episode. Which makes me wonder if that was actually WKX’s body, or somebody else, in the shed. Who “found” that body and recovered it? Was it a Scorpion or one of the Ghost Valley contingent? Also, where’s that key WKX was waving around, and why does no one seem to remember it?

 Other things:

lol at A-Xiang’s reaction to Jing Beiyun talking about how ZZS used to ask him to set ZZS up with girls. Further lol at Jing Beiyuan, “And funny enough, he was NEVER interested in them. Welp, time for another drink!” Seriously, Qi Ye, we like you, you can absolutely stay.

Still at the banquets, Xie Wang seems discombobulated during a lot of this. And then when Awful Yifu calls him Zhao Xie’er in front of everybody, holy shit, he’s getting everything he ever wanted. Xie’er, you … you’re not going to fall for this again, are you? Please tell me you are not falling for this again, at what is likely a crucial moment. This is NO TIME to take another roll of the dice, little gambler. Stick with the plan, whatever the hell it is.

Oh, hey! Are we finally getting some backstory on Fantastic Cranky Grandpa? Oh. OH. “Our child?” What is up, my friend? (I did go back to Ep 16, when WKX calls Chengling “my child” while defending him against Ye Baiyi, and looking at the Mandarin subtitles, I can’t entirely figure out (with my Level 2 Duolingo Mandarin) all of the nuances of these two references, but it doesn’t look like they’re using the same words to describe these relationships.) So some further wild speculation: Apparently, Cranky Grandpa Fantastico is solitary drinking in the dark instead of feasting at the banquet, over someone who (he feels) foolishly wanted to save the lost souls in the Ghost Valley? And now he feels like fate is making fun of him? And he’s asking Dead Beloved what he would do in Ye Baiyi’s position? Ye Baiyi, is it possible that fate is making fun of you because you have found yourself in the position of saving a lost soul from the Ghost Valley? Also, Ye Baiyi, I’ve noticed the children have been turning you grey. I don’t think you had that grey streak when you showed up for the first Hero’s Conference, did you? In fact, I feel like you got offended when WKX talked shit about possible grey hairs on your head. 

Duan Pengju, this asshole, omg … OMG. Well. I guess you got your confirmation, Xie’er. Were you really considering rolling the dice again? AT THIS POINT?

[whatcouldgowrong-ohthat]

Us and Andie Ch. 15

Summary: Bucky works as an Avenger because it’s what’s right. He feels he has sins he’ll never be able to make up for, but he’ll spend the rest of his life trying. However, his life takes an unexpected turn when he comes across Andie, the daughter of recently divorced Y/N. The life he had once “maintained” in hopes of surviving changes as his heart warms for a tough-as-nails nurse and her wonderful daughter.

Pairing: Bucky x Singleparent!Reader

Word Count: 3064 words

Series Masterlist - Masterlist

Neither of them spoke of what happened that afternoon. It wasn’t that they were keeping it a secret or that they had gone out of their way to discuss it. It was just…

It never came up.

And why worry Y/N with something that didn’t need to be discussed?

That wasn’t to say that everything stayed the same. Some things changed. Andie went to therapy now. Sam recommended it and said it would help with the nightmares, but that it was up to her in the end. It took Bucky agreeing to see his own therapist for Andie to go as well. She claimed they were, “Trauma buddies.” And it helped make it light. Better.

Bucky spent more time at the apartment. Y/N would tease him that he had ruined the fancy couch with how often he would crash on it, but sometimes she would sleep out there with him. Or Andie. Or even both.

The nightmares slowly stopped. And what became a week…and then two…turned into a month.

A month of them practically being a family.

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

“Shh, we have to be quiet,” she whispered. “Very quiet.”

Andie was currently sitting on Bucky’s lap, eyeshadow brush in hand. She turned towards Sam, dabbing for a bit of color from the eyeshadow palette he was holding for her. Sam was grinning from ear to ear. He watched the sparkly blue and grey colors get swiped across the sleeping soldier’s nose as if Andie were trying to create a mask. A very messy one. “Can I just say,” he whispered, looking back at Y/N as she started piling breakfast on a plate for them. “Thank you for inviting me. This has been absolutely fantastic.”

“Shush!”

Y/N smirked, pressing a finger to her lips as Andie finished her work. The tween leaned back as Sam pulled out his phone to take a photo. He wanted to save this memory for…well, for blackmail. “Do you two realize how hard it is for that man to sleep,” Y/N asked, brow raised. The two shared a look before shrugging.

And Sam took his photo.

The light flashed, waking Bucky up with an irritated grunt. Wide, bright blue eyes were wide open as he sat up. The movement was abrupt, pulling a squeal from Andie. He gripped the back of the couch with his metal arm, wild eyes and hair making him look something similar to a caveman. Sam fell back, laughing and holding his sides as Andie burst into a fit of giggles. It took Bucky only a couple of seconds to realize that, between the two and their items, he had been punked.

“You have got to be kidding me,” he muttered, groaning and leaning back on the couch. He threw his head back, looking at an upside-down Y/N. “Seriously, Doll, you couldn’t help me out?”

Y/N barely hid her smile, holding up a plate piled high with pancakes. “Was a little busy.”

“Wait,” Sam said as he lifted Andie off Bucky and set her on the floor. She took off running, hopping on the barstool, and digging into her breakfast. He followed Bucky into the bathroom, knowing the guy wasn’t going to actually keep the makeup on his face. Leaning against the doorframe, Sam asked, “Does this mean you two are official? Since you’re calling her ‘doll’ now?”

Bucky didn’t say anything as he scrubbed at his face. Water splashed on his shirt and in his hair as his skin turned bright pink. Huffing softly, he grabbed the nearest towel and dried his face. There were still sparkly remains, but at least the color was gone. “Um…” He glanced back towards the main area of the apartment, sighing softly. “No. I call her ‘doll’ ‘cause she’s my girl and I’m serious about her. But as for titles or whatever – that’s all up to Y/N.”

Sam watched him for a second, smirking. “’M proud of ya, man. You’ve really grown into the whole domestic lifestyle.”

Bucky snorted. “Shut up.”

“Nope, not going to happen. You’re stuck with me and my big mouth.”

Bucky took a slow breath, shaking his head as he joined his two favorite girls in the kitchen. He smiled when Y/N handed him the stack of pancakes. “Are these the infamous ones?” He raised an eyebrow as he took a seat next to Andie.

“Nope, those I’m saving.”

“For…?”

“Well,” Y/N leaned against the counter. “That’s what Andie wanted to talk to you about.”

“Our road trip!” Andie grinned, quickly snatching a pancake off Bucky’s plate moments before he could dowse them in syrup. Bucky raised an eyebrow at her, eyeing the pancake like he was about to steal it back.

Until he realized what they were talking about.

“Your road trip?” Bucky looked back at Y/N. “The one – “

“Where we go visit my cousin.” Y/N smiled, taking a sip from the coffee in her hands.

He could see the steam curl and twist in the air. With her smile, it was such a simple moment, but easily one of his favorites. However, Bucky frowned, knowing how important that tradition was to Y/N. “Are you sure you would want me there?”

Y/N smirked as she took another sip, shrugging. “This one isn’t up to me.”

“Nope, every December I get to pick if someone comes with and the movie and all of the snacks.” Andie hopped off her stool, carrying her plate to the sink and washing it off.

“So do I get to come,” Sam asked, stealing her seat.

A chorus of “No’s” filled the apartment.

