#but the art I'm thinking of was definitely post-Renaissance

[queerlyglittering]

Was the artist the ballet's style reminding you of Monet? He did all of the waterlillies paintings

no, it's not Monet. Monet is an impressionist, meaning his paintings are very soft and intentionally blurry. The paintings I'm thinking of are much more detailed. Monet is also from a much more recent period than the artist I was thinking of; his works were mostly done in the late 1800s, some in the early 1900s. The artist whose work I'm thinking of would have worked more in the Rococo period I think? Or maybe Baroque? so like early to mid-1700s ish. I do think they were probably French though, like Monet, and they definitely did still life paintings of flowers. Thank you for the suggestion!

[roxynugget]

Guys, please, Tango doesn't consider himself a builder in the same way Michelangelo might not consider himself a painter* (see tags). You can accept you're very good at two things, and still consider yourself better at one over the other. It's not negative talk when he calls himself a redstone guy.

[ck2k18]

Whitewashing in the ml fandom and why you shouldnt do (or support) it

Disclaimer: Because I am a Black person and the characters I am talking about are Black, this post will specifically address the white washing of Black people and characters.

What is white washing? White washing in the context of fanart is when you take a character of color, usually one with brown/black skin, and either make their skin lighter, give them more Eurocentric features, or both.

Why is it harmful? To explain why this is harmful, I will use one of the first examples of fanart; renaissance paintings of ancient Greek myths. Specifically, artwork featuring Princess Andromeda. Go to your search engine and type in "princess Andromeda". Based on those images, you would never have known that in the original Greek legends, Andromeda was black. So why is she most often depicted as a white woman?

McGrath’s article was definitive in addressing three things: that all the Greek mythographers placed Andromeda as a princess of Ethiopia, that Ovid specifically refers to her dark skin and that artists throughout Western art history frequently omitted to depict her blackness because Andromeda was supposed to be beautiful, and blackness and beauty – for many of them – was dichotomous.

That quote is from this article, and I highly recommend you give it a read. When you whitewash a character, you are perpetuating the idea in the quote above. That this character you like, whether you like them because they're funny or smart or beautiful, cannot be those things and also have black features.

White washing in miraculous ladybug

The show itself is guilty of whitewashing it's own characters. For example, look at these side by sides of Alya and Max alongside their hero alter egos.

Was this done with malicious intent? Hopefully not. But intentional or not, what it says to the people watching is, "These characters cannot have darker skin and also be heroes." And if you think it's not that deep, it is. The show's inconsistencies can't be used as an excuse for whitewashed fanart, because this shit isn't okay either.

Colorism and whitewashing

I'm going to bring up colorism, because even though Max's skin is lighter in that image, he still looks black. However, that doesn't make it okay.

colorism: prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group:

Lighter skinned Black people, while still targets of racism, are closer to whiteness than darker skinned Black people, and in some cases face less discrimination. When Black people first started to appear on TV, it was generally lighter skinned ones because that was more acceptable. This article goes more in depth about colorism.

Misogynoir and whitewashing.

Misogynoir is a word coined to describe the unique hatred that black women face. It is the intersection of racism and misogyny.

People may whitewash a female presenting character but not a male presenting character. In this fandom, you see it with DJWIFI fanart. People will make alyas skin color significantly lighter than Ninos. One trait of misogyny is tying a womans worth to their beauty. When you realize that beauty and blackness were (and still are) seen as antonyms, the issue with this type of whitewashing is made clear.

Texturism and whitewashing

texturism: a form of social injustice, where afro-textured hair or coarse hair types are viewed negatively, often perceived as "unprofessional", "unattractive", or "unclean".

When Black characters were first introduced to media, aspects of them would be changed to heighten their proximity to whiteness and make them more palatable to white audiences. Black women would get perms or silk presses, and Black men would keep their hair cut short and "tidy."

Note: This does not mean that all Black women with silk presses or perms or all Black men with short hair are trying to heighten their proximity to whiteness, or do not love themselves and their hair.

Animation has a history of not representing Black hair. Nowadays, Black hair is more represented, and beautifully so. Just look at movies like Encanto and Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse or TV shows like Moon girl and Devil Dinosaur.

In Miraculous Ladybug, Max is the only character with blatantly afro hair. Nino's hair is always covered and is cut short, and Alya's hair has a looser texture. Therefore, I give fanartists a pass on that one. However, this is a good thing to be aware of anyway.

How can you help?

Don't create, support, or reblog whitewashed art.

(P.S. if anyone wants to come on this post bripnging up blackwashing, read this post of mine)

[darkfictionjude]

I've followed blogs without a demo before and while sometimes it has paid off - I find myself doing it less and less overtime because all too often I go back to a blog 3/4 months later and find it dead with no demo.

That being said in a lot of cases the demos never being finished feels like a cycle of :

*wanting to foster interest and community around your writing* -> *writing an IF is a huge task and it takes longer than expected to learn coding/write a branching narrative/limit story scope to a feasible level* -> *interest dies down because it has been a long time with no demo* -> *low/no interaction on posts ends up feeling demotivating especially when compared to other IF authors so they lose passion for the project*

To compromise, on my part I don't often follow blogs with no demo but if I'm genuinely interested in the story I try to go back to the blog and like/reblog posts or ask questions if there's anything I'm curious about. I definitely think you should write what you want for yourself without necessarily expecting attention - but attention and interaction is always going to feel good regardless.

At the end of the day as an audience member you're never actually 'owed' free content (especially given that its more often then not a passion project) so I have no hard feelings for writers who make demo blogs just to share some fun info about their characters/story and then dip - even if it can feel disappointing.

It 100% feels weird/kind of scammy to have a patreon if you haven't actually written anything though, because you're taking money from people (who often don't have huge amounts in the first place) before they even know if they like your writing/world/story - and before they know if you're capable of actually fulfilling any of the promises you make (which given that IF is generally much longer than a traditional novel is a *massive* promise to make to your audience in exchange for their financial support).

After an author has dropped a demo (even before any/consistent updates) patreon is all good in my book. At that point the audience has a 'sample' of the writing and can use that as a method to judge if they enjoy it. As long as the promised content on the patreon tiers are being fulfilled - you as an audience member are now getting what you've paid for - and can unsubscribe at any point if you no longer wish to keep paying for it.

Yeah I do feel like writers tend to want to work on something that will sell, and why not? It feels good to know your hard work is recognized and appreciated

This is a very nuanced take, I feel that some people even get angry when writers disappear, which yeah I’ve been burned before but like I don’t understand getting pissed when at the end of the day there are more games out there and as you said, no one is owed free content. IF writers are hobbyists, like this is a side thing for most of us it’s a gruelling hobby not only work load wise but also if you unfortunately get anons being mean to you

Yeah I didn’t want to say that but it does feel strange when there’s no work but there’s a Patreon. Because Patreon is just additional writing, it’s meant to be complementary to the main work. People pay for additional writing because they hope it adds to their experience when reading the IF proper.

I mean based on the name it is a modern version of being a painter in Europe during the renaissance and have a richer patron pay you to make art 😭

[im-a-hoping-beetch]

In all honesty, idk what happened with the fandom recently for it to suddenly shit out a ton of crappy takes in ATLA most especially for Zutara. I often find myself defending Zutara because a lot of its antis say the most racist and sexist stuff against it. I'm not even a Zutara fan! I'm a rareshipper.

Can't just antis simply say they don't like Zutara and move on to enjoying their own ships instead? No more stupid holier art thou morality takes that just backfire on their faces.

If they want discourse, then use canon material NOT HEADCANONS, FANONS, OR FANFICS as "evidence" to back up their takes. Antis that do that makes my head spin in exasperation. Then you point that out they start whining how you hurt their feelibgs and get all offended as a "minority".

