#it says multiple times to not take time and to not refine it etc. i think my sketches are actually neater than the FUCKING EXAMPLE!

[zemnarihah]

description of assignment and example photo

my submission. (1/2 of it, the other pic is similar quality)

my grade and feedback.

[yandereunsolved]

When you have the time, yandere chain reaction to reader wanting to help by making dishes from our world for them? Like pizza, breaded chicken, spaghetti, lasagna, grilled cheese sandwiches,ect. Dishes you don't see in hyrule ya know? Maybe they first got to cook for them when wild is too exhausted or sick to cook? Actually, I don't think they know how to make boiled eggs or popcorn. Be funny if reader invented popcorn for hyrule. Hope you have a great week

Okay, I love this. You too, anon! 𖹭 ( part 2 )

cw: a mention of them possibly crossing your boundaries (at the end)

We'll set the mood by saying The Chain has had an absolutely exhaustive day. They've had to fight off multiple monsters of varying varieties, and to top off the sundae of shit, you have the rotten cherry of all of you being pushed into another portal. You're soaked in things you don't even want to imagine; all of your yanderes are neglecting their health and trying to take care of you; and you are hangry. You end up snapping at them and then getting gaslit for about twenty minutes. 

That's when they learned about the wonderful world of ✨ human cuisine ✨ —peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, meat pies, puff puff, zapiekanka, etc...

You were on the edge of your seat, and Wild was exhausted, so you told them that if they left you alone for an hour, you'd cook for them. After a bit of convincing the more worried and overbearing yanderes, you finally got more than five feet away from them. That's when you cooked a dish from your homeland.

Let me tell you, you just fell into a deeper hole than you already were. They are already dependent on you for love, affection, and attention. Now, they want you to always cook meals for them. They are all trying to get the recipes for your favorite meals out of you so they can win your favor. Naturally, Wild has them outmatched in this sense, and none of them are happy about it.

Wild gets all of your attention when it comes to cooking things. You get to share recipes and learn from each other. Sometimes Sage is able to join since he has more refined cooking abilities, except his Zonai arm always acts up because it reacts to his suppressed yandere tendencies towards you. It's a weird quirk his arm has gotten into. He still isn't sure why. Everyone else in The Chain always tries to undermine Wild's cooking skills when you aren't around. 

It backfires when Wild gets to be the one to cuddle up to you, and he manipulates you by telling you how the others hate him. They hate him because he is different. They hate him because he has you. They hate him because he is everything they are not. It just all seems so vulnerable and raw. Why would you not believe him? Do you not trust him? Do you not love him?

Over all, they are fascinated, and it only feeds into their worship of you. They are enamored by the foods you have brought them. Any of them practically drops dead when you make one of your native snacks for just one of them. Oh my, you made it just for him? No one else. You must really love only that Link! Fierce is even willing to use his deity magic to get ingredients from your world for you. 

How did Fierce do this?

Does this mean he is able to get you home?

No, uh—his power is limited because of the mask. Something, something, a convincing lie to get you to stay and not question him. He is a deity, after all. He knows better than you.

They may crave your food, but there is one thing they long for more—you. How long will you be able to deprive them of your body before they take what is rightfully theirs?

[preeningpisces]

Geto NSFW Headcanons

Im gonna try not to be biased because this is my main bitch right here 🖤

Lemme know if you want me to elaborate or write about any of these headcanons

(literally any ask about Geto will make me do somersaults—backflips, even)

18+ content below the cut, mdni, implied chubby f!reader

Pre-Incident

꩜ Geto is interesting because before he snaps and after he snaps feel like two different vibes in regards to sex

꩜ Doting, almost like a service-dom. He likes taking care of you, but he also prefers to have control. Though not so controlling that he can’t ever be submissive

꩜ Major smooth-talker, like Gojo said, he has a silver tongue. Likes a mixture of praise and degradation. The degradation is usually teasing, and doesn’t extend past the usual slut, whore, etc. range…usually

꩜ Sometimes it comes out corny tho lmfao pls roast him when it does

꩜ Good at making you feel sexy. The type that will kiss you all over, giving extra affection to areas you aren’t as fond of. It’s difficult at first, but with time you become more comfortable

꩜ Very sensual, and intimate. He has good self-control, & is very patient so he can draw things out & drive you crazy. Like he can spend all-too-long just toying with your mouth, denying you the kiss you so desperately want. Barely brushing your lips and teeth with his thumb, before pinching your tongue between fingers. Wowee

꩜ Refuses to kiss you after absorbing curses. Even though no one else can taste them, the thought of tasting like that is enough for for him to refuse; he doesn’t want you to go through it too. Also, tasting shit-vomit in your mouth doesn’t exactly get the schlong schlinging, yknow

꩜ I suspect absorbing curses gives him an immediate surge of negative emotions, so he usually needs space. Sometimes he just wants to hold you, or be held, in silence

꩜ Can be surprisingly playful in bed

꩜ Really likes fucking you from below. Smooshing your soft breasts and stomach against him, and feeling your weight on top of him. Holding you still so he can rail you while whispering sappy, dirty shit in your ear. I’m passing out someone help

꩜ I’ve been poisoned by the perv!geto fics on here, and can’t see him as not being a secret pervert. Just slightly. It takes a while for him to reveal that side to you, since he tries to appear refined and respectable

꩜ Definitely the type that likes music in the background; I see him as someone who cares about music a lot in general. You know he likes you if he’s sharing song recs

꩜ Lots of playlists, and even has a few sex playlists with different moods. Usually prefers things that are chill, but has a few harder-hitting songs—this is why he needs the playlists, lol. He doesn’t like when the vibe changes too much

꩜ One time you sneak Cbat onto his playlist & make him laugh so much he loses his boner. At that point did you really win? Hmm?

꩜ Tbh he’s got game & is aware of it. You gotta humble him occasionally or else he becomes insufferable

Post-Incident

꩜ This Geto is a lot more self-centered, aggressive, and sadistic in bed. I wouldn’t say he’s a tyrant tho

꩜ Will legit punish you when you disobey, no funishments here. Big into humiliation

꩜ My heart is telling me shibari, especially the kind that can be hidden beneath clothes. Particular about the color, and will pick ones that flatter your skin tone. Obsessed with the way the ropes pinch and dig into your soft body. He’ll bite and squeeze the parts that spill over the ropes

꩜ One punishment would be walking around secretly tied up, but the style where one of the ropes rubs against your pussy as you walk. It sounds nice at first, but that bitch is gonna chafe for sure

꩜ He’s more selfish than before, yes, but he still maintains a proclivity for doting—we all see how he spoils his daughters! It’s like, he gets his turn first, and when it’s your turn, it's your turn. Multiple orgasm king. He’ll do it until you’re sobbing tho, so pray for your pussy

꩜ Loves making you choke on his cock—gets kind of intense with the bjs. Mfer needs to chill (and buy you some throat lozenges)

꩜ Doggystyle is his favorite without a doubt, he just wants to pin your face to the bed and watch your ass bounce

꩜ A lot of the previous stuff is still applicable to some degree, but I think he has a lot less patience at this point, and is waaaay more into degradation & domination

꩜ He gets legitimately mean sometimes lmfao it’s like you gotta have 2 safewords: one for physical intensity level, and the other for bullying level 😭

꩜ Would he sleep with a non-sorcerer? Honestly, I can’t decide. If he did tho, he would be SO FUCKING MEAN I don’t even want to think about it !!!

꩜ Does he use monkey in bed unironically?? Chat pls advise

[eoieopda]

liar, liar (jhs)

Hoseok suspects that you’re “phoning it in” while sexting and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t call your bluff.

Pairing: Jung Hoseok x AFAB!Reader Type: Smut (18+ — EXPLICIT — MINORS DNI!) Word Count: 5K CW: Hoseok POV; cocky, fuckbuddy!Hoseok; soooo much teasing; masturbation with an audience (f); oh, the dirty talk; unprotected sex (p in v); Hoseok hits it from the back; overstimulation; squirting; multiple orgasms, etc. A/N: Inspired by some of the responses to @here2bbtstrash’s horny headcanon ask game 😈 Specifically, this and this.

Hoseok is a lot of things: a connoisseur with a dutifully refined palate; an archivist, collecting your artful nudes in a museum only his face can unlock; an absolute demon in his sexual prime. What Hoseok isn’t is a much shorter list: a goddamn idiot, though you seem to be taking him for one.

He’s not sure how he knows it — maybe he has a sixth sense for this sort of thing — but when he reads your text, telling him how wet you are for him, that’s not the way he pictures you.

Little liar that you are, Hoseok suspects that you’re half-awake in bed, going through the motions while some mindless drama plays in the background. In fact, if he knows you the way he thinks he does, you’re probably elbow-deep in a bag of kkobuk chips.

To your credit, you don’t make it obvious — not in your words, that is. You describe in poetically pornographic detail what you claim to want to do to him; and he’d be lying if he said his joggers weren’t growing increasingly tight with every little obscenity you send his way. You made one mistake, though, and Hoseok can’t let it go.

He could pick your disastrously thick, downright bite-worthy ass out of a lineup — and he knows that the picture you just sent him is one you’ve sent before.

It takes a minute for him to force his eyes off your supple skin and throw himself out of his bed, but Hoseok eventually manages. He tugs on a shirt, then a jacket for good measure, and then he stalks off towards the door to his apartment. Shoes on and keys in hand, he’s on his way to you before he can think once, let alone twice.

When he hits the sidewalk, it’s the fury of a fuck buddy scorned that propels him up four blocks to your place. Then, desperation and aching balls force him to skip the usual, friendly conversation with your doorman as he breaches your apartment building. Finally, with a bit of menace — for zest — his knuckles rap against your door. His jaw is clenched and twitching slightly when you finally answer, looking good enough to eat in your baggy sweatpants and shocked expression.

“Jay?” You squeak out your little nickname for him. Cute. Your frenzied hands then fly up to scrape fly-aways back into the bun sitting crooked on the top of your head. “What are you doing here? My place is a mess right now. I’m a mess right now — I wasn’t expecting company.”

