#No matter which program I get into I can probably do work in the other in actuality

[mintaka-iii]

My mental health can't possibly good if an essay on the found family trope gives me such an indescribable feeling of hollowness and yearning

[tofupixel]

⭐ So you want to learn pixel art? ⭐

🔹 Part 1 of ??? - The Basics!

Edit: Now available in Google Doc format if you don't have a Tumblr account 🥰

Hello, my name is Tofu and I'm a professional pixel artist. I have been supporting myself with freelance pixel art since 2020, when I was let go from my job during the pandemic.

My progress, from 2017 to 2024. IMO the only thing that really matters is time and effort, not some kind of natural talent for art.

This guide will not be comprehensive, as nobody should be expected to read allat. Instead I will lean heavily on my own experience, and share what worked for me, so take everything with a grain of salt. This is a guide, not a tutorial. Cheers!

🔹 Do I need money?

NO!!! Pixel art is one of the most accessible mediums out there.

I still use a mouse because I prefer it to a tablet! You won't be at any disadvantage here if you can't afford the best hardware or software.

Because our canvases are typically very small, you don't need a good PC to run a good brush engine or anything like that.

✨Did you know? One of the most skilled and beloved pixel artists uses MS PAINT! Wow!!

🔹 What software should I use?

Here are some of the most popular programs I see my friends and peers using. Stars show how much I recommend the software for beginners! ⭐

💰 Paid options:

⭐⭐⭐ Aseprite (for PC) - $19.99

This is what I and many other pixel artists use. You may find when applying to jobs that they require some knowledge of Aseprite. Since it has become so popular, companies like that you can swap raw files between artists.

Aseprite is amazingly customizable, with custom skins, scripts and extensions on Itch.io, both free and paid.

If you have ever used any art software before, it has most of the same features and should feel fairly familiar to use. It features a robust animation suite and a tilemap feature, which have saved me thousands of hours of labour in my work. The software is also being updated all the time, and the developers listen to the users. I really recommend Aseprite!

⭐ Photoshop (for PC) - Monthly $$

A decent option for those who already are used to the PS interface. Requires some setup to get it ready for pixel-perfect art, but there are plenty of tutorials for doing so.

Animation is also much more tedious on PS which you may want to consider before investing time!

⭐⭐ ProMotion NG (for PC) - $19.00

An advanced and powerful software which has many features Aseprite does not, including Colour Cycling and animated tiles.

⭐⭐⭐ Pixquare (for iOS) - $7.99 - $19.99 (30% off with code 'tofu'!!)

Probably the best app available for iPad users, in active development, with new features added all the time.

Look! My buddy Jon recommends it highly, and uses it often.

One cool thing about Pixquare is that it takes Aseprite raw files! Many of my friends use it to work on the same project, both in their office and on the go.

⭐ Procreate (for iOS) - $12.99

If you have access to Procreate already, it's a decent option to get used to doing pixel art. It does however require some setup. Artist Pixebo is famously using Procreate, and they have tutorials of their own if you want to learn.

⭐⭐ ReSprite iOS and Android. (free trial, but:) $19.99 premium or $$ monthly

ReSprite is VERY similar in terms of UI to Aseprite, so I can recommend it. They just launched their Android release!

🆓 Free options:

⭐⭐⭐ Libresprite (for PC)

Libresprite is an alternative to Aseprite. It is very, very similar, to the point where documentation for Aseprite will be helpful to Libresprite users.

⭐⭐ Pixilart (for PC and mobile)

A free in-browser app, and also a mobile app! It is tied to the website Pixilart, where artists upload and share their work. A good option for those also looking to get involved in a community.

⭐⭐ Dotpict (for mobile)

Dotpict is similar to Pixilart, with a mobile app tied to a website, but it's a Japanese service. Did you know that in Japanese, pixel art is called 'Dot Art'? Dotpict can be a great way to connect with a different community of pixel artists! They also have prompts and challenges often.

🔹 So I got my software, now what?

◽Nice! Now it's time for the basics of pixel art.

❗ WAIT ❗ Before this section, I want to add a little disclaimer. All of these rules/guidelines can be broken at will, and some 'no-nos' can look amazing when done intentionally.

The pixel-art fundamentals can be exceedingly helpful to new artists, who may feel lost or overwhelmed by choice. But if you feel they restrict you too harshly, don't force yourself! At the end of the day it's your art, and you shouldn't try to contort yourself into what people think a pixel artist 'should be'. What matters is your own artistic expression. 💕👍

◽Phew! With that out of the way...

🔸"The Rules"

There are few hard 'rules' of pixel art, mostly about scaling and exporting. Some of these things will frequently trip up newbies if they aren't aware, and are easy to overlook.

🔹Scaling method

There are a couple ways of scaling your art. The default in most art programs, and the entire internet, is Bi-linear scaling, which usually works out fine for most purposes. But as pixel artists, we need a different method.

Both are scaled up x10. See the difference?

On the left is scaled using Bilinear, and on the right is using Nearest-Neighbor. We love seeing those pixels stay crisp and clean, so we use nearest-neighbor. 

(Most pixel-art programs have nearest-neighbor enabled by default! So this may not apply to you, but it's important to know.)

🔹Mixels

Mixels are when there are different (mixed) pixel sizes in the same image.

Here I have scaled up my art- the left is 200%, and the right is 150%. Yuck!

As we can see, the "pixel" sizes end up different. We generally try to scale our work by multiples of 100 - 200%, 300% etc. rather than 150%. At larger scales however, the minute differences in pixel sizes are hardly noticeable!

Mixels are also sometimes seen when an artist scales up their work, then continues drawing on it with a 1 pixel brush.

Many would say that this is not great looking! This type of pixels can be indicative of a beginner artist. But there are plenty of creative pixel artists out there who mixels intentionally, making something modern and cool.

🔹Saving Your Files

We usually save our still images as .PNGs as they don’t create any JPEG artifacts or loss of quality. It's a little hard to see here, but there are some artifacts, and it looks a little blurry. It also makes the art very hard to work with if we are importing a JPEG.

For animations .GIF is good, but be careful of the 256 colour limit. Try to avoid using too many blending mode layers or gradients when working with animations. If you aren’t careful, your animation could flash afterwards, as the .GIF tries to reduce colours wherever it can. It doesn’t look great!

Here's an old piece from 2021 where I experienced .GIF lossiness, because I used gradients and transparency, resulting in way too many colours.

🔹Pixel Art Fundamentals - Techniques and Jargon

❗❗Confused about Jaggies? Anti-Aliasing? Banding? Dithering? THIS THREAD is for you❗❗ << it's a link, click it!!

As far as I'm concerned, this is THE tutorial of all time for understanding pixel art. These are techniques created and named by the community of people who actually put the list together, some of the best pixel artists alive currently. Please read it!!

🔸How To Learn

Okay, so you have your software, and you're all ready to start. But maybe you need some more guidance? Try these tutorials and resources! It can be helpful to work along with a tutorial until you build your confidence up.

⭐⭐ Pixel Logic (A Digital Book) - $10 A very comprehensive visual guide book by a very skilled and established artist in the industry. I own a copy myself.

⭐⭐⭐ StudioMiniBoss - free A collection of visual tutorials, by the artist that worked on Celeste! When starting out, if I got stuck, I would go and scour his tutorials and see how he did it.

⭐ Lospec Tutorials - free A very large collection of various tutorials from all over the internet. There is a lot to sift through here if you have the time.

⭐⭐⭐ Cyangmou's Tutorials - free (tipping optional) Cyangmou is one of the most respected and accomplished modern pixel artists, and he has amassed a HUGE collection of free and incredibly well-educated visual tutorials. He also hosts an educational stream every week on Twitch called 'pixelart for beginners'.

⭐⭐⭐ Youtube Tutorials - free There are hundreds, if not thousands of tutorials on YouTube, but it can be tricky to find the good ones. My personal recommendations are MortMort, Brandon, and AdamCYounis- these guys really know what they're talking about!

🔸 How to choose a canvas size

When looking at pixel art turorials, we may see people suggest things like 16x16, 32x32 and 64x64. These are standard sizes for pixel art games with tiles. However, if you're just making a drawing, you don't necessarily need to use a standard canvas size like that.

What I like to think about when choosing a canvas size for my illustrations is 'what features do I think it is important to represent?' And make my canvas as small as possible, while still leaving room for my most important elements.

Imagine I have characters in a scene like this:

I made my canvas as small as possible (232 x 314), but just big enough to represent the features and have them be recognizable (it's Good Omens fanart 😤)!! If I had made it any bigger, I would be working on it for ever, due to how much more foliage I would have to render.

If you want to do an illustration and you're not sure, just start at somewhere around 100x100 - 200x200 and go from there.

It's perfectly okay to crop your canvas, or scale it up, or crunch your art down at any point if you think you need a different size. I do it all the time! It only takes a bit of cleanup to get you back to where you were.

🔸Where To Post

Outside of just regular socials, Twitter, Tumblr, Deviantart, Instagram etc, there are a few places that lean more towards pixel art that you might not have heard of.

⭐ Lospec Lospec is a low-res focused art website. Some pieces get given a 'monthly masterpiece' award. Not incredibly active, but I believe there are more features being added often.

⭐⭐ Pixilart Pixilart is a very popular pixel art community, with an app tied to it. The community tends to lean on the young side, so this is a low-pressure place to post with an relaxed vibe.

⭐⭐ Pixeljoint Pixeljoint is one of the big, old-school pixel art websites. You can only upload your art unscaled (1x) because there is a built-in zoom viewer. It has a bit of a reputation for being elitist (back in the 00s it was), but in my experience it's not like that any more. This is a fine place for a pixel artist to post if they are really interested in learning, and the history. The Hall of Fame has some of the most famous / impressive pixel art pieces that paved the way for the work we are doing today.

⭐⭐⭐ Cafe Dot Cafe Dot is my art server so I'm a little biased here. 🍵 It was created during the recent social media turbulence. We wanted a place to post art with no algorithms, and no NFT or AI chuds. We have a heavy no-self-promotion rule, and are more interested in community than skill or exclusivity. The other thing is that we have some kind of verification system- you must apply to be a Creator before you can post in the Art feed, or use voice. This helps combat the people who just want to self-promo and dip, or cause trouble, as well as weed out AI/NFT people. Until then, you are still welcome to post in any of the threads or channels. There is a lot to do in Cafe Dot. I host events weekly, so check the threads!

⭐⭐/r/pixelart The pixel art subreddit is pretty active! I've also heard some of my friends found work through posting here, so it's worth a try if you're looking. However, it is still Reddit- so if you're sensitive to rude people, or criticism you didn't ask for, you may want to avoid this one. Lol

🔸 Where To Find Work

You need money? I got you! As someone who mostly gets scouted on social media, I can share a few tips with you:

Put your email / portfolio in your bio Recruiters don't have all that much time to find artists, make it as easy as possible for someone to find your important information!

Clean up your profile If your profile feed is all full of memes, most people will just tab out rather than sift through. Doesn't apply as much to Tumblr if you have an art tag people can look at.

Post regularly, and repost Activity beats everything in the social media game. It's like rolling the dice, and the more you post the more chances you have. You have to have no shame, it's all business baby

Outside of just posting regularly and hoping people reach out to you, it can be hard to know where to look. Here are a few places you can sign up to and post around on.

/r/INAT INAT (I Need A Team) is a subreddit for finding a team to work with. You can post your portfolio here, or browse for people who need artists.

/r/GameDevClassifieds Same as above, but specifically for game-related projects.

Remote Game Jobs / Work With Indies Like Indeed but for game jobs. Browse them often, or get email notifications.

VGen VGen is a website specifically for commissions. You need a code from another verified artist before you can upgrade your account and sell, so ask around on social media or ask your friends. Once your account is upgraded, you can make a 'menu' of services people can purchase, and they send you an offer which you are able to accept, decline, or counter.

The evil websites of doom: Fiverr and Upwork I don't recommend them!! They take a big cut of your profit, and the sites are teeming with NFT and AI people hoping to make a quick buck. The site is also extremely oversaturated and competitive, resulting in a race to the bottom (the cheapest, the fastest, doing the most for the least). Imagine the kind of clients who go to these websites, looking for the cheapest option. But if you're really desperate...

🔸 Community

I do really recommend getting involved in a community. Finding like-minded friends can help you stay motivated to keep drawing. One day, those friends you met when you were just starting out may become your peers in the industry. Making friends is a game changer!

Discord servers Nowadays, the forums of old are mostly abandoned, and people split off into many different servers. Cafe Dot, Pixel Art Discord (PAD), and if you can stomach scrolling past all the AI slop, you can browse Discord servers here.

