#i dont know why i keep drawing them their shapes are all my brain has the energy to comprehend at the moment

[pissfartboy]

Ist es over für mich?

[petarabbit2]

Realistic Ace Trappola + Headcanons

Ace headcanons + realistic artwork done with Art Breeder and edited in Clip Art Studio:

Okay so getting straight into it, this is my first post about my headcanons and realistic versions of twisted wonderland characters and the first one being introduced is *drumroll* Ace Trappola! Ace fans, you eating good tonight my chickies (that sounds so weird if u dont think of chickens right away LMFAO).

Sidenote: When headcanoning Ace and all my other characters, I take both factual and some of my personal thoughts/beliefs of the character to construct my headcanons.

So for Ace, its evident that I gave him acne due to reasoning such as his diet (fav food being cherry pie and mentioning his liking towards burgers) plus he is literally a teen boy that also has no women in his life and stereotypically the mother is the one to bring up looks as an issue, so without this Ace probably would have never gotten the right treatment for his acne. 

He’s already a red head so I added on that by giving him freckles. Also, it's known that redheads are more prone to acne, so another note as to why I gave him acne.

For his features for a realistic rendition, I went with a heart shaped face (because Ace’s card suit is hearts) but his widow's peak is hidden beneath his bangs. He has a snub nose shape which is quite round and slightly upturned. He has thicker eyebrows cause we all know bro don’t give a shit about his appearance.

For his hair I went wild, it's extremely fluffy, a bit curly and like shoulder length when wet. Bro has had like two haircuts his whole life and probably smells foul. I also tried to keep to the original style pretty closely without it looking really weird like bro came straight out of an anime. 

I didn't draw the bodies for any of them but Ace is more lanky with long legs and a rectangular body shape, but he has pretty big feet and hands.

Yeah and he's got a light British accent gang I’m sorry 😭 – he uses slang often as well.

Without & With Face Makeup:

Personality and backstory headcanons + a bit of character analysis:

Okay so Ace is one of the very first characters we meet in the game and a good one at that, a lot of people just put him in the category of “dumb friend with one brain cell”, and yes that's kinda true but every person had a reason to be the way they are due to personal experiences. We know in canon that Ace has always lived with his father and older brother but due to the literally no backstory on his mum, I’m saying his parents are divorced which he has much more time with his dad, also by his mannerism being so straight to the point and not sugar coated, this could be due to him being raised in an only male household. Which could also hint to why he “didn't feel committed” to his former relationship in middle school, he was so new to this type of love and got scared. After all he is just a teen, cut my boy some slack. (#1 Ace defender) 

Due to this relationship with his mother and seeing how his parents fell out of love, fought or similar, he’s very bad with women which is why he has only male friends. The only way he would have a girlfriend (or woman friend) is if they were not sensitive to his zero-filter way of speaking and even tell him off for it. (not me doing this since my yuusona is a girl 💀)

It's still mentioned that the whole family gets together around holidays (although this could possibly just mean his grandma and such and not the mothers side) so maybe the divorce wasn't messy and they just didn't love each other anymore, which happens all the time with quick relationships.

Ace is also pretty immature and not into deep and emotional conversations which is common with teen boys (especially around his age group). So not trying to hate, but all those scenarios made up with him comforting the reader and helping them feel better, in reality, he probably wouldn’t have gotten why you're so sad and not really know how to comfort you. Which is completely fine! He's not fully grown in body or mind and people need to accept this.

He definitely makes your mum jokes and sex jokes, bro cannot stop himself laughing when a teacher says anything sex related. He's highly competitive and will sulk if he loses a basketball game or bet with a friend.

Also despite being not very empathetic (not on purpose though), he appreciates the little things. For example, he’d appreciate you remembering his birthday or always having a spare pencil for him in class as you know he always loses his. He really appreciates those friends and even though he lacks in some areas, he will always protect them and stay by their side no matter what.

In conclusion, he's just some teen boy who's still learning about life and people. I had a lot of fun making the realistic design and giving him more depth as a character and I'll be doing this for the rest of the cast and after that maybe side characters?? Only if you guys want it though, I’ll also one day release my yuusona 😞. (she’s my queen get ready yall (hi i’m the 10/10 editor and assistant 😋)) (together, we are big brain)

My editor/assistant cause I can’t grammar or spell to save my life: @cyb3rpnnk 

SIDENOTE: DO NOT REPOST MY REALISTIC RENDITION OF ACE OR ANY OTHER CHARCTER I DO AS YOUR OWN. EVEN THOUGH THE BASE WAS MADE WITH AI IT IS STILL MY CREATION!

However you are permitied to use my headcanoing as your own for art or stories or whatever, just not my realistic rendition.

Hope you enjoyed my take on realistic Ace and my headcanoning!

[merriway]

Do you have any tips for how you developed your style? I want it to be like yours :3

OH my style has been developed over the course of many years through many different inspirations. I dont really have a name for it either per your other ask its more just like a hodge podge of all my favorite things. I can list some of my prominent inspirations for you to look up as well as list some of the things I focus on when arting!

For inspiration I'd have to go back to elementary school and say that my first creative inspo was probably the Nightmare before Christmas. I think that really encouraged a love of weird and whacky shapes in character design. Anime was obviously also a huge inspo and I love a lot of retro anime from the 80s/90s. Ranma, Moomins, Add in some PS1-PS2 era platformer mascots like sonic, spyro, crash, and klonoa. If we're talking video games too i gotta bring up pokemon cause thats been my obsession since the games first came out. From highschool through college I really studied a lot of art from classic disney and I'd say one of my favorite book series is "They drew as they pleased' I think studying that gave me a love for gesture drawing and acting. I think there was the show Wakfu which had a lot of art from Gobi and Bill Otomo and I loved how they pushed shapes in their character design. Takashi Nakamaru is a big inspo for me in how he stylizes and animates. He has such a level of volume and weight that what he animates feels so real but his style feels so cartoony and whimsical. Yuasa Masaaki headed one of my favorite anime, Kaiba. Which had a very stylized toony look but held a lot of darker heart wrenching themes. I really love cute/fun aesthetics mixed with heavier topics. Yoh Yoshinari is another major artist I reference a lot. Hes a major hitter at Trigger and I love the way he has blended both western and anime styles together. Also his extreme poses are so fun. I particularly love his book of sketches he did of Osamu Tezuka characters. Very toony but animated stuff. There is probably a lot more but I would say thats a erally good starting place to know where Im coming from. As for how I approach drawing. I will echo this as long as I live but gesture drawing gesture drawing gesture drawing. I took several life drawing classes in college and my favorite thing was to do short timed drawings of people and animals. There are so many videos for free on youtube about the Line of Action, about how to start gesture drawing as well as so many resources to find models/reference to draw from. Do 5 second gesture drawings where you can only get like three lines on the page, that helps you to focus most on the feeling and energy of a pose. Then 30 sec, 1 min, etc See how people do life drawing too. I really like Heinrich Kley and he was a huge inspo for many of the classic disney artists. You keep practicing that and it'll start to show up in your more stylized work. When you learn how to twist and bend shapes it starts to show in your personal art. For my personal art I tend to have a lot of mood boards, pinterest boards with artists I like and work that inspires me. I sometimes just spend 15min-30min looking at my favorite art, injecting the things I like about them into my brain and getting hyped to draw! Draw all sorts of styles, all sorts of things! Experiment with a variety of styles and eventually you'll start to create your own signature look. And dont be afraid to make a bad drawing!! I made so many! I drew on notes in class, on napkins, on post it notes, you name it. Just doodle and sketch bad things then try to figure out how to fix them through reference and learning. But remember to just stop and think about what you want! For example, what do you like about my art? is it the posing the shapes, the energy? Think about those things. Take a moment to ask yourself questions like 'what am I going for?" "why?" I think having a motivation, a drive, or something similar to that helps you want to draw and not get caught up with social media and trying to compete with your peers. Overall enjoy the journey! You're your own unique person and all your own personal experiences can feed into your work in a way others may not! And good luck with drawing, I hope it stays fun for you!!

[hecatombi]

001. MISC. PHYSICAL HEADCANONS

(( here is a bunch of miscellaneous physical headcanons i have about the guys, going from the ones with the least changes to the most! Vash and Chai .. are going to have a lot more due to the nature of my insane fixation on them. ))

👇THIS IS A LONG ASS POST! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.👇

ASH WILLIAMS

Ash has five different prosthetic hands, and several chainsaw stumps to attach to his hand.

He prefers to keep his hair as swoopy and voluminous as he had it in army of darkness ( even old ash. sorry ihate his slick combed back look )

GARY GOODSPEED

Gary naturally has heterochromia and blue + brown eyes, but after his possession by invictus, they are a striking bright pink. and it's permanent! Here's a ref i drew of him with them.

Post invictus, he grows his hair out and wears a far more complicated outfit. Like the concept art for the FS graphic novel.

JOSEPH JOESTAR

On top of having a prosthetic right arm, Joseph ALSO has a prosthetic left leg. This is because of the fact that LAVA HIT HIS KNEE CAP IN THAT FINAL BATTLE WITH KARS THERE IS NO WAY THAT DIDN'T DESTROY IT BEYOND REPAIR!!!!! So, double amputee.

When he is upset or mad, Joseph's hand clicks and wriggles around every joint independantly, and it is typically the only tell that he's angry or upset in any way if he's trying to hide the fact.

Joseph's arm was made by the SPW. not. who they're from in canon. <:) On top of that, it has several different functions, and a different appearance from canon. There are 5 star shaped buttons on it with varying uses. I.. still need to decide them, though.

He is NEVER ever seen without the remaining burnt headband of Caesar's. Ever. A common stim he has is twirling the ends of it.

CHAI

Now, i have a big ol' about page coming for Chai soon, but let's start here.

To get things out of the way; Chai has HORRIFICALLY poor vision. He refuses to get glasses though, because he is certain it makes him look like a nerd. He really, REALLY NEEDS THEM though. He's more farsighted.

Chai always had arrhythmia and other heart defects before his surgery at Vandelay. On top of that, he did not have mobility in his left arm at all, which is why he went in for the arm surgery. They told him they'd help with his heart too, but ...

.. the MP3 player + core replaced his heart entirely. And also gave him top surgery for free, even though he'd been too poor to afford it, as his breasts got in the way of the core. However, his top scars are more than just that; there are thick scars, branding him with the vandelay logo down his entire torso, becauuuuse...

His insides and organs had to be reworked to physically accept such a drastic change to his body. I'm talking moved around, and more than just his heart and arm replaced with robotics.

He straight up is an eldritch, terrifying mess of organs and wires in there. He doesn't know how much of him is robotic and how much is organic anymore. I draw this from the factt hat when electrocuted, Chai's skeleton shows up -- but his skeleton also includes the magnetic waste management tool in his arm, as well as the fact that the things he survives physically NOBODY ELSE CAN. AT ALL. like jesus christ he is somehow so resilient to things literally nobody else in game is under the same circumstances. Also, his body and brain can be hacked directly from his arm. You can't do that with organics, only tech.

So... that's why I think he's more robot than person now. Or cybernetic, if you want to get technical. W/e

His life span has been extended by an unknown amount, and he will age significantly slower if at all due to this change in his body. Oh, and the outer shell of the arm is made of a compound that is not metal. Dont know what it is, but it's still just as strong and durable.

It is possible for Chai to sync with other robotic beings in the same way he synced with 808( his cat ); you have a 50/50 chance of hearing the music that always plays in his head forever, like 808 now does, OR hearing the world moving to a musical beat for the rest of your life. Until he dies, anyways -- if / when he does.

His music core is shown to thump and beat like a heart, and if it pounds hard enough, it's enough to jerk his chest and cause him to get a little dazed-- it's definitely uncomfortable when it thumps so hard. I think he watches it cause he's nervous if his heart is fucking up or something, given that was a BIG health anxiety his entire life. Only 808 managed to snap him out of it, as you can see here.

Speaking of that, post surgery? He LITERALLY can not process anything beyond music and beat he can not hear. For the rest of his life, he will always move to a beat nobody can hear; the environment makes music around him; you can see in this example here how everything in the environment and even his own movements fall largely to the beat of the song. See the video below for an example of this.

He will never be able to hear or see the world regularly again. Not that Chai minds; he LOVES music. Adores it, even. He'd be happy to live with this the rest of his life. Which is good, cause he really has to.

He picked up cat tendencies from 808 when they synchronized, just as 808 picked up chai mannerisms ( like the way he fights & love of rock and roll ). They often mirror each other because Chai is influencing 808's expression more than you'd think! They pretty much share a single braincell now.

And, to close it all off; the surgery also gave him insane durability, as already discussed.. but it ALSO gave him nuts dashing techniques, and an ability to jump to a ridiculous degree. He's a very sturdy man now!

VASH SAVEREM

Vash only LOOKS human, but as we know, he certainly ISNT. He's a Plant; an independant variety, which is exceedingly rare. Plants are strange fusions of literal plants, angels, and mechanical blueprints that all meld together to make a more techno-organic being.

Because he only LOOKS human, I have PLENTY of hc's about his body and form and how they actually differentiate from your typical human.

First and foremost; he's trans. ALL plants are born female, no exceptions, as said by canon; which makes vash canonically trans. Pretty cool, right? but, in canon, where he doesn't have this -- he has plant private parts ( flower based ) and one of his breasts left. He has no desire to bind or for top surgery, as his chest is small anyways -- but he lost one of them a long time ago. More about the state of his body later, but this is important to still note.

Now, his teeth. He has fangs that he has filed down to look smaller, but they are still pretty sharp. His teeth are NOT defined like a humans; it's like .. kind of a solid plate of metal for bone? Teeth? With only vague outlines of where they should separate.

His eyes are an unnatural piercing blue, which we already know; however, the reason he wears those big orange glasses may surprise you! They're actually marksman glasses, which are known to be orange; however, they also serve as a neutralizer to his eyes. If you look at his glasses head on, through them, his eyes look like a neutral blue-gray. However, if you take off his glasses, they're still a BRIGHTLY inhuman blue.

And yes, they glow in the dark.

In BLUE and UV LIGHT specifically, his plant marks will show no matter what. Though, in blue light, they're much fainter / mostly in the eyes ( and they make them glow as you see in the example below ), while in UV all light patterns are exposed. When he heals plants, these also become pretty visible -- but if he has too use TOO much of his angelic power, one of two things could happen.

He goes comatose and unresponsive for a short while; blank stare, unable to react or process anything around them. Sometimes he can snap out of it, sometimes he can't. It really depends.