Hoseok smirks, revels in the fact that he’s caught you red-handed, and slips past you into your apartment. Before your brain can catch up to this turn events, he gazes at you through narrowed eyes while his head cocks to one side. At first, he says nothing. He simply lets you simmer; make-up free cheeks burning maroon while your dumbstruck mouth hangs slightly open.

“So,” he snips. Your knees wobble a bit under the heat of his gaze; he knows exactly what it does to you when he plays up the assertive attitude. "It would seem that we’ve got a credibility problem, petal.”

Your mouth closes, but your eyes grow wider with the practiced, twinkling innocence only a guilty person can sell. Hoseok can hear the gears turning in your brain as you try to think up an excuse for sexting him on autopilot. Lucky for you, he’s got all the time in the world to wait while you spin your wheels over the issue.

Lucky for him, granting you leave to answer and toying with you aren’t mutually exclusive.

When he steps closer to you, you inch away until your back bumps against the wall behind you. A tiny gasp escapes; your warm breath fans out over his neck as he leans down to you. You’re not entirely chest-to-chest — not yet anyway — but the consequences your actions had on him earlier are still palpable. He knows you can feel it, too, nudging the space just above your hip bone.

Hoseok, ever the tease, takes the hem of your t-shirt between his thumb and middle finger. Running the tips along the seam there, he tugs so lightly that the movement barely registers. Even still, it’s enough pressure to make your nipples peak through the fabric — just like he’d hoped. Meanwhile, your eyes shake as you stare, unblinking, up at him.

You are so fucking pretty when you shiver.

Pulling just a little bit harder on the end of your shirt, Hoseok leans in even closer. You push up, ever so slightly, onto your toes like you’re waiting to be kissed. He wants to indulge you — he knows you know that — but he’s determined to hold the line. You whine when he turns away at the eleventh hour so that his lips instead hover below your ear.

“You had so much to say over text,” he hums as he fidgets absently with your top. “Can’t help but feel a little neglected, honestly. Where’s all that big talk now?”

With his voice dropped low like that, Hoseok wonders if you feel it vibrate against your neck. You whimper, wordlessly confirming that you do. When he eliminates whatever remains of the distance between you, the tip of his nose bumps your jaw at the same time his swollen dick presses more firmly against your abdomen. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches sight of you swallowing down a moan.

He smirks as you shift. You’re subtle with it, but he knows what you’re trying to do — sidle up closer, get his lips to finally touch your skin. On any other day, you’d win him over in a heartbeat. You’d get him now if you used those honeyed words of yours in person.

“Ah, ah,” he tuts with a disapproving click of his tongue. Doubling down, he holds his hands up and out to the side where you can see them but not touch them, “Not laying a finger on you until you speak up.”

You pinch your bottom lip between your teeth as the tip of his nose once again prods your jaw. Now, that won’t do. “Not gonna give you my lips, or teeth, or tongue, either, if you can’t say that same filthy shit with your whole chest.”

What he does give you is a microscopic roll of his hips. There’s hardly friction at all — no relief. Maddeningly, it just compounds that dull ache you cursed him with. The only benefit Hoseok reaps from that tiny movement is the pout that blossoms on your face when you realize:

Playing stupid games wins you stupid prizes.

“Aren’t you curious?” His gaze drops to your lips for half a moment — long enough for you notice — then his eyes raise again to bore into yours. “About how good you could have it if you weren’t just going through the motions?”

You finally open your mouth. All he gets is his last initial, drawn out and quiet, but still so needy.

“Jay.”

“Nah,” he laughs darkly. The corner of his mouth pulls up into that smug, lopsided smile he knows will fuck you right up. “I’m Hoseok to you tonight, petal — and I don’t give a shit about the state of your apartment, or whether or not you shaved your legs.”

Your frown deepens when he backs away, but goddamn, does your face light up when he starts walking in the direction of your bedroom.

With how expressive you are, you’re unbelievably easy to tease. Any reaction Hoseok could ever want from you is broadcasted in an instant all over your sweet face. He has to bite back an endeared grin before he glances back at you over his shoulder — only to find that you’re still holding the wall up.

“Cat got your tongue and your legs? Damn!”

He’s already crossing the threshold into your bedroom when you finally take your cue to follow him. That adorable, confused crease reappears between your eyebrows when he goes for your vanity instead of the bed set up on the opposite side of your room. Grabbing the stool, he pulls it out and sits down. He then gestures languidly with his palm extended, silently inviting you to sit across from him on the edge of your mattress.

Abundantly cautious, you quietly study his face as you sink down onto your unmade bed. Your voice drips with suspicion when you ask, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Hoseok chuckles with a shake of his head and an admittedly devilish grin. He runs his palms over the thighs of his joggers, praying he’ll be able to shed them soon — just not too soon. “That’s precisely the point, petal.”

His words clearly haven’t sunk in yet, so you cross your arms over your chest and one leg over the other. Then, you wait — albeit not patiently — for an explanation he’s not going to offer.

Hoseok tilts his head to the side as he stares back at you. On the nights when you actually expect to see him, you tend to be more dolled up than you are now. He understands that, but he can’t figure out what you meant when you called yourself a mess. You may not be wearing the fatal lingerie from that recycled photo, but that fact doesn’t make him want to unwrap the gift in front of him any less.

Doesn’t make him want to tease you any less, either.

“Well, then,” he starts simply with a shrug, “Show me.”

You might be genuinely puzzled by this, but then again, you might be fucking with him now, too. You swallow, blink back at him all slow and cute. “Show you what, exactly?”

Hoseok leans back against your vanity and rests his elbows on the tabletop. His tongue darts out to wet his lips before he answers, and the way your hungry eyes follow its path isn’t lost on him. Though he won’t show his cards just yet, he’s dying to give you every sick little thing you want — so long as you open that pretty mouth of yours and speak it into existence.

Until then, he’s prepared to coax it out of you.

“Show me how you want me to touch you.”

Your eyebrows raise. That cotton candy blush sweeps over your cheeks again and it takes a conscious effort not to palm his own dick through his pants. He wonders if you taste like cotton candy, too.

A few moments stagger past while the two of you sit at an impasse, simply staring at one another in tension-riddled silence. He’s determined not to buckle, though that little pout of yours would normally have him on his knees by now. He’ll gladly be your toy any other night of the week, but this time, he’s not backing down.

With a tiny huff, you stand up on wobbly knees. Your arms cross over your stomach as you reach for the hem of your shirt, then you pull them back up slowly, taking your shirt with them. It’s not a sight he’ll ever get tired of — not one he ever takes for granted, either — watching the way your tits bounce when their only covering slips up and away.

When it really comes down to it, though, it’s what comes next that really turns him feral.

Your nimble fingers work out the knotted drawstring at the waistband of your sweatpants; Hoseok is all but drooling with anticipation. No late night photo of your ass could ever replicate the effect that the real thing has on him. There’s no comparison, no substitute. He groans without meaning to when that thick fabric slides down your silky thighs and lands with a muffled sound at your feet.

As he suspected, there’s no black lace to be found underneath. Hoseok feels validated, but more importantly, he feels his dick twitch against the confines of his pants when he sees the faint gloss of arousal on the upper-most part of your inner thighs. He tears his eyes away and follows your legs all the way down when you bend to pull your discarded sweats off your ankles.

He’s not sure if he’s capable of speech, so he doesn’t instruct you further. Instead, he opts to observe with a clenched jaw as you sit down on the edge of your bed. Once your bare ass meets the duvet, you push yourself back until there’s enough room for your legs. Your heels come to rest in front of you, but you keep your knees together — still hiding.

Really, he’s on the brink of begging. Hoseok can’t let it show, though. He fixes his dark-eyed stare on you and smirks, hoping one look is enough to prompt those perfect legs to spread. When they actually do, he swallows down a growl.

Fuck.

Your face and your pussy are tied for first, both the most angelic thing Hoseok’s ever fucking seen. Inside his mouth, he captures his tongue between the tips of his teeth to keep it to himself. There isn’t a part of you he doesn’t want to savor. Nowhere on your body he doesn’t want to nip at, suckle and mark.

Leaning your weight onto one hand, you slide the other down your navel. Then, his eyes follow it as it trails over the soft hair he’s told you a thousand times he doesn’t mind; but which is likely the reason you look so self-conscious now. Your hand stops to rest just above your clit and Hoseok doesn’t know if it’s nerves or showmanship that justifies the pause.

“Go on,” he sounds casual when he says it as if this isn’t killing him any less than it is you. “Prove that you meant what you say.”

Finally. Movement.

The tip of your middle finger dips down between your folds, and Hoseok can hear how thoroughly you’ve drenched yourself. He can hear your little mewls, too, as your fingertip wades through your wet heat, then travels back up to your clit. Slow spirals follow, underscored by breathy moans.

“Shit,” you sigh as your eyes flutter and your head falls back. Is that really all you’ve got to say? You push up slightly onto your heels, swirl your hips in microscopic circles opposite to your finger’s ministrations.

Hoseok knows it’s not enough for you. Your greedy pussy is screaming for more; he hears it loud and clear from his spot several meters away. It begs to be filled, knuckle-deep, and craves teasing pressure at an angle that’s difficult for you to meet on your own. He doesn’t move to help you, though. He just lets you try to mimic the way his longer digits make you feel.

It’s frustrating, sitting there with his hands kept to himself. If he’s not going to wield them against you, his only other instinct is to tend to the painfully hard dick leaking pre-cum inside his boxers. Unfortunately, it’s your touch he wants, not his own. Maybe if he gets you talking, you’ll unravel faster and earn a reward.

“I wanna see you finger-fuck yourself,” Hoseok’s gruff voice surprises you and causes your doe eyes to snap open. They lock in on his face, clearly flustered by his assertiveness. “Stretch that pretty pussy for me, petal. Need to know you can take it when I finally let you have my cock.”

