#picturesque imagery

[fracturedporcelaindoll]

Relatable~

The hopeless romantic urge to look at the moon and stars, forever.

[speakofshinee]

231216 Metamorph Black Rose Fancam

[dinnerthyme]

[freshthoughts2020]

[fracturedporcelaindoll]

Beautiful~

[dailyoverview]

Positano is a village on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, nestled between the foothills of the Lattari Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea. Renowned for its stunning cliffside architecture, vibrant pastel-colored buildings and picturesque beaches, Positano attracts tourists from around the world. It has a permanent population of under 4,000, but receives an average of 12,000 visitors per day during peak tourism season.

40.633333°, 14.483333°

Source imagery: Maxar

[gasolinecookie]

☆•° SHADOWMILK FIC BELOW!!! °•☆

k so this is my first time posting my fanfic onto tumblr. farts. lmk if i need to do anything special or not

Content; soul jam freakery, pwp, non-penetrative sex, switch shadow milk, switch pure vanilla, cookiefucking ig, brief mentions of purelily(?), 3k+ words :3

Pure Vanilla stood in a glade of flowers. As far as the eye could see, there were hills lined with hundreds and thousands of flowers. A shy moon peered over a hilltop, stars winking playfully across a picturesque, midnight-blue sky. For a moment, he just observed them.

On one hill surface, it was all coated in brilliant yellow and white petals. Yellow carnations, baby’s breath, chamomile, daisies, honeysuckle, white hyacinth, white roses. A beautiful cloud, light shining through each split where the sun kissed the feathery vapor.

Another swath of blue flowers lined another hill. Hydrangeas, irises, delphiniums, hyacinth, and morning glories. As Pure Vanilla heaved a relaxed sigh, inhaling the sweet scent of the floral arrangements around him, he noticed but a single flower at his feet.

A forget-me-not.

The rest of the flowers in the field burnt up, despite there being no fire present. They simply crumbled on their own, squeezing into themselves and turning into blackened char. The sweet smell of pollen and nectar and the midnight stars was replaced by the acrid stench of strawberry jam and burnt leaves. Ah. This must be a dream.

"Y'know, my silly little Vanilly, this has been in your cards for a loooong time coming," came a playful voice, an idle teasing to it, as if it were a conversation between old friends. Pure Vanilla didn’t bother to turn around towards it. In a way, it was really a reunion of sorts. “Have you missed me?”

Pure Vanilla stayed staring, fixedly, almost mechanically, at the single, twinkling flower before him. He wouldn’t give Shadow Milk the satisfaction of seeing him look startled, or even seeing his face at all. “Not in the slightest,” he replied with a sigh, the forget-me-not dancing in the painfully burnt nighttime air.

Hands wrapped around his eyes.

He resisted the urge to immediately elbow the foe behind him, or thrash out of the (admittedly gentle— why was it so gentle?) grasp of Shadow Milk, but he steadied his will, staying perfectly still. A warmth, a slow embrace, spread across his back as Shadow Milk pulled himself flush with the back of Pure Vanilla’s robes.

“Vannilly…” Shadow Milk cooed in a drawn-out tone. “If you want to look at anything ever again, look at me. You know that I can hear what you’re thinking. You can’t ignore me forever!”

Pure Vanilla sucked in a breath. He knew reading cookie’s minds wasn’t impossible— he himself could do it if he tried. Yet, he wasn’t sure if Shadow Milk truly knew how, if he was bluffing, or if you even could read one’s mind inside of a dream.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to risk it.

“That power is not yours, beast.” Pure Vanilla didn’t utter another word, keeping his lips drawn tightly together. Shadow Milk simply wouldn’t earn it from him, no matter how much he toyed with him.

When the ravaged flower field disintegrated around him, and reformed into a chapel, and Shadow Milk vanished from his back to reform in front of him, Pure Vanilla felt almost let-down, as ridiculous of a notion that it was, that Shadow Milk hadn’t tried harder to make him speak. Two rows of pews lined the rectangular room, highlighted by the beautiful moonlight coalescing through the windows. It streamed through blue, stained-glass windows— no doubt, they bore imagery of the wielder of the Light of Deceit.

