#SO much rambling under the cut

[whyeverr]

After darts, things moved upstairs to Alicia's room for an impromptu makeover session. Alicia went quite daring with the boldest basegame eyeliner one could imagine — top and bottom eyelid 😉 — and some setting powder for good measure, apparently?

"Well... What do we think?"

"You look great! You always look great."

"I think you could pull off something a bit bolder..."

Here's where I ramble about the bit of inspiration @moonwoodhollow shared way back when she shared survivors Cora and Rose over a year ago now.

Wow I'm good at making use of sims in a timely fashion! 😏

Berry mentioned Rose's look being inspired by a series called The Tribe which I had never heard of but absolutely would have been obsessed with as a preteen in the aughts because it. has. everything: Kiwi accents, bad child acting, distressed / punk y2k fashion, post-apocalyptic survival, and best of all, no adults. (The premise is that there's a disease or something that wipes out all adults on earth.)

As a present-day adult I was unfortunately only able to make it through maybe 2/3 of the first season (the soundtrack is so very grating — maybe this is what took out everyone's parents?) but greatly appreciated it for what it was, particularly for both its kids surviving the apocalypse premise (which... I'm not sure I'd even introduced Alicia or the Wilds when I put out the call for additional townies survivors last fall, much less revealed that child and younger sims can't be infected by the townie virus, but so much for ever having an original thought once ever in my life!) and — perhaps much more importantly — its makeup lewks.

[morrigan-sims]

Royal Horses

@morningstarequestrian's new Baroque Tack Set is absolutely perfect for tacking up the horses from my story save. (which I've been neglecting for the past year+) (Other pieces are from the Medieval Tack Set or the Medieval Round Bridle. The first outfits are from @objuct's Traditional Arabian Set, plus one of my recolors of that set.)

(also obligatory tagging @simgerale because Phillip pics.)

The first two outfits are something I could see being like, a parade outfit, at least for Alena. (Kristopher wouldn't be involved in any parades back in Oryn, I just wanted to test out all my cc.) Especially the version with the tassels isn't practical for just recreational riding, but it certainly looks nice for a parade, and does resemble parade-type outfits.

Alena's 2nd-3rd outfits and Phillip's 2nd-4th outfits are just more general-purpose riding. Two different saddles each and a few different saddle pads for Phillip.

Phillip's 5th outfit and Alena's 4th and 5th are potentially more of long-distance setups. Maybe like some kind of tour, where Fallon would be riding for long distances, but still want to look formal / be seen by people. (Again, not really something Kristopher and Phillip would have been doing, but it looked good on him and I wanted to test stuff out.) Alena has a second variation because technically white isn't one of Anvia's royal colors, but black is, so if it was a public event, she might tack in black. Especially as that would show less wear and dirt than the white for long travel.

The last pic is a blanket for Phillip because it gets cold in Oryn, especially in the winter and late fall/early spring. Alena doesn't really need a blanket most of the time, since Anvia's winters are much milder. (They don't often get snow, and when they do it's rarely more than an inch or two at a time.)

[chiquilines]

Hi guysssssss its been a minute

I havent posted in a hot while due toooo many things one of which being im not that much into mha anymore... i still really really love all my girls, tgchk mmjr midjoke miryumi etc still hold a dear place in my heart, and I'm gonna keep drawing them, just less. I might start posting more art from different media, but regardless im not gonna be able to post much in the coming months cause I am about to have a very very busy time academically, so Im gonna have less time for drawing :( anyways, thanks to everyone whos been liking my my hero art, it means a lot to me and i appreciate everyone who takes the time to look at my silly self endulging wlw!! This isnt a goodbye btw, im just taking the opportunity to be sappy :) see yall in the next post!!

[moonfromearth]

On Repeat - an oc tag by @elderwisp

"rules are pretty simple, pick as many (or as little) oc's as you'd like and find a song that you relate to them the most! feel free to mention why too! o and tag some more ppl too! that would be cool!"

I may have gone a little overboard 😅 To be honest this tag came around at just the right time! I'd just gotten a new song association and have been working on schoolwork so much that I really needed to do something creative 😆

Originally these were all going to be in similar editing styles (more like Corey's) but somewhere along the way that stopped because I had different ideas that I really wanted to do. Also I cheated a little and a few got more than one song... 🤫

I'm really proud with all of these in the end, and if you want to read more about the stories behind them you can check below the cut! ❤️

I know I'm pretty late to the party now buuut I'll tag: @igglemouse @swiftviolets @stargazer-sims @auspexsims and @seniorpollinationtechnician. Feel free to ignore though if you've already done it/don't want to! 😁

[deep dive under cut!]

COREY ALTMAN

"Holiday" - Green Day:

This song being here is random song association at its finest. The trail pretty much goes "Holiday" by Green Day > Surf's Up > Beach Vibes > Sulani > Globetrotter Challenge > Corey Song. If that makes sense... 😂 Pretty much, you can blame the Sulani round of the Globetrotter Challenge for it, plus the fact that I feel like it's the type of song/genre Corey would use in his own music.

"Catch Me If You Can" - Set It Off:

Now, it would be a crime to talk about songs and Corey without a song by Set It Off. Corey was created when I was listening to their songs a lot, and it definitely rubbed off on him. From his aesthetic to the songs I imagine him playing, a lot of it came from Set It Off. Even his name was derived from the band's lead singer (although changed from Cody to Corey because that's the route my mind took with it idk). So, this song in particular specifically reminds me of Corey for... Honestly probably obvious reasons 😆 "Catch Me If You Can" was pretty much the theme of his Globetrotter Challenge, where he was constantly moving on the run from the law. A line I really like though for him is the part that says, "I only feel at home when I'm on the run," because I feel like that leads into the deeper aspects of Corey. He really isn't at home anywhere, he's always on the move, even when he's not evading capture anymore. There's a certain non-permanence to everything he does. Something funny about the image itself is that it originally wasn't going to be edited to look like the back cover of a CD. When I took the picture of Corey with the guitar I kind of thought "this looks like the back cover of a CD" and when editing I just needed a way to fill the space at the bottom and it turned into a CD back cover edit 🤣 It actually kind of fits though since both of these songs are the sound I associate with Corey's own music so it worked out in the end.