You sound like an angel when you sigh like that. Hoseok grits his teeth and swallows hard. It dawns on him then that he may be torturing himself more than he’s torturing you. Every muscle in his body is threatening to mutiny, but he refuses to indulge their cries to move. Thankfully, you do.

As your finger penetrates your hole for the first time, Hoseok’s can’t decide which sound is his favorite: the moan that starts in the depths of your chest and only builds as it exits your mouth, or the squelch of your cunt as you tease yourself. Maybe it’s the slight squeak of the bed frame when you begin to grind down against your hand, pushing your finger in deeper towards your detonator and increasing the pressure of the heel of your hand against your clit.

You whimper his name and that settles it — that little plea is the best noise he’s ever heard. “H-Hoseok!”

At this point, he’d be quick to soothe you, rush over to gift you that orgasm you’re so desperately chasing. Instead, he stays planted in his seat, tilts his head to the side, and hums fondly, “Yes, petal? You wanna cum?”

He gets an eager, desperate nod in response which is nowhere near good enough. Please just learn your lesson so he can fuck you the way you need to be fucked. Just — “Tell me, then. I’ve read your bark; show me your bite.”

You add a second finger, and your head drops forward. The pace increases and — fuck — you’re gushing. Your arousal catches the light as it drips down the length of your fingers and pools in the palm of your hand.

Please, please, please just say what you need.

“Agh!” Your frustration peaks and you wail, panting. A sheen of sweat breaks out on your forehead, matching the slick on your collarbones. “Want to cum. Fuck, I — ah! — I need to cum so fucking bad, Hoseok, p-please. I want to feel you in my stomach. I — mmnh — need you to fill me.”

Hoseok has options. He could continue to sit there, watching you fall apart, and try not to cream his fucking pants. He could break his cardinal rule and impale you on his dick before making you cum twice first. Or, he could tag you out; take care of you and guide you right off the edge.

He gets to his feet before he even settles on a plan. The distance between you closes quickly, and then he wraps his hand around your straining wrist. You crash back against the mattress with relief washing over your face — and you have no idea what that aid is going to look like. He settles on his knees, one between yours and the other on the outside of your right leg.

“Got you, petal,” Hoseok murmurs.

His left hand cradles the back of your neck and pulls you in for a sloppy kiss. As he does, his right hand slips between your thighs. You moan into his open mouth, and he swallows it. He accepts your tongue without resistance, too; the same way your pussy takes his middle and ring fingers. Thoroughly soaked, he bottoms out quickly at the knuckles.

Immediately, he angles his fingers upright, presses the tips against your g-spot, and sets a punishing pace. The babbling that pulls from you is barely louder than current below, but Hoseok gives credit where it’s due: You cry out, clear as a bell, “G-gonna make me cum all over your fingers. Feel so f-fucking good!”

And you do, hard. Your release spills over his hand and soaks the sheet underneath you as you writhe underneath him.

Hoseok kisses you, deep and desperate, but he can’t stop there. He presses his forehead against yours, looks you dead in the eye, and then he begs, “One more, petal. Gimme one more and then I’ll fuck you stupid, I promise.”

You clench your jaw tightly and nod. Thankfully, you don’t make him wait long. He watches your eyes screw shut, then your mouth fall open. When your second orgasm rips through you, you’re too far gone to make a sound. On otherwise dead air, it’s just the flurry of expletives tumbling out of Hoseok’s mouth and the river he’s fucked out of you.

When the aftershocks eventually peter out, you slump back on top of your doused duvet. You throw an arm over your face as you attempt to catch your breath. While you do, Hoseok’s hand finds a new occupation in caressing the curve of your hip. You can’t see the pride in his smile, but it’s there.

“Don’t think I’ve ever heard you say cum out loud before,” He grins. Your move your arm just slightly, but it’s enough for him to see the one eye you’ve cracked open to glare at him. He gently and repeatedly taps your hip bone with the pad of his thumb until your face dissolves into a hard-fought smile. “Hot as fuck, in case you were wondering.”

You give up your hiding place and let your arm drop down beside you. Better still, you raise an eyebrow and hum, “I wasn’t, but d’you wanna know what I am wondering?”

Hoseok captures your lips in another kiss, though he doesn’t linger the way he wants to. “Sure fuckin’ do,” he says on a weighty exhale. He means it; he’s dying to hear whatever it is you’re about to say.

It’s difficult with the way you’ve melted into your bed, but you still manage to tilt your head to the side. Though he can’t know for sure, Hoseok suspects that the way your tongue glides over your kiss-bitten lips is payback for the way he’d looked at you earlier. He’s certain that this little tease looks far better on you than on anyone else — himself included.

As you speak, you pinch the hem of his shirt between your thumb and middle finger. You trace the seam, tug it with a force that barely makes the fabric flutter but still threatens to knock him out. Shit, the toll you take on him when you use his own actions against him…

“Tell me why you’re not naked yet, Hoseok,” you drawl, letting the last syllable click in your mouth. The wicked glint in your eyes makes his dick twitch; he knows you felt it jump on the top of your thigh. “You gonna fuck me stupid, or are you a liar, too?”

In a frenzy, he grabs both sides of your face and kisses you hard. You open your mouth against his, keening as he licks into your mouth. It’s now that he realizes he was right about something else, too: there’s a faint taste of kkobuk chips that barely registers when his tongue savors yours.

With a melodramatic gasp, he pulls away in order to point an accusatory finger at you, “I fucking knew it!”

It’s clear by the slight furrow of your brows that you have no idea what he’s talking about. In short order, you ignore the self-satisfied grin he’s wearing. Then, you tangle your fingers in his hair and tug. You pull a growl out of him in the process, “Goddamn it. I love it when you do that.”

“Hoseok!” You whine as your restless hands paw at his still-clothed chest. The pout he loves so much takes up residency on your face, shuts him right up. “Clothes off! Please, please, please — I’m dying here.”

He, a bastard, blinks down at you with the most convincing bemusement he can muster at a time like this. He asks, “Dying? For what?”

You don’t bother to respond with words this time. Lips pursed with effort, you wrap your arms around him tight and pull him all the way down on top of you. Undeterred by the weight of his body on yours, your unchecked arousal empowers you to roll until you’ve got him pinned on his back beneath you.

That look in your eyes — that feral one, where your pupils swallow up your irises — tells him everything he needs to know. He lets your rabid hands rip his shirt over his head; his hands drop down until his thumbs hook under the waistbands of his joggers and boxers in tandem. Before he can begin to tug them down, you swat his hands away and take over.

“Shit,” he hums, impressed, “Did I awaken something in you, petal?”

You shoot him a smirk and the way his unrestrained dick leaps at the sight of you makes Hoseok consider the possibility that you’re telekinetic. Amusement clear on your face, you lift a hand to run the top of your index finger along the vein trailing down his length. You shrug, suddenly nonchalant, “You wanna sit here and discuss it, or do you wanna feel that cock twitch inside of me?”

Oh, fuck.

Now unspeakably eager, Hoseok sits up until he’s face to face with you. “Turn around,” he instructs, and you listen.

Once you’re on your knees with your back to him, you lean forward and stretch your arms out on the mattress in front of you. As you wait, head down and perfect ass up, Hoseok is momentarily hypnotized by the subtle way you swivel your hips. The way your cheeks jiggle, even with the slightest shift.

“Liar and a tease,” he sucks his teeth. “You really wanna be my downfall, don’t you, petal?”

You bend your neck to look over your shoulder at him, knowing full well that he dies a thousand times whenever you stare up at him from under your lashes like that. Jesus Christ, you’re a dream. He’d pinch himself, but he doesn’t have the time; you reach back between your spread legs and take his dick in your hand.

Rolling your wrist, you work his tip at a goddamn snail’s pace like you want him to drop dead behind you. He’s unable to keep from groaning, and he can’t stop his hips from rutting forward into your fist, either. You do him the favor of squeezing the crown tighter when you finally do let him go, hand sticky with pre-cum.

“Well then,” you echo his earlier statement with that familiar twinkling innocence in your eyes, “Show me how good I can have it.”

Part of Hoseok is stalling because he knows that he won’t last long. He’s been so impossibly hard for so long now, the way you grip him will have him blacked out and drooling in a matter of minutes. However, the rules he’s made for himself dictate that you have to finish three times before he gets to. And so, with that perverted sense of duty in mind, his hand picks up where yours left off.

You both groan when his tip slides through your folds — goddamn, he wants to drown in you later — but he goes mute the second he finally enters you.

“Oh, fuck. How are you thicker than last time?” you croak because you know his ego hasn’t hit the ceiling yet. Your heads slumps down towards your elbows like you’re dead already, halfway to buried in a mess of sheets. “Swear to God, I’ll get used to this someday.”

Hoseok grins even though you can’t see him do it. The pads of his thumbs find the Venus dimples sitting pretty above your ass. It’s arrogant — he knows this — but he likes to think they were made for him, placed intentionally where his hands can find them when he gets ahold of you.

Rubbing spirals at the base of your spine, he calls, “All good, petal?”

“Fuck me,” you answer.

And he does.

The first thrust tests the waters to make sure you’re actually able to comfortably take him and it’s not simply wishful thinking on your part. You’re impatient, though, and you push your hips back when his second thrust snaps forward. For a moment, Hoseok fears he’s gone blind. Thankfully, it’s temporary; just the haze that overtakes his fucked-out brain whenever he feels your velvet walls squeezing the life out of him.

You match his movements every time he grinds himself into you. Either you’re as desperate as he is to cum, or you know his unspoken rule and intend to kamikaze dive off the edge with him in tow.

Whatever your motivation is, he can’t keep his train of thought on track — not with the way your slick has coated his balls, which slap sickly against your clit when he drives himself into you; not with the sight of your ass bouncing so deliciously against his pelvis, more so the harder he fucks you.

“Thrust are getting a little sloppy there, Hoseok,” you lilt through gritted teeth. Your teasing is interrupted by a breathless moan, but you still persist, “You about to cum, baby?”