Actually, let's focus on that last bit. It's pretty rancid too how sometimes they pretend to be part of the "minority" so they can use it as a shield for themselves when their bad behavior gets called out. In fact, this tactic hurts the actual minorities who have valid concerns about Zutara. They get drowned out by all the insanity toxic shippers say and get lumped in with them.

Well, with the new live-action coming, there has obviously, been a revival, making the fandom way much more active. Which leads to people having more time to pay attention to the show and all its intricacies.

This is where ship wars come into play. And in all honesty, atla’s ship wars have definitely left a legacy in a way I don’t think we’ll have to ever witness. With the creators perpetuous jabs at zutara solidifying antis need to hate on it and the fans, fuelling the whole thing to another level. To this day whenever something avatar related gets announced or released you start to see a revival of a not so dead ship war. And while they (probably, not sure) aren’t as brutal as they used to be, they have took another turn, with this faux-progressivism being used to fear monger zutara shippers as well as casual listeners about the ship’s legitimacy. I recommend @i-d-e-g-a-f ‘s post about it to get more insight.

On my part, if I were to pin point the moment where this faux- progressivism started taking space in a lot of anti-zutara takes, I’d say that the atla renaissance isn’t innocent for this phenomenon happening. You need to understand the context in which atla’s release on Netflix took place in. One where the blm movement took the entire world by storm. Resulting in people not having the reservations they’ve probably had in the past when it came to talking about racial issues. This was followed by the emergence of numerous movements involving similar cases (not identical, tho). As well as media and the people consuming said media being ready to offer commentary on and call out harmful depictions of racial minorities as well as the rethorics they carried.

Suddenly, anyone and everyone could offer their piece of mind on harm being caused to racial minorities. And while good, it also came with its downside.

When you take into account this context, I think it exacerbated the already existing phenomenon of people saying things in order to put on this front of being good and virtuous, yet failing or simply not wanting to realize how these things are perpetuating the very harm they claim they want to undo. You know, people perceiving and claiming zutara to be a colonized-colonizer ship. As well as comparing katara to Pocahontas, when talking about these two. Which, if these people actually cared about progress, they would know how incredibly racist and sexist it is to make that comparison.

When it comes to antis obsession with hating on zutara, I think it stems from a certain insecurity. You gotta understand that unlike any other non-canon ship, zutara could’ve legitimately been canon. It was constantly talked about in the writers room, many of the team members seriously considering it (head writers, voice actors etc..) Hence why, the creators felt the need to throw numerous jabs (ie. the ember island play, (2008) comic-con) at the ship and more specifically, its fans. Since they themselves were insecure. @burst-of-iridescent perfectly explains it in this post.

[pikespendragon67]

Pikes Small Fall 2024 Check-in Post!

I technically can still talk with friends but eh why not

IRL: o ye gods i have 2 interviews next week, one in person and one over the phone that may lead to an in person interview. They pay way more than my current job but I fear deceiving my supervisor to go to the in person ones. I'm in the middle of my annual review for my current job though so I think I'll get like. A very small raise and get asked why I've been coming in late for a while now (mainly due to traffic). Hrm.

It’s gonna rain for 2 weeks fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

In December I'm making up for not walking for my college graduation since I graduated during quarantine! I met Jamieson Price at my brother's graduation back in 2016 since he was announcing so my foolish hope is that he announces for mine. Sadly not a SoCal school so highly unlikely (especially with BS technology nowadays) but a fish can dream.

I also...spent way more than I realized this year so once I replenish enough funds I hope I can stick to a budget that my mom helped formulate. Getting the new jobs will help a bunch in those. Terrible timing since the Switch successor is coming out next year and who knows what guests will arrive at cons I can potentially go to. (Like if Jamieson Price, Akio Otsuka, Kenjiro Tsuda or Junichi Suwabe got invited to a con I might need to sell a kidney or 3). I tried using a Windows 11 laptop and it is somehow much slower than my 2019 laptop. Like. How. It's more recent. So I might need to invest in a tablet (like an iPad) or something instead since those tend to be faster. If it has HDMI ports I'd be set.

Also terrible timing for going on a budget since I want to get the Shunsui blind keychain in stores like GameStop or BoxLunch. I have Ukitake at least. I'd be willing to trade a spare Soifon that I have. Oh, and also Squishables plushies always tempt me as well as physical DVDs/games/manga but I am running out of storage space aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I want to get back into art but I need a bag to carry my art supplies and hopefully I can sneak in doodles when I run out of tasks at work. I'd draw on weekends but my computer takes up way too much space on my desk.

And I'm in a bit of a music rut, need to find new stuff to listen to. I usually like smooth cadences in things like electroswing, R&B or pop punk rock, but maybe with how hectic the world is becoming I can get into a new genre of music. Maybe folk? Maybe a ska renaissance that I keep hoping to happen in the public attention?

Animu: I just finished rewatching Digimon Adventure (1999)! I rewatched the dub since I'm nostalgic towards it. I recognized more voices than I did in my rewatch from 6th grade wrow. (I forgot Doug Erholz was in the OG series as Joe's brother and MachineSeaDramon). As a kid my favorite was probably TK or Kari but these days I relate way too much to Joe. I think my favorite arc is the Myotismon arc, and I really loved the Piedmon fight. The show really started feeling special after SkullGreymon appeared. It went from regular monster of the week show to something that explored more character depth, like when Sora felt she couldn't use the Crest of Love. Gonna start 02 next week.

I'm about to finish Delico's Nursery (thank GOD) and Moribito so I can finally move onto other stuff to either watch or rewatch. Maybe Big O, maybe ID: Invaded? Who can say. ...Probably after Beastars season 3 comes out.

Pokemon Horizons' next dubbed portion will air in February so I will see who voices Hassel and Larry then put it on hold until another character I like shows up. Unless something plot relevant happens. It's a good show but hhhhhhhh I only have so much time in my days now.

I'm liking Ranma 1/2! Originally I was a bit squicked about the bathing scenes but I really like the character interactions and the over-the-top jokes (like using your brother as a weapon, hilarious)

Tower of God season 2 is...there. Definitely in the gambler's fallacy where I want to finish this and have it be done with. I really miss season 1's animation.

Orb: On the Center of the Earth is a really intriguing drama. I'm hoping it has a scene that makes me think about life like with other dramas that I've enjoyed. It has sparks of it, so only time will tell.

I’m really enjoying Dandadan so far. I might not delve into the fandom side but I’m loving the art direction and the main character bickering. Dare I hope for a Mothman arc?

In my Jojo rewatch I’m 4 episodes away from finishing Battle Tendency. I’m not the biggest fan of Stardust Crusaders though so I’m gonna see if I can watch the OVAs instead

And finally, I'm not sure how many episodes Bleach TYBW part 3 will have but I'm lowkey waiting for when Shunsui's big moment happens. Hopefully it doesn't feel too rushed, as if we do follow the 13 episode structure we'd only have...5 episodes left to finish this. I'm also hoping that the light novels get animated. Or that Kubo makes the rest of the Hell arc an anime exclusive thing.

Videya games: I thought I could switch between Brothership and Dragon Quest 3, but hoo boy do I feel the grind more in 5 minutes of DQ3 than I do 20 in Brothership. Aside from the Luigi A controversy and odd way to do basic jumps/hammer attacks, I'm liking the combat again. Makes me want to go back to play Dream Team more.

I got Webfishing and I made my avatar Ogata. Life is goooooooooood. Also on some weekends I play with some buddies in either Granblue Versus, 100% Orange Juice, and recently we went through the prologue of Paranormasight. I grinded with some other friends in Granblue Relink and man I need to assemble that squad again so I can get Ambrosia.

Oh yeah, an IRL friend helped me start up collecting for Wii again! Meaning I can hopefully get Gamecube games too because while I do have Dolphin and Parsec, I still have trouble opening files, configuring my controller and configuring a memory card. True there's a risk of scratched discs and spending way more than I need to. Hm.

