#once I’m done with some art I’ll post it but in the meantime

[stillness-in-green]

First of all, thank you for Bring It All Back. Gave me chills. Second, what do you think about the newest chapters? It seems like Izuku took Gran Torino's 'killing to save' ideology to heart. Personally, I gave up somewhere around the Nagant arc.

Belatedly, thank you very much, @kermitthekrog-blog!  I’m glad you enjoyed it, and I’m particularly always happy to hear people say it was chilling, upsetting, enraging, or other such disruptive adjectives.  It’s a rabble-rouser of an art project, to be sure, quite intentionally so.

As to the rest, I’ve made a few posts here and there since I got this ask which probably make my opinions pretty clear, and I’ve got a new ask in the queue which wants to know my thoughts on the epilogue material thus far, so I’ll have more to say there!  But in the meantime, yeah, it’s pretty appalling to think back to all Deku’s talk about “saving” Shigaraki and realize that all of it predates the Gran Torino scene?

Like, he thinks he wants to save Shigaraki when they part ways at the end of the first war arc, sure!  And he tells the vestiges he wants to save Shigaraki!  But does that specific word choice endure once he wakes up?  Well, @codenamesazanka did some hunting recently (you can find two posts about her rereads here and here) and, it turns out, no; it doesn't.

After Deku wakes up and talks to Gran Torino, the focus switches to Deku understanding Shigaraki, choosing not to ignore him, finding out the nature of the Crying Child, all that stuff.  That word completely stops coming out of Deku's mouth, and very shortly after stops coming from any of the OFA vestiges as well.

It really does read, in retrospect, like, yeah, he sincerely took Gran Torino’s words at face value and to heart. “Killing can be a way of saving, so I can save him by killing him.”

Heck, if anything, given how little he focuses after that on saving, it almost feels like that’s the moment he resolves to kill Shigaraki—rather conveniently, it allows him a way to make peace with extrajudicial murder and avenge himself for all the people Shigaraki’s hurt that Deku can’t forgive him for.

The only thing that’s different from just killing him outright is that Deku wants to understand him first, as if he has to verify for himself that Shigaraki is secretly unhappy and why so he can justify that save-by-killing—putting Shigaraki out of whatever misery Deku can make himself believe Shigaraki is in—with a clean conscience.  But he absolutely does not make any further promises about not killing him afterward.

Grim fucking stuff, but it lines up.  One wonders what he would have done if the Shigaraki in the mindscape had changed to Sweet Innocent Tenko and never reverted back to Shigaraki Tomura at any point.  Would Deku have tried not to punch him to death?  Tried to call for Eri or Recovery Girl after AFO’s vestige faded out?  Felt like more of a failure because the “person” VFO devoured would have been that cute kid, meaning Deku failed to save the “child”?

As it is, he mostly just seems vaguely discouraged and unhappy about Shigaraki staying “the leader of the League” until the end—would he have preferred that his hands were ashen and flaking with the powdered remains of the crying child instead?

As to me giving up, the Nagant fight is one of two places I'd put that pin.  I was discouraged by the first war arc, when so many of the advantages Shigaraki had gained over the course of MVA were stripped away from him again.  I was dissatisfied with the second encounter with Muscular, when Deku's "victory" was framed in such a heroic, triumphant light despite being a categorical failure based on the standard Deku seemed to have set for himself.  But Deku’s fight with Lady Nagant was so bad for so many reasons that it served as the first true hammer blow to my belief that Horikoshi would be willing or able to seriously grapple with the societal problems the manga had been building up to at that point.

My patience with the manga, and the enjoyment I derived from it, continued to deteriorate throughout the rest of that arc and the following war arc, but the hospital attack is the other place I would point to as the sequence that completely destroyed my engagement with the series.

Just—the naked contrivances of it, the excruciating treatment of Spinner, the howling tone-deafness, the monumental unfairness of the demands it laid at the feet of its oppressed minority. The series presents a backstory like Shouji’s alongside current story elements like heteromorphs being turned away from shelters in the supposedly accepting and quirk-blind big cities and still somehow comes out valorizing passive endurance so hard it starts to look like willful self-subjugation.

It is the most comprehensively noxious moral in the entire endgame, rivaled only by Deku’s murder of Shigaraki under the guise of “saving” him, and frankly? I would still put that one in second place. At least you can point to Shouto (and possibly Ochaco, though that remains to be seen) as an indication that save-by-killing is not a story-wide moral about villains who have “gone too far.”

Conversely, pretty much everything the hospital attack mini-arc winds up preaching can be read outward onto the rest of the story's antagonists as well, including Lady Nagant. What else to make of her exchange with Hawks The Optimist, after all, than that the conclusion is that she should have just kept murdering whoever the government told her to until some outside player solved her problem for her?

A Hero is someone who is willing to suffer in silence. A Villain, then, must be someone who refuses to.

Truly, the hospital attack is the poisoned well that wipes out the entire village.

[iwas-princess]

my birthday girl • suna rintaro

summary: suna loves his pretty girlfriend endlessly, so he goes all out for her birthday.

genre: fluff, slightly suggestive

a/n: hi, this is my first post in a while. i decided to crawl out of my cave for my bestie @ilovesillycats birthday!!! i hope you all enjoy <3

“happy, baby?”

suna’s fingers ran along your inner thigh as he leaned in, sending a shiver down your spine at the tickle.

you smiled prettily in return to his question, nodding softly to confirm.

“very.”

the moment your soft breath hit his face he grinned before snaking a hand below your seat and pulled your chair closer to him. the loud screech of the iron legs against the tile floor caused your cheeks to heat as a few other customers turned around to glare. but once, your knee touched his, all anxieties disappeared and his grin turned into a smirk at the new proximity of you.

“i’m so glad, sweet girl.” he practically mewled with how pretty he sang it. “all i want is for my birthday girl to be happy.”

if you weren’t beat red before he spoke in that manner, you are now. you could feel your heart practically about to beat out of your chest with how nervous he gets you, how love struck.

“you’re such a pretty girl, y’know that?”

the smell of him filled the air you breathed, like it had all day. not a moment went by that he didn’t find a way to have you close to him today, and you found it beautiful. such a beautiful way to spend your big day, you thought.

his fingers caressed your soft cheek delicately, as if you were the most wonderful piece of art he ever set his hands on, as he guided your eyes to his.

“my pretty girl.”

the moment they set on his hazel orbs, you knew you were done for.

“everything okay, princess?” he teased.

suna knew exactly how to make you tick and blush so preciously, and he used those tactics so shamelessly— even in a very public restaurant.

you blinked at him a few times, utterly flustered as his cat eyes twinkled.

“c-can we go to the hotel now? i’m full.” you lied.

as much as you loved the food that you hadn’t a chance to eat yet, you were desperate to get your menace of a boyfriend back in private to avoid any farther embarrassment and to be more comfortable. you wanted to bask in his sweet essence before he turned back into the toad he is midnight.

as you suspected, he eyed you suspiciously.

“you haven’t even eat yet.“

you knew he would have noticed: suna notices everything you do. you mentally slapped yourself for even thinking of lying to him when there was no point to. the truth is what would surely get you what you wanted.

“i dont want to.” you beamed at him suddenly, eying him fondly and even placing your hand on his cheek— to which he gladly leaned into. “i just want to spend some time with you… alone.”

mischief gleamed in his eyes at the word ‘alone’ as it fell from your honey-sweet lips, and for a moment be contemplated calling the waiter back over to pay: until he remembered.

he frowned slightly and shook his head against your small hand.

“let’s eat first, then you’ll have me all to yourself, yeah?”

your smile dropped, which he noticed quickly and raced you to the next word.

“because i know you haven’t had anything in that belly today, so let’s eat up.” he sat up straighter in his own chair, taking both hands back and placing them somewhere else: his left over your shoulders and his right for himself. “i’ll be right here in the meantime.”

you grumbled in impatience but eventually gave in when he explained to you that ‘the longer you take complaining, the more time we spend here.’ and it shut you up.

