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myonmukyuu · 2 months ago

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Art Summary: 2024

I've been posting my art online for 11 years! wowie!!

My yearly review is under the cut (1.8k words):

Previous: 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023

Happy new year everyone!!! This is actually the first time in a long time that I've not posted my yearly summary on the 31st. I was a bit caught up with visiting family and being a good host so I didn't get time.

Anyways! Time for my year in review that no one reads except for me the following year. 💪💪💪

How this year went:

I think this year went... alright? Let's see, what did I get up to...

Ah. Okay! Art-wise it went "alright" but life-wise I had a pretty good year! Got a boyfriend! Got a cat! Went on two holidays (Japan, USA)! Visited family! Met a lot of online friends! Went to a bunch of concerts! (YOASOBI, Nijigasaki 6th, Hololive Down Under, Miku) A pretty eventful year ✌✌✌✌

But this is actually an art year in review so I'm going to focus on that! And... yeah, I think I went 'alright'. I don't feel terrible about how I went, but I also don't feel amazing? C+ or B- I think...

How did my art go?

Like I said, I think I went 'alright'. I felt very rocky several times in the year with periods of art block and a good chunk of time where nothing I drew felt 'right'. Was it burnout? Maybe. It took me some time to find my footing again. It also didn't really help that I had a lot of "interruptions" throughout the year. Traveling, getting sick, artist alleys and stuff really messed with my momentum. I did a lot of individual little works rather than comic works. I'm not exactly happy with that but it's something to look at for next year.

In terms of raw, technical skill I'm not really too far from where I was last year. But to be fair, after drawing for a decade that's to be expected. While I want to be always improving, I know that's not always immediately visible. That being said, my shikishis are a lot better than the first ones I made! (But technically it's more like my traditional skills are catching up with digital skills???)

Like I mentioned earlier I spent a lot of the year feeling "lost" when drawing. It was kind of like I forgot my own style? In my eyes that made a lot of the work shakey in quality at best... But excluding that fact, I'd like to highlight that I should probably revisit fundamentals. I think when I'm feeling lost, stronger anatomical fundamentals and linework would probably ground me a bit better. Will that be something I look at in 2025? Who's to say 🧍‍♀️

In terms of comic works I think I under performed in terms of quantity. And IMO they were affected by me feeling "lost" while drawing some of them. If I were to revisit them I'd probably touch them up.

I liked how the comics turned out though. 😊 (more in the next section)

My 2024 Goals and how I did:

This is the part where I read what I wrote last year and check if I acted on them at all ✌

As always, it doesn't really matter to me if I fulfill these goals or not. What's more important is the "why". It's good to be aware of what is important to you and what isn't.

“Draw more comics.”

Last year I was dissatisfied from a lack of comics. I think I released 1 doujin... and posted 2 mini-comics? So I don't blame myself for being so dissatisfied. Like I said, I’m a story-teller first, illustrator second.

I blamed an art block that had me eventually scrap a 20 page comic that was drafted and lined. I wasn't satisfied with the storyboarding at all. Because I was burned out, the storyboarding was done in a very direct/ dull way so I wasn't happy with it. But, it was a cute idea and I probably should've finished it. (It's like throwing a month of art into the void.)

While I've decided not to salvage that comic, I've taken the experience to heart. This year when I went to the US, I was interrupted while working on a comic I will be uploading somewhat soon. It took about 5 months to finish the comic. Which is a lot for a 14 pager. And that reason is because I was similarly dissatisfied with it. The paneling and the script just felt like it could be better and I wasn't happy working on it. But instead of randomly dropping it, I just re-storyboarded it until I was happier. The comic isn't posted yet, but I like it sooo much more than the initial draft! So my lesson going forward is to put more focus on my personal satisfaction. This isn't my job, it's a hobby I'm passionate about so I should always prioritise my own feelings!

I did end up drawing slightly more comics though. So technically I've "fulfilled this goal". I still don't feel satisfied with my productivity but it's an improvement.

“Push those shikishi to the next level!”

This goal is pretty self explanatory. Like I said, I think I've improved my shikishi craft quite a bit. I've also experimented with various materials like craft flowers and foil! The road of improvement is long and I still have so much more to learn but I'm fairly happy with how I've done.

There is one stipulation though, which is...

“Do artist alley, but don’t burn out!”

...burn out from doing too many artist alleys.

I did explicitly remind myself not to do too many, but I ended up doing 4 this year. I think this had a direct impact on my productivity and my overall satisfaction.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy doing artist alley with my friends. It's very rewarding. But it's also clear that I've been shooting myself in the foot. While I enjoy making shikishi they're not very sustainable for populating an artist alley table. When they've sold, they're gone. And it becomes empty space on the table. It isn't like prints or keychains where you can mass-produce some more. It could take me weeks to fill my table again. And I think this is where my productivity feels very strained.

"There's a con coming up... so I should prepare! I guess I should put this comic on hold while I work on shikishi/print stock." <- this ended up happening a lot this year. When it comes to making comics I'm really momentum-based where I have to basically hyper focus. So when my momentum is broken, I have a hard time going again...

And focus issues aside, when I combine it with the holidays I've taken I just haven't had as much time to work on comics in general.

It'd be convenient if I aimed to print every comic I made as they're completed (then you'd have a cycle of new prints on the table every time) but I'd rather aim towards thicker books/ bigger projects.

My problems would probably be solved if I made more prints or keychains and the like. I wouldn't have to be so pressed. But again, I know the issue just stems from me. I don't enjoy those things as much and I really want to specialise in shikishi and hand-drawn art along side my comics.

This year I want to be more selective with my tabling. Either that, or draw faster lmfao .

“Actually start planning that next story”

LMFAO what a big joke. I didn't do much on this.

I actually changed my sights to a few more scale ideas, so I'm not terribly fussed by this. Priorities change sometimes, y'know? What's important to me is that I'm still working towards something.

Goals for 2025:

With all of that in mind, here are the goals I've set for 2025! There's a lot so I don't expect to do them all. I would be happy to select a couple of things 😊. Step by step y'know?

"Draw more comics" (Repeatable Quest)

Continue my setsuayu anthology

I'm working on a bunch of little setsuayu stories I'd like to combine into a collection! I don't know if I'll finish for sure, but I'd like to make more progress.

Make non-setsuayu works

I've been bouncing ideas in my head for R3B1RTH comic ideas. And YuShizu. I've always liked these characters so I'd like to finally dedicate some time to them.

Honestly this goal is so incredibly malleable. I don't see it productive to set a static number of works I'd like to release. Because what really matters is if I make work I end up happy with. I could even end up drawing comics that are completely different in topic but still feel satisfied!

"Improve at art" (Repeatable Quest)

I made this goal super broad too because there's a number of things I want to try doing.

General:

study painting techniques

I think more practise with realism and still-life painting would do wonders for me. It'd give me more familiarity with tone and values that would help me in general. I also would like to make little shikishi with still life!

study composition

Recently I bought a textbook about this topic. My composition skills... could be better! It's truly a mystery how I've made so many comics. When I feel stuck with comics, I get the feeling that not being familiar with composition techniques contribute to that.

Traditional:

Continue producing shikishi

This one is a no-brainer! I still want to do artist alley! I still want to practise shikishi more! Not too much to say here specifically since everything else contributes to this.

Learn how to paint

When making traditional pieces, I'm not limited by media. So why not go more multimedia? Specifically I'd like to try a workshop with watercolour painting, or even gouache! Copic markers, although fun to use do have weaknesses. It'd be good to learn more about different media and how they interact with each other to create more interesting pieces moving forward!

Continue to experiment with craft/media

I did a piece with foil this year and it was pretty neat! (but a bit shoddy since it was my first time haha). I'd like to go further and continue designing pieces that use other materials in different ways.

I've also bought special inks that I'm excited to use as well!

"Improve my actual health"

Okay this one is the hardest goal... For context towards the end of this year I've been really tired. By what? I'm not that sure. I'd take multiple power naps a day and still feel sleepy. And I'd get 8 hours of sleep each night... And it's not like I'm restless when sleeping. I sleep perfectly fine but there's always a blanket of exhaustion....

Anyways I think I should eat healthier and get more exercise in. I think it would help my productivity more. (Less snackies for me 😢)

If anyone read this, damn that's crazy!

Let's have a good year!

#most people use different templates but i think using this really old one forever has its charm too #as always thank you everyone for the support this year #lets work hard next year too!#my art #art summary #nov comic isnt posted yet #but ive been working on it for 5 months so i put it there #its done ill post it soon ish!

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intercal · 9 months ago

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here's your computer post ya freakin nerd

tl;dr hash algorithm art

left: sha512 empty string, using the nibbles (4 bytes) choosing a color from a 16-bit color palette right: sha384 empty string, using the openssh "randomart" algorithm choosing a color from a 16-bit color palette

technical stuff below the cut

problem

one of the common issues in computer science and systems administration is comparing hashes. but the problem arises when you, the human being, have to compare two hashes. hashes come in the form of a very long hexadecimal string. It might look something like this:

da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709 (sha1)

e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855 (sha256)

cf83e1357eefb8bdf1542850d66d8007d620e4050b5715dc83f4a921d36ce9ce47d0d13c5d85f2b0ff8318d2877eec2f63b931bd47417a81a538327af927da3e (sha512)

these strings of text can be very long, and expecting a human being to check the exact match of 128 characters in a row (in the worst case) is unreasonable. it is unlikely to happen, but you can also get very very very close hashes. I remember seeing a twitter post (can't find it for the life of me) that showed two hashes that were different, but a cursory glance at them made them look extremely similar, eg:

e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae9800998b934ca495991b7852b855

versus

e3b0c44298fc1c14d41d8cd89961b204e9800998ecf8427ea495991b7852b855

it's pretty hard to tell at a glance that these are different. they have the same start and end prefixes, and there are some parts in the middle that are the same. but they're different! that's important! that means you've hashed different data, but it looks the same!

proposed solution

generate some art.

openssh does this. when you generate an SSH key, they give you a "randomart" (which is one of the algorithms I used above) of the key. From the comments:

If you see the picture is different, the key is different. If the picture looks the same, you still know nothing.

(source)

which I would say imparts some wisdom already. all you can use this for is determining if a hash is different. you cannot use it to determine if they're the same. what I've done is added a new dimension for what determines something being "different": a color palette. if you take the two extremely similar hashes from the example and generate a piece of hash art using the nibble method, they look like these:

first on the left, second on the right. they look pretty similar, but then you add the element of a color palette and you get visibly different images.

this is not a perfect solution by any means. I completely made up the two example hashes, and actually ran into an issue where my program chose the same color palette for both of them - I had to tweak them. but I think it adds some more value to it.

methodology

this is just an explanation of how this all works. I'm going to avoid posting source code for now because it has my real name attached and I don't like that. maybe I'll strip my name and post it later.

image generation algorithms

there are two image generation algorithms that I have chosen: direct representation using each nibble of the hash, and the openssh "randomart" algorithm (linked at the bottom).

nibble algorithm

the "nibble" method takes each nibble (hex digit) of the hash, laying them out on a grid, and choosing the color that it should use on the selected palette. since all palettes are 16 colors, each value 0x0..0xf is represented. for example, taking the sha1 hash da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709, the first row of the image would start with palette indexes 0xd, 0xa, 0x3, 0x9, etc. if we are using the red palette, the first row would start with blocks of these colors: #dd0000, #aa0000, #330000, #990000, etc. it's a direct representation of the hash, and completely lossless. the main downside is explained above - if you have two extremely similar hashes, it will yield two extremely similar images.

randomart algorithm

this has been derived using the openssh randomart algorithm. when you generate an SSH key, you will get some kind of "randomart" that looks like this:

the algorithm is as follows:

start a pointer (called a "worm") in the center cell of a 0-valued matrix (in our case, the matrix is 9 rows by 17 columns).

look at the bottom two bits of the first byte of the hash.

if the bottom bit is 1, then move the worm right - otherwise, move it left. if it cannot move in this direction without exiting the matrix, then don't move left or right.

if the top bit is 1, the move the worm down - otherwise, move it up. if it cannot move in this direction without exiting the matrix, then don't move up or down.

wherever the worm lands, increment the value of that cell.

continue this through the value of the hash, two bits at a time.

this is your output matrix. assign colors (or ascii characters) as you see fit.

