#i love blabbering in tags

[kekamao]

my brother managed to fry water a but/hj

[heartorbit]

i just wanted to draw the ave mujica outfits .

[solarisfortuneia]

— 𝐟𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐬.

and the smell of camphor dancing in the wind.

✦ info: he didn't know he'd lose you so soon. (come back, please. even if it is just for five more minutes.)

✦ featuring: alhaitham.

✦ warnings: angst, character death (reader), heartache, 1.2k words, somewhat proof-read.

✦ notes: i cried so goddamn hard writing this. why is my first work after hiatus pain. why did i pick up the angst wip. but!! i'm writing again, so that's good. (more notes at the end.)

he didn’t know that it was your last day together. 

he didn’t know that the smile you gave him that afternoon, your eyes sparkling like sunlight upon the serene waves of the ocean, would be the last he’d ever see. that the playful light in your gaze would fade so very soon, slipping through his fingers like sand.

he didn’t know that last night would be the last time he held you close while you drifted off to sleep. he didn’t know that today would be the last time he’d wake up with you.

he didn’t think he’d lose you like this. 

he didn’t think he wouldn’t be able to save you from that blow. 

“please, please,”  he begs, both to you and to whatever force that is just barely holding you together. “just stay with me for five more minutes, please. until i can get you somewhere.” 

the rain soaks him to the bone, clothes and hair sticking to his skin. your lips stay motionless, eyes shut.

“wake up, please,”  he bargains. “you can have all the five minutes of extra sleep you want later, i promise. just—”  his vision blurs, and something shines on the ground before it is gone, swallowed by damp earth, lost amidst drops of falling rain. 

desperately, he tears off parts of his traveling cloak to staunch the bleeding. deep inside, he knows it is futile. he knows your wound is too great. he knows what lies ahead. but he cannot help but press the cloths to your wound and pray. 

please, please tell me it’ll be okay. 

please stay with me, beloved. i’ll read you all the books in the world. i’ll sleep in with you everyday, even if we end up whiling away our time. 

please. stay. stay with me. i can’t lose you yet.  

“— just wake up, beloved.” 

by some miracle, your eye flutters. just a bit. just enough to set hope ablaze, just enough for the grip on his heart to loosen a tiny bit. he buries his face in your shoulder, resting his head against your neck, uncaring of the blood that stains his clothes. your blood. on his clothes. his hands. everywhere. 

no. no. this can’t be happening.

he feels you strain beneath him, your unwounded arm gently, weakly brushing his back. he jolts upright, eyes trained on your face. you send a frail smile his way. he clasps your face softly as you nuzzle into his palm.

“alhaitham—” 

his full name. archons, how long has it been since you called him that?  

“— take good care of yourself, okay?” you tell him, chest heaving, your fingertips touching a tear on his cheeks. “i love you. so much.” 

those are the last words he hears fall from your lips. he presses a kiss to your forehead, to your eyelids, and to your cheeks and to your lips, over and over and over until he feels your breath slow, hoping they’ll say what he knows he cannot manage to choke out.

i love you. 

he stays there next to you for who knows how long, holding you until the rain slows and a faint rainbow smiles in the sky.

until he can’t smell camphor anymore.

—

every person has their curiosities. 

they’re just the little traits that set them apart from others, the things that make them tick just a little bit differently, the things that make them, them.

for instance, someone may be obsessed with collecting tiny furniture, while another eats the crusts off their sandwich before actually consuming it. someone may have an affinity for the most niche aspects of linguistics, while another can accurately predict the next raindrop that slides down a window pane.

after all, no two people are exactly alike, are they?

alhaitham knows he’s got his fair share of these curiosities himself. his aversion to soup and all things that resemble it, to name one. and with you, he’d noticed two things. 

number one: the scent of camphor that seems to linger on every inch of your person. 

he’d caught whiff of it almost immediately the first time you met. you were but one of his juniors in the akademiya, filled with bright-eyed curiosity and anxiety to match. you had tripped over a stair and bumped into his table in the library, bringing the mountain of books in your arms crashing down.

and with subsequent coincidental meetings, he learnt that the subtle scent of camphor dancing in the air meant you weren’t far away. 

you were, unfortunately, one of the poor souls who seemed to be cursed with constantly recurring minor illnesses, and almost always walked about with a stuffy nose. and so, you always carried a small disc of camphor in a handkerchief, as well as in your pocket.

you swore up and down, left, right and center that sniffing the vapors helped make breathing easier.

