#if youre an art thief and youre reading this FUCK YOU!!!! LEARN TO DRAW ON YOUR OWN DAMNIT!!!!! STEALING IS WRONG!!!!!!

[chaosspelledwrong]

I fucking hate art thiefs.....

[cadaverre]

⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊☾ welcome ☽₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆

about me

you can call me juno or astraea

im a cancer sun, libra moon and sagittarius rising

my pronouns are they/she (and my pronoun page is here)

i'm a proud bisexual (i am very sapphic lol)

im taken (you can hear about my love via the “them tag <33")

i am a minor (i won't immediately block people 18+ but if you're creepy i will <3)

australian!! also a bunch of different places, none really interesting

this blog is for me to dump thoughts, interact with people and just have a good time :)

i play the drums and im currently in two bands! i also love playing guitar and one of my 2024 goals is to get better at playing!!

currently listening -> 🍁☕���🎸 nyc

currently reading -> the odyssey translated by emily wilson

currently watching -> doctor who and rewatching gilmore girls

things i like

i love: literature, the arts, queer culture, astronomy, feminism (no terfs allowed!!!!), fruit flavoured drinks, flared pants, converse, dark red, nail polish, eyeliner, burgundy lipgloss, tank tops, tote bags, brie (always dreaming of cheese), pinterest, spotify, my headphones, the ocean, my grandparents house (im there rn i love it), spring+winter, very specific shades of pink and green, black <3, folklore and 1989 girl, fiddling around on the guitar, fantasising about being a famous musician, finding new music, snow, picking silly little outfits,

books: osemanverse, the hunger games, books by rhiannon wilde, tim te maro's subterranean heartsick blues, all the best liars, books by octavia butler (specifically parable of the sower and parable of the talents), the last true poets of the sea, acotar, the weight of the stars, the seven husbands of evelyn hugo, the picture of dorian grey, house of hollow, howls moving castle, harry potter (mainly marauders, FUCK JKR), i kissed shara wheeler, red white and royal blue, song of achilles

movies + tv shows: dont look up, little women (2019), scream (i like most of them but 1996 is my fav by far), ladybird, barbie (2023), some of the mcu (thor and guardians of the galaxy <33), spiderverse (itsv is my love), gilmore girls, stranger things, loki, heartstopper, arcane, scott pilgrim takes off, she ra

musicians/bands: boygenius, taylor swift, lovejoy, glaive, brakence, paramore, ricky jamaraz, melanie martinez, lana del rey, ashnikko, girl in red, billie eilish, doja cat, big thief, adrienne lenker, ethel cain, mitski, remi wolf, cigarettes after sex, ericdoa, tv girl, clairo, the neighbourhood, bon iver, deftones (getting into them just a little), maneskin, courtney barnett, poppy

my favourite colours are black, dark red, burgundy, denim blue, sage green, soft pink, glaucous blue, golden yellow (i love colour theory so all colours are beautiful in their own context but here are my favs to wear/see)

i really want to get into more poetry so if you have any recs lmk!!

i have recently begun practising some very simple witchcraft, so feel free to talk to me about that and i would love to learn more!!

i love learning about astrology and use my birth chart frequently

i write very, very infrequently and think of more stories than i even start to plot lmao.

i draw way more than i write and will occasionally post some!! its not good by any means but its fun ig

talk to me + dni

my asks and dms are open!! feel free to talk to me about anything and everything!! i love talking!!

i love my mutuals so much so if ur my mutual *looks you dead in your eyes* i love you

my discord is the same @ as here, i literally just got it today so idrk how it works but feel free to add me there <33 but please lmk if you do if your username is different

if we’re very close you can ask for my insta!!

i rarely follow people without an intro post/descriptive enough bio (with name, age group, pronouns) so if you want to be mutuals please have one!! if not just shoot me an ask about who you are and what you like so we can be friends <33

dni: rude, racist, homophobic, transphobic, zionist, terfs, sexist, ableist, antisemitic people

tags

#juno.txt -> ramblings, original posts

#asks -> asks ive answered

#ask bait -> hehehe send me asks <3

#tag games -> tag games ive participated in

#beautiful mutuals -> interactions with my beautiful mutuals!

#spotify -> my music obsession dw im fine fhdklfhdal

#them tag <33 -> posts that remind me of my wonderful bf <3

links + sideblogs

spotify

pinterest

@likeasugarcubeinateacup -> my notes app poetry

@slowrotburiedinthepark -> a random sideblog i post art and occasional web weaving on

@stabbingstarsthroughmyback -> my writing sideblog (ask me about my wip!!)

stunning dividers by @chachachannah :))

here is a totally beautiful and amazing moodboard by @svnflowermoon that always makes me so fhadkfhakd

last updated: jan 19th 2024

[turtlemagnum]

INTERESTS: writing, music, art in general, anime, games (both video and tabletop), animals, linguistics, mythology/theology, philosophical bullshit, making fun of philosophical bullshit, politics, guns (and other varieties of weapon), tech, vulgarity and misanthropy

writing: i'm a writer!! that's like, what i'm best at at the moment. my Main Project is a fantasy setting that i generally either refer to as Winds of Change (for the whole deal) or Arana (the main continent that i've developed so far). i'm currently developing a game to show it off and make other people as feral about it as i am, so i'm also learning how to make music and draw and such. but, at the moment the only skill i'd consider myself competent in is writing, so i primarily just call myself a writer!!

music: my taste is simultaneously deeply eclectic but also tends towards high amounts of specificity. i would say that my "main" genre is progressive rock and some of its derivatives, but i also love a lot of stuff like funk, soul, a small amount of metal, some IDM, whatever the hell death grips is, some early rap (mostly just NWA since that was what i grew up on), occasional jazz, like 2 indie bands, oldies, and on occasion normal people rock. artists i like include but are not limited to: yes, david bowie, king crimson, jimi hendrix, danny elfman, symphony x, dio, death grips, aphex twin, nwa, nat king cole, marty robbins, lemon demon, tally hall, jethro tull, midas, and masayoshi takanaka. i'm also told i have a nice singing voice, but i'm personally biased against such suppositions.

i like art, if you were to look through my likes (which are NOT VISIBLE ON THE TUMBR) it'd have a good amount of art. what that art is of, i'll leave to your imagination. i'm not great at drawing but i'm getting better!!

i like some varieties of anime and anime adjacent things. i'm not like, one of those anime fans though, y'know. in terms of series i like, i'd say i'm a fan of fist of the north star (i need to pick it up again), cowboy bebop (very controversial, i know(also need to pick it up again)), fullmetal alchemist (good series, one of the few i have finished), jojo (i haven't watched part 6 yet but i read the manga all the way into the end of part 7 just after part 4 had finished airing), early gen pokemon is something i come back to on occasion for mostly nostalgic reasons, i'm getting back into dragon ball (kill me), i liked gunsmith cats (the anime was only 3 episodes, you can watch it on youtube, i need to read the manga though), i somewhat recently read thru the entire original yu-gi-oh manga and was surprised at how good it was, and i read a lot of doujins!

i'm a gamer!!!!!!! i mostly love nintendo shit and PC games, and some series i'm into include zelda (arguably my first game series i was Way Into), fallout (mostly new vegas), elder scrolls (deeply love hate relationship), early pokemon, mario, the first deus ex game, portal, kotor, half life, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., a smattering of indie shit (primarily UTDR stuff), a bit of GTA, thief, pathologic, disco elysium, and MGS. i also like TTRPGs but being Extremely Alone, i'm basically screwed!!

i like animals of basically all varieties. definitely a dog person, though i also love cats.

linguistics is cool but i'm also Fucking Stupid so i haven't really gained much past a fairly surface level knowledge. doesn't stop me from trying!

mythology is cool! philosophy is cool too! to be clear i view the vast majority of it as bullshit and not to be taken seriously, but it's still interesting to think about at least!

like most human beings living in the modern age, i have a lot of very strong political views. however, i don't like to ascribe labels to myself since people generally hear the label and just fill in the blanks of what they already believe and go deaf to everything else you have to say. i feel like my stances should be fairly obvious if you listen to what i have to say, but here's my main deal in regards to this: i like freedom, not in the typical american way that's basically glorified grandstanding with deeply authoritarian tendencies, but in more of a way where i like the idea of people being able to live how they want without a threat of starving and such. i abhor bigotry, though it's very easy to say that i suppose. i try to be open minded and tend towards a live and let live attitude, y'know. i also oppose imperialism and authoritarianism, but i feel as though that should be considered the baseline

huge gun nerd. i've got Gun Autism, babey!!! don't worry, i'm not One Of Those gun people, i mostly just appreciate them from a technical level. i post a lot about guns, so if you don't like that you can either block the tag #turtlegunrant or just not follow!!!!!!!

tech, much like linguistics, is something i like quite a bit but aren't smart enough to Actually Understand. i'm also the variety of tech enthusiast who's a paranoid shithead, so i'm definitely more of a PC guy. i actually fucking hate touch screens, so i hate phones (which i know is rare for somebody born in this century). i love torrenting, piracy, and just generally downloading and archiving shit

[canmom]

Animation Night 119: Dick Williams

heeheehee, dick

So. If you’re an animator, or have even thought about trying animation at some point in your life, you’ve probably ended up recommended a copy of this book...

Which is fair, it’s a fucking great book. It pretty much set the standard for animation pedagogy forever since.

You may also likely know the legend of its creator, Richard Williams. I believe I may even have mentioned him on Animation Night before, but since it’s been some time, let’s set the scene.

Animation is about compromise. On every production, from TV to film, you have to accept some limitation on your vision: drawings you don’t have time to correct, shots that might look better on 1s, CG where hand-drawn animation might look better. Part of the art of the animator is learning to do more with less, like developing a style that demands a more manageable drawing count.

Yet animators are proud creatures. It’s painful to let go of a sequence you know could be better with more time!

Which means... in the great annals of Animation Lore, there are a few times where some industry legend gets enough clout where they can get away with just going completely all out on a film. In the best cases, this results in films like Takeshi Koike’s Redline (Animation Night 19), which occupied Madhouse for a good seven years, but resulted in an exhilarating, one of a kind sakuga feast.

This one paid off, and while it rather strained the resources of Madhouse and they weren’t in a hurry to let Koike do whatever he wanted again, It’s clear that he levelled up a lot from the effort, with the nigh perfect understanding of 3D form becoming the foundation of his later Lupin films. But in these cases, actually finishing the film is maybe more of the exception than the rule...

The next famous case is that of Yuri Norstein - a titan of Soviet animation, who I have regrettably not yet covered on Animation Night! But Animation Obsessive have, in wonderful detail, so please go read what they have to say.

Norstein, famed for his films like Hedgehog in the Fog and Tale of Tales but fiercely independent, had a somewhat tense relationship with his superiors at Soyuzmutfilm. This came to a head when he set out to make an insanely ambitious feature-length adaptation of The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol. In 1985 he was fired from Soyuzmutfilm for working too slowly... but he found private investors after the fall of the Soviet Union... and has worked on it ever since, with an animation team consisting of just Yuri Norstein himself and his wife Francheska Yarbusova whose drawings form the cutouts which Norstein animates. Even now, 37 years later, he is still working on The Overcoat. Occasionally, clips surface.

It probably won’t be finished before Norstein dies, and at that point someone will probably find all the finished footage and edit it into something like a film. But the investors still seem to be willing to indulge him, perhaps because it’s not exactly expensive and it has the aura of a legend so they’re willing to play the long game.

But of course, the most famous of these quixotic passion projects is The Thief and the Cobbler, directed by Richard Williams. So let’s set the stage.

Richard Williams, in his own account, got interested in animation at age 10, in 1943, when he got a paperback book called How To Make Animated Cartoons. He started pursuing it seriously at age 22, while working as a painter in Spain, returning to London and working briefly in advertising while self-funding a short fim The Little Island, which he describes as a ‘half-hour philosophical argument’, released in 1958 when he was aged 25.

After making this film, Williams came to a very familiar realisation: he didn’t know nearly as much about animation as he had imagined. He describes watching Bambi for the second time and ‘crawling out of the theatre’ trying to figure out how they did that. He started idolising the animators at Disney and Warner Bros such as Ken Harris - someone he would one day work alongside, and become a close friend, and in the end be a pallbearer at his funeral. And The Animator’s Survival Kit‘s prose is still soaked in reverence for these animators, with a lot of cute little anecdotes about moments Williams spent with them.

His reverence for the Disney ‘full animation’ school was cemented after seeing the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine (Animation Night 86) and watching an unimpressed audience walk out - something Williams at the time attributed to the jerky animation that didn’t respect the movement principles of Disney. He describes by contrast how completely he was blown away by The Jungle Book, seeing the hand of some of the Nine Old Men like Milt Kahl, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston - so he wrote them a letter about how much he was impressed and they invited him to come visit.

At this point his intro drifts away from autobiography, so let’s give a brief summary from other sources. During this time, Williams had founded a studio in London, which mostly made TV ads and animated segments for live action films such as the comedy Casino Royale (1967).

Notably also in this period, Williams animated segments for a film about the Crimean War, The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968). The drawings for this sequence were insanely intricate, calling to mind the woodcut engraving style of newspaper illustrations contemporary with the war.

1971 saw his adaptation of A Christmas Carol, which was warmly received in the States. At this point he was frequently inviting talented animators from the States to come and teach the pathetic British how it’s done, including Grim Natwick (who is described as ‘still brilliant’ in the Survival Kit) and Ken Harris, who gets a fascinating little paragraph:

It takes time. I didn’t encounter Ken Harris until I was nearly forty and he was sixty-nine. I had to hire most of my teachers in order to learn from them.

I hired Ken in order to get below him and be his assistant, so I was both his director and his assistant. I don’t know if this is original, but I finally figured out to that to learn or to ‘understand’ I had to ‘stand under’ the one who knows in order to catch the drippings of his experience.

This period in the 60s and 70s was also the beginning of the saga that would lead, eventually, to The Thief and the Cobbler. Originally the film was to be titled Nasruddin, about the folk character Mullah Nasreddin. Williams had a hard time finding any sort of funding for the film, falling out with other production companies at times, so he quietly plugged away at it while working on other projects.

The Nasruddin connection runs a little deeper actually, because Williams was hired in 1976 to illustrate a collection of Mullah Nasreddin stories by the Sufi occultist writer Idries Shah. I’m not sure how this came about exactly - whether Williams went out of his way to draw Nasreddin, or if he happened to get hired by coincidence. In any case, the idea was clearly occupying a lot of his thought - but more on that anon.

The 70s also saw Williams work on animation for the title sequences for two of the Pink Panther movies, during which time he invited Art Babbitt to come to London to teach - Babbitt being the man who had been fired from Disney after the animators’ strike in the 40s, thus evading canonisation as one of the Nine Old Men. Babbitt also did some work on Thief and the Cobbler, and rendered this memorable quote about Williams:

He's a director, designer, animator, and has a good layman's knowledge of music. He's a dreamer. He has more to learn as far as animation is concerned, but God, he can draw like a bastard

By this point, Williams would have been 42 years old. He was still making ads, despite ‘despising the form’, and making the occasional film or TV special such as Raggedy Ann & Andy (1977) and Ziggy’s Gift (1982).

