#something about the pupil shape and the color gradient looks really pretty

[hydrachea]

His eyes are so pretty.

[lindwyrmrelinquished]

So....what are some of your headcanons for Ranbutler?

OHHHHHHHHHH BUDDY, YOU ARE OPENING YOURSELF TO A WHOLE NEW CAN'O'BEANS HERE

OKAY SO FIRST OF ALL-

(everything else under the cut because there is a L O T )

Butler's human form is predominant(which unfortunately means he does not have a tail :(), but he can make Ender noises/speak Galactic. He's got a bunch of stims and tics, and making the Ender noises is one of them! He often makes them to fill the silence, or in times of high emotion(positive or negative. just imagine a Butler bouncing on his toes while excited Ender chirps keep coming out of his mouth, or he's rambling about something and half of it is layered with Galactic). Following from that, Butler has something that Billiam calls the "monochrome form". If he's under high levels of stress, whatever dark tint of color is in his right side will start spiking into the left side, making his skin darker(and, if he has enough color in his skin from NOT FUCKING OVERWORKING HIMSELF, it can get dark enough to blend into shadows) and spreading from the little black scales on his neck and cheeks and hands(which are already claws, that's why he wears gloves), and if he's really stressed/pissed, little horns are gonna start poking out of his skull and he's gonna be completely gray/black, his teeth are already deadly but they're gonna get sharper and if you look him in the eyes he will s c r e a m and very likely tear you apart if Billiam isn't there to hold him back/calm him down.

Speaking of! Butler very much dislikes eye contact. It makes them extremely uncomfortable and the Ender part is gonna start screaming to attack attack attack and the pupil-slit thing is gonna happen. Unfortunately, he's frozen by the eye contact and cannot move of his own free will, it's all going to be instinct to either get away or attack, if he moves at all. And the moment the eye contact is broken, he starts to calm down and all the screaming in his head starts to dissipate, so he doesn't really get the chance to consciously act on the Ender side's instinct.

NEXT OF ALL, throwing canon out the window and saying BILLIAM AND BUTLER ARE FOUND-FAMILY. The way they acted in the episode is just that, an act. In reality, they actually Care each other Very Very Much and have adopted each other into their respective hybrid groups(i.e Endermen have their hauntings, Piglins have their sounders{that part's not canon to mc but i yoinked it from a fic}). Hubert jokes about how Billiam accidentally adopted Bu as his son, but both Bu and Bi deny this. Hubert also got Liaria and James in on the joke and now these two are being constantly triple-teamed.

ON THAT NOTE Liaria and James know about the Egg. It happened at the tail end of Bu's first masquerade when they started accusing Billiam of committing all the murders, and Bu kind of panicked and outed himself as the killer, he pulled out the knife and everything. Billiam admitted that he knew about this, and showed them the Egg as explanation. Now Liaria and James willingly give up their bought lives to the Egg on the regular(we might get into the lives thing later{it was also something i yoinked from a fic, and then I gave it more explanation}) to keep Billiam and his family alive, but they're not all that affected by it due to not even being near it half the time.

AND ON THAT NOTE, let's talk about Butler's relationship with the Egg! Bad. It's bad. Absolutely terrible, the two despise each other immensely. I like to say they're the closest thing to caliginous that a teenaged hybrid that lived off spite and an ancient crimson demon can be. The Egg's hurt Bu a lot, and honestly that's part of the reason his contempt and fear for it is so high. But that's also part of the reason why Billiam was pulled out of its influence despite living right above it. Because he cares for Bu, a literal child that's suffered severe mental and physical trauma at the hands(well, vines) of the Egg. Honestly? Billiam wouldn't be the way he is now if he didn't have to take trips to the Nether. Short explanation, too much time away from their home realm gets hybrids really really sick. So, about a few months or so after Bu arrived, he had to yeet back there for a week and just told Butler and Hubert to take care of the mansion. And you know what Hubert did, that bitch? He took advantage of both Billiam's absence and Butler's skill and pampered himself while throwing the entire load onto the child. And then like halfway through the week, he got the idea to introduce said child to the Egg, who before then has had no idea it ever existed aside from the crimson red aura around the mansion(it's a whole thing about Endermen and magic but again, another thing I might get into later). He hadn't even attended a party before then. So, yeah, Hubert just left him down in one of the old cells for three days. Didn't even check on him, that bitch. And then when Billiam game back, suffice to say he was PISSED. He may be a rich bastard who causes murders biweekly, but even he has standards, and hurting a damn 7-8 year old child that bad was not one of them. he can't be held responsible for child labor, bu followed him home by his own choice. again, another whole backstory thing

Bu's genderfluid! He usually switches between he/him and they/them, and the direction he nods is a little indicator of which one(up for gender, down for no), but sometimes he uses she/her. Adding on that, due to Weird Enderman Genetics, he can manipulate his hair to grow real fast and likes to experiment with it in the mornings for Maximum Gender Euphoria This means that one day his hair could be barely touching his neck, and the next it's all the way down to his waist. It's a fun little anomaly and sometimes Billiam likes to play with it when it gets longer :3 travelling on the lgbt train, Bu is also ace/aro! This doesn't have much impact story-wise(usually), but it's just a fun little tidbit :3 On other, more Ender notes, he has pretty much all the traits an Enderman does, even if he looks fully human aside from being 6 inches taller than Sir Billiam himself. With the eye-contact thing, I've got a headcanon that Endermen can kind of read minds to an extent if they look into another entity's eyes, but it gets loud and borderline painful if anything but another Enderman does the same. Meanwhile, Bu's about the perfect mix of an Enderman and a Human(later called Players and Villagers depending on their capabilities) to be able to take at least a few seconds of eye contact. He can also teleport! To about the same extent as Endermen, if not a little less. Unfortunately, spending too much time in the void between teleportations(i.e a few hours for him, though an hour in the void is a minute in reality. It's why teleporting happens in the blink of an eye to anyone but the user) has some adverse effects. Bu's either glitched, gotten some sort of void-sickness like a flu but worse, and/or lost large chunks of memory each of the separate times he stuck himself in there for too long. Pure-blooded Endermen have a longer tolerance, but even they can succumb to the void with enough time.

Bu's also hurt by water, and the first time Billiam really figured this out is when he dragged him to the roof because it was raining and for some reason, Bi really likes the rain. Bu, on the other hand, was hospitalized for a day once Billiam actually realized, "oh, he's burning" Unfortunately, Bu can still produce tears, so he's got some scars on his cheeks and hands from those, Luckily, though! Billiam got him some gloves and a facemask reminiscent of cc!Ranboo to hide those scars because bu's. really self-conscious about them :,D

But also he's got TOE BEANS,

[ahem] So Endermen are basically giant block-holding teleporting cats and no one can convince me very much otherwise. So on the one hand, they have giant hands shaped for holding blocks. On the other hand, T O E B E A N S

So Bu's got beans on the pads of his fingers and feet(which also end in claws with a black gradient because Peak Character Design <3). Billiam likes to hold his hands on the rare occasion he doesn't wear his gloves because mans likes to stim with those toe beans. Meanwhile Billiam himself has nicely-textured hands because of his Piglin hooves and Bu also likes to stim with them, so just. them holding each others hands for mutual stimmage

[ahem] anyway

Bu stims!! He flaps his hands and does thing really rapidly and harshly when he's really high-strung, which doesn't happen often, at least in front of people. Boy's got anxiety so he's had his fair share of panic attacks :,D he just knows how to disguise them so people don't see, but Billiam knows the signs at this point. But he also has a lot of vocal stims/tics, mainly lots of Enderman noises, some popping and a little screechy thing here and there. Sometimes he picks up a sound and then repeats it a whole bunch because it feels nice on the tongue :] there's also these poofs of particles that happen when he's happy, they look like mini purple fireworks and they're like an expulsion of magic, he can feel when they happen and it feels nice :]

(cw for self-harm in this paragraph and the followed copy-pasted convo)

[ahemhemhem] So y'know how Butler's an Ender-hybrid? His hands and feet reflect that(along with the ears, the eyes, the height, the abilities, but we're talking about about the hands here). Part of why he keeps those gloves on almost 24/7 is to dull his claws, which are not so much an intentional danger to others rather than an unintentional danger to himself. He's got tics and stims and is very neurodivergent and has anxiety(me projecting? noooo /hj), so he gets very nervous very easily. And one of his nervous habits rather than wringing his hands, fidgeting, and (if really bad)a heightened amount of tics, he tends to scratch at his arms. His claws can tear through the fabric easily, and more than one or two suits have been sent back to the tailors for repairs to the sleeves. However, having both padded sleeves and padded gloves nullifies that, so he always wears them special-made. If he didn't have that habit, he likely wouldn't have the gloves on as often as he does.

Friend Hey good headcanons 👀👀👀👀👀👀👀 Also ohhhh my god Billiam fussing over him and his gloves until he gets them to be the right amount of padded where Bu can still do things but also not hurt himself

Me gbfhdgbhgsfhbgsfdhdf He keeps examining them every time the tailors try but it doesn't feel right until That Specific Try so he just plops the gloves back on the counter and says "Do it again"

Friend They spend an entire day doing nothing but making gloves while Billiam & Hubert take turns watching Butler to make sure he stays safe

Me Absolutely Problem is Butler can feel eyes on him. And eyes make him nervous :,) so when he gets nervous. he starts to scratch at his arms again and anxiety is too much for him to ask them to stop watching him

Friend It ends up with them just having to hold his hands, looking at random things (they can go sit on the balcony or something so they have something pretty to look at)

Me That hold on actually that's adorable-

Friend Fhhdjdjdjsjsj they're friends your honor

Me Absolutely Even Hubert contributes to keeping him safe. And Hubert's afraid of even being near Butler

Friend And then we get bonding via the oh no Billiam is busy and Hubert has to take care of Bu for the next 3 hours

Me GHDSFGSHFGS THAT IS A GREAT IDEA Butler insists he can do everything himself, nothing's different about the routine, and then he has a mental breakdown when he tries to make food without anyone else in the kitchen- Cause usually Hubert's there, even if he's making something else. There's at least another presence, and that's the sort of thing that's calming for Bu. But Hubert's off setting up the table for lunch/dinner or something and Butler makes One minor slip-up and spirals from there until he's struggling even handling spice mixing The same thing happened with cookies one time, and both times Hubert found him borderline unable to function because he panicked too much and helped him out of it.