LIZZY ALTMAN

"Unopened Windows" - Set It Off:

So this one is the context behind this post lol. It's been like two years since I started working on this plotline I have to finish it eventually 😆 Anyway, Lizzy's been teased in many tag games so far, but without a name or much information (note: and this name's not final I'm not sure yet). Here you can probably guess based on the song choice how her story goes 😅 Going back to the epilogue of the Globetrotter Challenge, we see that something is going on, and it leads to Lizzy and her dad being separated. So, the entire song lyrically I really felt spoke to them and their situation (more in a future gameplay 😉). Bonus points for it being a Set It Off song, who I associate with Corey, and thought music could have been something that they bonded over and enjoyed together. I have a few things to say about the image itself because it was a struggle but I looooove how it turned out! It turned out essentially how I imagined it with Lizzy playing guitar in the foreground with a sort of memory of her time with her dad in the background. I probably had about five or six different poses that I put in the background because I couldn't decide which one I liked the best 😆 This was the last image I had to work on out of the four, and I was having trouble with how I wanted the song title to look. While I was browsing for overlays and stuff I came across a lot of cutout style poems and ended up adding in some of the lyrics because I thought it would help explain the concept behind the image. In the end this one is one of my favorites which is unbelievable considering how much I thought it was not going to turn out like I imagined 🥰

*UNNAMED*

(Sorry I don't have a name for her yet and don't want to commit to a temporary one 😭)

"Little Chaos" - Orla Gartland:

In a wonderfully serendipitous coincidence, this was the song association I was very into when getting tagged, and was already planning what became this edit! I rarely have song associations for sims/sims stories (despite how many ended up coming together here) so that's why I'll never get over how well timed this all was (thanks again elderwisp!!) On to the song, it has to do with my upcoming gameplay story centered around the For Rent game pack, and starring the pictured sim (who doesn't have a name yet sorry! 😅). She's going through a bit of a tough time where she's very lost and I thought the lines, "And it's a good day for a meltdown. All my thoughts getting too loud," fit really where she's at, especially at the start. Plus, the vibes are perfect. The image itself was inspired by the song's MV and one part in particular, but it looks a lot different now (I was limited by the poses I could find because I refuse to sit down and learn to make my own yet). I liked this idea of the torn pages framing the image, especially because it plays into the plot, which sees the main character do a lot of journaling throughout the story. So, the lined paper had to do with that, and it doubled as being good for making the letters stand out, which I wanted to be big and misaligned to be more "chaotic," though I think that could have been done more/better. Aaaaand the background is a picture of Tomarang, where the story takes place. To be honest this will probably be the cover image once I finalize a name and get started on playing it 😉

GHOST COWBOY

(no he also doesn't have a name yet same as above 😆)

"Ferryman" - Schafer James and Will Wood:

I've actually been having a lot of fun with this character since initially creating him back before the Horse Ranch pack came out (more on him coming out in a few days for the outlaw challenge 😉). So this song.... The entire concept of our ghost cowboy is that he, being somewhat half dead and half alive, winds up being a good source of convincing "unwilling souls" to cross over, and works with the character Death to do so in exchange for finding out why he's not entirely dead. I'll explain it better another time, but I also really love this song and just thought that the concept of the ferryman and the ghost cowboy as ferriers of the dead.

"Toss A Coin To Your Witcher (Epic Version)" - Samuel Kim and Black Gryph0n:

Liiiiisten... My family made me watch three seasons of The Witcher I had to get something out of it 😆 I joke a lot that this character gives off Geralt vibes but honestly they are definitely super similar just based on their overall aesthetic and horse companions. I wanted to be special though and chose this epic cover instead of the original... Just for fun 😁 There were some cool piano covers too that almost made the cut. This is probably a good place to talk about the actual image (yay!). I hope the visibility on it isn't too bad because it ended up waaaay more cluttered than I originally intended, plus the mist effect definitely makes it harder to see the characters. I made his (also unnamed) horse a little more transparent to try and give off this ghostly see through effect so I hope that comes through. The font isn't the kind of "wild west wanted sign" font that I wanted, but I think it's close enough lol.

Credits:

Image by rawpixel.com on Freepik

[bluestrawberrybunny]

Hehe. @briandraws and @shygirl4991 because you two seemed interested in these goobers. You can ask me not to tag you anymore and that’s fine-

Still no idea what their ship name should be, so if anyone has any ideas, go ahead and feel free to share them! ^^

Gonna be writing a fic for these goobers eventually.

But yeah, Kris is taller than Donnie. In the show, he’s 5 ft 6 (from what I’ve found. My god, he’s shorter than Luigi-) and Kris is around 6 ft 1, and torments him for this relentlessly.

So, some more general info about this ship below the cut because these dorks and consuming my brain rn. I guess kinda spoilers for the fic?? IDK. It’s more a quick rundown of the plot. If you wanna read the fic I’m gonna write blind, then ignore it.

Kris used to be a Purple Dragon, but sort of switched sides shortly after they started working for Shredder. He sort of became an informant for the turtles, having struck a deal with them so that he could continue to keep the reputation of being a Purple Dragon without actually having to deal with the beat-downs the turtles would give them.