Pure Vanilla felt a tightness about his limbs, and suddenly he noticed tendrils creeping around the floor, darkness forming and deforming vague shapes of tentacles as they wove between the pews. As he glanced towards the throne, between his bangs, there was a beast hovering above him, a sadistic grin twisting his cutesy, mis-matched features into a mockery of a cookie's face. Shadow Milk cookie, a tyrannical creature born of lies and falsehoods. There were many ways to end a dream, so Pure Vanilla quickly shuffled through his options, mentally. He didn’t want to even give this creature a chance to speak more. There was a war to fight, and it needn’t be distracted with silly things like dreams.

"Now, quit it with that look. We all know you can't do anything to escape from this dream, now! Stupid 'Nilla!" Shadow Milk cackled, as if he really could hear Pure Vanilla’s thoughts, and sure enough, more mysterious darkness rose from the floor, binding Pure Vanilla by the ankles. They slithered up Pure Vanilla’s slender legs, tracing his figure, wriggling across each inch of his dough. "Hey, didn’t you say you were going to protect everyone? That you didn’t have things like nightmares? You're the worst liar of us all. Which is why I'm going to take my Soul Jam back from you, Vanilly.”

Pure Vanilla glowered at this foe. He may have a point-- Pure Vanilla was not always the most truthful, as much as his jam implied it. Yet, every time he lied, it was in the name of justice. In the name of keeping the peace, and ruling over what he needed to protect. So, that was different. It certainly wasn't the shameful secret that Shadow Milk was making it out to be. If it was leveraged against him, though... he wasn't sure what he'd do. He just had to escape the dream before it got to that point.

Then, of course, in his moment of distraction, Shadow Milk took it as an excuse to approach Vanilla, looking down on him as the tendrils suddenly squeezed around his dough, crumbling the surface ever-so-imperceptibly. It burned. There was truly nowhere he could go, as far as his eyes could see, no way to fight against this darkness— he was caged in like a feral animal, and felt merely inches away from being provoked to fight like one.

Shadow Milk stepped towards the altar, finally lowering himself to standing height instead of floating. The porcelain tiles hissed as his feet touched them. With a gentle motion, he ascended the half-stairs, and settled atop the marble altartop. With one hand, he beckoned to Pure Vanilla, and he was dragged forward and onto his knees by the shadows binding his legs. Shadow Milk gazed down at him, cooing softly as one might to a stray animal. Pure Vanilla resisted the urge to growl at him in response.

"Don't worry, silly. This won't hurt a bit, okay? I'm gonna warm your jam up... bet no one's ever done that before, hmm, tightwad? Ahaha!" Shadow Milk cackled, and slowly rolled his sleeve a bit further back up his arm. His forearm was littered in hundreds of tiny scars that Pure Vanilla elected to ignore. This psychopath's sob story was worthless to him; he had probably just gotten into fights, or ran through brambles in boredom.

It was just as meaningless as the rest of his deceitful actions.

The shadows yanked Pure Vanilla upwards, suspending him off the floor by their grasp on him, and giving his knees an air-borne surface to rest upon. Being pulled forward so that his chest was level with Shadow Milk’s knees, he glanced up at the beast who held him in place. “Oh, my. Now that’s a sexy face on you, Vanilly. You look so angry…! What, going to crumble me with your teeth?” Shadow Milk offered with a smirk that only surfaced more and more suggestions in Pure Vanilla’s mind.

Shadow Milk’s hand found the side of his face, and it cupped his cheek. Without missing a beat, and keeping eye-contact with Shadow Milk, Pure Vanilla parted his lips and put his mouth around Shadow Milk’s hand, as if to bite it open. If this went as planned, Shadow Milk would surely become distracted and lose his grip on Pure Vanilla’s dream. What he didn’t expect, somehow, was the look of sheer masochistic elation that crossed Shadow Milk’s features, like a cloud crossing over the path of the sun and darkening a summer day.

