#definitely less shading and contrast

[networked-wild]

a thing for @randomhuman-bean’s DTIYS

original v

[socially-awkward-chocobo]

Happy Kagepro Day!!!

[xitsensunmoon]

HOW TO GLAZE YOUR WORK WITHOUT A GOOD PC(or on mobile)/TIPS TO MAKE IT LESS VISIBLE

Glaze your work online on:

Cara app. It requires you to sign up but it is actually a good place for your portfolio. Glazing takes 3 minutes per image and doesn't require anything but an internet connection compared to 20-30 minutes if your pc doesn't have a good graphic card. There IS a daily limit of 9 pictures tho. Glazed art will be sent to you after it's done, by email. It took me 30 minutes to glaze 9 images on a default setting. Cara app is also a space SPECIFICALLY for human artists and the team does everything in their power to ensure it stays that way.

WebGlaze. This one is a little bit more complicated, as you will need to get approval from the Glaze team themselves, to ensure you're not another AI tech bro(which, go fuck yourself if you are). You can do it through their twitter, through the same Cara app(the easiest way) or send them an email(takes the longest). For more details read on their website.

Unfortunately there are no ways that I know of to use Nightshade YET, as it's quite new. Cara.app definitely works on implementing it into their posting system tho!

Now for the tips to make it less visible(the examples contain only nightshade's rendering, sorry for that!):

Heavy textures. My biggest tip by far. Noise, textured brushes or just an overlay layer, everything works well. Preferably, choose the ones that are "crispy" and aren't blurred. It won't really help to hide rough edges of glaze/nightshade if you blur it. You can use more traditional textures too, like watercolor, canvas, paper etc. Play with it.

Colour variety. Some brushes and settings allow you to change the colour you use just slightly with every stroke you make(colour jitter I believe?). If you dislike the process of it while drawing, you can clip a new layer to your colour art and just add it on top. Saves from the "rainbow-y" texture that glaze/nightshade overlays.

Gradients(in combination with textures work very well). Glaze/nightshade is more visible on low contrast/very light/very dark artworks. Try implementing a simple routine of adding more contrast to your art, even to the doodles. Just adding a neutral-coloured bg with a darker textured gradient already is going to look better than just plain, sterile digital colour.

And finally, if you dislike how glaze did the job, just try to glaze/shade it again. Sometimes it's more visible, sometimes it's more subtle, it's just luck. Try again, compare, and choose the one you like the most. REMEMBER TO GLAZE/SHADE AFTER YOU MADE ALL THE CHANGES, NOT BEFORE!!

If you have any more info feel free to add to this post!!

[headspace-hotel]

The USAmerican imagination cannot consider land that is multi-purpose.

A corn field is Corn, an endless monoculture, and all other plants must be eliminated. A residential area is Houses, and absolutely MUST NOT!!! have vegetables or fruits or native plant gardens or small livestock. A drainage ditch is only a drainage ditch, and cannot harbor Sedges and native wetland plants, A sports field is for A Sport, and let no one think of doing any other event on that field, shops and storefronts must have their own special part of town that everybody has to drive to, which requires parking lots...and God forbid we put solar panels on roofs or above parking lots or anywhere they can serve an extra purpose of providing shade, instead of using a large tract of perfectly fine land as a "solar farm."

Numerous examples. But it is the most annoying with agriculture. The people who crunch all the numbers about sustainability, have calculated that a certain percentage of Earth's land is "Used up" by agriculture, which is troubling because that leaves less "room" for "Wilderness." It is a big challenge, they say, to feed Earth's humans without destroying more ecosystems.

Fools! Agriculture is an ecosystem—if you respect the ways of the plants, instead of creating monoculture fields by killing everything that moves and almost everything that doesn't. Most humans throughout history, and many humans today, sustain themselves using a mixture of foraging and agriculture, and the two are not entirely different things, because all human lifestyles change the ecosystem, and the inhabitants of the ecosystem always change themselves in response.

Even if you are a hunter-gatherer that steps very lightly in the forest and gathers a few berries and leaves here and there, you are being an animal and affecting all other parts of the ecosystem. By walking, breathing, eating, pooping, drinking, climbing, singing, talking, all of those things affect the ecosystem. If you gather leaves to sleep on, that affects the ecosystem...if you pile up waste, that affects the ecosystem...if you break a tree branch, that affects the ecosystem...if you start a fire, if you create a small shelter, if you cut a path, that DEFINITELY affects the ecosystem.

This idea, that human activity destroys the ecosystem and replaces it with something Else, something Not an ecosystem, is so silly. "But you just said that even the earliest most technologically simple human societies altered their environment!"

Yes, I did. Because we believe that "pre-agricultural" humans could have no effect on their "wilderness" environment, we ALSO believe another false idea: That when humans affect an environment, they destroy "Wilderness" and change it to something else, like Agricultural Land, that can never have biodiversity and never benefit many life forms.

I think it is the European idea of agriculture that it always involves people settling down and relying on a few special plants that are domesticated intentionally and grown in specially dedicated fields. After all, this idea of an agricultural lifestyle, is in contrast with the "hunter-gatherer" lifestyle, which is assumed to be what humans do before they "figure out" agriculture. The European mind imagines "pre-agricultural" folks ignorantly bumbling about, thinking plants and animals conveniently pop out of nothing for their benefit.

Bullshit! I shake my head in disappointment when I see websites describing Native Americans using wild plants as if those plants just-so-happened to grow, when those same wild plants just-so-happen to thrive only in environments disturbed by humans in some way, and just-so-happen to have declined steeply since colonization, and just-so-happen to be nonexistent in unspoiled "Wilderness" locations, and (often) just-so-happen to have an incredibly wide range where they either once were or are incredibly common, making it very...fortunate that they just-so-happen to have a wide range of uses including food, medicines, and materials for clothing and technology.

Accidentally of course, without any human impact from the humans that were impacting everything. /s

"But if it wasn't an accident, how did it happen?" Here is how to understand this idea: Look at the weeds! The weeds will teach you.

Look at the plants you always see growing without being planted around human buildings and roads, and learn their history. Often you will learn that these plants have many marvelous properties, and have actually been used by humans for thousands of years.