[blackholesun321]

Merry Christler @mega-ringsandthings-world your Loguetown au once again has rotted my brain and made me black out to create this! Was it a bought of mania brought on by my love for your blorbos? Maybe. Is it art fueled by my love for this au and your worldbuilding! Definitely. So here’s some of the new (maybe not improved) red haired pirates in this au.

Seriously those of you who haven’t checked out this au it’s amazing and I physically vibrate every time they post something about it!

Below close up of the art and explanations—

Benn my darling. ❤️

I love him so much; he's my angry traumatized dad blorbo, and he gets absolutely sent through the shredder in this AU. How'd he lose an eye and half his face? Well, I'm sure we'll find out, but it certainly did make him look striking. Did y’all know he wears pearl earrings in canon? Because I didn’t. And I think that’s neat and should be commented on more—something something this very masculine character wearing pearl earrings. He wears a lot more perals in this au. This man would kill me, and I’d say thank you.

—————

Look at him and his fancy shirt; man's colors are definitely red and gold, and he looks so fine. You know Mihawk picked out this fit, and those flowers—king loves his embroidered flowers, also done by Mihawk! And those dragon earrings, I wonder where he got those and what they allude to? Also, man is a ball of trauma wrapped in fancy clothes and jewelry to make others see him as a human being. Whoever he's talking to, he doesn't want to be there. The Haki scars are still vibrant and have yet to fade with time, and he's probably less secure about them, so the layers.

—————

Shanks, honey, you still gotta work on your diplomacy face; you don’t look enthused to be wherever you are. Look at all those scars; he gets pretty beat up in this AU. I mean, really beat up. I hope I got the Haki burns up his arms right? But one of my favorite things about this AU is the absolute fashion renaissance that happens later in the fic because of these pirates having a pretty spectacular self-experimenting and exploration phase. Shanks gets a lot of piercings, and Mihawk makes sure that they don’t go to waste.

—————

New Red-Haired Pirate flag. Scary! Wouldn’t want to be on these guys' bad side. They are a lot less the party pirates in this AU, and the flag reflects that. The skull is still laughing but with devil horns and bloody teeth, as well as the red wings to represent someone (Mihawk). Instead of two griffins crossed behind the skull, Shanks' sword is in gold and piercing through its mouth. It was a lot of fun to design. Will be doing Mihawk's flag in the future.

[fr00tb0wl]

Hi!! Not really an ask but I didn't know if you'd be okay with me dming you so i thought i'd send you these here!! I thought you would appreciate the sheer fucking SCALE of the main stemma compared to the others surrounding it!

+ I enhanced the colouring on the pic a little because it was kinda washed out in the lighting when I initially took it, I just didn't have the energy to do that before posting last time whoops

Anyway i hope you enjoy! I actually have a few more that I think you'd appreciate, though most aren't actually renaissance art, they are *chef's kiss*

This is the 'Monument to Marchese Spinetti Malaspina', who was a condottiere who died in 1407! It was made by Antonio da Firenze, Pietro Di Niccolo and Giovanni De Martino Da Fiesole and was originally made in Verona ca. 1430-1435.

This is 'The Sleep of Sorrow and the Dream of Joy' by Raffaelle Monti, made in 1861 (so obvi no renaissance). I just find her absolutely beautiful though - it's widely considered a comment on Italian politics at the time; a say on the resurrection of cultural unity in the country as it was proclaimed a kingdom on the 17th of March in 1861.

This is 'Diana Hunting' by Giovanni Maria Benzoni, made in 1859, and was adapted from the 4th century B.C. marble statue known as the Diane de Versailles which is situated in the Louvre. Personally I'm just a big fan of how he's managed to sculpt the flowing tunic, an art the Greeks mastered, but hasn't been lost (thankfully) even centuries later.

Finally here's some pics from the statue hall at the Victoria and Albert museum - most of these are copies but it's still very pleasing to admire. Trajan's Columns are the big ol' ones in the first pic, and any renaissance lover will recognise David in the second pic. I hope to visit Florence one day and see him in person <3

I apologise for the long long ask but if anyone would appreciate these pics that have been sitting in my gallery for almost a year now, it would be you! xx

All of these can be found on the Victoria and Albert museum website btw, with lots of different pictures and more information available if you're interested! I spent some time hunting everything down so I could be accurate since my memory isn't the best :)

Oughh!! This is absolutely wonderful!! Thank you so much for all of the lovely photos! 🥺 I deeply appreciate the effort that went into acquiring them as well as all of the information you provided! I’m definitely going to squirrel these away for further research!

Even if it isn’t Renaissance art, I AM a very big fan of art and art history! (Perhaps one day I’ll get around to posting all of the works of art I got to see in New York a little over a year ago now!)

I was in Europe last December to see and spend time with my Fiancé, and it’s a dream of mine to be able to go back and do a tour of art and historical museums in a multitude of countries. 🥹✨💕

[fleetwood-cheese]

Phantom Thief outfit breakdown: pt 7

This is a continuation of my previous post and series regarding my opinions on the phantom thieves' metaverse costumes, prompted by a poll by @waywardsalt. I will link all of these together as they're finished.

Akechi - Ann - Makoto - Sumire - Futaba - Yusuke

Next Up: Detective Prince Akechi! It's time for the marching band prince outfit. This one is much more break down than changes tbh.

For some reason he doesn't have a piece from the set of official art I've been including, so he gets this (does let us see the back though). I'm starting to see more and more people say they think this one is hideous, but I actually don't agree! From a design and character perspective, this outfit is striking, very coherent, and richly detailed without feeling overly cluttered. I think part of the reason it's so jarring is because its so on the nose for the prince personal and thus comes across as sort of childish and impulsive, like it was chosen on a whim, but I do think that's intentional. The purpose of this outfit is to contrast directly with Joker's, the white counterpoint to his black ensemble, lure the thieves into a false sense of security, and to make the black mask outfit more of a shock, and it accomplishes this in my opinion.

I also like that's its a subtle form of rebellion that's very specific to Akechi's situation; he's a bastard child being used by his powerful father with little recognition, so the idea of being a prince, someone powerful and important because of his birth and his familial connections, IS a form of rebellion for him. The rest of the thieves (besides Futaba and Joker, who're there for the 8/28 trauma dump) don't know this though, so it flies over their heads. It's the pristine, white prince to the black mask's dark knight.

The most obvious inspiration here is the fairy tale prince aesthetic, playing off his media moniker, but it also incorporates a significant amount of formal military regalia. I'm not super familiar with this particular branch of history and fashion, but it seems very European 1700s and 1800s to me, very Napoleonic. The white color seems very Napoleon's Grande Armee to me, but the cut, double row of buttons, and shoulder epulettes scream 1912 American Navy full dress uniform. Ironically, this mix of military gravitas and fairy tale stylization means that the outfit ends up looking startlingly similar to the duelist uniforms of Revolutionary Girl Utena in my eyes, which is probably not the exact vibe they were going for.

The red and gold accents help break up the monotony of the white very well, and the piping on the arms and legs provide a nice lengthening effect. The mask is very interesting, because while it follows the European vibe, its distinctly not military; instead, it pulls on two different types of masks: the zanni and the plague doctor mask. The zanni mask is Italian, named for the character it denoted in commedia dell'arte plays; this character was a servant from the countryside and often a trickster character, which nicely alludes to how Akechi is the rival trickster to Joker in Yaldaoboath's game, as well as the way he's intentionally tricking both Shido and the thieves. The plague doctor mask is, obviously, the mask worn to prevent the spread of the black plague during medical examinations and treatment during its outbreak in the Renaissance, and I presume it relates to Akechi in the way he's been treated as a pest his whole life and is trying to maintain distance with the thieves during Sae's Palace.

