#but that’s because I find their designs too complicated to draw

[quibbs126]

I was thinking about the idea of redesigning Dark Cacao (mostly because of the shoulder pads), and honestly, why didn’t they give him the Oreo shoulder pads from his beta?

I mean I guess the justification for his diamond shoulder pads is that they add more of that shape into his design, and the rest of his design is extremely angular so the curved Oreos might have clashed, but still

I think it would have been a way to tie back into Dark Choco’s design, and this particular shape of his shoulder pads is different and looks like it belongs to some above Dark Choco, like his father. So it’s tying in while being distinct

And considering Dark Choco’s like, the only character (at least as far as I can remember) who wears those Oreo pads, maybe it could be like a family thing

Like I don’t really see much of a point to getting rid of them, they would have worked great. And now I want to give Dark Cacao Oreo shoulder pads in headcanon designs

[mewkwota]

De-stressor doodles of the him (the boy). I find that I especially love drawing the accents on Hub's bodysuit, they also help a lot with guiding a pose and giving it more flow to me.

And do you know how many times it took for me to get a sitting pose I really liked? (About 3 times. Each one likely messed up thanks to his little(?) boots.)

[lemmymade]

why are fantasy style outfits so hard to draw and design!!!!!

[crystalflygeo]

Kinktober Day 2 - Shibari ft Alhaitham (Genshin Impact)

Google hishi karada under your own risk. That's it. That's the inspiration and GODS I want that hello????//HIT This one ended up longer than expected but also can you believe I wrote almost all of it on the bus/train omw home?? NICE

“Just saying, it’s an interesting use of the House of Daena’s resources. Coming from you, at least.” Alhaitham speaks nonchalantly, eyes glued to the book he’s holding in one hand as the other is currently held by you, crisscrossing red rope in a rather complex pattern as you glance back and forth at the book in your lap.

You give no answer, concentrated in your work. The rope draws lines and presses knots along his bicep, crossing over around the elbow and following down to his wrist.

Not too tight as to hurt.

Your brow frowns with little expression lines as you maneuver the rope into the last knot. This goes here, then pull there, cross here and tighten a little…

“There we go! What do you think?” You smile proudly scooting back a little, hands by your hips.

The Scribe finally diverts his attention from the calculus book he’s reading and looks at his arm with genuine interest, his green and terracotta gaze appraising. 

He flexes his arm a little, testing the give, and tilts his head just slightly as he looks at the pattern from different angles.

“How honest do you want me to be?” He asks simply. It’s a little game you two have.

“Um… 7? 8? It’s my first time, don't be too harsh” You reply with a little pout and puppy dog eyes.

He sighs. As if he could ever live with himself if he made you upset. “It’s not bad at all for a first time. The rope feels a little loose at some parts and the design is not fully uniform but the knots seem sturdy and well-executed. Perhaps you could have picked a simpler design however this one came through really well.” He assesses, sounding a little too much like a teacher but that’s why you find him endearing. Alhaitham is honest and direct. 

“Really? I’m happy then” You beam. “I picked this one because I thought the diamond pattern was pretty… and it kinda fits you” You giggle, turning to the book and gesturing at the drawings and diagrams, blushing a little.

Alhaitham knows how to read between lines. Clearly, you have pictured him tied up like this.

Or perhaps… yourself?

“May I try now?” He asks suddenly, closing his book and setting it aside.

“H-huh?” 

“A fair trade, I was your guinea pig, so now you’ll be mine. And you’ve caught my interest with this.” He says with a casual shrug. His expression as stoic as ever, in a way that no one could read his thoughts.

But you know him better than anyone, and you catch that little glint in his eye. 

“Sure… of course.” You nod dumbfounded.

The two of you undo the knots around his arm and you gather together the strings of rope. Alhaitham picks up the book and quickly flips through the pages with a certain decisiveness. 

He suddenly stops, thinks for a moment, his hand smoothing out the page. “Are you ok with a full chest harness?” 

“Um?” You scoot over and glance at the book. It’s a beautiful design. Doesn’t look too overly complicated but you have learned they can be deceiving in practice. 

It has a diamond design too.

“Ok, I have no issue.” You nod. 

He places the book close by, picks a rope checking the length and starts working. He first loops it around your neck and slowly starts weaving the strands. This one requires almost no knots it seems, just the rope pulling on itself from different angles to keep it balanced and create the diamond shapes.

You watch silently, the scribe checks with you on every step, if it’s too tight, hurting or pulling at something. You shake your head every time. He diligently creates the wrapping around your chest and down your tummy and hips. 

It’s hypnotizing, soothing in a way, but also has your nerves alight. 

Finally he reaches the spot around your crotch and you suddenly feel hyperaware as he loops the rope around your inner thighs, digging on the delicate skin of your groin. The ropes crumple at the skirt of your dress.

You squirm a bit as he ties the final knot behind you. Bringing everything together and securing it. “There, all done.” He declares pulling back a little. “I must admit I’m impressed, looks even better than I expected.” 

You move around and test his handiwork. The rope is snug on your skin, thigh enough it will surely leave light marks for a while, but not enough to be painful or chafe your skin. The sensation is… comfortable, flexible. But also so… noticeable. You feel the slight pressure of them, the teasing pull. They’re just there, impossible to ignore, binding you. And you can see the erotic appeal.

Reverent hands ghost over the patterns of ropes going around your body, teasing you with feather-light touches. ‘Adjusting’ here and there, meticulous, bushing at your chest or pulling at your neck. 

“Alhaitham…” You whine. Keenly aware of your nipples hardening.

“You know, I could loop some more rope going from the back and bind your arms too. Or… add a similar tie at your legs… keeping your thighs and calves together and your legs spread. This diamond pattern has many varieties.”

And so, it dawns on you.

“Y-you… have you read about this before?” 

He chuckles, hands smoothing over your legs as he leans closer to you. “Yes. In fact… I borrowed this exact same book once.” He smirks “When I saw you with it, I knew I simply had to try this tie on you. It rather captivated me back then… but it captivates me much more on you.” 

His thumb rubs over the damp spot in your panties and you squeak, hips bucking.

“Bastard. Mean. Evil. Y-you lied to me!” You sputter, flushed and worked up at having fallen in his trap. Clearly he had planned this from the start and here you are now, all tied up like his prey. His little prize. 

His hand tilts your chin up towards him, his face close making your cheeks even warmer. “I did no such thing.” He says, sounding a little playful even. “Nothing of what I said was untrue, and especially not the part about you looking absolutely enthralling like this.” His eyes roam over your figure, and this time, you see the hunger. 

his fingers hook on the rope between your breasts and he pulls you into his lap.

“Perhaps I should keep you like this for a little longer…”

[eoieopda]

whiskey neat | jwy

there’s no common ground between yours and wooyoung’s vastly different circles. that is, until tuesday nights at the black cat form the center of the venn diagram.

pairing: jung wooyoung x reader au: strangers to something type: one-shot | smut wc: 8.3k rating: 18+ | minors do not have my consent to interact. cw: inspired by hozier’s “too sweet”, primarily wooyoung’s pov with one switch at the end; bartender!wooyoung, musician!reader, alcohol use, setting is a bar, uhhh wooyoung is a (to the tune of that arctic monkeys song) cigarette smoker, oral sex (v), protected sex (p in v), corruption kink kind of?, use of “sweetheart” (fatal). reader notes: afab (gender identity not designated); kind of naive; into fitness/“wellness” (no body type/weight is described, except wooyoung thinking they’re “strong” + reader thinking that they are in the best shape of their life); wears a sundress at the beginning. the following terms are used in the scenes involving smut: pussy, cunt, clit, tits (no description given). a/n: i quite literally started this in march 2024 and then experienced the most severe hobby death of all time. this is coming after five (5) months of scooping it out of my brain with a melon-baller, so… not my best, but here she is! thanks @sailoryooons for beta-ing because i’m self-conscious lately 🍤

Tuesday nights at the Black Cat never used to be busy. 

For three years, Wooyoung spent the majority of his shifts behind the bar doing fuck all: Folding receipt paper into increasingly complicated and wasteful shapes; replacing citrus wedges that went unused and then brown; paying visits to the stray cat camping out in the alley near the dumpster. He’d go hours without talking to another human being, and he never took issue with it, even if his wallet did.

Two months ago, however, things changed. 

Two months ago, management started panicking about the lack of revenue. To keep the lights on and draw in a crowd of (hopefully) soon-to-be regulars, they implemented a schedule of recurring events — some monthly, others weekly, most stupid.

Wooyoung’s precious solitude disappeared, and in its place, he got trivia nights and turntable DJs, showing off their collections of vinyls. Games of bingo targeting hipsters, who show up en masse to fight it out for prizes — potted plants, of all things — they could easily buy on their own for far less than their tabs’ totals. Themed brunches. 

A million other events and just as many used glasses to wash.

Despite his ever-present scowl — his face just looks like that —  it hasn’t been all bad. Without the newly-added acoustic sessions, the bar wouldn’t need a local performer to both play and host on a biweekly basis. Management wouldn’t have reached out to you; and you’d have no fucking reason to come to a dive like this. Suffice it to say, your pilates-practicing, daylight-disciplined circle of doers would never otherwise overlap with Wooyoung’s, in all its nocturnal, nicotine-dependent grit.

Tuesday nights at the Black Cat now occupy the center of the Venn diagram.

As usual, you come traipsing in half an hour before your set starts with a gig bag slung over your shoulder and a megawatt smile on your face. This is your natural state, he’s come to learn. Solar-powered. It shouldn’t be possible, but you manage to brighten further when your searching eyes find him sitting on the counter behind the register.

Through no fault of his own, Wooyoung’s gaze trails down from your face to the little sundress you’re wearing. It’s new, he notes immediately. The skirt of it flutters with each step you take, showing off more and more of your thighs as you move.

You don’t react to the migrating fabric. Just the same, you don’t notice his appraisal or the way patrons’ heads turn as you cross the bar. 

No surprise there, he thinks. 

From the four (4) entire conversations the two of you have had so far, you’ve made one thing abundantly clear: You’re inclined to assume the best of people and their intentions. 

Nine times out of ten, Wooyoung dodges naivety like that the second it starts skipping his way, well-versed in the consequences of trusting so implicitly. You and your cotton-candy smile have proven to be the outlier, though. Working in tandem, you and that grin have him pinned where he sits with no urge to run.

You don’t notice that, either.

When you slide onto the stool across the bar from him, Wooyoung finally clocks what you’re holding. Your right hand grips some green concoction that he suspects was made with kale. Or moss? In your left hand, an iced Americano — beautifully black — weeps condensation onto manicured fingers, making hard-earned calluses glisten.

Wooyoung’s racing thoughts about those hands are still inflicting psychic damage when you lean further over the counter.

“Extra shot of espresso,” you hum as you hold the coffee out to him. You do your best to tease him, though you’re shy as hell about it, so the words still manage to come gently: “For those of us who were still awake when the sun came up.”

Wooyoung mentioned his coffee order several weeks ago in passing. It’s sweet in a way he’s not used to that you’ve not only remembered how he takes his coffee, but that you’ve brought it to him ever since, apropos of nothing, when all he’s ever done is his best to get a rise out of you. What he’s up to isn’t sweet — not by a long-shot — but it’s easily done and well worth the misplaced effort when he sees how flustered he can make you.

