#i changed the top drawing cuz i didn’t like it

[kishinera]

Redrawing another old drawing of mine :D

Og drawing

[royaltea000]

Qitian dasheng and other outfit concept sketches

[pahtoosh]

Hi hi hi, hello, you were one of the first people I thought to tell about this so, I have DID and sometimes the Little part of the braincase has dreams when I sleep, and he recently had (in his definition) the best dream EVER where he was adopted by Steve and Bucky and they went grocery shopping, and he was having the best day ever cuz he specifically saw a bag of his favorite chocolate and ran over to Bucky and holding it up like "DADDY DADDY DADDY, PLEASE???"

And then Bucky picked him up with the chocolate and set him in the cart while Steve just smiled about it all. The Little One was so excited!!

– same anon who talked about your stucky fics being my favorite thing ever when smol and my therapist actively recommended listening to the Little One more 🦖 (I might sign off on things with the dino if that's okay)

Baby's First Racecar

masterlist

18+

wc: ~700 words

warnings: named stuffed animal, bucky picks you up

a/n: THIS IS SO ADORABLE!!! thank you so much for telling me🥺 i was working on a totally different piece, but this was too cute and i knew i had to see this idea to the end!! i hope The Little One likes racecars hehe. also.. you guys will just have to imagine the "racecar" because none of the pictures on google matched the one in my brain 💔

pairing: stucky x gn!little!reader

summary: you go to the grocery store with your daddies

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆ ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆ ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡

Steve turned to look at you in the backseat with an adoring smile on his face. You looked too cute all buckled up, absentmindedly toying with your dino plush’s tail. You and your green friend came as a package deal these days. Steve loved it to the point where he took his sewing kit out of storage and set to remembering all the skills his Ma taught him, so that he could make some clothes for your favorite little sidekick. Today, he was dressed in overalls: a very practical outfit for your trip to the grocery store. 

“Are you and Ducky going to help me figure out what to make for dinner tonight?” he asked.

You nodded enthusiastically. 

Once the car was parked, Bucky helped you out of your car seat while Steve retrieved the reusable grocery bags. Your baba carried you into the store, as this was a busy parking lot and he felt safer having you in his or Steve’s arms. You had originally planned on walking through the store instead of sitting in a shopping cart, but that changed when you saw the cart that looked like a racecar. It functioned like a normal shopping cart, but it had been upgraded with an outer shell of plastic that almost made it resemble Lightning McQueen. A steering wheel placed in the front and flame decals on the sides completed the illusion. 

Bucky didn’t even have to ask if you wanted to ride in it. He smiled at your excited gasp and awestruck gaze. Never wanting to miss a chance to indulge you, he made a beeline for the novel vehicle. He gently set you inside, kissing the top of your head before he rounded the back of the false car and pushed it into the store.

“Baba, Dada, look!” 

You showed them the steering wheel. It actually spun around just like the real thing! You couldn’t actually control the cart with it, but you didn’t mind. It was way more fun to practice crazy drifts than to slowly navigate the narrow aisles of the grocery store. 

Steve leaned over, demonstrating the functional horn on the steering wheel. It was more like a muffled squeak toy, which was all the better for you because you could keep ‘honking the horn’ without drawing attention from the other customers. Ducky liked honking the horn too, but as always, your dinosaur was more comfortable resting on your lap. 

You had a blast “racing” through the grocery store. Bucky played along, making some of the turns into new aisles more dramatic than they needed to be. Steve too joined in on the fun. He played the role of drive through employee while asking for your opinion on foods. 

Your Dada mimicked talking into a headset with a silly voice. “Hi, welcome to Rogers’ Kitchen. Can I put you down for a bag of grapes or apples?”

“Apples!” you exclaimed, clapping your hands. 

“Second window, that’ll be one kiss.”

He set the fruit down behind you and held his cheek out expectantly. You giggled, giving him a sloppy peck before “driving” away. 

Your dada also became your pit crew when a turn into the snack aisle caused a few small items to slip through the grates of the shopping cart. 

While Steve excused himself to find your favorite crackers, Bucky noticed how untidy the cart had gotten and decided to fix the mess.

“Hang on, baby. Baba’s gonna take you out so I can move some things.” 

Bucky plucked you out of the cart, setting you down so he could make your chariot more organized and comfortable. While you stood in the aisle, a package of your favorite candy called out to you. You grabbed the bag with the hand that wasn’t holding Ducky and toddled back to your caregiver. 

“Baba! Baba look!” you shouted excitedly, holding the treats aloft. 

“Wow! Those sure look good,” he grinned.

“Can I get them, Baba? Please!”

Bucky pretended to think about it for a moment, then all of a sudden he was lifting you, Ducky, and the bag of chocolates into the cart. You giggled like mad the entire time, complementing Steve’s chuckles as he witnessed the interaction.

[yakutarts]

My first commission of the entire fucking year.

Explanation why this has the Undertale tag under the cut ⬇️

This is a Discord commission for Reef, thank you so much for commissioning me, it truly means a lot and it has been a really long time since I drew for someone else. ♥️

Wtf this has to do with Undertale? This is a dragonized version of the client’s OC, Pearl. She’s a ship child of Dream and Blue, for further context, see this post. Basically his OC if she was a “dragon” like Dream and Nightmare (Dragon is between “” cuz they are not actual dragons, because that wasn’t what I intended while creating the designs, it isn’t a “them but dragons AU”, but a “Them if they didn’t had skeleton vessels AU”. But I will continue use the term because it stuck and it’s the most simple way to describe them.)

BOY do I have things to yap about this. It’s been SO LONG since my last client (August 2023), and I was actually a little nervous, worried that it might not look good but it turned out quite amazing! There is no better motivator like money! /hj

The top 3 hardest parts of making this was figuring out how to place the neck and back plates and how they are going to overlap each other, the neck angle and how it bends was not helping at all lol, had to revise it 3 times to make sure it was right. Tried to make them pearl shaped while having some resemblance to Dream’s plate design since that’s his child and all.

Second hardest part was the coloring, since this is a custom design and my reference was a skeleton, I had to cook some shit up. I spent some hot time wandering how I should color this without making it look boring, this is a flat body comm so I had to figure out how to make it look interesting without shading everything so it wouldn’t look bland. Coloring with watercolor made it easier, more textured. Decided to pick a gradient between green and blue, in the beginning it kinda felt like I was coloring a beach. The underbelly was actually gold before it got changed to pale yellow, the star pattern, white freckles and the darker color in the plates is what made it stand out the most.

The last hardest part of this was resisting the urge to shade it, cuz damn I really wanted to.

But well, that’s pretty much it! I hope to get more clients with more frequency, instead of 1 every six months or I this case 1 per year 💀.

Honestly I have been really happy with everything so far, I really like the UTMV community and I get fuzzy feelings at the thought that somebody liked my “true form apple twins” AU so much that they diced to commission me a piece based on that idea. It really means everything to me after the things I have been through (dw about it).

ALSO ALSO! Since this is a Dreamberry ship child, during the whole commission, start to finish, I could only think about this /j :

Yes I made this yes I hyper focused on making this right after I finished the main drawing no I’m not normal.

Pearl belongs to Reef

Dreamtale belongs to @ Jokublog

Ink!sans belongs to @ Myebi / @ Comyet

Swap!sans created by PopcornPrince / now Community Owned

True Form AU / Designs belong to me ( @ yakutarts)

[frostiwars]

let's pretend i live on the west coast and it's still DAY 5: AU!!

do you think we're gay in every universe?

in which i turn insane and draw 5 different drawings for one prompt. and as a result, the rendering is a lot rougher, but oh well! i hope the designs are fun enough!!

GORE WARNING!!!!! and design ramblings under the cut

Role Swap: i referenced hanyuu from higurashi for king metata because, while dedede has no idea about how to properly dress in traditional voidborn-based royalty attire (because his parents never taught him), metata wears EVEN MORE traditional garb, fancified, and a tiara rather than a crown cap. instead of hiding his wings in his cape, he hides them in his silk scarf. i didn’t even have to change his hime cut. he’s still cocky and arrogant but less traumatized so he’s less serious and more haughty. also his bow tying his hakama is shaped like an M haha. meanwhile, knight dede is far more armored, aiming for bulk over dps, and of course his armor has his classic triangular patterning all over the place. instead of the jaw scar, his eyes are clawed over. i wonder how that happened...

Species Swap: voidborn dedede is shorty mcshort short, even shorter than regular meta. he’s so short he doesn’t even wear hakama cuz he’d just trip over them, so he sticks with just a kimono and obi (once again adding to the androgyny common in most voidborn designs). his geta are less bulky as well. it’s not seen fully because his wings are out but his cloak goes all the way to his ankles instead of his knees. additionally, his wings have a blue gradient that matches the new color of his robe. his hammer is more embellished, like if galaxia was a giant mallet instead of a sword. and to keep with the ‘circular’ feeling for the hair common to my puffball gijinkas, i gave him kinda croissanty hair. meanwhile, avian meta has eschewed much of his armor for the sake of piercing and aerodynamics. he’s much lighter and his sleeves flow out to make room for the wings he can spawn on his arms. and of course his hair is slicked back and feathery like Coo and Vul. even his mask has a few more spikes to imitate bird talons.

dedede is a negatively-to-neutrally charged voidborn. i talked with my sibling @clutzicone-dts and they suggested denial as a birth emotion. i also like @moonmacabre01's idea of using regret. very fitting for a redeemable character

Gender Swap: normal dedede wears his garb in a feminine fashion, wearing the kimono over the hakama, so fem dedede does it in reverse, tucking the kimono inside the hakama. different sandals again, and wearing just the crown while eschewing the cap, mostly so i can have her long flowing braids more visible. at least she has a top knot to resemble the pom pom tho. meta meanwhile is largely unchanged physically (duh, voidborns don't have physical sex) with outfit adjustments. she keeps some design aspects from her younger days to distinguish her from normal meta while still seeming in character. tassels on the shoulder pads, and a hood on the cape instead of the frill. plus her lower body armor is longer and more decorated to give the illusion of a skirt without actually being one and i gave her low double buns to keep the round hair shape without just leaving it as a bowl cut

Mirror Versions: i have a whole ass complicated headcanon for the mirror dimension. i think it would be best described that, in this gijinkaverse, the mirror dimension is less an alternate universe and more an alternate timeline that went wrong at a very specific point. it's led to shadow dedede being much more... in tune, let's say, with the dark matter blade within his heart. and dameta isn't very pleased about that. after all, the two never got the chance to reconcile over Meta Knight's Revenge before things went to shit in that world. so they have a very complicated, somewhat tragic relationship. but i can talk about that more another time. let's just say that all of this is why i made certain slight changes to the two's designs. but i also gave dameta striped legs because stripes are for evil people

Bad Ending:

:)

no spoilers. feel free to theorize about it. i'm sure there are plenty of clues to let you figure it out on your own.