“Man, you guys are mean.”

Andie giggled and, with a mouthful of pancakes, told Bucky, “But you can.”

-.-.-.-.-.-

“So…are you going to go?”

Bucky didn’t bother looking up from the punching bag. He struck again and again, flashes of Ethan’s, Zemo’s, and Quentin’s faces appearing with every hit. The truth was, he didn’t know if he should. He wanted to. He wanted to share that moment, but if he did, what did that imply? What impression was that leaving on Andie? And did Y/N really want him there?

“Bucky.”

Steve caught the bag, his head popping out from around it. “Don’t ignore me.”

“I’m trying to get a workout in.”

“Good for you, but this needs to be talked about, don’t you think?”

Bucky huffed, shoulders dropping as he took a step away from the bag. “What about it?”

“You know what. I’ve been friends with you for a long ass time.”

Bucky chuckled and shook his head. “I want to.”

“So what’s the but?”

“Y/N’s wanted to take everything slow and I have been respecting that. But respecting that also means thinking about the fact that this is their tradition. Even if it’s Andie’s choices, I need to think about what Y/N wants. One of the first stories she ever told me was about this thing. It’s – It’s her favorite moment – her only moment – with Andie that hasn’t been destroyed by some outside force.” He sat on the edge of the nearest mat, resting his arms on his knees and looking up at the blonde.

“You really think you’re going to be the guy to destroy that?” Steve raised a brow as he crouched in front of him. “Bucky, I can’t think of anybody better fit for that family. At all. I mean…Bucky, they’re what you need.”

“You think I don’t know that? I…” He snorted. “I figured that out the day we found Andie throwing M&M’s in Banner’s mouth.” Bucky ran his hands through his hair, pressing his forehead against his palms. His eyes were fixated on the ground as if it would swallow him whole or provide answers. He wasn’t sure which it was that he really wanted. Looking up, he finally explained, “I can’t tell if I’m what they need. Long term.”

Steve silently watched him, realizing just how out of their element the two of them were. “Well…you won’t know unless you figure it out.”

-.-.-.-.-

It was that sentence that brought Bucky here – awkwardly standing in the middle of the Labor and Delivery floor with a bag of McDonald’s food and a frozen coffee. He remembered what Y/N had said about the coffee and cold keeping her awake. Shifting nervously from one foot to the other, he looked around. Damn it, he was an Avenger and he was freaking out because he was surrounded by pregnant women.

A lot of them.

And for some reason that made him so nervous.

“Well, there’s a familiar butt – ow! I mean…face.”

Bucky looked over his shoulder, surprised to see Ciara there with one of the other nurses. He was pretty sure that the nurse was the one who had gotten the “ow” out of her. But as surprised as he was, he was also relieved. He would have gotten lost in this place if she hadn’t made an appearance. “Ciara, right?”

“Yup, that’s me.” She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Something he wouldn’t have been expected. Noticing his puzzled expression, she chuckled and gestured to the outfit. “Not on duty. My sister is actually a couple doors down.”

“Oh! Uh – congratulations!”

Ciara giggled, gesturing for him to lower his voice. “Careful. There’s hormonal women on this floor. They don’t need to know a beefy super soldier’s here.” She led him further down the hall. “I’m guessing you’re here to see Y/N?” She glanced at the food. “Ugh. So not fair. I need a boyfriend to bring me unhealthy junk in the middle of the night.”

Bucky smiled, remembering the couple times it had been mentioned that she was a fan of “the Falcon”. He didn’t really see why, but to each their own. Maybe Y/N was right and they could be a good fit.

“I’ll get Y/N, but for now you can wait in here.”

Ciara led him inside another room. It was clearly set up to be the lunchroom for everyone. “Are you sure this is okay?”

“Yeah, of course. Just make yourself at home.”

Ciara left the room and Bucky looked around. The walls were covered with different’ things for the nurses. Motivational posters, updates, events coming up – the sort of thing he would expect. However, he still felt out of place. This was where nurses came to relax and eat, avoid patients and their crazy families. And he felt like he was intruding.

“Bucky?”

He turned and smiled when he saw Y/N step in. She was clearly confused. “I…” He held up the sack of food. “I thought we could talk.”

Y/N raised a brow, her eyes shifting from the Bucky to the food and back again. “Um…okay. Yeah.”

Silence fell between the pair as they sat across from each other. Y/N laid out the food on napkins and an apologetic smile graced her smile when she explained that plates didn’t exactly exist. It made him laugh. Why would he care? He just enjoyed seeing her. That was when it clicked.

This was what he wanted.

He wanted late night hospital visits. He wanted to take Andie to therapy and sometimes pick her up from school. Maybe create new traditions the older Andie got…

Hell, maybe even adopt Andie and marry Y/N. Someday. Maybe.

Bucky wanted and needed the long term.

“Y/N…” He already knew he was blushing. He could feel the heat radiating off his face. But he couldn’t chicken out now. “What do you want from this?”

She looked up, her hand stopping moments before she could take a bite of some fries. “Uh…I’m sorry, I don’t think I follow.” Dropping the food, Y/N interlaced her fingers and rest her chin on them.

Bucky took a slow, shaky breath. Why was this so hard? He remembered the night when he held Y/N. Then, he had talked. Eagerly and easily. Right now, he felt like he was a stumbling fool. “Andie invited me to your tradition.”

Y/N slowly nodded, grabbing the coffee and taking a sip. “Yeah. It’s Andie’s birthday. She picks the guests.”

Bucky choked on the breath he had taken, coughing slightly. Y/N watched him with eyes full of amusement. “Her - Her birthday?”

“Yeah,” she dragged out. “She’s turning twelve.”

Bucky stared, completely surprised. It was her birthday. She was turning twelve. It was – She wanted him there. She…They wanted him there? “The last time we talked about us, we were trying and taking things slow. This seems like it might be more than that.” He was trying keep himself from sounding too hopeful, but that’s what he wanted to be.

“You’re asking if we’re,” she paused, trying to find the right word. “Official? Over McDonald’s?”

“I hate that word.” Bucky groaned, falling forward on the table and hiding his head behind his arms. “I swear it wasn’t this damn hard in the forties,” he grumbled against the table, earning a laugh from Y/N.

She poked his head before lightly running her fingers through his hair. “Bucky, you’re pouting.”

“Frustrated. Not pouting.”

Y/N smiled and got up, moving around the table before sitting beside him. She straddled it, crossing her arms over the back of the chair. “Bucky,” she whispered. He tilted his head, meeting her gaze as she lightly brushed his hair out of his face. Small smile crossing her lips, she told him, “We’ve been official ever since you took Andie to see Ethan.”

Bucky immediately sat up, brow furrowing. “How did you – “

“A mom always knows,” she joked, only furthering his confusion. She laughed, tilting her head as she asked, “Did you really think Ross and Stark wouldn’t tell me that my daughter broke my ex-husband’s foot?”

Bucky winced. Maybe he should have anticipated that. “You aren’t mad?”

“Oh, I was. I was pissed and ready to scream at you. Tell you to never come near my family ever again. But then I talked to Sam.” She bit her lip and he could practically see the memories playing in her head. “This was a while ago. Back when he recommended Andie go to therapy.”

“You knew this whole time?”

Y/N shrugged. “He told me about how much you’ve been worried about us. How all you wanted was to help Andie confront the guy who abandoned her, but you did it in a safe environment. Where she was able to decide what happens. I – I have never met anyone who cared about Andie as much as I do. I still haven’t, but…” She smiled, her fingertips tucking his hair behind his ear. “You’re a close second.”