Wooyoung tilts his head, draws his lips in a straight line, and gestures to your cup with his. “Worry about those waking up shortly after sunrise, sweetheart. They’re drinking algae.”

As intended, you’re visibly affected by the pet name, so much so that you stumble over your defense. “It — it’s healthy!”

“It’s swampy.”

Your nose scrunches indignantly, prompting the edge of Wooyoung’s mouth to tick upwards. He doesn’t emote more than that. Five (5) conversations in now, and he’s already picked up on how much it gets to you when he only concedes a hint of a smirk.

As much as he’d relish the opportunity to sit here and keep toying with you, the crowd surrounding you has doubled in a matter of minutes. Just over your shoulder, Wooyoung sees a patron glance down at the screen of her phone to check the time; then, he hears the complaint she thinks is muttered quietly under her breath. It’s not. In fact, you hear it, too, and you divert your wide, heart-shaped eyes away from him. That smile of yours curves in the wrong direction once you do.

When you look back at him, you say, “I should go,” but he hears it for what it is: an apology. 

He’s never been good at ending conversations — especially in the rare case that he’d prefer to keep one going — so he nods, leaves it at that. You pause for a nanosecond, as if you’ve got something else to add, but you don’t. You smooth down the back of your dress once you’ve hopped from the stool to your feet. Then, you mimic his gesture. 

You make it two steps towards the stage before Wooyoung calls out to you, prompting you to spin back around and your dress to flutter:

“Thanks for the coffee, sweetheart.”

Your frown disappears instantly. The smile that replaces it is still there when you disappear into the crowd, only to resurface several seconds later on the tiny stage across the room.

Guitar now in hand, you duck your head through the woven strap, shuffling carefully closer to the microphone stand. You introduce yourself, strum a quiet, major chord, and chirp, “Welcome to both the Black Cat and my favorite day of the week.”

Normally, you leave shortly after your last set, as if you’ll turn into a pumpkin when the clock strikes ten. With the schedule you keep, it’s no wonder. From what Wooyoung has gathered so far, you wake up before dawn most days to get a workout in before heading to the office. The very idea makes him nauseous whenever he thinks too long about it, so he does his best not to. 

Mornings are for sleeping, he told you once.

Life is for living, you’d replied.

Apparently, the two of you have drastically different ideas about what living looks like.

For Wooyoung, life on Tuesday nights looks like catering to a steadily dwindling crowd once you finish up and disappear with a friendly wave goodbye. It’s cleaning up sticky spills, resetting migrated stools, and doing a half-ass restock that will make the opener — him — complain about the closer — again, him — when his next shift starts at 5:00 PM on Wednesday. 

In the gap between his shifts, life looks like meeting up with his similarly shadow-dwelling friends on someone’s balcony to chain-smoke, sip whiskey, and watch the sunrise until he gets bored. From there, it’s either walking back to his apartment or kicking said friends out of his, so he can rot in front of his PC. Eventually, life looks like blackout shades and crashing into bed while the world around him heads out for brunch.

Tonight, however, life is starting to look a little different.

When you wander over, it’s not to say goodnight or close out the tab you think you’ve accrued, which Wooyoung never opened in the first place.

Maybe, he thinks, you’ve finally caught on that all these “technical issues with the point-of-sale system” — occurring for the last four (4) shows in relation to one (1) patron in particular — can’t possibly be a coincidence. That a free drink given will always beget a free drink received. That Wooyoung doesn’t deal in unpaid debts, even if he hasn’t and won’t own up to his petty workplace theft.

You sidle up to his bar and slip back into the stool you’d previously occupied, no more aware of the way your sundress shifts now than you were earlier. Likewise, he’s no less blatant with the way he looks you up and down, eyes lingering unabashedly and hungrily. The pair of you float in each other’s orbit for a few moments just like this: waiting for the other to speak first.

“Don’t you go to yoga class at ass o’clock on Wednesdays?” He eventually inquires, leaning back against the counter behind him with his arms crossed and head tilted.

Your eyes flick down to the screen of your phone, which rests face-up on the bar between your elbows. You clock the time but not the way your current posture causes the neckline of your mostly modest dress to plunge. Conflict creases between your eyebrows, then you tilt your chin to look at him.

Wooyoung knows that look, although he’s never seen it on you before. That look begs to be talked into something, rather than out of it. It’s a look he gets often. For better or for worse, it’s one he never turns down.

“I do,” you admit through a sigh. 

Offering nothing more than a hum to indicate his intrigue, Wooyoung watches you and waits patiently for you to elaborate. Another few seconds slip by without a word. His attention makes you shy, he notes; he loves it. 

But he loves the idea of toying with you even more, so when you don’t say anything else, he takes that attention and diverts it to the few remaining patrons, all of whom have vested interest in closing out and getting out.

Good riddance, he thinks as the last of them stumbles out and away, leaving the two of you in charged silence. 

Even more seconds pass. 

Still nothing.

Wooyoung glances around and finds a bottle of Jameson on its very last leg. It’s the perfect amount for a litmus test — two shots left, nothing more to give and everything to prove. Snatching two overturned shot glasses from where they dry on a holed rubber mat, he empties the whiskey evenly and turns back to you with an eyebrow raised.

Your eyes widen slightly when he sets the spare on the bar in front of you, more so with interest than surprise. For a moment, you stare at it with the same ambivalent expression, nibbling thoughtfully on your lower lip. 

Finally, you all but whisper, “I should’ve been in bed an hour ago.”

With his left palm flat against the bar, Wooyoung rests his weight and leans in, eyelids and voice dropping. “Why aren’t you?” He murmurs, gaze flicking down to your lips then back up again — just long enough for you to notice that he was, in fact, looking. “Hmm?”

Your breath hitches — just loudly enough for him to notice that you are, in fact, finding it hard to function this closely to him.

“On a school night, no less.” His eyes narrow teasingly.

“I’m asking myself the same question,” you confess, though you’re the picture of innocence. Your fingertip traces idly down the side of your shot glass, then back up again. 

He’s as distracted by the mindless movement as you are, albeit for different reasons. Before he lets himself get carried away in wondering whether or not your touch is always that delicate, Wooyoung lifts his glass and gestures for you to do the same. “Sounds like you could use a bad influence.”

A soft clink permeates when your glasses touch, followed by a muted thump when the bottom of each one is tapped against the bar. Your heads are thrown back in unison, just like your drinks, and when your faces finally level out towards one another’s, you counter him breezily, “Maybe you could use a good one.”

Wooyoung thinks he could use more than that.

Breaking eye contact, you glance down at your phone again. It’s obvious that you’re second-guessing your decision to linger. He wants to chuck that brick in the bin with the other useless shit, to get rid of any excuse you might give for having to leave, but he doesn’t. 

And you don’t give him an excuse.

Your hand wraps around that fucking phone, then you stand up slowly. 

“Try not to stay up too late,” you advise with a smile that still manages to read like disappointment.

Don’t.

Reaching into the pocket of your jacket, you pull out the tips you made tonight and collect a few bills before dropping them on the counter to cover the shot you didn’t even order. Wooyoung wants to tell you not to — that your money isn’t good here, even if you are — but he knows it won’t make a difference. 

You sling your gig bag over your shoulder, thank him, and tell him that you’ll see him in two weeks.

He scrubs his hands over his face the second you walk out the door and mutters through gritted teeth, “Fuck.”

You don’t see Wooyoung in two weeks. 

As a matter of fact, you cancel your acoustic session for the first time ever. Management either doesn’t know why you bailed or doesn’t think it’s any of Wooyoung’s business, so no one bothers to tell him. If he’d ever thought to ask for your number, he could check in on you himself, but he didn’t and therefore can’t.

Ignorant and annoyed, he resigns himself to occupying an empty tavern on a goddamn Tuesday night, yet again. 

Nobody brings him coffee. 

Nobody worth talking to crosses the threshold. 

No one makes little comments — genuine concerns poorly disguised as digs — when he uses the paring knife to carve little stars into the lip of the bar top, instead of slicing limes. 

And when he gives up and closes down early, he’s so tired of his own shit that he simply goes home and goes to bed.

Bed being the operative word. 

He doesn’t go to sleep, even though he has nothing better to do. Alternatively, Wooyoung replays your last interaction on a loop in his head, daydreaming about what could’ve happened if you’d stayed. While his thoughts spiral, his hand drifts, finds the pulse beneath the zipper of his jeans, and feels the throbbing ache building through the denim.

It’s pathetic. 

He knows it. 

Too bad that doesn’t stop him from fucking his fist every night for the next several, imagining how much softer yours must feel.

The patron pulls a face the absolute second Wooyoung slides her glass across the bar. 

Wholly uninterested in the response one way or another, he slathers on his customer-service smile and asks her, “Alright?”, in a tone that doesn’t match his expression in the slightest.

“There’s no ice in it,” she mumbles, cringing in mild horror as she does. As if the liquor features his spit instead. “I wanted ice.”

There’s a split second where he almost lets his mask crack, says something shitty just because his mood was already sour before she walked over. Wooyoung doesn’t get the opportunity, however. Over the girl’s shoulder, someone gently intervenes: “Neat means no ice. You’d have needed to order it on the rocks.” 

A beat passes, then comes, “Or — you know, with ice, please.”

Wooyoung neither hears nor cares what the girl says in response. She shuffles off, and that’s all that matters. Without her body blocking the way, he sees you clearly. You’re more done-up than usual, like you’ve just come from somewhere far nicer than here.

“It’s Saturday.”

Probably should’ve started with hello.

After eyeing the glowing, neon clock on the wall, Wooyoung notices that both hands are pointed skyward. He corrects himself, “Nah, it’s Sunday.”

You slip into the now-unoccupied stool ahead of him and nod, chuckling like you can’t believe it, either. When you settle in, you prop your elbow on the bar top, then your chin upon the heel of your hand. Just above, your eyes twinkle with a kind of mischief he’s never seen you wear before.

That might be the thin veil of tipsiness, actually. 

Not that he’s complaining.

Wooyoung hides his amusement by bending over and rummaging through the under-counter refrigerator that hums beneath the register. The rush of cool air has nothing to do with how awake he suddenly feels. He wonders if you feel the same but can’t ask outright; eagerness isn’t his style.

“You’re here on purpose?” He asks instead, resurfacing with a bottle of soju — some new, fruity flavor he assumes you’ll like — and a raised eyebrow.

You hum appreciatively when you see what he’s holding. That soft sound that punches him right in the center of his chest with force. “I was out with friends, but…”

Your voice trails off, too distracted by his hand enveloping the seal-covered bottle cap. With a firm grip and quick twist, it’s gone. You’re still eyeing his hands, he notes, even though all they’re doing is holding the bottle. 

Normally, he’d love to give you the benefit of the doubt and attribute your sudden fixation on the rings he wears. It wouldn’t be the first time a man in jewelry snags attention, complimentary or otherwise. Unfortunately — or maybe fortunately? — for you, Wooyoung forgot to put his usual accessories back on after this afternoon’s shower.

Nope, he thinks, biting back a wolfish grin. He’s not alone. You daydream about his touch, too.

Catching yourself staring, you shift atop your stool with a quiet, self-conscious laugh that sounds more like a sigh. He opts to let it go without further teasing, but he doesn’t let it go entirely. That breathy little noise echoes in his ears, drowning out the faint slosh of liquor as he fills your glass. 

In a weak attempt to distract himself, he remembers your half-finished sentence and prompts with a low voice, “But?”

