#but I really loved working with the idea of contrasts!

[lavenders388]

HII!!

could we please get some kang dae ho x reader??

something where he’s a bit of his usual himbo self and the reader is maybe a bit airheaded— something about two people being in love with one another while the world around them is burning is amazing.

~Flowers in December~

<3 Kang Dae Ho x Reader

requested 💌

authors note: i am amazed by the amount of requests and also so flattered!! I am so happy to get back into writing not only for myself but to be able to make other people happy to see their ideas come to life!! i apologize if this has some flaws i cant wait to get more practice in and promise the next will be better!! feedback is always appreciated! thank you all so much!!<3 -matcha

~~~~~~~~~~~⋆｡‧˚ʚ🍓ɞ˚‧｡⋆~~~~~~~~~~~

...

~takes place during the second night~

"we should all take turns keeping watch over the group" player 456 urged as the warning for lights out echoed throughout the room, the rest of the group silently agreeing- trusting the man who claimed to have been in one of the previous games, leaving as the sole survivor. you were, as were many others, reluctant to believe that he had done all of this before, but after his help in the first game and joining his team for the second, you grew to trust him; and the other members of your group. the man that had been assigned your partner for keeping watch was coincidentally a member you were drawn to specifically- at first because he was close to your age, his boyish face making you feel a little less scared and alone in the second game, and eventually you appreciated his outward personality and kindhearted confidence, a stark contrast to the situation you both were in. as you sat together, although trying to protect your group from whatever could happen in the dark room, you felt even safer. "how in the world did you pull that off?" you broke the silence with a whisper, referring to him playing gonggi in the previous game. "my hands were shaking so badly i could barely even hold my ddakji." he laughs, a bit louder than he should have given the people sleeping, but it made you smile. "i told you all i played with my sisters!" he chuckles. "you said you know how to do it yeah," you retorted, stifling a giggle at him being unaware of the compliment. "you didn't tell us you were amazing at it, that was a surprise." he turns away, embarrassed of how deeply your compliment made him grin and scared you'd see him blushing even in the dark. "thank you y/n." he says bashfully as he regains his composure. the silence returns; the reality of where you're both having this conversation threatening to creep back in. his gaze softens as he turns to you again, "you did really well with your ddakji you know, doing it the first try is really impressive, especially given the circumstances." you smile, a toothy grin as not only are you proud of yourself but you appreciate the compliment; especially from him. the kind, authentic way he states how good you did has you unable to find a response. "t-thank you" you say, blushing and still smiling. "it helped that nobody was there, i get nervous when people are watching me." his demeanor changes. he nervously runs his hands through his hair. "I'm sorry if i made you nervous, y/n" he says sincerely. your confusion shows on your face until you realize what he means. "oh no don't worry! i meant the crowd, like how everybody was cheering for the other teams! i didn't want them all to see if i messed up. you watching me helped actually. it made me less nervous." the silence returns; comfortingly. you've forgotten where you are, you've forgotten what would have happened if you'd messed up, all that's on your mind is the man sitting next to you. when you look back he's staring at you. smiling. "thank you for being on my team." you say to him as he turns away, trying to hide how long he was looking at you. you've never seen him speechless before. "if we work together nothing can stand in our way." he said to you just as he said to jung bae before the game. "i am truly honored you feel that way." you half-joke. "what are your plans for tomorrow?" you ask as if youre speaking to him in a normal situation. "oh wait im sorry!" you laugh. "well i bet they're the same as mine then!" you joke about your forgetfulness as well as making light of where you find yourself. like hes done for you, he also had forgotten the events of the day and what followed tomorrow. the two of you talking made him feel as though he was living a good, normal day. it was greatly appreciated by him, your bubbly nature being a moment of solace.

a/n if this is buns at all please lmk what i can do better!!! ⋆｡‧˚ʚ🍓ɞ˚‧｡⋆

[agbpaints]

How To Paint: Lense Gemming

In the Heat Sink tutorial I mentioned that glow effects are really common in 40k paint schemes but see less use in Battletech so let's look at something that I frequently see go the other way- flat painted gem effects for lenses. These work well for Battletech energy weapons, but they can also be used for sensor clusters, glass eyepieces on things like a space marine helmet, or jewels on a more fantasy inspired mini. There's a variety of ways to do these- gem or contrast paints over a metallic base coat, gloss varnish, or just splashing the area with a little color all work just fine- but today I'm going to go over my basic recipe for a green reflective glass effect.

Paints I Used:

For as much of a love/hate relationship as I have with GW citadel paints their color system is remarkably good at getting proper highlight colors for things like this- I'm largely cribbing my color choices here from the old Duncan Rhodes videos and you can feel free to sub out for whatever colors work best for your particular project.

Citadel Caliban Green (dark green)

Citadel Warpstone Glow (green)

Citadel Moot Green (light green)

Army Painter Matt White (titanium white)

Method

Once you've completed the area around whatever you want to gem, start by painting this with your darkest color. Here we'll be using our dark Caliban Green, focusing on the Starslayer's two large lasers. If a little gets on the rim around the lense at this step that's fine.