Twitch Streams Twitch has kind of a bad reputation for being home to some of the more edgy gamers online, but the pixel art community is extremely welcoming and inclusive. Some of the people I met on Twitch are my friends to this day, and we've even worked together on different projects! Browse pixel art streams here, or follow some I recommend: NickWoz, JDZombi, CupOhJoe, GrayLure, LumpyTouch, FrankiePixelShow, MortMort, Sodor, NateyCakes, NyuraKim, ShinySeabass, I could go on for ever really... There are a lot of good eggs on Pixel Art Twitch.

🔸 Other Helpful Websites

Palettes Lospec has a huge collection of user-made palettes, for any artist who has trouble choosing their colours, or just wants to try something fun. Rejected Palettes is full of palettes that didn't quite make it onto Lospec, ran by people who believe there are no bad colours.

The Spriters Resource TSR is an incredible website where users can upload spritesheets and tilesets from games. You can browse for your favourite childhood game, and see how they made it! This website has helped me so much in understanding how game assets come together in a scene.

VGMaps Similar to the above, except there are entire maps laid out how they would be played. This is incredible if you have to do level design, or for mocking up a scene for fun.

Game UI Database Not pixel-art specific, but UI is a very challenging part of graphics, so this site can be a game-changer for finding good references!

Retronator A digital newspaper for pixel-art lovers! New game releases, tutorials, and artworks!

Itch.io A website where people can upload, games, assets, tools... An amazing hub for game devs and game fans alike. A few of my favourite tools: Tiled, PICO-8, Pixel Composer, Juice FX, Magic Pencil for Aseprite

🔸 The End?

This is just part 1 for now, so please drop me a follow to see any more guides I release in the future. I plan on doing some writeups on how I choose colours, how to practise, and more!

I'm not an expert by any means, but everything I did to get to where I am is outlined in this guide. Pixel art is my passion, my job and my hobby! I want pixel art to be recognized everywhere as an art-form, a medium of its own outside of game-art or computer graphics!

This guide took me a long time, and took a lot of research and experience. Consider following me or supporting me if you are feeling generous.

And good luck to all the fledgling pixel artists, I hope you'll continue and have fun. I hope my guide helped you, and don't hesitate to send me an ask if you have any questions! 💕

My other tutorials (so far): How to draw Simple Grass for a game Hue Shifting

[evilchildeyeeter]

every time i have a pe lesson i lose a tiny bit of my will to live

heads up i kinda started venting in the tags so if you dont want to put up with that just scroll <333

[hauntingrabbits]

More Batman/My Little Pony au art because these are ridiculously fun to draw. Part 3 here! Part 1 here!

More info under the cut!

1. Sweet Talk/The Harlequin (Harleen Quinzel)

Originally contracted to work as a psychiatrist for the Tartarus villain redemption program, Sweet Talk had a unique relationship with the Joker. This relationship was proven to be even stranger than her coworkers had originally assumed when she broke him out and joined him in his life of crime.

Devoting herself entirely to her new life and relationship with the joker, she covers her original cutie mark at all times. Snce her horn was snapped she can no longer cast precise spells, leaving her magic mostly emotion-based and intensely volatile, (typically manifesting in the form of sparks, zaps, and explosions).

Other Notes:

-Using Tartarus as a substitute for Arkham Asylum for this au because why not.

-The villain redemption program did NOT go well. Sorry Twilight.

-Mostly based on BTAS Harley because I adore the original costume.

-Her horn was cracked by the Joker

2. Pudding Pie/The Joker (The Joker)

Batpony’s most notorious foe. Said to have been just a regular pony until he fell into a vat at an Ace Potions factory during a conflict with Batpony.

He doesn’t have a Cutie Mark, but it’s unclear whether this was always the case or instead a result of his accident. The effects of permanent Cutie Mark loss—the only known cases of which occurred via long-banned magic and/or traumatic injury—are largely unstudied, and it’s ramifications are unknown. Some ponies theorize this may be the reason for the Joker’s mental state and general disposition.  

Sundown has a different opinion on the matter.

Other notes:

-Based mostly on BTAS joker and the ‘89 Nicholson joker.

-His name is just based on Harley’s “pudding” nickname for in in a lot of versions, but I think it would also be hilarious if he was a distant relative of Pinkie Pie.

-I could leave it ambiguous but. Yeah the potion vat didn’t actually do anything beyond slightly altering his physical appearance. He’s just like that and he never got a cutie mark in the first place.

3. Gadiel/Scarecrow (Jonathan Crane)

Raised among ponies, Gadiel was relentlessly bullied for being gangly and birdish, earning him the nickname “Scarecrow” in his youth. Though he later successfully became a professor and psychologist in Gotham, Gadiel was eventually fired when he was found to be testing his fear-inducing potions on his students and purposefully putting them through terrifying and dangerous situations. Deciding to take his experiments to the masses, Gadiel donned the mantle of Scarecrow and weaponized fear to become a career criminal.

As the Scarecrow, he’s known for his skill in manipulation, psychological torture, and crafting dangerous potions and gas. The effects of fear on magical creatures are unique and intense, much to Gadiel’s delight and interest.

Other Notes:

-I wanted to make his front half a crane but I couldn’t get the long neck to work right with the mask, so he’s more crow-like instead.

-according to the wiki 1/3 of Griffin names start with a G so naturally I was extremely tempted to name him Gonathon and you should all be very grateful I did not. The name Gadiel has origins in the bible as the name of an archangel which I thought was fitting given the insane religious trauma some versions of the scarecrow went through. I thought about trying to do something similar for this version but given that the mlp universe uses Princess Celestia as a replacement for God in expressions like “Celestia knows where” and “Oh my Celestia” I wasn’t really sure how to go about it. There’s probably some kind of sun-worshipping thing in equestria idk.

-I spent a long time on the mlp wiki but from what I could find the only “fear” magic in the show is just used by one guy and its just called “dark magic”. I thought for sure there would’ve been some random plant or magical creature they dealt with at some point that maybe did something similar I could use for his blurb but unfortunately there was not.

4. Mandible/Falseface (Basil Karlo/Matt Hagen)

Hungry and deeply resentful of the changeling queen for forcing her underlings to share what little stolen love they had with her, Mandible went rogue early on and split off from the hive to pursue his own ventures. Finding success under the name Claypose as a pony actor in Gotham, he was sustained primarily by the one-sided love of his fans for years, despite the false identity having no real prior personal relationships to leech from. 

After a magical special effects accident on set revealed his true nature, he went into hiding and immediately started crafting a new persona, but soon found in his distress and rage over losing his identity as Claypose that he could no longer sustain any disguise long enough to keep up a long-term facade. Blaming the accident, he targeted the unicorn responsible by posing as his wife to leech his love, but ended up killing the pony in a panic when his disguise failed much faster than he’d anticipated it would. Unable to keep up a new identity or return to the hive, Mandible turned to a life of crime instead, doing dirty work for the bigger criminal names in Gotham and leeching love from his employer’s targets to survive.

Other notes:

-Clayface being a changeling was an obvious pick given his power set but I really wasn’t sure how to tackle the main issue of him being unable to keep a solid form for long. I went with his distress and frustration being the main thing keeping his disguise flimsy (so he gets put in kind of an ourobouros cycle where his disguise being bad makes him upset but him being upset makes it harder to fix his disguise), but the magic accident probably also contributed somehow.

-Why are all the changelings straight up just named after body parts in this show whats that about. The “Clay” in Claypose is obviously a reference to his title/schtick in the comics while the “pose” comes from both his job as an actor and the fact that he’s posing as a pony. Mandible is the name for the jaw part of an insect.

-there's actually an entirely different batman villain called falseface in the '66 series but I couldn't come up with anything better. Changeface just does not roll off the tongue.

3. Winglon/Killer Drake (Waylon Jones)

Originally intended to be used in an entrance exam, his egg was stolen from a Canterlot delivery cart on its way to Celestia’s school of magic and sold on the black market to a Pony Island circus. Raised to be part of the freak show, Winglon was pitted against circus performers and overconfident challengers in ring fights for money and entertainment. Enduring abuse and injury throughout his life from ponies that he was always fundamentally stronger than, it was only a matter of time until he snapped. Garnering the name Killer Drake for his actions, Winglon escaped into the Gotham sewer system.

Not knowing how to return to the dragonlands or whether he’d even fit into dragon society at all, he continues to lurk in the dark away from any life, deeply resenting ponies and all other manner of magical creatures that make friends with them.

Other notes:

-I like silly names ok. Winglon Jones. -I like the theory that the dragon egg used for Twilight’s entrance exam was actually fake/meant to be a no-win scenario, but I also don’t think it would be that hard for enterprising ponies to get their hands on dragon eggs. The practice probably stopped in the later seasons when they made friends with the dragonlands or whatever though.

-Given that dragons threaten to eat or kill ponies at multiple points in the show, the cannibalism is actually kind of understandable. And also not even cannibalism anymore. Still murder though.

[lovetei]

first off, thank you so much for all the work you do for the fandom! your writing is amazing!

someone has probably requested this already but i just wanna request for a soulmate-reincarnation au, if its okay? like, they were MC's lover in the past and MC died, so they've been waiting and looking for them to reincarnate since then (it's been thousands of years or so) and then RAD happened and then they realized that MC is who they've been waiting for. that's all, haha

you can pick if it has angst or fluff or smut, or which character/s it will have

thank you again for your contribution to the fandom, i hope you have a lovely day!

After all that deranged smut, I've come back from the dead with some fluff

Update: I'm on Lucifer's part and the Fluff I'm planning took a dark turn, fortunately

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

Soulmate-reincarnation universe in where they've lost you and won't let it happen again

Warnings: Grammatical errors, spelling errors, no proofreading, Mentions of death, Mentions of trauma, gruesome death, slight gore, Angst, possessive behavior

Versions: Demon brothers, Side Characters

Links: Masterlist

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

LUCIFER

He can still remember the day you escaped his grasps

The day you stepped in front of Father and begged him "No, not him please! Don't kick him our, I'm begging you!" You pleaded.

Yet, he can't do anything about it as he watch the angels pull you inside their father's room.

He waited outside, pacing around in circles hoping, praying to any being out there to keel you safe.

And when the guard let him in, it's almost as if he can breath freely

Not until he saw you, face planted on the white marble floor as you lay on top of your own pool of blood.

Wings ripped out and in his father's hands

His knees weakened as Father handed him your wings

"Remember them Lucifer, you destroyed them."

Is the last thing Father said before the floor beneath you cracked

"Lucifer..." You mumbled out with a smile as you each out for him with your bloody hands

That is before you fell and died

He can still remember every detail like he's watching a movie

He still can't forget you, he never will

That is until he was viewing the possible candidates for the exchange program and he came across your application

And all so suddenly, nothing is important anymore

That's what he was thinking as he burnt all the other application forms

He'll get you back

No matter what it takes.

MAMMON

The time where Father caught them rebelling against the heavens, he'll never forget it

Not because it was the day where he fell

But because it was the day he found out how cruel the kind can be

How the kind made him choose, "Save yourself or sacrifice for your love?" Father looked at him then looked at you

With a spear in his hand, he didn't expect what you did next.

Running to Father without a single drop of hesitation and plunging the spear to your heart

Plunging his spear to your heart

His eyes filled with hatred and regret, his body numb with pain can only drop to the ground

Before his screams echoed and shook the she realm

Screams of pain that will never subside, or so he thought

He found out about this exchange student plan

And he saw you, with a different face, with a different hair color

It doesn't matter

It's you

And maybe, he did pull some strings and a few tricks for you to be picked

But when he saw how your eyes softened when you look at him in a room full of other men

He didn't have any regrets

LEVIATHAN

You fought alongside them, beside him

Not because you support their ideology or anything

Just because he's there

He got hurt

And you swear you'll hunt down anyone who hurt him

And he'll do the same for you

So when he saw an arrow pierced your body and you fell

His wings lost its power and he fell with you

It was late when he realized what was happening and he flew as fast as he can to catch you

And he managed to before you landed straight to a flat rock near the shore

And so when he had you in his arms

He gently flew you down to the same rock and embraced your almost-lifeless body

Rocking you back and forth gently as if he was putting a child to sleep

And when you finally closed your eyes

He felt the last string of sanity snap and he looked up at the sky where the angels are fighting

And without a thought the warm and calm water was turned violent and drowned everything in its path

But sometimes, after the war, he would come back to the same shore

Where Mammon found him and informed him "They're back." He smirked at Leviathan

Of course, they are

He made sure to tell Lucifer he'll drown to death every other applicants they accepted until they admitted you.