In fact, some of the most powerful and difficult to control weeds, were once actually some of the most essential and important plants for human civilizations to depend on. The dreaded Kudzu, in its home in East Asia, was one of the main plants used for clothing for over 6,000 years, and not only that, it has been cultivated for food and medicine for millennia. You can make everything from paper to noodles out of Kudzu! And Amaranth, the most expensive agricultural weed in all the USA, produces edible and healthy grains as well as several harvests of greens per growing season, and several species of the genus have been fully domesticated and formed a staple crop of Mesoamerica.

Meanwhile...some people have come up with this neat "new" idea called Polyculture, which is where you plant a field with two crops at once and somehow get better yields from both of them. WITCHCRAFT! Unrelatedly, there are other ideas like "Cover Crops" and "Agroforestry" that for some reason have the same beneficial effect.

Wow...It turns out, sterilizing the whole environment of every plant except one crop...isn't actually a good way to do agriculture in many places in the world.

Just think about it from an energy point of view...

We have some places used for "Agriculture," where we wring the land as violently as possible to squeeze green vegetation from light energy.

And we have other places for Other uses, where we spend massive amounts of fossil fuels mowing, chopping, poisoning and trimming to STOP the land from producing its incredible bounty of green vegetation.

And in the agricultural fields, we spend even MORE resources killing the unwanted plants that grow spontaneously

This system is hemorrhaging inefficiency at both ends. It simply isn't a one-to-one conversion of land and fossil fuels to food energy. The energy expenditure of agriculture is mostly going into organizing the vegetation's energy into the shape and configuration we want, not the food itself.

In the Americas, indigenous agricultural systems involve using the plants that exist in the environment to construct an ecosystem that both functions as an ecosystem and provides humans with food, clothing, and other important things. This is the most advanced way.

Most of our successful weeds are edible and useful. A weed is simply a plant that is symbiotic with humans. My hypothesis of plant domestication is that it was initiated by the plants, which became adapted to human environments, and humans bred them to be better crops in response. Symbiosis.

Humans did not pick out a few plants special to intensively domesticate out of an array of equally wild plants, instead they just ate, selected, and bred the plants that were best adapted to live near human civilization. That is my guess about how it happened.

Just think about it. Why would you try to domesticate teosinte (Maize ancestor?) It sucks. Domesticated plants in their wild form are usually like "Why would you put hundreds of years of effort into cultivating this?" Personally I think it's because the plant grew around humans and humans ate and used it a lot because it was abundant. So we co-evolved with the plant.

Supporting this hypothesis, there are many crop plants that mutated and evolved back into weeds, like "weedy" rice, "weedy" teosinte, and "weedy" radishes. Also weeds develop similar adaptations to crop plants to survive in the agricultural environment.

Consider Kudzu. Everyone in the USA knows it as an invasive weed, but since ancient times in China, it was a crop that provided people with fabric from its bast fibers, food from its enormous starchy roots, and many medicinal and other uses. Kudzu is not evil, it simply has a symbiotic relationship with humans, and just as any other species might serve as a biological control, the main biological control of kudzu in nature is the human species.

Think of the vast fields and mountain sides of the South swallowed by thick mats of Kudzu covering lumps that used to be trees. Think of the people toiling away to clear the Kudzu, while wearing clothes made of cotton that was grown in a faraway place using insecticides and depleting fresh water, using energy from their bodies that came from crops grown in fields far away.

Now imagine people working to harvest the Kudzu, to cut the new vines and dig up the starchy roots and use the plant the way it is used by the people who know its ways. Imagine the people using the starch from the Kudzu root to make flour and noodles and sweet confections. Imagine workers processing the vines into thread which is woven into fabric. The hillsides and fields flourish with plants that used to be suffocated, and hillsides and fields in faraway places also flourish with their own plants, instead of being made to grow cotton and crops to provide for the needs the Kudzu provides for.

Imagine the future where we accept our symbiotic relationship with the plants!

[patheticbatman]

I haven't seen any posts about this yet but l've seen some fan art that makes me feel this needs to be said:

Don't forget Leah Sava Jeffries has darker skin when making Annabeth Chase fan art!

She is much closer to Lupita Nyong'o than Zoe Kravitz when it comes to shading, reflection, and complementary color usage :).

Lighting for dark skin is different on light skin. Light skin gets changed by lighting, and dark skin reflects the lighting. Below is a lovely shot of Nyong'o's character from Wakanda Forever in mourning. The filmmakers emphasize the umber qualities of her skin in contrast to the funereal white and (arguably harsh) light across her shoulder below.

Try to pick spots that aren't directly in or near the light, and try mixing 3 or more! You can put it into a color mixer online, or even color pick, lower the opacity, and lay the shades over each other until you find one that fits. And of course, the more 'realistic' you want to go with shading and lighting, the more shades you're going to want to be able to explore vivaciously :D.

Let's take a look at the same 3 beautiful actresses I mentioned at the beginning, with a bad color picked area and a better-ish color picked area. (Please keep in mind, these are not perfect comparisons, as I was not able to find pictures of all 3 actresses under the same kind of lighting.)

Kravitz's has a clear difference between the two, but they aren't too far apart, in comparison to Nyong’o’s and Jeffries’s. Note the dullness in the poorly picked shades as opposed to the better ones. Also keep in mind that while Kravitz has a rosy undertone (at least in that picture - it’s from The Batman, which has stylized coloring) Nyong’o has a slight cool undertone (I can’t pin down quite what, but the picture is definitely not stylized like Kravitz’s).

Jeffries runs more ochre or russet, but neither of those are pink. They are more red than terracotta or umber, but to call Jeffries’s face rosy would be wrong. Err more towards the golden when drawing her.

^^saved an image from a writing tutorial long ago, but can’t seem to find it. If someone recognizes it, I’ll link it. EDIT: it’s from this post. Thanks @autumnrowancollector ! <3

And also, the darker skin gets, the less likely warm undertones are going to appear. Don't be afraid to use blue or purple or even green on occasion!

Additionally, cool lighting on dark skin is always a win imo.

(I was going to use that picture of Jeffries as Annabeth by the lightning bolt, but then I realized the lighting on her face doesn’t quite match up with where it should hit from that angle, and I realized they kind of just turned everything bluer, so screenshot time!)