Of course, the real point he became famous was when Who Framed Roger Rabbit came about. The strange Disney/Spielberg collaboration is actually one I’ve written about before, back on Animation Night 40, where I said some kinda mean things about old Dick. What I don’t really talk about there is what the film is about: yes, it’s about the animation industry and full of little injokes, but it is also to adult eyes recognisable as a parable for how San Francisco lost its public transport system, leaning on the idea of the auto-makers conspiring to destroy it. The real story may be a little more complicated, but having now seen the strip mall sprawl in both ends of California, I can see why people would come up with it. It’s grim out there.

I also didn’t talk much about the production. Williams was involved precisely because Spielberg saw footage of Thief and the Cobbler and was so impressed that he approached Williams.

By all accounts, working on Roger Rabbit was intense for everyone involved. Williams writes of drawing scenes late at night in the hotel room, and there was all sorts of goofy studio politics with neither Disney or Warner Bros wanting the film to favour one or the other (leading to situations like the piano scene where Donald and Daffy Duck were obliged to have exactly even screen time; the same goes for Bugs and Mickey.

It was also, I learned recently, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for one young James Baxter, then 20 years old studying animation but frustrated by the more experimental approach taken at his course, wanting to learn - like Williams himself - something more tied down like the Disney tradition. Traditionally animated films on the scale of Roger Rabbit are basically never made in the UK (and odds are, never will be again now CGI is king), so Baxter and some of his university friends dived for the chance.

Baxter joined the production as an inbetweener, working basically non stop on animation for that year (‘eat, sleep and animate’) but so impressed the Disney animators with a brief test he did of Thumper from Bambi that they gave him a few small scenes of feet and hands to animate. His success at this led to him getting more scenes, and this is where we get a little anecdote about Richard Williams (see, this is relevant!):

Baxter: Not being a seasoned animator, not being, y’know, knowing kind of the ropes of that, I did the classic junior animator mistake of going too far with something before you show your director or your supervisor, and I got the beatdown! I got the classic beatdown from Dick, which was great. I had gone way too far on like a shot of one of the weasels and, you know, he said ‘yeah yeah yeah! No, get the drawings, go get the drawings!’ So I had to stand behind Dick for an hour or so while he drew over my pencil drawings with a pen, one by one.

Interviewer: Ohh, wow.

Baxter: That’s kind of awesome. Not on a separate sheet of paper either, just like, my drawing, his pen.

Still, Roger Rabbit was completed on something like a schedule; the animation helped kick off the Disney Renaissance and now everyone wanted a piece of Dick. Off the back of that, Williams was able to negotiate a ‘negative pickup deal’ with Warner Bros: they would buy the film on a specified date for a specified price. Williams believed he could fund the film through a major studio, so rather than seek European arts funding, he went for the Warner Bros deal - a decision that would eventually be fatal to the project.

So at last the passion project, at this point already ‘in production’ for around 25 years starting in 1989, could really get underway. Thanks to the work done by the visiting animators, it represented the final film for a number of notable animators: Ken Harriss, Errol Le Cain, Emery Hawkins, Grim Natwick and Art Babbitt.

Williams’s approach was... utterly uncompromising. Sakugabooru commenter pkoduah provides a nice summary of the issues:

1. The film was led by animation rather than story. He thought of the most technically impressive animation scenes and then tried to shoe horn them into a story. If even half of the care that went into the animation went into the story and clear locked down storyboards it would had fared better and not been such a hydra. Even after the 2+ decades the story is still not fully resolved. 2. Richard Williams had an almost religious commitment to working on 1's, even for relatively slow scenes. If he just changed that one thing he would have greatly increased his chances of meeting the deadlines. 3. The decision by a particular still powerful animation exec to steal his thunder with Aladdin which is heavily based on the Thief & Cobbler, put further pressure on the execs to take drastic measures with William's glacially paced project.

We can also add that the story - with its goofy orientalist framing featuring jokes like Grand Vizier Zigzag and Princesss Yumyum, and an incredibly simple story that simply revolves around a macguffin - feels like a relic of a different era of animated film. Despite Williams’s disdain for it, it feels like it has a similar feeling to Yellow Submarine.

As an animator who’s tried it, the insistence on working on 1s is especially crazy to me. At first glance it sounds like twice as much work, because twice as many drawings, but it’s worse than this - because issues in an animation, inconsistences of shape and line, become much more obvious on 1s than they do on 3s or 2s where you can get away with larger changes of shape.

The modern worldview is quite different, incidentally. Lower framerates, when used properly, can also create a snappy, impactful feeling (c.f. the Kanada school, or Mitsuo Iso’s ‘full limited’). It requires a slightly different approach with stronger poses and a lot of drawing skill, since each frame is pulling more work, so a sequence designed to run on 1s will not look better with half its frames missing, but a sequence designed to run on 2s or 3s can look just as good.

In the Survival Kit, Williams briefly comments on the issue, saying in his entire career he’d basically only found one sequence that worked better on 2s for reasons he didn’t understand - to him, animating on 2s was purely a cost saving measure, and now he finally had the chance to do his passion project, he wasn’t going to accept anything less than the best possible.

But then, I think Williams’s motivation was less about appealing to audiences, and more about showing off to his art senpais - the great animators he idolised. It’s telling that one of the first anecdotes in the Survival Kit is about Williams and Ken Harris:

In 1967, I was able to bring Ken to England and my real education in animation articulation and performance started by working with him. I was pushing forty at the time, and, with a large successful studio in London, I had been animating for eighteen years, winning over one hundred international awards.

After seven or eight years of working closely with Ken, he said to me, ‘Hey Dick, you’re starting to draw those things in the right place.’

‘Yeah, I’m really learning it from you now, aren’t I?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘you know . . . you could be an animator.’

After the initial shock I realised he was right. Ken was the real McCoy whereas I was just doing a lot of fancy drawings in various styles which were functional but didn’t have the invisible ‘magic’ ingredients to make them really live and perform convincingly.

So I redoubled my efforts (mostly in mastering head and hand ‘accents’) and the next year Ken pronounced, ‘OK, you’re an animator.’

A couple of years after that, one day he said, ‘Hey, Dick, you could be a good animator.’

The anecdote continues with Williams going down to visit Harris in his trailer when Harris was aged 82, and finding that Harris could still correct his work. He still didn’t have Harris’s ‘thing’. But, at least, Harris said he ‘had his own thing going’.

It’s never mentioned explicitly, but the shadow of The Thief and the Cobbler hangs over the Animator’s Survival Kit. The footage that earned this praise from Ken Harris was footage from that film. By that logic, it should have been an immense success for Williams: finally earning him his place among the canon.

So why is it instead such a negative memory for Williams?

Well, in 1992, the film was still in progress, with just fifteen minutes left to complete - but it was too much for Warner Bros, who didn’t want to be seen as making a knockoff Aladdin. Williams was booted from his own passion project, putting Fred Calvert on to hastily fill in the gaps in the story and discard the unfinished sequences, adding a number of musical sequences with far lowre quality animation performed by a number of subcontractors including Sullivan Bluth Studios, Kroyer Films, Wang Film Productions/Thai Wang Film Productions in Taiwan and Thailand, Pacific Rim Animation in China and Varga Studio in Hungary. A second recut was performed by Miramax, removing even more of the original.

The resulting mess landed poorly in theaters, and Williams, utterly dejected for obvious reasons, shut down his animation studio and went back to Canada, spending the next few years as a teacher while nursing his wounds and starting work on writing what would become The Animator’s Survival Kit, published in 2002. And, in a sense, the story has a happy ending: Williams’s book became a bestseller, the reference on animation; Williams could pass on the secrets of the masters he revered, and trust that he would be remembered as a great teacher and animator.

In 2008 he was invited to become an artist in residence at Aardman; in 2010 he finished a film he’d begun in Ibiza in the 1950s titled Circus Drawings, and then he spent the rest of his life setting out alone on a new grand passion project, an adaptation of the ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata by Aristophanes. The first part of the film, titled simply Prologue, was released in 2015, featuring elaborate hand-drawn camera moves and background animation all done in pencils and photographed directly. You can watch it:

What of The Thief and the Cobbler? Well, the workprint of the film prior to the edits has survived, and the legend of it gradually spread across the industry. Williams showed his workprint in 2000 at the Annecy festival, impressing Roy E. Disney, who started on a project to restore and finish the film... but this fell through as Disney turned away from hand-drawn animation and Roy left the company.

Instead, the restoration effort was led unofficially by fans. A filmmaker Garrett Gilchrist, created the Recobbled Cut of the film, which used all the Williams-era footage that could be found from various sources, including unfinished pencil tests and scenes rotoscoped by Gilchrist to deal with dodgy footage, all edited to basically the structure of the workprint with some added music. As more and more people saw the Recobbled Cut, the film began to be rehabilitated, and Gilchrist created further revisions as more sources of original footage came to light.

So a good ending for Williams, right. But I’ve talked a lot about how it is made, what is the film itself actually like?

In its Recobbled form, The Thief and the Cobbler is very very obviously an animator’s passion project lmao. It’s full of Williams’s homages to Islamic art, with the stark geometric patterns creating some very clever shot compositions.

The actual story is very light on dialogue, and in contrast to Aladdin, it keeps its characterisations very simple. The thief and cobbler themselves are both basically mute, driven by very simple impulses: the cobbler is simple and well-meaning and enchanted by simple things, while the thief is single-mindedly determined to steal the Golden Balls, never mind the consequences. It’s not a surprise it didn’t land well in a time when the rule in animation was Don Bluth and the Disney Renaissance: there are no ‘I want’ songs or really, character arcs as such.

So the Cobbler gets with Princess Yumyum, but... like a fairytale or a Golden Age disney film, not because we’ve been sold on them as characters who have chemistry and want to get with each other, but more because Yumyum seems to find the Cobbler kind of... a weirdly endearing little pet and that’s what the plot demands. The Thief continues his thieving throughout. Late in the movie, a massive army of barbarians shows up out of almost nowhere, leading to a spectacular scene in the cogs of their giant war machine, but we aren’t really asked to believe in them as a culture. It is basically a series of setpieces loosely strung together.

I have said in the past that The Thief and the Cobbler is callous in the treatment of the historical Islamic culture it depicts. It is certainly an Orientalist film and certainly very British in its outlook, there’s no question of that. Still, while I do still think the joke names like Vizier Zigzag and Princess Yumyum are tasteless, I think it would be hard to say that Williams does not have reverence or devotion. It’s a different beast than Aladdin - the way he shows this devotion is through his mad, obsessive craft. I’m not quite sure how I’d feel about it if I was on the receiving end of it, mind you. (I would be quite curious to find out what the Arabic dub does with it, if there is one.)

The thing is that Williams is, far more than a director, an animator. Like, say, Masaaki Yuasa, he loved the medium of animation more than anything - no matter what he’s animating, he’s clearly beyond happy if he can make it move in a cool way. The Animator’s Survival Kit is intoxicating because he really sells you in this fascination with how things move - the nuances of a walk, the effects of timing and spacing and gesture, like what does happen if you make this frame go up and this frame go down? The previous generation of animators was his god, but he also was keen to experiment, find new possibilities. For this reason, Williams is still relevant. Even if he had... fascinatingly strange ideas about how gay people walk!

But this means, unfortunately for this film, that he was far, far more of an animator than he was a director. In fact this ends up a very endearing quality. The Thief and the Cobbler is an intensely idiosyncratic film, a true expression of the worldview of Richard Williams both good and bad... the workaholic maniac that he was, a man with something to prove.

And for a man with a great deal to say about acting, we should look at the acting in this film. Since many scenes are wordless, it falls to the acting to convey the emotions of the characters in the scene. And... they’re certainly not subtle, but they are creative, full of clever and surprising images. It is I suppose a very theatrical mode of acting: a lot of exaggeration and big movements.

On the other hand, the characters’ inner worlds are like... well they aren’t really there. Pretty much everything is right there on the surface. Everyone is really exactly what you see. It’s interesting to contrast this with the psychological turn soon to be taken by anime in the 90s, in Eva or films like those of Mamoru Oshii. A character like Motoko Kusanagi has incredibly graceful 3D movement, yet she barely emotes... and nevertheless through the framing and script, we know a lot about what she might be feeling. Shinji sits still listening to his tape player. Sometimes less can be more.

What of the Thief? He is the most enigmatic character in the film, and yet he too is not complex. We don’t know why he wants the Golden Balls, why he tolerates flies buzzing around him, but he surely does. He’s just a weird little slinky gremlin guy, and in the end he gets away.

Of course, Williams talks a fair bit about gender in his presentations on animation acting. The Animator’s Survival Kit bonus DVD includes videos of lectures, so here’s a clip someone uploaded of some examples of what he’d say:

You can see how his interest here is in really pushing and exaggerating that gender difference - of course, pushed to extremes for pedagogical purposes, but still, it says something about the worldview he was operating under. Especially at the end when he gets a laugh by, essentially, animating a very effeminate walk for the bodybuilder character.

So a character like ‘Princess Yumyum’ is exactly what she appears: curious, vulnerable etc., a feminine ideal. There is little room for contradiction, or even straining against the bounds of this role like Princess Arete. The same is true in a lot of Williams films. Animation is about exaggeration, of course, but Williams was inescapably a man born in the 30s.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from him. Learn a lot, really. Thanks to Wiliams, even though the renowned animators of Disney and Warner Brothers have died, we can get a sense of how they used to think about things, and build on them. We can understand the tricks of spacing he uses to create a sense of impact, and pick up on some of his observations and insights about acting. And certainly, his exhortation to do figure drawing has caught on in a big way since the book has been published.

I feel like, in many ways, I can see myself in the young Richard Williams - well, not nearly as accomplished, but the awe he feels towards those old Disney animators, I feel towards people like Weilin Zhang, Mitsuo Iso, Shinya Ohira, James Baxter... the ‘how can they do that’, but also, one very important line:

Irrepressible ambition made me change my opinion that they alone could attain such heights; I figured, I think correctly, that given talent, experience, persistence - plus the knowledge of the experts - why should everything not be possible?

I couldn’t stand it any more. I had to know everything about the medium and master all aspects of it. Cap in hand, I made yearly visits to Milt and Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston and Ken Anderson at Disney.

For my part, I joined a lot of animation discord servers and now, starting this month, I’m trying to hit that “James Baxter’s first year” sort of pace. We’ll see how it goes. But like... all these guys are human. My muscles aren’t any different than theirs - I just need to see if i can shape my brain to acquire that power of observation and intuition for drawing. The method is clear enough. Like Williams, I won’t be an exact clone of my idols - I’ll become my own thing. If I just keep at it.

Anyway, I have gotten over my reluctance to screen The Thief and the Cobbler - orientalist as it may be, it is an important movie to animation history, and one worth seeing again, as well as Williams’s earlier animations to see where he came from. So if you fancy joining me, we’ll be at Twitch tonight - please head to twitch.tv/canmom and we’ll begin the movies in 15-20 minutes probably!!