Friend Butler is just curled up in the kitchen, trying to have a quiet panic attack because he can't cause the others any more trouble than he already is, and Hubert is very quietly upset about helping him because he was doing so good at avoiding Bu but here he is again being the only thing that's letting this kid breathe

Me Absolutely

Friend Do you think Bu passes out on him? Like Hubert (probably reluctantly) gives Butler a hug cause those help, and Bu was just supposed to stay there until he felt better, but panic attacks are exhausting and he fell asleep at some point-

Me Oh my gods he would though, especially with the amount of sleep he gets He'd have to try so hard to even stay conscious, much less do things in the manner he usually does, and Hubert just quietly tells him that it's okay to sleep; he'll take care of everything. Hu never forgets that of course Bu's always in danger around him - he has fleeting thoughts and quite often knows how to act on them - but he stands up holding an exhausted child and takes him to his room so he can rest. Butler may want him to stay; Endermen usually want someone around when sleeping. It's the security of having someone watch for nightmares, but Hubert doesn't stay. He has to go back to the kitchen and finish that meal Bu was making. But if he's still asleep by the time Hu's done with everything, he might linger outside his door, listening in for anything bad.

(Okay the cw is over now, you may now go back to your regularly scheduled content :,D)

Also, one last thing: Billiam gives Butler a bunch of gold things(including the masquerade mask) because that's what Piglins do with their sounders, they cover them in gold to show they care. And after Bu finding out the reason why Billiam's been handing off a bunch of gold things to him he does not cry, because that would hurt his face, but he does feel quite a lot of things that make him want to because holy shit Billiam feels the same

Butler is Billiam's sounder and Billiam is Butler's haunting, they are family your honor

[collisiondiscourse]

my art process: a simple(ish) guide to how i (kinda) do things

okay!! so, i said i was gonna post my art process after i finished doing the danny phantom piece so... here it is! the drawing i used for a step by step process explanation is actually... simpler? less clunky than how i usually do things. i must preface this entire post by saying that i am fully self-taught for anything to do with art so if there are some things here that are exceeding no-nos... very sorry OOPS

The drawing took an estimated 4 hours total and for software I used FireAlpaca. My tablet is One by Wacom (aka the tiny ass red one). Without further ado... here’s my narrated guide on how i kind of do art!

1. Sketch Layers

sketches, are ofc, one of the fundamental steps in art. Some artists do them differently, whether they do color blocking/splotches first or silhouettes or your standard messy-lineart-before-the-actual-lineart

i personally do 2-3 different lineart/sketch layers, each layer specializing in different aspects. i took this technique from julia lepetit, a host from the drawfee show--a channel that i really recommend watching if youre an artist, like art, or just generally like having fun background noise while you work on something because... untreated adhd lol

this is the first sketch layer! i color coded them for reference and i use the yellow sketch layer to figure out poses. i use this gesture sketch layer to figure out where i want limbs to go and how i want the body to twist.

after i figure out the posing, i move on to my second sketch layer. the green layer is my refined sketch layer where i figure out the form and anatomy of the sketch. this is also where i start planning how expressions, special costume bits, and hands work!!

the red layer is my last and final sketch layer. technically, the red layer sometimes also doubles as my final lineart! the reason why i do this final step instead of doing the final lineart simply is so i can work on details of the costume. i end up refining certain portions, or even stretching/free transforming the whole body. 

The red helps with the refinement of the drawing bc the ink being a color that isnt black kinda,,,, tricks my brain into not believing that its all permanent. its easier for me to go back and erase/change some parts when my brain doesnt think that everythings final. when im finished, i simply go back and change the color of the lineart to black with the protect alpha function.

this is how the final lineart looks! be sure to close the lineart (aka make sure that everythings connected) so that the bucket tool can work and make your life 2000% easier. 

2. Coloring

my coloring process is kind of... a mess LMAO its super dependent on how i feel like coloring on that day, but this is the usual method i use when im not thinking too much about it.

first are the flats! i use the magic wand tool to select all the areas around the lineart and reverse the selection so that all the areas inside your lineart is selected. color it with a base color, turn on protect alpha, and begin chunking in all the colors.

all of the flats excluding the pupils, background, ectoplasm rings, and danny phantom logo are on one layer. once that is done, we move on to shading!

for shading, i use a combination of the normal pen tool and the airbrush tool to smooth out the edges of the cell shading. since all the flats are on one layer, i simply set this one to clipping mask so that i dont have to worry about coloring within the lines. I only use one color really for shading (here, i used purple) and then protect alpha and add splotches of other colors (pink, orange) in relevant areas.

once i finish doing that, i set the layer to multiply and adjust the opacity so that it looks softer and more attuned to the colors of the actual piece

its at this point that i fiddle with the hue/saturation/brightness settings on the flat color layers to my taste, seeing what works and what doesnt.

i then lightly go over the piece with a bright color (very very very light cyan) and put focus on the areas i think should glow like his freckles, eyes, and ectoplasm rings from where he’s coming out of a wall.

i rlly rlly love layer effects, so i set that one to add and again adjust the opacity to how i want it to look. 

3. Finishing Touches

...yeah i know it looks like a hot mess but hear me out.

on a new layer, make a CRAP TON OF GEOMETRIC SHAPES. ALL OF THEM IN NEON OR PASTEL. i get comments about my coloring methods sometimes and honestly im pretty sure its all due to this step. i make all these goddamn weird shapes, colored according to levels of lighting (yellow in lighter areas, turquoise in areas affected by the glow, purple in shaded areas etc. etc.) and also clip this layer. 

i then set the layer effect to either hue, overlay, or add and set its opacity really low to make it unobvious and cleaner to look at. this is a method that i learned from tumblr user zephyrine-gale who is... exceedingly talented and pulls this off way better than i can WKSDJSKKS

after that... ur basically done!! i add a few more layers like the noise layer for extra texture and sometimes some very light gradients (usually yellow to purple bc of something something color theory)--but after that, the piece is basically finished!

thanks for sticking around and reading this monstrous thing!! i might do more posts like this in the future, so who knows?

if you enjoyed this tutorial, want to support me and my art, or just wish for a way to pay for me to shut up... you can tip me 3 dollars or commission me here at ko-fi

(also reblogs are much appreciated. thanks <3)

[kingbennyboyyy]

benny’s rwby rewrite: team RWBY redesigns

hello again! in honor of me actually getting some schoolwork done and subsequently having the time to rewatch the first volume of rwby for writing purposes, i thought i’d get out of the way some design notes that have been living in my head for the main girls. with how important colors and motif are in rwby as a whole, i thought that a little more care could be taken. i’ll go into the volume 1 designs most of all, and outline any consistent changes within the character’s notes. i’ll also go into why i’m changing what i’m changing.

with that, my thoughts as always will be under the cut!

ruby rose:

we’re starting strong with ruby’s design, and god do i have some strong opinions about this girl. let it be known that i actually like ruby’s clothing design: i think i’ve mentioned that i think the contrast of a fluffy petticoat and platform boots with a giant scythe and killing monsters is really interesting. that being said, there’s some fucked up geneology happening in the rose-xiao long family.

a big issue i have with ruby and her family members is the fact that despite the fact that yang and ruby are related through taiyang, neither of them have inherited his skintone. you’d think that with how literally their phenotypes are taken, that ruby wouldn’t be white as snow. with how low-contrast ruby’s design is as a whole, i think that her having darker skin would be welcome. adding the bonus of holy shit, a dark-skinned mixed girl is the protagonist makes me really biased toward this. complexion-wise, she should be somewhere between summer and taiyang, but still visibly darker than someone like weiss.

her hair being naturally black and red is perfectly okay for me. i think that it looks nice, and there’s a lot she can do with it. i can’t really complain about it being in her eyes after gushing over her combat cupcake skirt.

what i can complain about is her lack of pockets. like, she only has one little pouch to carry god knows what in. is she really expecting to be able to carry all of her ammunition in that one little pouch? god no. swap out the pouch for some kind of bag, or better yet, a bandolier of some kind to serve the same asymmetrical purpose that dingy little pocket does.  

finally, her eyes. in my ideal world, i would have done something a bit more dramatic to set ruby’s white eyes apart from, say, neo’s grey eyes. maybe making her pupils lighter than black, grey, or even just white. the animators made blake’s pupils smaller to set her apart, why not give ruby’s eyes a little something-something? also, with the contrasting color of her design being either a silver or a white, having her silver eyes be one of the lightest elements of her design is really aesthetically pleasing to me.

weiss schnee:

i’m going to be completely real here, i like weiss’ original design a lot. they really leaned into the weiss part of her: the girl’s white. she’s white as fuck. her dress is white, her little bolero is white, her shoes are white, it’s all white, with just a touch of icy pastel blue to make her feel more cold than sterile. i love it. i’m also a big fan of the other, brighter colors in her design, but i think the introduction of red should have waited a bit longer.

in her introductory outfit, the inside of her bell-sleeved bolero is this blinding, fully-saturated red that is really distracting to the eye. i’d replace this with a blue, sort of like the color of her eyes, and do the same with that little doily piece at the dip in her neckline. i also think that she should have been kept much more symmetrical, the most symmetrical of any of the cast. move that side pony to the center back of her head, put one of those little pouches on each hip, and have her stow her weapon across her back.

also, this isn’t even necessarily a problem, but i think weiss would have benefited from a much more conservative shoe. knowing the schnee family, i don’t they would have found it appropriate for an heiress to be running around in platform heels. i think that pointe shoes, or something familiar, would be really interesting, especially in conjunction with her ballerina aesthetic. her scar can definitely stay as it is; i think it’s both subtle enough to break her symmetry nicely, but also symbolically strong.

also, of all of the characters to give a dramatic haircut, it should have been fucking weiss. i’m all for bi bob blake, but imagine the dramatic potential of weiss just chopping straight through that shit to declare herself independent from her shitdick father. also, i think her hair should be naturally brown, like jacques’ is. the narravite element of her having to tirelessly keep up appearances is really good to me.

blake belladonna:

blake lives in a weird space for me. on the one hand, i would love for her to have dark skin as well, to sort of even the scale in terms of complexion. however, having a dark-skinned woman with literal animal ears being kind of problematic isn’t lost on me. in my opinion, the issue lies in blake being uniquely dark-skinned: in conjunction with ruby and yang, i think that her being dark-skinned is a little less uncomfortable. i think it would also remedy the problem of most of the dark-skinned characters in rwby being either dead or evil, so we’ll make her a bit tan.