Bucky couldn’t believe he was hearing this right. Y/N believed how much he cared about Andie. She knew he just wanted to look out for her. “I’m not going to ask if we’re official because we aren’t in junior high.”

She snorted, the sound turning into a fit of giggles as she nodded. “Okay.”

“But…” Bucky turned to face her, tugging her chair closer. “We’re long term?”

Y/N raised a brow. “Is that something they would ask in the forties?”

The two laughed. As much as Bucky wanted to glare at her, he couldn’t bring himself to. “Shut up,” he muttered, pressing his forehead against hers. “I know how important this tradition is for you and I wasn’t going to invite myself along if you saw me as something short term. I don’t want to mess with your memories.”

Y/N rolled her eyes. “Buck, you already have. I…hate thinking about a time before you were in our lives. As chaotic as it has been, I really like having you around. A lot.” She rest her chin on the back of the chair. “I could definitely skip the whole getting kidnapped, traumatic events, and seeing my daughter risk taking a bullet,” she said, trying to hide her nervousness around a chuckle. “But I like you. I like you in our lives. And I would really, really like it if you decided to come with us. So to answer your question, yes. I think we are long term.”

Bucky couldn’t stop the smile that appeared on his face. It practically hurt his cheeks with how big it was. He kissed her, unable to convey what he was feeling through anything else. His hand moved to the back of her head as she kissed him back. It was sweet. Simple. Perfect. They fit.

Their broken pieces fit.

Giggling against his lips, she asked, “So does this mean you’re coming with us?”

Bucky laughed, nodding as he brushed his nose against hers. “I would love to.”

She kissed him again. “Good. Now, I am going to steal some fries and the rest of my drink because I have to get back to work.” Grinning, she kissed his nose. “See you later.”

Bucky watched as she left the room. He knew he had the biggest, dopiest smile on his face, but there was no way in hell that he wanted to wipe it away. This was working.

When the door closed, he looked back at the mess they had made and quickly cleaned up. He didn’t need to stress out any of the nurses if they came in here to see that left behind. Tossing the last of it in the trashcan, he paused for a second. It was going to be Andie’s birthday.

It was going to be Andie’s birthday and he had nothing to give her.

“Shit…”

He leaned against the table, immediately unsure of what to do. What do you get an eleven-year-old? A girl? A mutant? His shoulders slumped as he realized just how out of practice he was. And Andie wasn’t exactly a normal kid in any sense of the word. She deserved the world. She deserved something no other kid could have.

Well, there was an option.

He pulled out his phone as he slipped out of the room. It was easy enough for him to leave the Labor and Delivery ward unnoticed despite Ciara’s teasing earlier. “Come on, pick up, kid,” he muttered as he took the stairs.

“Barnes? What are you doing calling me?”

Bucky smirked when he heard that voice. That very familiar voice. “Shuri, it’s been a while.”

“Damn right it has. And you don’t even like phone calls. So I’ll ask again. What are you doing calling me?”

Bucky grinned, glancing up the way he had come. “I have a favor to ask.”

-.-.-

@buckyssoul

@mr-robot-x

@booktease21

@amnahs9695

@lets--be-honest

@niahmariec

@purplekitten30

@mishaandthebrits

@maggyme13

@littleredstarfish

@gypsydraig​

@rinthehufflepuff​

[all-the-heart-you-cannot-see]

Mulan 2020 review

This is the first Disney remake i've cared enough about to review it, and i can only describe it in one word: dissapointing.

Spoilers ahead.

Now lets start with the things is did like!

I think the movie looks very beautiful, it's a nice color palette and the locations are all stuning, the set desing and photography is really good, i think this is the only aspect in which this movie manages to outshine the animation. It's never boring or ugly to look at, and im a sucker for a nice aesthetic.

I also liked Mulan, her internal conflict was nice, it showed she was a true warrior at heart, yes she was brave, and loyal, but she knew she wasn't true because she was being dishonest, the fact that it made her uneasy to know she was lying showed she had a good understanding of what it meant to be a warrior. I liked that.

I liked the ending and the reference at the begining to the original ballad with Mulan and the rabbits, i liked the action scenes, they were nice and i really, really liked the mid portion of the movie, it was the time i was the most entertained, the training part is the best part, the begining and the end were kind of meh for me.

As for the supporting cast, Shang was okay (i know his name is not Shang, i just dont remember how to write it) he didn't bother me, i like the ending they gave them, im annoyed by the fact thay they tried to made it seem like he knew she wasn't a man since the begining, we all know Shang was bisexual, Disney.

The witch and Mulan are sapphics and no one can change my mind, i liked her motivations, she just wanted to live in a society that would accept her for who she was, but the way she died was stupid, if she was going to die it had to be more epic than that, an arrow through the back while trying to save Mulan was lame (and also the death of a love interest, you can't fool me)

Now, with the rest of the soldiers we enter territory of what i didn't like.

When i first watched the trailers i was super excited. I love the animated version, but i was all on board with a live action Mulan that was all about war, battles, epicness and cool action scenes. I didn't want this to be a copy or try to emulate the original. My favorite part of maleficent is that is a new take on the original movie, it is not a afraid to go away from the source material, now i know Mulan is widely more loved than Aurora so they were probably scared of making it too different (also is disney kids movie) but if you took Mushu, grandma and the songs away, then go all the way.

I wanted an epic Mulan movie, i think the fact that it was princess movie held it back. Yao, Cricket and Ling only reminded me of the fact that this wasnt charming like the animated movie. If they wanted to keep them they needed to give them more screen time. Those characters are developed in the songs on the original, we don't have that in this version and honestly i don't think the cast had great chemestry together.

Mulan and Shang sure, but Mulan and the rest of the soldiers felt distant from each other which didn't help to sell me on them. I didn't find them annoying or unnecesary, just underwelming because everytime she said Yao my mind went to animated Yao (and how little we had seen about movie Yao to justify the playful i'll kill you myself banter).

The other thing i didnt like was the Chi thing. Like i know it is a thing in chinese martial arts, but part of the appeal of the original is that Mulan learns to be a great warrior like the other soldiers, there is nothing inherently special about her, she is just a girl in the army trying to bring honor to her family. When i saw kid Mulan do the back flip off the roof on the first scene i rolled my eyes so hard i could see my brain.

If they wanted to show Mulan wanst content with her role in society, little Mulan chasing the chicken was enough, the crazy ninja skills just took away from the experience in my opinion. The message of the original ballad is that you can't distinguish a rabbit from a female rabbit (i dont know the word in english for it, lol in spanish is a liebre from a conejo) when they are runing side by side, the message is you too little girl at home can be a fierce warrior, by giving Mulan an innate magic chi power they mess all that up. It was the WORST part of the movie, honestly without it i would like it more, even without the movie being an epic battle against invadors.

Keep the Chi, i dont care, its part of chinese traditions, but dont make it fucking magical, it didn't need to be.

Finally the ending. Mulan's magic kicks were cool to see in action scenes, but they were an awful way of killing off the villain, it was so anticlimatic i was legit waiting for the dude to actually catch the arrow and keep on fighting Mulan. I guess because it is a kids movie they couldnt have Mulan put a sword through his chest, but still, a cooler death would've been fine. I guess they wanted to trick us into thinking it was good by not having him die by falling into the fire thingy, but no Disney, death by arrow kick is just as lame.