[makeste]

literally just a giant post of Bakugou faces.

today, 4/20 (actually it is very much still only 4/19 over here, but to heck with it, we’re getting an early start dammit), is Bakugou Katsuki’s birthday. and as someone who loves Bakugou and who also hasn’t found much worth rejoicing about in April 2020 in general, it’s important to me to celebrate the shit out of this day. but these are strange times and I am le tired, and so what my tired brain ended up arriving at was “just do a post about how much you love his stupid face.”

so these are my favorite Bakugou faces. I stopped after Kacchan vs. Deku because this post was already like 100k words (slight exaggeration) with like 40,000 faces (slight), and because this already took forever and the next 130-something chapters were only going to have about one fifth as many good faces compared to the first 120, even though there are some good ones there still to be sure. but anyway, so there are no spoilers here. 

happy birthday Kacchan, and happy birthday to Kacchan’s angsty side profile with his hair covering his eyes.

why I like it: he scured.

lol but seriously. because up until this point he’s just been a complete asshole. even after he gets grabbed by sludgeman, he’s all “AS IF I’D LET THIS MUDMAN TAKE MY BODY FOR HIMSELF”, and he’s all feral-looking, and at first you’re like “eh he’ll be fine.” but then along comes this panel to serve as our narrator saying “he was not fine.” because he really is not. and on the page before this too, you can see how tired and desperate his struggles are starting to get. and absolutely no one is trying to help him. and he’s fighting, he’s straining, but he can’t. fucking. breathe.

and then this panel. and he’s just a kid. he looks so very, very young here, like this is the youngest he looks throughout the entire series except for in his flashbacks, and it’s because all the pride and bluster and anger are stripped away and he’s just a boy underneath it and he’s scared. “you looked like you needed saving.” exactly. exactly. and for Katsuki to actually ask for help is so rare. so you know that when he does ask (and he absolutely was begging for someone to come help him even though he couldn’t vocalize it. credit to Horikoshi for conveying all of that emotion in a single panel), he really, really needs it. thankfully there was one person watching who finally snapped himself out of that “a hero’s bound to come along soon” mindset that had everyone else gripped, and realized that he needed to be that hero.

why I like it: because he’s humiliated and fairly shaken up and also the most handsome he’s looked up until this point, but most of all he’s just chewing his lip and being all “god fucking dammit did fucking Deku really just save me, fuck my life, why is the universe fucking dumb.” like even after this hugely traumatizing experience, he’s incredibly resilient to the point where after he calms down, his lingering emotions are mainly just “smdh this is a new level of irritated even for me.” he is so brave and thickheaded and tough and absurdly, ridiculously petty jesus christ.

why I like it: like the old man said. his face just screams “I’m a rotten thief.”

there’s so much personality in this one expression. and then it’s juxtaposed against proto!Katsuki who I really desperately just want to punch in the face. just. my son my be a dick, but by god he’s an honest dick.

why I like it: baby?? cute baby??? mine?? my baby?!?

he’s just like. “I got it all figured out. gosh I’m so good at life.” that is the face of a child who has never encountered a single difficulty in his very young existence. everything is easy and he expects to be good at everything and he always is and he’s so, so pleased with himself. with a kid that little you really don’t want to go and shatter their dreams just yet, but maybe someone should have taken him down just a peg or two before it all got out of hand. alas. he was so cute that nobody wanted to and I can’t even blame them because he’s just that fucking cute, though.

why I like it: this is a very underrated panel which I think most people probably don’t even recall. it’s from chapter 11 just after he loses to Deku and Iida, and specifically right after Momo just completely lays into him and explains in vivid detail exactly how stupid every single one of his decisions was lmao. and it’s like he’s just had his eyes opened. he talks about her speech later, too, so it clearly had an impact.

there is no pride here at all. initially when I was reading this, I thought he was still shell-shocked. but looking back at it, and knowing what I do now about his unexpected willingness to accept criticism (something I certainly wouldn’t have expected during my first readthrough of this chapter), I think this is also a genuine “!” face as he realizes that she’s completely fucking right. YOU DONE GOOFED SON. but it’s okay because he learned from it!

also look how big his eyes are. when they get all wide like that. it’s so rare that I have to appreciate each and every time it happens. also he has no right to have such thick eyelashes. goddammit.

why I like it: because he’s strongest at his moment of weakness! because he’s upset but he learned from it! because he is such a strikingly human character with such complex emotions and there’s such a lovely mix of them on display here and that shit is my weakness! because this is when I signed the adoption papers (well, had them finalized after I initially obtained them after the “you looked like you needed saving” face in chapter 1, at least)!! because he always cries in front of Deku and doesn’t get embarrassed, but then he does get embarrassed if anyone else shows up! because his emotions around Deku are so raw and out of control! because the intensity of them is as compelling as it is confusing! but mostly because someone showing fierce determination while simultaneously showing intense vulnerability is basically the cheat code to unlocking my heart, and also the best thing anyone can ever draw in a shounen manga. thank you I’ll take infinity of them.

why I like it: because half of 1-A saw this face and instantly thought “fuck that’s hot” and then went “!! oh fuck me” but it was too late! that’s right kids. even knowing firsthand what a trashpile he can be, you’re still not immune to his charms. that confidence, though.

why I like it: the face of a boy who has just realized that holy shit, there are other people in his class. nothing gets past him. his reflexes are too fast.

why I like it: the slow motion (this is such a cool moment even if it’s at his expense lol), and the fact that this is such a weird and totally unique expression, and yet he somehow almost manages to make it look good. actually he does make it look good, let’s be real. of course, this was back when Horikoshi had more time to roll up his sleeves and really get into the art. look at all that shading goddamn.

why I like it: he cares!! he has feelings!! he has concern about someone other than him omfg whaaaaaat.

he’s so unsettled by what he just heard about Todoroki. the guy who was so strong and cool turned out to have an absolutely horrifying shounen protagonist past that he never let on about. honestly this scene is one of the reasons why I’m so strongly in favor of not interpreting Katsuki’s parents as abusive; because I just really like the character arc of him actually having a pretty good childhood, all things considered, but still having all these problems. because sometimes people actually do have everything going for them and yet they still screw up, because people are only human and sometimes you can fuck up (or be fucked up) even on easy mode! and if that happens it doesn’t mean you’re any more to blame, or more worthy of derision or scorn, or that you already had your chance so screw you, or any of that! anyway so that’s just such an interesting and relatively rare thing to explore and so I like it.

anyway. so just, the idea of him thinking of Todoroki as someone who had it made all his life, only to realize that’s not actually the case at all and that he’s actually the privileged one in comparison, just makes for a really great character-building moment. it’s a really big wake up call for him, especially given that he’s so often just wrapped up in himself and his own concerns still at this stage of the game. and it’s a moment that has a lasting impact on him and that he doesn’t forget, and it helps contribute to him starting to learn more empathy.

why I like it: my child is rabid please help.

but he’s so happy to have Ochako prove to be such an unexpectedly worthwhile opponent. she was sneaky and she nearly got him and he only just made it out by the skin of his teeth and fuck yes, that was awesome. he was really ready to throw down some more with her and it was gonna be the highlight of his fucking day. I just love seeing him acknowledge other people’s strength, because we know the value he places on being strong. so that’s a ton of respect from him, and Ochako fucking earned it, and this is just a great moment.

why I like it: just casually spittin facts and launching ships. nothing to see here move along.

why I like it: for everyone reblogging that one scene of shoujou!Bakugou from the anime over and over again, I just want to remind you all that as great as that scene is, we shouldn’t forget that in the manga he can be effortlessly handsome without even trying.

why I like it: as I said above.

why I like it: another one of the infamous “haah!?” faces. whenever he does these that one raised-eyebrow eye always goes so wide, and even though he’s trying to look like a pissed off thug it always makes him look surprisingly young instead.

also I’m not crazy for seriously wondering if Horikoshi’s art peaked all the way back in the sports festival arc though, right?? you honestly can’t find a bad panel even if you specifically go out and look for them.

why I like it: babyyyy.

I still don’t get how anyone could watch this scene and not get that he was way more upset than he was actually angry. he looks like he’s about to cry honestly.

why I like it: MY PRECIOUS SON’S ANGELIC SLEEPING FACE. all tuckered out. he’s had a hard day.

but seriously when you smooth out all of the >:O it is amazing how young he actually looks though. this one panel is shaded in such a way that you can see that he still has baby fat in his cheeks!! he’s just a little boy! HE IS A LITTLE CHILD LIKE THE REST OF THEM AND YOU MADE HIM PARTICIPATE IN THESE HUNGER GAMES AND HE KICKED ASS AND THEN GOT SAD AND YOU MADE HIM SLEEP AND CHAINED HIM TO A POST WHEN HE WOKE UP ANGRY AND TRYING TO BITE PEOPLE. anyways what a whirlwind of events huh.

why I like it: this child is literally trembling. he has been shaken to his very core. also for real though how did Jeanist even do that. anyways great internship or greatest internship.

why I like it: this is from chapter 60, right after he basically declares war on Deku and says he’ll crush him during final exams. then he turns around and is just like AND LET’S NOT FORGET THIS ASSHOLE HERE!!! and his eyes are practically bulging out and Todoroki just has his trademark “!!!” totally blank stare. this panel fully kills me guys.

why I like it: how was he THE CUTEST CHILD WHO EVER LIVED?? look at his little fists?! I can’t even deal with this???

why I like it: I actually like this one even more than the more iconic “the strongest heroes always win in the end” panel right below it, because in this panel you can more clearly see that he was crying quite a lot (he was only six!!), but it seems to me that it was more because of the unfairness of it than because he was hurt. even though he was hurt. but these jerks bumped into him and then acted like it was his fault, and it was two against one and he was much younger than them and IT’S JUST ROUGH YOU GUYS! LIFE IS HARD WHEN YOU’RE SIX! but he’s a little tough guy though so he scrubs the tears away in this very clumsy and boyish fashion because HE WON ANYWAY SO TAKE THAT! he is so little but already so determined.

why I like it: his eyes are just so intense all the time. even when it’s not an intense moment at all. also the dot shading here is so cool.

why I like it: okay so technically it’s the back of his head and not his face. but I feel like the fact that Kacchan was twitching and flinching and shaking too doesn’t get enough attention in this scene. he and Todo were both wigging out here and I love it. during the third light novel he also gets freaked out by the whole Disney Channel “we were telling a ghost story but now it seems like the story has come to life” plot that goes on at one point, just fyi. Kacchan is absolutely that kid who will refuse to watch scary movies just because “they’re dumb” and definitely NOT because he is scared, how fucking dare you sir.

why I like it: because this is the first of many scenes in this arc and the next arc in which he is freaking out but doing an excellent job of covering it up with his natural ferocity. he and Shouto have just come across one of their classmates’ arms lying in the middle of the path being chewed on by a villain in a straitjacket. his first reaction is to ask Shouto which of their classmates had been out on the path in front of them. he has immediately put two and two together, and he is immediately ready to throw hands with this dude, rules or no rules. but you can see the shading over his eyes though, and I think that -- along with the sweat visible on his face -- is a huge indicator of how horrifying this actually is to him.

why I like it: because this blank “processing...” expression that he sometimes gets when a lot of people are talking at once and he’s not really sure but he is pretty sure that he doesn’t like where this is heading, is my favorite.

why I like it: because even now it’s still ambiguous just what exactly was the prevailing emotion in these eyes and this expression, and the prevailing sentiment behind the “stay back.” I happen to think it was fear! not the same overwhelming, helpless fear as the 14-year-old who was caught up in the sludge, but a very on-edge, controlled-panic fear of a 16-year-old who’s trying to remain in control because he’s a hero in training now. and I think the “stay back” is the “stay back” of a boy who knows the look in that other boy’s eyes, and knows that it’s no use this time. it’s not protective, and it’s not hostile or defensive either. it’s just... resigned. don’t do it, Deku. that could have been the last thing he ever said to him, and it was measured and brave even through his fear and I love him so much.

why I like it: this is one which has to be viewed in juxtaposition with the panel immediately above it lol. Tomura looks like he could literally stare a man to death with those crazy eyes, and Kacchan is comparison just looks so ridiculously young and small and out of his league. but he doesn’t crack. but his eyes are super wide and even the shadows underneath them are stressed almost to their breaking point. like I’m screwed I’m screwed I’m so goddamn fucking screwed oh shit. my baby, guh. this was such a fucking scary experience though for real??

why I like it: same deal as above lol. this whole situation just keeps getting worse and worse, and here he’s just probing for more information while simultaneously trying to buy himself more time to think of a miracle plan. there really isn’t much chance of him getting out of here unscathed at this point (or at least there wouldn’t have been if the heroes hadn’t shown up), but I don’t think he’s letting himself think about that yet. but I’m sure it’s there at the back of his mind all the same.

why I like it: this is my favorite Bakugou face ever. SO MANY EMOTIONS. All Might came to save him! his hero!! he beat the bad guys (or so they think for that brief moment anyway) and it’s all okay now! he was alone but now he’s not anymore and All Might is there! and he is relieved, and he actually lets his guard down to show it for just a split second! his lip is trembling! I don’t think he even realizes for a moment, and then he does, and he immediately goes all tough guy again and the moment is gone! but while it’s there! it’s so much! I have never so badly wanted to hug a fictional character in my life.

why I like it: don’t you think this person could one day inspire thousands of others. do you see this courage in those eyes. the way he pushes past fear and panic and fatigue. don’t think, don’t doubt. just win.

why I like it: by now you have probably detected a pattern of me liking all of the Kamino faces because he was going through so many emotions that for once the walls just couldn’t keep up. he always looks so much younger when he’s not making >: faces. everything just smooths out. I also like that Horikoshi never makes his expressions symmetrical; he almost always has one eye wider than the other, eyebrows doing different things, stuff like that.

also this is when he sees All Might’s true form for the first time, and you can just see it hit him like a punch to the gut. All Might weakened; All Might weakened because of him; All Might might lose (!?!); All Might might die???? Katsuki’s entire world is falling apart in an instant, and in this moment he’s just a little boy.

why I like it: it beginsss. the angstening.

he’s not even resisting the hand guiding him. none of his usual unruliness or general aura of barely-checked rage. he just looks tired. and completely lost in his own thoughts. which as we now know were not good. I cannot fucking believe we had to wait another 25 chapters after this to finally get this kid a damn hug.

why I like it: because Bakugou Mitsuki is fulfilling my (and dating sim!Momo’s) lifelong dream of ruffling Bakugou Katsuki’s (spiky yet fluffy!!) hair. and all he can do is just chew his lip and halfheartedly glare at her all “mooooooOOOOmmm.” he doesn’t even really look pissed off here (because it’s hard to be mad when someone is talking about how worried they were about you and how relieved they are that you’re safe now, especially when that someone is your mom who isn’t normally the type to be so open about this kind of stuff at all), just begrudgingly grumpy. and I swear to god his bottom lip is made of fucking rubber the way he moves it around, just look at it.

why I like it: those eyelashes though!?!? [grabs Katsuki by the shoulders and shakes him roughly] WHY ARE YOUR EYES SO PRETTY.

why I like it: this is right after he found out he flunked the license exam, and you can see how upset he is. obviously we now know that shortly thereafter he went and had a complete meltdown. and buddy if you keep grinding your teeth like that, your dentist is also going to have a meltdown.