Once your dark green is dry, take a very small brush and thin down your mid-tone green. Choose one of the bottom 'corners' of the lense and start carefully applying paint there. Ideally, we want to paint a 'crescent moon' shape centered on that corner, with a fatter middle section and thinner tips, leaving the darker green visible in the lense center and one of the upper corners. If the detail proves to small or your hand-eye coordination is too unwieldy for this, sketching a 'C' shape or simply putting a diagonal line thru the lense and coloring the lower half with your light color will also work at this scale.

Next, take your light green color and thin it with your smallest brush. Very carefully apply a thin line of this color along the outer edge of the area you painted with your green midtone.

Finally, apply a small dot of pure white to the upper corner of the lense that remains dark green.

And the gemming is done! Once you get the basic idea down you'll find that this is a pretty versatile technique (I use a variation of it for canopy glass as well). Definitely worth giving a try, and if you aren't a fan then like I said there's plent of other things to do to achieve similar results.

[atalana]

actually you know what, while this isn't something i had an issue with in the movie (and honestly the costume designers for wicked did an incredible job), i do wanna talk about elphaba's stage dress bc i think the tumblr lesbians will have fun with it!

so like i made a post a bit ago about how i literally only have one gripe with the wicked movie and it's that every glinda outfit was pink (probably for marketing purposes, but stage glinda is incredibly varied in her colours, and she only has one pink dress, alongside a white, a yellow, a green, and two blue dresses)

but i didn't really go into how elphaba is, in her own way, just as colourful!

because if you read interviews with susan hilferty, the original costume designer for wicked, she talks about how the primary thing she wanted to play with was the idea of these two as earth and sky

glinda comes from the sky, both literally in terms of her first scene being in the bubble, but also that is who she is as a person, bright, airy, expansive. she gets so many colours because she represents the rainbow, and whenever her and elphie are put in contrast, she gets the light side as is fitting for the show

(i did mention this in my glinda post too, but in the show the school colours for shiz are blue and white, which they do conform to, but while every other student is wearing blue and white stripes, glinda is dressed entirely in white and elphie entirely in blue)

but to the point of this post! you then get elphaba as earth. i've seen posts around about how elphie's magic is so strong because she's more connected to the world around her, and that's not only true but something worked into her costume design! hilferty talks about mica and geodes being an inspiration here, elphaba comes from the earth and is an intrinsic part of it, she may not look like much from the outside but she holds an incredible beauty inside

and so her dress is designed to look black from a distance, but it's actually not! it's dozens of layers of different dark colours, that shine and catch the light in different ways

(these dresses are also all slightly different because she mentions they made each dress for the actress who would wear it, each one is unique to fit how that person plays elphaba)

it also to me represents her public vs private image, people like glinda who've seen those layers to her knows she's a beautiful person inside and out, know how she could be seen and loved and appreciated for her complexity and depth, but no one looks that closely. they see from a distance, and they see what they want to see - a wicked witch in a black dress

(especially poignant given how colourful oz is and how no one else, no one 'good', ever wears black)

and i genuinely do love the details put into elphie's movie design, i'm a big fan of victorian style costuming and she's got a lot of those elements (plus the amount of detail and complexity put into dresses that are entirely black should be commended)

but i wanna show off her coloured dress too, because it means the world to me

[brionysea]

#i'm never getting over Max being the only one defending Mike in early S3#even his best friends since childhood are fed up but she's still defending him and saying it's not that bad#max wants to be his friend so bad#and then.#she met El and got on a feminist side quest because she convinced herself he's actually a raging misogynist#i love them<3#they're so fucking stupid#sometimes you need that sidequest to become truly close friends and it's beautiful#also yes to the caption (I got sidetracked)#people need to stop putting words in Mike's mouth and just stay on his level#platonic madwheeler#mike wheeler#max mayfield

you get me @stranger-feathers. I also got distracted by max's feminist side quest in my tags before going 'no, stay on topic' and deleting them, but it's interesting, actually!