He’s holding on for dear life — to your hips, to the last shred of his resolve. He is going to cum, but not before you do.

“N-no. Could do this all night.”

You shriek when his fingers dig deeper into your doughy flesh and slam you down onto his cock; the force of your thighs colliding with his leaves him tingling.

Two things happen in such quick succession that Hoseok doesn’t have time to process them. There’s you, creaming on his cock with a wail. Then there’s you calling him a liar as your cunt flutters around him, forcing him to empty himself completely with a toe-curling groan.

Hoseok collapses in a heap behind you when he finally finds the strength to pull his still-twitching dick out of your pussy. A potent mix of your joint release spills out of you in his absence; he’s only graced with the sight of it in the split-second before you turn around and crawl back over to him. Unceremoniously, you drop yourself into the space next to him and rest your head on his heaving chest.

“So,” he sighs, thoroughly blissed. He glances down his nose at you as he gently unsticks strands of your hair from the layer of sweat on his chest. “What did we learn about mouths writing checks?”

You try to hide your smile when you roll your eyes up at him. You sound exhausted but thoroughly amused when you respond, “Ass better be able to cash them.”

Hoseok pats your ass cheek affectionately, gives it a light squeeze for good measure. “Damn straight, petal.”

[phoenix-is-the-hottest-thing]

Some people need to understand queer coding opens character identities and relationships up to a solid queer interpretation, but that doesn’t equal “this character 100% fits my headcanon and if you disagree you’re a [REDACTED]”

From a literary analysis perspective, as long as your interpretation is reasonably evidence-based it’s valid. As this is fandom, I’d add “sincere” to that since unlike an academic setting we get bad faith actors but that’s it.

So, to have a valid “interpretation” you have to do the work in good faith, and you have to be able point at the text to support your interpretation. If you can’t, or don’t want to, that’s a headcanon, and it’s totally fine.

“But this character is a lesbian she likes a girl!” There’s more to queerness than straight and gay. You could reasonably interpret a girl who likes another girl as plenty of different things:

Lesbian

Bi

Ace/aro and something else

Straight and closeted trans

Straight and lover is closeted trans

And so on.

So when you have an interpretation, someone might tell you, “I think this other thing.” The polite way to handle this if you don’t like it is to say “that’s so cool we can see different things in the ambiguity of art”. Maybe blocking each other if you dislike their interpretation that much.

That’s of course unless you both want a debate to further refine your understanding of the text or just like to argue or whatever. Which is fine! As long as it’s not overly bitter or whatever, it’s fun to discuss.

“So how do I know which interpretation is more canon than another?”

See, that’s the thing, you can’t. Canon is kind of shaky in the first place. The canon is just what’s written that’s recognized as true/correct text, not the way to understand it (and not what the author says is true, some people take Word of God as canon because it allows the following of one concrete interpretation instead of acknowledging multiple, but strictly speaking it is not). You can only interpret the canon.

For example, 4-komas bonuses of serialized manga are usually non-canon because they are jokes and not meant to be taken seriously as a part of the story’s text. That’s what canon actually is for, originally it’s to talk about which books are genuinely part of the Bible and which are to be deemed offshoots that shouldn’t be taken as a Catholic Church-endorsed religious text.

I guess that’s what gets people confused? That there’s no actual truth to imagined worlds, only what happens in the eyes of the beholder when they interact with art?

Because that’s what it means, canon often has nothing to do with who’s “actually a lesbian” short of them saying it directly. An onscreen wedding is said to “make a couple canon” precisely because there’s only so many ways you can interpret a wedding, but all that means is that the text says they’re together at a point in time. One way I can think of having a canon sexuality would be a canonical character sheet, or an omniscient narrator saying so, but everything less is basically an interpretation.

Note that interpretation obviousness can go from “that’s a stretch but I like it”, to “you only need eyes to see it”, they’re both still interpreting. Even a character talking sexuality technically only makes canon that they’re willing to say so, but that’s when critical thinking comes in.

If you hear a character say “I’m a married lesbian” and think “they’re just confused” with no evidence, you look like an idiot. You absolutely can argue which interpretation is more valid or likely by pointing out inconsistencies, stretched evidence, or that one interpretation has a higher volume of evidence/etc. This is how you avoid relativism and “nothing the text says matters” trolls.

Occam’s Razor is another way you might be tempted to try and determine whose thesis is stronger. This technique works through figuring out which interpretation requires the least amount of assumptions (saying something arbitrary is true as a basis) but it doesn’t make anything canon, or more interesting, it’s not a concrete sign of superiority. Just means it has stronger fondations.

However… your interpretation being stronger, more popular, better worded etc. or you thinking someone else’s is immoral, stupid, etc. doesn’t give you license to be a bully, to call people names, to dox them, dig up dirt to make them look worse, and so on and so forth. Thinking you’re right and they’re wrong does not make you above basic respect, politeness, or consequences. You’re not better than everyone else.

As a child, I used to think I was always right because I was logical, and I clearly made logical sense so there was no way for there to be a logical reasoning that arrived at a different conclusion. (Newsflash: Child me was very wrong! Sometimes multiple things can be equally valid! And even if they were not equal, that didn’t give me license to deride people publicly!)

Queer coding is by its nature interpretative. Coding is the author leaving hints about their characters by using a “code”. Some hints, almost everyone in your section of fandom might have the exact same interpretation about. Some hints might be dead obvious. Some hints might leave you overjoyed. Some hints you might ignore because they make you uncomfortable.

Some people will disagree with you about how they interpret the coding, or might even just state that they believe people have a right to interpret the canon however they want, even in ways you don’t like. That is normal. That is not a threat to your interpretation.

Don’t be a petty cunt about it.

Essentially,

[i-heart-hxh]

What do you think Killua's training consisted of? And you think he got the same amount of torture training as his siblings? I'm a little confused because It's hard to think of how the Zoldyck family would set up their assassin training. Thanks!

Hello! This is another of those Zoldyck questions where canon doesn't give us the clearest answers, but I'll put together what I can and try to make reasonable guesses with the rest! A lot of it remains mysterious, and I don't think it's likely we'll get significantly more clarity as the series goes, though I certainly could be wrong.

First off, my assumption is that there's a whole complicated process that the Zoldyck kids go through in their training, most likely something that's been refined for generations. If you look at how complicated even the system with the butlers is (the Zoldycks even have a school for butlers on their property!) for instance, I can only imagine how thoroughly set up and well thought out the training is for the kids. However, I'm guessing this is something that can be adjusted to account for individual differences, and it may involve trial and error as well.

(One of my reasons for saying this is it feels to me like Illumi and Milluki were treated somewhat differently--I think it's possible Illumi didn't turn out how they hoped with extremely strict training as the eldest child, and it might have messed him up, and then they ended up being "too lax" on Milluki after that. You could argue it's just personality differences, but to me they feel like the results of too strict/not strict enough upbringing in a way that may be intentional.)

We know that Killua learned and mastered darts as part of his training. The kids are likely taught skills like this that will apply to assassination techniques and train their coordination/depth perception/etc., probably as a lead-up to more intensive/hands on training.

We also know Killua has been taught to resist poison and electricity. With the poisons, I think they were added to their foods in small increments that increased over time, and with the electricity it was probably similar in the sense that they were shocked more and more intensely over time until they had a higher tolerance for it. This probably applied to other things as well--pain tolerance as a whole, going without sleep, other forms of tolerance (heat, cold, holding their breath, just off the top of my head?) that might be useful as assassins.

I'm sure there was extensive physical training of multiple kinds, including training with weights similar to what we saw in the butlers' quarters perhaps, and probably some sort of schooling on the family history, physiology of the human body, and assassination techniques, among other subjects. I'm sure the kids receive a thorough education, both in the assassin sense and in general.

We also know Killua was at Heavens Arena for two years, from ages 6 to 8, and he was left without any money. It's actually surprising to me that the assumed heir of the family (if he was deemed such by then, we don't know that for sure) was left there, but if I were to guess probably Gotoh or someone accompanied him, though canon doesn't say anything about this. (Or at the very least someone must have been tailing him/monitoring him without his awareness, there's no way they weren't keeping an eye on him.)

It's disturbing to think about, but I wonder if the Zoldycks would somehow obtain people that they could sacrifice to training the kids early on in their training process. Maybe death row inmates or something? We've seen a lot of questionable human rights in the HxH world, so it wouldn't surprise me. We also know for instance that love affairs between the butlers are punishable by death, so things like that could potentially be a source of people for the kids to learn on...

I assume after a certain point in their training/at a certain age, the kids would move on to actually taking on lower rank assassination jobs and learn directly through that. Canon has mentioned a few times that Killua has killed a fairly large number of people (though no actual numbers are given) and he refers to himself as a professional assassin, so maybe this started after he got back from Heavens Arena or something like that?

There also must be a timeline for when the kids start to learn nen as well. We know Killua hasn't learned about nen by the time he rebels and escapes, so it's possibly something the kids learn when they're a bit older, perhaps once the family deems that they've mastered the other aspects of the training. They may have been holding off on teaching Killua about nen to keep him under control as well, with the help of Illumi's needle.

There does seem to be a certain level of favoritism towards Killua in the Zoldyck family due to his talents. We know he's favored to some degree by at least Silva, Kikyo, and Zeno, and he receives preferential treatment from them. Zeno in particular is described as being soft towards him (we see this within the series itself as well), and Zeno employs Gotoh and Canary, who are the only butlers Killua truly trusts.

Again, there's no way to know when Killua was deemed the heir, but I do assume he was given more attention than the rest of his siblings as a result. I can't decide if his position in the family means he would have gotten stricter or less strict training overall, more likely a mixture of both. On one hand, he was likely held to a higher standard, and on the other hand, it was probably easier for him to meet those standards, so they may not have had to push him as hard. His cockiness and behavior at the beginning of the series makes me think he was praised a lot, and he was used to succeeding and being superior to his siblings. Of course, regardless his upbringing was clearly very traumatic and difficult for him.