And when he saw you standing there, frightened

He knew you can't remember him

But he's willing to take small steps with you until you remembered him again

SATAN

Like an idiot, he fell in love with you

After all the hard work his brothers put in his head, trying to tell him not to love a mortal

He didn't listen

He would sneak out of Devildom and would meet you in the forest where you built your own small home

Where he saw you age until you can't even get out of bed

The home in where he sat beside your bed as he read you your last book an dpromsied you that he'll be beside you for all eternity, waiting for you.

The home in where he buried you in the backyard and placed lovely flowers on top

He tried so hard to get over you

He tried so hard to ease the pain in his heart for thousands of years

Until one day, he can't hold it in anymore and came back to your home

The rain mixing with soil, staining his hands as he dugged your grave with his bare hands and was surprised when he didn't see your remains

And then when he came back to the house of lamentation

When Lucifer informed him about the program something came up in his head

With his hands still stained with soil and his clothes wet from the rain, he digged through the file of applicants and saw...

Saw no one that resembles you

Until Lucifer told him that they've already picked an applicant

And held out a paper with a picture that looks just like you

The smile that crept up his face was desperate yet filled with love

He snatched the paper away from his hands and went to his room

Dropping on his knees on the ground as soon as he entered the room

He hugged the piece of paper and said "It won't be long till you're back to me..."

ASMODEUS

People often thought of you as nothing, honestly

People thought that Asmo didn't even love you

Or that he managed to move on soon after you died

But that's not how he views it

He views your death as his death

He promised himself that you both will love each other like swans

And the moment you died, he was ready to die too

The way he remembers how your fresh blood dripped off his arms

The way he remembers himself pointing the dagger that killed you on his throat

The way he remembered you saying "Don't... I'll come back." as you gently held his face and placed your lips on his

That was the only reason he kept his life

And when he remembered this strange, suffocating hope when Lucifer mentioned the program

It took every strand of his patient to not dig through the files and look for you

Because he remembered how much you believed in destiny, he believed that's what made you beautiful

The way that you believe that if it's what the universe wants, it's what will happen

So he bit his cheek and clawed his palms

The moment he was walking in circles waiting for this student, his heart filled with hope that it was filling his lungs

The moment he saw you standing there, seemingly looking for something, someone

He instinctively said "I'm here... Love..." as he raised his hands, the blood from his fingers from biting his nails dripping down

And then he went numb

When he saw your eyes soften and be filled with love

Because he knew, even the universe wants you to be with him

In every life.

BEELZEBUB

You did your best, he knows it

Liliths death, he must admit, made him turn against Father and think about rebellion

But your death made him act on it

You begged Father to just give him and his brothers one more chance after disrespecting him

Father who said to accept it came up with one condition

And that's for your life

As soon as he over heard about ghat condition

He came out of his hiding and tried to attack father but you were held hostage

You were sitting on the marble floor with all the spears not pointed at the intruder, him, but to you, his most prized possession.

He can never forget how heavgy his heart is during that time

The way he can't even breath freely

"I was a fool..." Was what you said after you realized that even if you offered your life, Father will still kick them out.

And so you smiled at him "I will hold the virtues and give you some time to prepare..." then you opened your wings despite the spears piercing it.

"ESCAPE!" Was the last thing you said before you swung your wings and had the spears piercing their necks.

Then all he can remember is how him and his brothers managed to kill almost all the angels and archangels

But when they're about to enter the virtues domain, they stopped

And saw your head on the ground

The virtues praised you, saying how much love they felt as they fought with you

Now, it's still fresh on his mind

As soon as he saw you appear from the portal, unconscious

He was embracing your body as if wishing for you to remember him

BELPHEGOR

He was gone, he turned bat shit insane

People might think he's okay

But the brothers knew better

For the past thousand of years, there's not a single day where he didn't spoke your name

He's comparing you to every girl they tried to introduce to him, "MC was prettier", "MC was better" and more

It's time to establish his position even more, and he can do it the fast way by marrying a noble

But even after introducing all women, married or not, not him

His answer was only, "MC is the only one that can be my bride."

The council argued over this, MC is dead, they said

But Belphegor is not one to give up easily

During the meeting about this exact matter, he proposed a deal

"If you can fulfill my only condition, I promise to secure my position as the avatar of sloth and the guaranteed success of the exchange program."

Everyone's ears perked at his suggestion, naturally, they asked, what is this condition?

Then he simply held up a form containing your profile

"Bring my wife to Devildom."

[psychopathseraphim]

Hi :)

Can I suggest the mercs having a really bad day (maybe even crying) and their s/o comforting them.

The s/o can be female or gn :)

Sniper, Soldier and Engineer

Sniper, Soldier and Engineer seeking comfort

Hello, anon! Sorry if this is shitty— no proofread, and I’m writing this on a trainnnn…

Sniper

Not usually the type to express his emotions freely; worries that him venting could bother you… would probably keep whatever’s bothering him inside ‘til he bursts… or, well, ‘til he forgets about it

Today, however, was especially hard— trigger-finger kept messing him; aim was terribly messy; spies. All he needed was to let it out, and, frankly, he didn’t know how to

You just see your lover walk into his camper van, disheveled and obviously tense. He doesn’t say anything, just proceeds to sit down on the bed beside you with his hat off, looking towards the ground

When you ask him what’s up… 50/50 he’ll say nothing or he’ll explain in the smallest detail what went wrong about his day

You can read him pretty well, however, and every ‘discussion’ about his terrible day would end with him in your arms, or laying his head on your lap

You’d stroke his hair, telling him that he did a good job today, that everything was fine; he’d nuzzle his face into you and stay silent, enjoying the feeling of being pampered

“Yer too nice to me, roo…” he’d mutter, and you’d smile at him, continuing your ministrations— “well, that’s because you deserve it,” is what you always say; and it was nothing far from the truth

Eventually he’d fall asleep, but not before muttering an “I love ya, darl’…”

Soldier

Would probably be incredibly pent-up about the others not taking him seriously. Would come around to you and VERBALLY express himself

Due to his more-aggressive nature, Soldier would probably… feel things at higher extents; he’s easily angered and could easily cry

He would however suppress his desires to cry because ‘lashing out and being angry’ = masculine; ‘crying’ = feminine

If you do spot him crying, however, he would— no hesitation— wrap his arms around you and rack your frame while sobbing into your chest

When you ask him what’s wrong, he’d explain to you in incomprehensible English mixed with hysterical sobbing and a slight hyperventilation (ALL WHILE SCREAMING!)

Could possibly get mad at you… which will in the long run make him feel worse

“… AND NO ONE WAS FOLLOWING MY ORDERS TODAY!” He’d yell, gripping onto your sleeves even tighter

Just pet his head, reassure him that he’s not annoying, and he’ll be good to go

With enough reassurance and help, though, he’ll manage to calm down; instead falling asleep in fetal position and (possibly… possibly!) with his thumb in his mouth.

Engineer

Engie is a well-collected person… he knows how to handle his anger on his own; knows how to keep it to himself (not because he doesn’t want to burden other people, but he would prefer keeping quiet for this reason, but because he just doesn’t see any benefit in rambling)

If he feels himself getting stressed at something, he’ll turn to his work— he’ll program something to give him that boost of dopamine that he’s actually done something right!

If, however, his stresses come from his work— say, an error or malfunction he can’t crack the code of— then he doesn’t know what else to do; he can’t be useless, damn it; he can’t get things wrong!

Come into his workshop to check on him; if you see him with his head in his hands, approach him and massage his shoulders

Engineer would immediately melt into your touch; he’d let out a sigh of relief indicating his relaxation and lift up his goggles to look at you. With a dreamy, tired smile, he’d say: “hey there, pretty thing,”

You’d then try to pry him away from his workdesk… which, if he’s absolutely stressed, would work— take him to your shared room, cuddle with him, and he’ll be good to go

As for crying, Dell seems too collected for that; even if he wanted to, I believe he just can’t bring himself to— not a matter of his view on masculinity; he just can’t

[alexanderwales]

Alright, here's my dream Stardew Valley style game, designed for my own tastes.

You come to a small town with the usual twenty to thirty people. It's in the middle of nowhere. It's a fantasy town, and no one actually farms anymore, partly because it's only questionably profitable, partly because a lot of the knowledge has been lost. Instead, everyone uses these magic doodads which are very powerful but also very limited. The tavernkeeper has a doodad that makes him a single kind of weak ale and a single variety of off-tasting wine. The clothier has basically a square mile of linen to work with, and everyone wears her drab clothes. Tools are made from a doodad that the blacksmith owns, not even made of any actual metal, just a material that wears away after a month and needs to be replaced by a new copy from the blacksmith's doodad. People get their meals from the doodads. They get their medical checkups. It's all a bit shit.

Because I'm a worldbuilder at heart, I would have this all exist in the wake of a large-scale war that depleted the town of its fighting-age population, with the doodads being a sort of government program to ensure that more of the lifeblood of the town could be drained away. And for there to be some reason for the town to continue existing, perhaps the government is harvesting some resources necessary in the creation of doodads. That's enough for a pro-doodad faction and maybe some minor drama with them, though I do like the idea that the only reason things are Like This is because there was a war and things got bad. It's not necessarily a bleak town, but there's definitely a listlessness to it, a "what's the point".

So you're a farmer, but no one is really a farmer anymore. Maybe there are a few books, but you don't learn farming from books, you learn it from practical experience; that's a lot of what this game is about. When you start, there's no one to buy seeds from, there's just a bunch of wilderness where farms once stood, now all long overgrown.

So you go out and forage, for a start, and you clear the land, and you pay attention to the plants and how they can be used, and you start in on making recipes with them, maybe with the help of your grandfather's old, partially incomplete books. You find some wild corn that's a descendant of the old times. You find some tomato seeds in an urn. You discover potatoes because you see them dug up by a wild boar, which itself was once a domesticated animal.

In my ideal game, you need to pay attention to the soil quality, to how far apart things are planted, to what crops work well together. Farming is a matter of companion planting and polycultures. You get some chickens by giving them consistent feed, and you keep them around because they're natural pest control. Your climbing beans climb the stalks of your maize. You're attracting pollinators. (From a gameplay perspective, yeah, we probably put this all into a grid, and you have crop bonuses from adjacencies, and emergent gameplay that comes from all that, some plants providing shade, others providing nitrogen fixing.) You're a scientist making observations about the plants, maybe with your incomplete book giving you confirmation on the nature of all your crops once you hit certain production goals or a perfect specimen or whatever.

Cooking is the same. There has got to be a system that I like better than just "combine tomato with bread to get tomato bread". I'm pretty sure that it's some variant of the actual process I use when cooking, which is making sure that things are properly cooked, balancing flavors against each other, adding in a little salt or acidity or umami or whatever. Time in the kitchen, in this game, is often about making meals, ensuring that if you have a fatty piece of meat you have some asparagus that's coated with lemon to go with it. (From a gameplay perspective, I think building the dish once is probably sufficient and it can be automated after that, and building the meal is the same. I don't want to play this minigame every time I'm cooking a dish, I just want to play it a single time until I have good knowledge of the best way to grill a BBQ chicken breast with a homemade sauce.)

But if we're having a little minigame here where we pay attention to how long we're cooking the kale to make sure that it's the right texture, and we're paying attention to abstractified mouthfeel and palette, then we can get something else for free: variation. See, you're not just cooking to get an S grade, you're cooking for people with different tastes. The cobbler has a sweet tooth, the librarian loves fruity things, the mayor cannot stand fish, that sort of thing. From a gameplay perspective, maybe we represent this with a radar graph with some specific favorite and least favorite individual flavors, and maybe it's visible to the player, but the important thing is that player gets feedback and have a reason to strive for both "good" and "perfection" and some of this is going to depend on the quality of the ingredients.

And this is, gradually, how the town is brought back into the fullness of life. You're not just cooking for these people, you're also selling them food, and they're making their own recipes, and all the stuff that's not food is making their businesses not suck anymore. After the first test keg of ale goes swimmingly, the tavernkeeper wants more, a lot more, and puts in an order for hops, wheat, grapes, anything he can use to make things that will improve nights at the tavern. The clothier will skeptically take in wool and spin her own yarn, and then eagerly want more, because how awesome is it to have a new textile? There's a chemist who is extremely interested in dyes and paints, and wants you to bring him all kinds of things to see what might be viable for going beyond the ~3 colors that the doodads can provide.