There's no real changes I'd make here; I think this outfit does its job wonderfully, with a wealth of attention to detail and well used motifs. Most distaste with the costume is probably personal preference and the shock it gives you the first time you see it. It's definitely not something I'd ever wear but it gets the job done well. I place it 4th out of 10, with a solid score of 7/10.

[gontagokuhara]

Just went on Instagram to look at more DR art (because tumblr won't let me see a lot of DR art for some reason) and saw hinanami discourse out in the wild which made me say, out loud, "oh, are we still doing this 💀"

Like idk if I've just aged out of the fandom (on Instagram) but just seeing that hinanami rant made me realize I've been spoiled by the DR community on Tumblr bc I'll scroll on here for 2 minutes and see a text post that will literally SHIFT my entire view of a character/ship and CHANGE my LIFE in just a small analysis that was probably written by op while they were on the toilet💀

Anyway it made me think of the post about Maki and Chappel Roan that I actually recited by memory out loud to my friend last night [gooning over wlw content together after watching Muriel's Wedding], And also that one post abt Monomi and Monokuma being Junko's satire of her own rivalry with Mukuro, and Junko not liking that her friends don't appreciate her fursona doing stand-up 💀💀 and like compare that to Instagram discourse and it's like "Komahina is stupid bc hinata isn't straight" like 💀

Anyway maybe it was the same on tumblr before [it probably definitely was] but now that I'm older I'm really appreciating mature convos/takes about danganronpa because good fanfiction/fanart/fan interpretations are truly adapting the story+characters in much better ways than the creators could ever imagine circa 2010 [pointy objects] [peaches and cream] [anything w/autistic nagito] [anything w/transmasc hajime]

number one rule of modern fandom experience (at the very least with media that has a propensity to draw Certain Crowds [looking especially hard at danganronpa and p5]) is CURATE YOUR OWN SPACE AND STRAY NO FARTHER ‼️‼️‼️ i personally escaped the early era dr fandom (pre v3 localization/the 2019 Danganronpa Renaissance) but time capsule posts tell me i dodged something of a bullet there ❤️ in that vein 2019/2020/covid era discourse was still crazy insane (<- was a part of it for sure LMFAO) but it had a much different Flavor than it did way back when. and the same is true of present-day: still a little kooky if you search hard enough (insta/tiktok/twitter/tumblr all have their own demons). but at least This go around i have largely avoided that by picking my people that i trust not to be Weird and just living in my own bubble wrt the dr fandom at large. and thats served me very well the past year+ since i got back into dr <3 and i have also seen MANY of those perspective-altering posts in that little curation circle that has deepened and made better my experience THE GOOD IS OUT THERE ‼️‼️‼️

THE JUNKO FURSONA POST ALSO LIVES IN MY BRAIN its so real and just one of many takes i’ve seen fly by in a post and been like This is so real and it’s mine now. many such cases <3 i follow people like that and simply block people expending energy on discourse i DOOOOOONT care about. like simply enjoy kmha (I SURE DO ‼️‼️‼️) if you like it and ignore hnmi/kmnmi if you dont (cant relate I LOVE YOU TOO HINANAMI + KOMANAMI ‼️‼️‼️) and live your life happy not angry ❤️

like re: maki lesbianism (which was written on the toilet no lie) she is The most lesbian of all time i could write 10,000 scholarly articles on her comphet + traumatic past of being made to hurt people keeping her from fully coming to terms with herself as a lesbian and as someone who wants to Protect the people she loves (an integral pillar of butchness!!!!!!!!) and it is so important to me. and MANY people disagree! and i simply just dont worry about it <3 but i DO think about the people that agree (and the people who i Influence to agree…..that makes me so happy to hear you talking about it with people :D) and that makes fandom FUN!!!!! not arguing over word of god or whatever that isn’t going to change anyone’s opinions anyway 😭

there is a LOOOOOT of good discussion and character/scene analysis and genuinely fun unique takes on tumblr (+ im sure other places but i rly only interact with dr on her & Occasionally by liking a twt post on my main) and that’s where i’ve made my niche <3 people having fun with the media they enjoy and trying to salvage its shortcomings and missteps because they love it!!

and putting little old Me up amongst the dr goats (transmasc hajime) (autistic nagito)………..framing this ask tbh the HIGHEST honor 4 me……..thank you my beloved cider as always KISS MWAH MWAH

[docilepillow]

2024 January Media Post Thingy

i dont post on tumblr.com a whole lot i mostly just love to reblog but i wanna see if this novelty thing sticks because for like 2020-2022 i had like a text file i did that i stopped doing in 2023 or so for like video games in particular and i unno it was fun but i got distracted cus half that month i was doing retail anything special happen this year yet? not especially, but since soon ill be very busy with something that IS indeed special, and my bday, i may as well make a post now bc i feel like i will be preoccupied for the first good bit of febuary personally ( exciting life stuff ! ) last disclaimer is that at some point i would want to add movies and shows to this list when i get around to it , but for me december and january've kinda blended in that regard.. me and my friends watched Wonka recently and i was kinda so-so on that just cus' i think the original movies a certain way i guess. oops. i think there were other movies/ shows too and comics as well but once again, december-january blurr for me. Furthermore, any piece of media i pick out for this will also have a completely arbitrary doc-ism secondary title just because i feel like it. Enjoy! VIDEO GAMES! ! MARIO GALAXY 2 < SECOND ROUNDEST MARIO GAME >

I wanna say i spent from the first of january to the third on this game, but my Wii Menu calendar is a little fucked up....

Whoops! Regardless, i do have a bit of a background of not completely " gel-ing " with the original Mario Galaxy gameplay wise in my own friendgroup, to mostly dismayed reactions n junk. In short, i think artistically the game's merits are absolutely fantastic, but since i played it on the switch 3d mario collection some time after sunshine, i do think the control scheme is overall pretty limited, and that does apply to mario galaxy 2, i guess, but methodically, i think playing this game on a wiimote does make the limitation feel i guess more fair in terms of like camera control and deliberacy n stuff... the galaxy games and presentation are completely amazing works of art obviously and theres some good music here but i think between galaxy 1 and 2 i definitely prefer 2 mechanically. i enjoy the level scenarios more thats primarily it, i think. I'm so-and-so on how comets work and how many stars you need to get to get to the end ( I think how comets spawn is a little filler-ey and waiting for them to appear in a level i don't know it'll appear in was a little obtuse to figure out, even if i did eventually manage it and actually enjoy the challenges they offer. its mostly just really annoying comet spawning mechanics that were a drag. a very deliberately- controlling mario i guess and being more familiar with galaxy's control probably was why i was able to enjoy this one more ? Yay! I think i still enjoy 3d world more then this and most other 3D marios, though. It's a good video game and i liked the boss fights in it, theyre surprisingly cool and dynamic for what i'm used to from the mario series. I didn't do the special world, though. i wasn't compelled to go that far past the credits. ( You'd think this game's doc-ism title would come from it being the sequel to mario galaxy, and thus, second roundest, but honestly, i think in terms of the mario series scale, Mario Pinball Land has round mario in it, and galaxy 2's starship mario is definitely, i think, rounder then the comet observatory from galaxy one. That makes Mario Galaxy the third-roundest mario game! )

From around the 6th to the 13th, I ended up playing --- ACTRAISER RENAISSANCE < THE CEREAL-BOX GOD GAME >

actraiser is definitely a mixed video game for me, because i definitely see the merit in it. It's a very unconventional splicing of both sidescrolling and city-development game, a " remake " of a novel SNES/Famicom game with the same premise. You're like a big god of light guy who sends your soul into this little warrior guy who cleanses the land of monsters for around 6 different settlements to florish in with the assistance of a cute little angel friend and whatever area's flavor of local legend the game gives you after a story event or two to hold down the place from encroaching monster dens and such; and, apparently exclusive to this version, there's also little tower-defense segments that come in waves around four or five times per area, which in my opinion are kind of this game's weakest link, but not without like Some kind of merit. At the end of each town segment, there is also a big boss fight, usually tying into the story in some way.

