#not. enormously happy with this one

[ehlnofay]

Summerfest day 3 - GHOST

On the hoary street outside Aventus’ house, the children are throwing snowballs.

It’s snowed thick the last few days, only coming to a stop late this afternoon, so that the cobble of the road is entirely hidden; the younger ones, all a little older than it feels like they should be, are shin-deep in it, wading with some difficulty, clothes freezing wet and shoes probably soaked through. It’s the proper kind of snow, clean and crisp and cold to the bone. It lies smooth and flat where it hasn’t been walked through and most of the streets visible from the upstairs windows still haven’t been shovelled clear. There’s meant to be a market today, but after this weather – roads barely traversable unless people start rustling up sledges - it’s doubtful it’ll go through. It happens. This time of year you need to keep your storeroom well stocked, else you’re shit out of luck.

(Once, there were no storerooms; Torr couldn’t tuck themself away until the blustering died down. He’d wear seven worn-thin layers and stick his fingers in his mouth when they started hurting and if it got really bad he’d find somewhere with Griss and Kyrri and Katla and whoever else he could grab and he’d beat down the door of whoever was least sick of his face at the time. The Cornerclub, if he thought it was worth appealing to Ambarys’ better sensibilities; the temples dotted around the city, though some of them were never very helpful at the best of times. They waited a blizzard out on Eirmund’s kitchen floor, once. Broke into a few cellars, a few abandoned buildings, a shop. It’s lucky they weren’t arrested twice as often as they were. They think they got by mostly on luck, some days.)

It's pretty, if nothing else; there’s nobody else out on the streets yet so it’s just the gaggle of kids in their tatty coats and cloaks and the ends of their tunics wet, breath misting in the air so visible it’s practically crystallised, shrieking and ducking and hurling damp handfuls of snow at each other, loose-packed and crumbling. It hits the walls, sometimes, and sticks dripping between the stones; seeps through their gloves, through their hose, and Torr doesn’t remind them to worry about frostbite because they know and he knows they know, but he thinks about it. Their own hands are still scarred, fingertips ever-flushed, knuckles tough and pitted. It’s hard to remember that things have changed, in some ways. Harder to remember they were ever different, in others.

They’re posted up watching against the chilled stone wall, hood pulled over their head to shield them some from the cold, hands tucked up into the sleeves of their thick wool tunic. (It’s nice. Bluish-purple – Babette picked it out, they think.) The kids are all yelling their heads off, which they suppose the neighbours must have gotten used to. Ambarys is stumbling like a newborn deer through the snow; Griss is darting this way and that, her red skirt fluttering like a flag behind her; Skygna has Gellir on her shoulders, a lump of snow held high in one hand and the other holding onto her head, directing her to charge around lopsidedly. A trio of the newer kids – they’ve been appearing more often, Katla said, since the fighting started, and Torr’s still not entirely clear on which is which – are trying to pile up a crumbling snow wall. Skrauti keeps careful to the porch, mindful of his foot and realistic about the strength of his boots and the real utility of his crutches in that sort of terrain, but he ducks around corners and keeps neatly compacted snowballs piled up in his arms. He darts around the corner, throws one that dramatically misses anyone that it might have been aimed at, and lurches out of view again before anyone can try to get him back. Gellir is bellowing, his little face bright as the sun. Skygna is laughing. She always used to be so serious.

So much has changed. So much has stayed the same. Same clothes, some of them. Same people, mostly. Torr watches, leaning against the cold stone wall, and tries to find familiarity in it. Fails.

(It should be familiar. They used to play like this all the time – Windhelm’s certainly got the weather for it, coated in snow for the better part of the year and not all that much else to do about it; the kids would sneak up on him, or on each other, try to dump a damp handful down the backs of their tunics or grind it into their hair. Katla always tried to get it straight in the eyes. Torr remembers back when Skrauti was new, how he managed to smash a hard-packed snowball through one of the rare glass windows in the Grey Quarter, how he damn near cried with guilt afterwards until Torr promised they’d scrounge up the money to pay for it to be fixed. Torr remembers how Chukka down the docks tried to figure out how to lob snow at them with her tail even though it didn’t have half the dexterity for it. Torr remembers Katla shovelling snow down her throat in response to some stupid dare and then shoving Talres’ face in it when he laughed. Torr remembers, Torr remembers, Torr remembers; but it’s like that’s all he knows how to do. Like he’s slotting it away in the shelves of nostalgia as it’s happening. Like he’s not really here.)