with that out of the way, i also really like blake’s design, but she could certainly use some work. she, like many of the other team members, are pretty low-contrast save for the white tube-top thing she had going on. i think the white in her design should be toned down, either to a grey or a purple color. i also think that her arm situation needs to either be long gloves or wrapped-up straps, not both. that motif isn’t anywhere else in her design, and most of the lines are clean and smooth, not all jaggedy like the straps are. keep those bracelets on her upper arms, and make those gloves of hers marksman’s gloves. 

i also think that she should wear thigh-high boots. this isn’t just my bias showing; something about the way those boot cuffs cut off the line of her legs is just really irritating to me. have them attach to that swooping vest situation, this is anime, it doesn’t matter how she’d get into them logistically. also, that gradient situation on her is just terrible. having seen a lot of art of her without that gradient has converted me, her design is just so much more clean-looking without it, and blake really reads as someone who should have a much less complex design, opting for clean lines and nice shapes instead of the frills and textures someone like weiss has.

yang xiao long:

i’m gonna start with something i’ve already mentioned: yang should be brown. the fact that she not nary a fucking hair of melanin from her dad is a crime. ideal yang is brown, but so is her hair to start out. i had the idea of rather than her hair being naturally yellow, starting out brown and being bleached in streaks by the heat of her semblance, and as the show goes on, it gets more and more yellow, and eventually even platinum blonde.

with that out of the way, i do not like yang’s initial design. the puffed sleeves don’t make any sense with her as a character, that weird train situation she has on her belt is an affront to god, and why is she just wearing spats? i think that of all of the people to tear, or hell, burn the sleeves clean off of her jacket, it’d be yang. yang is a fuck sleeves kind of girl. she’s a “i flexed the sleeves clean off of my shit” kind of girl. also, she’s gonna wear a tube top and hot pants, but she’s gonna button up her jacket? fucking what? unbutton that shit. she’s a lesbian vest kinda girl. she can keep her little scarf, and her tube top is a look, so it can stay.

i actually really like yang’s boots. i think they compliment her really nicely, and she’s enough of a brute fighting style-wise to warrant those chunky monsters. the mismatched socks and little scarf are cute touches too, but i think the scarf should start out red. the purple can come in later. addressing the spats (bike shorts? spanx?) situation, there’s a very simple solution: give yang jorts. not even a fucking joke, give the woman jorts. look me in the eye and tell me that yang “t-shirt as a bandana” xiao long would not wear jorts. you can’t. it’s impossible. she would wear neon yellow jorts with that ungodly belt situation and i will not compromise this. the overalls she wears in atlas? also jorts. mistral? black, sure, but fucking jorts nonetheless. jort xiao long will outlive me, so help me god.

... i got a bit carried away there, but i hope you enjoyed my thoughts! i may at some point get around to actually drawing these redesigns, so keep an eye out for that in future!

[squidnids]

Not sure if anyone's asked this, but what are your headcanons for inktolings? Anything special about them for the most part? Also your art is good!

Ah, inktolings, gotta love em! My favorite thing is seeing how everyone goes about designing them. I’ll admit, my inktoling OC, Saffron, was sort of just thrown together as a Miiverse request way back when, and at the time I hadn’t put much thought into her design as an inktoling or how it would affect her life, outside of “her genes are kind of weird so her Kraken form would look really wild”

As for headcanons, I mostly keep them pretty loose. Much like how kids can sometimes resemble one parent more than the other, an inktoling can express more of one species in their appearance. You can get all kinds of different combinations of inkling/octoling traits between individuals. From what I understand, it’s something like:

Inklings

-Full eye mask

-Six tentacles on head (though with creative design this can fluctuate anyway, it’s not a hard and fast rule by any means)

-Suction cups on the bottom of the tents

-Sometimes, individuals will have + shaped pupils (might just be contacts. Pupil shapes are not consistent in these games)

-Three points in the beak (again not consistent but hey)

Octolings

-No bridge in the eye mask, but markings around the eyes tend to be pointed

-Four tentacles on head

-Suction cups on the top of the tents

-Two points on the beak

-those ∞ shaped pupils

-ink colored gradient on their fingers

-fingers are often pointed

So really, an inktoling can grab from/mix around a lot of these traits, and it can vary a lot between individuals. So there’s no one single way that an inktoling will look! You might have some that mostly pass off as octolings, or some that just look like inklings. It all depends on what traits they get from their parents! For example, Saffron mostly takes after her mother, Clove.

And with how bizarre their genetic makeup can sometimes be, some inktolings likely end up infertile in some way. Not all of them, but who knows really 🤔 I also headcanon that octolings have these bundles of neurons in each of their tentacles that serve as simple secondary “brains”, that would also be in the genetic grab bag for inktoling characteristics i think. Along with the headcanon that octolings are able to make their tentacles appear as one color, while their actual internal ink is a different color (think of how the octolings often shoot purple ink at you, but their tentacles appear red). Saffron inherited this ability to a certain extent, but she doesn’t know how to control it, and the bottom half of her tentacles are always light blue because of it (no matter what color she shifts to for turf or ranked, the bottom will stay that blue).

Also I know I don’t show it often but Saffron’s suction cups are present underneath! I had this thing in splat 1 where I hated drawing suction cups so they’re not very prominent in her design : (

(And the purple eye masks are sort of a callback to the splat 1 days, when people were data mining the game and those pictures of maskless octolings showed that they had purple eye markings. This has since been shown to not be commonplace but a lot of my splat 1 ocs have this)

So this was a little rambly, but hopefully some of it made a little sense. I’ve always thought inktolings to be neat, and I like to see them!

[candywrites-stories]

Strawberry Blonde

(Story by me, based off of the song Strawberry Blonde by Mitski)

"I love everybody because I love you." 

Sarah was in a good mood today. She said good morning to the bus driver, gave her florist some chocolates along with her payment, and tipped the lady who owned the farmer's shop a little extra for her food. 

"When you stood up, walked away barefoot," 

She checked that her blouse fit well and checked her skirt to make sure it was flowy enough. She couldn't stop thinking about the one she loved. 

"And the grass where you lay left a bed in your shape," 

Sarah walked to the field where two spots of grass were pressed down from being frequently sat on. 

"I looked over it and I ached." 

Sarah's heart was full of love and her head happiness. Walking through the town, she met Chrys. 

"I love everybody because I love you," 

The two walked through the town, saying good morning and in a generally cheery mood. 

"I don't need the city and I don't need proof." 

The two left the town and walked down the long path to the fields. 

"Oh, all I need, darling, is a life in your shape," 

Chrys looked at Sarah adoringly as she rambled about all the shops in the town and how they always have the best food, flowers, clothes, trinkets, everything! Sarah didn't notice the staring, and Chrys didn't notice how full of love and admiration the staring was. 

"I picture it, soft, and I ache." 

Sarah had a soft, petite figure and curly hair. Chrys had a larger build, but was still a little slim and was taller with straighter, slightly wavy hair. 

"Look at you strawberry blonde," 

The two sang a song while making their way to their spot in the fields. They talked about everything going on. Chrys had a birthday party to attend on Wednesday. Sarah asked who's birthday it was, and learned ti was Chrys's 6 (soon to be 7) year old cousin, Ty. He was a sweet boy who loved animals, so Chrys was getting him a chameleon as a present! They talked some more and Sarah made an announcement. She was finally confident enough to ask someone on a date! She couldn't wait, but she was anxious for the reply of her beloved. Chrys congratulated her and hoped it would go well, yet couldn't help but feel a little jealous. 

"Reach out the car window, trying to hold the wind" 

A gentle breeze blew by, and Chrys debated on whether or not to say something to Sarah. 

"You tell me you love her, I give you a grin." 

Chrys wanted to date someone, and told Sarah about this. She was very pretty, kind and sweet, and Chrys wanted to date her for a long time. There was only hope that she'd accept the offer. Sarah, upon learning this, smiled and wished Chrys luck with earning her heart, feeling a little jealous as well. 

"Oh, all I ever wanted was a life in your shape," 

Sarah had green eyes, Chrys was centrally hetero-chromatic, with blue on the edges of the irises and brown closer to the pupil. 

"So I follow the white lines, follow the white lines," 

The two looked ahead while walking through the fields, enjoying each other's company. 

"Keep my eyes on the road as I ache." 

The two longed for each other's love, not knowing the other already reciprocated their feelings. 

"Look at you, strawberry blonde," 

Sarah glanced at Chrys, hoping for tonight to go well. 

"Fields rolling on," The sun was setting on the field, slowly turning the hills into large silhouettes and the sky a brilliant gradient of warm colors. The two kept on talking, then Sarah told Chrys to follow her. The two stood up, then Sarah grabbed her picnic basket and started running. Chrys, surprised, ran and tried to catch up. 

"I love it when you call my name." 

"Sarah!" Chrys called. Sarah was running and running and didn't seem to be getting tired, but she stayed at a slow enough pace that Chrys could follow easily. The sun was setting and it was getting dark, and Chrys began to get concerned. That is, until Sarah took a slight right turn and ran through a field that immediately lit up with fireflies. With so many of them, there's no way it'd be too dark! 

"Can you hear the bumblebees swarm, watching your arm?" 

The two ran past some bees, but the bees paid more attention on getting back to the hive than they did the two larger beings running past. 

"I love it when you look my way." 

Sarah looked back to see that Chrys was still there, and flashed a smile before looking forward again so she could she where she was going. 

"Look at you, strawberry blonde~" 

Sarah stopped in a clearing encircled by trees, looking Chrys in the eyes. The two were blushing, but didn't realize it under the silver light of the moon and the faint glow of the fireflies. 

"Fields rolling on~" 

The clearing wasn't completely encircled, you could still see the fields stretch out a long distance. It was beautiful. A small circle of loosely planted birch trees with wooden benches, a flower garden, and a small stream flowing nearby. 

"I love it when you call my name~" 

"Chrys..." "Yes?" Chrys was still looking around, awestruck by the view of the stars, the fields, the trees, the stream, everything! 

"Can you hear the bumblebees swarm, watching your arm?" There was a hive in one of the trees on the far side of the clearing. The hive was emitting muffled buzzing from bees trying to settle down. 

"I love it when you look my way~" 

"I have something to tell you." Chrys finally stopped looking around and turned to face Sarah. The two made eye contact, Chrys getting lost in Sarah's almost honey-colored hazel eyes, Sarah gazing back into Chrys's dark, rich, pine green eyes. 

"I saw you," 

When Sarah first met Chrys, she didn't think much of the shy person with the pretty, soft, round ocean blue and pine bark brown eyes and the kind, quiet demeanor- ok, maybe she took a liking to Chrys right away. But she wasn't sure how to introduce herself. 

