#its a lot better quality if u click on it probably

[morninggmitch]

oh lird. heres my color crew ref line up + height chart ! (measured by top of head, horns, ears, hats, and/or antenna dont count!) click for better quality :3 umm click read more for character profiles if ur interested in that! :>

so my kier and dev designs r actually nether imps!! imps being a lesser kind of demon. kier is from a species of imps called crimson forest imp, and likewise dev is a warped forest imp. I have a lot of notes on the two subspecies of imps and their culture that i will probably have to keep to a different post as it's A Lot (can you tell im so autistic over this.)

boosfer.. you may think hes an angel or hails from the end but its actually a lot more complicated than that! no one really knows where hes from and hes technically considered a shapeshifter and can honestly take whatever form he wants (therefore making any design he is drawn as considered canon!) hes probably some kind of demi god honestly. trickster god type beat

jack and baablu are both enderian! jack being a warped forest enderman (subspecies of enderman that live in warped forests. if that wasnt obvious) and baablu... im not so sure. i know i want him to be from the end but not an enderman. possibly some kind of enderman off shoot like jack ? or rare mutation ? idk. regardless. guys from the end!

bubbo and qndres are both what one may consider "enchanted" individuals. in bubbo's case moreso a curse? depends on how you look at it. he was once a human player who was enchanted in some way to become a slime! but since he is enchanted he has special properties like enhancing potion effects when he drinks them :)

as for qndres, he was never human but there was a time where he was not sentient. a very long time ago he was a stone gargolye enchanted to come to life. he can enter a state of hibernation that lasts hundreds of years and will usually embed himself in a wall or sit in a cave when he does, reverting back to a solid stone. he actually met the rest of the color crew when they were doing a manhunt and found his sleeping form carved into the wall of a spawner dungeon (and accidentally woke him up)

as for fantst vitjok and yello... they are most simply anthropomorphic creatures. fantst an axolotl, vitjok a moth, and yello a coyote. not much else i can say about them!!

hey if you scrolled this far thanks for reading all this :) i have lots of thoughts about the color crew (special interest!) and if u want to talk about them to me please please pleaasseeee do not hesitate i will become so insane.

[socialprawn]

Hii u probably get a lot of asks but do u have any tips for improving upload quality ? Ur art always looks so crisp no matter what platform u post it on and I can't figure this out on tumblr or insta !

I draw on big canvases (4000px one side and above) because I find that the brushes perform better when they have more pixels to work with. Also I think because the hard round brush is the most flexible brush ever, it doesn't lose quality when you change its size, so it overall performs rly guud. But if you are looking to download brushes I think you should make sure that the imported brush shape or textures are not small which will result in quality loss and blur 🫡

But to confess, I post screenshots usually because my iPad runs slowly on wifi and can't post full PNGs. Sometimes I even post screenshots from my PC so I don't post my art at its crispiest 🥲

On IG follow this:

But IG also compresses reds automatically so the quality on IG is generally not the best🫠

What also helps which I genuinely used to do a lot is to follow instagram's optimal aspect ratios, I followed these and multiplied the dimensions 2-3 times

There's optimal aspect ratios for tumblr as well which is why when you click on a drawing it looks way crispier than when it's on the dash. I don't really follow these dimensions though but I guess we can try that together 😏

[m0llygunn]

/735662509094289408

oh but it does ruin the friendship. ~the angst commences~ imagine him toying around with someone, only because his own life is so difficult to control and he’s sick of it. he’s sick of his life being so unpredictable and troubled, so he resorts to using someone else’s to play around and have fun with. he’s the puppet master and the poor person just takes it because they actually love eddie💔💔💔he wants to kiss them one night (because he feels particularly unlovable that day so what better way to release the pain by inviting his ‘friend’ over) and tells them exactly that, “a little kiss wouldn’t hurt our friendship”

so they kiss. and it all goes to shit. they go off on eddie, “i can’t do this anymore! you’re playing with my feelings and it hurts me so much…do you have any idea what you’re doing to me?! i can’t stick around you anymore, i’m out of here,”

and then eddie is left to think about what he’s done.

anyway sorry for the random story, i was just thinking about it cuz i sure love me some angst <///3 and i think it’s interesting to look into a side of eddie that wouldn’t be particularly likable. lmk what u think tho. do u think eddie would come to develop actual real feelings for this person? would he even apologize at all and would it even work out?

ok i’m done now hope u have a good day :) ✨

nono don't apologize i love the story, thank you!! also i love the puppet master analogy, obviously because of master of puppets, but also because I used to be a puppeteer at a local theatre company!! you're speaking my language lol

i'm just gonna put a read more here so that this isn't a long post, and clickable link here to the referenced post!

I also really like the whole 'unlikable' kind of characters thing, and especially with Eddie's background, I always think that him serving those sorts of motifs produces very fascinating storylines. Canonically he has such strong redeeming qualities, that I think giving him some bad qualities never seems all that terrible, plus its just fun and interesting to read! In terms of how it would end, in my opinion, I think it definitely depends! Sorry thats kind of a bad answer but it could go so many ways? Like in some scenarios it could be the catalyst to them getting together, but it also could be the catalyst of things going really wrong if Eddie isn't willing to change. I also think that if Eddie were to pick on someone it would be because he already likes them to start with, so he would have to go through a lot of internal processes to come into his own, and eventually be able to move forward for sure!

Side note— I've actually been working on a sort of 'morally grey' characterization so I'm interested which ending is your preference? Like angst angst or happy ending? (my thing's already written, I just haven't had it in me to edit it, but spoiler its kind of like those movies where nothing happens but everything changes, but also nothing changes? very unproductive storyline but I think that in itself is valuable because life follows that storyline quite frequently).

I read a fic before kind of like your story so i just went for a deep dive looking for it lol I think you might like it! You can click here for it :) This one is from Eddie's pov so theres a lot of his internal processes, and I think it's just a good read.

Another fic that comes to mind is a series. It's a bully!eddie three part-er (i think) with a pick your own ending (which i think is soso cool and you don't see very often), so maybe you'd want to check that out too! Link is here for that one! I also like how this one gives a preface to why Eddie becomes a 'bully' and I just really like the story in general!

If either links don't work, let me know! I'll probably reblog them after this too :)

sorry this was so long omg, but thank you again for sending me your story, I truly appreciate it and love it sm!! (also i saw your other ask and I want to write something for it but it might take me a while with exams and everything come up, sorry!)

[glitchbirds]

19, 23, 25

:) 19: a character you really hate -this is so hard because i feel like a lot of characters i hate i also really love because of how those hateable qualities make them fit into the narrative. like i do like loomis and how he fits into the halloween series even if i would beat this elderly man with a brick if given the opportunity. u know. and theres a few others that i dislike in their Tumblrized Fandom forms, but in the actual films i do find them effective characters. leslie vernon is probably one. i think he couldve been alright in a better constructed film, but he's almost intolerable to me as is and i get irrationally annoyed seeing ppl hype him and his movie up 23: a movie that you would not rewatch for whatever reason(s) -ALSO very hard because i feel like i am very willing to rewatch just about anything. skimming through my lowest rated horror films on letterboxd, i think id honestly rewatch just about all of these with only mild complaint, no matter how abysmal/boring/painful to watch i think they are.. i can always find Some reason to justify it- thinking about why the film doesnt work for me, comparing it to others that do the same concepts better. if i have to pick one it'd probably be something like gutterballs, lesbian vampire killers, halloweed- mediocre edgy 00s/10s horror/comedy with very little going for it if you dont think shit like homophobia or rape jokes are funny. but then, i saw stan helsing twice in the same day and would probably see it a third time if given a sufficient reason. so idk if i can say i WOULDNT rewatch gutterballs.. 25: a movie that genuinely scared you -AUGH.

again, difficult. very limited selection of horror movies that even make my skin crawl a little bit. the most recent one was skinamarink (2022), though i have absolutely no idea if i would feel the same if i rewatched it- its an 1hr40min experimental art horror film thats like... if you watch the trailer on youtube you get a good idea of what its like for the Whole runtime, nearly all the dialogue is hushed children's whispers, most of the shots are long takes of dark hallways and television screens, the film is so grainy that it looks like its alive and crawling... reminded me of the totheark marble hornets videos and similar experimental horror shorts on youtube from My Youth; feels like it'll do numbers with the ""analog horror"" side of the internet, if it hasnt already. all of which is very effective If you manage to get engrossed in the film, but i absolutely cannot blame anyone who thinks its just boring and not worth the time to watch. it really demands your full attention with very little concrete payoff, just a lot of slow building dread with the occasional scare that often didnt live up to the hype that it had built up. every time my attention started to wander even a little bit, it was like all the magic had leaked out of it, until i forced myself to focus and it started to captivate me again. id worry that on rewatch it might not click at all for me and id think my past self was a loser for thinking this was good. still gave it 4.5 stars on letterboxd despite this. ymmv.

[chelans]

and they say true love doesn’t exist ☀️🌙

[alphabettcity]

hey! i had a question, how do you make your gifs/edits ? love ur blog, thank you !!

ahhh thank u !!!! this is probably not what you asked for but i over explain a lot AHJSJDHD so i kinda made this very long rip

ok so for my edits i usually do it on my phone 🤡🤡 i would use picsart, polarr and phonto. sometimes i’d go into photoshop and add some finishing touches but usually not ahakkaks

i’ll be using this as an example because it has pretty much everything i use !!

finding photos

so. first you’re gonna find some screencaps !! sometimes i’ll go and take them myself if there’s not the specific one i want but usually i go here / here / here. i personally like better the first one because they’re more hd but the last two are good for shows/new stuff

here’s the link to tfatws screencaps. i click on ep. 1 and i chose this bad boi (but you can choose whatever you want !! i’m just using It example to guide y’all ahajsj)

cropping

this can be done in any app lmao but i go in picsart because it’s easier for me. the dimensions are 1920 x 805 but you can crop it however!! here’s a step by step if you’re unfamiliar with picsart

effects!!!

here’s the fun part. you can really do whatever you want a few of my favourites are: b/w contrast, noise, motion blur, radial blur, colour pop and more !!! here’s a step by step on what i did

text

i personally love this part. i use phonto because it’s easiest for me !! the fonts i used are poppins and prima demo. here is how to download fonts to phonto and here is how i did the text

now for gifs !!! im still very new to photoshop and trying to get the hang of it but here is my process !! i'll be using my header gif as an example:

getting the scenes

there are a few ways to get the scenes you want, i personally screen record (🤡🤡) which is kind of why my gifs are a bit low quality. you could download movies/tv shows and screencap (which is how most gifmakers would do it) but this way works for me so its what i stick with !! here is a good tutoral using screencaps.

photoshop

so yes photoshop my biggest friend but also my biggest enemy. this shit is very complex at first but from looking at tutorials on tumblr and youtube ive managed to figure it out here / here / here / here are some good ones !!! (note: the last link is more for photoshop in general and not really gifing ahakjsjdjd its long but super helpful!!)

bringing in the video

just go file -> open and click the video you want !!

cropping

im gonna crop it to tumblr header dimensions which are: 3000 px x 1055 px and you get this:

now im gonna resize it to 540 x 190. go image -> image size

make sure it’s on pixels !! make the width 540 (the height should automatically change with it but if not make it 190)

colouring

here’s how did it !!

sharpening

this is very much influenced from this tutorial. making an action for this part is very handy because you’ll do this every time. click here

saving/exporting

the final part !! go file -> export -> save for web (legacy) this will take a minute

here are my settings. i still don’t exactly *get* the save for web options lmao i use what’s recommended but feel free to fiddle with them !! here is a good tutorial explaining the options.

that’s all !!!! ik this was long and a bit confusing so feel free to ask me anything you’re not clear with !!

[wri0thesley]

many many anons under the cut bc i didn’t want anyone to feel like i was ignoring them and i wanted to respond to u all! warning for small text too, it was so long i wanted to make it look smaller fgbnjkgkjn

Anonymous asked: NAT... you can write WHATEVER you want! It's your blog, and I hope that rude anons can learn to respect that. I used to be on your blog just for jjba content too, so when you started getting into jjk I was indifferent but eventually you dragged me into jjk so hard!! I already like bnha, so seeing you write for it only made me happier! I hope that you continue to write whatever make YOU happy:) ❤and yes, longer fics certainly doesnt mean it's better, quality over quantity

ahh i’m happy that you are here for all three!! i always feel so accomplished when someone is like ‘your constant screaming made me think about jjk <3′. all three of the fandoms are fairly popular and i tag everything v carefully so i hope people who do use the filtering find that useful!!! 

Anonymous asked: Goodness gracious. People really be out there thinking they're entitled to dictating what kind of content you should be making

i think part of it might be that i do take requests so people feel like they have like . . . a certain right to certain kinds of my content? i take requests mostly bc they keep me motivated, i like making content for ppl who cant find what they want bc i’ve Been There, but maybe people think i am a pushover? idk i am just trying to have a good time!!!

Anonymous asked: Hi. I only started following you a few days ago but please ignore that rude anon. People are so fucking entitled towards writers it's insane. I recently had someone throw a fit for "spoiling" something in my fanfic, even though the fic was about a manga-exclusive character, so what did they expect?? Overall I've really enjoyed your writing so random assholes coming to guilt you is just a shitty thing that happens. Keep going with what you wanna do.

ah gosh anon i’m sorry about that :(. i’m always super careful tagging spoilers and stuff but like, if someone clicks on a fic about say, naoya or the steel ball run boys and is mad that i spoil something they havent found out yet . . . yeah thats on them fgbnkjgfkjn

Anonymous asked: That...that anon had the nerve to say "we". The fuck?! No no no anon, YOU'RE the only one talking and you're just talking for yourself, don't you dare try and lump us other anons/followers up with you to make yourself look like you're right. We love you nat and we appreciate you. It's your blog, you're allowed to write about whoever and whatever. This brain dead anon just needs to either go read someone else if they're that salty or write their own stuff if they're that impatient.

gosh i WISH some of my mad anons would just write their own stuff honestly. idk if this anon thought they were talking for everybody but i guess they expected anons to agree with them and not be mad at them. i appreciate u anon ;_;

Anonymous asked: Just want to say that ily and you’re one of the best jojo fanfic writers in my opinion 💗 I don’t think you’re half assing jojo fics and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you being multi fandom. A lot of jojo blogs have started posting about jjk so it’s not as if you’re the only one. I’m not sure why you get hate like this but I think it’s just because you’re one of the popular writers and that makes people bitter for whatever reason. Keep being you and posting about the things that make you happy 💕

honestly after so long writing for jojo - i’ve written well over 200 jojo reader insert fics - sometimes it feels like i’m retreading stuff, and that’s when i take a break bc i dont wanna half-ass stuff!!! i love all of my fellow jojo friends who are posting about jjk too, i appreciate them <3. 

Anonymous asked: Hey my dude, ur writing has really grown since the jojo days and its better and awesome seeing u become happier to branch off and write in different fandoms 🤌🤌 those stupid anons are just boring farts that couldnt be bothered making their own content 😤😤 is it possible to block them to ease ur mind?

hello anon!! i run a statcounter for IPs but it doesnt always work for ppl who access through the tumblr app, i don’t think; a lot of the anon hate i get i just use the ‘block’ option, but last night got to me because i’ve been getting that kind of writer a lot which is . . . a bad look for the jojo fandom who are, as a whole from the ones i’ve interacted with, lovely!!! <3

Anonymous asked: People often forget, the person behind art or writing, is just another regular fan. You deserve to be happy with what you create and we should be thankful you share your talent with us. You also have right to change your main interests, and it's very normal thing. Jojo is one of the MANY things that you write for and all you get from that is a like or share. Its not your job. It's your fun thing to do, in spare time. You haven't betrayed anybody. That person was just rude, selfish and bored.

i am just a person doing my best!!! anime fanfic is one of many interests i have and i already devote a lot of time to it honestly, i love when people tell me they’ve enjoyed something i made bc it makes it feel worthwhile but equally it gets to me a lot when people are rude because i am usually trying my hardest. 

Anonymous asked: Bro that jjba anon... the entitlement🤮 Fam, you write whatever you want to write😤 -Saturday

dfnjbkjnkgf i find most fic readers are NOT entitled at all and are just grateful but when they are . . . oof. 