Kris is a year older than the turtles, Casey, and April.

Before they found out that he’s a part of the Purple Dragons, April ended up having a crush on him during her stint of time hating the turtles after her father was mutated. But Kris wasn’t into her and shut her down quick.

At some point, the Purple Dragons and Shredder find out about Kris betraying them and beats him up, threatening to hurt his family if he dares to double cross them again, which leads to him fighting the turtles.

Donnie is confused by all of this and knows something is up, so he heads to Kris’ apartment, where he finds out that he lives with his elderly grandpa and helps take care of his triplet younger siblings (Mark, Ethan, and Amy (If you get the reference you now platonically own my heart)) alongside his twin brother Manny. Donnie then promises Kris that he’ll help him, and Kris sort of brushes him off.

But eventually the foot do kidnap Kris’ family (who had no idea he was a Purple Dragon either), and the turtles jump in to help Kris rescue them, which is when Kris finally decides to quit the Purple Dragons for good and join the team. All of this takes place before the Kraang invasion of New York, so he and his siblings are there for season 3’s events, and Kris joins in for season 4’s events too because my boy is going to space. Manny doesn’t get involved much because he is not much of a fighter. Although he and Mikey do become friends who begin shipping Kris and Donnie together once they see how the two interact.

April is ecstatic over Kris joining the team, and Donnie is now unsure of how he feels about the whole situation because he’s still having his bi awakening, y’all.

But he does have some rivalry with Kris, similar to how he does with Casey, although it is very one-sided. Kris just goes along with it cuz he’s grown to love messing with him.

But after Kris shuts April down for the umpteenth time (yes, she goes after him like Donnie does with her because haha irony-), Donnie realizes that he isn’t really competition for April’s affections. But he still keeps doing what he’s doing and having this rivalry with him, even though April has been completely removed from the equation.

Haha, turns out he’s bi and has a thing for Kris and this realization sends our beloved Donatello SPIRALING.

And to my fellow TMNT 2012 fans… remember the Bigfoot episode?

Kris is absolutely seething with jealousy towards Bigfoot throughout that whole thing. My guy turns greener than all the turtles combined with jealousy. He’s actually the reason Bigfoot runs away because dude just snaps of her for daring to get so close to Donnie and keep bugging him like that.

He eventually confesses to this once the turtles tell him off, although he does say it’s because Bigfoot was “being creepy” towards his “friend” *cough* crush *cough* and that it made him uncomfortable to see Donnie uncomfortable.

And, Donnie may be a genius on paper, but he is dumber than a box of rocks with this shit because he completely misses all the signs that Kris is in love with him. Like… my guy a bit stoopid and I love him for it.

Not gonna spoil how they get together tho.

But as an official couple, they are unbearable. Kris will annoy Donnie while he is working. Donnie will drag Kris into his science stuff and ramble about it for hours. No, Kris will not understand a single word he said but will listen to the yapping anyway.

Kris also came up with a stupid human disguise that somehow worked so he and Donnie can go on dates in public, although they do frequent Murakami’s place for the obvious reasons (although it was strange when Kris first showed up there since he was sort of involved in that first fight but had ran the second he saw 4 giant turtles come in and beat up his… coworkers?? They definitely weren’t really friends. Bro was a part of the gang for survival purposes only)

They are insufferable when it comes to PDA after a while. It takes Donnie a bit to get used to it, since… first boyfriend and first relationship, but once he’s warmed up to it, he’s all for it. Hand holding, kissing, cuddling, they even started calling each other those cheesy pet names, but only in front of others. Like, Honey-Bun, Turtle-Pie, Schmoopikins, all of those.

Kris brews Donnie’s coffee and will drag his ass to bed if it kills him. He takes care of 3 9 year olds. He can handle a grown-ass (sort of…) turtle.

So… that’s all for now :3

[tragedykery]

remake of this post!

[ID: the first two paragraphs of the priory of the orange tree written with tengwar, tolkien’s elvish script. the text reads:

the stranger came out of the sea like a water ghost, barefoot and wearing the scars of his journey. he walked as if drunk through the haze of mist that clung like spidersilk to seiiki.

the stories of old said water ghosts were doomed to live in silence. that their tongues had shriveled, along with their skin, and that all that dressed their bones was seaweed. that they would lurk in the shallows, waiting to drag the unwary to the heart of the abyss.

the word “abyss” is written in red. /end ID]

I’m using a phonemic mode this here, instead of the orthographic one I used last time, though I’ve changed the mode slightly since the last time I used it, plus I’m using shorthand for the words “of” “the” and “and” the way tolkien did. I really like seeing how I’ve improved over time. the old version is from less than a year ago!

[ID: the old version of the same text in tengwar. it looks more condensed and less elegant. /end ID]

this took Such a long time to do though holy shit. the final piece took like three, four hours I think, which isn’t that much, but the experimenting with the guiding lines and spacing before that took a frankly insane amount of time. I think I wrote the entire text three or four times to make sure I wouldn’t have like. a page full of text and then two lines on the other. I’m still not fully happy with the spacing & sizing of the letters but like hell I’m gonna do it Again lol

[criminal-sen]

Okay so I know this manga hasn't gotten to any of the batshit villainy I've heard about. But the antagonists are honestly rad af even this early on. This guy is my favorite (can't remember his name atm (which is extra stupid of me since he's a fictionalized version of an actual historical figure) goddamnit jfc) cuz he's like.. Japan's version of some crazy fuckin gunslinger. And him being a former samurai just makes him cooler bc he's fighting all these guys with guns then will randomly pull out his sword, as he puts, 'just for funsies'