Im ngl i missed the part where the emperor says to Shang to go after the girl but it wasnt something that made me like the movie less, i just wish they had made it different enough so i wouldnt have to miss those things. Like i said im okay with her and Shang not being really endgame, if they had Shang meet her at the village then i would've wished grandma was there so that was a smart move on their part.

Overall i think kids will enjoy this movie, but the rest of us who grew up with Mulan will just be dissapointed, this movie had great potential, i think the people who made it actually liked the character and cared about making a good movie, the fact that they had to combine action with a princess movie i think did not work in their favor.

I don't want to be too harsh on the movie, because i think they managed to give Mulan as a character something new, and im also a huge Disney simp, but if im honest, its probably a 6/10.

[dailymilesmorales]

The life of a teenaged superhero is never easy, but it’s about to get a lot harder for the young vigilantes of the Marvel Universe. March’s Outlawed one-shot introduces a new status quo that has the government cracking down on superheroes under the age of 21, and these events will have repercussions across the publisher’s entire line. Written by Eve L. Ewing with art by Kim Jacinto, colorist Espen Grundetjern, and letterer Clayton Cowles, Outlawed sees the country rocked by a tragedy involving the Champions that compels politicians to take drastic actions. The set-up is reminiscent of 2006’s Civil War, which similarly began with a tragedy surrounding a young superhero team leading to federal restrictions on superheroes.

“Civil War was meant to be (among other things) about curtailing personal liberties in the name of safety,” says Outlawed editor Alanna Smith. “Outlawed is tapping into different social anxieties. There’s been a lot of debate lately about the role of the youth in our society—whether they should partake in activism, how much their voices should be valued, whether they’re old and learned enough to have a say in their future, and what responsibility the older generations have to keep them safe. When you boil it down, Outlawed is about the conflict that arises when widespread decisions that affect an entire generation are made by people outside that generation, while ignoring the input of people who will have to live with those decisions. In this case, there are real, heartfelt concerns on both sides of the conflict that make it that much more complicated for our heroes to overcome. It’s not a problem they can punch.”

“To me, this story isn’t just about young people being in conflict with the government, but much bigger questions about what we ask of young people, how they’re expected to be independent sometimes and subservient other times,” says Ewing. “Every era of history brings new challenges, and young people today are coming of age in the era of mass shootings, the era of the climate crisis—things that in some ways are unprecedented in history. Yet we often don’t recognize their wisdom and their insights. It’s like we get above a certain age and lose all empathy. I just wanted to explore that tension, and them being superheroes really ups the stakes because they’re literally out there saving lives every day, but aren’t seen as full people or full citizens. And, at the same time, maybe the law is a good idea? Maybe it really is for everyone’s protection? It’s intentionally kind of morally ambiguous.”

“Eve is really skilled at getting into the psyche of our younger characters without pulling punches,” says Smith. “Her run on Ironheart had a really dark undercurrent of coping with loss and self-doubt that elevated it beyond what I think people expected. Outlawed needed someone who could write about kids dealing with a world that’s turned against them and make it feel visceral and real and urgent. She brought that intensity, and she’s also incredible at capturing the charm and personality that has made these characters so beloved in recent years.”

“I feel really grateful that the editorial team saw how much I enjoy writing adolescent characters and decided to give me this opportunity,” says Ewing. “I used to teach middle school, and as a teenager myself I was really angsty and dramatic but also, I think, had a lot of genuine emotional and intellectual perspectives, as all young people do. So I’ve tried to bring those experiences to bear in the way I wrote Ironheart, and the way I wrote Spider-Man and the Unstoppable Wasp when they paid a visit to the Ironheart world, and with Marvel Team-Up I got to really explore questions about what it means to be an adolescent because in that story, not only was I writing Ms. Marvel, but Kamala and Peter Parker actually switched bodies. So Peter had to remember what it was like to be a teenager. In a sense, I’ve kind of been in his shoes, putting myself in the head of a 15- or 16-year-old and trying to make sense of what it’s like in there, with real respect and care. So I’m excited to keep flexing that muscle.”

“When we first started talking about this story I was really excited about it from a character perspective, because I love the Champions, I love what Mark Waid and Jim Zub and Grek Pak and Jeremy Whitley and Saladin Ahmed have done with these characters individually and as a team,” says Ewing. “And I was also really excited about it from a sociological perspective, because I think the story presents some big questions about young people and politics and society and citizenship and government control and surveillance and what we think of as safety. All of that. But I did not anticipate that the powers that be would want to make this into a more far-reaching story that will really ripple across the MU. So I’m very humbled by that and definitely working up my nerves to just try to tell a good story that’s worthy of all that.”

This exclusive first look at Outlawed #1 highlights the complicated ethical dynamics at the core of this story, showing the perspectives of both adult and teen heroes. Jacinto’s dramatic body language and Grundetjern’s bold color palette charges these talking heads with emotion and urgency, and the final page of this excerpt highlights how well they capture heroes in action. “Kim’s style has evolved in really dynamic and exciting ways in the past few years,” says Smith. “I wanted someone who could draw intense, visceral action and also someone who would make our younger characters look like total badasses, and Kim delivered on all fronts. He’s got flair, and this is a book that needed flair. We’ve also got Espen Grundetjern killing it on colors, and longtime Champions mainstay Clayton Cowles on lettering, so you’re going to want to feast your eyes on these pages!”

Jacinto’s artwork has gone through some significant shifts over the years, and he has a talent for adjusting his style to match the tone of his projects. “I’m trying a different approach on this book,” says Jacinto. “My taste typically leans towards a dark and gritty style so I changed it a bit and I’m experimenting on this book. Since most of the characters are young superheroes, I wanted to give the characters more energy and dynamic poses. This book made me explore new ideas and go out my comfort zone and that excites me the most. Eve is very easy and fun to work with and straightforward. She will tell you if something is off and that makes it easy.”

“We’re bringing the next generation of heroes to the forefront in a major way and swinging for the fences in terms of story, stakes and scale,” says Smith. “Outlawed introduces an ongoing status quo that will be reflected in books across the line—almost every active character who’s under 21 (and even a few who are older) will be affected by the decisions made in Outlawed, and they won’t all agree on whether the new world order is good or bad. But there are real, serious consequences now for those who go against the ruling passed down in Outlawed, and it’ll interfere with their lives in a way they’ve never experienced, leading to some really interesting stories.”

[lostsummerdayz]

Lost Summer Deep Dive - Christie Monteiro Part 1

An In-Depth Look At A Capoeirista Forgotten By Lore

by Nay Holland

When one thinks of capoeira, it is impossible to mention the impact video games had in bringing the art into the public eye. Sure, there have been movies, books, and capoeira schools for as long as the art existed, but video games were arguably the form of media which made the art popular. The same could be said for its representation in video games.

While you had capoeiristas like Richard Meyer and Bob Wilson in the Fatal Fury series, it wouldn’t be until years later that a rich Brazilian capoeirista known as Eddy Gordo would set the bar. No, he wouldn’t just set the bar, he would be the bar himself.

In arcades during the year of 1997 and home consoles the following year, many a player felt rage from a single man. A man whose flips, spins, handstands, and kicks, would bring awe to those who played him, and frustration to those who fought against it. He was both famous for moves never seen before in a 3D fighter, and infamous for being the definition of “cheap.”