Anonymous asked: It's funny how people throw "we got you popular" and they think you start apologize and cry. Your writing and passion made you gain few numbers on a follow counter, nothing more. I think I'm too old for stuff like this, we are nothing more, but +1 on a number scale. You ow us nothing, we ow you nothing. Popular... Funny word. You just write for fun of it, fake scenarios about someone's manga characters. It's not that deep. Have fun and don't listen to people like this. I knew it's not that easy, but they are really not that important as they think they are.

extremely fun fact for people who think ‘popularity’ is important to me: i would 100% rather have 10 people who regularly comment, reblog my fics with tags and interact with me than 100 people who read my fic and either leave a like or simply move on. i think this is true for the VAST MAJORITY of writers tbh. i’m glad that people think i am a ‘popular’ blog (i am not in the grand scheme of things, one of my ex-best friends used to run a kpop reader insert blog with like 30,000 followers) bc it gives me an ego boost lmao, but i really just want people to read and enjoy the stuff i write!!! 

Anonymous asked: I followed you a while ago for jojo and when my friends started getting into jjk i was like...eh sounds like work...but now that I see you writing for it I feel really motivated to get into it!!! I really enjoy your writing and I want to be able to read the new stuff too!

ah anon i really hope you like it!!! it’s only one season rn if u wanna watch the anime and there isn’t too much of the manga to catch up on either but it is a lot of fun and it’s nice to be in a fandom that’s like, excited about a new chapter and new plot developments every week!

Anonymous asked: Pls dont reply if u dont want to! <3 I'm not sure if this will be of any help to you or not but this is the kind of thing that often helps me and is the only way I know to try comfort others so I wanted to give it a go~

Now im not gonna say 'dont feel bad pls' bc I know that's not really useful but what I do think is useful is just discussing why that anon and many others feel the need to respond that way. As someone who follows a lot of writing blogs myself and have done for a long time, i've seen my handful of favourite writers come and go for different reasons, lose motivation for a while, gain motivation for a while, go from multi to single fandom, or single fandom to multi. Often times as a reader it can be upsetting when things change but it's also important as a reader to understand that some things aren't in anyone's control, I can't control what my favourite writers become a fan of or lose interest of, I can't control things in their personal lives that may motivate or demotivate them to write, but what I can do is support them as long as they're active, and if they move on to do things i'm no longer interested in or i'm the one that changed interests, rather than being upset that they're evolving to do other things or that they're not evolving with me, I think it's important that I still feel thankful for the works that I enjoyed while we were still on the same page and this is how I personally deal with those negative feelings. I think the anons that lash out at you probably just dont know what to do with themselves, maybe they got attached to your works while you were still only a jjba blog and now that you're evolving they're upset, while I understand how they feel, they're going the completely wrong way about it. I've learned to take these things and turn them into something positive for myself or at least something bittersweet that I can move on from but the anons that lash out at you for whatever reason probably haven't learned this yet. Maybe it's because i've moved on and changed interests a lot myself that I know how these things go for both writers and readers but those anons maybe haven't experienced this as much so they dont know what to do with themselves other than complain that you've changed and throw insults at you in an attempt to get you to revert back. None of this is because of the quality of your writing like they want you to believe, it's literally just because you've evolved and while some of your old followers might not like the new content for no reason other than it not being their cup of tea, it's definitely not regressed at all. You are pumping out a lot of content right now but every single thing i've read has just been better than the last. Things that really stand out to me is how well you get characterisation down to a T and all of your dialogue is just on point and from the pov of a reader I think those things seem the hardest to get right so I am such a huge fan of your stuff at the moment and I can tell you're really putting so much thought and care into each and every fic no matter how fast you're producing it, I think the fact that you're also proud of what you're writing at the moment really shines through as well and I just adore the passion that radiates from every completed request as well as in the responses for the subsequent thirsts resulting from these works that appear in your ask box later (I know i've sent quite a few by now~)

Just to be clear i'm not defending those anons in any way, while I can understand what they might be feeling/why they're reacting in the way they are I still believe it's just so immature to be hateful online point blank. Even during a time where I still got upset with writers if they started doing something else I still never targeted that negativity directly to the writer and sending rude or hateful comments whether on anon or not never something i'd stooped low enough to do even when I still had an immature way of thinking, however, I hope that it might make it a little easier to brush them off if we try and understand what they're really upset about, and that they're just putting the blame for their negative feelings onto the wrong thing rather than coming to terms with change themselves.

hello anon!! i appreciate the long message. i do feel bad for people who have no interest in what i’m currently producing and i get that they feel upset about it; i’ve watched a lot of fellow jojo writers move on completely or just stop posting, honestly. this kind of thing is why i was so intense about asking people if it would be better if i made a separate blog but the resounding answer seemed to be ‘i’m just vibing with whatever happens and i’ll block tags as needed’. 

i often return to works by my favourite reader-insert writers who no longer write for the fandoms i like (and i read stuff bc it sounds interesting or i trust the person who writes it), but change can be difficult and i guess at this point i’ve - whether u like me or not lmao - been a fixture in jojo reader-insert tumblr for a While so it’s probably kind of jarring. 

anyway i really appreciate you and the nice words! <3 

Anonymous asked: hi nat! I just wanted to pop in and say that regardless of what fandom you write for, the love and care you pour into your writing and into interacting with followers who care about your work as well is really obvious. you're doing this for FREE and people should appreciate what you've given us so far, since ultimately this blog should be for you, whatever that means to you at any point in time. it's ok to jump fandoms! the important thing is that you feel good about what you're producing and that it makes you happy. everyone else is just a bonus - but, seeing you on my dash certainly makes me happy : ) I hope you feel better soon!

thank you anon! i’m feeling much better and happier today. birthdays are very difficult for me (i did not think i’d be alive at eighteen, much less 25!) so this event is definitely kind of a way for me to concentrate on something else, and i’m a little bit extra sensitive atm. i appreciate you so much, thank you for the kind words!!! <3

Anonymous asked: Hello! I just wanted to say, write what YOU want and make YOUR writings as long as you'd like. 💖 To the anon who is like "We mAdE yOu FaMoUs dOnt HalF asS iT" stfu, let people do what they wanna do. If you think they half do it, write something better and longer you asshat.

this is an open invitiation to that anon to send me a link to their writing blog and i’ll hype them up i promise <3 

Anonymous asked: nat i'm so so sorry about that ask please know that your older followers don't share the same opinion :( sometimes people forget about the living, breathing person behind the screen smh. you are not a machine. you absolutely should not restrict yourself to posting about one fandom forever. yes, we're first pulled in by your amazing content, but we stay for your wonderful personality and work ethic. please just keep being you, taking up projects you feel comfy with! <333 bless u

ahh thank u anon! unfortunately i actually am a writing robot, i’m sorry u had to find out this way. my jojo chip has been removed, please send it back so i can continue to not half-ass my jojo work. fgnjkbgjkfn thank you so much angel!!! i appreciate you ;_;.

Anonymous asked: i don’t think it’s fair for other people to say shit about what you choose to write about because on tumblr and other writing platforms, writers are constantly developing how they write and the fandoms that they write for. it’s not fair for someone to criticize that “you don’t care about jjba blah blah blah” because you can enjoy new shows/manga. and like you said you’ve grown so much!! proud of you nat and im glad that ive been able to read your works (sincerely other nat)

i am STILL waiting for you to come and fight me other nat fgnjkbnf. it’s nice to be enjoying different things! i am constantly learning new things and reading new works and making new friends and improving and i think that’s important. i do care about jjba - a lot! but i can care about other things too! <3 

Anonymous asked: I may not be one of your oldest followers, but i've been here for almost 3 years. Yes, i started following u for ur jojo content, but let me tell u, ur newfound motivation and enthusiam for other fandoms was honestly contagiuos for me. And i say this as a person who finds very difficult to move from one interest to another. Jojo is great, but so are other fandoms. Please don't let some faceless scum rob u that motivation. This is ur blog and u r always free to write whatever u want.

honestly, i have been there! i am autistic and i have special interests and watching other people move on to stuff i’m not vibing with has made me sad in the past, but i want people to be happy more than anything and sometimes that means new things and change! <3 

Anonymous asked: Hi Nat! I saw that rude anon message & I just wanted to pop in & say that they're wrong. You're not betraying anyone & you should write whatever it is you want to write. I followed you for jojo & I'm not familiar with the other fandoms that you write for, but personally it makes me SO happy to see you enjoying new things! It's always good to find joy wherever you can, so keep writing what you're interested in. There a lot of ppl who want to see you happy and healthy <3

honestly the idea of it being a GRAND BETRAYAL is so funny, i am just writing anime fanfic here and thriving!!! tysm anon! <3

Anonymous asked: Those anons can piss off! They have no right to judge how long or how short your writing is. If they want longer content write it their damn selves. I think your writing has improved wonderfully and I originally followed for Jojo and I'm enjoying all the content period. I don't even watch jujutsu ( not my cup of tea personally) but I love seeing the creativity and the interactions. You write what makes you happy Nat and that's on that! You don't owe anybody anything! I know how hard writing is and when your consuming new content it's hard to make content for something else. That doesn't mean you don't like it any more your just doing something different for a while. Love you and your content and I'm enjoying the love your putting into your content whether long or short. ♥♥💕 Sending love your way!

honestly my idea of ‘short content’ is still over 1k words, i’m not good at reeling myself in! i guess it’s bc they see like, 1.5k jojo fic versus 5k jjk fic but it’s not that i didn’t enjoy the first fic, just that the point and the story came a lot quicker and so did the natural end! thank you anon, i appreciate you ;_; 

Anonymous asked: Hello! Just wanted to let your know that I think your writing is awesome, and that you should write for whoever and for whatever you want to! You dont have to stay loyal to one fandom or anything, and your followers shouldn't expect that from you! It's not like they are paying you to write, you are doing this for free, and because you enjoy it and it makes you happy! If they dont like your stuff, they dont have to follow you, they can go to other blogs that cater to their taste, and they definitely don't need to be sending you such hurtful comments, and they dont get to make you feel sad about your writing! Just because they followed you during your earlier stages of writing, doesn't mean you owe them some type of loyalty or compensation! You can write literally whatever you want as long as it makes you happy! That's what your hobby and your blog are for! I hope you know that alot of your followers love your work and think that you are an amazing writer and are down to support the work that makes you happiest! 💖💖

ahh thank you so much anon!!! i am always so bowled over by how many people are nice to me when something like this happens, i am sending you my love <3

Anonymous asked: don’t listen to them!! we love you as a writer no matter what you write, because you’re a good person and a talented writer!! you shouldn’t have to change what you write to please a bitter person, and if they only want jjba, they can go to another blog instead of bringing you down. you’re doing amazing and they should be thankful you grace us with your talents!!

to be totally honest, if i was half-assing or not vibing with content i was making i just. wouldn’t post it. like you’d be able to TELL when i was half-assing stuff just to get words out (source: i have re-read my own nanowrimo works). there are lots of great jjba blogs who could do with more followers n interaction!!! i hope they do find them and i hope they’re nice to them :(. 

Anonymous asked: Please don’t pay attention to that anon. People only have that confidence when they have anon turned on. Them looking through your blog despite feeling that way is peak fan behavior and speaks to how addicting your writing is. Naturally, you can’t please everyone and there will be people who are irrational and feel entitled to tell you what to do or what to write no matter what. Trust me when I say they’re a small minority and are more likely probably passing viewers rather than regulars. I check your blog about three or more times a day because I love reading not just your fics but also your takes, banter with other anons, or even random updates. Brainrot posts? LOVE TO SEE IT!!! Desk update? AMAZING!!! With that being said, don’t feel pressured to continue pushing out content for others. Write what makes you happy! You’ve been writing for JJBA for 4 years and it’s completely normal + healthy to get into new media. I’m not sure if it would mean much, but your love for JJK has gotten me excited to start it too!!

anon i really hope you enjoy it!!! sometimes these anons remember stuff i’ve posted and said better than i do tbh, i am living in their heads rent free i guess! 

Anonymous asked: I've been following you for a couple of years and honestly it would always be a joy to see when you posted. Your writing has improved and I'm very happy you're enjoying yourself ! I know it hurts hearing and seeing stuff like that but I'm happy you're here. I'm honestly blessed everytime you post. Your writing is phenomenal. I love reading it even if its characters that I dont care for. You capture their essences so well and weave an amazing tale within the prompts and whatnot. You're amazing nat!

wehh thank you so much!!! re: the improvement, i really don’t feel like it has and then i re-read something i wrote when i first started and i’m like oh my god maybe it has. did i really write about jotaro acting like that. 

Anonymous asked: Hi Nat. I recently became a follower of yours and I'm really saddened to see you get hate. You seem like a genuinely sweet person with amazing talent! I'm a writer myself and, unfortunately, get the same kind of comments. And when you get those comments, it doesn't leave you feeling motivated. People need to understand that people can and will, at times, grow out of fandoms. (1 Not just that but you're doing all of this for free. Again, I'm sorry you got such a comment. But please know that I'm proud of how far you've come. I'm proud that you're living a life that makes you happy. And no matter what fandom you may find yourself in next, I will always enjoy your writing. Take care of yourself. (2 end

HELLO NEW FOLLOWER I LOVE YOU (i get a lot more a day now than i used to and i feel guilty about not being able to look through so many blogs but i do try and follow back other writers for my fandoms!! ;_;). i’m sorry you get the same kind of comments! i’m always just happy to see people i like enjoying new things, even if i have no interest in it (hello to all of my mutuals who write for hunter x hunter and haikyuu, not interested but i’m sure you’re having a great time and i support you!!!). 

Anonymous asked: I'm sure you're getting a barrage of supportive messages now (at least I hope so) but I figured I'd add my voice, because I'm a longtime follower. Your writing is, and always has been, wonderful. I've been so happy to see you and Haz get to a place that works for you both. Idk if it's obvious for everyone, but you seem like you're emotionally in a pretty good place most of the time these days, and it makes me really happy to see that. I followed years ago for JJBA content, but I stayed because regardless of what content you put out, I find your wit delightful. And I'll stick around even if you move fandoms entirely, because whatever content or editorializing you produce is going to be worth reading, regardless of what it's for.

ahh, anon!! thank you for sticking around so long, sorry if you’re old enough to have been around the vore and jorts and spider rohan fiascos! <3 i am definitely a lot more stable than i have been and - barring the Pandemic Related Mental Health Issues - happier! i’m glad that it’s noticeable! <3

Anonymous asked: It actually makes me mad how entitled some people are. Nat, you're not a content creating machine and those who expect you to be are not worth wasting a thought on. Your love for something is not measured in word counts and for you to write every day without getting burned out in the slightest you really must have a burning passion and huge dedication to your craft. If others decide to send hate then allow me to send admiration because I can feel your love and hard work in each post you make!

i try and write every day bc it’s super good for my little ocd/autistic brain to have routines and distract itself, so i’m glad other people can enjoy them because that makes me motivated to carry on! like, i write for myself mostly bc the content i want i sometimes get find, but filling requests and writing for other people also leaves me with happy warm fuzzies too! i appreciate you!! <3 

Anonymous asked: If people only care about your writing for the jojo porn that’s on THEM, not you. Your writing was amazing when I followed about a year ago, and it’s only gotten better and will continue to get better! I think it really comes through when you enjoy what you’re writing and it adds a whole other layer of worth to it, because not only are you making free content but you LIKE that content and we can all gush about it together!!! More than just fans, I think you’ve created a community here and we don’t just stick around to read smut, I promise you that. -Reronon

i do miss having a discord community bc it was nice to talk to everyone in real time but it was hard work, i am glad that people feel like they can just come into my askbox and gush! i’m not very friendly in real life and people tend to think i am cold and stuck up so i work very hard to try and seem friendly and approachable online, which is much easier for me because i get to think and re-draft before i type! <3 

Anonymous asked: Hi Nat! I’m sure you’re getting a lot of messages like this right now but I just wanted to say for what it’s worth that, as a person who originally followed you for jjba content and hasn’t watched/read any of the other series you’re currently writing for, I’m honestly still along for the ride. This is your blog and you’re allowed to do what you want with it and put out what content you feel like writing. Sometimes??? People acquire new interests??????? Shocking! I know absolutely nothing about jjk or bnha but out of curiosity still read some of your posts about them and even though I might not Get It, I still enjoy them because I think you’re a very talented writer! Honestly, as long as you’re still writing, I’m still down to clown, and whenever you take breaks (which are important!) I’ll still be waiting for your return or supporting and respecting your decision to stay away longer. Don’t let the entitled assholes get you down. Utilize YOUR blog and YOUR space however YOU choose. Your talent and kindness speak for themselves. Love you!!! ❤️❤️❤️

anon i care about you and i am so appreciative of you and everyone for sending me such nice messages! i am running out of ways to say it but it’s true, it really does mean a lot to me ;_; <3

[aharris00britney]

ASKS 20

lmao last time i did one of these was February there is a lot

Anonymous said: What's your collab process when you and other creators make packs? Like how do you decide to do it together and how do you split up the ideas and everything?