(Also if you want another really great live action example, check out anything Aldis Hodge is in, like Leverage and Black Adam)(and of course there’s Spiderverse <3 but I want to post pictures of Hodge)

Now, to here’s a list of more experienced people’s advice:

Black facial features & hair

Shading digitally for a (somewhat) monotone Black character

Stylistic choices and places to start looking for inspiration (besides a search engine).

Coloring Black people’s lips

A better coloration tutorial

Also a nice tutorial for Indigenous skin tones, just in case yall want to draw Piper or use this information for other dark skinned characters :).

EDIT: Some actresses who are closer in skintone to use for Annabeth, provided by the lovely @blackfemmecharacterdependency ! If you can’t find a reference for Jeffries in a specific lighting, maybe check out these ladies’ pictures! It’s a reblog, so scroll down.

TLDR: Don’t make Annabeth pink and pale, make her dark and golden.

[conkreetmonkey]

trick or treat

You reach out and knock on the rusty old bulkhead, yelling "trick or treat!" as you do.

It produces a hollow, resounding clang that echoes around you, a vibration you feel in your bones.

Wait, where exactly are you? How did you get here?

Looking around, you find yourself in what could only be described as a "facility." You seem to be at the bottom of a rusted metal stairwell you have no memory of descending. The walls are of a rough, filthy concrete, skirted in decaying institutional white tile up to about your shoulders. The floor is of much worse-off dark green tile, accented with the occasional aquamarine one.

Everything is covered in a layer of dry dirt, building up in the corners and missing tiles, save for where the criss-crossing pipes snaking up and down the walls and ceiling drip foul water from corroded fittings, supporting pockets of green algae and moss, and the occasional unnatural-looking mushroom. A completely rusted drainage grate sits in the middle of the room, revealing only darkness beneath.

The air is stale and musty, with an acrid chemical tinge to it. Motes of dust hang languidly in the air, illuminated by buzzing, half-dead flourescent tubes. Wait, this place looks totally abandoned, why is there still electricity? You have no clue what purpose this area could possibly have served. There isn't even an indication of what floor you're on, let alone who built this place and for what.

The door in front of you is all there is down here, save for a few strewn-about pieces of trash, and some ominous neon yellow barrels in the far corner. You don't even want to know.

The door is odd, clearly old and abandoned, yet at the same time bearing evidence of regular use. The valve that presumably opens it is well worn, darkened white paint rubbing away to reveal fresh, unrusted steel. One of the hinges looks newly installed, its gleaming metal surface starkly contrasting its dull surroundings. Shoeprints not matching your own cover the dusty floor, most saturated at the base of the door.

Most damning of all, though, is the laminated piece of printer paper taped to it, reading "NO SOLICITORS" in calibri bold. Somebody definitely lives here, in the rotting guts of some Soviet-ass brutalist hellhole, and you just knocked on their door and yelled "trick or treat!" Uh oh.

As if on cue, the moment you think this, the valve begins to turn with a mechanical squeak, and the bulkhead opens outwards just a sliver, a seemingly gloved hand curling around the edge as somebody peeks out a-- what.

"Ah! I was starting to think there wouldn't be any of you this year!" a nasally male voice says as the door is heftily shoved all the way open, forcing you to take a step back.

Standing before you is some sort of freak.

The man(?) before you is slightly above-average in height. His baggy avocado green t-shirt obscures his midsection, as do his maroon pants, but based purely on the way they hang off his form and the look of his hands and forearms, you subconciously clock him as scrawny to skinnyfat in build, clearly no athlete. His worn black and white sneakers peek out from under the cuffs of his too-big pants, whatever's holding them up obscured by his even more ill-fitting shirt. Both seem to be scavenged from scraps, repaired over and over again with sloppy hand stiching and the odd strip of duct tape.

This is where the normal aspects of his appearance abruptly end.

His hands were never gloved, it turns out; rather, they, along with the rest of him, is a deep, unnaturally saturated bondi blue, seemingly the actual colour of his skin. Even his battered fingernails are a tealish cyan, his lips and lower eyelids fading to a darker, comparatively less ostentatious shade of catalina blue.

A thick, wild mop of taffy pink hair hangs down to his shoulderblades, and would likely reach down to his mid back without its fluffy, springy texture. It looks coarse and unpleasant, but at least not greasy.

A pair of inhuman eyes stare excitedly into yours, neon yellow scleras clashing against red-40 irises in tones typically reserved for candy or tropical fish. They seem far brighter than they should be in this light, and his pupils glint in the industrial gloom like those of a raccoon or similar nocturnal garbage animal. His boyish face sports a five o' clock shadow of pink facial hair, implying it's his natural hair colour, which wouldn't be too surprising considering the rest of him.

He overall looks rather scruffy, yet at the same time clearly at least somewhat takes care of himself. His stubbly face and tangled hair bring up imagery of some sort of basement gremlin, and your surroundings do little to contest this. He smells like sour fruit gummies an-- Wait, what's that on his lip?

Some sort of ooze is trailing from his mouth, luminescent neon green, looking like the liquid inside of a green glowstick. Before you can get too good of a look at it, he licks it up. Then he speaks.

"Here ya go, little guy! A li'l snacky-snack for ya!" he says, plopping something cylindrical and heavy into a plastic bag you just now realize you've been holding. The blue man, despite looking like somebody rubbed magnets on a TV screen tuned to a documentary about homelessness, clearly means you no harm, even if his demeanour is a little eccentric, his scent a little unusual. Before you can thank him, the door slams shut with a "Happy Halloween!" and the squeak of the valve. You're alone down here once again. You look into your bag and remove a strange object:

Huh, weird. It seems metallic, and your hand tingles against its lukewarm surface. What kind of candy is this? Wait, is it even Halloween?

You look around yourself, weighing your options. You don't want to disturb the blue man, him having been so kind as to give you this... whatever it is. It's not like there's anything else to do down here.

With no other directions avaliable to walk in, you start up the rusty industrial stairs, your strange gift sitting heavily in the bottom of your bag.

[valentine-cafe]

could i ask for takara with kitsune darling? reader is clearly less into causing mischief, but so, so very excited to be with a fellow fox!!