[bananaactivity]

My Son

I know I know LR MM painting it’s coming it’s coming I’m chipping away at it… but my son!

I love Kai he is my character he is my love the second I saw him in 2012 I knew I was destined to adopt him… I actually re worked the way I draw him to better resemble his appearance in show

Longer nose and lashes changed up how I draw his freckles too. They are very faint but give overall an adorable look. Even if he does deserve jail time. I’m not playing if you watched the show you know he needs to be jailed fr.

anyways I also reworked his face he looks much less intense. After rewatching his episodes again so I can get a better understanding of his character I see that I have him being much too serious and locked in. Hes a little locked in but he’s much more of a pissbaby. Like chill bro nobody did ANYTHING to you that you didn’t deserve. I still love you though…

I love his expressions like why did he look so pissy all the time. Like if you pause during a scene he’s in his expression is just like…

He’s so angry with no backstory… he was just born like that.

I have a head cannon that when Jack and Kyle (Kyle being his name is also a head cannon…deadass no way his parents named him Kai I refuse to believe that. he was born Kyle and he hates that) always riff that the other is the ugly cousin… and everyone else is just like “objectively youre both handsome little babies and it’s kinda insulting that you’d call one ugly”

I have so many head cannons I gotta make a list. him and Jack are the most realistic cousins ever to me, right alongside Marcus and Leo. Like me and my Cousins say wild stuff to each other, and once my cousin drew on my wall cuz i threatened him with a fork… tbh don’t know what I was thinking i deserved that ngl…

Anyways old Kai and his old husbands:

the one on the bottom is cannon to my AU I know I said Marcus is his OTP in every universe buttttt. I’ve genuinely found so much common ground between Art and Kai in the show that they both come from and I feel like they would be best everything’s.

It’s unfortunate that grunge boyfriend x wealthy boyfriend is really ironic and quite unrealistic but just call Kai a poser he don’t gaf Arthur Augustan Percy-Barret Turner is his rock and they can work on him being an out of touch trust fund nepo baby in the mean time.

Other then that my love of their made up relationship comes from an understanding that if the show put them together they would definitely work together over their common goal of fucking up Jacks life. They have similar mannerisms, similar expressions and tendencies. They would get each other so much ,again besides the rich thing. I’d bet all my money that they would have failed if the show runners had put them together: 1 because nobody but Jack gets to win which I accept because I fuck with Jack, and 2 because these shows like to say that bad guys work poorly together because they always wanna be the top dog. I hate that trope leg the villains be friends and work well together. It makes things so intriguing. ughh this is too long I gotta yap about this some other time….

[trees-be-drawing]

I am back with the other moomin fic of interest!

This one is 43 chapters and I read all of it in a span of a week in November. And even stayed up to read it during a sleepover at a friend’s place.

It has some slice of life, has good banter between Joxter and Moominpapa, some cute corny romance, supportive Joxter being a good dad, and a hint of racism towards Mumriks as Snufkin deals with the changes to his body. It has some angsty moments too of course, due to the racism, but it’s pretty good.

I will warn you, the things I draw will be some small spoilers within the fic so..

SPOILERS AHEAD!!

I’ll be honest, I wish I drew more, but I was starting to feel burnt out. There was genuinely so many moments I wanted to draw but

1. I decided to draw it alongside the “Spirit in Moominvalley” fic and did not think about spacing nor how much I’d actually want to draw, so all the moments are pretty scattered and on one half of my page.

And 2. I really should find more time to actually practice drawing other moomin characters. Joxter was a pain to draw for me which was surprising but also I realized because of how little reference there is of him, with the limited amount of drawings, content and such surrounding him, I wasn’t actually sure how I wanted to interpret him. All I knew though was I wanted him to be more cat-looking than his son.

He ended up looking pretty ugly despite drawing in that same exact place maybe… 6 times or more? Idk, I just genuinely don’t like how I drew Joxter here and gave up cuz my page was starting to fray in that specific area.

Taking in how Snufkin was described, I did draw the difference between when he first left, and when he comes back, which… did make me feel awkward drawing cuz I’m not used to seeing Snufkin showing arm or leg and I feel I made him look too baby… but besides that, I also drew the spare outfit described. I actually really like him in suspenders, he’s so dapper 🤭

I also hope I got the tail right. The fic itself described much of how the characters looked pretty well so I’m glad and hope I captured it okay.

I couldn’t figure out how his new coat should look though, but I imagined Moominmama took his old coat, and simply did invisible stitches to expand the old coat with spare fabric, and I tried visualising it in the bottom left corner.

You can also see me debate how the paws should look. I wasn’t sure whether to give him cat paws or “cat paws” like… those gloved cat paws some people have (I actually have some myself, I’ll confess. I used them as reference).

I also didn’t like how I drew the top right, with this one moment where Snufkin’s instincts kicked in and proceeded to bite a bunny down. I don’t have the best reference for that so I just did my best.

I really loved the baby Snufkin I drew though. He genuinely looks so cute!! Actually, drawing Snufkin in general made me pretty happy. I loved drawing his hair specifically though.

You can see this one tiny drawing I did with him and Little My, and that’s a moment near the end of the fic. I actually wanted it to be bigger cuz it was a pretty important sibling moment to me, but I was thinking of filling the space in between the stuff I drew and hate drawing background, so that’s why it’s pretty tiny.

I did plan on drawing some angsty moments but… honestly, I didn’t feel like drawing other characters at that moment. I probably will once I actually practice drawing everyone, but for now, I hope you like what I did. It’s not my best work but I did enjoy it. Maybe I’ll make another page just for the angsty bits someday, but today is not that day.

Sorry it took so long to post though. You can see from how faded the page is that I’ve been stalling on it for a while cuz I couldn’t decide what moments I wanted to draw and fill the space.

[dewdroppdraws]

Hi I’m new to tumblr so I’m not sure how you normally post on here but I wanted to try posting some sketches of earth from tsams! I’m not the best with anatomy so I won’t lie I did trace over some photos (REAL PHOTOS NOT ART) I found on Pinterest and modified the proportions to fit my design, but I’m trying to improve lol. For now I just rlly wanted to flesh out my design for earth which I couldn’t do while my anatomy looked like crap 😭 all the full body ones I used references for but the one in the right corner was all me so I’ve got that to my name at least 💪 I’ll include my “reference” pictures as well :> and below the pics is an explanation of the design because I love to gush about this kind of thing. Fair warning, it’s pretty long LMAO

Hehe now it’s time for me to gush about my lil design 😈

So the first major difference you probably noticed (aside from body shape) is the very fluffy clothing I have her in. The leg warmers and… fingerless gloves? Leg warmers that she put on her arms? Idk what the arm ones are called but yk what I’m talking about lol. When I first noticed earths little rainbow headband my brain immediately said “80’s workout videos”. The big hair, the rainbow headband, it just immediately jumped ot at me and stuck. I decided to give her oversized leg warmers in that same rainbow pattern because it made me sad that her actual design doesn’t have the rainbow anywhere else. It’s funky and I like it what can I say.

Next I decided I really wanted her to wear thigh-highs. I personally love thigh-highs and also it gave me an excuse not to think about her leg mechanics. I tend to draw Sun and Moon like ball joint dolls, but it gets a lil funky to draw when they are bending their limbs so having a fluffy excuse to hide them was ideal lol. I decided to go with the bold choice of putting thigh highs and leg warmers on her, which I don’t regret even tho it probably seems like a lot. I might change a few things about her later down the line since these were just basic sketches so don’t worry if you hate it.

I gave her shorts because a skirt just didn’t feel right for her. I feel like a daycare attendant would be very active, even if earth tends to sit with the quieter kids, and a skirt would be very awkward to climb around in. I figured shorts would be good. I drew them like jean shorts since that was the original intention but they could be cloth rather than denim gimme time to think about it 💀

I had a lot of trouble decided whether the thingies on her shoulders were stand-alone or like pieces of hair she keeps up front (probably attached cuz she’s a robot) I decided on making them attached to the bigger floor of hair cuz I thought it looked cutest on the pic with her shoulders up and in front of her face lol.

Onto her chest plate thing, I was considering making it an actual shirt but decided against it. I wanted her to have a crop top bc I love crop tops so I just made it so her chest area was painted like a shirt, and then her middle area was back to her “skin” color, so it’s almost like a crop top but not really…?

Last but not least is her face, I also made that her “skin” color and just put the blue and green as her cheeks! I thought it looked cutest that way. She also has heterochromia cuz when a character has two main colors I really enjoy putting them on opposite sides as often as possible haha. So her green cheek has her blue eye and her blue cheek has her green eye. I know her original model has two blue eyes but this was what I went with.