So by year two, if you're doing things right, you're the lynchpin of the revivalist movement. People are now moving to the town, for the first time in decades, because they hear that you're there and doing interesting things with the wilderness. Maybe there are other farmers following in your wake, but maybe it's just new characters who are specifically coming because a crate of wine was shipped to the capital city. Maybe some of them bring new techniques for you, or a handful of plants from a botanical garden, and there are new elements for the minigames, or maybe some automation for the stuff that's old hat.

I think something that's important to me is that there's a reason for the crops you plant and the things you do. I always like these games best when it feels like I'm doing something for someone, when I can look at a plot of cabbages and think "ah, those are the cabbages I owe to Leon". Where these games are at their worst, everything is entirely fungible and I've planted eight million blueberries because they have the highest ROI.

And yeah, in most of these games, there are other minigames like fishing and mining and logging and crafting, and since this is just a blog post and not a game, I definitely could massively expand an already sizeable scope.

I think for mining the player would use doodads of their own, and maybe you could make a mining minigame out of that, using the same planting tile system to instead create an automated ore harvesting machine that plumbs the depths of the earth (possibly dealing with rocks of different hardness, the water table, and other challenges along the way).

Fishing is a question of understanding the different fish species, what they eat, where they congregate, and then setting nets or lines, since I have never met a fishing minigame I really enjoyed. Again, there's some idea that the player is gaining information over time, building up a profile of these fish, noticing that some of them go nuts when it rains, understanding the spawning season, that they go to deeper water when it's cold, etc.

Crafting really depends on what you're crafting, but if you're reintroducing traditional artisan processes to this town, then people are going to need tools and machines and things. I'm not sure I know what a proper crafting game looks like. The only experience I have to draw on is wood shop, where I made wooden boxes, cutting boards, and picture frames. Since this is an engineering-lite puzzle-lite game, you could maybe do something in that vein, e.g. defining a number of steps that get you the correct thing you're trying to make, but ... eh. I love the idea of designing a chicken coop, for example, or building a trellis if I want my climbing beans to not need maize, or whatever, but I don't know how you actually implement that. There are definitely voxel-based and snap-to-grid games where you build bases, and I tend to find that fun ... but it's mostly cosmetic, for the obvious reason that doing it any other way than cosmetic requires programmatic evaluation, which is difficult and maybe unintuitive. The closest I think I've seen is ... maybe Tears of the Kingdom? Contraption building? But I don't know how you translate that to a farming game. Maybe I should ask my wife about this, because she's always doing little projects around the house (an outdoor enclosure for our cats, a 3D-printed holder for our living room keyboard, a mounting for our TV).

Making an interesting crafting system is difficult, which is why pretty much no one has done it.

And if I'm talking pie in the sky, without concern for budget or scope, I want the villagers to all have a mammoth amount of writing for them. I want petty little dramas and weird obsessions, lives that evolve with or without my input, rudimentary dialog trees that let me nudge things in different directions. This is just an unbelievable amount of work on its own, it would be crazy, but I would love having a tiny little town game where sometimes other people would fall in love. I would like to be invited to a wedding, maybe one that happened because I encouraged the chemist to hang out with the clothier, and in the course of working together on dyes, they fell in love. With twenty people in town and another ten that come in over the course of the game if you hit the right triggers, I do think this is just a matter of having a ton of time/budget. You write tons and tons of dialogue so there's not much that's repeated, you have some lines of conversation between characters that are progressed through, you have others that trigger off of events, and then you have personal relationships between NPCs that can be progressed through time or with player intervention. Give single characters a pool of love interests, have their affections depend on their routine which depends on what's changed in town ... very difficult to do without spending loads and loads of time on it though.

Anyway, that's one of my dream games. No one is ever going to make it, it would be a niche of a niche, and as scoped here, is too much for a small team to ever actually finish, let alone polish. But it's the sort of thing I'm imagining in my head when I think about playing Stardew Valley and its successors.

[captainsophiestark]

Just The Two Of Us

Wanda Maximoff x Reader

Masterlist - Join My Taglist!

Written for Fictober 2024!

Requested by @ghostofskywalker! Hope you like it bestie! This was very fun to write :)

Fandom: Marvel

Day Nineteen Prompt: "This is getting ridiculous."

Summary: Wanda and her SO have put in a TON of work to finally get a date night off, alone, without interruption. But, like most things, it doesn't work out exactly according to plan.

Word Count: 1,828

Category: Fluff, Humor, little bit of Angst?

Putting work into an AI program without permission is illegal. You do not have my permission. Do not do it.

"Alright. This is going to be the pefrect, quiet romantic evening the two of us have been needing. No Avengers, chaotic family members, or world-ending threats to interrupt us."

I made the promise to reassure myself as much as my girlfriend, Wanda Maximoff, as I squeezed her hand and led the way into the gorgeous (and very private) restaurant I'd picked for our date night. We'd barely seen each other lately with various Avengers/SHIELD/adjacent responsibilities, so we'd both found a way to clear our calendars for an extended date night tonight. I'd volunteered to plan it, and Wanda had ensured nobody scheduled anything for us that would overlap on timing.

"Sounds perfect," Wanda said, leaning in to speak quietly in my ear as we reached the hostess stand. I gave her hand another squeeze and shot a little smile back over my shoulder, which was exactly the moment everything went to shit.

"No way," I hissed, scowling as my eyes locked onto a couple chatting at one of the tables overlooking the city. Wanda frowned, and then her gaze followed mine.

Goddamn Tony Stark. He was here on a date with Pepper. While I normally liked both of them, tonight was specifically designed for Wanda and I to take a break from the Avengers and all the challenges that came with them.

"It might not matter," Wanda whispered to me. "We can just ask for a table on the opposite end of the restaurant."

As if she'd conjured it, Tony chose that moment to glance in our direction. I groaned internally as he pointed us out to Pepper, and she turned around, giving Wanda and I a bright smile when she saw us. I did my best to return it, although it probably looked more like a grimace.

Tony waved us over, and I resisted the urge to scowl. I could swear I heard Wanda huff a laugh behind me as she pulled me towards the pair.

"Come on," she said, a grin on her face. "No way out of it now."

I hummed, but didn't resist. Really, how could I?

"Fancy meeting you two here!" Tony called as we reached his table. To my horror, he then turned and tried to wave for a waitress. "Let's pull up a pair of chairs, you two can join us."

"Oh, we wouldn't want to interrupt you guys..." I started, but Tony immediately waved me off.

"You're not, don't worry."

I turned to Pepper, and she'd just started to speak with a smile on her face when Wanda broke in with a gasp. I turned to find her staring at her phone with wide-eyes.

"I'm so sorry," she said, looking up at the two of us. "I just got a message from Pietro. We have to go."

My heart sank. Figures, we couldn't get a second alone either way. Run into people we know and get roped into joining them, or have something come up no matter how hard Wanda worked to prevent it.

We quickly said our goodbyes, Tony and Pepper insisting we plan something for the four of us to do together to make up for the interruption, then quickly headed out of the restaurant. I sighed as we made it to the parking lot.

"Alright, so is Pietro at the Tower or is he somewhere else?"

"I don't know."

I stopped short, turning back to Wanda. She just stared back at me after giving a little shrug. I frowned.

"What do you mean you don't know? Did he not tell you where he is? What was he messaging you for?"

"He didn't text me."

I frowned, not sure at first what she was trying to tell me, then my jaw dropped once an idea clicked. Wanda finally gave me a grin.

"When you say he didn't text you..."

"I mean I made up an excuse so we could leave and keep our date night interrupted. That was my job for this whole night, remember?"

I laughed, all the disappointment fading away as bright sparks of joy burst in my chest. I stepped forward and pulled Wanda into a kiss.

"You are amazing. Do you know that?"

"I do. But I don't mind hearing it."

We shared another laugh, and then I took Wanda's hand.

"Alright, let's get out of here. I've got a lot more than just dinner planned for us tonight, and even better, we can also get food at date location number two."

"Sounds perfect to me."

****************

After a brief walk, Wanda and I found ourselves in the middle of the most perfect, movie-level boardwalk I could find. We'd immediately gotten fair food, since we'd missed dinner at the restaurant, and now we were strolling down the alley of carnival games arm in arm.

"Well, we had a rocky start, but I think we managed to save our night," I said, absolutely beaming as Wanda and I took in the bright lights.

"I agree. This is absolutely perfect."

I turned to share a smile with her, and almost perfectly on cue, I heard familiar voices shouting from just a few booths down. I grimaced, but I didn't really have a choice but to turn and look over her shoulder.

I thought it was a hallucination at first, or maybe Loki was messing with us just for fun. But no. They were really here.

At the look on my face, Wanda turned slowly, too, to find Steve Rogers bowling pitches at carnival pins. Standing next to him and cheering him on were Bucky, Peter, and Shuri. She sighed at the same time I groaned.

"Did everyone choose tonight to go out?" she asked with a laugh. I threw my hands up and huffed.

"Apparently they did! This is ridiculous."

Wanda had a grin on her face, but apparently my exclamation had drawn some attention. The mini Avengers group started to turn in our direction, but I didn't let them finish the move before dragging Wanda after me and behind the row of carvinal booths. We slammed our backs against it, keeping quiet and still, and after a few moments I felt fairly confident we'd avoided our friends.

I felt a little bad, but not bad enough to go back out there and say hello.

"What's the plan?" Wanda whispered to me. I shot her a look, since we both knew whispering was excessive, but she just grinned at me.

"The plan is to get the hell out of here, get some ice cream, and go for a nice, peaceful walk on the beach without any of our friends interrupting us."

Wanda laughed again, the sound easing my nerves and loosening the frustration knotting in my chest. She slipped her hand into mine with a smile, and my heart did a backflip.

"Sounds great to me."

****************

Wanda and I had to duck and dodge a little bit to leave the boardwalk without being spotted, but our friends weren't looking for us, and we were both trained enough to manage just fine. We swung by the cute ice cream place I'd been looking forward to visiting, then took off our shoes and strolled through the surf together. We talked, laughed, and relaxed exactly like we'd been trying to all night.

At least, we did for about ten minutes. After ten minutes, we noticed another couple walking in our direction from further down the beach. I didn't recognize the woman headed our way, but I'd recognize the shock of light blond hair anywhere after dating its owner's sister for so long.

"This is getting ridiculous," I sighed, coming to a stop. Wanda gave me a concerned look, then followed my gaze and found her brother headed in our direction. Because of course he was.

"What is he doing here?" Wanda huffed, her voice showing irritation for the first time tonight. I just sighed again.

"Who knows? Maybe there's some big conspiracy to ruin our date night tonight."

"Well, whatever it is... do you mind if I suggest a plan alternative?"

I deflated a little as Pietro got closer to us. I'd been so determined to plan the perfect date night for the two of us, and my plans had been foiled at nearly every step. Although, to be fair, I guess Wanda's had too. She'd worked so hard to get everyone to do something else for the night so they wouldn't bother us, and it definitely hadn't worked out how she'd been planning.

I took a deep breath and shook off my irritation. I turned away from Pietro, who'd apparently noticed us and was now heading in our direction with a smile, and met Wanda's eyes. I smiled.

"I think a plan alternative is exactly what we need right now."

Wanda gave me a smirk that made my heart race, then wrapped an arm around me and pulled me towards her. She raised her free hand, since she'd finished her ice cream before we'd seen Pietro, and with a little chaos magic we lifted gently into the air.

"Hey!"

Wanda ignored Pietro's shout, and I almost did the same, until Pietro appeared below us in an instant thanks to his super speed.

"Where do you two think you're going? You don't want to say hi to your bro-"

He stopped short as I hurled the remainder of my ice cream cone at him. My aim was dead on, and he clearly wasn't expecting it, to the point that even his superspeed couldn't save him. It landed dead center on his shirt, and his outraged shout was enough to make both me and Wanda laugh.

Wanda and I went up, up, and up, until we were into the clouds. Thanks to a little help from her magic, we didn't get too cold, and even better, nobody that we knew would be able to see us up here. When we finally dropped back down again, it was at the top of one of the tallest peaks in a closed park at the edge of the city, giving us a perfect view and perfect privacy. We touched down gently, but Wanda didn't take her arm away from my waist.

"So... what do you think of this?"

"Perfect," I said with a grin, bringing my arms up to rest on her shoulders. I leaned in, giving Wanda a soft kiss, then resting my forehead against hers. The night was beautiful and peaceful around us, exactly what we'd been working so hard to find.

