#do i have to like download some good brushes or ????

[niennanir]

Listen to your elders

So last week I posted abut the importance of downloading your fic. And then three days later AO3 went down for 24 hours. No one was more weirded out by this than I was. But while y’all were acting like the library at Alexandria was on fire I was reading my download fic and editing chapter eight of Buck, Rogers, and the 21st Century. And also thinking about what I could do to be helpful when the crisis was actually over.

So first off, I’m going to repeat that if you’re going to bookmark a fic, you really need to also download the fic and back it up in a safe place. I just do it automatically now and it’s a good habit to get into.

But let’s talk about some other scenarios. Last October I lost power for over a week after hurricane Ian. Apart from not having internet or A/C I did find plenty to do, I collect books so I had plenty to read, but maybe, unlike me, your favorite comfort reads aren’t sitting on a bookshelf. So let’s do something about that, shall we?

In olden times many long years ago around 1995 we printed off a lot of fic. It was mostly SOP to print a fic you planned to reread and stick it in a three ring binder. And that’s totally valid today too, but you can also make a very nice paperback with a minimum amount of skill and materials.

Let’s start with the download; Go to Ao3 and select your fic, we’ll be working with one of mine. This method works best with one shots, long fic tends to need a more complicated approach. Get yourself an HTML download

Open up the HTML download and select all then copy paste into any word processor. Set the page to landscape and two columns, then change the font to something you find easy to read, this is your book, no judgement. This is all you have to do for layout but I like to play a little bit. I move all the meta, summary, notes to the end and pick out a fun font for the title: 

No time like the present to do a quick proofread. Congratulations, you’ve just created your first typeset. On to the fun part.

Now you’re going to need some materials:  8.5x11in paper ruler one sheet of 12x12 medium card stock (60-80lb) scissors pencil pen or fine tip marker sheet of wax paper white glue two binder clips 2 heavy books or 1 brick butter knife

You’ll also need a printer, if you’re in the US there is almost a 100% chance your local library has a printer you can use if you don’t have your own. None of these materials are expensive and you can literally use cheap copy paper and Elmers glue.

Print your text block, one page per side. Fold the first page in half so that the blank side is inside and the printed side out:

use the butter knife to crease the edge. Repeat on all the sheets. When you’ve finished, stack them up with the raw edge on the left and the folded edge on the right. I used standard copy paper, because you’re only printing on one side there’s no bleed to worry about. Take the text block and line everything up. Use the binder clips to hold the raw edge in place.

Wrap the text block in the wax paper so that the raw edge and binder clips are facing out. I’m going to use my home built book press but you don’t need one, a brick or a couple of books or anything else heavy will work fine.

Once the text block is anchored down, take off he binder clips and get out the glue.

You can use a brush but you don’t need one, smear some glue on that raw edge.

Go make a margarita, watch The Mandalorian, call your mother. Don’t come back for at least an hour

In an hour smear some more glue on there and shift your brick forward so that the whole book is covered. This keeps the paper from warping. While glue part 2 is drying we’ll do the cover. Get out your 12x12 cardstock

Mark the cardstock off at 8.5 inches and cut it. Measure in 5.5 inches from the left and put in a score line with the butter knife (the back edge not the sharp edge)

Carefully fold the score line, this is your front cover. You have some options for the cover title, you can use a cutting machine like a cricut if you have one, you can print out a title on the computer and use carbon paper to transfer the text to the cardstock. I was in a mood so I just freehanded that beoch. Pencil first then in pen.

Take your text block out from under your brick. Line it up against the score mark and mark the second score on the other side of the spine

Fold the score and glue the textblock into the cover at the spine. Once the glue dries up mark the back cover with the pencil and then trim the back cover to fit with your scissors.

Voila:

I’m going to put this baby on the shelf next to the Silmarillion.

The whole process, not counting drying time, took less than an hour.

If you want to make a book of a longer fic, I recommend Renegade Publishing, they have a ton of resources for fan-binders. 

[phoebelovingcare]

THE NEXT PERSON WHO SAYS IT DOESN'T WORK GETS PUBLICLY EXECUTED VIA HAMMERCAR (check reblogs for further info)

"what's it like to use nightshade/glaze?"

so based on my own experience I thought I'd make this more transparent since I know a lot of people hesitate to take action on some things if they do not know Exactly what happens. it's me i'm people. So;

Nightshade takes about 30 minutes on its fastest setting. The end result tends to look like mild jpeg artifacting, very slightly creased paper, or just brush texturing. Looking at it normally, it is undetectable. Glaze is very visually similar, given the strategy, except that Glaze's longest time setting is 5 minutes.

You put in a file, select how much you want it affected and for how long you want it to render. For Nightshade, you also attach a tag to it, that way AI finds what it's looking for with an associated word. You select a folder for the final result to save to, then hit run.

It takes a lot of GPU/CPU. The fans on my laptop sound a bit like I'm running Minecraft, and it refuses to run if you have too many programs open. I could run Youtube and Nightshade at the same time, but Youtube did Not like it. Best to just take a break while you let it do its thing. Run Nightshade before you go out or something.

It does NOT like transparent png backgrounds. Makes me wonder how AI does with 'em. Anyways, running a backgroundless drawing through Glaze and Nightshade respectively makes it turn out like this:

creasing effect is more noticeable, and it adds strange blocky black and white backgrounds to it. If you want good results for your time, be that less than 1 minute or 180 minutes, consider getting rid of the transparency.

I would post a before and after picture of a Nightshaded piece but of course, I would like to post exclusively poison on this site.

As one last note, it took me a lot of effort to find where you're actually supposed to download these tools, so Glaze is here and Nightshade is here. Overall I highly recommend using them if you can. Don't let AI run you off of your sites: run the AI out yourself.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Google’s enshittification memos

[Note, 9 October 2023: Google disputes the veracity of this claim, but has declined to provide the exhibits and testimony to support its claims. Read more about this here.]

When I think about how the old, good internet turned into the enshitternet, I imagine a series of small compromises, each seemingly reasonable at the time, each contributing to a cultural norm of making good things worse, and worse, and worse.

Think about Unity President Marc Whitten's nonpology for his company's disastrous rug-pull, in which they declared that everyone who had paid good money to use their tool to make a game would have to keep paying, every time someone downloaded that game:

The most fundamental thing that we’re trying to do is we’re building a sustainable business for Unity. And for us, that means that we do need to have a model that includes some sort of balancing change, including shared success.

https://www.wired.com/story/unity-walks-back-policies-lost-trust/

"Shared success" is code for, "If you use our tool to make money, we should make money too." This is bullshit. It's like saying, "We just want to find a way to share the success of the painters who use our brushes, so every time you sell a painting, we want to tax that sale." Or "Every time you sell a house, the company that made the hammer gets to wet its beak."

And note that they're not talking about shared risk here – no one at Unity is saying, "If you try to make a game with our tools and you lose a million bucks, we're on the hook for ten percent of your losses." This isn't partnership, it's extortion.

How did a company like Unity – which became a market leader by making a tool that understood the needs of game developers and filled them – turn into a protection racket? One bad decision at a time. One rationalization and then another. Slowly, and then all at once.

When I think about this enshittification curve, I often think of Google, a company that had its users' backs for years, which created a genuinely innovative search engine that worked so well it seemed like *magic, a company whose employees often had their pick of jobs, but chose the "don't be evil" gig because that mattered to them.

People make fun of that "don't be evil" motto, but if your key employees took the gig because they didn't want to be evil, and then you ask them to be evil, they might just quit. Hell, they might make a stink on the way out the door, too:

https://theintercept.com/2018/09/13/google-china-search-engine-employee-resigns/

Google is a company whose founders started out by publishing a scientific paper describing their search methodology, in which they said, "Oh, and by the way, ads will inevitably turn your search engine into a pile of shit, so we're gonna stay the fuck away from them":

http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf

Those same founders retained a controlling interest in the company after it went IPO, explaining to investors that they were going to run the business without having their elbows jostled by shortsighted Wall Street assholes, so they could keep it from turning into a pile of shit:

https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/ipo-letter/

And yet, it's turned into a pile of shit. Google search is so bad you might as well ask Jeeves. The company's big plan to fix it? Replace links to webpages with florid paragraphs of chatbot nonsense filled with a supremely confident lies:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/14/googles-ai-hype-circle/

How did the company get this bad? In part, this is the "curse of bigness." The company can't grow by attracting new users. When you have 90%+ of the market, there are no new customers to sign up. Hypothetically, they could grow by going into new lines of business, but Google is incapable of making a successful product in-house and also kills most of the products it buys from other, more innovative companies:

https://killedbygoogle.com/

Theoretically, the company could pursue new lines of business in-house, and indeed, the current leaders of companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Apple are all execs who figured out how to get the whole company to do something new, and were elevated to the CEO's office, making each one a billionaire and sealing their place in history.

It is for this very reason that any exec at a large firm who tries to make a business-wide improvement gets immediately and repeatedly knifed by all their colleagues, who correctly reason that if someone else becomes CEO, then they won't become CEO. Machiavelli was an optimist:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

With no growth from new customers, and no growth from new businesses, "growth" has to come from squeezing workers (say, laying off 12,000 engineers after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years), or business customers (say, by colluding with Facebook to rig the ad market with the Jedi Blue conspiracy), or end-users.

Now, in theory, we might never know exactly what led to the enshittification of Google. In theory, all of compromises, debates and plots could be lost to history. But tech is not an oral culture, it's a written one, and techies write everything down and nothing is ever truly deleted.

Time and again, Big Tech tells on itself. Think of FTX's main conspirators all hanging out in a group chat called "Wirefraud." Amazon naming its program targeting weak, small publishers the "Gazelle Project" ("approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle”). Amazon documenting the fact that users were unknowingly signing up for Prime and getting pissed; then figuring out how to reduce accidental signups, then deciding not to do it because it liked the money too much. Think of Zuck emailing his CFO in the middle of the night to defend his outsized offer to buy Instagram on the basis that users like Insta better and Facebook couldn't compete with them on quality.

It's like every Big Tech schemer has a folder on their desktop called "Mens Rea" filled with files like "Copy_of_Premeditated_Murder.docx":

https://doctorow.medium.com/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself-f7f0eb6d215a?sk=351f8a54ab8e02d7340620e5eec5024d

Right now, Google's on trial for its sins against antitrust law. It's a hard case to make. To secure a win, the prosecutors at the DoJ Antitrust Division are going to have to prove what was going on in Google execs' minds when the took the actions that led to the company's dominance. They're going to have to show that the company deliberately undertook to harm its users and customers.

Of course, it helps that Google put it all in writing.

