#on one hand I like simplified stuff on the other I like detail help--

[scarapanna]

Even more human design doodles for PV!!!

Funny old fellow!!!/silly

[docdufresne]

how r you so good at drawing (halo) armor. You’re literally one of the best I’ve ever seen. Tips please if possible? (specifically for the shapes of the armor)

Oh god heLLO; I'm super bad at explaining my process of drawing RvB armor, as it's been multiple years since I've done it up until recently, so I'm super rusty but I will do my best to explain myself!!!

I've never made any sort of tip guide or tutorial, so please bear with me!

USE REFERENCES!!! This can go for renders from the Halo games directly (ArtStation was a great place to start, I'm not sure how things are post AI ""art"" surge, though) but at the very least, screenshot the heCK out of the series from whatever season you want to draw. There are a lot of different angles, and after they started to animate, it made it easier to get references with arms up or splayed out to the sides, or legs bent and hand motions!! Depends on what you're looking for!!

For this Reference, I used a Halo 3 render, as well as the Caboose-isms poster render. There are more clear renders out there, I'm sure!

First step that I take in learning to draw a new set of armor is color coding the sections that I'm going to draw, and then labeling them with points of interest that make me remember the detail later; Like grooves, or a bevel that looks weird or silly. Color coding and labelling the parts made it easier for me to break it down into smaller bits to draw piece by piece, bc let's face it; Armor can be super tedious and daunting, especially if you're just starting out.

Remember It's ALL SHAPES!!! IT'S JUST SHAPES!!!! Break them down into more simple shapes to find what works best for you! Keep it loose in the sketch stage, so you don't get lost in the pesky details

Remember that the armor goes on TOP of a body, and isn't a part of their body! Halo Infinite dOES have prosthetics that are a bit smaller than the armor, which adds depth and flavor to your armor though!

When in doubt, draw it larger than you mean to, and size it down to fit your other pieces!

SIMPLIFY IT!!! TRACE TO LEARN!!!! Really just figure out where the pieces go and put them together like a puzzle! Armor is simply just, hard, and there's no easy way to learn quickly how to do it efficiently and well; It really does take a lot of practice and trying and sketching and watching clips and staring at other's art to maybe notice shortcuts or even details you didn't notice before!!

But the biggest tip that I can give you is just, don't be afraid to make "bad art" don't be afraid to draw "bad armor" !!! It doesn't have to be perfect, the details don't all have to align on model 100% of the time! All of my art, paintings and all, have things that I fudged or missed, or messed up on and didn't notice, but I still have fun painting and drawing because I like making people laugh with my comics and I like having them feel stuff about my paintings!

Sorry if this wasn't what you were looking for, but I hope this helps even just a little bit!!

[adobe-outdesign]

I know you've done the various mr mime forms, but have you reviewed mime jr?

(This is the last Pokemon review request in the inbox right now, so send 'em if you got 'em.

Mr. Mime review is here, G. Mr. Mime review is here, and Mr. Rime Review is here.)

Some people find Mr. Mime to be kind of uncanny, with its nose-less face, long jointed limbs, and slightly too detailed hands, but I've never heard anyone complain about Mime Jr. here. It's mostly because, while based off of Mr. Mime, the design has been simplified greatly, and features like a super cheerful expression make it hard to not find this little guy adorable. Them mimicking people and not being very good at it also doesn't hurt their cuteness factor.

I like how, conceptually, it starts off as a clown and then becomes a mime; kind of similar but still distinct ideas that work well with each other. It also looks really solid visually; the light pink body has great contrast with the dark blue accents, the black eyes pop, and the nose and red ball on the chest compliment each other, as does the ball on it's jester-cap esq hair. It's clown-like enough to pick up on the theme, but done in a nice and subtle way.

I've heard a lot of people say that Mime Jr. doesn't look enough like Mr. Mime, but I honestly don't agree. They share the exact same color palette, similar color distributions (dark hair and legs/feet, light pink faces and arms, dark pink circle accents, etc.) and a lot of the same motifs, like the zig-zag hair and circles. I think the only place where the line looses cohesion a bit is the head, as the two have very different eyes; not inherently a bad thing, but it does make the faces less similar.

Ironically, Mime Jr. arguably fits even better with the Galarian Mr. Mime line, but for opposite reasons; the color palettes are completely different, but more elements of the body shape and face carry through (G. Mr. Mime has a nose, think arms but thicker legs that are completely black, mitten-like hands, and a scalloped pattern to the body; all traits that Mime Jr. shares). Mr. Rime also helps with this, keeping all of the shared attributes and even gaining a stockier body shape in the legs, the round red nose on the stomach, and similar eyes to Mime Jr.

(A lot of people say there should've been a Galarian Mime Jr. On the one hand, having an ice-type variant with blue instead of pink would've made the cohesion of the line spot-on; but on the other hand, I don't know if there's a ton they would've done with the design beyond just minor visual tweaks. I don't know, if it's between a fairly standard recolor variant that exists for coherency vs. just skipping it all together, I do get why they wouldn't think it was needed. Plus, like I said, the line is incredibly coherent as-is anyway).

Anyway, a really cute and fun pre-evo that feels like it adds something thematically to the line and works really well with both regular and the Galarian Mr. Mime lines. Great stuff.

[skeleton-mischief]

Introductions with a Skeleton in a Suit and Tie

Thinking about a fanfic idea where it's the mob skeletons x reader and like like like one set is the one that the reader works for as a bartender and depending on which one they work for it influences the fanfic and stuff. Like, I imagine how whichever one the reader works for definitely would impact the skeletons as well and their perspective on them.

Let me just get this out. For one, I have more Mafia interpretations for other Sanses and Papyri but I'm going wild over the major three AU's Tale, Fell, and Swap. This is a rather simplified idea of what I think the first interactions would go for mob sans. I will work on the others a different time >:)

Bullet and Ace: Mafiatale Sans and Papyrus

Set in the 1920's, you were struggling to earn cash. Working in a shitty city, you dealt with a shitty boss in a shitty backrooms bar that shitty people went to. As time went on, you noticed that monsters would rarely visit, and you understood why. After all, you lived in an area where Humans and Monsters would conflict with one another due to terf wars. The bar, which of course was illegal to work at, allowed Monsters, but it was clear that not many welcomed them. It was common that customers would glare and other workers would be snippy or purposely make mistakes. Quite a few times, you would hear about what would happen when you weren't on shift. It wasn't something you particularly enjoyed, especially since you know that the other workers don't like you too much.

You had a strong opinion on how to treat others, and that was with respect until they disrespected you. You had a confrontational personality, and you weren't afraid to stand up to others because of it. It's not a common trait here in this infected city, where corruption would even destroy the most rational of mind. You have been threatened, jumped, and you have the scars to prove it. You hold this with pride though, even if you've almost died over it.

Don't get it wrong, you were a playful and overall kind Human, but you refused to deal with Humans talking shit about the Monsters here. They have dealt with enough, and if you can help it, you will make sure they can at least have a couple of drinks in peace. In fact, it was your impulsivity and strong sense of beliefs that got you where you are now. You don't regret it though, not one bit.

You have been working at the bar tonight since 10 'o clock. Nothing seemed too out of order today, except that you have been hearing about the whispers of suspicious rumors. Apparently, a new district has moved in, and has already made themselves comfortable in their territory. How this has happened is unknown, but it's quite an open secret for those that do know. You didn't have to guess too long that it was a Monster group, especially with how the folk along the streets have been cursing their names more so than usual.

Your hands went smoothly over the glass as you cleaned with a cloth, your fingers firm yet precise as you did so. Your eyes focused on the intricate details as the sounds of smooth jazz and small talk filled the corners of your mind. ...a Monster group, huh? A part of you wondered how long it would take for you to get fired over getting involved in a fight happening inside the very bar you worked at.

It was clear that something was wrong when you noticed the sudden drop in volume among the customers. You tilted your head up, your hands working subconsciously still to clean each glass properly as you scanned the room. The air held an air of electricity, however faint, and you wondered if it was the tension from your customers or if it was due to the monster walking through the entrance. A short, rather thick boned skeleton directly made his way towards you. He wore a crisp black suit that seemed to pair well with the porcelain appearance of his bone.