“They wanted to end the night.” You accept the glass into your hand from his and raise it slightly in thanks. “I didn’t,” you whisper, then bring the rim to your lips to cloak their upward curve.

Wooyoung would be lying if he said your tiny act of defiance didn’t send all the blood in his body rushing straight to his dick. Maybe it’s arrogant of him to assume that he’s the source of this newfound rebelliousness. The spark that lit the fuse, or whatever. Maybe that should bother him. Of course, it doesn’t.

In an effort to hide how strong of a chord your confession has struck, he gestures with one extended finger to the clock. Your eyes follow, and he leans in closer; the smirk you can’t see is still evident in his voice, he’s sure.  “How much of a coincidence is it that you showed up right before the trains stop running?”

When your gaze flicks momentarily back to him, he spots a hint of surprise. This impeccable timing wasn’t a scheme at all, he realizes. Not a plot. If he had to bet, Wooyoung would guess that you’re never out late enough to know that the train schedule ends at all.

God, you’re going to give him a cavity.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. Coincidentally, I know someone who gets off just in time to walk you home.”

“This gonna bother you?”

Having stepped out of the bar before Wooyoung, his question prompts you to look back over your shoulder at him, one eyebrow raised slightly out of curiosity. He lifts his right hand from his jacket pocket to reveal the half-spent pack of cigarettes he’d been storing there.

He expects it to, and to his surprise, he cares enough about that possibility that he doesn’t light up without asking in the way he normally would.

“In theory, yes,” you laugh, “because I’d prefer your lungs to be tar-free.”

“And in practice?”

You must not have expected him to note the distinction; you fluster. Grinning slightly, Wooyoung answers his own question on your behalf, “In practice, you find it kind of hot.”

He keeps his eyes on you as he pulls a cigarette from the pack — slowly, to test his hypothesis that you’ve got a thing for his hands — and then, Wooyoung slides the cardboard back into his pocket. 

Your gaze follows while he gently places the filtered end between his lips. It stays put when he furnishes a lighter, holds the flame to the opposite side, and inhales. Turning his head to the side, Wooyoung exhales the smoke where it won’t reach you. 

“It’s alright, sweetheart,” he assures you, eyes devilish. Deer in headlights that you are, you freeze but for the bob of your throat as you swallow. “I won’t make you admit it out loud.”

Yet.

Once he’s decided that he’s played with you enough for the time being, two of you head south, ambling under streetlights without any sense of urgency. Making up for lost time, maybe; picking up where the last Tuesday left off. 

He can’t tell if it’s the alcohol making you more talkative than usual, or if you’re feeling the rush of your off-brand decisions, but Wooyoung’s fine with it, either way. You tell him about your week — in full and without hesitation — like you’re chatting to a friend and not someone you’ve only just started to encounter on a brief, twice-monthly basis.

You had a date this Tuesday night, he learns. It didn’t go well. Too similar, you explain with a wave of your hand. According to you, it’s boring to sit with you at a dinner table. Wooyoung looks pointedly at you as soon as he hears it, noting his disagreement. For a second, you assume something he doesn’t mean: that he enjoys his own company more than you enjoy yours.

“No,” he corrects you. “I just can’t picture dinner with you as something boring.”

You duck your head, embarrassed. “Oh,” is all you manage in reply.

Wooyoung follows your lead across several more city blocks, hanging on every word you say in the meantime. When the pair of you reach the front of your apartment building, his cigarette is spent, but neither one of you is. He takes an extra step towards the garbage can near the door and drops the butt amidst the others in the lid, which doubles as an ashtray. A faint vein of smoke bleeds out until the dark sky laps it up entirely.

You look conflicted when he turns back in your direction. Clearly, you don’t want him to leave just yet, but asking him upstairs is likely way out of your pattern of behavior. Wooyoung sees two options: He could say goodnight and go; take a few steps towards his side of the city, and hope you to act even further out of character, or — 

“If you’re asking, I’m saying yes.”

— he could go off-script entirely.

Your apartment looks exactly the way Wooyoung expected it to. Everything is cozy; a far cry from the modern and monochrome edge of his place. It all makes sense, based on what he’s learned about you so far. Feels like you, although he’ll concede that you haven’t been felt by him just yet.

Each shelf features a tchotchke or framed photograph — or several — but not a single speck of dust. Likewise, the various potted plants you’ve displayed artfully around the space are well-kept. Flourishing, he assumes, despite the fact that he doesn’t know shit about fuck when it comes to plants.

His shoes, ratty in comparison to yours, are toed off at the door before he follows you further into the kitchen. You stop at the island, bottom lip between your teeth once again. Unsure, you nibble on it, like it’ll help you set your dizzy mind straight.

When Wooyoung inches closer to you, he does it slowly, even though every part of his body demands that he ramp up the pace. As badly as he wants his hands — and his teeth, and his tongue…— all over you now, he can’t be the jump scare that sets your little bunny heart to sprinting. The adrenaline is practically vibrating off your frame already with every step he takes in your direction.

Though you could, you don’t move further away, the nearer he gets. You stay put with the small of your back against the lip of the granite counter, hypnotized. Right where he wants you.

Once he’s close enough, Wooyoung tests the waters. You let him; your gaze clings to him so strongly that he feels the weight of it without reciprocating. With his thumb and forefinger, he traces the belt loop closest to your left hip, then tugs slightly, making your breath quicken for a moment. 

Eyes still focused on his own ministrations, he murmurs, “Am I the first stray you’ve ever brought home?”

You don’t answer with words. His gaze flicks upwards, and from under heavy-lidded eyes, he sees the tiny nod.

“Full of surprises.” He looks down again, purposely depriving you of eye contact, and moves his fingers from your belt loop so that the pad of his thumb brushes over the top of your jeans. There, the skin of your hip peeks out from under the denim, hot to the touch. “Not just sweet, are you?”

“Someone told me I needed a bad influence.”

The sudden re-introduction of your voice pulls his focus. You stare back at him boldly, and it feels like a dare. Both of his hands move to your hips now, simultaneously guiding you closer to his chest and keeping you pinned between his body and the island.

“You’ll miss your Sunday morning pilates, I fear,” he tuts with a slight shake of his head.

“You’ll make attending redundant, I hope.”

And then your mouth is on his, all tongue and teeth, while you card desperate fingers through his hair. It occurs to him, as he licks into your mouth, that the split-dyed strands you're clinging to are a microcosm. 

Black and white. 

Conflicting tastes, like sugar and salt, that only make sense together in certain contexts. Like this one — right here, right now — with the two of you tangled up in your half-lit kitchen, so caught up in exploration that inhibition takes the backseat. Steeping in the aftertaste of soju and cigarette smoke, scent heady like arousal.

You break the kiss to catch your breath but can’t make it very far. His teeth claim your bottom lip, pulling forth the softest little growl he’s ever heard.

“Fuck,” he echoes with a growl of his own. 

That’s it. Breathing is overrated. Wooyoung’s ready to suffocate, so long as you let him.

“Lay back on the counter.”

You’re stunned into silence for a second, and while you blink back at him, he wonders if you’ll actually let him eat you out where you eat. It’s objectively filthy, he knows, but he might drop dead where he stands if he has to wait another second — or take another step elsewhere — before he tastes you.

Your answer is a leap, figuratively and literally. The hands you’ve been using to cling to him each flatten palm-down on the island behind you. With his grip on your hips to boost you, you scramble to your new stage; and you shatter the conservative expectations he had for you in the process. 

A newfound confidence flashes in your eyes, making his stomach flip and his dick twitch. A patronizing frown graces your kiss-bitten lips. “You didn’t walk three kilometers here just to look at me, did you?”

He sure as shit didn’t. Still, he can’t help but bask in the odd sense of pride he feels in staring up at you on the pedestal he put you on. The more time you spend with him, the rougher you seem to get around the edges; and he’d be lying through his teeth if he said he didn’t love the grit.

In lieu of a verbal response, Wooyoung locks eyes with you and gestures downward with the index finger of his right hand. You follow his silent command eagerly and without question; he keeps the praise you’ve earned on the tip of his tongue, saving it for later.

It takes less time than he expects to strip you of your jeans, most of which is attributed to slipping them off your ankles and dropping them blindly over his shoulder. They hit what he believes to be the range with a soft twack, then a barely audible crumple when they finally find the floor. 

Your lace underwear disappears in a similar fashion, albeit more eagerly. Couldn’t be helped, he thinks. That scrap of fabric was the last barrier between him and the thing he’s been craving most since he met you; and fuck, if you don’t exceed his expectations once again.

“Christ,” is all he can say.

It’s rare to find a pussy so perfect that it wipes out his vocabulary, let alone makes him want to weep. That’s exactly what’s waiting for him when you spread your thighs wide enough to accommodate his body between them. Really, the only thing driving him more insane than the sight of you is the thought of how many self-imposed rules you’ve broken to get to this point — the self-discipline you’ve thrown out the window on your way down to him.

He accepts the invitation, descends upon your wet heat like a man starved, and loops his arms underneath your thighs. Immediately, your thighs tighten around the sides of his head, muffling the groan that slips out of him the second your taste hits his tongue. Just the same, you’ve got him drunk in an instant while he laves his way through folds sweeter than cherry wine.

From under his own lashes, he looks up and sees yours flutter at the sensation of his lips encircling your clit and suckling slowly, deeply.

“Oh, my g-god,” you hiccup before your fingers are in his hair again, nails scratching perfectly along his scalp. “You’re so —” 

Wooyoung’s wickedly curved lips are slick in more ways than one, though he doubts you can see them through all those stars in your eyes. You don’t see the switch-up coming, either. Unwilling to let you race too far ahead of him, he scales it back, trading his deep pulls for targeted kitten licks.

“— evil.”

Your frustration rings out with a tortured whine. Wooyoung can’t blame you; he knows he’s cruel for guiding you so close to the edge, right out of the gate, then refusing to send you off of it. But he has to draw this out as long as he can, savor what he can for however long you give him.

And to your credit, you take it well. 

You give, too, offering up the moans, whimpers, and sighs he couldn’t have dreamed up correctly if he tried.

Well…

Wooyoung did try. Gave it his best shot, even, but his imagination fell short. He knows that now. The pitch was wrong, the timing was off, and he failed to anticipate just how badly it’d fuck him up to feel you grinding against his tongue. To have your fingers tied off in his hair, refusing to accept anything less than closeness.

That particular chorus swells for the first time when he unwinds his right arm from where it secures your left thigh; and his middle finger slides into your cunt, curls upwards to greet that spongy patch of nerves along your front wall. 

Eyes swimming with previously untapped desire, you look so pitifully perfect. Only breaking eye contact to throw your head back, you start to wail, “Wooyoung, I —” 

But the rest of that thought must turn to static before you can finish it. Charged silence settles in its place, save for your ragged breathing. All the while, his tongue never lets up on your poor, abused clit, though your arousal already has him coated, leaking down over the knuckle.

A particularly needy tug of his hair seeks what you can’t verbalize. 

More.

Closer.

When he adds his ring finger to fuck you further open for him, you can’t keep his name from spilling out of your mouth. Wooyoung starts to sound like a summoning spell; an invocation repeated so desperately that he just might give you what you want.

“W-Wooyoung, please,” you choke out, hips bucking up to chase his mouth. “I’m so close!”