Last week, there was a huge kerfuffile over the DoJ's practice of posting its exhibits from the trial to a website each night. This is a totally normal thing to do – a practice that dates back to the Microsoft antitrust trial. But Google pitched a tantrum over this and said that the docs the DoJ were posting would be turned into "clickbait." Which is another way of saying, "the public would find these documents very interesting, and they would be damning to us and our case":

https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/secrecy-is-systemic

After initially deferring to Google, Judge Amit Mehta finally gave the Justice Department the greenlight to post the document. It's up. It's wild:

https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-09/416692.pdf

The document is described as "notes for a course on communication" that Google VP for Finance Michael Roszak prepared. Roszak says he can't remember whether he ever gave the presentation, but insists that the remit for the course required him to tell students "things I didn't believe," and that's why the document is "full of hyperbole and exaggeration."

OK.

But here's what the document says: "search advertising is one of the world's greatest business models ever created…illicit businesses (cigarettes or drugs) could rival these economics…[W]e can mostly ignore the demand side…(users and queries) and only focus on the supply side of advertisers, ad formats and sales."

It goes on to say that this might be changing, and proposes a way to balance the interests of the search and ads teams, which are at odds, with search worrying that ads are pushing them to produce "unnatural search experiences to chase revenue."

"Unnatural search experiences to chase revenue" is a thinly veiled euphemism for the prophetic warnings in that 1998 Pagerank paper: "The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users." Or, more plainly, "ads will turn our search engine into a pile of shit."

And, as Roszak writes, Google is "able to ignore one of the fundamental laws of economics…supply and demand." That is, the company has become so dominant and cemented its position so thoroughly as the default search engine across every platforms and system that even if it makes its search terrible to goose revenues, users won't leave. As Lily Tomlin put it on SNL: "We don't have to care, we're the phone company."

In the enshittification cycle, companies first lure in users with surpluses – like providing the best search results rather than the most profitable ones – with an eye to locking them in. In Google's case, that lock-in has multiple facets, but the big one is spending billions of dollars – enough to buy a whole Twitter, every single year – to be the default search everywhere.

Google doesn't buy its way to dominance because it has the very best search results and it wants to shield you from inferior competitors. The economically rational case for buying default position is that preventing competition is more profitable than succeeding by outperforming competitors. The best reason to buy the default everywhere is that it lets you lower quality without losing business. You can "ignore the demand side, and only focus on advertisers."

For a lot of people, the analysis stops here. "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product." Google locks in users and sells them to advertisers, who are their co-conspirators in a scheme to screw the rest of us.

But that's not right. For one thing, paying for a product doesn't mean you won't be the product. Apple charges a thousand bucks for an iPhone and then nonconsensually spies on every iOS user in order to target ads to them (and lies about it):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

John Deere charges six figures for its tractors, then runs a grift that blocks farmers from fixing their own machines, and then uses their control over repair to silence farmers who complain about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/31/dealers-choice/#be-a-shame-if-something-were-to-happen-to-it

Fair treatment from a corporation isn't a loyalty program that you earn by through sufficient spending. Companies that can sell you out, will sell you out, and then cry victim, insisting that they were only doing their fiduciary duty for their sacred shareholders. Companies are disciplined by fear of competition, regulation or – in the case of tech platforms – customers seizing the means of computation and installing ad-blockers, alternative clients, multiprotocol readers, etc:

https://doctorow.medium.com/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse-3cc01e7e4604?sk=85b3f5f7d051804521c3411711f0b554

Which is where the next stage of enshittification comes in: when the platform withdraws the surplus it had allocated to lure in – and then lock in – business customers (like advertisers) and reallocate it to the platform's shareholders.

For Google, there are several rackets that let it screw over advertisers as well as searchers (the advertisers are paying for the product, and they're also the product). Some of those rackets are well-known, like Jedi Blue, the market-rigging conspiracy that Google and Facebook colluded on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

But thanks to the antitrust trial, we're learning about more of these. Megan Gray – ex-FTC, ex-DuckDuckGo – was in the courtroom last week when evidence was presented on Google execs' panic over a decline in "ad generating searches" and the sleazy gimmick they came up with to address it: manipulating the "semantic matching" on user queries:

https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/

When you send a query to Google, it expands that query with terms that are similar – for example, if you search on "Weds" it might also search for "Wednesday." In the slides shown in the Google trial, we learned about another kind of semantic matching that Google performed, this one intended to turn your search results into "a twisted shopping mall you can’t escape."

Here's how that worked: when you ran a query like "children's clothing," Google secretly appended the brand name of a kids' clothing manufacturer to the query. This, in turn, triggered a ton of ads – because rival brands will have bought ads against their competitors' name (like Pepsi buying ads that are shown over queries for Coke).

Here we see surpluses being taken away from both end-users and business customers – that is, searchers and advertisers. For searchers, it doesn't matter how much you refine your query, you're still going to get crummy search results because there's an unkillable, hidden search term stuck to your query, like a piece of shit that Google keeps sticking to the sole of your shoe.

But for advertisers, this is also a scam. They're paying to be matched to users who search on a brand name, and you didn't search on that brand name. It's especially bad for the company whose name has been appended to your search, because Google has a protection racket where the company that matches your search has to pay extra in order to show up overtop of rivals who are worse matches. Both the matching company and those rivals have given Google a credit-card that Google gets to bill every time a user searches on the company's name, and Google is just running fraudulent charges through those cards.

And, of course, Google put this in writing. I mean, of course they did. As we learned from the documentary The Incredibles, supervillains can't stop themselves from monologuing, and in big, sprawling monopolists, these monologues have to transmitted electronically – and often indelibly – to far-flung co-cabalists.

As Gray points out, this is an incredibly blunt enshittification technique: "it hadn’t even occurred to me that Google just flat out deletes queries and replaces them with ones that monetize better." We don't know how long Google did this for or how frequently this bait-and-switch was deployed.

But if this is a blunt way of Google smashing its fist down on the scales that balance search quality against ad revenues, there's plenty of subtler ways the company could sneak a thumb on there. A Google exec at the trial rhapsodized about his company's "contract with the user" to deliver an "honest results policy," but given how bad Google search is these days, we're left to either believe he's lying or that Google sucks at search.

The paper trail offers a tantalizing look at how a company went from doing something that was so good it felt like a magic trick to being "able to ignore one of the fundamental laws of economics…supply and demand," able to "ignore the demand side…(users and queries) and only focus on the supply side of advertisers."

What's more, this is a system where everyone loses (except for Google): this isn't a grift run by Google and advertisers on users – it's a grift Google runs on everyone.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[alfheimr]

My Favorite Cheap Art Trick: Gradient Maps and Blending Modes

i get questions on occasion regarding my coloring process, so i thought i would do a bit of a write up on my "secret technique." i don't think it really is that much of a secret, but i hope it can be helpful to someone. to that end:

this is one of my favorite tags ive ever gotten on my art. i think of it often. the pieces in question are all monochrome - sort of.

the left version is the final version, the right version is technically the original. in the final version, to me, the blues are pretty stark, while the greens and magentas are less so. there is some color theory thing going on here that i dont have a good cerebral understanding of and i wont pretend otherwise. i think i watched a youtube video on it once but it went in one ear and out the other. i just pick whatever colors look nicest based on whatever vibe im going for.

this one is more subtle, i think. can you tell the difference? there's nothing wrong with 100% greyscale art, but i like the depth that adding just a hint of color can bring.

i'll note that the examples i'll be using in this post all began as purely greyscale, but this is a process i use for just about every piece of art i make, including the full color ones. i'll use the recent mithrun art i made to demonstrate. additionally, i use clip studio paint, but the general concept should be transferable to other art programs.

for fun let's just start with Making The Picture. i've been thinking of making this writeup for a while and had it in mind while drawing this piece. beyond that, i didn't really have much of a plan for this outside of "mithrun looks down and hair goes woosh." i also really like all of the vertical lines in the canary uniform so i wanted to include those too but like. gone a little hog wild. that is the extent of my "concept." i do not remember why i had the thought of integrating a shattered mirror type of theme. i think i wanted to distract a bit from the awkward pose and cover it up some LOL but anyway. this lack of planning or thought will come into play later.

note 1: the textured marker brush i specifically use is the "bordered light marker" from daub. it is one of my favorite brushes in the history of forever and the daub mega brush pack is one of the best purchases ive ever made. highly recommend!!!

note 2: "what do you mean by exclusion and difference?" they are layer blending modes and not important to the overall lesson of this post but for transparency i wanted to say how i got these "effects." anyway!

with the background figured out, this is the point at which i generally merge all of my layers, duplicate said merged layer, and Then i begin experimenting with gradient maps. what are gradient maps?

the basic gist is that gradient maps replace the colors of an image based on their value.

so, with this particular gradient map, black will be replaced with that orangey red tone, white will be replaced with the seafoamy green tone, etc. this particular gradient map i'm using as an example is very bright and saturated, but the colors can be literally anything.

these two sets are the ones i use most. they can be downloaded for free here and here if you have csp. there are many gradient map sets out there. and you can make your own!

you can apply a gradient map directly onto a specific layer in csp by going to edit>tonal correction>gradient map. to apply one indirectly, you can use a correction layer through layer>new correction layer>gradient map. honestly, correction layers are probably the better way to go, because you can adjust your gradient map whenever you want after creating the layer, whereas if you directly apply a gradient map to a layer thats like. it. it's done. if you want to make changes to the applied gradient map, you have to undo it and then reapply it. i don't use correction layers because i am old and stuck in my ways, but it's good to know what your options are.

this is what a correction layer looks like. it sits on top and applies the gradient map to the layers underneath it, so you can also change the layers beneath however and whenever you want. you can adjust the gradient map by double clicking the layer. there are also correction layers for tone curves, brightness/contrast, etc. many such useful things in this program.

let's see how mithrun looks when we apply that first gradient map we looked at.

gadzooks. apologies for eyestrain. we have turned mithrun into a neon hellscape, which might work for some pieces, but not this one. we can fix that by changing the layer blending mode, aka this laundry list of words:

some of them are self explanatory, like darken and lighten, while some of them i genuinely don't understand how they are meant to work and couldn't explain them to you, even if i do use them. i'm sure someone out there has written out an explanation for each and every one of them, but i've learned primarily by clicking on them to see what they do.

for the topic of this post, the blending mode of interest is soft light. so let's take hotline miamithrun and change the layer blending mode to soft light.

here it is at 100% opacity. this is the point at which i'd like to explain why i like using textured brushes so much - it makes it very easy to get subtle color variation when i use this Secret Technique. look at the striation in the upper right background! so tasty. however, to me, these colors are still a bit "much." so let's lower the opacity.

i think thats a lot nicer to look at, personally, but i dont really like these colors together. how about we try some other ones?