I’m going to answer another ask outside of this post that details this but I’ll answer this one here too. The way me and ayoshi do packs is not like a usual collab (in my opinion I don’t think people collab like this). I am good at making meshes. So usually I make a mesh for something and ayoshi makes a base texture that I can use to finish the base of the top/bottom and then we work together to fix any texture issues. Nothing we’ve made has ever been 100% mine or 100% his except for the hairs. Sometimes a mesh is easy but the texture requires a lot of work so it’s more work for him, sometimes I decide I want to try and texture something (like with this AxA I made textures for some of the clothes) and then ayoshi will clean the texture up for me and add some shading for me. So it’s a lot different than what I imagine most collabs are. But I love the way me and him work together and the ability to change something I don’t like because it isn’t just his, it’s ours. 

Anonymous said: I'm so excited for your new AxA collab that female hair is stunning!!

Anonymous said: I s2g if it werent for your cc my sims would just have to walk around naked lmao you literally make the game playable for me, so thank you ❤❤❤❤❤

thank you!!! Assuming the 2nd ask is about AxA too because that’s the only time I make clothes lmao. Excited for you guys to see everything this week. 

Anonymous said: Do you know anyone who recolours your hairs? They’re so gorgeous I’d love to see them in more colours! Xx

I usually reblog recolors of my hair at @aharris00britneyrecolors​.

Anonymous said: I'm a sucker for your sim Bella. Every time I see Bella as your hair models, I click and download

Anonymous said: Hi, sorry to bother, are you planning on uploading your Bella Sim Anytime soon? Love your content!

Bella is a queen, she’s a streamer in my game at the AH00B house. I don’t think I’m going to upload my Sims anymore though :( I have a ton of sliders and presets in my game and I have no idea which ones I use. I have 3 of the ones I know I use listed on my resource page but there are so many more and I don’t want to share them and they be broken in peoples games.

Anonymous said: will there be an axa this year im in desperate need of new clothes for my sims :(

I got this a few days ago before the teaser came out which I thought was funny fvghb yes there will be one

@lysssimpatico​ said: I was wondering if you might consider making the Elli hair have ombre accessory options. There aren't any cute curly ponytail ombres anywhere!

I think I tried making an ombre accessory for it when I made the hair and it didn’t fully work with the way I changed the UV maps. I’m sorry :(

Anonymous said: why the HELL is your dog so cute lemme have her please

Right? She’s an angel omg my dad is watching her while my foot heals but I miss her so much fghvbj 

Anonymous said: Your Daphne hair is so cute!!

thank you! 

Anonymous said: I have the feeling everyone knows what kind of Supernatural they would be if they were one, so what's yours?

I think I would want to be a ghost so i could fuck with people ya

Anonymous said: Does the Natilie hair need to be updated?

Nope, all the updated stuff is in my post that lists all the updated content off. Everything on my download page is up to date.

Anonymous said: Hi im just submitting an idea if you want to - i love your melanie hair and i was wondering if its possible to remove the accessory on it? im sorry if im bothering you im new to all this hope you have a nice day!!

hey :) I am pretty sure someone had to have made a hair similar to that already as it’s just the university ponytail with new ponytail on it. If not I could look into doing it sometime in the future. 

Anonymous said:I LOVE U 😍

and i love u

Anonymous said: Do you know if there’s any hair accessories (like ones that change the color of it) that work with your Elli Hair? ❤️

It comes with an accessory that changes the elastic :)

Anonymous said: Hellooo! first of all, how are you? how´s your day? i´m sorry but, do you know if someone makes maxis match hairs based in kpop videos? I´m searching for that bull all i can find is alpha hair and i´m not into alpha cc :( Thank you very much! have a great day!

I’m not sure if there are people that specifically only do that but I think there are a handful of creators that get inspired from kpop/music videos and make hairs similar to that. Cause we use EA meshes most of the time the hairs aren’t going to look exactly like the inspiration though. Like I have two hairs that are based off Go Won from loona (Go Won hair and Kelsey Hair) but i don’t think you can tell that just from looking at them. 

Anonymous said: I downloaded the new version of the sydnie braids but my game says they're corrupted and won't let me play with them in my mods folder

try to redownload and they should work, I haven’t had any other issues. 

Anonymous said: hey, i was just wondering whether you did or are thinking of doing eyelashes at any point

I am not lmao I don’t think I would be able to make my own eyelashes

Anonymous said: you are incredibly prolific. constantly amazed and delighted by your high-quality work. have a good day king

thank you!!!!

Anonymous said: aaaahh I know this is probably a long shot but I was wondering if you had the quartz eyes psd? I've been trying to find it but all of the links I've stumbled onto are dead :( thank you in advance!! ♥️ and no problem if you don't have it or can't share it :)

here is a link to a post that has the PSD

Anonymous said: the mica hair looks so cute 🥺 you’re amazing

thank you! It’s named after the main singer from Magdalena Bay ;n; i love them

@whendowestopcaring​ said: I love, love, love your work!! + your blog, aesthetic, etc. Keep it up!

thank you!!!! pink and blue all the way bb

@marsupialmother​ said: Not an ask, just a comment. All you stuff is so beautiful. Thank you for being such an amazing creator!!!

no, thank you for sending me this! I appreciate it a ton <3 have a wonderful day

Anonymous said: How long have you been creating CCs for?

I recolored a get together cardigan in Dec 2015 and started making hair in November of 2016 to promote Britney Spears lmao. So around 4-5 years. 

Anonymous said: hi!! just wanted to say i love the item index download option! thank you for your awesome cc and organization :)

You’re welcome! item indexes make things so much easier I agree, happy to help simplify things for downloaders. also they look nice so that’s a plus for me. 

Anonymous said: i love your cc, they are really beautiful but can you do more male hair cc? im just asking

I prefer doing female stuff tbh, I feel like I’m better at it and I get more ideas. But i did 4 male hairs in this upcoming AxA 2020 pack and a bunch of male clothes. I’m sorry I can’t do more :( I just don’t get inspired to make much male stuff personally.

Anonymous said: what happened to Ayoshi???

he’s in the basement working on AxA, don’t ask.  he actually just doesn’t like being on Simblr anymore but still likes making CC with me, so we just make cc on call sometimes when we get bored of a game we’re playing. he sends his regards from the basement of AH00B studios <3

Anonymous said: hello i love all your cc and you’re my favorite creator, i have a question, are you planning to make some more clothes anytime soon?

getting these while working on AxA was so funny because there are like 80 new clothes for male/female sims in it and i was like... these people don’t know what they have coming their way. thank you!

Anonymous said: 💃 How you make all your item index for your pack and collab? 💃

I make mine in Word using tables and then save as PDF. Here’s a peak at the AxA 2020 one

Anonymous said: am i on drugs or have u uploaded an eco lifestyle kids dress conversion? i remember seeing it so vividly, (the zip up kids dress), but maybe it was another creator... lol

I think that was from grimcookies! Here is a link to his eco lifestyle add on set that he made. 

Anonymous said: would you happen to know how to get rid of the weird gloss that can be on some cc hairs?

if you download Sims4Studio and open the package you can make the specular blank but that could cause issues in your game if you play on certain graphic settings. So do it with caution. 

Anonymous said: Awww we have very similar life aspirations, I just want a boring/calm life, settle down with a wife (I'm a lesbian) and become an lit teacher.

yup yup boring lifes are where it’s at. Like i just want something simple lmao if I wanted exciting I wouldn’t do teaching. 

Anonymous said: hi! i hope youre doing well! could you please tell me wcif the two toned jeans on the sim in your eco lifestyle addon collection?

They’re in AxA 2020! We have had so much of the stuff done for a while so i’ve been using it in previews for a while lmao. 

Anonymous said: WAIT is the Love Bomb palette named after the Fromis_9 song???

yessss ayoshi is their #1 fan

[yourultraarchive]

Using Jisho to Translate Verbs, Adjectives, and Nouns for Names

So, there was definitely a lot going on in my “Creating a Name” guide, and after a couple of asks and private messages on creating names I realized that this part deserves its own more digestible post.

In one of the asks I got, I mentioned that this section of the names guide might have gotten lost in all the background context hubbub (it’s found in the first subsection in the “Types of Names” section; the following quote is edited for brevity):

A common thing I see in people naming OCs after verbs to give them that “name that matches the quirk” quality is that they [...] just use that verb as a name, with the verb ending and all [...]. Most verbs have a hiragana character at the end which changes depending on how the word is conjugated, but for a name it’s easy to just cut that part off and just use the singular kanji. When doing that, make sure to find an alternate reading or a name reading for the kanji by itself [...].

For people who don’t know how to read Japanese, this might be confusing or hard to do. So, the following is a step by step guide on how to use Jisho.org to properly translate an English word into a name worthy of an MHA character. (Unfortunately, this post does not account for punny names, just how to use jisho to make names. See the names guide for more on punny names, though.)

Disclaimer: This is just a guide for how to use jisho in the context of creating a name as referenced on this blog/in the names guide. This is not the recommended use of jisho, nor how you would normally create names for characters in other media/fandoms... though you can if you want to.

Note: I will not be defining words like kana or hiragana in this post. Please see the names guide or google for more info!

1. Translate your word. (And also, understand how Jisho works.)

If you have a lot of ideas, translate many words. Anything related to the character’s quirk or personality, whatever works.

Using the example from the names guide, here’s what jisho looks like when you look up “dragon”:

The anatomy of the above image is as follows:

Orange: the English word you’re looking up

Blue: the Japanese word relating to the English word you’re looking up (the image only shows one entry, but there will be multiple on the actual jisho site), with “furigana” above the kanji to show you how to read/say it

Keep in mind that this word may not actually mean what you think it means, hence the next bullet point of “green”...

Green: the definition of the Japanese word (blue), which usually has the English word you looked up (orange) somewhere in there, to give you a precise idea of what the word actually means, and may even give you multiple definitions if the word has more than one meaning

Note the small grey word at the top that says “Noun”! This tells you what kind of word the entry (blue) is, and this is going to be especially important when I get to talking about verbs and adjectives...

Red: the kanji which include the word you looked up (orange) in its translation, but keep in mind that kanji themselves have multiple definitions and may not just mean the one thing you were looking for

This section might actually be the most useful to you in making names, since you won’t get caught up in all the multiple definitions of actual words, but sometimes actual words are useful, so using just the kanji list to create a name is another starting point to go from rather than using the definitions/actual words as a starting point

Check the “More Kanji >” link toward the bottom of this list if you’d rather use a kanji as a starting point for your name rather than a word (for future reference, you can also skip directly to this list by looking up your word with the “#kanji” filter: “YourWordHere #kanji”)

Check the “Details >” link in the lower right corner of the box to see more info about the kanji, its readings (kunyomi, onyomi, and nanori/name readings), and some other words that may include this kanji somewhere in its beginning, middle, or end

Now, after you translate your word, there’s a couple ways this can go:

You probably started with a noun so you have your kanji to create a name with. Skip to STEP 3!

You decided to use the kanji list at the sidebar rather than using a word. Skip to STEP 3!

Your word was an adjective or verb, so there might be more work to do. Proceed to STEP 2!

2. Cut off the kana, extract the kanji.

So, say the word you looked up wasn’t as simple as a noun. There’s probably extra kana tacked on, which isn’t really the norm in a name. So you need to cut those off.

For quick reference like in my proverb names post, these are kana!

For an adjective that’s also a noun like “白 shiro” (white), there’s no extra kana, so you’re good. But some adjectives like “楽しい tanoshii” (fun/enjoyable) and “可愛い kawaii” (cute) have kana at the end, and the same goes for verbs like  “寝る neru” (to sleep), “泳ぐ oyogu” (to swim), and “死ぬ shinu” (to die). The occasional noun will have a kana too, like “眠り nemuri” (sleep), but the same rules apply--cut off the kana!

Extra information, feel free to skip this section:

Japanese usually have two types of adjectives, “i-adjectives” and “na-adjectives”, which you’ll see in the definitions section (green from before) in jisho. The “i-adjectives” are the ones that usually have extra kana.

There’s a sort of third type of adjective, “no-adjectives”, which are basically nouns that can be adjectives too. You don’t have to worry about any extra kana showing up with these, for the most part.

There are three types of verbs, “ru-verbs”, “u-verbs”, and “irregular verbs”, but jisho calls them different things like “Godan verbs”. There are other classifications like “Transitive” or “Intransitive” and other such things listed in jisho, but you don’t have to worry about them (they’re mostly for understanding usage/grammar, which isn’t what we’re focusing on here). In regards to the “ru” and “u” verbs, verbs are categorized by how they’re conjugated. In Japanese, the ending kana changes for tense, negative, potential, etc. which is why the kana is at the end of the kanji rather than part of the kanji itself.

Now once you have just the kanji, we can proceed with creating a name as outlined in the names guide. I’m gonna illustrate what the steps look like so you have a better idea what to do!

3. For a simple name, look up the kanji with the “#names” filter.

After you’ve got your kanji, copy it into the search bar and either type “#names” after it or manually click the filter button (green in the below image) and select the “Names” option (blue in the below image).

That will give you a whole list of names, with romaji included so you know how to read the kanji. It will also tell you whether it’s a male or female given name, a family name/surname, an unspecified name (usually for unisex given names, but sometimes those kinds of names also work as surnames), or the name of a place or known public figure (the latter-most two options you should ignore--naming a character after a place is unconventional, and you really probably shouldn’t be naming characters after real life people).

To narrow down your search so you don’t have to look through all the categories you don’t need, you can use these advanced search options by typing in these tags after adding the “#names” filter:

“#surname” for surnames

“#given” for given names, unisex or first names of any gender

“#fem” for feminine/female names

“#masc” for masculine/male names

“#unclass” for unclassified names (these can be any of the above)

So if you’re looking for names for a boy with a dragon quirk, for example, you could search “竜 #names #masc” or “竜 #names #given” or “竜 #names #unclass”.

EXTRA OPTION: Homophonous Names

In the “How to Create a Name for your OC” section of the names guide, one of the tips about creating a “name that sounds like another word” name is to take the pronunciation of the name that includes the kanji you want and using a name spelled with different kanji instead. It’s really easy to use the “#names” filter on jisho to do this!

Once you find a name you like, simply take the romaji spelling (green below), put it into the search bar (red below), and add the “#names” filter. This will show you a whole list of names that sound the same but are spelled differently (blue below)! You can pick the spelling you like, but be sure to check what it actually means with STEP 4!

Anyway, this step is pretty simple, but for a name that’s more than one kanji long, proceed to STEP 4. Otherwise, see more options in STEP 5.

4. Translate the name back to see the meanings of the other kanji in the name.

So say you found a name with more than one kanji that you like, including the one you were looking up in the first place. Great, now to see what the full name actually means!

Copy the kanji in the brackets of that name (green below--note that you shouldn’t be copying the kana directly to the left of it!) and put it back into the search bar (replace the text in the red below).

After that, either type “#kanji” directly after the name or manually click the filter button (green below) and select the “Kanji” option (blue below).

You’ll be taken to a page with lots of large text and technical info on it, but the most important bit is the definition of the kanji (green below). The image only shows the first kanji of the name, but if you scroll down you’ll see the others (one example in red below).

If that’s what you want your name to mean, great, you have a name! Otherwise, you can go back to the other steps and start over, until you find a name you like.

Proceed to STEP 5 if you want to manipulate the name some more to give it some uniqueness or possibly make a pun out of it.

5. Make a name out of a combination of kanji of your choice, or find alternate kanji readings.

So you have a kanji you like, but the options in the list of names in the “#names” filter don’t really fit your character: ie. you have a dragon quirk user but you don’t want to name them just “竜一 Ryuuichi” (one/first dragon) or “竜鼻 Tatsuhana” (dragon snout) or something.