and yet again Horikoshi manages to strike this uncanny balance between making him look pissed off and making him look like he’s trying very, very hard not to cry. he just failed, again. it’s like the whole world is screaming at him over and over again that he’s not hero material at all.

why I like it: because he drags Deku out to the middle of nowhere and is all “I know you have All Might’s power and we’re gonna fight”, and Deku protests, and you expect Kacchan’s reaction to be just about anything other than what it actually is. this is as close to pleading as Katsuki is ever going to get. he may not be drowning in sludge but he is still desperate.

why I like it: this may be the best Katsuki that Horikoshi has ever drawn.

why I like it: super ultra mega unpopular opinion: I like this panel even more than THE PANEL!! that follows shortly after it. I am a sucker for when Horikoshi does this thing where he shows Katsuki’s face from a side profile, and his eyes are covered by his hair so you can’t see his full expression, but you know it is something vulnerable because he only ever does this when Katsuki is trying to hide his vulnerability. I could make a whole separate post just about these hair-covering-eyes faces lol. but out of all of them this is my absolute favorite. I can hear Okamoto’s voice acting in my head just looking at it.

why I like it: because it is THE PANEL. he finally broke completely; he let the walls fall away; he couldn’t hide it any longer. he’s so unbelievably torn up about this; he hates himself for it and feels like a failure; he’s lost and doesn’t have the faintest idea how to find his path again. he ended the Symbol of Peace. he was weak and wrong, and Deku was strong and right, and he can’t even hate Deku for it anymore, he just wants to understand what it is that he keeps doing wrong, why it is that he keeps failing.

why I like it: it’s, uuuuuh, angst.

lol it’s funny because at the beginning of the series, it was always Deku who was always crying at the drop of a hat. and to be fair this is still true. but Katsuki also cries way more than I would ever expect a rival character in a shounen manga to cry. and specifically he has cried every single time he’s had a dramatic and overly emotional altercation like this with Deku (and that’s three separate times now). is it because he’s always felt like he has less to hide around Deku? or because his Deku Emotions are so much more intense and volatile than his other emotions? at any rate, whatever it is, if this happens one more time (and I guarantee you it will too because A Certain Someone still hasn’t officially made an apology yet) he will officially lose all authority to ever call Deku out for being a crybaby again. meanwhile poor All Might will just be beside himself. I’m sorry dude, both of your children are just like this, you just gotta deal with it and accept their feelings.

why I like it: HE FINALLY GOT HIS HUG, BLESS.

and more hair covering his eyes! and chewing of the lip! and his head is bowed so much here, he fully allowed himself to be pulled into this hug and to accept this gesture of comfort for once in his life, just for a moment! after everything he was feeling, everything he was beating himself up over, All Might comes and tells him it’s not your fault. and there’s still so much guilt there, but he needs to hear this so badly that he accepts it all the same. meanwhile he is also CRYING AGAIN!? because this was the chapter where Horikoshi said “I am going to put all of the angst and cathartic conflict resolution into a single fight and it’s going to be the best thing ever” and it really was. do you even understand how much I love this. do you??

why I like it: OH GOSH I FORGOT ABOUT THIS, THIS IS MY OTHER FAVORITE KATSUKI HAIR-COVERING-EYES PANEL.

oh no. he’s ruffling his own spiky fluffy hair. he’s tired and he’s beat up (and whose fault is that lmao) and he’s learning all kinds of new things about himself today. he’s got basically nothing left in the tank, but for the first time in ages he has his path laid out in front of him again and he knows the way to start moving forward. he has been absolved of his guilt, the guilt which was eating a hole away inside of him. and all of a sudden he realizes -- it occurs to him -- hey, All Might finally admitted it, he really did give his power to Deku. but it’s still a secret though, isn’t it? it’s important, isn’t it? and so he tells them, hey, look, I get it, I won’t say anything, you don’t have to worry. it’s partially gratitude -- he owes so much to All Might and it’s ridiculous, that’s a fucking debt right there, and this is the least and only thing he can offer right now in return -- and it’s partially just... the right thing to do. like, common sense. honorable and shit. and it’s not like it’s a big deal or anything. but just, let them know.

I love his side profile so much and I love his hair and his ear and the scuffs on his face and his beaten up hand and his hunched up shoulders and him being soft and trying not to show how soft he’s being and he is precious.

BONUS:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY HANDS IN POCKETS GRUMPY TRIANGLE EYES ROVING FERAL HOG SON, I LOVE YOU.

[adzoic]

[Community Beware] @theeggoman Thread

It’s 8 in the morning, I’ve had like six cups of coffee and I’m ready to go. Today, we’re focusing on a user that’s been repeatedly called out for tracing and theft.

I want to start out by telling you not to send harassment or death threats to this user, as they’ve proven time and time again that they will use and run with it in order to garner sympathy and place the blame on other people.

That is not what I want. What I want is for @theeggoman​ to take full responsibility for what they’ve done and what they continue to do each time they are called out for a situation like this. Which is a lot, mind you.

Tumblr user @theeggoman​, formerly known by these names:

Fooperdoodle, PleaklyandJumba, Pleakly, jombasworld, mistskistrawberryblonde, Jumba, etc.

Has been called out for tracing, scamming, etc. on many an occasion. Their (and I’m using they pronouns because I’m unsure of which pronouns they use. A bitch can be respectful and still call you out.) most recent dive into tracing artwork being taken from the artist Grendel Menz on twitter.

Grendel posted on 12/28/2020 that his vent art was stolen for a Hannibal animatic using the the song Butch 4 Butch Simping by Rio Romeo. Grendel follows this tweet up with two more, confirming the identity of the art thief.

Big yikes, but wait! There’s more. A reply to Grendel’s original thread blows this shit wide open, revealing the fact that Tumblr User @theeggoman​ has, in fact, been at this for quite a long fuckin’ time. 

According to Kyosein on twitter, this shit has been going on since forever.

And it just. gets. worse.

Quoting Kyosein, the twitter thread states:

A follower found their comic, and then noticed similarity (pretty obvious) with some of my work. So they messaged me about it and here all it starting.

Once again, according to the twitter thread: After they had been caught, Theeggoman began to go into hiding. They changed their names multiple times on all of their accounts, hence the laundry list of alternative usernames at the beginning of this thread. 

All of the works they had claimed, with little acception, are traced and copied from different images. Example:

Now, while the thread mentions Theeggoman faking harassment and copying art styles ( I don’t see that sort of shit as the crime it’s made out to be. Seriously, we all take inspiration from somewhere), I don’t think that takes precedence over the art theft and scamming that’s going on here. While on the topic: Yes. Tracing and taking inspiration from someone’s art style is completely separate.

More importantly. Let’s talk about the issue of tracing for profit.

You heard me. On their previous patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/fooperdoodle, now defunct.) Theeggoman made commissions at $50 USD. In which, you pay $50.00 for a traced drawing. 

Additionally, Theeggoman made buttons! That just so happened to also be traced. Example:

The original, adorable illustration by Floofyfluff on twitter:

Versus, Theeggoman’s direct fucking rip-off of a button:

They also had a Youtube channel! A channel where they posted speedpaints. In a video (now either deleted or private, like all of them are) talking about their situation, the fucking “tumblr” layer was visible in the goddamn video. Seriously, Eggo. Do you think people are that stupid? 

Versus, the two works they traced from! Originally by @furpocalypse​:

Y’all need more proof of theft?

‘Cause I’ve got more proof of theft.

Not to mention that the 2019 cover of their Tapastic comic looks suspiciously similar to this tweet back in 2016.

Finally, we’ll get to the aforementioned scamming.

To quote Kyosein’s twitter thread:

They did open an donating money page, for their "goal" to go to an "art chool", showing traced drawing as examples.

And from an article found on Theeggoman in the twitter thread:

SHE GOT IN TO A SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM WITH  STOLEN ART “She has been accepted to Columbia University, CAL Arts and Savannah School of Design and is weighing funding and options.” “She said she prefers a smaller company that cares about the artist.”

 Everything she did until now is using plagiarism, tracing, copying art. To enter school. Making money. Taking all the "rights" on the back of real artists. Promoting their stuff. Lying to their community. We're about to contact the reporter of this article.

And thus, Theeggoman absconds with all of the money they’ve scammed with a sweet little “lol k thx, byeeee” at the end of their donation page:

Here are the screenshots for the article quoted above, or you can really just go to Kyosein’s original twitter thread.

Alright, I think that’s all of this bullshit so far. Again, I’m not asking anyone to deplatform or send death threats to @theeggoman​. That’s not something people will learn from, and as we’ve seen time and time again, it only allows shitty people a platform to whimper about being cyberbullied on the internet. 

However. People should be made aware of what’s happening, what they’re paying for and who they’re supporting/giving their hard earned money to. And making money off of shit that isn’t yours? C’mon, Eggo. You’re an adult and you should know better.

I’ll end this by saying thank you. Thanks for sticking around and reading through the muck of shit with me. I hope you’ve come away from this a little more informed than you were before. 

And finally, to Eggo:

Shame on you.

[elemental-daddy-neos]

YGO! Questionnaire

Tagged by @cipher-wise

Pleasantly surprised to be in one of these, so let’s go

Favorite series: *Gestures to icon* Is it any surprise I’ll be picking GX? I love GX with all my heart and soul. The story’s pacing is very good and never feels like it’s dragging its feet to get to where it’s going, most duels are over in less than a full episode with the longest one being three, there are so many good characters to get invested in, and this boy right here is your protagonist.

Look at him blow kisses to the audience after beating Crowler, how could anyone not love Jaden Yuki? I care him so much. Even the filler episodes in GX are pretty fun to watch most of the time, and it’s the good kind of filler that may not advance the plot much or at all, but it’ll give you plenty of good memories to take with you. Who could possibly forget the eggwich thief? Not to mention the soundtrack fucking slaps.

Favorite protagonist: I mean...

Yeah it’s Jaden. GX hooked me immediately when I started watching it because of how much I loved this boy. He’s that perfect mix of cocky and sweet when it comes to dueling because he’s confident in his own abilities, but he never stops having fun and being amazed at what his opponent can do, he cares about all of his friends and does his best to help them with their problems, he’s kind to strangers, and he has exactly half a brain cell. 

I feel the gif speaks for itself, but Jaden’s dialogue when he turns around here is “I’m such a sucker for things like this! I’ll help you, ma’am!” Dorothy says “No, you’ll be late... Don’t you have a test today?” And Jaden replies with “Who cares if I’m late? I couldn’t leave a lady in trouble!” Jaden Yuki is my absolute favorite protagonist.

Favorite rival: Oh man is that a tough one. Am I allowed to pick two? It’s a hard call to make between this dumb edgy bitch-

And this dumb gay bitch

Honestly they’re tied for favorite rival in my book. I absolutely loved Chazz when I watched GX, and I thought his arc about breaking through his inferiority/superiority complex and learning to accept loss as a part of life without letting it define him was wonderfully written, and seeing him grow as a person throughout the show just made me feel happy for him. Shark... I really thought I wasn’t going to end up liking Shark at first, but god he just gets so much better as Zexal goes on, starting out as this mean spirited middle school bully in episode one, and slowly ending up as Yuma’s boyfriend closest friend. It’s incredible to look back at how Shark acts when he’s first introduced and compare it to... season 3, I think it was, where just hearing the words “Yuma’s in danger” is enough to send him running to his rival’s side. Chazz and Shark. They are my favorites.

Favorite BFF: Him

Crow Hogan is an absolute treasure and he was my favorite part about watching 5Ds. This little bird man first gets introduced by stealing cards for his kids and clowning on Sector Security, and he’s a source of so much good throughout the show. Excellent best friend (technically brother but I’m counting him), wonderful father, 10/10 person all around. Plus the fact that the only thing stopping him from berating his bitchass brother even more was Yusei having to literally pick him up and pull him away is definitely extra points in my book. What a powerful little bird. His only weakness is people that are taller than him, which is unfortunately most people.

Favorite GFF:

Yuzu. Have I actually watched Arc V yet? No, but I’m still picking Yuzu for my number one here. Tea and Tori are just awful characters, I’m neutral towards Alexis, and Akiza... Did have potential to be something interesting on her own, despite how uncomfortable she made me in seasons 1-2 of 5Ds, but her relevance is alllll downhill from there. I’ve seen one clip of Yuzu yelling at a man eating pie and calling him a 100th rate duelist, and that was all I needed to know she would be my favorite. (Clip here) 

Favorite villain: Oh boy

The fuckin carrot is my favorite villain, and I say this as someone who fully believes he didn’t deserve to be in the last episode. Vector did some fucked up shit in his day, and he only continued to do fucked up shit in Yuma’s day, but I have to say he was pretty effective when it came down to his goals. He got things done and went right for what he wanted by taking direct action to seize Don Thousand’s power, and he manipulated Yuma perfectly by preying on his kind nature and love for Astral to use him to further his goals. 

...Plus I mean just look at his subbed dialogue God he’s such a slut. Evil slutty alien.

Tl;dr Vector was a horrible horrible person, but he was a good villain, and he was so entertaining whenever he was on screen that it was impossible not to like him. Still kinda wish he got what he deserved though, and what he deserved definitely wasn’t another chance.

Speaking of Don Thousand though, can we talk about how unfairly pretty he is? If I had to pick a runner up villain in terms of looks alone, it would definitely be him.

God it was not fair how pretty the big bad of Zexal was. He’s fucking gorgeous, and in my opinion, the best looking villain at the very least.

Favorite card: *Sweats in Duel Links* Favorite? There’s so many cards out there to pick from, but since I’ve already broken the rules with my two favorite rivals, I’ll be picking two of each card type: Spells, traps, and monsters. One for the aesthetic, and one for how often I make use of it.

First up, the Aesthetics group

What can I say, Vampiric Koala is such a cutie, Dwimmered Path has some really pretty card art, and Rainbow Life is an eternal flex on any heteros I may encounter while playing Duel Links. Nothing better than a gay trap card.

Now for usability

Dragon Knight of Creation is suuuper helpful in any dragon themed deck and has a permanent slot in my decks for Mokuba and Kaiba, PoG is always a fun way to boost up weak monsters to ridiculous heights, and Dark Bribe just lets you block your opponent like “Okay I know you wanna hurt me but I will let you draw another card if you do not do that thing”, and they can’t refuse you.

Favorite episode: I’ll be copying cipher’s format here and picking one for each series, but this will still only total out to five for me since I’ve yet to watch past Zexal ^^; Soon I’ll get to Arc V! One day...