——

“happy, princess?”

no matter how many times he repeated his question, you were still at loss for words. happy couldn’t even begin to describe the irrevocable joy that you felt through your whole being as you gaped at his gift.

your eyed weld with tears, you had no idea what to say.

this.. this was too much. he really outdid himself with your date, but this…

“please say something because it was super hard to find and i have been thinking of this moment for a month.” he sighed as another minute of silence passed.

your eyes slowly ripped away from the gift bag and met his. you both were a little tipsy from all of the wine prior, yet this moment seemed to sober him up with the way he seemed nervous— of your reaction no doubt.

you cleared your throat, trying to form words for him but failed as you glanced back down to the necklace.

it was expensive, very expensive— which is why you postponed buying it for yourself for so long. rent and groceries were always above your own wants. suna knew that, but he also knew how badly you wanted it. so, as impulsive as he is, he finally bought it for you after your many years of yearning.

by first glance, the locket looked like any normal heart-shaped piece of jewelry that any sweet boyfriend would get his girlfriend, but it was so much more than that.

it was real gold, 24 karats of it, with the initials ‘s.r’ engraved in it, and inside bared your favorite photo of you two— the clumsy arcade picture from the day he said ‘i love you’ for the first time.

it meant little to most, but so so much to you and you’d be forever grateful to suna for it.

“i-i-“ you struggled to find words yet again the longer you stared at it, too emotional to form words let alone think them.

suna, knowing you like the back of his hand, could sense this and took it as a sign that you were more than happy.

he embraced you finally, his long arms wrapping around you and pulling you tight to his chest. with the way you resisted him so little told him that he took the right route with physical touch.

“th-thank you.”

he grinned at the sound of your broken voice and placed a kiss to your head.

“it’s no problem, my birthday girl. you deserve it.”

——

“rin, this is ridiculous!” you giggled at your childish boyfriend.

he ignored you and continued tucking you in by stuffing the blanket under your body aggressively.

“hush, i’m almost done. boy, you sure are fussy.”

you scoffed at his comment but stayed silent as he finished up and climbed back into bed, clinging to your side as usual. his arm slid around your shoulders and hugged you to his side before shifting and placing a kiss on your head.

the soft sounds of your sleepy breathing made him chuckle, he knew your sleep habits enough to assume you were dozing off already.

afterall, you were rather sleepy after you shared your cake, so much so that you kept biting his arm sporadically to keep your self awake.

“sleepy, bubba?”

you hummed tiredly, your eyes practically glued shut as exhaustion took it’s toll on you. your head suddenly felt heavy as you rested on his chest and you let out a soft yawn at the realization.

giving you a tight squeeze, rintaro sighed in content at the feel of his girl in his arms. there truly was nothing better than you, he decided.

“you can go to sleep, princess. i’ll be right here in the morning.”

“love you…” you incoherently mumbled before sleep took over and your consciousness was ripped from you as you fell into sweet bliss.

“love you too, baby.”

with one final soft squeeze around your shoulders, he leaned down slightly to the crown of your head and gave you a lingering kiss ‘goodnight’ like he always had.

except tonight he stayed up a little longer to watch you, bask in how beautiful you look as you’re snuggled into him, makeup wiped clean and in his stained pajama shirt.

he imagined making you his wife someday, the thought of ending every night with this sight was such a bonus to that plan. he hoped your children looked as gorgeous as you, if not a spit image.

in that moment, as you began to let out light snores, he promised himself he would never leave this sight or jeopardize it.

“always here.”

[quibbs126]

I’ve just been drawing this today because I’m bored

I don’t think I can have free days anymore, because I end up feeling brain dead during them and can’t work on the schoolwork I know I need to do, and by the end of the day I feel guilty about wasting the day despite literally not being able to do anything actually productive

But anyways, this. I mentioned Fantasy Life earlier today, and I have a save file where put Ceres from Evoland 2 in Fantasy Life. I actually originally made this save file some months ago, but I never really played it, leaving it once I found the first save point I could

I only realize now this is like that time I put Descole into Stardew Valley. Hm

I still haven’t gotten much of anywhere in the game, I only just started the Carpenter story. And to be honest, I’m not sure I want to continue because I kind of just want my own character in Fantasy Life, but also I don’t know how to make that. So maybe I’ll just continue with Ceres and see where it goes, or I’ll just delete it

But out of boredom, I wanted to draw her from the game regardless

So the design here is what she looks like in the game, or as close as I made it. For various reasons, including the fact that I can’t add horns or non-human skin tones to my character, or have bicolor hair, I made some changes. Her hair probably also isn’t the most accurate hair I could have given her to her original, but I think it looks good on her

Also as you may notice, I don’t entirely know how I should draw her, whether I should be closer to the game or my style

I’m debating whether in my drawings I should stick to the Fantasy Life skin tone or give her the blue she canonically has. I flip flop on which I prefer

I only realized when I was looking at my other Evoland 2 art how wildly different this color palette is, and it’s probably significantly brighter. I mean for this I was eyeballing the colors from my 3DS’s screen, while I color pick from the Evoland 2 sprites, so maybe that’s a factor

Edit: I am now seeing it on a computer screen, and it looks even more different. Like that hair straight up just looks blue, I can't see any purple

But yeah, I really didn’t know what Life to give her when I made her, I just picked Carpenter because I haven’t done that one in a while. Maybe Alchemist would have been best, but I really don’t know. It doesn’t help that Ceres doesn’t have much of a personality I can make a decision based on. Though in all fairness, I’m not entirely sure what I’d make the other characters either

I’d say Fina either Woodcutter or Hunter, Menos probably a Paladin? (Just not for Castele specifically) Kuro I’d say Mercenary or potentially Alchemist works (though in terms of weapons Menos and Kuro should probably switch), and for Velvet I don’t really know, maybe Miner, Alchemist or even Magician? I don’t know, as far as I can remember, nothing fits cleanly with “archaeologist”

But anyways, maybe if I continue with this, I can basically make up my own personality for Ceres, so I should continue, but I don’t know if I’m motivated enough to do so. We’ll see. Take this in the meantime I suppose. It isn’t much of anything, but it is a thing

Oh also one more thing I forgot but can’t fit elsewhere: I think the storyline idea for Ceres here is that she ended up here post-Evoland 2, but she doesn’t really remember getting here at all, thinking she’s just been in Castele her whole life, until she starts slowly realizing things don’t add up. She isn’t from this game though, especially since I don’t think demons exist to explain why she’s blue

[twistedtummies2]

Sing a Yo-Ho! I’ll slaughter the swine!

Yo-Ho! Must be Fate’s design!

At last our tales will again intertwine!

Revenge, REVENGE, REVENGE is Gonna Be Mine!

Oh, it’s gonna be! Oh, it’s gonna be!

Oh, it’s gonna be mine!

Oh, it’s gonna be! Oh, it’s gonna be!

Oh, it’s gonna be MINE!

“Revenge is Gonna Be Mine,” Colin O’Donoghue

--------------------------------------------------------------

Initially I planned for today’s entry to be a different image, but it’s actually not finished yet: due to personal issues, the artist is taking a bit longer to complete the picture than expected. That image will be posted once it is ready, but in the meantime…here’s James Killian, posed with his inspiration, Captain Hook from “Peter Pan!”

The legendary “Shy Art Anon” did the artwork for this one. Funny enough, this was actually the first of the five images for the series to be completed, and it helped to serve as a template for the rest of the artists to use when working on their own images. I can hardly think of a better example: SAA made the official ref pic for James, so I knew they could handle him well, but I’m especially impressed with their rendering of Hook, as well as that ethereal background. As always, a stellar piece of work!

Just like our previous subject, Elias, James was actually one of the first OCs I properly wanted to make…which is ironic, since he’s the last of the five I’m featuring here in this series to make a proper written appearance, and I haven’t even done his Chapter Story yet. The reason I wanted to make James early on had nothing to do with kinks, and simply everything to do with the fact I love Disney Villains: much like the Phantom Blot, Hook has been referenced a few times in the game, and paid homage to, but there is no actual, solid, properly analogous Captain Hook CHARACTER. I honestly consider this not only surprising, but almost akin to blasphemy, as Hook is one of the most prominent of all the Disney Villains, as well as a personal major favorite of mine. So, from very early on, I felt the only thing to do was create my own version of the character.

Like Hook, James is flamboyant, theatrical, and LOUD. He’s very vain and full of himself, and has a sort of old-fashioned quality to his speech at times, calling homage to Hook’s many “hook-isms.” The most important thing I took from the Captain, however, was the way James’ ego works: Hook is an arrogant character, make no mistake, but a big part of who he is comes from how pathetic he is at the same time. Hook doesn’t just hate Peter because he cut off his hand and fed it to the crocodile: he hates Peter Pan because Pan represents everything Hook will never be, and because just about every move Peter makes emasculates and humiliates the Captain, often without Peter even really trying. Something one will note, if they watch Disney’s Hook in things where Peter is not involved, is he can actually be a genuine threat and is able to keep his cool much more easily. But once Peter is involved, Hook goes flying off the handle, and is quickly made a fool of in the process.