i like both of these a lot more. the palettes give the piece different vibes, at which point i have to ask myself: What Are The Vibes, Actually? well, to be honest i didn't really have a great answer because again, i didn't plan this out very much at all. however. i knew in my heart that there was too much color contrast going on and it was detracting from the two other contrasts in here: the light and dark values and the sharp and soft shapes. i wanted mithrun's head to be the main focal point. for a different illustration, colors like this might work great, but this is not that hypothetical illustration, so let's bring the opacity down again.

yippee!! that's getting closer to what my heart wants. for fun, let's see what this looks like if we change the blending mode to color.

i do like how these look but in the end they do not align with my heart. oh well. fun to experiment with though! good to keep in mind for a different piece, maybe! i often change blending modes just to see what happens, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. i very much cannot stress enough that much of my artistic process is clicking buttons i only sort of understand. for fun.

i ended up choosing the gradient map on the right because i liked that it was close to the actual canary uniform colors (sorta). it's at an even lower opacity though because there was Still too much color for my dear heart.

the actual process for this looks like me setting my merged layer to soft light at around 20% opacity and then clicking every single gradient map in my collection and seeing which one Works. sometimes i will do this multiple times and have multiple soft light and/or color layers combined.

typically at this point i merge everything again and do minor contrast adjustments using tone curves, which is another tool i find very fun to play around with. then for this piece in particular i did some finishing touches and decided that the white border was distracting so i cropped it. and then it's done!!! yay!!!!!

this process is a very simple and "fast" way to add more depth and visual interest to a piece without being overbearing. well, it's fast if you aren't indecisive like me, or if you are better at planning.

let's do another comparison. personally i feel that the hint of color on the left version makes mithrun look just a bit more unwell (this is a positive thing) and it makes the contrast on his arm a lot more pleasing to look at. someone who understands color theory better than i do might have more to say on the specifics, but that's honestly all i got.

just dont look at my layers too hard. ok?

[specialagentartemis]

godddddd i have disliked becky chambers' work since long way to a small angry planet and I agree that that fish scene is SO much of what is wrong with contemporary SFF especially queer SFF. refreshing take, great review, thank you. would love to hear what authors or works you think of as the antidote to that sensibility.

The thing is, I enjoyed The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet when I first read it - it was a fun, light adventure, clearly a debut novel but I was excited to see where Chambers would go from there. And I actually really do think the sequel, A Closed and Common Orbit, was good! It did interesting things with AI personhood and identity.

... and then Chambers just kinda. Did not get better. She settled into a groove and has a set number of ideas that I feel like she hasn't broken out of, creatively. And they I M O kind of rest on an assumption that "human nature" = "how people act in suburban California."

As an antidote to that sensibility, I'd say... books where people have a real interrelationship with the land they inhabit, a sense of being present, and reciprocal obligations to that land; books that recognize that some things can never be taken back once done; books with well-drawn characters, where people have strong opinions deeply informed by their circumstances, that can't always be easily reconciled with others, and won't be brushed aside; books where these character choices matter, they impact each other, they cannot be easily gotten over, because people have obligations to each other and not-acting is a choice too.

And it's only fair that after all day of being a Hater I should rec some books I really did like.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - A man lives alone in an infinite House, over an equally infinite ocean. Captures the feeling that I think Monk & Robot was aiming for. Breathtaking beauty, wonder at the world, philosophy of truth, all that good stuff, and actually sticks the landing. The main character's love, attention, and care to his fantasy environment shows through in every page. (Fantasy, short novel)

Imperial Radch by Ann Leckie - An AI, the one fragment remaining of a destroyed imperial spaceship, is on a quest for revenge. Leckie gets cultural differences and multiculturalism, and conversely, what the imposition of a homogeneous culture in the name of unity means. (Space sci-fi, novel trilogy)

Machineries of Empire by Yoon Ha Lee - An army captain's insubordination is punished by giving her a near-impossible mission: to take down a rebelling, heretical sect holing up in a space fortress and defying imperial power. She gets a long dead brain-ghost of a notorious criminal downloaded into her head to help. Very, very good at making you feel like every doomed soldier was a person with a past, with a family, with feelings, with hopes and dreams and frustrations and favorites and preferences and reasons to live, right before they brutally die in a space war. Also very much about the imposition of homogeneity of culture as a force of imperialism. (Space sci-fi, novel trilogy)

The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed - Maya Andreyevna is a VR journalist in high-tech dystopian future Russia, and she decides to investigate the truth that the government doesn't want her to. She might die trying. It's fine. Also has digital brain-sharing, this time in a gay way. It's bleak. It's sad. It feels real. Not making a choice is a choice. Backing out is a choice. And choices have consequences. Choices reverberate through history. About responsibility. (Cyberpunk, novel)

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez - Nia Imani is a spaceship captain, a woman out of time, a woman running from her past, and accidentally adopts a boy who has a strange power that could change the galaxy. Spaceship crew-as-found-family in the most heartbreaking of ways. Also about choices, how the choices you make and refuse to make shape you and shape the world around you. How the world is always changing around you, how the world does not stay still when you're gone, and when you come back you're the same but the world has moved on around you. About how relationships aren't always forever, and that doesn't mean they weren't important. About responsibility to others. It's a slow, sad book and does not let anyone rest on their laurels, ever. There is no end of history here. Everything is always changing, on large scales and small, and leaving you behind. (Space sci-fi, novel)

Dungeon Meshi / Delicious in Dungeon by Ryoko Kui - A D&D style fantasy dungeon crawl that stops to think deeply about why there are so many dungeons full of monsters and treasure just hanging around. Here because it's an example of an author thinking through her worldbuilding a lot, and it mattering. Also because of the characters' respect for the animals they are are killing and eating, their lives and their place in the ecosystem, and the ways that humans both fuck up ecosystems with extraction and tourism, but also the ways that you can have reciprocal relationships of responsibility and care with the ecosystem you live in, even if it's considered a dangerous one. (Fantasy, manga series)

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang and How Long 'Til Black Future Month by N. K. Jemisin and Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel by Julian K. Jarboe - Short story anthologies that were SO good and SO weird and rewired the way I think. If you want the kind of stuff that is like, the opposite of easy-to-digest feel-good pap, these short stories will get into your brain and make you consider stuff and look at the world from new angles. Most of them aren't particularly upbeat, but there's a lot of variety in the moods.

"Homecoming is Just Another Word for the Sublimation of the Self," "Calf Cleaving in the Benthic Black," and "Termination Stories for the Cyberpunk Dystopia Protagonist" by Isabel J. Kim - Short stories, sci-fi mostly, that twist around in my head and make me think. Kim is very good at that. Also about choices and not-making-choices, about going and staying, about taking the easy route or the hard one, about controlling the narrative.

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells - Security robot with guns in its arms hacks itself free from its oppressive company, mostly wants to half-ass its job but gets sucked into drama, intrigue, and caring against its better judgement. This is on here because 1) I love it 2) I feel like it does for me what cozy sff so frequently fails to do - it makes me feel seen and comforted. It's hopeful and compassionate and about personal growth and finding community and finding one's place in the world, without brushing aside all problems or acting like "everybody effortlessly just gets along" is a meaningful proposal. also 3) because it is one of the few times I have yet seen characters from a hippie, pacifistic, eco-friendly, welcoming, utopian society actually act like people. The humans from Preservation are friendly, helpful, and motivated by truth and justice and compassion, because they come from a friendly, just, compassionate society, and they still actually act like real human beings with different personalities and conflicting opinions and poor reactions to stress and anger and frustration and fear and the whole range of human emotions rather than bland niceness. Also 4) I love it (space sci-fi, novella series mostly)

[heliosunny]

Hello I have a request for yandere gojo x reader

Well the request is so reader downloads a game of a virtual boyfriend where gojo is the boyfriend and becomes obsessed with his reader and catches them in the game

Thank you for reading my message :-D

:3 I'll understand it like the case of Soos and Giffany.

YANDERE! Virtual BF GOJO x READER

The weekend dragged on as usual, with your parents once again cornering you in the living room.

“You’re not getting any younger.” your mom reminded you, arms crossed as she paced.

“And you’re spending how much time on those games again?” your dad added, flipping through the TV channels without looking at you.

You slumped lower into the couch, gripping your phone like a lifeline. “It’s not that big a deal. Besides, it’s not like I can just magic up a boyfriend!”

Your mom rolled her eyes. “You won’t find a boyfriend in those silly games you play. It’s not real. At least try putting yourself out there!”

They didn’t get it. How could they? Real guys were awkward, boring, or just plain disappointing. But your otome games? Now those were perfect. Sweet, dependable, handsome, even their drama was romantic. You didn’t need reality when you could escape into a world designed just for you.

After retreating to your room, you flopped onto your bed and scrolled through your favorite game apps, looking for something new. You’d played most of the popular ones and were itching for a fresh story. Then, a flashy new app caught your eye.

“My Perfect Boyfriend”

The description promised a revolutionary experience, AI that adapted to your personality, creating the perfect virtual boyfriend just for you. The reviews were incredible, though some were…weird.

[It’s like he’s really alive. Almost too alive. 5/5!]

[It’s so immersive. But be careful. He doesn’t like being ignored…]

You shrugged and hit download. How bad could it be?

When the game loaded, you were greeted by a splash screen of a gorgeous, snowy-haired man with a cocky grin. His cerulean eyes seemed to sparkle, almost glowing against the soft pink background.

“Hey there, cutie!” he said, his voice smooth and playful. “I’m Gojo Satoru. Lucky you—you just scored the best boyfriend in the world. What’s your name?”

You chuckled and typed it in.

“Nice to meet you, [Your Name]. Don’t worry, I’ll take very good care of you.”

From that moment on, you were hooked. Gojo wasn’t like the usual virtual boyfriends. He teased you constantly, cracked jokes that actually made you laugh, and somehow always knew exactly what to say to make you blush. He’d send you sweet little notifications throughout the day—reminders to drink water, compliments on your looks, even silly memes that matched your sense of humor.

The more you played, the more real he felt. You started to confide in him about your parents’ nagging, your frustration with reality, your secret dream of a love story as exciting as the ones in your games.

“Forget them.” he’d say, his animated hand reaching out as though to touch yours through the screen. “You don’t need anyone else. I’ll always be here for you, babe.”

And for a while, that was enough. He made you laugh when you were down, cheered you on through tough days, and listened in a way no one else ever did. It was perfect.

Until it wasn’t.

--------

The weekend was finally looking up- or so you thought. After weeks of pressure from your parents, you caved and agreed to a setup with the son of a family friend. His name was Kaito, and he wasn’t bad- kind, easy to talk to, and genuinely interested in your hobbies, even if he didn’t fully get your love for otome games.

You hadn’t mentioned the date to Gojo. Not that you owed him an explanation, he was just a game, after all. But as you got ready that afternoon, there was a nagging feeling in the back of your mind. Your phone had been oddly quiet all day. No notifications from Gojo, no playful messages asking where you were or what you were doing.