He was about 5'5, his shoulders rolled back with ease. If you weren't paying attention, he could've fooled anyone with the wide smile he wore. He moved with a languid, smooth confidence. To you, he looked harmless, but you knew better. There was a strange look in his eye, a curiosity that didn't feel right mixed in with the scent of cigars and pine. He sat directly across from you, nodding his head politely. "May I request an order?" "Of course, and what is it that you'd like to order?" "Hm...do you have Lucky Star on hand?"

Of course you did, rarely did a monster come here, so having a monster drink was a given despite the lack of needing it much. You always made sure it came in with the shipments, even if your other coworkers found it pointless. "Of course," you smiled, turning your back from him to get straight to work. You felt his eyelights staring at you as you did so, but it didn't feel piercing. Rather, it felt like he was looking at you with curiosity, even if it was intently. You didn't turn around though or comment, you've had to shrug off multiple customers doing the same damn thing.

You slid it across the counter and he swiftly caught it, raising his glass towards you with a smile and a slight nod. "Why thank you, do you take gold? I can scrounge up cash if need be," "Sorry sir, but we only take cash." "Not a problem," He was brief, and so you were in return. You watched him pull a small wallet, opening it and handing you a wad of cash. You swiftly dealt with it. "Will that be all, sir?" You asked, only to see a spark in his eyelight. You felt that he was waiting for you to say that.

"Actually," He took a swig of his glass, the beverage a light, translucent blue swirled with citrus and cherry. "I was wondering something, if you'll humor me?" He set his glass down and rested his jaw against the palm of his hand, tilting his head to the side. He didn't wait for an answer. "Do you know what types of jokes skeletons make?" This left you a little confused, raising your brow as you took a moment to process what he said. Huh?? "I-I'm...pardon?" "Well, don't keep me waiting, what kind?"

You had to think for a moment, but nothing came up. You shrugged your shoulders slightly and spoke. "I do not know sir, what kind?" "Humerus ones, of course." You took a moment to understand, and the side of your lip twitched before you tried to suppress your smile. "Excuse me?" "Though, bad ones go into the skele-bin." You found that your mouth smiled involuntarily, your features trying to remain composed. "What's the matter? Do humans not have a funny bone?" He just kept on going, didn't he? The twinkle in his eyes revealed enough, and as a small noise escaped you, his grin only widened.

"Tibia-honest, I thought you had one in you. But I guess you're like me, things just go right through you, huh?" Before you could stop yourself, a snort left your lips as you pressed a hand over your mouth. He leaned on the counter some more, his eye sockets scrunching up as if the bone worked differently than a Humans. "Was that a laugh? Oh I think it was, I can feel it in my bones. No-body here seems to understand me, but you do."

By now, you couldn't keep your composure, and he was eating it up. "S-Sir, please-" "What? Am I being a numb-skull? Forgive me if so, I'm just a little bonely," Oh no no no. You instantly let yourself speak, and you would say you regret it if that was true. "I'm not tired of this yet, sir, but your puns are bad to the bone," "Guilty as charged," He chuckled, a visible tension you didn't see before leaving him. You wonder if he was trying to ease the tension that so easily filled the bar in his presence, but it was working for him thankfully. "Please, I need to remain serious," "Why? I don't have the stomach to stop myself,"

Your own laughter filled your ears among the quiet jazz in the bar and you missed the way he looked at you. For a moment, if you were able to notice, you would have seen the joy and relief in his features, and maybe a small tint of blue. "Please?" "Okay okay, this might be getting a little bone dry if I don't stop. My name is Bullet, it's a pleasure to meet you." Bullet, what a name. Well, you figured that it was better than a name like Robert for a skeleton. Maybe Monsters had a different custom for names, you wouldn't question it. "Well, it's a pleasure to meet you too, sir-" "Please, call me Bullet," "-Okay, Bullet. What's a skeleton like you doing around here, hm? Not like it's my business though." You inquired, before you noticed the slight shift in his posture.

"Ah, well, I just so happened to find this place while wandering around. I'm new to the area." He said with an averted gaze, his phalanges slightly fidgeting with his tie, which you just noticed was done incorrectly. He looked so at ease, which confused you when you could see the tension in his hands. You were more acute than the average Human, since it's kept you away from danger, so these things didn't pass you. His response was brief though, honest. "I suspected as much, you're...nicer than my usual," You joked, and his white eyelights flicker back to you. They had a pretty tint to them, ever faint, of a blue similar to the stone on his silver chained broach. Topaz, you suspected, which was a swiss blue. What a gem, those don't come cheap. It made you wonder what made a skeleton who could afford such a thing to come to this shit hole of a bar?

It seemed to do the trick for him to smoothly slide away from himself, and he grabbed that opportunity with a swift efficiency. "Oh? Please, do share what you mean." You brushed off the fact he subtly was uncomfortable about talking about himself. You were the same way for your personal life, so you wouldn't dare think of prying. Remaining decisively oblivious has gotten you far in life, after all. "Didn't you feel the clear emotion of friendship and joy of this bar on your way in?" You asked with exaggerated shock and sarcasm.

He snorted a laugh, before he raised a bonebrow(?) at you. "Okay okay, I get it. No need to be like that now," He relented, raising his palms up in mock defeat. "I'm just surprised you think of me kindly enough to comment on it," He confessed, before he grabbed his drink. He hasn't chugged down his drink, you noted. Usually, Monsters who felt unwelcomed in bars like this would make sure to take their glass and finish it off quickly. Instead, he kept that languid ease, relaxed as he took his time to savor each drink. You suddenly were struck with a thought. How could he drink when he's a skeleton? That felt invasive to ask though.

"Well, Bullet, folks around here aren't known for their manners. You've been a great customer, and it's a pleasure to serve you." You replied kindly, straightening up as you went back to cleaning glasses behind the counter. You kept yourself facing him however, to show your interest in socializing. "I hope that you know that I find you nicer than my usual as well, then," Bullet commented, his phalanges plucking a cherry from inside the glass before he popped it behind his permanent smile. "Kinder too, with excellent manners and excellent humor."

You barked out a laugh at that, but you believed him when he complimented you with sincerity. "Excellent humor? Your puns are awful," "But I got you to laugh, didn't I? I count that as a certified win!" He proudly exclaimed, placing his hand on the counter as he straightened and pointed your way while holding the glass. "Don't ignore what else I said though, too. You're an excellent bartender."

You haven't felt this comfortable with a customer in awhile. If you were to describe it in detail, you'd best describe it as if a warmth orbited the two of you. There, a lack of the outside world made things feel all the better. You leaned your arm against the counter, bent forward as you raised an eyebrow. "Well thank you, I try. I know this part of the city is harsher to folks like you. Please know that you're welcome here by me anytime,"

He seemed to appreciate that, with how his eyelights grew a little fuzzy around the edges and dilated ever so slightly. It felt natural to get along with the skeleton, even if it started a little strange. He tilted his head upwards, leaning closer. He didn't invade your space, but it was crystal clear to you that he could practically wrap his hand around your shoulder if he wanted to. His smile softened, and he kept his eyes locked onto your own. "You're truly a dear, I'll keep that in mind..." His voice softened to a smoother tone, as if he wanted to say something more. Alas, he didn't get the chance to.

His phalanges twitched suddenly, and your eyes broke from his as you glanced behind him. The rest of the bar seemed to be normal except for the few lingering glares of drunken idiots in the corner tables. They seemed to be growing silently more worked up, muttering amongst themselves as the sensations of malice were directed to both of your way. His eyes flickered towards their direction without turning his head, before he glanced back at you. His gaze lingered on your eyes, before he glanced down at your chest and then slowly to your hands. He extended his hand forward, careful as he offered it to you.

You accepted it of course, and you knew what he was going to say before he spoke. "For now, though, I think I've started to overstay my welcome." He hummed, your tongue clicking behind your teeth for a moment in silent but begrudging acceptance. "That's quite a shame. I was starting to wonder what else I'd get to learn about you." You felt his thumb pressing against the back of your hand, rubbing it subconsciously. He pulled your hand to his face, and for a moment you were confused.