‘it’s my grandmother’s remedy, alhaitham! camphor always works wonders. well, that and eucalyptus oil.”

alhaitham may not know the validity of your claim or the legitimacy of the cure, but he knew to never, ever question a grandmother’s remedy. that, and he’d much rather refrain from starting a back-and-forth about something so small.

and number two: your neverending pleas of different variations of ‘just five more minutes!’ 

“five more minutes, ‘haitham. please.” you’d whine grumpily when he woke you up to start your day. “let me sleep in for five more minutes.” 

“five more minutes, habibi,” you’d ask when he put down the story you’d requested he read out to you before bedtime. “read me the part where she finds the music box?”

“five more minutes, baby,” is what you’d tell him when he asks how much longer you’d take getting ready. “you can’t rush perfection!”

those five more minutes were never five minutes long. 

but he’d always, always indulged you and those pleading eyes of yours. as stoic as he appeared to be, you lived in his heart. of course he could never deny you anything under the sun.

—

alhaitham remembers that silly little song you sang over and over, the one you’d learnt from a kid in the bazaar. he’d taken you to see one of nilou’s performances, and, friendly soul that you were, you’d struck up a conversation with some of the eager audience members before the play. 

“oh, how i wish i was a bird flying free,

i’d see the world, every mountain and every sea!

oh, how i wish i was a cloud in the sky,

wouldn’t you like to wave to me as i pass by?”

you’d hum that rhyme on every idle afternoon.

loss is inevitable. he knows that, with how logical and rational and straightforward he is. he’d lost his parents, but he was far too young to remember. he’d lost his grandmother, but she passed in her sleep of old age, serene and wise.

but you? he didn’t think you’d leave him this soon. a singular wish sits in his soul, making its home in his bones. 

a wish that you’d come back, somehow. 

he wishes you gave him five more minutes, just as he always did.  but he knows that you could’ve given him five more hours, five more days, five more years and five more decades and it would still not be enough time spent with you. 

a blue feathered bird comes to perch on his shoulder, interrupting his musings just as he raises his face to the sky. he sees the heart shaped cloud that floats idly above sumeru city.

 he thinks of the rhyme again, and something in him tells him to wave. and so he does. a scent so familiar lingers, faintly brushing his nose in the wind that picks up.

“alhaitham, it's time to go.”  kaveh calls his name softly.

 alhaitham doesn't move. “five more minutes,”  he says, echoing your favorite phrase. “i smell camphor in the breeze.” 

✦ extra notes: my alhaitham characterization for this fic stems from how i believe that when alhaitham is attached, he's attached. so i focused more on that, and less of all that rationality and whatnot. this one loves deeply, yk?

that camphor thing is a real grandma remedy in our household (my mom would tie some in a hanky and put some under my pillow and still to this day reminds me to do it when i'm sick) which is what originally sparked the idea for this

when i'd initially started this wip, i didn't expect it go this way. usually i write with my brain, but i think i wrote this one with my fingers working faster than i can think hsjhsj so sorry if it's kinda out of place lmao but yk what? i'm happy with it still even though i feel like it doesn't have my usual quality.

thanks for reading.

[basilpaste]

yeah i accidentally invited your boyfriend to a death game. yeah, mhm. yeah, the love was there but it didnt change anything. but the love was still there. so. yknow.

[akirathedramaqueen]

You know what I love about this show so much?

The kindness. The understanding. The redemption.

And that's in the setting of fucking Hell. The irony.

The characters are deeply flawed. They make a lot of mistakes. They fuck up even trying to fix things.

But they are trying. They have a lot of virtues, too, even though they don't see them themselves. They slowly but surely process their problems. They work around their trauma and the conditions they were raised in, deeply affected by it, hurting but still powering through, learning, and developing.

Although we are far from the end of these characters' journey, the SpindleHorse team does an amazing job of making these characters sympathetic, believable, and real. They give you the information and the opportunity to understand how complicated things are, how both sides of the conflict can be understood and blamed at the same time.

And the main thing? The forgiveness and redemption. You want these characters to do better, to be better, of course. But you also want them to be loved, despite the fact that what they did was obviously wrong.