the only context s2 max had was how sad mike was (which these two have their own understanding of, while the rest of the group seems to struggle with knowing how to deal with them) and how it was because of el - survivor's guilt, the trauma from seeing a girl turn to dust in front of you to save you, whatever

that, combined with the wheelers home life being - while not like max's, Not Fun - is how mike ended up driving hopper nuts by hanging out in the cabin for 6 months straight. mike missing el + mike not wanting to be at home + mike feeling comfortable talking back to hopper the way he isn't with his parents + mike feeling the pressure to be in a romantic relationship with el but not knowing how to do that = mike and el making out for months on end and only rarely having a real conversation

el, as always, doesn't really have the context to know how things work and is just going along with it until max tells her she gets a say. when el was living with hopper, she missed mike so much it became a point of conflict (as a cover for el's lack of autonomy, which mike never really did to her; when el was living in mike's basement, she wandered around all the time, and in s3 mike was only repeating HOPPER'S words of el not being 'allowed' to go shopping; hopper recently locked mike in a car and went off on him, of course mike thinks max is insane for breaking his rules), so el would listen to mike more than hopper during a petty disagreement. mike treated her better; he never sold her out to brenner, for a start. even when el DID listen to hopper and stay hidden, she ended up hitchhiking to new york or wherever to go against his rules, because she didn't think breaking them made her stupid

so the set up is a whole lot of mike's feelings crashing together and influencing his actions. hopper, by virtue of mike's talent for being so annoying, forgets about that (despite the s2 scene where hopper saw mike's feelings finally explode, precluded by the two of them arguing over el) until hopper interacts with mike's parents at the end of s3 and sees that they have NO IDEA where their son is, in contrast to joyce freaking out trying to find the kids while hopper made fun of her. then the whole time the kids actually were in danger and joyce was right, as usual, which seems to make hopper chill out. max, who spent s2 trying to get mike to talk about his feelings so they could be friends, also seems to forget that he has any the second el gets involved

which, let me be clear: el definitely needed feminism. her friendship with max, which el initially refused because of jealousy over mike, was so needed. el keeps getting hidden away and controlled by men (brenner, mike, the boys, hopper); sometimes for her safety, sometimes that's just a thing they say while not realising or caring about how they're also suppressing her autonomy, and not questioning their patriarchal need to control women and girls, but in s3 that doesn't seem to be an issue anymore. because of the tone shift, it's not really addressed, but the best I can figure is that el's safety was no longer a problem because nancy burned down the lab and ran them out of hawkins (look at that! legitimate feminism! solidarity among girls - barb's justice - improving el's quality of life!!! I love it here)

I think mike, by virtue of living in a sexist society, WAS sexist. not to the extent that the fandom makes it out where he's the bane of all evil, but he was so caught up in the emotion and fear of losing el again that he wasn't questioning whether his need to keep el tucked away and safe from the world was fair to her until max raised the issue. before that, while mike was trying to be straight, he was kind of infected with the more blatant heterosexism, because that's 'normal' (think billy being such a ladies man that max knows what happy screams are, but also calling women 'cows' and 'bitches'; lucas and mike calling women 'a different species' is like Baby's First Dehumanization)

before that, when it actually seemed like an organic character flaw rather than mike conforming, you see it the most with max - 'this is the boys room' 'yeah, so?' 'so you should go home' comes to mind. max was probably making it a bigger issue than it is, the way mike's SHE'S CONSPIRING AGAINST ME comes across (she kind of was though lmao - like, sexism is definitely a real problem that max isn't making up and people taking that kind of challenge as a personal attack when it's not is really common, but max DID seem to be making Girls vs. Sexist Mike a whole thing), but it wasn't a baseless accusation. probably, max just can't stand up for herself when people are sexist towards her and was using el as a buffer. in s2 max only asked lucas if they weren't including her because she's a girl, even though mike was the one to make the weird boys room comment and max argued with him about other stuff 2 seconds later, and she didn't do more than roll her eyes at billy

remember how mike mouthed off to hopper because he can't mouth off to his parents? max does the same thing to mike because she can't with billy. hopper and mike are emotionally and physically safe to engage with, and the show spending a lot of time trying to convince you otherwise (hopper is legitimately scary at times, like when he threw the door of el's room open thinking mike was in there again but it was really MAX, the girl with a violent home life, which must include things like violently slamming doors open as a precursor to more direct violence) without anything actually HAPPENING proves it. they're not safe because they were born with no moral impurities, they're safe because they put the active effort in to be safe. they could be just like everyone else, which s3 puts a lot of emphasis on, but they ultimately choose not to be. nobody is born a feminist. women tend to get there faster because we're directly harmed by misogyny, but after their argument, both mike and max do listen to each other. mike apologises to el for acting so controlling and jealous, and max works with mike to protect el (from flayed!billy) in starcourt

mike could so easily be Not Our Mike. his family has money and a nice house, unlike will. mike has white privilege and never has to deal with racism, unlike lucas. mike doesn't have a visible disability like dustin. he's not a girl like max and el. mike could EASILY slide under the radar as that wheeler kid with the big house without having to deal with any of this, but he feels more at home with the outcasts of society instead. the mike we initially meet is so lovable because he'd been choosing to be true to himself rather than taking the easy route for years. or in mike's words, I guess, asking will to be his friend was the best thing he's ever done

max defending mike and choosing the words he uses to defends himself with is actually something that can be so personal

[yuukouku0x]

I know I said it would be out on Tuesday but I finished up early and I had more time on my hands then expected😼 SO HERE IS IT!!

Jayce Talis x Male reader with Vander's body type.(Reader is a blacksmith, and I know Jayce is somewhat or used to be a blacksmith but it's whatever I guess🤗)

FEM READERS DNI.

When they first meet.

- Jayce first meets you during a project requiring a custom part for one of his inventions. He’s used to polished, topside workshops, but something about the gritty, efficient nature of your blacksmith shop in the Undercity fascinates him.

- You’re older than Jayce, with a calm and steady demeanor that instantly contrasts with his excitable energy. Your broad shoulders and powerful arms catch his eye immediately, though he tries not to make it obvious.