Okay fine he didnt say 'just for funsies' VERBATIM, u got me okay? but he did say smth along those lines. Anyway idk if I'm to 'I wanna fuck that old man' levels of fandom but I'm getting up there. I'm approaching:3

[averlym]

HI I DIDNT KNOW YOU WERE INTO ADAMANDI HOLY SHIT. Can’t believe so few people know about this masterpiece of a musical

:OOOOO hai i agree it is criminally (haha yknow bc there are crimes..) underrated!! and really brilliant!!! discovered it literally midway through the week and akdfjgsjhdsjhjgdf

have a doodle of the saints :3

[silversoulstardust]

watching atarashii joushii wa do tennen for the BL but I'm amused at how accurately they portray traumatic work experience

a simple thing could be triggering

and yet it could easily be fixed with a kind gesture from a superior

[sysig]

I did some Souichi studies because I’m love he <3 (Patreon)

Bonus:

Here are the Studies compared to their Originals btw :3

So like, not a joke, not an exaggeration, I’m pretty sure this is my favourite panel in the entire Challengers/KoiBo continuity (and I decided to draw it first lol - it’s ‘cause I have such big feelings about it!!) It just hhhhhh, it so perfectly encapsulates everything he’s feeling in that moment; disbelief, betrayal, uncertainty, distrust, conflict - every moment of love he’s built up to that point has been thrown into immediate relief to what he’s been told and it’s all there, right on his face, it’s such a masterfully done expression ;; <3 I legit cry every time I reread, that whole scene is just so good, I could actually talk forever about his relationship with Morinaga in that one moment

The rest aren’t nearly so intense lol, mostly just grabbed from moments when I thought he was being especially cute <3 Concerned lad! His hair is so swoopy in Challengers hehe <3 <3 It’s actually even fluffier in his super early-on appearances, which are also excellent >:3c But I still like his KoiBo look best ♪ You can also see it’s a bit of a challenge to make his face as slim as he actually is, just thicken the lines inward until it almost looks right! Lol

I love this panel haha, everyone so silly chibi’d out. You can also really get a good look at how ridiculous his hair is, look at how the tuft that’s tucked behind his ear joins up with the tie! How does he tie it up like that, consistently?? How is he allowed in labs like that!! He’s ridiculous <3

Confused and blushy Souichi ft. Morinaga, I just kind of filled in the details he was covering lol. I love Souichi being dumb and having no self-awareness <3 He’s actually quite intelligent and emotionally aware a surprising majority of the time! But his blind spots leave big gaps haha

I love when he has his eyebrows in a relatively neutral position, he’s normally so grumpy! He looks so friendly even with just a neutral expression :D Plus his hair!! The way it’s communicated to be thin and feathery by being able to “see through it” to his lab coat, ah <3 Handsomest

Shy boy <3 I also really love the way his hands and wrists are shaped, such cool lines ah

I could’ve sworn he and Morinaga were like, almost the same size in Challengers... I guess Morinaga did have a second growth spurt, but still! It’s just an excuse to see him being cute!! Oh noooooo (lol)

Grump man <3 Beauty boy <3 His hair flows so beautifully!

It’s also fun to see a younger Souichi in a flashback, rather than in the Challengers style haha. He was a mess by himself, he’d hate to hear it but he really only does well with others haha. I also love how this scene is from the POV of one of his admirers, Momo is such a good girl and she’s so right <3

He’s being such a meanie to his sister in this scene lol, he’s the worst! <3 I was going to leave it at that, but adding his little frameless-glasses stem holes really made it look like Spamton’s googly eyes and I about lost it lol

[itspileofgoodthings]

have had a bit of my crash after flying too close to the sun this past week and you know what, it’s very annoying and also very good for me in a stabilizing way.

[zhongrin]

now that i feel lucid enough and has time while commuting, here's a crazy 2am hsr discussion and predictions between me (0 knowledge about hi3) and my brother (played hi3 and had ptsd the moment i said 'flame-chaser'):

mem(ory? ories? oria? oir?) is half of elysia (memories intact but unable to speak), and march is her other half (no memories but has a humanoid physical form); they combine and become cyrene who grants tb the power to rewind time and rewrite everyone's 'fates'

griseo and kosma spotted in the trailer, probably the former summoning the latter in his dragon form (remembrance path mechanics)

acheron or another version of MEI from the galaxy amphoreus is in may either reappear somehow if the final boss really is phainon/kevin bc hyv and honkai looooves their parallels

third path in amphoreus could be enigmata (it was all just a story/fiction coming to life) or voracity ('heretical black tide' causing the apocalypse, oroboros being symbol of infinity and amphoreus being an infinity symbol)

mydei is probably kalpas but either way we both want him in the account apparently, so i guess we're pulling for him

ps. these are all just for fun and we're most probably sooo wrong but i was cackling like a hyena hearing my brother sound so traumatized bye

[bluuscreen]

redraw <3 the lyrics have like no relevance to these characters anymore but oh well it’s cute

the original… it’s from 2019 i think

[volfoss]

the big and long miss yucky restoration post, part 1:

early february, i got a very damaged (what i thought was) ddh-10 (dollfie dream head, model 10) head from yahoo japan auctions. i had never seen a doll with such damage EVER and even though i hoped someone else may buy her (i did not want to pay the shipping fees), i ended up buying her. for your viewing pleasure, images of miss yucky at the start of this with explanations of what exactly is the damage (or what i thought the damage was at the time)

[ID: Four images of a severely damaged doll head.