You weren't for long however, as you felt a tingling sensation pressing against the back of your hand. Was that...a kiss? He looked up at you and winked playfully, before he shook your hand with a controlled firmness. "I guess you'll have to wait. You don't mind doing that, do you?" He smirked, his natural charm causing you to snort. You felt the warmth in your cheeks, but you couldn't help but give him a purely honest smile that seemed to warm the skeletons bones. "I don't, I don't mind at all. You have to promise to come back though, alright? Who else can give me such awful puns and good companionship?"

He let go of your hand with some reluctance, as if he wanted to linger in your warmth. You felt a little sad to see him go, but he quickly reassured you. "You really know how to put a skeleton in a corner, huh? You strike a hard bargain, though, so I'll bite. I promise that I will, as long as I can find you, okay?" He asked you, adjusting his suit as he pulled out a cigar from his inside pocket. He didn't light it, though, perhaps due to some manners of his. You nodded your head, your eyes crinkling slightly as you straightened up yourself.

"It's a deal then. Get home safely, alright?" He winked at you again, a bonebrow raised as he chuckled. "I can handle myself perfectly fine. Don't waste your time on me, okay? I have a few tricks up these sleeves, danger passes straight through me."

"You already used that joke, Bullet."

"Point taken."

He waved to you as he turned away, the heel of his shoes causing him a swift turn as he had the last word of your first interaction. "Farewell, I'll see you again soon..." If only you realized how soon, maybe then you would have had time to prepare how this skeleton was going to change your life for the better...

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Closing Notes: Oh this was longer than I anticipated. I had fun though, and I hope you guys enjoy what idea I had in mind when typing this. Thank you for reading, please tell me what you guys think :-))

[vampstel]

Out of your favorite designs you’ve redrawn or has drawn who do you enjoyed working on the most?

As a character designer myself, I can’t help but love all my ocs equally, and learning from you actually helps me expand upon my stories. You’ve helped me so much writing a story for Victoria (She’s a princess vampire who is generations after Dracula (Temporary name because some details are being worked on) in my universe I don’t think this made sense but hopefully it does?) and I actually took some inspiration from your video in order to fully develop her.

I also love it when you diversity your work. It makes me really happy seeing all sorts of characters with real life details? If that made any sense. I like learning from you and I wanna try to understand more about details. Mainly because I suck at drawing details and idk how you do most of your stuff by hand. (I usually try to find brushes on IbisPaint on Pinterest for my work)

What kind of advice do you have for any upcoming artists who’s struggling with character designing?

Do you start with the character and then work on the story or is it the other way around?

This is going to be a VERY long response so it’s all gonna be under the cut…

I don’t really have a favorite design honestly... It’s hard to pick favorites when your characters have different aesthetics to them. It feels unfair to me to compare them because of that LOL so I try my best to avoid that.

That being said though, I can definitely say I had so much fun redesigning Elliot and making her her own person rather than a character who’s meant to represent me. She doesn’t have a full body render yet but… I think she’s neat :3

She’s just got all the things I love in one design and since she’s so personal to me, I guess you could technically say she’s my current favorite design out of all my OCs so far. Minus Rei, of course…

But yeah I can definitely relate to loving all your characters equally!! Victoria sounds cool and I’m glad my content helps you out ^_^

As for the last few questions… Details are really hard to draw especially if your art style is more on the cartoony side. There’s nothing wrong with using brushes or patterns online to help out the process but if you want to practice without them, it’s good to try out how to simplify details!!

Not everything has to be crazy complicated. So long as you get the general idea or silhouette of something in your art, it translates pretty well in the end results. Lots of artists simplify things to make it easier for the eye and it’s a hard skill to master but as you get used to it, you’ll become way better at it. Try and be fluid with your line work. That’ll help a ton!!

For advice on character design: I’d say the most important part to designing a character is making them feel alive by having meaning to their physical appearance and attire. A lot of beginner artists tend to forget that which results in a boring or un-relatable character.

We all have some sort of history with our appearances and it’s good to try and figure that out with your OCs. I usually do that during the design process but it’s fine if you do it after or before it. Before it is more ideal in a professional setting though!!

Go insane with designs. Mix and match aesthetics if you want and use LOTS of references and inspiration. That’s the second most important part. It’s why I have tons of pins saved on Pinterest and tons of reels saved on Instagram. But remember to always ask yourself questions like:

Would this character dress like this? What do they think about their clothes? Do they dress traditional, medieval, or modern?

Would they like this sort of thing? What sorts of fabrics and textures do they prefer to feel on their skin? Are they comfortable with revealing attire or do they prefer something more formal?

What sort of history does their clothes have? Was it a gift from someone, did they buy it from a thrift store or did they make it themself?

Do their accessories have sentimentality or are they completely irrelevant and something they use just for aesthetics?

Is there a way to incorporate things from their backstory or their current story to their appearance? Like scars/marks on their body? Maybe even accessories from a loved one or no?

Can you explain why they have specific physical features? Why are they skinny? Or muscular? Do they work out and eat healthy or do they barely take care of themselves?

It’s a lot to consider but when you can answer these questions, your character becomes much more lively and unique.

I personally tend to start the design of the character first but as I go through the drawing process, that’s when I flesh things out like their story and such. I don’t recommend this process to beginners since it’s SUPER messy but do what makes you feel comfortable! Hope this was helpful and thank you once again for the sweet compliments <33

[nikoisme]

Something that I always really like in your art is your use of shapes. They're simplified but still very believable if that makes sense. Do you have any tips on that? Or could you direct me to where you learnt that?

I'm glad you like the shapes! They're one of my favorite things to draw and see in art hahaha. I'm going to explain how I personally do them, so it might vary for others.

So when looking at objects, i do try to break them down in big shapes. I usually hold what i'm drawing as a 3d object in my mind, and then i just try to,,,, rotate it. It gives me a much better sense of how it looks. For example, if i'm drawing a head, i'm drawing it as a box - i can easily rotate a box in my head, so it gives me a stronger idea of how i want to draw it. Also i just try to feel something out. I can feel out the structure of my finger or face just by touching it. This helps me a lot for planes, which comes in handy when i try to render things.

Instead of looking at objects as a bunch of different, smaller lines, i try to break them down into bigger lines that kind of define a shape. For example, if i'm drawing a face, i'm not going to draw each individual slope or curve of a line. While it would look fine, i would have no idea what i'm trying to draw. I'm drawing lines, which are 2d, instead of shapes, which are 3d.

Here's a very rough example

(the angles are a bit different but you get the idea)

With the first one i tried to draw each little curve of the face, but in the other i just broke it down into big lines/shapes. While both look okay, the second one is much quicker to do and a bit more shaped. I want each line to count. So i have one line for the cheekbone, one for the jaw, etc. Also, most of my sketches are just a bunch of boxes, so i have shapes as a fundemental. Of course you can use any other shape, but i personally use boxes because they're the easiest for me to work with.

Then the one that definitely helped out the most was doing a shit ton of figure studies. Instead of focusing on the muscles and the details, my goal is to get the overall form down. For some reason i am horrible at drawing in large scale, so the figures are really small. And I just hold the fact that i want each line to count, breaking things into big shapes/lines and just rotating things in 3d in mind as i go.

These are super rough, and i can definitely spot some mistakes - but the idea is there. Almost each big muscle is a single line. If i have a good sense of the fundamentals, then i can build up on the rest of it.

What helps a lot is of course, practice. I have pages upon pages upon pages of just random poses and heads and other objects in slightly different angles. So something is bound to stick. Also getting a good sense of the fundamentals, aka anatomy. Skulls, muscles, facial planes, bones, you know the stuff. If you understand the fundamental rules, you can break them and adjust them however you like because you know how things are supposed to connect to make sense. Sinix on youtube has some really really great videos on the fundamentals of anatomy and how you can break things down into shapes! Also you can find those 3d references where you can rotate the thing you want to draw.

Also just do whatever shapes you like best! I personally prefer boxes (or squares and rectangled for that matter), i find they suit what i want best. The heads i draw are boxes, the fingers, the hands, the eyes - hell i will break a round object into boxes if i so desire.

Most of this is internalized at this point and became muscle memory, and honestly i never really paid it much attention. So apologies if this doesn't make much sense hahaha! Shapes in general are something i love seeing in art, so i probably absorbed some other things through osmosis (aka i just,, stare at things a lot. I will see a fucking lamppost and go "wow those are some really good shapes you have there" and in my mind i'm already breaking it down like "this is a cylinder, one big line for this side, a box there, some slopes and curves on the other side" so i can reference it from memory later). I mostly fouced on the human figure here, as that's something i draw the most - but this counts for literally any object! I could do figure studies of a chair, why not. My process is the same.