I hope this is helpful! A lot of it is guesses, but I think they're at least educated guesses based off canon. Even though it's left vague, there's still a lot to this topic, so I may have overlooked some aspects, but I did my best to give a thorough response within reason. If anyone thinks of things to add on, feel free. Thanks for asking!

[louisisalarrie]

How can there be a bbg ending? Like Louis just says ‘oh btw he’s not mine’

if u are a PR member from Louis’ team, please listen carefully, because there are a couple of ways to end it, and I will be expecting my pay check asap thank youuuuuu.

Simon Jones, or whoever you may be, welcome to the show!

(these are the sad endings where we feel bad for Louis and boost his image to the gp as a good guy):

1. fight ending in paternity test (a number of different arguments could be used for this) and then bam turns out B has been using him for money like her ex said she would do to Louis and slept with multiple people around that time. Now, you may be thinking “oh but L has publicly treated this kid like his own and he’s a nice guy surely he’d still want to be in this kid’s life” and Louis would make a statement like “if F wants me to be there still as a person in his life I will be but that’s up to him. Please respect their privacy” but we never end up seeing any more photos of them etc., so it’s essentially over. Oldest trick in the book. He’ll come out looking squeaky clean. I kinda think that’s why they didn’t do a paternity test sooner. It’s the last trick up their sleeve to end it when they were ready.

2. Louis is like “I’ve known for a while he’s not mine, but I didn’t want to announce to the world because I still care about him and it would cause a fiasco for him and B from the fans, but B and I think it’s time and I am going to take a step back from his life to not put him in the spotlight any further. Pls respect their privacy” so he looks like he’s lied for a little bit, but “known for a while” would be post AOTV, and he was just worried about his kid dealing with the media and fans and the onslaught that would bring. What a good and caring guy who’s looking out for a kid that’s not even his! Wow.

Those are just 2 that come to the top of my head. There would need to be further planning and more detail, but you get the gist. Those 2 remove his paternity completely. NOW these theories also heavily depend on the way larry wanna come out. Is it gonna be a shock tell all? Because in that case, the above doesn’t matter. Or is it going to be coming out separately and then getting together? Is it going to be coming out together and saying it’s a new thing and they “reconnected”? Well, that I don’t know. But the two above still confirm that Louis is, or was, into women and didn’t, or still doesn’t, define himself as gay. So that’s also a spanner in the works which again, I don’t entirely know the identity he aligns with, but I lean towards gay over ever being bi etc. because of his interactions with women.

So if we want to look at ways where he looks like the good guy (also not sad in a club but I guess maybe a bit??) and entirely remove him from ever being near a vagina, this is my main one:

1. Louis was a surrogate for B at the time as she is a close friend and was in a space to have a baby and he was happy to do it because he loves kids and wanted one of his own but he’s gay so he can’t, so it worked out well. The media took things out of perspective and blew it up into something different than what it was, but they ran with it because he wasn’t ready to come out. And wow… what a generous and loving guy! He loves that kid and he’s still a dad, he’s lied to us but it’s just because he was scared to come out, that’s truly both a heartbreaking and heartwarming story. (The timeline of bbg is messy as it is, so this would need some refining to work without looking suspicious).

So, how do we make him not a dad and ALSO never been into women? Well… a tell all is gonna be the best way to do this, exposing the stunts. But legally, a huge process (unless they say fuck it and cop whatever the repercussions may be). But if we’re doing a slow coming out, I think he’s gonna kind of have to be F’s dad unless it’s a paternity test or a tell all. He’s in too deep with AOTV and the Instagram posts and his family and shit. I don’t think we can have 100% gay and 100% not a dad without it being truly bizarre for the gp to swallow.

Idk im very tired but you can also go to my bbg tag and just have a sift through where I talk about this a bit more in depth.

[giddlywinks]

An Evangelical clown troupe could convince anyone to support genocide, and y'all could not even convince yourselves to get off your phones long enough to see that you MUST rectify your communication towards conservatives! You have to convince them of you through empathy and accesible communication! They hate you, and they are the majority. You really thought saying you hate them, think they're idiots, or delusional over and over to have that thrown in their face for almost a decade would make them say you were right? And CHANGE their minds???

And although many of you would like to believe your common sense makes you superior, it doesn't! You are just as uneducated as them. Do you know how insurance companies work? The stock market? The FDA? FEMA? The Fed Reserve? Crypto? International history and US Politics? The way local governments work? Etc. No, you don't, but you believe that pretending you do, while someone whom you've never met, from a pool of options you didn't choose, advocates for you about those issues, is going to produce the outcome you would like. You are not wise! You are just as exploited by your own willingness to be both angry and uninvolved.

You need to heal your trauma and communication with those who are within your network to be able to reach them in their confusion, fear, and distrust. Anger and words don't produce solidarity! Education, literal support for others, refining communication to be accessible and to be logically sound is what convinces others that your ideas are worth their time. That posturing of pseudo-superiority, both intellectual and moral, while handing the left's ass to the mouth of a shark, is why the tide has shifted devastatingly.

Do y'all know who Audre Lorde is? The master's tools of fearmongering and anger were the ONLY platform of the Democratic campaign before even Harris. Why did you all believe that you could sit at home hating and shitting on millions of people, somehow be better than them, and then be able to convince them they need to make the choice you would make in an election they barely understand in most of the geography of this country! You have got to get it through your mind that they are the majority and they always have been.

Stop being assholes to assholes like that convinces everyone to be and act differently or better. Stop wasting time on the bullshit of everything needing to be correct or appropriate and start being effective instead! It's civil disobedience, not "look at us and know we are right." Stop thinking you can only do a little march, an emotional social media post, or any other out-of-touch political action a couple times every year and change the world. You can't! Start taking actual political action on personal and community levels to dismantle the systems that privelege you in some convenient areas and plot your death in others. Stop thinking you just don't know how to get involved. Educate yourselves and make it up! Stop giving people/corporations your money when they hate you. Stop making the hatred for the left grow larger. Stop wasting your time in fear and excuses while you're wiped off the map.

This happened twice because none of you learned a thing! Grassroots movements in solidarity with rural communities NOW NOW NOW!

I wrote multiple versions of this post that Tumblr kept saying failed to post, and I clarified in those, but I'll do so here, too. It's important. I want to clarify that my criticism is towards the hypocrisy of the bitter left to project blame and assume that's a win for progress. It's not a win for anyone. My criticism is NOT directed towards the countless, tireless, emotionally brutalized, progressive activists who desperately tried to bridge solidarity while working within the awful, unstoppable fact that harm reduction is all we can do now.

[shamebats]

If anyone wants to see a different take on AI use in art by a professional artist who's personally using it for their work, I recommend this Reddit thread:

Text copied under read more:

"I've been a professional artist and illustrator for decades. Like most artists, I was concerned when AI image generators hit the scene. But since they sucked at first, I wasn't all that worried... but then they started to get much better, really fast. I figured I should look a bit closer to see if I should be worried.

What I found was that they really are a powerful tool if used creatively, but they are *nowhere near* a replacement for human artists. They don't understand context, they spit out a lot of garbage that needs a ton of work to refine into something useful, and you still need an artist's eye to know how to direct them to make anything that's actually good. This is why you see so many people complaining about all the bad AI art. Because there really is a lot of bad AI art out there. The good AI art? People don't even know it's AI in many cases.

But as an artist who has been around since before the days of computer art, I have had to adapt to many changes. I adapted to using a computer to make my illustrations to keep up with the times. I learned to use Photoshop. I learned to use Blender (although admittedly not very well). I see this as necessary in a world where technology is constantly evolving; you need to evolve and adapt with the tech, or you will get left behind. So naturally I looked into ways to use AI generators to help in my work flow.

I started out by using it to create textures. One thing I have always done is use a blend of photo textures in my digital paintings to create visual noise and interest. It's a great technique that's been around for years. Being able to generate my own textures with AI means that I can get exactly the texture I want, much quicker than looking through stock images or going out with a camera trying to find new textures.

As AI image generators improved, and as my prompt skills improved, I started using them to generate thumbnail images to work off of, and to generate models to use as reference, etc.

I have always been very open with my clients about my work flow, and I've never had a problem with that. If I have a client who is opposed to my use of AI, then I don't use it when working for that client. No big deal. I have some clients who actually prefer that I use AI in my work flow, as it helps smooth the process along, gives me more flexibility, and they believe that the end product can be better. Again, I'm happy to accommodate.

Well I had one such client hire me to do a book cover. They suggested I use AI to help because the cover included multiple human figures, and without AI I would have to get some very specific photo references which would cost a lot of time and money. The whole image was completely created by myself, a product of my own mind, but there were some AI elements remaining in the final image.

The client was very happy with the end result. The author of the book was especially excited. They shared it with their audience and they got a ton of positive feedback. No negative feedback at all. Just another job well done then, right?

Well, no. Apparently another artist who also does book covers decided to run it through AIorNot and it came back saying it was likely AI generated. Well, of course it did. If you so much as look at AI while creating an image, AIorNot will say that the whole thing was made by AI.

And often even if you don't.

It will say that my old abstract acrylic paintings are AI generated more often than not. That software is seriously flawed. But no matter, as in this case, I actually did use AI elements in the illustration, and my client was well aware of this. No big deal.

Well, no, it turns out that it *was* a big deal. This artist contacted the book's author who, apparently, had not been made aware that I would be using AI in my work flow on this piece. It turns out that this author is extremely anti-AI, not just for images, but in general. For him it is a moral issue, and anyone who uses AI is not fit to be employed.

My client, the publisher, explained to him that I made the image, but only used AI elements as part of the process, but the author wasn't having it. They refused not only to use the cover, but refused to allow me to paint a new cover without the AI elements in it. In fact they strongly pressured the publisher to cut off all ties with me. The publisher obviously wasn't going to do this, as they are very happy with the work I do. In fact they still paid me for the cover art, even though they can't use it now, because they loved the cover and I did the work they asked of me.

But still, the publisher had no choice but to pull the cover art.