With James, I decided to take this idea and transform into the idea that my boi - much like Nakoda - has a very fragile sort of ego. James deliberately makes a spectacle of himself, behaving in an over-the-top manner, because he’s someone who’s always lived in the shadows of others, and has never felt fully respected or appreciated. Underneath that melodramatic demeanor, he’s actually very sad and hurt, as well as very fickle, in some ways. James can be a good sort when he wants to be, but when you put certain temptations in his path, he simply can’t be trusted, and will easily become obsessive.

This also, incidentally, applies to kinks: unlike Captain Hook, who is downright TERRIFIED of being eaten by the Crocodile or the Octopus, James is a bit more…conflicted. On the one hand, he doesn’t REALLY want to DIE…but on the other hand, the idea of himself becoming part of something “greater” than he is ends up being surprisingly irresistible. Seeing beings tower over him and getting the sensation of them lording things over him can be embarrassing, but it also makes his pulses jump. He’s both scared AND “excited” by the sensation, much in the same way I am (and my Prefect character is), although I should say James is typically much less willing. Beyond kinks, though, it’s this sort of backwards, conflicted, broken ego that informs much of who James is: he loves himself, yet he also hates himself, and that kind of mentality will always cause problems for others who get caught in the crossfire.

One last note: you’ll notice the song of choice I used for this description and the image title? While he has yet to appear in a story or art piece properly, rest assured: James does have his very own “Pan” that he loathes with all his soul, and is a major reason for why he is the way he is. His name is Matthew Satyr, and if you bring up his name around James…prepare to get an earful.

[destructivearchitect]

Just wanted to say I saw the art for your upcoming fic and it's gorgeous and also first contact au?!??

*Pulls up a seat*

Super excited! ❤️

aw thank you for your message 🥹 this fic is my main wip, and i’ve been working on it for a few months now.

i’m almost done with the first draft, and will hopefully start posting chapters soon! if i’m being honest, i’ve had major writer’s block on top of being busy with general life stuff (but knowing that someone out there is excited about my work sends me over the moon! <3)

in the meantime, i’ll share some general info about the fic!

Lieutenant Gunnery Officer Vakarian mans the guns on a turian dreadnought. Once his mandatory service is up, he plans on following in his father’s footsteps and joining C-Sec. His plans, however, are interrupted when humans are discovered at Relay 314.

LC Shepard has just joined David Anderson’s crew on the Hastings, after single-handedly decimating a squad of turians on Arcturus station. Growing up a troubled orphan in the lower reaches of Vancouver taught her strength, and how to endure.

The two cross paths during a battle on the human planet of Mars, where the turians plan to capture the prothean cache.

Instead, what they capture is one lone human Lieutenant Commander.

[asterlizard]

2022

This year kinda breezed by, but I'm glad to say that this December was better than last December (looking back at previous years, autumn seems to be a rough period for me for some reason) I ended the year feeling excited and full of art ideas that I can't wait to share with y'all in the new year!

Anyway, accomplishments and updates:

KalChi: The next chapter is coming along, and after dealing with writer's block in autumn, I just finished my latest draft, and will hopefully have it published early in the new year (and hopefully I can finish more chapters sooner instead of releasing one a year)

Job hunt: No luck this year, and some people I know also find it odd that I don't have a job by now despite my efforts, so hopefully I can get that sorted in the new year. If a lot of time has passed, I may return to school to get a Masters degree, but that's kinda my last resort at this point. In the meantime, I'm managing through zine work and dogsitting.

Speaking of zine work, I contributed to 4 of them this year! (simultaneously too, which is my limit!) -Serenity: A BNHA Self-Care Zine -Together In Unity: A Hetalia North American Bros Zine -IidaTenBros zine -First Steps Haikyuu zine

I also think I’m getting a better handle on drawing dynamic and fluid poses, so my next goal will be improving backgrounds

I’ve had quite a few art posts that got pretty popular, but my silly crow doodles was definitely the most popular at 4K+ notes (also I’m enjoying reading people’s replies to my art posts)

I started keeping a health journal

And I’m trying to fight boredom in the meantime

And the resolutions:

Language learning: I was getting tired of not being fluent in a second language despite my enthusiasm for foreign languages my entire life, and I think I finally found a routine that works. So far I’m using it to improve my Japanese, but I want to try and apply it to the other languages I’m learning too

Now that I’m fully vaccinated, I’m starting to feel more lenient in going outside and visiting places more (still avoiding crowded spots though)

More image descriptions: the year kinda ran away from me and honestly I forgot to do this, but I did get one finished! (I will just continue to bug myself about it until it's done) Although now that alt text exists, I think I’ll be using that from now on.

More cleanup: I’ve saved a lot of links and resources over the years due to my curiosity and I never really looked at them until recently. So I gotta be more ruthless this year to not add to the pile of things to do or look at later

Relaxed schedule: Try to not give myself too much to work on at once if I can help it. I suffered a bit of burnout earlier in the year, likely as a result of wanting to do too much in a small amount of time.

And of course keeping up socializing, which I feel I've been slacking on this year (I need to talk to people!)

I've also been slacking on watching anime/reading manga until autumn, and I want to continue with it in the new year (send me your recommendations)

Also I haven't done this in a while, but I wanted to see what good things have happened this year, since my positive outlook had taken a bit of a beating this year: [Link 1] [Link 2]

I’m excited for 2023, hopefully it will be a good year for you all too! 💕

[acelucky]

NYE Post

I love a good NYE post where I summarise the ups and downs of the year and put into thoughts what I’m looking forward to next year. I try to keep it brief, I rarely succeed. I feel this is essentially like those old fashioned round robin letters people still occasionally do in Christmas cards!

Bad bits - All the World Events/cost of living and energy crisis/War and weather aside... I finally caught covid, an old friend passed away in horrible circumstances, my dear bunny Cloud died in June, a relative has fallen very ill and may not have long left to live and at the start of the year my mental health was in shocking shape. I also broke my wrist playing 5-aside football with work in September.

The Good - I completed an amazing course of therapy which has left me feeling so much more confident and happy in myself - it really has changed my outlook on life. I saw the Francis Bacon exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts in March, I’ve also visited several fascinating museums and exhibitions. There’s been lots of concerts, the most amazing being seeing Placebo again at Portsmouth Guildhall, seeing Joe Jackson with my dad and after years of trying to see them live, getting to see Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at all points east festival with @cassandrafey  My husband and I had a long road trip up to the lake district to visit his family as well as see where he grew up and visit some of my favourite places too, it was lovely. I did a 27 and a half mile walk with work for charity (The Surrey Three Peaks challenge but we got a bit lost), it was the most physically difficult thing I’ve done in my life and I was so proud of myself. For my birthday we went to Longleat Safari and stayed overnight nearby - we fed the lorikeets and the seals, it was absolutely perfect.  In October my husband and I went abroad for the first time since June 2019, we went to Rhodes, Greece and it was beautiful, relaxing and romantic. We had a lovely wedding anniversary and went to the Theatre to see Swan Lake. And finally we had a 3 night family holiday to Bruges where we experienced all the magic of late Autumn/cold crisp winter and saw all the Christmas lights.

New Year’s Resolutions - I pretty much have one this year and that is simply. To be more mindful. More mindful about what I spend my money on, what I eat, how I take care of myself, how I react to situations, what I reveal about myself at work, how much I drink at comedy gigs, what and who I spend time and energy on. 

Looking to 2023 - On the one hand next year already has some very big plans and will be busy, but due to this my plan is to keep other times quieter than usual and focus more on me and the relationships I hold dear/my home. I’ll still be performing comedy but not doing as much or chasing it, I’ll continue to run the comedy night’s I run and will still perform once or twice a month at new gigs/the best gigs/gigs worth doing and am doing a Split show at Brighton and Ventnor fringe festivals, but that’s it. I want to focus more on the funeral industry and potential career change and my writing.

Plans for 2023 - There’s a few loose ones like my husband and I hopefully going to Ireland for a week. But set in stone the biggest adventure I have is going to New Zealand with my dad in May (and a night in Singapore) to explore, show him my favourite places and see family. We have Beltane Festival at the end of April at Butser Ancient Farm and in September I’m off to Budapest with the wonderful @cassandrafey to see IAMX. Oh and we may have bought tickets to see Def Leppard and Motley Crue in London....

