#essential characters

[biglittleluobo]

萝卜's Essential Chinese Characters #1

大家好！

When spending time in China, there were several characters/words that I wasn't familiar with (as an ~HSK4 learner) yet seemed to pop up everywhere! Being so prevalent, I tried to take note of them and now can share them with you all over a series of posts! If you're planning to visit China, I hope you follow along and find these posts useful :)

Today's character is: 区 (qū)!

区, meaning "district", "area", "region", etc, can be found in a multitude of contexts. Some explicit examples from my experience are:

小区 (xiǎoqū) – home community, neighborhood. The apartment complexes/condos where many citizens live are usually in the form of several high-rises built around a central recreation/park area, sometimes also with a school, markets, restaurants, etc all right downstairs! Collectively, this living space is known as a 小区. You can find one of my pictures of a 小区 below!!

凉菜区 (liáng cài qū) – literally “cold dish area” aka where the cold dishes are located in a restaurant

NFC区 (NFC qū) – “near-field communication zone” aka where you should tap your card/phone to transfer information such as payment or identification

景区 (jǐngqū) – scenic area, related to the similar term 景点 (jǐngdiǎn) meaning “scenic point”

Other examples:

区号 (qūhào) – area code (literally “area number”)

城区 (chéngqū) – city district, similar to 市区 (shìqū) meaning “urban district” or “downtown”

地区 (dìqū) – local, regional, area; when used as a suffix to a city name, means “prefecture” or “county”

时区 (shíqū) – time zone

Have you encountered 区 before in your studies? Let me know if you have other favorite 区 words!

See you next time! 下次见！

(Picture of a 小区 under the cut)

[lackadaisycal-art]

I'm getting so sick of major female characters in historical media being incredibly feisty, outspoken and public defenders of women's rights with little to no realistic repercussions. Yes it feels like pandering, yes it's unrealistic and takes me out of the story, yes the dialogue almost always rings false - but beyond all that I think it does such a disservice to the women who lived during those periods. I'm not embarrassed of the women in history who didn't use every chance they had to Stick It To The Man. I'm not ashamed of women who were resigned to or enjoyed their lot in life. They weren't letting the side down by not having and representing modern gender ideals. It says a lot about how you view average ordinary women if the idea of one of your main characters behaving like one makes them seem lame and uninteresting to you.

[velvetwyrme]

aHhh okay so the discussions of Titan!Megatron on @callsign-relic's blog have fully. FULLY taken over my brain and ive been drawing stuff for it for like the last few days nonstop

the tl;dr of this is AU is pretty much "what if Megatron got turned into a titan/cityformer as a form of penance/imprisonment and now roams the empty wasteland of Cybertron forever" plus "IDW Megatron has really fucked up internals so... what if that, but as a City?"

and of course since he's a Titan, that also means he has a cityspeaker... or three. One per sub-AU thing. Theres 3 options. 3 flavours of AU.

i have so much art to make. but in the meantime, for more info! check out the #titan au tag on Relic's blog :]!! (also uhh potential ns//fw warning for the link shfjbdkd)

Hi. My battery is running out once again so design and art notes get chucked here instead of an image.

The cuffs and collar are hardwired into Megatron, so I made the lights the same colour as his biolights!

I imagine that on the tops of his shoulders there are solar panels, even if you can't see them here lol.

I really wanted to keep the swirly bits on Megatron's chest from IDW

Other art notes:

The second picture with the seekers is (loosely) inspired by a discussion about whether or not Megatron gets visitors or not. I thought about who would visit him and well... I think this is as close as Starscream realistically gets to visiting him.

Extra detail about that piece is that Thundercracker and Skywarp are keeping watch from above! Also drawing Megatron took me like 8 hours because I was struggling with his legs really badly kshffkbfkdsbdk,, the background went much faster, funnily enough.

Optimus specifically isn't wearing his Autobot badge any more.

This isn't relevant in this series of images, but Ultra Magnus's eye markings are only on the Magnus armour. His other two forms do not have them :] (... until he begins to discard the armour, that is.)

Megatron is roughly 3200m/2 miles tall. Technically he could have clouds around his knees, but I thought this looked a little bit cooler lol.

Also, height chart! Him big. I didn't even attempt to put a human for scale because that'd be. near impossible with this scale.