[myrmica]

do you have any tips for getting better at drawing anatomy? your poses are always so fluid and realistic

first of all THANK YOU!!! that makes me happy to hear!

under the cut because i got long winded... i hope something in here is useful! some of it may stray from the point, and i have no idea what stuff you already know.

in my experience a lot of it is about paying attention to form/volume. at one point or another i realized i vastly prefer art that emphasizes this, as opposed to flatter more stylized anatomy, as far as things i want to emulate in my own work go (flat styles can be cool when other people do it; this is a huge thing with art i think, developing a sense of discernment when it comes to the art you Want To Make versus the art you like but wouldn't want to mimic...)

so i add contour lines to everything i draw as i sketch because it helps me figure out where the object is in space, in relation to the viewer. doing this immediately establishes where the subject is in relation to the "camera" because lines curving one way mean you're looking up at something, and vice versa. if you've ever seen the coil method of foreshortening before, it's the same principle.

while construction lines won't always be there in a finished piece, you can communicate form in the curves of your lines. the round end of a sleeve is a countour line, so are fabric folds (although they have their own volume too), etc.

the feeling of looking up at someone, or their arm moving towards you, or their back turned away from you, that's where a lot of tension and dynamism comes from--some of the "fluidity."

another thing is to focus on weight, and how things interact when they touch... if you grip someone's arm, how does the skin fold/warp under pressure? can you actually draw it doing that, instead of leaving the arm being grabbed unaffected? stuff like that. a huge inspiration for this (and i think it shows in some of the artistic choices i've been making lately) is margot maison's work. like, check out this panel from bora the brain:

or this one of mine, where i just grabbed my own arm like that to see how it felt and what the skin did...

these are both examples of smaller details but the same principle applies any time you're drawing two people touching, or even a bent leg where the thigh and calf meet. i'm more interested in how skin/fat moves around than i am in getting the nitty gritty details of muscle groups and bones right. knowing the muscles and bones certainly HELPS; my personal favorite bones are the radius and ulna in the forearm, and keeping the way they move in mind Is useful because it reminds you that the arm isn't a uniform tube shape, it's a flat rectangle type thing, and it'll look wider or narrower depending on the angle... etc. see pronation/supination gif below:

they get recomended all the time but the morpho books are my favorite reference for doing actual intentional anatomy practice & in redrawing stuff from them a ton of tricks for constructing bodies have stuck in my head. like, here i was focusing on how they simplify the shoulder/armpit in relation to the ribcage:

(you can download most of 'em for free off of libgen btw.)

you can also get something kinda special drawing bodies from life. if you don't have other people to draw, your own hands/legs work too, and it's good for foreshortening and perspective because you're always seeing them in relation to your own viewpoint:

granted both this and the morpho studies are things i find fun to do. on the off chance that you're someone who finds studies tedious or boring, rather than pushing through it you might want to paint a character you like onto the pose you're practicing or something like that to keep yourself invested?

i also use references gratuitously. usually many pictures at once, where i'm combining them to get the pose i want. either just referencing different photos as i draw different things or literally editing them together depending on what it is. over time, i've gotten better at coming up with dynamic and interesting poses without a ref, because using them has built up my understanding of the body (it's actually way easier IMO to draw a dynamic pose without a ref than it is to draw a dude just standing there without one ?!)

there's sort of a push and pull for me between accuracy/realism ("can the arm Actually bend that way???") and exageration/stylistic liscense ("if it doesn't, does it look cooler like that?") where it helps to KNOW if you're drawing something that isn't technically "anatomically correct."

there's also a lot to be said for tracing over photos for practice!

thank you for the question, i love to talk about these things ^_^

[pizzazz-party]

ice and snow spoilers issues #1 through #3

usagi’s arm—the one that got smashed by a kappa that one time—being the arm that got dragged by the yuki-onna 👀👀👀

watching keiko and jei eat. i’m gonna think of the emperor’s ban on meat until the day i die. meat was something basically everyone enjoyed anyway, if they could get their hands on it (the hikone clan gifting “medicine” to the emperor, the illicit meat market trade in the bigger cities, the fact that poorer towns with poorer harvests relied on hunting as another avenue for food), but these two really don’t do things by half, huh.

jei casually rooting through someone’s mind and memories, his victims eyes momentarily going white.

side note, i love these little details, like their (straw?) winter capes being “well-oiled to make them waterproof and keep in the heat,” i was wondering how those worked.

for tbs au stuff, i’ve been looking into housing around this general era. and it’s interesting to compare the few remaining farmer houses of the edo period (along with some amazing recreations in japanese museums), to what stan puts on the page. he’s a comic artist, and that means he has to work fast, and that means simplifying a lot of what he works with. no one except the nitpickers are going to care if his houses look less than lived in when there’s a greater story going on.

and in this case, it makes sense if the yuki-onna doesn’t have that much stuff lying around.

nonsequitor: yuki-onna’s fire burnt hair cut looks kinda gay (approving)

jei proves to be far more interesting when his face isn’t just stuck like that. or when he’s having opinions.

for the longest time, part of jei’s only slightly interesting angle was the fact that he was shrouded in mystery. but in my opinion, that’s held him back a lot. having keiko around, spilling his backstory, having him interact with other supernatural beings—all of that helps him become more like a character than a force of nature. which, in theory, sounds a little like a downgrade. but it’s not. lord hikiji can pull off the former, because his actions are used very sparsely by stan sakai, while simultaneously ghosting the entirety of the narrative. there is no story without him. by comparison, we get a lot of jei. and it only serves to draw attention to how little substance he has as a character.

he doesn’t have an arc. he never learns anything or grows (prior to keiko). he interacts with bandits the most (this is what, the second or third time he’s become someone’s boss?), but only to kill them really. and watching them cower around him gets real old, real fast.

even watching him fight usagi isn’t actually that interesting. i’m never as worried for usagi as i am for other characters. (rest in peace, inazuma—and hold on yukichi.)

unrelated: jei is made of void, confirmed /j

[toyotacorolla2008]

hi!!! i was wondering if you could do a tutorial for how you draw transformers? i can never simplify them like you can. do you have any tips?? also love your art sm <33

hi ヾ(•ω•`)o

I WILL TRY MY best to explain what i do… i don’t actually have a very structured system but this is vaguely how i got started and how i simplified the process

1. look up and compile a whole bunch of references

this will be useful for EVERYTHING– transfomos come with lots of shapes and gizmos and details and stuff so a variety of references from different angles and in different poses is really useful because you can see the shapes they’re made out of and also understand how everything connects with each other

trapezoid town! this is a mess but it’s a quick example of how by looking at everything you start to notice trends or details like what moves with what or how flexible some parts are

there are a whole bunch of resources very nice people have compiled on the web like here here here here and here (mainly MTMTE) and there is a discord server (this is a link to a tumblr post about it and not the invite link itself) for it too but you can always look through the source material and just start screenshotting and pasting shit into a folder. 

you don’t have to do humongous in-depth breakdowns if you just want to be able to quickly doodle robots (god knows i don’t!!) but having the references on-hand makes it easier for the times when you’re like This pose is going to be challenging and I’m not sure how all of the cuboids will be positioned.

references also help break you out of thinking of it as just drawing blockier humans because the proportions and shapes vary a looooooot

2. draw draw draw

at first i drew a lot using refs heavily to get an idea of the shapes then i got lazy and just started drawing anime girls and smacking rectangles and kibble on top BUT as you draw more and more you start to pick up on the Salient Features as well as their General Silhouette.

drawing from memory means that what makes them look recognisable will become more emphasised in your mind so you’ll naturally pick up on how you can simplify them without losing what makes your guy Look Like Your Guy. so if you want to simplify the robots just be incredibly lazy like me B)

i'm kind of horrible because i don't even do like Basic Shapes i literally just eyeball it

for poses i rectangle it out while thinking really hard

anyway when i first tried to draw transformers but Something Didn’t Look Right it was either a) the level of detail across the entire drawing was inconsistent and threw it off balance or b) proportions weren’t right and these things only got better with me finangling and doodling and learning by iteration.

of course sometimes i don’t give a fuck because no cops in transformers doodle land but yeahhhh i’m the kind of guy who only gets through stuff by throwing a lot of rocks at it. i don’t have a Method to offer you unfortunately but what i did do was

3. experiment and exaggerate and experiment!!

