#personalized brushes

[abuddyforeveryseason]

This is the Buddy for May first. It's May Day, so Buddy's wearing his finest summer suit, and the blackwood trees are blooming with red, bloodlike flowers.

A couple of personalized brushes were used for the background - the red spots are classic Kirby dots, the ones I use a lot for drawing smoke, energy, hair sometimes... The trunks of the trees themselves were made with a roller-type brush I mde on FireAlpaca. I kind of wanted to make them look more organic with a few white notches, but they ended up looking rather same-y, so I don't think I'll keep using that brush.

Not that it matters since I lost that particular brush last time I wiped the computer. I can always make it again, but there's no point.

I like a story where the bad guy's wearing white, though. I don't really know why, it's just a fun design choice.

You know, even though Taxi Driver is the best movie of all time, it's created a blueprint for other, worse movies, where the main character is supposed to be a conflicted villain, or someone who becomes villainous due to the circunstances around them, but the audiences sees them as a realistic anti-establishment hero.

Sure, that's happened with movies before it, like The Third Man, but that's a more adult movie, it's a different context, and in many ways that was the implicit point of the movie. That's kind of what makes it the best movie of all time.

But it feels like Taxi Driver paved the way for a throng of movies that are just wish-fulfilment fantasies of reactionary violence, with the creators insisting that the idealized hero isn't supposed to be idolized and that the fans just "missed the point".

But, seriously, if the fans are missing the point like that, doesn't that mean the moviemaker is just incompetent? Or, you know, maybe they should stop making those movies, since it's obvious the fans will "miss the point" again? Considering how much money these movies bring in, that's not too likely.

The worst movie of all time is one of those, and despite the "misinterpretation" of the story by the fans, there was even talk of a sequel that would once again be "misinterpreted", not that it affects the director's profit margins.

On the opposite side of the spectrum is a movie like Midsommar. It's pretty cool, and some critics (morons, mostly) say that the movie's being misinterpreted as being about a radical feminist heroine. That hasn't really been happening, but it's an attempt of going "well your side's doing it too" when defending against criticism of the crap they love.

Although I'm not sure if Midsommar is a movie I should be discussing today. Does it take place during May Day? I know there's a may queen coronation ceremony, but I'm not sure the midnight sun thing happens during May.

Well, I'm far from an expert on the subject. Nevertheless, it's still the best movie of all time.

[magentasnail]

I'm just a toy to you my love...

I saw someone comparing ford and fiddleford's relationship to ford and bill's relationship and I haven't been the same since

[bananafire11]

He has arriiiived. I think i got almost everyones suggestions.... oh and wretched is there too

[hinamie]

realizing how much i like drawing him a million years too late :<

[lazylittledragon]

mombin pt 9!! it's been too long i'm sorry

(1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)

[animeglitch]

[stankworth]

Soft spot

[katabay]

ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE WAS A KNIGHT...

the visual inspiration for this was a combination of Frederic William Burton's Meeting on the Turret Stairs and also Bernardo Cavallino's The vision of St. Dominic receiving the Rosary from the Virgin

this was supposed to be just a one off illustration to get the thoughts out of my system, but then I started thinking about medieval politics and warfare and plagues and a castle and home as both a place of refuge, a prison, and a tomb, so perhaps they will end up as ex voto characters as well.

you may say, hey! that rosary looks like it has too many beads! it's a fifteen decade rosary, probably. dominicans are really into marian devotions. it works out.

also. spiral style stair cases. oh boy. it was that unexpectedly more difficult than I originally thought it would be to draw. the more I think about it, the less I understand them, even though I had a million photos of the stairs in front of me while I was drawing it.

⭐ I have a tip jar (ko-fi)!