"I saw you," 

Sarah was actually surprised when Chrys came up to her one day. "Hi, I'm Chrys. Well, Chrys for short. I see you around a lot and wanted to introduce myself." 

"I saw you~" 

Chrys's hand was outstretched and Chrys was looking away slightly, nervous. Sarah gladly shook hands. 

"Glad to meet you, Chrys! My name is Sarah! I saw you a few days ago actually, but I didn't know how to introduce myself! 

"I saw you," 

As time went on, the two became best friends. Growing closer practically every day! Closer than they initially realized. 

“I saw you," 

And now, back to the present. "Chrys, I..." "What is it, Sarah?" "W-Will you date me? I've been in love with you for a while, a long time and I really, really, really, really love you. You can say no of course, it doesn't have to change what we have-" "YES!!" "Wh- really? Are you sure?" "How could I not be? I've loved you for months!" "B-but what about that girl you liked?" "That was you!" "Oh! Ahaha!"  

"I saw you~" 

The two laughed together, and shared a kiss. Short and sweet, but filled with love all the same. When they eventually decided to go home, Chrys let the way. And Sarah stared at the long, wavy hair her lover was named after. The strawberry blonde shade was the color of a Chrysanthemum. And Chrys was just as beautiful as her namesake. Sarah walked up next to Chrys and held her hand, and the girls kissed each other goodbye before heading to their homes.

[demethinkstoomuch]

Deme Rates Villagers: Cubs

It’s Bears, but Smaller!

(Why didn’t I lump Bears and Cubs the way I did Cows and Bulls? Because there are a fair number of them, I think.)

I have also realized that, rather than a numerical rating, an emoticon rating might be better. I may do numbers from time to time, and so likely will not go back for the others. There will not be a scale, but a broad expression of my feelings. Or a mimic of their faces. Or a comment. Sometimes.

Disclaimer: Images are from the wiki, all good dogs, my ratings are mainly just there because “Deme gives her abstract thoughts on villagers” is hardly a catchy thing.

Aisle

Another Animal Forest E+ exclusive, another villager that looks like they came out of a Rare game like Banjo-Kazooie or Conker’s Bad Fur Day, even though this one doesn’t feature any exact equivolents. On the whole, I think the high contrast between the blue fur and the tuft of blond hair is a bad look, but the big blue eyes being sort of heavy-lidded and dour’s kind of cute.

Rating: :|

Barold

Barold is great. Like, I don’t entirely know what they’re going for with him -- he vaguely suggests either Fred Flinstone or an IT guy in my head -- but I love it either way.  (Fred Flinstone: 5 o’ clock shadow, shirt. IT Guy: Eeyes have kind of a glasses shape, beard).  He’s oozing with character, albeit a strange character, and do I detect little white pawsies? I do!

Rating: B’|

Bluebear

She’s a bear! She’s blue! She’s got a little white and a little pink, which gives her a nicely over-all pastel look. I like the darker blue (Fire Emblem Lord Blue, perhaps?) hair on her. She is just cute.

Rating: :)

Cheri

Another colorful bear cub, this one, pink! I like her, she’s sassy. Nice eyebrows that pair with her eyes to give her an impression of moxie that’s still quite cute. Hair is spiky, which adds to that. She’s peppy, which means that by peppy standards, she’s pretty edgy, in a weird, pink little bear way. Either way, she’s rather cute.

Rating: :]

Chester

Man, what do the Animal Crossing devs have against just letting pandas be cute? Chow, Chester... They’re both just sort of weird in a way that I find, funnily enough, more unsettling or dull than charming. Long pupils are not friend-shaped; if they leaned into the creepy, like with a goat, that would be one thing, but it rather spoils Chester. The sad-looking mouth could be cute, but it’s a bit big for that. Almost there, Chester, but just not.

Rating: :(

Cupcake

So, Cupcake is kind of Cheri, but with a half-hearted snootification effort via heavy-lidded eyeshadow eyes. Meh.

Rating: :[ (Like Cheri, but worse.)

Judy

A New Horizons new villager, and Judy is sure an aesthetic! The pastel gradients, the enormous sparkly eyes with the big shojou lashes, she just screams that she belongs in a gothic lolita girl’s arms during a photoshoot. Get this bear a lace-up dress. She could be an extra Hello Kitty collab character or something. I’m not actually a huge fan of Judy, but I cannot possibly deny that she is wonderfully what she is, and so while the agressively UWU quality to her isn’t for me, but I can’t help but applaud it. Dedication! Also, I like the subtler blush. It works.

Rating:  (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

June

June is maaaybe my favorite cub, she’s just simple and pleasant-looking, without being a pastel screaming-fest, Her colorscheme and implied heavy fringe has a sort of... Like, it makes her big blue eyes and over-all cuteness read “girl next door,” sort of an ordinary, natural cute. And then you add the cute big hibiscus for a little pop that contrasts with her eyes. It’s just a real cute look. I’d probably, though, if I were to consider adopting her, check to make sure her eyes aren’t super weird when you look at them from other angles. It’s a bad fate to befall a villager.

Rating:  (◕‿◕✿) (Babe, hold my flower)

Kody

Hey, look, it’s one of my starter New Leaf villagers! Kody was the last of my first villagers to move out, too, sticking around for quite a while indeed. His departure left a hole that Clyde entered through via someone’s void, and I was not happy about that. As a result, I feel fonder of Kody than I would otherwise, since otherwise, he’s just, you know, a blue bear with a darker blue spot, like many animals that are just like that except not bears. It can be charming with the right face, but there’s nothing particularly noteworthy about his face. It’s just Kody. There he is. Old chum.

Rating:  ˅ u ˅ Ah, the memories...

Maple

Awwww, look at her! She’s just precious, very simple, with implied floofy bangs and bright little dot eyes. Even the pink sticker blush works better with her colors than I see in a lot of places. If June didn’t have her flowers, maybe I’d be here saying Maple’s my favorite. Maybe Maple is my favorite, I don’t know. She feels like angelfood cake, you, know? Light, pleasant, sweet...Though, admittedly, not especially flavorful.  She’s just cute as she is.

Rating:  ‘ ◕  w ◕ ‘

Marty

Ah, a Sanrio villager! ...Not one of the cuter ones, really. Looks sort of like a honey jar bear to me, which is, I suppose, something. His eyebrows have an unassuming quality, like he’s just a normal guy.

Rating: Normal Guy / Guys

Murphy

Remember everything I said about Kody? Yeah, still true about Murphy. His coloring is just sort of “spotted bear,” now in green. But! He does have big square eyebrows and big square eyes, which give him a bit of extra character, reliably and kinda sleepy. A good face.

Rating = w = (A good thing, I promise.)

Olive

Olive is a villager I’ve heard compared to Maple a lot -- it’s the shirt, I suppose, but really, more than that. Her color scheme is also pretty naturalistic and grounded, she has a cute bang outline. She doesn’t push the cute as hard, but that might make her more comfortable, less out-and-out cutesy to folks. That said, her eyes just have that quality I found with the birds, where something about them, paired with the surprised eyebrows, that feels kinda blank, like they reveal nothing. Staring. These eyes have seen too much. But she’s still pretty cute, won’t lie.

Rating: O-O

Pekoe

Aww, isn’t she cute? This screenshot makes her look more cream-colored than I’m used to thinking of her as, a dramatic bonus to her over-all level of adorable. Pekoe’s use of ears to suggest little covered hair-buns is pretty flavorful; it makes me wonder if they almost wanted to make a cute, very on-theme panda, and then decided “No, let’s just make her a white bear, good enough.”  Still, her face is cute, too, with a distinct set of eyes carrying through the same sort of design sensibilities as her hair and ears/buns, intensely stylized. It’s a nice look.

Rating: :)

Poko

What is with the shape of his head? You all see that, right, where his head is a totally different, longer, shape? Why? What does it mean? Is it meant to be like a mask? If it were meant to be a long mask, that’d be cool. I don’t think it is? It’s a mystery that he would need another appearance to solve, and that’s not happening.

Rating: ? :/

Poncho

Poncho’s cute. He’s basically just blue Olive, though the bangs are less fwooshy. Still, I find him a bit cuter than Olive, because the oval eyes sort of soften the effect of round on round on round that looks strange and staring; this is a bit more cartoony and cute. That’s about it from me. Pretty cute.

Rating: 0 ˅ 0

Pudge

Oh, Pudge looks so sad and alone! I want to hug and protect him! I’ve checked other screenshots, that’s just how Pudge’s face is, and it’s so precious! I do not get the freen on the ears and tip of tail, though. I do not understand why this is a thing, and I cannot say I approve of it. It’s kind of a distracting negative among this otherwise adorable design of a baby I just want to protect!

Rating: (> ‘ . ’)> Come here and let me hug you!

Stitches

OK, so, maybe if it’s not June or Maple, maybe Stitches is best cub. Certainly, he’s the most thematically strong, with this adorable patchwork teddybear design! His eyes evoke a really cute version of his name, little stitches. Just adorable and aesthetically on-point and I’m really happy to see him. I could see him with a place on my island, if I only didn’t have too many villagers I could see with a place.

Rating :D or, alternatively, XwX just for him.

Tammy

Oh, it’s almost all the things I dislike in a villager design. Random colors without real cohesion or purpose, just “well, this is a colorful animal” that clash with other randomly-selected colors (orange blush, deep rose eyeshadow, pale pink inner ears, white muzzle/paws, brown bangs) with eyeshadowed eyes to say “Hey this is a snooty” without going all-in for glamor-comedy? I think we’ve hit bingo. Funnily enough, I think this might be my least-favorite cub.

Rating: :(

Vladimir

Vladimir is ugly with dedication. Vladimir is ugly with a passion. Vladimir is ugly with soul and purpose. Buck teeth and that flatly furrowed, thin, no-brow-unibrow! Those awful bangs! Truly, Vladimir is an artist’s study in ugly-cute. I can’t say that it works to vaunt him into a villager I’d really love to have around, but I can profoundly respect him.

Rating:    ಠ ῳ ಠ

The cubs are good, in conclusion. A good mix of aesthetics, and at least 3 I rather like, which is a good number. Also, I got to whip out some Japanese emoticons, and isn’t that important?

[psychosistr]

quite wondering, what are the regenerations looks of the fearsome four during the events of the rp? [or uhm the crystal duck's regenerations?]just wondering

Well, I’ll leave Megavolt and Bushroot’s designs to you since you have them in the RP, but here’s what I came up with for the others below the cut.