The First Rule of Gun Safety is to Have Fun and Be Yourself! i took a lot of liberties and rarely stayed on-model when i doodled and waffled around (and i still do…) but it helped me figure out how much i was willing to draw lol and consequently how i would stylise them.

i would play with how big or small or exaggerated or expressive they'd be… even my most detailed drawings are nowhere near comic-detail but my least detailed ones were. turquoise triangle that’s vaguely brainstorm-shaped. having fun with it and just doing it to make stupid jokes makes the practice seem like not practice.

so yeah tl;dr i started by reffing what bots actually look like, would trace comic panels to get an idea of the shapes and details and then start drawing side-by-side → drew billions of perceptors from my diseased mind and played around with lines → ??? → upgraded from goofy-looking rectangles to goofy-looking rectangles

that’s it for advice! (i don’t feel qualified to say that much)

below are just examples of stupid doodles i’d make on my ipad in class or in the margins of assignments lol, you can tell the last one is from when i still didn't understand brainstorm's build very well because the wings are placed wrongly... But i grew.

hope this was somewhat helpful! there are other tutorials from other artists that i can direct you to but this is how toyotacorolla2008 got to shitposting on tumblr dot com

[fantasyfantasygames]

The Dossier

The Dossier, B(l)ack Room Games, 2014

The Dossier's physical presentation is its best aspect. It was distributed in a manila envelope with tape across the flap. The rules are done in cheat-sheet format, with extra detail and clarifications provided on the website when the cheat sheet wasn't enough. Every page of handouts was photocopied multiple times before the version in the envelope was made, so they all have that distinctive "lost the originals" look. (The rule handouts are kept clean.) There are grainy washed-out photographs. There's even an envelope-within-the-envelope with the GM-only information. It's a great physical artifact.

Unfortunately, that's where the good stuff ends. The game's writing, art and system all fail where the physical presentation succeeds.

The game's concept is straightforward. There are aliens and/or monsters in the world and you must hunt them down. You're part of a federal bureau that no one respects and most people don't believe, so you have jurisdiction but not much authority. In this case, all the monsters are hiding as people. So far, fine. Except that the alien groups that are listed in the game are stolen from real-world conspiracy nonsense and frequently turn out to be racist or antisemitic if you look them up online.

The people in the photos, the ones supposedly taken over by aliens/monsters? They're clearly the author's friends with their clothing done weird and some mediocre stage makeup. The writing is trying to sound grown-up and mysterious but reads like a B-movie script.

The rules of the game are a little reminiscent of Unisystem. It's probably not a coincidence that Conspiracy X used Unisystem. The Dossier makes a large number of simplifications. It gives you a set of pregens instead of having more flexible chargen. These pregens are not the least bit balanced (nor would it be easy to explain why they keep hanging around each other). The dice system uses d6 instead of d10, which means botches happen more often. The outcome table is simplified to pass/fail. Everywhere the rules aren't cut down, they're excessively detailed. Lord save me from autofire rules. In short, the rules were simplified past the point where it was useful and ran headfirst into unbalanced characters and wacky antics with automatic weapons, which is definitely not the goal.

The game has a strong assumption of "You have run RPGs before", which, so does this blog, but a total lack of GM advice doesn't help get things going. The metaplot as outlined in the GM-only envelope commits the cardinal sin of not providing a central role for the PCs, and the venial sins of being boring and not providing enough detail for a starting scenario.

The game is not a total failure. I can imagine a group having a lot of fun with it before they realize how broken it is. It's a D-grade game. Judicious use of stock photos would bring it up to a C-. Trimming out the overly detailed gun porn and shifting back towards Unisystem's core would get us a C+. Balancing out the pregens could get us into the B range. To get an A it would need a total overhaul of the GM materials.

The website for B(l)ack Room Games can be accessed through Tor. At least it's appropriate to the name of the company. They theoretically sell copies of the game, but they're listed as out of print, probably because they all need to be assembled by hand.

[danthatartman]

Books I read in 2023

Heeeeeeeeey Tumblr, I'm alive! Warning for very long post.

Given how little I ended up drawing during the back half of the year, I want to do a different kind of summary to close out 2023. And, since I already posted my thoughts on almost every movie I watched on Letterboxd (https://letterboxd.com/NotThatCrypto in case you're interested), I wanted to share the books I read during the last 365 days.

For 2023, I wanted to read at least a book per month, with a secondary goal of reading two per month. I ended up with 16 total reads. Not quite two per month, but probably the most I've ever read in terms of different books in a year (If we don't count that time I got obsessed with fanfics and read what must have been the equivalent of 20 novels in like five months a few years ago.)

Anyways, let's get started.

1: Tress of The Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

Sanderson is my favorite writer, and this year he and his team delivered the Year of Sanderson kickstarter, which ended up including 4 novels he wrote in secret during the pandemic. Tress is the first of these novels.

I found this to be a delightful story. Sanderson really flexed his style muscles for this book. It's probably his most beautiful in terms of prose and rhetorical figure usage. You can really tell he wanted to make a novel *for* his wife.

It gave me the vibes of older fantasy tales, while still retaining much of what I love about the Cosmere and Brandon's books in general. I do wish some things were a little more unpredictable, as the twists were a bit too clear right from the very early chapters, and would have liked to be more surprised. I'd probably rank it among my top 5 fave books by him, specific spot undecided.

4.75 stars out of 5

2: I'm Not Mr. Monster by Dan Wells

I started reading the John Cleaver trilogy last year, this is book 2. On the one hand, I think I preferred the atmosphere and pacing from the first one. On the other hand, Wells managed to dive so much deeper into John's psyche here, and that really carries the whole book. There's also some concepts that I felt could have been expanded more upon, but guessed that would be done in the last book (We'll get to it later) Overall, some improvements over the first, and some things that felt weaker to me.

3.75 stars out of 5

3: Queer: A Graphic History by Meg John Barker and Julia Scheele

Read this because I was dealing with some personal stuff earlier in the year. It's a graphic novel that details some of the more theorical and philosophical aspects to queerness and sexuality throughout the years. Found it to be really well explained but at the same time, brief. It serves as a really good jumping-off point to get into the subject, which I want to do in the future. Scheele's illustrations are awesome and really help to highlight and simplify the most important information.

4 stars out of 5

4, 5 & 6: Percy Jackson and The Titan's Curse, Percy Jackson and The Battle of the Labyrinth, and Percy Jackson and The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan

Like with the John Cleaver series, I started reading Percy Jackson last year, after a friend of mine really recommended it, and wanted to read them before the show premiered. I read these in succession, so I'll list them together.

Titan's Curse was really good, probably the most emotionally complex Percy Jackson book, and I'd probably rank it second or third amongst the five.

Battle of The Labyrinth is probably my least favorite from the whole series, as it felt repetitive and at times like it dragged on for too long.

Last Olympian however, was super enjoyable for me, even though it did also repeat some actions sequences in terms of structure. Would rank it highly as well.

As a whole, I found the Percy Jackson series to be a blast, and it scratched my greek fascination itch. Percy is a really well realized character, and I adored reading from his perspective.

I do wish I had read these books a bit younger though, as I obviously encountered some stuff that left me wanting more as a result of the target audience. Not at all faults of the books, but good to point out.

Titan's Curse: 4.5 stars out of 5

BotL: 3.5 stars out of 5

The Last Olympian: 4.25 stars out of 5

7: The Binding by Bridget Collins

One of my most dissapointing reads. Its characters never clicked for me, and I found the book to be too tropey and like it didn't do enough with the premise or its magic system. It left me feeling frustrated, especially after I'd heard some really fantastic things about it.

I will award some points for the writing style though. It was very beautiful, and was what made me power through, other than my curiosity.

2 stars out of 5

8: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

While I think it is quite easy to see where the story is going right from the start, I think the journey to get there is super compelling. I like Haig's style, and only wish this one had been slightly longer so it could dive more deeply into each of the protagonist's possible lives. Some really cool imagery too.

Enjoyed it, and want something similar that explores the things that this one didn't.