His hair will brown or blacken. If you know what this means, have a gold star! If you don't, this means he is ACTIVELY shortening his life span and using too much of his power at once. When a plant's hair browns or blackens, it means they no longer have limitless energy.

Side note; since we see that since birth, Vash has had BROWN EYEBROWS ( whereas all plants are born with blonde hair and blonde eyebrows, and blue eyes, NO MATTER WHAT ); i have a headcanon that because Nai is based on a toxic albino plant that was never meant to live in the reboot, he subconciously saved Nai at birth. He was always the stronger twin in terms of health, where Nai was sicker.

Also .. despite his glasses being pretty normal marksman glasses, he can do this thing where he reflects everything in the environment BUT his eyes subconciously; it's a big tell that he's trying to stay distant and not let people read his next expressions. He often does this to distance himself or when he's being vague. It happens a bunch in moments specifically where he does that in show, so im adopting that as a little weird plant quirk he can do. Call it manipulation of light and reflection, I suppose, since he IS a plant...

He's way taller than he looks. He will keep continuously growing for the rest of his life til a certain point, to which his true height would be around 9 ft to 10 ft tall at the least when in humanoid form. However, as of right now, he is 7'5 in his natural body. Here's the fun part though; he actually SHIFTS HIS BONES and condenses his weight and appearance to look more humanlike, but that still leaves him at a hefty 6'5. Even despite this effort to appear smaller and more unassuming, due to the poor nutrition on Gunsmoke, nearly every human is much, much smaller than him. Unless they've been genetically and unethically modified, of course. Then they can get fucking giant . But, nobody matches his height on an average basis there.

when he's in his full 7'5 ( and growing!! ) form, his limbs are gangly, and too long. His eyes look Bigger, and his skin a little bluer; his fingertips get elongated with a black gradient like all his plant sisters. Example here.

His angel arm is something he does not bring out due to a great deal of trauma with that and knives; he does not have access to a full plant angel form. What he DOES have access to is a gigantic angel arm, and three pairs of wings; parts of his body transform into an eldritch mechanical angel kind of being, but not all of his body can. This is because of his twin, Nai / Knives having the other half. Had Nai never existed, Vash would have full access to his plant angel form. He is one of the most powerful plants of his kind with said angel arm, but ... he'd sooner kill himself than ever use it. There'sa a whole rant i have about how he feels having been forced to have it out, but .. that's for later.

Now, for this paragraph, heads up for y'all for mentions of starvation and body dysmorphia, over all bad condition of a body. The next red text you'll see is where discussion of this stops. as is pretty heavily established, Vash has a great deal of body dysmoprhia. He is absolutely letting his body fall apart at the seams, and frequently punishes himself for "failing" to protect people by starving himself, despite needing it to survive / have energy and heavily enjoying food. That is why he's so damn scrawny! Which is unfortunate, but he has so so many complexes ( shout i make a separate infodump about this too? ) tht this is just par for the course. Now, he could heal the scars and shit on his body faster if he wanted to, but he's pretty self conscious about it. He will let any humans hurt him if he deems it justified, and unforch, he usually does. He lets them beat him senseless, cut him up, shoot him -- nothing he couldn't survive, anything goes. his body is straight up canonically barely held together by thick staples and grates of metal over exposed muscle.

This is part of why he never takes off his coat, ever. Or those long sleeved shirts of his. I mean, he might to shower or clean up wounds, but...... very rarely does he do this. He just takes whatever beating humans give him cause he feels he deserves it, and deals with it.

Warning over!

With all the heavy stuff said, here's a few final short hcs.

He photosynthesizes some, and really enjoys basking in the sun.

He's a very light sleeper and rarely ever gets decent sleep. He's pretty much always exhausted, but never lets it show.

CAN'T EVER LISTEN TO CLASSICAL MUSIC. it puts him into SERIOUS triggered mode and gets him too panicked to think straight, even after Nai / Knives died.

His hair looks like normal hair, but it absolutely DOES NOT feel like it. It feels like really soft velvety flower petals, and will always keep this consistency.

He's got inhumanly amazing marksmanship, yet somehow, being drunk ( should he ever GET drunk ) improves it more. Yes, I stole this bit from 98 vash but i think it's funny and it's my interpretation so this is what i keep. ok? :)

And lastly ...

He stims by reloading and loading guns :3

Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed! Should I make a part 2 sometime? :p

[zombtropolis-central]

Pre-amble: I sometimes make character mods for Don’t Starve Together, I’ve made two so far based on my OCs, and because PvZ still occupies my tiny pea-brain I’ve been considering making one for Super Brains (and maybe Zomboss, if I can figure out how to draw his wack-ass head) so have my rambling thoughts on how such a mod would work. None of this is going to make sense if you’ve never played Don’t Starve or Plants vs Zombies.

If I did make a mod for ol Supes the hardest part aside from figuring out if I should go through the trouble of adding his cape in some fashion would be writing his dialogue. My most hated part of the mod creation process is making custom dialogue in the speech file because: A) Making a full unique speech file with unique dialogue takes forever because every item in the game can be inspected with something that character has to say about said item. Most character mods don’t bother and either directly lift another character’s speech file (usually Wilson’s) and edit it here and there. I’ve done that, and it still takes what feels like an eon; and while you can get rid of some strings (like I get rid of the ‘Gorge’ and ‘Forge’ strings because those are events you can’t play now without mods so why bother keeping them) you’re gonna wanna keep most of them. B) DST is a game that’s still getting updates that add new content, so you’re gonna have to update that adds new content (said this in a DS server i’m in, but every time a new update comes in I groan because that means I have to update my mods’ speech files) Dialogue would be tricky because the only time Super Brains has really exhibited a personality was in the GW adaptation comic where he only briefly showed up near the end, and since I don’t have access to any newer comics, I don’t know if he’s a regular character in the comic series after the GW adaptation, so writing dialogue for him would be a chore. (I suppose I could lean into how his wiki says he believes he’s in an 80s action movie all the time, similar to how Wigifrid is always acting like she’s in a stage play? I dunno)

As for how he would play and what quirks he’d have:

He’s similar to pre-refresh Wolfgang where he’s a high damage dealer who needs a lot of food to be strong (I hope the way to code that in is easy, if I can’t figure it out I’ll merely give him 2x damage with a fast hunger drain)

Can eat monster foods without penalty similar to Webber (sadly can’t code in brains)

Doesn’t lose sanity during the evening and night as a creature accustomed to darkness. (no night vision though)

Like Wortox and Webber, Super Brains is considered a monster, as a walking talking corpse should be, and will be attacked by Pigs, Bunnymen, and Catcoons.

Now why consider making a mod like this?

A) PvZ brainrot. I could just stop there if I wanted to, honestly.

B) I’ve been teaching myself coding, and doing a mod without using the ‘Extended Sample Character’ would be a nice exercize.

C) A lot of character mods in DST aren’t weird enough. Not knocking these people (I know a lot of these people are beginners like me who just wanna play as their OCs) but so many of the character mods use the same body shape and after a while they all kind blend in to me. (doesn’t help 75% of them are anime characters) So I was like “Welp, might as well get weird with it.”

If I do make the mod maybe I’ll post it to the workshop. I dunno if there’s a lot of PvZ fans who are also DST players. But yeah, autistic brain dump over, i dont expect this to get any notes lmao. I’m going to bed now.

[foryoumyheroes]

hi! I dont know if you are still taking request, or even active but if you are, could you do a headcanon with todoroki having a s/o that loves drawing him ? they could be already on a relationship or not ur choice

Hi anon! If you're reading this I previously replied that I am sort of taking requests, but I was inactive until recent. In order to make that up to you I'll give you both a scenario fic and headcanons since I was struck by inspiration to write this! Hope you enjoy!! I kinda spiraled off topic asdfgh 

Pls accept my word-vomit like I’m a cat giving you a dead rat. 

The Campos 

Todoroki x Artist!Reader

"How is it possible for anyone to be that handsome." 

Even you were surprised by the words tumbling out of your own head, stopping your pencil in its place and as you froze like a still frame. It wasn’t long before you felt heat creep up your body, painting your cheeks all the way to your ears with a red like the sunset. 

It was always like this. 

There was nothing artistic from the way his image always flowed from your pencil in hurried lines and messy scribbles, and there was no beauty from how you always hunched over into the collar of your shirts whenever you felt the burning of your emotions. You wrote Todoroki [Name] and [Surname] Shouto in the margins of your notebook as if you had reverted back to primary school, doodled among little tiny hearts and sketches of his side profile. 

Maybe your parents were right. You should’ve just gone to art school like they had said and fallen down the path of them and so many of your other relatives. But at fourteen you were just so caught up with wanting to be different. You had to be. You had to get off the beaten path and flow out of the frame you were confined in. You said that in this family you would never be the best artist, but you could become the best Hero that the [Surname]s had ever had. You were a Hero-in-training, but you knew that at heart you would always be an artist. 

And now at sixteen you were at a loss. You were at a loss because whenever you looked over at the last window seat in 1-A, your talents always fell short. There was nothing you could draw that could bridge the distance you felt, to calm the foreign feelings in your body. Your drawing skills had not diminished while you practiced war, but you were backtracking now. Perhaps you really should’ve gone to art school instead. 

Maybe then you would find a way to express how you truly felt. 

Nothing you wrote or drew now could match up to the endless admiration you had for one Todoroki Shouto. 

Everyone else was mere background noise to Todoroki when he set his gaze on you. 

Although Bakugou and his group of friends were in the common room shouting and making a ruckus and Todoroki’s own friends were giggling at the back of him, tossing frosting, floating bowls of batter to Iida’s ire. 

His eyes always sought you out. 

It was difficult to explain why. Even now, with you in a baggy sweatshirt and loose jeans rolled at the ankles, Todoroki wondered why he was paying you so much attention. The world around you was spinning and you were at an impasse. You were only writing in your notebook, probably jotting down notes at a speed he couldn’t comprehend. Your head was always buried in that Campos notebook.  

With a loud screech, Kirishima bumped his hip on the dining table, jostling both you and him from your standstill, pencils rolling across the wood. Your eyes immediately flashed up and met with his wide heterochromic ones. A deer in the headlights. The two of you turned away as quickly as it came, ignorant to the pink that bloomed on both of your cheeks while a spark flickered across his left cheek. 

“Whatcha drawing there, [Name]?” Kirishima asked boisterously, pulling out the chair beside you while you heated up like a furnace, waving your arms around wildly and sputtered like a train engine. You couldn’t snatch it away fast enough and his dark eyes fell on your doodle-ridden pages with a soft, “Oh.” His lips formed a small O shape. His eyes carefully looked up at the hot-and-cold boy before dropping back down to your page. You carefully averted your eyes, fixing [e/c] orbs on some faraway wall until he carefully pulled your notebook toward him and quickly scribbling something down, pushing the pages back toward you. 

When you snuck a peek at the drawing of a blond gremlin with spiky hair like a porcupine, and a crude drawing of a K and B underneath an umbrella, a loud laugh tumbled out of your mouth. 

It was as if Todoroki didn’t exist anymore as you gave Kirishima your full attention, laughing to whatever jokes he made or witty one-liners. 

He wasn’t a poet. He didn’t know the words. 

Others could talk about how selfish he was for having his mother’s pretty face and his powerful Quirk; boys and girls have tried before, handing him letters in his locker and bouquets of flowers, but that never mattered to him. Only you have stayed on his mind. His attractive features and his Quirk only had stock to it if it helped him win over your affections. 

In crowded places and busy gatherings, when he stood in solidarity, when his hands hung by his sides and his eyes were left with nothing to see, he wondered what primitive part of him was always acting out. How his hands wanted to cut off all connection with the logic in his brain and reach out to grab yours. How he always silently watched you from faraway, physically unable to tear your visage away from his eyes. His body always acted without reason — the heavy palpitations against his rib cage, the rose against his skin, the sweat on his palms, the dilation of his pupils. 

He wondered how he was in Heaven just by being near you. 

He wondered what it would take to get you to look at him for once. 

But your eyes would just be deep within the confines of your Campos notebook, impervious to his lingering thoughts of you.

Surprisingly it was Todoroki who offered to clean up after his friends while they went into the showers to wash away the flour and frosting that coated their hair and skin. The night had already been long by the time they turned in, heavy and drowsy after making several tins of uneven, ugly cupcakes. He had to do something with all of this energy, he thought, scrubbing away at stubborn stripes of sugar that painted the counter tops.

The lights were off and only the streaks of moonlight filtered through the large windows of the dorm room. You had left with Bakugou’s group several hours earlier, accepting Kirishima’s invitation to go to the nearest konbini for ice cream with an open hand. 

Now it was just him. 

Tossing the rag in the wash bin, he was about to make his way back to his room when his eyes fell upon the dining table and he found your notebook. 

How could he not know it was yours. He had seen it within your hands more times than he could count, more obsessively than Midoriya’s Hero Analysis for the Future No. 13. He wondered if that was why he was so interested in you. Your dedication to your studies were admirable. Nearly twenty-four-seven. 

Carefully, he crept closer to it, as if it was a bomb going to detonate before he picked it up. 

The pages curled and crinkled in his hands, and he debated opening it. 

It was just a school notebook, right? You probably only had notes and worksheets hidden inside of it. 

Maybe he could get an answer to your time. He could discover the subjects that you were struggling at, or even find one that you were better than him at. You were a couple ranks below him in the class grades. When he returned your Campos to you he could ask to study with you. 

He flipped it open and his heart stopped at the sight. 

Shit, shit, shit! you thought, running down the stairs, taking two at a time. It was late enough that the elevators were locked for curfew and you cursed Aizawa-sensei for putting your room at the very top of the building. After you had gotten back from the konbini with your friends, cheeks hurting from how hard you were laughing at Kaminari’s antics and Sero’s sarcasm, you had completely forgotten that you left your notebook on the kitchen table. You only remembered when you dug through your bag only to scramble around when nothing came up. If anyone like Hagakure or god forbid — Mineta, found it, you would never live it down. You were lucky enough that Kirishima was a good sport about it. He knew how to keep his mouth shut, but everyone else? 

You wondered if it was too late to transfer schools. 

Your feet landed harshly on the carpeted ground after the final step, head snapping back and forth for your notebook, but froze at what you saw. 

Even in the dim light of the moon and past the hand clamped over his face, you could see the heavy pink on his cheeks. 

Your heart dropped. 

“I — “ His hand fell to his side and you were given a full view of the strong flush on his face. “That’s my notebook... Todoroki-kun.” 