So that’s my re-cap for the year, whether anyone reads it or not, it strangely makes me feel better knowing I’ve written it all down and can reflect in time to come.

In the meantime, I wish you all a very Happy New Year! 

(Photos are of: Cloud the bunny, Sunset in Rhodes, me on my birthday, The Lake District with my husband, Bruges)

[destressjournal]

I have some motivation left in me!

After a much-needed vacation, I feel a little more motivated for the rest of the year. Now that I’ll be in the country for the foreseeable future.

Look, if buying a house doesn’t happen for us this year, it’s not the end of the world. Like I said, 2024 is our buffer year.

The thing I really want to happen is for me or my husband to find a job this year (hopefully my husband, but realistically it’s probably going to be me). And I’ve applied to a couple, did a couple interviews, and lost out. I have applied to 2 more and am waiting to hear back. But in the meantime I should apply for more.

Other than that I have other goals that I’m working on the rest of the year. I’m also just going to focus on being healthy and not losing weight, because CLEARLY losing weight is not something that comes easily to me. I’m just going to make being healthy my focus, going to the gym, eating the right foods, but not directly trying to lose weight or beat the scale. And i think I’ll be a little happier for that!

I’m getting back to reading for fun again. I should totally do a ranking of all my BOTM books and post them here. Putting a pin in that.

I also want to delve back into my art with my “where I’ve been” mini painting series. I’m also getting my new instagram art account off the ground. My goal is to set aside time, even if it’s for 10-15 minutes, per week to work on my art projects.

Lastly I want to really CLEAN AND PURGE the house! Like deep clean! Getting into all the crevices, really organizing stuff, really being thoughtful in purging stuff I don’t need, even the big furniture. I’ll feel so much better once I’ve done that.

I can’t be too bogged down about things because that means I can’t work on things to be better. So let’s get going!

[bardicbeetle]

Hey there writeblr folks, as I have vented briefly about, myself and my coworker of over a decade are being laid off at the end of September. Chelsea is trying to lean more into her art and patreon offerings in the meantime while she takes a much needed (though unexpected and unchosen) break from the horrors of capitalism.

Give her a follow, throw some support her way if you are able and interested! She sends out excellent cards and neat stickers and planner pages! (and September sign ups get extra goodies!)

You can also find her on instagram under @ChelseaInkAlchemy

Reblogs greatly appreciated as she tries to spread the word!

(my own patreon is in the works, I’ll post it once I’m done fiddling/get internet set uo at my new place <3)

-Larkspur

[alunclewe]

Consarn it I have really been slacking lately.  I haven’t posted anything in, uh, let’s see... almost a month!?  Yikes.

I have in fact been drawing some things, though not as much as I should.  I’ve participated in a few @sequentialartistsworkshop free Friday Night Workshops (though not last week’s, because I was working that day), but I haven’t posted my comics from those yet.  (Which is something I should do.  I’ll do it tomorrow.)

But in the meantime, I thought I’d get back to the Year of Art drawing challenge I’d been intermittently doing... except that it seems that there haven’t been any new prompts posted for that since March.  Although it could be I’m mistaken, because I thought once before that there were no new prompts and it turned out they were in a new post and I’d forgotten to check the tag; I did check the tag this time but it’s still possible I missed something else obvious.  And even if they did stop doing the prompts, I guess it’s understandable because I’m not sure who else was actually participating in that challenge and it makes sense the account behind the prompts wouldn’t want to bother to keep posting prompts if nobody was using them.

(I am intentionally not @-ing the account in question because (a) I don’t want it to seem like I’m calling them out about not posting prompts, which is definitely not my intent, and (b) they keep changing their username, and I’m not sure if they're trying to avoid being associated with past posts or something?  Although, on the other hand, am I robbing them of notice they would otherwise get by not naming them?  It is a dilemma.)

Anyway, even if there are no new prompts, there are enough old prompts I didn’t do that I figured I could just go through and try filling in the one I missed.�� So, this drawing was for the Year of Art prompt back in January 5, “change”.  I did start this on January 5, but never finished it, and I figured I may as well do that.

You might notice that nothing is changing in this picture.  That is because it’s still not finished; this was going to be an animation, and I only have the first frame completely finished.  I’ll try to get the rest done tomorrow, and you’ll see then what he changes into.  (Although... it may not be hard to guess; I was basically just going for the first thing that came to mind for the prompt, so it’s kind of an obvious choice.)

[talesfromthebandgeekmafia]

I wanna hear abt ur ocs owo 👉👈🥺

AAAA omg bless u you’re a peach <3

I would love to tell you about my OCs I’m like Charlie It’salwayssunny over here I’ve got boxes full of OC stuff I’m just dying to talk about. I’ll put everything under a read more so anyone that’s not interested can just skip past here cause I’m about to get RAMBLY okay let me tell you about my beloveds

Okay so by far my favorite creative project right now is my novel that I’ve been planning on & off since January of 2019, the working title is Villainous, it’s like the most refined and likely to actually go somewhere of all my story ideas and I swear this thing holds my entire soul

The actual story is a play on the classic Career Woman RomCom setup except her name is ~Magnate~ and her big city career that never gives her time for love is ~Supervillain~

unfortunately I don’t have any art of her or any of the other characters yet because good super designs are difficult to nail down, but I’m working on it!

Anyway Magnate is amazing and a bit of an ass and I like her so much <3 She’s a big time supervillain that uses the high tech gadgets she creates for your standard robberies heists kidnapping the mayor the usual. Her parents were shitty white collar criminals that on top of being totally uninvolved in their daughter’s life embezzled from their numerous charity organizations, leading her to be suspicious of anyone that calls themselves a hero + giving her a whopping case of trust issues and a loose grasp on ethics, cuz hey, morality may be a ruse but the power and prestige sure aren’t. She's worked hard and climbed the ladder and made a name for herself as a kickass supervillain, and she plays cool and dramatic but underneath all the bravado she’s just an endearingly awkward nerd who wants a friend, which is where the next character comes in~

So for plot reasons Magnate joins up with another even more infamous supervillain to get a spot as his right hand woman in his plan for world domination, and she’s fine and everything’s business as usual until she’s told that she has to work with another person he’s recruited for her part of the plan to do biochemistry stuff synthesizing the compounds they need while she engineers the tech components, and so enters best boy Dr. Bodhi Bright who crashes into her carefully curated life and ruins everything in the nicest way :)

listen, I LOVE this guy he’s weird he’s a weirdo, just a chill funky lil dude with the most incomprehensible moral compass on Earth. Because of their job he and Magnate have to spend a lot of time together forcing Magnate to actually socialize for once beyond hurling quips at her nemesis, and right of the bat Bodhi completely throws her off her game vis a vis her supervillain image with just his whole deal. He’s this sweet polite guy who’ll talk about a death ray in the same casual tone as the minutiae of city parking, he’s new to the villainy thing and he just thinks Magnate is cool. Bodhi thinks he’s just good at reading people but he actually has minor latent empathic abilities which let him pick up on Magnate’s bravado and so he’s just...not intimidated by her at all. He completely circumvents the whole ‘big evil supervillain’ thing and just talks to her like they’re normal coworkers. And it’s not like they can just find somebody else to replace him so Magnate’s forced to respond and build an actual relationship and rapport with someone for the first time in ever. So they get closer and become actual friends, Bodhi starts calling her ‘Meg’ because Magnate kind of sounds like Margaret, and she lets him. Meg shows him the ropes of villainy, and just sort of learns to be a person again through working & developing this friendship with him, remembering what it’s like to be genuinely happy and excited about her everyday life and care about more than just her job, to open herself up to care about other people at all, and this is a romantic comedy so of course as the story progresses they fall in love and just—GAH I love their relationship so much they're so good for each other I could talk about them forever and I’m literally writing a book about it so like yeah they’re great. my darlings <3.