Anyways that was super long and I’m super nervous about posting this so I’m just gonna hit post and if I find a typo or decide my lil explanation was 4 paragraphs too many I’ll fix it later. Have a nice day whoever is still reading this! :>

[dailymothanon]

Random things that I know

I’m currently on a road trip, so I didn’t have much time on my hands to draw much but I do have a small wip and old sketch I did! Along with just talking about random ideas and things that I know. Which. I mostly did a bunch of research on Delta Junction, Alaska as you will be able to tell soon

I passed by Delta Junction, and I remembered that they are the city with the most Ukrainian born people in percentage, it’s even higher in ancestry as well! This is because DJ has very similar terrain and climates to Ukraine (I think??) along with the fact there are already many Ukrainians there, there is not much of a language barrier for them! That’s neat :> So I wanted to make DJ as Ukrainian, and this is just one design concept I came up with today too quickly, it is likely to change as I learn more (I don’t have a definitive answer of what gender I’m thinking them to be yet)

also I think DJ would make BANGER cream rolls. Because I know this lady that lives there that comes to my city every summer and sells cream rolls; she’s done this ever since I was little

Alaska is the windiest state, with a windspeed average of 30 mph; in Juneau they have winds called Taku winds, and in DJ they have winds called Chinook winds

DJ was also known as the “Windy City” and “Little Chicago” by soldiers stationed there, as DJ is big on the military presence stuff

DJ is a very quant and neat place I won’t lie. They have buffalos there sent from Montana!! They now roam a lot around the Delta area, most are within the Delta Bison Sanctuary; I like to imagine DJ tells Alaska to tell Montana the bison are prospering

Colorado has a coin collection due to being the worlds top producer of coins (I think that’s cool)

Cali didn’t know what mosquito repellent was or was a thing until he overheard Maine and Alaska talking about them and asked about it, the other two were horrified he didn’t know (this is a tease cuz my girlfriend didn’t know it was a thing until I asked if she had any once)

This is an old sketch of a character my girlfriend made! She based them off Mexican culture, specifically this is based on California’s Lone Star flag from way back when

I think DJ loves the idea of having a family, but the opportunity has simply never been given 😞

Talkeetna was considered abandoned in 1910, before getting revived in aboit 1920 thanks to gold rushes, I think she is a little afraid of being abandoned again tho, but she knows Mayor Denali would never do her dirty like that

Hawai’i and Alaska both have the best air quality out of the states, they’re seriously breathing that great non lower 48 stuff. They are prospering. Manifesting.

Louisiana is actually one of the most, if not the most (it changes per article but they remain one of the top 3 always) stressed states, along with Mississippi and New Mexico

uhhhmm this is all I can think of currently. I hope y’all can wait for me to get back home to post regularly again 👻 that would be cool.

[artsinus]

Recent arts

I just drew some quick little traditional drawings of Bambinata from PGR and some woman I made up that i thought i drew decently.

Ignore the weird perspective I’m still learnin 😩

Aside from that however, there was a drawing I was workin on that I doubt will be working on for a while. This drawing was supposed to be my big grand entrance back to digital, but I keep messing up so i’m just going to post it as a WIP and work on it later. It’s a drawing of Onikata Kayoko from Blue Archive, another gacha game i’ve been playing.

You can stop readin here cuz i’m gonna detail my journey of Blue Archive.

I never usually play games like Blue Archive because I despise games that are boring to play (usually idle games). I avoided Blue Archive not only because it didn’t look fun to play, but the community is extremely sussy which is creepy considering almost everyone in the game are underage minors. Personally, it ain’t real so idc but It’s still pretty icky to me. Recently however, I found the animator named BlueSeichi, who animated cute stuff about Blue Archive. Here is where I learned about the OST of BA, which is stupidly good for no reason. Due to this, I downloaded the game, and I’m having fun with it as my casual game while PGR is my main game. My top 3 favorite characters rn are Kayoko, Wakamo, and Toki.

The characters of BA carry the game, everybody having unique personalities. P.S, Kayoko and Wakamo are the only confirmed adults so what a coincidence 🤔. I also realized that the gameplay ain’t as braindead as I though, with it requiring skill timing and team building to actually clear harder content as apposed to pure brute force with leveling up. If I had to say what the hardest gacha games I played were, it’d be Arknights, Punishing: Gray Raven and then Blue Archive. The gameplay just has so much charm and personality to it.

Do yer want to know why I love Kayoko and Wakamo so much? Kayokos such a sweet heart, even with how she looks. In her description, she’s literally the only sane one in Problem Solvers 68 and she literally keeps it from crashing breh😩. She’s also a cat and music lover so based. Everybody in Problem Solvers is such a goofball, but Kayoko just follows along with their shenanigans just because she doesn’t want to break people’s expectations that she isn’t a delinquet. She knows how she looks may be detering, but she doesn’t care enough to change it. She also has some mystery to her, as it was revealed she knows Ako, from the Disciplinary Committe, one of the big bois that protect Gehenna. So, people say she used to work in the club, but it doesn’t make sense why she’d leave to go to join a rowdy troublemaking group full of nutjobs. Overall she’s a mystery overall, being disguised as a delinquent even tho she’s actually competent.

Wakamo, is crazy. In a good way. She’s basically a yandere, but one you can fix. Literally. Basically she’s one of the seven prisoners who broke out after the disappearance of the general student council president. She’s pretty violent and destroys every place she goes. When she met Sensei however, she developed love at first sight, and she kinda just stalks him. However, she actually listens to what Sensei says if he reprimands her, since she started holding back her violence specifically for Sensei. Like seriously, if Sensei tried, he could actually fix Wakamo, which is why I like her so much because she isn’t just your typical yandere.

And toki is just cool. I think i’ll like her more if I read her relationship stories, but the fact she can transform into a cool mecha suit is super badass ngl.

Blur archive has been quite the experience for me, and I an actively looking more osts for my playlist.

[evanescentsun]

tch. I hate the 30 limit tag… so just adding everything here LMAO… I was hoping I would be able to say everything I wanted within it. but eh. I was cLOSE THOUGH….! then I remembered I forgot to add the character tags LOL.

#my girl shiemi bday was like the next day and I KNEW I had to do something be damned

#and in perfect world I would be able to spend as much as I wanted on this and do it more idk what the word is

#structured I guess?

#fresh from the new chapter I had rinshi in my mind so I had to add it somewhere

#and obvs I knew from get go im going to have izushie in it….

#and I wanted to add more characters

#and honestly yukio was the next person in mind…

#I wondered what he’d do. and I really liked the idea of him just smiling I debated on whether he’d be in the hug and it was very close but

#couldn’t think of way without overloading or changing what I had and I cba to do that and from there honestly

#i knew that I would have the cram kids and had to add them in….!

#ryuuji was the last person for me to add n think of what he’d be doing and I like how it came out….

#I knew I wanted nee and Kuro and lol kuro was supposed to be on top of shiemi’s head but I forgot while doing it and wasn’t going to add hi

#in anymore but I felt like it needed it towards the end and added him on izumos side to balance Rin’s tail

#which I didn’t also plan and was like would be fun… and I did love that detail….!

#I do think it’s super funny how Kuro was on side of koneko n izumo… both such cat lovers… I was thinking while drawing Kuro on her back wow

#izumo would be so happy with that. I did want to add paku n shiemis mom n grandma…! but too much work same itb the confetti thing LMAO

#I didn’t know how it looked tbh and I couldn’t be bothered to look up refs and draw it properly but I do adore how when drawing the confett

#scribbles the idea of banner and later nee holding it came to me and I loved that…. so cute….

#ryuuji was honestly gonna be just holding some presents too but I felt like it was too redundant and while moving stuff around… it didn’t

#really work anyways so I gave him a random pot LMAO anyways while making this and thinking of briefly what character would do what. man. I

#wanna write a compinating small piece now….. it seems this happens a lot LOL it happened with that fun lil sketch I did for an idea… and no

#I have an au planned and an au of that au.. also mentality into the piece was me just scribbling stuff no actual finalising stuff… and I

#really liked that? Yeah in the middle I was like wow this sucks and I hate it and I did put more time into it than I expected mostly becaus

#of the adjusting LOL and I had that mentality of quick in and go for this art cuz my hand wasn’t doing well and I wanted to create somethin

#for shiemi anyways. it worked well!!! I started to love when I came back for the last session of adding stuff and finishing it… and it was

#SO nice seeing it come together!!! I love it!!!! also I forgot what I was gonna say……

#first time drawing a cat really n was kinda worried but I just went in and it came out alright… I didn’t like it as I was drawing it but

#finished Kuro is so cute I love it… and I was struggling with Yukio but after fresh eyes I really do like it…..! I love him<3

#but it might just be recency bias LOL

#doing the most on first day and then working on it this morning and then later really did help I think with the fresh eyes

#overall I really like the composition the best.. it makes me happy that it came out overall nice together

[yaknowlikenyah]

hi I'm a faggy tgirl looking to get even more faggy after getting involved in my local punk scene. from one faggy trans person to the next do you have any advice for looking cool cuz all your outfits fucking rule. I've been buying lots of accessories these days and really wanna get snake bites + maybe a Medusa piercing. also you're really really hot

Okay, getting my ego out of the way, I’m incredibly hot and you should 50000% get piercings. I have never regretted my stake bites a day I’ve had them except the one time I did regret them cause it turns out if you have a food allergy you didn’t know about you find out very quickly when your lip swells up.

But I got you!! I can’t say this’ll be perfect advice cause a lot of the time I have no idea what I’m doing but let’s go. Advice under the cut.

OKAY. Welcome to the party. A lot of this advice will be scattered tips and tricks but we got this.

Fishnets

Fishnets are a magical, versatile thing, cheap, and a punk staple. Especially if your clothes have rips or tears they can show through, but just in general they tend to add a lot of visual interest.

They can be prone to tearing but if you’re going for a punk/emo aesthetic this isn’t a bad thing

In addition, if you layer two pairs of fishnets it makes REALLY cool patterns. You can experiment with the size of the fishnets you’re layering to get different visual effects.

Want a fishnet shirt? Just tear the crotch of your fishnets and cut holes in the ‘foot’ portion where you want your fingers to pop out. It WILL look sick but you may need to pin it to your pants if you don’t want em to look like a crop top.

Accessorizing!

You’ll have to excuse the mess in these, but accessories REALLY can make the fit. Collars, chains, cool bags, etc, they all do somethin’ for the outfit.