When the Campos dropped to the floor and he dashed across the common room, hand around your waist and his lips on yours, you found that you didn’t need flowery words or an arsenal of artistic techniques to express how you felt. 

Your hands wrapped around his neck, locking him deeper in the embrace, fingers cording through his soft red and white hair. 

The instinct to be closer to him would be all you need to overcome the division between a desire for him and the stillness of your body. 

Headcanons: 

After you two get together and it becomes more obvious that you’re drawing him, he’ll coax you out of doing it in secret.

He’ll ask to take pictures of the drawings on the margins of your notebook or if you’re drawing it on scrap paper, he’ll ask to have it after you’re done with it. 

He keeps it in a box uwu and he has to upgrade every year because it keeps on getting full. 

Even if you’re not drawing him, you ask him to pose for you so you can take references for your other drawings. He’s just so proportionate!! 

It makes him so happy every time he sees it!! He nearly catches on fire every time. 

The fact that you’re expressing your affections in this special way makes him so soft?? 

He once tried to draw you in return but he has like zero to none art experience. Even had no experience in his childhood because all he wanted to draw was All Might and Endeavor wouldn’t allow that. 

Instead you offer to teach him the basics on how to draw and you two continue bonding that way!! You sit on his lap because that’s the best spot to be close enough to guide him and show him how to draw while you drone on and on about shadows, anatomy, perspective, and he’s just nodding along without a single word going to his brain because he’s just staring at you the entire time. 

[“Shouto-chan, did you get that?” 

“Yeah...boxes?”]

If you draw him complete pictures he keeps it on his wall, and eventually his dorm room looks like he’s about to string red yarn around it because it’s blanketed with paper all over like he’s uncovering a murder conspiracy. 

A/N:  The picture that I used for the page breaks is Anselm Feuerbach’s “Peonies” and I actually saw it in real life at the Neue Pinakothek!! It’s one of my favorites and I even got a mousepad of it bc I’m a dork asdfg 

The Kirishima and [Name] scene is inspired by this comic by marbitss and I was inspired to write a lot of prose after reading Nicole Krauss’ The History of Love!

[ibelonginthepast]

yoo i really looooved your bucky headcanon thingy it made so much sense???

since you said you loved the marvel one: nat?

Thank you so much dem,, I needed the approval, its very close to me 🥰

AND AH NAT! MY LOVE!!

Sexuality Headcanon: I am gonna go for sex repulsive asexual, pan/bi romantic.

Its ironically funny she uses seduction and sex as a weapon ^_^

She doesn't realize her asexuality for a long long time, and thinks she hates sex because of her trauma and struggles with intimacy. Also cause she doesn't find romance with it ever. She doesn't get it, doesn't realizes its an option to not like sex.

Gender Headcanon: (non binary) she/her. Imma just through some random words. Grace. Feline. Beauty. Alluring. She's that gender that has short chin length curly hair, wears bright red lipsticks, high cheekbones, corsets, black, high heeled boots, knives. U get it.

A ship I have with said character: hmmm ngl I dont think anyone deserves the perfection that she is. Seriously. No one could ever deserve her. Not anyone in mcu yet. BUT, anyone she falls for, I dont mind banner... but I think he wont get her complexity very well. I wanna say valkyrie, but I ship them with cap marvel. Damn I just remembered they really killed nat didn't they? Fuck them. Fucking fuck them. Yeah I dont have a ship for her... no one deserves her yet.

A BROTP I have with said character: HAWKEYE AND NAT I love them so much???? Just so much?????? THEY ARE SO PERFECT, everything about them!!!!! I love how Clint is the soft side of her. I love how nat gets around clint's kids. I love how much nat loves him. How he's the only one who has ever treated her right. I'll actually start sobbing. They are so devoted to each other. I cant even. I love them so much.

A NOTP I have with said character: idk I cant ship her with Steve,, just like not for ever. I like what they had in the movies, how nat struggles with it, but I cant ship them as a legit couple for life nah.

A random headcanon: okay so bts,, nat has a horrible self esteem. she's ambidextrous. she loves dressing up. she prints out photos of rich old white neurotypical able cishet men in power, and practices shooting on them. When she's really mad at Tony or Steve or Banner, she adds them there on her target boards for practice, and it has horrified them to sometimes find their bigass postures punctured with bullet holes. Shes a fierce feminist and wears the label proud. She has had convos around this with every male on her team. She has hit them all in the head, rolled her eyes at their dumbfuck explanations of why they dont like the term feminist and helped them understand better what it is and make them know that they are in fact feminists too. she's an empath. I dont think that even hc, I think its very clearly shown just not acknowledged. Shes extremely forgiving, and believes in redemption of anyone. Shes for rehabilitation, anti-prison. She hates the concept of governments in general. She is nihilistic. She is a communist and passionate about it. She's secretly a philosophy simp, reads a lot about them when she treats herself.

Even though shes all for redemption, she struggles with forgiving herself and is very hard on herself. Her hypocrisy is really cringe and bothering here.

She has a thing for textures. She picks up stones, and cloth pieces and rubs her fingers on them sometimes.

she's an artist. She used to draw in red and black a lot, and has some ink sketches journals, where she has drawn random glimpses of her memories. She longs for a calm life by the sea where she can stargaze. The only time she actually did anything other than ink was, when she tried to pain open night skies and oceans. Cause pics like those make her heart ache. She tries painting them to capture the longing for freedom, otherworldliness, calmness, serenity they make her ache for. But she never captured them right and never was satisfied with them.

Something about her orientation? Because of the red room, she has a very complicated relationship with gender expression. The red room forced a form of femininity on her uk? she was forced to reject traditional soft expression of femininity. But forced the ballet kind of femininity, of using femininity as a weapon, or being powerful with feminine grace. She was forced to use her sexuality as a weapon. She thinks that her need to be voluptuous was something beaten into her in the red room. This all caused her a lot of problems with her identity. When she started recognizing what the red room did to her, she had the urge to be reject her sexual expression. This conflicts with her asexuality too. She tried changing a lot. A lot of internalized misogyny angst here. In her struggles to pursue a romantic relationship, she tried to fit in by being stereotypically feminine too, flowers, motherly devotion and care and all that. But she can't do it. She struggles with understanding want for kids. She struggles with gender roles and confuses them with gender too. She shifts a lot. She struggles with defining her own femininity for a long while. Cause she's naturally emotional, she hates herself for it for a long time cause she associates it with weak aspects of femininity. But eventually, she stops the what ifs, and tho it sounds fucked up, she accepts that the red room made her who she is and she doesn't need to fret over what could have become of her, cause after all our circumstances and environment do shape us. eventually she gets around rejecting gender as a concept, thinks it's fluid, and believes its boxing is a total social construct and fraud. She does what she likes. She goes with she/her pronouns cause she believes that they match with her expression and help people perceive her better and know what to expect.

Cause she ded, am sed. Cant hc her for old age, I wish I could. Really.

General Opinion over said character: what can I say, simp for the emotionally wrecked female power icon who hides all her emotions away and keeps the family together is so very fucking devoted,,, is my shit. I'll do anything for her, she can take me in and make me her slave.

I feel like I didn't do well with her. Idk its 2 am, my brain's not the best rn. Maybe ill add more later. Thanks dem <3 sry if this is disappointing 😔

[sanstropfremir]

Okay, time for my weekly rant so buckle up. The vocal stages were okay-I cant really remember them well because I watched them only once so take what I say with a grain of salt. Well I watched the Spark one once and I only got through half of the other one because I can’t stand ballads especially when there’s no interesting movement on stage to keep me engaged. Like it’s no fault of the members themselves or the song (I actually think their singing was incredibly beautiful and Eunkwang always sings like his wife just left him with the kids which is how you know he’s good) but I physically could not pay attention. That’s why I liked the spark stage a bit better-there was enough movement that I was able to focus on it. I really liked the use of the fire and the way they were walking in and out of the frame trading off parts so there weren’t too many awkward moments where the other members where on stage but not doing anything. The opening was gorgeous with each members being lit by the spotlight as they harmonize. So stagewise, I prefer Spark but vocally I think the other group was stronger. I love Spark and Taeyon is such an incredible vocalist (I mean the song is great because of her) so I don’t get why their delivery was, I don’t want to say weak, but subdued might be a better word. The only one that really stood out was Junhoe (but also that man couldn’t not stand out even if he tried, not with that incredibly rasp) and even he seemed to be holding himself back a bit. Though it was a bit slow it built up well to the two last choruses but still the first half could have been stronger. I know they were trying to draw it out to a strong pay off but I don’t really know if it was enough. And yes the suits were *chef’s kiss*. I think at this point in their career the FNC stylist has put SF9 in so many suits they’ve got it down to a science. Also I’m a sucker for those shirts with the triangle cut out and we got not one but two of them here.

Okay moving on, I’m not sure which group was next but I’ll talk about the Ikon stage. It seems like they finally realized that they’re on a performance based competition show so they decided to pull out the big guns. Love the little skit at the beginning (making sure people don’t forget that they’re YG), it was cute and refreshing. I really appreciated how they leaned into the campy acting in this stage (Stray kids did it too-just adding to the similarities between their stages). The song was meh but I also don’t really like BP especially not their recent stuff so it’s not a big deal. I would have preferred if they had gone with another song maybe Whistle or As If It’s Your Last or if they’d done a 2NE1 song like Chanwoo mentioned some point in the episode. I also think the stage would have been way smoother if they’d let Ikon and Lisa interact. Like if the boys appeared in her set after her section and then they all moved back to the first jungle set and then the whole thing turns gold and they did a dramatic outfit change (but with better jackets because theirs look like they came out of Party City). I also get what you mean about the dancers outfits not being that great. I actually really liked the outfits of Lisa’s dancers in isolation but they didn’t match with her or the set so they threw me off a bit. At least with the ikon members they were going for a modern look so the dancers outfits didn’t look that strange in comparison. Do you think it would have been better if they were white? How would you have improved then? The best way I can describe this performance was that it was a stage, stuff happened, I enjoyed myself but I don’t plan to revisit it anytime soon. Oh and we also have to give points for them cursing on national television not once but twice (at this point Jinwan deserves to say fuck).

Now to Stray Kids. So I feel like I need to preface this with the fact that I am actually a stray kids fan (I won’t call myself a stay because I don’t associate with the fandom) and though I’ve been really critical of them and their stages tend to be my least favorite I still have a soft spot for them (I got into this show because of them after all). I loved, loved, loved the intro with Felix (and yes his biggest flaw is that he’s Australian but I forgive him for it) and the way it immediately transitions into the chorus of DDD-the abrupt transition does fit really well with the Deadpool theme and I guess it is the closest they’re going to get to the feeling of yeeting themselves into traffic like in the movie. Interesting choice to start with the chorus. Now that I’m rewatching it I do really wish they stuck with the comic theme. I think that’s my gripe with SKZ-they have a lot of good ideas but they move on too quickly from them. Just pick a handful of things and sprinkle them throughout instead of cycling through them at breakneck speed. Like okay they’re doing Deadpool and he’s a comic character so keep the comic styling (it would have been a good thing to put in the projection behind Seungmin’s scene), maybe in the subway they could have had some fight choreo so the guns coming in at Lee Knows part aren’t out of nowhere (also someone please tell me they were trying to recreate the meme with the cat and the knives, please I need to know). I absolutely agree that them having a goal or an antagonist would have really helped the story along. I mean they literally have a spoken intro so why couldn’t Felix just tell us who they were fighting (and I’m pretty sure in the movie Wade tells us he’s trying to kill Francis in that scene sooo). As always they put more focus on the rappers (please can we get less Changbin and more Seungmin, Jeongin, or Lee Know or at least give Felix more parts). Seungmin was the real mvp of this stage and he had the best outfit (I think it qualifies for Hanya’s best gay little outfit list). Personally I with they hadn’t gone with Gods Menu again. I’ve been hoping that they would perform My Pace (and maybe remix it with their B-side TA off their Go Live album) because that would be such a fun stage. Again, I enjoyed myself but I won’t revisit it anytime soon. At this point the only groups I actually look forward to are BTOB and SF9 (they’re doing fucking Move and I don’t know whether to be excited or terrified-there’s a clip of Taeyang covering Move from a variety show or interview and I think he does it really well so I know at least one of them can pull it off). Again thanks for creating space where I can info dump and I hope I said something of interest to you!

i think you wrote more than me!! i love this, im gonna put my response under a cut im not being super obnoxious on the dash.

i get that the mayfly stage would be not as visually stimulating for people and usually i would count myself in with that crowd because i love a good spectacle but i think because i watched the spark stage first and my colour perception is sometimes weird so when there's a lot of movement with very little colour variation my tiny pea brain loses track of whats happening really quickly. especially with red. so it was kind of difficult for me to pay attention to the spark stage in the second half. also i absolutely HATE watching people flub on stage because it brings up such visceral secondhand feelings that i couldn't even watch the stage when i started the full episode today.

i love a good suit but you know what i would also love: sf9 in more costume variations. tbh im just getting nitpicky about it because im a costume designer down to the core and i got trained by a designer who specialized in doing avant garde costuming so i tend to skew more towards wild than reserved. it looks like the move stage wont be be suits so ill take it, but oh man to do i want to see some really crazy stuff. which i know they'll never do because idols have to be pretty at all times or the fans get mad but oh i want it so badly.

do you mean how i would improve ikon's backup dancers outfits or lisa's? here why dont i do both. for lisa's dancers i would have just done away with that harness shape all together, its almost exclusively a military style. the jackets by themselves would have been fine but really what they should have done was put them in something that matched the gold but contrasted enough to give them shape. by having at least her dancers in all black on a gold stage there was a lot of "haha look at me do a duck walk because lets throw in some voguing for spice." they could have gone with a mesh bodysuit idea similar to what she was wearing or even just different colour coats. as for ikon's backup dancers, firstly pants. not black. or even a longer skirt. genuinely a part of the reason why i dont watch girl group content is because i HATE the hem length of the shorts they make everyone wear. words cannot describe how much i hate that cut. kpop is so obsessed with showing off women's bodies and especially their legs but they do it in the LEAST flattering way possible because it "can't be too risqué," just shoot me now. i hate it. i hate it so fucking much. yea yea everybody was on cocaine in the 80s whatever but at least they were all wearing french cut bodysuits so their legs looked fantastic. stop interrupting the lines!! anyways. pants so the only section of skin showing is thigh to mid calf, especially because they weren't even doing any fun legwork! if they really wanted to keep the full sleeve bodysuits they shout have done them in a fabric with a texture or external embellishments, like a patent/vinyl or sequins/rhinestones. something to catch the stage lights so we can actually see the shape of the limb. but the easiest way to fix it is literally just cut the arms off the bodysuits. stages are lit to show off skin, sometimes the best way to have something be seen is just to have it bare.

i agreed skz cycles through ideas way too fast, they need to just pick a couple and stick them out through the stage instead of just adding more and more different ones throughout. also ok good someone else noticed that there is just...so much changbin. we don't need that much changbin. i know there's other boys in the group let them do something! also im pretty sure theyre not recreating the cat knife meme but actually the promo image from john wick chapter two, which i also could have sworn i saw a deadpool version of as an instagram ad back when movies were happening, but now that im looking for it it doesn't exist so i might be crazy.

im excited for the move stage but im also trepidatious because...its move. i have NO clue what the concept is from the previews so i just hope its weird enough to take it enough out of the taemin context for me to enjoy it.