Here I’ve got some memes to give a better impression of their dynamic

I've only really got one other important character left to talk about aside from Meg & Bodhi's boss (he's literally the worst & the major antagonist for the book that's all that needs going into for now otherwise this thing is just going to reach unwieldingly more rambly and specific heights) and she's the secondary antagonist, superhero extraordinaire and Meg's nemesis AmaZing (get it? like amazing? except it sounds like amazon? cuz she's a lady superhero—) in a shocking turn of events this woman is the best person out of any of the people here and also the most well adjusted, she is also a very interesting character to me and I could probably pull a whole other book out of her character if I wanted to. AmaZing’s real name is Zoe Amison, before she was a hero she was a professional ballerina with a kickboxing hobby that she used to keep in shape, her first night out I think she was just straight up dressed in her costume for Firebird or something. She has superhuman strength and agility, her powers manifest with these bursts of golden sparks and arcs of electricity which she can direct as a close range weapon, basically she’s very good at the big punchy aesthetics. She’s known as one of the best superheroes in terms of like who they are as people, she tries to help rehabilitate the supervillains she fights, including Magnate, even though most of them have none of it, any money she gets from her hero work she donates back to the community so she can contribute more than just punching muggers, and she does a lot of activism and charity events on the side. She makes most of the money she needs to eat and whatnot in the cornerstore she inherited that her family’s owned for generations, and she lives in the apartment above the store with her girlfriend because YES she’s a lesbian YES her girlfriend is trans YES they are disgustingly in love and YES they own a cat named Petal together. (Her girlfriend’s name is Callie (short for Calliope) she’s a nurse and patches Zoe up when she gets hurt on the job)

And there is so much more I could say about this thing but that’s about all I can muster right now in terms of like a basic overview of these characters. Thank you so much for this ask dude this was so fun to do!!

[gilbirda]

Deal

Based on a tumblr post!

Now with sequel! -> The After

NOW WITH ART! AMAZING SHORT COMIC BY PAPS

One day, a woman hires Jason to kill an unusual amount of people. The more he looks at the case, the more he is convinced he has to accept.

"I want them gone." She had said with a straight face. "All of them have to die."

---

notes:

This is set after the events of Lost Days and before he goes to Gotham to do Under the Red Hood stuff. I'm playing with timeline like a kid with building blocks. Any needed context is added in the story.

I know Dick killed the Joker because of Jason's death. I KNOW. But Jason here doesn't know. Don't come at me in the replies.

There is no ship content per say, but is hinted in the future.

[Read on AO3] [Read on FF]

---

Jason looked up from the closed manila folder and glanced at the quiet figure of his new potential employer.

Caitlyn Williams.

It was a fake name, he suspected. If the black wig wasn't enough of a clue about the fishiness of the situation, the way she omitted parts of her explanation, redirected his questions or provided just the basic information he would need for the hit was another big red flag.

Jason could work with this. It wasn't as if he had the moral high ground here - he was living with a fake identity given that Jason Todd was dead and theoretically buried six feet under. Not even Bruce knew he was alive, but he had plans to remedy that.

In the meantime, he was trying to get some extra money since wouldn’t have Talia’s wealth forever and he had to eventually leave the nest, so to speak; and until he had a stable income he had to do small hit jobs like this one.

What this woman wanted wasn't small, though.

"I want them gone." She had said with a straight face. "All of them have to die."

That was a lot of rage in so few words.

She didn’t dwell with pleasantries, she didn’t smile once he sat down in front of her in the Diner they chose for this meeting, she didn’t make small conversation. She just nodded at him and slid a folder over the table to him and said those words before explaining what she wanted, exactly.

Jason didn’t open the folder just yet. He watched her as she sipped on her tea, her eyes fixed on the window of the diner, deceptively calm and distracted. She was watching him as much as he was watching her.

He respected that.

She continued sipping her tea as he opened the folder to take a look at the information inside. Names, locations, details about security and notes about how to bypass them - she had done all the homework for him.

“It’s a lot of targets,” he commented, eyes going over the lists and profiles. Scientists, doctors, a few government officials. It wouldn’t be easy. “It will cost ya.”

“I’ll worry about the money, you just have to kill them.” Caitlyn placed the empty cup on the table. Her hands were steady, too steady.

“What’s the story?”

Her lips twitched. The first show of real emotion since he sat down in front of her.

“I was under the impression that you didn’t ask questions.”

Touchy subject, then. “And I don’t.” He chose to let it go. For now. “When do you need this done?”

“You can take your time,” she interlaced her fingers over the table, “ponder over how and when you want to do this.” She looked up at him. Jason had never seen eyes so cold, so furious, and so devoid of any other emotion but rage - at least not on any other person than himself. “I don’t mind waiting if it means they all end up dead.”

It was personal, very personal. She didn’t want to kill a business rival, or an ex-employer, or wanted to eliminate a threat. She wanted revenge.

What could have happened to make someone hire him to kill so many people? She was young, too. Probably eighteen, twenty at most, even though she tried to mask her age under makeup, nice clothes and high heels.

Caitlyn had been royally screwed over by the people in this list, that was clear. Enough to make her hire someone like him.

Alright. He would do this.

Jason flipped more pages just for show despite having decided he would do this hit, and maybe give her a discount too; he was a sucker for petty revenge, after all.

She quietly sucked in a breath when the last section of her thorough report was revealed.

Doctors Jackson and Madeline Fenton.

He glanced up, but her face was again a mask of contained fury and faked indifference. Jason shrugged, knowing he wouldn’t get anything from her, and read the information on the paper.

Lead scientist in the GIW, made a career studying creatures from another dimension, made a big breakthrough a few years ago about those creatures and had received this and that award.

The information in this section was extensive, with more notes about their behavioral patterns, a cataloged report on every little detail despite not needing that much information for a hit.

“Those two,” the young woman said, one finger with bitten off nails pointing at the photo of the scientists on top of the report, “I want them to suffer.”

If eyes were the windows to the soul, Jason would have guessed her soul was dark, cold and filled with a desire to kill so deep it almost made him shiver.

***

He accepted the job, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to do some extra investigation on the side.

Her report was extensive and plentiful, but there were gaps and a subtle vagueness that didn’t sit well with him. It meant there was a big chunk of information she was deliberately not sharing with him, and that couldn’t be good.

One, because if there was something he needed to know, he wanted to know. He wouldn’t put the whole mission in jeopardy just because a pretty girl subtly told him to not look too much into it.

Two, because she could be lying and selling him bullshit to rope him into killing innocent people - not that they looked that innocent in the paper, given the dubious experiments and the suspicious payment methods - and Jason had morals, thank you very much.

And three, because he was curious. What had happened? How was this woman involved in a secret government organization that experimented with creatures from another dimension? He needed to find out who she was and why she wanted to destroy them so much.

Turns out, it wasn’t that hard to find out the answer to at least one of his questions.

Her name was Jasmine, twenty years old. Eldest daughter of Jackson and Madeline Fenton.

Jason had to stop and take a step back for a moment, his mind replaying the way her eyes hardened at her mask of indifference almost broke when those two were discussed.

Her own damn parents.

“I want them to suffer.”

What the hell happened? He wasn’t a stranger to shitty parents or wanting to kill paternal figures; hell, he wanted to kill Bruce, but he wanted it to be clean and swift, beat him at his own game, not the dark desires he saw in her eyes as she said those words.

The next days he worked restessly to find out what the fuck happened to the sweet girl in the family photos he managed to find online. What happened since her graduation photo, seventeen and with a bright smile full of hope and plans for the future, that could make her what she was now.

Turns out, she had a brother. Had.

Daniel Fenton was seventeen years old when he was reported missing. There was some follow up on the investigation, but local police quickly closed the case as another runaway and forgot about it.

It smelled so bad and sketchy, the police files were half assed and filled with grammatical and spelling errors, as if nobody cared enough to properly write them. The interviews were brief and scarce, and the parents were absent for the most of it.

Bad. Very bad.

The last piece clicked when he found out about project P-001.

It wasn’t in Jasmine’s report. For a good reason.

If Jason had to make a list of things that weren’t pleasant to read, the reports on project P-001 would be at the top - and he had read many unpleasant things in his career as Robin and then with the League and training with the teachers Talia set up for him.

P-001 was… an ode to inhumanity. How far people were ready to go “in the name of science”, how extreme things could get without anybody having concerns about the morality of it all, how much auto-justification a person needed to hurt another creature and stop questioning if there was a limit to what they were doing.

Jason saw a photo of the studied subject for project P-001. Malnourished, broken and defeated, but not beyond recognition.

Daniel had been tortured and killed by these people, his parents won a few awards thanks to the results of project P-001, the GIW got a whole new influx of taxpayer money thanks to his sacrifice.