˖⁺. “ foxes in love ” : 

﹙ kitsune partner x gn kitsune reader ﹚.𖹭 ݁

. . . verse 9948e takara x gn reader !! 🍓 : ﹙ kitsune  ˖ mercenary character ﹚

some headcanons of takara with a kitsune lover!

﹙ cws ﹚: none !  | wc : 0.4k 

﹙ receipts ﹚: takara with a kitsune lover is my FAVOURITE hc 

꒰  other treats : guidelines ˖ m.list ˖ characters ˖ our lore  ꒱

admittedly, takara was a bit cautious about this relationship when she first entered it. she’s had a kitsune lover in the past — and it didn’t end too well. your general personality however, did calm him down quite a bit. he loved you after all, but sometimes they found themselves nervous at the notion of it all. you made sure to tear down all of their fears with your love and your calm care for them.

the fact that you were so excited to be with a fellow fox - takara almost felt bad for comparing you to the ghost of their path. you were just so sweet! sure you weren’t as chaotic as she was. but the contrast to his general personality was certainly appreciated.

you could calm her down when she was being a bit too much. furthermore - you helped to ease that darker side of their mind. what surprised takara the most was the fact that you were able to decipher her own mind. pull her out of it and show her that she was stronger than her own nature and those urges that plagued her.

she loves having late night walks with you through the spirit realm. linking your tails up as you lead them through to different stalls and vendors. trying out new foods with them ; their favourite pass time. the both of you look like a match made in the divine realms.

one of his favourite things is burying his face into your lap while you play with his hair and ears. they either fall asleep or try to cause mischief by nipping at you tummy or the tops of your thighs. until you give them a little bap and rake your claws through her hair gently. she always lets out her signature fox laugh and pokes the tip of her tongue through her canines at you.

they enjoy merging both of your fox fires. curious of the different magics and what illusions they might manifest. it’s another pass time they enjoy with you whilst the two of you sit at the roof of his treehouse in the middle of the night.

takara definitely tries pulling you into all sorts of mischief. whether it be getting into trouble with them in the society of shades of causing chaos in the spirit realm. they like seeing how far they can push you ( without crossing your boundaries of course ). most of the time - you manage to pull them out of all the shit they try to stir. with promises of treats and sitting along the ledge of his treehouse to watch the forests.

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[starrysharks]

OK heres zeno coloring tutorial 2.0 !!!! i'm gonna do it kind of in chapters i guess?

chapter 1: choosing base colors

when i'm choosing base colors i always pick everything based on a specific off-white! my 'default' off-white is this kind of very light cyan color but i change it regularly based on character designs/environment/lighting whatever,, examples here!

for callie in this piece, i based everything off of this pinkish color! her skin tone, tentacles, outfit etc are all chosen to harmonise/contrast with the pink color

and with this piece, i used a slightly darker blueish color as they're in space but there's still a lot of light... and the lighter colors in the background (the explosion) make a sense of depth i guess? i used that blue color and chose similar cool colors to harmonise with it!

so i more or less base the tone of the colors in the piece off the off-white! warm off-white = warmer colors (like the nova valentine's day art) and cold off white = cooler colors (like the explosion nova and paro art). but i switch up this formula often !!

chapter 2: coloring specific things

here i'll go over some specific textures and stuff like skin and hair ... skin first !!

for skin, i like to use a variety of tones! there are different ways to draw cooler and warmer skintones that other people have gone over way better than i have but basically for skin i use this part of the color wheel and pick the darker tones of oranges/reds/pinks etc. (for darker skintones, i go to the middle of the color square thingy, and for lighter tones, i usually slide down the upper-right side)

when it comes to shading skintones, it's pretty straightforward, just a darkish-purple and a pinkish color on 100% multiply, and i always add a little shadow on the nose and blush becuz i think it's cute

(also i like to add reflective spots on darker skin tones sometimes because 1. darker skin tones reflect in real life and 2. it's fun)

next up is hair... this is very specific to my artstyle but i like to add 3-6 long oval line thingies to the hair to mimic reflection ! it looks cool, it's a good way to show off different colors in the design and i like to switch it up sometimes based on a character's personality!! (like how the frye pic above has a lighting bolt shaped hair thing, or how my teto design has a wing shaped hair thing to mimic her wings in her chimera form!) (note: it doesn't always need to be lighter than the actually hair color and it usually isn't)

for other materials like metal, screens, etc etc... i just add random X marks lol... and reflections!!!

(also, just a general thing, but adding little saturated lines to shading really adds depth and color imo!!)

i would put more tips with refs but tumbles only allows 10 images per post ;w; so i will simply close off by saying don't be afraid to add overlays and filters to your art!! overlays can really help harmonise colors and filters like brightness and contrast can help colors pop... try not to completely rely on them for color choice tho!!

and that's basically it !!! this is not a definitive 'how to draw/color' post... i am not a color theorist... i just wanted to show people how i choose colors cuz a lot of people say they like my color choices! honestly i don't know much myself but i hope that this and the philosophy of 'do what looks good' will help you all o_ob thank you and goodbye

[machineheraldbabe]

my arcane hot takes/predictions

i believe all of these things but! it's all in good fun. there isn't a character i genuinely dislike; every one serves their purpose, their motivations are fully realized, and every dilemma they endure/represent is morally complex and super fascinating!!

i love reading/talking about this show :)

If we had to nominate a single character as the show's villain in s1 (rather than the enforcers as a unit, or silco's shimmer operation, etc.), it would be marcus. if he hadn't taken silco's blood money, none of this would have happened.

jayce is "worse" than viktor in season 1 morally; "worse" comes with a lot of weight, ofc. i think season 1 follows jayce's story especially closely, from starry-eyed genius, to political initiate, to chess-master-in-training. the narrative indulges and displays his darkest traits and contrasts his narrative of moral emptiness with viktor's story of lonesome self-sacrifice. this is why i think it's VERY interesting that jayce allows viktor to break the news about his deal with silco for an independent undercity.