[inlovewithsaturn]

Dean Winchester’s 42nd Birthday

Dean woke up on his 42nd birthday the way he had been waking up nearly every day in the last few months: an armful of white fur and wet kisses across his cheeks. When Miracle first came home with them Dean had made sure to get her a big, cushy, memory foam dog bed so that she would be comfortable, but it had taken all of three nights for him to relent and let her sleep pressed against his side. He liked having her there, hell, he didn't even try and hide it. He was trying to hide things less now. He was trying to be better. ** **

He was trying to be the man Cas had told him he was. 

The thought of Cas had him hugging Miracle just a little tighter to his chest, burying his face in her warm fur. He thought about Cas a lot. His eyes, his final moments, his confession. Dean missed him more than he really thought was possible. But life goes on. You lose people and you have to keep going, no matter how big the ache in your chest gets, you have to keep going. That's what Dean was trying to do. He wanted Cas’s sacrifice to mean something. If he got out now Cas’s death would have been for naught, so he kept going. 

There had been some close calls, even as the number of hunts got lower and lower. Dean had a nasty gash still healing on his ribs from where a piece of rebar almost got him, now that would have been a dumb way to go. Those first couple of weeks had been hard. Dean contemplated just ending it all, he wasn't really sure how to go on after everything that happened, wasn't sure how to fill the angel-sized hole in his heart. But Cas’s words played on his head in a loop and he wasn't going to die and throw away the chance Cas had died to give him. He loved the other man far too much to let that happen. 

So Dean got up, he pulled on his dead guy robe and grabbed the plate from last night’s pizza rolls, and he scratched Miracle behind the ears. Today was going to be a good day, whether the universe wanted it to be or not. He hummed as he walked to the kitchen. He was doing better. Coffee was scenting the air as he neared the doorway and, oh, bacon? Happy birthday to him! As he grinned and rounded the doorway three things immediately became clear. 1. That was not his brother (way too short), 2. The “unbreakable” glass plates he got at the store were not in fact unbreakable if the cuts pricking his legs were to be believed, and 3. He was going to get to start his birthday by killing whatever son of a bitch had decided to put on that trenchcoat and waltz into his home. 

The shattering dinnerware caused the creature to turn in surprise, it's elbow nearly bumping the frying pan to the ground, but it caught it at the last moment. It then turned back, blue eyes locking with green. Dean was frozen, not for long but for longer than a seasoned hunter should have been. In two long strides he had a knife from the butcher block in his grip and was pressing the blade to the fucker’s neck with his other arm solidly around it’s chest. His voice was wobbling when he spoke. 

“I dont care what the fuck you are, get out of that body now or your death is gonna take a hell of a lot longer than it needs to.” 

The sigh of frustration coming from the monster was almost expected. Monsters were cocky little bastards. The words it spoke though? Rather surprising. 

“Dean, if you don't let me go the bacon is going to burn and this is the only pack in the fridge.” 

Huh. Okay. So it was going to get extra tortured then. It was one thing to take his shape but pretending to be his angel cooking him breakfast was another. He pressed down harder with the knife, drawing a blood and a wince-

“Cas?” 

Dean didn't loosen his hold but he did turn his neck to look at Sam, who was currently in the same position of shock Dean had vacated moments earlier. His brother’s face pushed the tears that were burning the back of his eyes into the light. He needed a drink. 

“Sam, get the silver and the holy water from the cupboard,” Sam didn't move. “Now!” Dean gritted out, just as the monster cut in. 

“I'm not a shapeshifter Dean, or a demon, I was just trying to make breakfast.” 

“Shut up. Stop saying my name.” Was all Dean could manage. He had been thinking about hearing Cas say his name, just once more, for weeks now. This was agony. 

Sam had apparently been shaken from his trance because the next thing Dean felt was residual holy water splashing his cheek. He let go of one arm so Sam could push up the coat, his coat, and draw the thin silver blade over skin. 

Nothing happened except a few pricks of blood and a sharp inhale that Dean could feel pressed against his chest. Then there was a quiet, fluttering, woosh to his left. A sound he hadn't heard in months. 

“It seems I should have arrived at the same time as Cas, sorry about that.” 

Dean’s brain was going way too fast. It felt like there was cotton stuffed in his ears and all the way through his skull. The edges of his vision went dark, zeroing in on the figure standing next to the stove, white jacket somehow almost glowing. Now Dean was almost certain that this was a dream because the last thing he saw before fainting backwards into the counter was Jack, smiling like there was absolutely nothing amiss. 

His head hurt. Not like a hangover but more like that time a vampire had clocked him from behind with a 2x4. He opened his eyes, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. That dream had been insane. Why was he in the kitchen? 

“How is your head Dean?” Cas’s low voice washed over him in a sea of warmth. 

“It hurts like a bitch. What happened Cas?” 

Oh fuck. Not a dream. 

Dean pushed up so he was sitting and tried to stand and tackle the man before him at the same time but the floor seemed to rush towards him and he ended up slumped on Cas’s chest. Warm arms caught him by the waist and sat him back down. A large hand gripped his chin and he was turned to see his brother. 

“Calm the hell down okay? You hit your head pretty hard on the counter.” Dean jerked his eyes back to Cas and tried, again unsuccessfully, to leave his hold. His face was turned again. 

“He's not a monster Dean, stop moving. You have a cut.” Sam lifted his hand to place a small bandaid on Dean’s eyebrow. 

“What?” 

“Jack pulled me out. Please let your brother finish his first aid so we can talk.” 

Dean sat still. 

Once Sam was satisfied with his handiwork he and Cas helped Dean stand and move to the table. 

Dean sat still. 

This was not happening. How in the world could it be? 

Cas sat in front of him. Cas gazed at him with a mix of worry and pure joy. Cas reached out a hand to gently squeeze the one Dean had lying limp on the tabletop. He felt real. He felt like Cas. 

“Cas?” Cas smiled wider. 

“Hello, Dean.” 

Tears slid down Dean’s cheeks as his hand not currently occupied with gripping onto Cas lifted, shaking, to brush across the angel’s cheekbone. He was really here. He was warm and solid and breathing. He was the most beautiful thing Dean had ever seen. 

“How are you here?” His voice was barely above a whisper. He was terrified that if he spoke too loud or moved too fast this would all fall apart and he would wake back up in his bed, alone with only his dog and memories to keep him going. 

“Jack came to an agreement with the Empty, he could help it sleep if he was allowed to pull a few angels out to help in Heaven. I was the first.” 

“I prayed to you Cas. I didn't think you could hear me but I kept praying. How long have you been out?” At this, sadness shadows across blue eyes, guilt evident in his ethereal features. 

“A while by Earth standards of time. There was so much to be done. I heard them. I heard you.” 

He looks back up. 

“I am sorry Dean, we worked as fast as we could. I cannot tell you what it is now, but it is far better than what my father created. Jack is a good leader. It was important I finished before I saw you again.” 

“Why?” Dean is now holding both of Castiel’s hands in his own. A sad smile graces Cas’s mouth.

“Because I knew once I saw you I would be unable to leave you again.” 

Dean stands, the floor now remaining steady under his feet, and has his arms around Cas in seconds. Castiel stands as well so he can wrap around him, Dean’s face quickly finding its home in the crook of Cas’s neck. 

“Thank you.” 

“I didn't actually do it, Jack is the one to thank.” 

“No.” Dean pulls back so he can see Cas’s face. “Thank you for coming back.” 

“I’ll always come when you call.” 

Dean pulls him back in, suffocating himself in the scent of Cas. He stays that way for a time, only pulling away when he hears a small giggle from behind him. Jack is beaming, as is Sam, and Dean rushes to envelop Jack in a hug as well. 

“Thanks kid.” 

“Of course, Dean. It was his choice anyway, I just made it happen. I don't think there is anyone better to teach him how to be human than you and Sam.” 

Dean pulls back. 

“Human?” 

Cas speaks again, anxiety laced into his words. 

“Yes, as Jack said, I made the choice. I can go somewhere else if that-” Dean’s arms surround him once again, crushing any doubts he was holding. 

“We are gonna teach you everything okay? You're gonna love it.” Dean is smiling so wide his cheeks hurt. Cas is staying here. Cas is human and real and he's here. 

“I know you all need to catch up on some things but I do have some pressing matters to get back to, and I brought a birthday cake that I would very much like to eat.” Dean doesn't know if he will ever be able to feel this much joy ever again. 

“And I insisted on a birthday pie as well, though it is not traditional I thought it may be appreciated.” Dean’s heart could have exploded right then and there. Cas is the best thing that ever happened to him. 

“Get some plates Sammy.” 

They sit down, Cas and Dean on one side, Sam and Jack on the other. They eat cake. Dean eats pie. They tell Cas about the things Dean left out of his prayers, like Dean’s application to a local mechanic, and how Eilleen has been staying over more and more. They all hug Jack goodbye and he promises to drop in sometimes. Sam leaves to call Eilleen, and finally Dean and Castiel are sitting side by side in the empty kitchen. Cas speaks first. 

“I got you something.” Dean blushes and averts his eyes from the man beside him. 

“You didn't have to Cas. You coming back is pretty much the birthday gift of a lifetime.” Cas chuckles at that but slips his hand into the breast pocket of his coat all the same. 

“I wanted to. You deserve good things, Dean. Especially on your birthday.” Dean wants to make a joke about how utterly unworthy he is of anything Cas has to offer but the words die in his throat as Castiel stands from his seat to kneel on the cold floor beside him. Holy shit. 

“I heard your prayers Dean. I know how hard you tried to get me out. I know about your mom’s ring. I could hear the life you planned out for us. I heard everything. I could see you too. I know how hard you have been working to be true to yourself. I never regretted for a moment that I let the Empty take me. Not one. You are worth everything. I rebuilt Heaven for you, Dean. Everyone will benefit but I did it for you. You are so full of love. From the moment I raised you out of hell I knew I would never lay my eyes on another soul as beautiful as yours. I know I do not technically exist and you are legally dead but I do not want to spend another moment without you. So, Dean Winchester, will you marry me?” 

Dean is on his knees, hands cradling Cas’s face, lips crashing against the ex-angel’s before he can even utter his response. He’s been wanting to do this for years. Dean kisses with every ounce of adoration he has in him, pushing away only when he needs to breathe. Their foreheads rest against each other, two sets of tears mixing on cheeks. They are breathing the same air, eyes still closed, chests rising and falling in frantic harmony. 

“Yes! I love you. I love you so much I can hardly stand it.” 

They're kissing again, soft and sweet. Dean’s fingers are threaded through dark hair, he never wants to let go. They stay kneeling on the bunker floor wrapped in eachother’s arms for what feels like an eternity. Once Dean can feel his knees giving out he stands and drags Cas along with him, the shorter man scooping up the ring box on the way. Dean hadn't even seen the ring yet. Cas clutches his hand and rests it over his heart while he fumbles to get the jewelry free. 

It's a simple band, nothing flashy or ornate, but Dean’s eyes catch on something engraved inside. Cas reads his mind, the same way he always does. 

“For Love,” Castiel smiles that same watery smile that is seared into Dean’s heart.

“The engraving, that's what it says. I made it before we came.” With those words he slips the ring onto Dean’s hand. He doesn't let go, only uses one hand to pull Dean back in, kissing him with all the love in the world. Dean kisses back, matching him move for move. 

The next day they walk hand in hand through the door of the lone jewelry store in Lebanon, Mary’s old ring in Dean’s pocket. Lighter silver than the one on Dean’s finger but fitting all the same. They get it engraved too. 

“We are.” 

[wollfling]

Hi Allie! I wondered if I could ask you for some advice. I want to draw really badly and create art but I really don't have any skill! I know that in order to get better at art I have to actually do it, but I feel so overwhelmed by how I'm not where I want to be with it right away, and also with where to start with learning to draw. Do you ever feel that way when you draw? And if you do how have you gotten past it?

[I am literally so sorry this is so long oh my God. My mind has been very jumbled lately so I accidentally rambled too much, but I hope it still helps you in any way orz] Oh sweet little anon.. ;^; I do feel that way, a lot of the time if not all of the time! Just recently this week, I felt like I just couldn't draw despite picking up my pencil and scribbling, it just wasn't working partly for that exact reason! Overwhelmed by not being where I want to be with it! These things happen and its frustrating. It's hard for me to imagine as a beginner artist because I've been drawing since I can remember but I will still do my best to offer you some meaningful advice!

But first, to answer your very last question, getting past it can be a little random sometimes. This whole week after being unable to draw, I was laying in bed trying to sleep while reflecting on some heavy feelings ive been having and memories. Suddenly part of an image flashed in my mind and I got up to immediately try drawing it. (The drawing I recently posted and captioned "parade"!) I worked on it completely driven by my heart, and so it didn't matter at the time if it looked good or was anatomically correct, etc. Right now I am working on another heart-driven drawing, but if I tried to work on lets say a study or character drawing instead.. I dont think i could!

My point in all this is that, I think that its important to know/understand why you want to create art, and I think my advice would change slightly depending on your answer. For me personally, I am an emotional artist. I create art that (usually) reflects how I'm feeling or topics I am emotionally drawn to. Illustrations, drawing characters, writing comics, etc.. I think this week, while I'm definitely struggling with my skill level, I was so burdened by some things I've been feeling lately that I couldn't focus on or enjoy anything that I was trying to create, until I was able to release it all in a drawing. (And I'm still not done with them hence why I am now working on another related drawing, but im making SOMETHING and feeling passionate which cannot be said with any of my other attempts this week.) So since these drawings purpose outweigh my current issues regarding my skill, I am able to work on them. If that makes sense?