I think this is a neat way of doing it, provides a simple piece of art, and two different hashes will, usually, look different.

the main weaknesses that stand out to me: this is a lossy algorithm that could create ambiguities - there are sequences of bytes that could hypothetically produce the same image twice (I am too lazy to come up with these, so that is an exercise left to the reader). additionally, I have noticed that this algorithm tends to drive the worm into a corner, and creates lots of diagonal streaks on its journey. unless the worm hits a wall, it can only ever move diagonally, for better or worse. it looks okay, but I think we can do better.

overall, I think this is a good basis for a new image drawing algorithm, and I might play around with that in the future.

sizing the output image

the images are just a matrix, each cell treated as a pixel, and then I size it up to 32x32 pixel blocks. the number of rows and columns are determined by the art algorithm used, and maybe the hash type (depending on which algorithm is chosen).

for the randomart algorithm, I just use 9 rows by 17 columns - this is what they use in openssh, but I want to play with this because you get pretty boring/dark randomart for hashes with fewer bytes. md5 hashes usually just look like black rectangles with a few lighter blocks, not very useful.

for the nibble algorithm, I tried to make the art as square as possible. for example, sha1 hashes are 160 bits long, or 20 bytes, or 40 nibbles (each nibble = 1 block in the art). 40 nibbles can be sized as a 40x1, 20x2, 10x4, or 8x5 matrix. I opted for the 8x5 matrix, but I want to make this customizable in the future. here are the image sizes I choose for all the hashes I support:

md5 - 128 bits, 16 bytes, 32 nibbles - 8x4

sha1 - 160 bits, 20 bytes, 40 nibbles - 8x5

sha224 - 224 bits, 28 bytes, 56 nibbles - 8x7

sha256 - 256 bits, 32 bytes, 64 nibbles, 8x8

sha384 - 384 bits, 48 bytes, 96 nibbles, 12x8

sha512 - 512 bits, 64 bytes, 128 nibbles, 16x8

choosing the color palette

each palette is 16 colors. there are 8 base color palettes: red, green, blue, black, cyan, yellow, magenta, and white. red palette is #000000, #110000, #220000, ... #ee0000, #ff0000. blue is #000000, #001100, etc. Black and white are the only ones that I think may introduce some ambiguity - black goes from #000000, #111111, etc to #ffffff. white goes in the reverse order, #ffffff, #eeeeee, etc to #000000.

the color palette is chosen by taking the sum of all the bytes in the hash, mod 8. for example, the sha1 hash da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709 is broken into the parts 0xda, 0x39, 0xa3, ... 0x07, 0x09. These are added together to get 0x92e, or 2350 in decimal. 2350 % 8 = 6, so we choose the 6th color palette (zero indexed) of RGBBCYMW, magenta.

more ideas

rotating or reflecting the image based on the input hash might yield useful results

adding more color palettes may ensure fewer "similar" images

doing something using a noise algorithm (perlin noise, simplex noise) to generate image matrices using the hash as the seed.

further reading and sources

Hash Visualization: a New Technique to Improve Real World Security (Perrig, Song, 1999)

openSSH randomart algorithm (fetched 2024-05-23, commit hash fc5dc092830de23767c6ef67baa18310a64ee533)

thanks for reading!

#t #computer science #hashing

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on-wine-dark-seas · 7 months ago

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“There are no prisons in Heaven.”

One winter night, the King of Curses took an overly curious fugitive of heaven to task. That night, and the many that followed, would see her drawn into the jujutsu world, crossing paths with some of its most storied sorcerers and fighters across millennia.

𓇢𓆸 Chapter 7: Halloween

Jujutsu Tech, October 19, 2018, 15:20

“A mole?” Nadja murmured quietly, her voice a sultry glide of steel sheathed in velvet, a predatory interest glimmering in her visible eye. Gojo had always appreciated Nadja’s cold and ruthless efficiency, and with her lack of cursed energy, it would make her the perfect spy. He dared not speak aloud lest unkind ears be pressed against the obvious vulnerabilities of Jujutsu Tech’s barriers. Instead, they practiced the art of meaningless conversation within which they couched their true meaning.

“I have a sneaking suspicion that the events that took place were an inside job,” Gojo said leaning back in his chair, long legs sprawled in front of him. “But I can’t be sure. I’ve already alerted Utahime but it wouldn’t hurt to have an extra set of eyes on it.”

Nadja snorted. “And to whom shall I send my invoice?”

Gojo steepled his fingers with a smirk.

“Gojo Satoru, of course.”

Thus did Nadja find herself in Kyoto, dressed as a pretty foreign tourist hidden beneath a comfortable layer of hoodie to hide her features from surveillance technology. Her lack of cursed energy made her invisible in the crowd, but jujutsu was born here and likely there were other security measure in place to catch sorcerers.

Luckily, she was no sorcerer.

She visited the Kyoto campus, of course. She had to in order to begin her investigation proper, joining Utahime, as well as Satoru’s first years [and technically hers since she shared his teaching duties now]. Nadja had her suspicions, but she let Utahime take the lead. They met in the parking garage some ways from the campus grounds.

“Gojo tells me you’re one of the best at tracking,” Utahime said. “But I don’t think we’ll need it for this particular suspect.” She looked pained, almost reluctant. Nadja’s brow furrowed.

“I am not here on orders to harm anyone, if that is what you fear,” Nadja said. Megumi’s eyes went a little wide, as did Yuji’s. Utahime shook her head.

“No!” She said quickly, apologetically. “It’s not that. It’s…it’s one of my students.” That last part was said so quietly it almost went unheard. Nadja’s gaze softened, a trace of sympathy in her beautiful face.

“Mechamaru,” she said softly. All three students glanced at her in shock. Utahime winced, as if saying it aloud made it all the more real. Nadja’s sympathy ended there.

“My orders, such as they are, are merely to question him,” Nadja continued. “But from my understanding the nature of his Heavenly Restriction renders him immobile and sensitive to light, correct?”

Utahime nodded. “Yes. We are to question him, nothing more.”

“Soooo…guess we for sure know who the mole is.” Yuji said as they stood in the doorway that should have led them to Mechamaru. They all stared, even as Utahime bit her lip, knowing that they arrived too late. The entire room had been scrubbed clean, as if no one had ever occupied the space. Nadja’s mouth was set in a grim line. Judging from the stale but unpleasant odor, and how dry it was, she could already tell that this room had been empty for some time. She wished she had Toji’s nose, the man could damn near tell you how many days since a room had been occupied by scent alone. She supposed the nature of heavenly restriction had been refined since she was born.

Utahime made a call to Gojo, hushed and concerned. Nadja shook her head. If the boy was working with curse users and those special grade cursed spirits the students clashed with during the Goodwill Event, then likely he would be killed when he outlived his usefulness. Nadja could not imagine someone as objectively smart as him falling in with deranged curse users looking to rob Jujutsu Tech of dangerous artifacts. To what aim?

She snorted. She needed to get more answers. Something wasn’t adding up.

“Hey,” Nobara said curtly. “Hikmat-sensei, what do you want us to do, now?”

Nadja sighed.

“We’ll find nothing else here,” she said. “Utahime, thank you for your assistance. We’re going to head back to Tokyo, make a formal report, and see if perhaps your wayward student has set up shop elsewhere.”

Utahime looked concerned when she got off the phone with Satoru, almost as if she were blaming herself for not knowing.

“It’s not your fault,” Nadja said. “And we will ensure no harm comes to the boy when we find him.”

It was a lie and Utahime knew it. The two women held one another’s gazes, knowing full well that the boy had either gone to ground or was dead. Either way, he would never be found.

But nor would Utahime sign his death certificate or warrant until he was.

Thus did Nadja’s business in Kyoto conclude.

Kyoto, Japan, 1875 AD

Nadja was accustomed to hardship. Walking the world for as long as she had, very little surprised her. But when she saw her daughter laid low, she found herself hurting in ways she could not fathom.

It was not Sundari’s fault, not truly. She hadn’t meant to do what she did, and she hadn’t meant to harm innocents, but when one experiences tremendous loss for the first time, who was to say how the resultant grief would manifest? And for a being as powerful as Sundari, that grief took the form of an unfathomable black rage.

Nadja had been abroad when she heard the news on the trade roads leading back: an entire city killed in a night, as silent as a mass grave. Sundari had stained humanity with her pain and her grief having lost someone who was dear to her to a violent border skirmish between two nations. As a living avatar of a goddess, she had been cautioned and forbidden to intervene, but love did what it did.

And humanity paid the price for crossing the heart of divinity.

And so Nadja had returned, riding hell-for-leather through the impossible paths to Sundari’s mountain temple, where she had retreated in grief and shame and fury. So much like her father and she hadn’t even realized it.

They’d fought, because Nadja had attempted to bring Sundari back down to earth. It was not their fault humanity assumed Sundari was divinity. Anyone could look at her and see she was not a being of earthly flesh. But Nadja understood the nature of cosmic consequences and karmic debt. What Sundari had done…

…and now they were here, far from those mountains, far from the ruined temple that bore the scars of their private war, and in some nobleman’s abode in the hilly countryside of Japan’s imperial capital, begging favors from a sorcerer.

Nadja needed a seal, one that had—as far as she knew—had not yet been crafted by mortal hands. She knew of it, and sought to bring it into existence. Its crafting dipped into the more esoteric and forbidden parts of jujutsu, and she knew she would be hard pressed to find a sorcerer willing to perform the profane rites necessary to seal a power like Sundari’s without turning her into a cursed object. No one had ever tried to seal an actual immortal before that she could recall, and after careful probing and investigating, a name finally bubbled to the surface: Kamo Noritoshi.

He was regarded as one of the more fearsome sorcerers in the jujutsu world, and renown for his more esoteric and taboo practices, some of them downright barbaric. It was precisely that kind of moral flexibility Nadja sought for what she needed, and she could not keep her daughter hidden for much longer. Humanity was evolving, and unfortunately with its evolution came a decline in their superstitious religious beliefs. It would be harder to explain Sundari’s existence when the people who would hunt her no longer worshipped fire and ate snakes in hopes of gaining wisdom.

Thus, Nadja was granted audience with the infamous clan head, who now regarded her with keen and predatory interest.

“I must admit I had not expected a foreigner to be so intriguing,” he said from his noble seat on the dais in his receiving room. He’d dismissed his attendants and advisors. It was merely the two of them and neither carried fear of the other. He sensed no cursed energy from her, and when he made the connection, he smiled knowingly. She saw the scars that ascribed his forehead, her eyes narrowed in pensive suspicion, but said nothing. Neither would ask questions, keeping their cards close to the breast.

“High praise,” Nadja said wryly, never shifting from her place on her knees. “Were it my aim to intrigue you, my lord. But unfortunately, I am here on separate business.”

Noritoshi’s brow went up at her audacity, but he did not admonish her.

“Yes, I’ve heard,” he said laconically. “You seek to make a Divine Seal, correct?”

Nadja’s expression was unreadable, and she gave a solemn nod.

“I understand if this is something that may be beyond even your capabilities, my lord,” she said, and there was no mockery in her voice. “But I would be remiss if I did not at least make my request.”

Noritoshi did not move, did not speak. For a moment they gazed at one another. Nadja counted five steps. Five steps is all it would take to close the distance between them and have her blades at his throat. The scar on his forehead gave her pause. It was deeply unsettling and she wondered how he got it.

“Why?” Noritoshi asked. “Do you seek to bind a god to mortal flesh? What possible need could you have for such a powerful thing?”

Nadja’s expression hardened, her gaze flinty.

“Why I need it is not important, only that I need it. Can you provide it or no?”