One of the things you can do is just put together 2-3 kanji that don’t actually make a “real name” and come up with your own reading for them. For instance, “竜夜 Tatsuya” (dragon night) may be homophonous with a “real name”, but the spelling is unusual and if you look it up on jisho with the “#names” filter, nothing will come up.

It’s possible to make up names like the above example by combining the the different readings of the kanji. For example the 夜 can be read “yo”, “yoru”, or “ya”. To find the readings of a kanji, you can either look in the kanji list when you’re looking up a word, or you can check out the specific kanji details to find the kunyomi, onyomi, and nanori. (All the different areas to find kanji readings are in red in the images below. Nanori is called the “Japanese names” reading in the last image, but be aware that not every kanji will have nanori available.)

(The names guide outlines this a little too, as well as list other ways to find kunyomi, onyomi, nanori, etc. and their romaji readings, but I will not be getting into that here since I’m only focusing on jisho in this post.)

Of course you have to know how to read a little kana to figure out how to pronounce the kanji and its readings, but you can either reference the kana sheet above, google or wiki, or use google translate. The image below is going to be the only non-jisho image here I promise, but this part is important for people who don’t know how to read kana so I’m including it. (Be careful not to use the actual translation, in red below. The green and blue are the kunyomi and onyomi respectively, just to show you where in the romaji reading they are, as google translate doesn’t use line breaks in it. You can see why it’s not a good idea to use the red area since it tried to translate “rou” as an actual English word “low”--this also illustrates the importance of kanji, since all of those readings technically mean “dragon”!)

Once you have your kanji readings, you can combine them however you think sounds best. For example, 竜夜 (dragon night) can be any of these given or family names (this is not a complete list, and not all of them are necessarily homophonous with real names):

Tatsuyo

Iseya

Iseyoru

Ryuuya

Ryuuyo

Ryouya

Rouya

Rouyoru

Riuya

Riuyo

Riuyoru

You can also do this to names that aren’t made-up mashed-together kanji. For instance, take the real name “竜ケ江 Tatsugae”. With alternate readings, you can use “Isekemi” as a surname and still spell it the same as the traditional “Tatsugae”. This is useful to make a name look normal but change the pronunciation to be appropriate for a pun (my example is not a pun, however--I was just demonstrating how to do it). An example of this is Mina Ashido’s name, as the surname “芦戸” is normally pronounced “Ashito”.

Alternate readings are usually how puns are made, but I won’t get into that here. Check the names guide for more in-depth stuff on that, but the info from STEP 5 is particularly useful for the “name that matches the quirk” subsection of the “How to Create a Name for your OC” section.

Congrats, you made it to the end!

Welp, that’s all you need to know about using jisho to make a name! Please check out the “Creating a Name for your MHA Character” guide that this post was made to supplement. This post was just “how to use jisho”, the names guide will really get into the meat of how to create a name befitting of an MHA character.

If anything about this post was unclear or confusing, let me know and I’ll try to clarify. Hope this helps you name your character!

Go beyond and PLUS ULTRA!

[brokemylegflippingthefirewall]

*This is absolutely a fic promotion, but plz hear me out on the discourse part too

So, self inserts and original characters, the worst fanfic catgeory (fanfiction.net literally says that in one of its fic groupings, and I'm pretty sure the number of views on any fanfic website says the same).

TLDR- Yes, I agree that this stereotype carries truth, but I do think SIs and OCs have more potential to be explored, and the stigma surrounding these labels is blocking that. And oh god I just want to know so badly if this is the deal with the work I'm currently writing or if I genuinely just can't write well.

The longer version- (this was written quite late into the night/ I'm in Singapore/, and might not be so well organized, I apologize for that.)

To what extent is this stigma "justified"? I mostly use AO3 for reading fics, and when I see the OC/SI tag, the thing is....I came to look for fics about canon characters and might not have the wish to invest my time in taking in a new character. I understand that most people who read fanfiction would feel the same. This, I think, is more or less justified. If you came to look for a certain canon character/relationship, and you don't want to get invested in any OCs, then of course the OC/SI tag isn't for you.

But... I think that's about it. Bcs here's the thing,

1. Using the OC/SI format does NOT automatically make the fic worse in quality. Hell, I'm not even sure if the statistical "fact" that these tags generate the worst fics is true. Judging from what I've read in the tma fandom and my other past fandoms, the stuff with OC/SI isn't inherently worse or better than the rest of the fics. There are ones that are pretty normal in writing quality, and the ones where the prose is rly good, others where plot design stands out etc. Of course, there is a lot of wish fulfillment and the like, but... there's also a lot of that in fics that write about canon characters.

2. I can't really say whether a wish fulfillment "I just want to write cool scenes/fluff" fic is better or worse than a more serious fic that explores some characterization or plot point. I think stories (all stories, books, fanfic, myths, everything) exist to entertain us and make us feel things. I am not sure if writing a feel good story is any less meaningful than writing a story that brings people "deeper" thoughts and makes them feel good in some other way. And this isn't even the issue at hand, because fundamentally, writing an OC/SI or not doesn't determine what the content is about. I agree that a larger proportion of OC/SI fics tend to be more on the lighthearted side, but... so is most of the content consumed in the other tags. Readers don't seem to have a problem with feel good stories/fix it fics etc when there is no OC or SI, so I don't see why that type of fic paired with an OC/SI should be considered any less "meaningful".

3. Guys/gals, what is an OC/SI?

Yes, it is very personal, and it is very wish fulfillment, but... isn't that like a common literature thing...like in general? Look at the works that "real writers" publish, from contemporary to the classics, which writer doesn't write about themselves? Like, just off the top of my head, Les Miserables, Marius? Um, Dante's Inferno? (and that guy did not self insert into some random thing he straightup went for the Christian Canon😂 used his real name too, so Jonny I guess if you feel awkward about your MCs name you can think of Dante//Jk). But seriously, self insert and wish fulfillment is a big part of literature itself, and while there are things to be said about these tropes, if people don't have that much of a problem with them in other literature, I don't see why fanfic OC/SIs shouldn't be treated the same.

4. in relation to the last point. More specifically...

I do think that a lot of fanfiction which write about the original characters are also OC/SIs to different extents. I've read fics that depict pairings where the author and readers project heavily onto one (or more) of the characters. I've read stuff where the author uses a minor character to explore the established world building/character dynamics and it's clear that it's an SI but with the appearance of being a canon character (and yes it gets tons more views than one that's written as SI). How do I know this? Because I am one of those readers who project onto those characters, and I know why I read those fics, I know why I like them. It's because I can self insert, and feel like I am part of the story, part of the world. Isn't that something most people want to do? I mean, Universal Studios? Specific franchise themed museums? COSPLAY??? Of course that's not all there is to engaging with a story, but what's the shame in wanting to be a part of an already established world building, or want to love a wonderfully designed character? (slight tangent, but if u feel like it's bcs ur not as interesting/cool as the story's world or other characters appear to be then I can tell you with certainty that's not true. You are very interesting and cool and absolutely deserve to be part of a fantasy world.) Isn't that a big part of why "real literature" is written and read as well? So... what's the problem with being like, okay, I'm just gonna insert myself into the world now, through this original character? Of course, I'm not asking for people who prefer to write strictly in canon characters to change that. What I mean to say is, writing it in the form of an OC/SI, doesn't make it a lot different from other fics, or hell, from classic literature even.

I think a potential problem might be the feeling that you are taking too much creative liberty with something that is established canon, by having your own character directly interact with it. But, um, can't the same thing be said if you take a canon character, and then proceed to project heavily onto them? Like, a big part of why I don't feel comfortable writing just canon characters is that I know I'm clearly projecting and it feels awkward to rewrite an already established character to explore my own thoughts/desires. I would rather just straightup design a new character. (this is all just personal feelings, I haven't thought enough about this to make any kind of argument here. And of course, the main reason is I can't trust myself to write canon characters that don't ooc in some way so having one as my protag might kill me with my own awkwardness. )

5. the potential.

Now this is looking far ahead because I'm not sure how much our current system for distribution of knowledge & copyright can allow it. But damn. The OC/SI thing has a lot of potential. There is one thing that makes it different from writing in canon characters, and that is the way it opens up a clear space for you to add your own experience into the story. When exploring your own world view through the lense of an already established world, or vice versa, so much can be revealed about both, perhaps even bringing to light aspects of the narrative the author hadn't previously seen. We all know this feeling, it's when we ramble on about one of our stories or worlds to a friend, and they point something out, and we're like ooooh that makes a lot of sense but I hadn't thought about it before. Yea, like those moments. Stories are generally made more interesting by their interaction with many different perspectives/experiences. With OC/SI it straightup allows you to be like, okay, I'm going to engage my own experience with this fictional world/character now. I mean, isnt that also a large part of how fanfics work in general? Readers/writers bouncing symbols and experiences off each other in the form of stories? Reading about the various interpretations of canon stuff? Whats the problem with tagging it as it is? I'm just thinking about the fics that could have been written as OC/SI and explored the story in some fascinating way which weren't written at all or were discontinued bcs the number of views discouraged those authors. (I feel that with my current work as well, though I have already written half of it and the remaining half is too juicy to give up so I'll probably be completing it)

6. conclusion, sorta

I guess what I want for OC/SO fics is just the same treatment as everything else. Saw it in the tags you were searching for? Look at the teaser. Do you find it interesting? No, then very well. Yes, then click in and take a look. Do you like the writing style? Are you getting into the narrative?... etc. You know, like, same standards you would have for any other kind of fic. Not feeling like you want to read about a new character? Cool, no problem at all, click away. But I do not think that the current difference in number of views is just based on whether readers are interested in reading about a new character or not. In fact, that's what I want it to be. Show me that "true" difference, the one without the stigma behind it, because, as the same goes for every kind of stigmatized community, you're not receiving the proportionate amount of positive feedback, but what's worse is you can't even trust the criticism you receive. If no one engages, or someone gives a negative feedback, how am I supposed to know if it's because my writing is bad? or my teaser wasn't interesting? or my character was badly written/designed? Or if it was to a certain extent, bcs of the stigma? I do want criticism, of course I do, it's the first step to every improvement, and I would love it if I could get feedback that I can trust. (and this brings us to the truely "oppressed" community of the fanfic world, the people who write very good but cant write interesting teasers//jk)

7. the entirely skippable straw man rant part, also the expression of my love for The Magnus Archives.

some straw man: if you like writing your own characters so much, why not just write your own story entirely? and publish it?

You think I'm not annoyed about that? Here's the thing, I LIKE THIS WORLD I READ FROM THIS BOOK/SOME OTHER FORM OF MEDIA OR WHATEVER, I like it, it's brilliant, I want to write for it, about it, be in it, think about it, read about it, engage in whatever way I can. I CAN'T just "go write my own." And who do you think is more annoyed about not being able to publish the stuff? (According to you) I have written something that is potentially publishable (thank you btw I know you don't exist and is a strawman I invented just now but I've gotta get my compliments where I can//Jk), and I can't publish it in any potentially big way (and rightfully not) because I have no copyright over the characters. I worked hard to design my character, to make the plot meaningful, and to study the original canon plot and characters so that it would all fit together (I mean, partially bcs I can't force myself to sit down and write sth that is any less complex), and I can't actually publish it where more people will read it. And of course, on top of that, even less people will feel like reading once that "original character" tag is up. Does it look like I would be here if I could "just write my own"?

(slight tangent but come on what even is "your own"? how many classic European lit books were just fanfics of each other which were all just fanfics of the Bible or Greek mythology or sth? Stories and symbols have no boundaries it's the economic system that drew those.)

Damn this got way longer than I thought and it's morning now😂 guess I ran out of space to actually promote my fic, might have to do that in a seperate post then. But to anyone who actually read up to here, I'm so sorry for wasting your time no but srsly thanks for reading all of these jumbled thoughts, and good luck with whatever you are working on at the moment, I know you're probably working on something if you're reading through these tags. And of course good luck to the tma folk we're gonna face the end together🙏. good night (I should rly go to sleep now😂)

[idkthisisjustforfanfic]

two years too late, chapter f o u r

Jake Newcomb was tall and blonde and probably one of the most sarcastic people you’d ever met. When you were ten, you had told him that if you never married anyone, you’d be marrying him. He took it in stride, really, seeing as you informed him of this decision rather than asking for his take on the matter. 

You liked to think of him as the brother you never had, the one you’d go to for advice or reassurance if he could handle being serious for more than five seconds. He’d probably called you by your name only fifteen times, ever--Smalls had been a mainstay since it’s origination in 2007.

Adam Penter met Jake when they were in nursery school--only a year before they were in the same class as Harry in Year 1. Adam was just as loud and just as funny as Jake and Harry--but he was a much better listener and couldn’t stand the Rolling Stones.

He’d been in and out of relationships with girls the whole time you’d known him, seemingly always with ones who turned him into some type of puddle the second they left him. He was sensitive and sweet and put up a good front: his humor just a shield for his emotions. 

Jake and Adam together sometimes felt like babysitting--avoiding blowouts and roughhousing became second nature when everyone was together.

“M’probably just gonna beat the shit out of him as soon as he gets here,” Jake laughed, his elbows resting on the kitchen table at Adam’s mum’s. The curtains over the window were the same for the last thirteen years: a red and white toile pattern that always seemed to remind you of history class.

“So you’re serious when you say he paid for you ticket?” Jessie’s eyes were kind of wide, she leaned in on the table to stare at you more directly. 

“Yes and I thanked him a thousand times already, very sweet of him, I know.”

“Did he say anything about why he suddenly wanted to hang out with you?”

Adam’s question had no ill-intent, but the words still stung like a skinned knee. 

“No, I dunno--he said he was glad, though, on the plane.”

“Hmm,” Bryn sipped at the beer in her hand, eyeliner thick around her eyes for a night on the town. Holmes Chapel, that was. 

There was never much going on in the sleepy town where everyone knew everyone’s business. Save for the few days before Christmas and New Years when your generation would flock home, momentary pauses on their lives in London or Manchester, a drive up to the countryside to get sloshed at the Red Lion before some quality family time. 

Bryn was leaning against a wall, right next to Adam. As soon as Harry showed up, you’d head downtown. “And you still haven’t talked about it?” 

“No!”  You said quickly, setting your beer on the table with force. “And none of you are going to bring it up tonight, yeah? Cause that’s seriously the last thing any of us need having not seen him in so long.”

They seemed to shrink at that, averted gazes and hunched shoulders as Jake cleared his throat. “S’fine, Smalls. None of us will bring it up and it sounds like he won’t either.”

You hadn’t told them that he’d tried. You didn’t tell them about your emergency trip to the toilet  for a minute to clear your head. 

“And you’re--are you, like--” Jessie treaded carefully, you knew the question she was posing before she could even form a full sentence. 

You cut her off. “No. I’m not. I will not. Let’s leave it.” You were not falling in love with him again. 

Jessie Alby had been your best friend since you showed up at their school at ten years old. She  was bold and brazen and sure, quite loud and energetic, a thick accent inherited from her Northern parents. She’d been dreaming about going back to school, a PhD in Creative Writing. She now had her sights set on being a Uni professor. You couldn’t really picture her in that role, though, not with the mouth she had.

“Oh fucking relax,” she rolled her eyes. “M’just asking.”

Bryn Miller was quite the opposite, really. Poised, posed, and rather posh, Bryn was smarter than the rest of you by far. She started working in finance straight out of Uni and she probably made twice your salary. She’d be running her own company in a few short years, you were sure of it. 

There was a knock on the door, Jessie danced over to open it, revealing a hooded Harry on the front step of the tiny house. His hands were in the pockets of a denim jacket, dressed down in a sweatshirt and black jeans. He offered a wide grin into the house before stepping in from the cold.

“Well hello,” Jessie greeted excitedly, his arms wrapping around her with a squeeze. The rest of them rushed over through the living room, socked feet padding on the brown carpet that had endured one too many alcohol spills in your teen years. You trailed behind, giving them space and time to take a look at him--like parents whose child had just come home from their first weeks at school.

A chorus of greetings echoed through the living room as they all took turns hugging him. Jessie then Adam then Bryn and then Jake. 

“Smallsy,” he offered a two-finger salute in your direction. “Two days no see.”