Okay im sorry with how long-winded this all is so far and all about myself orz but I wanted to give context on how I view art and I think if you asked someone who creates like. Hyperrealistic drawings their answers would be completely different. So! I wanted you to be able to judge if my advice would work for you if that makes any sense at all...!!! Moving on to my actual advice then..!

This is a little general ofc because I dont know what sort of art you are creating, or what your passion behind it is. And if after this you would like to tell me more about your art I would love to hear! 🥺💗 you are welcome to dm me or if you send another anon/ask i think that would be good too since.. well other artists who see can also give their own advice too!

Okay. So anyways lol, first I want to tell you that your desire to create art makes you an artist, despite your skill level. And therefore, everything and anything that you make even now has value. Even if right now you're drawing wonky shaded spheres and cubes! I understand its frustrating when wanting to make something but you feel like your skill isn't "there" and how that can prevent you from making anything to begin with!! But I really want you to try and work through it! Ignore it, disregard it, give your worries about your skill the silent treatment!! And I know its near impossible to do but if its getting in the way of you actually creating well.. thats the worst! We can't have that. If you really want to draw, then you really NEED to draw, you know what I mean? You deserve to draw! The hardest part for like 80% of artists is working around their skill level. I promise you will get there, but for now, you can't let it get in your way. And I realize me saying "oh you feel like you're not good at drawing and its hindering you from doing it? Just do it" sounds like Chad advice but ;---; unfortunately its the reality that comes with being an artist. If you tell me more about what you like to/why you want draw then maybe we can find some alternate lines of thinking that will help you (for example "this tiger i drew looks like shit but drawing all of her stripes was therapeutic and made it worth it!" If lets say you draw as a stim, opposed to "this tiger im drawing looks so bad I can't even look at it anymore " dhsjhd I really hope that this all makes sense lol.)

Moving on, learning how to draw.. this also depends on what you enjoy drawing but my main piece of advice here is study from real life. I grew up drawing cartoons and anime, and now that I want to draw a little more realistically.. its so hard!! If you study real shapes/people/animals/etc it might be easier later on when you understand fundamentals to bend them if you decide to create stylized or surreal art. However if right now you like to draw stylized art, I would recommend to keep working on your personal style while studying from real life on the side simultaneously! Any way you look at it, understanding how shapes, lighting, colour, etc work in the real world will help you out even with the most obscure pieces. And since art is a learned skill yknow you need to build those brain..pathways..and such. Im not a scientist but you get what i mean. Studies are the equivalent to lifting weights! I would recommend the website quickposes (com) they have a library of images that they throw at you at random. The site can explain itself better than I can lmao, check it out!!!

I really hope i was able to offer you something of value here, I didnt mean to ramble so much. I'm excited for you to grow as an artist, I love when I hear about others deciding to learn how to draw ;-; please feel welcome to ask for any clarification (as im having a hard time articulating my thoughts lately) or if you really just want to ask or say anything! ♡♡♡ again sorry if this was more than you bargained for length wise dhsishskshksj

[lillupon]

So, I've got a very long rant/opinion here and Idk really know how to say this without coming off kinda bad but I'm gonna say it anyways. I agree with the fact that the seventeen tag has been kinda dry lately on most fanfic places, but it's really only in the smut area. It's the sane way with other groups too I feel like. All of the nice little innocent tags are boomin to this day and thats completely fine. I think the smut tag is dry tho bc lately I feel like a few social issues (like sexualizing people and disrespecting them and their identity) have crossed over into kpop and have been ?blown out of proportion? Lately there's been a rampage of people who like to say that writing smut about someone is disgusting and is dehumanizing because people want to assume that it would make the idols uncomfortable which could equate to some morality issues on how you are reducing someone only to their body without their consent and a bunch of stuff like that. It kind of pisses me off bc this is fiction. About grown adults. Clamping down on horny people who simp over hot asian men isn't going to solve the issues we face in real life. I think a shit ton is wrong with the world we currently live in, and deciding to come after something that isn't even real bothers me. Like what does that actually accomplish. But yeah, I think thats a reason why smut has been dying down. I mean, on youtube almost every video about unpopular opinions, or things they dont like about kpop will include something about shipping idols in fanfics. And then everyone in the comment section will talk about how its all fine and dandy in moderation, but once people start writing smut it's crossing the idols personal boundaries. It's something I've been seeing a lot more often and I think people who are interested in writing smut are being turned away from it bc we've gotten to a point where people are being called disgusting for having fantasies.

Hi Anon, thank you for sending in this Ask. 

I want to preface this by saying: when I write or talk about Mingyu and Wonwoo fucking on my blog, it is a fantasy. I am not speculating about what the real Mingyu and Wonwoo might be like in bed. I am imagining the versions of Mingyu and Wonwoo that I have created in my head, that exist only in my stories. None of it is real. I understand that this can be a blurry boundary for some people. But for me, the separation between fantasy and reality is well-defined. Now, on to your Ask!

You’ve hit the nail on the head with this one. You’ve also touched on many of the issues I have been struggling with myself as of late. It’s difficult to argue about morals since everyone has a different set of values, as well as different comfort levels. Some people think real person fiction (RPF) is a gross invasion of privacy. Others are fine with it. And others don’t care one way or another. There is no single answer; I can only offer my answer. Which means, of course, people are welcome to disagree with it, or parts of it. 

In this essay (LOL But forreal: this is an essay), I will be sharing my experience in the k-pop fanfic community from 2014 to present, the etiquette I personally abide by as a reader and writer of RPF, as well as my stance on RPF in general.

I started reading and posting fanfics back in 2014/2015 on a website called AsianFanfics (AFF). Obviously, no one on that site had a problem with RPF, since AFF is a platform made specifically for sharing stories about Asian celebrities. For many years, I read and enjoyed RPF with zero guilt. I scribbled away by myself in my own corner of fandom and curated my own content. I didn’t interact much with other fans, readers, or writers. I didn’t have a Twitter, and I only used tumblr to reblog memes. As a result, I’ve been able to avoid a lot of anti-shipping discourse, as well as purity and cancel culture. I had no idea there were so many negative opinions about RPF. It wasn’t until I became active on the subreddit r/Fanfiction last year that I learned about all the discourse surrounding RPF. 

This newfound ‘awareness’ does make me feel guilty at times—but only because after mulling this over, I still don’t think this is something to feel guilty about.

Here’s what I remember, first and foremost, when I create and consume RPF: fanfics and my favourite ships are fictional, and fiction is fantasy. This is basic etiquette when it comes to RPF, and most people in the k-pop fandom understand this. Delusional fans exist, of course, but they are not representative of the entire k-pop community. 

Another point of etiquette is to keep fanfics within fandom spaces. I would never push my fics into celebrities’ faces, or go around claiming that my fanfics are accurate representations of a k-idol’s life or personality, in any way, shape, or form. I would also discourage directing ship-related questions to official accounts, or bringing them up during fansigns or other face-to-face interactions; I believe that in these instances, shipping does have the potential to strain real-life relationships.

So with basic etiquette out of the way, let me share my approach to RPF in general.

As much as we like to think we know our favourite celebrities, we really don’t. All we see is their public persona. And this public persona is intentionally controlled, managed, and curated by a team of people: directors, tabloids, editors, makeup artists, publicists, etc. How “real” are these celebrities? We are so distanced from them that they may as well be fictional.

I draw from the public persona that idols project, and I work them into my own writing. But at the end of the day, these personalities are my own interpretation. My interpretation is probably nothing like an idol’s actual personality. I just use the “public persona/character” that idols portray as inspiration for my own stories, which are set in wildly different universes.

More than anything, I think of k-pop idols as “actors” in my fic. You know how when you write an original novel, you scroll through Google images, looking for the perfect person to portray your original character? RPF is literally that, except you might build upon pre-existing dynamics and personalities.

When it comes to explicit fanfiction, two main concerns are prevalent: one of consent, and one of sexualisation.

If we argue against explicit RPF due to lack of consent, we should be willing to apply the same lens to all explicit works. How do we know that the creator of a movie, book, series, etc., is okay with us using their characters in our stories, explicit or not? We don’t. Perhaps some creators encourage fanfiction, but don’t want their lovingly crafted characters engaging in sexual acts or experiencing trauma. We just don’t know. I feel this line is even more blurred when we talk about characters from movies or TV series.

Let’s take Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, as portrayed by Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan, from the Captain America movies as an example. I am willing to bet that when people consume and create explicit fanfiction about Steve and Bucky, they are imagining Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan in their heads. I doubt many people are imagining the 2D cartoon versions of Steve and Bucky, even though they’re technically the exact same characters. Why? Well, it could be because movies are more readily and easily consumed than comics, and so people are unfamiliar with comic book Steve and Bucky. But it might also be because fans find Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan attractive. Is this really any different from RPF, where fic authors make up everything about a celebrity’s life?  

When readers and writers of fanfic talk about how hot Steve Rogers or Bucky Barnes is, those comments are about Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan’s bodies. When reading explicit stories, fans are going to picture Chris and Sebastian’s bodies in their head, doing sexual things. Can we say, “Well, it’s not really you, Chris/Sebastian”, when in a way, it is?

The reality is, people are going to thirst over celebrities, regardless of whether or not explicit fanfiction exists. They’re going to post thirst tweets on Twitter. They’re going to talk to friends and strangers online about how hot [insert celebrity name here] is. They’re going to fantasize about dating and having sex with their favourite celebrity. Or, as it is in my case, they’re going to make up stories in their heads about their favourite idols dating and banging each other. People are going to do all of this without ‘getting consent’ from the celebrity. Cracking down upon and shaming writers of RPF isn’t going to change any of that.

To be honest, I’m not sure why people think it is disgusting to imagine sexual scenarios about real people. It is okay and normal to have these kinds of fantasies. I suppose the alternative is to fantasise about having sex with cartoon characters instead? It’s a very binary way of thinking to say that if you imagine/write real people in explicit scenarios, you are immediately sexualising, dehumanising, or objectifying them. There is more to dehumanisation than writing smut about our favourite celebrities. For one thing, you can love someone and appreciate all parts of them, and still want to fuck their brains out. And generally, fanfics come from a place of love—love that is not only sexual in nature.

Is it the sharing aspect inherent to fanfiction? The possibility that a celebrity might stumble upon explicit works about them? The chances are very low, I think, of the k-pop idols I enjoy writing about coming across my English fics. But I also believe in curating your own content, and that applies to celebrities too. Perhaps a celebrity should not go searching for fanfics about themselves. And of course, people should not show celebrities their fanfics, unless invited.

Another argument I hear against (explicit) RPF is, “How would you feel if someone wrote fanfiction about you?” First off, I don’t like this argument because there’s a difference between someone who decides to be a public figure versus someone who decides to remain a regular private citizen. Celebrities should and do know what they’re getting into when they choose their occupation. (This is not to say, “They are celebrities; sexualise them all you want because that’s what they signed up for.” Here, I am only acknowledging that people might have sexual fantasies about celebrities they are attracted to. Presumably, celebrities are cognizant of this.)  

If someone (whose existence I am not even aware of, mind you) decides they want to write explicit fanfiction of me in some tiny corner of the Internet, I wouldn’t care so long as: (1) they don’t shove it into my face, and (2) they don’t harass me and ask invasive questions about my personal life and relationships. It’s not hurting me or negatively affecting my life, so it wouldn’t even register as a blip on my radar. When fanfiction remains within its appropriate spaces, it is largely harmless. 

Now, if a k-pop idol were to ask their fans to stop writing fanfiction about them, would I? Yes, I would. However, I can’t imagine that happening. Judging by the number of ‘sexy’ concepts, fanservice moments, and variety shows such as ‘We Got Married’, I am certain that k-pop idols realise they are the stars of many fantasies—some of which are explicit in nature. Considering the prevalence of shipping in the k-pop industry, I would argue that shipping is subtly encouraged.

It’s sad that so many talented writers are shamed out of fandom, or feel that k-pop cannot be the medium through which they tell their stories, or explore their sexuality, or cope with trauma, or simply have fun. Professional works and Hollywood love their RPF—readers and writers of fanfics should be able to, as well. 

As you said Anon, “clamping down on horny people who simp over hot asian men isn't going to solve the issues we face in real life” (this is a lovely sentence, by the way). The kind of person who dehumanises another and reduces them to a sexual object will do so some other way, if not via fanfiction. I don’t think the issue of fetishisation can be fixed simply by telling people not to write explicit RPF. In my experience, people who read and write RPF are more respectful and thoughtful about these things than the general public. We’ve all seen the general public say highly sexual things about celebrities in the media and to their faces, or tag celebrities in their thirst tweets. Are these things less invasive than fanfiction? Personally, I don’t think so. And in my opinion, there are more pressing and damaging issues in stan culture than fanfic.

In conclusion, I don’t think there is anything wrong with creating and consuming RPF, both explicit and non-explicit so long as we:

Remember we are writing fiction

Keep RPF within its appropriate space, and

Do not harass celebrities about their personal lives and relationships

RPF is not for everyone. There may be people who enjoy RPF, but draw the line at explicit stories. This is fine. Everyone has their own personal preferences. What is not fine, however, is attacking people for creating things you don’t like. I’m not sure what kind of moral crusade people are on and what they hope to achieve by shaming writers of RPF, explicit or otherwise. Ultimately, fic authors are writing a fantasy. It’s not real; no one is being hurt. I think it’s important for people to curate their own content, and AO3 makes it very easy to filter out explicit works and unwanted tags. 

Maybe this is me trying to justify my own participation in explicit RPF—I don’t know. What I do know is that I love k-pop, and fandom is an important part of my media and entertainment experience. I adore the k-pop idols I write about, and I just want to imagine them being happy and getting lots of love and orgasms. Let a bitch be horny, goddamn… 

Some bonus fun facts!

At the time I am writing this, on AO3:

26.2% of Stray Kids fanfics are rated M or E

26.3% of Seventeen fanfics are rated M or E

29.0% of Merlin fanfics are rated M or E

34.9% of Captain America (Movies) fanfics are rated M or E

40.1% of BTS fanfics are rated M or E ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Coincidentally, I saw this post on Reddit this morning: Can we have a RPF positivity post?