In addition, it helps to have a statement piece. In this case, it’s my massive fuck all boots but-

It can also be the jacket in a fit like this. You want something that draws the eye.

Balancing your fits

You’ve heard the “big shirt little pants vs big pants little shirt’ thing, but a lot of it is creating a visual balance between your top and bottom half. For an outfit to be visually pleasing, it helps to balance the points of interest. In this case, the first fit was super top heavy and I didn’t have my big fuckall boots to draw the eyes back down, so I swapped my pants and switched the top layer and collar to match

Color schemes!

So you may have noticed I don’t stray a ton from black/white/red when it comes to my more alt fits. That’s cause buying clothes and statement pieces is WAY easier if you’re constraining yourself to a color pallet that suits you. It does limit ya, but especially when you thrift a ton of your clothes you can save some money. I personally limit myself to two color schemes with some overlap. (And a few exceptions)

(Blue, Yellow, (Red,) Black, White)

It lets me change up the aesthetic if I want without needing a COMPLETELY separate closet.

Finally, I’m using this as an excuse to show off any outfits that I couldn’t fit cause they look cool as hell but you can see how it all applies

[the1975attheirverybest]

Could you explain the context behind Matty's speech today?

Sure thing! Disclaimer, though, I haven’t had the chance to sit with it yet/ catch up on the show. It’s like just turned 9 am over on my side of the world, lol. So this is just off the top of my head….

I think the key to understanding what’s going on here is in the fact that he revealed the fact that the speech was written by ChatGPT at the END. Cuz, like, he could’ve just said “so, I asked ChatGPT to write a speech that sounds like a Matty Healy rant, and this is what it came up with. Gosh I sound so annoying don’t I heheheh” but he DIDNT do that. In fact, he chose to set it up as an “interruption” of the actual show. Like, he asked the guys to “cut” the music.

This way, he’s got the crowds attention. Cuz if he had done it in a moment of quiet in between songs as he usually does, people wouldn’t have paid as much attention/ would’ve been talking to him or over him or cheering like “I love you matty!!” Or “shut up and play notes!!” So, he set us up by making it a surprise so that we’d pay attention. If you’ve seen the clip on tiktok, the crowd is almost completely silent. He starts to speak, and at first it’s all vaguely making sense….he even leans into it when he says “Matthew,” and strokes peanut’s leg 🥺 which solidifies the illusion that this is a speech that he wrote and planned to say as peanut was next to him. So it makes us think harder about what’s going on. Like, we’re all thinking “He seems to be saying something important but….bro is not making much sense….or maybe I’m dumb? Maybe I’m not getting it?!” So we wait for more, like maybe it’ll make sense as he keeps going / if we listen carefully enough. But it just gets worse and worse.

The speech SOUNDS like Matty. In the sense that it gestures towards desire for connection/ cultural critiques. It has a few big words thrown in there. Even the arc of it is Matty-esque in that it tries to end on a positive note. Some vaguely coherent sentence about us all trying to be better and do better and maybe we can change things. Which is the only part that the audience kinda understands (you can even hear the crowd start to cheer and clap at this point cuz they’re like ‘okay I’m familiar with this bit that he’s saying. Yeah it’s that sounds like something I agree with. We SHOULD indeed all be trying and changing shit’).

Then he pulls the rug from under us, so to speak, and says “you know who wrote that? ChatGPT” (in the clip I saw, a crowd member yells out “YOU DID!” Before he tells us that it’s ChatGPT).

So, why did he do that? Again, this is off the top of my head, but I think for two reasons.

1. It’s the ultimately self-performance, right? Literally saying shit that he didn’t write but that is written to sound like him. I’m not super tech savvy, but as I understand it, ChatGPT works on an algorithm that detects speech patterns. So, in order to compose this speech, it mined the internet for Matty Healy content. Which means that it was probably drawing on his reputation (and we know what the most prominent articles and posts online about him rn would say. If you were an algorithm, what pattern might you find?) as a public figure. Lacking the context. Lacking the nuance. So, in that sense, much like Peanut, the speech is addressing his personal “controversies” on one level, but also commenting on our culture and reactionary politics more generally. He’s literally performing the version of himself that the world thinks he is. Especially since the show changed BECAUSE of the vitality of the band on tiktok and BECAUSE of his recent “reputation” and he told us that he was going to be commenting on it. Reducing himself to a bunch of public impressions and behaviors and speech patterns and then putting them on like a performance.

2. He’s thinking through the artist-fan relationship. We have this trust in him. We go to these shows because unlike ChatGPT, we HAVE THE CONTEXT. We as fans know where he’s coming from. So what would happen if he were to alienate us? To say something purposefully weird and incomprehensible….it’s not even real fuckin English it’s just a bunch of nonsense with a few words and phrases that sound like something that he would say. We experience a moment of critical confusion. “I want to believe in him. I do believe in him. I wanna get this. I’m trying to get this. But has he cracked? Has he finally pushed himself too far and gone to the land of nonsense? Is he turning into the obnoxious self-centered artsy straight white guy that Twitter thinks he is? Has he always been like this? Is this what he actually sounds like in real life and it’s taken me seeing him live to finally get that he’s a fuckin weirdo? Matty, what are you doing man???” And then we hear that vaguely positive end to the speech and are like “phew! Okay this sounds good. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I just don’t get it.” And in typical Matty fashion, just having made a deep, poignant point, he’s like “JUST KIDDING ITS NOT ME ITS THE ROBOTS HAHA TRICKED YA!” Showing that the artist-fan relationship is still built on the same public impressions. If we fully listened and believed that he was serious only to find out that we were totally wrong, what makes us think that we know him any better than ChatGPT does? Or twitter ? The only difference is, we hear that shit and think “he’s trying to make a point” whereas Twitter hears it and says “ah this confirms exactly what I know. He’s a dickhead who’s in love with the sound of his own voice and thinks of himself as some kind of philosopher.”

Idk. I’m sure there’s more that I have yet to think about. I haven’t had coffee yet so I’m still warming up lmao. Does this make any sense at all? Does it help? Does it make things worse? Idk. Just my way of seeing it I could be 100% wrong.

[helixmersd]

Whaaat? Noooo I totally didn’t redesign my LL oc? What? That’s crazy…

Yes tf I did also sorry if you can’t read my crappy hand writing 😭

Also he does have more crocheted plushies it’s just I was too tired to draw them all :’)

BUT I WILL SOON…probably …maybe- idk :’]

But OMG IM SO HAPPY WITH HOW IT CAME OUT!!

I’m not even joking when I say this took 100+ hours , yes 100+ HOURS— I TOOK MY SWEET @$$ TIME ON THIS LOL

PLUS I FORGOT TO ADD HIS TOP SURGERY SCARS [it’s a upside down heart scar why? Cuz I said so (•_•)]

Man’s is dressed like a gothic horror show while th3 relic looks like overpriced cotton candy from an amusement park 😭

(It’s like that one meme I saw with the goth girl but her room is all pastel pink :’))

[Edit : I changed Henry’s height from 152cm to 154cm- i should’ve thought that through before posting this- i think.]

[drawnaghht]

tag guide anyone? + differentiating between usagis (thinkpiece)

I'm really just curious now if something like a "tagging guide" would help? If you would like this, or know if anyone else has posted something like this, sound off in the comments or like/reblog to agree ^^ 

I posted a poll about this on twt and it looks like 13 so far really want one, so I’m putting a lil test post around here too. I also found while researching for this post that apparently on tumblr, the first 20 tags show up in search! so I guess they changed that from 5 to 20 at some point. huh. that’s a bit more helpful than just 5 tags!

I’ve noticed sometimes people have no idea what to tag with a show like Usagi Chronicles that is less than 2 years old and is based on existing IP, but also that ppl use a lot of tags in general, perhaps confused about what is the “main tag” or most used tag for a character in rottmnt for example. So I started writing a little tag guide, which I’ll post the draft of at the bottom this thinkpiece. The main issue around tumblr seems to be excessive mis-tagging or multi-tagging i.e when a character isn’t there. I think I’ve seen this in some other fandoms too (primarily bigger fandmos), but I’m not gonna get too deep into it. You can skip to “tagging guide” via CTRL+F to search it on the page. I’ve also included a little character “separator” part with graphics, cuz it seems some are having trouble seeing the characters differently from fanart alone. I thought it would help to post more of the “source” materials ^^

Also if you have problems differentiating between the two in general…aside from both being white long-eared rabbits they are almost as different as night and day, at least on the surface ^^;; Here is a helpful post by Freakova, about how to tell the difference between Miyamoto Usagi and Yuichi Usagi, ancestor and descendant respectively: 

https://freakova.tumblr.com/post/707461151549702144/i-made-this-for-my-besties-to-help-explain-the

But I kinda get it! Especially if characters are intentionally obfuscated a bit (e.g. there are characters in the show who can’t tell between Miyamoto and Yuichi Usagi, but it is mostly used as plot hook/humor). But they have different names and characteristics and slightly differing fanbases on a site like tumblr, so separating them in tags is helpful. I think part of it also comes from the name confusion, but I already wrote a post about that. Imo, if you have your own design already and it looks like neither of the two characters, you can just use “Rise Usagi” or “rottmnt Usagi” or other variations as tags, those are popular and used enough already that you don’t need to use the main character tags ^^

Personally, I would only like to see Yuichi Usagi in his own tags when it applies (he’s in the pic/fic), but if he’s not, well, what are you doing tagging him there?

I also get that some newer/younger TMNT fans apparently didn’t know the Usagi characters are from their own franchise for a short while last year (but ppl probably learned, right? I’ve literally only seen posts/tweets asking what the series is abt and unrelated posts exasperated that ppl don’t know) but visually they’re quite distinct, even if they are all white rabbits. I’ll post these comparisons just so I can use the tags properly and not piss off anyone else.

We have the original Usagi and his 1000-years later descendant.