3.5 stars out of 5

9: The Alpha's Son by Penny Jessup

Cool queer love story that also happens to involve werewolves. I honestly think the shapeshifter aspect of the story is undercooked. The relationship between the two main characters is interesting but I also think sometimes it develops too quickly.

Action is definitely not this book's strong suit, and given how much the third act focuses on it, it feels a little underwhelming. However, the style and characters are good enough that I am interested in reading the sequel, which came out a few weeks ago.

3 stars out of 5

10: The Frugal Wizard's Guide to Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson

Back to Sanderson. Book two of The Year of Sanderson was an incredibly dissapointing one for me. I think this is the book of Sanderson's that I've liked the least. The humor never clicked, and I found the protagonist to be quite unlikeable. The illustrations for this one felt very disconnected from what I was reading too. Sefawynn was really cool though, best part of the book. The writing felt too dry, and while the tech seemed interesting at first, at the end I felt there was a more compelling story to be told with it.

2 stars out of 5

11: The Werewolf's Guide to Life by Bob Powers & Ritch Duncan

Funny that I read two books with "Guide" in the title right after the other. Read this as research for some personal stuff. Really cool book, written as if werewolves were real, basically functioning as lore and instructions if you were to turn into one. No real story here, other than the few examples of "real life cases" they share. Fun writing style, with interesting ideas about the genre.

4 stars out of 5

12: Yumi and The Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson

Third year of Sanderson book, and back to the Cosmere. I adored this one. I think Sanderson wears his influences on his sleeve a bit too much here, but that also made me love the book all the more.

Both Yumi and Painter are extremely interesting as characters. I also think Sanderson really captured the feeling of mystery with the worldbuilding and plot that his best works do. The imagery it sprung to my head was really beatiful, and the gorgeous illustrations by Aliya Chen are breathtaking.

Uses a bunch of really evocative and interesting concepts, and in superb ways. I do wish some of the secondary characters were more fleshed out, and I feel like the ending is a bit too tidy.

This is a story I really wish there was more of, but Sanderson has said he has no plans to revisit these specific characters. I hope at least the world is explored further, cause that was such a great setting. Had a blast with Yumi. So glad Brandon got so much better at writing romance with this and Tress.

4.5 stars out of 5

13: This is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

Okay, this one was very interesting. I'd heard about it before it blew up on socials, but I have to admit that that was what made me dip into it.

While I liked a lot of the concepts and the general structure of the book, I was not a fan of the authors' writing styles. They just moved too quick, and I felt they spent too much time describing certain aspects when others drew my attention more.

Red and Blue's relationship doesn't feel organic to me, and given that it is the main driving force of the story, I found it disappointing. I also found some descriptions to be more confusing than poetic.

While in concept this is a mighty interesting read, I think some things fall apart when put in practice.

3.5 stars out of 5

14: I Don't Want to Kill You by Dan Wells

Finale of the John Cleaver trilogy.

I feel like it starts off a lot stronger than how it ends, but still really liked it. I think I prefer it to the second one as well, but can't help but feel that it didn't manage to recapture a lot of the powerful ambiance of the first installment.

Well's prose also read much sharper and refined here, and John is a fully realized character. It's very uncomfortable to be in his mind, and yet I couldn't help but keep going.

Glad there is more after this, as I do think that these characters and world can be explored further. Excited to see where it goes. Also very curious to read more of Dan's work, as his way of thinking interests me a lot as it is so different from mine.

4 stars out of 5

15: Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl

Quick read that my students (a whole different story for another day) chose for their reading assignments so that they could practice their English. I adore the movie and was excited to read the source material along with them.

Really liked it! We read a lovely illustrated edition. The story's scope feels just the right size, and Dahl's writing style is a real blast. I do think the last two or three chapters are too quick, and would have liked to see a stronger conclusion to the story.

4 stars out of 5

16: The Sunlit Man by Brandon Sanderson

Final year of Sanderson book, and also final book I finished this year. Appropriate that it's number 16.

This book has me a bit conflicted. Sanderson jumping so far into the future of the timeline, but doing so with a character we are very familiar with feels risky to me. I think it reveals a lot of things that changed my expectations for Stormlight.

As for the story itself, the book takes a bit to get started. It's first act felt a little frustrating to me. That really seemed to change once the second act started. It's a lot more engaging and exciting. Sunlit is the most standard Sanderson novel out of all the secret projects. That's not a bad thing necesarilly, but I do think the other two Cosmere focused ones felt a lot more exciting and innovative as a result.

Nomad as a character felt a bit muddy. It almost felt like reading three people at once, something that sometimes happens to Sanderson when characters are viewed through other POV's, except this time it happened within Nomad's own. Auxiliary rules though.

Worldbuilding is probably the best and most enticing part of Sunlit. I also think the ending was very cool and I really wanted to continue even after the end.

3.75 stars out of 5

And that's it!

I read a lot of Sanderson this year, but I also managed to read a bunch of books that had been on my TBR for a long time. I was excited to delve into some genres I'd not read much of before. I'm also glad to have read books that might have not been my cup of tea, that always helps to make better sense of my tastes and to train my skills too.

As for next year, I *might* continue reading more of Riordan's work, as well as checking out what's next for John Cleaver, BUT I want to go back to The Wheel of Time first, I'll probably dedicate January and February to that.

I want to get into some more epic fantasy series, so First Law, Farseer, and Malazan are all on my radar, but I will probably choose only two of those. Discworld has also been popping into my head recently, doubt I'll dive too deep into it for now though. Might keep going with Gentleman Bastards too, I love Lies of Locke Lamora.

I want to read more sci-fi as well, been thinking of going for The Expanse or Murderbot.

Wind and Truth comes out in December, so I want to read as much non-Sanderson before then, we'll see how it goes.

I'm going to try to reach the 2 books a month mark, but won't make any promises, as a lot of things are in flux in life right now.

I am open to suggestions for books if anyone has any! Would love to hear ya'll's thoughts on that and the post in general. xoxo!

[impishcupid]

The newest IOS update is a HUGE win for the disabled community

this is gonna be like 90% infodumping, but I LOVE all the new accessibility features! IOS 17 is projected to be released at sometime in September, but I wanna get my grubby hands on it NOW

The General Stuff

They’re updating the phone app and messages, allowing fun banners to be added to contacts when they’re calling you! As well adding better search filters to messages, and a heap of other stuff! Check out this link for the full update notes and details

2. Live Voicemail

Apple is taking it back to the days of answering machines, now as people leave voicemails it will show a transcript on the caller interface, allowing you to pick up the phone mid-voicemail and accept the call! Perfect for users with social anxiety bunking new numbers!

3. Check In

Users will be able to set a list of contacts, as well as a location, and when they hit the location it will send a mass alert to everyone in the set list, detailing where you are, what time it is, and you can choose for it to even say your battery level! Of course this is useful even for able people, but as someone who faints and sometimes forgets to send check ins to my mom, I’m so excited for this!!

4. Audio Message Transcriptions

HUGE win for the deaf and HOH community!!! Now, voice messages will include a transcript directly underneath that will try its best to provide subtitles! The first of many wins for the deaf community!

5. Hand Gestures

There’s a bunch of new stuff for facetime, but this one is my favorite. You’ll be able to set on-screen reactions (the example they used was confetti) when your hands preform a certain action, which i’m 99% sure will have to be configured by the user. If that’s the case, those who use sign language will be able to create reactions to specific signs! I can’t wait to set mine to rain confetti when signing congratulations, or hearts when signing Love! Of course it’s available to both abled and disabled people, but the possibilities!!

6. Airdrop

WOW they added so much to airdrop! This feature alone may be what pushes me to get my mom an iPhone. In the new update, you’ll be able to share information by simply tapping your iphones together (Ive been calling it applepaying data)

You can tap a new friends phone to send them your contact, and fancy banner (mentioned above)! You can also now just tap phones together to share general data, like multiple photos from your camera roll or a link!

This is all done with end-to-end encryption, which makes it a bitch and a half for anyone malicious to try to decrypt

7. Journal

OKAY APPLE I SEE YOU! Journal is like the love child of the health app and siri suggestions- it uses machine learning to pinpoint what your average routine is; your jogging route, your work playlist, even your favorite reaction meme can be turned into suggestions to add to your entry in the journal app!