[terminally-karkalicious]

allow me to rant about the only thing that has been in my brain for the past two months and that is doll customizing babeyyyyy

i know there’s a 90% chance that you wont give a Shit about any of this but here we go anyways

SO first you gotta choose a doll. preferably one with a high range of motion to avoid creating new joints or having annoying limitations like not having elbow joints for some fucking reason. what the fuck mattel. give monster high dolls back their ball jointed shoulders and elbow joints. smh

the most common dolls ive seen used as bases are monster high and ever after high. most customs ive seen are highly stylized so the stylized face molds work well for those types of dolls but dolls like barbies are good for when you want a more realistic face-ups.

once you’ve got your base picked out you gotta wipe that bitch’s face off with like. acetone or nail polish remover or something strong like that. you can also use acetone to shrink doll heads which is cool as hell imo. n e way once the face is wiped you gotta chop off the hair and remove the hair plugs from the inside. ive seen this done several ways but the easiest and most common way ive seen is to dunk the head into boiling water for ~30 seconds until it gets squishy and malleable. once you’ve got the head back, you can use pliers (i think tweezers would work in a pinch) to pull out the hair plugs which are kinda icky because theyre covered in glue and other gross shit. ew

now you must decapitate the doll. dunk em back in the boiling water to soften them back up then just tug the head off. the neck pegs look funky and are usually a different color than the body so thats cool ig

once the head’s off, you can start the face-up which is basically just giving the doll a new face using stuff like watercolor pencils, acrylic paint, gouache, and a whole lot of other stuff. hell ive seen people use person makeup on these dolls.

next,,,,, hair. there’s about twenty million ways to do hair from gluing yarn wefts to sewing to rerooting with purchased nylon doll hair or yarn wefts but i’m gonna talk about the most common one ive seen which is rerooting and gluing.

before you can reroot, you need doll hair. which, as i mentioned, can be bought at stores like the doll planet or made at home with yarn in literally any color. have fun with it! make rainbow hair or something idk

to make homemade wefts, you take some acrylic yarn, cut it twice as long as you want the hair to be (keep in mind you can cut and style the hair once it’s been rerooted), fold them in half, and tie it to something sturdy like a wire coat hanger for the next step.

once you’ve got your yarn tied to your hanger, use a pet brush and brush the yarn until it’s wispy and looks like hair. then take a straightening iron and iron the weft flat. then remove from the hanger and boom. hair wefts. ta-da

to reroot the wefts onto the head, use a rerooting tool (which can be as simple as a needle with the eye cut at angle) (just google it please i’m shit at descriptions)) to poke small sections of the hair into the head. you can use the pre-existing rooting holes for your own reroot as they’re usually pretty reliable. to reroot, take a small length of you doll hair (about 10-15 strands), loop it in half, and put the middle of the loop into the reroot tool. poke the end of the tool with the hair on it into the pre-existing hole and remove the tool. the hair *should* stay in and fill up that plug!! also remember to plug thickly at the hairline and part of the hair where it's most noticeable. it doesnt matter as much in the center of the head as that’s not usually visible on the doll. once you’ve rerooted, squeeze in strong glue through the neck hole and squish around the head to make sure it covers all the plugs and secures them in place. then pour hot water onto the head to make the hair lay flat for styling later.

also, you can reroot yarn directly into the head to make thicker, more textured hairstyles. and since the yarn is thicker, you dont need to glue the inside of the head for the hair to stay in place!!

if youre not doing body modifications (which are also cool as hell) then it’s time for clothes but clothes are boring and i like body mods more so i’m gonna rant about them instead

the material ive seen most doll artists use is apoxie sculpt, which is like play doh on steroids. it comes in two parts which you gotta mix together for some reason. why dont they sell it pre-mixed. what was the reason. also once it’s dry it’s super super strong and you can sand it, drill into it, paint it, and all kinds of stuff. very nice and i want some for myself.

you can use hand saws and drills and shit to whack off doll limbs to make stuff like digitigrade legs or new joints. also dont be afraid to use other mismatching doll parts when customizing like heads and bodies and forearms and hands and shit. it literally does not matter if youre gonna recolor the doll anyways so have fun with it. make frankenstein’s doll if youre feeling spicy

accessories my beloved. stuff like tiny beads and clay baubles and shit will literally transform the entire doll plus they’re adorable and multi-purpose

i suppose i must talk about clothes now. ah well. you can find great clothing patterns if youre new to customizing on other customizer’s etsy shops and probably google although those will probably be lower quality than paid pattern pieces. and keep in mind that if it exists as clothing irl, you can likely make it doll-sized. there are literally no limits to your clothing options as long as you can execute your idea.

the once all your components have been made, you can assemble the doll again!! and finally see what all the parts look like together!! very cool 10/10 stars.

ight that wraps up my doll rant. i could really go into more detail on certain parts but thats a whole other rant for a whole other day smh. sorry for fucking flooding your inbox ender ahaha……………. you asked for this

little did you know that dolls have been one of my favorite things since like ever. if i can read a 25 chapter long fanfic i can read this B)

mattel definitely fucked up by completely ruining MH doll designs and just stopping EAH, alot of their profits most likely came from people who collect and customize dolls and by changing MH doll designs/Stopping EAH dolls they 1. most likely lost a small (or big if we're not jus talking people who customize dolls) part of their profit and 2. made it harder for doll customizers to make dolls/get commissions out rather quickly because they probably have to waste more time making joints or learning how to make joints.

EAH/MH dolls (specifically MH dolls) had AMAZING MODELS because there was so much variety with height, face shapes, etc (my favorite molds had to be the short/tall dolls and the cat molds because of the tails) and doll customizers really went all out with enhancing a molds unique features. The only "downside" abt MH dolls is that they (or atleast most)(from what i remember)) had slimmer faces but wider eyes while EAH dolls have wider faces with slimmer smaller which left a canvas for the face and not the eyes (and vice versa for MH dolls)

I've never seen any videos where a barbie is customized (maybe because i absolutely despised barbies at the time) so I'll definitely have to check those out but they seem to be good for realistic makeovers. I've seen like like semi realistic makeovers for EAH/MH dolls that were pretty good too tho (pretty sure mostly EAH dolls since yk MH dolls were used for creature makeovers while most EAH dolls weren't)

yeah i was always amazed by the head shrinking with acetone. honestly i still am?? idunno i have no idea how that chemical bullshit works. Ive seen a few of uh makeovers that just pain over the face (in multiple layers ofcourse) but that's usually when they're painting the entire body a different colour (again usually when they're turning a doll into a funky little baby man). I've also seen a few that just chop the hair off and take out the hair plugs yk without uuh like softening the head or just go straight for the hair plugs after taking off the head (i used to do that it was funny to me??). i always really liked when they used watercolour pencils or just colour pencils in general to draw/sketch on the face cause like wow ur drawing on ur doll without ruining it?? kinda epic maybe even poggers and pogchamp?? oh god my brain is failing wjshsmsj.

Watching them putting the hair back on the doll was, other than the face stuff, was the BEST part for me. Favorite type of hair was iuuuuuh was either thick yarn or brushed out yarn. Literally worship the people that would reroot the hair, theyre the most patience people on this earth!! it's literally insane but i guess that's what happens when you've been doing that for years? you guess kinda get used to it. when they put glue into the head does it just become stiff?? like it's just a clump of dried glue or does it like..hollow out again??

dude you literally cannot convince me most of the supplies used for doll makeovers. APOXIE CLAY LOOKS SO FECKING GOOD. its edible and i will die on that hill. The body mods are literally so amazing!!!!! it's so impressive how theyre able to imagine certain features THEN LIKE ACTUALLY MAKE IT LOOK ACCURATE TO WHAT THEY WANTED TO LOOK LIKE AFTER LIKE ON TRY (or many yk trial and error is very necessary for..everything). Absolutely loved when doll customizers would saw off a dolls legs and use different ones or just completely get rid of the torso to use a different one. it's like uuh that one big guy that's mismatched and sewn together. very cool. The accessories are so fun!! just small little details you seen really need but can add because it's your feckin doll!! I used to be absolutely obsessed over the doll clothes i would find on etsy, so much so that i started sewing shitty shirts and dresses for my uh "customized" dolls (they were absolute HORRORS idk WHY my mom let me feck up my dolls like that).

Thank you for this!! i haven't been able to talk about any of my interests for a while and this just really made me happy!!

Question fer u my fellow MH/EAH enthusiast: what was your favorite MH/EAH movie/episode and doll series. Mine was The fusion dolls (MH obvi) and that MH movie "Haunted" cause we got to know more about Spectra :D

[xianglingslesbian]

oh I'll give u a character alright: Izuki, Kiyoshi, Riko and Aomine <333 technically that's four, but what goes around comes around (I'll keep this circle of love goin forever buddy)

VICCCC ily my man <33 thank u!!! aight putting this under a cut bc it got long

Izuki

Why I like them: izuki’s just overall so amazing! he inspires me to give my best in the stuff i do, and although it sounds a bit silly i try to be a person that he’d be proud of. his puns are hilarious and well-thought-out (as a person who loves words and word jokes, i’m naturally drawn to him lol). they’re also a way to take the heat off the team, he’s so hardworking and never views obstacles as obstacles, rather as hills he must climb to find newer skies. he’s also rather clever and employs his brains to great effect when his body fails him! izuki embodies the meaning of ‘eagle’ in the truest sense - waiting to strike when the time is right and not failing when it is.

Why I don’t: *sweats* can’t really think of a reason i don’t like izuki, at all??? i guess he can overwork himself a lot and tends to keep his true emotions hidden which could lead to misunderstandings between friends (although this is totally headcanon territory lol)... i also didn’t like the ableist comment he passed on hayama (“i’m just glad you weren’t smarter than me”). but i think he can (and will!) grow from that kind of stuff, he is that kind of person so yeah no particular reason for me to dislike him at all

Favorite episode (scene if movie): how dare you make me pick s3 e8 izuki vs kasamatsu, hands down. i know its like cliche or whatever but that moment just told me so much about izuki as a character? he’s willing to do what it takes to win, he’s adaptable and dependable and he doesn’t let shit get him down ever. it’s gorgeous

Favorite season/movie: s3, he got some fantastic moments in there!! although i will say i loved the spotlighting he got in s1 in the seihō match

Favorite line: “Fear isn't a bad thing. There are some things that can only be done by cowards.” this is first of all such a nice thing to say. ‘fear is not bad’ is just... so fucking wise? keep in mind that this boy is 17, i’ve met 30 year olds who are less mature. secondly it feels like izu’s speaking from experience?? like he has a lot to be scared of, i’m sure. particularly of falling behind and being a burden to his teammates. but it’s that ‘cowardice’ that drives him to practice so so hard. that visceral terror of weighing on seirin is what pushes izuki beyond his limits - which is why here he can empathise with furi’s fear, and knows how best to employ it.

Favorite outfit: look i hate last game w/ a passion but that lil tie/shirt/hoodie thing he had going? that was literally so cute. izuki in general has a p great fashion sense but his last game outfit takes the cake <3

OTP: hyuuizu oh my god i could talk for years about them but since this post is gonna be very long i’ll refrain. just. they are perfect they are fucking perfect

Brotp: kiyoizu!! kiyoshi is izuki’s biggest enabler and i love that for him <3

Head Canon: izuki can be very very passive aggressive when he’s angry at someone/sad and gets cold and withdrawn. it’s not fun to experience but tbh if you upset him you probably deserve it

Unpopular opinion: izuki should’ve been naturally better in canon. it’s not fair to shaft him and give the ‘trier’ thing off to himuro. that being said i am p happy with who he is as a person

A wish: i want to know how izuki felt after middle school! izuki’s and riko’s backstory focuses so much on hyuuga its dumb >:( he also would’ve been demoralised but he didn’t quit bball and i would like to know his thought process!

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: i. uh. i guess izu quitting basketball. because i genuinely cannot see that happening. it brings him so much joy, he should never stop cold turkey. i can imagine old man izuki hobbling about a court giving little kids pointers and making them laugh T-T

5 words to best describe them: “big brain caffeine-powered clown baby” 

My nickname for them: babyzuki/izu/shunshun

Kiyoshi

Why I like them: lots of reasons! kiyoshi is an admirable person. he’s strong, yet friendly and gentle, and he loves his team above all else, which i just find beautiful. i find his manipulative side also pretty cool, bc it shows off how multifaceted he is.

Why I don’t: this is more of a fandom reason but i really dislike how kiyoshi is always said to have had the greatest impact in hyuuga’s story. he badgered and manipulated hyuuga, and while some may argue hyuuga needed that push, it only worked bc hyuuga had had time to think about shit. he’d also been given space by riko and izuki (two integral parts of his life whom the fandom looooves to sideline for uwu kiyo//hyuu). 

Favorite episode (scene if movie): yousen match (can’t pick the episodes)! i loved the backstory we got for kiyo vs mura and i loved how kiyoshi was willing to smile and play but also refused to lose. he truly stole the show despite kagami being the one to finally take down murasakibara, it was gorgeous <3

Favorite season/movie: s2 for sure. kiyoshi wasn’t allowed to shine much after yousen imo - all the focus was on hyuuga kagami and kuroko, and to a lesser extent izuki. not complaining, but yeah

Favorite line: “Let’s go have some fun.” i know it’s kinda cliche but i do love how kiyoshi’s always thinking about playing a good game and enjoying basketball. he wants to play because he loves it and as someone who loves a sport as much as kiyoshi loves b-ball, that love is so poignant and tender

Favorite outfit: practice clothes! kiyoshi looks great in pink <3

OTP: kiyohana. hateshipping amirite ;)

Brotp: kiyohyuu! i love them as friends so so much <3

Head Canon: kiyoshi is half-iranian on his mother’s side and is muslim. i won’t say too much because i am not muslim myself, i need to do more research into this but i’ve had this headcanon for quite a while now!

Unpopular opinion: he should be bullied more for the fact that his canon power is having yaoi hands

A wish: kiyo finds something he loves as much as b-ball. he can’t canonically play at this level again, so if he found another sport/competition/anything, it’d be amazing

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: he should never become demoralised. kiyoshi at heart is a dreamer, so let him dream, let him look towards tomorrow with a smile always

5 words to best describe them: “useless dreamy dumbass cheerleader clown”

My nickname for them: kiyoyo, bc my feelings about him have yo-yoed a lot lmao

Riko

Why I like them: im a lesbian, next. /j i love her because she’s so tenacious and driven. yet she’s also kind and gentle, and never loses her humanity. she cares, and she cares hard. she’s so fucking smart too like... coaching a hs basketball team at 17 against players of NBA calibre and making them win? i could never. seirin without riko is nothing.