( I think one of the things that genuinely pushed me to give the game a try was the cute angel design in it..... ) (I usually take an excessive number of screenshots whenever i'm playing on switch, just because doing so is very easy and i'm a sentimental freak ( For actraiser R, this is 148 screenshots ) ) ( If i continue doing this next month, i'll try to include the foresight to actually use my capture card for images, instead of taking pictures with my phone.. ) ( I think one of the things that genuinely pushed me to give the game a try was the cute angel design in it..... ) (I usually take an excessive number of screenshots whenever i'm playing on switch, just because doing so is very easy and i'm a sentimental freak ( For actraiser R, this is 148 screenshots ) ) ( If i continue doing this next month, i'll try to include the foresight to actually use my capture card for images, instead of taking pictures with my phone.. ) Some things i like that this game does, alot ---

i think it has a very very cool " world select " map. one very postive thing is that it updates in real time with your progress in the area, so you can watch it all expand from your little sky palace once you've done your buisness there. it's really satisfying and pretty... this game's got really good 2d art, i think. I've heard people be mixed on the sidescroller art in comparison, but i think it's got a charm to it. I think it's cute and while its probably more a budgetary limitation, i do like how everything kind of looks like one of those fantasy stills you can sometimes buy from arts and crafts stores. The framerate on them is like a bit lower then what you'd expect from a modern game but mechanically its still very responsive, which makes me feel like it's a stylistic choice to look more stop-motioney, i guess. Maybe im just a fan of ham, i unno.

In terms of the overhead segments, it's pretty basic and automated, which is fine by me, and perfectly workable for what it is, i think, conceptually ( they build out on your own but you do kind of " guide their hand " when it comes to where paths go, at least. It does lead to a weird meta thing being to zap your own people with holy lightning to destroy stuff you don't want though, which feels flavorfully odd for a benevolent god.... I guess it's fair enough

the main problem with the game is that the tower defense segments, the main major feature and addition of this remake, does kind of take the game's pacing and drop flat in the middle of it. They're usually decently long segments where you can only indirectly fight, and are kind of slow. They also usually need you to protect or have a certain number of buildings left by the end of it ( having all of your farms in tact by the end, defending the main temple, not having every house burned down ) which can be a bit more difficult then it sounds. i dont think the segments are bad or anything, there's just.... entirely too many of them??? like mechanically theyre fine they just happen every other second between story events and it feels kind of padded after like the second one in one area, and there's about 5 per area of increasing difficulty. i definitely think if anything could be reined back, it'd be that. I don't think the story is too special , either, the angel kind of just quips sassily about the story at you from time to time and your followers make requests of you at the temple, usually manifesting in the town segements as " have x number of y " or getting the population to a set threshold, or getting x number of resources. The structure of each area isn't shaken up too much, mostly just " new settlement, find a guy, guy isnt so sure about this lord of light guy but through fighting alongside u and some small character arch, they become a champion of yours or something and you meet the scary boss guy and kill them and weaken the big bad dark lords forces behind it all, but there were two segments i liked, both pretty late-game, with the ice wyvern and this guy named shemall whose only affront to you is having a more popular humanitarian ideology ( who actually becomes the dominant ideology in the segment leaving the church literally empty for a good portion of it , and is only tied into the status quo by the dark lord himself possessing the other temple and shit and starting a really really bad storm of eeevil , who i like a bit ) and a boss in the last area who was implied to once be a force of good but ultimately subservient to the bad guys will, which is basic but i tihnk neat. also they have cool designs. )

Shrug! I think it's neat but it has problems that bog it down! Waah! i dont regret playing it or anything but it's like a 7! ( It's kind of like a game you'd get in one of those cereal boxes, and it's a little cheap, but its endearing to me ? ) TOREE 3D < LEAST-CONSEQUENCIAL SPOILER AWARD >

finished this game the same day i finished actraiser, in one sitting. Ummm... i know this game's like a crowd favorite, and it's, like, solid, but i don't really have all that much to say about it ..... Like, it's an OK platformer, with like really great value for your dollar, but i don't really have all that much to say about it, endearment-wise. I think also that the VHS horror elements are largely unnecessary and are kind of whatever, but I know i'm not really the audience for it. That's the spoiler, i guess. Around the same time, in a date range I don't remember, I basically ended up completely reorganizing my room for Life Stuff, and ended up giving a really cool fan project a try, from a series i've always wanted to try more of, if not for the language barrier, in the form of -- STARFY ORIGINS ( Densetsu no Stafy ) < SPLASHABLE VIDEO GAME >

Waaaaaaaa ! i love starfy ( Stafy? ) You probably wouldn't have the background on it unless you knew me, but i'm a real DS head, and one of my earliest games on the system, one i have vivid memories with, was The Legendary Starfy, an " underwater platformer ", mostly known as being a kirby-like game in style, and being the last entry in a mostly untranslated series of platformers that're japanese-exclusive!

Essentially, what this means for me was that there was , for a very long portion of my kid-years, a bunch of video games out there that i knew i'd be instantly endeared by if ONLY i could play them ( since, even at the time, gba emulation for me was kind of mystical and out of my ability ) ; and , at least in my mind, that meant it'd have just as many lovable characters and such as the the starfy I got to play, anecdotaly meaning the only exposure i'd have to these games beforehand is ferverously looking up stuff on the starfy wiki and watching youtube videos of the final bosses and stuff; basically just lementing for years that " aww,, theres no translation. i guess it's just too obscure " with the rest of the starfy fans i've heard about online, until recently! I emulated this game on Vita and overall i'd just have to say its a cute, decently-novel-but-slightly-padded 2d sidescroller. I'd say it was like ok-levels of worth the wait, but im honestly just floored that a translation of the first game happened at all, and i think its awesome what's been done. It's selfish to want, but i'd really like to try the other DS starfy game sometime, whenever that's translated. It's honestly one of the few loose-end games i can even think of and mechanically that one's a whole lot more out there then this one, which, other then the novelty of playing this game i've only heard murmurs of for over a decade, is just kind of alright. kudos to the fan translators making this game work out!!! I wonder if the team that did this have plans for the others now that this game's been translated....

Wew, halfway down the list, i'm sick of typing, but i'll keep going with ---> DEATHSMILES < SCARY >

Cool bullethell shmup with really tight gameplay my friend endeared me to with a single screenshot and a slightly empassioned ramble i forget the exact context of

idk i think this green girl is neat and the arcade style bullethell gameplay's really fun on steam deck; i just think the girls should be like 7 years older each then what the game says because the loli aspects of this game are kind of uncomfortable and unavoidable and i don't like them at all... the gothic horror halloween aestetic the game has otherwise absolutely rocks and is just up my alley, though. i guess its just part of the style theyre going for, but it's a really unfortunate Japanese quirk you kind of have to just tolerate for the other Very Good aspects the game has gameplay and artisticly wise ( music and art direction is awesome )

the girl's dragon familiar is named booboo by the way. just thought that's important. LITTLE GOODY TWO SHOES < GAME **MOST** RESPONSIBLE FOR SINGLE-HANDEDLY HOME-WRECKING MY BRAIN CHEMISTRY THIS MONTH >