The two of us found a nice spot at the base of one of the trees to settle in, leaning against each other and looking out at the sparkling lights of the city. Wanda's arm rested across my shoulder while I wrapped one of mine around her waist. I'm not sure how long we sat like that, just enjoying our space alone, together. By all rights, we both should've been exhausted at some point, but the privacy was so rare and refreshing that we stayed up there to watch the sunrise. Our night may not have started exactly the way we'd planned it, but it had ended absolutely perfectly.

****************

Everything Taglist: @rosecentury @kmc1989 @space-helen @misshale21

Marvel Taglist: @valkyriepirate @infinetlyforgotten @sagesmelts @gaychaosgremlin

[mariacallous]

I plan on voting for Biden in November.  But it’s terrible.  A vote for him is still a vote that will not significantly improve our deepest and most troubling social problems.  He won’t give us Medicare for All or any other badly needed boosts to social programs.  He will probably continue to support policies that actively oppress BIPOC.  He will not help us.  He’s also a sexual predator.  Truly, I do not want to vote for this man.  This is not the man I wanted to vote for.  I don’t want him in office.  He is simply not good enough.  This man doesn’t represent what I want at all.

But if I don’t vote for Biden in November, I feel like I’m making it that much easier for Trump to win another election.  And I want that even less than I want a Biden presidency.  I don’t want another 4 years of what we have now.  No fucking way.  No.

I’m so conflicted.  I feel like there is blood on my hands.  I feel like I’m casting a vote for death and misery if I’m not voting for a progressive candidate with a progressive platform.  I feel like I’m committing nothing short of an atrocity no matter what I choose to do.  I don’t want to harm people, and yet, won’t I essentially be doing exactly that?  I just want to do the right thing.  I don’t want to bring harm, or perpetuate harm towards anyone.

Trump will probably win anyway.  He’s doing all he can to ensure that, and it will probably work.  The impending climate disaster will kill us all because we will clearly continue to do nothing.  Our bodies will be riddled with micro and nanoplastics.  America will become an even more of an inhospitable police state.

 Nobody will hold Biden accountable for anything if he wins, and he’ll never give us the public policies we desperately need. 

“Is this what hope feels like?  I’d forgotten,” you tweeted recently.  How?  And for what?  I see nothing but bad things to come.  I feel a deep sense of hopelessness and despair.

There are plenty of reasons to feel hopelessness and despair right now, but with regard to Joe Biden, you are wasting a whole bunch of negative emotions on a giant pile of shitty beliefs that just aren’t true.

First, and let me be very clear on this one, Joe Biden is not a sexual predator. He’s just not. Believe me, I would be shouting it from the rooftops if I thought he were. When Tara Reade went public, I took her allegations very seriously. I gave her extra helpings of the benefit of the doubt, but it turned out there was a mountain of evidence suggesting that Reade has always been a lying, manipulative grifter (which I didn’t want to be true), and there was another mountain of evidence suggesting that the predatory behavior alleged by Reade is simply not in Biden’s character (which I was very reluctant to trust). There was a time when I was hopeful that Reade’s accusations might even knock Biden out of the race, but I’m not the kind of person who believes a thing merely because I want it to be true. It’s fine if you want to criticize Biden for what appears to be a history of awkward or retrospectively inappropriate behavior. Hell, you can even buy into all that “Creepy Uncle Joe” bullshit, but you’re just plain wrong if you insist that Joe Biden is a sexual predator. (Obviously, the same cannot be said of Donald Trump, who is a straight-up serial rapist with a list of at least twenty-five women who have publicly and credibly accused him of sexual assault.)

As for your policy concerns, I understand your frustration. I would love to be voting for a far-left ultra-progressive firebrand of a candidate in the upcoming general election. That would feel wonderful, right up until the moment that she loses in a landslide, and I guarantee you, a far-left ultra-progressive candidate would get her ass handed to her by Trump. That’s not an outcome we can afford as a species, much less as a nation. You understand this, which is why you still plan on voting for Biden. Good. I’m really glad you’re not being a purist asshole about this. The evil garbage monsters in the GOP just love a left-wing purist who refuses to vote responsibly. Republicans are desperately praying to their imaginary white Jesus that all the Green Party crunch bars will fuck it up for the rest of us like they did back in 2016. We cannot let that happen again.

Listen, I’m not gonna try and convince you to like Joe Biden. You’re already gonna vote for him, so I’m perfectly fine if you hate his breathing guts. What I do want from you is a little maturity, some vision, and a realistic sense of scale. No one candidate will ever be the solution to our problems — not Bernie, not Liz, and certainly not Joe. At best, a candidate is a vector, a course correction, a desperately needed step in the right direction. That’s all we can expect from Biden, and he is bringing it. He’s bringing it every single day with a list of policy positions that are more progressive than any President’s in the history of the United States, and he most certainly brought it with the selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate.

Biden recognizes his place in history. He knows he is little more than a national stop-gap, a post-Trump tourniquet to stanch the bleeding. His Vice-Presidency and eventual Presidency will be a line of demarcation between two very distinct chapters of American history. This is more than just bridging the Boomer/Millennial generational divide. In the distant future (if we have one), it is my sincerest hope that Biden will be remembered as “The Last of the Old White Men,” a happy warrior who marked the end of a certain kind of Modern America and who helped usher in a new kind of Postmodern America. Those terms are clunky and loaded and absolutely will not stand the test of time, but we’re not the ones who get to name what we’re about to become. We’re the ones who have to keep doing the hard work to finally get us there, and that’s why I really need you to change your whole fucking attitude. 

This shit is going to be grueling. The fight will be brutal if not bloody, and there is absolutely no room for whiners and layabouts. You want to improve our deepest and most troubling social problems? Great. Quit moaning about doing harm with your vote and go do some actual good with your own two fucking hands. Pulling a lever in a voting booth every couple years is the bare minimum. In terms of civic duty, it is the absolute least you can do. Of course Biden won’t give us Medicare for All. Neither would Sanders or Warren. That’s not how any of this works. Presidents don’t give us shit. We do it ourselves. We demand it, loudly and with force, and over long stretches of time, with enough solidarity and sustained action, laws are enacted and policies change. 

I was around when the Clintons tried deadlifting their universal health care plan off the ground back in 1993. Maybe you remember it, maybe you weren’t even born yet, but that’s how long this shit takes. It’ll have been three fucking decades and two fucking generations of Democrats trying desperately to kick that gutbucket up Capitol Hill by the time we finally get around to some semblance of a single payer healthcare system. Thirty fucking years, my friend. That’s the kind of patience and perseverance the American experiment demands of us, so quit your fucking whining. Enough with all the pearl-clutching and hand-wringing. Take all your conflicted navel gazing bullshit and toughen the fuck up, buttercup.

You are on the right side of history. You are with the good guys. Quit your fucking bitching, and get out there and help us win.

[coralinnii]

Being Reincarnated into a New World as the Bad Guy feat: Floyd genre: humor, budding romance note: set in the same universe as previous works (Azul’s and Jade’s ver specifically), no pronouns were used, villain/ess!reader is not a merfolk, 1.6k word count, use of non-canon family name (I’ve officially adopted you),

My wifi is on the fritz again so going online hasn’t been easy but hopefully I can get it working again soon. I’ve been hiding in cafes but my wallet isn’t appreciative because I don’t like going into a cafe and not order anything T_T. Anyway, hope you guys enjoy our number 1 crazy eel boi

Series masterlist

You’re contemplating your life choices as you wonder what on Earth you did to deserve this. You can’t remember what happened that brought you into this world you once thought fictional but you were aware of how you’re probably gonna leave this world if the story stays in its original path.

You were a nameless mob character who was caught in the crossfire of your imbecile brother. During a party, your brother started bragging about your father who was a famous knight and started a knight training program after being given the title of baron, which grabbed the attention of the dangerous son of a marquis family, the Floyd Leech. Since then, the merman would suddenly visit your home to curiously watch the training while your brother continues to brag and even starts talking about how close he is to the notorious Leech family son who, while not the heir, was in line to inherit a great bit of land and some “business assets” from his father.

Your younger brother didn’t think that associating yourself with a family of suspicious background was too bad…until a rival of the Leech family invaded their home and proceeded to interrogate your family for information on the Leech household. Obviously knowing nothing, the rival family ended you and your mother’s future in anger. Your father, heartbroken and weakened by the lost of his beloved and one of his children, collapsed and became bedridden.

Still, you couldn’t hate your brother no matter how foolish he was, especially when he begged Floyd in tears to avenge his family, only to be ignored by the eel merman. “How is it my problem?” He cruelly said as he dismissed your brother to deal with his broken family.

You grew cautious, wary of people associated with the Leech household and any other noblemen that aligned themselves with them, which included the Golden Count Ashengrotto with his new partner, and that family that recently arranged an engagement with the Leech family heir with their only child.

You also taught your younger brother to learn when to hold his tongue, your family’s business is your own and avoid excessively bragging to others as it lures unpleasant leeches (he thought you meant metaphorically).

Then you explicitly told him not to interact with anyone from the Leech family, especially Floyd. You were willing to smack him over the head to get that warning across, telling him, “To him, we’re just toys. Not friends”

This was a clear solution, just don’t meet Floyd…or Jade…and have anything to do with that crazy eel family and your future is secured. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

Then one day, at a party…

The night was going well. Your younger brother found a clique of his own to interact with so you didn’t have to worry about catching the attention of a certain someone. Although, while you saw Jade mingling with the crowd, you haven’t seen even the shadow of the other Leech which worries you somewhat. However, you chose to let your guard down to enjoy the ambiance of the party. You deserve to have some fun too.

Some time has passed and soon you felt your body growing tired of all the socialising. You wandered around alone to find a secluded room to rest while contemplating whether you should call it a night. Typically you stay behind until your brother was ready to leave together as to keep a watchful eye over him. But since he’s been on his best behaviour, you wondered if you’re really needed. But then, voices then disrupted your train of thought as you heard someone speaking from the other side of the closed doors of the room you were occupying.

“If you need some time to rest, Sir Leech. I suggest one of these rooms my master has prepared” someone whom you assumed to be a servant spoke but that’s not what concerned you. Did he say Leech?!

A mental battle was going in your head as you assess your situation. Which Leech was it? (Does that matter?) Should you stay? (No!) How would you get out?? (!!)

You looked around in panic as you prayed for maybe a door to a conjoining room, maybe a bathroom to hide in until he leaves. You then looked to the balcony and without a second thought, pulled the doors open. You were on the second floor which wasn’t too bad. The balcony faced the back of the house towards the back garden which meant no one should be there to witness you climbing down. You’ve seen enough parkour videos that you figured you could come of this unscathed.

But the logical part of your brain is pulling you back, telling you that this absolutely reckless, stupid really. You can imagine your dumb brother doing this but your parents urge you to be the level-headed one of the two of you (which you like to argue on, why do you have to be the responsible one?).

But before your senses could come to you, you heard the knobs of the room door shaking, and you decided that you only live once.

So jumping, it is.

Without looking down (in fear of your nerves winning), you leapt off the railings of the balcony and braced for impact. Your clothes flutter loudly in the air as you try to push the fabric from your eyes to watch your landing. But instead of the marbled flooring, you were met with a pair of surprised heterocromatic eyes.

Floyd was sighing in irritation as schools of bottom feeders noblemen rushed over to him and his brother (mainly his brother) in hopes to find themselves in good graces with the Leech household. Jade may have a better facade going but Floyd was having a harder time not to snarl and squeeze the living souls out of these suck ups. In this pompous tank, no one was worth his attention. So, Floyd figured he could kill some time away from the mindless minnows and walk towards the backyard of the mansion, maybe chill out in a tree until his brother finds him.

In no imagination he had thought of for today did he expect to see something - or someone - flying down towards him in a mass of fabric fluttering in the wind. With quick reflexes, the ocean-haired man raised his arms and swiftly caught your waist through the mess of your clothing but momentum still won against the two of you as Floyd fell backwards with you, crashing onto the ground rather unceremoniously. His anger building quickly, Floyd raised his head about to take a good look at the crazy human he’s about to squeeze. But like how quickly his anger started, it immediately extinguished when he did take a good look at you.

He saw you, a flushing mess slightly shaking from your reckless decision to literally take a plunge off the second floor. Your hair in a disarray from the wind and likely the landing as well. And your eyes that Floyd found himself watching in intrigue as a swirling range of emotion was evident in your expressive face. Most visually present was your look of fearful realization.

Floyd Leech. Out of the billions of people you could ever meet, you ended up bumping…ah no crashing into the most unpredictably violent man in this world. Granted, you’re glad you survived your frankly dumb behavior but to be saved by the man that would be your future downfall was just proof that the world was messing with you for sh*ts and giggles.