Season 0: Episode 16:  Turnabout by a Hair's Breadth - The White-Robed Crisis I’m a sucker for my son Joey, and this was a good Joey episode about him and his sister, plus it was nice seeing that doctor get what he deserved :) Duel Monsters: Season 5, episode 12-14:  The Deciding Match for Duel King - Yugi vs. Leon/Golden Castle of Stromberg/KC Grand Prix Ends  Probably a weird batch of episodes to pick, I know, but a lot of DM was kinda forgettable to me, and these are some of the few episodes I do recall. I just... really felt for Leon’s situation, and I wanted good things for that boy. I care him. GX: Season 3, episode 34: Dark Fusion! Inferno Wing!! Jim. Jim Jim Jimmmmm. This was the episode that finally made me understand why saviorshipping was a thing because it hits you with all these memories Jim has of Jaden and shows how they bonded before all this Dark World shit happened, and the whole thing was very emotional. 5Ds: Season 4, episode 2-3:  Recollections, Entrusted with a Friend's Dying Wish God Crow, my precious bird son. I really liked the backstory they gave him, despite how much it hurt. It was probably the best character development he got in the whole of 5Ds, and let you see a side to him you probably wouldn’t expect. I loved watching him get his justice. Zexal II: Season 2, episode 5-6:  Alito the Silent Fighter - Reunion of the Passionate Duelists!/ Be Revived! The Duelist Soul That Transcends Life!! I picked these episodes for Nistro and Nistro alone. He was one of my absolute favorites in Zexal, and seeing how well he and Dextra were doing was good for the soul. Just look at this good lion man right here.

Look at him!!!

Favorite decks to use: Elemental Heroes, Aromages, Red Eyes, Six Samurai, and Crystal Beasts.

Fusion, Ritual, Synchro, Xyz, Pendulum, or Link: I’m a simple girl, I love fusion/tributes for how easy they are, but synchro can be pretty fun, too

Years in fandom: ??? Even I don’t know the answer to this one, friends. I used to be in the fandom when I was in middle school, wrote/read a few fanfics here and there, but then I fell out of it for... Well I’m 22 now and only got back into things 6 months ago? I started rewatching the abridged series of Duel Monsters in March, and from there I just wanted to consume actual Yugioh content and never went back.

Who am I tagging: @finding-fallen-petals @dizziedaikonn​ @chazzaroo​ Go wild y’all

[getalittleclosey]

under 50k larry fic rec

hi! i’m becca and i read...so much fic. these rec lists are an accumulation of fic that i’ve read or reread and extra loved from 2016-now. there’s a wide range of stuff here and i think there’s definitely something for everyone!! i divided them up by length so you can check out all those categories below!

please make sure to read tags and warnings on all these fics!! the only things i think i can guarantee is that these are all larry, there’s no non-con, no age play, no eating disorders, no mentions of bg, they end happy, and they’re mostly aus. oh and they’re all on ao3 and some are locked so you’ll need an account! anyway i hope y’all enjoy!!!

under 5k

under 10k

under 25k

under 100k

100k+

☆ the beginning of everything by thedeathchamber 31k

“How do you take it?” Harry asked, pouring tea into a cup.

“Just a dash of milk, please,” Louis cast a look over the small table, filled to capacity. “They’re very fond of you.”

Harry ducked his head, grinning. “They’re trying to impress you.”

Louis smiled, shaking his head. “Why would they want to do that?” he asked as he took the cup Harry passed to him, their fingers brushing for an instant.

“Empathy,” Harry said under his breath.

--

A Belle Époque AU set (mostly) in Paris in which Harry is a struggling artist, in more ways than one, and Louis is a successful theatre critic and a failed writer, more or less.

☆ to kill the mess we’ve made by misandrogyny 43k

And when he's finally standing, Liam fussing over him, rubbing his hand at the red mark blooming on Harry's forehead, does Harry learn two things:

One, he wasn't actually hit that hard, and Tommo--or Louis, rather--is just as pretty when Harry is staring at him head-on and,

Two, Louis is the Adidas model he's going to be working with on today's photo shoot.

(or: AU where Harry and Louis are both models, and they decide being friends-with-benefits is a great idea. It isn't.)

☆ heart open, bloodstain on my sleeve by silkbombs (mulberrygrey) 36k

“I couldn’t help myself,” Harry admits, one hand coming to rub the back of his neck, “I stared at you for a good while before I finally got the guts to come up to you. You looked so pretty sitting there, with your little ankles and your pencil in your mouth, so enthralling… art in front of art.”

Louis’ not sure what to say, so he just kind of sits there, eyes bugging out as he stares at Harry.

“I mean, like you’re not an object!” Harry rushes out, babbling.

“I just, there’s something about you that’s so captivating, and maybe it’s the way your eyes are like a watercolor painting of the sea, or how delicate your hands look when you draw, but I just wanted to get to know you. It’s not like I pick up random boys at art museums usually, I swear. Not that I’m trying to pick you up! Unless you want to be…God, fuck I’m sorry this is so awkward now. I can go, um, if you want."

--- Or, the one where Harry's the long limbed, gangly, sweetheart who just happens be a high profile art thief who conducts heists for a living and Louis' the loud, pushy art student who just happens to steal his heart.

☆ a king beside you by stylinsoncity 26k

When the aliens invade, the last thing Louis expects is to fall in love.

☆ the boys of summer by afirethatcannotdie 45k

“I mean…we’re gonna have to sneak around anyway, yeah? Like, with that whole rules thing that I guess we’ve decided to ignore. Might make it a little more fun this way.”

AU. In which Louis is a reluctant sports coach, Harry's a fellow counselor who wears tiny yellow shorts, and camp rules say they're forbidden to date.

☆ don’t let the tide come and take me by kiwikero 29k

The aquarium in the lobby has been there as long as Louis can remember, and so has the merman inside. That is, until the day Louis loses his job and decides to set the creature free.

They set off on a road trip to the sea, learning to communicate more and more each day. Their destination is LA, but the closer they get and the more Louis gets to know the merman, the more he dreads having to say goodbye.

Or, the one where Louis decides to set a merman free and ends up finding his own freedom along the way.

☆ introduction to dynamics by juliusschmidt 29k

Louis Tomlinson is the outspoken omega in the 'Introduction to Dynamics' course Harry wishes he didn't have to take. He's nearly certain to present as a beta, after all. Things will be simple for him.

☆ saved tonight by objectlesson 31k

Harry is the world's most persistent seduction-baker, a questionable dog-sitter, and Louis's biggest fan. Louis hasn't written in years, is trying to pass loneliness off as cynicism, and absolutely hates his fans. It's probably destiny.

☆ once upon a dream by objectlesson 27k

“M’not gonna half-ass our fake relationship,” Louis almost snaps, voice sharp with a defensive edge, like Harry wandered too close to a bruise with needy fingers. “Now kiss me again. We’re gonna make every shitty tourist here wish they had stayed in the Midwest. We’re gonna burn Disneyland down with our gay. ”

Harry shuts his eyes and opens his mouth, because he can’t fucking say no to Louis.

--

Or, a fake dating AU where everyone is lying and they happen to be at the Happiest Place on Earth.

☆ rivers ‘til i reach you by embodied 29k

Louis can’t begin to understand how he’s always this close and still can’t manage to make Harry his. He stands up and gets another beer. AU. Louis studies astronomy; Harry studies Louis. They spend their summers on the water and it shouldn't be complicated (spoiler: it is).

☆ life was a song, you came along by rainbowninja167 38k

It's embarrassing how long it takes Louis to recognize his own song. Niall had sung it as a bright, hopeful love song, and that’s honestly how Louis had always assumed it should sound. But this new voice, slow and rough, stripped of any backing instrument, has infused the lyrics with just the tumultuous mix of fear and defiance that Louis can remember so clearly from the night he wrote them. It’s not a comfortable thing, to feel like someone is singing all your secrets back to you.

Louis is a songwriter trapped in a lie that could ruin his best friend's career. Harry owns a record store, distrusts everyone in the music industry on principle, but loves Niall Horan's newest album. A modern retelling of Singin' in the Rain.

☆ learning to eat by photo41 29k

Celebrity chef Louis Tomlinson has a problem. He’s opening his first restaurant in 9 weeks, and he has yet to hire a pastry chef- apparently people think he’s ‘standoffish’ and ‘rude’ and ‘quick to temper’. Whatever. He ends up saddled with an annoying, happy-go lucky rookie who also happens to be obnoxiously good looking. His tv presenter and pop star best friends only add to the drama, and for fucks sake would everyone please stop quoting Julia Child?!

Kitchen AU where Harry helps Louis re-learn how to eat. (METAPHORICALLY)

note: just to clarify this is NOT an eating disorder fic don’t worry

☆ runner on third by kikikryslee 40k

As Harry stood there, the other man turned around, and he knew he was correct in who he thought it was. “Louis?” he asked, still not quite believing it. Louis blinked. “Harry? Wh– what are you doing here?” “I work here,” Harry said. “What are you doing here?” “Um, I’m picking up my brother. The nurse called and said he was sick.” Harry felt like he was going to be sick. “Wait, Ernest is your brother? Since when do you have a brother?” “Since about seven years ago, I guess. Wait, how do you know Ernest?” “I’m his teacher.” “You’re his what?” Louis exclaimed. Harry gulped. This was going to be a long year. --- Or, the AU where Louis and Harry were best friends growing up, but lost touch after Harry moved away. Ten years later, Harry has moved back to town, but he and Louis don't pick up where they left off.

note: there are four fics in this series that total to 60k

☆ roots by cherrystreet 43k

There aren’t many things that make Harry Styles nervous. He’s spent the past couple of years on and off various stages, filled with screaming fans, all chanting his name, loud and adoring. He’s done countless interviews, some even on live, national television, never faltering over his words, answers meticulously planned out, smooth and steady. He’s signed countless autographs, taken just as many photos, and even when he sat in his label’s studio, waiting to see how high up on the charts his single made it, he didn’t feel uneasy or uncomfortable. It’s all been unbelievably fun. No, there aren’t many things that make Harry Styles nervous.

Enter Louis Tomlinson.

☆ once upon a dream by thedeathchamber 33k

Louis is psychic and gets caught in the middle of a murder investigation led by FBI Special Agent Harry Styles.

aka. the Medium/Criminal Minds-inspired AU no one ever asked for.

note: there’s a 24k sequel for this!

☆ the melody you never heard by bananasandboots 30k

It's one last adventure. One last chance to be young and carefree. One final weekend before they take up their internships, their corporate positions, before they enter the real world, fresh out of university. Niall's his best mate. Liam's been there for him since they were lost, little freshmen, trying to find their ways through an overwhelming first year. Harry can't disappoint them, even if it means enduring four days with Louis.

Louis, who he does share a history with, a history he's never told anyone about, not even Niall, a history he hasn't brought up in three years because it's stupid and embarrassing and confusing.

Or, the one where Harry gets roped into a four-day camping trip with the boy who kissed him and never called back.

☆ born to make you happy by objectlesson 26k

Harry makes a quiet vow to himself that he will be the very best girlfriend Louis has ever had, even if he never actually gets to be Louis’s girlfriend.

note: i literally had to take a break and reread this cause i love it so much

☆ close to nowhere by angelichl 35k

“I will kill you in your sleep,” Louis threatened as he quickly stepped out of his jeans.

“I don’t think that would work very well baby, seeing as you talk to dead people all the time.”

“I’ll kill you in your sleep and ignore your ghost. And don’t call me that.”

Louis and Harry are psychics who kind of hate each other. They go to Tennessee to investigate a haunting.

☆ adrenaline by reveries_passions 38k 

“Harry Styles,” Nameless Boy who now has a name says. Louis is too busy having an internal crisis to realize the boy has just introduced himself as Harry Styles. Harry Styles, only son of Des Styles, PhD, Dean of Harvard Medical School. Harry Styles, known by everyone and their grandmother. Harry Styles, star rower. Harry Styles, youngest enrolled student in graduate school at Harvard University. Oh my god, Louis thinks, mortified. I just slept with Harry Styles. As he reaches out tentatively to shake the boy’s hand, another thought hits him. Oh my god. Harry Styles is gay.

~

louis tomlinson, college dropout, up and coming dj, and gay activist, is the notorious owner of exclusive underground gay club, adrenaline.

harry styles, med student by day, partier by night, child prodigy and seemingly heterosexual son of harvard professors, is the youngest and arguably the smartest student at harvard medical school.

or: a one night stand wasn't supposed to become the greatest love story of the 21st century.

☆ bloodsport by tofiveohfive 40k

“You know how our next game is against the Cardinals, right? You remember how vicious those guys can get. I wanted us to come up with some plays, maybe work on a block from the left—”

Louis stops when he hears a chuckle.

He doesn’t think he’s said anything particularly funny, so he turns to Harry, waiting for an explanation.

“‘S funny, ‘s all.” Harry throws his finished bottle somewhere near the other discarded ones. “This is the first time you’re talking to me in eight months, and it’s still about football.”

☆ the haunting of louis tomlinson helloamhere 31k

“I'm not afraid of ghosts,” Louis said.

Every single magnet unstuck itself from the fridge and fell to the floor in a clattering cascade.

“I'm only a little afraid of ghosts,” Louis said.

*** OR: Louis is a plucky Gothic Heroine, Harry is a Mournful Spirit, and Big Country Houses are full of mystery and suspense, as Big Country Houses ever are!

☆ can i not like you for a while? by larryshares 43k

louis tomlinson is awful. harry is just as difficult, and they're both terrible to each other. it makes being in the same acapella group together quite complicated.

☆ delight in masques by kassio 28k

Popstar Louis Tomlinson has been pulling one over on the mortals for years. In the five years since he put on a human illusion and tried out for the X Factor, none of them have realised that he’s one of the Fair Folk – a cat shapeshifter, to be precise – and he’d like to keep it that way.

When he returns to the X Factor as a guest judge, the last thing he expects is for some half-Siren fool to use magic on the judges. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Harry Styles does. Now Louis has to track down some rogue changeling before he exposes them all. Even worse? Apparently, Harry doesn’t even know what he is.

(An urban fantasy adventure, set in the world of - but not crossing over with - the October Daye book series. No need to be familiar with those books; I just want to give credit where it's due on a lot of the worldbuilding.)

☆ no love like your love by rearviewdreamer 43k

When it comes to saving the world from itself and convincing rich CEOs of environmentally harmful companies to go green, there's nobody better than Harry Styles. That is, until Louis Tomlinson, his ex and former Alpha, is involved.  

note: i love vegan harry styles

☆ for neither never nor ever by fairytalelights 29k

Then Harry looked down. A newspaper was on the steps in front of him, looking new, like it had only just gotten delivered but no one had bothered to carry it inside yet. That, in itself, wasn't unusual. The unusual thing was the headline, Chernobyl - Half a Year Later, and the date in the corner. 5th November 1986. He looked up to stare at the girl in the doorway one last time, before he did the only logical thing his body knew how to do in this situation. He bolted.

or, the one where Harry travels through time and has to come to terms with losing everything he's ever known. Louis might be the only thing that feels real.

☆ worth dying for by whoknows 45k

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Louis says, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. In the center of the table, a set of three glossy photos stares up at him, mocking him.

“A security detail is non-negotiable, Louis, you know this,” his mum reminds him, tapping the middle photo with two fingers.

Louis doesn’t look back down at the pictures, gesturing towards them wildly, over-dramatically. “This is not a security detail!” he protests. “This is a lanky college student. In what world do you hire someone like this kid to protect me?”

☆ listen to your heart by lovelarry10 35k

Are you kidding me right now?

I… No? Louis frowned, feeling angry now. It wasn’t fair, he knew that, but at the same time, he couldn’t help his feelings. It felt like this had been brewing for weeks, and this was it. Give it a rest, Harry.