Noritoshi said nothing, and instead regarded her. He knew of her, of course. The other clans had employed her services over the centuries, and no one spoke of her because of the nature of her existence. Troublesome that he could not gather much intel on her. Whatever the nature of her pact with the divine, it enforced discretion on all who encountered her, even non-sorcerers. It fascinated and frustrated him. Not only that, it had the potential to ruin his plans if he found himself at odds with her in the future. Still, she had come seeking his aid, perhaps she could be roped into a non-interference agreement in exchange.

“I can,” he aid thoughtfully, smirking and Nadja tried not to consider why this pleased him. She knew he would demand something of her in turn. “But I cannot provide it without first knowing what or who you want me to seal, the nature of the seal, all the fine details that go into such complex spellwork.”

Nadja sat up a little straighter.

“I’m aware,” she said. “You would be sealing a person. Just their power…and their memories.”

That intrigued Noritoshi.

“And who is this person whose memories you wish to lock away?”

Nadja considered a moment before replying. If she revealed too much too soon, it could jeopardize everything.

“My daughter.”

October 31, 2018, 04:45 AM

Sundari’s eyes cracked opened when she heard the shower running. Gojo had come in not too long ago, and she sleepily watched the steam pour out of the open bathroom door, debating whether or not to go and bother him. Likely he was exhausted and needed sleep, so she closed her eyes and drifted back into slumber.

She awoke to the feel of a warm body sliding into the sheets next to her, and she opened her eyes to see two weary cerulean eyes gazing back at her.

“Hey you,” she mumbled, her voice slurred with sleep. Satoru smiled, and she moved closer as he slid his arms around her to hold her close. Without thinking Sundari’s arms did the same: all four of them. Satoru buried his face in her hair as they wrapped themselves around one another.

She drifted off again, breathing in the clean scent of him as Satoru sighed contentedly. For just a moment, there was nothing else but them. For just a moment, there was only the soft, warm cradle of joy they’d stolen for themselves.

Three hours later, Sundari watched Satoru pull on his uniform through the slits of her lower set of eyes, and her heart sank like it always did when he left. She had been cautioned not to venture too close to Tengen’s barrier, and even though Satoru was influential and powerful, even he could not get her execution order rescinded or suspended if it came to light that she was Sukuna’s own flesh and blood. He’d been hiding her in his home for most of the summer since her seals broke to unleash the limit of her cursed energy, and as autumn finally began to drive away last dregs of the heat, Sundari grew restless.

They sparred, of course, to help her let off steam, and Satoru was proud to see her growing stronger each time. She was highly adaptable, much like he was, and he wondered if that killer instinct was inherited or trained into her. Nadja herself was a sharp and vicious fighter, and he saw much of that fluidity in Sundari. No, she was like him: a thing unto herself, wholly contained and individual. It thrilled him to no end. He loved her, how she made him feel electrified with every trade of blows between them, and after…ah well. After, he loved her even more. He loved making her laugh, full-throated and unfettered, and the way all four of her eyes glimmered with mischief and affection. He loved the way she looked at him as if he were the only one in the world for her. Satoru was sick in love with her.

And he saw how his relationship with Sundari made Nadja tense.

At first, in his arrogance, he mistook Nadja’s annoyance for jealousy and envy. She and Satoru had never been intimate despite that encounter in her bathing chamber. He’d already found Sundari by then, and he realized he reacted that way because he saw Sundari in Nadja and vice versa. And he still had yet to unravel the mystery of what Nadja was. No sorcerer abilities to speak of beyond her Heavenly Restriction, which was so absolute as to draw any sorcerer within her purview into a binding vow that forbid them from speaking of their association with her. He wondered how isolating it was to be forced to endure perpetual anonymity. Toji had arrogantly called himself the invisible man, but even his presence was whispered about: Sorcerer Killer. The name was like bitter bile in Satoru’s mouth.

Of Nadja, no one spoke, and she had hidden Sundari for a thousand years right under jujutsu society’s very noses.

Satoru decided that if anyone would have answers it would be Tengen, oldest amongst them.

And Sukuna, who would likely not be as cooperative in divulging anything that happened between himself and Nadja. He could always ask Sundari what she knew, but likely the binding vow prevented her from speaking as well, and bits and pieces of her memory were still missing. Satoru slipped his blindfold over his head and watched as Sundari finally slipped from the bed and came toward him. At this point it was automatic: he folded her into his arms, bringing her close, bending his head to capture her mouth in a needful kiss, slow and indulgent. He squeezed the muscles of her back, and she squeezed in turn, burying her face in his chest, breathing deep the scent of his cologne and of him.

“When are we killing my dad?” She mumbled into his jacket. Satoru chuckled, burying his face in her curls. She smelled so good and it was getting harder and harder to leave everyday.

“Soon, hopefully,” he said, not thinking about how insane their conversation was sounding. He smiled when he heard her doubtful snort, reaching up to massage her scalp and calm her nerves.

“It’s already October, Satoru,” she murmured. “I’m going to go crazy if I don’t go outside and…” She caught herself, all four eyes glittering with the ghost of her father’s bloodlust. Satoru knew it was like a sickness in the blood, that need to flex and exercise her power without restraint. Creatures like them were so rarely given the range they needed to run free. They held one another for a time, and Satoru knew that his grace period for being acceptably late to the morning staff meeting was running out.

“I’ve got to go,” he murmured, hating every word. “But we can go out tonight. A proper date is in order, I think.”

Sundari pulled away from him, and he noted how cute she looked in one of his shirts, which looked like a mini dress on her. He eyed her with open appreciation, Six Eyes tingling at the brightness of her cursed energy, and his cock got hard when his gaze swept over her long legs. Sundari gestured for him to return his gaze to her face and he grinned shamelessly as four garnet eyes narrowed at him with a knowing smirk.

“A proper date, hm?” She mused. “On Halloween?”

Satoru grinned. “We can wear masks, terrorize unsuspecting kids, and eat more candy than our stomachs can hold. And maybe a fancy candlelit dinner if you’re into that sort of thing.”

“Your stomach is a dumpster, Satoru, how do you still have abs?”

“I’m the strongest.” He looked as smug as he sounded. Four eyes rolled in unison.

Sundari laughed, then giggled when he came in and stole more kisses from her, peppering her neck, lingering on the bruises he’d sucked there two nights before. If anyone had told him four months ago that he’d be falling in love with Sukuna’s actual daughter he would have laughed.

Sometimes he’d think about it and laugh, actually. Life was so fucking funny.

“Go to fucking work!” Sundari cried between laughs and kisses, feeling lightheaded with how quickly she’d fallen in love with this idiot.

Satoru settled in for one last kiss, because he couldn’t resist the pull of them anymore than she could, and he blinked out of sight with only a slight rustle of the air around them. Sundari was left with the lingering impression of his soft, beautiful lips on hers, and she touched her fingertips to her mouth, smiling softly.

Today felt good.

Shibuya District, Tokyo, October 31, 2018, 21:03

When the first curtain lowered, Nadja knew that her journey would end soon. Everything she had prepared for was about to culminate into something, and the moment she received the reports from the assistant managers who were stationed around the first curtain, she felt the unease.

Something was wrong.

The curtain, according to Ijichi, was designed to trap non-sorcerers in the district, and there were reports of another curtain being lowered within the first one. Not only that, but there were reports of non-sorcerers demanding Gojo Satoru by name. Nadja pinched the bridge of her nose with a sigh.

“It’s a fucking trap, obviously,” she said. Nanami tried to ignore her language but he could not help but agree.

“One that Gojo will have no choice but to trigger if we want any chance of saving civilians,” he countered. “Our first priority should be dismantling the veils and evacuating the area.”

Nadja nodded.

“The veils won’t be a problem for me,” she said. “I can scout further ahead and see if there’s any other points of entry we can try.”

Nanami frowned. “You shouldn’t go alone. Take Maki and Kugisaki with you.”

Nadja grinned, inclining her head at the two girls. Nobara and Maki looked ready as ever.

“Alright ladies,” Nadja said. “Let’s go a-hunting, eh?”

As it turned out, getting into Shibuya was easy. The veils did not restrict the movements of sorcerers, and since Nadja had no cursed energy, she passed through the veils easily, her cursed blades hidden by the seals within the sheathes. She strode with purpose, and the city became eerily quiet as the crowds began to bunch up in some places, or retreat indoors in others. Whole streets were already shut down, and Shibuya Crossing was still crowded by the time they arrived.

“Man this sucks,” Nobara said as they made their way through the crowds. “Of all the nights for curse users and curses to cause trouble. I should be in the club!”

“You’re like 12,” Maki said drily and Nobara chuckled.

“I’m actually 16 but you know what I mean! Tokyo is so fun at night!”

The jovial back and forth was cut short when Nadja held up her hand to silence them. Immediately, both girls were on alert, and Maki’s brow furrowed as she observed the crowd. The crowd…

The crowd that seemed to be milling about aimlessly the more she observed, some of them with blank, haunted expressions on their faces. The crowd that sounded like a chattering mass, only as she tuned her ears, she heard nothing she could understand, a mockery of human language.

“Hikmat-sensei,” Maki said in a quiet voice, grimacing when the murmur of the crowd began to die down rather all at once. And then, as one, the crowd’s eyes turned on the three of them.

“I see them,” Nadja muttered through gritted teeth. “Looks like they planned to delay us. Keep your eyes sharp, girls. Not all of these humans are victims of the patchwork curse.”

That was the only advice she had for them before all hell broke loose.

Nadja had killed countless humans in her long life. She had slaughtered thousands over the course of the centuries, but never had she taken life that was not pertinent to her mission. There were rules for this sort of engagement, and these curse users and cursed spirits were just skirting the edge of breaking them. By mixing transfigured humans with the populace, Nadja was forced to move with more meticulous care than she ever had. Several times a screaming civilian came between her blades and her targets, and several times she was forced to grab them and get them out of harm’s way before the transfigured humans killed them. And Maki fared no better, as her naginata was too long to be precise in its strikes without harming civilians.

It was Nobara’s abilities and quick thinking that salvaged the battle.

Nadja heard the whistling of projectiles, instinctively moving her head aside as three curse-imbued nails flew past, embedding themselves into the disfigured face of one of the patchwork’s humans. It’s maw was opened wide, the teeth unnervingly still human, and as Nobara snapped her fingers, it ruptured to pieces easily.

Still, Nadja worried because there were still so many of them, and they needed to get down into the station and stop whatever it was that delayed Gojo’s return.

The transfigured humans closed in around them, and bedlam caroled into the night air for an hour’s aftermath before a rare and eerie silence fell on Shibuya Crossing.

Silence, and the wet, squelching noise of blood and gore beneath their booted feet.

“Fuck!” Nobara breathed, catching her breath. She clutched her hammer with a trembling fist, two nails ready to fly in her other hand. Maki was vibrating beside her, brimming with leashed lethality, her naginata slippery with blood. Nadja took a deep breath to re-center her mind, and let her senses relax.

“Agreed,” she said after breathing a sigh of relief. The carnage was awful, it would always be awful, and she knew the girls would never forget this night, nor the horrors to come. At the very least, they’d managed to get the civilians out of harm’s way, urging them to take shelter within the buildings around them until this mess was cleared.

“Come on,” Nadja said. “We have to get down there. Like as not, Satoru is probably engaged with our true enemy.”

They pressed onward, blood-soaked and eager.

Gojo Satoru’s Residence, Tokyo, October 31, 2018, 21:15

Sundari was restless.

No, she was anxious.

This morning, when Satoru kissed her goodbye, he’d promised a date tonight. They’d wear masks, they’d terrorize the kids [affectionately], and they’d eat candy until they couldn’t stand it. That had been the promise made, and she had believed him. Of course, she knew his work—his vital, life saving work—took precedence over whatever romantic daydreams they entertained while in the privacy of his home. But she was still annoyed. They’d been texting throughout the day, but around 7 PM, he stopped responding.