They called him “Phantom”, but there was no doubt that it was Daniel who was sitting in that cell, chained to a wall. They called him “a thing” but the reports talked about vital signs and electrical brain signals and bone density. They reported his death as a “small bump in the road of the pursuit of knowledge” but he couldn’t find a death certificate no matter how much he looked.

***

Jason found the woman in a nearby park, quietly feeding the ducks some lettuce at the pond. It was a nice day outside, not too sunny or too cloudy, and the breeze was cold enough for a jacket. A perfect day.

Jasmine looked younger in her jeans and black long sleeved shirt, now without makeup in her face. She had long red hair freely moved by the breeze, pushed back from her face with a teal headband.

“It wasn’t hard to find you, Jasmine.”

“I wasn’t exactly hiding.” She shrugged, still looking at the ducks approaching the little lettuce chunks she threw at the water.

Both watched the ducks fight for the food for a moment.

“Having second thoughts?” She asked, deliberately not looking at him.

He shook his head despite knowing she wouldn’t see it. “No. Just… curious.”

“About?” Jasmine arched an eyebrow, ripping a bit more of lettuce and throwing it at the ducks.

What could he ask? How did that happen? Why didn't she save her brother? How could her parents do something like that? Why had she chosen him for this?

“Why me? Why now?”

“Those are two different questions, Mr. Todd. Pick one.”

It just came out of her mouth like nothing. She knew who he was. She knew about Jason Todd and about his past and what else-

“Relax. I don’t know the details. I just know you were dead for a while and then you were not.”

“How?”

“It wasn’t that hard, actually. Just connected the dots between the dead Robin and Bruce Wayne’s adopted son that was involved in a tragic accident overseas.”

At this point, he was just impressed. When Jasmine investigated, she did so thoroughly.

“It was one of the reasons I chose you, actually.”

“Because I was Robin?” If so, he was walking out of this and never looking back.

“Because you died.” She dropped the last bit of lettuce and turned towards him. Her eyes were dark as the depths of the ocean. “And no one avenged you.” Jasmine smiled, but it wasn’t the vibrant smile of the picture he found of her. “Want to walk with me?”

He just nodded, too entranced by her mysteries. He needed to know what she knew, how she knew it and why her words pulled strings in his heart.

They started wandering around the park without a clear destination, walking side by side, virtually alone at the park in the middle of a weekday.

“I knew you would take this job if only because of the similarities it had with your case. Died young at the hands of a maniac that never got what was deserved. I hoped to appeal to your unprocessed rage as a way to convince you to kill all these people without asking too many questions.”

He frowned, not really liking the analysis, especially because it was exactly what he was going to do. “That’s too many assumptions about a person you have never met.”

“I was going to be a psychiatrist.” She shrugged. “I was interested in profiling and therapy. Guessing is my specialty.”

Was. Past tense.

“What happened?”

“I came back home during a school break to find that my brother was missing. Jack and Maddie acted like he would come back at any moment and didn’t give it a lot of importance.” Her mouth twisted when she said their names. “Danny’s friends told me the truth - he had been taken by the GIW.”

“And the doctors were covering for them.”

She was already shaking her head before he finished his sentence. “Wrong. They were the ones that sold him.”

“Their own son?” The words left a bad taste in his mouth.

“Ah. But they didn’t consider him a son anymore. Danny, for them, was dead. Replaced by Phantom.” She saw he was going to ask follow up questions and quickly added. “Ghosts. The ‘creatures’ they were investigating. You call them ghosts.”

Okay. Aliens existed. He had died and came back to life. Ghosts he could believe. “Your brother was already dead?”

“He was a halfa. Half ghost, half human. A rarity.”

Jason didn’t ask more. With what he found in his research and with the new twist in the story, he was capable of drawing correct conclusions.

“Why didn’t you try to rescue him?” It hurt a little that Danny was already gone by the time he was made aware of this.

“I tried, I tried so hard.” Jasmine stopped walking for a moment, her eyes lost in the memories. For a second, Jason thought she was going to cry. “But it was futile. We were too late, he was dead before we could gather enough resources and intel to storm the lab.”

She resumed walking and he followed. “And then?”

“Then - And then it was like, I don’t know. I wouldn’t say they tried to move on, because they were affected for a while. Danny was dead and gone, we couldn’t even find his ghost in the Ghost Zone, and they accepted it and continued life.

“It was like I was the only one that still cared, that still felt like life had fucked her over. They asked me to let it go, to let Danny go, to be content that at least he was finally resting and not in the hands of his torturers. I couldn’t.” She looked at him, a single tear rolling down in an otherwise emotionless mask. “He was my baby brother. They killed my brother, Jason.”

The force of her words hit him like a sledgehammer.

She wanted the people that hurt her brother to be killed? To suffer? He would do it. Free of charge.

“Give me three days and you have a deal.” He extended his hand for her to shake it.

The slight tremble in her hand when she took it wasn’t exactly because of the cold.

***

Precisely three days and three nights later, everyone in that list was dead. All the bases had been burned to the ground and the lab where Danny was tortured didn’t exist anymore. As an extra, he also uncovered where some of the dirty money came from and sent a few emails to the people that would investigate this.

The GIW would be no more by the end of the week.

He called Jazz, as she insisted she preferred to be addressed, to tell her the good news. It was late at night, but she picked it up after a few rings and didn’t sound sleepy at all.

“It’s done.” The night was quiet as he walked back to his motorcycle, ready to go back to his safehouse, shower the blood away and collapse in his bed for twenty four hours.

Jazz’s only answer was a slow exhale. Was she relieved?

“Thank you, Jason.” Neither commented how her voice broke a little.

“No problem.”

He knew he should hang up as it was what he usually did. The job was done, the bad guys were killed, and the client was satisfied.

And yet…

“I’ll send you the rest of the money-”

“Don’t.”

She was quiet for so long he checked that the call hadn’t been dropped.

“Are you playing with me?”

“Nope,” he popped the ‘p’. “I was feeling charitable and I think your brother deserves a bit of righteous fury. Long story short, the down payment you did before the hit? It will get bounced back to you in a business day or two, I think.”

“I don’t want to be pitied. If this is because I told you-”

“No.” He finally got to his bike, hidden behind some bushes. “It’s not about pity. Is not even about your brother. It’s about me.”

“Oh?”

He sighed. He had time to think about this job and how close to his heart it hit. “You were right, I was never avenged. I have an older brother, but you probably already knew that,” she hummed in agreement, but didn’t interrupt him. “I wish he had gone and hired a dude to kill the Joker, like you did, instead of hiding behind shitty morals.”

“I don’t think the Joker could be killed so easily, so it’s not the same situation.” She chuckled softly, the sound fitting her lovely voice. “And also, I hired you because I can’t fight and I don’t have the means to do what you can do. Not because I didn’t want to do it myself.”

He couldn’t help but smile. “So you are saying that if you were trained, you would have done this yourself.”

“Absolutely. Why waste time telling my sob story to a total stranger?”

She had a point. Also, he was scared what kind of assassin she could be if she had the proper training. She was smart and methodical, she just needed-

Jason stopped the thought right there. He was getting attached. Maybe he was just tired.

“So. What’s the deal now? I don’t know you, you don’t know me, and we never speak again?”

“Pretty much it,” Jason got onto his bike, but didn’t turn it on just yet. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Jazz.”

She hummed again. “Thank you again. For this, I mean.”

Jason choked a little at how sincere she sounded. “No problem at all.” And, feeling like she needed a bit of closure, he added: “Danny would be proud of you.”

Jazz was quiet for a moment, and he feared he said the wrong thing for a hot second. The apology was ready at the tip of his tongue when he heard a quiet sob.

“I hope so.” She tried to sound normal, but he already heard her. “I really hope so.”

***

He tracked her down again in another park, in another city. She had changed her fake name twice and did a really decent job covering her tracks to just disappear and start again.

The thing is, she looked miserable.

She was looking at the ducks in a nearby pond, a lettuce in her hands, but she wasn’t moving from the park bench she was sitting on. Just looking at the ducks.

“I thought we wouldn’t see each other again.”

“Maybe this is a coincidence.”

Her chuckle was as lifeless as the rest of herself. What happened?

“Danny’s friends got angry at me. They said I went mad and that what I did was wrong.” She said as an explanation, but he knew that it wasn’t it. “An anonymous tip led the Justice League to my childhood home and everything was confiscated.”

She glared at him, as if she knew he had something to do with it. One of her hands went for a necklace she hadn’t the last time he saw her - it was more like a piece of metal that had been drilled a hole and was attached to a chain.