Why are you such a brat? Why can’t you just be happy for me for once?

You think I want to hear about you kissing James? Really, H? There’s things I just don’t need to know, okay? I’m your best mate, not your fucking relationship advisor…

*****

Louis has always been comfortable being Harry’s one and only. When Harry starts to branch out, Louis has a hard time letting him go.

Harry is very lucky to have someone who listens to what he has to say, despite the fact that he’s deaf. He’s finally feeling like he’s coming into himself, but Louis seems bothered by his newfound confidence.

☆ another day gettin’ into trouble by whoknows 26k

Harry’s drunk when the idea occurs to him. He’s also a pop star, so sometimes his drunk ideas turn into actual things instead of just ideas. The clone-a-willy kit is one of them.

In Harry’s defense, when he first thinks about it his intention is just to buy the kit and give it to Louis to make his own dildo with, because that’s what he wants anyway, right? To have a penis filling him up?

Then he realizes that it would be weird if Louis made a copy of his own dick to fuck himself with. It’d be super weird. Louis fucking himself? That’s a weird idea. Harry’s pretty sure Louis wouldn’t like that.

Clearly the only solution here is to use his own dick for the mold.

☆ all the right moves by cherrystreet 32k

This is the third game in a row that Harry has been distracted by the noisy boy in the stands, five rows back.

There’s really no reason that he should feel compelled to stare into the audience as frequently as he is, but he can’t help it. This boy is a nuisance. And he’s loud. Even from basketball court with nine other players running by him, shoes squeaking on the shiny hardwood floor, and thousands of cheering college students, Harry can hear this boy nearly shrieking, his laugh more like a cackle than anything.

It’s seriously obnoxious.

☆ play the odds by alivingfire 26k

Harry and Louis are best friends since childhood who, after a night of drinking, find themselves locked in a bet: first one to kiss the other a thousand times wins. Wins what? They don't know. Glory, Harry supposes. Bragging rights, though those don't do much in this economy. All Harry knows is that this is one bet he can finally win. What he doesn't expect, though, is what happens when he starts kissing his best friend on a daily basis.

Namely, he doesn't expect falling head over heels in love with his best friend.

Now all he has to do is make sure the bet never ends, so he never has to stop kissing Louis.

[lemongogo]

HNNNNG ART ANATOMY STUDIES ARE SO FUCKING HARD. i can't fucking get it. just nothing looks right, i know you can only practise to improve but I'm not improving

All these artists talking about how anatomy just clicks after they've studied for a bit and proportions just come simply after a bit of studying, or how they study other artists and learn from them or just anything, I don't fucking get it, I don't get how to do it and I;m so frustrated and upset, idk how to get better from here. Obviously I need to practise but the practise always ends in my being upset and disappointed cause it genuinely turned out bad, either anatomy wise or just anything (2/2)

aa ! yeah i get you :-( its really frustrating coming from a place where it just doesnt click, like you said. i relate to u on a molecular level in the sense that. it just. doesnt make sense to me. i watch videos and read tutorials and people only ever talk about their visualization. how they See the body in their head, how they can Imagine the joints moving or how the body bends to accommodate certain poses based on what they’ve learned. but my!!! brain doesnt work like that !! i dont “see” anything. anything i try visualize is composed in mostly tangible thought (aka i feel it on my brain and the back of my head, i dont see a picture) and very abstract lines. 

i was just talking abt this with some of my friends and it kinda helped me put into perspective that we (assuming you probably have some different way of “seeing” or thinking of things yourself) cant necessarily draw or learn as a lot of other artists can. i  cant create an image in my mind, cant see anything imaginable in depth or be able to rotate anything to look at it from different angles. for me, it sometimes feels like im always playing a losing game?? and its really demotivating, i completely get that. i guess that just means u have to find a way that benefits how u more or less visualize and start adopting trends that make sense to u? revolutionize the way you study. if understanding the scientific aspects of it and applying it to form doesnt make sense, maybe look into sycra’s iterative drawing video.   or look at different gestures for a set amount of time (say, 1 minute) and then try to draw the pose from memory. compare to what you referenced it from and make notes on what to improve. for me i guess it just helps to draw a LOT of shit and just slowly get better. i dont have any foundational understanding bc i simply dont know how to achieve that but. over time i just kind of start to adopt what looks “right” to me. 

idk i wish i could say more to help u out :( i know its so hard. but youre essentially teaching yourself here when a lot of people who teach anatomy have been taught beforehand, have really good visualization techniques or understanding, and have been practicing soo much. comparison is the thief of joy !! u have to start somewhere and it might feel shitty it might look shitty but its necessary for u to be able to grow as an artist. i have dozens of sketchbooks full of. things that are Wrong or Bad. but i learned from those because i can see what i did wrong and try to work around it in the future. 

u only ever see the art people want to post ! its a curated feed; u never see the months or years of practice leading up to those drawings u know.

u got this !! i believe in u !! im sry i couldnt give u any concrete help as to how to learn anatomy (something i struggle w nearly every day) but i hope u can figure out a method tailored to ur needs that make it more accessible to u

[da-can-draw-stuff]

You seem to have your own version/interpretation of Goro since you write for him a lot. Can you explain what it is?

Wow, I didn’t think I would get this question, but let’s go! I’ve been working on this since the game was released in Japan.

Let me preface this: A lot of the art I’ve drawn shows him

pretty happy and adjusted. That happens through the years (but I can’t pinpoint an exact moment) since it’s gradual , but it’s also fun to draw. It’s a lot less difficult to draw than him by himself angsting and clutching his head the whole time tbh (how often can I draw him wallowing?).

A lot of my interpretation isn’t that far from material that has been released since, I believe.

I’ve heard my interpretation called human, romantic and possible.

And my writing was visceral and raw emotion. And that’s really what I think it is: human--folly and all.

...Also, sorry about the long reading but I can’t think of a way to sum it up without cutting things out. Sorry, mobile users!

Overall, he feels like a work in progress in that he’s trying to figure out things for himself as he goes. His cunning doesn’t mean that he's completely sure of himself, after all, he isn’t deemed an adult yet by Shido, among others.

He’s never really had choices for himself in his childhood, so when he comes to live on his own, it’s so many choices. Yabadabadoo (I don’t like to call his real name unless I gotta) monopolizes on that, seemingly lining up his goal of having a player with Goro’s goal of pursuing his own revenge. It’s callous since he has at least some inkling of an idea that this is a dangerous path and that his goal will ultimately end up in toppling the government.

This is where Ayana comes in—a stubborn question to that previous statement.

Well that’s fine. The system failed him. He’s about 14ish at this point. This is what he thinks he wants. This is something he can foresee in his (currently) blank slate of a future.

He’s actually a bit awkward outside of his celebrity personality. This kind of lines up with the OA app S.Link.  He prefers to have a few close friends, and keep mostly to himself without having been pried into—which lines up with the translation of his taste in romantic partners (I can’t remember what the magazine or blog was, but he wanted someone who knows how to keep their distance). And he has a love-hate relationship with stardom: he loves it at first, getting ‘affection’ from it, but eventually he starts to detest it for the intrusiveness on his life. Not to mention: obsession, hypocrisy, artificiality and superficiality.

As a result, he doesn’t trust most of the stardom personnel he meets. He’s always aware, but always pleasant.

Sometimes scathing with a smile. He only deals with them as he must, but he’s always known this dirty side of business. This is how he views most of his jobs’ interactions: necessity. And he knows that his good looks, charm and mannerisms will get him far.

Surprisingly–he’s also impulsive sometimes, and searching for his own answers. He thinks he could have it all–the life he envied of others, being seen by the public, vengeance on a man who gave no shits about his consequences. And so, he’s meticulous; he keeps an eye on the lines and tries to ensure they don’t intersect. So because of that, it takes a huge mental toll on him the more and more pressure that puts on him. I write that lightly, but he definitely suffers trying to keep it all together. And by P5, he realizes he can’t have it all together and not have them be intersecting. He’s used to being what others ask of him and then abandoned.

He’s not adverse, but he isn’t so open to the change she elicits in him. And it’s slow, but sure. They ask themselves what they want from this, how they see themselves, how they see each other. He comes to truly love her. He tries to learn from the positive influences he does have, whether or not he realizes it. (Hell, he appreciates that her older family friends treat him well and offer him advice on normal topics sometimes.)

As a result of time and perseverance, he feels very comfortable around her and gets to explore a self he didn’t have the freedom to before. Playful, sometimes a bit childish, but welcome to share his thoughts without betrayal. So Ayana knows some of his more cynical thoughts and encouraged him to get professional help at some point. He trusts her a lot by the P5 year, considering she still remains by his side and the one time he accidentally unleashed all his insecurities about being used/abandoned at her.

And he is very soft where she’s involved.Talking about her shows an obvious soft spot and more sincerity, but he definitely hates when people try to be nosy/manipulate/kiss up to him. He treasures their everything together, he is protective of that normalcy and he will not be kind if you try to encroach on that for your own use. He recognizes that she has her own choices that he cannot machinate or save her from, i.e. she’s actually a Phantom Thief. Goro also realizes that she needs her own closure, without his help. Doesn’t stop him from keeping an eye out for her safety, naturally.

He really does love her with all his heart, and he never imagined that it would come this far, so he’s eager to keep it safe. He’s come to taste the simpler pleasures of life that we might take for granted. And that’s why his trying to get her uninvolved with the plans is so urgent to him, selfish and yet unselfish.

But that doesn’t change the fact that he still has his own goals he wants to accomplish. Ultimately, his desire for vengeance is still one of the things he clings to. He really wanted to be good for her, but as Shido’s plans and the Thieves change, he finds he can’t have it all, after all. His lives are all connected and he’s struggling to keep them separated. But now…he can’t even pull them apart! It’s agonizing for him when he realizes how badly he screwed up and panicky when he tries to rig it. A diffuse-one-of-the-bombs situation.

So he does own up to the fact he fucked up his own life. Heck, if he’s already locked into being a pawn, what can he do now that there’s no exit button without severe consequence? Yaba has convinced him that his path will always end with Shido.

In the future, he’s definitely more well-adjusted.

It’s a balance between Robin Hood and Loki. He’s not acting for anyone’s sake anymore, and he’s not going to go out of his way to be more or less cynical or showy either. So it’s definitely more genuine. You’ll definitely get a mix of his Palace battle facial expressions in there. He’s not happy with his past, but he’s grateful for the chance to start anew in a simpler life and to be able to earn that second chance. He is honestly happy no longer having to always wear a customer service smile. That said, there’s definitely bouts of depression, anxiety and guilt that keeps him up at night, but hey, he did finally get professional help.

[greed-the-dorkalicious]

What I assume Yugioh is about based on having seen like less than 20 episodes of it

Because I used to do this every time I started reading a new Jojo part, just to see how much I got right and how much I got wrong. I don’t think anything will ever top “Rohan Kishibe is a high schooler who draws Chris Hart-esque anime art and thinks he’s a pro mangaka and his stand, Killer Queens, is made of bees, but maybe this will at least be slightly amusing. (Also I know it’s kinda late for this but listen, they still haven’t even gotten to Yami’s backstory, I still have genuinely no fucking clue what the actual overall plot of Yugioh is)

Anyway so here are the characters

Yuugi Mutotutotototuto

No for real tho is it Moto or Mutou someone explain this to me please

Looks like he’s 10 but is actually 15 and very short, which is relatable

Sunshine goth

MY SON NOW.

So fucking nice and good and loves his friends

I think uh... I think he’s like mixed race and that’s why his hair is like that? Not that that makes literally any sense whatsoever but I feel like I remember someone saying something like that

I think he’s like the reincarnation of an ancient pharaoh, or maybe just his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-whatever-grandson

Was able to solve the Millennium Puzzle because of this and also probably because he’s good at games idk

The pure-hearted chosen one who can win every battle even if he’s at a disadvantage because he Believes in the Heart of the Cards. Still don’t know what the fuck that even means but I support him so much

Just a perfect boy

I’m willing to bet a large portion of the fandom thinks he’s a boring protagonist. I say this entirely based on the fact that he is a genuinely nice and optimistic person and god knows fandoms can’t handle characters who aren’t assholes

If you talk shit about Yugi I will show up at your house and eat all of your Yugioh cards. This is non-negotiable

Yami Yugi

The ghost of a pharaoh who was just Really Good At Games and maybe some sort of god or something idk. But I guess maybe he has amnesia?

His real name is Atem but nobody calls him that

Also my son now I love him so much I would die for him thanks

Anyway he lives in the Millennium Puzzle and occasionally possesses Yugi’s body and SOMEHOW this completely changes Yugi’s eye shape, makes his hair even MORE complicated and also makes him taller.

A fucking sadistic bitch

But like a good one though. Like I think he’s a good guy, he just needs to learn to Chill The Fuck Out For Once In His Goddamn Life. It’s ok though Yugi will teach him about the power of friendship and then it’ll be fine

Apparently kills people in the manga, which I guess would make him my legally allotted one (1) irredeemable murderboy I’m allowed to stan

Died tragically and violently after he... uh... he uh... he got framed for cheating at go? Anyway so that’s why his ghost lives in the Millennium Puzzle because I guess maybe he wants revenge or something??

In the most bizarre anti-bullying aesop I have EVER seen, whenever someone wrongs Yuugi or his friends Yami will show up and completely fucking eviscerate them

Just loves games so much, doesn’t matter what game it is or who he’s playing with or why, he will play any game anywhere anytime and will probably send someone into a coma in the process

In conclusion I’d die for him thanks for coming to my TED talk

Seto Kaiba

The antagonist, I guess

Had green hair but then they took it away. Why did they do that

Very mean, I do not like him. I guess he probably has a tragic backstory and Is Actually A Nice Guy Deep Down™ but I still don’t like him

Like a bazillionaire because he owns Kaibacorp. I have no idea what they do. Maybe they manufacture duel disks? Which are like these things you wear on your arm so you can put cards on it. Like a little table for your arm. I don’t know why this is necessary or special but everyone has one

Obsessed with Yami because he is So Good At Games that Kaiba thinks he’s his true rival or some shit idek

Technically could be compared to Akira Touya but I don’t want to because Akira is a very nice and good boy and Kaiba is at best an Ochi

Joey Jounouchi

Yugi’s bff and for some reason the only one of the Crewgi I ever hear anything about so I’m just going to assume this means he is plot relevant somehow

He is the delinquent who picks up stray kittens in the rain

Looks like an asshole but actually a decent dude

Has the exact same fucking backstory as Dio Brando, but like, isn’t an absolute garbage boy, unlike Dio

Was in a gang when he was a kid, a gang with yo-yos. Except in the manga it wasn’t yo-yos, I forgot what it was. Knives? Or maybe hockey sticks? Maybe hockey sticks with knives taped to them??