The author put out a social media post about it, essentially accusing me of being dishonest. People are jumping on the bandwagon, calling me an art thief, telling him how morally superior he is, etc. It's a truly nauseating display. This is not a matter of creative differences to these people; it's about good vs. evil. And because I dared to try and stay relevant in a changing world, I apparently picked the side of evil. And there is no arguing with them about it being art theft. They have no idea how these generators work, and they don't actually want to know, or they wouldn't keep pushing that obvious falsehood.

I have reached the frightening conclusion that if AI generators don't put artists out of work, then they may very likely do it to themselves when the community implodes. The way I see it, you can either try to stay competitive, or you can choose to be a Luddite and fall behind, because AI image generators aren't going away. They simply aren't. And in a few years, only the zealots will remain, beating their drums in a small echo chamber where only other zealots will hear them, because everybody else will be over it and bored sick of the drama. In the meanwhile, they are only making it more difficult for artists to stay employed in this new world with AI generators, by punishing those who try to adapt!

Any artist who runs art through an AI image detector, which actually uses AI to operate, is committing extreme hypocrisy.

The irony is completely lost on them, that due to their panic about AI potentially putting artists out of work, they themselves are using AI to track down and punish artists by threatening their livelihood.

AI will put artists out of work, because artists are making it happen.

So now, my client is in a bit of a panic and adding a disclaimer that relevant covers are made with AI on all the Amazon links because, even though Amazon claims that no such disclaimer is needed in cases where AI is merely used as an assist, he is worried that people will complain about them, and they could lose their Amazon affiliate shop, which would be death to their company. So even the images that merely had a texture overlay somewhere on it now have to be labeled as being ENTIRELY GENERATED BY AI. Even though according to Amazon's own terms they were in full compliance already. And the issue there is that if an Amazon affiliate has too many products which are listed as made by AI, apparently (I'm not sure exactly) they get put in a different category or something. So even though Amazon claims that AI assistance and editing is fine in their rules, in actual practice it is not. You can't take that chance because of the witch hunt that is happening right now.

And I'm still perfectly happy to work with or without AI. I have done without it for many years. But my clients still want me to use it, because they also don't want to fall behind. So that puts me in a difficult position of feeling like I need to choose a side on an issue that I don't even think should be an issue in the first place.

TL/DR: AI image detectors, which use AI to function, are being used by artists to track down other artists and endanger their jobs. And I really hate this stupid war."

[sapphire-weapon]

i have a question if it's not much of a bother but I remember way back when you answered an anon and explained a bit about the dev teams that work on RE.

Like the K2, M2 thing ?

You said they all work separately but the entire time ive been wondering how that exactly works, bc wouldn't capcom still have supervision over it? Or like the main division for it ? So that their plans can align?

So when division one says they have plans to make something (like aeon ) can't they/capcom just communicate with the other studios to make that happen

Sorry if it doesnt make sense what Im trying to say , but Google hasn't helped

um, so

That's not really how RE's dev works?

There is no "plan." There never has been. There never will be. That's why you can't take anything said outside of the games as canon. It's not like there's some encyclopedia of canon that Capcom keeps around and references when they make games. There's not a narrative roadmap. That's why RE's story changes direction so dramatically at different points of the series, and that's why so many characters and hanging plot threads just get dropped and are never picked back up again.

To my understanding, this is a general idea of how RE's dev works in most cases:

Step One: Capcom corporate executives (along with their investors) decide that they're going to make an RE game to release in X fiscal year in order to boost profits, and they hammer out the scope, scale, size, and budget of the project -- as well as determining how big/important the title will be and what systems it'll release on

Step Two: Capcom execs put a team together to helm the project

Step Three: those team leaders (the producer, the director, etc) refine the idea brought down by corporate into something that's actually buildable and then playable as a game

Step Four: the actual developers on the team get to work building the project laid out by the leaders in step three, following the direction and roadmap that those leaders finalized

Capcom Division 1 is the name of the giant pool of developers that work on mainline RE titles. There are enough devs in this pool that they can be split up into different teams so that Division 1 can be working on multiple projects at the same time -- and then, when one project is complete, the devs who worked on that now-completed project move over to a different team to help finish up whatever that other team is working on. For example, when RE8 went gold, the RE8 developers then switched over to help finish RE4make. We'll talk about this more a little bit later, but this is possible because they're all Capcom Division 1 devs; they're all familiar with the series, the engine, the tools, etc etc -- and they're all on the same payroll.

But Capcom Division 1, while huge, is still a limited number of devs. This crew can only be working on so many projects at once. And since game development is an average of 4-6 years, if Capcom corporate wants to release an RE game annually, there just simply aren't enough developers in Division 1 to meet that timeframe.

So they outsource the projects to other studios that Capcom does not own (as is the definition of "outsource").

Enter K-2 and M-2.

These are independent game studios that get contracted by Capcom to work on Capcom titles. They act like any other artist who gets a contract. They're not Capcom employees; they're just being paid by Capcom to work on a specific project. And once that project is finished, they will go back to being independent.

So, in these cases, step one is still the same. But then step two becomes "determine a liaison between Capcom and the contracted studio." And then steps 3-5 happen within the contracted studio. The liaison is there to just make sure that the studio stays within the parameters that Capcom corporate set out.

All RE projects, regardless of whether they're being developed in-house by Division 1 or if they're being contracted out to an independent studio, give the bulk of the creative liberty and development to the project leads of whatever studio is developing the game.

So, in other words: When an RE game gets made, the director and the producer have full creative liberty to do whatever they want with the title and are not beholden to any other creative vision from any other director or producer to have ever worked on Resident Evil.

Tl;dr: The director and the producer can do whatever they want.

This is why a lot of RE's story has been kind of incongruous and incoherent ever since Shinji Mikami left Capcom. The original RE1 on PSX was Mikami's pet project. When it became successful and was turned into a series, Mikami was tasked with the oversight of the series from a creative standpoint. It was solely his vision that was being realized.

But Mikami left Capcom after 4. And the story's been a free for all ever since. No one in Capcom has since stepped up to the plate and been able to take Mikami's place as the sole creative visionary director of Resident Evil. So, in the modern era, Capcom allows each project to just sort of... be whatever the fuck the producer and director of that project want it to be.

So, in the case of the current swath of RE remakes...

Resident Evil was in dire straits after RE6 was a monumental failure, and public trust in Capcom was at an all-time low due to other controversies within other projects.

Enter Yoshiaki Hirabayashi.

Hirabayashi wanted to put together a remake of RE2 because fans had been begging for it for well over a decade, and he had worked on the original REmake with Mikami-san himself. So, he felt that an RE2make would be the perfect project for that moment. But he knew that Capcom had said in the past that they would never remake RE2 and had, for a time, considered DSC to be RE2's remake. He was also in hot water at the company because he had been the producer of RE6. So, he took to Facebook and worked out a plan with fans as to what this RE2make would actually look like and be. He did the majority of the pre-production of RE2make himself by doing this.

He then pitched his idea to Capcom corporate, and Capcom was hesitant to greenlight it. In fact, they told him "no" several times. And each time, he went back to Facebook, told fans what corporate said, and they refined the project notes.

When RE2make was finally greenlit, it was considered a massive gamble by Capcom -- so, in order to help maximize profits on this gamble, they also greenlit remakes of 3 and 4, hoping to reuse assets and resources between the projects in order to take in as much money as possible.

Hirabayashi was put in charge of the RE2make project, and RE3make and RE4make were both outsourced to M-2 -- because the rest of Division 1 was working on RE7 and RE8 at the time.

So, Hirabayashi's team was working on RE2make at the same time that M-2 was working on RE3make. These two projects had nothing to do with each other and were being worked on separately by separate teams in separate studios. There was really no communication between them at all other than to share assets back and forth.

M-2, at this time, had the bulk of their devs working on RE3make and a skeleton crew starting on RE4make. But because both titles were being developed by that same studio, those two projects were in communication with each other, and that's why there are nods to RE4 in RE3make.

RE2make went gold, and those devs went to go help finish up RE8. And RE2make turned out to be incredibly successful.

RE3make went gold, and those devs went on to beef up production on RE4make.

But then RE3make performed poorly and wasn't received well by fans.

Capcom knew that they couldn't allow RE4make to be a failure in the same way. Fucking up an RE4make would put them right back in the hole in terms of customer trust and satisfaction just due to RE4OG's legacy. But they were also kind of stuck, because the team that had put out the massively successful RE2make was now tied up in RE8, and Capcom didn't want to risk that game facing delays.

So, after RE8 went gold -- two years after RE4make started production in earnest at M-2 -- Capcom pulled the project from M-2 and put it back in-house to have its development rebooted and completed by the same team at Division 1 that had developed RE2make.

The reason why there's a coherent narrative and characterization throughline from RE2make to RE4make is not because Capcom had planned it that way. Their initial plans were for those two projects to not be linked at all. The reason why that throughline exists is because both of those games were completed under the direct creative control of Yoshiaki Hirabayashi. That was his doing and his doing alone.

And now, since Hirabayashi's team is working on CXVR, we can expect CXVR to be a direct sequel to RE2make and a direct prequel to RE4make -- but, again, that's only because Hirabayashi is at the head of it. He has a vision that he is seeing realized. It's not Capcom's vision. It's his.

Normally, when a team sets out to work on an RE game, the only reference they use is the series of games that came before the one they're working on now -- and, sometimes, they don't even use that. Sometimes, they just don't give a shit. That's why Steve Burnside never reappeared in the series. That's why characters like Sheva and Helena will never return. That's why RE9 is now allegedly ignoring the Blue Umbrella storyline.

There is no coherent vision for RE at Capcom. There hasn't been since Shinji Mikami left. There is only the vision of the individual directors and producers at the head of the teams that build the games.

We are incredibly lucky that Hirabayashi has been able to do RE2make, CVXR, and RE4make. This will likely be a trilogy that will be the most coherent and consistent narrative that RE has ever seen between titles. But it will be the exception, not the rule.