- When you hammer away at the forge, sweat glistening on your skin, Jayce finds himself stammering through explanations of what he needs, completely distracted by your presence.

- Despite his status as a topsider, you treat him like any other customer. Your no-nonsense attitude and grounded personality intrigue him.

Starting to date.

- Jayce begins visiting your shop under the guise of needing more parts, but it’s clear to both of you that he’s just looking for an excuse to talk.

- He admires your craftsmanship and how you’re unphased by his fame or status. You even tease him a little for being a "pampered topsider," which he secretly enjoys.

- After a few weeks of building tension, Jayce nervously asks you out, stumbling over his words. You grin and tell him he didn’t need to make such a fuss—you’ve been waiting for him to say something.

- Your dates often involve quiet moments, like sharing a drink in your workshop after hours or Jayce showing you the progress of his research in his lab. He loves how you keep him grounded while still encouraging his ambitions.

The interest in your body type.

- Jayce is openly fascinated by your physique. He loves how safe and secure he feels when you’re around. Your broad shoulders and solid frame make him feel like he can lean on you when the weight of his responsibilities gets too heavy.

- He’s especially fond of wrapping his arms around your waist and resting his head against your chest. He jokes that you’re like his personal fortress, but he means it sincerely.

- Watching you work is one of his favorite pastimes. He’s mesmerized by the way your muscles move when you’re forging something new, and he often loses track of what he’s saying mid-sentence because he’s too busy staring.

- Jayce loves tracing the scars and callouses on your hands, seeing them as marks of your strength and hard work. He admires that you’ve built your life with your own hands.

- He’s a little possessive, but in a loving way—always eager to show people that someone as strong and capable as you is with him.

Relationship dynamics.

- You’re the steady anchor to Jayce’s boundless energy. While he’s always full of ideas and ambition, you remind him to take breaks and not overwork himself.

- Jayce is the one who tends to your wounds when your job leaves you battered or burnt. He’s surprisingly good at patching you up, though he always nags you about taking better care of yourself.

- Despite your age difference, Jayce often calls you his “wise old man,” earning him a playful glare and a swat to the arm.

- He appreciates how your strength is balanced by your gentle side—something only he gets to see fully.

- Together, you’re an unstoppable team: Jayce brings the innovation, and you bring the craftsmanship, creating something greater than either of you could achieve alone.

Jayce never thought he’d fall for someone so different from his world, but now he can’t imagine his life without you.

Jayce finds every excuse to be close to you. He’ll visit your forge under the guise of needing parts, but he really just wants to see you in your element, watching the way your muscles ripple with each swing of your hammer.

- He’s not subtle about his admiration—he’ll stand behind you while you work, arms crossed, pretending to be interested in the metalwork when he’s really just appreciating how good you look in the firelight.

- When you finally call him out on it, Jayce turns bright red, laughing sheepishly before admitting, “Can you blame me? Look at you.”

- You tease him for being so obvious, but the way his hands linger on your waist when you kiss later shows he’s not sorry at all.

- He adores the way your size makes him feel small in the best way. After a long day, he’ll press himself against you, burying his face in your chest and murmuring how safe you make him feel.

- One of his favorite things is lying in bed with you, his hands roaming across your broad shoulders and chest as he kisses you slowly, savoring every inch of you. “You’re incredible,” he whispers, his voice heavy with awe.

Spicy moments?😀

- Jayce is surprisingly tactile. He loves running his hands over your body, marveling at the contrast between his smooth fingers and your rough, calloused skin. He’ll trace the curve of your muscles with his fingertips, murmuring compliments like, “You’re so strong… so perfect.”

- He gets flustered when you take the lead, pinning him against the nearest wall or lifting him effortlessly off his feet. “Damn,” he breathes, his face red but his grin wide. “You really know how to make a guy feel wanted.”

- In the privacy of your shared space, Jayce will spend hours exploring your body, pressing soft kisses to your neck and shoulders as his hands slide down your back. He loves how responsive you are to his touch, the way your body tenses under his palms.

- He’s incredibly vocal about how much he loves you—whether it’s murmuring sweet praises while you’re tangled together in bed or groaning softly against your neck, whispering, “I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of you.”

- Afterward, he’ll hold you close, his head resting on your chest as he listens to the steady rhythm of your heartbeat. “I’m so lucky to have you,” he says, his voice filled with quiet affection.

Things he loves most.

- Jayce loves how your strength doesn’t just show in your body, but in the way you care for him. Whether it’s protecting him from the dangers of the Undercity or simply holding him close when he’s stressed, you make him feel like nothing can touch him when he’s with you.

- He admires your steady nature and the way you keep him grounded. While he’s busy dreaming of the future, you remind him to appreciate the present.

- Most of all, Jayce loves how deeply you love him in return—your touch, your words, and your actions all showing that, to you, he’s worth everything. And for that, he’s endlessly devoted to you.

I GOT A LITTLE STORY FOR Y'ALL.

Jayce leaned against the doorframe of your forge, arms crossed, watching as you worked. The heat from the furnace made the air shimmer, but it didn’t seem to bother you. Sweat trickled down your brow, your shirt clinging to your broad shoulders as you hammered a glowing piece of metal into shape.