And Sundari felt a great unease in her heart. Satoru could be negligent in his communication, but he usually reassured her that he’d be home soon. Or he’d come in smelling of blood, ozone, and smoke at 4 AM, shower, and crawl into bed with her. She assumed Halloween would be the busiest night for sorcerers, but she was surprised when Satoru told her that summer was usually their busiest time. The curses spent their time building strength in the cold months, sitting with miserable humans until they were strong enough to manifest in the spring and summer. It made sense when Sundari considered the pattern of the human condition.

Still, none of this did anything to dissuade the anxiousness inside of her, and she was tired of piddling about his luxurious home like some princess awaiting the return of her knight.

She tried calling her mother too, but it went straight to voicemail. No surprise there. Nadja having a phone to be reached was a miracle in and of itself. Getting her to actually respond was another, one Sundari had only been able to pull off recently.

With no direct line to any of the sorcerers of Jujutsu Tech that Satoru said she could trust—Nanami and Shoko respectively—Sundari made an executive decision and got dressed. She’d been living in Satoru’s clothes for days, shamelessly addicted to his scent while he was away, but when it came to combat readiness, Sundari preferred her own clothing. She had already told Satoru she was the more stylish of the two of them, although she did compliment his sunglasses game.

The other reason was that her mother had brought her a trunk filled with the trappings of her former station, including the cursed tool, Starstorm, a paired set of short swords that called down the terrible wrath of heaven upon her foes. Sundari was not sure if she was powerful enough to wield them yet, so she did not equip them. Bits and pieces of her memory had come back, first as a trickle, then as a flood, and her dreams were true dreams for she dreamed as the divine did: in memory.

She knew, because of her father’s curse, that her tattoos must always be visible in combat. For this reason, she decided to forego wearing a top, and laughed when she thought of her exposed breasts on display. Satoru had been shocked when she told him, but her nudity was more than welcome. It certainly made their spars more exciting.

She pushed back her curls, tying them back. Her face stared back at her, tattooed, four-eyed, and fearsomely beautiful. She saw her mother’s divine-sculpted beauty in her features, that frightening symmetry that spoke of something preternatural in their bloodline. And from the descriptions of her father, she saw him stamped upon her flesh as well: that fierce glint, that arrogant smirk, the cursed markings of the Disgraced One, and his unfathomable power. She pulled on a pair of black hakama, tying the red sash low around her waist. She observed the other items in the trunk: jewelry mostly, and silks older than this city. Sundari did not wear those either.

For some reason, shoes bothered her, and for a moment she tested her reflexes, shifting from foot to foot. Being barefoot in battle was not something she enjoyed, so she pulled on a pair of tabi socks and sandals, tying it off. She tested herself again. She liked it.

And thus did Sundari Hikmat, daughter of the Disgraced One, set out into the night, following the brightness of Satoru’s cursed energy like a star to which she fixed the compass of her heart. She moved with speed, precision, and purpose. And when she arrived, the hairs of every sorcerer in the area stood on end. They were not prepared for her, they were not expecting her.

Good. She was overdue for a proper party.

-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ- Masterlist 𓆗 Previous Chapter 𓆗 Next Chapter

© 2024 Hajara Asiri. Do NOT copy, translate, plagiarize, repost anywhere without permission [reblogging posts is okay]. I only upload on Tumblr, AO3, and FFN. Title banner by me. Dividers and banners by @cafekitsune.

#muse writes #fic: beast of no nation #series: parallax #ch: gojo satoru #ch: zenin maki #ch: kugisaki nobara #ch: ijichi #ch: nanami kento #oc: nadja hikmat #oc: sundari hikmat #jjk fanfic #jujutsu kaisen #jjk x oc #jjk x black oc

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your-favourite-plague · 2 years ago

Text

✵ The Mother ✵

✵ The Thoughts ✵

[Kalluto & Kikyo, before the mission in Yorknew]

Word count: 1,060

✵✵✵

The scissors blade sliced through the paper with a quiet snip. Another set of little pieces fell on the desk, each perfectly even. The small, agile hands gathered them and carefully hid in the slits of the long sleeves.

Kalluto looked in the mirror, ensuring his hairstyle kept the intact shape and smoothed nonexistent wrinkles on his obi decorated with a geometrical pattern, matching the one on the bottom of his furisode. All preparations were done, and he was ready to go on a mission; technically not his own, as he only assisted his older brother, yet he wanted to polish everything all the same. In a long time he didn't leave his home and he couldn't hide from himself the anticipation of seeing the outside world again.

Obviously, he loved his home and his family. There was no doubt about it, and no reason for him to want to leave. But lately, sometimes, just sometimes, he found it difficult to breathe.

Everything changed when Killua ran away. His abrupt and impudent breaking the rules left everyone distressed. Outwardly, the Zoldycks still worked flawlessly like the harmonized organism, yet the home atmosphere drowned in tension. The wound seemed to heal for the moment, but then these people came and aggravated it once again. They called themselves 'Killua's friends', invaded their property and took him away, ruining the family peace. The butlers crept in foreboding, Illumi began to disappear even without missions, Mother cried more often. And the Thoughts �� the ones Kalluto so desperately tried to quell or at least seal somewhere deep inside him; the ones that made him glad all Illumi's attention was always dedicated to the heir, so these awful taints on his mind could slip unnoticed — now they got excruciatingly harder to bear. In this situation, he should especially increase his efforts to be a good child to ease Mother's pain at least a little, but everything he did seemed to make the matter worse.

If only Killua was here.

He couldn't tell what he sensed first — the stately aura, the flowery scent of perfumes or a click of the heel. He quickly neatened already perfectly adjusted clothes and bowed to greet his Mother, coming into his room.

Maybe at heart he actually wanted to leave home, even briefly, but he definitely didn't want to leave Her. Recent disarray visibly worsened Her state and agitated Her already fragile emotions. He feared She could have a breakdown at any time, and he desperately didn't want it to happen. Even though going on missions was his official responsibility, the one much more important for him was to ensure Mother's peace of mind. He always tried to be near Her, as Her companion, support, confidant. Making sure no one, and especially himself, would do anything what could upset Her, and if She was screaming or crying even then, do everything to distract Her, talk about art, about nature, about assassinations.

He was also painfully aware he was being irrational. The outbursts, no matter how terrifying, always passed without the repercussions, and She regained serenity as if they were just Kalluto's delusion. Moreover, She was surrounded by skilled butlers who knew how to comfort Her. There was nothing in which he would be irreplaceable.

"Oh, I see you are ready. Very well." The praise felt warm in his chest. "You really remind me of Illumi, dear, you've matured so fast! When you come back, I will have to implement more trainings he underwent into your routine, and soon enough, you will be just like him!" While She chattered, this warmth was slowly succumbing to the cold stinging.

"Yes, Mother," he said habitually, not sure if She even needed the affirmation.

"However, I have to say, it was not necessary to take you as his assistant. This is not what is best for your current situation. If only he consulted me, I would have opted for something more quiet and clean for you." The red iris on Her visor shrunk minimally, Her voice momentarily shrill. "And quick." He understood the reprimand.

"Yes, Mother."

"I should be the one to always choose your missions, I know what you need." His heart tightened when Her tone hit the mournful string. "It is regrettable that your father pretends not to understand this. But we will work hard nonetheless and correct these little defects, right? Don't worry, dear, mama will take care of everything."

Yes, Mother, he wanted to say, but something heavy choked his throat.

"I don't want—" the Thoughts blurted weakly, taking control over him. His eyes widened, when sudden silence made him realize what he had done. He was insubordinate and he just saddened Her again. Maybe he should leave home after all.

Silk taffeta rustled when She came closer and fondly caressed his cheek, the pressure of Her fingers painful against his skin.

"Kalluto, is everything okay?" Her voice needled him with guilt.

"Yes, Mother," he said with difficulty, through the mouth stitched by Her presence. "I'm sorry."

He shouldn't forget.

He might still not be the completely finished product, but the course was set. His path was decided in advance, the role that was assigned to him from birth and the sole reason he was created — to serve the head of the family, first his father, then Killua, then Killua's child if he would live long enough to see them. The desire to change was not only unnecessary, but could be harmful.

Unconsciously, his fists clenched.

"I have no doubt that you will do well, dear, just remember to look after each other." She returned to Her previous tone as if nothing had happened, and began adjusting the collar of his kimono and evening his musubi. "You will be a good helper for your big brother whenever he needs you, won't you?"

"Yes, Mother." He couldn't look Her in the face.

With the last stroke on the cheek, She left him, standing in the middle of his room. And he stood, maybe for hours or seconds, his head uncomfortably heavy, yet deprived of any thought. His mind disobeyed again. He just had to concentrate on steady breathing, inhale through nose, hold, exhale through mouth, hold, and on executing the mission. Still with splinters of hollowness in his head, he glanced at the mirror and, straightening up, went out into the corridor.

✵✵✵

It's a part of my longer fic, but I kinda like this excerpt on its own too.

#zoldyck family #kalluto #kalluto zoldyck #kikyo zoldyck #the zoldycks #hunter x hunter #hxh #hxh fic #hxh fanfic #hunter x hunter fanfic #i write #spiderling

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arcadechan · 2 years ago

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Hey! I just found your art and I adore it! I don't mean to be a bother, but how do you draw hands? They're so amazing and I struggle a lot with them!

Hello there, thank you so much~! It's no bother at all, sorry it took me a little while to respond (I came down with a cold and wanted to reply properly!), but check under the cut for a quick rundown on how I do hands and some general tips!

So I generally draw hands in four steps. First, I draw the block of the palm (which depending on the angle of the hand will typically be either a squarish shape or a wedge shape). Then I place the MEAT, that good chunk that's basically part of the thumb, if it's visible for the pose.

Next is the fingers. If the knuckles will be visible I usually circle in a KNUCKLE GUIDE, it helps me space out the fingers, follow the curve of the hand, and can sometimes make some nice shapes for me. As for the fingers themselves, I'll either just draw straight lines to start, or come in with big blocky shapes. I've found sometimes it's easier to erase the shape of the fingers than to draw them outright, especially in the sketch phase where I use thicker brushes (on purpose, so I don't worry about detail too much). That's my usual process!

I make frequent use of reference - normally I use my own hands. Either looking at them as is or taking a picture, I do both all the time

working digitally is GREAT for learning to draw something you struggle with, especially hands. sometimes I'll draw them very large on purpose and then shrink them down, or I'll zoom in while I draw them. big hands.

looking at how other artists draw hands can be just as helpful as looking at real-life reference, especially if you have a more "pushed" style

when drawing complicated hand gestures, I usually stick to simple shapes (at least for the sketch phase), because then I can at least get the idea down.

using the eraser or a brush on transparency to find the shapes of the fingers for you is a gamechanger, erasing can be drawing too!

I let the character decide the finger and hand shape

knuckles still don't make much sense to me (that's why I often use a KNUCKLE GUIDE, sometimes I'll just partially erase the circles to make the knuckle shape for me and call it good)

Nothing...hugely revelatory. Hands can be pretty intimidating, they're comparatively small and full of bits and bends...and you can always just kind of tell when a hand isn't "drawn right". Practicing drawing singular hands on a larger scale really helped me, as well as focusing on "shapes" over "details".

One thing I've been really trying to remind myself of lately is that I can draw things how I WANT them to look instead of how I think they SHOULD look; looking good or cool vs "right" or "correct". This is especially helpful with drawing hands, as they can be so expressive and articulate and weird in their own right, that ignoring technical correctness in favor of GOOD SHAPE, LOOKS COOL can really help you land somewhere a bit more satisfying.

#chan replies #replied #hands #draw tips #i hope....anything here was useful anon #hands are complicated. learning to simplify them - just so you can get comfortable drawing them #and THEN getting complicated again #was my general process. and it kind of still is #good luck!! thank you for the ask and the compliment!! let's draw!!!!

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rosabienfuerte · 2 years ago

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do you know, how can someone gain more confidence in their art?

Wow... This is such a strong question, i will do my best to answer. I cannot say i *know*, but, this is what i think, and the conclusions i've arrived to over time:

I think it's about losing shame. To a degree, shame is necessary for our human growth, and is there to propel us towards change and betterment. But it can also prevent you from truly, fully living life in this world.