“Does that feel good?” Vanilla asked in utter disbelief, whispering the words across Shadow Milk’s dough, far more sensually than intended, as he fixed him with a stare. “Ah, you’ve always been strange…” he continued, “but truly, I could never have expected to what degree.” He just had to keep throwing Shadow Milk off of his game. Then, he’d be able to slip away.

Then, unexpectedly Shadow Milk brought his other hand (not the one cupping his cheek) up to Pure Vanilla’s upper chest, and began to toy with his Soul Jam, grazing his finger crossed it’s blue surface. It was an overwhelming sensation, causing him to cry out— ah, why was that so sensitive? Vanilla knew they were connected to their senses, as his own had flickered when he was in pain, but he didn't expect it to literally feel like his soul was being stroked along the edge by Shadow Milk, a wanton noise peeling itself from his lips. It was a tightness and blossoming in his chest, all while Shadow Milk's multi-colored eyes, on his face and on his body, seemed to be watching the faces he was making with curiosity raptly.

Pure Vanilla did try to reign in his expression, concealing his faint noises of surprise by biting his lower lip. It was made vastly more difficult by the fact that his legs were restrained and he couldn't simply run from this.

Normally, the moment before the villain could enact their awful plan, a hero would come bursting into the room, and save the hostage just as it started to look hopeless. Well, it seemed futile to resist, to Pure Vanilla, and there was yet to be another cookie within sight. No, it was all those piercing, mis-matched eyes.

Mis-matched eyes that were gobbling up eyefuls of Pure Vanilla's pathetic condition greedily, lustfully. "I just love how this looks on you," Shadow Milk whispered, sultry, to the distressed monarch before him. It was a new thrill to have this brilliant leader finally subjugated before him, finally brought (literally) to his knees by Shadow Milk's plans. It's not as if he couldn't have potentially seen it coming, but there were so many possibilities for losing or capturing Pure Vanilla every day that Shadow Milk cookie had simply taken to ignoring them.

He stroked along the edge of the Soul Jam with one pallid blue hand, the other halfway covering the flustered face of Pure Vanilla.

"Shall I keep going?" Shadow Milk offered with nothing short of a insane grin, just feeling the waves of pleasure rolling off of his body from just the blonde’s expressions. Yet, that grin was just the sort of thing that would perfectly throw Pure Vanilla off his game. "Seems like you're plenty ready for the warm-up, needy-Nilly.”

"Don't do this," Pure Vanilla said, eyes furrowing— though, it just looked like he was relaxing into the pleasure even more, "I'm not going to do whatever you want." Oh? Shadow Milk smelled a Class A lie around those words, like curdled milk atop an otherwise perfect latte. All it took was a little teasing to bring out the deceitful side of the blonde, and Shadow Milk had yet to tell even a single lie. Frankly, he knew which one of them deserved the Soul Jam more, based on that.

Teasingly slow, Shadow Milk reached a blue hand deep into the jam on Pure Vanilla’s chest, sinking into its substance like a cushion; the tone of his dough and the surface of the soul were the same color, as if they were always meant to be put together this way. He slowly pushed in, first inching in his fingers, then his palms, and then the beginnings of his wrist. It pulsated around him— it wasn't meant to be touched like this, but nevertheless, it burned in a way that was both painful and pleasing. It seemed almost to him as if he had stuck his arm into a pocket dimension somehow contained within Pure Vanilla's body. He would’ve been curious as to how it felt, if he hadn't tried such a thing with his half of the jam. And by his own experiences, he knew exactly how overwhelming it was.

“How’s that…? You know, this is why you’re mine. Without me, you wouldn’t be able to feel this way. Without my Soul Jam on your body, you’d never have known this pleasure,” he cooed, leaning down to speak into Pure Vanilla’s ear as he slowly began to swirl his hand and the tips of his fingers around inside of Pure Vanilla.