The first image is of the head facing straight forward. Her face is very unevenly colored. She has small patches of a darker and more yellow vinyl tone showing on her face, from the paler paint cracking away. Her face is very simple, with big eyes that have cartoonish eyelashes and a small smiling mouth. Noteably, her nose is barely there. She has many spots of dirt on her forehead. Her eyes are dark blue and round, with unsmoothed white clay above the iris.

The second image is inside the doll's head, showing the eyes being held in with hot glue, gray clay, and blue sticky putty. Her headcap is set to the side and the true more yellow vinyl color is visible on the rim of the head that is open.

The third image is her head at an angle that better shows the eyes. The eyes themselves have a weird bumpy texture on them and her face looks very shiny from this angle.

The fourth image is her head in profile, showing that her nose has been almost completely removed. The discoloration is more visible in this photo than the first, with patches of bright white along the head seam right beside dark patches where the paint appears to have been scratched away. In this picture, it is most clear where the headcap has been replaced from the original, as there is a lower seam running around her head, with the headcap being much smaller than it should be. /end ID]

Hopefully her nickname makes more sense now lol. More elaboration on the issues and her process to looking a lot better under the cut, because it is long :)

As for the issues, I assumed it was either a sealant issue or just something mysteriously wrong that was causing the sheen (once I got her in the mail, I began to assume that it was all the plasticizer leaking out of her head, leaving it rock hard). Plasticizer is what keeps vinyl (which is what her head is made of) squishy, and when it leaks out, it leaves a sticky residue on the vinyl, a lot of sheen to it, and most importantly, when it is all leaked out, it leaves the head hard. Her head was as hard of a rock (or as hard as my resin dolls) and that was the only thing that made sense. It couldn't be age, as at the time, I believed she was a DDH-10, which had only begun production around 2016 (and most of the heads that had hardened over age were at least 5-10 years older than that).

Her eyes were stuck in in some mysterious way. The white on the top being not smooth threw me off, as I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be clay or just something to stick the eyes in. I hadn't really seen white sticky putty used on eyes super often but it is something that was used. The other obvious issue is the modding. At the time, I fully believed she was a DDH-10, so was shocked at all the modding that had been done to her. Her eyes had been widened, nose completely sanded away, chin seemingly sanded a bit, and her head cap was from (what i thought was) a different company. We will return to the true ID of miss yucky shortly.

Once I got her, I became aware of a few more issues:

She was INCREDIBLY sticky when I touched her face. This is not normal with vinyl dolls, and I could really only pray it was a sealant issue (as the most popular sealant in the BJD hobby, MSC, can seal glossy if it's used improperly (I've had the same issue when spraying it too close to the face or in too cold of weather)). The shininess was far worse in person as well.

The aforementioned head as hard as a rock. For people unfamiliar with vinyl heads, this specific type of doll has a headcap (which is the thing that you can kind of see is ill fitting in the original photos) that you are supposed to be able to squeeze the head to remove. These kinds of heads are VERY squishy. For example, my other vinyl doll, Beatrix, has a head so soft that I can easily remove the headcap with little effort (it's about the squishy levels of a Monster High head if that helps). At this point, I was very worried I would be completely unable to remove her headcap. But since the listing photos had had it removed, I was moderately hopeful

Her eyes were in odder shape than I thought. Prior to getting her, i had assumed her eyes were the ones you see in an average stuffed animal, just simple ones you sew in. With her modded eyes, it was pretty clear that she would need some kind of custom eyes, so this had made sense to me, that someone would have gotten those eyes and popped some clay around them. But upon getting her, I saw that they were custom eyes that were usually made for these kind of anime BJDs (term used loosely but most vinyl bjds like this have stylings closer to anime artstyles rather than the realistic ones that resin bjds have) and had some weird residue on them.

Her eyewells (the bit of vinyl between her eye and eyeball, where your waterline would be if she was a human) were much deeper than expected, which was why her eyes looked so deep and far back. Most of my resin dolls have similar issues due to that being how the company sculpts them so I wasn't too worried about that as much as I probably should have been lol

[ID: Two pictures of the same doll head.

The first picture is from an upwards angle and shows that she has a somewhat thick line of vinyl between her bottom eyelashes and her eyeball itself. She is being held by a pale hand and the photo is under harsh lighting.

The second picture is facing from the front and is being held by a pale hand. She is noteably very shiny and is about the size of the person's palm. /end ID]

You can see here the way the vinyl is thicker under the eye than it should have been in this case. The second picture is there because she was MUCH bigger than I anticipated, about the same size as Beatrix's head. Quick explanation on why this is odd: The DDH-10 sculpt is meant for 1/4 or MDD scale bodies (BJDs have different scales, all compared to the human body. 1/4 scale dolls are less than 2 ft tall, or on average, 45 cm tall. MDD is the type of body that the company that produces the DDH-10 that is made for the 1/4 scale), but the DDH-03 (the head model Beatrix has) is meant for 1/3 scale (on average around 60 cm or around 2 ft). Everywhere online had said that 10 head model was smaller but I didn't think much of it at the time.

The day that she had arrived, I had made a post on a big BJD forum, as a sort of project journal as I worked on her. The members were IMMENSELY helpful and the hunt for her true identity had begun. A few members were convinced she wasn't a DDH-10, but to me, I really was convinced she was, as she had been listed as such, had arrived in a box for that head type, and the way that she could have been modified made a lot of sense to me with that sculpt. This was not the case, as she ended up getting id'd as an Obitsu 60 cm girl head. I'm including this for a reason (and not just because I wanted to do a big post writing up the specifics of my journey fixing her)

[ID: A blank doll head. It has the same smile and nose of the doll head shown in the photos prior, but noteably does not have any eyeholes carved in. Her vinyl color is much warmer and closer to a typical peachy tone than the very pale paint covering the prior shown doll head. /end ID]

This photo is taken from an old Mandarake listing, as one of the forum members had linked me to it. The most noteable thing here, is that unlike the head I have, the eyes are meant to be painted on (much like a Monster High head). Which means the customizer before me had hand carved these eyes (and somehow got them as even as they did). Other good news with this- the body I wanted to put her on was an Obitsu body, so somehow, they matched perfectly (each vinyl BJD company has different skintones, so I was not expecting that much of luck).