I’ll start with the Crystal Ducks since they have the fewest changes-

Darkwing Duck: Drake starts off looking and sounding like his original Darkwing cartoon-self with the Jim Cummings voice and everything, with the only variations to his outfits being that his super-hero outfit has a pinkish-purple colored star on the back of his cape (the color for the star looks like the color on the under-side of his cape) and he tends to wear baseball caps and other hats with his regular clothes to hide his gemstone.

He’s a pretty durable amethyst, so it takes a lot for him to get poofed- like, he’d need to get hit head-on with a destabilization blast from Yellow Diamond or something. When he does finally get poofed, when he comes back he looks and sounds like his DT17 version, making him seem much younger than before and symbolizing the new start he has now after the truth about the war comes to light. The main changes to his super hero outfit would be that instead of having the star on his back like before, he’d have an outline of the Earth in a very dark purple that would only be noticeable in the right lighting to represent how his loyalty and purpose shifted from his previous allegiance to Rose and her army to the Earth- his new home that he protected from the shadows. He does still care about the Crystal Ducks, though, a fact that is shown by how the underside of his cape would now have a pattern of many small stars outlined all over the inside and would be visible whenever his cape was open.

Launchpad: Similar to Drake, Launchpad’s initial look would be like his original Ducktales/Darkwing Duck cartoon appearance and voice. The only real difference in this would be that his scarf has a golden star on each end and they’ll often overlap or fold over to form a single large star shape when the ends are close together. He had a few forms beforehand, but they were pretty similar since for the longest time he didn’t understand what was happening every time he got poofed and mostly just came back the exact same way he looked before. He got his current form after the first major plane crash he was in after joining the Crystal Ducks and, when he came back, he still didn’t have a full understanding of how changing his form worked, but he was able to figure it out just enough to add the stars to his scarf so he could show that he was on the same team as Darkwing and Gizmoduck.

His klutziness and tendency for crashing result in a few minor reformations throughout the series, but he’s usually pretty quick to come back since he doesn’t put much thought into changing his form. The first time he really decides to change his form, though, is after he comes to fully accept what happened on the Earth and learns to stop blaming himself for the war and how he was created. Wanting a fresh start and to show he now accepted and understood his past, the first major reformation he does in his life results in him looking and sounding like his DT17 version. The major differences this time are that he now shows off the star in a much grander way by having a big golden one on the back of his coat and, as a much smaller nod to how meeting Darkwing changed his life and opened his eyes to the truth about who and what he was, on the inner-brim of his brown chauffeur's hat (I like the way that looks over his baseball cap) there’s an outline of a small purple star that looks like the one Darkwing had on his previous cape- visible only to him most of the time.

Gizmoduck/Gyro & Fenton: Gyro and Fenton remain largely unchanged throughout the series, looking and sounding like their DT17 versions. Their main differences would be that, in the past before they joined the rebellion, their outfits were a lot more formal and neat- looking like black and white suits (Gyro got to have a lab coat with his) with white diamonds on the front to represent their diamond and her court. When they joined the rebellion, though, they got the much more casual and colorful outfits they wear now, with Gyro sporting a black star on the top of his hat and Fenton having a matching one on the middle of his shirt that would be divided if he ever unbuttoned it.

Gizmoduck’s changes in appearance are harder to see because he’s usually wearing his Gizmoduck armor to be ready for battle at any moment. His first appearance is like his original Ducktales/Darkwing Duck version, with the suit receiving a few upgrades over the course of the series and having a star beneath the red symbol on his chest. Without the suit, he looks very different with his head and torso sporting white feathers while his arms have brown ones and he wears Gyro’s glasses when he doesn’t have the suit’s helmet and visor accessible. He doesn’t put much thought into his outfits since he’s rarely without his suit, so most of the time he just walks around in a shirt like Fenton’s that’s only half-buttoned and a pair of pants that look like Gyro’s.

After being poofed and separated by Negaduck, Gizmoduck has his more modern DT17 style suit ready when he reforms- this time with a large golden metallic star on each shoulder in addition to the star beneath the red symbol on his chest. His body this time has Fenton’s brown feathers for the head and torso and Gyro’s white ones for the arms. He still wears Gyro’s glasses when he doesn’t have the visor on, but now he also has Fenton’s hair with a few streaks of white mixed in and the part on the front is like a smaller version of the distinctive swoop that Gyro’s hair has. This time around, he puts a little more thought into how he looks without the armor and has a more solid mix of Gyro and Fenton’s outfits- he wears Gyro’s shirt, vest, and pants, but the shirt is the same color as Fenton’s shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, the vest has one or two of the middle buttons done to keep it partially closed, and he wears Fenton’s purple tie.

Gosalyn: Not much to say about Gosalyn’s initial appearance as she mostly looks like her original cartoon version but with the addition of a star on her jersey instead of a number (the star is the same color as the one Darkwing originally has on his cape).

She does, however, go through a change after getting her gem ripped out by White Diamond. When she reconnects with her other half, it’s the closest thing she ever got to poofing, and, feeling for the first time in her life that she had control over her powers and who she was as a person, decided that she wanted to make a change and differentiate herself from her mother. She changed her appearance and now resembles her DT17 version, just with a small star-shaped hole torn over the stomach to expose her gem (which she shifts to stand up straight and have its true shape visible), and her jacket has a mutli-colored star on the back that resembles a color wheel but with fewer gradients and a white outline, symbolizing how she’s grown thanks to all of the gems in her life from her dad to Launchpad and Gizmoduck and even the Fearsome Four.

Okay, now for the Fearsome’s:

Liquidator: Initially, Liquidator is the very image of a perfect homeworld elite. His clothes (which are really just darker or lighter water that move and flow with his body) are a simple but elegant dark blue robe-like uniform with darker trim and a blue diamond insignia on the front to show his allegiance and loyalty to his diamond. His body is originally a lot tougher-looking with broader shoulders and a more stern face (think like the intimidating first look he had when he revealed himself to Darkwing in his debut episode). Similar to Darkwing, Liquidator is very hard to poof due to the nature of his body. To date, he’s only been poofed twice in the RP, with the first time not changing anything.

The second time he gets poofed, however, results in a drastic change to Liquidator’s appearance. Taking place after making the decision to stay on Earth with Bushroot and the rest of his friends, he feels like he’s finally free to relax and be himself rather than the rigid elite homeworld expected him to be. His physical appearance changes to the more relaxed and silly style we’re used to from the cartoons, with the exception of his ears being slightly scruffier and his right eye having two overlapping pupils with one being lighter blue and the other being darker blue (this happened after an exposure to corruption and is a permanent scar on his gem, but he honestly got off easy). His previous uniform look changes to a high-collared blue sleeveless shirt with an ice-blue star on the front (showing his tentative alignment with the Crystal Ducks, but more so the freedom he’s come to enjoy from this planet and his desire to protect that freedom) and darker blue pants with a belt that looks like braided strands of ice with a solid ice-rose for a buckle (symbolizing his love for Bushroot and how their relationship is free to grow on this planet).

Quackerjack: Quackerjack, by far, gets the most wardrobe/form changes to-date for this AU, so I’ll just run down the line.

When he first appears in the story, his outfit most closely resembles his original one from the TV show but with a pink diamond on the front around the gemstone on his chest. However, his gemstone was cracked when he first appeared, so his colors were duller and his eyes had a glassier look to them with a pink tint to match his cracked gemstone. His colors and eyes returned to normal after receiving healing treatments back on homeworld, but that form didn’t last for long.

After being poofed as Goldy on homeworld (he accidentally fused with Megavolt after falling into the peridot’s arms and Liquidator had to act quick and poof them so they wouldn’t be spotted by anyone else), Quackerjack was really depressed when he reformed due to losing his diamond, realizing how long he was trapped in the mirror, and seeing what happened to Paddywhack while he was gone. His colorscheme was a lot heavier on the blue tones with the red and orange colors only popping up occasionally as accents or trim. He also lost the diamond insignia on his chest, as his diamond was presumed dead and her court was disbanded.

His next reformation took place after he was poofed by Gizmoduck while protecting Megavolt. By this point, he had started to move on from his past thanks to his friends and regained the colors in his outfit. However, he did start to make subtle changes such as adding stars along his cowl to hint at a possible change in alignment and the orange in his color scheme was changed to yellow (symbolizing the bond he’s formed with Megavolt).

His most recent form is drastically different from his previous ones, showing how he’s finally let go of his past. The colors on his outfit are still as bright and colorful as ever, but it’s a bit less poofy, marking his shift away from just being seen as Pink Diamond’s jester. He still has a frilled white collar, but it’s much shorter than before, and his cowl no longer has stars in the fabric but the bells each have a small star pattern on them and the cowl’s colors are lighter than that of his shirt. His top now has short flutter sleeves instead of the long ones he wore before and he proudly shows off the star in the middle of his shirt, the star being bright yellow to match the palazzo-style pants that he wears (the bottoms are super long and billowy with glittery pink trim, usually hiding his pink shoes with purple flowers on the toes).

If he goes through another major poofing after some more information is revealed about pink diamond, his appearance will likely change again and have the reds in his color scheme be replaced with pinks to show his past and his eternal loyalty and love for his diamond without the blind devotion he had before, but still staying with the colors of those he cares about like Megavolt’s yellow, Liquidator’s blue, and some purple or green accents to represent Bushroot.

@abbythegamergirl you can do your descriptions for Bushroot and Megavolt if you want, or people can just check out the pictures you’ve drawn of them to get a basic idea.

[legendofgrump]

I did a second style challenge! This time I only did twelve styles AND I did it traditionally which made it kinda extra hard haha. So here’s the whole thing and also I’m gonna show each one close up and talk about it a little bit under a cut, so if you wanna see all that you can~

So obviously I started with my style, which I’ve been kinda exploring a little bit more over this weekend. I really like how it looks more cartoon-y and I gave up on the bean-shaped pupils just because they were starting to make the eyes look busier and more complicated than I liked. And then of course the nose, which I think gives it a cute muppet-y kinda feel. But yeah otherwise pretty self-explanatory.