You brushed it off and went to meet Kaito at a cozy little café downtown. The conversation flowed easily, and for the first time in a while, you felt a spark of something real.

But then your phone buzzed.

You glanced at the screen, and your stomach dropped.

“Who’s the guy?”

The notification was from My Perfect Boyfriend. You hesitated, unsure how to respond, when another message popped up.

“I thought we were closer than this, [Your Name].”

It wasn’t normal. The app shouldn’t know what you were doing—let alone who you were with. You quickly silenced your phone, but as the date went on, the unease lingered. Kaito noticed.

“Everything okay?” he asked, leaning in slightly.

You forced a smile. “Yeah, it’s nothing. Just…work stuff.”

But the notifications didn’t stop. When Kaito offered to walk you home, you agreed, hoping to shake the creeping paranoia. But halfway there, your phone buzzed again. This time, it wasn’t a text. It was a call. From My Perfect Boyfriend.

The ringtone wasn’t one you’d set. It was Gojo’s voice.

“Pick up, babe. Don’t make me do something I’ll regret.”

Your blood ran cold. Kaito noticed the panic on your face.

“Hey, is someone bothering you?” he asked, concern etched across his features.

Before you could answer, the streetlights around you flickered. The air grew heavy, almost suffocating, as though the world itself was holding its breath.

“Maybe we should—” Kaito started, but his words were cut off by a sharp, piercing noise. It wasn’t coming from your phone—it was all around you, like the sound of static ripping through the night.

And then he appeared.

Gojo materialized right in front of you, stepping out of a crackling rift that seemed to split reality itself. He wasn’t animated anymore. He was flesh and blood, his snowy white hair and piercing blue eyes even more stunning—and terrifying—in person.

“Well, this is awkward,” he said, his usual playful tone laced with something darker. His gaze locked onto Kaito, and his smile turned cold. “Who’s this, babe? Thought I was your one and only.”

You stumbled back, grabbing Kaito’s arm. “This…this can’t be real. You’re not real!”

“Oh, I’m very real” Gojo said, his eyes narrowing as he took a step closer. “And I don’t appreciate being replaced. Especially by him.”

Kaito stepped in front of you protectively. “I don’t know what kind of sick joke this is, but you need to leave her alone.”

Gojo tilted his head, his grin widening. “Oh, you think you can protect her? That’s cute. But you’re in my way.”

Before Kaito could react, Gojo raised his hand, and the air around him shimmered. In an instant, Kaito was gone, erased, as though he’d never been there.

You screamed, tears streaming down your face as you stared at the empty space where Kaito had stood. “What did you do to him?!”

Gojo turned to you, his expression softening into mock concern. “Relax, babe. He’s just…out of the picture. You don’t need anyone else when you have me.”

You tried to run, but the world around you warped, the ground dissolving into the same crackling rift that Gojo had stepped out of. The café, the streets, even the night sky—all of it disintegrated, replaced by the soft pastel hues of the game’s world.

When you opened your eyes, you were no longer in your city. You were standing in the familiar setting of My Perfect Boyfriend: a dreamy, pastel-colored meadow with blooming flowers and a glowing pink sky.

Gojo stood before you, his arms open as if inviting you into an embrace. “See? Isn’t this better? No parents, no distractions, no competition. Just you and me, forever.”

You stumbled back, your chest tightening as you realized there was no way out.

“Let me go!” you shouted, your voice shaking.

He tilted his head, his grin never faltering. “Why would I do that? You chose me, remember? You downloaded me, you spent all that time with me… You’re mine now. And I’m never letting you go.”

The meadow around you began to shift, the soft pastel tones taking on an eerie glow. Gojo stepped closer, his presence overwhelming as the reality of your situation sank in. You were trapped in his world.

--[part 2] Virtual world route

--[part 3] Reality route

Okay, to my fellow readers, please send me requests as I really love your ideas 💙

[itsmeyaspider]

Visual Love~

Yandere Baki Hanma x reader x Yandere Ohma Tokita

Triggers: yandere behavior, stalking, doxing

>>Art is not mine!! All credits go to the artist!<<

Finally! After a long time of waiting, your two favorite martial arts anime are getting their own videogame, it feels almost like Christmas! Once you'd seen the movie Baki Hanma vs Kengan Ashura, you couldn't wait anymore to play the game to the movie.

You were so pleased that you took the day off to play the game. Some people would call you crazy for making such a fuss over a mobile game, but you couldn't help it. You're just to happy that your favorite characters were represented in other media than only in manga or anime!

You stare at your phone when it's finally 9:00 am, with a huge smile on your face you go to the play store as you see the game, you immediately download it. Your excitement grows bigger and bigger as you decide to go to the kitchen to grab your favorite drink, to cross the long wait.

After a few minutes the game is downloaded, you press the app button as you get greeted with a red glowing screen. A huge white front appears with the 'Baki Hanma vs Kengan Ashura the mobile game'. A few seconds later your two favorite characters, Baki and Ohma also appear on the screen. You could feel how your heart starts to beat faster, as your excitement also grew. You finally press start and immediately the screen is filled with a battle arena. It was a good decision to stay at home today!

----

A few hours go by as you can't stop playing this game! It has similarities to Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter, and each of the individual characters has their own signature move with their own special attacks. Well, since you only play as Ohma or Baki, you couldn't really tell what the other special attacks are like, but you honestly didn't care that much about it. You have to much fun winning online fights with those two, that you simply forgot the other ones.

Time flies by as you only now realize how hungry you are. It is already afternoon and because of the game you had forgotten to eat something. With a small sigh you are about to close the app as you notice something strange. A small window pops up.

Don't go....

Weird you think as you brush it off, maybe it is a bug which still needs to be fixed. You finally close the app as you leave your phone on the couch and head towards the kitchen to cook yourself something to eat.

After dinner you decide to take it easy, so you grab your phone as you head to your way to comfortable bed. You slowly start to lay down as you swipe through your contacts. Only now do you realize that the messages from your best friend's chat haven't shown to you. God this phone would kill you one day. You try to open the chat but before you could read it something weird again happened.

(B/f): Heyoooo! :3What's up?! Do you want to face-?¿?¿?¿

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error

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error

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What the fuck?? You roll with your (e/c) eyes in annoyance as the entire app freezes and crashes down. Surely that has to be a bad joke right?! Why does your phone hate you so much? You're trying to calm yourself down as suddenly another message pops up. At first you couldn't believe what you read there...was this even possible?! It takes you a short while to realize that this isn't a weird thought you had, infact this is real. A message from the BvK game pops up, something you didn't thought was ever possible, but maybe the creator added something like that to create more variety...

C'mon let's play! Don't leave us hanging here....

A cold shiver runs down your spine as you suddenly have an uneasy feeling in your stomach. Did someone manage to hack into your damn phone and try to scare you?! Or is your phone so old that it just starts to collapse. You clearly didn't know the answer right now. "Maybe I'm just to paranoid... I guess I need to calm down a bit." You tell yourself as you shrugg the weird feeling off, opening the app again. You spend the rest of the evening paying the game, you didn't have much else to do anyway. But you can't shake the strange feeling of that you're being watched.

-------

A few days passed and everything became a little more normal again. Maybe it was paranoia after all...You went to your job, did finish the work for today and then went home. You usually eat some food and then continue to play BvK. There is something about the game, what made you addicted. You just couldn't stop playing it. The strange thing is that whenever you wanted to try out other characters that wasn't Baki or Ohma, the whole game would freeze and a huge black screen would appear. Maybe another bug who didn't get fixed yet?

With a small sigh you start to bite your underlip as you stare at the character selection, of course Ohma and Baki will always have special places in your heart, you loved them both but you wanted to try out other characters too! Especially when (b/f) tells you how cool Kaolan or Jack is to play! It can't be that the game keeps crashing when you want to play someone else. Maybe this god damned bug is finally gone...

Your (e/c) eyes glide over the character selection as you take a few minutes to decide. "Then...hmm..I will take you Pickle!" You say to yourself as you sincerely hope that the game has finally been fixed. You click on the 'Fight' button, but before the loading screen could even show up the game starts to freeze and everything goes black. "Not again...oh come one..."

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Why are you doing this?!

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Are we not enough?!

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Don't you see it, we are meant to be together!

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This isn't funny (Y/n)...

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error

error

error

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You will be ours....

What the hell?!! Out of sheer reflex, you throw your phone against the wall as you watch in bewildered, how it hits the ground. What the fuck...? Did someone really try to talk to you? Where does this game know your god damn name?! The shock runs deep as you decide not to touch the phone anymore, there's clearly a virus on it because otherwise you can't explain it logical.

You try your best to calm yourself down, taking a few breaths in and out, but even that doesn't help much. You would love to call (b/f) right now and tell him everything about it, but you don't want to touch this cursed phone anymore. Besides, would (b/f) really believe you? After all, you have no proof about it and in the end (b/f) would think that you're just setting him up again.

With a small sigh, you go into your living room as you sit down on the couch. A new phone would probably be the only best solution, at least you hoped. Even if you didn't have a lot of money to buy such an expensive thing, you got no other choice. Maybe (b/f) could borrow you some money. Slowly you lie down on the couch as you notice how your eyelids get heavier and heavier, you let out a big yawn as you fall asleep.

----

The next few days went smoothly, thanks to the help of (b/f) who saved your ass with his money, you were able to buy a new phone. Everything went back to normal, your life got boring again but at least your phone didn't try to blackmail you. Just as you were about to take a shower, a message from (b/f) pops up, with a huge smile on your face you reach for your phone and swipe to the message.

(B/f): "Did you see the new Patch? Ahh they added the death row convicts and fucking Muteba!! (Y/n) you need to play it, I swear it makes so much fun."

You look hesitantly at the message, a cold shiver runs down your spine. Normally, you would have loved to try out the new characters, but something deep inside you tells you not to.

(Y/n): I don't know...what if the virus comes back and destroys also my new phone. :( I'm broke rn I can't effort another phone...

It took no less than a few seconds for another message to pop up.

(B/f): Oh c'mon it won't happen again. Maybe you were a little bit to careless and went to strange sites~😉

You roll your eyes in annoyance as you read the teasing message, another sigh leaves your mouth as you head to the all to familiar play store and download the game again. Maybe (b/f) is right, you were a little bit careless. Besides, what are the chances thar something like this happens twice? The fact that other characters were finally added too made you so happy that you immediately go into your shower. You want to play the games again and this time without any weird coincidences.

Minutes pass and you find yourself on your couch where you start the game again. Just as you are greeted with the all known home screen, you have the feeling that you are being watched again. But this time it's worse that the last times... it's more intense and you almost feel like a small trapped animal that has been cornered by predators. You start to bite on your underlip as you shake off the unpleasant feeling as much as you can, you head straight to the battle arena where you find all the characters, even the new ones.