Jayce was mesmerized.

You’d been at it for hours, muscles taut with every swing of the hammer. The sheer power in each movement left him speechless, as it always did. Your body was a masterpiece—strong, solid, and commanding.

“You gonna stand there gawking all day, or are you gonna say something?” you called over your shoulder, your voice warm and teasing.

Jayce chuckled, pushing off the doorframe and stepping closer. “Can you blame me?” He gestured to you, his grin wide and playful. “You’re kind of hard to ignore.”

You glanced at him with a smirk, setting the hammer down and wiping your hands on a rag. “Flattery won’t get you out of paying for this custom job, you know.”

Jayce moved behind you, sliding his arms around your waist and pressing his chest against your back. “Who said I’m trying to get out of anything?” His hands rested on your stomach, fingers splayed across the firm expanse. “I just… really like watching you work.”

You chuckled, leaning back into him. “That right?”

“Mm-hmm,” he hummed, his voice low and full of affection. “You’re incredible, you know that? The way you move, the strength in your arms… it’s ridiculous how attractive you are.”

He let his hands wander, running them up to your chest, his fingers tracing the curves of your muscles. “You’re so solid,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Like… unshakable. It’s not just your body; it’s *you*. You make me feel like nothing in the world can touch me when I’m with you.”

You turned in his arms, raising an eyebrow as you looked down at him. “That’s a lot of sweet talk for someone who didn’t even say hello when he walked in.”

Jayce laughed, leaning up to kiss you softly. “What can I say? I got distracted.” His hands tightened around your waist, pulling you closer. “I love every inch of you,” he said against your lips, his tone more serious now. “Your strength, your scars, the way you carry yourself… it’s all perfect to me.”

Your hand came up to cup his cheek, your thumb brushing over the stubble there. “You’re a sweet talker, Jayce Talis,” you said, your voice softer now.

“Only for you,” he replied, his grin returning.

You kissed him then, slow and deep, and Jayce melted into you. He loved how solid you felt under his hands, how you held him like he was the most important thing in your world.

As the kiss broke, you rested your forehead against his. “You’re not so bad yourself, you know.”

Jayce laughed, the sound warm and bright. “Yeah, but I’ll never look as good swinging a hammer as you do.”

You grinned, pulling him closer. “Good thing you don’t need to.”

In that moment, surrounded by the heat of the forge and the weight of your arms around him, Jayce felt like he was exactly where he was meant to be.

[nittroy]

In light there's darkness- Cmm from @n1ghtmeri for @lesserideafountain Thank you for working with me >:з ✧

[paper-possum-party-pal]

More doodles!

First we have tiny Stanley and Narrator because small :)

I really enjoy the hc that after Stanley leaves the parable he goes and gets a job that requires manual labor or as a florist. I feel like he would want to detach himself from office work as much as possible, even if there’s som layer of attachment due to familiarity. I really love this small doodle because I managed to successfully use more interesting lighting which is something I’m trying to improve.

References for all the drawings

[salemoleander]

Creator Commentary / Explaining Elements

I don't normally do this, but there's SO MUCH going on in this one that I actually wanted to do a commentary on it and why I picked what I did! I put a LOT of thought into elements and how they contribute to the overall effect of a piece, so I thought it might be fun to lay some of that out.

That all got (predictably) incredibly long, so it is under its own cut! I've labeled each bullet by what I intuitively called that element, rather than the actual title/author/etc, to make it easier to follow which bit I'm talking about. (For example, rather than "Président de la nuit", I've labeled it "Chair painting".)

Also, you seem unstable… speech bubble

Chosen because it evokes superhero comics (which is the AU we’re in) and gives a humorous/light-ish start to the piece.

Could genuinely be said from either of them.

Overlaid on the wound-tending image to form a kind of tableau

Bandaging hand art

The hands being Grian/Scar’s isn’t sensical per the fic (they only had the 2 hands during the backstory) but the theme of helping/dependence due to injury really benefits from it.

This art also works bc it ties in the seafoam green & skin tone/reddish hues that appear in the chair & other hands. (The right side of the piece is blue/black, bc it’s about Scar’s “betrayal” of evicting Grian from his body)

in his eyelids poem excerpt

Contains the idea of existing inside another person, as well as the fear - one last nakedness, one last level of being exposed to the possible judgment or harm from someone else. 

The words ‘sleep until dawn’ create an image of soft/warm affection, and the mention of nakedness also leads well into the nude man with blank eyes below it, what happens when Grian is kicked out of that body.

Broken glass

Needed a low-contrast bg image that would blend well into the art below, and to enhance the idea of superheros/danger/risk/fighting without just chucking another wounded hand into the mix. 

When you/ bend and kiss the rotting wings poem excerpt

The rest of the poem is much longer, and even this stanza is longer, but it had several bits I found either redundant or less-applicable for this use. 

The final line in full is “Even now I still need something better to say/ than this hush love creates between two people” but ending it at “better to say” hits harder. The hush love creates is being created by the other pieces & its placement over a cozy house scene, no need to belabor the point.