So now, with RE0make being developed by M-2 and K-2 in tandem, they are free to do their own thing. They are not bound by Hirabayashi's vision. RE0make will be whatever the fuck RE0make will be, because Capcom corporate believes in giving the project director and producer creative control of whatever they're building.

It is entirely possible that the REmake series goes back on the retcon of aeon if RE6make falls into the hands of someone who is not Yoshiaki Hirabayashi. (But, if I had to guess, Hirabayashi is going to be the one to get forced into that project eventually -- because, apparently, no one else wants to do it, and Hirabayashi already has a proven track record of banger REmakes under his belt. All of the ones worth talking about have his fingerprints on them.)

But just keep this in mind as the remake series moves forward.

I'm sorry for the huge wall of text. I know you probably thought that you were asking a simple question. But there are a lot of moving parts to this, and it's important to understand all of them in order to understand the answer to your question.

[hypnofantasma]

"Where's the Ulterior Spectacle remake?"

I know i've gotten this a ton of times, and seeing how it's been a couple years since i said it'd exist, i decided i'd give all of my reasons why it's taking So Damn Long. hopefully, this'll reduce the amount of... hate? judgement?? i keep getting regarding this song.

1) The only reason I SHOULD be giving: the simple fact that I am working on an immense universe

I'm not working on JUST Stars Below, and even THEN, a remake has the lowest priority of all when it comes to new Stars Below songs, character development, design solidification, etc. I'd rather solidify the world and story FIRST before making a remake that might swiftly become outdated once again if I rush it. This is also why songs IN GENERAL have been slow; I'm refining the story. It's a HUGE WIP.

I'm not a company, I'm One Single Person with OCs on the internet. If I don't work on one singular aspect, I'm sorry? I guess? That leads into...

2) I'm so immensely stressed at the moment that I'm having physical health issues and can't reliably/consistently work on things

Like I still CAN draw, but completed PVs are so high-effort (and risk), low-reward for me right now that I have to make smaller things. That's why I'm focusing on Artfight for now. On top of that, I'm gonna try to get another term of college this year so I can accomplish something tangible in my life and get a degree. (College is ALSO why stuff's been slow)

If you want to know WHAT my health issues are, all you need to know is that I've got visible ribs yet my weight is constantly depleting.

3) People keep reuploading my stuff

People keep taking things from my Discord server and reuploading them on sites like Youtube. If I don't upload something, I do not want it uploaded, plain and simple. No, I am not free game just because I'm on the internet. I'm just an independent artist and not a company, and this is breaking several boundaries of mine.

If you claim it's "out of fan love" or "giving me free promotion", it doesn't change the fact it makes me (and even my community) exceedingly uncomfortable. The big one being reuploaded was Tundra Lens, and while I did make it public again, it was solely to appease the reuploaders. Please don't reupload my stuff.

It's killing my motivation and drive for the Ulterior Spectacle remake.

4) Multiple abusers in my life

I won't dive into this one but just know that, behind the scenes, I have been treated like a goddamn ragdoll. I have been treated like an object by both strangers and people extremely close to me, and I'm drained, man.

These events have been adding to my current status of being physically ill and chronically fatigued.

5) I am currently being stalked by a group who hates me and intentionally mocks me

A certain group of individuals (who will remain unnamed) are currently stalking me, gathering my creations, and making a complete mockery of a project that intends to break all of the universal rules I have crafted. I don't mind if you don't know everything about my universe; it's a lot, after all, and I'm more than happy to educate.

However, this group intends on making a complete mockery of not only my universe but also my art. It is out of malice and not parody. Due to this, I'm almost too scared to post anything, really. I don't want this to stop me, but damn it does it sting. I'll ride this out with god-rivaling perseverance if I have to.

Now....

While all of this is there, I'll also say the remake IS NOT cancelled. I'll be dead before it's cancelled. But I just wanted to give some perspective a little bit, and maybe- if you're someone mad about the lack of the remake so far- you'll understand why a little more.

Just please respect my boundaries for things, don't drum up drama with me, and leave me in peace. That's all I ask. One day this song'll be completed, and it'll be a day where I'm no longer treated as some soulless machine.

Thank you.

[cyberpawn]

VOICE HC / MEME

bold what applies to your muse, italicize situational ones. feel free to add your own suggestions and carry it on.

► ACCENT  

“country” │ “backwoods” │ “sailor” │ “upper class” │ “city slicker” | foreign speaker │ refined  

► ELOQUENCE

educated │self-taught | uneducated | doesn’t use conjunctions │ shortens words | omits entire words on occasion | mixes up words │ just makes up their own words! │ archaic english │ dependent on mood or setting | doesn’t use contractions

► TONE

loud │ soft │ room volume │ high pitched │ low pitched │seductive │velvety │ speech impediment │ abrasive │ gruff │ shrill │ booming │ matter-of-fact │ toneless │ husky │gravelly │ breathy │ nasal │ barking │ chatty │ condescending │ musical │ suave │ world-weary │ brash │ authoritative

► HABITS

refers to self in third person│ incorporates different languages/terms/sayings │ uses gender-specific terms │ adapts to audience │ changes pitch around animals or children │ shifts tone when lying │ gives others nicknames │ uses terms of respect towards others

► OTHER BITS

It takes a lot of effort for Vale to be quiet, so they're shouting a lot without even knowing it. They speak!!! Like everything!! Is really important!!!! And!!! THIS!!!!

Vale loves making shit up!! They'll make up words to use, like "badassitude", "buttfuckingest", "gobbledygook", etc!

Vale shortens most o' their words 'f they can! S'kinda also a lot of slurrin' words together cuz' they talk fast so at times it can turn into somethin' likethiswhich'sreallyhardt'follow.

Vale can speak multiple languages, so sometimes they'll incorporate multicultural amounts of swears into a situation if Vale deems it necessary.

They project a lot, so they're talking with their chest voice (or at least trying to!)

Growing up in Night City (LA in their Modern Verse), it's almost expected that Vale would pick up the local accent, but!! That's a fun reminder that Vale scripted most of their dialect after kaiju movies, cartoons, and fast-paced rock'n'roll music! Vale talks fast because pretty much everything they took in as a kid WAS FAST!!!

You're honestly very unlikely to hear Vale call someone Sir or Ma'am/Madam.

► VOICE CLAIM REFERENCE:

If you've got tenure here at cyberpawn.tumblr.com, something you may know is that I pretty much just grab a lot of random voice clips that sound like Vale and point at it and go "THAT'S VALE", so there's not a solid voice claim for Vale. BUT!!! Max Mittelman's performance as Red XIII hits hard and it's so funny to hear the energy!! That's Vale!!!!!

tagged by: @prvtocol tagging: BE GAY DO CRIME SPEAK STEAL THIS

[silverchronicler]

Prime Report for TennoCon (July) 2024 - SPECIAL EDITION

hey what the fuck

Prime Access

SO some stuff happened at TennoCon. Let's talk about what it might mean for the future.

Currently in Prime Access is Protea Prime, along with Velox Prime and Okina Prime. As was revealed at TennoCon, she's slated to be replaced by Sevagoth Prime, alongside Epitaph Prime and Nautilus Prime in August, when they release with The Lotus Eaters, a planned August 2024 update coming to Warframe.

Protea Prime was released on May 1, 2024, making her guaranteed 90 day reign end just about August 1. They've almost all been slated to go a little longer than that though, so it's likely that the update will come out mid August. I'd bet it comes either August 14th or August 21st, but that's just throwing darts at a dart board. Maybe if they have all their ducks in a row we'll get it on the 7th. Most of these dates are less than a month away, so it's best to keep this in mind if you wanted to get her.

This is great. He looks great. But it does raise one question:

Where's Xaku Prime?

Speculation under the cut.

Sevagoth Prime being announced as the next one was a surprise. Mainly because, any way you slice it, he's way out of the order of expectation. Usually they follow a pattern that organizes the Prime warframes by gender, but then goes loosely in release order. Male-Male-Female-Female-Male-Male-etc, with frames being slotted into those slots according to the pattern they were released in loosely, with maybe two being switched around here or there.

Now, Xaku was always going to be an interesting case and exception (sort of) to this, because Xaku is pluriform as they are made up of the remnants of multiple warframes implied to be of multiple genders. But to me this means that they could fit into whatever slot they happen to match to, since they are, in a way, of both/all genders. Xaku was the first frame to come out after Protea, so it'd make sense that they'd be slotted right after her, which is what I've been expecting this whole time since I wrote about it in January.

Instead, Sevagoth is jumping two slots to take the slot after Protea, also jumping over Lavos, who is the next male warframe in line. I'd expect there'd need to be a pretty decent reason for this big of an upset in their pattern. They didn't give much of one, and in fact Xaku wasn't mentioned at all during TennoCon as far as I could tell. I had sort of hoped they'd at least say they were coming back to Xaku but DE made no mention of any other future primes or the frames around Sevagoth in any notable way.

Now, that's not a bad thing necessarily. These patterns have never been officially announced as far as I can tell, but they've been pretty closely followed for the general fairness of the prime process. Following close to a pattern means they aren't playing favorites choosing warframes to prime, and that no frame gets forgotten for getting a Prime. But there could be plenty of reasons for them deciding to or wanting to change it up. Maybe they wound up having a few in process at once and Sevagoth wound up being the one that was far enough in the process to do next, with Xaku and Lavos still needing their concepts refined, something like that.

I know there's been some anxiety in the past around Xaku getting a prime as their whole concept doesn't lend itself easily to the concept of a prime warframe in the same way that almost every other warframe does, but I definitely think if Xaku weren't going to get a prime at all, they would have already told us. They know people are looking forward to Xaku Prime, and with more and more weird and unique warframe concepts being introduced these days, there's no good reason why having a unique concept should keep Xaku from getting a prime. More likely something came up in the development process that caused some hiccups, and I could think of plenty of reasons for this, especially around TennoCon being the reveal of the next prime. We have no reason to think anything other than that Xaku is being pushed back a slot or two, and Lavos as well.