The idea is to help build routine- which myself as an autistic have so many issues trying to do- and promote better mental health. They’re doubling down in their health app update, but that’s coming up!

The best part of the journaling app, is that it’s TRULY private. Once you’ve set your password, not even apple can see the data you’ve stored. This data is not sold to anyone, because they can’t even read it.

8. Airpods

for the full tech jargon explanation, look at the apple website!

Airpods will now be adapting to different noise levels! If you’re wearing your airpods in a crowd, it will kick in with noise-cancelling (as best a small earbud can)! However if someone starts talking to you while noise cancelling is active, airpods will evaluate the best mix of noise-cancelling and media volume to ensure you can hear the person talking!

9. Maps

i’m unsure how this one may help the disabled community, but I figure it’s an honorable mention! Maps will now let you download a specific area TOTK style, and allow that map/route to be used offline! Perfect for hiking trails or roadtrips with dead zones! As well, Maps will now alert users where charging stations may be along their route!

10. THE GRAND SLAM BABY (Visual Lookup)

PEOPLE WITH VISION LOSS SUFFER NO MORE!

It’s unsure if this will be used with live camera, or if you have to take a photo of the Thing, but when IOS 14 drops they’re introducing Visual Lookup! This feature will read out any text selected (perfect for signs or small text), as well you can look up specific items in the photo! Plant enthusiasts can identify the plant in a youtube video, fungi fun-guys can look up if this mushroom will kill you or just make you see God! I’m excited to use this feature with my mom, who sometimes has difficulty reading small text but can get embarrassed when it’s read to her!

11. Sensitive content

Yes! Your very own Iphone blacklist! It’ll scan all incoming data for your set Sensitive content, and much like Tumblr will pop up a “are you sure?” window!

12. The Health App

Finally, the one that will help everyone everywhere. Health will now let you choose your current mood, your daily mood, and general mental state. The best part of this, is Apple will be adding legitimate mental health assessments into the app (taken at your convenience), making it the closest to a real diagnosis without a doctor! You’ll be able to save a PDF of your results to share with your care team/doctor!

As well, if you’re in crisis, apple will now send you articles and resources regarding your crisis!

And the cherry on top of this update, is med reminders! Apple will ping your phone, your watch, anything to tell you it’s medication time! You can log several medications with several times to take them!

that’s all folks!

In conclusion, despite apples cash grab approach and complete monopoly over the tech industry, these features will be life changing to some disabled iphone carriers! I know i’m over the moon for some of them, and I’m already babbling to everyone with apple about them!

[corpsoir]

hello! so I don’t really know how to word this in a non word vomit kind of way so my apologies ahead of time! One of my further questions about art especially digital art is finding a nice in between style of realism & “cartoony.” I personally struggle with the realism kind of art somethin about drawing real people is extremely difficult for me, I don’t want to draw them like fully real like but I do think my art could improve if I figured it out. Do you have any tips or recommendations to help with finding this? My other question is a bit more into coloring, i think I’m getting a little better at it but I’m still a tad confused on things like shading how to do lighting all that extra stuff people add when it’s not just flat color. Hopefully I make sense? I’ve been watching videos on digital painting & it’s helping but sometimes the ones I watch kinda go over my head & I was wondering you had any other tips/tricks or could dumb it down for me. Please & thank you sm again I really appreciate your help 💘

yeah sure i have lots of tips and thoughts im sure other people might find useful or fun to read as well!

i just wanna preface this by saying this is how just i do things and by no means am i saying im doing it "right" or that there even is a right way to do art. have fun! art is just a by-product of being human, nobody can do art more correctly or better than anyone else, its just art, its like breathing!

the best tip i can give to anyone looking to improve their art, especially when it comes to drawing people and light and shade, is taking a real life figure drawing class!

i know it can be expensive depending on where you live etc but if you ever get the opportunity, DO IT! its seriously so valuable especially if you have a teacher who is good at explaining 1) how to think when youre drawing and 2) can point you in the right direction and give you tips personally according to your abilities

when it comes to balancing realism and a more stylised cartoony style the best thing here is also to learn how the real human body works and looks. and again a figure drawing class can help here but so does looking at pictures, looking at your own body and how it moves and how light plays on your skin etc! i think in order to stylise something its always helpful to have that background knowledge of how something looks like in real life, that way you can sort of abstract the thing youre drawing and simplify it with simple shapes. i think one of my favourite examples for this that a lot of people struggle with is hands. people tend to want to draw every single finger in detail, and sometimes that can look a little bit stiff. heres a bunch of hands ive scribbled lately, notice how theyre all just. idk. shapes? especially the little negative spaces that trick you into seeing a finger when in reality its just a blob with a hole through it.

you read them as hands but theyre really just. blobs mostly.

there are tons of books on anatomy for artists as well and those might help! i dont have any tips there though, most of my knowledge on the human form is from figure drawing and looking at my own body and stuff :))

and COLOURS! so i always work with a limited palette for my art. instead of going in and picking new colours all the time and ending up with an inconsistent muddy mess like i used to, i have made a nice palette with colours i enjoy and that go together well.

lots of reds and browns and purples here, but thats just my personal preference for how i work with colours lol

and im gonna be really annoying with this but when it comes to shading things "right" this is something you gotta practice practice and practice, by looking at real world examples and trying to replicate it on paper (or digitally i guess). i still have a lot to learn, i struggle with light and shade still too and its fine, its a learning process!

but anyways this is how i usually do the light in my art, and i think this piece is the best example because its a very bright light source and stuff

excuse my handwriting lol my thinking when it comes to light is just. im trying to think about what im drawing as a 3d object, so in my head i try to visualise for example how the light will fall on their weird hair shapes and their skin and clothes.

oh and also i just found a compilation of a bunch of videos by an artist who is really good at explaining a lot of stuff i do too! its REALLY long but she's got so many good tips on how to think about art and its really helped me a lot since i stumbled upon them. shes also really great at explaining colour theory in a way that made it so much easier for me!

hope this helps at least a little bit lol im not a good teacher sorry!!

[feanorianethicsdepartment]

Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?

askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like

(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)

i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads

which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter

it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272

it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all

and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to

i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet

rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare

(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)

(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)

probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them

like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy

(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)

(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)

even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it’s meant to

i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident

and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection

‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!

another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing

other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could

this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor

something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins

and...

first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more

(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)

more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left

(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)

(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)

which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them

there’s just so little of him left but the weapon

he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins

not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once

and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps

... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here

just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either

no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?

the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -

it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat

they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope

but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one

yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction

the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...

that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice

like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds

... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger

what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?

don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear

some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all

and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain

(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)

(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)

i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond

he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him

but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’

(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)

(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)

more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror

in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them

that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands

as for maglor...

i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad

but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge

it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons

horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!

it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve

and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me

so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them

an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects

maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin

seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me

the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them

there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay

they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain

he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can

(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)

(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)

however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this

but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created

and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable

look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat

but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?

that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian

we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence

(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)

like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them

(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)

elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home

... right?

it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice

then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them

the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him

instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through

... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most

i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives

they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t

speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations

because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke

that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain

(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)

(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)

(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)

(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)

not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past

i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy

no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer

compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea

and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic

honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way

but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me

which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage

it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently

i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist

in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing

they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification

they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world

and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood

nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams

there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer

as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor

(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)

but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves

they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage

he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less

and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be

... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out

the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of

and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -

i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can

they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light

and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality

it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved

even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor

not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands

it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one

that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other

and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness

but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out

well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell

it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial

still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away

[ms-hells-bells]

Sorry if you’re not the person to ask, but ever since 7th grade I’ve seen and heard stuff like “babies are sucked out with a vacuum and torn limb from limb during an abortion and they feel everything” and that they’re “decapitated and torn to bits” during it and they feel everything and is that true? I feel like a bad person saying even if that’s true the woman/girl should get one if she needs/wants one but some websites say it’s true and some say it’s not and i’m confused 🥲

it is but it's not.. if it is done to a fetus that has developed enough to be described as 'limb from limb' and 'feeling pain', then that is a later term abortion where 90+% of the time, either the fetus is extremely deformed, will not survive gestation, or is already dead (if it is still early second trimester, which starts at 13-14 weeks, then it is possible that the fetus is viable and healthy, but the woman was prevented from getting an abortion earlier....like having extremely strict abortion laws that require one to travel state lines/countries and wait weeks, and have unnecessary ultrasounds, etc.). it is an extreme minority of cases. for example, in new zealand in 2020, 13,246 abortions were performed (almost 1 in 5 known pregnancies were aborted).....of those just 26 were late term abortions (defined as 21 or more weeks). that is essentially 0.2% of all abortions. all abortions at or above 9 weeks made up just 4% of total abortions, the majority of those before the second trimester.