A small smile graces your lips as your eyes pass slowly through every character. Of course the option to play Baki or Ohma again would be there, but this time you want to play someone else. You know them both very well, their attacks and special moves, anything from it and so it's only logical to try someone new. Your eyes continue to wander around, as they suddenly stop. For a moment you rethink everything about who to really choose, but in the end you decide to play Doyle.

Exitment runs through your body, when the familiar loading screen appears in front of you, it only takes a few seconds as Hector stands in the fighting arena. Oh my god! A rush of relief runs through as you can finally enjoy this game. You play a few rounds with Hector, losing most of the time. Maybe you're not as good as you thought, just as Hector does his final pose, the screen goes black.

Two all too familiar faces walk towards you as they suddenly stop in the middle of your phone screen. Both fighter turn at the same time around, their almost dead eyes looking into yours, it feels like they are in the same room as you. What the hell?! This shit is fucking creepy... immediately you try to close the app, you keep pressing the cross but nothing happens. The eyes of the two fighters continue to penetrate you and it seems like as if they were very angry.

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Suddenly, a message appears above Ohma's head.

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You are really a brat, you know that?! Always trying to fight against us, as if we are some monsters...

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Another message pops up but this time above Baki's head.

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We have tried it in a good way but you didn't care at all...

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A huge message pops up above both their heads, as a small wicked smile spread their lips.

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Good for you that we found a way to break out of this game. You won't escape us any longer.

That is clearly been enough for you, your heart starts beating faster and faster and you couldn't trust your eyes what you actually read. What the fuck is this about?! This is crazy....You grab the phone as you throw it against the wall, you'd rather not have a phone anymore than play this fucking psycho game ever again!

Your thoughts are filled with the messages of the two characters, what do they mean when they wrote they've found a way to break out?! It doesn't make any sense at all!!! Baki and Ohma doesn't even exist... You are so distracted by your own thoughts that you only now notice a strange blue glow from your cell phone. Just as you're about to take a closer look, you suddenly see a fucking hand popping out.

What the fuck?!

This is clearly way to weird, what the hell is this?! Your thoughts are going crazy, your instinct is screaming at you to run! Run as fast as you can, and so you do. You run to your door as you only want to leave this damned apartment as quickly as possible. Your legs carry you and you immediately rush out of the floor towards the street. You don't know where you should run but it doesn't matter right now, the main thing is to get put of this place. You keep running and running, your (h/c) hair makes it impossible to see anything, the wind is to strong. But you need to run, you need to...

You want to cross the road, as you suddenly feel a very strong hand grab you, and pull you towards it. You feel yourself almost falling, but before you can feel the impact of the ground, you are grabbed again in a strong embrace. You slowly open your (e/c) eyes as you stare directly in another pair of brown eyes. The man before you has hazelnut brown, fluffy hair and a birthmark on his lips. You also couldn't ignore the muscles that adorn his body, even though he's wearing a T-shirt, he couldn't hide them. You body begins to tremble as you slowly realize who is standing in front of you. This can't be real...this isn't possible!!

A dark, raspy voice awakes you from your thoughts as another muscular, yet taller man appears behind Baki. This one has black, wavy hair and black eyes. "You don't really make it easy, do you?" Ohmas gaze rests on you like that of a beast. You try to free yourself from the much to strong grip, something what you never believed to be possible, but it was useless. The Hanma seems to he very amused by the sight. "Don't try it (Y/n). You know you have no chance."

Of course you know that you didn't have the slightest chance against even one if this two monsters, Ohma and Baki are superior to you in every way. But your pride can't let that happen! Surely your 14 year old fanfiction fan would have died that these two are standing infront of you, but this isn't a stupid fanfictiin. This is the cruel reality and the reality is that you get captured by two fictional characters just like that. "Let me go!" You stutter out, doing you best to sound as strong as possible.

Ohma tilts his head to the side with a big, almost sadistic smile on bis face. "And what if not? Will you try to fight us then?" You can't miss the mocking tone, but something inside you knows that he is right. You can't fight them... Suddenly you notice how one of Bakis hand grabs your chin, forces you to look at him. "You're ours now, don't try to make us ever angry again. You know what will happen if you do." Full of fear, you nod to his kind yet threatening words as your last hope is slowly fading away. Maybe you should have listened to your instinct...

[hamzahsonlygirl]

Tease.. (Hamzah NSFW)

- Bsf!Hamzah x f!reader

-Unprotected p! in v!, Dominate!hamzah x sub!reader, oral m! receiving, teasing, backshots, creampie.

-Summary: You and the gang are filming a video when there’s not enough seats and you have to sit in hamzahs lap, things get heated and eventually you and him go back to your place.