(He isn’t. Not really. Not like he’s supposed to be. Once, they would have been the one to start it, putting snow down Katla’s dress, on Talres’ arm, in Griss’ hair; it kept them all laughing, kept them active, kept them distracted. They were the best at those games, unbeatable, though since half their opponents were half their age having the best arm and the quickest dodge probably wasn’t much to brag about. They remember it all but they’re still leaning statue-still against the wall; trying to move feels like an imitation, unreal. None of it feels real. Every time Torr comes back here they feel like they’re dressing up in their own skin, carving the blood off their palms, trying so hard not to seem like they’re pretending. He loves the kids – he does, he does, he does; he would do anything in the fucking world for them. There’s not much left that he hasn’t already done. But there’s little comfort to be found here, these days, feeling slow and stagnant and ill-fitting. They want him here, though, all the same. So he visits. And he tries not to feel like he’s lying.)

Torr is lost, as he usually is here, in thought (he can’t get away from it – he steps through Windhelm’s ancient gates and falls backwards through time, falls backwards into his own head), so he’s not expecting impact, sudden and sharp, against his right shoulder. Just under the clavicle. Their clothes are thicker-softer-better here than they ever used to be, but even so they can feel the freezing shock against the scar tissue knotted over their joint – they’re reacting before they even begin to think about it –

Their head catches up to their body before they actually put a hand on their knife, but not before they’ve flinched for it, shoulders curled in, sinking their weight low, one foot shifting agitatedly against the powder-pit of the snow; then Torr blinks, remembers himself, remembers when he is and where he is and that there is a world past the sudden snap of vigilance singing through the thundering of his blood. Blinks again. Looks, over the muddy-trodden surface of the sparkling snow, to Griss; who stands with one arm still raised and one side of a smile pinned on. It seems to be caught in place halfway through slipping away. There is snow on Torr’s jacket sleeve.

(Once, keeping her smile in place was the entire pared-down goal of his life; Torr spares a moment to hate himself, acutely and utterly. Then he moves on.)

Torr knows the steps for this game; knows what to do; knows what they would have done, though not why it used to be so easy, or why it’s so hard now. Griss looks grimacingly like she’s about to apologise for startling them, which is so horrendously not how they talk to one another that the idea stings. Torr crouches – all their muscles still coiled, chest held tight, very unhelpful – to dig a handful of snow from the ground at their feet and fling it in her vague direction. She yelps and dodges with ease, but it fixes the look on her face; she sticks her tongue out at him and ducks down to build up another arsenal, and Torr shakes his head ache-inducingly hard and tries as best he can to wrangle his attention to here and now. The snow is painfully cold against his ungloved hand, but it kind of helps. Makes him feel like he’s here.

When Griss hurls another projectile at him, he has at least the presence of mind to sidestep; she cackles delightedly, and he smiles, thin and dirty-cold as the dusting of snow on his shoulder.

[ialwaysknewyouwerepunk]

it's 20 degrees btw

[puppyeared]

eepiest little man in the building

[somegrumpynerd]

Started reading The Bad Wingmen by @topazshadowwolf and @paddie-ut and it utterly possessed me for a few days so I needed to draw some of my favourite bits

[skunkes]

parents found a new ducky viewing spot so i was convinced to drive to it

[justqueenie]

Just checking if we as a fandom have decided all those mad sexually charged scenes with Dean and Benny in purgatory where Ty being genuinely atttacted to Jensen Ackles and it trickled through (*cough* destiel is cockles fault *cough*) or is it just me

[scribblingface]

I went into bg3 fully ready to have a good time and have done so despite many ways in which the game is not good and have not worried too much over various dramas about patch changes but my chill streak has finally ended and I am wailing gnashing my teeth etc. about patch 7 (the supposedly final one with story/content changes) not adding companion reactivity for any of the durge content in act 2

[zenitsuinamogus]

Been liking your Dungeon Meshi manga panel colorings a lot, keep up the good work!

There seems to be a texture to your colors, is that from a specific tool you use or is it the manga panels themselves that have the texture already?

Thank you, I am glad you like them!

I make all of my manga colorings on ibisPaint X which is an app like Photoshop, so the texture comes from two noise overlays at different levels of fuzziness, one below the colors and one above.

Recently I have also been experimenting with adding dotted/diagonal screentone overlays to get a more vintage, printed feel.

This is what my recent colorings look like with and without texture overlays ~

I really like the look and feel of vintage comics and prints, so I use texture in my digital colorings to try and replicate that gritty, rough feeling of physical paper. I started doing it with my first few manga colorings [which at the time were from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and Demon Slayer] and it kind of stuck and has since become my signature style since. Whether they look better with or without texture is up to personal preference but I think it adds a lot of dimension to the otherwise flat colors.