Another game my friend reccomended whicch is completely awwesome and my entire aestetic and i love it alot and i think its my game of the year unless something else comes around and im absolutely floored with it and i went into it completely endeared and its completely wrecked my vernacular and its so pretty and its so artistic and its so different and its so pretty and its so girl and its so gay and im Elise and im in the woods i like being in the woods this game has the best aestetic of any game ive played ever and it feels like no competition and ummmmmmmmmmm

idk just fucking look at it its so so so so good i love this games world so sooso osososoos s oso ososo o os so mcuh its so good it so nice its so charactered genuinely great little slice of life slash horror slash social sim game with admittedly some jank portions of it that piss me off a little bit but holy fucking shit this games aestetic is the best besy best best bersy tbest best thing ever made i think its really really good pelease watch this segment on youtube its so silly

im not gonna type anything else this game Is its narrative and i dont wanna spoil anything but its great its got a lovely dark fable aestetic and i think everyone should play it especially if you like rpg maker horror type games / are gay as hell / love fairytale aestetics like I do

i like ummmm Lebkuchen by the way. if u wanna know what my ending is. there is some fucked up shit that happens in this game though despite how absolutely adorable it looks. everything in this game points to it being one of my favorites of all time or at the very least it will definitely poison my brain forever at the expense of my friends who havent played it yet. Waaah..... no i dont think talking about a fanmade pokemon rom hack after arguably a massive artistic achievement is disrespectful thats just how the month flows POKEMON ROWE < I broke it, oops... >

really cool open-world emerald rom hack, similar to crystal clear and the like. I've technically played it already, but this is the first time i've completed it, though i completely broke the game really early into it that undermined it in a way i didnt realize for about 7 gyms, before i accidentally nuked the overworld with a massive bug that scrambled my player's gender and made the overworld color pallete fuck-ey, which, im not ggoing tto blame the developer on, i'm summing that up to a cosmic ray or something. i think with time and with more polish i could see myself liking this more then crystal clear, but time'll see. ( Team was as below )

MIGHTY GUNVOLT < tie in video game i've ever played >

typing this like an hour ins making me realize this docism thing might not stick but mighty gunvolt is neat i guess i never finished it when i first played gunvolt and obsessed over that when it was new ( Mighty gunvolt came as a free download if you bought the first game digitally, you see ) because of the first boss, but now as a more experienced gamer, that's really just because the fire boss is kind of just a weird difficulty spike at the start that the rest of the game difficulty wise doesnt really match up to. It's a cute, very short ( i beat all 3 character campaigns in two hours , liesurely ) platformer styled like megaman, and that's all it really needed to be at the time. i wouldnt go out of my way to play it these days if it wasnt for my own baggage with the gunvolt series in general, and if it wasnt for my much greater affection for its sequel, mighty gunvolt burst.... I'm just gonna say if this game interests you , you really should just play burst instead. Even if you've played the latter before, you're really not missing out on much more then a moderately ok side scroller. it sure is a tie in demake on the early 3ds ! 6180 THE MOON

Surprisingly, this game's on alot of platforms? I just kind of chose it on a whim 'cus it was on the top of the list of H-SHOP stuff and i was looking for something short to play, but it's pretty artsy.

It's a puzzle-platformer where the gimick is that the ball wraps around the screen when you fall down or up, which works really well with the 3ds in my opinion. with the compression and stuff on the 3ds and how the game was laid out, it affectionately reminds me of a flash game you'd find on coolmath or the such, and its very relaxed ( if a little wonky ) . i dont have anything bad to say on it or anything its just a small little game i played on a whim. it's very minimalistic, if you're into that aestetic, you might like this. That's the last of the wholy " new " stuff i finished this month, and id say overall its a solid start for me, and kind of out of season ( very octobery-feeling game lineup in retrospect..! But that month's always usually crowded with obligations and stuff, so i doubt i'd be in a mood for them even at that time of year.. )

Also, i gave a try to cavestory on wiiware, first time i've played the game in a few years now since the switch rerelease! I think its just as fun as i found it when i first discovered it on 3ds, and, while i have a friend who adamantly disagrees, i actually really do like the OST of this version. It's a cute mutation on the games ost that in my opinion enhances the kind of forelorn vibe the game originally had, and i really like the blown up art of this version of cave story, even if it does have nichalis's hands all up in the matter. since it's unlocked from the start, i played the game on Curly Story till the true ending. I still love this game alot. Sometime i'll trick a certain individual into finishing it, i hope.

That's all i have to say! this is the first time i've made such a big post on any kind of social media period, so, hopefully its not unreadably disjointed or self-absorbed. Whatever!

play little goody two shoes

[onewomancitadel]

Also, small addendum to the Death Knight posts... mentally I separate the Death and the Maiden mytheme from Beauty and the Beast, despite the fact that they tend to crossover in ships, because I would categorise Death and the Maiden under the genre in which women take supernatural lovers, whereas Beauty and the Beast's resolution involves the embrace of the Beast's humanity. Obviously there are iterations of BatB which lean into his supernatural nature, so it's definitely fluid, but all of these would go under a broader mythemic umbrella of mortals with immortal or supernatural lovers.

Death and the Maiden isn't strictly a storytelling mytheme either; it's a thematic idea especially explored in the Renaissance, about the intermingling nature of life and death, and features strongly in Renaissance paintings and subsequently poetry and art interacting with it. Folklorists would be much more strict about the fairytale typology, but I'm from a background where we don't do that, and I'm averse to how systematic their methods are. I'm more interested in how people interact with and reproduce archetypes as opposed to how strictly those archetypes are themselves realised within their functions... if that makes sense.

Death and the Maiden, as an academic idea, looking at the relationship of life and death, doesn't necessarily have to be romantic either. It doesn't always have to necessarily look familiar: Red Riding Hood and the Wolf is a brush with death and awakening to maturity, but wolves are not an explicit representation of Death, in how explicit it can really get. But it's the consciousness of mortality and time and danger. When it does crop up in romantic pairings, it's obviously a lot of fun; its resolution just doesn't always look as strictly neat as BatB, because once it serves its purpose - awareness of mortality, adulthood - it doesn't necessarily have to offer anything else. But of course you have Hades and Persephone who are the king and queen of the Death and the Maiden motif - except even then it's not necessarily romantic either, if anything it represents a complicated set of gender politics, the death cult of patriarchy. But in the Greek context, I struggle to lean into one specific moralising direction or the other, because I think it's a little more complicated than that - including the fact that the way it's told evolves, our chief source being Demeter's perspective in the Homeric hymn, which is significant in the corpus because it's told from a goddess' perspective and is related to the Eleusinian Mysteries. Anyway, moving away from that... I think the reason modern readers find it sexy is because the Death and the Maiden is an exciting mytheme, irrespective of Greek context (or indeed because of).

Then there are examples like Eros and Psyche, where Eros is not explicitly chthonic, but he is a supernatural lover who must conceal his identity - and he's an accidental lover as a consequence of misdirected vengeance. But I would group Eros and Psyche closer to Death and the Maiden. On the other hand, Eros concealing himself with a mask is significant, because he's concealing his identity; the concealment of identity is important in Beauty and the Beast, and for Death Knights especially, because identity is humanity. So, Eros and Psyche crossover with Death Knights in an interesting way here too.

The point being, the reason I didn't invoke Death and the Maiden with the Death Knight is because I was focussing on one angle of Beauty and the Beast, but equally I think the Death and the Maiden can figure into the Death Knight for the same reason the Death Knight isn't always romantic, if not is rarely romantic. It can do thematic things that Death and the Maiden can do - the reminder of mortality, the death of chivalry.

And I think it's good to keep a focus on specific idea just for the sake of brevity. But here are my thoughts laid out. Now I want everybody to sit and meditate on the fact that the romantic ship featuring Jaune/Cinder of R/WBY fame features every single fucking one of these motifs.

[nichiperi]

Important Update

(It's a bit long so it's below the cut!)

Ok I've been kinda hesitant for a while cause I've been worried about potentially making people uncomfortable with this, but I feel like my art (Not necessarily my IZ stuff, but just my style in general.) is going in a direction that involves more blood, gore, probably body horror, and general viscera and I might start posting some of that here.

While I promise to do my best to use the appropriate tags, PLEASE let me know moving forward if there is a tw tag I should be using that I am not. Chances are, I just don't know about it. It is absolutely not my intention to upset anyone.