The fact that you’re downright begging — on the brink of tears, no less — goes straight to his head. He lets up for a moment to purr, “Since you asked so nicely…”

The hand he doesn’t have half-buried in your heat grips your right hip, hard, securing you against the granite. It’s for the best, really. You jolt so much when he finally lets you cum that you could’ve knocked him out otherwise.

Not that he’d complain.

When the aftershocks peter out, and you gain back some control of your trembling limbs, you collapse back onto the countertop, chest heaving as your breath struggles to even out. One leg stays put, hinged over his shoulder, the best kind of dead weight; the other pools off the edge of the island, hanging limply.

Before pulling away entirely, Wooyoung presses an open-mouthed kiss to the soft skin of your inner thigh, suckling slightly — just enough to leave a calling card, though he doesn’t want anyone but you to know it’s there.

“You fucking menace.”

Your eyes flutter open and catch the way he’s grinning, the lower half of his face otherwise shining with a mix of spit and slick. With you watching intently, he licks his lips, simpering, “Think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you swear.”

“Deserved.” You sigh contentedly and close your eyes again for a second, but the blissed-out look on your face doesn’t dissipate. 

Wooyoung wonders if you’re holding onto the image of him between your thighs, replaying it behind your lids. The sight of you is going to haunt him — then and now, before and after. Even if your stamina is depleted now, his appetite’s been sated. He can survive off of this moment alone for weeks if necessary.

But you summon the strength to stretch your arms over your head, to moan breathily while you arch your back off the counter and ease the tension in your muscles. Then, in a burst of vitality, you sit upright. Eyes alight, you give him a smile to match.

“Help me down?”

As if he’d say no to a question asked that sweetly.

You wobble when your feet touch the ground again and thank him when he snakes an arm around your waist to steady you. With a nod in the direction of what Wooyoung assumes is your bedroom, you beckon him, “Come with me.”

“That’s been the plan, sweetheart.”

You roll your eyes at him — another first — and take his hand in yours. Fingers intertwined, you lead and he follows through the adjoining living room towards a door on the far side of the apartment. The pair of you barely cross the threshold into your bedroom before you turn and tug his hand, pulling him into a kiss.

“Do me a favor,” you murmur against his lips.

Wooyoung has no questions about that — the answer is yes, no matter what the favor is — but there is something he’s wondering about: when you open your mouth against his, can you taste yourself on his tongue?

Distracted by that thought, and the way your free hand makes its way to the button of his jeans, he nods. It gives him the opportunity to swallow down the groan that builds in his chest when you squeeze his still-clothed cock.

Your mouth leaves his then, drops to the side of his neck. Something about the light nip of your teeth below his ear makes his resolve start to crumble. It only gets harder when the warmth of your tongue flicks over his skin to soothe the sting. He sounds fucked out already when he sighs, “Anything.”

“Let me repay you for all those drinks you never charged me for.” Between kisses down the length of his neck, you purr, “Not exactly subtle, you know.”

He clenches his jaw to keep it from dropping. “Have I been hustled?” 

“Is it hustling if I offer to reimburse you?” 

Knowing damn well what it’ll do to him, you flutter your lashes against his skin, forcing him to fight off a shiver. There’s no hiding the rush of heat that follows; he doesn’t need to ask to know that you feel it creeping up his neck. “I’ll make up for it,” you promise. “Atone, and all that.”

Wooyoung reaches up and cups your jaw with his hand; you follow his direction and look up at him with excitement twinkling in your eyes, juxtaposing the deep black in his. “I’m charging interest,” he bites back. “The rates are astronomical.”

“Oh?”

“Oh, indeed. Get on the bed, sweetheart.”

With a light smack on your ass, he sends you on your way. In the few seconds it takes you to skip over to your mattress and jump onto it, he tugs his shirt up and over his head, then tosses it aside. Before unbuckling his jeans and tearing those off, too, he snatches his wallet from the back pocket. More specifically, the condom he’s been keeping within just in case you ever decided to stoop to his level.

You’re a second away from drooling when he makes his way over and stops at the edge of the bed. That kind of hunger is yet another thing he failed to see coming. There’s something insatiable in your eyes now, darkening by the second. 

You reach out for the condom, but he pulls his hand back, holds it up where you can’t reach. Frustration makes your eyebrows pinch together. Out of context — if you weren’t naked, wet, and wanting him — he’d likely go out of his way to tell you how fucking cute you look when you’re annoyed. 

“Don’t pout at me, sweetheart.” Wooyoung’s warning tone is gravel-lined, sharp to the touch when it hits you. Whether you intend it or not, your breath hitches in tandem with your pupils dilating.  “I’ll let you do it, but I have one condition. Consider it a repayment term.”

You tilt your head to the side, eyes narrowing with intrigue. “And what’s that?”

“No hands.”

The surprised look he was counting on never comes. He gets sheer determination instead. You pull the packet from between his fingers, rip the foil open with your teeth, and flick the empty wrapper onto your nightstand. Not a second is wasted in you tugging his black briefs down his thighs.

You don’t deal in unpaid debts, either, it seems.

What happens next nearly puts him in an early grave. Wooyoung fucking wishes for a fly on the wall to witness you — someone else to memorialize the finesse you exhibit in working that latex down his length with your mouth alone — because he can’t believe his own eyes. In fact, he has to screw them shut to keep from cumming at the sight of you with his dick down your throat, lips flush to his pelvis.

“My god,” he groans, head dipping backwards. “If that’s how good your fucking mouth feels…”

You give him a second to pull himself together. Then, you wrap your hand around his wrist and pull him. He drops into the space you were occupying just a second ago, and as soon as his back hits the mattress, you steady yourself with your palms on his chest and position yourself over him.

Now, he can’t keep his hands to himself. His fingertips scratch up your thighs, leaving goosebumps along the fastidiously trained muscles underneath his touch. Palms gliding up the curve of your ass, then your waist, then those fucking tits.

“Shit,” you mewl. He lightly pinches your left nipple between his thumb and forefinger, spurring you on to rake your nails over the flesh of his chest. The way he tenses under your touch must embolden you. “Play with me all you want, but I need you inside of me now.”

Wooyoung has no idea where this assertiveness came from, but he’ll be goddamned if he doesn’t give you everything you want and then some. To prove that you’ve earned the lot, you line yourself up and take everything he has. 

Somehow, you manage to take his vision, too. The world gets blurry as your heat envelopes him; everything in the periphery blackens until all that’s left is you throwing your head back in pleasure. No other light, no noise beyond the obscene sound of your pussy soaking his length and the collision of your perfect ass against the tops of his thighs.

As strong as you are, Wooyoung knows your orgasm will wipe you out long before your body tires. He sees your eyes start to roll back in your head, even when you put your palms down behind you and lean away from him to perfect the angle. 

Not good enough, he decides. He wants to watch your pupils blow when you fall apart.

“C’mere,” he rasps. 

Fuck, he’s about to break, too. 

“Eyes on me, sweetheart.”

You push off your hands and move to lean in, but you wind up crumpling against his chest, immediately overwhelmed by the depths of his strokes when you re-enter his gravity. With the proximity perfected, every movement that follows is desperate — animalistic, even. Clinging fingers, sweat slicked bodies swapping searing heat. He lifts his hips to drive himself further into you with every downbeat, sets a pace so punishing that he has you speaking in tongues.

When you cum the second time, the moan that rips through you almost sounds like a sob. It really might be. The droplets on your cheeks are either tears or sweat; one or both would be justified, considering the show you just put on for him.

Shit, how you managed to blow his world to pieces just by walking into his bar, he’ll never understand. All he knows is that when he cums — not long after you — and his entire fucking body goes numb, you’re there on the other side of the cataclysm to kiss him back to life.

Sweet.

When you wake up, you don’t even have a guess as to what time it is. That’s your fault, you know. You didn’t think to connect your phone to its charger prior to falling asleep in a mess of sheets. The numerous alarms you always keep set didn’t go off, obviously, but right now, that’s the least of your worries. 

Until your phone has enough juice to power back on, you won’t know if Wooyoung texted you before sneaking out of your apartment.

You’d taken it as a good sign when he asked for your number in a fucked-out haze. Now, you realize, that naivety of yours was operating in full swing, even when the rest of you was down for the count. That’s what one-night-stands are for, you tell yourself. That’s the decision you made.

Uncharacteristically, you’re tempted to spend the rest of your day — however much of it is left — rotting in bed. It’s an urge you’ll give in to, you can already tell; just like the one that got you here in the first place. The only thing stronger than the call of your bed is the grumbling of your stomach, begging for sustenance.

Sighing loudly, you throw your comforter off your lower half and wiggle towards the edge of your bed. Bare feet meet the braided rug below, then unsteady legs do their best to get their bearings. As you ache, you realize that you need to give credit where it’s due:

You’re currently in the best shape of your life, and Wooyoung still managed to fuck the constitution out of you.

You bend slowly to scoop a shirt from your untouched laundry basket, groaning all the while. On its own, it’s long enough to cover your ass, so you don’t bother to dress yourself further — except for the fuzzy slippers waiting next to your bedroom door.

It’s closed, you note when you finally bother to look at it. It wasn’t when you fell into bed with Wooyoung. He probably didn’t want to disturb you on the way out, you figure. This would strike you as thoughtful if it didn’t feel like a chapter ending too soon. Reaching out to reopen it, you tell yourself to be less sentimental.

In the living room, laying eyes on an empty kitchen, you also tell yourself, I told you so. This isn’t a drama, after all. There’s no love interest in your kitchen to cook you an unexpected breakfast. 

Pre-made frozen breakfast sandwich it is, then.

You tear open the package with more effort than you should’ve needed to expend, then dump the single-serving lump onto a paper plate. As if on autopilot, you shove the plate into the microwave and smash a few buttons without registering much of it. The quiet hum of the machine nearly lulls you straight back to sleep.

Well, it likely could have.

The metallic rattling up the hall catches your attention, prompting you to step backwards so you can peer over at your front door and confirm that it’s locked. It is. You turn back to your breakfast in progress, and it takes five (5) entire seconds before you realize the issue here.

Keys jingle with more determination, right on cue. You spin around fully this time, eyes wide, to find Wooyoung in your doorway. He holds the door open with his elbow because both his hands are full; and as if that all wasn’t enough, he tries to toe off his shoes without being able to see them over the cardboard to-go tray in his hands.

“Fucking —” he grunts, wobbling. 

It must’ve been louder than he intended because he winces immediately. In his moment of panic, his eyes flick over to your bedroom door. Then, when he realizes it’s open, they search for you, blinking in surprise when they find you. He peeps, “Oh.”

As it turns out, his ability to make you lose your words isn’t limited to late hours. The sun is beating through the sliding glass door to your balcony, and you confirm that you’re just as dumbstruck by him in daylight. So, you simply point to the drinks and paper bag he’s holding with your eyebrows pinched in confusion.

“Found that café you go to on Tuesdays,” Wooyoung explains gruffly. His morning voice is every bit as ruinous as you imagined it would be. “The logo on their cups is just a cloud, so it took a lot of wandering to solve that fucking mystery.”

This time, it’s you who peeps. “Oh?”

It’s then that he finally succeeds in getting his shoes off. With his hip, he nudges the door shut; your key ring chimes in the process, having been attached to his belt loop. In a few steps, he sets his burdens down on the kitchen island and looks up at you with a wicked glint in his eye. Apparently, his immediate thought is the same as yours. Simpering, he picks everything back up and makes for your living room’s coffee table instead.