Pure Vanilla suppressed a strangled moan at the intrusive feeling, immediately attempting to further cover his mouth with one of his own hands. Not that it lasted long, with one of Shadow Milk's tendrils quickly ripping it away, but an effort had been made to at least save himself part of the humiliation. "Please..." Pure Vanilla whispered, not being quite sure what he was begging for, other than that Shadow Milk was sure not to provide it, if he asked.

Shadow Milk made a satisfied grin and hum as Pure Vanilla's mouth was re-uncovered, wriggling his fingers inside the goopy substance of the jam until Pure Vanilla couldn't help but moan out again. It felt like someone had reached directly into his chest and was playing harp with his bare nerves; too overwhelming to form words, but still amazing.

"Oh, wow!" Shadow Milk giggled, tensing his fingers to squeeze the surface of the Soul Jam's glistening tension. "I can feel it, pulsing. It wants us to do this, doesn't it? Just think of how powerful we'll be together, Nilly..."

Pure Vanilla full-body shuddered at the nickname, feeling a familiar, aroused tingle in his back from the jester's rough voice; somehow, that managed to be almost more intimate than Shadow Milk's fingers inside of his soul. "It's too— too much," he finally managed, squirming away from Shadow Milk.

That's when it happened: Shadow Milk curled his hands through the jam, grabbing it like a handle from the inside, and yanking Pure Vanilla forward by it. The utterly debauched sound that fell from Pure Vanilla's mouth was both a shriek of pain and a guttural cry of pleasure: he wasn't sure which part was more earnest. "No running away, now! We've only just started, Vailly!"

With that, he pulled Pure Vanilla up against him into his lap, still holding him by the inside of his jam. This time, Pure Vanilla managed to keep it at a controlled yelp, but it did nothing to diminish the lustful burning he felt in every inch of his dough. He saw his Soul Jam faintly flicker with burnt out light— he was suffering, and he couldn't help but feel as though his perverse pleasure derived from it was a betrayal of everything his Light stood for, everything that he and the others like White Lily had fought for.

Just as he made the thought, Shadow Milk tsked aloud. “Don’t think of her. I can see it on your pathetic face— she doesn’t own you, I do. She wouldn’t make you feel like this, right…?” he asked, relaxing his grip on Pure Vanilla’s jam and returning to stroking it gently from the inside. It felt like stepping into a hot room on a cold, winter’s afternoon— it tingled all over Vanilla’s body, causing him to emit a soft squeak as the feeling bubbled up into every square inch of his vanilla dough.

"Now that you're up here..." Shadow murmured into Pure Vanilla's ear, pulling him closer to his chest. Vanilla couldn’t help but smell the faint aroma of blueberries on his skin. He managed to grasp onto Shadow Milk’s shoulder, bracing himself through his panic at being pulled, and steadying his pleasure. "Let's try something, okay? This'll feel even better than just my hands," Shadow Milk promised, and then their Soul Jams gently touched together as he pulled Pure Vanilla up closer into him, engaging him in a sloppy kiss.

Pure Vanilla could suddenly feel everything in Shadow Milk’s body and nothing in his own all at once. He was somehow two sets of lips, locked in an embrace that smeared frosting lewdly across faces, he was the future, he was the past, he was Blueberry Milk and he was being torn apart in luxurious torment and lust.

After either all of time, or just a second, Shadow Milk shoved him away with a sudden gasp, multichrome eyes going wide. His face was brushed in a dark blue flush, giving him a healthy looking bake, for once. He panted, licking his blue lips, causing Pure Vanilla's smudged off-white frosting to smear slightly across them both. "Woah there, Vanilla! Getting ahead of yourself!" Shadow Milk chuckled, his eyes slightly too wide for it to really come across as a properly controlling order. Had he really not predicted what this would do? Had Shadow Milk truly been unable to predict how this would feel?

That, or he was simply more sensitive than Pure Vanilla. When was the last time Shadow Milk had touched another cookie, dough-to-dough, after all?