Confidence & shamelessness are learnable skills like anything else... It's important to always seek growth while also understanding that, ultimately, making art isnt something you should torture yourself with

Learning technical artistic skill can bring you confidence, i think. It is a tool to broaden your abilities. so you can make what you want to make. My thoughts on this have changed over the years. Skill is also not the ultimate goal. And it is also not possible to "reach" a final point in this, you always have more to learn , if the world didnt work this way nothing would make sense, it's what makes learning and curiosity so thrilling.

The reason why we make stuff is just to make it. Its a natural human behaviour. Singing, dancing, painting, talking, storytelling, etc etc etc , at the end of the day, this is to nurture our souls, it's something that's coming out directly out of your being , your skills, your relationships to the world, the things you see and experience , and is beautifully valuable in its own way no matter what..

it is possible to learn, practice and become better at 'LOOSENESS'. Being free with your hands and what youre making. The way to do this is to just make. Make a lot. And push yourself out towards what youre a little scared of. I don't know what art you make, or how, so this is something you can know yourself..

It also has to do with just, general confidence, in your day to day life. I'm still carrying a lot of shame myself, so i dont have at all an expert solution i can give you. I often feel terribly shameful even about just standing there in front of people. I really admire those who speak in public or act or do theatre or any kind of performance where you have to put your face-voice-body in such a vulnerable visible position. It's incredible. The same way someone can be at a party, dance terrible, but still be greatly charismatic because they just don't care, because theyre just having fun. As opposed to the effect of doing something shamefully.. it is possible to reach a point of seeking perfection that just becomes a joyless burden. We are always capable of more. Discomfort is a door to the endless possibilities of this world. And there should be joy in this. Not all the time, of course. But becoming too severe can backfire, you know? We should enjoy ourselves.

I'm sure putting yourself in those situations can be a way to just not care of how youre coming across. This is all just me assuming this is ask is about shame and self perception or fear.. if you meant it in some other way, let me know..

Like anything else, confidence can be learned, and as a human being you are fully capable of doing that, never convince yourself otherwise, none of your self is "FIXED" in place

I hope at least some of this helps you in some way, and i wish you the best. I've witnessed loved ones rid themselves of shame in such a beautiful transformation. A friend in highschool was so so overcome by fear and embarrassment and i watched her slowly become more and more comfortable with making art again after years of not doing so at all. It was so beautiful. At the end of the day we are all here to enjoy this life, so, have a good day, I love you, good luck 💗💗💗

#And thank you for sending this. It made me remember some really important things.#asks #anonymous

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nineslover222 · 8 months ago

Text

If I keep fantasizing about my death I’ll forever hold that. I keep fantasizing for a reality where I’m not hated and I’m not paranoid I am. The pink grass is forgiving, fleshy. When you look around you’ll see elsewhere in the distance. You’ll fall in love with some guy at the campfire below the treehouse. Not even in love. You’ll never have sex. You’re smoking together and you’re close enough. Running my arms along yours. Comparing the hair and laughing. Your eyes are painful to look into at first. My thumb pressing below your eyes, so dark. You would’ve thought they were black eyes.

“You’re tired.”

“Yeah, I’m dead now though. I haven’t been dead for long.” I run my fingers through his long hair, knots. I stand up to grab a hairbrush, returning and carefully dragging it through his hair.

“Is there a reason you’re here?” He nods at my question, I hold a strand of his hair.

“Just a friendly face, a twisted version of the one you saw before.”

“I thought I recognized you.” He nods again.

“I’m sorry.”

“For killing yourself?”

“Well yeah but also for being a piece of shit.”

“I never knew you technically”

“You did.”

“Oh. Did I?”

“Should I mess up my face into the one you’ll recognize? Just kidding, I love you. I don’t want to scare you off with my actual face.” A shiver goes through my body, I already know what he’s talking about. His face pictured in my mind. I set the hairbrush down and look at the ground.

“I thought you werent supposed to be cruel after death.”

He laughs in response.

“You have no idea how cruel recovering is, especially for you. There’s a sick plan planned out for you. But don’t be scared, the stars are evening it out with pleasant moments.”

I stare at the ground sadly.

“It was supposed to be over.”

“It is. This is healing, going back over things.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No!”

“Don’t yell at me.”

“Get away from me.”

He lights a joint on the campfire, staring at me while I stand up and take a few steps away frantically. His eyes glance at the burns on my arms. Swirls that compare to starry night, some shit art by some shit guy.

“I quite like Starry Night.”

“That’s not what that is. There’s no hearts or X’s or straight lines in that stupid painting.”

“Can I see?”

“Hell no.” I pull away my arm, hiding it.

“Please?” He holds out a hand, hoping I’ll submit. I look at the black under his eyes again then at the smoke from his joint, wondering when his eyes will be red. (They won’t become red.) A few moments pass, I reluctantly hold my wrist out to him. I cringe as his fingers wrap around the swirls. I’m reminded of what it’s like to be against his skeletal body, little flesh covering the bone. On top of me, using me. I attempt to pull away but he’s got a firm grasp on my wrist. He’s feeling the spaces between all of my self-inflicted pain. Tears form, I can’t get away. Despite barely trying to, I automatically give up. Learned helplessness should be a sin. I scream out for help just once before succumbing to reality. I can’t bear to look up, at his face fully transformed, his teeth are out and I can feel his drool dripping into my skin, massaged in to me by his wandering fingers. There’s nothing for miles but us. Flesh colored grass, flesh colored leaves, and the smoke from his joint. I start to realize this was cruel from the beginning. The hairbrush isn’t where I set it and my laughter evaporated. He’s like a surgeon, working endlessly for personal desire. Humiliating, my arm is limp now, I didn’t even realize he wasn’t gripping it anymore. I’m too weak to move it. I cry like I always do when boys masturbate to me. The sun begins to set and the burning ash from his work is visible. He snickers and pulls it out of his mouth, grabbing my chin. Opening my mouth like a dentist, he blows all of the smoke in. Burning my throat and my wrist. He laughs again. Telling me I’m wonderful to kiss, that my thick lips are so erotic. I cough and cough, my throat is allergic. I spit into the ground, falling away from him. He’s careful to not let me go, holding me up slightly, his fingers touching the edge of my chest. I throw up on the dirt, oh how I despise a ruined throat. The pain is unforgiving.

“You’re mean.” I mumble.

“Speaking?” His laugh sounds so far away and still. As if we’re on opposite ends of a hall where the only dance I’m going to experience finally is rape. You bring a new meaning to the word judgement sir. Suddenly I’m ripped forward along his body, his joint connecting to my skin.

I scream.

“I bet you’d like it if I just tossed you in the fire.”

Your average person would’ve begged here, widened their eyes in horror at the thought of burning alive. But the joint is already on fire. I’m already burnt to a crisp. I look him in the eyes.

“Cremate me.”

#Spotify

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irregulardiaryposts · 1 year ago

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01:37 16/02/2023

Well... its obvs been a while since i updated huh. reading back on some of those .. some of its nice ig and some of it is quite articulate but looking back on some of it with my perspective now, idk its sad but also a little cringe lol. but thats the point of a diary to keep it cringe and truthful to how im feeling in the moment. well anyway

its 2023 woooo im in my second year of uni and things are pretty okay i guess. im still a litlte lonely dont get me wrong but im sure things will get better. um. ive got an essay due at midnight on the 16th (technically today) and im like a third through it? but the first 1/3 is the easiest part cos its just explaining the concepts. anyway im behind on a lot of uni work. for no reason. at all. like theres no good reason behind it other than i need medicated i guess. maybe i really should get meds im an adult now so im hoping they can. its genuinely really affecting my uni performance i cant get out of bed most days during the winter cos its so so cold. why is the world so so cold. my feet are also so so cold. can you tell im procrastinating :P unis still lonely but also i barely go anyway so what would i know anyway. i got some hobbies i guess. anime has revived my want for a tumblr blog so in november i made a new blog for anime ToT. its fun tho i really do enjoy it its so fun and silly and i can be as insane as i want to over fictional characters. better than twitter by a mile cos well yeah. it has also reignited my want to make art, cos then i can post it and other people who are also insane about the same characters can enjoy it too. even if its kinda bad idgaf. the whole 'oh shit two cakes' meme constantly runs through my head.

ahh anyway i also like playing video games too, or ig the difference is i have the money to buy them and a decent laptop to run them on. so that helps fill the void of community im missing. i really miss people. and im a huge introvert for the most part (unless im drunk but shhhh) but i miss not being in my room 24/7. i guess the theme of this update is i need meds ToT. not that it will necessarily be a perfect solution sometimes theyre not but ig it doesnt hurt to talk to a doctor about it. that depends on if i can actually get an appt ahhhhh. i dont have too much to talk about ig just that im alive and barely staying afloat but not actively suicidal so *thumbs up*. i really do need to write this essay i would dislike to get an extension because then i would just put it off again until next week lol. im such a good procrastinator :D this definitely isnt detrimental to my non-existent work ethic.

maybe i can talk about something thats itching at me from my philosophy course. my essay isnt exactly on this topic but i rlly wanna formulate some thoughts on it lol.

so we're talking about what exists in the world right? things people would easily say exist are things like tables, chairs, frogs, dogs, atoms and molecules. things that are a little harder to figure out if they exist are things like love, morality, goodness, numbers, gender. the lists are not exhaustive but that kind of thing. and there's this concept of Ordinary Objects(OO) and Extraordinary Objects(EO). the first list has almost all OO, which are defined as being highly visible objects right before our eyes (that do not escape our notice). the atoms and molecules make things tricky in philosophy as nothing can ever, ever, be simple in this subject. anyway. EO are objects that are also highly visible objects that do escape our notice. you're thinking how can an object, a physical object, that is so obviously in front of us, escape our notice??? well you're not alone in thinking philosophy just makes up things along with justifications of said things just for shits and giggles, and calls it a day, cos that's exactly what i thought when i heard this the first time. and genuinely so much of philosophy is just postulating and theorising about this thing and that thing but its done with such earnestness and sincerity that i get endeared by these stupid dead guys. ANYWAY. the existence of EO are obviously controversial (of course) and even OO are argued too. but yes what are EO exactly? the example given in the reading was a Trog - an object that is composed of a dog and a tree trunk. no, they are not connected in any way, and no they don't even have to be near each other but they can compose this object called a Trog. this is what you can call an EO. it is highly visible (assuming the dog isn't microscopic and the tree is not invisible) and it is right before our eyes yet we never notice it. well of course, who would? but the question is do EO really exist or is it a baseless theory. well...

another example of an

#oh well i guess i did try and update in between 2021 and now but i never finsihed my philosophy rant and i never will tbqh #because i do not remember what i was gonna say but im sure it wouldve been interesting to re read it cos i loved learning philosophy #anywya

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crazy-pages · 10 months ago

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The problem is fundamental to algorithmic moderation and, fun fact, an excellent reason why flagging nsfw content should be done by people tagging things appropriately rather than banning them (which encourages people to not tag nsfw things). And this, algorithmic transphobia, is specifically is a really good reason Tumblr never should have banned nsfw stuff and tried to moderate it with algorithms (because it's an impossibly large task for paid humans). It's something everyone who knows anything about algorithmic moderation saw coming, and a lot of people said stuff about it before it happened.

See the problem is this. The only thing nsfw moderation algorithms can do is mine data sets which have posts flagged as nsfw, and then draw correlations between image data and text data and metadata and something being flagged that way. But they're not nearly good enough at this to identify what's not safe work by image data alone. So they have to also look at text data and metadata, and this is where the problems happen.

When people add additional tags to porn, they don't typically tag it for including cis people, because that's seen as the default. But they do tag it for having trans people, whether that's because they're catering to transphobes who don't want to see trans bodies, or whether it's because it's a trans person trying to improve the visibility of trans art and porn. This creates a correlation between the word trans and nsfw content.

Trans people, especially trans women, also tend to do sex work at much higher rates than cis people, for a whole host of reasons from economic precarity to fetishization to the way queer spaces tend to destigmatize sex work. And that creates a real correlation which the algorithm picks up, because the algorithm is nothing but a dumb correlation accumulating machine.