Trying his best

Chadhotep

That isn’t his real name. I forgot what his real name is. I tried really hard to remember it but I couldn’t so now his name is Chadhotep

An Egyptian priest, not sure if he’s somebody’s reincarnation or immortal or a time traveler or just a regular guy who has Been Doing This For Generations

Has the Millennium Key, which presumably goes to the Millennium Lock and grants the user the power of fucking Shugo Chara whatever

Not really sure who’s side he’s on tbh

I feel like... he’s what Avdol could have been if Araki had gone more for the “badass pyromancer Egyptian fortune teller” thing like he had in chapter 1 instead of him being a constantly distressed mom friend. Not that this is a criticism of Avdol!! I love Avdol so much, he’s perfect, however I feel like Chadhotep could be like... an alternate Avdol I guess

I think he’s like Knuckles but instead of guarding the Master Emerald he guards the Millennium Items?

Haven’t actually seen him in like 10 episodes since Yami like... fuckin... imprisoned him in his mind palace for all eternity or some shit, is he ok?

Mokona Modoki

Kaiba’s little brother?????????

How

I guess he has like an Emporio Alniño thing going on?

Why is he here. He’s a child. Tell him to go home

I bet he’s supposed to be like 5 and speaks like a 15 year old because nobody knows how to write kids. That or he only looks like he’s 5 and is actually like 14

I don’t know anything about him but Kaiba is a bad role model

Thief King Bakura

I don’t actually know much about this guy because he hasn’t showed up yet but I think he’s the other antagonist?

Presumably the ghost of Yami’s ancient political rival, lives in the... what even is that. The fucking like. The Millennium Tambourine I guess

You know in Death Note when it’s revealed that there’s a whole orphanage full of L clones training to become the next Batman or whatever? He looks like he escaped from there

Presumably wants to steal all the Millennium Items so he can summon Shenron or vore god or some shit. I don’t actually know what all the others are but I’m going to assume there are 7 in total because that’s how magic item sets in anime work

Ok I know I made a Knuckles joke already but this dude legit looks more like a Sonic character than absolutely anyone else so far

And that’s everything I know about Yugioh, thanks. In case it isn’t obvious I took benadryl today and I haven’t been more than 60% awake since then

[zenithgurugirl]

Truth pt. 2

My mother since birth has sabotaged my life existence. Anything inspirational as kid that I have done, she did not support. As a child you have the tendency to impress your parent by joining spelling bee's, sports, art stuff, etc... You become social and make friends and become a part of your friends circle (clicks, subculture, etc...).

Okay, so the first thing I do as a child (because I did not go to preschool and probably should have to learn social friendly skills) I tried to play house with the other children. This did not work out well. The kids had the mommy and the daddy thing already picked out and they already picked out their kids (in Kindergarten we had this huge area with sections of play houses set up, it was awesome! Little fridges, ovens, bunk beds, table and chairs, all sorts of plastic foods and plates. It was loads of fun for most little kids okay.)

I was scouted out as a maid. We had picked babysitters and even played out granny and grampy but No... I was maid. I cleaned up the kitchens and made the beds. I cooked and vacuumed, swept and mopped. I did not have a place to go so I switched out into different play house families. I was honed out to be alone. The little girls had "mommy" meetings and the "dads" went to work. I went from play house to play house cleaning shit up.

At home I had a very large play house of my own as a little girl with a big doll house to match. Not from my mother but from one of the guys she dated. He was really amazing for building those two things for me. I was grateful that this guy (out of many many men she dated) even noticed my lonely existence. From age newborn to 5 I had no sibling to play with and no friends. My mother usually put me in the middle of the living room with toys and did her thing (what ever her thing was idk to this day.... I was too busy being imaginative in my own world in my head.) This wonderful man graced her life and felt sympathy for me. So I would come home and hang out the rest of the day in my very own neat organized play house.

Put this to real life perspective in a humorous way....

I might have been the fucking maid at school and neglected as a kid at home BUT I HAD A BAD ASS PLACE ALL MY OWN haha! Make me a maid - I got me a pad all my own, I did not have to share it with anyone! Take that Kindergarten!

I had an imaginary friend named Johnny. He was older than me and smelled like the river that ran behind our rented house. Yes he was wet, all the time, but never dripped water anywhere except outside near the bridge. Don't ask....

Anyway. During the time of the maid play crap at school; I did artwork. I would color on the huge pads of paper. I took advantage of the little book shelf littered with books and read every one of them. I'd get real bored and I screwed up by doing all the packets that were labelled with my name near the teachers desk. Oh she didn't like that because I went ahead and did all the work available for Kindergarten. It had my name on it and I was bored.... what did she expect?

Which reminds me; I was really good at reading and writing before the age of 3. I didn't talk until I was in Kindergarten - by choice. I didn't want to talk. I learned how to talk at age 1 and stopped at age 2 because I was traumatized by my cousins. So, I stopped talking and took up reading and writing. I was able to write paragraphs at age 4 and reading college books. No joke! Its not a bragging thing here. It was survival. I was alone, bored, and neglected by a parent.

In first grade I wrote a book for show and tell. It was called "Monsters". The rest of my Kindergarten year was artwork and going with the 5th graders to a reading circle while the other students did their packets LMAO! 5th graders were confused by my presence at first but then soon realized I was smart and began picking on me. So, in first grade I wrote my first story. MONSTERS. I even illustrated it with monsters. Okay, this didn't end well with the teacher all horrified about my well being and talking to my mom who beat the shit out of me when I got home. In first grade I ended up in the 7th graders reading circle as my 1st grade class mates did their reading circle. I was being influenced by the older kids who were picking on me.

I'm a parent today. I embrace and encourage my daughters decisions and goals. I even help her by purchasing whatever it is that she enjoys. She liked making music so I bought all sorts of crap so she can proceed with that. She likes painting and drawing so I bought art stuff of all kinds. Anything to reach whatever goal or dream she has; I support, encourage, and do with her.

Unlike my mother who beat the crap out of me for writing a book and freaking out the class. Funny thing is, she watched me write it and illustrate it at the dining room table. She kept calling me strange and weird but let me do it. Then beat the shit out of me ???? Thanks for the great support! What she should have done is redirect me, talk to me, and help me with it so it wouldn't be so shocking at Show and Tell. Thanks mom for your abuse, it was the best!

I kept writing. Any attention is great at this age, even if it was abusive attention. I wanted to become a writer. This was now my dream, my goal, my ultimate place in life. I would write books. I would read dictionaries and encyclopedias and all the research books that I can cram inside my big imaginative mind and make stories.

I was and still am continually sick (Marfan Syndrome). My mom did move around a lot. She had many boyfriends. Most of them never liked me because I was "weird". She invented a scenario of me that I was slow and retarded. This probably saved me from molestation since most of the assholes she dated were drug users and criminals and abusive and creepy. She claims today that she never did drugs but I'm well passed the age of naïve - if your friends and boyfriends are using YOU ARE TOO using with them. I was too involved with my lined paper and pencils and books to pay any attention to her bullshit life. I had bad grades except for my reading and English classes.

When we moved back to her childhood town; my play house was destroyed and my doll house ended up with my Aunt who hated little girls. I stopped school all together pretty much. I did good in 3rd grade but had 4th grade twice because the teacher of 4th grade could not stand that I was able to read and understand what her huge grading book was all about. Not sure if anyone out there knows what I am talking about - those huge grade books with all the answers and how to teach a class certain subjects in the book .... well, I read the whole thing and knew that she was doing it all wrong. WOW I got held back a year for being too smart for my own good. She told my mother that I was immature and needed more socially exceptional things in order to pass her stupid class.

She got a new teachers book the next year and locked it in her desk. She also had me sit in the far back so that I couldn't read the big teachers book while she instructed students. Oh lets not forget that she also took me out of college level reading and comprehension studies to Kindergarten reading and writing. Bitch. Like that was going to stop me from pursuing my dreams. I quite school. Basically slacked off anything she had to teach. 5th grade came and that teacher adored me. He let me read and write anything I wanted. The kids (my younger peers from my flunked grade) were jealous and tried everything to ruin my life. I hated them and they naturally hated me. I was in the library most the time during my second year of 4th grade and 5th grade. Read every book on the shelf and learned how to work the computer.

Fights every day after school during the second time around in 4th grade and 5th. I learned how to kick ass and give black eyes. I was bullied most my life so I learned how to fight back. I was even slapped around by a teacher! So, yep I think that kids should be able to fist fight. I think adults today should just go out and fight it out with boxing gloves. It does help. All this anti-bully crap has these kids today stupid soft to even the slightest gesture. OH HE TOUCHED ME! Yeah, he did touch you. At least he didn't fucking smack you around and call you curse words. Be thankful you little wimp!

My mother got married when I was in 5th grade to some wealthy asshole. He treated her like shit and me too. I was not allowed to have any books in my room and I couldn't have any paper or pens or pencils in there either. I had a television, black and white. No radios no desk no nothing. I had to get rid of my dolls. Basically; grow the fuck up. He molested me from day one until I was twenty.

Oh I tried leaving the home. A thousands times did I try to flee. I ran away all over the place. Now, normally a young teenager runs away to a friends house or to a boyfriend. I had neither. Sometimes one would run off to a relative. Yeah, I done fucked myself there too. My family hated me. Thanks to my mother, my grandma and grandpa - my aunts and uncles - my cousins - they believed whatever my mom had to say about me and most the time it was not good. She told them things like - I was a pathological liar, a thief, mentally retarded and rebellious, etc.... whatever she deemed good for her to keep me home. Crazy bitch.

I learned to be social all right. First place to run off to was San Francisco. I slept in the bus depot. I learned how to pan handle. I made friends with homeless and hung out with them learning life skills. You'd be surprised what life skills you learn from the homeless. Much respect for them out there! Sure I got sexually harassed maybe even sexually assaulted and raped. Shit happens and I learned from it. I learned to wear secure clothing and don't fucking flirt. Don't talk to everyone and keep to yourself. Discernment and gut feelings - yep I learned this. I learned to be alert and when it was okay to relax. I learned the value of life. I saw shit that would make one of these spoiled SJW people scream SATAN IS HERE lol! I see this bullshit today and just shake my head in shame about our society.

GROW UP AMERICA

My mom she would have people find me and drag my ass home. I wasn't doing drugs, I wasn't hoeing around and hooking it, I wasn't being a bad citizen in society. I'd always land a job and a place to stay out there. I gave good advice and was actually influencing good things to those around me. I was kind and caring and anyone who was helping me - in return - I helped them. But she would drag my ass back to her home with that molester. I signed up for modelling and that was short lived. I signed up for fashion design at an art school, paid my tuition and got dragged back home and had to drop out. She wanted me with her. Any boyfriend I had ended up sleeping with her or she'd tell them I'm retarded and they'd dump me immediately.

I ran so far away as to end up in New York. I ran off to Canada. I ran off to Mexico. No money. No car. Just a thumb for a ride and a backpack. She would find me and get someone to drag my ass back here to this county. I bought my first home in Oregon. Had to sell it after a year because she threatened me with her suicide attempt. Family blamed me for it and I wasn't even here!!!!! How can a person blame another if the other was not even around her depression. I never talked to her for a year. So she goes depressed to the point of suicide because I didn't talk to her and was living my 23 year old life out with a full time job, a newly bought house (not a rental), a car that was paid off and raising a kitten.

I was forced home by family members and threatened. I came back because my half brothers packed up my house with a moving van and had their wives beat the crap out of me. I wasn't going to come back. I had sell my house, my car, lost my job (worked in a craft store), and lost most of my belongings thanks to half brothers and their evil wives.

I rebelled as much as possible and became the monster they thought me to be OH YEAH! Started drinking, smoking weed, pill popping, partying, stole my moms car, and ran up the cell phone bill and any other bill she had to pay. Then I stole her money and spent it too! By this time I was 25/26 years old. I did try to run off a few other times but my half brothers would travel across the states and bring me right back to mother. She was divorced when I was 20 years old. My half brothers thought of me as a shit ass retarded girl. My mom began gender shaming me. I did end up gay for a while because she wanted a boy not a girl.

I'm super straight as they call it today. The gay thing was a phase. I can't keep a boyfriend ever or get married. My mom will scare them out of my life even today she does that shit. Oh and she moved in with me after I bought a trailer in the trailer park. The family tells me "She will be homeless if you kick her out so think about that when you decide to be nasty with her again. You will be blamed for her homelessness if you kick her out of your home!" OUCH!!!!!

Do I hate my mom? Yes.

I have many reasons to hate her. I learned to distance myself from any love and can walk away cold and shallow from any relationship. I have no heart for actual love now. Thanks to her I have learned this. Never get attached to anyone or anything. I can walk away from this life and not feel a thing for it. To me, it was a waste of time and energy. My existence is a total waste and time of energy.

Happy Mothers Day......

Actually; I love my daughter and her boyfriend. I have a motherly (my own kind of mommy) to her best friend and her boyfriend. They are my true family. If something happened to them I would be weeping and feeling pain over it. I had a half sister who was my best friend in my 20's who ended up as a best friend and I love her too. She passed away 3 years ago and I still cry over the loss of her. So not all is waste of time and energy. I did learn how to correctly love my little family despite what my mother has done to me. I still hate her. I live with her or rather she lives with me. Her sick joke is to tell people "My daughter and I are married" ..... No. Just no.

Someday I am going to publish my novels. Every one of them. I'm going to move away and have several places that only my little family knows about (my daughter, her best friend, and their boyfriends - because they seen first hand how my mother is) and I will build my mother a home of her own - a gift from me. But my homes are not anywhere near her home and no one can drag my ass to her house because after all - I gave her my life - 40+ years of it.

I just feel wasted away though. I missed out on all sorts of stuff that I am seeing with my daughter. I didn't want to live here in a trailer park. But when you have a mother or parent that leeches off you spiritually, mentally, and physically - your time and effort mean nothing. I had money but it was spent on her bullshit. Right now today she complains that she has no money blah blah - yet 6k sits in her bank account while I pay 300 dollars on bills and 850 dollars on rent with a 600 dollar paycheck. I'm in debt. She doesn't help and if I ask for her help she usually says "I don't have money to help you".

Typical.

I don't ask by the way. I know what comes out of her mouth with the HELP ME question. 6k in her bank though. She can pay bills for the next 3 months at least. Give me a breather. Or let me move in an ex boyfriend who wants to help me and is pissed off at her for digging me into further debt. She likes me suffering and struggling. If I am happy she gets all sorts of angry. No joke! She's 74 years old and still gets up in my mug if I even act on being happy.

So yep. I have vented it all out.

My plan; to own multiple escape area places and never tell her where I went. When she dies to collect the house I had built for her and leave joyfully and to never visit her graveside EVER!!!!!!!!

Happy Mothers Day!

[wanderingworldwarrior]

Warrior’s Fic Recs

I’ve wanted to create a list of fic recs for a while now! I have these bookmarked on AO3, but there’s not really a system like that for Tumblr. So, here we are! I did “Draw the Squad” doodles for each of these, and they have nothing to do with the fics themselves, but they were super fun to make!

---

Marvel:

“To Walk Together” by @shootingstarsojourner

Original “Draw the Squad” template by @mugges

“To Walk Together” is a Captain America/Reader fic that’s paired with my own series, “Of Different Emotions”! Expect a lot of fluff! Star is the queen of fluff. She’s really nice! Go talk to her!

Series Summary:

“You are a sojourner of the stars. You go from galaxy to galaxy, realm to realm, discovering the wonders of worlds everywhere.