“Hey you” you let out a small shriek as you hear Floyd call out to you slowly, reminding you of a shark slowly swimming its way to you for a meal, though really what difference is there? “What’s your nam-“

In an act of reckless desperation (your second one already), you didn’t let Floyd finish his question as you rolled over to the side, twisting your body out from the merman’s grip. Disregarding your absolute messy appearance, you sprinted your way away from Floyd who was still on the ground, rounding the corner of the manor to dash towards your carriage. You’ll tell a servant to inform your brother of your early departure later. You just needed to disappear from the menace’s sight immediately.

Though there was no real hurry as the menace in question chose not to pursue as he preferred to watch you flee in such a cute manner, entertained by the way you sped off like a prey in chase.

“Floyd, are you alright?” a familiar voice called out to him from above to which he then recognised and looked up to see his brother on the second floor balcony, the same general area you appeared from, immediately understanding where you came from.

Huh, you just got more interesting.

Floyd ignored his brother’s concern and asked a question back, “Hey Jade, you got any idea who that flying fishie was?”

The Marquis heir, who noticed the opened balcony doors, managed to glimpse upon the fascinating human who not only took a chance at jumping off the second floor, but also managed to intrigue his brother enough to escape his grasp…for now.

“I cannot be certain but I believe that was the first born of the Linni family. The youngest child is still here if you would like a chat with him” Jade oh so generously offered his knowledge to his brother, knowing full well that Floyd has started itching to sink into something fun. And what kind of brother would he be to interfere in his brother’s joy?

Floyd grinned, his sharp teeth visually showing. He got back onto his feet and with one more look towards the path you fled to, walked the other way, back into the manor and towards the party area where he was giddy to have a chat with your brother. You can flee for now, Floyd loves a worthwhile chase.

[traegorn]

So when I do finish this book I am writing (speaking it into existence bc adhd is a BITCH) Like what's your experience with publishing? How much does it usually cost? What kinda income does one get? I don't really care about making money but it would be super neat to make something since I cannot work. How do taxes work on that also? Google is confusing me

So far i have an idea and half a first chapter with thrilling notes such as " add a cat" and "insert spell here"

So I self publish, so that's the world I know. If you want to find a traditional publisher, you'll need to query agents and do a bunch of other stuff. My only advice for traditional publishing is that when going that route, money should always flow towards the author. If they're asking you to pay for something, they aren't a traditional publisher and there's a good chance it's a grift.

So let's talk about what I do know.

(And this turned out to be long as hell, so I'm putting in a "keep reading")

When you self publish, you are effectively acting as the publisher. If you want someone to do edits? You'll have to hire an editor. If you want someone to do the book layouts? You'll have to hire someone to do it if you can't do it yourself. You need a cover? You get the idea.

Now I don't pay an editor, so I can't really give you a price range on how much they cost off the top of my head. I do know they can get expensive though.

I also do all my own interiors, but I have a graphic design background and have been doing print layouts for decades. If you want to hire someone to do the interiors, that can run you $100-500, so I recommend just... learning to do it yourself.

Frankly, it's not terribly hard. I do mine in Apple Pages on my Mac for my paperbacks and Amazon has a free program for formatting eBooks (which you can export both as the Kindle format OR the more universal ePub format). With your print version, you just want to make sure you get your margins right, along with using a standard font like Times New Roman.

Like, literally just pick up a book and study the layout. Look at the front matter (copyright page, title page, etc) of a handful of books and mimic what you find there. I don't know why so many self published authors get that bit wrong. It's a book. Format it like a book.

Now the cover... this is where you'll probably end up spending something. I do my own covers for my comics, but hire out for my novels because I can't do the kind of covers expected of my genre. And you do want to match your genre, because you want a potential reader to know what they're getting into. I've seen so many self published books with terrible covers and it drives me nuts.

Cover design can run you anywhere from $35-$400 depending on who you choose to contract, and this is where I recommend you spend your money. On the cheap end you have companies like GetCovers. Now they primarily do covers made from edited stock photos, and I've honestly been pretty satisfied with their work... but you have to hold their hand and be very clear with what you want.

GetCovers is a part of Mibl Group, and it's pretty much all of their most inexperienced employees. The whole point of it is to get them the experience to work on bigger projects down the road. They have cheaper packages, but for their best work you'll probably only spend like $35-$45. If you're working in a genre that mainly uses stock images, that's who you want.

I often end up retouching the covers they do though, because I'm impatient. Like there are edits to The Witch and the Rose and Shadowcasting I made after they handed me the completed files. You're going to have to be very specific with what you want. The first version of the Bloody Damn Rite cover they did... was awful. But they did the revisions I asked for, and the version they delivered in the end was great.

Now if you want, like, original art or just more complicated, custom stuff? You're looking at at least $250 on the cheap end, but sometimes you end up in the ballpark of $700-$1000. Like on their regular site (just to use the same company as GetCovers for comparison), the Mibl group charges like $300 for a more complicated stock photo based cover (that requires more complicated edits) and at least $700 for covers that require digital painting, 3d modeling, etc.

There are a wide range of prices depending on what you're asking for. But, y'know, you're paying that once for a commercial piece of graphic design.

I'm cheap and can do some of the work myself, so I go for the $35 cover. I also figure out what fonts they used for the covers, so I can go buy my own commercial license for them and replicate a similar logo on my title page. You don't need to do that bit, I'm just finicky.

Actually publishing the book is easy. You'll want to use a self publishing platform like Kindle Direct Publishing or IngramSpark (or, if you're like me, both). I sell KDP books on Amazon, but all other distribution is through IngramSpark. You make more money on Amazon by using KDP, but even though they offer distribution, no book store will ever order through them. So I turn that option off, and then I take the same book and I make it available through IngramSpark.

On amazon I make a little more than $2 on a $3 ebook, and about $4.00 on a $12.99 paperback. When a bookstore buys an IngramSpark version, I make about $2.50 on a $14.99 book (if you wondered by my books cost more when not buying it through Amazon... that's why). Now if you buy yourself author copies, they cost way less -- in the end I think I can get them for like $5 a book? So when I sell them in person, my margins are much higher.

But, y'know, you have to actually sell them.

Because that's the hard part. When self publishing, you only have you to market it. I don't know how many books I'd be selling if I didn't have a pre-existing audience -- and even then it's not a huge amount. I've sold about 200 books this year? Which isn't nothing, and I appreciate every single person who's purchased one of my titles, but it's obviously not enough to quit my day job for, y'know?

That said, I've known people who do sell enough to make a steady living. So it's possible for sure.

But it's not going to happen overnight, and it won't be easy.

As for taxes, you'll need a 1099 and do stuff with the Schedule C. I always forget exactly what until I'm actually doing them, but it's not super hard, just annoying.

[pekoposting]

peko pekoyama fic recs (part 1 maybe?)

want to read more about our favourite shitty self-image swordswoman? i have scoured the peko tag a lot, but if i gave all of my recs we'd be here all day, so i mournfully cut it down to ten fics (mostly character studies)

(note: fuyuhiko is also here for a lot of them because their characters are so entwined)

mason jars by thewildwilds (6k words, canon compliant character study, hurt/comfort. comprehensive)

You are seven and a half when the strange men come and shove you and Peko into the back of a van.

She’s always been there for you when they tried to take you away.

notes: if you are going to read only one fic on this list, let it be this. one of my favourite dr fics ever, it is so comprehensive yet so beautifully written that it's a single, poignant one shot

absolute zero by thewildwilds (9k words, canon compliant character study, angsty coming of age. pre-canon)

She swears she is nothing but a sword, a shield, a cog in a machine.

Peko Pekoyama. The name of the girl who became a tool.

notes: second part of the series containing mason jars, honing in on a specific yet pivotal off-screen event in it. notable for being one of the few fics which depicts pekoyama as choosing to become a tool because of her care for fuyuhiko rather than purely being abused into it (a depiction which kodaka's own tweets agree with)

blossom in the dark by venusiancarbondioxide (3.6k words, character study, hurt/comfort. pre-canon)

Thirteen-year-old girls were not meant to be assassins.

Chen Shi knew this.

The problem was that nobody else seemed to get the memo, least of all the assassin herself.

note: has probably one of my favourite HCs for what yakuza tattoo pekoyama would get

brace for recoil by mithrigil (20k with 5 chapters, dark. canon hope's peak)

Peko didn’t fall into despair: she descended, one blind step at a time.

notes: the best pekoyama despair descent fic i've seen. it was written years before dr3. a minor consequence of that is that natsumi's actual name wasn't known, and so she's referred to as nabiki

absolute lithops effect by venusiancarbondioxide (5k, character study, existentialism with a happy ending. non-despair hope's peak)

In which Peko goes on a shopping trip and tries to grow into who she always was.

notes: finally, something more happy. another great character study

woven by sunbrights (3.7k, character study. pre-canon)

On the thirtieth of June, she is thirteen, and her hair is past her collarbone.

notes: examines peko's relationship to her hair. so good that i had to cite it when trying to do analysis of the symbolism of peko's ribbons

brick by brick by sunbrights (30k, 5/10 chapters, UNFINISHED AND DORMANT. character study, bleak recovery with pinpricks of light. post-canon)

They meet again, after the Neo World Program has torn them to their foundations: hope, despair, and the yawning debt of their history, waiting to be answered. It's up to them to rebuild, from the ground up, no matter how difficult the work or unfamiliar the tools.

No one can lay the mortar of your recovery but yourself.

notes: best post-canon peko (and fuyuhiko) recovery fic i've seen. still absolutely worth it for the fascinating questions it raises about fuyuhiko and peko's relationship. how does the inflection shift when peko realises that something she wants is something fuyuhiko wants? especially if what they both want is a romantic relationship? heads up, this is tagged 'unhealthy relationships'.

Takeo Pekoyama by PekoIsBaby (3.8k, some angst but overall fluffy. non-despair but backstories the same and they're roommates)

It's Peko Pekoyama's birthday, and Fuyuhiko's set up some plans.

notes: one of the greatest looks into the gap in fuyuhiko and peko's relationship where they know they're romantically interested in each other, but they have to improve themselves before they can have a healthy romantic relationship. also they get a cat :D

growing pains. by alighting (3.9k, 2 chapters. angst with a happy ending. post-canon)

Peko has never had a mother of her own, and so when the time comes for her to raise her own daughter, she's not sure what to do.

Companion fic of sorts to such great heights.

notes: summary applies to the first chapter. the second chapter focuses on the pov of a grown kuzupeko fanchild, who has to figure out why older kuzuryuu clan members keep using such a weird and specific insult for her mother.

Cupboard Children by shsldespair (1.8k, angst-tipped retrospective character study. right after natsumi's murder.)

Natsumi Kuzuryuu is not technically Pekoyama's charge, but the grief hits just as hard. It's unbefitting of a tool.

[thefaiao]

seeing your clowns made me go feral since my fixation is cringe and clown flavored

Who let you cook like that who let you cook AUTHHFFH UR ART IS SO COOL IM BEING DRAGGED AWAY

You’re hatching is so fucking inspiring since it’s soMETHING I try to do in my own work I LOVE UR ART

would it be fine to ask what brushes you use? I love ur values also, you’re so so good at shapes and form WAAAA I LOVE UR STUFF. I did dig up an old ask you made iirc, but I’m not sure if it’s changed

Hey! Thank you very much. I'll go through the brushes I use for each program: Drawpile

From what I understand most of these are MyPaint brushes... but I only know them as drawpile brushes because that's what I use. Main ones I've used lately is Irregular Ink and a default brush for coloring

I don't really change the size of irregular ink much and the pressure doesn't matter that much. It has high stabilization which I haven't changed, but I'm sure you could get away with lowering it. For the other brush I'm pretty sure it's a default one that I slightly tweaked (drawpile is a bit bad about communicating what brush exactly you are using to you.) I quite like it because it feels like playing with clay, makes it easy to map out the volume. I use it for those lineless pieces I do from time to time too. I change its size a lot while drawing. I've also used these two, one of the pencil brushes and a second one I stole from Jokioro that I have no idea what is called

I used the first one for the D'arce I did a while ago and the recent VTMB piece. It's great at emulating sketchy graphite pencils, I like layering it to do multi-colored hatching rendering. The second one I don't know how to use super well yet but it's probably my fourth most used as of late. It works very weirdly so if you wanna figure out how to make it work I recommend looking at how Jokioro draws. Clip Studio I bounce around a lot with all the brushes, but I use a loooot of stuff from the Frenden pack. Mainly Meeko Leako for lining and even coloring, it has a great texture to it, very fun

This has been my most used brush for years. It's great for super straight lines and produces a great difference in value between quick lines and thick lines. I haven't used it as much since I picked up drawpile more recently, but it's amazing! Other than that I use the default G-pen when I just want simple lines without much texture

It's a bit ugly at a glance but I think if you lock in it's great for super clean lines, just trying to get the point across without much noise. I also like coloring with it at times, when I'm going lineless. SAI Binary pen. Use the binary pen. It's the best brush ever made

It just feels super right to draw with it, it's so simple but it makes your lines look super slick, and it's just a binary pen. I guess they just got the behavior down perfect for it. But yeah, love this brush. IRL I've always used these archival ink pens in different sizes for basically everything I've done traditionally, and of course just a simple number 2 pencil for sketching and such. I've used a bit of charcoal recently, and been wanting to deep into darker pencils for detail, but this is still the default. I also will probably try out dip pens sometime

That's all I can think of immediately, but I always like to mess around to try and find another great brush, and you should do the same even if you end up using these a lot.