You, as the viewer, already forgive them, and you just want them to forgive themselves. To allow themselves to be loved.

When I watched the show and saw them making the same mistakes I did, some horrible things I wouldn’t forgive myself for and struggled with for years, I suddenly understood the struggle. I empathized with them. I wanted to give them a hug. I wanted to comfort them and promise that things would get better and encourage them to give it one more try, one more talk. I wanted to scold them for self-loathing because I know all too well the kinds of dark places it can lead you to sometimes.

And then the thought comes to mind, "Can I afford a bit of this empathy for myself too? Just allow myself to live with the fuckup and allow myself to be human?"

It didn't fix me. But it eased my turmoil and taught me to understand it better. It taught me some empathy, too, and I thought I was the one with the emotional ingelligence of a nightstand. Well, I still kinda am, but at least I learned to listen to people sometimes.

I just want to thank the whole team who worked on Helluva Boss for all the self-reflections I experienced with their creation.

Thank you.

[myriam-draws]

some starfires i’ve drawn a bit over time i miss her (i refuse to read titans 2023)

[moralesmilesanhour]

"Why isn't there any [character] x [trait] reader?" Damn! Maybe it's because you are sitting there asking that question instead of writing it 🫶🏾 the creation of fandom is a collaborative effort. It's not like a streaming service or a store where things just magically appear for you to consume.

You wonder why the fandom feels "dead"? (it isn't actually but I digress) It's because new ideas aren't being put out there by as many new people! Whatever idea you have in your head that you're scared is "shitty" or bad has probably been done worse on ao3. Please just write that shit oh my god (said affectionately)

[lowcallyfruity]

Please tell me no one has done this

I like how a good chunk of us agree he looks high as fuck

[peasant-player]

"I am Thorin, son of Thrain son of Thor, King under the Mountain! I return!"

And the whole drawing

Dwarves have such a odd anatomy and he looks a little wonky but I really love his armor and dark hair look.

I know that the thorin from the books is already grey but hear me out - why drawing him old if I can draw him young and hot.

I'm personally very proud of the shield!

please ignore him holding his sword wrong. It's all the elvish design fault.

It was so fun drawing him. How could I not have fun drawing this for @tar-thelien ! I know she is working on a thorin and I hope that my thorin will motivate her to post her version ❤️

No pressure though

[callmegaith]

Down the Rabbit Hole pt.4

LOOP CONCLUDED

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3

comic/David playlist

thank u everyone so much for joining me and David on this small trip. Hopefully there will be more to come in the future :D

And again, thank u for encouraging me and supporting me to create something so special about a character that I love so deeply 🥰

[hoshiina]

pairing: akatsuki hyoga x gn!reader (no prns)

summary: kind of inspired by from the start by laufey, you loved him from the start

warnings: the reader is described as beautiful and pretty, hyoga is kind of sweet

If someone were to ask you what made you fall in love with Hyoga, you’d be in a bind, because you truly had no reason. You had no idea what started this little crush, but you were certain you loved him, there was no mistake about it. From the way you would notice your eyes following him, all the way to the way your heart would flutter when he talked to you. There was no other explanation of these emotions you harboured.

Hyoga was skeptical at times. He enjoyed talking to you far more than you would ever imagine, but sometimes he would have a sense that you might have some feelings for him. However, every time he had thought of this, it would immediately fade as he came to his senses, because there was absolutely no way you would fall for him. There was nothing he had ever done that could possibly come across as good, let alone something that would make someone fall for him. And definitely not you.

There were so many people who would kill to get one date with you, but none of them had had the confidence to ask. You were the most beautiful person most people had laid their eyes on, and he wasn’t an exception. This wasn’t only about your looks either, it was actually mainly about who you were. You would always be down to help and you always had a smile on, no matter the day. 

Your existence was more of an annoyance to Hyoga when you were just revived. He first assumed that Senkuu had just decided to revive a pretty person to raise the moral of the team, after realizing you had no particular strengths. However, it wasn’t long until he realized it wasn’t your looks that were making everyone’s day, it was rather your energy that was. For the first time in his life, he realized the effect one’s kindness can have on others. Soon after, the two of you had your first conversation, and for the first time in a very long time, you brought a smile to his face.