⭐ and other places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app

[wilimia]

Snack for the road

[vaguely-concerned]

on the one hand I think inner demons could stand to have a bit more romanced rook specific content, but on the other hand the underlying in-built implication that 'yours is the one true voice of comfort and safety in my inner world' is a sentiment and intimacy so way beyond the romantic or the platonic or any secret third thing you could care to name that it makes me lose my entire poor little mind a bit. it's so big and fundamental — near-existential — that in that exact moment at least the distinctions kind of seem irrelevant.

all the people lucanis' mind conjures up along the way are relationships he has that are unavoidably mixed and fraught in some ways even when they're also full of love (they are fraught BECAUSE they're full of love) — the good in them inseparable from things that hurt him at the same time. (it's about: the basic disorganized attachment patterns this poor guy is dragging around with him. careful with those, they're dellamorte heirlooms. what you love also inevitably hurts you and you won't be allowed to have one without the other, you have to surrender parts of your soul to hold on to what little you have left: this is the story up until now.) and the idea that rook isn't that to him — that beneath the fear of wanting them when romanced (which is more its own separate thing because within this psychology, actively wanting something and not just clinging on for dear life to even a meager status quo lest you lose it is in itself dangerous bordering on catastrophic), this is a relationship where there isn't resentment, or guilt, or shame, or dread, or rage, or self-hate, or any of the other emotions that keep him paralyzed, unable to move this way or that. no debts, nothing owed of yourself and your soul's substance except what you can freely and safely and happily give. love and freedom don't coexist — but, I mean, you're almost starting to make me think........... unless...👀👀👀. the unconditional and undramatic 'you are here and I am here with you, you can be exactly how you are right now with me and it's safe for us both even though you're afraid it won't be, I'm not going anywhere' acceptance rook shows him here that he returns to them in the big romance scene, when it's rook who needs it. the way he's just. standing there in the center of it all, like a child desperately helplessly waiting to be found, hiding in the place he hopes you'll know to look first. (rook does know. it's one of the first things they say in there.)

in short the most important room in his little mind palace for the romance is the very first room — the one where rook isn't. where, in fact, rook cannot be, because they disprove the entire structure of the place with their existence and presence in his life. with everyone else he's putting words in their mouths about what they think of him, and rook is the one who actually gets to come in to speak their own words to him — and have him listen. ('he'll listen to you, he always listens to you', 'your voice is a comfort'.) of course rook isn't present anywhere else in there — at the risk of stating the obvious to a tedious degree, they aren't one of the locks, they're bringing the key. in the very finest 'the messenger and the message' sort of way.

[thebibliosphere]

My Grammarly subscription finally ran out in December, and I'm not renewing it (see my various past rants about their introduction of AI), but I just got my final "insights" email, which tallies up how many words you've written for the past week but also since you started using it.

I almost want to frame it as a fuck you to my "I'm not doing enough" brain worms because, since September of 2019, when I reinstalled Grammarly for a pro-editing job (required by the company, as many of them now do 🙄), I've written over twelve million words.

I primarily used Grammarly for my emails.

That's 12,834,172 words of telling people they're gonna be okay. Sharing resources, doctor information, and just general words of comfort. That MCAS isn't a death sentence. That MCAS from long-covid isn't the end of their life; it's just going to be different from now on.

And here I was, feeling guilty about setting up auto-responders with links to resources because I got too burned out to do it one-to-one anymore...

...Yeah. No. I did enough.

I did enough.

[solarpunkani]

Hot 4am take but I feel like if we want to get people more interested in making their yards a more habitable space for wildlife like insects, we have to acknowledge that ‘Don’t want bugs in your house’ is still a 100% fair and valid point of view. ‘Loves nature’ and ‘doesn’t want roaches spiders and mosquitoes in the house’ aren’t opposites.

And with that in mind, when we propose to people that spraying pesticides around houses is Not A Good Idea, Actually, I feel like we need to give an alternative asides from ‘deal with it.’

[yuseirra]

the MC is so proud of his dog

best game

[ihavesomejays]

text transcription:

Many springs ago, I perceived a sea of flowers upon a lake. I thought to myself that those fleeting colors held indescribable beauty.

The next time I perceived those colors was many years later, when the medic’s tent had blinded me to all but red. The radiance of that shining star was lost on my eyes.

Now, my eyes no longer perceive the subtleties in the colors around me.

But I am content.

For I can now see the most brilliant colors in my universe.

anyways yeah why did they fucking do that to jiaoqiu bro

the planning for this experimentalish comic is under keep reading

[hinamie]

theyre soft your honour

[heilos]

Man...I might be a Clip Studio Paint believer for real now. Sketching in it with just the one brush I've tried already feels so good and responsive with what I want it to do. I'll always go to bat for my beloved Paint Tool Sai, but wow I understand now.