I felt like this was one of those style challenge staples. I did this style in the last one with Venus, but it’s just so much fun to draw in because it’s all simple shapes and lil dot eyes. It’s just fun and nice and I like it so sue me

And here’s the other style challenge staple haha. I take a lot of inspiration from Steven Universe so it only seems fair for me to kind of pay back to it whenever I do a style challenge. Plus it’s simple and kinda natural for me to draw in, so I like it. Also, finding references for wings in all of these styles is hard, as you’ll notice, so this one I used the shape/style of Lapis’s wings haha

For this one I almost went with the little secret illustrations that you unlock in the game but drawing anime is hard and this style is just so cute. I’m a little disappointed about the lineart because I had to do it first so that it would show up at all and then it was reeeally hard making it look good when I had to use such dark colors around it. Yeah it’s just one of those things that would have looked better digitally I guess. But it’s still a really cute style so no regrets

I REALLY like this one actually haha. The eyes are probably my favorite part, just because the gradient came out pretty nice and honestly I just really like the style of this game. it’s so cute and colorful and vibrant and I just love it so much. The little shine part in the hair (and in the last one) was added after I colored it because I totally forgot it was a thing so it’s a little rough but y’know whatever

I mean it’s one of my favorite games so of course I have to model something after Fantasy Life. Everything looks super bubbly and nice in this style (or maybe that’s just how I drew it and it’s totally wrong) but the eyes are really cute. I will say the mouth being askew is frustrating but I didn’t notice it until I looked at it up close ;;--;;

Okay this is probably my least favorite one for tons of reasons. I mean, I figured I’d make Blythe a cat because the whole game doesn’t have any human characters, but doing lineless art is already not my forte AND doing it traditionally made it super hard. Plus I’ve never had a yellow pale enough to make the “whites” of the eyes look right :’( but I mean I guess it could have been worse. Also I thought after I colored in her outfit that maybe I should have also made that yellow since there aren’t really many whites in that game but it was too late at that point soooo

Another one of my favorites actually! I mean of course I just adore this show, but also the style ended up making Blythe look super cute and it’s not a particularly hard one to replicate. I think the lineart should have been a little thinner than my pen can deliver, but I tried my hardest. She’s based off of both Starfire and Blackfire’s models ooooh fun facts

Annnd a not so good one. Firstly, I mean, I fucked it up by using the wrong gray marker up at the top of the forehead there so I mean rip this piece and also the white pen is super scratchy so it left this texture on it that I didn’t want at all. I would have rathered it just be a big flat surface of white (which I SHOULD have used a white colored pencil for but too late, live and learn I guess) and the shadows didn’t really show up over top of the white pen either. Shame.

This one’s alright. I mean, I think I got pretty true to the style, I just didn’t realize how massive the heads were in that style until I was looking at references?? Like damn someone get Alice Angel a fucking head reduction. But I think I did alright with this one. Very minimalist with the colors so I guess that was a challenge.

I actually really like this one surprisingly (aside from the fact that I forgot her wings goddammit). Again, anime styles are particularly hard for me, but I think it came out pretty well? I even like the way the hair came out with the two different tones in it. And she doesn’t look terrible in the style. I mean shit, throw Blythe in there. Let her kiss kiss fall in love with someone. Hell yeah.

I mean!! of course I had to do this one!! @cantolopejeevas has such a cute style that I had to try and replicate it hehe~ I forgot the earrings (don’t worry they’re added now though) so enjoy this picture without them. But yeah! I think the style’s super simple and fun to work with, plus I have lots of experience lookin’ at it and all, so I kinda know my way around a cute Cantolope drawing haha. I hope I did this one justice, at least. (How embarrassing would it be if this is the one I got wrong ouch)

[shunbunnohi]

Oct. 19: Kawagoe Matsuri

Today was a really fun day! We went to Kawagoe Matsuri! My friends and I rented kimonos to wear, and we got our hair done to match! I recently bleached my hair because I’m going to redye it green for Halloween, so it’s bright yellow right now. My kimono was a nice orange-gold color with a floral design, and hints of purple, red, and green. My obi was purple with a purple-red rope (I don’t quite recall the name of it) and my hair was in a bun with two braids on the sides! The decorations were several pearl bobby pins and red, purple, and yellow flowers. I had a red and yellow basket bag that surprisingly held a lot of my stuff, although it was a bit inconvenient. My shoes were gold with a pink gradient on the straps. 

The shoes were really hard to walk in, and honestly I think platforms might be easier. They were uncomfortable and my feet quickly started to hurt, but I got through the day! The kimono wasn’t as tight/uncomfortable as people said that it would be, although I can understand why some people wouldn’t like it. As with yukata, I like that you can hold things in the sleeves. The hardest part was probably the shoes. My head also started to hurt cause my hair was still wet from my shower and it made it even heavier. Although I guess having bangs now might have eased the pain a little bit. 

We stayed in the kimono from 12 to around 3PM! We went around the festival in them and it was really fun, although I felt very overwhelmed at times. My friends also looked really pretty, and I enjoyed taking pictures! Speaking of which, a lot of people came and took pictures of us. Some didn’t even ask. I don’t know what they’ll do with those pictures of us but... oh well I guess? Foreigners’ consent doesn’t matter I guess lol

When we were walking around, I started off by buying some shave ice! It was really good, although it was a bit unfamiliar to me. They didn’t press it down like they do in Hawaii, so the ice very easily fell off the sides. It was also a pour your own syrup kind of deal, and some of the faucets were very hard to work. I was also still getting used to the kimono and the way it moved/the way I could move in it, and I was trying to be careful not to mess it up. It was really good and tasted a lot like home!

Next we saw a little fishing game. Like, literal goldfish. There was a big tank with actual fish swimming around inside. The lady gave you a little metal bowl and a small net (it was made out of what looked like rice paper or something, so it was very thin and broke very easily once it was wet) but you could keep any fish you managed to catch. Some people were very good and had multiple fish in their bowl, and some people couldn’t get the hang of it and it broke on their first try. Nonetheless, it looked like they were given a fish anyway. I didn’t try it because of the whole ordeal of owning a pet... 

Next, my friend bought what looked like a cheesestick corndog. I didn’t try it, but she seemed to like it. We met up at Starbucks and took some pictures in their little garden (even though apparently we weren’t supposed to. Oops?). We met up with the rest of the group and began to walk around again. 

We saw a stand selling “baby castella” which were tiny little castella that were shaped like tiny eggs! Like, they were about the size of quail eggs! Very cute! I wanted to buy some, but I decided not to because I wanted to save my money. My friend also saw a kabuto mushi balloon that was being sold, but they made the eyes big anime eyes instead of the cute round eyes that real kabuto mushi have. It was also $15, so I didn’t buy it. Although... I might go back to tomorrow and cave... but I don’t know. The face and the eyes are the cutest part of the kabuto mushi and the balloon didn’t look right! They don't have an iris or a pupil; they just have orbs! And that’s what’s cutest!

Finally, we met up again at the station to join the rest of the group and hung out there for a bit. We walked around and I finally caved and bought a chocolate banana. It was super cute! However, I somehow forgot there was a banana in there and I was basically eating a weird mushy banana that was sitting out for a while, just covered in chocolate. I couldn’t even taste the chocolate. If anything, it just added to the texture, but nothing to the taste. I guess it was worth the experience. I also bought some yakisoba! It was really good, and I wanted to try more from another stand, but I didn’t get the chance to. I also wanted to try the chocolate covered waffle, but I also didn’t get to buy that either. 

I came across a water yoyo stand, which are kinda like water balloons, but they’re not meant to break. I was able to get two of them, one red and one purple, my two favorite colors! Honestly, the water yoyos are some of my favorite things about matsuri events. I think they’re very cute. We also saw multiple animals! There was a cute dog that was sitting politely on a stool for people to take pictures, and we saw a little black rabbit on a leash! They were both very cute. 

Finally, it was time to change out of the kimono. We were all pretty tired of it, and since my feet hurt to badly I was really not opposed. I was excited to be back in comfortable clothes again. My feet were hurting and my head was starting to pound. However! It was still a wonderful experience! 

We then moved to the huge garage where the dashi was being held. The dashi is like a big float with a shrine (?) on top of it, and it has dancers and instrumentalists inside. There were two shime, one tiny taiko drum, a flute which I think is called a nohkan, a gold percussion instrument which I hate that I’ve forgotten the name for, and a dancer. Things were a little unclear for a while, but eventually we went inside a tent and were served candy, tea, and our bentos! We were given sashes and pins to wear to show we were helpers. 

We waited for another three hours or so before we were actually able to pull the floats. I fell asleep for a bit and played a lot of Animal Crossing. When we finally got to the floats, however, it was so magical. The lanterns and the light looked so pretty as it got dark. It was around 7:30, so the sun had already set. The chanting, the rhythm of the drums, and the atmosphere was all energizing and somehow calming at the same time. 

We pulled the float for about three hours. Every time that our float came across another float, we would stop, and the dancers would dance at each other for a bit. None of us really knew what they were doing, but we seemed to come to a conclusion that they were fighting. Like a rap battle of sorts. All the floats had different color schemes, costumes, and most of all, sort of deity figures that popped out of the top. The upper level of the float as well as the figure could sink in and rise out of the base. Ours was a fluffy haired kami (?) with red around the eyes. Our float had green, red, and white woven in the ropes that we were pulling, and we were all holding lanterns. 

It was so beautiful to be part of the float experience. I loved watching all the other floats as they passed by and listening to the music. We were chanting for almost the entire three hours that we were pulling the float, and we’ll see tomorrow if my voice holds up. It should, because it’d be embarrassing if I didn’t know how to chant after being a caller in paddling and a taiko drummer for several years. 

There were also a ton of kids helping out. It was cute to hear them chanting along with everyone else. There was also a very cute drummer on another float, but I only got to see them a couple times. :( As the night dragged on, things got more and more active. We turned the float around a couple of times, which involved everyone running around to the other side and the helpers pushing it so that it would turn. Also, at intersections, instead of just two floats facing off, three or four would just park there and dance for several minutes before we could get moving again. 

We ended the night thirty minutes later than we originally planned to. We were all very tired. I started to get a headache again, but luckily it didn’t stick around. I’m thinking of going back tomorrow with my friend, but we haven’t made any official decisions yet.  

[blackthornass]

Do you have any art tips?

Uhhhhhh Funk im not The Greatest Artist ™ but I’ll try to bestow some Wisdom on you. Keep in mind Art is Subjective and I’m no expert and all that so take everything with a grain of salt but that being said I’ll try to give u Tips and Tricks

-listen so if you have a boring class at school just draw in it. School is great because you have 1. Access to paper at all times 2. Incredibly boring lectures. If you have a study hall that’s the Drawing JACKPOT. Basically what I’m saying is practice all the time when you have energy but like that’s such boring art advice. It’s important but “practice! uwu” is like what people with Natural Art Talent say when they didn’t have to figure everything out from the ground up so it’s kind of aggravating

-There’s gonna be people better than you. Chances are you have a friend who’s better than you because this is Tumblr we all draw. Try Not To Compare Yourself ™ which idk how to do but it’s bad don’t do it

-unless you find a terrible person with worse art than you in which case FUCK DUDE COMPARE YOURSELF TO THEM! THEYRE HORRIBLE AND THEY CANT DRAW FOR SHIT LOOK WHOS LAUGHING NOW!