“I’m glad to report that the green shit you drink doesn’t include algae or moss.” He lifts a smoothie from the carrier and holds it out to you, flashing you a smile that makes your knees wobble. “However, I regret to inform you that it does contain vegetables.”

If you try any harder to bite back your idiotic grin, you might lose your lips. “Did you — did you really think there was moss in it?”

He waves his hand dismissively. Notably, he doesn’t say no. That hand then lowers, finger crooked to beckon you closer. You move in, and you try to focus on the moment in front of you, rather than the obscene flashbacks the gesture gives you. The knowing look you expect doesn’t follow, though. Wooyoung simply places your drink in your left hand and your keys in your right.

“Sorry for borrowing those without asking or — well, notifying you in any way, whatsoever.” He grimaces. “I figured I’d be gone for a minute, and I didn’t want someone to waltz through your unlocked door and wake you up.”

“Was burglary on that list of concerns, or is sleep truly your main priority?”

At this, he grins like an idiot. “You’re getting better at that, you know.”

The look on your face must convey your confusion. 

“I like the version of you that doesn’t pull punches,” he continues, sounding almost embarrassed to admit something about himself.

You take a move from his playbook and slide your finger through his belt loop, tugging him forward until he’s squarely within kissing distance. “This Wooyoung?” You murmur, “The one who got up early to hunt down a smoothie he’s disgusted by? Objectively likable.”

He rolls his eyes, but it doesn’t distract from the pink tint overtaking his cheeks. “I don’t know about that.”

You kiss him before he can offer to agree to disagree. And when you finally pull back, you nod firmly. “He might be sweet enough for me.”

while likes are appreciated, comments/tags/reblogs with your thoughts are really what make my brain go brrrtt.

ateez masterlist. multi masterlist. navigation.

tagging: @jihopesjoint @bahng-chrizz @sourkimchi @variety-is-the-joy-of-life @notevenheretbh1 @borabitsch @bubbly-moon (also paging @moni-logues because i feel like woo is our sister wife, lmfao.)

[dira333]

Blind Date with Tsukishima

Blind Date - Tsukishima x Reader

“And it’s going to be a Blind Date,” Hitoka points out. “I’m not telling you who it is. But he’ll wear a red scarf.”

“A red scarf,” you nod. “Gotcha.”

She squints at you. “You don’t wanna know more?”

“No, I’m fine.” You sigh. “Better to go in blind, right? Not like swiping on Tinder did me any good.”

She laughs heartily. “You’re too much in your head. You’re just like me! But he’ll be nice. Ah, well… he’ll be nice for you.”

It’s your turn to squint. “He’s not that nice to others?”

“He is!” She reassures you, already panicking. “I’d never say anything bad about him, he’s my friend. But he can be a bit brash at first if he doesn’t know or trust you. But he’s always respectful to authorities, I know that’s important to you.”

“Well,” you sniff before sighing. “I am too single to complain about that. Blind Date it is.”

-x-

“A Blind Date,” Kei repeats, dragging the words. “How old are you?”

Hitoka pouts. “It’s a cute idea!”

“Sure, for her. But you could tell me who it is.”

“But where’s the fun in that? Tadashi, back me up!”

“Tsukki-”

“No,” Kei shakes his head. “Don’t bother. I’m going to go along with it because you asked so nicely, but only this one time, okay? And don’t remind me that I’ve been single for too long, I know. Shush!” His hand snaps up just in time to cut off Kanji who’d just opened his mouth.

Kanji pouts but falls back again, throwing his arm around Hitoka for support.

“What is she going to wear?” Kei asks Hitoka. “A red scarf too?”

“No,” she shakes her head. “She’s got a big red hair clip that’s shaped like a flower. A Gerbera.”

“Oh, is that the exotic one?” Kanji asks, perking up.

“No, you mean Hibiscus,” Kentarou drawls before taking a sip of his beer. He rolls his eyes at the sudden attention. “What? Everyone knows those flowers.”

“Sure,” Kei drawls back, finding at least a little reprieve in the angry glare he gets in response.

-x-

Hitoka has a lot of friends, you realize, as you stalk her Instagram account.

But she’s very good at tagging all of them, be it work friends, old high school friends or all those other people she knows from dating a Volleyball Player.

You scroll back all the way to her first post in High School and come up with only three people wearing a red scarf around her.

Sure, that means nothing in the long run, but one of those people is a girl, and the other two are Asahi Azumane the Fashion Designer and someone called Tsukishima Kei, Volley Player.

It doesn’t take long to figure out that Azumane is happily married, the red scarf now tied around his wife’s neck. What a shame. He’d have been cute.

Tsukishima’s Instagram Account is private and you’re not going to embarrass yourself by sending him a follower request.

Koganegawa Kanji’s account, however, is public and he posts a lot.

From Selfies at work, Tsukishima glaring at him in the background to Group Photos at the Isekaya they seem to visit regularly, everything is there.

It doesn’t take long to find a messy video of the Gang, Tsukishima and someone with a haircut resembling a Tennisball engaged in the laziest catfight you’ve ever seen or heard.

Tennisballhead’s insults are not for the soft but Tsukishima draws back just as effectively.

So… you could be mistaken, but you’re pretty sure Tsukishima is going to be your not so blind Blind Date.

-x-

He doesn’t want to know, really. But then again, a bit of research doesn’t hurt, right?

Hitoka has only five girlfriends that she regularly mentions and posts on social media.

Two of them are taken, one is going through a complicated breakup at the moment as far as he’s aware, and the other two… 

There is no Gerbera hair clip in sight. Not even a hair clip with a different flower, though he doesn’t think Hitoka would mess up something that simple.

It’s two days until the Date and he finds himself scrolling through both of their Instagrams, looking for clues, pretending he isn’t interested at all

And maybe he wouldn’t have figured it out if not for Kanji’s big mouth.

-x-

The Diner’s nice, decorated in a western style.

You start salivating just at the thought of a milkshake with fries but busy yourself with the menu instead, sipping slowly from the glass of water you’d ordered.

You’re early, the result of a surprising eagerness to meet your blind date.

Someone brushes past you and you can feel it - the giant red hair clip snagging on something. You can feel the break before you hear it, watch helplessly as the fake Gerbera adorning the clip tumbles to the floor, only to be crushed under someone’s eager foot.

Your hair now flows freely around your face, a welcome shield from the outside world as you fight against the sting of tears.

It’s nothing big, the hair clip not even of sentimental value, but you can’t help but see a sign in it.

-

Tsukishima Kei is fifteen minutes late. 

You stare at Hitoka’s message on your phone, the innocent question of whether you made it to the Diner just fine. No sign that she knows he’s not showing.

Maybe he got held up at work? Does that happen to Volleyball Players?

“Have you decided yet?” Your server appears next to your table, chewing bubble gum and grinning.

Surely you’re imagining the smug curve of her smile.

“Just a minute,” you ask. “I’m waiting on someone.”

“Oh honey,” she drawls out with enough satisfaction to leave no doubt she’s enjoying this. “He’s not showing. Just accept it.”

“I-”

“Are we paying for that roast on the side or is that on the house?” A deep voice asks to your left and you both turn, surprised.

Tsukishima’s there, in the flesh, out of breath, and beads of sweat glistening on the bow of his lip. He looks like he ran here and you’re ready to believe it, no more evidence needed. 

“I’m sorry Honey,” he tells you with a voice so sweet you can only call it passive-aggressive. “The train got delayed and my phone was empty. Never letting Kanji play games on it to pass the time.”

“You’re forgiven,” you tell him simply, sending a pointed glare toward your server.

She catches herself, shuffling away with an apology but that’s too little too late. You know you won’t be tipping too well tonight.

Tsukishima slips into his seat, pulling the red scarf from his neck.

“I thought you were supposed to wear a hair clip?”

“I thought you were supposed to be on time?”

He smiles, clearly enjoying that you dare to fight back.

“Missed my train. Running over was faster than waiting for the next.”

“Mhm,” you eye him. “You sure you didn’t just want to show off your stamina?”

“Maybe?” He grins. “What about the hair clip?”

“It got crushed under careless feet,” you admit, trying not to feel sorry for yourself.

“Good,” he comments. “You won’t need it any longer.”

“Excuse me?” You ask, a little perplexed. 

A blush, as red as the Gerbera mentioned, rises onto his cheeks.

“No more blind dates?” He offers and you smile. “We’ll see about that.” 

- Bonus -

“How did you know it was me?” You ask, your joined hands swinging in between your bodies.

His cheeks are flushed from the cold, the wine and no doubt your attention as well.

“Kanji… Hitoka’s boyfriend. He mentioned your favorite food.”

“And?” You blink, surprised that this might have led him to you.

“I might have been stalking Hitoka’s Instagram. It wasn’t that hard to figure out.”

“Oh,” you chuckle. “Well, you wear that red scarf a lot. Just saying.”

“You knew it was me?”

You shrug, unable to keep from smiling proudly. “Had a hunch.”

Requests open

[oobbbear]

Hi!!!!!!

I really love your art and I was wondering if you had any art tips?

I'm pretty good at drawing realistically, but I struggle with more stylized or cartoon-y stuff...

Here I’m going to talk about the two, in my opinion, the most important aspects of stylization is: ‘Simplification’ and ‘Exaggeration’

First, simplification,

I took this picture of a man holding a hammer, if you just look the silhouette, it is very complicated the pose is stiff

Try summarize the pose with only two simple lines, one representing the head, torso and the leg, the other representing the arms. This is the line of action. Now you got the two lines, play around with it try make it flow better. (Google ‘line of action’ you can find a lot more better examples)

The next step is to simplify the previous drawing throw away all the bumps and little details, take what you think is the most important and draw it based off the line of action you just acquired. this step might take a lot of practices so look at tutorials and draw a lot you’ll get there (Go on YouTube and search ‘life drawing tutorial’ they teach this step really well)

This is how you simplify a complicated pose! I’ll talk about how to simplify character after the next point

Second is exaggeration

I’m using the same photo here again blocking the person black so we can see the silhouette clear. This time we’re not finding the line of action, we’re reducing this person into a simple shape, to me, he looks like a rectangle.

great, now we try drawing this man with only rectangles

After blocking out the simple rectangles, exaggerate them, make the big ones even bigger, the small ones even tinnier.

Make the main focus of the drawing clear and easy to see, the audience needs to be immediately on that thing the moment this drawing shows up! What’s the focus point of the drawing? The hammer, it’s too small for one to find so let’s exaggerate it make it huge.

Tada, now you have a clear and cartoony silhouette, the rest you can fill in however you like

To cartoonify a character is easy, similar to how you cartoonify poses, you take out the little details and leave what you think is the most important, the things that makes the character unique, and exaggerate them

((Here I’m using a genshin character because their character designs are known for being a hell to animate (genshin fans don’t come for my ass this is only for educational purposes))))

I’m… not the best at explaining things so if you can’t understand any of these please let me know!!!!!!!!!!