For people who've been following me since before my IZ renaissance, this is probably not news to you at all since I already posted a lot of vent art featuring blood and injuries. This warning is more for the people who have followed me since, who are maybe less aware of those pieces and the general tone of my more personal art.

I've been hesitant to even make pieces like that in recent months because I've been too in my head about it, and too worried about what other people think of it, and what people would think of me as a result of my making that kind of art. I've even hesitated to reblog art that I really love because it includes these themes.

I'm honestly really tired of feeling like I have to sanitize my blog and my work. And it's not on anyone but myself to fix that. I gotta just start doing what I want to do. I'm scared of people being uncomfortable with me as a person because of my work. But I have to learn to be ok with the idea that not everyone will like me or my art.

Of course, that doesn't mean this blog's IZ renaissance is over by any means! Right now all of my seratonin is coming from the space bug show, and I have a lot of stuff I'm working on that doesn't deviate that much from what I've already been doing. You DEFINITELY won't see less Zim. Just MORE of my other stuff.

I only say all of this because I want to move towards being more genuine. I don't think I'll ever be comfortable fully being a human person on the internet, but that is all the more reason for me not to hold back when it comes to my artistic expression. Otherwise, what would be the point of having this space where I can be whatever I wish? I already have to be (somewhat) normal and restrained out there in the real world.

From now on, this place is going to be what it was always meant to be: a place where I can just vibe, create, and exist.

TL;DR - I'm going to be posting and rb'ing more visceral art. I will do my best to tag appropriately, but PLEASE tell me if there's a tw tag I might not have been aware of that I should be using. The IZ renaissance will continue, but there will simply be more art posted in general.

[freakyelf-ontheshelf]

STARDEW VALLEY HEADCANONS PART 2:

YIPPY!

Starting off with my favourite blond:

•Haley:

-Besides what I said in part 1 with Alex, Haley kept on kissing boys until she openly came out and felt comfortable enough (when she met the FF🤭)

-Every time you gift her a sunflower she keeps them in a vase on her bedroom window, once the petals wilt she keeps them in a box for later crafts^^

-She stopped putting effort in photography because she was embarassed and felt she had a different image to keep, once she meets female farmer and her hardwork, passion and dedication, she starts rediscovering herself and retaking her passions seriously

-Once when she the farmer passed out and Haley found out, she ran to the farm and made the farmer let her help. Ended up doing the work for her that day and let the farmer fall asleep on the porch<3

-When she goes and visits the farm, she takes nature pictures and snaps some discrete ones of her farmer girl🤭. She takes them to her red room and sends them to the farmer with lipstick marks<3

-Her and Alex remain best friends and when he starts dating the male farmer they enjoy gossiping about their love life's by the icecream stand ^^

-Haley switches her nails every two weeks and they always have a seasoned theme, once she starts dating you she'll excitedly show them to you, hoping you love them (you do, obviously, and are glad to tell her everytime<3)

-She smells of Macedonia fruits and salt water, sweets as well😻

-Everytime you gift her a pink cake she grabs the strawberry on top and feeds it to you, smooching you after (I'm so terribly in love with her)

-Her favourite season is summer, although she tells everyone it's winter because of the sweat

-Once she starts reading and searching for herself, she finds a love for art history and Renaissance books

-Poetry reader (sapphic mostly, Spanish artists translations...)

-When she starts working the farm, she specially enjoys taking care of the animals, going to find you giggling everytime she gets stained

-in the hot weather you sprinkle her with the hose and she loves playing around in the sprinklers with you

-When you ask her to marry you she quite literally, jumps you (then she cries, a lot)

-She ends up having an amazing relationship with Emily, making fun of her everytime she talks about Sandy (she secretly loves seeing her sister fall in love)

Again, I'm going to stfu now cause I could talk about her forever (I will)

•Abigail:

-Had a My Chemical Romance fase and a scene kid one too (Caroline almost had a heart attack, still almost does though, bitch needs to calm down)

-Is taking classes not only to please her father and have some peace of mind, but also because Sam is taking them too and would hate to disappoint her friend

-Shes an amazing artist and is the one that decorates the store. The windos are painted with a different scenery every season.

-Shes had five different guinea pigs cause they kept on "disappearing", she geniuenly thinks that still (goofy aah)

- Definitely bisexual, with a preference to women. Even though that means there could be a chance for her to date Sebastian like literally everyone wants, she's never liked him (or Sam) in that way

-Follows every single alternative or goth woman on her socials, has a secret Twitter account where she posts shit about people in her day to day life to unwind

-Loves My little pony, prove me wrong

-Her and her dad used to play videogames together, which is why she got into it in the first place, but as she got older her dad thought she should be concentrating on other stuff and eventually stopped playing with her, which is why she asks the farmer for help in her two heart event

-Caroline gifted Abigails flute to her when she turned 14 and she's been playing ever since, only having shown Sebastian and Sam

-One time Haley told Abigail that her hair is suprisingly healthy and well kept taking into account she's been dying it purple since the age of 15, and she's seen Haley differently since then

-Has a hyperfixiaton on the ocean, specially it's wild life, minerals and swordsmanship

-After the sixth heart event Abigal and the farmer do all the mining together, and once she sees the effort and danger in doing that she actually realises how much the farmer cares for her, going in the mines to get minerals for her and such.

-She loves taking you to the mountains when it's really late at night, going camping and listening to you tell her about the stars

-When you go to Sam's concer and she sees you from the stage she blushes and makes sure to not make a single mistake, asking you later on if you enjoyed the song (she wanted to know if you thought her skills were cool, okay)

-The first time you ever saw her cry was when she told her dad she was (finally) dropping out from the classes she despised, getting into the biggest argument with them and running all the way to the farm (and into your arms ayeeee)

Time to stfu again, see you in part 3 (yippyyyyy)

[sillyandquest]

Mutant Mashup post this time around, it's been a while 🎉🎉🎉

Anyway, I've been thinking about the missing sisters from rottmnt. Technically they'd also exist in the Au and I have some headcanons for why they'd be older than the boys. Includes a LOT of thoughts about what their inclusion means for the rest of the Au

Lots of words below the cut, but also some Mutant Mashup doodles as a reward for all the reading

Draxum is a scientist, so that would mean that he probably had some experiments with the ooze before the Hamato's. Probably meant to test if it was safe or not. Maybe he got his hands on some left over DNA from Lou or Yoshi and afterwards just decided that it was better to have the actual humans present.

However! If Draxum did mutate the girls before the boys, then how did Frida end up with Big Mama? How did the other sister (she never got a name but was most likely named after a female artist) end up in a whole nother dimension? Draxum doesn't seem like the kind of character to just give away his experiments, or view them as just weapons (that's also not the kind of character I want him to be in this Au). He may not be the best person, but he does genuinely care about Yokai and wants the best for them. That would extend to his creations, especially if they were indeed animals before they became mutants.

So what happened to the girls? Since they were likely mutated before the Hamato's entered the picture, Draxum likely kept them while they were still small. Of course, tiny turtle tots getting into trouble is nothing new. Maybe they got into some portal shenanigans, leaving the unnamed sister to be whisked away into another dimension while leaving Frida in the streets of the hidden city to be found by Big Mama.

It's also possible that the girls were separated during Lou and Yoshi's escape. There was a lot of noise and panic that would have scared both girls into doing everything they could to escape.

Either outcome leads to some great story potential for Frida and the lost sister. Definitely leaving some unresolved trauma for Frida and would explain her serious yet subservient personality. She doesn't want what happened to her sister happen again, but doesn't trust herself to make her own decisions for fear of it happening again. When she finally gets to know the Hamato's properly and comes to trust them, Frida spills the beans and tells them about their long lost sister. What she was like as a child and how Frida sent her away, it was an accident of course, but Frida still holds a large amount of guilt and self loathing. I'm debating whether Frida should be the older of the two because of this story line.