Stan Sakai based Miyamoto Usagi largely on his childhood inspiration of samurai films, mainly “Samurai Trilogy” starring Mifune Toshiro playing Miyamoto Musashi, a real-life samurai who inspired many other films and adaptations. You can hear more about how Stan created Usagi here in this Portland Art Museum video where he explains and draws his Usagi. The story usually goes that he drew a rabbit with a chonmage (the edo-period top-knot) and suddenly, Usagi was born.

In the show he has a slightly older-looking design? but in the comics his look varies slightly because the series has been going for 40 years and the character has developed over the pages. so he can look slightly different cover to cover, page to page, but mostly it’s all him, the same character, just different situations, life periods and emotions. So he can look different in official material depending which publication period you start reading from, but mostly the same. 

Then we have both the Miyamoto Usagi’s in different animated mediums,

And Yuichi in different media (show itself in 3D and 2D and merch by Stan)

And then there’s also Jotaro (very important Usagi Yojimbo character introduced early on/vol 1) and Yamamoto Yukichi(introduced in later stories/vol 4), who I think people aren’t mixing up with any of the previous rabbits yet, but who knows, i don’t look through absolutely all the tags myself after all and tumblr seems to have a problem of not showing much older posts in the public tag search anymore, so I can’t find older posts I used to see anymore ^^;

More thoughts on tagging + being a fan under cut. 

This … is not really a vent or analysis post, I can't get that upset about it myself. with real life worries etc - fandom is supposed to be a fun outlet for creativity, at least for me. So I try not to feel anything about it. But tagging has always seemed fairly straight-forward to me and it’s mostly to organize a blog/find other people with similar interests. Writing non-structured non-essays is basically how I interact with a piece of media when I feel like fanart is not enough. And because tumblr posts now apparently Do Not HAve Limits, this is a better alternative to tag rambles.

-------------------

So when I saw the post about the Miyamoto Usagi tag I remembered that this was why I didn’t use the “follow tag” feature + the “your tags” tab as much myself (aside from not having it before and not being used to it on tumblr). Because usually with bigger fandoms, people do mis-tag or tag their other shows/fandoms into it without including the main character, this happens on occasion because there are a lot of people using the tag. I also don’t follow the Leosagi tag anymore for the same reason, that people can’t seem to differentiate between the characters and it becomes hard to tell what they want to post or which character they are talking about/drawing ^^;

As pointed out by Tamalinvonpineapple's post about it, people mis-tag Yuichi Usagi and Miyamoto Usagi and that’s a problem for people who would like to see just one of those characters but not mis-tagged as the other. I’m not gonna assume these are made in bad faith e.g. intentionally to piss off other fans, cuz there can be so many different reasons for people doing this. This post is also not gonna get into ship tags much because that is a contentious topic and tbh, left for a separate thinkpiece (I also already wrote smth abt tags for myself).

I tried to find out more possible reasons for mistagging in general or what the general consensus on tumblr is about tagging but it seems (or we can assume) it is a “bad practice” from how social media sites have given a slightly different use for tags tiktok/instagram/twitter - “tag for reach” - so like those social media accounts for companies that spam other tags. I do see this in anime/manga fandoms occasionally. Not just for the different spellings of characters (e.g, when a dub would give the character a new name; japanese vs western way of writing names) but specifically when 1 character is the only one there and the tags then have 30 other characters listed as well so the post/media would show up in search. But I wonder where this habit is from? Aren’t people curious to see what other tags their character/show have? I remember that on sites like blogger, we only tagged so that we could find things later, so people often made their own custom tags, i.e. "my work on the show" or "midnight doodlies". if a show got tagged, for example TMNT or Usagi, it would probably get 1-word/1-phrase tag (i.e. “turtles” “turtlies” “mutant turtles”) or just the series title tag - either the abbreviation or full name of a series/comic/cartoon depending on content. When it comes to tumblr tags, I remember getting annoyed at NOTPs permeating the tags as well. Or just posts about other seriesM multi-crossovers where your blorbo is only there to die, but then is still tagged after that; edits that have no relation to the character but they share a name or tag for whatever reason and you keep seeing these unrelated posts in the tags. I’ve seen more than enough from almost any of the fandom tags I’ve visited on tumblr. So I get how annoying mistagging itself can be.

But basically in regards to tags on tumblr itself, it seems people misuse them mainly because they don't know or don't like the tags for the other shows. Folks also like to see their posts get to as many people as possible, which I understand, I do the same on instagram, cuz that’s what I’ve learned by other artists example. Seems to make sense that more tags = more views. On tumblr, this sort of doesn’t always work this way. I could post a drawing from a popular cartoon and get maybe 5 notes total in 12 years, while a scribble I deemed too ugly to tag properly might get 54 notes on it’s first day. It’s almost like a Murphy’s Law of Tumblr that what you expect to do well, doesn’t. It’s just how it is here and I’m so used to it, it feels weird to complain about it, even on other sites with actual algorhitms and working apps etc.

Well, as a fan of the Usagi Chronicles show, perhaps what makes me more sad is that this has had the adverse effect of older TMNT/Usagi Yojimbo fans being so angry that they can’t stand the show/character itself now, even if they already disliked it before seeing other fans post about it. Which is just plain sad because some people even make up stuff about it just to discredit it as a show that Stan Sakai worked on. I understand that people have different reasons to dislike the show, most probably valid, but they also assume many things about it, to the point of stating them as fact when the opposite is true. I have… a different post about it. In general, we can say that being online seems to be the common thread between fans annoyed at fans.

In some ways, what’s even sadder however is an empty or unactive tag. Imagine that the last post you saw in that tag is still the one from 2013 you made yourself. It’s a bit annoying seeing people mistag or post unrelated fanart in it but hey, maybe this means they also read the tag? A chance to educate or get more views on your own fandom? Just a chance for communication? I know that doesn’t seem very appealing when those same fans are the ones mis-using the tag, but it just seems better than something completely empty. Of course, this is not a problem for TMNT fandoms perhaps, but from my experience in smaller fandoms, or being a fan of smaller/less popular media. And with how much there is mainly ship-related posts in almost all the Usagi Chronicles tags, this seems to be a matching experience I’ve been having so far in the Usagi tags. The comic series tag itself is also often full of other things, or only ship things, or sometimes only TMNT things for a short bit, but overall, I guess at least people use it?? But I would still like it that Samurai Rabbit, SRTUC, etc stuff gets tagged with those tags so I can actually find it instead of combing through multiple tags at a time just to see something new. While the newer “Your tags” feature on tumblr makes this a bit easier, I can see the easy annoyance at when people tag a character but then don’t include the character. and to add insult to injury, they tag a different character, but without acknowleding the first character at all.

But this is now like a joint fandom for a crossover for two franchises which have had crossovers before and now… there’s sort of a joint fandom? Sort of? So because it’s a bit bigger, it feels nice when other fans are considerate of small things like tagging. Now, on the whole, while many do still mistag and the leosagi tag is still mainly yuichi x leo for many, I’ve also seen in my own tagscrambles that not as many do this as much anymore, or going through a tag in time, the newer stuff seems to do this less. So like I’ve written in previous posts, my honest hope is just that fandom will adapt and grow into healthier online habits. Still, there are a few other things in the tags that I just can’t help but notice each time. it’s also why I don’t bother too much with repeat-viewing tags unless I’m looking for something specific.

It often feels like people just make up their own versions of any Usagi and/or write off the show as “too bad to watch”. And. idk, this just makes me feel sad about it because as mentioned above, I’ve seen it before in other smaller fandoms I’m in. In transformative works, it’s fairly normal that people make their own versions of a show or it’s characters, because that’s something fun to do with fanart and fic. But to openly hate a character? idk man, just feels weird to me personally. Like I don’t have the energy for hatedom. I know my little sibling really gets into hating one series that really disappointed her as a viewer, but even she now says that it’s an odd way to spend time, when she could be making fanart of something she likes instead. And I get that. I also spent my earlier non-internet days being more hateful of new media I disliked at the start, and while expressing that isn’t always bad (it’s just an iopinion), it became weirdly detrimental to me actually enjoying stuff in my tweens. Everything me and my friends and their friends ever talked about, was related to somehow being more above others or knowing better than others, being hateful of anything new or popular. And without quite realizing it right away, that was really tiring. Even if I spent time on things I did like, hobbies I enjoyed, that hate and childhood snobbishness sorta simmered there. I remember that for me it mainly came from “oh, I want to be a real animator one day, I should act like a real profesional adult and always be critical of the media I view, because that’s how I see adults treat real serious film.” Fast-forward 15 years, I’ve been through making comics as a tween, making fanart as a teen, I’ve been making a lot of different kinds of “cartoon art” in general as well as some actual art education, thinking, maybe I want to have some more general art schooling too. Later in my mid-twenties, I met someone with this similar mindset to my childhood self, who at first I got along with. We laughed at cartoons we didn’t like and made fun of the bad endings of those we did. At some point, I listened to them talking about getting to visit a big animation festival. And how they completely unironically expressed their hate directly at a leading crew member of a cartoon they didn’t like. And then I realized like. Wait a fucking minute. I don’t wanna act like this to other people! And this is why I don’t really “shoot the shit” about cartoons I don’t like as publicly anymore as I maybe once would have online on tumblr etc. Like I just don’t get it anymore. At most I’ll write down my thoughts somewhere private or to friends and try to understand why I don’t like the thing. And if it’s a very simple dislike, I just don’t spend time on it.

So like, I don’t get the hate the show (SRTUC) and character(Yuichi Usagi) get. Like I can understand sort of where people are coming from. but I don’t get why they gotta publicly tag it, announce it, or put it in the reblogged tags sometimes. the og poster sees that after all? so that’s like a bigger thought for me when it comes to tags.