[gachagon]

I love it when characters who were previously incredibly pompous and egotistical realize that the pedestal they've placed themselves on is actually worthless given the current situation they're now in.

Kaiser is realizing now that his idea of what it takes to be on top, to be the best striker is wrong and that it's probably been wrong for a while. And that's really got to suck, because while Kaiser has accomplished a lot of great things, ultimately his goal pales in comparison to the people he now has to go up against. Isagi and the other Blue Locker's aren't just there to rise up the ranks slowly, this is a last man standing program and Kaiser isn't strong enough to stand on his own.

He had become a great player, but he's not the best player. And he needs to be better in order to even have that position of acclaim in the first place. I am reminded of what Isagi taunted him with earlier, calling him a "Naked Emperor/King" which is an obvious reference to the "Emperor's New Clothes".

In that short story, a king orders himself new clothing that outshines everyone else and so the court creates "Invisible Clothing that only he can see" for the King. The king accepts the clothes and "wears" them, and so to him he is wearing the finest cloak imaginable, but to everyone else he is just a naked man making a fool of himself.

In a way, Kaiser ended up being the naked emperor in that he only came to the realization that his past achievements weren't good enough to stay in the team until this very game with Isagi.

I really think that fear of losing everything he worked for was always holding him back from really going above and beyond as well, because while he does have the support of a partner to do passes for him and he's able to read the field accurately, he doesn't take chances that tougher opponents hand him.

His backstory as a thief really puts this into perspective too because thieves wait for the right moment to strike instead of going out into the open to steal. And just like a thief, everything they get is "unearned" because they just take it from other people. In a way, you could almost say Kaiser's position as the best and the king was unearned because he hadn't actually done what needed to be done in order to get to that level.

And that's why I think this makes him so upset when Ness rattles off all of the thing's he's done, because ultimately none of those things will really amount to anything if he can't keep control of this team and be the best among them. It won't matter if he's scored a goal in every match, or if he's gotten offers from top teams, his goal is to be better than everyone and right now some dude from a no name prefecture in Japan is wiping the floor with him, and easily.

You really gotta feel sorry for Ness too, because he thinks of himself as one of Kaiser's "accomplishments" in a way, but Kaiser literally doesn't care about him enough. He just see's Ness as a tool to use, someone who's easily replaceable and loyal like a dog.

My moot (@miyamiwu) made a really good observation about how Ness might just leave Kaiser soon if he doesn't keep playing in that magical way that captured Ness in the first place, and I think that's true now especially since Kaiser himself seems to also realize it. When he's thinking about all of the achievements he could potentially lose if he doesn't win this, Ness is one of them.

"I thought I was becoming human." Is so sad too because I think deep down he really did think that by being close to Ness that he was truly becoming a normal player, that he was on the fast track to achieving his goals. But because he doesn't really know what that goal is anymore, the rug has been pulled from under him now and he has to literally reevaluate what is probably years worth of self reflection.

I also think this chapter is Kaiser ditching the rose as a symbol of his ego because he's truly looking back on things and realizing that the object that really gave him solace wasn't that symbol of the impossible, but the soccer ball itself. He is coming to terms with the fact that without soccer, he doesn't have anything at all, and that it is the only reason he was even able to get this far or have the courage to fight back against his abusive shitty dad.

Instead of the rose tattoo being here, we see there's a new tattoo that's prominent now and it's in the shape of a crown. And rather than being in a place where he's most vulnerable (his neck), the tattoo is on his hand, which I think symbolizes how he is able to take his own freedom and by extension his own place as a king with his own two hands.

Kaiser's solitude is something he really needs to become the best, because if he can't do it alone, than he can't do it at all. He is clinging desperately to the things he has managed to gather throughout these years, including Ness' loyalty and he's so afraid of losing even one of those things that it's making him a worse player.

However, whether or not being totally alone is what he needs to heal as a person is another thing entirely, which is ultimately why I don't think Kaiser will ever beat Isagi and that if he does it'd actually be the worst ending for him. Throughout this entire manga, Kaiser comes off as a really calculated person who's always thinking ten steps ahead, but inside he is just a damaged kid who is using soccer as his one means of coping with the trauma he faced as child.

And that phrasing "I thought I was becoming human" really just makes me feel so sad for Kaiser, because to him if he doesn't have soccer he is less than human and has nothing to give back to the world. He has never allowed himself any time to just be a normal teenager and just make friends in a healthy way, and the one friend he does have might just up and leave if he's not playing in a groundbreaking way. He thinks so lowly of himself that he hinges his entire identity around how other people perceive his abilities in the game, and if he's not the best at the game, he surely can't matter that much as a player, no matter how much Ness tries to placate him with words about how he's "already done enough".

Ego Jinpachi said it as well after Nagi made his really good goal, that some people are content with just being average and "good" instead of being great. And that it's because they're content with where they are in life, that they never advance at all. The idea that they are totally fine in their current position makes them lose the drive they normally would have if they weren't still thinking about trying to get better.

And Blue Lock's philosophy hinges on the player wanting to always get better and better and beat the other players on the field. Being "good" is never enough, hell being "Great" isn't enough at times, you need to be the best forever. You need to make it so that dethroning you is an uphill battle.

[a-memory-a-distant-echo]

it's time for the long-threatened post about how to get subtitles (including translated ones) for videos that don't have subtitles.

in my experience, the methods in this post can probably get you solidly 75% or more of the content of many videos (caveats inside). i've tested this on videos that are originally in chinese, english, french, german, hindi, japanese, korean, spanish, and honestly probably some languages that i'm forgetting. my experience is that it works adequately in all of them. not great, necessarily, but well enough that you can probably follow along.

this is a very long post because this is the overexplaining things website, and because i talk about several different ways to get the captions. this isn't actually difficult, though, or even especially time consuming—the worst of it is pushing a button and ignoring things for a while. actual hands-on work is probably five minutes tops, no matter how long the video is.

i've attempted to format this post understandably, and i hope it's useful to someone.

first up, some disclaimers.

this is just my experience with things, and your experience might be different. the tools used for (and available for) this kind of thing change all the time, and if you're reading this six months after i wrote it, your options might be different. this post is probably still a decent starting place.

background about my biases in this: i work in the creative industries. mostly i'm a fiction editor. i've also been a writer, a technical editor and writer, a transcriptionist, a copyeditor, and something i've seen called a 'translation facilitator' or 'rewrite editor', where something is translated fairly literally (by a person or a machine) and then a native speaker of the target language goes through and rewrites/restructures as needed to make the piece read more naturally in the target language. i've needed to get information out of business meetings that were conducted in a language i didn't speak, and have done a lot of work on things that were written in (or translated into) the writer's second or sixth language, but needed to be presented in natural english.

so to start, most importantly: machine translation is never going to be as good as a translation done by an actual human. human translators can reflect cultural context and nuanced meanings and the artistry of the work in a way that machines will never be able to emulate. that said, if machine translation is your only option, it's better than nothing. i also find it really useful for videos in languages where i have enough knowledge that i'm like, 75% sure that i'm mostly following, and just want something that i can glance at to confirm that.

creating subs like this relies heavily on voice-to-text, which—unfortunately—works a lot better in some situations than it does in others. you'll get the best, cleanest results from videos that have slow, clear speech in a 'neutral' accent, and only one person speaking at a time. (most scripted programs fall into this category, as do many vlogs and single-person interviews.) the results will get worse as voices speed up, overlap more, and vary in volume. that said, i've used this to get captions for cast concerts, reality shows, and variety shows, and the results are imperfect but solidly readable, especially if you have an idea of what's happening in the plot and/or can follow along even a little in the broadcast language.

this also works best when most of the video is in a single language, and you select that language first. the auto detect option sometimes works totally fine, but in my experience there's a nonzero chance that it'll at least occasionally start 'detecting' random other languages in correctly, or someone will say a few words in spanish or whatever, but the automatic detection engine will keep trying to translate from spanish for another three minutes, even tho everything's actually in korean. if there's any way to do so, select the primary language, even if it means that you miss a couple sentences that are in a different language.

two places where these techniques don't work, or don't work without a lot of manual effort on your part: translating words that appear on the screen (introductions, captions, little textual asides, etc), and music. if you're incredibly dedicated, you can do this and add it manually yourself, but honestly, i'm not usually this dedicated. getting captions for the words on the screen will involve either actually editing the video or adding manually translated content to the subs, which is annoying, and lyrics are...complicated. it's possible, and i'm happy to talk about it in another post if anyone is interested, but for the sake of this post, let's call it out of scope, ok? ok. bring up the lyrics on your phone and call it good enough.

places where these techniques are not great: names. it's bad with names. names are going to be mangled. resign yourself to it now. also, in languages that don't have strongly gendered speech, you're going to learn some real fun stuff about the way that the algorithms gender things. (spoiler: not actually fun.) bengali, chinese, and turkish are at least moderately well supported for voice-to-text, but you will get weird pronouns about it.

obligatory caveat about ai and voice-to-text functionality. as far as i'm aware, basically every voice-to-text function is ~ai powered~. i, a person who has spent twenty years working in the creative industries, have a lot of hate for generative ai, and i'm sure that many of you do, too. however, if voice-to-text (or machine translation software) that doesn't rely on it exists anymore, i'm not aware of it.

what we're doing here is the same as what douyin/tiktok/your phone's voice-to-text does, using the same sorts of technology. i mention this because if you look at the tools mentioned in this post, at least some of them will be like 'our great ai stuff lets you transcribe things accurately', and i want you to know why. chat gpt (etc) are basically glorified predictive text, right? so for questions, they're fucking useless, but for things like machine transcription and machine translation, those predictions make it more likely that you get the correct words for things that could have multiple translations, or for words that the software can only partially make out. it's what enables 'he has muscles' vs 'he has mussels', even though muscles and mussels are generally pronounced the same way. i am old enough to have used voice to text back when it was called dictation software, and must grudgingly admit that this is, in fact, much better.

ok! disclaimers over.

let's talk about getting videos

for the most part, this post will assume that you have a video file and nothing else. cobalt.tools is the easiest way i'm aware of to download videos from most sources, though there are other (more robust) options if you're happy to do it from the command line. i assume most people are not, and if you are, you probably don't need this guide anyhow.

i'm going to use 'youtube' as the default 'get a video from' place, but generally speaking, most of this works with basically any source that you can figure out how to download from—your bilibili downloads and torrents and whatever else will work the same way. i'm shorthanding things because this post is already so so long.

if the video you're using has any official (not autogenerated) subtitles that aren't burned in, grab that file, too, regardless of the language. starting from something that a human eye has looked over at some point is always going to give you better results. cobalt.tools doesn't pull subtitles, but plugging the video url into downsub or getsubs and then downloading the srt option is an easy way to get them for most places. (if you use downsub, it'll suggest that you download the full video with subtitles. that's a link to some other software, and i've never used it, so i'm not recommending it one way or the other. the srts are legit, tho.)

the subtitle downloaders also have auto translation options, and they're often (not always) no worse than anything else that we're going to do here—try them and see if they're good enough for your purposes. unfortunately, this only works for things that already have subtitles, which is…not that many things, honestly. so let's move on.

force-translating, lowest stress mode.

this first option is kind of a cheat, but who cares. youtube will auto-caption things in some languages (not you, chinese) assuming that the uploader has enabled it. as ever, the quality is kinda variable, and the likelihood that it's enabled at all seems to vary widely, but if it is, you're in for a much easier time of things, because you turn it on, select whatever language you want it translated to, and youtube…does its best, anyhow.