You forced a laugh and smiled in return, all eyes in the room on you. You shrugged your shoulders. “How’s your mum? And Gemma?”

Adam seemed to motion for you to all follow him back into the kitchen. 

“They’re good,” Harry said casually. “S’good to be home for a bit. Adam, are your parents here?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “Downstairs, I think.” He opened the fridge, tossing a beer in Harry’s direction once you’d all reclaimed your seats around the kitchen table.

Of course he’d ask--he’d always been the one friend to make sure he said hello and thank you to whoever was hosting. But Adam’s parents meandered upstairs a bit later when they heard the laughter in response to Harry’s story about he and his sister fighting over the bigger guest bedroom. 

One of the first things Harry had done after the band started making money was buy his mum a new house on the outskirts of town. An upgrade from their townhouse with a small garden, the one where you’d watched scary movies on Halloween and where you did homework at the kitchen table once in a while. 

The new house was set back from the street, almost out of view when you drove by. You’d been only once--beautiful shrubs maintained by a stranger in a landscaping shirt still stuck out in your memory. That was probably the summer of 2012. 

You watched and stayed quiet as Harry reintegrated into the group, his laugh just as loud as it was at sixteen, only now he had a five o’clock shadow and an extra four inches in height. He told them all about your midnight walks through the village--the Pad Thai you’d eaten and the Sara Bareilles concert. 

He asked them about their jobs and their families, nodding thoughtfully as they took turns giving  him an update. You wondered, as the stories and updates unfolded, if anyone else was feeling angry by the way he’d faded out so easily. 

Jake and Adam had always been quick to defend him, even when he royally fucked them over. They’d make an excuse. He’s busy, he’s in a foreign country and doesn’t get good reception. As far as you were concerned, it didn’t matter.

So maybe it angered you a little bit that things seemed to click back into place like puzzle pieces--once apart but never changing shape.  But maybe everyone else was more forgiving because they hadn’t been in love with him when he left. 

**

The inside of the Red Lion was frozen in time. The brick fireplace in the corner always seemed to keep the dim room warm as you threw back drink after drink. Tiny wooden tables were cramped together as always, bodies and chairs spread around the room as music leaked from the speakers overhead.  

You’d all shown up a bit late--a fair amount of old classmates already settled when the six of you walked in from the car park. 

Kieran Chesna, Mollie Amsbury, Kenny Tilley, Maddie Winslow, Amy Goodwin, Michael Waite. Familiar faces greeted you with hellos and how are yous, but you certainly noticed the buzz and the whispers that spread when Harry stepped in behind you, pulling a beanie off of his head when he was shielded from the wind. 

You could only imagine how strange and out of place he must have looked to them all--making a rare appearance as if he was still one of the gang, not an award winning musical artist who had enough money to buy the Red Lion out from its owners. But if he was nervous he hid it well, offering hugs and handshakes to people you’d both known since you were kids. 

 You’d made your own rounds with Bryn and Jessie in tow, getting an update from Amy about her engagement and from Kieran about his sister’s wedding. After grabbing a cocktail from the bar, you sat back down between Jake and Mollie, answering their questions about your work in New York.

“So you don’t ever think you’ll come back?” Mollie smiled up at you, her blonde hair was shorter  than it was last Christmas when she brought a new boyfriend to the meetup. Apparently he wasn’t in the picture anymore. 

A shrug of your shoulders and sip of your drink. “Not here, at least. Maybe London, but it’d take a really good reason to get me out of New York.”

“So cool that you’re writing for The Scoop,” she cooed, resting her chin in her hands. “You’re kind of famous, y’know!”

You shook your head but laughed. “M’not famous--I just have some dedicated readers I guess. And I’m an idiot on the internet, so that helps.”

Jake lifted an arm to pat you on the back, his lips pulling into a smirk as he looked between you and Mollie. “Leave it to Smalls to post her own embarrassing date fails on twitter for the whole world to laugh at.”

You couldn’t disagree--working at The Scoop had completely changed your life in a lot of ways. You were way more comfortable poking fun at yourself, your followers growing each time you shared an article or got into funny quarrels with celebrities on social media.

Your list about the fifteen most embarrassing things about millennial culture really seemed to seal the deal. Your stories were getting millions of views, your inbox was being flooded with messages from strangers, and most importantly, Whitney was impressed and appreciative of the humor you were bringing to The Scoop. 

It was nice to know that your classmates were impressed with your work and the fact that you moved to the other side of the Atlantic, but the excitement in Mollie Amsbury’s face increased tenfold when Harry sat down next to you.

It’s not like there was a competition to see who’d been the most successful as an adult, but if there was, Harry would win. Which was fine. You loved your job. You loved New York and you didn’t need Harry Styles in your life to be happy.

“The album is amazing, Harry, as always,” Mollie’s eyes glazed over, Harry took a sip of his beer before setting it on the table. 

“Oh, thanks, Molls--how’re you, though? How’s work?”

“S’good, s’whatever,” she laughed, her eyelashes fluttering as she offered a coy smile to Harry. Jake offered you a knowing look between them as he ran a hand through his hair. 

Harry was funny like that--there were moments when he hated the attention and wanted nothing to do with it. Some nights he’d show up at the Red Lion and seem annoyed by anyone even mentioning that it’d been a year since they saw him. 

Other moments he ate the attention up, hungry for the reassurance that your former classmates still loved and adored him, despite his long absences and poor communication. 

“Tell me about tour though--so cool you’re doing it all by yourself now!” Mollie was more than happy to give Harry the attention--she still rested her head in her hands, watching the words fall out of his mouth like honey. 

“S’cool, definitely different than being in the band, but s’good. Busy for sure, so I’m glad to have some time off for the holidays.”

A smile pulled at Mollie’s lips, a knot in your stomach. 

“So amazing,” her voice was high-pitched, like a bird singing in the sunrise or maybe a whizzing blender. Either way, you took another sip of your drink. 

You liked Mollie Amsbury. She was sweet and friendly and never gave you any trouble in school. She was just as bad as the rest of them, though, becoming more enchanted by Harry as his net worth grew and suddenly missing him so much more than she ever did before he was famous. 

To save Mollie’s reputation in your mind, you decided it’d be best to do a lap and visit with others. After all, hearing about someone’s job as a cashier would be more entertaining that listening to her gush about how talented and special your friend was. 

“Hi,” you found Jessie at the bar and pulled up a stool beside her, letting your elbows rest on the counter in a sign of defeat. She sat with Adam and Michael Waite--both incredibly enthralled by a video on Adam’s phone, their faces squished together to watch whatever it was. 

“Hi,” she turned to take a good look at you. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” you sighed, the bartender took your empty glass and offered a refill. “Just sick of hearing Mollie drone on about how amazing Harry is.”

Jessie peered over her shoulder, a quick glance in their direction to take in the sight of Jake still stuck between them. “Yeah, well, you know how it is,” a sigh escaped her lips, turning back to your before offering a smile. “S’fun, though, to see everyone, right?”

You stared at her suspiciously, eyes scanning her face as the bartender set down a new drink in front of you. 

“What?”

“Why do you want me to be having so much fun?”

“Y/N, just relax, will you? You’re so...on guard about him being around again you’re not even able to enjoy the fact that we’re all together.”

You rolled your eyes, blinked a few times, took a sip of your cocktail and contemplated her words. She wasn’t wrong, but she wasn’t right either. When you didn’t say anything, she kept talking. 

“He’s being fine, okay? He’s normal and he’s not mad about it or anything, so just, relax, okay?”

“He’s never said anything about it to you, has he?”

“No,” she said quickly, “not even last--”

She cut herself off and her eyes doubled in size, her face going white before she bit at her lip, horror washing over her face as you leaned in to lower your voice.

“Last when? Did you see him?”

“I didn’t.”

“Jessie,” you spoke her name calmly, even and controlled as your fingers tightened around the cold glass in front of you. 

She let out a dramatic groan--almost more of a whine--and let her head flop to the side as she grimaced. “We saw him last Christmas--he was home and texted Jake and then, I don’t know, we just tagged along.”

Your jaw hung open, eyes unblinking as Jessie tried to twist her mouth into a smile. “We didn’t tell you because we knew you’d be upset and he asked us not to because he figured you didn’t want to see him.”

“Are you kidding me?!”

Jessie leaned forward to grab your hands, holding them in hers with force. “I’m so sorry--we’re total knobs and you have every right to be mad and we suck, alright?”

“You do suck,” you pulled your hands from her. “You’re liars and traitors and--”

“Why is she a liar and traitor?” Bryn appeared beside you--her hair pulled back into a pony, her glasses framing her face in the dim room. 

“You’re one too,” you said angrily, leaning back to the bar to reach for your drink. You’d need at least three more if you were going to let them off the hook for this. 

“I let it slip that we--y’know--engaged with the enemy.”

“What?” Bryn’s head dipped to the side, her eyes narrowed as she waited for Jessie to explain. 

She looked around the room, mostly to search for Harry. When she located him--now standing with Maddie Winslow and Kieran, she turned back to the two of you. “We saw Harry last year. I told her. She’s pissed.”

Bryn’s face contorted into one of hesitance. “Oh, Y/N, we didn’t--we were just--we missed him, you know?”

“He literally ditched us! Then he shows up in 2015 and lets me make a fool of myself and then you two go engaging with him?” You borrowed Jessie’s word, the two drinks you’d already had lending themselves to the flurry of emotion rising in your chest.

Anger. Betrayal. Jealousy. Guilt. Confusion. On one hand, you were proper pissed. They’d thrown caution to the wind and gone behind your back. They’d lied and kept something from you for a year and as far as you were concerned, you had every right to flip a table or light something on fire. 

But then there was the guilt. They wouldn’t have to lie or sneak around if you’d not been so uptight about seeing him or talking to him or anything in between. Or, realistically, if you hadn’t been such an idiot to begin with. 

The scene in the bathroom played in your head for the ten thousandth time. 

“What do you mean?” He asked, his head turned to the side to watch you for a second, but you couldn’t get over the cool tile on your bare skin. 

“Dunno,” you slurred out the word, a whine escaping your lips when he cracked a smile. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” He laughed, his finger reaching over to poke you in the stomach. 

“The cute smile thing.”

“Can’t help it,” he shrugged. “You bring it out of me.”

“Why’s she staring off into space?” Adam appeared beside you, leaning an arm on your shoulder, his question posed to Bryn and Jessie as he finished the last sip of his drink. A shaky breath escaped your lips as you pulled yourself back into the present.

“Jessie blabbed that we saw Harry last Christmas.”

You looked up at Adam, his face dropping quickly when your eyes landed on his. “Smalls,” he said your name slowly, apologetically, even. 

“Save it,” you said, pushing yourself up from the stool before hopping down to the floor. “I’ll get over it. I just--I need a minute.”

They watched you walk away, doing your best to avoid Harry’s gaze as you passed him in the middle of the room with Jake and Kieran by his side. You slipped out the front door of the Red Lion, the main street through town still busy despite the late hour. 

You leaned up against the side of the building, thoughts swirling in your head like the wind in the sky. 

You smiled up at him, your lips pulled into a thin line to avoid the smile that so badly wanted to plaster itself on your face. The bathroom was dark, the noises of a muffled party were seeping through the door. Jessie’s laugh, Jake talking loudly over the music. 

But you felt safe in here--secluded and cozy and best of all, it was just the two of you. You turned to look at him quickly. “Why’d you show up tonight, anyway?”

He brought his gaze to the floor quickly. It wasn’t necessary a question you needed to ask. His band was done. Who knew what he’d do next--though you knew he’d figure it out--maybe a quick stop in Holmes Chapel was enough to get him grounded. 

You blinked quickly, forcing out the memory like it was a bad taste in your mouth--stubborn and harsh as the door to the Red Lion opened. Jake appeared in a sweatshirt, a cigarette between his lips when his eyes landed on you. 

“What’reyadoinouhere?” His words jumbled together, a combination of the alcohol and his attempt to keep the cigarette in place. 

“Avoiding you five,” you laughed, anger fading from your veins as he came around and draped an arm over your shoulders, the heat from his body a welcome change from the night air. 

“What’d we do now?” He brought a lighter out of his pocket and held it up to the butt--you lifted a hand to help shield the wind. 

“Hung out with Harry last year and didn’t tell me.”

“Hmm,” he nodded, taking a puff before letting the smoke return to the black sky. “Surprised the girls kept it quiet that long.”

“Me too,” you said. 

A moment of silence passed between the two of you. You were appreciative of the fact that he didn’t try to make an excuse or explain it away. Instead, he took another puff of the cigarette and then looked down at you. 

“Y’know, Smallsy, I do think you should talk to him about it.”

You let a groan escape your lips, a churning in your stomach reminded you of why you hated this particular piece of advice.

“Why do you think that, Jacob?”

“Because he doesn’t care.”

You let out a small laugh, amused by Jake’s level of intoxication but also intrigued by his statement. A few people walked up to the front door--faces you recognized but couldn’t quite name--and headed inside. 

“Why do you think that, Jacob?”

“He told me.”

Smoke danced up from his mouth, swirls of gray against the black sky above. “He told you?”

He nodded, his lips pursing together. 

“Wh--what did he say?”

“He said ‘it was two years ago, doesn’t matter,’” he imitated Harry, his face twisting into a serious grimace with dipped eyebrows. It was a good thing that Jake was some type of Marketing and Analytics pro in London--he didn’t have a future in acting. 

You let out a snorted laugh at his impression--his face immediately delivering a frown, he pulled his arm from around you and took a step back. “Laughing at my impression? I thought it was spot on, honestly!”

“It was shit,” you said simply, folding your arms over your chest before another gust of wind fluttered by. A small Holmes Chapel bus slowed across the street, depositing passengers onto the sidewalk. 

Another puff from his cigarette between words. “I think you’re being a baby about it, Y/N.”

You looked up at him, his tone more serious than before. Your shoulders tensed, suddenly more defensive. “M’not being a baby--you weren’t there, you know. You didn’t see what happened.”

He rolled his eyes. “Heard all about it though from both of you.”

You shrunk at that--silently questioning how Harry’s retelling was different than yours. Did he recount the temperature in the bathroom, hot air blowing from the radiator nearby? 

“It’s so fucking hot in here,” you said suddenly, your fingers working towards the buttons on your shirt. Shiny, silky, green. 

“So hot,” Harry said, his voice lower as he slumped against the wall in the dark. He crawled towards the radiator on his hands and knees. “What is wrong with this thing, anyway?”

He looked up quickly, the corner of his mouth pulling up when you drunkenly slipped the shirt off of your shoulders. 

“Too hot for this,” you said, tossing it to the ground, the buttons making tiny taps against the tile. 

“Alright, s’freezing. Fuck this.” Jake put out his cigarette and tossed it to the ground--you heard Alyssa’s voice in your head about saving the environment, but you didn’t have the energy to fight Jake on his disposal or ask any more questions about the night your life fell apart. 

He took two big steps to the door, held it open, allowing you to cross under his arm. One look around the room to see Jessie and Bryn laughing hysterically at something Harry said--a determined march to the bar. Your card smacked down on the surface. Another drink. 

Two more. 

Then a third. 

Then dark. 

**

You heard the clanging of pots and pans before you opened your eyes. One blink, two, a pounding in your head that felt more like a jackhammer on the pillow beside you than a headache. Grey walls, the scent of waffles--no, pancakes. 

“Morning,” his voice was behind you--stood over the bed as he folded a t-shirt and placed it into a drawer. 

“Jesus,” you flinched at the sound, pulling the sheet up to cover your fully clothed body as you twisted on the mattress to face him. “What happened--why am I here?”

“Relax,” he laughed, a dimple appearing in his cheek. “You didn’t want to go home--said your mum and dad would be livid if you showed up so trashed.”

You let out a breath of air. That was true, really. They would be. Harry padded around the bed and sat down beside you, his eyes steady on your face as you ran a hand through your hair. 

“I just offered to bring you to mine because the rest of the gang was pretty toasted too.”

You got a glimpse of the bar in your memory: Maddie and Mollie both hugging you goodbye, almost tripping over the legs of chairs in the crowded bar. 

You didn’t know if Drunk You was trying to actually avoid an issue with your parents, or if she was really just bold enough to find a way to sleep in Harry’s bed. You shivered at the thought. 

“Need an aspirin? I’ll get you some water, too.” He was up and out of the room in seconds, giving you time to throw yourself over the sheets to reach for your phone on the side table. Composing a message to Jessie and Bryn, you typed furiously. 