And this is funny when a post about inflating balloons gets flagged as mature content because inflation is a porn thing. But it's a lot less fucking funny when it innately sensors and locks away the fundamental human experiences of an entire group of marginalized people.

And these correlations extend beyond just the word trans and other similar words. It extends to metadata about the people sharing the post, it extends to the language people who share nsfw trans content use in other posts, all of which is also correlated to sfw trans content and can't be managed by just telling the algorithm "hey, ignore correlations between trans language usage and porn". Which is technically difficult in its own right.

This was an absolutely foreseeable and inevitable problem to moderating away nsfw algorithmically. Plenty of us said it was going to happen before Tumblr did the nsfw ban and we were right.

But the problem here is that this goes deeper than individual transphobia among moderators ever could. You can't fix this just by firing transphobes. Hire enough very skilled computer engineers and you'll be able to mitigate the problem, and Tumblr has apparently done that to some extent. But you'll never be able to get rid of the systemic transphobia baked into algorithmic moderation.

The only way to fix it is to get rid of it. And that's how much bigger task to get Tumblr to change its course on, but it's what's going to happen if we want to fix this. No amount of calling for Tumblr to fire transphobic moderators is going to fix the problem of the algorithm itself, and the fundamental fact that it is just a dumb correlating machine which can't actually see and evaluate the images it's looking at the way a human can.

The machine has to go.

Tumblr flagged this post as sexually explicit and it's literally just a trans dude in high fantasy art.

Make it make sense.

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pep-the-artemis · 1 year ago

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art vent : if the artist wanted you to know something they would HAVE PUT IT IN THE ART PIECE

This is a vent about my parents who when we went to an art gallery. You can read if you want, or not, i don't mind.

Both my parents infuriate me in art galleries. My mum isn't that bad but she walks faster in art galleries than her normal speed! That is wrong! No. You walk slower in art galleries because you're supposed to look at the art, with your eyes. Its uncomfortably stressful. But we all have our vices.

My dad is so much worse, oh god. Firstly, instead of using a search engine, when my dad wants to know something, he asks chatGBT |: but thats not the worst part really. He has this vile desire to search up the meanings of every stupid painting we pass, like stop! I don't care what the painter was intending with this piece, I want to stare at it and let my mind wonder that and then fill in the gaps wondering the possibilities. Artists are cryptic little gremlins and will tell you everything you need to know in the painting. And what about if my interpretation is wrong, good!

beyond a technical level (because his art skills are superb), I don't like Picasso's work, not because they're modern but because that fucker is telling me what I'm looking at and thats no fun. Oh, look its a face, but like the eyes and mouth are in the wrong spot, how quant, how dull. beyond a fucked up face theres nothing left to enjoy. Note, my feelings against Picasso aren't strong, I'm just not a big fan and I was underselling the depth in his art to make a stupid point but art (beyond testaments of skill) should have depth, even portraits can have depth beyond what is visible because it can raise questions on the type of person, their opinions, and what they're doing.

The implied is so important to art, its the reason all art pieces don't look like this

portrait, adult, female, 21 years old, police officer, sad, bleeding, brown eyes, grey hair, medusa like figure in reflection of eyes and badge.

oh fuck thats ai art oops. but my point still stands, art should be veiled in a layer of unknown and complexity and leave room for interpretation.

I feel like I've done a terrible job explaining my opinion so I'll rephrase it. For me at least, telling me the deeper meaning of an art piece is the equivalent of a person spoiling the ending of a film.

My dad even went beyond just researching the art piece, he would also use his phone to translate the little slip next to it which tells you information like the title and a small description which for me is fair game because its information meant to be enjoyed with the art. So, whats the problem? Well, dad, why are you translating it WHEN YOU CAN JUST READ IT! My brother in Christ, we speak (sufficient) French! He also translated the same text twice, like Dad, we know what this says, it says 'untitled', how do we know that? Because you just 5 seconds ago translated a slip with the same name!

By the end of the trip i was so tired of my dads antics I stared at a blank wall like it was an art piece so that he can't tell me the meaning because its A FUCKING WALL. It was actually very interesting because I realised nothing aligned in the corridor and there was a small security camera which stood out around the rigid lines.

Sorry for the vent

#vent

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skinnytuna · 2 years ago

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there's a certain stubbornness to my approach to art.

i'm always trying to improve, trying to make something that's better than the last, but there are clear shortcomings i have no interest in fixing. in music, for example, there's an arms race. and this arms race takes many forms, be it plugins, guitar tone, composition, or just a general vibe.

it's competitive. and there's a clear, visible delineation between the people competing and the people not competing. a lot of people in my life are competing. they're always hunting for a sound no one else has their hands on yet. to be honest, this competition doesn't interest me at all. it bores me, and it sets you up with this constant win/loss dynamic depending on where your arsenal stands relative to everyone else's. it makes me uncomfortable to participate in. so i, either deliberately or just due to being a creature of habit, resist upgrades at every turn. i will use the oldest shittiest tools i can for as long as they last, and begrudgingly upgrade when i have literally no other option.

but even an an out-opter of this race, it still feels like failure to not participate. oh my god. did you hear that one part of that essential mix. how the fuck did he make that sound. i don't know man. i thought we left the "technical skill = good" argument in the 70s. you'll often see people who find themself winning try to scratch their way out of the competition as soon as possible, too. skrillex left the vocoder growl --the sound that made him famous-- in the past after only a handful of tracks.

it's also possible that all of this is in my head. i still seek growth… through feeling, through structure, maybe others just seek growth through tools and HOLY FUCK!s instead. i'm well aware i have a tendancy to seek complex patternic explanations for my own inadequacy complex. it's also true that the amount of validation you receive is not necessarily correlated with how good of a job you are doing. the landscape is very chaotic, and oftentimes the simpler and less expert art is what connects because it's closer in proximity to the brain of a consumer.

i often think of what sort of life i would be leading if i had devoted my life to illustration rather than writing and composition. if i would grapple between integrity and accessibility, if my fanart blowing up would make me depressed in relation to my unloved original stories. if i would find myself frustrated that my technically gifted allies couldn't find an audience next to my memey dysgraphic catscratches. if i would come up with a whole neurotic structure in my mind, of the way the game works, of the way i don't fit within it, of the way everyone else knows what they're doing and i don't. i wonder if people who are equally devoted to two things find themselves understanding the world better. a formatiel bilingua. another wall to synthesize between. maybe if i care about writing enough i'll learn the answer myself.

really it all comes down to narcissism. i have somehow convinced myself that, if i maybe try a little bit, not exceptionally hard, but only a little bit, maybe i will somehow magically be good enough and worthy of critical praise. lol! how bold! how entitled! you think you could be better than people who bled and cried for it? who dedicated every waking moment? who didnt spend the first 15 years of their life playing call of duty? by doing fucking nothing? you should be so lucky.

whatever happened to me that made me like this i sure don't seem to have any way to fix it. since basically the moment i discovered i can make whatever i want with a computer i have not stopped or slowed down and as a matter of fact it has probably gotten worse this decade than any other. i'm doing better in my real life at least.

what was i talking about, again? oh yeah, systems.

i still think, on the whole, there is something radical about art made with very few man-hours behind it. if we know being world-class at something requires time and money and being in the right places and having the right people around you, why is it valued as inherently good? is it not spitting in the face of the structure to hit the cello with a hammer? im a junkie for bad art, i try to walk as perpendicularly to the line of objective quality as possible. oh this extremely coveted painting is just a black canvas? tight. okay maybe the millions of dollars in laundered money being passed around to exchange ownership of it isn't tight… you know what i mean. i think thats why i like friend art so much. or things that have big nasty warts on them to scare away anyone who grew up on pristine, 40 person projects being churned out by industries who stand to profit.

the arms race to me is an idealism. an appeal to the systems that say effort = good. inaccessible = good. difficult = good. if you suffered more its more better. well fucking maybe i dont like suffering. sue me. whatever.

#art

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insertdisc5 · 4 years ago

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Hey, if you're still willing to make it, I'd be interested in the RPGmaker MV tutorial (please)! (Always been curious to use it, but I know absolutely nothing about game dev...)

OK OK OK SO.

This tutorial technically applies to all RPGmaker versions, but I’m using MV so maybe it doesnt apply 1 to 1. I have MV because I got it when it was on sale, but as a rule I think you should get the newest one (right now it’s MZ)!

RPGmaker actually has a tutorial that’s inside the software itself! I highly recommend going through it and making a test project to remember the different things... But mostly imo as long as you understand switches and variables you’re all good. This tutorial will probably make WAY more sense if you went thru the tutorial already.

(also this is... less a tutorial and more “things i wish someone wouldve written down in an easier spot to find” lol)

P L U G I N S. USE THEM. THEY WILL SAVE YOU SO MUCH TIME.

Plugins are pretty much little bits of programming that you can add to your project to change your game. It’s pretty useful if you know how to program, but if you’re like me, it is REALLY USEFUL because there’s a lot of really talented people doing some great plugins out there. (iirc rpgmaker ace uses “scripts” instead of plugins.) Plugins in MV are .js files! To add them to your game, drop the js file into your project’s folder>js, and then in rpgmaker go to tools>plugin manager, and select the file through here. I am writing this down because it took me a good long while to find out.

As for great plugins, i CANNOT recommend yanfly’s enough. They have a bundle of their whole library for 30$ and imo it is a MUST BUY. Other notable plugin makers are GALV, Himeworks and moghunter. Also if you got rpgmaker’s dlc there’s plugins in your rpgmaker local folder. Took me months to even realize.

A few more things about plugins:

-if you use a plugin, CREDIT THE MAKER!!! I recommend making a list of the plugins youre using along with the creator’s terms of use-- some might be fine with just being credited, but some might ask for you to contact them first. Some of those plugins might be a few years old and you might not be able to contact the creator-- on my end I tried to leave a comment somewhere on their website at least.

-some dont play nice with one another and might create bugs! Sometimes it’s just a matter of reordering them in the plugin manager (higher plugins take priority or smg? usually plugins tell you where to place them, like “put this one at the top so it doesnt break stuff”).

-usually if i had like something i wanted to do in rpgmaker (like... having a visible hp bar for enemies) i’d just type “hp bar enemies rpgmaker” on google and it usually did the trick. rpgmakercentral is a great ressource

-If you get a bug theres a 90% chance it’s because of your plugins. In that case the fastest way to find out which one is to turn off all your plugins and turn them on one by one until the bug happens. then you have found The Culprit and can act appropriately

MEMORY

Um when youre maybe 40% done you should play your game with the task manager open so you can see how much memory your game uses. As a reference I think mine runs around 300-500MB, which is fine and works on most computers. (i think omori is 600MB?) You should do this just in case because you might find out your game runs at upwards of, uh, 3 gigabites of memory or something. It is absolutely not something that happened to me. No siree. It definitely hasnt happened because I added a glitch animation effect to every single torch in the game and it caused the game to leak memory like crazy. anyway. check the memory at some point

PIXEL ART

pixel art and tilesets in rpgmaker is hell i have blocked it out. Look it up yourself and struggle along. Using the already existing tilesets as a base was very useful. Or just buy some tilesets online and save yourself time

SKILLS AND GAME BALANCING AND REFERENCES STUFF

heres a few ressources i found useful~

-damage formulas 101

-skills: what you’re doing wrong

-making a balanced game

-how to balance an RPG: or, how to not make your game feel completely broken, unless that's how you want it to feel

-yanfly’s “let’s make a game” comics

-studio zevere’s map design timelapse

-another map design timelapse

-the rpgmaker forums and rpgmaker subreddit have saved my bacon more than once if you get stuck on something! also google, CANNOT praise google enough. just ask google questions.