[epiicaricacy-arts]

oh we’re still so young, desperate for attention

this was super experimental so i will talk about my process (+ clearer version) under the cut

i’ve been looking at a lot of “messier” or more textured painting styles recently and an artist that stuck out to me is clariondeluna ! they posted a self-portrait recently that i really liked and i was super interested in the brushwork seen in their work. i love all the textures and how the shapes feel so loose yet everything is so detailed.

that’s not a method for me at all!!!! i cannot paint like that at all and the stuff i like to paint is very different to theirs. which is okay!!!! i had no intention to copy this artists style so closely like with what i tried to do in my raiden painting, i just wanted to try this style out :^)

it’s been a goal of mine to avoid over-rendering like i tend to do a lot, and i think i’ve been doing good with that recently! the mindset i’ve got going on right now is that if i find myself staring at it too hard for too long, i have to leave it and move on. if there’s still something wrong with it, i can fix it later once ive got a fresh view!

i’ve been trying a lot of things with my art this year. i always try to challenge myself with each piece, and to end the year off i wanted to be as uncomfortable as i possibly could be with this painting. i let myself draw whatever i wanted because i still wanted to enjoy it, but everything i did in this process was new, including parts of the subject matter.

i’ve never drawn a head at an angle like this, and i struggle with drawing mouths open. i don’t do bold lighting like this, and if i do, it’s not fire. i’ve never drawn fire! i also rarely work with warm colours and i hate using green, so i combined those to be my colour palette. i like working cleanly so instead of having a dozen different layers for one section, each section only had 1-2 layers for rendering. instead of clipping masks i would simply paint over things loosely and clean it up later. i never like having limbs cut off in a drawing so i had his other arm go GOD knows where. i don’t like weird patterned backgrounds so i made myself figure out how to like it!

IS THIS MY FAVOURITE PIECE OF ALL TIME. no. absolutely not. but i’m very proud of how this came out with all the challenges i put on myself. i WANTED to get better at these things and be more broad with my art, both in terms of the styles and subjects i portray.

okay let’s talk about wtf this drawing is

for those who don’t know, the design in this painting is my fatui/“Father” lyney fan design (read the design post here). the concept isnt super complicated and i don’t really have much explanation for it, but i wanted to combine the story of how lyney wanted a delusion before getting his vision, fire eating circus acts and how olympic medalists will bite their medal to prove it’s real??? don’t quote me on that i’m like 75% sure that’s a thing that happens. i don’t watch sports though so im just believing someone i heard on the internet ages ago.

anyways. i think fire eating acts are cool. and i think the fact that lyney wanted a delusion is very interesting to me. scratches my brain in the right places. and yk as a magician lyneys character revolves a lot around fooling people and creating illusions so i guess what im saying here is that lyney is trying to prove to himself that this power he’s been bestowed is real. bc his whole life his only constant has been lynette so he is trying to see if he can trust this new power. cause i guess this is an alternate universe where lyney does eventually become “Father” but he never got his vision ??? idk im not making lore for this i just wanted to dress up this funny little guy.

ok i’m done

thanks for reading

here’s my dog

[ann-atar]

Another observation re Sauron and Celebrimbor in ep. 7. (Yes, more. Op is a teacher and is posting while grading today.)

While Celebrimbor slowly, painfully made his way back to the tower, what did Sauron do? He stayed there.

He was tearing the place apart, pacing and fuming, but he stayed put for some time, almost as if he was waiting for Celebrimbor.

As if the fact that Celebrimbor escaped, even for a short time, was momentarily beyond his comprehension.

Like, where is he, where are the nine, I left him right here!?!

He was panicked and enraged, but when Celebrimbor returns, there is still this sense that Sauron expects him.

And then instead of killing everyone immediately and dragging Celebrimbor out to take him to the nine he pauses, makes a show of killing the guards, continues their back-and-forth, says, "you will place them in my hands."

It's showy and theatrical, such a performance of intimidation, is what I'm saying.

Now, maybe there is something essential to the creation of the rings that requires Celebrimbor to surrender them in their finished form to Sauron willingly, because even though the rings incorporate Sauron's blood they are still Celebrimbor's creation and until he gives them away, he remains their master, at least while he's alive. (Which is cool if true and I approve!)

But I think there's something psychological at work too. For months and weeks Sauron and Celebrimbor have been cohabitating in that tower. It's their enclosure, their habitat, their little dysfunctional home. And by leaving (and then returning as expected), from Sauron's perspective Celebrimbor is still playing by most of the rules that govern their relationship.

They're even at the stage where the abuser starts scrambling to justify their choices and tries to win over their victim again ("this too shall pass"). Sauron feels solidly in control of Celebrimbor and now that he knows his identity, Sauron is basking in the heady feeling of being known.

So their codependence is still very much a thing and even though Celebrimbor won this round the game is still very much on, and Sauron expects him to come back, to continue the battle of wills until the next round is settled, and the one after that, and the one after that.

Sauron expects to win, to have Celebrimbor place the finished rings in his hands, because the nine belong to him and so does Celebrimbor.

What Sauron doesn't quite get is that Celebrimbor understands all of this because he can see the pattern now. He went back to that tower not because, as Sauron might have thought, he was compelled by the guards or by fear or by his own complicity, but because he understands the clockwork horror of Sauron's mind.

Despite his show of emotion about their time together ending, Sauron still expects to be in control because he's fighting with might, but now that the veil has been lifted Celebrimbor is fighting with light.

We know that Celebrimbor doesn't have long to live, but if I had to make a prediction about how, exactly, he meets his end it would be this: after drawing out their game by provoking Sauron and slowly "breaking" under torture, he finds a way to end his own life. (Yeah.)

At which point Sauron's rage will be enormous, and destructive, and his version of grief might cause him to display Celebrimbor's body in the way we're all dreading.

Sauron is super powerful and like Celebrimbor told Galadriel there might be no one in Middle-earth who could resist him, but Sauron is not all-powerful. There are flaws in his design, weak points in his facade and Celebrimbor can see them now, he knows where to apply pressure so that cracks form, little by little. He might not deliver the killing blow but I believe he will weaken the form of Sauron's mind, so Sauron will not be in the right headspace to kill Galadriel during their inevitable confrontation.

[theresattrpgforthat]

Do you have any solo ttrpgs that deal with like being a bodyguard or someone's knight? It's something I've had rattling around in my head for a while

Theme: Solo Knights

Hello friend, no luck in the bodyguard department but I sure do have some knight games! Let’s take a look.

Frog Errant, by ManaDawn Tabletop Games.

It’s a deadly and brutal world out there, and it is not too friendly for a lone frog. But if you embrace your quest and heed the omens, you may just be able to make a name for yourself. And if you wander long and far enough, you may be remembered in the songs of both frogs and mice.

Frog Errant is a solo, or GMless, game mode for Mausritter or other Into the Odd based games. In Frog Errant you will take up the role of a wandering frog knight-errant, seeking adventure, looking to fulfill a Quest - all while avoiding you prophesied Doom.

If you are familiar with Mausritter, then this game will be pretty easy to pick up. The game builds in some story that isn’t present in Mausritter - primarily the Quest that has been given to your frog knight, as well as a Doom that has been prophesied to overcome you. It looks like you can use a lot of the items and monsters from Mausritter, but Frog Errant has plenty of new pieces too!

Misericorde, by Andrew White.

Misericorde is a game of knightly romance, pining, unrequited love and confronting the expected behaviours of your social class. You play as a squire serving under a knight on a great quest, without your assistance they surely will fail and yet, as a squire you are obligated to remain in the background, forgotten and not commented on. However, you have developed feelings, perhaps unrequited, for your knight. The actions of the game focus on this struggle, between your Duty and your Desire. Will you hold back, hew to your duty and rank; or will you break free and open your heart, no matter how your beloved may respond.

You’re not exactly a knight in this game, but rather a squire to one. Misericorde is completely unlike the other games on this list because it focuses on devotion and desire, rather than the actions that a forsworn duty drives a Knight to do. You play the game by setting up scenes, asking questions, and rolling dice on an Oracle to figure out what happens next. This is an interpretive game, so while the Oracle will point you in a direction, you determine what exactly each result means.

Chalice, by Monkey’s Paw Games.

Chalice is a solo journaling role-playing game where you chronicle the perilous journey of a Grail-seeking knight in Arthurian England. During the game, you will tell the story of your Knight’s physical and spiritual descent as they quest for, and ultimately fail to find, the Grail. Your Knight’s quest is doomed. Their chivalric virtues will be surely undone by their fatal flaws and moral shortcomings.

This looks like the most immersive game for Arthurian mythology as a solo game. The game itself is designed to look like a manuscript from medieval times, calligraphy and all. Your Knight has benefits called Passions, key relationships called Bindings, and a fate determined by drawing cards from a tarot deck. Throughout the game, you will draw more cards that serve as prompts, which will give or strike through your Passions and Bindings, and play happens over the span of years. Each year is measured in two parts: the deed, which will be what your character accomplishes, and the Chanson, which is evocative recording of your character’s deeds. When you are unable to fulfill a prompt given to you, your story end

Pilgrimage of the Sun Guard, by Amanda P.

Quests in King Arthur stories are about ideals, conflict and temptation. 

Pilgrimage of the Sun Guard is a solo prompt-based journaling game where you create a Sun Guard and travel alone on a quest, attempting to hold to your Code until you reach the end, facing trials and complications along the way.  

You are the last Sun Guard. Will you take up the mantle and ride the ancient roads?

Pilgrimage of the Sun Guard follows a cycle of play. You will start by travelling to a new location, and follow the directions according to each location’s prompt. This may involve using or acquiring resources, accomplishing great deeds, and writing a record of what happened with each step of the quest. When you run out of all of your resources, you can choose to either end your quest there, or break your Code to continue. If you like the story of Gawain & the Green Knight, this game might be for you.

Sanctum Guard, by Bulger007.

Sanctum Guard is a 20-minute pen-and-paper solo game about protecting a powerful magic artifact against a horde of night terrors. In this game, you are a lone guardian of a secluded sanctum built to protect the Obsidram, a powerful artifact that can potentially destroy worlds if it falls into the wrong hands.

You live in peace and harmony with the Obsidram while it is hidden in this secret and desolate domain from power-hungry minds. But one night, someone or something finds the way and you see a glimmering portal from which a horde of monsters descends upon you. Will you manage to protect the Obsidram?

This game runs like a tower defense game, and requires a sheet of graph paper to play. You will build your Sanctum randomly, then roll against generated monsters with the hopes that you can take them out before they utterly destroy the Sanctum and take your sacred relic.

This game doesn’t detail who you’re guarding the Obsidram for, although I think you could also substitute the relic for a person, if you want to be guarding someone instead of something.

Falling Kingdom: The Last Knights, by Purple Robed Wizard.

“The lands are shattered, the gods that once held our hand are dead and the beasts are upon us. Our King. killed by his own flesh. All of us, but waiting to follow. But we still stand, we hold our ground as we rot, we are the Last Knights, and we will stand until we last draw breath.”

In Falling Kingdom you control the last Knights of a realm threatened by a great, corrupting and unstoppable force. There is no great victory waiting for you at the end, no songs to be heard. There is only struggle, corruption, betrayal and death.  The Kingdom will Fall, but this story isn’t about that, it is about the heroes that face this imminent fall, the Knights of the realm, normal men and women elevated to a position where they will fight for their homelands against all odds.

This is a map-conquering game, with randomly generated missions, a Great Battle that could turn the tides of the war, and a stages of battles depending on how much territory you win or lose. You can accumulate corruption as you play, which is helpful in getting successful rolls, but accrue too much, and your knights begin to die. If you like a game about strategy, tragedy, and abstract warfare, this might be the game for you.

Sentinel, by Meghan Cross.

You are the lone guardian of a place of great power - known to you only as The Sanctuary. Many years you have kept vigil in this place, guarding what is kept within from any and all who come to disrupt it or steal it for themselves. 