The missing sister's name is also up for debate but it was confirmed that she was named after a female artist like Frida was. Artemisia, Angelica, and Sofonisba are some of my picks but I'm leaning towards Sofonisba for the sole reason of the woman being from the Italian Renaissance. Lou would've known that the Renaissance era was Yoshi's favorite period in art and would've picked a name from there to honor Yoshi. I'll call her Sofonisba or just Sofo, it's a hassle typing "the unnamed/missing sister" all the time. The other names are still great picks though.

So, Sofonisba was stuck in another dimension and was described as "kooky" by the writers, not a lot to work with but it's what we got. Going off Frida's mistake, Sofo probably doesn't have a lot of memories of her childhood beyond Frida and maybe small snippets of Draxum. She has gotten comfortable in the dimension she lives in, even if it's a little dangerous. I don't wanna say that she got stuck in Dimension X, but that would be just the kinda place for her to go to. That also leaves room for Sofo to relate to Mikey and Blue to an extent. All three of them were transported to another dimension and had to deal with foreign entities trying to kill them constantly. Unfortunately, with the time dilation, that wouldn't be possible. Sofo would likely outlive the family if they did manage to figure out she was stuck in Dimension X.

Maybe instead of Dimension X, she got sent to a very similar one? We could also get rid of the time dilation in Dimension X entirely. It kinda removes the Savage Mikey episode from TMNT 2012, and the baggage of implications that comes with that, but that could lead into a different story beat. Reminding Vin, Zio and Nico that Simon IS capable on his own and doesn't need to be babied or treated like a responsibility. That might spark some resentment from their cousins, specifically Purple and Orange, who are also treated as more delicate to varying degrees.

Anyway, back to Sofo. I'm unsure of what to do with her character, but I do have an idea. Taking a bit of inspiration from Puss and Boots for this one, what if she was a thrill seeker at heart? She loves adventure, is a good fighter, and comes off as a little cocky sometimes. But underneath all that, one thing remains true, Sofonisba is incredibly lonely. She never had anyone around that was in her corner growing up. All she had was the memories of a little turtle she called her sister. Sofo never really had anywhere she felt safe enough to consider home. She didn't have a family before. So when she meets the Hamato's, she's thrown for a loop.

Sofo comes off as "kooky" partly because she isn't used to living in the dimension she originally came from, but also because she doesn't know how to be part of a family. She's not used to having people care for her or having a place specifically for her. She masks a lot of her trauma because she doesn't trust the turtles quite yet, even though she desperately wants to. Years of living in isolation leads to Sofo being overtly self reliant and unwilling to receive help from others, yet still craving companionship.

That leaves her in a situation similar to DaVinci and Red, who are both terrible at asking for help.

There's more to talk about with these girls. I didn't even cover my thoughts about the other experiments Draxum could have had. More long lost family? Possibly. But! That's enough for now, I'll type more ideas when I get my thoughts together.

Enjoy some doodles!

[seriously-mike]

Welcome to the third installment of "Artists Through The AIs": this time, we're going way back to the classics with a certain young witch dressed up as a certain sorceress.

Due to odd behavior of the data model (the freshly updated Dreamshaper V7), I had to fiddle with the prompt. Namely, if emphasis was put on the "painting" part, the images were sprouting easels and/or heavy gilded frames every-goddamn-where, even with CLIP skip set at 2 instead of the usual 1. So "painting" was left at 1.0 weight, while "by X" was emphasised to 1.2. Other than that, the prompt is "embedding:kieshi3v with long (red hair):1.2, wearing long red medieval dress with corset, medieval castle exterior background, dramatic lighting, detailed, high definition", and the seed is 254762234227837. Negative prompt includes "((easel)), ((frame)), ((interior)), red eyes" in addition to my usual heavily magical list. So here we go.

Leonardo da Vinci - I'm having second thoughts about the background common for several of the renders, but there's enough distinction between them to highlight Leonardo's style. The main focus is skin shading and curly hair, as seen in Leonardo's depictions of Virgin Mary.

Caravaggio - deceptively similar to the previous one, but with a noticeable distinction: the deeper shadows and higher contrast, creating a very Caravaggian chiaroscuro.

Titian - asking for "Titian" and "Tiziano" generated very similar takes in a lamp-lit corridor with way too modern look and pretty much no similarity to the paintings you can view online.

It also appears that AI omits the paint and canvas textures from Renaissance paintings, something it didn't do with the impressionists previously. This is most probably due to less emphasis on the "painting" part, as I'm going to show you in another post. Moving most of the description two-three tokens down apparently also creates a new baseline with a window or portal (either fitted with a door or not) instead of an overcast outside shot.

Albrecht Durer - whether you spell him with an umlaut or not, the outcome is a generic take with a portal in the background. The umlaut just removes the door and gives Sabrina a handbag.

Lucas Cranach the Younger - what we have here is a miscommunication. If you ask for the art of Lucas Cranach, sure as shit you'll get your character in a black beret popularized by the elder one's paintings of German VIPs. However, the diametrically different interior characteristic of Renaissance painting and less pronounced effect of the embedded likeness of Kiernan Shipka makes me think that, once again, we're dealing with a "So you have heard of me" behavior.

Hans Holbein the Younger - once again, something's way off here. We have a similar Renaissance interior background with some traces of brushwork, less pronounced embedding and some odd lace bonnet, but nothing that would link the work to either of the two Holbeins. I think that we're dealing with the side effect of the prompt being knocked two further tokens down, but I'm not sure. It goes too far, particularly if you consider that differences between other images are much less pronounced.

Rembrandt - as in the case of Caravaggio, the distinct part of this one is the chiaroscuro. There's also more pronounced detailing of the collar and shoulders of the dress, possibly inspired by the outfits in "The Anatomy Lesson of dr Tulp", "Syndics of the Drapers' Guild" and "The Night Watch".

Vermeer - there's no doubt. This is Vermeer. Two different seeds and I got two very similar mashups of "The Girl Reading A Letter", "The Girl With Pearl Earring" and "The Milkmaid". This goes so far against the prompt that we're dealing with a similar case to Simon Stalenhag from the first test.

Peter Paul Rubens - this one itches my brain something fierce. While scrolling through the renders, this one and four neighboring ones share the exact same position of white shift and a dark underbust corset, meaning they're merely slight variations on a baseline, but I swear that I've seen a similar painting of a long-haired man in a black doublet with frilly white collar and sleeves. Was that a Rubens? I have no idea (it wasn't Hals' "The Laughing Cavalier", though).

Diego Velazquez - this one is trying to do something. Once again, we have a portal in the background, but the character's position is slightly off the baseline and the palette is slightly muted.

Murillo - way too generic. The background is curiously off, as it's not a portal but a vaulted ceiling supported by pillars, but the pose is shared by four other renders, including the Rubens one, meaning it's sticking to the baseline fairly closely.

Francisco Goya - this is an odd one. It has nothing to do with Goya's works, but still, the pose is off the baseline, the background features brushwork and an abrupt switch from a near wall to a wider expanse with bizarre levitating architecture. I have no idea what's going on with it.

Eugene Delacroix - it's generic. Sure, the background features an open street with some people as opposed to the typical portal and lamp or chandelier, but the pose and outfit are kinda samey. What, no attempt to go anywhere near "Liberty Leading The People"?!

Jacques-Louis David - another generic one. I mean, what the fuck. If you look at David's corpus of works on Wikipedia, this could have been done entirely differently, yet we have an underbust corset, a portal and a light source in the background.

Thomas Gainsborough - finally something. Discernible brushwork, unusual contrast and lighting, and - as a bonus - the Strawberry Hill Gothic castle in the background make this one distinctive and consistent without plowing straight into obnoxious homage slash blatant plagiarism territory.