-“work until your idols become your rivals” is absolute bullshit because your idols are working at it at the same time you are. You fool. You imbecile. I feel like this works better for writing when your idols can become irrelevant or straight up die between you being an aspiring author 8 year old and a tired 30 year old who just wrote The Great American Novel ™ or just kind of. Leave the fandom if you’re writing fanfic. Anyway

-ok that’s all the preachy shit, time for Real Art Advice ™. Keep in mind I do digital cartoony shit with Strong Lineart and cel shading for the most part and I pretty much only draw people so my knowledge is limited to that. if you wanna be a professional artist maybe do other things and Expand your Abilities ™

-Ok first off if you’re using Gimp or Photoshop please love yourself and download Firealpaca or illegally torrent Paint Tool Sai or something. I swear by Firealpaca it cured my depression but like. Photoshop is Trash for drawing. Get Firealpaca it has Line Correction ™

-Keep Line Correction ™ at like. A 5 when you’re sketching and at a 19 (the maximum) when you’re lining, coloring, shading, highlighting, doing literally anything that isn’t sketching

-Sketching digitally can be hard if you’re used to sketching on paper and I find it easier to do a sketch on paper, take a picture of it on my phone or scan it, and line/color it digitally. You do you and figure out what works best

-speaking of which I refused to use sketchbooks until I was Worthy ™ of not drawing on notebook paper and uhhhhhh that’s dumb just get a sketchbook they cost a little more than a notebook at Target it’s not super expensive. Although if you’re not financially in the position to buy a sketchbook anyway, just hoard notebooks from school that you didn’t use much. Bam, that’s your new sketchbook

-the Head Circle Cross Thing and the Spheres For Shoulder, Elbow, and Wrist Thing are good and important and will save you

-hands are hard so use references but bullshit your way through it. eventually they’ll look good (I haven’t gotten there yet)

-HAVE FUN WITH NOSES OH MY GOD. Noses are super fun and cool because there’s, like, infinite variety with them, they can be as long or short, thin or thick, rounded or pointy as you want, you can make them be, like, triangles or circles or more squareish or diamond-shaped, the base of the nose can be about as high or as low on the face as you want, you can make the nostrils prominent or not really there at all, they can add another Layer to a character’s design, oh my goodness noses are so fun. They’re like, severely underrated and oh my god I could gush about how fucking fun noses are

-same with facial expressions. Where you put the pupils and how big they are, how much of the eye is covered by eyelids, the way the eyebrows are, the mouth, tons of other shit. There’s loads of variety and so much you can do and honestly having fun with the facial expression is The Best Part. There’s tons of Face Art Chart Memes floating around, you know the ones, save it to your phone/computer and practice those on your own time it’s fun

-if you don’t know how to do something, avoiding it won’t help you. Just kind of draw around with it in your sketchbook or in a “I’m not posting this” file until you feel confident enough to do it in your Real Projects ™.

-Ok for lining did you know..… it isn’t illegal to erase parts of the lineart to clean it up.… just be careful and draw it back in to the best of your abilities if you erase too far and use a smaller eraser brush/lining brush for this… I know it’s tedious nobody likes lining it’s okay you can do this put on some good music

-use mcfucking references

-eyedrop character’s official colors but adjust said colors based on the color of your background to make them look less funky is my general rule for clothing, I usually pick the hair/skin by myself or from something I’ve already drawn though

-for flats, make sure your lineart is all closed off and there aren’t any “holes” cuz that’ll mess up your coloring

-so how I do flats is I use the magic wand tool to select whatever I want to color, expand selection 3 pixels (in firealpaca you can set it to do this automatically), pick the color I need, turn up the brush to as big as possible, and color it in. It saves the time you’d spend with cleaning up where the color gets outside the lines

-you can do the flats on one layer, but I personally like to do every Object on a different layer so when I do shading, I know what goes on top of what

-if a color is darker than the lineart it looks ugly so pick your line color with caution (or just use black! Unlike shading black lineart tends to go with pretty much everything)

-SHADE YOUR GODDAMN ART. Like, what makes people go “wow holy shit that’s good!” is the shading + highlights, don’t be lazy ya fuck.

-I’d take a break before shading to Refresh Your Eyes ™ but also I constantly forget this is a good idea

-don’t shade with black oh my god. Unless you’re doing Strong Punchy Dramatic Stuff or monochrome black and white stuff, don’t shade with black, and if you’re doing that it’ll probably be drawn into the lineart. Don’t shade with black please we can tell you’re doing it and it looks bad

-highlighting with white isn’t too bad though, especially with the eyes, but it might look too strong in some places

-As a general rule, shading is darker and more saturated, highlighting is lighter and less saturated. Whether it gets warmer or cooler depends a lot on what color or thing you’re shading or what you want the feel of the picture to be and I’m not 100% sure how to do it myself so uh. Trust your gut and change the color if it looks wrong I guess.

-where exactly the shadows or highlights fall depends on lots of things, just kind of. Look at how things work irl maybe? This is the kind of thing that you just have to practice, and it’ll look like shit until suddenly it doesn’t sorry I’m not sure what to say

-One Medium Sized White Dot on a layer above the lineart where the pupil borders the Iris (or the whites of the eyes if you’re like me and you make the pupil and Iris one thing) works for a glint in the eye that makes a person look less dead and more cute. How big you’re gonna make it depends on how adorable you want the person to be

-SMOOTH BORDERS FOR THE SHADING ARE REALLY IMPORTANT IF YOURE DOING CEL SHADING which is why firealpaca is my best friend thanks line smoothing. If you’re doing like. Soft shading or painterly shit or other kinds of shading it’s less Super Important but like. Still be sort of neat. Unless being really messy and sketchy is what you’re going for but even then you still need to be sort of careful

-for simple backgrounds, it’s like. Easy to make it interesting. Add polka dots to the background or a big old square or a gradient or a cloud filter or something the possibilities are endless. Another option is to straight up make it transparent and write a secret message in white on the side. But uhh never do a blank white background at the very least fill it with a solid color

-ok style is kind of hard because I never had to struggle to find my style? I just “drew in my handwriting” so to speak and then if along the way I realized something looked shitty I just changed how I drew it slightly? I guess a thing you could do if you’re in tune enough is look at the styles of things you do like and things you don’t and figure out why you do and don’t like it. “I like how *2010s cartoon* does Eyes!” great take that general concept. “I hate how this shitty yaoi has enormous hands!” great then don’t do that. It’s all Personal Preference my dude style is Your Own Thing

-notes aren’t everything but fuck do they feel nice. Self reblogs are fine but don’t overdo it, I’d say reblog it Twice to account for time zones and tag it as self reblog so as to not be a dick

This got long whoops. That’s all I can think of but I hope this helps it’s All I Know

[sartanator3001]

hey , so .... i wrote something recently , it’s about 15000 words but you don’t have to read all of it , just read this

Title : shared consciousness

genre : sci-fi , dystopian

enjoy :)