Sentinel is a solo journaling game about a solitary guardian and the place they are charged with keeping safe. It is a deck and dice based game in which you will create your guardian and the sanctuary that they protect before reliving the memories, facing threats, and finding interesting objects while time passes around you. And then, when the time has come for your watch to end, find out what happens to The Sanctuary when you are no longer able to guard it.

This is a journaling game that uses cards to determine what kinds of actions your character can take. Hearts summon memories, Diamonds grant you items, Spades bring threats, and Clubs pass time. If you draw a Joker, the game is over and the story ends. At the end of the game, the final roll determines whether or not you are successful in your quest. This is a great game for folks who like journaling and world building.

Games I've Recommended in the Past

5-Min Knight, by enui.

Fetch My Blade, by Ethan Yen.

[uva124]

¡ Valentino redesing!

We finally have the baby!

(This redesign belongs to the Wish Au "Kingdom of wishes", written by @annymation and illustrated by @emillyverse and me)

This will surely be the redesign where I have the least things to say lol, but I still have some things to comment on so let's go!

At first I hadn't thought much about how I would redesign Valentino, what I was sure of was making him more adorable and cuter so that everyone would want to have a goat as a pet, because if I'm completely honest, Valentino's official design in the Disney movie I didn't find it adorable at all (sorry Disney artists, I know they put effort into drawing and animating but I just didn't like Valentino's design)

(Do you get my point? He's just not cute or adorable, and the voice they gave him didn't help either, or the face idk ,but I thought the joke about his voice at the beginning of the movie was funny ¯_(ツ)_/¯)

So I made a mental list of things I wanted to do (which aren't many if I'm honest): -Make it fluffier and fluffier -Give him other clothes -Add even one symbol in your redesign

Anny sent me several references of goats and concept art, among them I found this one, which I based myself on mainly because 1-I have always liked that animals had moles or spots on their fur or skin 2-When I saw that on their clothes You could see the seams that joined the different fabrics, I realized that it coincided with Asha's redesign (on the sleeves) so I was like: "AWWWWW it matches his mom's clothes!"

In the end I only added a part of it with a different fabric because I didn't want to complicate the design too much, but I liked how it turned out, I added some symbols of the tattoos that exist in the Amazigh culture, which is also to protect the person (or animal in this case) of the bad influences that are around them

I also liked adding that little ball of curly hair on our goat's little head, it just looks so cute!

FINAL COMMENTS!

As I said, this is not very long, but I'm satisfied with how the drawing turned out, I wanted to try something new that looks like the lighting was a sunset, I don't know if it's noticeable but at least it turned out nice lmao, as a curious fact, with this drawing I realized how MUCH my sketches change when I paint them in detail

…..BRO HOW THE HELL DID THIS CHANGE SO MUCH WITHOUT REALIZING ME? (ESPECIALLY ASHA)

Well that's all for now, until next time! ✨✨

[abyssal-author-and-artist]

oh shit i just realized i forgot to post the trans dipper essay

oh well, better late than never!

Introducing - Why Mason "Dipper" Pines is Trans and Why that Matters - an essay I spent more time on than I did my actual college project today

Mason "Dipper" Pines from Gravity Falls is trans. Trans masculine, to be specific. Do I believe this was intentional? No. Do I believe that there's a seriously convincing case to be made? Fuck yes.

So first off, he's just like me frfr, which is pretty compelling in and of itself. But that's not enough for a whole essay, so we move onto our second point - character designs. Dipper is designed like, well, like every modern-era trans man I've ever drawn who isn't goth. The shorts, the one shirt in the one color, the absolute insecurity. He even does the hunch of the back! Also, I think I heard somewhere that the vest is to make his shoulders look broader, which I'm not entirely sure is canon but I am accepting this whole-heartedly. It's such a trans move of him. He's too young (and it's summer so it's too hot) to wear a dysphoria hoodie so he picked a vest. (I say too young because dysphoria hoodies usually cover your chest and Dipper and Mabel probably haven't hit puberty.)

The second part comes directly from science. According to this article, and many others, sex in identical twins is complicated, but most identical twins will be born the same sex. There are cases where this isn't true (which might be the case for Mabel and Dipper) or they might be fraternal, which is also pretty likely. However, looking at them when they were younger (and listening to their very similar voices), it's likely they were identical and both girls. That's not to say I dislike trans Mabel - every trans woman I draw dresses like her, so I do love her being trans as well and them hitting the age of like. 10. and swapping genders is incredibly funny and adorable to me.

So, we can't reliably use the aforementioned evidence, then, can we? After all, identical twins can be different sexes, although rare, and we don't have any proof they are identical beyond their visual (and when they were younger, audible) similarities. Well, first off, I'd say that's pretty compelling evidence already. In a cartoon, especially one as detailed and beautiful-looking as Gravity Falls (the art is good and I will die on this hill), visual language makes up for a lot. And Alex Hirsh has gone on record saying that he very much wanted Jason Ritter and Kristen Schaal for Dipper and Mabel respectively, to the point where he would have canceled the show if Kristen hadn't signed on, so I wholeheartedly believe every character (with the exception of Grenda and any other characters who had last minute va's picked) had their voice actors picked very specifically. I can't find whether Jason Ritter voiced younger Dipper, though, so that's a dead end.

Now, that's all well and good, but it's a lot of visual language, isn't it? Why don't we move into something more based in the writing itself?

So the first and most prominent example of Dipper being transgender is the episode Dipper vs Manliness. You know it, you probably have emotions on it, it's the episode where Dipper is trying his hardest to be a man's man. The episode was supposed to be about toxic masculinity and how to be a real man is to stick to your morals. It's a good lesson and in my opinion, holds up even in 2024. Pretty good. Does a great job of what it wants to do. Now, Dipper vs. Manliness has been dissected to hell and back already as a transgender allegory, so I'll keep this brief: the episode centers around Dipper being mocked for not being manly. While Mabel and Stan still see him as a man, albeit an effeminate one, it gets to Dipper. He proceeds to do anything to prove himself a real man. If viewed as a trans allegory, Mabel is teasing her brother and not realizing how deeply it actually hurts him (whether accidentally because she fails to realize how insecure he is over it or because she hasn't been there before, depending on how you want to headcanon it). As for Stan, I like to pretend he's supportive but regularly forgets Dipper was ever a girl, so he makes a serious slip up because of that (and/or he's regurgitating stuff said to him. That hits harder if you also headcanon trans Stan, which I am warming up to). Dipper proceeds to try and prove himself a man, crying when he takes even one more blow to his self esteem/sense of identity as a man, and eventually gets comfort from his family when they realize just how BADLY they messed him up. He is affirmed as a man and the episode ends. Everything that can be said, has been said - including that you don't have to act toxically masculine - or even masculine at all - to be a real man. Remember this part, it will be important later.

So, other trans moments for Dipper come a little sparser. Dipper vs. Manliness is the example for a good reason. But still, there's other moments. The short Voice Over from one of the short story compliation episodes is another one that's commonly referenced as a metaphor for voice dysphoria. Yes, Dipper's voice is cracking in ways common for a cis pre-teen boy his age, but the pitch and tone of his voice can also be seen as his more feminine voice peeking through. Taking the potion can be seen as taking testosterone or other hormones. Granted, this falls apart when you consider that Dipper is later discouraged from taking the potion, because that could be read as Dipper being discouraged from transitioning, but on the other side of the spectrum, it could be read as Dipper being affirmed as a real man despite his voice. From that perspective, his family prevents him from taking (possibly dangerous) homebrewed hrt. Also, the euphoria he gets when it does change his voice is just. Absolutely adorable.

Now, my favorite resource for Dipper acting trans is in the episode Headhunters. He's asking Manly Dan questions and Manly Dan calls Dipper a girl. And MAN the discomfort on Dipper's face. He immediately attempts to correct Manly Dan, but is shut down and the episode moves on. I think that for such a short moment, it does a good job of making Dipper seem trans, though. He is called a girl and feels extreme discomfort around it. He does not like being called a girl. He is not a girl. But he's not shocked or surprised or even really offended - he's resigned. He's used to being called a girl. Sure, he hates it, but he doesn't cry or scream or anything. Sounds to me like a trans man who's absurdly used to being misgendered but still hates it. That pain never goes away, but sometimes all you can do is flinch in discomfort, try to correct and move on, like the episode does.

For a (mostly humorous) video of more of Dipper acting trans, check out this video.

So I think we've made a pretty compelling point for Dipper Pines being trans masc here. Looks pretty good, yup, this is a great essay, let's wrap it up. Oh? What's that? The name of this essay?

Why Mason "Dipper" Pines is transgender and why that matters.

Well, let's dive into section two of this essay - why does Dipper being trans matter?

Someone could easily say it doesn't matter. Just fun fandom headcanons, that's it, wrap it up now. Nothing more to say. Dipper is trans and that's just a fun reading of his character.

But I don't think that's the case. I think that Dipper being trans means so much - to trans fans of the show, to fans who have never seen or spoken to trans people before, and to queer fans of Gravity Falls and similar shows. (I personally am a Steven Universe fan who really valued the representation there, so Gravity Falls and all it's queer coding means a lot to me.)

First and foremost, I'm not going to keep you in the dark as to why you're remembering my earlier point. As a recap, it was this: Dipper vs. Manliness, and by proxy, Gravity Falls as a whole, says that you don't have to be traditionally masculine to be a real man. For a show that spends a lot of time mocking a kid commonly headcanoned to be a trans man, that says a lot, and a lot of stuff I think more people need to hear.

You do not need to act like your gender to be your gender.

You do not need to present like your gender to be your gender.

You do not need to fit some rigid box that society enforces to be who you are.

If you are a man, you are a man, trans or cis, regardless of how you act. (And the same goes for women and nonbinary people! You don't have to fit a mold.)

You don't owe anyone anything.

You don't owe people masculinity. (Or femininity or androgyny for that matter.)

I think that's part of the reason Dipper vs. Manliness ages so well. Dipper reads as trans, especially to queer fans, and his story in that episode tells us that we don't have to be someone we're not for people to take us seriously as who we are. At the end of the day, the really masculine thing is staying true to you - a sentiment echoed and reversed in The Last Mabelcorn, where the most feminine thing you can do is to stay true to yourself. I can't find it right now, but I could swear that there's a That GF Fan video explaining my point a little better. The point is, there's nothing that makes you more of whatever your gender is than staying true to yourself.

Additionally, if Dipper really is trans and someone sees themself in him, that can help them explore their gender or explain it to other people. Young kids who have never interacted with trans people before can see Dipper and grow up to connect the dots - or grow up to have him crack their eggs.

I know I'm new to the fandom and I was already out before watching the show, but he really helped me explore my gender. I like dressing like him - he's very relatable, even though I'm old enough to be in college now. I see him as a very anxious, slightly paranoid trans kid, and I see a lot of myself in him. He has a lot of issues, and a lot of issues that aren't trans specific but definitely hit harder when you are trans. He makes me feel seen on a level that I never thought a cartoon character could do.

Honestly, here would be a good place to put a rant about representation in kids media - queer kids under the age of 12 exist and struggle. I liked a girl (before realizing I was trans) in fifth grade, so about 9 years old. There are kids who experiment with their gender when they're younger than that. We're here and we exist, and every single time a character in children's media is made and is prevalent, another kid is able to really see themself.