He didn’t comment on the object, although he assumed it had something to do with Danny.

“Jasmine Fenton is dead.” She sighed. “I really can’t go back, huh.”

Jason couldn’t think of anything useful to say, so he didn’t say anything.

Both sat in silence, watching the ducks paddle around the pond. Jasmine fiddled with the lettuce, probably thinking about walking up to the water and feeding the animals.

Jason stood up and extended his hand for her to take it. To his surprise, she easily did so, following him towards whe ducks, and letting him take the green leaves from her hands.

He started breaking off pieces of lettuce and throwing it to the water. “You could come with me.”

“Huh?”

He didn’t look at her. This wasn’t some spur of the moment decision - he couldn’t stop thinking about her dull eyes and her anger and her sad smiles. He had his own issues, but he could see a kindred broken soul in her.

Also, he could use someone like her in what he had planned for Gotham. She was smart, capable and wasn’t afraid of doing what had to be done.

“I’m going back to Gotham soon. I have plans for that city.”

“What about Batman?”

He looked at her, finding her arching an eyebrow at him. Her teal eyes were getting back some light as she narrowed her eyes, thinking, analyzing him.

“I have plans for him too.”

Jazz had given him much to think about. After he got his shower and his rest, Jason considered how broken up Jazz had been about the whole issue, how much revenge had taken from her. She got the job done, she made sure her little brother’s death meant something - but her cost had been more than money.

He still resented Bruce for not doing anything after his death, don’t be confused. But he was starting to think that things aren’t that simple, and that grief could really mess up with someone’s decisions.

So. He had changed his plans regarding Bruce. Less torture and more hard facts, and was still going to make him lose his mind trying to guess who Red Hood was, but that was more for his own enjoyment than to see him suffer.

“How could someone like me be of use to someone like you?”

Right. His offer.

“You have guts and the brains to back them up. I like that,” he shrugged, passing the lettuce back to her. “And you can be trained.”

“To be like you?”

“If that’s what you want.” He wouldn’t force her, though. If she said no, he wouldn’t push it. “You could watch my back and I watch yours.”

Jazz was quiet as she took her time breaking up the lettuce and letting it fall into the water. Her face was neutral, her eyes glazed over as she contemplated her options. She had done her research on him, on his past, on Gotham and on Batman. She knew what she was getting herself into if she said yes.

“You know what? Why the hell not.” She rubbed any remaining piece of lettuce from her hands and turned to look at him with a tiny smile. “Danny always said I had to live a little.”

She extended her hand for him to take it. He did so, finding that this time her handshake was firmer. Stronger.

“Give me three days and you have a deal.” She winked.

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[dokidokiliteraturegirls]

Now that the story is over, what will happen to the blog?

Hey there! Yui here, and I’m here to answer some questions you guys might have about the future of this blog. Some stuff I’ve been asked before and some stuff I’m planning for the future~ ❤️

First of all,

I won’t be deleting the blog.

A lot of people seemed to be worried about that, but I assure you I won’t do anything like that to the blog! I want to leave it up in case anyone wants to reread it, or if someone stumbles upon it 4 years from now and wants to check it out, or heck, just for the sake of archiving alone. I’ve made other blogs I’ve ended up deleting after I was done with them and I always end up regretting it QwQ So don’t worry, this story will be available to be read here until the day tumblr as a website collapses and dies.

Secondly, I’m planning some fun ddlitg-related stuff for the future! The fist of those is “What’s the Deal With: This Story Isn’t Ending Anytime Soon (+Epilogue)”, the series where I explain the motivation behind the arcs, narrative themes, the reason I wanted to take the story in that direction, etc. I’ve mentioned this before, but this episode of WTDW will be way longer than usual cuz I’ve got a ton of things to talk about, so I’m planning to make it a video! I’ve never recorded a video before, so this might take a while to come out as I figure out the basics, but in the meantime I’ll be answering asks and publishing the things you’ve sent me! I’ve more than my fair share of asks piled up that I haven’t been able to answer yet, so imma get to that starting tomorrow~ I apologize in advance for taking so long to respond, but I’ve been extremely busy these past weeks, what with working on the Final Update and moving out of my old place ^^;; But now that I’m done with all the art and am more settled at my new place, I’ll get to answering them! Plans into the future also include a Q&A stream that will be either on our Discord Server or on twitch, depending on the setup I can get going and how many people are interested in joining, so please look forward to that announcement 😊

If you liked DDLitG so much that you want to follow the rest of my work, first of all, holy moly thank you you have no idea how wonderful that makes me feel!!! 🥺😭 And second of all, I wanna let you all know that I’m currently working on my next story, Y.L.C.E! Instead of a fanfic, this one will be a completely original story~! I’ve been working on and off of it for about 10 years at this point, and now that I’m done with DDLitG I’ll start working on it at full throttle! I’ll give you all more details about it in future posts, but here’s a couple character concepts~

I’ll be posting updates on this project on my twitter as well as our Discord Server, and once it’s out (like 3 years from now lmao) I’ll post the announcement on this blog as well~

Thank you all so much for following, and please look forward to what’s coming in the future! This story might be over, but I want to keep entertaining you guys with whatever comes out of my imagination. I promise I’ll keep working hard to make something special you all can enjoy! I hope you enjoyed DDLitG enough to trust me and see what I make next. If so, thank you, and I promise you won’t be disappointed ❤️

-Yui out! I’ll keep you guys updated~

[raposarealm]

Magitober 2022 Catch-up #2

Look, I’m doing my best here, it’s not my fault psych meds knock you out cold better than an old grandmother with a rolling pin.

Anyways, I scanned these as well, and tried to crop them best I could. A number of these are just concept sketches, ‘cause if I actually tried give them justice, we’d be here until next year.

I’m skipping past Day 6, because I didn’t even finish the concepts for these. I’ll be posting the finished items in December instead, to coincide with a different celebration. If I can get them done in time, that is. Moving on!

Day 7 - Favourite event

So, my favorite event is actually Beachside Bonds, but since it seems like a number of other folks also chose that event, I went with my second favorite event instead: Otsukimi is After an Elegant Tea Party. This is only the rough scene layout, showing the track behind Mizuna Girl’s School, with the figure in the foreground standing in for Yukika, the event’s main character. Eventually I’ll get around to drawing the scene in its entirety, but not today.

Day 8 - Historical magical girl

I double-checked earlier that historically-themed magical girls could be used for this prompt, ‘cause a) I didn’t want to draw Tart characters twice, and b) I didn’t want to draw Tsuyu or Chizuru, their designs are so damned complex. I do love the Tokime, though, so I picked one of the units I don’t actually have, Ryoko. She doesn’t look feisty enough here, though, I feel. Whoops.

(Skipping Day 9, ‘Create a Doppel’, because I don’t have the slightest clue how to go about doing that.)

Day 10 - Oriko Magica

Oriko’s hat looks like a bucket to me, so have Oriko’s true final form: Oribucket! Yes, I’m very funny. 

Fun fact! That’s the first time I’ve drawn Oriko.

Day 11 - Favourite non-magical girl

Yes, it’s Tasuke, big surprise. I guess I’m fond of that exact brand of very tired dad who ends up involved with a larger cause that their kid also ends up a part of. (Points if you can guess any other characters that fall into that description!)

Anywho, earlier I joked in the Discord about a playable unit, except it’s just Tasuke throwing something ‘cause he doesn’t have a weapon exactly. I wanna do an actual fake card art at some point for this, because it’s too funny to me. So have these sketches in the meantime.

Day 12 - Create an Alt

Another one I mentioned (and actually uploaded) on Discord, but here we have Seika, Sailor version! There’s lots of small notes on this one explaining the specific details, but in a broader sense, I modeled her altered design here off of old-time sailors, specifically those found around the Aran Islands, which are shown with the cabled sweater mostly hidden beneath the overcoat (whoops!), and the scarf in aptly named “fisherman’s rib”. Her weapon is a modified belaying pin, which are used to hold down rigging to the ship’s sides. I’ll have to work on its design a bit, but I do plan once again to do a better drawing of this at some point, ‘cause a number of y’all in the Discord seemed to like it.

That’s all I’ve got strictly finished for now. I’m going to keep chugging away at the prompts, but I’ve got the feeling that my entries are going to extend well into November. 

[marbleboa]

I know it’s been a hot minute since I’ve posted a chapter for Achilles Come Down, so I’d like to give some updates on the current state of the fic for those interested!