Shadow Milk was overwhelmed. When he had touched his own half of the Jam, it hadn’t felt even half that intense. No, that was a splash of cold water, and this was a dunk in the ocean. Oh, God, he felt so one with Pure Vanilla. What had he been thinking? He needed… Vanilla to become him, not the other way around…!

Pure Vanilla's grasp on Shadow’s shoulders tightened, sensing his weakness like blood in the water. "Isn't this what you wanted? Isn't this what you forced me to do?" Pure Vanilla spoke forcefully, his voice carrying more venom than he ever let it have. Vanilla was purity, he was a figure of angelicness, forgiveness. Yet, now that he had felt what it was like to be him, he had a taste of being like Shadow Milk, feeling how Shadow Milk felt; a lingering flavor of blueberry and strawberry jam on his tongue.

He found he liked it.

He found it was the bit of Deceit inside of him, that sort of sadistic joy he found at Shadow Milk's startled expression, the nervous twitch to his pupils as they raked over Pure Vanilla's body. Glancing down to where Shadow Milk's eyes were fixed, he saw that his Soul Jam was... slightly melted, in appearance. Bits of it dripped loosely in comparison to its typically crystalline appearance, and Shadow Milk eyed it with trepidation, yet enthusiasm.

"Again," Pure Vanilla found his voice demanding, despite originally being the one who disagreed with this whole arrangement. Surely, it was the pieces of Shadow Milk's Soul Jam that were simply combining with his own. They were extended body parts, nervous systems— as if a second brain purely to use magic existed in the beasts and the ancient heroes.

After all, this was just a dream. Pure Vanilla could do whatever he wanted with this blue freak; he had given up on escaping. He’d have fun until Shadow Milk had enough and ended the dream. It was his domain, after all— it’s not like Vanilla could do anything that Shadow Milk couldn’t escape from at his very own will. Besides, when was the last time that Pure Vanilla was allowed to have fun?

With a sudden lean forward, Pure Vanilla caught the dough of Shadow Milk's neck in his mouth, dragging their Soul Jams into another gooey connection. Devouring him, tasting the faint flavor of blueberries and darkness and sweet, fresh milk, on his dough. It made a frankly lewd sound, and Pure Vanilla could feel himself losing his purity yet again, slipping into the body and mind of the insane man before him as if it were his fine Sunday clothes. A gratuitous moan rippled from Shadow Milk's lips. "Oh, Vanilla..." he managed, trying again to pull back from their embrace.

No, that wouldn't do. Pure Vanilla ran his hand up the back of Shadow Milk's head, feeling emboldened by the Light of Deceit that was flowing through him, the contradicting nature of the powers within him. He grabbed a fistful of Shadow Milk's hair, and gave it a harsh tug as he bit down more harshly on his neck. The resulting sound was something Pure Vanilla wished he could hear for the rest of his life. A debauched shriek, rough in the quality of the jester's voice, of his own name. "N-Nilla...!"

Pure Vanilla paused for just a moment, teeth in Shadow’s dough, paralyzed by the intoxication of lust. With that, he was giving Shadow Milk another chance to struggle against him, but it was futile in earnest. Shadow was only doing it for the fun of it: both of them knew he could run whenever he wanted. Two-toned eyes gazed up at Vanilla in all of their sex and pain-tinged glory. "No running away. We're just getting started." Shadow Milk’s expression grew even more lustfully destroyed with the idea of Vanilla echoing his words, his earnest expression, with just the faintest hint of a smile on his blue-smudged lips.

☆°•~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~●°☆

OKAY BYE THATS ALL THANK YOU

Gasoline Cookie OUT !! (feel free to send me requests in asks!)

[fracturedporcelaindoll]

Beautiful~

She has a dark, vintage soul where butterflies dance and wild orchids grow.

@arta-enigmaticei

[myfriendpokey]

tunnel notes

i wrote some extra little notes and thoughts for the bonus tunnels in anthology of the killer, and then removed them before release; i didn't like the prescriptive feeling of leaving that stuff in the "final package" as if it was something people should feel obligated to engage with. but as of today it's been 30 days since the loader came out, so i figured i'd dump some of them online, for the benefit of whoever is interested in these things.