BUT! viktor will completely flip this dynamic next season, and viktor fans like myself will find ourselves in jayce's shoes! i can't wait for this!

relatedly, i am eager for a complete villain arc for viktor. it's mostly agreed upon that his story is incredibly sympathetic, but i'm hoping that the writers push him a few steps too far. i don't want to be comfortable - i want to watch a true degradation of morals to complicate what it means to redeem or condemn someone with such a tragic past. it'll blend very nicely with our initial impressions of vi's s2 story.

jinx is the main character of arcane and i love that for her.

vi's alleged enforcer arc makes Perfect sense, especially when contrasted with her dialogue with vander in act 1: "i grew up thinking that i am less than them." she can't be less than them if she's one of them.

mel hates viktor and was worried that jayce prioritized his relationship with viktor too highly. this comes from the scene where jayce confides in her that viktor is dying and her first remark is: "i didn't know you were so close." not long after, she silently belittles viktor when convincing jayce that the hextech weapons are a necessity by looking down upon him and refusing to consult him. i also want to be So Clear that i adore her character and that this is NOT a criticism; both scenes are phenomenal and are integral into their tripartite dynamic.

caitlyn was way out of pocket for her aggression in ep 9 and it definitely revealed her character's darkest tendencies that i think we'll see more of in s2.

viktor will be the sleeper-agent for s2. i know i'm projecting here but think about it - even visually, he has his own shade of purple amidst shimmer's fuchsia and hextech's blue. much like how powder's stealing was the initial conflict in s1, i think viktor has the same catalyst potential.

the worst things s2 could do are a) killing off a champion too early (save the deaths for ep8/9!) and b) giving viktor a love interest.

[melonisopod]

Limbus Heathcliff definitely is meant to have shades of Hareton in him. Between how often he is considered crude and stupid (the OG Heathcliff was more of an evil genius lol) and his character being about breaking the endless cycle of abuse that plagued him through the multiverse this Heathcliff is clearly more Hareton-like. Bonus points for the ways he compares and contrasts Hindley.

I don’t think being more Hareton-like makes him any less “authentically” Heathcliff, because Hareton was essentially Heathcliff 2, with the next generation of kids being a redux/repeating/breaking of the cycle that started in Part 1. Given that Erlking is clearly meant to embody Book!Heathcliff more it makes sense that “our” Heathcliff is more Hareton.

He is definitely more heroic than his book self but still feels faithful to the book.

[queercoshon]

So this next story I'll be posting in 2 parts. The second part will definitely be racier. Based very loosely on a prompt given by @bigtobiggest Sorry if it's not exactly what you were looking for! The story ran away from me lol.

Without further ado, I present

A Kept Play Thing Pt. 1

CW: teasing/name calling, intox

Life has been a blur since you moved in with your girlfriend. It had been at least a few months, but less than a year of living with Olivia. However, you aren't exactly sure how much time has passed.

You remember moving in. You remember feeling exhausted hauling all those boxes in, and your girlfriend telling you to sit and rest. You remember Olivia giggling, but still concerned, as you huffed and puffed, trying to help lift the new couch up the few front steps. You remember feeling like your little pot belly was getting in the way. You remember finally collapsing on the couch and the celebration that followed.

Everything was moved in, but not unboxed and certainly not organized. Olivia had lived in the house for a few years already, so there were kitchen utensils, but she claimed exhaustion as well and put in an order to your favourite pizza place.

While waiting for it to arrive, she grabbed a box of craft ciders from the fridge and plopped them on the floor between you. She handed you a cherry one, which you chugged back gratefully. God, you were thirsty after all that exercise. You let out a belch, and she smirked and patted your belly, shaking loose a few more burps. She handed you another can while she went and got your housewarming present; a brand new gorgeous bong. It was different shades of blue and looked almost like stained glass. By the time she had ground the flower and held it to your mouth, the second cider was gone.

A few bong rips and you were soaring, and so hungry. By the time the pizza arrived, you'd consumed half a bag of oreos and another 2 ciders to deal with your cottonmouth.

Olivia handed you your large pizza and kissed your forehead, making you blink your eyes and smile dumbly.

"Eat up, baby. You're starving."

And you were. So you dove in, swallowing so fast and chewing so little Oliva was afraid you would choke. She kept interrupting your hoovering with the bong and endless cider sips, which you accepted every time.

She finished her personal sized pizza as you got lost in a haze, freely hiccupping, burping, and letting out little moans. Her hands fondled your belly, now sticking out of your shirt entirely.

You both knew the other person was very into this. Part of moving in together was influenced by your desire to let go, and your girlfriend's desire to blow someone up into an obese play thing. She already loved the contrast of your plush, curvy body, now just a little too big for size L clothing, up against her lithe and visibly muscular physique. She held the last piece of your pizza to your mouth, desperately eager to make you so much bigger.

You don't remember anything else from that night. You don't remember much of anything since then, really. Day blends into night and back into day for you. You wake at random times. Sometimes Olivia is home, sometimes she's not. There is always food for you, and always paired with booze and weed.

If Olivia's home, she helps you gorge by feeding you when you lose momentum, holding your chin up to take another swig when your head starts to lull, lighting your bong and countless joints, and rubbing your expanding gut to make some room and ease the ache. She makes sure your mouth is never idle. Often, you'll pass out in a drunken food coma mid-chew.

If she's out, either at work, the gym, out with friends, or shopping, she's set the expectation that everything she set out better be gone when she gets back.

You'll often crack open your eyes, and belch as you try to roll over, still drunk and/or high. But that won't stop you from reaching over to the night table and popping the tab on a beer or chugging back whatever mixed drink Olivia left for you. Your head spins as you light a joint, and even though you're still stuffed from when you previously passed out, you salivate as you look at the push cart beside you.

You're not sure, but you think the amount of food on it is growing. When you started this, she would leave enough food for 2 people plus leftovers, like an extra large pizza or stack of pancakes with bacon and sausage on the side. You would of course do as you were told and devour everything, rendering you speechless and breathless, temporarily beached in your bed or on the couch.

As the amount on the tray grew, so did you, though you were barely aware of it. You knew you were gaining weight, but you didn't register just how much and how quickly it happened. Your pot belly grew into a rounded gut, always taking up real estate on your thickened thighs. Your arms fattened up and stretched all your sleeves. Your chin quickly grew into three that shook and jiggled with every bite. Your chest sat on top of your belly, little mounds of sensitive flesh Olivia loved to play with to get you riled up. You wore just your underwear, or constantly new sweatpants and t-shirts. Olivia never sized up any of your jeans or nicer clothes. You never left the house so there was no point.