Thanks again for the ask, and I hope you will continue to enjoy my future colorings!

Also, I may post some of my older works I originally shared on reddit since my Dungeon Meshi colorings are actually a very new hyperfixation and I have around 150+ colorings from Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer, One Punch Man, Chainsaw Man, and more. If that interests anyone I will share them ♡

[darthkvznblogs]

If it's not a direct spoiler, can you tell us more about Genosha as a country?

Minor worldbuilding spoilers ahead:

Genosha is a massive, artificial island (with a surface area of roughly 300 square miles) largely built by Magneto himself and funded by the United Nations Mutant Development Programme, located in the Pacific Ocean, northwest of Hawaii, roughly equidistant between the easternmost point of the Hokkaido region of Japan and the westermost point of Oregon.

It's technically a dictatorship, in the sense that Magneto is and has been the official leader since its founding, but he's more of an ideological figure than a lawmaker. There's a democratically elected parliament for that, as well as an independent branch equivalent to the justice system. Professor Xavier generally acts as an ambassador for the mutant nation, and the X-Men, as previously stated, serve as its mutant outreach taskforce, detecting new mutants around the world via Cerebro and getting to them before unsavory parties can, and preventing possible disasters from high-level mutant powers.

Genosha is protected, rather ironically, by Sentinels modelled after the original Trask Industries robots. Trask Industries was dismantled by SHIELD and the X-Men due to its inhuman (heh) and illegal experimentation, and the Sentinel schematics were gifted to the mutant nation as a sign of good faith, on the condition that the nations of the world get to continue developing on Trask's mutant detection and defense tech.

[dirt-mann]

the need to not grieve in the tags on posts that remind me of my parents late dog

[nutmeg-cider]

how to reconcile a lifetime of everyone building you an identity around being “the smart one” with the fact that you’re turning out to be the dysfunctional disappointment of the family

[void-kissed]

"We'll fight as one!"

One of my friends said they wanted to see Aria and Clio battling together, and.. while my first instinct was to make a more proper set of double renders of us together in combat, my second instinct was to give them both the Combined Keyblade to wield together for the sheer fun and symbolism of it. So that's what this is!! ^-^

Tag list: @dragonsmooch | @sol-rbs | @bugsband | @sunlight-ships | @friezaforce | @hallowed-nebulae | @stargazer-sims | @potionomic | @detective-with-one-arm | @deepsea-loves | @mikaelrealman | @artificervaldi | @thatslikesometaldude (To be tagged in my work in the future, please see this post!)

(Anyone is welcome to comment on and reblog my work if desired, as long as my DNI is respected!)

[vulcanette]

🥰 I got a super jumbo claw clip to hold my 1000lbs of hair comfortably and it really is the little things in life 🥰

[04tenno]

so why can't mine be bi?

I mean... I would rather people think he's bi than outright deny his attraction to Daigo. If I've ever said he "can't be bi" at any point, it's not because I don't think anyone should be allowed to interpret him as bi, or because him being bi is entirely out of the question. It's because the concept of him being bi is diametrically opposed to my personal analysis of Mine and the concepts his character portrays.

He's asked out by twenty different women (notably, he has never asked a woman out himself and explicitly says he has no interest in doing so) and he never once shows any enthusiasm when he agrees. He goes to hostess clubs and completely ignores the actual hostesses in favor of the men who drag him there, spacing out entirely the rest of the time when they're not talking to him.

He's also one of the only characters who explicitly talks about sex, in that in he says in Japanese he could sleep with as many otherwise desirable women as he wanted (again, emphasis on the number)... within the context of a list of things that he feels should have made him happy, but didn't.

The one and only time he doesn't act like he's being subjected to abject misery when interacting with a woman who's clearly attracted to him is at the end of his Okinawa character story, but that's... not really saying anything. People aren't gay because they've exclusively had bad experiences with dating. In fact, many people realize they're gay because they've had the "ideal" experiences, but still don't feel fulfilled. Which is exactly the sentiment Mine expresses in the finale.

Like… it's not for lack of trying, or lack of interactions with women. At some point it's just no use looking for the "right woman," because the "right woman" is never going to come along for someone who's not attracted to women in the first place. For Mine, the "right person" was Daigo Dojima.

[teaandinanity]

man every time one of the corvids come up to accept tribute my brain is just

corvids CORVIDS CORVIDS--

[stepffan]

as much as i would like to see more banquet photos and shoma hanging out with the other skaters, if that's what he needs to do to stay focused on the skating and it helps keep away the competition stress of the "i need to win and fight and compete against others" mindset and then by all means i hope he continues what he's doing now, just focusing on himself and hanging out with his team of emotional support middle-aged men