I believe people can learn to be nice about a show they don’t like, but if they start to feel annoyed at fandom parts of the web they see online, they also start to feel hate toward a specific show, even if the show or thing itself might not be as bad. Example - I have this toward Star Wars for example, it’s a big fandom. I feel indifferent now, but in my youth, I found it annoying that everyone was talking about it as if it was the best thing ever, when it was spoiled for most of my childhood for me, and also felt like a generic movie series after all that. Something growing in popularity, or being really popular in a niche fandom can make ppl dislike it in general and that’s fairly ordinary as fandoms go. Often, people just don’t like a popular thing. Just think of series of like GoT/ASoIaF or HP. But then again those go down the cultural road so easily, I suppose in countries where western-media is really popular/common, it becomes like a cultural osmosis and fans can assume *everyone* likes it, even if not everyone does. I’m thinking about the fresh 30+ dads from 10 years ago I read about who only interacted with their kids through their own nerd interests. Pokemon is such a culturally permeated thing, it’s everywhere and everyone seems to assume everyone has played it or at least knows about it, even if at some point, some of us were big fans of Digimon instead, or some don’t like it at all. At some point, my dad gifted me a Harry Potter book, even though I (non-vocally) disliked it, but it was in the cultural osmosis here so strongly that it was everywhere and he just assumed I was into it (bless his heart, he genuinely didn’t know). HP was something that I initially disliked because it was so popular, but the idea of a “basic magic premise, but extended” seemed interesting, and it was required reading in my middle school, so at 11, I went to see the movie and thought, alright, maybe I’ll give it a chance. But reading the book I found things that didn’t make sense to me, that didn’t match what seemed like the themes of the book (the whole slave freedom plot for example) so I always sort of kept it at arms-length - not quite getting into it, but also not turning it away if I found anything, not saying anything upsetting to people who were fans of it. Everyone at my school read it though to varying degrees, or at least everyone knew things about it even if they weren’t fans or weren’t invested at all. (This was all before we knew JKR is a vocal TERF, so now I feel a bit validated in my dislike, even if I feel sad for the fans who got something positive out of the series).

So point being, fandom can have different types of people in it. A type of media will often accrue a specific type of fan and sometimes it won’t match what the show itself puts out. E.g. fans acting in ways that go squarely against what the media talks about (Steven Universe is a popular show with many fans that comes to mind), or a show having an unexpected viewership next to it’s intended demographic (us 90s kids still being cartoon fans in our late 20s/30s/early 40s). It’s slightly unpredictable in a general way. 

Of course, TMNT fandom is a bit different from those bigger properties because it was an indie comic made in the 80s that was so different and off-the-wall indie for a comicbook, it sold out and gave its creators Eastman and Laird a hefty legacy, lasting careers and actual money. Good for them! Personally I think it’s thanks to how genuinely creative and collaborative their work was then. Like Usagi Yojimbo, it’s an old comicbook/franchise now, so the “fandom” as such differs from generation to generation, from childhood to childhood. I met the turtles for the first time with the 87 series in the early 90s, then the next time w the 2003 series, which i initially hated as that angry, cartoon-critical tween, but was surprised at how much it seemed to take from the comics. I think I was initially angry about it for different reasons, mainly, “why is it so serious? why are the jokes so lame?” and also because I had invested so much emotionally into the idea of seeing something as good as the 80s cartoon again... but then found that it grew on me and now 20 years later I can look at it with nostalgia. As a result, my reaction to the 2012 series was mostly “wow another TMNT cartoon?” and “huh it looks interesting” and “oh I’ve seen this person work on another cartoon before”. My little sibling on the other hand only saw the 2003 cartoon and their reaction the the 2012 adaptation was “Wow, THEY’RE FINALLY TEENS” because as kids, we thought the 2003 TMNT looked and sounded “too much like boring adults”. But from many online fanspaces back then a lot of the more vocal reactions was around “THE 3D IS SO UGLY” and “WHY ARE THEY SO YOUNG”. You’ve probably heard similar sentiments of various degrees if you’ve been a fan or viewer of any TMNT cartoon. 

Usagi Yojimbo is unique in this sense because Stan Sakai has been the only one drawing and writing the comicbook for 40 years. Some of the visual style and writing tone change from book to book, but it’s gradual because Stan has changed as an artist and writer too. If you look at any comic series like this, it’s actually a natural part of many comics i.e. webcomics used to be a prominent example of this, as the creators were often complete novices at the beginning and graduated to a more consistent style. But even from a surface level view, lets say, reading other people’s reviews, you can see that people really enjoy Usagi Yojimbo for how consistent it is with it’s treatment of its characters, story and Edo-period culture. Stan Sakai really does his research and puts respect back into fiction inspired by samurai. Even though guides will often tell you that you can jump into the series from any point in the series, there’s just something really consistent about it as a whole. Sakai gets to do whatver he wants with his books and what he does seems to be thought-out usually. Even if the early animated adaptations were a bit incorrect, comic readers in general have a lot of respect for Stan and his work. My favourite part about this all is how Usagi Yojimbo is actually used to teach about japanese culture in a college course in the US.

Because both TMNT and UY are originally creator-owned comics (still so with UY regardless of publisher or adaptations but not so much TMNT as Viacom bought the rights in 2009), perhaps the general fan experience is more similar to original comics fandoms in Japan. Although whether a series is creator-owned varies from series to series, the manga and magazines culture in Japan seems wholly different from what US comicbooks were in the 80s and even what they still are now in that regard. Because a series will more often be written and illustrated by the same creator/artist/team, there are less variations and book-to-book differences both visually and tonally. In the US, a comicbook series can start with an artist-writer team, but then switch if the editorial decides some change is needed. This is something that often affects consistency and a story or character’s canon eventually and in a convoluted way, it’s the reason why we got “alternate earths” and “multiverse crossovers”. Which, while fun, make american comicbooks hard to read for some newer readers. Even with TMNT, once Eastman and Laird started having less time to make the comics and their other problems, it led into breaking off their creative partnership and never speaking again. But they had to continue the comic. If before the feud, they would just have fun passing the pages between each other, now they actually  so they wrote it he series became different based on who was writing it. One more sci-fi leaning and one more martial-arts and mysticism leaning. You can see this difference in the TMNT animated adaptations as well. The 2003 series namely is more based on Laird’s storylines in the comics and he was also consultant on the series. After the 2009 sale of Mirage to Viacom, we get the 2012 series, where Eastman acts as consultant, so it’s more heavy on his ideas of what the TMNT are. In 2019, the documentary series “Toys that made us” brought them together for the first time in almost 2 decades. And then we fans got to have The Last Ronin, a collaboration between the two again.

(What I’ve paraphrased here is mostly based on this video overview of how the comic became a franchise “How did a violent indie comic become a $15,000,000,000 franchise?” by matttt if you’re interested in seeing and hearing a more picturesque summary of this)

So getting back to fandom, because it’s mostly been one comicbook series, both the more avid and casual UY comics fans might not be used to there being adaptations of Stan’s Usagi. Yes, even with the visual examples I brought up above, perhaps some simply haven’t seen the animated adaptations because these are still marketed “for kids”. This is like the only reason I can think of that people who are 30+ adults, go online to complain about the Chronicles series online, even though it’s obviously for kids, meaning they probably didn’t even watch it. Folks are “surprised” Stan “let Netflix ruin his series” etc - even if it’s explicitly in a new futuristic setting to avoid affecting the comics canon. It will be interesting to know how people react when or if Sakai puts out his “Kagemusha” anthology, where the idea is about different creators telling different Usagi stories.

Even TMNT fans, many of whom don’t know Usagi beyond the animated adaptations, might jump in with this similar mindset of “different = bad”. Maybe there’s a manga/anime adaptation out there with the fans having similar concerns about their adaptations. Sailor Moon comes to mind, but as always, people’s grievances with an adaptation may have good reasons underneath. But also I’ve personally never seen an avid Sailor Moon fans be as annoying as the casual Star Wars fan. It might also depend on the age and lifestyle of the fan. Someone who is a teacher or parent, maybe they’ve met more people, put more thought into it, might feel milder about new or different things vs someone who is used to going online to see people angry and enjoys getting into arguments.

If I start to think about it, I can get a similar reaction out of myself. It was hard to look at mid-00s fanart of Usagi because it always felt a bit “extreme” like fans changed things about Usagi to suit their own understanding or image of samurai, which was always more based on popular movies or anime rather than the comic. I think this is just a general thing about fanart over the times. I still balk at some fanart, either UY or SRTUC, if for example the sides of the clothes are opposite - right over left, for burials vs left over right, like the letter ‘y’ - because it just means the fanartist didn’t bother to look up even references. Most times people just don’t know about this sort of stuff, they might be anime fans or they might even be part of a different asian culture, but it it’s not something that’s taught, of course it won’t reflect in something like fanart. But then, it’ll just be something new to learn. To me it also speaks of a wider annoyance of people liking things only for the surface-level appeal.

Usagi Yojimbo I’ve noticed has much more of a fanbase than fandom. I know fanbase doesn’t get used much as a term these days as more and more media gets an active fandom rather than staying at a fanbasem but it’s a term I’d like to use in this case. “The Wilkes Beacon” in 2014 defines the difference so: “Not everything with a fanbase has a fandom, because a fandom is a group of committed fans who are always vocally interested in their “thing,” usually expressing that on a social website such as Tumblr. Just because you’re a fan doesn’t mean the fandom will accept you.” Indeed sometimes fandom feels almost like being in a separate part of the club, only for people in the know about it. The origin for fanbase is attributed to early 20th century baseball fans. The origin of fandom, most well-known as a portmanteau of fan + kingdom, is often attributed to the original Sherlock Holmes fans who actually gathered to mourn the character when Arthur Conan Doyle decided to kill him off (bless your hearts and souls, sometimes it feels like fandom has never changed) but also from early 20th century sports fans and 60s Trekkies, who saved their show. A lot of different sources give different origins and histories for these words and many will also equate them as synonymous.