Y/N L/N (9:13am): Which one of you let my drunk ass go home with Harry?!

Jessie Alby (9:13am): GOOD MORNING BEAUTIFUL. 

Bryn Miller (9:13am): You were a mess and he offered. You should be thankful, not angry!!

You rolled your eyes, tossing the phone back to the mattress when he reappeared. 

“Here,” he said, handing you a glass half full, a tiny red pill in his hand. You took it, threw it into your mouth, and took a big gulp. He took back the glass and placed it on the night table. 

“I’m sorry--I hope I didn’t, you know, say anything stupid.”

He laughed, a small smile before he shrugged and shoved his hands in the pockets of his joggers. “No--s’fine. I offered, really. Wanted to make sure you didn’t choke on your own vomit,” he gestured down to a plastic bag on the floor, immediately causing a flush to rise your cheeks. 

“Great. Wouldn’t be the first time,” you forced a laugh. He smiled at that--less tension in the room than moments prior. 

“My mum’s making breakfast downstairs--Gemma’s here too. M’sure they’d love to see you.”

“They don’t think we, like, did anything, right?”

“I slept on the couch downstairs, so, they’re aware of that.”

“Good.”

He stood there for a second, silently watching as you licked at your dry lips. You didn’t remember throwing up or falling down or anything, so aside from waking up in a bed that wasn’t yours, last night seemed like enough of a success. 

“I’ll, uh, get dressed.”

“Right,” he nodded, heading out of the room to shut the door behind him. 

An exhale when you were alone. 

You remembered the fifth drink--the last, you were sure. Jessie and Bryn had followed you into the bathroom and Mollie walked in on you taking obnoxious selfies. She joined in and then, suddenly, Jake staggered in. 

I thought this was the men’s room, he laughed, before posing for a photo as well. 

When you stood from his bed and looked down at the clothes on your body, you realized they were his. A pair of sweatpants he’d had forever--Holmes Chapel Comprehensive School stretched down the leg in maroon lettering. A black t-shirt, advertisements from local banks and shops on the back, from his Year 9 footy team. 

You found the pile of clothes from the night before--a ball of dark colors on a chair in his room. Luckily, they were versatile enough to be worn in the daylight. 

It wasn’t how you expected to see Anne and Gemma after so many years--you’d imagined that maybe it’d be at someone’s wedding, hugs with cocktails while you caught up. Instead, it was over pancakes and coffee and in the comfort of their own home. 

They were thrilled to see you--Anne didn’t even seem to mind that you ended up in her home due to your staggering lack of decorum. When she hugged you and pressed her cheek to yours, she smelled like honey and whispered in your ear, so good to see you, love. 

It was fine, it was nice. You’d always liked his mum and sister and, after sweating out a hangover in Harry’s sheets, you were starving. But that didn’t stop you from bolting out the door as soon as the plates were cleared and the washing up was done. 

If you had to sit in the car beside him while he drove you home, the least you could do was get it over with. 

“Hey, whoa, Y/N, what is up with you?” His voice was loud enough for you to hear it over the morning wind, you turned quickly, unaware he’d even followed you out the door after you’d said goodbye. 

Your lips parted, nothing but a breath emerged. You looked around the front garden--hedges and grass and a cloudy gray sky. “I just--I feel bad, I didn’t mean to impose.”

“You’re not--I don’t,” he paused, cut off by the shutting of your door as you climbed inside his car.

“What?” You asked when his opened, he shook his head and pushed the key into the ignition.

“I don’t know why you’re acting like all of this is so weird. Like me being your friend is so weird.”

“Because I don’t know how to be that with you anymore.”

His shoulders slumped. He let out a sigh and then started the car. “Maybe we don’t have to be friends.”

“And do what? You’ll fade out again like last time, like both times, and we’ll just pretend all of this never happened? Why do you just get to decide when you get to be in my life? Who made that rule? S’not fair.”

He turned to look at you from the driver’s seat, hesitant, like direct eye contact might make you explode. He put a hand on the wheel and put it in reverse. “I know I’ve fucked up, I’ve said it, like, a bunch over the last week. But you won’t talk to me about it. You won’t even allow me to even begin going there because, what, Y/N, you’re embarrassed? You’re still so caught up about that night that you won’t have a conversation with me?”

You kept your eyes on the winding road once he pulled out of the driveway. “I tried, Harry. I tried to have conversations with you before you left and I tried that night and maybe if you just didn’t suck at being a friend we wouldn’t be doing this right now,” you motioned around the car--black leather seats and black carpet beneath.  

“Well maybe if you weren’t so stuck in the past you’d wake up and notice we’re in the present, okay? Things don’t have to always be the same as they were back then! Jesus, I mean--”

You held up a hand to silence him. He stopped. The radio hummed in the background and the heat puffed out of the vents. 

“I never should have said anything to you that night. I shouldn’t have even talked to you because I was mad that you left and I’m sorry, alright? I’m sorry that I went and made it messy--

I was drunk and it was two years ago and I don’t feel anything I said anymore.”

Quiet. 

“You don’t?”

“No.”

You didn’t really buy it, but you hoped it sounded convincing. 

The door was still locked. He pulled at the knob again but it didn’t give. He turned around and looked at you--a drunken smirk on his face before you could even speak.  

“If I’m locked in a bathroom with anyone, m’glad s’you.”

Maybe he said it because you were shirtless--but the four gin and tonics you had liked to believe otherwise. 

“Ditto.”

He didn’t say anything until the car slowed in front of your house. You unbuckled the seat belt before he put it in park, the only sound was the beeping from the dash, angry that one of you was unprotected.

“Smalls.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not going to disappear again. Promise.”

“Okay.”

Your heartbeat slowed with the shift in the energy. Just like always, your heart didn’t know  whether you hated him or loved him, but with the headache and nausea that was setting in, you figured now wasn’t the time to decide. 

“Let’s do something for New Years, yeah? With everyone.”

You nodded--the five of you had been doing it together forever, it was just always a crapshoot as to whether he’d show up. “Sure, yeah.”

The door shut behind you and your mum waved from the door at Harry--who offered a smile and wave in return before pulling back onto the road. 

You typed out a message to Bryn and Jessie. 

Y/N L/N (11:03am): I shouldn’t have ever thought we could be friends. 

**

You were sure he wouldn’t show up. More sure than when you were sure you failed a chemistry exam in Year 10 and more sure than the time you knew Jake was going to royally fuck up his date with Laura Dalton. 

In years past he’d spent the new year in London--in clubs, no doubt, with alcohol and women and other celebrities who were much too cool to be sipping on vodka in someone’s parent’s basement. 

The plaid pattern on the couch was straight out of the eighties--the cushions on which you sat were older than all of you. Jessie appeared at the bottom of the stairs with a bottle of rum. “Who wants one?” She asked, her voice excited and lilting as she made her way over to you.

“You need one,” Bryn answered for you, her eyes narrowing in on your permanent pout. 

“I’m fine.”

“Right, and I’m straight,” Bryn laughed, her eyes rolling so far back in her head you were sure they’d disappear. 

Jessie let out an obnoxious laugh as she reached for a red solo cup. She poured a mouthful of liquid in and handed it to you. “Drink.” She ordered.

The wood paneling on the walls had heard many secrets and giggles over popcorn when you, Jessie, and Bryn had tried to fall asleep at slumber parties. Like the time Bryn took a deep breath and admitted her crush on Penny from her science class. We know, you and Jessie had smiled, excited that she’d finally just come out with it. 

“I still feel like shit from before Christmas.”

Jessie gave you a dismissive glance, Bryn was enamored with her phone. “You had Christmas eve, Christmas day, and the five days since to recover. You’ll live. Your liver has practically regenerated by now.”

“I don’t think it works that way,” you told her, squeezing your eyes shut before tipping the cup back to your mouth. A harsh taste--swallowed. Bryn was watching you when you opened your eyes.

“So--you’re done with him?”

“I’m done. There’s no point.”

“And what did he say again?” Jessie plopped herself down on the carpet, terribly eager for all of the details in person before Jake and Adam arrived.

“That I’m stuck in the past.”

“Prat,” Bryn let out scoff. 

“He has a point,” Jessie widened her eyes at you. You shot her a look that made her course-correct. “I just mean I think it’s good for you to close the chapter. You’ve spent a long time having feelings for him and maybe it’s just time to let it die.”

You sighed, she was right. “I should have never even talked to him that night--and I said that! I told him I regret it and that I was drunk and I don’t feel anything now that I said I did.”

Jessie tilted her head to the side. “Do you?”

“No.”

“Y/N,” Bryn lifted an eyebrow.

“I’m trying not to,” you confessed.

Jessie let out a sigh. “I vote you get drunk tonight and ignore him if he shows up and who knows--maybe we’ll go to the Red Lion if people head that way and you can make out with Michael Waite.”

“M’not making out with Michael Waite.”

“I’d make out with Mollie Amsbury,” Bryn said. 

“We know,” you retorted quickly. “No one’s making out with anyone. We’re staying here.”

“Fine,” Jessie said, her phone buzzing on the carpet beside her. “Adam’s here.”

She disappeared up the stairs, Bryn plugged her phone into a cable and played music throughout the room. When Jessie descended the stairs--two at a time out of excitement--she was trailed by three people, not one.

Adam. Jake. Harry. 

Harry, Jake, Adam. 

Jake greeted you and Bryn with a smile and hug, speaking over his shoulder to Jessie, who’d reminded them all that they were welcome to spend the night. Her parents were out of town to see her older brother, they’d return the next morning. Bryn opened up some snacks, Adam set up a dart board on the wall. 

“Let’s talk later, yeah?” Harry spoke to you quietly, his back turned to the rest of them while he poured a drink. 

“About?”

“Us.”

“Us?” You didn’t know there was an us. 

“Yeah,” he nodded. 

“Maybe.” You said. 

He walked away, leaving you to wish that refilling your drink would erase the tension and the awkwardness. As if drinking more would make it less likely to come up. So you did what you’d grown used to over the last two years. You avoided him and did your best to act like you weren’t secretly watching his every move. As if twitter didn’t suggest his username when you opened the search function--or like your discover page on instagram wasn’t littered with pictures of the boy who walked home with you in the rain in Year 8. 

And you thought you were getting away with it. You both drank more and Jake seemed to get more and more competitive over the current game of darts he played against Bryn. So when you felt it was safe, you wandered upstairs to find the bathroom on the other side of Jessie’s parents’ living room.

The same blue carpet sat in front of the toilet--the crime scene of your first drunken night at 15. 

You wiped your hands on the towel, the flush of the toilet muffled noises from downstairs--it was close and you knew it. You weren’t about to miss the countdown and the cheering, the midnight shot of whiskey that usually left you on the floor. 

You opened the door, ready to race down the stairs to find them all excitedly crowded around the television. Instead, the living room was dark, but Harry stood in the middle of it, the blue light of a small telly let his figure glow. 

He had on the same show that you could hear floating up from the basement, but the show in front of you was muted. A busy scene in London unfolded--crowds and cheering as people waited for 2017 to exit. 

“What are you doing up here?”

“I wanted to talk.”

“I don’t think now is a good time,” you said, motioning to the growing excitement on the screen. Neon pink numbers flashed in the corner. Thirty seconds, twenty-nine, twenty-eight. 

“I’m sorry that things were a mess two years ago. I’m sorry it was such a--”

“Terrible night?”

“Yeah,” he laughed. “We were both really drunk.”

You stared at him, the room going silent just like the plane had. Twenty-one, twenty, nineteen. “I’m sorry I made things awkward.” 

He shook his head. “You didn’t, Smalls, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you--if you’d listen.”

Thirteen, twelve, eleven.

A shrug of your shoulders, you glanced back at the telly. “We should go down there.” 

“We could stay here.” He took a step closer to you.

Your stomach seemed to get warm and for a second, you feared it would happen again. You could still feel your palms pressed to the floor, holding up your weight that night.

“I wish you still did feel the way you said you did two years ago,” he said.

“You do? Why?”

Five, four, three.

Instead of answering your question, he shrugged, looking over to the telly as confetti blasted over everyone on the South Bank. Noise erupted from the gang downstairs and Big Ben chimed loudly through the basement speakers.

“Always thought we’d be good together.”

“What?” You stuck your head out, unsure if you’d heard him correctly or if the two drinks you’d had were landing heavily on your still-recovering liver. 

He shrugged. “S’fine, though. I--I guess I missed my chance. I get that.”

“What the fuck are you two doing up here? It’s 2018!” Jessie flipped the light switch on quickly, her eyes going wide when she assessed the lack of space between you. You looked down, also unaware that somehow, you’d brought it down to a matter of mere inches.

A giant step back. “Coming down, sorry, I peed.”

“In the bathroom? Or out here?” Jessie’s face twisted into one of inebriated confusion.

“Yes in the bathroom,” you grunted back at her, a laugh escaping Harry’s lips. 

“We’re good, yeah?” Harry offered a hand between the two of you, to shake as if you’d finally closed a deal.

“Oh,” you looked over to Jessie, hoping she’d get the hint that now would be a good time for her to leave.

She didn’t though, she stared at both of you with a happy and drunk smile on her face. 

“Yeah,” you said, reaching forward to let your hand meet his. “We’re good.”

read the other parts here

AN: Thanks to everyone who has been sharing my excitement about this fic!!! Thank you for the messages and the love and for just READING IT!! Definitely some more hints in this chapter about The Incident. I hope you’re all excited to CRINGE over the full flashback.

tag list:  @clorenafila​ @ainsleesolareclipse @castawaycths @harryspirate @wanderlustiing @ursamajor603 @thurhomish @omgsharry @jdcharliewhiskey @stepping-into-the-light @rachkon​ @jdcharliewhiskey @sad-little-asshole  @shawnsblue​  @gendryia​ @g0bl1nqueen​  @laula843​  @flooome​  a-woman-without-a-plan @awomanindeniall​  @shaw-nm​ @staceystoleyourheart @ohprettylittlemind​ @anssu-amry​ @my-fandomful-life​ @stylesfantasy​ @bookingbee​  @mleestiles​  @haute-romance-quotidienne​ pinkpolaroidgirl craic-head-horan 

[claiirvoyants]

𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒘𝒏𝒆𝒚, 𝐒𝐘𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐋.

        ❝   yesterday,   you   were   an   OLD   MAN   spitting   cherry   pits   into   the   weeds.   today   you   are   a   fisherman’s   daughter,   dragging   small   minnow-nets   through   the   𝒔𝒉𝒂𝒅𝒐𝒘𝒔.   tomorrow   you   could   be   a   DOE-EYED   dancer,   an   ash-stained   chimney   sweep,   a   beggar   singing   psalms,   anyone.   when   you   lean   over   the   side   of   the   lake,   the    𝐫𝐞𝐝   𝐥𝐢𝐥𝐲   𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐬   whisper,   be   free.   taste   the   air.   do   you   feel   the   echoes   of   ancient   energies   moving   into   new   bodies?   they   learn   of   suffering   and   beauty,   again,   again.   𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑   𝐁𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐒   𝐀𝐑𝐄   𝐎𝐍𝐋𝐘   𝐇𝐎𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐋𝐒.   ❞ 

         hey,   isn’t   that   SYBILL   PATRICIA   TRELAWNEY?   i   read   a   daily   prophet   article   on   them,   once   ;   the   forty   eight   year   old   halfblood   WITCH   is   a   ravenclaw   alumnus   who   has   gone   on   to   be   the   professor   of   divination   at   hogwarts   school.   i’ve   heard   they   can   be   quite   ECCENTRIC   &   VIVACIOUS,   but   i   don’t   know...   they   came   off   very   RUMINATIVE   &   HAUGHTY   in   that   interview.   it   really   is   hard   to   know   what   to   believe   these   days   though,   isn’t   it?   click   𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄   for   statistics   and    𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄   for   her   pinterest.