CREDITING

Credit every ressource that isn’t yours. Can be from icons you found on itchio to plugins to sound effects you found on a website. The standard seems to be credits inside the game (whether as a choice in the menu or at the end), and a credits text file inside your game folder. I personally added each person’s website so if you need ressources just look there lol

EXPORTING THE GAME

dont fucking export as mac don’t do it it’s hell if you have a mac and its actually impossible to export to mac if you have a pc. I got lucky enough to have a friend who both possessed a mac AND rpgmaker MV. But it still has problems and even some industry ppl told me “lmao you made a mac version I would NEVER” so just save yourself time and don’t export to mac. Exporting to PC is pretty self explanatory

A QUICK EXPLANATION ON SWITCHES AND VARIABLES

Those are very important to make a game and it took me a while to understand so heres a little section about it lol. maybe it’ll help

To take START AGAIN as an example, when you use a crest and the tears disappear, using the crest makes the “Tears1Gone” switch go from OFF to ON. The tears themselves have a second page where if Tears1Gone is ON, then the tears aren’t here anymore.

For variables, they can be anything but i only used them as numbers. So for the barrels, every loop the “BarrelCheck” variable starts at 0, and every time you check a barrel the “BarrelCheck” variable goes up by one. If you check barrels a lot there’s different events, like siffrin thinking that the people of the house must rly like nuts, right? For that, I have a conditional branch that pretty much goes “if BarrelCheck=5, then event is “wow they rly like nuts”“, “if BarrelCheck=12 then another event happens”, “else just the usual dialogue.”

Here’s a tiny bit of how it looks like in practice! The tutorial might explain it better. It took me a little bit to understand how to even use it lol

as for event pages also: REMEMBER PAGE PRIORITY GOES FROM LEFT (least priority) TO RIGHT (the prioritest). So if an event you’ve added doesn’t start it may be because the page order you made is wrong.

THE CREATOR BRAIN ZONE

Making a game is hard. But it can also be extremely fun. But also it’s haaaaaard!!! How do I even make a gaaaaaame!!!

Play games that you love again. Take notes. Notice the very small parts about a game that make it incredibly easier to play. Add that to your game. As an example: i played the great ace attorney as I was making the prologue. AND. did you know the dialogue in ace attorney has a very slight pause at every comma or semi colon, and a longer pause after periods or exclamation points and stuff. Did you notice. Are you losing your goshdarn mind over it now. Well someone made a plugin to reproduce that so go say thanks

also you WILL hate your game at some point. and at that point you gotta push through it and tell yourself “well. if i hate it. maybe i should just. make it better” and add like a cheesy scene about people eating snacks. works every time

anyway in general just analyze why you love/hate video games and add that to your game. just be extremely annoying about it. Like i just LOVE flavor text in games so I added it EVERYWHERE. Did i get worried it was gonna get annoying? Yes. Did a lot of people really like the flavor text anyway? Also yes. Make a game you’d love to play and it might click with people. Also what would be the point of making a game you don’t like to play??? NONE!!! SO BE AS SELF-INDULGENT AS POSSIBLE, GODDAMMIT!!!!!!!

also make a devlog post every two weeks with what you did in the last few days so you can see how far you’ve come later lol

thats it thank you i hope this was somewhat useful

#ask tag #tutorial #rpgmaker #rpgmaker mv #game dev #i might add to all of this sometime...#Anonymous #reference

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willowdove · 1 year ago

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While the process does make it interesting, it doesn’t have a plaque telling you about how it’s a unique pigment or about the smoothing technique. At least there’s not one visible in this picture. So I think that’s a fault of the museum or gallery displaying it. That context would go some way towards engaging viewers. Otherwise, it is visually uninteresting. And yeah, I wouldn’t think to make it because of that fact. Because it’s boring. If I for some reason made this pigment, I’d paint a peacock, or a dragon, or something.

I’m not trying to hate on anyone who likes it. But I think if the majority of people see an abstract work and think “I could do that” or “my five your old could do that” or “my dog could do that” or “I could reproduce that effect in 2 seconds on photoshop”, it’s probably not successful art. It IS still art. Not here to quibble over the definition of art. But it’s not particularly good art.

What message is it trying to send? What emotion is is supposed to convey? If you saw this hanging in someone’s house, what could you glean about their personality? There’s nothing to analyze here, except basic color theory. Is it supposed to be calming because it’s blue? I don’t know. And we wouldn’t know unless the artist told us.

Now where I think people get really off the rails is when “I don’t like this particular art” criticism turns into “all modern art is bad” and “we are experiencing the end times of human creativity” or other such reactive nonsense. These sentiments getting a conflated in the discourse shuts down what I feel is a legitimate critique, which is unfortunate.

Why should all emotional reactions be valid except the feeling of “this is boring”? Why should people prioritize emotional over technical analysis of art? These art haters are entitled to their opinion on the work, just as the art defenders are entitled to theirs.

abstract and modern art haters are sooo snobby like klein literally Created an entirely new pigment and then painted a canvas in a way where the brush strokes wouldn't be visible. the insinuation that people with no skill could reproduce that is so annoying because unless you are skilled at color mixing and painting you definitely couldn’t lmao

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tfwlawyers · 4 years ago

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Not me singlehandedly going through your entire parent trap au I’m so invested even though like half of the posts are from 2015 💀

THESE THINGS HAPPEN I get such a kick out of knowing this au is still making its rounds though 😭😭

and yk what just because I know I’m never going to do anything else with this, have a 3.5k attempted scramble of fic for this au I tried writing back also in 2015. i was even less of a writer back then than I am now so it’s absolutely terrible but have at thee

“Oh, wait...” Trucy winced and tapped her earring. Apollo’s eyes widened in realization. “Looks like we have one more thing to do tonight - it’ll be super quick, I promise.”

“Oh no,” Apollo said, visibly paling, “there’s no way you’re doing that to me-”

“Then cutting my hair was a total waste,” Trucy huffed, tugging at a newly shorn lock, “because there’s no way I can go to camp with pierced ears and come home without. Come on, Polly, where’s your sense of adventure? It’s just one little pinch!”

“Just one?” he asked hesitantly, eyes now trained on the sharp needle laying on the table.

Trucy paused. “Well... I guess it’s technically two. I really only wear the one earring, but both my ears are pierced.”

Apollo sighed. “Great.”

“Nah, I got this,” Trucy said, grinning toothily. “I went with Aunt Maya when she wanted to get hers pierced, even though she chickened out at the last second.” She picked up the needle and a book of matches from the table, eyes glinting. “I had to get mine repierced because of infection the first time too. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”

“Put that apple slice back,” Apollo said, narrowing his eyes at the piece of fruit in Trucy’s hands. “They’re acidic, I don’t need that anywhere near me and oh God you’re really going to shove a piece of metal into my ear, aren’t you-”

“You sure I look okay?” he asked, patting down the skirt. He squinted down at the stark white boots he’d thankfully fit into. “I’m terrified to walk in these, they look like death traps -”

“Which is why we’re practicing,” Trucy said primly, wiping her hands on a gel-stained rag. She still didn’t quite have a grasp on the correct ratio of product to actual hair, but she was much better than when they had started five weeks ago. “Now, walk towards me.”

“One last thing, I guess,” Apollo said, removing his bracelet and handing it to Trucy, watching as she carefully slid it on. He rubbed his now bare wrist absentmindedly, feeling strangely naked without it.

“So... this is really it. We’re really doing this.”

“We’re really doing this,” Trucy confirmed, bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet. For all her apparent enthusiasm, she looked as nervous as he felt. The studs in her ears reflected the morning light.

“Give papa a hug for me,” he said, smiling weakly.

“Give daddy one for me too,” she said.

They hesitated a moment more before Trucy threw her arms around her brother’s shoulders. Apollo’s arms immediately snaked around her waist, drawing her in tight. They clung to each other, silently willing and praying this was somehow going to all work out - that they wouldn’t just to get to meet their other parent, that they wouldn’t only get a few short weeks with the other father they hadn’t even known had existed, but that they could find some way to reconcile the two, that they wouldn’t have to lose anyone across the wide expanse of the Atlantic ever again.

“You’ve had your ears pierced,” he said almost absently, cradling her head between his hands and gently turning her neck back and forth to better view the studs. He clicked his tongue. Trucy felt her heart sink.

“Do you... hate them?” she asked tentatively.

Edgeworth’s eyes snapped to hers. They were the same soft gray color as the paint Daddy always kept too much of around the house. “On the contrary - I find they suit you incredibly well. Please tell me you didn’t get an infection.”

Her face split into a wide smile.

Apollo thumbed through a stack of canvases that had been shoved into a corner. There was a thin layer of dust of them; if he had to guess, he’d say they hadn’t been disturbed for at least three months - not a particularly long stretch of time, all things considered. They were clearly less polished works, lacking the technical skill and attention to detail that made Phoenix Wright a name to be reckoned with in the art community, but they were still beautiful in their own way. Paintings of vineyards and what looked like London, towering skyscrapers and calm seas and -

His father.

Apollo blinked.

The portrait of Miles Edgeworth drawn in rich oils did not blink back. Nor did the three that followed.

“There were a lot of paintings of the same person in daddy’s works. Some guy with grey hair,” Apollo said, struggling for nonchalance.

Maya’s grip on the mixing bowl faltered. “Is that so,” she said carefully.

“Was he one of daddy’s favorite models or something he just never told me about?”

Maya pursed her lips and continued stirring with a newfound vigor. “You could say that.”

“You’re not Apollo?” he asked, voice thick. “You’re Trucy?”

She smiled weakly. “That would be correct.” One strand of hair fell lank across her forehead - how did I not notice, Apollo hasn’t used nearly that much gel in years - and he absentmindedly tucked it behind her ear. He felt her press into the warmth of his hand, as if she were afraid he might suddenly vanish across the Atlantic again.

“I hope you don’t - I hope you don’t hate me,” she said, voice beginning to waver, “it’s just that Polly and I met at the camp and the whole thing sort of just spilled out. I’ve wanted to see you for so long, and Polly felt exactly the same way about Daddy, so we sort of just - just switched lives and hoped it wouldn’t take you so soon to notice. I really hope you don’t hate me, because I’ve wanted to meet you basically my whole life and I hope that maybe one day you can love me for me and not Polly and -” (this is ALL from movie tho so mix this up)

Edgeworth’s left hand came to cradle the rest of Trucy’s face, cutting her off mid-sentence. “Oh, my dear,” he said, cautiously tugging her forward. She came willingly, all but sprawling across his chest, tucking her head underneath his chin and wrapping her arms around his middle. “I’ve loved you since the day you came to me,” he whispered into her hair, blinking away the beginnings of tears he felt gathering at the corner of his eyes. He felt her tighten her hold and he did the same.

He poured himself a thumbnail of scotch, perfectly content to pretend he didn’t have tickets to a plane back to a state he had vowed never to set foot in again departing in less than four hours. “He was rather handsome,” he found himself admitting, absentmindedly swirling the glass and taking a sip. He paused, staring at nothing and mumbling to himself, “...had the most crooked smile. Always made me weak at the knees.”

“What was that, sir?”

Edgeworth snapped his attention back to the other man; he’d nearly forgotten Gumshoe was even in the room. “Nothing, nothing, never mind, have you seen the tickets?”

Gumshoe shrugged. That was Trucy’s cue.

“Almost ready, papa?” she asked, stepping smoothly into the room from her hiding place behind the thick wooden door. Edgeworth looked just as wild-eyed as she’d been hoping.

“Yes, of course, I’m almost finished packing -”

She didn’t even have to look at his still mostly bare suitcase to know he was lying.

“ -and you did tell your father we were coming, didn’t you?” he finished, placing his drink on a nearby dresser and running his fingers shakily through his hair.

“Absolutely,” Trucy promised.

“Ah,” Edgeworth said, fiddling with his waistcoat buttons. They looked like they’d been polished recently.

“Liar,” Gumshoe leaned down to whisper. She shushed him.

“Might I suggest we continue this little gathering inside,” Maya said, already beginning to shepherd the twins - the twins, she was going to need another vacation just to process the fact that they were together again - into the room. She twisted back around to look at Edgeworth, still shoving Apollo (that was Apollo, right?) forward. “Hi,” she began again, offering a free hand, “you probably don’t remember me -”

“Maya!” he interrupted, smiling warmly and bending to kiss her chastely on the cheek. His breath was sour with vodka and his glasses clunked awkwardly against her face. As he turned and stepped fully into the room, Maya’s cheeks(rp) began to hurt from smiling so fiercely.