[adobe-outdesign]

Best and Worst Jelly Neopets? If this has been asked before, Apologies!

Jelly would be a hypothetical tie-in colour to Jelly World, if Jelly World existed (which it doesn't). It's kind of one of those weird niche colours that only makes sense in the context of Neopets, with there already being a huge amount of jelly items available on the site.

As for the colour itself, the designs are pretty standardized across the board—the pets are rendered to look like jelly and given a semi-transparent look, though the "flavor" (color) of the jelly can vary. Part of me wonders if more could been done with it—like, you could have pieces of fruit in there, change up markings and round off pointy fur to look more jelly-esq., have whipped cream accents, etc.—but I do appreciate the consistency, with the colors adding just enough individuality per pet.

This color is a Lab Ray exclusive (unless you count the Rainbow Fountain, which I don't). While getting Lab-exclusive colours is always a pain, it does at least make sense here given the somewhat odd nature of the colour to begin with.

This color should've been unaffected by customization, as it wasn't very dependent on poses. However, for some reason a lot of of the converted Jelly pets have less shading and transparency effects compared to the originals for reasons I can't hope to understand. There are plenty of good-looking post-customization Jelly pets out there; it's just the ones that got converted that seemed to get the short end of the stick. Thankfully, pet styles do exist.

Favorite Species:

Chomby: A tasty green lime color, the Jelly Chomby has some nice highlights to it that give it that all-important jelly texture along with a subtle bit of transparency. While the converted is fine, the UC/styled version is extra nice—the shading, highlights, and transparency are even more pronounced, which really gives it a good sense of depth. This is also helped by the fact that pre-conversion Chombies were just kind of lumpy to begin with.

Kiko: There's nothing all that special about this Jelly pet specifically I suppose, but I really like the light orange shade used here. Once again, the shading and highlights are very well done, and the transparency gives the body a really good sense of depth in areas like the arms. There's a tiny bit of tone variation in there, not enough to make it look un-jelly like but enough to give it a little bit of contrast.

Chia: You could argue with this one that it's a missed opportunity—considering all the fruity Chia colours, it definitely feels like this could've been done as a giant jello mold or something instead of just being the usual fair. That said, the rendering here is really good—subtle gradients are used along with a bit of transparency and layering at the bottom to make this thing look very jelly-like, and I love little details like the air bubbles. Only complaint is that the tongue is way too normal-looking.

Least Favorite Species:

Quiggle: I am giving this one the coveted dung award solely because it has regular non-Jelly eyes and that disturbs me. Also, while the UC/styled version has some decent enough transparency, the converted version's shading makes it look like rock-hard candy.

[siblingshuffle]

Day-017: Partner

Lore:

Dr. Light’s idea was for robots that could grow, change, and think for themselves. However, he’d had to win over the committee before he could make that dream a reality. Feeling bad after he’d told the committee that he couldn’t support Wily’s double-gear system (especially because Wily had been there to witness it), he offered that they could build the first Robot Master together.

Wily had always been better with hardware and mechanical design. It was something of his specialty, even. With his skills with hardware and Light’s skills in artificial intelligence, the two could be basically unstoppable.

Wily had initially refused - the salty man he is, he definitely interpreted Light’s gesture of goodwill as some kind of condescension. However, eventually he accepted. Light (mistakenly) took to mean he’d been forgiven. Wily would design a lot of the hardware and design, including, eventually, the prototype Megabuster and the Variable Tool System.

Dr.s Cossack and LaLinde weren’t officially on the project, though they did contribute their thoughts and ideas. When Blues’s core failed in the middle of the Military demonstration (because they built it with Blues the unarmed child in mind and forgot to compensate for the weapon attachment, and it turns out it couldn’t generate enough to power both Blues and the buster. The event damaged his core, making it more inefficient and unbalanced.), Light made sure to consult Dr. LaLinde to help him design the solar cores for Rock and Roll (she’s an environmental scientist and he figured she would probably be able to help him and Wily design a more efficient environmentally-friendly solar core.)

————————————————————————

Notes:

Their overall appearances are based on their young designs from Megaman 11. Their shirts are colored that way as a reference to their young selves from the Ruby Spears cartoon.

Wily’s hair color came from blending the shades of yellow of Piano, Bass, and Zero together (& then lightening it because 11’s Flashback Wily has LIGHT blond hair). With Light, I blended Rock, Blues, and X’s hair colors and darkened it. ✨ Contrast ✨

Light and Wily were roommates. They couldn’t exactly escape each other. After ignoring Light for a week, Wily told their shared friend group that he was getting sick of having see his "stupid, traitorous face" every the morning and afternoon and LaLinde & Cossack (he was doing his thesis at the time) individually suggested that he should try talking to Light about how he felt. He basically said "screw that!" but did take their advice to at least try to get along. It was the first crack in their friendship and he never actually forgave it.

Dysfunctional Besties <3 (/hj)

Also I think it would be kinda cute if Light was inspired on a subconscious level by Dr. Cossack talking about Kalinka & how she was growing up. She might be like 2, if she is even born yet tho. Still working out the timeline there. It’s a little fuzzy.

Blues took quite a few years to build because they had to do everything from the ground up. The Robot Masters built after him used modified versions of Blues’s base code and designs, so they took comparatively less long.

The idea was presented before the committee as just the base code, which they determined would probably work. (I assume the committee would reach out to investors or something, but I’m like the furthest thing from a roboticist so I have no idea.) By the time Light founded Light Labs and obtained military funding, he’d gotten like. parental-levels of attached. He didn’t set out to make robot children but boy did he want robot children now—

and then he made 4 that were "children" children and like a bajillion that don’t stay at Light Labs

[takami-takami]

Stray Dogs Will Crawl Home.

includes— hawks x reader. minors dni. angst (with a happy ending).

warnings— gn!reader. breakups. keigo's trauma because i can't give this man a break and he needs to heal.

For better or for worse, Keigo has always been thrust into the role of decision maker.

Sure, on the inside, his emotions pick and chew at his open wounds; but the man has driven the proverbial and literal knife into far too many backs to hesitate when he leaves you.