[ronanlynchbf]

tshirt that says NO LIVE ORGANISM CAN CONTINUE FOR LONG TO EXIST SANELY UNDER CONDITIONS OF ABSOLUTE REALITY

[canisalbus]

*carefully picks you up and peeks into your conch snail shell*

Ehm... Sorry to bother, but... Could we, maybe, possibly... see Vasco's wife and her lover pictured by your hand? Sorry again, thank you for listening. Take care.

*delicately lays you back into the water to prevent any stress or dehydration*

Unfortunately I don't have her lover figured out yet, but I think Ludovica looks something like this:

[egophiliac]

I don’t think we’ve ever seen you draw knight of dawn before 🤔 what are your thoughts about him? Or take?

I've drawn him a couple of times, just really little/in the background. but I should draw him more, I love this guy a lot! I have many, many thoughts about him and the way he parallels Silver...and also I think it is extremely funny that his ghost is stuck in a ring. especially considering where that ring has been for the last 16-ish years.

[casually-eat-my-soul]

Stiles, like the law breaking citizen he is looks at the laws of the universe and the laws of magic and laughs.

Some old as magic user who is losing very badly in a fight against: How are you doing this? The laws of magic don’t allow for this type of power.

Stiles “I would kill god for a night of restful sleep” Stilinski, cackling: bold of you to assume I adhere to any laws ever.

[ariadne-mouse]

I feel fandom would get along a lot better if there was mutual understanding that liking a character, agreeing with a character, and thinking the character is well constructed/executed are all separate (if often overlapping) positions, each with their separate tastes and subjectivities. Also: character portrayals are intended to make the audience feel things; this is separate from (if often overlapping with) analyzing/appreciating their actions and role in the story.

[non-plutonian-druid]

[ID: A drawing of Grunkle Stan in the 80s, sitting on the floor of what will be the living room of the Mystery Shack. There are papers and books scattered all over the floor and table, and an axolotl smiles vacantly in a tank in the top corner. Stan stares into the distance, haunted, holding Journal 1 in one hand. End ID.]

He's fine, it's fine, everything's. Fine.

[kan-be]

so I’ve had this fantasy AU in the back of my mind since 2021 and I finally decided to draw some stuff on it

[silversoulstardust]

man who answer such question like this to a woman must have a death wish

(anyway, aroace luffy, yes?)

[biglittleluobo]

萝卜's Essential Chinese Characters #2

大家好！

Hello again for another round of essential Chinese characters! When I was in China, we took a lot of taxis. They’re everywhere, reasonably priced, and fast. While you can call for a ride-share type service using a Chinese navigational app like 高德地图 (I like to read it as “above average maps" XD), it’s usually pretty convenient to just hail one on the street. How do you know which ones are available though? I’ll tell you how, you read the sign! Here’s what you need to know:

空车 (kōngchē) – literally “empty car”, meaning it’s available!

有客 (yǒukè) – literally “have guest/customer”, meaning you should catch the next one!

The funny thing about this is that while these two phrases seem to be fairly universal, the colors they show up as differ from location to location. So while in Chengdu 空车 is in red (see the picture), and 有客 is in green, these colors were flipped in other cities! So there’s no easy catch-all in terms of colors, you do have to read!

I felt a bit weird taking pictures of active taxis while abroad, so I just found the above picture online (source). This taxi looks a bit older, though it still has the classic green of Sichuan!

See you next time! 下次见！

P.S. Fun fact about license plates in China: the first two characters refer to the province and city where the car was registered. So in the above picture, you can see that this license plate is 川A meaning that it is from Sichuan (四川) city "A", which in this case is the capital Chengdu! It's quite fun looking at the cars driving around and see where everyone has come from, especially during a holiday time like Chinese New Year!

[doctorsiren]

I love Hermes teehee also I decided that Athena should have the lightning scar from God Games so just pretend that I drew it on the other gf/epic drawings of her hehe

[witchkittymeow]

Dying might seem scary, but being alive is scary already

[ID: art of Eugene from Drawtectives. He's staring forward, surrounded by billowing green smoke and floating golden stars. His expression seems wary or maybe uncertain. End ID.]

[watmalik]

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?!

[miscellaneousrenaissant]

In this week's issue of Toudens In Black...!

My pieces for the DunMesh x MIB AU fic Toudens In Black by TheTrueCommander as part of the Dungeon Meshi Big Bang (@dunmeshbigbang)!

Since Men in Black started as a comic, I made faux comic book covers~