Now, you had no idea how to make Hyoga fall for you. You had pondered on this for months now, thinking about this every time you talked to him. Quite frankly, you were tired. You wanted him to like you so badly and today you were going to go for it. You had to start somewhere and whatever you were doing obviously wasn’t working.

The next time you talked to Hyoga was rather soon. He was just finishing his training for the day and you had just helped bring back the minerals that Chrome had found today. You were always nervous when you talked to him, but today must have been so much worse than usual, because you blurted out the words you had carefully held in for months.

“Hyoga, I like you,” you said and he was visibly shaken, but to his surprise you looked just as horrified. 

“...What?” he asked, genuinely surprised.

“That came out wrong,” you said and he undeniably felt his heart drop a little. Of course it did.

“If you’re going to pull that prank, at least do it to someone believable,” Hyoga said.

“What?” you said and immediately you realized what he meant. “No, I do like you. I’m serious, I just didn’t mean to blurt it out like that.”

“There’s no way,” Hyoga said, but he was hoping you would deny him and explain. “What have I ever done to make you like me?”

“Well, I’m sure that I do. I can’t quite point out when I first fell in love, but I can list things I like about you,” you said, absolutely confident. “I like the way you don’t say things you don’t mean. I like the way you care for those who matter. Oh, I love the way you’re always working hard. I know you’ve never skipped a day of training, even when you were burning up with that fever and you really should’ve...” You were ready to go on but the way Hyoga’s eyes widened surprised you. Immediately, you remembered when you first fell in love with Hyoga.

It was like you had thawed his frozen heart. He was so lost on how to react, no one had ever said that to him before. It was then that he remembered the time he probably fell for you. It was the first time the two of you had talked and your first comment was that you liked his kudayari spear. He had questioned if you were familiar with it and you told him you were not, a little embarrassed. You had admitted that you hardly knew anything about combats and weapons, but you assumed that the wear and tear in his spear showed how hard he worked. That couldn’t help but make him smile.

You were always like that. 

“Hyoga, I remember what made me fall in love,” you said, almost proud. “The first time we talked, you smiled. I thought a cupid shot me in the heart.”

Your confident demeanor was slowly fading away as you waited for his response. He could tell you were nervous and that made his heart flutter. You were serious. 

It wasn’t on purpose, it wasn’t because you had just said that. He just couldn’t help but smile. 

“Then, I fell in love first.”

BONUS

"No way," you said, unable to process that he returned your feelings, let alone fell first.

"You better not go around doing that to other people," he said, not elaborating on the previous statement.

"Oh, don't be silly," you said and he opened his mouth to tell you he was serious, but you went on. "I've only ever been looking at you, how would I know anything about anyone else?"

[dykedvonte]

i love your mouthwashing takes but i also love the extra you leave in the tags, it's like a whole other secret post down there

I'm like a certified tag talker. I like don't like writing huge mega posts, its why some separate analysis just seem like cut off continuations, its mostly an aesthetic preference.

Usually what I put in the tag are my less refined thoughts on what I was previously talking about or just slightly adjacent ones I didn't feel would make the cut into their own thing.

The tags are like a bag for word dump and I got a lot of trash.

[yuseirra]

Omg though, I had this happen for YEARS but there are times when I draw something in a very serious manner, going 'ohh this is so angst...' and then, I see people responding to it saying "it's so cute!"

I love that (while feeling a bit perplexed-is perplexed the really right word for this- I get a bit confused, but I'm happy!) um.. But I hope what I meant does still get through...! I really am serious abt conveying feelings and all? Although it can't be helped if it isn't!

So maybe I should go for "cute" in terms of creating things. I can make even sad things cute. I don't actually intend for things to be that way! So maybe it is a speciality that I just have! I'd like that! Then I have something more to be confident about you know?

Reactions really do help you learn things about yourself you can't find out on your own. I enjoy them, so thank you very much...I sincerely enjoy reading them when it happens. I want to know about how you feel about my things(please be kind because my heart is so very tender)

I'll go out and have fun! And draw more, hope you all have a good time today too! I've been here for so long, and there wasn't a single year I felt unhappy about being here, I felt so lucky and excited and fortunate and I believe I keep meeting the best people. That's true luck on my end and I know that well, so I HAVE to say my thanks when I could. On every platform I've been on, I should. I do it time to time... I'm grateful, so I wish to get better so that I can give out better things. That's what I'd like to say!