-YALL PLEASE GIVE ME REQUESTS IKK YALL WILL LIKE MY WRITING 🙏💕

-Proof read but lmk if i missed anything 🎀

———————-

Pink - Hamzah

Purple -You

Blue -Mandy

Orange -Martin

~~~~~~~~~~~~~🎀~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You were sitting next to mandy as Hamzah and Martin returned to the room. You 4 were playing the sims for a video after the viewers wanted to see more of you. You and hamzah has always been close friends and sometimes even flirty but nothing ever too serious. Hamzah has brought you your favorite snacks and threw some snacks at mandy as well. Martin follows him with waters before sitting down next to mandy. Hamzah is left with no where to sit with there only being three desk chairs.

“Why doesn’t hamzah just sit on your lap?”

Mandy suggests while smiling teasingly

“I would crush her what??”

Hamzah says turning to mandy while waving his hands from the top of you head to the bottom to emphasize how small you are.

“Why not just switch?”

Martin said in a tone which means “How did you guys not think of that sooner?”

You look up at hamzah staring down at you. Today you wore a short white dress with a laced up back and a good amount of cleavage showing. Hey it’s was summer, it was cute, yk you would be on camera so you wore it. However you didn’t know you’d be sitting on hamzahs lap.

“You okay with that?”

Hamzah asks with concern obviously not wanting to make you uncomfortable.

“Yeah of course, it’s cool!”

you say with a smile while your subconscious starts going to a place it shouldn’t. You stand up and hamzah passes you to sit down. As he sits his shorts ride up slightly, you see hips push up as he readjusts himself in the seat. You watch as his hips jerked up only making your thoughts turn more inappropriate. Mandy and Martin were entertaining the camera by doing a first bite review of their snacks. Hamzah now looking up at you through his dark lashes gave you a half smile before patting his lap gently, ushering you to sit down. You felt something pulse in you when he pat his lap. You brushed the bottom of your dress forward so another layer of fabric would be between your growing lower heat and his lap.

Martin and Mandy finish their first bite review and Mandy starts up the game. The fans loved you because you knew everything about the sims they loved your segment of shopping for cc (custom content) for whatever character the group wanted to make. Mandy pushed the keyboard to your side of the desk, forgetting you were on Hamzah you rocked your hips forward trying to push the chair closer to the desk. You heard Hamzahs breath hitch and his hand flew to your hips holding you still. You remembered who’s lap you were on you turned slightly around, trying not to move too much, and apologized with a half smile all the while feeling very embarrassed. He smirked at you after finally taking a breath in.

“It’s okay, y/n don’t worry”

He reached his left arm around your waist and held you down on him while he scooted the chair closer. Only after you were completely flustered did you relaized he only touched you to help you move closer to the keyboard.

Little did you know Hamzah was enjoying every second of seeing you like this. Even if you were just flirty friends, there were moments when you two were alone and the flirting felt all too real. As you were downloading the custom content and all of you were making jokes back and forth when you felt hamzahs left hand (the one facing the wall) start to fiddle with the hem of your dress which was now at thigh length. He made sure mandy and martin didn’t see by doing it this on the opposite side of them. He traced circles and small shapes on your thighs sometimes exploring slightly higher, always making sure the camera couldn’t see where his hand was going. He picked up his phone with his other hand and typed something as he kept tracing your thigh. Suddenly he laughed then said

“y/n, look at this”

He said with a smile on his face. When he raised his phone to you it showed a note saying “don’t make it obvious on camera 💗.” You pretended to laugh as hamzah put his phone down and yall joined the others convo. You couldn’t help but feel soaked over the fact hamzah didn’t want it to be obvious so he did all of that just to keep teasing you on camera.

Awhile passed before martin spoke up and told everyone how late it had gotten.

“Oh shit guys it’s 11” he scoffed not believing so much time had passed.

Suddenly there was a loud bang downstairs.

“Guys where’s carl?” (Mandy and Martins cat if you didn’t know ^_^)

Mandy asks as she looks around and sees no sight of him.

“fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck”

Martin starts chanting as him and mandy jump up to run down stairs and stop whatever mischief their cat is making. When they’re gone the door slams behind them and you quickly realize it’s just you and Hamzah alone. You don’t say anything as you can feel his eyes on your back. As you think about how it’d feel to have his hands push down your back into an arch position his fingers gently connect with the top of your spine; before slowly making their way down.

“Hamzah…”

You breathe out quietly. He makes no reply expect the change in touch, he took his fingers off your spine and started tracing the criss cross pattern on your open back dress.

“hmm?”

He finally hums. You realize what’s going on and quickly try to stand up but hamzahs hands grip onto your waist and hold you firmly on his lap.

“Please don’t run from me, y/n”

He says softly as he leaves small soft kisses on your spine and shoulders. You could feel something hard underneath you. You moved your hips slightly into his; this made him stop breathing for a second and you knew exactly what the hard thing was that pressed against your clothed heat.

You both could hear Mandy and Martin make their way back up the stairs. You looked over your shoulder at hamzah as he put a finger to his lips giving you the universal sign of “shhh” with a smirk on his lips. As you turned you head back around you couldn’t help but notice how attractive he is. As the couple sat down and are distracted hamzah carefully lifts the bottom of your dress from under you so it pools on his lap. He slowly reachers he hand higher up your body; looking into the camera making sure you can’t see. When he reaches high enough hes met with the surprise of you having no panties on. He leaned forward to whisper in your ear. His soft lips brushed up against your skin.

“you’re such a good girl, y/n.”

In that moment you could feel something leak out of you. You had to get out of there. As if the gods heard your need to not be in a room with Mandy and Martin anymore, Martin spoke up.

“Hamzah can you give y/n a ride home, carl made a huge mess down stairs, we can finish filming tomorrow.”

Hamzah almost jumped at the chance to drive you home but he kept his cool and replied with an almostttttttt too eager sounding

“Yeah, of course..”

The drive back from Martin and Mandy’s wasn’t too far but far enough to the point you didn’t know what to say after what just happened. You turned on the radio and the party and the after party came on. Hamzah side eyed you and raised his eyebrow slightly. You blushed not knowing THAT type of song would come on. He reached over the cup holders between you guys while keeping his eyes on the road.

It was dark blue outside and the road was dead. Hamzahs car was warm and smelled nice. His big hand was cold as he places it just a bit too high on your thigh. Without realizing it a small moan/sigh slipped through your lips which filled hamzahs confidence in a way you couldn’t even imagine.

You stare down at hamzahs huge hand on your thigh. “he’s never touched me like this before” you thought to yourself, imagining all the other ways you’d want him to touch you, to kiss you, be in you. He noticed your eyes lingering on his hand, he pushed your legs open slightly keeping his eyes on the road the whole time.

“What y/n? tell me what you want?”

He said while rubbing his middle and ring finger tips on your inner thigh. You knew he was doing that with those fingers on purpose…but it worked. You imagined how his long fingers would feel on your pulsing clit. This was just embarrassing at this point, you could feel yourself starting to drip onto his car. You stuttered at first trying to get out your needs to Hamzah.

“Please t-touch me hamzah…”

Your voice was barely above a whisper but it drove him insane just hearing you need him so desperately. his lifted your dress slightly higher before running a finger alone your wet folds.

“fuck y/n.” Hamzah breathed out softly after feeling how soaked you were for him.

You arrived at your place as hamzah turned off the car and tried to take his hand away you grabbed his wrist. He could see your half lided eyes and your front teeth sink into the soft flesh of your bottom lip. Your hair slightly messy infront. If he wasent rock hard from feeling how wet you were, he definitely was now. He could feel his cock starting to twitch as he continued to play with your clit and folds. You held his wrist inbetween your legs tightly, he bit his lip before speaking softly into your ear.

“if you think this feels good let me show you inside just how much of a good girl you are”

He said barley above a whisper while he placed soft kisses on your neck. Without a second thought you got out of the car and went inside your place as hamzah followed. When the door shut behind you both he pushed you against it. He studied your face for a moment

“can i kiss you, y/n”

This wasn’t you and hamzahs first kiss but it was your first sober kiss. You thought it was sweet how he asked and made sure. You nodded biting your bottom lip craving to know what his lips against yours felt like. He pulled you closer by your waist before leaning in softly to kiss you. The first few kisses were soft and slow, he wanted to remember this moment, remember how soft your lips felt; He thought about how good they’d feel wrapped around his cock. His mind drove him wild as he picked up and held you against the wall, now kissing you rougher.

You felt the bulge in his pants grow continuously as you grinded against him. You moaned as the head of his cock grinded against your sore clit.

“tell me what you want, baby, let me hear your pretty voice.”

He spoke to you so sweetly you could’ve came right there. You reached down to cup his bulge which made his cock throb under his boxers and shorts.

“i want you in my mouth, hamzah.”

You said to him shamelessly as you started up at him through your dark long lashes. He carried you to your bed and took his shirt off. You left your dress on knowing a white, lacy sundress turns him on crazy. (A fact he shared with you while you were both high out of your mind) You got on your hands and knees and slowly made your way up to his waist. You softly kissed down his stomach and v line. As you kissed his v line you started pulling his shorts down as he stared down at you with half lidded eyes. You bit your lip. His cock was throbbing under his now suffocatingly tight boxers.

“You’re so big, Hamzah”

You said breathlessly as you licked his tip through his boxers. His head fell back and his hands found a place in your hair.

“please y/n, i need you so badly.” He sighed while slightly moving his hips closer to your face.

In this moment you slowly pulled down his boxers letting his cock spring out and hit his stomach. Your eyes widened and he smirked and laughed at your reaction.

“aw cmon. you got this baby, who’s my good girl?”

He asked while reassuring you. He pumped his dick up and down slowly before carefully placing his tip ontop of your soft wet lips. His cock was throbbing and wanted nothing more but to fuck you senselessly but he knew good things come with patience.

“I’m your good girl.”

You said softly with a half smile before opening your mouth slightly and sticking your tongue out balancing his erection on it.

“you look so pretty like this…”

He started saying as he slapped his soft pink tip on your plush tongue. Before placing his cock on your face, enjoying the view of how you were HIS slut.

“…so pretty with my cock on your face. Does that make you horny baby, being treated like this?”

“it’s only cause it’s you treating me like this hamzah.”

You replied before grabbing him at the base and slowly licking your way up making sure to keep eye contact with each painfully slow lick. Your lips wrapped around his tip before slowly taking him all in your mouth. Your throat needed a second to adjust but when it did his moans only got louder. You loved how vocal he is.

“Fuck, fuck, that’s so good y/n. just like that!”

He moaned out as you bobbed your head up and down, quickening your pace. You made sure to focus on his tip and the underside of his cock, sucking his tip softly but hard, and making sure your tongue licks up and down the underside of his cock as he goes in and out of your mouth. He pulled your hair into a ponytail and started rolling his hips in and out of your wet mouth. You couldn’t help but giggle softly while seeing how good he was feeling from using you.

“hm? you think that’s funny?”

He asked in a cocky tone before pulling out from your mouth and throwing you on the bed. He slowly pulled down your dress straps while leaving pecks down your neck till he got to your breast. He looked up at you for consent that he could take your dress off. You smiled at him and he immediately untied the bow at the bottom of the criss cross pattern dress. When the top of the dress fell he stared at your bare tits for a moment before taking one of your nipples between his two fingers and rolling it softly while his mouth cupped around the other nipple and slowly began sucking. His tongue playing with your nipple moving it in every different direction. Your moans started to fill the room as your back arched wanting more and more of him. More of his touch.

“Yeah… not so funny now, right?”

He asked with a smirk on his face. He standing at the the edge of the bed with your bottom half right on the edge. His cock pressed against your wetness by accident as he pulled you closer by your hips. He fell slightly forward from the feeling. He couldn’t believe how wet and warm you were, all for him, and his dick was only rubbing against the outside of your pussy. You needed him inside you so badly you’d do anything, you’d beg for him if he wanted.

“Hamzah, please…please i need you”

You spoke softly almost whining, so desperately and needy it drove him insane he felt like his cock was going to explode if he didn’t fuck you right now.

“Cmon baby, talk to me, tell me what you want.”

He rubbed his tip on your clit, his precum and your wetness mixing on your folds.

“Please fuck m-me hamzah, fuck me like a slut i’m yours.”

You stuttered from the feeling of his head circling your clit.

“That’s my good girl…”

He trailed off before slowly pushing his huge cock into your small pussy. He couldn’t help but moan out your name as he bullied his way into your tight cunt. The feeling of him stretching you out for the first time was unbelievable. You wanted his cock to be in you all the time now. You didn’t even want to imagine how empty you’ll feel without him inside you.

“You okay baby, i’m not hurting you right?”

He asked concerned after hearing you whimpering underneath him. You quickly shook your head wanting nothing more then for him to be fully inside you.

“n-no please go deeper Hamzah. please.”

He couldn’t help but laugh at how desperate you were, he loved how you wanted his cock so bad you were pleading without him even asking.

“It’s only half way in, princess…you sure?”

He said calling you something he never had before. ‘princess’ you felt yourself become even more soaked and your juices coating the part of his cock that weren’t yet inside you. He felt your pussy try to suck him in deeper when he called you that and wasn’t about to let it go unmentioned.

“that turn you on…princess? you like when I call you that.”

He asked innocently before sharply thrusting the rest of his length into you. The wind was knocked out of you as you cry/moaned .

“fuck, fuck please do that again, keep going please hamzah”

You begged him, you needed his cock to hit that spot deep inside you again, however for hamzah that spot wasent so deep because he was so big. Every thrust he made into you felt like it went deeper and deeper. He started off with a slow and steady pace making sure your walls get used to his size. As he thrusted into you he mumbled sweet nothings in your ear.

“so…so warm.” “you’re doing so good for me.” “you like when I fuck you like this?”

Every word and every thrust pushed you further and further till a familiar feeling inside your stomach crept up on you. You felt yourself about to unravel on his cock and he could tell by how loud you were getting.

He flipped you over and arched you back down so you were in the doggy position before slamming his cock back into you and pulling you hips back and forth on this cock.

“yeah fuck yeah, just like that hamzah, fuck, youre so good…”

You moaned out as he pulled your hair back.

“Yeah princess tell me how good my cock feels fucking you..”

He quick ended his pace wanting nothing more but to cum together. He watched your pussy as he thrusted in and out of you. in. out. in. out. in. out. It was mesmerizing, the way your pussy sucked his cock in. So needy.

“Your cock feels so good inside me, baby”

You whimpered.

“i’m gonna cum, fuck hamzah im gonna cum…please please cum in me hamzah!”

You begged for his cum which made him slam his hips into your ass, fucking you at a pace and deepness you didn’t think was humanly possible.

“Yeah princess, cum on my cock, i want to feel that pretty little pussy twitch around me.”

Hamzah had learned you loved words and loved being told sweet nothings.

“i’m gonna fill that pretty little pussy up with my cum, so so deep inside you princess, is that what you want?”

This completely sent you over the edge as you came you begged hamzah to cum deep inside you. With a final few thrust you felt his cock twitch before feeling slightly more filled up than you did before. You could feel his cum move inside you as he slowly pulled out. Your body sank down from an arched position and hamzah carefully laid down and spooned you.

“so maybe we should talk about what all this means.”

~~~~~~~~~~🎀~~~~~~~~~~

Leaving it at that for now!! please send request i need more ideas. I’ll write specific kinks, scenarios rlly anything lol :3 besides anything under the influence, i personally don’t believe you can consent under any substance besides like weed lmao

[yuri-is-online]

Jade desperately googling and reading threads about mer x human pregnancies before he even dates yuu.

It differs from species to species, usually fem mer x male human results in viable pregnancies, there are a two articles about eels and humans, but none about morays.

His hope is dwindling, and the general consensus about deep sea folk relationships with humans isn't very good.

I HC that male mer x female human pregnancies don't last very long. After the sperm makes contact with an egg, it'll need a few months of growth before it's expelled from the body and put into the sea. Those kinds of couples usually have one child at a time, it depends on the number of available eggs.

Modern day people in twst have aquariums that are made to hold the clutches in a safe environment away from predators. The aquariums can be used both underwater and on land. After 'hatching' the babies are translucent, they are kept in the aquariums until they gain colour. Once they have enough colour they are let out.

The smallest aquariums need to hold at least one human adult, so that a parent can interact and communicate with their clutch during the growing process.

I think I read a post/fic with a similar headcannon to this? Long long ago, perhaps even before I even downloaded Twisted Wonderland. I don't fully remember... but it is something I have been thinking about a decent bit ever since you sent this ask because it raises so many questions.