So this year, the combination of a freelance gig and work for my senior film was…honestly quite brutal. I had hoped that once I was finished I’d be able to throw myself back into the writing saddle, but the opposite unfortunately happened-the constant creative momentum I was forcing myself into caused me to effectively crash once it stopped. It was nearly impossible to sit down and focus on anything, especially writing which doesn’t come to me as easily as art. TLDR, Burnout Wack.

Only a few months later am I finally starting to feel back to normal, and it’s still not coming as smoothly as it used to. However in good news, Chapter 20 is 99% done! Just got some minor additions and tweaks I’d like to make before I call it complete. However, I’m definitely wanting to get Chapter 21 to at least a halfway point before I post it, just to get some starting point for a backlog again.

It’s been a bit of a juggling routine applying for jobs, keeping up commissions so I’m getting some form of income in the meantime, and working on portfolio pieces + the fic, but progress is still being made! Thanks so much to everyone who’s left kudos or comments on the story, I hope I’ll eventually be able to bring it to a satisfying conclusion for you all.<3

[rantrambles]

Ever get so upset you make a Tumblr account to vent?

I haven’t even listened to The Penumbra Podcast yet but it’s on my list because it’s insanely popular and the cosplays I’ve seen are hot as hell (A+ to all the cosplayers I’ve seen you’ve done great work). Now, with the recent news surrounding the podcast, I’ll wait till it’s done if I ever do get into it. I’m Asian and part of the LGBT community but I’m not nonbinary so I can’t say much about the trans represention in the art but I wanted to add my two cents on the matter as a person of color and someone examining the situation from the outside. Also, before I get deeply into it, I’m not the only person of color with opinions on this matter so if people have their own frustrations and criticism with the racism in The Penumbra Podcast and/or the new artist they hired, definitely listen to them too. These are my own personal opinions, and I’m sure other people will disagree and that’s fine. We’re all going to have different views on this so bear that in mind. Also, feel free to correct me or add anything if I’ve missed some information. Here’s a great breakdown of the whole situation for those that don’t know what happened. Finally, I was very hesitant to post this, but I felt it was important because I make a statement at the end on how race should be presented in a podcast format so if you are interested in making a podcast and want to have a diverse range of characters, please skip to the end to read those thoughts.

I’ll start off by saying, I’m not even that upset with the new artist that The Penumbra Podcast hired. I know that statement alone is controversial but I don't personally know them, and I’m not going to judge who they are as a person by a few pieces of art they’ve made. They are the least of the problems that I have here. Since the announcement and the backlash, I’ve been scrolling through the artist’s Instagram account and I can tell why people find the designs offensive, but I’m also comparing the designs to the artist’s other work, and I honestly believe that’s just their style. They’ve exaggerated the features of just about every character they’ve made, regardless of race or gender. From what I’ve seen the sharp angles and overly round curves in the anatomy that make some of the character’s features more jarring are how they prefer to draw. I’m sure they’re capable of drawing more realistic proportions but for the most part they’re art aims to call attention, be bold, and create distinguished features. Not inherently a bad thing on its own.

And yeah I’d understand the issue if this were a scenario where the artist heard how these characters acted in the podcast and thought “hey, obviously this character is a black woman because they are super strong and therefore must have big muscles, no other woman could look like that” or “hey, this character has to be Asian because they act super seductive sometimes better draw them as such.” But from my understanding the race was already decided by previous official artists and a general description of the characters were already generated by the audience, similar to how The Magnus Archives leaned towards drawing scrawny Jon with black, greying hair and dark skin. The new artists couldn’t really change those features even if those features aren’t described in canon because a depiction that strayed too far from popular fandom interpretation would make the character’s unrecognizable to the fanbase. 

I think the reason this became such a big issue for most people is because the new Penumbra artist used their exaggerated art style when making these characters and people of color and nonbinary folks already see themselves drawn as these exaggerated caricatures all the time (with those images being used to further discriminate against them). I’m sure the artist didn’t mean for their art to be offensive, but that of course doesn’t change how it was received. 

According to some, the poses and expressions the artists chose did not fully represent the characters entirely and only served to further perpetuate harmful stereotypes, and I’ll have to take their word for it because I still haven’t listened to the podcast so I have no idea how the characters act. But again much of the criticism is based on the one line-up and doing a deeper dive into the artist’s work I managed to find artwork that was much less offensive. Here some art where Vespa is depicted in a non-violent pose and one where Vespa is in a threatening pose but not an overly violent one. Here is Peter drawn in a non-seductive pose. Hopefully, the artist truly does keep the criticisms in mind as they work on the new official art. I’m just not the type of person that wants to get the pitchforks out and cause this particular person to lose a job they seemed really excited about over their old character line-up, especially when that person is also part of a marginalized group.

Again, that’s just my opinion on that particular artist. Those who are offended by their art are still valid in how they feel, and the artist should absolutely take their criticism to heart to better how they represent the characters.

What I’m more upset about is that I think The Penumbra Podcast should never have released official art for their characters in the first place and that’s their mistake that they refuse to own up about. They have made it clear that the story was never meant to portray characters of colors, a fact emphasized by the fact they hired mostly white actors from the start. They only started releasing art of the characters to get a profit. And the thing is they know what they did was wrong. All I had to do was search Penumbra Podcast racism and there is a note on their website saying that they archived some old official art.

“We have discontinued all Penumbra merchandise that uses the original character designs, and in the meantime, any profits on the sales of that merchandise will go to the For The Gworls project. We also realize that the depiction of these characters as POC, while not appropriate for us to use in our marketing and merchandise, has nonetheless become personally meaningful to many POC listeners. For that reason, and because we do not wish to distance ourselves from our mistake, we are keeping these images on our website for archival purposes. Though we do want to make it clear that many of the main/featured voice actors are white and that we did not write the characters to represent any specific POC experience, you are, as always, free to imagine these characters in any way that you like.”

I went to their shop and they still sell posters and pins with the character’s faces on them, but they are donating it to a good cause so hopefully that stays the same. However, I still find it a little uncomfortable that they are still selling character merch and have plans to continue selling character merch. They have no right to dissuade the fans that already found representation in the characters, but they also have no right to profit off the representation that was built, regardless if they made the story. 

Let’s compare this to another piece of popular media. I love Avatar the Last Airbender and, I liked the ATLA voice actors just fine but there should have been more people of color doing voice acting behind the screen too. The voice actors for that show were mainly white too, however, the creators knew that they would be making poc characters. That’s what makes the difference. Did they still choose to go with mostly white voice actors? Yes. Could they have done better and pay more people of color? Also yes. But I’m not as furious at them because they did their research on the cultures they were basing the ATLA world off of and intentionally gave us a show where Asians could see characters that looked like them represented on the screen. The Penumbra Podcast did not do any of that. Again, they openly admitted that it was never their intention to make the character’s people of color when they made the podcast so that goes to show no research was made to properly represent specific cultures. The color of the character’s skin in their official designs therefore became more of aesthetic choice rather than representation, and it wasn’t even their aesthetic choice to begin with!

Race isn’t a color you can just throw onto the character because you feel like it. So I want this to be a lesson to anyone that wants to make a podcast: if you want to include poc characters please do some research into the cultures you plan to represent the way you would with any other form of media. Just because the audience can’t see the characters and just because it’s harder to smoothly introduce the character’s appearance doesn’t mean you’re allowed to be lazy on how you present the characters. Do research before you start writing the first episode and take the time to hire poc actors. Hiring poc actors is actually the least that can be done to show representation. Also, since the audience cannot visually see the race of the characters on a podcast and it can’t typically be described the way you would in a book, you’ll have to be creative. It’s not my job to say how, but my suggestions would be, before the fans come up with their own image of the character, you need to establish race in the first few episodes or release character profiles on a website so that the fans know you canonically intended the characters to be of a certain race even if you aren’t able to mention it in the actual podcast. If you are unwilling to do any of these then the best route is to avoid stating race at all and allow the audience to build their own representation into your form of media. However, once this happens, you are not allowed to profit off popular fan interpretations. You lose all rights to create official art or images of the characters. You cannot use “we have a diverse cast of characters” when you market your story. It doesn’t matter whether you created the content or not, you did not create the representation for those minority groups.

It’s one thing for fans to build their own inclusivity into a form of art like a podcast, but it’s another thing for the creators who never worked to make the representation happen to take advantage of the representation that the listeners built for themselves. Thank you for attending my TedTalk.