[willlmesh]

i love the first handful of songs from a idol project where some of the vas haven't completely decided what voice they're doing for their character yet. or just when you listen to a character's first song then their most recent one and they have a completely different vibe. idk where i was going with this

[worrysomegus]

Do you have any tips or good tutorial links for getting started using the hair tools in Blender? They seem intimidating, but your models look fantastic

sorry I uuuh don't watch tutorials (evil) I just fucked around for years until it suddenly clicked. So here's a few things, not sure if they'll be useful or not

also blenders particle system fur isn't being worked on anymore and is getting glitchier by the update so maybe look into geometry node fur (I haven't) (evil) also everything under the cut is assuming you know absolutely nothing about hair

this is based on blender 3.5 btw

create a particle system, put it to your desired length (short fur is usually longer than you expect) then set the number to 0, then you can use the add tool to get a symmetrical groom

the strands you add are just to guide all the fur, in areas that curve a lot add more to prevent clipping

puff brush is best girl

once you've finished your groom you can create a weight map to control the furs density (you can also make some for clumping and randomness and shit) (I usually don't) (mostly because I'm lazy) then go to children > interpolated and select your weight map in the density zoneland, if your computers beefy and/or you want a better idea of what it will look like you can change the viewport amount of particles to 100 (or whatever)

go render properties > curves and change it to strip (you don't need to do this using cycles) then back into particle properties under hair shape to change the diameter root length from 1 to whatever looks best (uber dependent on what size your model is, I usually go with 0.08)

oh fuck I forgot to mention you gotta do different systems for the head, neck, body, whatever. It makes it easier and is better for lag

roughness is pretty important for making animal-ish fur too, here's my settings I used for making this face fur, my settings for all my particle systems are pretty consistent but it's also pretty dependent on your models size

here;s some other things I forgot and can't be bothered to go back and add

selecting this thing will let you select groups

uuuuuh I think that's it on the groom itself onto shaders

so they're pretty important to making some nice looking fur, you can make it look fine in eevee but cycles will probably always look more realistic (not to imply eevee isn't best girl it's really good at most things)

(eevee)

(cycles)

in cycles you pretty much just need a principled hair bsdf shader with a few settings tweaked (here's mine for the model above) (also make sure the fur material is different to the skin material)

so for both cycles and eevee your best friend ever is the curves info node (hair info in older versions)

all of these can be pretty useful but the most usefulest ones for me are intercept into a colour ramp makes an ombre from the roots to the tip

and random which adds variation to the strand colour

here's a little breakdown of my cycles shader for her

and eevee, they're pretty similar tbh

BUT also for eevee you need to change a few more things to give your hair weight n shit

in render properties enable ambient occlusion and bloom, then in the settings of your lights enable contact shadows

and one more important thing for nice looking hair is lighting, I find it easier in cycles because it reacts more realistically and rim lighting my beloved, but in eevee it's suuper important to making it not look flat, if doing those settings edits didn't do much it's because of your lighting

1 make your background completely black so you can see what you're doing better

2 add ONE area light and position it, pay attention to how the size, distance, and power affect things and make sure you don't make your model look flat

then you can add a rim light (duplicate the area light and reposition) if you want to give your character some extra highlighting, although good fucking luck if you're using eevee it's probably not worth doing

then you can add an hdri (super good webbed site for them) to be the fill light

having it at full strength tends to flatten the model (especially in eevee)

(cringe mode)

(yaaay)

and uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh I think that's it, I don't feel like reading all this back tbh

and please don't follow this like a loser follows the law this is just a guide and you should do whatever you find the most fun/gets the best result

ALSO ALSO don't feel upset if your first few attempts look like dogshit fur is super hard and only insane people make beautiful grooms first try

[devilsrecreation]

Things on TLG I’ve noticed that no one else has:

Njano has 4 different laughs

From what I gathered, he has a different laugh every time we see him.

For example, he does this little “heheheheh 😈” in “Swept Away” but in “The Hyena Resistance”, he goes “Tststststs” or smth like that (idk how to type that sound lol)

I don’t have a problem with it, I just thought it was interesting