“I knew I always liked him,” she said to no one as she closed the door.

This was ridiculous. This resort was full of entirely too many people who favored the same sort of eccentric clothing that man had even fourteen years ago, a disproportionate amount of them with the same slate grey hair. He almost would have written that (awkward*) expression seen from across Dahlia’s shoulder/a hotel lobby as a figment of his overtaxed imagination had it not been so much realer than the stacks of canvases in his studio. Which meant Miles was here, but he’d swept the first level of the hotel twice already after begging Dahlia to take to her room for a bit, the pool area was as depressingly empty as the inside was, and -

There he was.

Across the pool, descending the steps carefully from the inside lounge area and walking on the balls of his feet like he always did when he’d had a bit too much to drink (and why did he still remember that) was, without a doubt, Miles Edgeworth.

Phoenix suddenly found it difficult to breathe.

Edgeworth was halfway down the opposite path before Phoenix realized he should probably do something.

“Excuse me,” he said, shouldering his way through the crowd. It would be rude and more than a little intrusive to just call out his ex-husband’s name in the middle of a resort, right? Perhaps not as rude as nearly shoving the poor bellboy into the shrubbery, but, well, desperate times called for desperate measures.

He didn’t immediately notice the odd assortment of friends and family and a lumbering man in striped green swimming trunks perched on pool chairs as he stepped past, but they certainly noticed him.

“Daddy, are you okay?” Trucy asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said vaguely, refusing to take his eyes off Edgeworth. He was abruptly terrified he might vanish again if he did.

“Nick, watch out -”

“Hey, pal -”

“Daddy -”

With that, Phoenix collided into a passing service boy, arms pinwheeling wildly as he fell directly into the pool behind him.

“Hello Miles,” he said, smiling sheepishly and wringing out his tie. He fought the urge to rub the back of his neck and settled for clenching his hands into tight fists instead. “Or do you people call you Edgeworth now?”

“Miles is - Miles is fine,” Edgeworth said weakly, trying to look anywhere but Phoenix, as if this was a perfectly normal conversation they should be having for the first time after fifteen years. “My father still calls me Miles.”

Something warm coiled in his chest. It felt infinitely more dangerous than it had fifteen years ago.

“You always had a smart mouth,” he murmured, rubbing a swathe of cleaning ointment along the cut on Phoenix’s forehead. Phoenix hissed.

“So glad you remembered,” he bit through gritted teeth.

“Hush.”

Phoenix hmmed but stayed silent for a few more seconds, staring at Edgeworth as he dug back into the first aid kit. Edgeworth tried not to flush under the scrutiny.

Phoenix held his wrist in a loose grip. He should have felt clammy from the pool and the rapidly descending night, but he blazed oddly hot against Edgeworth’s skin.

“Miles, I-”

“Feenie? Who is this?”

“Dollie!” Phoenix said, shooting upright and wincing at the sudden dizziness.

Edgeworth’s burgundy coat was hung carefully over his arm, too thick for the warm California night. The buttons on his waistcoat glinted from a nearby streetlamp’s glow.

Phoenix swallowed.

“Do you have any idea where they’re taking us?” Edgeworth asked, leaning in slightly. Phoenix’s (nose twitched? something about scent memory?) and he refused to let himself acknowledge that Miles’s choice of aftershave hadn’t changed since the day they’d met. He abruptly remembered the taste of cheap wine and overly sweet cake on his tongue, felt the ghost weight of a ring fifteen years gone.

He hastily turned away.

“No idea.”

“Grandfather chipped in a bit -”

“Apollo,” Edgeworth warned.

“Alright, so Grandfather chipped in a lot, whatever, we’re poor teenagers, the point is,” he said, emphasizing the final word by pulling the ship’s impressive doors open with a firm tug, “it’s ours for the night.”

Phoenix whistled shrilly in appreciation, instinctively reaching out to ruffle Apollo’s hair. It was a testament to how important the night was that Apollo merely batted Phoenix’s hand away. “Seriously, dad,” he mumbled. His scowl was clearly forced, however; he felt oddly warm that he was able to finally use that word at all.

“Subtle,” Phoenix remarked.

“Mm,” Edgeworth agreed. “I don’t suppose we should let their efforts, however misguided they may be, go to waste, should we?”

“You just want to know who else they roped into this ridiculous scheme of theirs.”

“Oh, because you don’t.”

“I,” Phoenix said, moving to the chilled champagne propped by the windowsill and popping its cork, “have a perfectly healthy level of curiosity. It does not involve wondering what’s going on in my kid’s head. Trucy is a teenager. That’s terrifying.” He carefully poured the sparkling drink into two glasses and offered one to Edgeworth.

“I find that somewhat difficult to believe,” Edgeworth said, striding forward and taking the proffered glass. He made certain their fingers did not brush. “Thank you.”

They waited until she had hastily bowed out of the room before turning their focus back to each other. “Miles, that’s why we came up with this arrangement in the first place,” Phoenix continued, nonplussed.

“Really?” Edgeworth carefully picked up his glass flute, trying to ignore the tremor he felt running through his hands. “I thought it was because we’d agreed to never see each other again.”

Phoenix’s heart clenched. “Not ‘we’, Miles,” he said slowly, spreading his hands on the tablecloth and feeling like if he missed a step here, he would risk something he couldn’t afford to lose again.

Edgeworth took a shaky draw of wine. “You know,” he said slowly, seemingly forcing himself to meet Phoenix’s eyes, “that part is unclear to me as well.”

“Oh, you don’t remember the day you packed?” Phoenix asked.

“No, I remember that day perfectly. Did I hurt you when I threw that - oh God, what was it -”

“It was Kamisar’s Modern Criminal Procedure. It left a dent in the wall from where it rebounded off my head.”

“Oh,” Edgeworth said, at least having the grace to look properly abashed. “Right. Sorry.”

Phoenix shrugged. “It’s not like I was making it that easy on you.

And....” Edgeworth trailed off, twisting a napkin between his fingers. “You didn’t chase after me.”

Phoenix felt (something) shift. “I didn’t know that you wanted me to.”

“A toast to -”

“Our children,” Edgeworth cut in. He ignored the tightening in his chest at the our.

“Our children,” Phoenix repeated slowly, as if the words didn’t quite match with what his mouth had wanted to say.

“We both got where we actually wanted to go.”

Phoenix’s eyes never wavered from his. “We did,” he said, voice strange.

They toasted again and finished their meal in silence.

“Apollo, what are you doing in those clothes? We’ve got a plane to catch.”

“We’re getting totally ripped off,” maybe-Trucy said. “Daddy said we’d get our camping trip and we want to go.”

“Wait, hang on,” Phoenix interrupted, “what camping trip?”

“The one Aunt Maya and I make you take us on every year before school starts,” almost-definitely-Trucy said. Phoenix began to lift his finger in triumph, sure he’d found his kid -

“ -the one behind the house that runs all the way up to Gourd Lake, remember when you fell in that one year,” I’m-not-too-sure-if-this-one-is-still-in-fact-Apollo finished.

Phoenix’s arm fell listlessly to his side. Edgeworth snorted.

Phoenix shot Edgeworth a look. Thanks for helping, one of these is yours. “This is entirely unfunny, you’re going to make your father miss his flight,” he said, shifting his attention back to the twins. Honestly, he was an Ivy University graduate and Miles was a world renowned defense attorney, how were they being duped by their own kids -

“Apollo -” Edgeworth began.

“Yes?” they both said in unison.

Edgeworth groaned. “They get this from you, I’m sure,” he said.

“It’s not my fault you’ve apparently been raising a devilishly deceptive teenager,” Phoenix quipped back, never taking his eyes off the twins. He could feel the beginnings of a migraine pound at the base of his neck. “He’s probably rubbed off on Trucy.”

The twins grinned.

Phoenix rubbed a hand over his eyes before stooping to their height once again. He stared hard at each of them, looking back and forth between their faces. “This one’s Trucy,” he said slowly, pointing a finger to the sibling in orange. “I’m positive.”

“You know, I hope you’re right, Daddy. You wouldn’t want to send the wrong kid all the way back to Germany - ”

“ - would you?”

How was any of this fair?

“Here’s our proposition. We go back to Daddy’s house, pack our stuff, and the four of us leave on the camping trip.”

“The four of us?” Edgeworth interjected. They ignored him.

“And when you bring us back,” maybe-Trucy-maybe-Apollo continued, “we’ll tell you who’s Trucy and who’s Apollo.”

“Or,” Edgeworth said, carefully stepping around and in front of Phoenix and crossing his arms firmly across his chest, tapping his finger rhythmically against his arm, “new plan. I take one of you back to Germany with me whether you like it or not.”

Two identical sets of eyes twinkled back at him.

(He felt a migraine beginning to pound in his left temple.)

“You can cook now?” Edgeworth asked.

“Oh yeah,” Phoenix said. “I can make pasta. And pasta. Probably more pasta, if you ask really nicely.”

“Hm,” Edgeworth said, eyebrows scrunched in mock thought, “pasta sounds good.”

Phoenix grinned, bumping Edgeworth’s shoulder. He was warm through the cotton. “Pasta it is.”

Edgeworth looked across the seat at Apollo. His glassy eyes reflected the flickering street lamps as the taxi sped down the empty street.

“Apollo, I -” he began, deflating as Apollo turned further away. It’s entirely justified, he thought despondently. I’d hate myself as well.

“Grandfather?” Apollo called, shrugging out of his heavy jacket and hanging it on the coat rack. The house was silent.

“I’ll check the study,” Edgeworth said, tugging his jabot loose. Apollo nodded and headed towards the direction of the kitchen, toeing off his shoes on the way. Pushing open the wide doors that led to the study, Edgeworth saw someone reading a paper at the desk. He cocked his hip against the door and crossed his arms. “Hello, father. We’re back.”

The newspaper lowered. It wasn’t Gregory.

“Hiya, papa,” Trucy said. The corners of her mouth were quirked despite her obvious attempts to reign in her expression. “Did you know the Concord gets you here in half the time?”

Edgeworth slipped against the doorframe. He felt the knob dig into his hip. “I - yes, I’ve heard that.”

(Edgeworth was acutely aware of the doorknob digging into his hip from when he pressed against it. “I - yes, I’ve heard that.”)

Apollo walked into the room, drawn to the sound of voices. When he saw Trucy his face split into a blinding grin. “What are you doing here?”

Trucy neatly folded the newspaper on the desk and clasped her hands in front of her. “It took us about thirty seconds after you left that we decided we didn’t want to lose you two again,” she said, eyes crinkling.

Edgeworth swallowed past the sudden lump in his throat. “We?” he said, voice cracking.

“We,” a new voice agreed.

From the corner of his eye, Edgeworth noted Trucy moving to stand by the far wall of the study, giving the vaguest attempt of privacy. It didn’t matter. His eyes were trained on Phoenix, tracking his movement as he crossed the room.

Phoenix peppered his face in light kisses, smiling into the curve of his throat and pressing his lips to the thrumming heartbeat beneath his skin.

They eventually pulled back, desperate for air. Phoenix’s eyes crinkled - crow’s feet, Edgeworth thought wildly through his haze, he’s got crow’s feet now, I haven’t seen him this close up since - and he rested his forehead against Edgeworth’s.

“God, I’m never letting you go again,” he whispered, hands snaking around the other man’s back to pull him even closer.

“You want to toast with this? I’d have thought you might want to upgrade to something with a little more class.”

Phoenix smiled sloppily, pressing a chaste kiss to his temple. “You’re the only one I said I’d drink it with, remember?”

Edgeworth smiled back. He took the proffered bottle warmed by the weather and tugged his husband into a proper kiss, matching rings glinting in the dying sunlight.

#bluefaewren #replies #parent trap au #attempting to write tag

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