My own experiences tell me that a fanbase is more general - any fans of a thing, whether they attend conventions, buy the media or no (i.e. Sherlock Holmes readers, sports fans) and will comprise the “base” of any activity - the larger number of fans that exist for a piece of media/sport/celebrity. A fandom will be the more “active” part, more interested in being connected with each other within that fanbase. Of course, to any other person outside of fans, both of these will be synonymous and a fan will look weird and fanatical regardless of how little they invest themselves into a media. But I’’m making this distinction to describe what I see as more casual and more active “fanbase as a whole”. Fanbase as a word feels more general, while Fandom sounds more specific. So as an example, the One Piece “fanbase” might feel large and more everywhere, like with pokemon or Sherlock Holmes the book, but the OP fandom can feel more active and particitative, like the .It’ll depend entirely on what way each person interacts with the media. Do you have friends who are also fans of the series? it’s like a fandom. You just watch it but don’t participate as much? You’re in the fanbase, but you might partake in fandom activities if you feel like it. You might be a more casual fan, but you might have more avid feelings about the series as well, but you’re not that interested in making fanworks or posts or reacting to other fans at all. A fandom might be big, but more ubiquitous, more silent and conversely, some fandoms may be small, but still very active and vocal. I’ve often theorized that this is because So UY online fandom sorta feels like the latter, but more under-the-radar. Small and active but also more silent and appreciative. With the previous “big fandoms” example, it’s also the juxtaposition between Old and New that comes into play. An old Spidey fan from the 70s might have become an official Spiderman fanartist, but they might not partake in all the fan stuff they used to anymore. Still a fan, but maybe the newer and younger “fandom” as such is just not appealing to them in the same way.

The larger or more advertised a TV series or book is, the larger and more annoying its fanbase in general. If a piece of media has less popularity, it will ergo have a smaller fanbase and sometimes no “active fandom” at all. So now with the Samurai Rabbit: the Usagi Chronicles TV show as an animated spinoff-adaptation, we have a similar problem that TMNT fans have been familiar with over the decades. Thanks to the show, there’s a more active, slightly younger fandom who want to connect over the series and maybe even read the comicbook, know more about the source and origins, they might want to even know how the show was made, make fanart or fic. So fans like any other, but just that the media they’re a fan of now, is still relatively new. Maybe these newer fans act or write differently online from how older fans are used to. Maybe they even treat the original source comic differently or just don’t know anything about it. In any case, new series and new fans will generally seem annoying because culturally that’s what we’ve started to associate some of fandom with. Otaku culture etc. So it and it’s fans might get the “new thing” treatment as mentioned above with the TMNT animated adaptations.

The difference here is that Stan Sakai has been wanting his own animated adaptation for a long time (just look at the Space Usagi pilot for proof) and while many suggested projects to him before, this one actually piqued his interest bc they did something new with the characters. You could say that what people don't like abt this series are some decisions resulting from this being a netflix cartoon for kids. the decision to set it in a near-future with a new younger for example, was made in the beginning by netflix and I haven’t found any articles yet that’s found a legit reason for why it stayed this way. My guess based on interviews with Stan and crew is that Stan found it interesting as a possible new way to get more readers to the comic. Something for the younger generation. Although many readers and even parents will attest that the comic is child-appropriate (and really, it is), the TV-Y7 ratings and so on exist for a reason. And while I would love for more western studios to get funding for more adult animation in general (I’m not from the US myself and animation such a large medium, the way that genres are explored or what gets made for adults vs kids feeks so different elsewhere), I think it’s good that the first full series based on UY is this “non-violent” (your mileage may vary). Because a lot of the more vocal adult fans of UY seem more focused on the violence vs what kids might get out of it. A popular quote from Sakai is “Once, a mother asked me, 'What is Usagi Yojimbo about?' and before I could answer, her son said, 'It’s about honor.'"   (Komai for JANM, 2011). Sometimes it seems like the “older adults” or the “more casual” fans of UY sort of don’t get it.

Even the naming of the series and character has reasons, which I’ve seen some Rise Leosagi shippers make their own reasons for. So the various hate from “older fans” I see about it is strange because all evidence points to the show having Sakai’s approval and his full involvement. Of course, I could also be wrong, but watching the series, it doesn’t feel to me like an “empty cashgrab” as one angry TMNT fan put it. It feels more like something made by other UY fans, those more familiar than I was at the time, with both Usagi Yojimbo lore as well as the culture and lore behind it. In their quest to properly honor the comic series they loved, crew put a lot research hours into making sure both edo and post-edo periods got to be part of their show. Like “trips to japan during a pandemic” type of research. The show is an interesting fusion of old and modern in futuristic setting and feels wholly unique as an experiment.

Another aspect of course is also the shipping parts of fandom. I can never quite get my head behind this “arguing about ships” because it just reminds me of my Grandma and her older sister fighting over their soap operas and who should get together with who. And alright, maybe this was fun for them...? I’ve never been that invested in this myself but it can be fun to have a pairing you root for in a show, when it’s just a bunch of connected ideas over the story, there really seems like a real genuine connection between the characters or if there’s a chance to connect with other fans over it. That’s kind of what fandom is for me in general, but with crossover ships, it’s like a strange and interesting combination of “oooh what interesting similarities and differences” and “lets find out” with fanworks. 

This is the main way I enjoy making crossovers in general work, even if I’ve never finished an actual fic (I’m more of an artist) and even if the works sometimes don’t go together (it’s like a fun challenge). I wonder sometimes if the SRTUC crew also imagined crossovers with TMNT? As in this fanart post on facebook by Samurai Rabbit character designer Andry R, I wonder what that could have been like. After all, if many of the crew are fans too, it just makes sense to think about that? it’s fun to think of crossovers after all! And since it’s fanwork, I personally don’t feel as obligated to make some of the quality as insanely good as I would have in my younger days. I want to enjoy the art making process too, so putting research and sketches into a piece is sometimes my own “enough”. So I don’t really care about views either because I know even now, tastes might still just be not geared toward something sketchier that I make.

Even so, despite the experience with online sites and social media people have in general, or other artists/fans encouraging to feel a bit less worried about socmedia algorhitms, it might be frustrating that posts are not as popular even if your idea feels great.

So connecting all of that fandom talk, I can only assume people mistag between a popular and non-popular series for similar reasons. As said earlier, fans might assume everyone prefers the popular thing and that it’s better to tag that popular/bigger/older thing. Because at least that So in our case, I’ve noticed more that ppl tag Yuichi Usagi with the Miyamoto Usagi tag. From the surface, it seems like people don’t know about the Yuichi tags/show or they just don’t like it for some other reason. Now Tumblr is more a “home of fandoms” than casual fans, as most of the user-generated content is entirely by people who get much more invested in a series than a casual fan. Similarly I’ll see people tag their TMNT 2012 inspired fandesigns as ROTTMNT as well, because that is simply seen as the popular fandom at the time ergo, more attention on your post.

Maybe a solution for the mis-tagging could be smth as simple as fandom outreach, something active to unite the different types of fans into using tags correctly, but of course, something more active and social might feel more unnatural, as most of us are more wall-flower than social butterfly - working off the assumption here that most fans are shy. I used to be pretty shy as a fan and now I’m more active and out-going in general in my adult years, but at the same time, doing something socially more active is still a scary thought in my brain so I can understand that it’s easier to just tag and hope it’s correct. Or easier to make ticked off posts vs something with a different kind of effort. But then again, as brought up in my examples of other fandoms, being a fan can make people very active in taking part in similar fan activities. As we all enjoy the same thing in different ways or different media in similar ways, we are all still fans at the end of the day. Whether casual or more involved, that’s a unique experience that should unite us. So I’ll have my peace with the older cartoon-hating fans who only view Usagi Chronicles as an empty children’s cartoon etc etc. 

So, because I’m an adult, but also an artist and animation fan, this is how I’ve been approaching TV cartoons for the past 5-10 years. Against my first reaction of “oh, this is too slow for me” the way I chose to view the series once I saw more of it was “I’m an adult, and this is a cartoon made my other older adults, for kids - let me see what it’s about”. It’s more about curiosity and seeing what other creatives have done to put connective tissue between one idea to another.

Personally when it comes to tagging I try to keep to a general amount of “minimum amount of tags possible” bc I’m a bit lazy but also, I will never find anything on my own blog later if I used more than 20 tags about a simpler fanart post. So maybe like 1-2 tags for show/series, 1-2 tags for characters and my own art tags. I am lazy but I also like being considerate with other people. But also because of my previous experience with blogging, I like to keep tags I re-use as consistent as possible so I have the same experience. Of course, sometimes I forget what I’ve actually used if there are many tags i.e. many characters. so keeping the tags short is a boon for that end.

Here is the draft version for the UY and Usagi Chronicles tag guide, i'm gonna change this more but this is mostly how I've been tagging stuff (or have tried to so far) and I wrote a small guide back in march before all this, but have been coming back to it now with more general and character tags in mind. 

== Tagging Guide ==

Hello Rise of the TMNT and Usagi Chronicles joint fandom! Here’s a guide on how to tag Usagi Chronicles/Samurai Rabbit stuff! Mostly it’s my own view on how to tag things based on how I interact w the fandom stuff posted here but also from my experience of using tumblr and older blogging platforms - how I see the most common/make-sensical ways to tag characters/shows. But maybe you will find this useful too, fellow fan!

Usagi Yojimbo - the name of the original comicbook series - I decidedly reserve this for posts and reblogs ONLY about the Usagi Yojimbo comic (pages covers,, screenshots, memes), or general fanart of the comic or its characters. This helps me keep it separate so I can find posts about it later.

Usagi Chronicles - personally I use this for all content for the show, but especially the crossover stuff and my own art posts. This seems to be the most commonly used unique tag about this show.

SRTUC - acronym, good for short posts, for quick tagging. but I also use this to tag general reblogged posts about the show

Samurai Rabbit - I only try to use this if it is about the official stuff, like interviews and GIF/screenshots in bulk (more than 2). This tag gets used a lot for both the series but before that it was also used for posting general UY comics content and alternate covers by other artists, as well as for original samurai rabbits unaffiliated by UY. It is too general for me to use it on my own posts outside of text posts maybe.

Samurai Rabbit the Usagi Chronicles - mostly I use this tag for more general posts, but also reblogs if someone else has made something directly related to the series.