History: HISTORY IS A NIGHTMARE FROM WHICH I AM TRYING TO AWAKE is one of many famous zingers given to Stephen in Ulysses and I’ve always wondered if it’s especially Irish as a sentiment, Ireland sort of feeling like the “Oops! All Peasants” edition of European history as a whole – same misery, exploitation and death minus the occasional episodes of feudal colour or triumphant empire-building that seem to make the past tolerable for other people, and give them their own sense of demarcated time. But then I’ve never been much good on Irish history, which has always just felt like an interminable, indistinguishable series of massacres and betrayals and missed shots. Was I not paying attention or was this how it was taught in school? Well, it would have fit the style at the time – I was born in 1989, smack at the start of the famous end of history era. The 90s in Ireland meant the peace process and infusion of American capital to our backwards shores, all the more reason to cosign the idea of an abrupt and permanent break with a history notably lacking in the non-depressing or picturesque. All our history textbooks seemed to trail off at the point we’d joined the EEA. And even as this new modernity just started seeming like the monstrous antiquity dressed up in different clothes – hooded prisoners transported to torture sites through Shannon airport, our patchy social infrastructure dismantled by burghers, ghost estates and half-completed monuments scattered around like the ruin theory of value with more leprechaun imagery – there was still a sense that any change was off the table. You didn’t want to drag us back into history, did you? History seemed to have “ended” in the same sense Freddy Krueger did – done away with in ways that none of the grown-ups ever wanted to talk about, and now officially a non-presence, even if all the kids in town were mysteriously disappearing.

--

Art: One reason I wanted to do an episodic series is just to see what would turn up, if any recurring interests would build despite a minimum of planning. One of the themes turned out to be, “art” – or specifically modernist art – and I am curious about why that would be. A recurring tendency in modernism was the idea that only by destroying the world as it currently existed could we clear space for anything better to emerge. Under the cobblestones, the beach! But this was always attended by a kind of fear: that clearing away the old structures would just allow something even worse to emerge, unmasked. Under the cobblestones, more corpses! And that the bleakest tendencies of the period would now run free without even the emptiest symbolic constraints to chafe against. Max Ernst’s painting of the fascist victory in Spain, of a huge, grinning oaf rampaging over the landscape like a kaiju while a miserable birdlike figure remains haplessly grafted to its leg – is titled both “The Angel Of Hearth And Home” and “The Triumph Of Surrealism”. As if to suggest that these are each the same thing, as though a cause of creative liberation worth devoting your life to and an empty cliché of domestic repression had so little light between them as to not even be worth the effort of distinguishing.

Part of the reason works like that make their way into the games in little ways is because I just like them, and go back to thinking about them. But the status of modernism in the 21st century is an odd one; the most tentative and inventive parts got dropped, while the brashest and stupidest aspects curdled into a kind of official state ideology – the idea of “creative destruction”, which just seems to mean a vague sense that it’s punk rock to create ridesharing apps. The monkey’s paw curled and the emptiest version of the modernist credo became something we all have to live with.. and yet I still can’t help but be moved by the source works and the goofy, ridiculous temerity of that wish to transfigure the world. sometimes it feels like only way to keep faith with those ideas is to travesty them, to try returning to them some of that sense of fear and doubt without which they just sound like so many web design agency manifestos. Kept alive in the breast of so many grimacing waxworks, underground.

Another reason to put this stuff in a horror game: to try getting at that feeling in a dream of looking in the eyes of people you know, people you love, and seeing nothing there anymore, seeing them look right past you. An earlier horror game idea I used to think about would have ended with the protagonist being dismembered and eaten by Gertrude Stein.