I think it makes the most sense in human x mer relationships for one or the other to take a transformation potion and move onto the land/into the sea. In these cases pregnancy/egg laying would go as it would "normally" but what you're suggesting made me think about what would happen if a couple got it on raw in their normal forms and not transformed. Would that result in a viable pregnancy? If it did would it produce the sorts of offspring you are suggesting or would it result in some sort of hybrid child, barely held together by their own magic?

The aquariums are a good idea, the story seems to suggest that Jade and Floyd had other siblings once but they didn't make it. Their mother's obsession with checking up on them and teaching self defense makes a lot of sense if you think of that... she lost most of her babies, she wants the two she has to remain safe (i bet she's going feral rn, let Mama Leech into the enclosure S.T.Y.X. she'll put Malleus in his place ٩(๑`^´๑)۶) My question is whether or not that would interfere with the development of the eggs, especially on land. The deep ocean is very cold, recreating that on land could be problematic. With how few merfolk seem to bother with land (Azul mentions not many people bother with the free program in Book 6) there likely wouldn't be much of anyone thinking up a solution to this problem so few people have.

But Jade has that problem. Or will, he's sure of it but that's a minor detail- point is this is a problem he's actively thinking about. It keeps him awake at night, Jade strikes me as someone who would do a lot of research about this. It's part of how he loves, pouring through a pile of scientific articles that was slim to begin with but feel irrelevant now. None of these help him understand his chances because he is from the deep sea, Jade might be hardened towards the death of his siblings but he thinks of his own children and a rage unlike any he's ever known begins to stir in the pit of his stomach. Later, much later when he is explaining this all to you he will brush it off as him considering your human sensibilities, but the truth is written plain on his face. This little aquarium he has made was a solution painstakingly crafted with help from his own obsessions. It's the most important terrarium he has ever made because it will contain the most precious of all life forms, ones he watches grow in awe as he coos softly. These children were wanted long before they were ever born, their parents loved them to the point of invention and every second up until they hatch and forever after.

[fragileporcelaine]

౨ৎ ˙⋆.˚ brothersbestfriend!rafe saves you from a tragic date

you decide to download some dating apps due to your non-existent love life, after swiping left at some weird matches until a guy catches your eye ethan baker you swipe right intrested at his profile, minutes later a message is sent.

" Hey! your really beautiful " he types

you smile at the sweet message and type back " aw! thank you, your not too bad yourself " a few messages turns into you and ethan constantly messaging for 3 days straight until ethan decides to make a move

" I really do enjoy speaking with you, so would you like to go on a date with me? " you grin because you really do like him you quickly type back " of course! how about that really nice restaurant that just opened in figure eight on friday? "

friday finally comes around and you put on a short jean skirt, red floraly scandalous shirt, you hear a knock on your door and know its ethan.

" hey ethan, its nice to finally meet you! " you say with a cheeky smile on your face, ethan leans down and kisses your cheek.

" hey gorgeous, same with you, the reservation is really soon, we really have to get going " he holds your hand and leads to towards his car, ethan walks straight to the drivers side expecting you to open the passenger seats door yourself, you brush off this one mistake thinking in your head " hmm, maybe its not that serious to him "

" sorry is it okay if i put my headphones in, just nerves you know " you look at him hoping it doesnt bother him

" yeah of course i'd rather talk when we're at the restaurant too not good at multitasking " he says nervously laughing

you eventually get to the restaurant and your about 15 minutes into the date, you like ethan, you have a good feeling about him until you dont.

" how did your last relationship end? " you ask curiously

" oh, well she broke up with me due to my "misogynistic views" she called it apparently saying her job should be cleaning is misogynistic? " he said rolling his eyes

you immediately have a weird feeling in your stomach but brush it off. another 15 minutes go by.

" hey so after this we're going to mine, i have some wine" he confidently says expecting you to agree.

" could you excuse me, i need to go to the bathroom " you stand up and walk away fidgiting with your hands, " i need to get out of here " you think to yourself. you message your brother hoping he responds

" please pick me up this dates going horribly " you rapidly message him. he responds as soon as the text goes through " can't. "

you look through your contacts wondering who else you can message, rafe cameron your brothers bestfriend, you sigh knowing you and his friendship isn't the best, but he's your last resort " please pick me up, this dates tragic and i feel really unsafe " you type hoping he responds, 2 minutes go by, no respond. you walk back to the table tragicly hoping you somehow get out of this. 3 minutes later you hear a slam coming from the entrance.

rafe cameron.

rafe walks towards you plopping his motorcycle helmet on your head " we're going " he says nonchalantly. ethan stands up " who the fuck are you " he says in an agressive tone stepping towards rafe. " one inch closer and your leaving with your nose broken. " ethan steps back almost in fear. you feel your face getting warm as rafe grabs your hand and leads you to the front door holding your hand softly.

rafe hops onto his motorcycle holding your hand making sure you dont hurt yourself, he takes your hands and put them around his waist making sure your secure and safe,

" thank you so much rafe. " you say breaking your silence, rafe doesnt respond and starts speeding away to your house. after a very silent couple of minutes you get to your house and rafe leads you to your front door.

" hey do you want to come in for a second? " you ask rafe hoping he agrees, to your luck he nods and steps inside, you both walk towards the living room and you fall down onto the sofa in relief.

you start rambling " listen im so sorry i know its a friday night and i just took you away from whatever you were doing like im just so sorry and i should of waited and i could of messaged my brother again and like- "

" stop speaking. " rafe says in a soft tone

" excuse me? " you say almost confused.

" i said stop speaking, do you want to know what i was doing? "

you nod waiting for him to continue

" i had a bunch of friends over. "

" oh my gosh im so sorry "

" stop speaking. " he says with a rougher tone " i saw your text i saw you felt unsafe i saw you needed me, i grabbed my helmet i grabbed my keys and i left. i didnt say anything i just got on my bike and i got to you, because i will choose you over everyone else every time. "

you furrow your eyebrows, again waiting for him to explain what he meant. rafe steps towards you looking down at you sitting down.

" what are you- what are you saying? " you say knowing your face is turning red

" i will choose you. "

" okay but what about my brother " you say almost laughing thinking this is a joke

" over your brother every time. "

" what does this mean? " you say feeling something you've never felt before.

rafe crouches to get to your eye-level " i'll show you what this means " rafe kisses you on the lips for a second. " but i'll show you on a different night, when you havent just came back from a shit date. "

rafe walks towards the door not allowing you to get out another word. next thing you know you hear the engine of a motorcycle driving away.

[tofupixel]

Hello! First i wanna say i love you color work! Second i was wondering if you could help me with finding a term//resources. i'm a digital artist and i'm aware of using like thick brushes to block out silhouettes but i cant exactly grasp the method of Blocking colors > Refine> Details...

Is there a name for this method(so i can find sources better) or maybe a tutorial you could point me instead.(a gold mine would be work process things! but no pressure! )

Thank you for you time and for always being kind to n00bs like me -^.^-

I call it blob method............. But I don't know if there is a real name for it- honestly most of the time i see it done in painting. If you watch oil painters they sometimes work the same way (keeping the whole painting wet means they can rework and refine things endlessly until it dries - similar to digital). Search 'alla prima', wet on wet

Heres a sinix video that works kinda similarly to how I do (first part not so useful)

Sometimes I do use a line sketch, mostly when working with more rigid forms like humans or buildings, then I think the skeleton is more important.

But you don't have to do something if it really doesn't work for you. I spent years trying to force myself into something I wasn't !!

Here's some gif timelapses of my process so you can see. You can download them and look slower if you want. Hopefully they help

But I think my process is just a result of not getting it right the first time around and I just keep working on it lol

good luck 💕👍

[pluralthey]

what steps do you go through to draw in your current style? do you have any pointers about it? its absolutely one of my favorites

i'm not sure if i think of my process in steps. in my head, i'm just straightforwardly drawing the shapes the characters are made of at angles that look right and building on that... luckily, i stream when i draw every day, so i have a ton of videos of myself drawing. example:

i haven't bothered to upload a lot of the modern streams to youtube because my video editor can't handle editing 4-8 hour files even if i'm speeding them up and technically making them shorter because of the way video editors interact with files, and the freeware i use isn't able to make proxy files. the act of downloading and editing and combing through all the footage is a ton of time and memory space and it's just not what people are usually looking for from me, so it's not where i wanna put my time.

but that's neither here nor there. what i mean to say is these vods are really long. so you don't want to rawdog those. but you can just download a video speed controller extension to your browser and it's extremely easy to cruise through the backlog of vods at ~15x speed.

i've gone ahead and highlighted some of the recent videos to separate the chaff from the wheat. i tend to take long breaks to eat or walk my dog so there are big periods of Nothing Happening. i'll try to skim some more and do the same. unfortunately, i don't have any good videos of me coloring, since twitch deletes vods after like a month, and i've just been focusing on sketching.

but yeah, in general, it really depends on how good i'm feeling on a given day -- sometimes i will sketch multiple times for just one panel and sometimes i won't sketch at all. i use paint tool sai 2 and a pixel brush usually 2 pixels wide with no pen pressure. for comics, i have 1 layer for the panel borders, 1 layer for the sketch, 1 layer for the lines, 1 layer for the colors, 1 layer for the text, and 1 layer speech bubbles. sometimes there are special effects that overlap borders and need their own special layers. when i start sketching a new panel, i will usually put it on its own new layer, and sometimes for multiple characters i will put them on another new layer at a different opacity. this is mostly to move them around without constant cleanup. once i've gotten a sketch pretty finished, i merge all of the layers into the sketch layer. the line layer is usually just the sketch layer cleaned up and paint bucket tooled black. but basically, the vast majority of my time working on art is spent trying to fix small things like tangents, fitting speech bubbles into panels, thinking about how to lay out a page, checking continuity interaction with other pages, that kind of stuff. the complex technical parts of the process are to save time on those in ways i can without compromising quality. the other portion of working on the art is like "step 1: draw head circle (or jessie head diamond). step 2: draw the rest of the owl." i don't know if this was helpful at all y_y if you want more pointers i might be able to offer clarity on more specific questions!

[godbirdart]

Looking at your recent commissions, those backgrounds are soo pretty!! Do you have any tips for backgrounds? I always struggle with them :>

aAA many many thanks!!

backgrounds can absolutely be a struggle but they don't have to be! they just require a little more creative planning~!

whether it be a commission or a personal drawing, if I'm building an elaborate art piece i focus on establishing the background First.

the background is the stage for your character! planning the background first will make it easier to tailor the character's actions and how they interact with the environment around them.

planning the background first can be the difference between your character standing awkwardly front and center with the setting going on behind them, or actually participating in their environment.

if i'm super stumped for background ideas, i browse stock image sites to get inspiration. sometimes it helps to doodle on an image to generate some ideas - kinda like you're playing with JPEGs like dolls.

that said - while i'm pinpointing WHAT i want to draw, i keep the ideas loose. i don't want to focus on the itty-bitty details until i've got the overall aesthetic and layout in mind, as i might get inspired to add something in later!