Regardless how you felt about him, there was no denying that Eddy was different from the rest of the cast. In a game where homages to Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Tiger Mask were evident, there was nothing who was comparable to Eddy at the time. His unique, yet slightly exaggerated, homage to capoeira brought new fans into the art. Capoeira became a popular buzz word for fighting enthusiasts almost overnight.

But was Eddy always considered to be the face of capoeira?

After Tekken Tag Tournament, Eddy was noticeably absent from the main roster. In place of him was a young Brazilian woman by the name of Christie Monteiro. A fresh face for a game that represented a new era in Tekken, her moves were very similar to Eddy’s.

In fact, apart from her normal throws, her movelist were identical to Eddy’s in every way. Eddy being a palette swap for her in Tekken 4 and Tekken 5 brought the “Christie is Eddy” angle to its head. At the time, although Eddy was included in these two games, Bandai Namco was trying to push Christie as the new face.

At the very least, they were trying to push a woman as the capoeira representative from the very beginning.

In a 1998 CVG interview, following the release of Tekken 3, the development team discussed how the concept of Eddy came about. When asked how the team went about designing its roster of characters, the team replied with the following.

“A good example is Eddy, since he wasn't planned to be the character you see at first. The development team wanted to include a character who used Capoeira, so the idea was passed on to the artist team. Mr Kimoto requested the artist to make a female character for Capoeira. However the artist said it was too difficult to design a female character who used Capoeria, so there came Eddy.” 

It wouldn’t be until Dark Resurrection that Eddy had his own slot on the roster for the first time since Tekken Tag Tournament.

With the separation of the two characters at last, Christie’s push would be put on the backburner in lieu of Eddy’s importance to the story. Christie’s relevance came to a screeching halt in Tekken 7 as Eddy was one of the final main roster characters revealed without a Brazilian woman in sight.

NO!!!

Anyways, Christie wouldn’t make another official appearance until the mobile Tekken game, but considering the mobile Tekken game is literally a dump of old characters that didn’t make the cut in Tekken 7, that’s hardly a victory.

I started writing this back in early 2018, and since then, we’ve gotten Marduk back from the graveyard!

However, I’ve long since stopped holding out for hope. If she shows up, she shows up. If she doesn’t, well. It still won’t dilute the amount of love I have for this girl. Hopefully by the end of this I can shed some light on what makes Christie amazing to me.

So, what happened? How did the one who was pushed to be the babyface of capoeira after Eddy’s origin ended up becoming the queen of the indies known as mobile Tekken? What is it about Christie that makes me admire her as a character? Well, let’s start with her design.

Appearance

So, imagine the year 2001. You’re in the arcades and you see Tekken 4 for the first time. The attract video plays and you’re in wow at the graphics. Especially considering this is the first Tekken on a new engine in the arcade at least. Then suddenly you see this mami twirling and making sensual poses, flashing the biggest grin.

It was at this point you dumped quarters in the machine. Don’t lie. This totally didn’t happen to me at an arcade while I was in the Poconos. Nope.

I remember the rumors at the time. Everyone thought the designers took inspiration from Tyra Banks and Harada himself de-confirmed this.

Wearing a low-cut green floral blouse that cuts above her midriff, black leather hotpants with frills at the end, black fingerless gloves, and Spartan-style sandals, Christie’s primary outfit was made to turn heads and accentuate her features. As with most outfits and hair designs in this game, Christie’s design was also made to show off the new graphics engine for Tekken. Christie’s long brunette hair, coupled with her loose-fitting clothing, flows with the wind with every kick and acrobatic motion. Her design was made for comfort in mind as well as ease of movement.

Christie’s competitor’s outfit is a brassiere-style top with silk training pants and green fingerless gloves. Wrapped around her waist is a capoeira belt, much like Eddy’s competitor’s outfit. Whether this is an actual representation of her rank, or just a design choice, is up in the air. I’d like to say it’s the latter, though I believe a purple belt is a high ranking in capoeira.

Comparing Christie and Eddy’s competitor’s outfit, they aren’t too different from each other. In fact, side by side they appear like partners rather than a radical difference.

Following her debut, her primary outfit changes from a green to a light purple top and black to white colored hotpants. The top of her competitive gear is more confined and stylish while retaining the same effect as it did before. As the series progressed, her butterfly motif became more prevalent in her clothing.

With such a dynamic taste in style, one would think that her personality is just as bubbly, and you’d be correct to think so.

Personality

Pointing at her opponent with finger guns and firing off in their direction, Christie enters her ginga stance with a declaration…

“Here we go!”

Oozing with confidence no matter who she is fighting against, Christie never backs down from an opportunity to show off her studies in Capoeira arts.

Christie makes it clear to her competitors that if they take her lightly, they will pay for it in a loss.

Perhaps one of my favorite exchanges with another character is when she fights Bruce in Tekken 5. Bruce exclaims that the “competition has gotten easier on the eyes,” in which Christie taunts him in return. When Bruce questions if her capoeira can stand up to [his Muay Thai], she replies with a sultry tone of confidence.

Ultimately, Christie would win the bout and she toys with him, saying that his lack of rhythm will be the reason why he will never defeat her.

It’s exchanges like this, as well as her other intro pose where she blows her opponent a kiss and declares them to “go easy on her,” that she uses her looks to her advantage. It’s almost as a form of intimidation, being caught off guard by swift kicks coming at you at every direction while she emerges the victor, leaving the battle almost unscathed.

There is a depth to this. When things get serious, Christie has a sense of justice within the confines of her own capability. This is commonly brought up whenever Eddy runs off headfirst into danger.

In the same game, when she runs into Eddy, she doesn’t back down from fighting Eddy to save her grandfather’s life. Win or lose, she will fight her hardest for those who she loves, even if it means fighting the one person, she loves the most.

She’s also highly emotional as an individual as evident when she shows her disappointment at the end of her winning the 4th Iron Fist Tournament. This changes to a complete 180 as she sees the one person who she has been looking for all tournament, immediately returning to her bubbly cheerful self. A dark version of this trait shows when she is overburdened with emotion to the point of tears upon discovering that her grandfather passed away.

This combination of a flirtatious happy-go-lucky capoeirista who revels in her fights and a woman who is bound to protect those who she holds dear comes into full force in Tekken 6. Although in the overall canon she takes a backseat, controlling her in Scenario mode reveals hidden layers about her character.

One of the hypothetical scenarios that is brought up is when Christie and Eddy do cross paths in Scenario mode. If the former approaches Eddy, he will exclaim that she shouldn’t be here in high concern. If the latter approaches Christie, she will appear angry that he has, once again, decided to be inconsiderate in being brash for considering working with “Public Enemy #1.”

Both Eddy and Christie wish to protect each other, yet they do so by ironically placing themselves into harms way. While on a larger scale, they are two small fish in the giant ocean that is the Mishima bloodline story. If one zooms in on the microscope, you see two troubled young adults who wish to live in peace. One is bound by vengeance while the other is bound by duty.

Story

While Tekken 4 is the first time we see and hear of Christie, that game is not the first time we hear of her story. In Tekken 3’s prologue, Eddy was incarcerated after being framed for the murder of his father. During his sentence, he learns the art of capoeira from an elderly master. Up until his release, Eddy perfected the art of capoeira and entered the third King of Iron Fist tournament to exact

That elderly man was none other than…

Well…

The old man never had an official name. The Tekken wiki has his name as

DENSETSU NO KAPOEIRA MASUTAA

or the “Legendary Capoeira Master.”