SamuraiRabbitNetflix - lol I only use this one on twitter, bc I saw someone from the crew use it and it has stuck for most of my more finished posts I guess ^^ Literally nobody else on tumblr uses it which is fine, but I think it’s a good way to separate the series and the more general posts people make about the comic or guest art of it (or sometimes original art unrelated to UY)

Characters:

Miyamoto Usagi - I try to mainly use it for just comic Usagi and fanart, but occasionally I will use it for fanart depicting

Rise Miyamoto Usagi - Any Rise!versions of comics Usagi. Usually these are fandesigns, but sometimes fans will adapt it wholesale (usually adapting him from his younger years). Sometimes it is unclear which version it is based on or it is a completely original version so I simply tag these as Rise Usagi.

Yuichi Usagi - pretty self-explanatory! I only use this for posts/fanart including Yuichi Usagi (but not when he is only mentioned in passing). Sometimes it is hard to differentiate between these versions however, 

Usagi fandesign/Yuichi Usagi fandesign/Miyamoto Usagi fandesign - I use all these tags to organize the fandesigns ppl make of all these characters, reserving “Usagi fandesign” when it’s really an original design based on various canon Usagi concepts or more of a “general” Usagi than a specific one i.e. meant for the Rise or 2012 TMNT crossover AUs. This counts for me in reblogs also when the OP hasn’t really decided what the character is and has tagged both characters. Lol there is a lot of different fanart of these characters and for my own sake, I tag these separately where possible so I can find the fanart easier later (especially if the posts themselves have text which doesn’t use these names, or if tumblr search is not working on blogs)

UY character - I use “UY” as the common acronym before characters from UY, but I also generally tag their names in reblogs. idk, this just makes it easier for me to find them later in my own blog and that’s all (Kenichi and Mariko for example are quite common Japanese names)

Tomoe Ame - This character just deserves her own tag, but also, I think the 03 version, while quite different, can fit in the same tag because people don’t post about them as much ^^;;

--

And now for the TMNT tags!

Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - the official name! long, but good if you are tagging official stuff i.e. screenshots, gifs, concept art, tweets from crew etc

ROTTMNT - good short catch-all tag, lots of ppl use this to tag their reblogs quickly, but shorter posts can also go under here

Rise of the TMNT - Slightly longer tag than the full acronym, but more descriptive, if you wanna make sure people know it’s a TMNT show

Rise TMNT - I’ve seen a few ppl use this as a tag and it’s a valid way to tag (short and unique) but it’s not as popular as the others

2018 TMNT - again, general tag for the series. Common way to make a tag for a TMNT series - adding the year of airing before the TMNT acronym. Same with TMNT 2018. Same for the comics! I’ll use IDW TMNT as a tag for example, bc it seems widely used and understood.

TMNT18 - same as the previous one, but shorter! There are a lot of TMNT media besides the comics, (movies, animated series, etc) so it’s a general easier practice to tag via year. Ppl also sometimes use the variation 18TMNT. Anything is basically fair game with these general tags as long as the author of a blog finds stuff later.

Characters![I’m not sure about the characters yet bc I use the tags differently than other people apparently. my blog my rules i guess!]

rottmnt [character] - reserved for when i tag this character in crossovers, eg rottmnt April, rottmnt donnie. I generally use nicknames for the rottmnt boys cuz I am lazy.

Rise [character] e.g. Rise Leo, Rise April - I try and use this just for 

April O Neil (full name) - for when I’m tagging them in general and just want to see them in this tag with the other versions

12 April or 12April - for the 2012 TMNT versions of the characters. I often write the tags together bc I am just lazy but in the case of numbers, I can also forget. On tumblr I try to remember to use spaces cuz that is allowed here lol.

----

And that’s it! I have more in the list, but that is the gist of the style of it. Basically hust explaining what I’ve seen and if/how I use it on my own blog. Let me know if you have more thoughts about this. I’m curious to know what other fans of both series think!

[koqabear]

hello hello WHERE HAS THAT ALIEN SOOBIN TENTACLE PORN FIC ALL MY LIFE???????

as a fiend for all things terrestrial and lover of monster fucking i just lost my mind over how mind numbingly good that was

and i mean all of it, like the world building is on top and how i love the power dynamics when mc got into the kingdom, and am i deranged for thinking the scene w mc tied down to a chair was so hot?

oh imma get into soobin like HSJKDODJSJWI ur descriptions on his alien physique and powers was so so good like the image i have of him in my mind is killing me, if i have the skill to draw i'd fill up a whole book w him

AND THE SMUT GODDAMN!!!!!! how mc didn't moan when soobin choked her is beyond me but omfg that got me all fucked up i was starting to feel like im in heat too 😭

like im banging my head on the wall how u manage to build up all the tension from mc being level headed and leader-like to her throwing herself on tyun and hyuka and then still trying to brat out soobin to ultimately get her mind broke.

ALSO THE FACT THEY WATCHED AAAA im making myself ctfu cuz i kept imagining them in their minds w mini spongebobs panicking and burning files while trying to not make eye contact 💀

love how soobin also slowly got softer like he's this tall almighty couldn't-look-into-his-eyes intimidating being back at the palace and now he's a cuddly smug lil shit w mc just cuz they mated 🥹

which btw im also curious as to how he's able to form a bond by injecting his blood (?) into her, which is completely fine by me if u wanna leave that up for Interpretation! im just so interested in this universe, like bullets don't affect soobin? his species instilling fear after mc figured out what he is? could soobin just kill the mc and sever the bond or could he not? like how good of a pussy do u need to have to tame this beast?

u don't have to answer all that im getting obsessed w this fic and the world and i need to stop this is getting so long im sorry 🥲

anw i love ur writing and ur one of my fav writers, that was such a good good read and it's definitely my top favorites now, honestly every fic u put out has impeccable background and again i adore how u write relationships and dynamics so naturally and deep and the whole experience is just so immersive

k ending this here before i add another 10 paragraphs... 🚶‍♀️

hahaha thank you!!! this sudden resurgence of interest for what the body wants was completely unexpected but wholeheartedly welcomed! this fic was the first lengthy, detailed one that i published on here, so it’s such a compliment to hear that you enjoyed it ! <3 and omg, you’re making him wanna draw him now… pause… i think i will after this. 

i honestly was a little worried that both the mc’s and soobin’s change was too sudden 😭 i still feel like i could’ve executed it better, maybe? or maybe i’m just overthinking things, idk. but seriously, that smut was genuinely one of the most insane one i’ve ever written?? i didn’t realize that i’d forever be cementing soobin to a life of nonhuman!aus after that— sorry soobin i simply do not make the rules. 

i answer your questions under the cut!! i also go overboard with it aksbsksn

-[blood bonds? how tf does that work?]

ok. so! in the universe that WTBW is set in, Soobin’s species (that i am too lazy to go check the name of) are seen as absolute indestructible units by both other aliens/monsters and humans. Why is that? Because of their blood! it’s used as a weapon against other nonhumans because it’s toxic and deadly— thus, the reputation of the lilac blood gave the creatures the image of being insanely dangerous. 

as a matter of fact, there are operation sites that breed and harness blood from Soobin’s species because it’s such a sought after (and illegal. insanely illegal.) weapon! and that’s the reason why humans— more specifically, the mc and her crew— are so terrified of the Hexen species, (yes i did look up the name just now.) and more importantly, their blood— because it’s known to be used as a lethal weapon. 

Now, onto the main question; blood bonds, what the hell is up with that? lilac blood is lethal to every species but the one it came from— in other words, it doesn’t harm the hexen species. so, when they give each other / inject their blood into each other (i know, it sounds a little gross) it’s basically their way of bonding/mating— it represents them uniting and becoming one, and is a promise to remain together as long as they’re alive; yeah, they bond for life! 

-[do bullets affect soobin? how strong is he?]

long story short, yes— however, they don’t affect him as much as they would a normal human, or another nonhuman that isn’t as strong as his species. would they penetrate his skin? yes, but it would be a surface wound at most; his species has evolved to be extremely strong because they carry lilac blood and are able to receive it, so their body should be strong enough to handle it, and also, they have like six other limbs to attend to— it takes quite a bit of mental and physical strength to be able to develop and strengthen everything properly, if that makes sense.

could the mc’s crew have taken him down? yeah, a headshot is a headshot and soobin would’ve been a goner askdlh,, but his threats were enough to bring them to their senses bc yk.. he has tentacles that can move at the blink of an eye and he would’ve most likely taken one of them down before getting killed. he’s not invincible, but you do have to put a little extra effort in harming/killing him.

-[could soobin just kill the mc to break the bond?]

here’s the fun part hehe— so lilac blood, when used on humans, doesn’t kill them. Instead, it acts as an aphrodisiac. originally, lilac blood was only used as a weapon against non-humans; in other words, before space exploration evolved into what it is in that universe. Because of that, the hexen species didn’t evolve to combat against humans— which means the deadly aspect is taken away from the whole injection of it all. on soobin’s planet, everyone is already strictly against interacting with humans— the hatred doesn’t run as intense as other planets however, which is why soobin is so indifferent when he encounters the mc without her pin— so really, none of them knew what would happen if you injected your blood into them. 

soobin simply thought it would work as usual; what he didn’t account for, however, was the fact that humans don’t die from it— which means that they’re able to sustain it, and now… soobin’s body and mind thinks he’s just bonded with another of his kind!

as previously mentioned, the hexen species bonds for life— meaning that, if soobin tried to kill the mc, his body would go haywire and immediately think that his mate— his other half— is dead. a life without your mate can be seriously detrimental to both one’s physical and mental health, so soobin wouldn’t have lasted long without the mc; he would’ve been immediately weakened, and the crew would’ve taken that chance to take him down— if they somehow chose to keep him alive, he quickly would’ve died after anyway. (that’s dark sorry.)

ahhhh im so mad i never really included any of this in the original fic, but thank you so much for leaving me such a kind review and allowing me to ramble about this story!! i hope this answered your questions hehe, thank you again!