--

The moral: I’ve seen people express a sense, now, that merely working in the negative is not enough; to just outline what’s bad without also trying to give a vision of the good, some glimpsed utopia to shoot for. For the benefit of these people here is an epilogue. Imagine it’s the future and the long nightmare of prehistory is over; history proper unfolds as the full expression of human powers unhindered by material subjugation. Some students are given an assignment by a professor to investigate the meaning of a term that no longer exists, the meaning of horror. Well, the students do their best: they watch lots of old movies, put on rubber masks, comb through old fragments of the world that was. They’re enjoying themselves and that enjoyment warps the process, they keep drifting into pleasure, unsure what’s meant to be funny and what’s not. They get lost, get confused, lose the thread, famous faces appear under the wrong names, espousing things that are the opposite of whatever they believed. In the end they all have to admit defeat: they hand in their assignment with a note saying that in the new world, we can’t even imagine what horror may have been. The professor reads their findings, nods, and gives them all an F. No moral.

[image source: James Ensor, "The Intrigue"]

[willothewispwisteriadawn]

I’m going to be real. Is there anyone who actually doesn’t realize that The Secret History is criticizing the romanticizing of things? I periodically see posts like “So many people misread this book and don’t get that it’s really saying we shouldn’t romanticize—” Like come on, people get it. But the book has some intentionally pretty, vivid imagery. And the author clearly enjoys classics. And its very possible to be in awe of the style this book has without being oblivious to the message.

Besides, I think it’s a jump to say this novel is saying “academia bad.” It’s not the classics that are bad. What’s bad is trying to view what you love without any regard for morality so that you can bury yourself in it. I think knowledge and ambition and wanting to look nice are good things. And it’s very obvious to me that suit-wearing, classics-studying author Donna Tartt thinks so too. Beauty is a good thing. It’s pretentiousness, elitism, cultishness, and “the picturesque at all costs” which are bad.

[masoenart]

Art Post for: "In My Time of Need" for @jld71

Dean Winchester Big Bang Art Post

Full set of imagery is too spicy (that claim pose ... ) for the Tumblr world but here's a sneak peek at the art the wonderful and amazing fic that follows Alpha Sam and Omega Dean on a case in a picturesque town in the Pacific Northwest.

Plenty of Dean whump, so much pining, a protective Sam and all-in-all an absolute sandbox of a fic to play in as an artist.

This is the first fic that I claimed as an artist EVER during a Big Bang event, though it is not the first posted. I adored visualizing some select story elements for @jld71 and the magnificent tale she spun. Summary: After working a case in the idyllic seaside city of Port Townsend, Sam and Dean have a fight. Angry, Dean leaves, needing to drive and maybe stop at a bar where what he thought playing a harmless game of pool leads to a fight that leaves him bruised and broken. Waking in the hospital with Sam by his side, his memory is affected, leading him to mistakenly believe that he and Sam are mated.

Link to Art: AO3

Link to Fic: AO3

[fracturedporcelaindoll]

Beautiful~

Edith Wharton, The Custom of The Country

[pmamtraveller]

FAUN /1923/ by CARLOS SCHWABE

The central figure of the painting represents a mythological creature from Roman mythology associated with nature, fertility, and wildness. Fauns are half-human, half-goat creatures, which are central figures of an arguably strong connection between humanity and the natural world.

The faun, with its goat legs and human torso, embodies a dualistic nature—part earthly and part divine. Such symbolism is picturesque of a harmonious relation between humanity and the natural world, reflecting Schwabe's reverence for nature.

The color palette in "Faun" typically features muted tones and soft contrasts, which are characteristic of Schwabe's style. Such a choice highlights the more ethereal and mystical atmosphere in the painting.

Schwabe was influenced by the Symbolist movement's focus on depicting inner realities, dreams, and spiritual truths rather than outward appearances. In that respect, "Faun" reflects these themes through its mythological subject and symbolic imagery.