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘.

buckle up ! i’m abt to show u guys i can write a short or at least SNAPPY intro.

sybill was born in the seaside town of port isaac in 1972, the product of an affair between her pure blood mommy ( cressida trelawney ) and a muggle daddy ( edwin teague ). 

cressida knew abt edwin’s muggle wife. edwin’s muggle wife ( and his daughter eugenia, sybill’s half sibling ) did NOT know about his witchy gf. what happens in btwn the lines of the wizarding world stays within the lines of the wizarding world, ig.

sybill’s dad died p suddenly when she was six, and he didn’t leave anything to either her or her mum, cause... men ain’t shit ! learn it. anyway, sybill’s mum begged her slightly estranged family for like, something, and prob would have got NOTHING if she hadn’t said ‘hey, my daughter is totally the next cassandra ( and also DEFINITELY a pureblood )-’

this changed things a bit, even tho at the time... sybill had not shown any actual prophetic talent, lmao. she was a six yr old playing like, dolls, and trying to bring fishies home from the seashore in glass bottles, u know? 

the fam took them back under their wings, and sybill was told to keep her little mouth shut ( in like, a kind of nice way ) about both the fact she was a halfblood ( she prob didn’t conceptualize this one very well at six ) and the fact she was not a seer. she also prob didn’t conceptualize this very well. but playing pretend is something kids LIKE to do, so when cressida told sybill to say some mysterious things and play this role, she took to it immediately ! it was fun ! 

it stopped being fun PRETTY quickly, but as sybill got older and understood things a bit more, she clued in to the fact that her grandparents and extended trelawney family were quite... uh, to put it mildly, strict. her mum had gone out into the world on her own because she didn’t fit in the box that the trelawney’s had expected her to ( like a lot of pureblood fams ), and sybill was a lot more like cressida than she was the rest of her fam, and she was also, like. way more attached to her than she was them, so while it stopped being a fun game, she still kept to it for her mummy.

got her hogwarts letter. headed off. breathed an actual sigh of RELIEF when she was on the train, cause... she didn’t have to pretend to be something she was pretty sure she wasn’t anymore, and at hogwarts, she wouldn’t have to go through the ‘training’ and ‘lessons’ for her future as a famed seer that her fam were prepping her for. she got sorted into ravenclaw, which tracked ( most of the fam were ), and she just... went abt her life.

i know this is gonna sound wild. but at hogwarts, sybill was... exceedingly ordinary. she was a well behaved young lady who was assumed to be of quality breeding, and though her grandparents spoke highly of their little seer granddaughter to their friends, the kids and grandkids of those people didn’t really ... know much about this. sybill flew pretty far under the radar, and that was how she liked it. she graduated with top marks, turned of age, and started working for her grandparents on a full time basis in the little fortune teller shop they had at this point in time at the divide between knockturn alley and diagon alley - she’d already spent summers with them, so it was just one more step. still, no discernible seer talent.

very appropriately, it all started with death omens. sybill had always faked what she was seeing cause she sort of had to, so she’d always made the future sound pretty bleak - but there’s bleak and then there’s seeing grims wherever she went. a month later, her grandmother ( a woman who sybill could never decide was either a talented seer in her own right or a talented liar also ) was dead. it was sudden, and things seemed to escalate exponentially from here. within a year, her grandfather, an aunt and her own mother had passed on ; and sybill had started to notice. changes.

kinda hard not to notice the fact she was beginning to go to sleep in a very warm and cosy bed and wake up barefoot and naked in the middle of the creek at the bottom of the garden, arms raised to the sky, images seered to the back of her eyelids. sybill consulted dozens of healers. she was given dozens of different potions to aid her sleeping, she was told that she had been through a lot of loss in a short amount of time, it was natural to begin having sleeping issues and the images she saw were only NIGHTMARES, or dreams, or the echo of something normal from her subconscious. the potions didn’t work tho ! the spells, the advice, the grief counselling they sent her to... over the next while, sybill’s life really began to unravel, and she couldn’t understand it, so she definitely couldn’t explain it. 

throw everything together and mix some severe money issues in as sybill was never very good at actually running the store and was now dealing with a whole lot of confusing shit - she loses the shop, then the house, and this is what eventually brought her to albus dumbledore, where - haha ! - she made her first ever actual prophecy. fun ! sucks she doesn’t rmbr it <3 

sybill got the job based on that, but figured it was cause he liked her a lot ( he didn’t ). life straightens out somewhat, she moves into hogwarts ( did eventually buy a cottage in hogsmeade since she got married and w/e, but is back living in hogwarts now they’re divorced ), she terrifies students for many years over, blah blah blah. makes a second prophecy to harry potter ( doesn’t rmbr that one either ), fights in the battle of the astronomy tower, fights in the battle of hogwarts, yada yada yada.

i won’t say whether she ever thought herself a legitimate seer, or ever learned to think of herself as one, or ever figured that was maybe what her ( still persistent ) sleep walking was. got my thoughts ! think its fun to just leave it at : maybe ! maybe she’s a seer, maybe she’s half of one, maybe she’s a real good liar. she had plenty of practice ! either way, she really embraced her weirdness ( shoutout to mama cressida for teaching her to b weird and love every second of it ) and has spent the past couple decades just straight vibing. 

can’t think of anything else to add. come to syb if u want some wizard pot ?

𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒.

SYBILL TRELAWNEY ( sandra oh ) is looking for their EX WIFE / PARTNER who resembles SARAH SHAHI, RENEE ELISE GOLDSBERRY, CARLA GUGINO, SARAH RAFFERTY / ANY FC and should be 45+. applicants do have to contact RACHEL / PETRIICHVRS or DISCORD to talk over the details before applying.   (   i’m really open ! mostly because i'm entirely erasing the mr higglebottom thing, so we have so much freedom here in terms of… how they met, when they fell in love, how long they were married, how they’re dealing with the co-parenting thing, etc. sybill really did love them, that much i do know - but the marriage fell apart in my mind, sometime before the battle of hogwarts. maybe during her disastrous fifth year, when professor umbridge was, you know, attempting to ruin her life. i imagine they were a bit more maternal than sybill, and probably entertained / were even quite fond of how eccentric she was for years, but just eventually… got tired of it, or of how she wasn’t really putting their homelife above hogwarts, etc, and love just… was not enough to save ‘em. i think it’d be neat if they were a professor at hogwarts, too - maybe even a canonical one, like aurora sinistra ! - and their cute little staff room moments turned into total awkwardness for everyone else at the school < / 3   )

SYBILL TRELAWNEY ( sandra oh ) is looking for their ADOPTIVE CHILD who resembles TATI GABRIELLE, ASA BUTTERFIELD, KAYLEE BRYANT, VERNON CHWE / ANY FC and should be 18 - 22. applicants do have to contact RACHEL / PETRIICHVRS or DISCORD to talk over the details before applying.   (   you have some choices ! i don’t mind whether they’re biologically her ex wifes, for example, or whether they were adopted, and if so, they absolutely could have been adopted at a later age - in fact, i think it’d be really interesting if they were. they were raised by sybill and her now ex wife, anyway, and would have attended hogwarts - unless… honestly, if u wanted to go a route of them being a squib or something i would be HERE for it - but, really, i don’t think that sybill has been the best of mothers, especially since she’s always been the sort of woman to put her ‘career’ [ which in her case is just, her being a seer ] above all else. she never would have intended to be the absent parent, and i guarantee she’s tried to be the ‘fun one’ moreso than that, but i gotta say. huge believer in acknowledging the faults of my chars. honestly, i feel like kids just aren’t her thing, and the likelihood is she decided to make them her thing for her ex wife - but she relates better to like, fully formed people, and only in more recent years has probably started to try be more of the sort of person they need. whether they’re here for that or no is absolutely up to you !   )

[auxgod]

Ranking Every Jay Z Album From Worst To Best

The rapper who began his career as a witty corner hustler is now just about the greatest capitalist success in the genre’s history. The 13 albums he’s released during that period reflect this growth in real-time, leaving behind a group of indelible but often flawed records that are equally exciting and bewildering to pick through. Jay has a few unimpeachable classics, and you’ll find them at—or near–the top of our list. Most interesting, though, are the ones that, depending on your perspective, also get there, very nearly do, or perhaps even miss altogether.. 

Here’s our ranking from Least Favorite to Favorite

13. Kingdom Come (2006)

it’s only a matter of time until someone brings up Kingdom Come so lets get it out the way. Kingdom Come was Hov’s first album after a short retirement. 

After “retiring” with his brilliant “The Black Album” in 2003, fans were eager to have Hov back. But no one wanted it like this. “Kingdom Come” was fun for Jay-Z, but probably ranks as the most uninspiring thing he’s ever done. Hard to imagine anyone is still blasting any track from this one not named “Lost One.”n.

https://open.spotify.com/album/3A29Ss77LjRZ3sKuauWieYr.

12. The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse (2002)

Too many songs

It wasn’t the same quality as The Blueprint. If I had not pushed this double album concept and just made it 12 songs, it would’ve been an incredible album. Personally I don’t feel the Blueprint needed a sequel to begin with but all and all the album wasn’t bad.

https://open.spotify.com/album/5xHStEOG8PsbzNQb7LkxZU

11. Magna Carta Holy Grail (2013)

With one of the biggest deals in music history, Jay Z achieved 1 million sales weeks before the album was released thanks to Samsung, who delivered the album for free to Galaxy owners through a special app. 

The album featured a lot of well-acclaimed track such as Holy Grail and Tom Ford but it just wasn’t our favorite.

https://open.spotify.com/album/0OTjYdGtP7AbwOwbYsGhyi

10. The Blueprint 3 (2009)

The Blueprint was better than 2 in our opinion because the timing. Jay didn’t need to release a sequel right after the first. But this coming after American gangster came out of no where.The LP has a lot of nice tracks and stellar features such as Hate ft. Kanye West and Off That ft. Drake.

The track he refers to is Empire State of Mind, which is lately becoming more popular than New York New York by Frank Sinatra as New York City anthem

https://open.spotify.com/album/2CUT0104gySOIvqwtXeFsX 

9. 4:44 (2017)

4:44 is the long-anticipated thirteenth album from JAY-Z. It arrived after a four-year hiatus, and just 15 days after his historic induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame on June 15, 2017. The entire album is produced by No I.D

https://open.spotify.com/album/7GoZNNb7Yl74fpk8Z6I2cv

8. American Gangster (2007)

A American Gangster was released in 2007, following the disappointing Kingdom Come. The album was inspired by Denzel Washington’s movie (whose voice is sampled in the intro of the album) and by New York’s lifestyle. That’s how Jay Z explained it

The album debuted at #1 on the Billboard chart and sold 1,131,000 copies overall earning a platinum plaque.

https://open.spotify.com/album/6QOGDVh3mVnAJYPnt66Qj5

7. The Dynasty: Roc La Familia (2000)

The Fuckin intro........The album was actually born as a showcase for Roc-A-Fella artists such as Memphis Bleek, Beanie Sigel, Amil and Freeway but also featured other artists such as Snoop Dogg and R. Kelly. Production-wise it featured up and coming producers such as Kanye West, Just Blaze and The Neptunes. 

It contained the Streets is Watching sequel, Streets is Talking, and other hit tacks such as Change the Game and I Just Wanna Love U..

https://open.spotify.com/album/3VfeeJElCEDeXlDiNZbn3E

6. Vol. 3... The Life And Times Of S. Carter (1999)

Vol. 3... Life and Times of S. Carter is the fourth studio album from Jay-Z and exhibits a return to the street-oriented sound of his first album, Reasonable Doubt. Pro

The final in his Vol. series. The album features Jay’s biggest stylistic departure thus far, moving stridently away from the Mafisio theme of his first three records and embracing his life as a crossover artist. The tracklist was rearranged at the last minute due to widespread leaking of the album, further giving the album a 

https://open.spotify.com/album/3rWJsuu7ukoZZhp7YYkjNZ

5. The Black Album (2003)

Hov’s eighth and (supposedly) last album was released in 2003 and dominated the charts, going double platinum. An acapella version was later released for remixes and mashups, such as Black is Back by 9th Wonder.

https://open.spotify.com/album/4FWvo9oS4gRgHtAwDwUjiO

4. Vol 2... Hard Knock Life (1998)

A In 1998, Jay-Z had everything lined up perfectly. He had observed and understood every trend happening in rap. He knew, for instance, that there was a void at the center of New York rap, a void that his old friend Biggie Smalls would’ve filled if he’d survived to fill it. The flashy, excessive Bad Boy sound still had some steam, but it was on its way out..

In his book Decoded, Jay writes about how he got approval to use that Annie sample. To clear that sample, Jay wrote a letter to Martin Charnin, the song’s lyricist. In that letter, Jay told a story about how he’d won an essay contest in seventh grade. As the prize, he got a trip to Manhattan to see Annie on Broadway. In the letter, Jay wrote about the feeling he had seeing that play — the feeling that he was seeing his own story playing out on the stage. It was all a lie. Jay never won an essay contest, and he never saw Annie on Broadway. He saw the movie on TV, like everyone else. The lie worked. Jay had his sample, 

https://open.spotify.com/album/3j1xCJdBMCl6wYQXurz2tb

3. Reasonable Doubt (1996)

A He was only going to make one album. So goes the story of Reasonable Doubt, anyway, a tale Jay Z has regaled us with at every opportunity since its release. There is nothing like the debut of Jay Z, a stroke of genius chronicling the life of a 26-year-old drug kingpin from the Marcy Houses with a love for craft unrivaled elsewhere in his work. 

Reasonable Doubt was the debut of the Marcy Projects rapper and immediately you notice he spoke from the perspective of a boss with expensive taste. The was the perfect way to introduce himself to the game and is considered his third classic album.

https://open.spotify.com/album/3YPK0bNOuayhmSrs0sIIBR

2. The Blueprint (2001)

Hov’s second of his three classics, If you heard the Dynasty and saw where exactly Jay was at this time, you would’ve already solidified him as the best, but the Blueprint made it no debate. The Blueprint was a movement as much as an album – the album that began to turn Jay Z from a rapper into the rapper.

19 years after September 11, 2001, Jay-Z is a towering figure in American culture, a businessman and "business, man. The Blueprint was showcased the Jay Z-Nas beef, The birth of Kanye West and Just Blaze as production superstars. The iconic records (“Izzo,” “Song Cry”). The Blueprint forever changed Jay Z’s career, and Hip-Hop.

https://open.spotify.com/album/69CmkikTHkGKdkrUZTtyWl

1. In My Lifetime, Vol. 1 (1997)

Our personal favorite album which may come as a surprise is Jay-Z’s sophomore album which found Hov at the peak of his hunger for success and recognition. Look at In My Lifetime as a transitional work, all the ingredients for the superstar version of Jay are there — the transcendent arrogance, the pop instincts, the unimpressed-to-the-point-of-boredom street-talk. 

A year later, everything would click for Jay. Jay would release Vol. 2… Hard Knock Life, the album where Jay really became the larger-than-life figure that he’d always imagined. To listen to In My Lifetime in 2020 is to hear Jay’s process at work. It’s a fascinating exercise, and for it to be the follow up to reasonable doubt will always be why it will always be our favorite Hov album.

https://open.spotify.com/album/2nJapeqTbOhnhHUhh5tzpB

[writtenbyhappynerds]

Fanfiction 101 Unit 2: Formatting and Text

Ok. So we’ve established the rules of the universe, which is a fancy phrase that means set parameters that meet the standards of the world and stick to them to keep continuity and cohesion. Before we continue onward, let’s talk about the thing that will absolutely make any new reader click off immediately: bad formatting.

       Bad formatting can really make or break your fanfiction and there is no excuse for it. Even if the fanfiction is the next Brave New World, if I as a reader don’t have breaks in the paragraphs when the scene changes or someone new is talking, I will not sit through it. I’m not going to try and sort through what is going on, and who’s talking. On top of that, bad formatting looks bad on the author. It looks like you don’t care enough about your story to use good paragraphs, grammar, and punctuation. Fortunately, there is a solution. Grammarly’s beta is free. You can add it as an extension to google chrome. Write your fanfiction in google docs and let it correct your grammar for you. This series is checked for grammar by not only my Editor but Grammarly. However, grammar is just half the battle.

       A break in paragraphs, ie: a new paragraph appears when there is a change in who is speaking, in location, or in action. You should start a new paragraph when there is a new idea, when your readers need a break, and when you want to present contrasting information.

       When we say, “new idea,” we mean the same thing as a change in location or action. If Leonardo and Raphael from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been sitting in the sewers for five minutes and now are going to the surface, you would start a new paragraph to demonstrate that change in an idea.