Her ID aside, let's dive into the restoration! I had to give a bit of backstory before we got into the good stuff lol

First step was getting her headcap off, as I wanted to remove her eyes before cleaning her face, just to not cause more damage to them than what had already happened to them (at this point, I did not know why the eyes looked like that). Thankfully, a hair dryer was able to heat the headcap and get it loose enough that I could pop the headcap off and get my first look inside her head.

[ID: A closeup of the inside of the doll head. There are thick globs of hot glue holding the gray clay in, a mysterious clear shape that is the back of the eye, and blue sticky tack holding it all up. /end ID]

Getting a better look at it, I just decided to dive in and start prying the hot glue off. Once I did that, it revealed that the gray clay was in fact Apoxie Sculpt (which dries VERY hard when its cured all the way. This was the worst case scenario, as I did not want to deal with removing that) and that one of the eyes came out all the way.

[ID: A closeup of the doll eye out of the head. It is surrounded by white clay on the top, with some of the Apoxie sculpt on the top. Above the doll eye, there is a piece of Apoxie sculpt that has browned and has some of the blue sticky tack on top. Two pieces of the hot glue are below the eye and the head is off to the side. /end ID]

I was SO relieved to see it was coming out, but the other eye did not come out as easily sadly. There was still a big chunk of clay that was presumably used to hold the eye in. I have no idea why the eye mechanism was like this at all to be honest. That clay was NOT coming out at all, so I moved to get her cleaned up.

At this point, I had noticed some black spots inside of the head. I was praying it was not mold because that would be nigh impossible to get cleaned up (given I could not just do what you do with MLP and heat the vinyl up and squish the mold out with using Oxi-Clean. Her head was too hard for me to do that). I had also been hit with an overwhelming "new vinyl" smell, which was another sign of the plasticizer being completely gone/leaking slightly, so I was pretty sure that was the case.

I cleaned her up with warm soapy water, but it didn't really get anything off. My next step was to remove the faceup with acetone, which is a little stronger than what most people use to remove faceups but I am very careful with it so please do not try using it unless you are cautious as well. I needed something strong to really get the layers of paint off. With how many dolls I've removed full body/full head paint off of, I have the method down pretty well (a short list of painted dolls I have had to deal with: my own Cordula head, as her head is bright white and needed to match her yellowed body; the body I have for my big guy (which was just a LOT of blue paint); Clarimonde's body (which was painted mostly to hide the top surgery scars from the modification but I wanted to remove the paint)). It came off pretty smoothly, and was revealing a gorgeously yellowed vinyl underneath. Quick clarification here, most people do NOT like their dolls yellowed. I do because it's easier to blush and work on because it is not stark white and I feel it makes the skin look a bit better for the most part (most of my dolls are yellowed but maybe 2 of them). She had some minor staining around her eyes and mouth but nothing compared to what I expected.

[ID: The aforementioned doll head, now much closer in tone to the listing photo. Her face is all cleaned up and her headcap is resting besides her. There are some faint stains by the eyes left from the eyelashes but she is otherwise completely cleaned and is blank. /end ID]

The difference was stark, as she looked much better with all the discolored paint removed. What I had worried was mold was just paint from the faceup and came off completely with no worries (I am convinced I kept lucking out with her because she was thankful to be cleaned up and taken care of).

I had, weirdly enough, been very worried that she would lose all of her charm and cuteness with no faceup, but she did not. Now that I had cleaned her up, I could return to the to do list. With no faceup, it was clear her eyes were slightly uneven, and the modding had left some scratches inside of the head that i wanted to clean up (namely because I felt bad for her for having to have those inside her head). Her nose was something that I definitely wanted to resculpt (which was partially why I wanted to get this doll, she was a big project and an excuse to learn skills that I had been too scared to learn prior to this, sculpting being one of them), but the shape was something I was super uncertain of. She would need custom eyes that were made to fit only her eye shape (her eyes are carved very low on her face in comparison to the original, so normal round BJD eyes would not fit properly) and I would want to make her a wig. I also needed to get her on the body in a specific way modification wise, which will be something we will cover in a later post (as I have not done it yet lol).

Starting with the eyes, I started to work on getting the chunk of clay out of the head. I was immensely glad I had gotten a dremel to help restore my big boy (if you remember me posting images of getting the clay on a chest piece sanded down, that is the same doll) as I had to pretty much sand away at the clay for about an hour or more. Eventually I just gave up and pried it out of the head with a small sanding tool (as sanding it down was just not working too well and it was kind of my last resort). I sanded the inside of her head and outside of it, but neither of these differences show up a lot on camera, so I won't be including images. I sanded the outside of her head to get a few of the areas that were stained a bit to be a tiny bit less stained, as well as wanting a fully clean and sanded surface before I started sculpting.

[ID: Two pictures showing the inside of the dolls head. The first one has a large chunk of white clay visible under the right eye and the second shows the same spot with no clay, as it has been removed. /end ID]

You can see how big of a hunk of clay it was! It was BAD lol. I got through maybe 3 long youtube videos while getting this thing out.