He can do what needs to be done. It's for your own good. You deserve more than half a man, more than the scraps of whatever is left crawling to your door after another day of putting his goals of building a peaceful society before you.

The night before he left you, stone-faced to contrast your tears and begs of 'why' on the cold of your doorstep, he lay on his side and watched you sleep. Tracing the bridge of your nose with the tip of a finger, he wondered, throat tight, what you'd think of him if you knew the truth of what he's done.

He can't bear to offer you a man who's already sold himself. You shouldn't have to shoulder the weight of his sins. He tells himself it's for the greater good, but under the cobwebs of his bed, he knows a smaller, childlike voice is telling him you deserve someone who isn't dirtied by a life counting shades of moral grey.

It aches like he's dying, sure, but that's what hero work is for, right? He can throw himself into the trenches, hour after hour, until the sun looms over the horizon and the lovebirds' chirps announce the arrival of another morning without you.

For what everyone in the media says about him being a 'golden boy', he just doesn't feel the sun without you.

His subordinates ask more than a few questions about the bags under his eyes, why his glowing smile has fizzled to a mere plastic performance. It's even easier to brush them off than it was to brush off you, to smile wider and turn the question on them— an unspoken order to fucking drop it.

But Keigo's kryptonite, the deep burn that itches under the layers of his skin, is that he's well aware of what happens after someone like you becomes single. The thought crawls under the remains of his bones, and as he perches on the highest point of the city, he makes the mistake of allowing himself to entertain it. If he wasn't weighed down under the drags of sleep deprivation, he'd curse himself for being so weak.

Deep down, he knows what happens after the weeks of digging through tubs of comfort food on the couch are over. You'll stop sobbing over the phone with your best friend. You'll probably start scheduling little dates with people who remind you less and less of him with each passing one.

You're going to move on.

Someone else's fingers will press against your skin. Someone else's quips will cause you to laugh into your sleeve, someone else will hear your shaky breaths under the cover of the night, someone else will whisper promises they can't keep.

Someone else is going to make a spouse of you.

He winces. Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he takes a single stride off the ledge and surges upwards with the beat of his wings.

He makes a note to add another shift to his schedule. Maybe two.

Are you thinking of him? If you were here, he knows you'd tell him to be open with you, to stop 'being so goddamn stubborn'. You'd tell him he deserves a break from pushing his emotions down, that you knew damn well what you signed up for when you decided to be his, and to just trust your judgement for once.

To make matters worse, you'd frame it sweet, hook the words around his heart like a taffy lasso, make it so he can't resist. You do know how much he likes it sweet.

It picks at the anger thrumming in his veins. You expect him to lay himself bare? To expose the rawest parts of him, despite the commission's repeated orders not to? You expect him to be selfish?

Why does he want so badly to be selfish?

He should definitely add two more shifts to his schedule.

His phone begins to ring, startling him from his musings. He knows exactly who it is from the first note. Your favorite song plays on his speaker; the one you confessed reminds you of him, with your thumb swiping over the raised hairs on his skin. His heart hammers in the cavity of his chest, pleading to be let out.

He can't be fucking rid of you. Keigo's heart, his mind, his very bones crackle with the fire he frantically tries to put out. God, he wants to burn, wants to drag himself by his fingertips to the door of your chapel and beg you to just finish him off. He wouldn't mind serving as the ash of your incense. He'd do anything for a chance to fill your lungs.

Shit. He scrambles to dig his phone from his pocket, nearly dropping it like hot coals when he attempts to pick it up.

"H-Hey, sweetheart!" He cringes at the puppy-like excitement in his voice at the mere sound of yours. "I'm s-sor— I," he stutters for far too long before he finally gives up. Sighing into the speaker, resigned, he squeezes his eyes shut and says exactly what his mind is screaming he shouldn't.

"Can we talk?"

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Just read your eridan essay. I left a lot of words in the tags (sorry about that btw. I'm @kitkat-not-karkat, those were my tags) and I just. Holy fucking shit man.

THANK YOU FOR PUTTING IT INTO WORDS. Like. Genuinely. Thank you.

That said, do you have any ideas on why Eridan might specifically flirt as a sort of default response sometimes? (I really hope I'm not misremembering that, the fandom bastardizes the poor guy to be Cronus 2.0-)

I have my own personal speculation here, but I'd love to see your take on it!

I think it's a few things all working in tandem, and I think you definitely nailed at least most of it! I do agree that a huge part of his fixation on romance is the fact that a romantic partner is "supposed" to stick around, and Eridan is simply desperate for attention and friendship.

There are a lot of people who idealize relationships and believe that they're the "fix" or "solution" to their emotional problems, and Eridan's obsession with blackrom in particular (where the caligulas part of his trolltag comes from) definitely has shades of that. A kismesistude is an outlet for violent urges, as well as a romantic interest who ideally doesn't ghost you or leave you alone (cough Vriska cough), and one of the two concupiscent quadrants that needs to be filled so you don't get culled.

An interesting thing is constantly being implied within the comic, which is that moirallegiance is actually kind of the most important quadrant for trolls, but their culture has de-emphasized it in favor of the two breeding-related quads. After all, since adult trolls don't have to raise their own young, what Karkat calls "mating fondness" is biologically much less imperative to their species compared to the quadrant that keeps volatile trolls from going berserk and killing people.

Moirallegiance is always treated with a sort of mysticism - it's called "magical" by the narration in relation to Kanaya and Vriska's moirallegiance while that's still extant, it's the only quadrant described as "soul mates," and in contrast to "mating fondness," Karkat mentions the "mystical forces governing moirallegiance." Moirails - Equius and Nepeta being confirmed, but I genuinely believe that that's what Feferi and Sollux would have resolved to in that hypothetical golden ending - are also the quad that spends the most time together, rather than the two concupiscents. The initial description of the pale quadrant even outright says that the attraction is "instinctive." There's something magical and destiny-laden in a moirallegiance that just isn't there to the same extent in the other three quads.

But in Alternian society, kindness, guilt, and the other kinds of things you'd share with a moirail are considered weakness, especially for highbloods. When Feferi is breaking up with him, Eridan flips out the hardest at the implication that she felt the need to take care of him, insisting that he was perfectly fine. I think this is the reason, in addition to the painful breakup, that Eridan never pursues pale relationships, even though a moirail is what he desperately needs. Instead, he pursues the much more societally acceptible pitch quadrant, which can serve a similar purpose of discharging some of his pent-up aggression.