But either way, we have no current info from DE as far as I know, but if that changes then I'll update this somehow.

As for if they'll do something to rectify the gendered slot pattern, it's impossible to say.

Predictions for Future Prime Order: (Bold is already exists)

Grendel Gauss Protea (We are here) Sevagoth (Announced) Xaku Lavos Yareli Gyre Caliban Styanax

Or, if they have decided to eschew double gender order from now on:

Protea Sevagoth Xaku Lavos Yareli Caliban Gyre Styanax

I could also see them switching Xaku and Lavos on either of these lists if for some reason Xaku continues to be a problem. I personally wouldn't get worried about anything unless we get both Lavos and Yareli prime without hearing any news about Xaku prime. At that point I'd be asking some serious questions, but for now this is unexpected but fine. Sevagoth Prime is gonna be cool as hell, and we already know that.

Prime Resurgence

Currently available from Varzia are Nekros Prime with Tigris Prime and Galantine Prime and Harrow Prime with Scourge Prime and Knell Prime, along with relics for their component parts and such. They are slated to stay there until August 1st, at which point they'll be replaced by Mesa Prime and Limbo Prime.

Also available from Varzia until October 24th are Ember Prime with Sicarus Prime and Glaive Prime, and Rhino Prime with Boltor Prime and Ankyros Prime. They and their relics are available to celebrate the Ember Heirloom Collection that launched the morning of TennoCon with DE's new system for Heirloom Collections. If you don't know about the new system, I suggest you look at the Heirloom Collection page on the warframe website to familiarize yourself with it. At TennoCon, they announced that Rhino Prime would be the next Heirloom Collection after Ember, thus why they get to share the space in Varzia's for now. Get them while the getting's good!

Ok I think that's everything! Gonna try to do shorter versions of these more often but when there's more to talk about I feel more motivated to write them so we'll see! Happy Prime Hunting!

[xxmarvelouslifexx]

Hello! I hope you're having a great weekend; your posts are lovely and often bring a smile to my face. What's your favorite museum/art exhibit you've been to, and what did you like about it?

Hiiii sorry for the delay in responding I was thinking over this way too hard. Tbh my first instinct was to say I barely ever even go to museums, thinking of all the nicer, more well-known museums in The City I have yet to hit up. But then I really thought about it and I do actually go to places to learn, just not exactly the XYZ Museum of Natural History, etc.

One nearby museum has a very eclectic combination of collections, including weaving looms and spinning wheels! They actually host a weaving guild, I took a class once with a rigid heddle loom which was so fun and I hope to find some time to go back soon. I guess I feel like it doesn't count because it doesn't take the form of the traditional enclosed space with a bunch of neatly arranged plaques and stuff. But they are still spreading knowledge and working to preserve some fading arts, which is very cool of them.

I have also visited quite a few smaller, very local museums. Sorry I'm not dropping names but these are a touch too local for my comfort. In my area these museums typically take the shape of adobe houses that preserve the local town history, heavily reliant on volunteers. I was a volunteer docent for one in my area for a couple years. While they do hold some important history, they have their shortfalls. At least for the one I was at the history of the indigenous people in the area was often glossed over, with a focus on the settler families of the area.

One of the more interesting exhibits I've seen was at an adobe house, not the one I volunteered at. They had an exhibit curated by the local tribe filled with different tribal objects explaining how they lived prior to European contact. Which I thought was very responsible of them to honor. We have our own dark history of resettlement being part of the California Missions, which I think the average resident isn't aware of.

Speaking of, another interesting spot I passed by recently was the local archaeology center. They had multiple exhibits on the pre-colonial populations, and also one explaining how research has refined theories of how and when the Americas were originally populated. Which I did not realize was such a hot topic in archaeology.

This was probably way more rambling than you were expecting but I am terrible at picking favorites. Thanks for your kind words and your ask!!! It did have me reflecting of the spaces I frequent and why.

[umemiyan]

on this post

Do you think it has to be like, higher brow social commentary discussion?? All the time every time I mean

Or could one just say some shit like “Anakin wasn’t actually the one meant to balance the force” and let him take it from there?

LMAO nah i mean i think it's definitely both!! he has his nerdy side and even applies that to his understanding of certain concepts so there's bound to be overlap with the philosophical/ethical/etc. discussions and ones that are more "who would win batman or superman"-esque lol

if you want me to be fr fr tho i think he's less interested in emotions being involved in the discussions in general. as someone with an auxillary introverted thinking function, he's going to be biased towards objectivity (which no one is ever perfect at ofc because we all have some form of personal bias, but yeah). if you tell him "i think superman would win because i like him better" then he's going to be like "okay. lol." and challenge the fuck out of you even if, for example, he also thinks superman would win, but for reasons based more on logical principle. u know?

he wants you to argue about the logistics w/ him. i mean i think he'd get off to an argument in general lmao, but especially one that stimulates different viewpoints. he's also a cocky little bitch, so with how he is when it comes to physical prowess (he likes entertaining those who are "more on his level"), he could potentially be like that when it comes to the intellectual realm as well. but who am i to say lmao. i mean at this point bro just needs a friend in general 😭 i just think he'd find it extra fun to have someone who can fondle his little brain cells

and he's obviously no textbook boy either who's gonna wanna just sit and talk about the theory of relativity or some shit all day. that would bore him just as much unless there was some sort of engaging, exploratory element involved. he makes conclusions based on facts, but he's primarily interested on using those facts to entertain and play around with multiple possibilities. he likes to toss ideas back and forth and refine them via discussion. that's what really gets him going and gives him the happy brain juices.

so yeah. that could be achieved via a fucking existential discussion or something about video games. tho due to his nature there may be some topics in which he'd want to avoid the heavier, negative emotions that would come about. but that's a whole other can of worms LMAO

[third-half]

2023 Self Check

Honestly, having an overall middling year where most of my troubles were my brain’s fault was kind of a breath of fresh air. Being out of commission for most of last year with a fucked up knee at least got me thankful every morning I can get up and walk around without a brace or cane. I don’t really agree with the doctors and my Dad that I’m “young” but I’m apparently still young enough I can heal. That said, I’m kind of let down in myself for letting depression and laziness get the best of me like, worse than usual this year. It hit kind of hard when sitting back and going through old archives of content and realizing that:

Sketch-A-Day was 2015 Eishi and Dixie was before that Revolver Knight ran from 2005-2008 or 2009

Meaning I’d basically failed to really deliver on any of the series/game/etc ideas I’d pitched from 2016 onward with the arguable exception of the dungeon crawler card game’s first version. If anyone was curious as to whether I’d touched on some of that stuff in the meantime the status of my Things right now is:

Angel Dust (The Gatty Thing)- Pretty much axed, as much as I love the character, it was kind of turning into edge for edge’s sake. The thing about Gatty Ling is I’ve had the idea of an erratic, destructive but adorable and well meaning character kicking around for ages but she’s kind of just a blank slate beyond those traits and I’ve tried to plunk her into like three completely unrelated settings with different origins. I was also attempting to kind of do a distinct art… sub…style with her stuff closer to a moe VN look, really pump up the cute to make the dark stuff pop, but well, Madoka already exists and the last iteration was basically Madoka with Robots. I probably wouldn’t rule it out forever but I’ve kind of been using some bits and pieces of the setting to flesh out the Plane Girls Thing

Revolver Knight Reload- I got like three pages into drawing a complete remake of my old webcomic, but kind of got cold feet from a combination of things. I didn’t think I was ready to take on another gigantic long form story, though I promise that the new version was *MUCH* more refined. Like Gatty, I wouldn’t say it’s *impossible* I mess with this, but I think I might look into something closer to a light novel with spot illustrations than a full on comic in the interest of like, finishing before I die.

Critical Heaven (The plane girl thing)- Still active, but having a bit of an identity crisis. It began as a ‘skirmish’ tabletop wargame then I got to thinking about it as more of a shmup-inspired duel game. The format of tabletop/print is also kind of iffy because I know people would be more likely to play it digitally and I have like, zip experience putting a substantial game project together. There’s also a more or less complete ‘campaign’ jotted half in my head and half in my notepad (putting it in a game with multiple endings would save me from deciding which ending to give it, hmmm.) But in short, yeah this is still being picked at.

Irrgarten (The Dungeon Card Thing)- I know I lead off with kind of the downer limbo thing but I’ve actually not totally abandoned this, definitely not the setting. Surprise, Radona is from this world! Really, I could probably bring this back pretty easily by revising the original game rules, the biggest issue we ran into play testing was that items didn’t ‘feel’ very valuable- characters were strong enough on their own not to need them. Maybe I can bump this up in priority.

There are probably other story ideas I’ve mentioned over the years and not followed up on, but characters from axed stuff do tend to surface in other projects if I’m attached enough to them. If there are any particular things that you enjoyed my work in or reading about in the past, do let me know. I’ve had a hard time motivating myself, so a nudge wouldn’t be a bad thing about now. Next year, I would really like to put more effort into having a regular “thing” to work on, maybe I’ll bring back some gag comics. Definitely plan to do more drawing in general because drawing one decent thing then going radio silent for two weeks leads to needing to de-rust like, every time. I’m a creature very vulnerable to inertia.

So, no promises here, but my goals going into 2024:

Put some time into practicing more ‘dynamic’ content like simple animation and game design since I have like three game making programs sitting around

Regular art posting, with a focus on improving quality and speed

Minding my health more since it’s easier to be active when there’s less of me to move

Establish a more regular streaming schedule since it helps me trim down my backlog

This kind of turned into more navel gazing than I had planned to be doing, but I thought this was a good time to touch base on some things since I’m back to posting here… well, okay, ‘regularly’ is a stretch, but there are a lot of things I’ve brought up before and not followed up on in a long time. If anyone has still been reading this- thank you, truly. I hope that with a bit more focus and less dwelling on the gnawing darkness in my gut, we can have some fun here again.

Oh, yeah, by the way- also been kicking around a top X games list I may get to posting soon, but may save for New Years Eve.