there are two main methods (dependent on the trimester/circumstances). the first is intact induced 'birth', where the woman is induced and passes the (virtually always) dead or dying fetus. this (and the other method, which conservatives kinda mix up with this one) has been spun as 'partial birth abortion' by conservatives, who paint it as women giving birth to living, viable babies, who are then killed by doctors, which is absurd. this is sometimes medically called dilation and extraction or intact dilation and evacuation (depends on the place, some define evacuation as second trimester and extraction as third, but some use the terms as synonyms).

the process that you're talking about is also called dilation and extraction/evacuation in many places, also majority done on severely deformed, dying, and/or unlikely to live to birth fetuses. in this procedure, (correct me if i am wrong, gyns, I'M NOT A DOCTOR, this is my best understanding and simplified explanation of a complicated, individualised procedure), first you are (if the fetus is still alive) typically injected with a medication that stops the fetus' heart (almost always done, at least here, if the fetus is alive and at or past the 'viability' line, which is like 22-24 weeks, so less than a handful of cases in my country even get to this point of having an alive fetus while medically needing a late term abortion), and the doctors keep checking the heart beat until it stops, confirming that the fetus has died (this can also be done during intact D&E, i'm just describing the procedure you're interested in in more detail). once that is done, they then also use induction medications to help your cervix open up and pass the fetus. they may use tools like forceps and vacuum to pull the fetus out, usually crushing the skull, the largest part, and sometimes pulling the body in pieces in order to get it out successfully without causing major trauma to the woman.

this sounds gruesome and unpalatable, but it is a highly studied, highly practiced procedure developed over decades of research and implementation, by doctors who want the best and safest outcome for the woman, as well as the most 'humane' for the fetus, if still alive. the exact procedure, and actions done within it are individual for each woman, who decides it in discussion with her doctors. extensive thought, care, and consideration goes into each procedure when it is this late into gestation.

in the end, worrying about the exact methods of the procedure and what WE deem as 'okay' is not our right, it is doctors and the women themselves that know what's best for the situation. and in fact, loose abortion laws decrease late term abortions. new zealand had an abortion amendment in 2018-2020, making first trimester abortions FAR easier to get, and the proportion of abortions that were performed before 8 weeks of gestation went from 27% to 45%! surgical abortions overall (which in earlier gestation is NOT dilation and evacuation or extraction, it is suction and aspiration of uterine tissue, which includes the tiny embryo) went from 72% of procedures to 59%. and finally, all abortions at or above week 9 went from making up 6% of abortions to 4%.

i hope this gives some comfort. blocking any procedure just hurts women. because individuals have a right to defend their own body regardless of anything else, even fully fledged humans cannot use someone else's body without consent, like taking an organ or blood.

edit: correcting an error or two, largely due to my brain misreading a confusing report lol! 45% of nz abortion are under 8 weeks, 46% were between 8-12 weeks, and 5% being 13-16 weeks. so, 96% of abortions are performed below 14 weeks, not 9 weeks. this still means that 96% of abortions are performed during the first trimester though. and the number of late term abortions (21 weeks and over, which includes mid-late second trimester) was 102, not 26, which adds up to 0.8% of total abortions, not 0.2%. minor in terms of what i was talking about, but i'd hate to spread false statistics!!!

[cantdanceflynn]

OK JUST NOW GETTING AROUND TO THIS SRY

OK FIRST OF ALL FOR ANYONE WONDERING WHY THERES ONLY 13. THE COMIC REDRAW I POSTED A LIL WHILE AGO WAS PROMPT 2 I JUST FORGOR TO ADD IT I WAS TIRED

THIS ONE PROBABLY TOOK THE LONGEST TO DO AND IM NOT AS HAPPY W IT BUT I ALSO THINK ITS VERY FUNNY. WHO NEEDS A STOVE WHEN U HAVE A LIVING SUN

I JUST THINK THIS ONES SUCH A FUNNY AND FUN CONCEPT. REAL "THIS IS MY GIRLFRIEND AND HER HUSBAND. HOW DOES THAT WORK? OH, SIMPLE! SHE LOVES ME AND HIM, HES COOL W ME AND I HATE HIM :]" VIBES FROM ALICE GFSJFSBKSFBGFSJ

I HAVENT RLY POSTED ANYTHING FOR MY SCI-FI AU(NOT TO BE CONFUSED W MY ALIEN AU OR MY STAR WARS ONES OR LIKE. ANY OTHERS IM RLY FORGETTING BUT BASICALLY STACY WAS A FAILED PROTOTYPE ASSASSIN BOT WHO GOT THROWN OUT AND CANDACE FOUND TRYING TO PIECE HERSELF BACK TOGETHER ONCE SHE GAINED ANY FORM OF SENTIENCE AND BASICALLY GAVE SOME(SOME. ITS COMPLICATED) LEVEL OF A HOME TO. GINGER ENDS UP BEING A MORE SUCCESSFUL PROTOTYPE THEY BASICALLY KIDNAP SDGOFSVOFSVFSG

FWOWERS :]]]] THIS ONE WAS THE QUICKEST

IVE FORGOTTEN WHAT MY THING FOR THIS WAS. LOVE STACY IG <33333333333333

YOU CAN PRY DUCKYLOVE (+ JENNY) MOVIE NIGHTS OUT OF MY COLD DEAD HANDS. THIS IS ALSO MY FAVORITE OF THE BUNCH

CANDACE IS HARD TO EXPLAIN FOR THE ALIEN AU BUT TO SIMPLIFY, SHES A WEIRD SNAKE ALIEN WHO HAS THE CAPABILITY TO PROJECT IMAGES AND STUFF

IM NOT ALLOWED TO GIVE CONTEXT FOR THIS ONE

THESE R BY NO FUCKIN MEANS FINAL DESIGNS AND DJANGO LOOKS WEIRD PLUS I DONT THINK MOST ASPECTS OF IRVINGS DESIGN MADE IT ACROSS BUT I ACTUALLY LIKE THESE DESIGNS FOR THE TWO OF EM :)))

I PUT A LOTTA DETAIL INTO THOSE 6 ROSES

THIS ONE LOOKS KINDA WEIRD AND IS DEFINITELY WEIRD WITHOUT EXTRA CONTEXT BUT SIBLING PARALLELS REAL(SO SLEEPY TIRED)

I MEAN 90% OF THE DEITY AU CAST CAN TECHNICALLY FLY IN THE LONG RUN WOUT HELP BUT ITS DIFFERENT WHEN UVE GOT VAMPIRE WINGS

ALSO NO THOUGHTS HEAD EMPTY

DONT ASK WHAT KIND OF DARK MAGIC I DID TO MANAGE TO REDO AND FINISH HALF OF THESE AND DO ALL OF THE REST IN TWO DAYS. HERES THE FIRST 14 SHIPURARY PROMPTS BARELY IN TIME. THE ALICE X FARMERS WIFE THING IS A CRACKSHIP BEX CAME UP W AND THE LAST ONE WAS FROM A REQUEST FOR SHEEPY THAT WAS GONNA BE AN ANIMATION ORIGINALLY BUT THAT ONE GOT CORRUPTED TOO. I HAVE LITTLE NOTES AND INFO ON EACH I WANT TO ADD BUT I AM TOO TIRED <///3 SO TOMORROW. ILL ALSO BE DOIN DAILY DRAWING FOR SHIPURARY FROM HERE ON OUT AGAIN THIS WAS BASICALLY A CATCHUP

@pyxehastoomanyinterests @samtheacesheep @pftones3482 (ASSUMING ITS OK TO TAG U FOR THE ALICE X FARMERS WIFE THING)

RAN OUT OF GOT DAMN TAG SPACE >:(