For a while, the urban legend regarding his name was “Ho Chi Myong,” but unlike the Tara Banks inspiration, this wasn’t ever confirmed by Bandai Namco. I don’t think it ever will.

The one thing that was confirmed, however, was that the

DENSETSU NO KAPOEI---I’m sorry.

The elderly capoeira master was Christie’s grandfather. How did Christie herself know capoeira? Through Eddy, as a form of mutual respect for her grandfather teaching him the art. Suddenly Christie and Eddy having identical moves isn’t farfetched.

However, I always wondered why Christie’s grandfather never taught her capoeira himself? The obvious answer would be because he, too, was imprisoned. Still, you’d consider that maybe he would have taught her when she was a child or began to teach her. Who knows?

At the end of the King of Iron Fist Tournament 3, Eddy finds out that it was Kazuya Mishima who orchestrated the events which led to his father’s murder and his own imprisonment. Since then, he has sought out to find Kazuya and settle the score on his own terms.

Enter Tekken 4, where a concerned Christie realizes Eddy has gone missing. In her response, she spends the 4th Iron Fist Tournament looking for Eddy, sensing trouble brewing on the horizon.

Honestly this was Eddy’s fault to begin with. Had Eddy not told Christie that he was going to avenge his father’s death, she wouldn’t have bothered to put herself in harm’s way. However, Christie’s story had to start somewhere yeah?

In the end, Eddy doesn’t find Kazuya, but, if we take Christie’s ending in Tekken 4 as canon, we can deduce some details.

Christie wins the iron fist tournament, incredibly bemused, as she failed at her original goal in locating Eddy. However, seeing a familiar face in the crowd, she runs over to Eddy in a full embrace. Eddy appears in this ending with a cast on his arm, so it is assumed that his progress in finding his father’s murderer ended prematurely. Even so, despite his lack of success, he still shows up to his girl’s victory match in support. What a romantic.

Several months later, tragedy strikes. Christie’s grandfather is inflicted with an illness and the race to find enough money to pay for the operation begins. In the end, no matter who wins the tournament, they use their prize money to pay for the operation which turns out to be a success. Christie, Eddy, and her grandfather are all seen at a park practicing capoeira and everyone lives happily ever after, right!?

Unfortunately, not.

Several years later and the climate is different. Jin Kazama wages war against the world and it turns out that neither Christie nor Eddy was able to win the tournament after all.

Running out of time and resources, Jin makes a deal with Eddy. If Eddy works for him and helps exact Jin’s vengeance against Kazuya, then Jin will help pay for the operation. Considering this as an opportunity to become in direct contact with Kazuya, the murderer of his father, it’s a win win for Eddy.

He didn’t want to be a part of this war, but for the safety of the one person who was a father figure for him and the chance to kill the one who has caused him years of torment, he will take up a gun for Jin.

So, where does this leave Christie? Back to where we once were in Tekken 4, on the lookout for Eddy and her grandfather.

Do you see where I’m getting at now? “As the series progressed, Christie’s role became diluted?”

The sad part is that Christie is not the only character to suffer through this “character dilution.” The4thSnake’s video on Asuka Kazama goes over the same points that I could ever make, so please give that video a watch when you can. In Tekken 6, if it wasn’t Mishima related, it was on the backburner.

Once again, both parties are unsuccessful. Christie never finds a cure for her grandfather’s illness and he succumbs. Eddy is deceived by Jin, refusing to hold his end of the bargain, and is unable to save his master’s life. While visiting his grandfather’s grave, Christie discovers Eddy.

Instead of a warming reunion, Christie, in a fit of rage and sadness, slaps him while demanding where he was. In response, Eddy stands there, motionless, as he throws his Mishima Zaibatsu pin to the ground.

This is where Christie’s story ends. Officially.

What began as a bright young capoeira student ended a grieving shell of a person, thanks to the dishonesty of Mishimas and Eddy for pulling a Knuckles and believing Eggman---Jin Kazama.

If we look at the Tag 2 endings and assume, they take place after 6, Eddy takes a page out of King’s book and opens up a capoeira school for orphaned children. After some time passes, he embarks on a trip to become the world greatest stuntman the Mishima Zaibatsu has ever seen!

No of course not he’s going to confront his father and master’s murderers of course! What else would Eddy POSSIBLY do at this point!?

In Christie’s ending, as a continuation, she catches wind of this and chases Eddy, but, as history tends to repeat itself, she’s too late. Eddy is already on the train.

Some. Things. Never. Change.

At least she was spared a grim fate, unlike our friend here.

Conclusion

So. Where do we go from here? From the beginning, we know that Eddy is an integral part of Christie’s story. However, there are signs in her design that shows she can hold her own, both in a fight and in her sense of justice.

I recommend anyone to play through Scenario mode with all of the available roster and not just Lars, but in Scenario mode, Christie has a sense of justice that almost felt refreshing. It wasn’t just simply “where’s Eddy,” but it was also “I have to stop the messed up things from going on in the world”

Earlier I posted a photo where she confronts Eddy for working with the Mishimas and she has no qualms in defeating him to knock sense into him. I also mentioned the confrontation between Bruce and Christie, which is just about non-canon as far as Tekken 6 is confirmed. They treat their encounter as if it was the first time they’ve ever met. Bummer.

But there are signs of life for this character and when it shows, it’s refreshing to see. Christie is not the only character who suffers from this, but she is the one who is marred by the reputation of “always being in Eddy’s shadow.”

When discussion is brought up on why she shouldn’t be in the game? “Eddy is already in there.”

When the game throws her into a repeat storyline for the third straight game in the series? “Eddy is already there.”

Why is Christie out and about? “Her grandfather, but Eddy is there as well.”

Part of the reason why I considered myself a Christie main is because Christie is an underdog in the Tekken universe as well as within the competitive scene.

The irony here is that Christie was meant to replace Eddy, but the inverse happened.

One day, Christie can exist without having to worry about being in Eddy’s shadow. A fan can dream. Until then, I’ll always consider her my favorite fighting game character so there’s no replacing that at least.

There will be a Part 2 to this as there’s one key game that she’s a part of where she does regain some of that luster I wish she had in the main series. A game that is largely underrated but a game where Christie has had her moment in the sun.

Stay tuned for Part 2 soon! If you weren’t sick of me talking about Christie and made it this far, congrats! Stick around for the follow-up!

[hitodama89]

Because I’m still not over what a mind-boggling disaster the whole process of creating that pixel animation from yesterday was, I actually want to share the painful details with you! Which is extremely unprofessional of me, as everyone who has felt any ounce of respect towards me or my art will absolutely lose it hahah, but the good thing is I’m not a professional so it doesn’t matter for real.

So, the beginning part I have already told: I drew the whole thing, looked at it and decided that I actually want to make it look good. There’s really no way to do that in pixel art without putting every shitty little pixel down individually, so that’s the method I used while redrawing 90 % of the thing (only some of the coloring could be saved). During this I redrew Näkki’s braid I think 4 times and the northern lights 2,5 times.

Then I once again looked at it and thought “man, this really would be neat as an animation”. The idea had been in my mind ever since the beginning, but I never intended to truly chase it. Well now I did, but because I’m an idiot the whole thing was on like 3 layers and I had to manually separate elements from each other to make anything work. (During this I actually made a cool discovery though! Gimp usually considers one layer as one frame of animation, but one layer folder is also just one frame! This made things so much easier.) First I made Näkki move, and then I added some slight movement to water, stars and the light effects on the ice. Then it was the northern lights which were really tedious... Because I sort of forgot that I had drawn a separate base form for them that I was supposed to be able to edit easily. Whoops. But what can I say: at this point the whole thing was already in three separate files: the first one contained a non-pixel sketch and reference images, the second one was the actual pixelated piece and the third one, which I was now working with, had the animation. The base was on the second file, so of course I never remembered it existed!