       When we say, “your readers need a break,” we mean that walls of text are a bit daunting and not pleasurable to look at. If you find yourself having a large wall of text, you can look through to find new or alternating ideas-- showing information that is different from one another also works for new paragraphs, and these can break up a mass of text into something more appealing to the eye and easy to read. Formatting is important, and another thing that is important is text.

       I’m going be blunt: Pinterest lied to you. Tumblr also lied to you. Every verb that is describing the way someone talks or someone moves does not need to be unique. Every verb also does not need an adjective describing it. Writing can get very, My Immortal that way, which, if you don’t know what that is, it's the most iconically bad piece of fanfiction of all time and the Internet Historian has a 3-part series acting out only a chunk of it. However, as the author John Scalzi once said, “to ignore [popularly bad works] is to ignore why they are successful and what we can learn from them.” What we can learn from My Immortal is that extremely specific descriptions of clothing, links to makeup/outfits/hair, and using an adjective and unique verb every time a character moves across the room or speaks is clunky and decreases the quality of a narrative. It’s amateur writing.

       I’m sure you’ve seen the charts. They’re all over Pinterest, and some are on Tumblr: ‘200 words to use instead of ‘says’’ and ‘100 ways to say ‘went’’. These charts are useful to a point. As a writer, you should not pull a new word from those charts every time a character is moving. It makes the writing awkward. It makes it clunky and uncomfortable, and the reader notices it. As readers, we don’t need the tone of something shoved down our throats every ten seconds. If every means of speaking is unique, none of them are.

       In addition, when it comes to speech your characters should have differing voices. You don’t need every line to clue us in to who’s speaking. It can slow down the text. To improve the use of ‘said’ work on developing unique voices, because you’ll find you use them often. It can even work in rooms with many characters. As an example, I’ll show you an Avengers fanfiction, where five of my OCs have been trapped in Loki’s cell. The first example will have every dialogue followed by a unique descriptor for speaking, and an adjective. The second example will have just ‘said’ and a footnote of who is speaking. The third will be as it is written.

**

Example One: descriptor + adjective:

“What, are you the kind mother-figure meant to bring us under your natural authority? Get that first-year psych-student bullshit out of here.” Duncan taunted merrily.

“Please,” Naomi added quietly, coming to rest by Duncan.

“Yes. Please.” Jano murmured low. “B, what was her request anyway?”

“That we stop calling Nicky a pirate. Also probably Nicky.” Bianca surmised aloud. Micah snorted from his position across the room.

“I don’t think that’s gonna happen-” interjected Micah quickly.

“Absolutely not,” exclaimed Naomi.

“Have you all gone mad?” questioned Jano confused, “We call it like we see it.” Bianca held her arms out and smiled.

“It’s not just me.” She simpered with a smirk. “A spade’s a spade lady. I don’t do power moves.”

“Noted,” grunted Romanoff, who left the room.

“Get better material!” Duncan shouted cheerily as she left the room. He looked down to see Barton still there. “Are you the bad cop now?”

**

Example Two: ‘said’:

“What, are you the kind mother-figure meant to bring us under your natural authority? Get that first-year psych-student bullshit out of here,” said Duncan.

“Please,” added Naomi.

“Yes. Please,” said Jano. “B, what was her request anyway?”

“That we stop calling Nicky a pirate. Also probably Nicky,” said Bianca. Micah snorted from his position across the room.

“I don’t think that’s gonna happen-” said Micah

“Absolutely not,” said Naomi.

“Have you all gone mad?” said Jano. “We call it like we see it.” Bianca held her arms out and smiled.

“It’s not just me,” she said with a smirk. “A spade’s a spade lady. I don’t do power moves.”

“Noted,” said Romanoff.

“Get better material!” said Duncan as she left the room. He looked down to see Barton still there. “Are you the bad cop now?”

**

Example Three: stripped back:

“What, are you the kind mother-figure meant to bring us under your natural authority? Get that first-year psych-student bullshit out of here.”

“Please.”

“Yes. Please,” said Jano. “B, what was her request anyway?”

“That we stop calling Nicky a pirate. Also probably Nicky.” Micah snorted from his position across the room.

“I don’t think that’s gonna happen-”

“Absolutely not.”

“Have you all gone mad? We call it like we see it.” Bianca held her arms out and smiled.

“It’s not just me. A spade’s a spade lady. I don’t do power moves.”

“Noted. Romanoff left the room.

“Get better material!” Duncan looked down to see Barton still there. “Are you the bad cop now?”

**

       Do you see the difference? The first one is clunky and doesn’t fit. Some of the verbs and adjectives don’t even make sense together, which is an issue I see on its own. It slows down, and clogs up the pace of the scene and makes it drag instead of pulling it forward. Adjectives can be used to your advantage, but save them when you want to slow things down. Don’t be afraid to use ‘said’ it doesn’t make you basic, it makes your writing easier.

       The second example is better than the first but still awkward. When you compare the second and the third examples you see that not every line of dialogue needs its own note as to who’s speaking. If Jano asks a question, we can assume as readers Bianca is going to answer it. If Micah laughs or snorts across the room, we assume he’s speaking next. From this small snippet, more of each character’s personality can be expanded on and their voice can be distinguished. Naomi speaks in very short one-word sentences. That’s her voice. Bianca is louder. Jano speaks with the Queen’s English. Duncan tries to joke. Something I do when I write characters is give them a couple of cues in their speech unique to them. Maybe Micah starts his sentences with ‘uh’ a lot. Maybe Duncan never shuts up and has longer, run-on sentences. These are things that can distinguish your characters’ voices, and make each one unique. They shouldn’t all sound the same. The third example, also in comparison to the second and first, is much easier to read. It takes less time to get through it, and the dialogue goes down smoothly. You want your writing to go down like that. It should be smooth, and easy to read, and formatted in a way that is easy for the audience.

       Let’s move on to links and descriptions. Clothing is very tricky. I myself, am a former Polyvore hoe. That shit was my jam, and I spent so much time making outfits. Some of them may or may not still be up in my stories. However, we are better than that. I understand a desire to want to describe every inch of clothing, but it makes for a wall of text that is frankly boring to scroll through. It can be done but shortened. For example, if you’re writing a Percy Jackson fanfic, and the character is at Camp Half-blood, I’m going to assume they’re wearing the same summer camp attire that everyone else does: orange t-shirt, shorts, necklace. Give me something that no one else would be wearing. Tell me they’re wearing their bronze bracelet because it has their weapon. Tell me they’ve defaced their t-shirt and sprayed graffiti over the logo. The same is true for Harry Potter. If the character is wearing a uniform, we don’t as readers need to know as much what they have on. We can assume it’s what everyone else is wearing because it's a uniform. You can still show personality through the way they put their hair up. Or their shoes. Look at the novel The Hate U Give. The main character wore a school uniform, and the author then took the time to describe the model and brand of her shoes, because that was both unique to that character and told us something about her personality. A recent Harry Potter fanfic I just read made a point to describe when the character had unique makeup looks, or when she was wearing a stolen sweater, because those pertained to her personality and the relationships around her.

       There are exceptions, of course to clothing. A big one is superhero costumes. However, much like abbreviations in text, you only need to describe it once. So, if I have a superhero and I say she wears… a sleeveless leotard with her logo on the chest, long black pants, and a black domino mask to hide her eyes when she fights crime, for the rest of the story, unless her costume changes from that description, all I have to say is: she put on her uniform. Save yourself some time.

       Now, in regards to links to hair, makeup, and even characters. We all can do better. You are too good of a writer to be linking away what your character’s hair and makeup are. It’s also not hard. Describe the brown smokey eye. Tell me it’s a cut-crease. Say they glued on false eyelashes and put on a red lip. Tell me their eyeliner wing could cut a man. Not everyone is a pro makeup artist, and even if you tell me their makeup isn’t the best, you still can reveal something more about their personality. A girl or boy or nonbinary friend who takes the time to meticulously perfect a cut crease and put on fake eyelashes for the ball is different than the person who pops on a red lip and some mascara and calls it a day. You then make two more hints at personality, rather than just giving your audience a photo. The pictures you use as a reference as authors should be for you and you alone. In your mind, this is what it looks like. As a writer, you have to communicate that image to the reader.

       Links to characters are something I’m guilty of. I checked my Psycho-Pass fanfic before I wrote this section, and yup… they’re still there, and I’m not taking them down anytime soon. That crap’s cringe. Pure cringe. And there’s a good way and a bad way to do it, and the bad way is smack-dab in the middle of the story when you introduce a character. It’s lazy, it takes the reader out of the immersion, and it makes the author look bad. Yes, I am roasting myself. No, I don’t care. This needs to be said. In my Psycho-Pass fanfic, I do it twice: the first is when a sniper is trying to shoot down my OC. The way to rectify that high-intensity situation is to just describe the bare basics. Young woman. Long hair. Giant gun. That’s all the reader needs to know at that moment. The other time I do it, is when a character is going to pick up the OC from the police station. That is a less intense scene, and I as an author can take my time and describe the older man with salt-and-pepper hair who smelled like cigarettes and had a scar that cut through his smile. Notice in both descriptions, I stay away from what each person is wearing. To tie back to before, it doesn’t matter as much. The reader can imagine what a young assassin is wearing when she’s trying to kill a crime lord. The reader can also imagine what that crime lord’s exasperated keeper looks like. I don’t as an author need to spell those things out for you.

       Stock images and reference images of characters are great. They let you as a reader visualize what these characters look like in comparison to everyone else. However, the images and pictures of characters are only for you. You have to be able to communicate the vibe, appearance, and aesthetic of your world. For example, many of my own characters have their own Pinterest pages filled with aesthetic-y images, outfits, and face claims. These images are for no one else but me. They will never be seen by my readers, they will never be checked by the Editor. They are for me and me alone, so that I can check on one board and remember the vibe and personality I am going for with a specific character. These Pinterest boards are reference images, and as such, they are for me and me alone.

       As mentioned, there are acceptable ways to insert images in fanfiction, should you choose to. I don’t believe these are necessary, but if you so desire you can put a little link in the author’s notes or as the footer of your story. Let those lead to the main characters. Next week we will talk more in-depth about face claims and how every fanfiction writer needs to leave Emily Rudd alone and let her live her life. Formatting is the quickest turnoff to a new reader sticking around. Change your paragraphs when necessary, keep your verbs simple, make your voices distinct, and reference images are for your eyes only: use your words.

       If you are interested in additional supplemental instruction, here is the archived My Immortal fanfiction from 2008ish. It is the worst fanfiction ever written and should serve as an example to you all of what not to do. 

https://myimmortalrehost.webs.com/

[coolgirl]

the ones from harley quinn breaking glass preview

OH okay yes i can do a tutorial for that. i must say it’s super easy but personally i’m not very good at it because i do it with my fucked up mouse AND don’t have knowledge about lightning and color theory so it kinda looks super basic. I’ll use these two as examples:

First it will always depend on the quality of the b/w pic you’re working with. Like you won’t have to do the same steps when coloring the harley one than coloring the batfam one.

I’ll start with the easy to do one, which is the batfam one because well as you can see its pretty high quality. Its black and white, no weird textures, no colors that need to be whitened, etc.

Ok personally before i color anything i prepare a color palette for it, sometimes i use reference pics, other times i just do it by eye lol depends how im feeling it. 

Then well again this depends on you, but i always separate each layer for each color, and do folders for each color so i dont get confused bc my attention span is very small. OKAY that done, you gotta start coloring by creating layers and putting them on multiply (or u pick which one looks best for u!)

Then just color it? 

(you rlly can tell when i got tired of coloring LMAO) but anyways. yes.

then you can add shadows and such, which again im not artist so im terrible at it and usually dont do it LOL but u can do it by changing the size of the brush, the hardness, and opacity. Heres some tutorials and here some more.

I usually just add a lil bit of blush on the cheeks/legs, maybe if i have a good reference pic try to copy the shadows but usually not. Then you can also add textures, like grainy textures to give it a pic feeling, or paper ones, etc. Here i added this texture on overlay to spice it up a lil bit.

and thats it.

NOW FOR SOMETHING LIKE THIS

well that one first of all is a pain in the ass i would right off the bat tell u to wait until its available in high quality. anyways. i did this one as an icon and im definitely not be remaking it so we’ll stick to the psd i had saved for it and im gonna go back on my steps. OKAY SORRY i talk a lot. first cut off background as best as you can, and if it’s like lopsided try to cut it to make it straight

ill explain only for the harley one. ok first do a copy of the image layer. then go to here image, that one idk how its in english, black and white, and play with the variables until you’re satisfied with how it looks. (the objective here is to make it as white/black as possible, so it’s easier to color it without it looking to grainy)

after i played around a bit, it looks like this, which isnt ideal ngl!

so u go down here, and add a color corrector layer, here we’re interested in the black/white, maybe neutral depending if theres any color left but the previous step should had taken care of that. here u gotta play with it urself, deciding what u think looks better

it probably isnt enough - maybe it isnt which nice but usually not, so u add a levels layer thats in the same tab as color correction. again u gotta test it out yourself until ur satisfied. this tool basically makes the blacks blacker and the whites whiter, and um sometimes like brighter?

okay this is how it looks now with all those layers, way better. i couldnt add more layers without making it look fucked up so i had to work with that. TIP! as u add layers do right click on the layer > create clipping mask (or just clipping mask? idk how it is in english sorry),  that should make the layers only get applied to the image you want, leaving the background untouched. so anyways. here.

then u gotta color like the other one.

added my own psd and tada

and thats pretty much it! if u wanna do like. complicated coloring like all those cute manga edits going around, this blog has a really good tag that has many helpful tutorials about it. I use them sometimes but usually not bc again. im stuck with my broken mouse and i dont have a good pulse to color. 

if u have any questions feel free to hmu again! 

[ariereii]

I wanna see the picrews of ur bsd OCs!! ^o^

oh hello !!!! this is probably gonna be a lot/v long...

(ik u didnt ask but i wanted to add info about them too u dont have to read those parts)

so here's the one that has the most accurate portrayal of her (and the 1st i made)

i mean this is literally her, she just has a scar on the side of the face and/or across her nose, haven't decided...

here's the rest, as usual click for better quality:

info: kage, 19, asexual, aromantic, autistic, assassin for the port mafia, kills for fun, smiles while doing it, not highly ranked but also not low ranked, keeps to herself, i made her a loner until i made my next oc blaze. they occasionally communicate. weapon of choice: gun. at first i gave her no power but now i think she has a power that she can't miss / perfect aim? idk. maybe that only works with guns and she also sometimes uses knives to kill and other stuff to challenge herself.

next oc, blaze. i wanted to spell it like blaise, but i wanted it to mean 'fire' and that spelling means something else.

i don't have a picture that shows perfectly what he looks like, like with kage but, this one is the closest

he has those exact scars on his body and he also has bandages covering his eye to match with kage.

info: blaze, 22, homosexual, aromantic, autistic, deaf, his hearing aid makes him be able to hear a tiny bit but most of the time he can't hear shit, (i cried when i saw some picrews with a hearing aid), uses bsl bc he's british, moved to japan with his best friend (my next oc), i haven't decided on his ethnicity but he's south asain, an assassin for the port mafia, likes to use knives to kill, sometimes guns even tho he doesn't have to. he has a fire power, haven't decided exactly what. but he could easily kill people with fire, which he does do. doesn't kill for fun tho, only for his job.

next one:

i don't have a name for him yet but for now im calling him sydney (i need him to have a name that means 'water' bc he's trans and he wanted a name that means water cos blaze's name means fire and he's fucking gay for him and he's a nerd like that. sydney was on a list of water related names but its not close enough)

im mad there's nothing similar to the anime style, but this is the one that portrays him the best (its always the first one i make lol) :

info: name tba or sydney, 20, bisexual, demiboy (male and non-binary) (afab, transitioned), blind (became blind at age 13, years after he met blaze), autistic, (him and blaze met as kids in england and this group for disabled & autistic kids), nerdy, good boy, never done anything wrong in his life, ridiculously in love with blaze, when he moved to japan with blaze when he was like 18, blaze found out about the port and joined, syd was totally against that and they fell out but still remained friends, he found the ADA and joined that, the relationship was obviously strained cos of the opposite sides but they're still best friends.

he either doesn't have an ability or has one that is helpful for the agency or something, idk yet. definitely one that cant be used for killing anyway. he's new. i have to think about that.

(they eventually get together)

thank you so much for asking, sorry this is so long!