Why I don’t: i dont like the constant slapstick of her beating up her boys. also, i dislike how the narrative forces her to act ‘feminine’ and then has the boys think of it as nothing. like first of all if someone like her offered me a kiss i would so take 100, and secondly... why is a girl’s worth so tied to her femininity? it’s awful

Favorite episode (scene if movie): her sending in furi vs kaijō, early in s3. it was an exceedingly smart move that could have only come from her knowing her players’ strengths and weaknesses intimately, and being a brilliant coach. just amazing <3

Favorite season/movie: all of them! riko has some amazing moments each season, so i can’t really pick

Favorite line: “Humans grow. Don't act like you understand when you don't even realize that!” here, riko knows and knows well that she is in her element. momoi might have the data, but riko understands adaptability and knows how to predict stuff. in that way, one can draw parallels between takao vs izuki and momoi vs riko: takao and momoi are recon experts, whereas riko and izuki are strategists. momoi uses raw data; riko manipulates the data to her advantage

Favorite outfit: idk if this is exactly an outfit but her glasses are so cute oh my gosh. (i’d kill to see her in a leather jacket tho)

OTP: rikomomo!!! i’m 100% sure that momoi’s fixation w/riko’s boobs is just... repressed lesbian sentiments. also sports girlfriends gimme

Brotp: hyuuizuriko. i hc that hyuuizu were tgt since elementary school and riko joined them in middle school so... childhood friends feels!

Head Canon: riko knows how to shoot a gun. her father owns one so it makes sense

Unpopular opinion: riko does not need to have bigger boobs in fanart. please stop sexualising a 17 year old girl

A wish: white suit riko please

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: her ever leaving behind sports in any way shape or form. it’s her thing. in the same vein, she should never have to change herself or become more traditionally feminine to be ‘appealing’

5 words to best describe them: perfect perfect perfect perfect perfect

My nickname for them: ai/riri

Aomine

Why I like them: aomine is just a pure, hurting young man that deserves help. he’s passionate, and his fire died down out of no fault of his own. that fire’s reignition through kagami is one of my favorite scenes <3

Why I don’t: he’s perverted as hell and i dislike that. it plays into the ‘brutish dark-skinned pervert’ stereotype which is yikes. also i thought we were done with pervs in anime

Favorite episode (scene if movie): s2 seirin v touou when kagami enters the zone!! aomine’s finally happy and it’s so amazing to watch <3

Favorite season/movie: s2, he finally got happiness and peace of mind

Favorite line: “You’re the best!” there’s just so much of pure joy in this line. he’s so so beside himself that he finally has someone he won’t destroy. kagami sees aomine the person, and that person is so happy, it’s beautiful

Favorite outfit: the leather jacket from the finale lmaooo he looked so cute

OTP: AOKAGA BABY i could write an essay tbh

Brotp: aomomo!! theyre such good friends and bi/lesbian solidarity too!

Head Canon: aomine cannot dance. he has stepped on kagami’s feet multiple times. he has also attempted to twerk when drunk. kuroko recorded the whole thing and uses it as blackmail in case the puppy eyes and “but aomine-kun you didn’t fist bump me back” don’t work

Unpopular opinion: more a fandom thing, but you all need to stop making aomine the aggressive/possessive top/‘seme’. it’s racist as fuck

A wish: aomine goes pro. it’ll be amazing for him, a huge challenge and kagami will be there too so its a win-win ;)

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: he quits again/b-ball loses its allure. aomine at heart is someone who needs passion to drive him so i just want that passion to always burn bright within him

5 words to best describe them: “bastard baby needs a hug”

My nickname for them: dai-chan, momoi rubbed off on me

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

THAT MAP

i didn’t die

also spoilers. like. major spoilers. im serious.

dont click that read more unless you’re totally okay with spoilers cause i talk about some endgame stuff too <3

CELESTICA ERIDIA

THAT ERIDIAN RIFT HUHHHHHHH ITS RIGHT NEXT TO PANDORA

WE’RE ENTERING THE FLORPUS

IT LOOKS LIKE THERE’S A WAY TO TRIANGULATE/OPEN THE WORMHOLE OR SOMETHING???

alright LOOK

each planet (Eden-6, Promethea, Pandora) they’re all circled and when their lines cross it leads to SOMETHING

and looking at the grid that’s obviously what looks to be a wormhole

so we’ve also got the lines

“elpis - not what it seems. is elpis a lens? or a conduit. or both?”

A CONDUIT/LENS?? FOR W H A T??

ARE WE BEAMING SOMETHING OUT OF PANDORA? BECAUSE IF THESE TEMPLES ARE ALL SIMILAR PYRAMID-LIKE STRUCTURES TO THE ONE ON ATHENAS THEN THAT WOULD MAKE SENSE

this is DEFINITELY on pandora (you see elpis up there) so it’s possible something is going to hit elpis and it’s going to beam to this vault-thing and open up a gateway to the Eridian Rift??? OR

we open this Vault and it beams something up to elpis and elpis helps open up part of the Eridian rift

i’d guess we’d need all 3 (?) active to open it?? Eden-6, Pandora, and Promethea

so something SEEMS to be getting beamed either from elpis to pandora or from pandora to elpis

but im going to get elpis to pandora given the way it’s being thrown out? like it hits elpis straight on and then defracts over pandora like a prism

im guessing it’s such a broad spread bc it’s trying to hit the vault-temple-thing we see above (still... not quite convinced those are vaults like we’ve been seeing them in the past games (with lots of big loot inside). again something like teleporters makes way more sense to me)

they also bring this up, that athenas and promethea have a draw to one another, which makes sense since part of the promethean vault key is on Athenas

“Although Athenas is not in the Promethean System, there is a strong pull detectable through use of [eridian resonator (customized) which I have discovered here (seen in purple)]” i have no idea if any of the bracketed stuff is right“

more importantly it looks like one piece of Promethea’s asteroid belt is ‘highlighted’ which i imagine is that giant space laser

which ngl surprises me because

this doesn’t really look eridian to me at all. like, okay, the laser part IS purple but... the actual tech doesn’t look Eridian at all. it looks VERY human. maybe maliwan/atlas discovered it and changed it somehow? that’s pretty much the only reason i can give. like they made it so it would only hit a certain area (concentrated) instead of the entire planet (like we see Elpis doing)

also if we look at Eden-6

eden-6 seems to be 1 of 6 (or more) planets surrounding the gas giant (?) named Eden (which is such a cool fucking detail). or maybe that’s just a solar system named eden. either way. AWESOME.

my question is:

is Eden going to act similarly to Elpis? to the Asteroid Belt of Promethea?? because if that’s the case OH MAN MORE GIANT SPACE LASERS. maybe this is why ships keep on crashing to Eden-6. We know the planet is basically a ship graveyard, maybe there’s some Eridian interference that’s causing this to happen???

Also, when they say “Vaults lead to other Vaults” do y’all think this is tied into in any way the “Vault of Vaults” or whatever “It” is???

because THE VAULT OF VAULTS??? APPARENTLY WE WERE NAUGHTY AS FUCK FOR OPENING IT (the overseer says so when you accept the quest for the proving grounds)

AND THE MASTERS (whoever the FUCK they are!) ARE NOT HAPPY BOYS

ALSO “UNIVERSE DESTROYING POWER” AS CLAIMED ON THE WEBSITE

UHHH IM GONNA GUESS THAT RIFT IS ABOUT TO KILL EVERYONE AND/OR LET OUT A BIG OL SPACE DEMON COUGH THE DESTROYER COUGH

ALSO WE PROBABLY ARE CONFIRMED THERE ARE TEMPLES ON EACH OF THE PLANETS WITH THAT DIAMOND SHAPE

THEY MATCH UP WITH THE SYMBOL WE’VE SEEN EVERYWHERE

(also we now can guess this takes place after Athenas..?)

‘Vault... Key?’ i mean... think about it. we know the symbol for Vault is the circle with the arch. but this is different. this is diamond with, yes, with a vault shape in it. but... there’s obviously more to it than just the vault symbol

plus tannis is using it on pedestals dedicated to Vault Keys so i mean. you know.

and if this IS the symbol for Vault Key than oh man oh me oh my

that would mean opening up the ‘mini vaults’ on Pandora/Promethea/Eden-6 would lead to that big Eridian rift opening, whatever it is

which could explain this line: “the Vaults lead to other Vaults” “Smart, Leda!”

looks like Typhon met someone who writes in blue. who’s name is Leda.

calling it now typhon totally banged a Siren named Leda and had 2 twin kids (it runs in the family) the twins take after their parents: one red, one blue. possibly inherit the Cloth Map and learn about the purpose of the Vaults through it. i got nothing on the cage thing but tbh i wouldn’t be surprised if Typhon or Leda ended up going crazy at some point and/or having kids inside of a Vault for some ungodly reason. spewing random shit about ‘bandits this, bandits that’ to keep them from leaving. maybe they knew their adventures were going to (eventually) lead to the destruction of the universe so they wanted to keep their kids safe without having to admit they’ve doomed everyone outside this has no proof at all, im just spitballing lol i mean look at these love-sick FOOLS lmao

look they both left messages (that i can’t read) with hearts at the end of them

“Genius! [gibberish i can’t make out] <3″ “you know it! <3″

we don’t know what the Vaults really are for, huh Tyreen?? NOW WE DO. NOW. WE DO.

“ERIDIAN GLYPHS ARE CYHPERS!” (sic???)

“by overlaying various found glyphs patterns emerge which are then...” ASDFGSHJ i CANT READ THIS “What is the machine?” “We’ll figure it out together!” MACHINE????????

i NEED it

“Mapping in progress: the key-glyph [something] is an Eridian cypher hiding coordinates to some kind of cyber (????) structure” this perhaps???

also the proving grounds. let’s talk about those. we know they’re eridian, we know there’s 6 of them, we know there’s 1 at least on both Athenas and Eden-6.

we know those Eridian Ruins/Cyphers lead to the proving grounds. we know this much. so is it definitely confirmed the proving grounds hold a higher place in the story than they’re saying? i mean let me pull up my other draft talking about these in-depth and copy paste because there’s only 36 minutes until the NEXT endgame content stream

“Later in the campaign, you may be worthy of taking part in the Proving Grounds: themed gauntlets watched over by a Guardian known as the Overseer who wishes to test your mettle on behalf of the mysterious ‘Masters’.”

so it sounds like at least one is going to take place during the main campaign of the game.

as for uhh who the Masters are... I don’t know. I imagine they’re Eridian in some way/shape/form. to be honest, considering the Overseer is a Guardian (confirmed), I imagine these ‘Masters’ are just literally Eridians. some sort of council, perhaps. i mean “the masters will determine who is at fault” for “naughty humans opened the vault of vaults”. so i imagine they’re like a council.

Let’s start listing stuff we know about the Proving Grounds:

1. you get them by translating (we apparently get a translator later on in the story) Eridian texts (ciphers) left behind, which tell us where (?) these proving grounds are. why we’re not just using tannis... i dunno. something better not have happened to Tannis, gearbox

We’ve seen these texts in the Eden-6 gameplay, so it looks like maybe we won’t need the eridian doritos stabby thing to break any crystals. damn youuu

“Ohhh good. Nonsense.”

i make jokes with my friend that soon i’ll be able to read Eridian given how much i stare at these tablets. it’s only a matter of time...

2. there’s apparently 6 of them, and at least 1 on each planet. We’ve seen the Athenas (Survival) and Eden-6 (Instinct) versions, which does make me wonder if there’s any tie between 6 of these trials and the 6 Sirens...

Also, given there’s supposedly 6 trials and only 5 planets (as the community has gotten devs to tell us), it makes me wonder a) if there’s actually 6 planets or b) why there’s only 1 planet with 2 per planet. i guess if that’s the eridian homeworld then it’d make sense if they have 2.

(Also Varnell did originally say 7 trials at first, but he gets a pass because he was live on stage and i would’ve made that mistake too knowing my dumb brain lol)

3. Apparently during the narrative of the game, at some point, we will unlock at least 1 trial.

“[proving grounds are] encased in the narrative of the game. a combat challenge the Eridians have left for the player to kinda prove themselves worthy for... things i won’t completely spoil right now, but uhhh prove themselves worthy to the ancient, lost, Eridians.”

so... YEAH. big news, gamers.

does this take place at the end of the game? its possible. its likely considering this is considered endgame content. it might not. it could be both, like sort of a repeatable thing. im not really certain. 

What I am certain about tho, is that this takes place after a huge story event.

So, maybe the BL3 story ends on a cliffhanger. Tbh i would upset if that happened, but THAT SAID, if the game does end on such a huge cliffhanger that this is AWFUL and the end of the universe is coming, I don’t think we’d be getting 4 story DLCs that completely ignore this problem.

The devs had said the entire story will be contained within bl3 (no splitting it up between dlcs), and it seems the games like to keep the timeline intact in the real world, so if imminent death is on its way, we can’t exactly wait 5 years irl and in-universe for borderlands 4.

So, if this is a cliffhanger ending, I don’t think whatever happens is... that big of a deal. Sort of the level of finding the Vault Map at the end of BL2. It’s big news! but it’s not going to end the universe. The story marches on. We figure out the new goalposts of this universe and keep doing stuff outside it.

Now that we know that, let’s take note of what the Overseer says at the start and end of this mission:

“Vault Hunter... I thought you might show up sooner or later. So naughty your species, so curious. The Vault of Vaults has been opened and it has been released. Prove your worth and I will reveal why the Masters made me wait for you”.

“Naughty humans opened the Vault of Vaults, but the Masters will determine who is at fault. Until next time, Warrior.”

so that’s some pretty fucking loaded dialogue, isn’t it?

im vvvvvvvvvv curious about who this ‘it’ character is... something the Eridians didn’t want out- well, that’s bad, because we (or the twins, or maliwan, or both I guess) just let it free. and the fact the Overseer won’t even reference the thing by name... that’s probably bad. If this is an actual entity, then that is mostly why I believe this particular Proving Ground takes place during the main story.

that said, ‘it’ could literally be anything. Knowledge, hope, whatever. the potion you brew to become a Siren. you know. anything. She called whatever was released ‘it’ and it doesn’t seem like we’re in a RUSH or anything. Just hanging out doing proving grounds. and apparently this is because we’ve been naughty humans. not evil, just naughty. like she’s giving us (or the cult) a slap on the wrist.

The Overseer doesn’t seem too affected by us opening the Vault of Vaults herself. The Masters apparently are trying to determine ‘who’s at fault here’, like it isn’t exactly clear. was it the humans for opening it? was it the eridians for making them openable?

it would be interesting if this isn’t even talking about something that happens in game, but instead like... she’s referencing Typhon and Leda. the Vault of Vaults had been opened (by Typhon and Leda) and IT has been released... whatever it is... maybe the reason Typhon and Leda locked their kids in a vault? ... i mean if we’re going by the eridium/slag causes psychos, then maybe that? we definitely find eridium on planets other than pandora...

also speaking of stuff taking place during the game, lets remember what was discussed in that interview: “[proving grounds are] encased in the narrative of the game... a combat challenge the Eridians have left for the player to kinda prove themselves worthy for... things i won’t completely spoil right now, but uhhh prove themselves worthy to the ancient, lost, Eridians.”

worthy of what, exactly?