[brokenmachinemusings]

actually, i’m putting this in a separate post since people usually don’t see my reblogs, but whoever animated train trial’s typography knew what they were doing. props to you. every character has their unique animation while drawing parallels between some of them.

li tianchen, our first character, has tje most out of them, namely 3 (which i noticed at least). qiao ling also has 3, but i left the li tianxi ‘reference’ in my other post which talked about observations.

li tianchen’s are as follows: something like twin stars (alongside a third smaller star towards the side), the first one being framed as in a photograph and the second one simply around the text. maybe worth noting the stars are four-sided and they are hollowed out. accurately representing the li twins, if you ask me. the other one is just another four-sided star, and a constellation around li tianchen. the constellation, again, has four-sided stars, which is quite interesting.

liu xiao has two, but i chose to show one. the other one is a heartbeat monitor which is behind the text, i’m not sure if it counted. a lot of the mv revolves around cutting and dicing like you’re playing fruit ninja, but liu xiao also has a lot of puppet imagery; in his lyrics, too, and he literally holds a wooden puppet at some point. (also, rewatched and the strings are ALL OVER his part, theyre very obviously puppet strings.) either way, the one i show is like a classy, old-timey architecture which i’ve had to clrd way too much of that i’d rather not. (also, is it just me, or does liu xiao’s look a lot like a butterfly?)

qiao ling also has three, but again, i’m showing two. mainly, i don’t feel like making a reblog. you can see the li tianxi one here. as for the ones i screenshotted, it’s a roundish cube, and some more cutesy framing, contrasting liu xiao’s elegant one which is slightly sharper, as opposed to qiao ling’s round imagery.

cheng xiaoshi’s is more brash and stable. two five sided stars at either ends, as well as a lot of cubes and angles for framing. the second one actually looks a lot like either a print with guidelines, or even a photo, or multiple square photos with different dimensions, different type of film. a lot of his animation actually revolves around him diving… well, quite obviously. makes sense why he’s a star and why he has a picturesque framing, mirroring qiao ling’s round one a little.

lu guang actually doesn’t have any specific ones, but he does have two, if you can call the second one a specific one. this one however… diamond shaped stars with a constellation like look. where did i see this one before, hmm. scroll up for your answer. this further solidifies the parallels between lu guang and li tianchen, i think. though, if we circle back, li tianchen’s is double-looped, which often represents “lies”, “two-facedness”, or other similar things. but also, lu guang’s is quite sectioned. or maybe the animator was rushing to get through the last part, or didn’t get enough assets to animate with. if you’re curious, the “other one” is quite literally three dots above the lyrics. groundbreaking, i know.

either way, i hope the animator for train trial got a raise. for the most part, they had ONE artwork to work with and still managed to keep it insanely interesting and engaging while giving colour and personality to all the characters, things that are uniquely them. quite amazing.

[optiwashere]

Welp, here it is. The epilogue for my modern/band AU is done, and it's extremely bittersweet to see it posted. I'll leave you to see what the tone of the epilogue is, though.

Does Shadowheart get a picturesque ending? Is she living in a happily-ever-after with Ash? Are there pets involved?

Anyways, this fic was a ton of fun to write! It's still wild to me that so many people jumped along for an AU that I randomly mused about over coffee on a random morning last year. I go into some more details about kinda "behind the scenes" stuff in the end note if you're curious. Thanks for reading 💜

Rating: E for a few smut scenes

Ship: Shadowheart/Trans Fem Tav

Tags and AO3 Summary under the break.

Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Band AU, POV Alternating, Romance, Angst, Strangers to Lovers, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Religious Cults, Abusive Relationships, past abusive relationships, implied/referenced past prostitution, Dissociation, Trans Female Character, Smut, in which a traumatized guitarist finds love in a small town, and searches for her cottagecore fantasy

Summary:

Shadowheart, the guitarist for a small-time metal band on tour, nearly crashes her band's van into an auto body shop in a podunk called Rivington. That's the least of her worries. Every day on the road revolves around the devolving relationship with her ex, the Avatar of her religion and the frontwoman of the band. Everything is Shar, and Shadowheart knows no escape nor if she deserves one. At least until Ash, the head mechanic of that dinky garage, questions everything Shadowheart's ever known, digging into her life until they both bleed.

[fracturedporcelaindoll]

Beautiful~