He tugs gently on my towel… poem excerpt

I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO USE THIS FOR FOREVER Fjords is a phenomenal collection but the poems create such a specific feeling that they’re very hard to use well. 

The full poem POV is referred to with she/her, which isn’t a dealbreaker but I found I could cut around those lines & still get the core image I wanted to steal for this.

Again emphasizing this gentle/warm/caring nature that still results in unclothing (a last nakedness!) the POV character, in reminding them they are not human, and an assumption that that is a flaw.

Blood decanter

This was one of the last additions - I like to break up horizontal/vertical edges when I can, and that middle edge was VERY unbroken. 

There are a bunch of other vein-style carafes by the artist, but this one had an alien/baby-animal-taking-its-first-steps spindliness that I liked.

The recurrent blood motif is partly my own personal bias towards it but also bc it turns out it is VERY HARD to visually convey ‘guy who is living inside another guy’, especially if you, the artist, have a phobia of parasites. So, blood/veins/connections through tendrils it is. Vaguely mold-like but not bc I am a big baby.

Red wings

Again, wanted to break up that vertical line, and also this Grian does have wings, and also also I figured I could maybe do a sort of tableau thing w/ the guy sitting. Not trying to do true collage there, but the implication of his having wings is good enough for me!

Would you murder me texts

Needed something small/with simple or no text to go over the cozy chair. At one point Grian mentions basically ghosting Scar for almost a year?? And it seemed like an appropriately funny-but-not-really thing to include.

Chair painting

I needed the coziest, most Scar-tastic living room (with a balcony/night view bc superhero au obvs) and Ms. Carole Rabe fucking delivered. All of her paintings are so richly done!! Go look at them!

Scar colors, and also blends between the seafoam/pale green & orange -> sunset tones that play so well with the red and dark blue.

Also. There’s only one chair, and it’s empty. 

Give until I’m… poll

I originally used all 4 of the results from this, bc imo they fit REALLY well to Scar Grian Xisuma and then one aimed at recovery. In the fic it’s clear they’re all kind of.. different flavors of too-altruistic, different flavors of lighting themselves on fire to keep someone else warm.

However that ended up dominating the feeling of it/ adding too much gray, so I dialed it back to ones that convey the fears/themes of the work. 

Scar refuses to become hollow, refuses to be a home for someone else; Grian trusts and trusts and that breaks him, gives up his own body until it is a shell for Scar to carry out; Xisuma has seen everyone he loves die and keeps going, doggedly continuing a heroic fight that nearly ended with him dead on a warehouse floor.

Sitting on floor guy painting

GO LOOK AT DENIS SARAZHIN’S ART. NOW.

Okay - the blue with touches of red at the toes was the right color for what I needed. He’s in the dark, almost veiled by the quotes around him.

Mostly I picked this for his expression. Go look at a full-res version of this - his eyes are intelligent but veiled, mouth slightly hardened and fist clenched. 

I also think the title has some very good synergy with the themes.

love me enough to drown me out

I don’t do easter eggs, but this is about as subtle as I’ll let things get. Depending on screen brightness a lot of people won’t even see this element to the right of the sitting man, which is intentional.

With this I was both thinking of Grian’s need for Scar (love me enough to ignore your misgivings, to let me be part of you, to escape the pain of being alone in my own head, drown me out) and Scar’s implied request in return (love me enough to drown out the distrust, to let me see you, to eclipse your fear of not being enough).

It’s hard to see bc this is the point in the story where they are the least communicative - Grian made into an insensate thing, Scar never even telling him what he was planning. 

Think of visible red/blood in this collage as representing ‘wear your heart on your sleeve’; the text is obliterated because the idea it contains is obscured.

I return to the site of injury

Trying to let some pieces be more/less easily legible, letting smaller/more private thoughts exist with less contrast.

They are each others’ sites of injury; Scar literally could not have lived without him, and Grian cannot forgive the wound of separation.

to have & to hold

This might as well be the thesis statement. To have - to possess, to contain, to consume, to be - is incompatible with to hold - to comfort, to exist beside. Wanting doesn’t make them synonyms.

happiness is…

Gonna be real, I just saw that title on an old blood donation ad and was like ‘LOL yeah that works’.

Like yeah happiness is helping other people despite the risk to yourself, reaching out will always be nobler than stagnation, etc etc.

Birds and smoke

I love the bright red of the birds against the smoke, and the sky/smoke mimics the blue of the top right side excellently.

Needed something to subtly set the scene (there’s a fire in the warehouse, it’s nighttime, etc) without being too muddy bc there’s so much stuff in the foreground.

Veins and Bones Arm Embroidery

MAYBE MY FAVORITE ELEMENT

The artist (if I’m understanding correctly): Photographed her own arm. Printed it on fabric. Drew on her bones. And then embroidered her veins!!! Sick as hell!!