Moreover, his flirting isn't nearly as relentless as people think it is, although he IS both really stubborn AND really socially inept, which makes it difficult both to get a "no" through his brain, AND to make it stick. Another part of it is that he's operating at very little self-awareness, which means he'll often be doing something without consciously realizing it. Also, he's desperate as hell, and has basically no ability to differentiate good and bad attention. This leads to a pretty messy cocktail that basically means:

He'll hit on anyone at least once (desperation), with the exception of people it would be really weird to hit on, for example, their dancestors, who are way older than them.

If a rejection is not made excruciatingly clear, he probably won't register it as a rejection (dumbassery).

Nearly any attention he gets might be misinterpreted as flirting, even after a rejection is made (desperation, also, can't differentiate between good and bad attention).

Even after a rejection is made and he logically understands it and outright says he respects it, he might still act in a flirtatious way unconsciously (zero self awareness).

Because he will hit on anyone at least once, and is constantly making things weird and leaping to "romance?" even when there's no flirtatious intent, people kind of assume he's always hitting on them, even when he isn't.

His emotions always running at a fever pitch, and the lack of self-awareness he cultivates in order to help deal with his horrible cognitive dissonance, mean that even HE'S not sure about his real feelings. He's always feeling SOMETHING very, very intensely (it's the trauma and anxiety), which he mistakes for true caliginous hatred, or fevered flushed intent. Unlike Cronus, who's basically just trying to get some action, Eridan genuinely feels something for people, and his extreme lack of emotional intelligence means he has no idea how to parse his own tempestuous emotions. He always leaps to feverish concupiscent attraction because that's just how intense his emotions run at any given moment.

#4 is happening to Feferi and Sollux, IMO, while Rose never properly rejected him, so he still thinks they have a chance, and the same happened with Vriska when she started ghosting him post-kismesistude. #5 can be seen in his last memo with Karkat, where Karkat starts to wonder if past!Eridan was redflirting with him by inviting him to LOWAA, even as Eridan himself has no idea what the fuck Karkat is talking about.

Thing is, he DOES actually accept rejections once he gets them through his thick skull, which sets him apart from Cronus, who gets rejected, knows it, and keeps going. It's just... Eridan's messy. His emotions are all over the place, and too big for his stupid body, so he's always making things weird and intense.

I blame his lusus, personally. In a previous post, I talk about how a huge factor in his inability to identify negative attention is because he's basically being emotionally neglected. This has also led to his desperation for attention in general. When combined with the trauma from all the murdering and the pressure society puts on him to fit into a certain mold, it leads to some pretty explosive emotional ourbursts, of which his intense, insistent, and downright uncomfortable flirting is a major facet, but also, only a facet.

[beneathsilverstars]

@horatiocomehome replied

ooo how about jewelry taste. dangly earrings vs studs, do they wear bracelets, rings, flashy vs elegant, etc

mirabelle has so many cute trinkets! we know she loves accessories that go ding ding, and she'll layer a ton of necklaces so they knock against each other. sometimes they all match nicely, sometimes it's eclectic chic! she adores metal charms and carved beads, especially charmingly unusual shapes like an itty bitty fork, ducky, book, etc. as well as classics like lockets and bells! she tends to fidget with rings and lose track of them, so she avoids those. post-canon she decides to stop wearing earrings, so she turns her novelty earrings into bracelet/necklace charms! and gives her more basic studs to isabeau so he'll actually own some basics.

isabeau is all about shapes and contrast, so he likes chunky beads in materials like turquoise or jasper that have different shades marbled together, metal geometric shapes, wire-wrapped stone, and unique arrangements of elements. he likes funny noises too, but will go for one complicated necklace instead of multiple single strands. he definitely tends towards statement necklaces and earrings — he used to run into trouble because he only had statement pieces, so they would clash terribly, but then he started buying more matching sets. he loves bonding earrings as a romantic, but is a little torn because there's no way any two earrings could match all of his fits...

odile is the kind of person to pick a nice look and stick to it, so there's not much variety in her accessories. she has her glasses gems, a pair of pearl studs, a pair of silver studs, and a couple sentimental rings that she keeps somewhere safe instead of wearing. we know bonding earrings are popular in ka bue but not as universal as in vaugarde; i think it would be cute if ka bue had a whole language of earrings and rings, with different gem types/cuts/colors denoting different sorts of relationships and emotions. so she's got, like, a [daughter, you are the most important thing in my life] ring from her dad, and a [lover, we change each other] ring from an ex.

siffrin is all about sentimental pieces!! it doesn't really occur to him to buy himself jewelry, but isa or mira will see him looking at something in the market and buy it for him and suddenly the aesthetic appeal that sif had mildly enjoyed doesn't matter at all compared to They Gave This To Me. siffrin tends to be drawn towards solid shades or starry dots, and smooth, swirling shapes. isa also gets them stimmy pieces like a bumpy bangle or spinny ring, and mira gets them cute things that remind her of them like star pins or kitty charms. he's just so fun to give trinkets to, even bonnie and odile have gotten him some, so he's working up quite a collection! he carefully rotates through everything, and keeps some pieces in his pockets when he can't fit everything he wants onto his body or doesn't want to wear any jewelry that day.

bonnie's bracelet is smooth wood, and they're going to be very upset the day it no longer fits over their hand. they prefer non-rock materials like wood, shells, bones, and sea glass, because that's just way more fun! they made shell necklaces with nille all the time, so many that it doesn't matter how often they lose them.

loop goes full magpie! since they don't have to buy necessities like food, they're less careful about spending money than siffrin, plus they're more desperate to capture any scrap of joy. they also have a bit of "everyone else is an npc" brain and "i am both above and beneath normal rules", so they're more comfortable with stealing than siffrin is. they like drapey chains, black and white beads, and unusual pieces. they like the pressure stim of very heavy necklaces and the clack of many bracelets. once when one of their favorites broke they procured the tools to fix it, and started modifying the stuff they own and stringing trinkets onto chains!