But no matter, the thing was now basically ready to go! So I once again did the mistake of looking at it... And realized the animation wasn’t paced the way I wanted. (This is when I posted the preview image.) Näkki’s breathing looked too fast, and slowing down the whole thing looked just awkward. I was afraid I’d have to make a couple of new frames for it, but after sleeping a night I decided I’d instead duplicate all the frames and make Näkki and the background elements move at different paces. That seemed like a good compromise... In theory. In practice? I would’ve survived with so, so much less if I’d just added the two frames like I originally meant to.

How would I even describe the mess that followed... Even though I had only 3-4 layers in one layer folder (GOD why didn’t I separate things even more than I did?!) some of them had several separate objects moving in different paces. It was a total nightmare and if I had to explain where everything is in like a month, I would likely not understand it even myself. =‘D The stars and the ice effects had three frames that went back and forth and the water had three frames but it looped instead. The northern lights had... Four frames? They also went back and forth, just like Näkki who had only three frames. But Näkki’s frames had a rhythm of 2-2-4 frames instead of the normal 1-1-1. Then there was also Näkki’s breath clouds. First there was maybe 5 frames of them, but when I doubled the frame count I drew more in-betweens for them. In the end it looked off because they were so close to Näkki who moved much slower, so I actually deleted the new frames and made the original ones move on 2-2-2 speed.

At this point I have no idea how many things I had redrawn, because everything was constantly this close to just falling apart, so I had pretty much not enough brain power to keep count of them. But... Somehow I stumbled to the finish line! And saved it as a gif, watched it to see the possible damage the compression had done and... Was fairly satisfied. Except for the color of the sky, which originally had a gradient in it. The gradient absolutely didn’t work with gif palette, so I went back and made the sky colors more flat. Aaand that somehow left some weird stripes of the original sky color into a few frames. Okay, this is fine, I can deal with it. I delete the stripes. Now the water animation is completely fucked up! At this point I was too tired to make the connection between deleting the stripes and the messed up water, so all I could think was that I just hadn’t noticed the thing before and it was actually gif optimization that had done the damage. I go back and basically redo the animation without optimization, which takes about three tries because I am TIRED and always lose a frame or two somewhere and it’s easier to just do the thing over from the beginning than start searching what went wrong and where. Finally all looks as it should! Except now I have to change the sky again. And delete the stripes. And nOW THE WATER IS FUCKED AGAIN.

Now I finally realized that the water actually had some of the same color as the stripes I had deleted, and those pixels got accidentally deleted, too. I laugh and cry and correct my mistake. The thing is fucking finally finished! I go to sleep and decide to return to the shitshow tomorrow.

Next day I come to assess the damage, but fortunately I don’t find much. The most horrifying thing is that when I was already dead tired I had actually overwritten a wrong file at some point, so I had replaced the cryptid animation from last summer with a messed up version of this animation. (It was named “cryptid” and this was “colors”, so they were close to each other.) Thank god I had uploaded it to several places on internet, so I could just download it back to my computer! Besides that the animation still looked decent, but I still decide to fix one little thing with Näkki’s hair. I’ll do it, save it and upload it to dA. And realize I had forgotten to save it as an animation. Thank the merciful gods of the universe I hadn’t shut down Gimp just yet, because if I had done that I would’ve lost... A lot of work and would’ve needed to create the animation for 65674564236145th time.

Soooo yeah, that’s finally it. I saved the thing again as an animation and swore to never look at it too closely again, because doing that is apparently really, really cursed.

The lesson of the day: actually plan your animations in order to not end up like this! =‘‘‘D

[mysticsparklewings]

Powder Glass‪

Hu boy it's been busy around here lately, trying to get everything done by this or that deadline :P Even so, some of you may remember the Status Update I posted at the end of January showing off my prize pack from the Sketchiest Sketchbook contest I entered last year. It took a little bit, but I finally got around to playing with the Powder Pack and bio-degradable glitter, and this was pretty fun.   The main focus was, of course, the powders: Pinkest Pink, Loveliest Blue, Greenest Green, and Yellowest Yellow. Which are more or less CultureHustle's claim to fame. Per the (very simple) instructions on the packaging, you can mix the powers with your choice of water, an acrylic base, or linseed oil depending on if you want to use them as watercolors, acrylic paints, or oil paints. (I'm also assuming for watercolors that if you wanted to you could also mix them with some gum arabic, glycerin or honey, and add a white base/pigment if you wanted to try making gouache.) I've actually been wanting to make my own paint in some capacity for a while, but the steps involved in making proper watercolor paints (requiring mixing up bases and milling on a glass surface, among other things) is a little too intimidating and expensive to start for me, so being able to just mix some powder with water sounded like a much more convenient way to get a similar experience. And it was actually as simple as it sounds. I just scooped out a little of each powder onto a palette, added a few drops of water, then mixed the two using a brush. Once I had the four pure colors mixed up, I got a little wild and decided to use a little of the pink and yellow powder to mix up an orange, and a little of the pink and blue to mix up a purple. Then, of course, I swatched each of them out to see what they actually look like on paper. For the most part, they live up to their titles. The main thing of note is that a large part of their titles come from them being bright, neon/fluorescent colors. Likewise, they will never scan or photograph as quite the same colors that you see in person. Technology just hasn't managed to make screens that can display those colors properly yet. But let me assure you that, in-person, the yellow, orange, and pink are so intense they almost hurt to look at.   The green isn't as intense, but there's a chance I got a little more water in it than the others and that's part of why. The blue is nice, but it doesn't have the same wow-factor as the others. And, if I'm being totally honest, it's not really what I picture when I think of the "loveliest blue." I think of more of a deep, saturated sapphire color. This is more of a cyan or electric blue. I do have to say I absolutely love the purple the blue and the pink make together, though. It's a pretty unique shade that you don't really see in watercolors (and to a certain extent, art supplies as a whole) very often. And honestly, I'm kinda surprised that CultureHustle doesn't sell a pre-mixed purple powder for it. Unless I just missed a special edition one at some point. (I know they did a special edition orange one for Halloween, hence why I'm not saying the same thing about the orange.) They also make really, really pretty pastels when you water them down. They have almost a glowing quality to them, especially the yellow. And I did specifically use some neon/fluorescent watercolors I have on hand in my Master's Touch set, just to compare and make sure they were indeed unique and you can't get identical results from just any neon paints. To be fair, the results were similar, but these powder paints do have just a little bit more brightness and intensity to them. They're just more vibrant, somehow. That said, I don't think it's enough of a difference to be massively disappointed if you can't get your hands on the powders. At least as far as watercolors go. I don't have specific plans for more testing just yet, but I would like to play with these some more and see what else they can be used for or might be capable of. But as for this artwork, once I was done with my swatching and a couple blending tests, I went to work on a sketch so I could just play with the colorings and blending. This ended up being, as you can see, an hourglass. It's fairly simple and I thought it would be fairly nice to just kind of let the paints flow to color the sand inside. And it also kind works out since the paints are originally in the form of a powder, similar to sand. (Hence where the lame title came from ) Once that was done, I inked the sketch with my navy Gelly Roll, since they're waterproof and I was hoping for a blue-purple look, similar to a blacklight. I knew I had a Mermaid Marker that was the exact color I wanted, but I couldn't use it for the lines because 1. The ink is basically watercolor and would definitely not stay in place if I got close to my lines and 2. They bristle brush tips. I have a hard time doing clean/consistent lines with a fiber brush nib as it is, forget an actual brush. So I did the initial lines with the gel pen and then after I had the sand painted and dried, I filled in the hourglass rims to my liking, using a paintbrush and water to blend it out to look shaded, and then went back in with a fountain pen I put some of the mermaid marker ink into to thicker the lines in certain places. Then topped it off with some white gel pen for shine. For the powder paints, I did do a couple of test runs on a couple of copies of the lines I made while trying to make sure my inking muscles were warmed up before diving right into the final version. (A habit I'm trying to get myself more in to instead of just diving right in and then getting frustrated when I can't seem to ink anything to save my life.) So when I moved on to the final I had a pretty good idea of where I wanted certain colors to be and I could focus more on just getting them down and letting them flow and blend nicely. I also added in a couple of butterflies for ambiance and treated them the same way I did the hourglass Then I went in with the glitter, which I had somehow forgotten about until I was finishing up the hourglass. Since it is little tiny silver star shapes, I didn't want to treat it like normal glitter or my memories of how we did glitter in elementary school: Put glue down, dump glitter on glue, shake off excess. I carefully would pull out a few pieces of glitter at a time, let them fall somewhere inside the hourglass shape, and then once I had what seemed like enough glitter placed how I wanted it, I very carefully picked up each piece and dabbed the teeniest, tiniest bit of glue on the back of each and then placed them back down roughly where I had picked them up from. It was not a fast process, but it worked. Then, just to top it all off because I couldn't resist, I added a touch of blue pastel around the hourglass. Oh, and it really doesn't show up on the scan at all, but there is some white shine on the hourglass that was done with a white gel pen. It shows up more in-person since the watercolor paper is off-white. It's not the most elaborate or detailed artwork I've ever done, but I genuinely had fun with it and I do think it made for a fun experiment for the paints. And that's all I really wanted anyway. On to the next project! :D ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