I wanted something that used veins, that showed the entry/takeover of Grian into X’s body while also avoiding gore. I had a cool old blood-drawing illustration that I decided to abstain from bc I thought it might be a bit much (and also it wasn’t colorful and I didn’t wanna have to do Yet Another Filter)

The tracing of bone underneath - the implication of something permanent and solid that veins are woven around/ latticed on - felt like a good choice to convey what Grian does in the fic.

with all the holes in you already…

Abjection, baby!

No seriously, go read some Kristeva and then come back. 

Jenny Holzer the text artist of all time tbh. 

Needed something to convey injury/damage/mutualistic parasitism/’you’re afraid but you don’t have to be’ and unfortunately just pasting in a scene from the Xenogenesis trilogy would take too much room.

Also the pale mirrored silver/red fit great with the arm embroidery and bloody hands.

Car headlights

Wanted to convey city/bright/hard to see, and the moment they stepped out the door with Grian piloting X, the need to stand up to news & paparazzi, just a bunch of things related to ‘bright light in my eyes ouch’

I did not hunt down the moment

I am SO SAD scatterghosts deactivated. Wonderful TMG edits.

So this already had the perfect colors and was itself a city scene, it felt very logical to overlay it on the car headlights.

I was mostly thinking about how after a year of avoiding him, this reunion comes upon Grian without warning. 

Also thinking about dreams/waking, potentially suppressing X’s consciousness, and a blurry-eyed attempt to determine What Is Happening.

Bloody hands

\o/ HANDS WITH BLOOD (Do you have any idea how hard it is to get good art with blood/gore that isn’t 1. Guro (very.) 2. Irl photos of dubious provenance 3. Medical photos again of dubious provenance??)

There’s a whole set of hands with blood in that series, actually! I chose these bc I wanted 2 hands (Grian and X), and I wanted X’s to be lax, with Grian’s active.

I thought the way the thumb is digging into the lower arm seemed evocative of the connection/penetration of letting your cells start to breathe for somebody else.

The blood is blood but the way it coats one hand while marring the other also brings up contamination/spreading, like we can see Grian’s cells flowing down?

Do you have a question…? poem excerpt

Again, slightly harder to read than I might normally do!

A question that can’t be answered is about keeping secrets, as well as Grian’s refusal to ask Scar why, to confront him, to have that conversation.

Mercy being difficult to understand is the other side of that coin - if Scar wasn’t being cruel, why did becoming hurt? Why is he willing to risk his life for X, despite knowing the incredible danger? He wants to be a pigeon again.

A piece of burned meat poem excerpt

This is Xisuma’s POV to me, post-fic. Not much of it, but I wanted to explore both the idea of ‘my body is HURT and I am not in control’ and also ‘I am so tired. I have been so tired. At least this isn’t up to me anymore.’

catching signals that sound in the dark webweave

Created as a gift for @droidofmay for her incredible fic!

// Sources under readmore //

What is a webweave? Previous art: Third Life | Void Falling | Attempt 33 | Limited Life | Nightingale | solving counting sheep | Hunger au

Also, you seem unstable… speech bubble / via imperiuswrecked ◆ Naka-Choko [the inherent homoeroticism of wound tending] / @dontbelasagnax ◆ Excerpts from Your Lover (The Galloping Hour: French Poems) / Alejandra Pizarnik via @feral-ballad ◆ Constellation No. 26 / Zhao Zhao via @psikonauti ◆ Excerpt from Hush / C. Dale Young via @grocerystoredean ◆ Excerpt from Refrigerator General (Fjords I) / Zachary Schomburg ◆ Carafe Nº6 / Etienne Meneau ◆ Red wings / Natalia Karna ◆ Would you murder me… texts / sparklebussy (deactivated) ◆ Président de la nuit / Carole Rabe via @huariqueje ◆ Give until I’m… poll / @orewing ◆ Out of touch / Denis Sarazhin ◆ fill me up, fill me full up / @taohun ◆ Excerpt from Heed the Hollow / Malcolm Tariq via @geryone ◆ Excerpt from No I Don’t Want to Connect with You on LinkedIn / Emily Skaja via @serratedpens ◆ Happiness is- / National Institutes of Health ◆ Fire reflected on birds in smoke / Coen Robben via @theanimalblog ◆ Constructual 5 / Juana Gomez ◆ With all the holes… (Survival series) / Jenny Holzer via @valtsv ◆ New York Winter 2014 2015 / Lina Scheynius ◆ I did not hunt down the moment edit [[Need More Bandages / TMG | Night Lights, Berlin / Lesser Ury]] / a-doctor-not-a-fangirl (deactivated) ◆ Lie (Peripety series) / Jen Mazza ◆ Excerpts from From The Book of Time (Devotions) / Mary Oliver via @liriostigre ◆ Excerpts from Having It Out with Melancholy / Jane Kenyon via @cithaerons

[andoutofharm]

the way patrick talks about the way pete thinks is so beautiful

[wreckedhoney]

hardmode enemies-to-lovers would be....teddy and marie......forrest and ponty.....henry and the secret archives....peggy and brad......