In a life so big and full, how can one be so lonely? You’ve been running away from your feelings of hurt and loss after your recent relationship breakup. You welcome distraction.

But trouble has a thing for finding you, and suddenly you find yourself falling to Earth, where a certain, lonely Captain from Brooklyn finds you and gives you refuge in New York.

Steve Rogers is a man out of place and time and has been dealing with post-traumatic stress in his new modern-day setting. No friends, no motive, he’s just trying to get through the days. Now you’ve fallen right into his lap.

Neither of you expect the blossoming bonds stemming from meeting one another. Are you willing to walk together to mend from the wounds of loss, or will you runaway again?”

---

“Power and Magic” by @sidrisa

Original “Draw the Squad” template by @mamafrankee

“Power and Magic” is a Loki/Reader fic that I cannot scream about enough. It motivated me to get back into fanfiction and inspired my first fic on AO3. I have immense respect for this author.

Series Summary:

“The princes come with their exalted Father arriving amidst a hail of pomp and pageantry all parties would rather forgo.

This is war, where men die, their blood purchasing land and peace until it’s time for more men and more blood.

But your mother adheres to the old rules of hearth and hospitality. The Lords of Asgard must be given their due despite the grim business precipitating their arrival.

It is too bad they don’t deserve it.

There is nothing to recommend him, Loki, Prince of Asgard. He is rude and cold and childish. You try to find some merit in him.

You find none.

Exactly none.

But maybe, after trial and tribulation,

You will.”

---

“The Tower” by @littlemisssyreid

Original “Draw the Squad” template found at @submit-your-oc

“The Tower” is a Loki/Reader fic that I’m having a blast reading. The author is a wonderful person, and the story itself is an excellent mish-mash of fairy tales and takes place on Asgard. Give it a read!

Series Summary:

“After attempting to rule another realm, nobody in the courts of Asgard was opposed to Loki’s conviction. However, years later, in a turn of events that nobody is privy to, Odin wonders whether his youngest son was sentenced too harshly. Unbeknownst to anyone, Loki is moved to a new type of cell, with new terms of imprisonment too, in the hopes he will have a chance for redemption. However, as days become months and months become years, the world moves on without him in it. Will Loki really benefit as intended or has he simply been condemned to a new type of torture? The arrival of a stranger puts everything to the test…

Despite being overlooked in your hometown on a daily basis, your spirit is not easily broken - not, until one day when an incident on the road out of town leaves you broken and bruised. With nowhere else to turn, you find yourself at the doorstep of a man with no interest in saving anyone but himself…”

---

“Liars in the Dark” by @padawantimelord

Original “Draw the Squad” template by @snuffysbox

“Liars in the Dark” is a Loki/Reader fic that I thoroughly enjoyed reading! The angst is strong with this one, you guys. Great Reader character and awesome writing style!

Series Summary:

“You don't like thinking about the accident. The one that spiraled you out of control, that shattered your normal high school life and turned you into a hermit working at your grandparent's farm. You don't talk about your problems. You pretend not to see what others can't see. And your grandfather doesn't say anything about the watery whiskey you've been diluting to hide how much you drink because the pills don't work.

You're pretty fucked up. And though, during your most desperate and sober moments, you think about how much you would love to go to college and learn science and astronomy more than anything. But then you notice the rippling fabric of time, or the gentle brushing of something outside your reality and you're back in the liquor cabinet sneaking booze from the bottle.Then an angel falls from the sky and changes everything. You patch his never healing wounds on his flesh, and he tries to touch the ever churning storm within you. Loki shows you how much better you can be, and in the process, how much better he can be as well.”

---

“Hubris” by @seekerofvalhalla

Original “Draw the Squad” template by @croxovergoddess

“Hubris” is a Loki/Reader fic that I was so excited to find! It takes some inspiration from Mulan and has a lot of action and violence. Had me hooked from the first chapter!

Series Summary:

“Asgardian men and women normally fought battles side by side, so when the Allfather strips away your opportunity to seek your revenge, you disguise yourself as a man. Your pride prevents you from quitting, but how long can you keep your walls built up before someone sees through the cracks?”

---

Miraculous:

“Once a Thief Always a Thief” by @saijspellhart

Original “Draw the Squad” template by @looneyfrechie

“Once a Thief Always a Thief” is a Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng fic that was suggested to me by @shootingstarsojourner​! It was my introduction into the “Miraculous” fandom, and is the first non Reader-insert fic on this list! A totally awesome read with amazing art from the author!

Series Summary:

“Things were starting to look up for Marinette as museum curator. She had a prestigious new exhibit to run, and an ace team to help coordinate it. That is until she crosses paths with the internationally infamous cat burglar, aptly named Chat Noir. She wants to hate him, but this suave and charming thief has his eyes set on more than just her exhibit's priceless Bastet artifact.”

---

I’ll be updating this with any other great fics I find, as well as some more dumb doodles to go with them.

Stay awesome!

 Updated 4/23/18

[metawohoo]

There is currently a content creator blackout in my fandom, and seeing all those posts about art theft brought back some memories.

(Go and read @hchano​‘s brilliant post, by the way. I’d have replied to it but then my reply turned into a novella.)

The art theft stories resonate with me, you have no idea.

You know, if someone was to check my 'rules' pages right now, they'd see this:

Fanart:  I don’t care about reposts, don’t worry if you spot my drawings somewhere else

Now, it might look like I'm super chill about this. That I'm not 'whining' like those artists who 'care too much, it's just drawings'.

The truth is I don't care because I haven't posted an artwork I gave a fuck about since 2011. I do not want to bother with that. It's thankless. It's an endless source of stress and discouragement. Why would I spend effort and time when I know the end result is that I'll be - for lack of a better term - pissed on by entitled jackasses and by thieves?

Story time.

I used to run a flash minigames website. It didn't have much content, since I had to draw it all myself, and figure out how actionscript worked, and so on. Still, I put ads on that website, and not only did it pay for itself, it brought me a tiny bit of income too! For my own content that I had made myself, just imagine! I planned to make that little site grow and grow until it could support me and drag me out of the hell that is unemployment.

It'd see cute stories on Stumbleupon by parents who said their toddler had loved the games. That made me super happy. It was real nice for a while.

And then I got an email from a girl in Israel telling me she had seen my art sold as coloring books in her area.

That was a blow.

I mean, I'm literally an artist by trade. I have a diploma to prove it and all. I'd have loved to get paid for my art, seeing how I couldn't fucking find a job using those skills that were apparently good enough for commercial use.

But I kept the site up for a little while, as well as my profiles on art websites, though I barely updated them. I'd ignore the thieves that sold IMVU stuff with my art on it. I'd pay no mind to the brats who sold it on Gaia Online, because it was just virtual coin. I tried to ignore the fact that some of my stuff got popular under someone else's name.

Just drawings, right?

Anyway, my flash games could be stolen. Actually, in the general sense, it was pretty much the goal. There was my website's logo on them, a direct link. Having them redistributed meant traffic coming back to my site, and advertising income for me.

Can you see where this is going?

Back then, there was a flash game monetization network, called MochiAds. It was cool. It allowed you to insert ads into your games, and a great many flash games websites would import MochiAds' feed, which made for a fast and widespread distribution of the games. It was a neat service.

Except someone decompiled my games, replaced my logo by theirs, inserted ads inside them and published them as their own.

Within hours, you could google the new names the thief had given to my games, and get 500.0000 results. Accounting for all of my games, that made for millions of reposts, all of them defaced, linking to the thief's website, monetized by them.

Of course, MochiMedia responded quickly when I reported the theft, but their disabling the ads on those games didn't remove them from the thousands of independent websites they were posted on.

I never made another flash game.

As a matter of fact, I no longer draw.

I was never in it just for the fun. I wanted the rewards. I wanted to make art my full-time job. Hell, I went to school for that. I wanted the compensation for my effort and time. I wanted my website to grow from the 'sustains itself' to 'sustains me' size.

And then I realized that people could snap their fingers and steal it all. Make me look like I had plagiarized my own work. Bury me in stolen content.

I learned that, on the internet, there was no point giving your heart and soul to something you can't nail in place.

And, more than anything, I learned to hate drawing.

But, hey! Look at the bright side! Now that I gave up on drawing, nobody will steal my art anymore!

Isn't that great? :)

[peachy-keen-glam-queen]

2017 Reading Roundup

Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help by Amanda Palmer

Dawn by Octavia Butler

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket

The Reptile Room by Lemony Snicket

The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket

Adulthood Rites by Octavia Butler

The Miserable Mill by Lemony Snicket

The Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket

Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher

The Ersatz Elevator by Lemony Snicket

Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee

The Sex Myth by Rachel Hills

The Vile Village by Lemony Snicket

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

The Witches by Roald Dahl

The Hostile Hospital by Lemony Snicket

The Carnivorous Carnival by Lemony Snicket

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Slippery Slope by Lemony Snicket

Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

The Dark Half by Stephen King

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture by Glen Weldon

The Grim Grotto by Lemony Snicket

The Penultimate Peril by Lemony Snicket

The End by Lemony Snicket

Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight by Travis Langley

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

The Gunslinger by Stephen King

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

Holes by Louis Sachar

The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman

Shockaholic by Carrie Fisher

The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King

Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? by various, edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hadju

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

The Waste Lands by Stephen King

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano

The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan

Skeleton Crew by Stephen King

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Running with Scissors: A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Matilda by Roald Dahl

“Who Could That Be at This Hour?” by Lemony Snicket

“When Did You See Her Last?” by Lemony Snicket

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

Four Past Midnight by Stephen King

The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis

The Collected Short Stories of H.G. Wells by H.G. Wells

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling

Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling

Believing is Seeing by Diana Wynne Jones

The Field Guide by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black

The Seeing Stone by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black

Lucinda's Secret by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black

The Ironwood Tree by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black

The Wrath of Mulgarath  by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian by Kurt Vonnegut

Harry Potter and the Halfblood Prince by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black (Thanks for the recommendation, @batmanisagatewaydrug​!)

Dracula by Bram Stoker

An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison

Time of the Twins by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman

I didn’t quite make it to my goal of one hundred books, but that just gives me something to strive for this year. Now, the top five books I read this year, in no particular order (not counting books that I’ve read before): 

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

Hands down one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. In addition to being a roller-coaster of emotion that will leave your heart in pieces and then gently glue them back together, this book also managed to hit the majority of my interests in one go. Gay shit? Check. Victorian-era theatre? Check. Socialist revolution? Check. This book truly has it all.

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

Speaking of books that will break your heart, here’s a doozy. If you’ve read any of Roxane Gay’s work before, then you know that she writes with a raw passion that makes you feel alongside her. One of the most honest books I’ve ever read, Gay captures a broad range of emotion with grace, humor, and humanity. 

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

What do you get when you combine stage magic, comic books, Yiddish folklore, and a helluva lot of heart? You get this fucking book. Though it veers dangerously close to tragedy porn at points, Chabon keeps things grounded enough that it never feels like drama is being drummed up for drama’s sake. A beautiful tale of love, loss, and friendship set against a vibrant historical backdrop. Along with Tipping the Velvet, this managed to not only become one of my favorite books of this year, but of all time. 

The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help by Amanda Palmer

Amanda Palmer is, to say the least, a polarizing figure. People either love her or can’t stand her, and she knows it. Like Hunger, this is a book written from a profoundly humanist perspective. Here we’re privy to the insecure cracks in a woman who has built a career out of being bold, brash, and boisterous. Not only does she hold a mirror up to herself, but also to the reader. This book forced me to confront hard truths about myself, and I know that when I need a kick in the ass of inspiration, I’ll be returning to it again and again. 

The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture by Glen Weldon 

There’s not much to say about this one other than this: if you care at all about Batman, you need to read this book. Weldon does a phenomenal job not only of telling the history of the Dark Knight, but contextualizing each phase of his existence, revealing what the many versions of Batman over the years say about the prevailing culture of the time. 

Well, that’s it for this year’s reading roundup, folks. Here’s to a New Year full of good stories and good nights spent curled up with a good book!

[arachnida-girl]

Ladies of Laburnum ~ To Belong

Well, I made some OC’s for TheNamelessDoll “To Belong” Series. I liked the series and I don’t know. . .I just kind of made them. I didn’t make any of the art because I can’t draw. Anyways, my polyamorous triad, the Ladies of Laburnum.

Lady Eleanora Laburnum:

-A young noble woman left with a wealthy fortune and the large weight of her family’s history and all their enemies.

-Eleanora is an intelligent, analytical and is fond of learning for merely the sake of learning. She is straightforward and will read any book she can get her hands on.

-Eleanora, like anyone else, has her flaws. With a collection of extreme trust issues, she is vindictive and can hold grudges for life (like the rest of her deceased family).

-She also would prefer to be left alone or at least with intelligent company.

-Shifts into a mixed-breed cat

-19 almost 20

Raina Wickes: Right

-A deadly spy that serves under the house Laburnum.

-technically her job is to collect information (which she does) and flush out traitors (but she usually ends up killing said traitors in brutal fashions).

-Raina is an interesting person to know, her natural charming and friendly nature can make anyone feel welcomed. She is filled with energy and always has the best gossip.

-However, it’s important to remember how manipulative and dishonest she can be. She isn’t sentimental either and has no qualms about killing people if they pose a threat to her or her fiancees.

-Shifts into a common rat

-26

Knight Colleen Ashmore: Left

-A loyal knight that serves the house Laburnum.

-A lot can be said about Colleen Ashmore, whether they be rumours from her enemies or her compliments from her friends, but if nothing else you should know she's compassionate and courageous.

-She also can be hot-headed and misunderstood the expression, “pick your battles wisely,” as she’s down to fight anyone. Her overzealousness can be too much for some people but it has good intentions.

-Shifts into a bengal tiger

-25

Backstory: (Above is the Laburnum Banner)

Raina used to be a highly skilled thief who attempted to robbed, Colleen while she was travelling on the road outside of Raina’s town to House Laburnum. Though, Colleen held her own and was impressed by Raina’s ambush so she offered her a job as a spy. Raina decided, ‘eh, why not?’. Thus began the highly unusual partnership between two people who give no fucks about socially acceptable things. Like not offering jobs to people who try to rob you. Six years later, this partnership quickly blossomed into a romance and they were ready to commit until the entire house of Laburnum was poisoned.

A rare and almost undetectable poison slipped into their drinks, killing all seven family members. All but one, a young lady who skipped dinner because she was too busy reading. Eleanora suddenly was the head of her house and plenty of people were ready to take opportunity of her inexperience. Whether it be her estranged relatives seeking wealth and power or the very same enemies who poisoned the entire family.

Eleanora, however, was quick to find real allies and asserted her power, as she may not have wanted the title of Lady of Laburnum, she certainly wasn’t going to be pushed around. Amongst her real allies, was her knight, Colleen and her spy, Raina. The duo worked under Eleanora for a year, seeking out and fighting enemies for her ladyship. The three became very close in that year which lead to another romance between the three of them. Which really put a damper on the wedding plans due to Eleanora being proposed almost every week. Nevertheless, the (future) Ladies of Laburnum wait for the opportune moment to elope.