I’m still of the belief that it’s for the title of Vault Guardian (and, yes, by proxy, i want to say Siren, but y’all won’t take me too seriously if i keep advocating for this crack theory lol... implying you took me seriously in the first place 🤡) because of the Guardian Rank

the fact we’re killing Fallen Guardians means, technically, a position HAS opened up... plus I don’t think the Watcher would have come in contact with Lilith if she didn’t think the Eridians needed us

that said, if this isn’t for just becoming Vault Guardians, then... idk. If this is strictly endgame stuff, i don’t even know what we’re trying to prove our worth for.

I guess worthy of not being thrown into alien prison is probably a good one. magic space prison is probably hard to get out of. like, ‘200 years an opening’ hard to get out of. and ur roommate is the destroyer 😨

i mean... maybe worthy of entering the Eridian Rift? i mean... it’s possible this rift leads to the eridian homeworld... there would have to be one HELL of huge Vault Monster to keep people from getting through :o

anyway, we’ve got 20 minutes until the new endgame content, i’ll be sure to add onto here if we learn anything new and/or i think of anything else. im vibrating over this shit, it’s awesome. i LOVE this map. might have to pick one up on ebay or smth.

[itstimetotheorize]

props to the bh6 writers. What will happen next? a discussion on season 2 episodes 1-5, warning spoilers ahead

i gotta say we’re not even half way thru the second season and i can already tell that the bh6 writers have really outdone themselves. The story is much darker than the first season and the villains of the show have developed into more sinister versions of themselves. 

but out of all the villains so far, the big MVP of this season is definitely Liv Amara. Not gonna lie, i didn't know how they would play liv out in the show, or if she would even be played off as an even bigger threat than Obake, but oh boy do they know how to write a good villain. 

liv amara is more cynical compared to Obake, and unlike Obake who was originally good, but due to a deathly explosion that caused him brain damage, he was left with the inability to tell right from wrong, so he was not consciously aware of the fact that he was doing something he didn't want to do. Liv Amara on the other hand has no such brain damage and is fully aware of the fact that she is doing inhumane things and doesn't care who she brings down if it means she can accomplish her goals, but just what are her goals to begin with? thats the other thing that the writers are doing so well, keeping the mystery behind liv amaras plan a secret but still laying it out bit by bit to keep having us guessing

so far from what we have seen, Liv Amaras generous funds do not just come from investors seeking to support her work, rather they mostly come from shady villainous people who will have no issue supporting her insane experiments. In season 2 episode 2, Liv meets up with Momakase to talk about her “investing” funds for a specific top secret project she is currently working on at sycorax. We do not know what this secret project is but it is no doubt something that she cant just show to any investor with a good conscious 

 However, that doesn't matter to villains that have done equally horrid things and wouldn't mind giving Liv the cash she wants if it means that they could benefit from her skills as well. And, as we later learn near the end of the episode 2, (thanks to a mysterious chip liv inserted into her neck) momakase can now produce indestructible knives from the tips of her fingers

since it is clear that Liv is responsible for the mutations this season the only questions now is, what is Liv Amaras end game?, what is her “top secret project” and what do those chips mean for the people she is mutating. 

first lets talk about the chips. Its clear that the chips reprogram a persons DNA and can cause specific mutations at the persons request. My only question is, are these mutations permanent ? orso knox in season 3 episode 3 was able to return back to normal thanks to karmi, but as liv amara states ( as she effortlessly blackmails him), she has the power to return him back to his monstrous form whenever she likes. 

if these chips are removed will the persons abilities be removed along with them? or do they become inactive once the person has fully mutated, leaving their only chance to return to normal a series of treatments to splice their DNA back to normal. Regardless of who it is, once its embedded in a persons skin all it takes is for liv to activate it.

next, lets talk about this “top secret project”, in episode 2 liv shows the top secret project file to momakase. This project may be what gave momakase the idea to have liv turn her into a knife wielding super monster, so its clear that the plan involves some kind of human genetic mutation. 

In episode 3 (out of hiros constant bickering to figure out livs actual progress on orso knox) karmi finds out that she cant access the knox file, then directly goes to livs office to ask about why she cant access the info related to orso knox. 

before karmi reaches livs office we get a clear shot at some of the files on her screen and what we see are base pairs for parts of someones DNA (maybe orso knox, momokase or someone we haven't seen yet) and what is clear in those pictures is that there are parts blackened out, as if to show that something is missing.

 We see this same DNA in episode 4 when liv meets high voltage, the dna strand is visible as a hologram on her desk and is again missing certain pieces.

 When karmi looks at the DNA sequence of mutated orso knox in episode 3, she notes that the base pairs in his DNA are not similar. 

For those of you who have a hard time understanding this, basically imagine DNA as a ladder split down the middle, the steps that make up the middle part of the ladder and allow people to climb it normally are different shapes on both sides but when they come together they make a proper ladder, 

in order for DNA to produce a functional human being the DNA base pairs need to match. Those regions of his mismatched DNA are being caused by a specific area somewhere else in his DNA, and so long as that specific region remains orso knox continues to lose more and more of his humanity as his DNA continues to produce that mismatched areas. 

We can clearly see this occurring with Momokase as well. When momokase escapes the teams combined attacks near the end of episode 2 we see that she has now developed blue skin, sharp teeth and wild and unruly hair,

 even more noticeably is when she runs in the direction of hiro. She doesn't try to attack hiro and granville now that they are vulnerable without baymax and the others there to help, instead she makes her way to the pillar behind them to escape and gives them an angry hiss/growl before leaving. 

In episode 4, high voltage undergo the same procedure as momakase but transform at a slower rate. Later on when they crash a high school dance, they become fully mutated eel people

once high voltage gains the upper hand to make their escape, what do we see them do? they dont just escape, they escape and without a second thought they immediately go to liv amara, now fully mutated into eels and living in her office aquarium!!. 

If high voltage returned to liv then odds are that momokase is somewhere in her building as well. But why are they going back to liv?, well, back in season 1 episode 18 knox didnt go directly to liv, he followed his schedule until he found his way back to her, only to attack her, and sadly now that we know liv is the second seasons main antagonist liv learned from her mistakes with knox and most likely implanted the idea in future mutated people to return to her without fighting back. But what does this all mean?, why is she collecting mutated villains, what was the point of mutating orso knox? and what does this have to do with her secret project?

well, what if Liv is trying to make mutants but is having a hard time figuring out a base pair that will allow the persons DNA to remain stable and thus creating a stable mutated human. But to do that she needs test subjects, and she knows that she cant just experiment on ordinary people without drawing suspicion, so instead shes using criminals that the public would prefer not seeing. The only exception was orso knox who may have realized what liv amaras secret project was and refused to give her the money to support it. Liv turning him into a monster was just one way of keeping her money and gaining a lab rat, however, now that he is back to normal all she has to do is threaten him with turning him back, if he doesn't keep quiet about what she is doing. 

she may have always known how to turn mutants like orso back into regular humans but thats not what she wants, she wants these mutated and now animalistic humans to stay unstable so she can figure out the missing link in their DNA.  In episode 3 when karmi sees orso and quickly figures out the right treatment to turn him back, liv comes in and looks at karmis work, 

liv doesn't look happy or surprised, shes upset because now there is someone other than her that can successfully turn mutants like oros back to normal, liv knew karmi was smart, but now that she knows karmi is to smart, she identifies her as a threat. And what does she do once she realizes that karmi is capable of undoing her work?  she pushes some buttons, 

takes fred to the elevator and leaves karmi, hiro, and baymax seconds before orsos lock is disabled and the entire building is placed on lock down. 

Liv was trying to murder hiro and karmi, then later pin the blame on orso to cover up her tracks!! and the only reason she took fred to safety is because she still needs to get her funds from his mother, and she cant do that if his mom is grieving for her dead son. 

and now lets talk about the biggest question of the show, what is liv amaras end game? in episode 5, we see her experimenting with the cell regeneration capabilities of globby and claims that the way globbys cell regenerate may be a breakthrough to what she is working on. When nega globby begins to regenerate  into a bigger size in front of liv we see that they are confined to a small room, this room/lab contains a series of pods and one more pod that chris looks over to on his right off screen.

 In episode 3 as hiro, karmi, and fred discover that orso is confined in sub level 9 fred says, “thats the most mysterious sub level there is, unless there’s a  sub level 10, is there a sub level 10?”. 

Odds are, freddy is right!, there may be a secret level that liv did not include into the buildings computer and that secret sub level is where she is currently conducting her “secret project”

later, when the nega globby escapes, Chris meets up with liv in that same suspicious room were liv is working on a single giant pod in front of her

when chris states that the glob escaped liv deactivates the security shutdown (which she says in episode 3 that she has no control over, but clearly she does !!!) 

and lets it escape into the city. Chris then says, “dont we need it for..” then points to the giant pod next to him. 

What if livs top secret project and ultimate end game has to do with whatever is in that giant pod. And what exactly is in that giant pod?, I have no idea!!, it could be anything at this point, and without enough evidence I am just gonna list out some ideas below and do a follow up later on when new info is revealed in future episodes:

1. in episode 1 liv says to grandville, hiro and the gang on their tour, “mother nature is an artist and I see myself as her protege, studying and... even improving on her work”. Liv believes it is her responsibility to do what nature is no longer capable of, improving human kind and is making a giant serum to transform the entire city into mutants, and later transform the entire world, making her the new mother of an entirely new world.

2. she is trying to create a new human race and what is in that giant tub in episode 5 is the first superhuman, however, because she hasnt figured out the right DNA sequence it is still incomplete and unstable. 

3.she knew(possibly admired) or knows obake and found his body underwater after his base fell apart and currently holds him in that tub as she is trying to turn him into the first line of super mutants and thus saving his life but also using him to her advantage.

4. shes gonna turn the entire city into mindless animalistic mutants, have them all under her control, then later use her new army of mutants to take over the world, starting with san fransokyo.

5. again this is just a theory, so don’t bother complaining, I’m just making this up as i go until i get new info. Liv found Tadashi after the fire and is currently holding him in that giant tub as she is trying to figure out how to stabilize his mutated genes and fix his damaged body so he can use whatever abilities his body is developing. Then she will later use his DNA to create a new line of mutants to serve under her. 

its just a theory, a big hero 6 theory!

[kireiscorner]

I need help Do you have any tips on drawing female bodies?

1) Take half of what you've learned from anime and throw it out the window.

2) Take every male expectation of women and YEET that shit. Ask girls what makes them feel good, observe people around you, and start pulling from women in real life. I cannot tell you how excited my first animation teacher was that I drew women with muscle mass. Like, the dude outright thanked me in front of the entire class and then went on a tangent about how women have muscles too. Women have so many body types, research the look you want.

3) DO NOT SACRIFICE FEMININE FEATURES! I get it; some of you will be creating trans or agender characters, but keep in mind anatomy and how it works. And by that I mean the way their bone structure and such works. It's more realistic and easier to identify with when people can see their identity there than completely wiping out their journey. Looking more feminine but not identifying as a female does not change the fact that they identify differently. It's just how their body is and you dont need to wipe that evidence to make your point. I know trans ppl who still have feminine feature who identify as male or agender. Its normal??? That's real life, pull from real life.

4) Avoid giving stereotypical features where you can. THAT INCLUDES SLIM THICC AND BIG BOOBS. Not all latina and black women are thick. We dont all have thick lips and big noses or kinky hair. Fuck that. Yes there are common features between races but not always. My mom has a short upturned nose, I have a long bridge and bubble nose, and my Puerto rican cousin has a wide short nose. Pull from real life, but stay true to your character too. Have MULTIPLE refs, at least 7 or so to give you more variety. This includes for body types, lips, noses, eye shapes, etc. Cause I cant count how many times in hs I've seen ppl get mad when different Latinos or Asians got mad for being said another Latino or Asian was the same or that Africans and Blacks look the same or all white people look alike. Theres so much variety in the world, use it. God created it all for a reason. Feed that artistic brain yo.

5) Look to what in real life age groups wear. We dont wear uniforms, overly fashionable color scheme oriented outfits, or model wear. Think about what shapes look good on certain shapes. Think about where they're from, why they're dressed a certain way; again, avoid stereotypes. Not all black girls need to be dresses to be super ethnically-coded. I wear leather skirts, pajama pants, and yoga pants just like every other girl. We all like to be cute but we also like to be comfortable too! Sometimes we dont wanna dress up and sometimes we wanna give aphrodite a run for her money. We dont all wear makeup of have piercings. Anyone can inherit moles, freckles, etc. not just certain races.

6) Figure out personalities first if you can. A lot of times this can determine how a girl does their hair, makeup or no makeup, clothing style, etc. Their personality is very important and can also effect posture and gestures too.

7) PRACTICE. PRACTICE ANATOMY. PRACTICE WITH VARIOUS BODY TYPES. TAKE FIGURE DRAWING CLASSES IF POSSIBLE IT HELPED ME SO MUCH.

8) One thing I constantly see is ppl thinking theres one way certain types of women look or can act. Like, short hair and "boyish" tendencies means ur gay. Feminine traits mean you're weak and soft. Girls who dont have interest in love are bitchy or gay. That's bullshit. Maybe shes content not having a partner, maybe she doesnt need one. Shes no bitch she just dont want you. Characters dont have to date, esp female characters to be an important woman. WE EXIST. There are very feminine, super girly, cuddly cute gay women. THEY EXIST. There are short haired straight women. Draw them. THEY EXIST. Break barriers, your character is yours and if you want a buff, tall, bisexual long haired goddess who believes all clothing must be made of lace do you boo. If you want a character who is lanky as hell, bald, and killer spicy mama go for it. Draw her too, shoot. Draw all the girls.

9) Everyone has different versions of sexy. Boobs and ass hanging out isnt everyone's sexy. Sexy doesnt mean sloppy, sexy doesnt mean turning the character into a prop. Respect your characters plz! You dont know who will see it and who u can influence.

10) DONT LET PPL TELL YOU REAL LIFE WOMEN DONT LOOK LIKE WOMEN THATS DUMB

And those are kireis main rules for drawing women. The most helpful thing is pulling from real everyday life, I promise you. That, and knowing women know our bodies best so we're gonna give you experienced answers. Hope this helps even tho I'm high key ranting lol