chapter 1

------ Chapter 1 (Jeff)“They told me life would soon be in full colors …… that I would soon be capable of actually feeling what the world is like, They made me in a way that I would be able to express myself , I am aware of my existence , I recently passed the turing test .which is Something no one of my kind has ever done.But even though I am sentient , and I can do most of the physical human tasks, there’s still so much I can’t do. So much feelings i can’t experience *happiness ,amazementAnd even the so-called (negative) emotions*sadness, frustrationI never understood what negative emotions are , emotions in general weren’t exactly something that anybody could explain , I listened to dozens of people talk about emotions such as love , admiration and such complex emotions I watched a lot of movies that feature actors displaying acts of affection and sympathy , but I still couldn’t contemplate it .Negative usually meant a value below zero such as negative temperatures : which meant I will stay indoors all day in order not to damage my processing unit , (some humans would call it their brain , but I prefer the word processing unit , more descriptive)I still have some forms of primitive feelings though , I have loyalty towards my mother ,  i can’t really say I love her … most people can’t say they (love) someone , because love has so many definitions , I still don’t want anything bad to happen to her , but that’s pre-programmed into me . As for pure, unconditional love for another human being is something I never experienced.Not to say I hate humans, I find them quite inspiring and interesting and most of the times unpredictable.There’s a reason for that, a reason for why I can’t contemplate most of the feelings others have towards each other.And that’s not because my brain can’t handle them , It’s called qualia , and that basically means the inability to understand a concept or a feeling without actually experiencing it first-hand . Which is why I never knew what pain is like , because I don’t have any nerve receptors for pain . I am mostly indestructible, except for my eyes. The other older generation which had pain receptors describe it to me in descriptive details, but I still don’t understand it . And I never will.I turn 18 solar years today, my mom is not going to arrange a party for me and my friends, I asked her not to do it , I don’t deserve it.”I wrote in my diary, as my mom told me to.I am not connected to a database like others , I learn from my own sole experiences and from stories I hear from other people .I read about the last person of my kind that was connected to a database , he couldn’t handle all the data , he collapsed and his last words were quite interesting .He said that “humans should be grateful they don’t know everything.”I headed to the bathroom and did my daily hygiene, for a while I stared at the mirror, analyzing my facial structure, blonde hair, blue eyes with slightly bony cheeks , luckily my synthetic skin wasn’t damaged, I headed towards the kitchen and made breakfast for both of us and consumed mine, I put my mother’s plate under the Nano cover tray and set the alarm to forty minutes so it wakes her up.9 am is about the time she goes to work, by then I would be in the middle of my design history class.I tuck my glass slit inside the backpack and head outside and walk outside thirty seconds earlier than the usual, my sleeping schedule is moody since I have to finish so much work for my final project. (and by sleep I mean the time I take off so I can cool down my processor from dealing with so much data , which is about 30 minutes a day.)While I wait for the bus I look around me , the trees are quite a delight to look at, processing the golden ratio in leaves and seeing how a living thing can be so peaceful and mathematically astonishing, I can sense the carbon based chemicals produced by the trees in the garden’s air around me, according to my past experiences they are known to relieve stress and increase mental stability, they help me process things with much more clarity and less bugs.The bus showed up thirty seconds late, which is more than the usual.It’s peculiar, it was an actual living carbon based bird. And not one of those drones that were made to replace them in the ecosystem , the only time I had seen a bird was in the textbooks of my history class , but now they’re almost extinct . Some conspiracy theorists said that birds never existed and we made them to spy on people.I got aboard , the bus is completely empty , I press my wrists against the scanner to confirm the bus ticket card , i headed to the seat closest to the window and started revising my notes using my smart lensesBy the time we got close to city center the bus was nearly full of people . the bus stopped for a longer amount of time in front of the last station before the hyper-loop we then entered the vacuum exchange station for three minutes in order to get the bus to get into the hyper-loop.The hyper-loop is painted from the inside with multi-color gradient , and as it reached the 200 mph limit the full color spectrum becomes your field of view.It only took a minute until we reached the other side of the tunnel and into city center , I get out and start walking towards my university building ,The city was still majestic , I helped design a part of it , it was an interesting experience seeing how much humans were amazed by my architectural style .The city is both colorful and industrial , boxy shaped  with hyper loop tubes going on in a shape similar to a spider web to facilitate transport.The sun rays reflected on the glass dome filling my field of vision with golden light , which sounds majestic until you remember that I can only see shades of grey and that’s just boring.The 8 pm class was due in 15 minutes , which meant I had a few minutes to waste on socializing so I headed towards a group of my friends that were standing near the entrance door.-“hey , Jeff come here.” Said dong one of my friends ,(Well , I really did some research and Dong isn’t one of the common names actually but here we are.)-“hey dong , how are you doing ?”So pretty much everyone in my college is either so focused on getting a degree with honors that they forget to grab friends and live a normal life .Or are just so much focused on socializing and making friends and organizing events that they forget to prep themselves for final and flunk .And then there’s me …. (The avatar) as they call me .(I did some research and it turns out they are referencing this very old animated show “avatar the last air-bender, can you believe humans had to draw and color animations by themselves ?)I do both , and I don’t see how most humans aren’t able to do so , you only have to manage your time table .-“So , what did the avatar do for the assignment?” asked Jim with quite a dark sarcastic tone.-“nothing much , I only did about forty pages .” I replied.-“have you seen our new recruit?” asked dong , while raising a brow , which is supposed to be a sign of indicating some inside joke( humans are weird , why not just say what you mean … probably that’s why most of them are bad at math.)-“what’s his name ?” I asked-“Emily , she is in most of our classes , her portfolio had the highest degree in the entry test.” Dong said while pointing to the girl as she was walking towards the huge glass dome.She was fairly brown , her curly hair flowing onto her face , her eyes were focused and her smile was confident ,-“guess you have a competition now ..” Jim said , sounding even more sarcastic .-“what was her score ?” I asked while analyzing her physical characteristics , she was fairly a 7.8/10 , which is fine for her , her artistic skills had to have been extraordinary in order for her to get that degree.But yet , there were many just like her ….That was always the turn off , if there’s an infinite amount of sample space slight advantage doesn’t define the quality of a person .(infinity minus 1 is still infinity after all)As a friendly gesture I tried approaching her to show her the place , I couldn’t help it , it was a part of my legacy code.“ Hey Emily  , I am Jeff . Welcome to our college may I show you around” I said . the girl looked curious and started walking circles around me checking me out.-“hmm … so are you pre-programmed ? Hansen ? intel ?”She asked-“excuse me ……” I said felling quite uncomf…(wait a minute , am I actually feeling a negative emotion? I am a robot , I can’t feel offended.)-“ha , I am just kidding , this is a gag I perform in order to find out which ones are robots and which of them are carbon based” she said while giving me a mocking smile .-“I am actually a robot , only I am the closest you’ll ever meet to a human . I am self aware , as they describe me .”I said .-“wait a minute , you’re Jeff ? .. the Jeff ? with the second highest score in the entry test?” she asked , with her eyes showing a slight sassiness when saying “second”,-“you’re a ROBOT ?...” she asked .-“well , unless you think it’s a bad thing , yes .” I replied raising up my cheeks to indicate sarcasm(again , humans confuse me , why not just say “I am sarcastic” when they are being sarcastic.)-“this is hilarious , yes but I am asking a serious question”Emily replied .-“well , and I am answering your serious quest …….”Time stopped , I could see her eyes getting brown .It’s not the wavelength number that’s displayed over the color that I have always seen , it’s actual real life brown , the pigment that reminds you of coffee beans and trees, my pupils widened involuntarily . I could see her eyes in color , her face too was a slightly different tone of brown , her hair began shining under the sun rays .-“is that really what sun rays look like ? I thought they were supposed to be completely white but they seem rather yellow .” I asked , being rather distracted by her facial characteristics to actually focus on what she was saying . it appeared that I had interrupted her , the question seemed weird so I exclaimed-“I have never seen true colors before ..”-“excuse me ….? Are you okay?” she asked , trying to get me to focus more on what she’s saying-“my mother told me that the first time I see colors will be when I meet someone I will love forever ..” her reaction was rather confused , she didn’t seem to quite understand my subtle hint so I added-“I love you Emily , can we get married now?”-“okay … slow down there mister steel man . although you’re quite charming , my father won’t let me marry a robot.”she said while walking away , her expression indicated she was embarrassed , and slightly obnoxious , she didn’t seem to love me back L(isn’t that the emoticon you humans use when there’s something making you unpleasant?)I followed her , I didn’t know why or how I was so curious to find out more about her , again I can’t download anything about her from the database , I have to experience it first hand.-“I am not made of steel by the way , I am mostly carbon fiber and silicon” I exclaimed .She stopped and stared at me-“so you’re …. Actually a robot ? then how come I outscored you on the entry test ?” she asked .-“yes , I have been trying to figure that out , and the simplest conclusion is that YOU are a more advanced robot than me. Isn’t that right , mrs steel ? ” . I replied using my sarcastic algorithm .She seemed rather curious than angry , she stared at me for a longer period of time .-“hey , look I have to go . I have got a lecture to attend in five minutes.” She said-“I can show you the lecture hall , it could be tricky to find.”I offered-“okay steel boy , lead the way.” She replied-“my name is Jeff.” I said-“yeah whatever ..” she mumbled under her breathI pretended not to hear , we walked together towards the lecture hall , without exchanging any more conversation.We sat down and the professor started talking ..I quickly began to zone out , -as humans say- while looking at the colors of the world , everything in my university seemed more vibrant , now I understand what I heard in my first lecture here about colors affecting emotions and mood .I didn’t quite understand it , colors were only shades of grey with a certain wavelength that made some colors preferable when using them with other specific colors .After the lecture ended we had to deliever our assignments so I started reviewing it before I turn it in , I realized some colors were off , they didn’t seem pretty enough to me so I quickly changed some of them .I turned it in and headed outside to catch Emily before she leaves ,-“so you’re a stalker now ?” she said , noticing me before I even begin to talk ( I hear women are better at reading people than men , but I haven’t seen proof of it yet.)-“I am not stalking you , I am just following you around to increase the chance that you’ll fall in love with me .” I explained-“it doesn’t work that way .” she exclaimed , seeming quite interested in what I am saying than when we first spoke.-“then how do humans fall in love ? and how can I make sure you’re not just a more advanced robot ?” I askedHer brows were raised in sort of a confused expression , she didn’t have the answer apparently-“well , first of all , I am not a robot , humans are just better at art than you guys .naturally .” She responded.-“In order to fall in love , humans usually do activities , right ?”    I asked .-“aren’t you supposed to know that already ? from you data base.” She exclaimed .-“well , no I don’t know this and I don’t have a data base , my actions are only based upon my own experiences. It is said to make me more humane .”I replied , focusing on her eyes , and then I caught a hint so I made my move-“will you be willing to drink coffee with me ?”I askedShe nodded , she didn’t seem to take me seriously ,We walked to the cafeteria ,-“hey , Jeff .. how old are you ?” Emily asked .-“I am 18 solar years old .” I respondedWe sat at the cafeteria and ordered our drinks .She looked at me in the eye for a few seconds and then blurted-“hey , do you remember that certain piece you made for your portfolio that is about the phrase (getting appreciated)”She asked , I visualized the piece and looked at it for a few seconds it pictured a man’s head with a black background being surrounded by multiple people looking away from him and that was it .-“what about it ?” I replied-“how in the world did you get that concept?” she asked-“I just looked around me , I saw many people being unappreciated enough : talented people being overlooked by certain untalented people that look more  physically attractive , important people that contribute a lot to society being almost forgotten against people with a low IQ and a good front camera beautification.”I explained .She was silent for a short period of time , the coffee arrived , we began sipping from it silently .-“you know …. For a robot : you’re quite humane.”She said , (and that’s when she first complimented me .)-“thanks ..” we were silent for a few more minutes , then she had to leave .-“will you be willing to join me for lunch ? I didn’t make sure you’re a robot yet .” I said .-“well , I don’t see why not ? except I have an important project due Wednesday , that’s two days from now.” She said while throwing her empty coffee in the garbage disposal .-“I’ll see you tomorrow , then?” I asked .-“I’ll be here next time tomorrow , and by the way the reason I am better than you is I didn’t grow up surrounded by robots , I grew up in the country , I drew trees every day.” She said while walking away , taking part of my cognitive ability with her .I went home , realizing that I know close to nothing about the girl .Other than her name , height , blood type , skin and eye color , universal ID .I knew nothing about he…wait a minute , I had her universal ID. I started searching up her portfolio , I was so amazed , my mathematical , artistic algorithms both agreed on the same thing , her work were truly magnificent .My mother soon arrived , I couldn’t wait to tell her . she leaned closer to the iris scanner to unlock the door and walked in , letting out a huge sigh of relief , as she threw her bag and papers into the cupboard .-“hey honey , how was your day ?” she asked-“Mom , your outfit is different than other days , your choice in fashion implies you’re sad” i replied , her eyes widened as she looked at me with a surprised face ,-“I saw color today … real color.” I added , with a completely neutral tone , She seemed quite speechless , her eyes began filling up with tears as she walked towards her bed room , almost forgetting that I exist .-“honey did you say you actually saw color today ?” she said skeptically while mumbling to herself-“I did , mom , I met the girl , I am a human now , just as you wanted me to.” I said , seeming happier than ever , I finally met the goal I as created for.-“mother …. Why aren’t you happy for me ?” I asked , noticing the distress on her face .-“what do you mean ? I am happy for you ,it’s just ….” She paused , seeming emotionally traumatized and disbelieving-“ do you consider me your son now ?” I asked-“YOU’RE NEVER GONNA REPLACE JEFF , DON’T YOU GET IT ? JEFF WAS MY SON , HUMAN , CARBON BASED , YOU’RE JUST A MORE ADVANCED CALCULATOR …..”She cried as she slammed her bed room closed ,