[space-finally]

So! I’ve picked through clips and images of stuff we haven’t seen yet (as of Episode 5) to try to piece together what happens next.

Also I’m gonna be using the TV guide summaries for help placing which scene occurs in what episode. Notice, however, that the summaries only show up to episode 9, of the 13 total episodes.

Olan recently said that episodes 12 and 13 were still in production, so it’s very unlikely we’ll be seeing anything from those anyways.

Obvious spoilers below!

I’m assuming that any scene featuring Mrs. Goodspeed happens here:

(I mean, that’s not to say she COULDN’T appear in any later episodes)

...and since they’re escaping specifically Zargon slugs, we know that they MUST be in the “Dark Zone.”

Also, since she’s his mother, I’m assuming we’re gonna get a little background on Gary’s childhood, so we’re probably gonna see these as well:

So THESE must be Arachnitects, so anything they appear in I’m going to assume comes from this episode. Also, anything involving Titan-y exposition, since they seem to be from the same episode.

Since it also says that this is where Tribore starts to rebuild the resistance, then this is also when we see this clip:

I’m also assuming this happens at the beginning of the episode, since he’s not standing with the rest of the group in the Titans’ realm.

This seems to show an alternate meeting of Quinn and Gary, most likely Nightfall meeting “her” Gary.

Since it also mentions “evil KVNs,” then these are all from this episode too:

...As for the next two episodes (that we HAVE descriptions for) I can’t confidently place the rest of the clips anywhere. So, I’m just going to give a few of my best guesses.

This might belong in “The Notorious Mrs. Goodspeed,” since it appears in the same clip as the scene with the Zargon slugs, and the color palate seems to match the place where we saw her earlier. Maybe this place houses the next dimensional key, and she’s helping them get to it (when really she’s planning on keeping it for herself?) (I do think that we should find a dimensional key at least once every other episode, if we’re ever gonna get anywhere with those.)

Again, this might be the same episode because the color palatte seems to match. Then again, we see everybody here EXCEPT Tribore, so it could also be after he left, so “The Arachnarchitects” or after.

Could be from the same episode as the one before, or could not be. The color palate is the same, but everyone seems to have moved around. But they still could be? Maybe it’s from “Arachnarchitects,” if Chapter 8′s anything to go by travel to Titan-y places seems pretty...exhilarating. And, since Mooncake goes missing in that one, maybe the first picture is them heading towards, and the second is them heading back?

This may be exposition via flashback in “The Arachnarchitects,” OR this could be after Gary’s freed Bolo, and thus one of the latest clips chronologically that we’ve seen. In the case of the latter, hmmm.....doesn’t look good! Freeing him might have been a mistake! ‘’:)

Don’t have any concrete reason to think why, but I think this might be in the next episode, just ‘cause the first episode sorta set up these two having a conflict and we haven’t really seen them fighting at all since, so I’d hope to see that come back soon.

....At this point this could still be anywhere. Back before “The Happy Place” I thought for sure we’d be seeing it there, then I was sure it would be in “The Other Side,” so I’m kinda done guessing with this one. Either way, I’m not too worried, maybe this will be where Ash saves him with her powers.

Don’t really know where this could belong, other than maybe still in the Titan’s/Arachnarchitects’ place. Again, only saying ‘cause the background seems to match the color palette.

Don’t really have any frame of reference for these either. I thought the “who’s there” part was gonna be for the “unexpected guest” he ended up throwing the bachelor party for, but clearly not.

Still don’t know about this either? Looks like it COULD be inside the Crimson Light though

These are from the same sequence (Maybe there’s a dimensional key inside wherever he’s at?) Or they might be connected to these:

Maybe this is some sort of “trial” from the Titans? Or this could have to do with “The Remembered,” what with the mountain of skulls and the death motif implied by the title. I’m still not 100% sure though.

(Oh hey, you know who those guys kinda remind me of too?)

(though Olan confirmed that he’s neither a Titan nor a villain at all. So maybe he’s help, or like a weird “guide” sorta character?)

Could this be related too?

The “ghost” scene looks like it could belong either at a beginning or an end. Still, some super hella spooky foreshadowing there. (Kinda makes me think of the “Remembered”?

...And the last one we have a description for:

...Maybe this “way of communicating with Quinn” involves whatever this is?

And this looks like it could be located here:

(Notice what looks like a snowy mountain side on the left side there.) I’d previously guessed this was where the “happy place” would be, but I guessed wrong.

...This looks like it could be the remnants of Earth, so this would have to be one of the last couple of episodes, once they’ve made it inside. Otherwise, maybe once Gary’s able to communicate with Quinn, we actually switch to her POV for a bit and see how she’s holding up inside Final Space and just what she’s dealing with? Although it’d be more likely that they’d keep us mostly in the dark in that aspect, until she’s actually out.

This sort of looks like an “ending,” maaayybe this might be the end of “Mrs. Goodspeed,” with him upset that she’d leave him again? Or maybe it could be Gary upset and missing Quinn, and this is right before he figures out how he can communicate with her?

Don’t know where this could fit in either the “Dark Zone,” and the slugs are somewhere in here, or possibly it’s where they keep any lifeforms that manage to survive inside Final Space, and Quinn’s in one of these?