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

Anyway I think the twist being the main character was what they despised all along fucks actually

[cq-studios]

29. How do you think they would be as a parent?—Ephemer

Ooh, okay, I do spend quite a bit of time thinking about this.

So, I think Ephemer would be a really fun dad overall, but he’s also not entirely stable.

He’d mask a lot of his pain with his cheery demeanour but sometimes his kid(s) will come home and just see him completely broken on the couch or something. Ephemer has a lot of trauma and I very much doubt Scala in general, let alone early Scala, has a good grasp on or ways to help treat mental health issues.

Speaking of that trauma though, I don’t think he’d want his kid(s) to be Keyblade wielders. I’ve talked about this before, but Daybreak Town certainly had a lot of kids dying… all the time. I can’t imagine that anyone, let alone someone as social as Ephemer, could’ve avoided that. I feel that Ephemer would be against kids wielding Keyblades similarly to how Skuld was against Shift Pride, with the compromise being the education system. Even still though, I can’t imagine Ephemer would be too comfortable with the idea.

I also think for similar reasons that he’d be a bit of a helicopter parent lol. All up in his kid(s) business, always checking in to make sure they’re okay, can’t let them out of sight for too long. Like people who had too much freedom when they were younger tend to not give their kids enough freedom and Ephemer certainly had quite a bit of freedom when he was younger.

I feel like his partner would try and rein him in a bit, to moderate success. The anxiety wins over quite often, but it gets better as the kid(s) get older.

I’m trying to think if I have any other headcannons about this but I think that’s it

[joyridingmp3]

crazy to me to think that my dads birth chart is predominantly fire, my mothers is mostly water, my sister is super earth heavy, and i have a lot of air in mine

[sanstropfremir]

Hello! I was looking through your kpop opinions tag, and I found what you said interesting and insightful. I was wondering what your opinions were on Key's Gasoline :D

i have............complicated thoughts on gasoline. i LOVE the graphic design and album marketing and i like a big chunk of the songs on the album, i think a lot of the styling and the mv are really well done. all those outfits are custom builds and the embroidery work is UNREAL, as garments they are beautiful pieces of work. but i don't really like how the song is just a retooled version of industry baby. and i'm not sure how i feel about all the crosses, to be honest. the use of them is obviously very intentional and undoubtedly they mean something TO key specifically in terms of his faith but it's..........not really a thing i can get behind, personally. something about it feels a little too evangelical to me and i will absolutely admit that i am overly sensitive to that kind of thing bc i've had more than one run in with evangelical attempts to convert me. i don't ACTUALLY think it was meant specifically as a whole dogmatic evangelical thing but i find myself being a bit......uncomfortable with the imagery even now a year later.

[starrysmiling]

thinking about the au i unceremoniously dropped like a bomb in mage's dms last night but also realised could be canon compliant since it doesn't contradict anything so behold, the concept of all time:

jax and wren are twins and both of them are in love with fern

(alternatively: fern has two hands and he is going to hold both of their hands)

hear me out okay. consider that there's a boy who makes you feel alive but your love rival is your twin and the object of your affection seems to look happier with him than you. even though you're twins. welcome to the natsubane family

but like. jax, the total brocon older twin who would do anything for wren and is the generally more oblivious energetic one who introduces fern to wren as his crush...

...wren, the more serious, observant, shy younger twin with a calmer personality and definitely not jealous of the fact that jax is a lot closer to fern than he is...

...and then we have fern, who loves teasing the easily flustered jax and the pride that jax's growth fills him with and his lively presence standing beside him in the kitchen while he bakes dessert, but also the sparkle in wren's eyes as he tells fern about the newest book he read and the genuine curiosity he treats the world with and the sense of comfort he gets sitting by wren's side as they watch a documentary.

yeah eventually fern ends up kissing both of them but it's so fun thinking that how he shows different sides of himself and enjoys himself in completely different ways with each twin. jax takes fern on exciting dates and they battle and train together as rivals and banter as best friends; wren soothes fern with his presence and they play with pokemon and are happy to spend time with each other quietly doing work because he's just that comfortable with wren. fern's cheeky prankster side shows up a lot more with jax, his gentle sweet side shows up a lot more with wren, and each of the twins feel that the side fern doesn't show to them makes him closer to the other twin instead.

and don't get me started on the dynamic between the twins themselves bc i'm going insane over wren's jealousy over jax being the one with the deeper bond as well as being fern's rival as a trainer but thinking that it means fern wouldn't love him as much as he would love jax so he ends up urging jax to be the one who asks fern out despite the fact that he desperately wants to be the one who makes fern smile.

also going insane over jax being conflicted over finding out that wren also is in love with fern and his life being built on loving and protecting his younger twin that he desperately wants wren to be happy but wren's happiness would come at the sake of his own happiness with fern and knowing that for anything else he'd give it up in a heartbeat but also knowing that wren would hate to see him give things up for him.

ough. neither of them realise that fern has two hands. fern kisses jax and sees wren half pulling a pout so he kisses wren as well. they both make him happy, but in different ways so they don't overlap and don't compete. he loves them both.

also, mage dropped this earlier and killed me on the spot.