The eyeballs themselves turned out to be made of resin, and thanks to one of the members suggestion on the forum, I cleaned them with acetone. They believed it was just sealant sprayed while the eyes were still in, and the acetone cleaned them up beautifully. They were still not the right fit for miss yucky, but I was very relieved to see that they cleaned up okay.

This photo was before cleaning them up, as I was so confused what could have even been going on here and needed to get advice.

[ID: The eye close up. There is an almost foggy texture over it that obscures the colors a bit. They are a dark blue. The surface is very bumpy and there are some remnants of the white clay that surrounded them still attached. /end ID]

And this photo shows them cleaned up! The left one has been cleaned and the right has not.

[ID: The two eyes laying flat on a gray countertop. The left one is still moderately foggy but is much much clearer than the one to the right. There is a slight gradient in the iris and a small light blue highlight towards the bottom. The right eye is much foggier and is still very bumpy. /end ID]

As for the nose, I was originally planning on doing a larger nose (at least for an anime doll. Closer to what a Dollfie Dream Alna looks like versus the typical very skinny pointed nose) but the more I looked at her, the more I felt she resembled Pinoko from Black Jack. The eye shape, nose shape, and mouth shape (as well as how the eyelashes were painted) felt near identical, so I took inspiration from how Tezuka drew her nose when I was sculpting. I wanted it to flow into the rest of the profile naturally (that does not make much sense but it will once I show the pictures, or so I hope). I didn't want to do a super big difference with her nose, and stick to the original aesthetic as much as I could (which was my goal for most of this project, stick to the original but make it look a bit less "haunted doll" (as one forum member described her)).

[ID: Pinoko from Black Jack. She looks surprised or startled in the photo. She is a pale young girl with a orange-brown bob with bangs, wide brown eyes, a small round nose and a round face. She is wearing a blue shirt. /end ID] (This photo is from the All of Black Jack artbook if anyone is curious)

^Pinoko for reference. I hope the similarities are clear to see! I took some "pre-op" photos of miss yucky (she still does not have a name) and then got to work with some superfine white milliput.

[ID: Images of the blank head from the front and both sides. The first three photos show what the head looked like before the nose, and the second three photos show what she looks like with the nose. The nose is a very stark white compared to the rest of the head and is fairly small. It is upturned and has a slightly rounded tip. It flows into the rest of the profile smoothly, causing it to look very natural from the side. /end ID]

I was not perfectly happy with the nose but it was pretty close to what I had wanted, and I hoped that painting would just fix my issues. It is hard to see here but her eyeholes are also more evened out, although it is a VERY small difference.

The next step was a faceup, which was admittedly very scary. I got nail brushes to help get the fine lines a bit better than what I could do with my usual brushes (my hands are IMMENSELY shaky and have not wanted to cooperate at all during this project, thus the faceup has taken forever because I want to get it right) and wanted to pretty much just redo the previous faceup but with eyebrows and not the scariest skintone situation known to man.

For some context here - normally with faceups, you start with using chalk pastels to shade the head, then go in with watercolor pencils to get the lines, and then do acrylic paint last before doing the final sealing and glossing areas that need to be glossed. I normally follow this to a T, you can see that in my past faceups, I do most of the blushing and the eyeshadow colors first, then go through the rest of the steps.

This was not the case with this head, as I started off with trying to sketch her eyelashes with a watercolor pencil (this did NOT want to cooperate with her head texture/sealant texture) and then eventually just gave up and went in with watercolor paints on a brush. This was ALSO a pain (she wanted to be so so evil to me during this step I think lol) so I just went in with acrylics before doing anything else on the head. Her faceup was going to be mostly acrylics (minus the blushing on the cheeks) as I wanted to keep a similar look to how Tezuka paints Pinoko (he was a very big inspiration during this project, and is why I am doing certain steps, such as the nose and eyes (when I get there) the way I am) and keep the head's cartoonish and cute appearance. The eyelashes were the worst part of it, as I wanted to keep them symmetrical or as much as I could, but it was very hard. I got through the faceup immensely slowly, but to be fair, I was working on another faceup as I did hers (as I wanted to redo both of my anime style heads).

The eyebrows were OBJECTIVELY the worst part of this faceup though, as even in the mockup, I really struggled to paint ones that I felt suited her. At this point, I was really empathizing with the previous faceup artist as with her eyeshape, good eyebrows were hard to do. My other struggle was matching the nose to the vinyl. I am normally somewhat decent with color matching (again, doing Cordula's faceup around 3 times and having to color match the head to the body with paint each time helped here), but this was just very rough, as even with sanding, I felt the nose didn't blend into the face the way I wanted it to. The color was off and I couldn't figure out exactly HOW which was a very big pain. Admittedly, in lower lighting, the nose mod looks GREAT but up close with harsh lighting (which is how I do my faceups), it looked pretty rough. I'm not done with the faceup just yet, so I'm really including a few WIP pics, as I will be tossing the finished faceup pics in when I make the part 2 of this post :)

First off, the nose painted pics:

[ID: The head, now with the sculpted nose that is painted over, on a messy desk. The first image is in harsh lighting and the line where the nose mod begins and the vinyl head is more apparent. The second image is in darker and warmer lighting, and the mod looks more natural. The third image is under the same harsh lighting and shows the head tilted on its back, showing the side view of the nose that is painted. This angle makes it look better than in the first image. The paint is nearly perfect color matched but is slightly off. /end ID]

For my very first attempt doing a mod like this, I was very pleased with how it looked. Milliput is NOT as bad to work with as I anticipated and with the paint, the nose looked pretty natural. It definitely encouraged me to want to work with it more in the future, which is good (as I need to go back and fix Aca's top surgery a bit lol, as I was too scared to do the sculpting at first for him, but now I feel moderately confident about it). It was pretty fun to sculpt it but the painting was a bit of a pain since it was just off in a way that I couldn't put my finger on.