That's really the point of this section. Dipper is trans. That matters. People - mostly queer kids but people of all ages - see themselves in him. He's here and we see him as queer because it's validating. It feels so good to hear Stan affirm him at the end of Dipper vs. Manliness, because it proves that at the end of the day, you don't need to present as super masc or femme or androgynous to be who you are.

Gravity Falls, through coding Dipper as trans, sent a message:

You are seen. You are loved. You are valid.

Thank you for reading this all. Trans Dipper means a lot to me, and I love writing him and seeing him in general. I want more of him because Dipper being trans means the world to me.

I love you all. Have a wonderful day. Remember to stay true to yourself.

[littlestpetgoth]

Tell us more about your little homestucks?

ok.. ill only go over my descendent ocs because they're the ones ive been posting about recently, i have too many homestuck ocs to cover lol..

mayosi pyrope is the first descendent oc i made back when there was a brief trend on twitter to make, fan descendants of the trolls. i think i was inspired by ko's descendent acarid, and terezi being one of my favorite trolls i ended up making a bootleg pyrope. (and i draw them together all the time bc they rot my brain)

they're a radical transmasc weeaboo skater "vigilante" who grew up being raised by humans in a very normal average household where they got basically anything they wanted with no issues. their interests include; dishing out justice, watching animes, playing videogames, and doing sick tricks on their board. they wield a katana that resembles terezi's dragon cane.. they're my simplest designed character, and though they look a lot like terezi with a skirt and long hair their design was heavily influenced by dirk because i imagined that dirk has influenced some kind of anime character that mayosi obsesses over and has based their look on..

they aren't at all interested in, being a lawyer or anything like that and would like to take care of bad guys samurai batman style in their ideal world.. unfortunately the loving gently parenting of their human family didn't toughen them up enough so they're mostly a baby who doesn't do well when faced with conflict. mayosi's easily bossed around by anyone who firmly tells them to do something because they're too scared to step up and stand up for themself and others, they have a lot of shame for not being as strong and cool as terezi or red glare. real wet blanket.

uuuh like terezi, they weren't always blind. they were lured in by their ex best friend now super complex hate not boyfriend acarid and he poured acid into their eyes, ruining their vision and giving them crazy chem burn scars.. i think around this time they were also given their super rad pointy shades so they can look more like their hero, but it was a major blow to their confidence since not only are they a weak coward they're now a weak coward who can't see. they eventually learn to navigate the world via sound waves, its not as effective as terezi's sniff and taste vision but mayosi isnt as interested as smelling and licking everything in their presence.

example of what i think it's like for them here..

theyyy are convinced by acarid to join him in his perfect sburb sesh, where they eventually grow a pair and cut off his arm and gouge his eyes before being shot in the brain and killed dead without ever waking on their moon. (sad) mayosi's feelings about acarid, who essentially abuses and manipulates them constantly, are very complicated because they feel an obligation to take on the brunt of his crazy in order to protect everyone but also because they cling to the nostalgic memories they have of him and are hoping he'll one day go back to that.

kokesi megido is based on kokeshi dolls, i think she sees ghosts and is really scared of them so she's super skittish and is always finding ways to shoo them away.. she probably knows how to speak japanese ig, i dont have a lot to say about her unfortunately.. i like how her design turned out though.

grimir maryam and romato vantas are brothers adopted into a rich human family, they're both spoiled brats and are constantly bickering with each other when they aren't pretending the other exists. grimir is mute and likes to garden (sooo original, i know) and romato speaks a lot and is a hopeless romantic writer. shrug.

i don't have as much to talk about. for any of my descendents other than mayosi because i have a really hard time developing ocs when i dont have people to bounce ideas off of. i mean most of mayosi was formed around acarid's existence and from ko's influence, otherwise they also wouldn't be developed . sorry .

[dollya-robinprotector]

You can answer this whenever, or never, if you don't want to! But can I ask for advice on how you come up with outfits? I saw the one with Nyan and Kariya's protest outfits not too mention the ones you come up with on your own.

They're all just so pleasing to the eye, and I need to know your secret!!! or tips or anything!!! 🙏🙏🙏

I guess all I can say is you gotta see a lot, save it to your memory, and know how to do some mix-match.

If you take a look at the Galery section in my commission info web, you'll see nothing I've done to the PCs comes even a bit close to what I actually design for commission or work. The style, I mean. So if you want to draw clothes or characters with simple but still pleasing designs, I think it's safe to say just do whatever you like. My PCs wear only black and white because I like those colors. Lyah wears glasses because I like men with glasses, he has his sleeves rolled up because I like men when they roll their shirt sleeves up. Lya's dress top is skimpy because I like to draw soft boobs spilling out of the hem of clothes. Kariya wears virgin killer because I like bare back and side boobs, etc... Do what you like most. Then you'll know how to make them pretty.

Or... if you want to be more complicated, let's say, hoyoverse or onmyouji or Square Enix level, even Love Nikki level of complicated, then you must really add as many things as possible to your image library. I don't know how to actually say this, it's hard to put into words, but just keep finding references and keep drawing.

Motifs and tropes are something to learn too. For how insect wings and flowers will make you think of fairy or natural, while clocks or gears remind you of steampunk.

How to make a female character look like a mommy? What kind of mommy are we talking about? The "ara ara" type? By making their figure look more round and plum, making their hair loose or more silky with a long dress and apron, and making them always have their palm to cup the side of their face, and tilt their head a little... Things like that. Sometimes stereotype is a good way to start your design game.

Or how to tell if a character is a young brat? Spiky hair, missing teeth with bandages here and there, maybe a tattoo or some piercings with sloppy clothes? Butttttt when you look closer they always have, maybe, some cute stickers on their belongings? Maybe because they have a lil sibling and they have a soft side for that sibling? Yeah, sneak in some easter egg here and there. It's fun when people notice an Easter egg and hopefully, that could lead to questions or discussion between your fans!

[specialagentartemis]

I just started trying out stained glass, which I know you also do...any hot tips for beginners or things you wish you'd known when you were first learning?

YOOO STAINED GLASS. Fave. I would love to see what you come up with!

Are you primarily using foil+solder or lead came? I've never actually used came so I have very little advice in that department, though I do want to at some point...

Some things to keep in mind, some imparted to me by my craft center teachers and some discovered by trial and error:

Get a designated box to cut glass over, because the more ambitious the shapes you want to cut, the more shards WILL go everywhere and you want to keep them contained.

If you're cutting glass by hand, you cannot make sharply concave shapes. You will think you can. You will think it can't be that hard. You WILL push your luck. You will end up frustrated. Avoid concave shapes.

If you want to cut concave curves, make them very gently and generously sloped.

If you want to incorporate concave shapes in your design, use multiple pieces of glass to make the curve.

Design with glass in mind from the get-go, rather than trying to adapt a complicated image. If you're designing your own work, try to build it around larger, geometric shapes, without a lot of small fiddly curves. Small fiddly curves DO make fun images, but they will also drive you crazy when they inevitably don't quite fit together right. Make sure you build in enough larger, geometric shapes into your design to anchor your piece and save your sanity.

That said. NGL incorporating things like fossils and marbles and weird shaped natural things is Fun. You can wrap anything you want in copper tape.

Draw or print out your pattern on paper and number each piece on both the pattern and the glass itself. Sharpie wipes off glass pretty easily.

When grinding glass, make sure each piece is ever so slightly smaller than it is on your pattern. The thickness of copper tape seems negligable but adds up when you want pieces to fit precisely.

There are non-lead solders, and they're basically fine, if a little more annoying to use. Lead melts more easily, but I usually use zinc because it's not lead lol. Though if you're not eating off of your stained glass, using lead proooobably isn't a huge deal. Always wash your hands after glasswork regardless.

Tip tinner is your friend! Tin the tip of your soldering iron before and after use, it makes it so much easier.

When you're soldering pieces together, I find laying down a base of thick cardboard, laying out your design on the cardboard, and then using thumbtacks around the edges to anchor the glass pieces in place and prevent them from sliding around helps a lot.

If you want to hang up your stained glass creation like a suncatcher, add loops or hooks, and try to put them at junctures/seams of different pieces of glass to distribute the weight and pressure. My go-to method to make loops for hanging the pieces is to take a metal paperclip, and then loop it around needlenose pliers to make a circle with the wire sticking straight out on either side. Lay the flat wire ends along the outside and solder it down. It makes good secure loops that you can tie a ribbon or attach a chain to, while distributing the pressure along the outside of the piece. And it’s metal so solder sticks to it.

I hope that's not too much! I love working in glass, it's fun and it's so pretty.

[fantomette22]

A little something about the students dress

Alright so I was looking at references (to draw a character) and ended up doing a bit of research on academic dresses & graduations uniforms! I only find a couple of things so if someone have more infos I will be very interest!

So in Bloodborne we got those dear uniforms :

The one with the robes is very classic of what people in old classic university still wear for big events and graduations such as in the U.S.A or UK. A decades/century ago they did wore those uniforms of course way more often. Now we wear mostly casual clothes.

(This image always made me think of Byrgenwerth. With the balcony and all. That remind me of a post I made a while ago I have still no clue what those balcony were use for!!!)

At first, I discovered that between a bachelor/licence degree, master degree and phd/doctorate you aren't going to get the same clothes. Plus, colours can differ depending of : the level of the degree, the school or the field you graduate in (can differ depending the countries as well).

Bachelor outfits are the most simple ones with not a lot of colours for most of them. Sometimes they don't have hoods but depends. Sometimes they seems to have very large selves like the Byrgenwerth one. The master ones have a bit more colours and I read generally long sleeves but that depends? Then the phd/doctorate ones are generally very colourful! And like the last sources below v They even had even more beautiful outfit for very important members (so I guess Willem pope outfit still make sense XD)

As for the colors it really depends the country etc but I read red is often associated with medicine and surgery (what a coincidence!). White / purple or even red is for theology and blue could be for sciences (Byrgenwerth/willem researches seems to be quite a mixt with theology/sciences so make sense).

(@katyspersonal we did talk a while back on colours on clothes meaning but hey it had have academic significations that fit well too! So in the end, drawing Laurence with white & red clothes is even more accurate now! XD) Oh I wanna draw him in an entire red academic dress now...Future drawing idea ).

Also I forgot to mentions that there's the hat/trencher that's part of it as well. It's not part of the set in the game but ennemies have it.

Also little side note: some dress have stripes or ermine bands on the clothes that represents their grades and also "academic curiosity, academic honesty, and academic courage."

So i suppose the garb Micolash, Damian & co have would look more similar to a master degree one? I guess?

But I won't throw any rocks at Fromsoftware even if the ones we got might not be too much detailed/ accurate because they sure did their homeworks to find and design those clothes. They aren't historians and they probably found a lot more things than I here (plus Japan don't have those dresses too). They're not going to design like 5 different outfits in the game too XD. (Yes I want more details for my story bc making things way more complicated is way more accurate I guess...) We don't know how exactly those types of institutions fonctions in Bloodborne universe too. And it's a fantasy world after all. So it's free real estate

I dunno if you guys @pyro-madder @karnaca78 @secteel or others could know more about it 🤔

But for now it's all!

Sources :

PS : I found this piece of medieval scholar dress and it really look like the same as the guy in the cainhurst painting and cut content Beltran!

They are probably wearing a "simarre". Some magistrate/ university professor / religious clothes people would wear. So pretty oblivious and what we thought @heraldofcrow