if you're a weird media hoarder like me and you want to download the autogenerated captions, the best tool that i've found for this is hyprscribr. plug in the video url, select 'download captions via caption grabber', then go to the .srt data tab, copy it out, and paste it into a text file. save this as [name of downloaded video].[language code].srt, and now you have captions! …that you need to translate, which is actually easy. if it's a short video, just grab the text, throw it in google translate (timestamps and all), and then paste the output into a new text file. so if you downloaded cooking.mp4, which is in french, you'll have three files: cooking.mp4, cooking.fr.srt, and cooking.en.srt. this one's done! it's easy! you're free!

but yeah, ok, most stuff isn't quite that easy, and auto-captioning has to be enabled, and it has some very obvious gaps in the langauges it supports. which is sort of weird, because my phone actually has pretty great multilingual support, even for things that youtube does not. which brings us to low-stress force translation option two.

use your phone

this seems a little obvious, but i've surprised several people with this information recently, so just in case. for this option, you don't even need to have downloaded the video—if it's a video you can play on your phone, the phone will almost definitely attempt real-time translation for you. i'm sure iphones have this ability, but i'm an android person, so can only provide directions for that: go into settings and search for (and enable) live translation. the phone will do its best to pick up what's being said and translate it on the fly for you, and if 'what's being said' is a random video on the internet, your phone isn't gonna ask questions. somewhat inexplicably, this works even if the video is muted. i do this a lot at like four a.m. when i'm too lazy to grab earbuds but don't want to wake up my wife.

this is the single least efficient way to force sub/translate things, in my opinion, but it's fast and easy, and really useful for those videos that are like a minute long and probably not that interesting, but like…what if it is, you know? sometimes i'll do this to decide if i'm going to bother more complicated ways of translating things.

similarly—and i feel silly even mentioning this, but that i didn't think of it for an embarrassingly long time—if you're watching something on a device with speakers, you can try just…opening the 'translate' app on your phone. they all accept voice input. like before, it'll translate whatever it picks up.

neither of these methods are especially useful for longer videos, and in my experience, the phone-translation option generally gives the least accurate translation, because in attempting to do things in real time, you lose some of the predicative ability that i was talking about earlier. (filling in the blank for 'he has [muscles/mussels]' is a lot harder if you don't know if the next sentence is about the gym or about dinner.)

one more lazy way

this is more work than the last few options, but often gives better results. with not much effort, you can feed a video playing on your computer directly into google translate. there's a youtube video by yosef k that explains it very quickly and clearly. this will probably give you better translation output than any of the on-the-fly phone things described above, but it won't give you something that you can use as actual subs—it just produces text output that you can read while you watch the video. again, though, really useful for things that you're not totally convinced you care about, or for things where there aren't a lot of visuals, or for stuff where you don't care about keeping your eyes glued to the screen.

but probably you want to watch stuff on the screen at the same time.

let's talk about capcut!

this is probably not a new one for most people, but using it like this is a little weird, so here we go. ahead of time: i'm doing this on an actual computer. i think you probably can do it on your phone, but i have no idea how, and honestly this is already a really long guide so i'm not going to figure it out right now. download capcut and put it on an actual computer. i'm sorry.

anyhow. open up capcut, click new project. import the file that you downloaded, and then drag it down to the editing area. go over to captions, auto captions, and select the spoken language. if you want bilingual captions, pick the language for that, as well, and the captions will be auto-translated into whatever the second language you choose is. (more notes on this later.)

if i remember right, this is the point at which you get told that you can't caption a video that's more than an hour long. however. you have video editing software, and it is open. split the video in two pieces and caption them separately. problem solved.

now the complicated part: saving these subs. (don't panic; it's not actually that complicated.) as everyone is probably aware, exporting captions is a premium feature, and i dunno about the rest of you, but i'm unemployed, so let's assume that's not gonna happen.

the good news is that since you've generated the captions, they're already saved to your computer, they're just kinda secret right now. there are a couple ways to dig them out, but the easiest i'm aware of is the biyaoyun srt generator. you'll have to select the draft file of your project, which is auto-saved once a minute or something. the website tells you where the file is saved by default on your computer. (i realised after writing this entire post that they also have a step-by-step tutorial on how to generate the subtitles, with pictures, so if you're feeling lost, you can check that out here.)

select the project file titled 'draft_content', then click generate. you want the file name to be the same as the video name, and again, i'd suggest srt format, because it seems to be more broadly compatible with media players. click 'save to local' and you now have a subtitle file!

translating your subtitles

you probably still need to translate the subtitles. there are plenty of auto-translation options out there. many of them are fee- or subscription-based, or allow a very limited number of characters, or are like 'we provide amazing free translations' and then in the fine print it says that they provide these translations through the magic of uhhhh google translate. so we're just going to skip to google translate, which has the bonus of being widely available and free.

for shorter video, or one that doesn't have a ton of spoken stuff, you can just copy/paste the contents of the .srt file into the translation software of your choice. the web version of google translate will do 5000 characters in one go, as will systran. that's the most generous allocation that i'm aware of, and will usually get you a couple minutes of video.

the timestamps eat up a ton of characters, though, so for anything longer than a couple minutes, it's easier to upload the whole thing, and google translate is the best for that, because it is, to my knowledge, the only service that allows you to do it. to upload the whole file, you need a .doc or .rtf file.

an .srt file is basically just a text file, so you can just open it in word (or gdocs or whatever), save it as a .doc, and then feed it through google translate. download the output, open it, and save it as an .srt.

you're done! you now have your video and a subtitle file in the language of your choice.

time for vibe, the last option in this post.

vibe is a transcription app (not a sex thing, even tho it sounds like one), and it will also auto-translate the transcribed words to english, if you want.

open vibe and select your file, then select the language. if you want it translated to english, hit advanced and toggle 'translate to english'. click translate and wait a while. after a few minutes (or longer, depending on how long the file is), you'll get the text. the save icon is a folder with a down arrow on it, and i understand why people are moving away from tiny floppy disks, but also: i hate it. anyhow, save the output, and now you have your subs file, which you can translate or edit or whatever, as desired.

vibe and capcom sometimes get very different results. vibe seems to be a little bit better at picking up overlapping speech, or speech when there are other noises happening; capcom seems to be better at getting all the worlds in a sentence. i feel like capcom maybe has a slightly better translation engine, of the two of them, but i usually end up just doing the translation separately. again, it can be worth trying both ways and seeing which gives better results.

special notes about dual/bilingual subs

first: i know that bilingual subs are controversial. if you think they're bad, you don't have to use them! just skip this section.

as with everything else, automatically generating gives mixed results. sometimes the translations are great, and sometimes they're not. i like having dual subs, but for stuff that Matters To Me, for whatever reason, i'll usually generate both just the original and a bilingual version, and then try some other translation methods on the original or parts thereof to see what works best.

not everything displays bilingual subs very well. plex and windows media player both work great, vlc and the default video handler on ubuntu only display whatever the first language is, etc. i'm guessing that if you want dual subbed stuff you already have a system for it.

i'll also point out that if you want dual subs and have gone a route other than capcom, you can create dual subs by pasting the translated version and the untranslated version into a single file. leave the timestamps as they are, delete the line numbers if there are any (sometimes they seem to cause problems when you have dual subs, and i haven't figured out why) and then literally just paste the whole sub file for the first language into a new file. then paste in the whole sub file for the second language. yes, as a single chunk, the whole thing, right under the first language's subs. save the file as [video name].[zh-en].srt (or whatever), and use it like any other sub file.

notes on translation, especially since we're talking about lengthy machine-translations of things.

i default to translation options that allow for translating in large chunks, mostly because i'm lazy. but since an .srt is, again, literally just a text file, they're easy to edit, and if you feel like some of the lines are weird or questionable or whatever, it's easy to change them if you can find a better translation.

so: some fast notes on machine translation options, because i don't know how much time most people spend thinking about this kind of stuff.

one sort of interesting thing to check out is the bing translator. it'll only do 1000 characters at once, but offers the rather interesting option of picking a level of formality. i can't always get it to work, mind, but it's useful especially for times when you're like 'this one line sounds weird'—sometimes the difference between what the translator feels is standard vs formal vs casual english will make a big difference.

very fast illustration of the difference in translations. the random video that i used to make sure i didn't miss any steps explaining things starts with '所以你第二季来'. here's how it got translated:

google: So you come to season 2

google's top alternative: So you come in the second season

bing's standard tone: So here you come for the second season

bing set to casual: So you're coming for the second season, huh?

reverso default guess: So you come in season two

reverso alternate guess: You'll be participating in season two

capcom: So you come in season two

yandex: So you come in the second season

systran: That's why you come in season two

deepl: That's why you're here in season two

vibe: So your second season is here

technically all conveying the same information, but the vibes are very different. sometimes one translator or another will give you a clearly superior translation, so if you feel like the results you're getting are kinda crap, try running a handful of lines through another option and see if it's better.

ok! this was an incredibly long post, and i've almost definitely explained something poorly. again, there are almost certainly better ways to do this, but these ways are free and mostly effective, and they work most of the time, and are better than nothing.

feel free to ask questions and i'll answer as best i can. (the answer to any questions about macs or iphones is 'i'm so sorry, i have no idea tho.' please do not ask those questions.)

[hms-no-fun]

your last answer was very good, its really great to see someone actually talking about "AI" as a labour issue instead of complaining about "plagiarism" and saying we need to make copyright stronger lol. my question is completely tangential to that, but i'm really curious what you mean by making a distinction between a communist future and an anarchist future- what in your mind would be true about a communist future that would be undesirable and not true about an anarchist future? in my experience theyve always been largely equated, albeit generally with some differences mostly stemming from the differences in socialist and anarchist perspectives on the whole issue

i'm so glad you asked this question!

i tend to focus a lot on democratic socialist policies in my writing, your public option and affordable housing etc etc. i do this because they are tangible, relatable necessities whose impacts would be of incalculable benefit to the working class. but i don't see them as the end goal. for me, getting those programs in place and future proofed is step zero. barring a full scale organized revolution, this seems the most likely path forward.

step one from there is to build communism. this means more than unions, more than socialized healthcare, more than high taxes. this means seizing corporate firms and nationalizing them. this means worker ownership of and democratic participation in those firms. and it means a million other things.

if you asked me the right way to build communism, i'd have a few shrugged suggestions and then say "i don't know." the question of how to build communism will be answered in the doing. mistakes will be made. people will get hurt. but people are always already getting hurt, and we must remember that our task here is not to build a perfect society, but a better one.

yet this pipe dream itself is not the end goal. i think state communism is perfectly capable of falling to rot in its own ways, even in a world where there are no capitalist superpowers waging economic warfare against them. to my mind, the ultimate goal of state communism should be to make itself redundant. this is almost certainly beyond our lifetime in even the rosiest of scenarios. we're talking generations of very deliberate work. but let's say we've arrived at the equitable future. a truly classless, borderless world of the proletariat may yet have little need for states. i struggle to imagine such a world without the abolition of hierarchical organizations as we know them, because hierarchies manufacture class dynamics.

what i imagine then is a form of anarchism in which governing bodies emerge out of necessity or ingenuity, serve their function, then dissolve as a matter of course to avoid the re-entrenchment of imbalanced power dynamics. don't ask me to elaborate further on the practicalities of that future, because i honestly haven't got an answer for you. anarchism is a beautiful hypothesis which cannot be proved in a lab.

i see socialism, communism, and anarchism not as competing ideologies but stages along a spectrum of societal development. the conflict between these schools of thought seems to emerge out of disagreements over which one we should build first, which one we should never build, and the order in which one may then build up to another. you don't have to agree with me on that assessment, but from where i'm sitting in the 21st century united states, socialism -> communism -> anarchism makes the most sense. you can't dismantle the state without controlling the state, and you don't truly control the state until you control the means of production, and seizing the means would probably be a hell of a lot easier under a democratic socialist state.

that's the theory, anyway! i am not particularly dogmatic about this stuff because i can imagine plenty of scenarios where we hopskip socialism or jump a curb somewhere into anarchism. and of course it's not gonna be the same order, the same process, the same logic in every country, nor will it happen all at once. we're most likely talking about a project of centuries, even as i believe in the transformative immediacy of revolution. hence my focus on democratic socialist policies, whose necessity are paramount regardless of your political disposition or prescribed solution to the problems of the world today. i'm sick of debating the hypotheticals of a system we are not even remotely close to activating in the real world, i want to put my energy towards a project that feels genuinely achievable and that would immediately change a lot of lives for the better overnight. beyond that, i simply try to emphasize that this is one step to take on a long path, because i think it's healthier to take the long view. shrug!