Next up, the most recent WIP

[ID: A closeup of the head, with the same cartoonish lashes painted on in black that she had before. The lashes are incomplete, with the left eye being painted partially with dark brown paint and the right in black paint. Both eyes have the bottom lashes fully painted in black and faint brown pencil marks serve as guides to place the lashes. The right eye has the first two eyelashes painted in black, whereas the left only has the pencil marks. She is very faintly blushed with a light pink on her cheeks. Another doll head in the process of being painted is in the background of the photo, mostly out of shot. /end ID]

I did dark brown paint first, in hopes that I could just outline it first and then do the blushing I needed to, but the stupid paint was NOT going on solid. So i had to jump right into the black paint and pray for the best. The best thing about acrylic paint is you can wipe it off with water easily. The faceup has been taking days, not just because of my chronic pain flaring up and making it hard to move my hands in a way that would work to make these eyelashes right, but because I am doing one lash at a time. This makes sure that my prior work isn't erased if I need to redo a lash but it makes it take a lot more time. I did this for both the heads I was working on, as they both are very fine motor skill required and I needed to get them perfect. The nose mod is also a bit more visible here, it really looks good in certain lighting and bad in others which makes it frustrating lol.

That's all for this VERY long post, ty if you have made it this far! The next post will hopefully be including progress on:

The faceup (hopefully done lol)

Eye making (this will be a VERY miserable time for me I fear)

The way I'm working with my personal modifications to the body to get the head to fit on there

Wig making/styling a wig I have to be her temp wig

And as a little bonus treat, her with Beatrix before I got her cleaned up :)

[ID: A pale vinyl BJD with an orange wig holding the project head. The doll holding the head has green eyes, and a very orange toned faceup. She is sitting on a white shelf and is wearing a white turtlenck and a striped yellow and white skirt. Their heads are around the same size. The project head has had no work done on her in this photo, so the contrast between the heads appearances in this photo is quite stark. /end ID]

[kinaesthetiqueer]

where i am:

where i really want to be:

where i actually have to be:

just. gently lower me into a nice soft hole in the ground and let the worms take me.

[wundrousarts]

hi I hope this doesn’t sound like a demand lol but I love how you draw jupiter and I hope you draw him more

your art is so cool by the way I really like your character lineup 🥺

Thank you so much!! I literally never draw Jupiter, on account of my inability to draw 1. adult men and 2. beards, BUT it’s something I need to / want to get better at. The only other time I’ve drawn him was that lineup which I did super quick, so it was fun to try and think of an actual design so I can try to draw him more!

[ID: Three half-colored digital sketches of Jupiter North from Nevermoor. They show him as a kid with messy hair, a young adult with a mullet and mustache, and an adult with longer hair and a fuller beard. End ID.]

Details on my Jupiter design / headcanons (?) for his life under the cut:

I started with the middle— in my layers, I dubbed him to be “teen” Jupiter, originally intending for him as a senior scholar, but as time went on I figured he was more like, early 20s young adult Jove. The Wunsoc sweater is just still there on the adults because I didn’t want to redraw <3

I feel like Wunsoc, especially with Dearborn and Murgatroyd prowling the halls, holds its student’s appearances to a certain standard. Sure, society members are representatives of the society for the rest of their lives once they graduate, but their time in school is their first introduction to that life. It's their debut as society members. We see this in a lot of stuff with Holliday, in Hollowpox and in the one Silverborn snippet, how she's manufacturing an image for Mog and co. and physical appearance plays a part in it.

Going with this: I feel like Wunsoc would expect their students to keep their appearance clean and approachable somewhat. Jupiter gives me a vibe of the kid who had a crazy growth spurt, and was able to grow a beard before graduating– BUT I don't know if Wunsoc (really just the Scholar Mistresses) would be crazy for that. So I imagine that he's relatively clean-shaven for the most part, nowhere near modern Jove, and then starts to grow out his facial hair a bit more as a senior scholar where I imagine things would lax a bit, and then just commit fully to growing a beard once he properly graduates.

So young adult Jupiter is perhaps in his early 20s, a somewhat recent Wunsoc graduate. I'm a mullet Jupiter truther, where his hair is longer in the back, and had to represent that. Younger Jove's is messier and more fun; he's not too concerned about his image as he hasn't quite reached that laundry list of titles and accolades yet.

Present-day adult Jupiter is still rocking the mullet style, just now it's longer and styled a bit more professionally. But let's be real– it doesn't stay this way. It totally gets easily messed up from his hats, and Jove loves to have fun and entertain people, Plus, he's a busy man, constantly stressed and running around. While the hair here might be great for say, a formal meeting or a magazine cover, the hair most folks end up seeing him with tends to be a bit more wild. He definitely starts to resemble his younger self's hair more after a rowdy night or a stressful endeavor.

Kid Jupiter– not much to say here, tbh. I figured I'd stick with the longer hair he has as an adult, kinda rowdy. Not a mullet yet, though! I was thinking of the part in Nevermoor where he starts talking about the rules he broke and stuff he got up to as a Wunsoc student, and how Hawthorne started taking notes, and made his hair similar to the rowdy hair of our favorite bestie. However, while Hawthorne's hair is curly, I'm of the belief that Jupiter's hair is definitely pretty straight. So no curlicues for him </3

Hopefully now that I've started to nail down a design for Jupiter, I can draw him more!! I always have soooo many Nevermoor ideas circling around in my brain. I love thinking about designs for various characters and the reasonings behind different aspects of their appearance.