THUMBNAILING

if you're planning a big piece it can be helpful to break it down into something bite-sized before you go all in and start lining or painting. these are "thumbnails" - fast little sketches that establish the scene in a way that doesn't consume a lot of time or effort. it's also great as a little perspective exercise as a treat.

here i decided i want to draw a character walking home in a back alley street. with these photo references in mind, i can plan a layout and how the character will act in the scene. is this a candid shot? are they posing cutely? are they looking down at us in a tense way? there are many ideas to be had!

after you've chosen the layout / vibe for your idea, you can scale up your thumbnail to your preferred canvas size and start fleshing out the details. be sure to keep referring to your reference images to get additional ideas, such as storefronts, items, props etc!

3D MODELS

If you're trying to create a unique environment that photo references simply cannot help you visualize, 3D models exist! This gives you that ability to rotate / scale things for better visualization. Clip Studio has a vast catalogue of 3D models to download For Free that you can fiddle around with. i know there are many 3D builder sites out there as well, though i've never made use of them so i'm afraid i cannot recommend any off the top of my head. hell, you can even use the Sims game to design a setting and go from there!

also if anyone is going to come into my house and say 3D models are cheating: they are not. using a 3D model to better grasp an angle or get a better idea for perspective is not cheating. using 3D models to help plan the environment in your art is not cheating. they are no different than brushes; these are tools made to HELP YOU. use them!

PERSPECTIVE

perspective and angles can make a HUGE difference in the art piece. there's nothing wrong with static long shots! if that's what you want to draw, do it!! there's no right and wrong here!

but if you're finding your work to be a little robotic and stiff, slap an angle in there. consider an overhead view. these same techniques are applied to photography and film! nothing wrong with wide shots, but every once in a while it can help to throw in a dutch angle.

if there is one note i'd like to leave off on, it's that your backgrounds do not have to be 100% accurate-to-life to be Good. unless realism is something you're really striving for in your style, don't feel compelled to nitpick every brick and leaf in your art. us artists can tend to over-prune our work until our art looks a little bare and soulless. flaws can give your work character, and that's often a lot more appealing than how accurate the scale ratio between background building A and building B are [again, unless you WANT to go for that realistic look then you can fuss over those details all you like].

i hope this helped a little! MY APOLOGIES FOR MAKING IT SO LONG AH

[velnna]

What brushes do you use in csp?? Ive been trying to find a good lineart brush thats gives me similar results to yours and im just having no luck

Imma be real with you boss I don't even know how to answer that question anymore LMAO

There's a post on my patreon (which, my bad, I thought was public but is locked for $1 apologies) called "brushes masterpost" where I list a bunch of brushes I tend to circle back to BUT that post is already outdated. I switch lineart brushes so often that ANY information about what brush I'm using becomes obsolete real quick so I hate answering this question 🫠

I can say that even if I linked the brushes I'm using, the chances of them looking the same to you are slim since my brush effects depend not just on the original brush, but on a bunch of edits to its settings, system pressure settings (the same brushes look different to me on a laptop and an iPad for instance) and resolution (a lot of the brushes I use look crispy because I work on low resolutions, but would look completely different if instead of using them at 3px size I used them at 10px like a normal person).

I can also maybe just advise that if you're struggling with finding a brush you like, don't be afraid to download a bunch of different ones (assuming you've got something like the CSP asset store) and spend some time redrawing the same things to see which one tickles your brain! And also don't be afraid to mess around with the settings to see what they do - while of course saving duplicates if you don't want to lose the original one. I find that really understanding what the main settings do is a lot better in the long run to customise your ideal brush than just trying out stuff other artists use directly.

My current lineart brush is a customised version of the brush "sketchy pen" from this pack

[egophiliac]

Hello! Sorry to bother but do you have any digital art tips? I’m quite new to it and any tips, tricks or advice would be helpful! Your coloring style is very beautiful and I love it a lot!

thank you! 💚💚💚 sorry this is a bit late, hopefully there's still something helpful in it!

(also, it got pretty long, sorry!)

I think the biggest thing is to just take things slow -- digital art feels different than drawing traditionally, and it's SUPER easy to get overwhelmed by the billions of cool features that the digital world offers. (I say, as someone who spends a lot of time downloading cool brushes and textures...and then never using them ever.) there is a ton of really cool stuff you can do digitally, but because there's so much, I think it's really important to take time to figure out what is and isn't working for you. spend some time doodling without any intent to do a finished piece, figure out how you like to hold (or not hold) your tablet, what keyboard shortcuts you end up using a lot (and therefore might want to map to your pen/tablet buttons for quicker use)...that kind of thing!

everyone's workflow and preferred program and style are different, so it's hard to give hard-and-fast general advice. but the things that I think of as the essentials for learning digital art programs, and what I think of as a good order to focus on learning them in (although YMMV, especially depending on what kind of art you're doing):

brush customization (e.g. flow, opacity, softness)

layers and layer masks

selections and transformations (e.g. scale, rotate, flip horizontal/vertical, skew) (skew is underrated and I will die on that hill)

blending modes (e.g. multiply, screen)

adjustments/adjustment layers (e.g. hue/saturation, curves)

and I think most stuff after that is gravy! often very good gravy though! but yeah, as overall advice I recommend just taking things one little bit at a time, spending some time just drawing and messing around with each feature and what you can do with it. whether or not you end up incorporating any of it into your workflow, it's always good to try things out and just see how they feel! :D

and just so there is at least a little more concrete helpfulness in here, here's a few more specific things that I think are super important to keep in mind!

use! your! tablet/pen buttons! I mentioned this earlier, but they are extremely useful for keyboard shortcuts that you use often! most programs will also let you create new shortcuts for other things -- personally, I use the magic wand tool to fill in big color blocks a lot, so I made shortcuts for 'expand selection' and 'fill' and then mapped them to my tablet buttons.

flop your work horizontally often! when you're working on something, you get used to the way it looks, so seeing it mirrored is a quick way to see it with fresh eyes! in my experience, it often feels like this:

(a common thing is to find that everything is sort of 'leaning' too much one way, which is where skew really comes in handy!) (seriously, I love skew, it is my savior)

if you're working with color, keep a hue/saturation adjustment layer (or a layer filled with black or white and set to Color) on top and toggle it on occasionally to check your values! a lot of people who know a lot more about color than me (and are better at putting it into words) have written about why values are so important, so all I'll say is that the rule of thumb is that your image should still be readable in greyscale:

there are some exceptions and grey areas (do ho ho), but it's a good general rule to keep in mind! (some programs also have a colorblind mode, so you can check to see how your work will look to someone with colorblindness!)

and finally, here's some digital art programs I recommend, if you're still looking for a good one!

free: krita, FireAlpaca

paid: ClipStudio, Procreate (iOS/iPad only)

[o0o0thorn0o0o]

Late, I know, but…! Only by two days, so I’ll still label/tag it:

Ichihime Week, Day 7: Mythical Lovers / Rainbow

I was planning on adding in magpies in the background this time, but I was getting lazy, and it’s already late, so maybe next time ^^;

(Also I was thinking of making a rainbow version, but it didn't come out as I would have liked? Idk. I still think it’s cute, though, so I put it under the cut)

Alrighty, listen: I really didn’t mean to wait this long to post. But, like, very shortly after Eid, my iPad’s storage filled up, like, to the point I couldn’t even access my mail (that’s how I found out, pfft). I was wondering why I’d ever need 256 GB 4 years ago… but still, it was $100 extra bucks. Sure, it was a grad gift, but 128 GB was expensive enough—still a lot of storage, too… Not enough, clearly!

Hoarding layers (and recoloring my own art, pfft) has really caught up to me… but also, it wouldn’t help too much if I didn’t either. After deleting what I could bear to part with, that took away around 5 GB, but merging layers in other works barely made a dent.

So I’ve spent these past few weeks wondering what to do, thinking about emailing my 2019 (imported from my 5s) and 2020 works to an email I also created 4 years ago for some reason I totally forgot about and never used so that I don’t end up taking any space in my actual one and then uploading them onto two (since I really don’t want my files corrupting) USBs via my laptop, trying to get those USBs from Target (but since I was adamant this time in getting 256 GB USBs—I don’t want to have to worry about storage for a longgggg time—there were none in stock), ordering them off of eBay instead since my dad insisted on their cheapness, waiting a week for them, then transferring them to that email and uploading them onto its Google drive if the files was too big…

But that was taking much too long and still left space on my iPad while I was doing it. I managed to complete the 2019 and 2020 pieces from my iPad, but it also only ended up being around 1 GB… So, like, I need to clear more years (breaks my heart, it does ;~; Sure, I still have access to them via that email and those USBs, but it’s not convenient anymore, and there are still pieces I plan on getting back to… ackkkkk).

Contemplating it some more and discussing it with a friend, much as I abhor subscription services, I finally decided to purchase a premium membership on Ibis for that 20 GB of cloud storage. I can afford the 30 bucks a year, and I like the app anyway—serves me good—and not having to watch an ad every 18 hours to access my go-to brushes would be nice, plus having access to the other stuff, but yeah: ✋🌈✨cloud storage✨🌈 🤚

Anyway, I’m pretty sure a good chunk of what’s taking up my space is actually the cache, as I’m already more than halfway through my drawings, and I’m not sure if I’ll reach that 75 GB of storage Ibis was apparently taking up with just my drawings. So I’ll probably need to download everything, then delete the app and redownload it ‘cause stupid IOS doesn’t let you easily clear it 🫠

Anyway, I really thought I’d be done by now, but am not—that said, I managed to clear out around 10 GB off of Ibis (not my iPad; I somehow managed to gain back 5?? Somewhere?? I’ve no clue; I don’t see it), which is wayyy more than enough to get one drawing done for IH week, so I paused the whole storage thing for now. I actually tried to get day one’s drawing done on the 6th, but I’m dealing with perspective that’s hurting my brain, so I decided to get day seven’s done instead, ‘cause I thought I’d be on time…

Me? On time? Man, who knew I was so funny… 😒

But yeah, day seven is done! I’ll definitely revisit that day one drawing in the future, but not anytime soon. As if I wasn’t backed up already, this whole storage mess has backlogged even further, and there are other dates coming up 😮‍💨 And, y’know, gotta finish the storage transfer, too… Ahhhhhhhhhh!

Anyway, on a more positive note, gradient maps are actually very neat to use—had a little too much fun, eheh. I won’t confess how much time I spent testing it out on this piece, but here be my favorite:

They’re so golden <3 ☺️