#that my brain wants to default to having that style be my base of reference but 'tis an interesting conundrum

[loregoddess]

why does art have to be so art

[charbies]

I love your coloring style! I struggle so much with painting color, do you have any advice for cohesive color schemes, or how you go about picking what colors and values to use? Do you always use references?

Yes!!! Ok so for a long time I struggled with color too, I would get stuck and give up on whatever I was working on because color just didn't make any sense

truth is, I don't think you can get very far with figuring out color without first figuring out VALUES

So when we color first and then desaturate the left pic, we get a very boring, flat pic, limited values. Middle pic and right pic are 2 examples of grouping values by foreground, midground, and background to create more contast & dynamic layouts.

Case in point; contrast shows our eyes where to go. Our eyeballs like having clear focal points, it makes a good drawing that much more satisfying to look at within its borders.

2 layouts for values that I personally like are dark foreground on light background, and light/dark foreground on midtone background.

once I have a value study I like, I start laying color in by applying a gradient map. Drawing programs will have presets, but I highly recommend learning to build your own gradient maps. From there I'll tweak the hue around until I find undertones I like (more on that later)

NOW LETS TALK LOCAL COLOR. I define local color, aka "flats" as the color your character is "made out of." Basically ask yourself what colors are your character, if your character was sucked into a vacuum where there was no organic source of light/shadow/sun/etc that would influence the local colors.

Once I have local colors, I use a new layer set to overlay and "lay" the local colors over the gradient. Local colors we want + gradient undertones + dynamic values = cohesive colorssssss

Now one thing I want to mention about color in general is, when I started doing digital art, my brain would "icon-ify" colors and pick colors based on an object's "information" (e.g. frogs are green). As a result, I'd pick a lot of saturated colors in the upper right quad of my color picker, and this would limit my color pallets quite a bit.

Now that I'm more well-versed with values, I've intuitively gotten better at picking local colors in other quads and on parts of the color wheel that go against object "info." In general, I like picking local colors that are warm & earthy.

Additionally, you can always use overlay to create cohesion if you're trying to go for a certain look/feel that's tricky to manually pick out on the color wheel!

Last 2 things I'll mention are I avoid using a large amount of default digital "white" in artwork. This white literally does not exist in nature, it's like a vacuum to the point where these "clouds" just look like holes in the pictures here. I highly recommend looking at examples of traditional underpainting & using undertones, this was a gamechanger for me since I learned how to carry a traditional technique into digital art and it greatly improved my digital art

References I always use references, for 2 reasons: 1) I have a tough time conceptualizing whole ideas in my head and can't draw most things from memory (womp womp). 2) I legit do not practice anything ever, oops, I am usually learning at least 1 new thing every time I draw, so basically it'll be like "ok time to learn how wolves work" and this requires references lol. I'll use photos or hostages (ie my partner lol) for anatomy & poses, pinterest & posemaniacs are fantastic for this.

Anyway that's every silly little thing I could think of to say lol. I've done digital art for 10ish years, I'm fully self-taught, take that as you will lol. Thanks for asking this, hope it was helpful! :+)

[hollycircling]

would you consider dropping some tips on how you color? your art always has such a nice feeling to it

Thank you so much, and yes, absolutely! 

So... I have been agonizing over how to answer this question for over a week because I tend to make a lot of my major decisions based on what looks and feels good to me in the moment. It’s sort of hard to explain. Then I started getting philosophical with it (“how does one color? How do I explain aesthetic?”), and I started rambling, and had to cut the answer way, way, way down lol.

But here’s what I can help with right now. I think the most important part of how I color is my tools and what they allow me to do. These are currently my favorite brushes to use: 

From top to bottom, I use Kyle T’s Gouache for just about everything. A lot of my recent pieces are done entirely in that– I love the chunky texture and how the pressure mimics traditional gouache. It’s great for children’s book illustrations, and filling linework, and realistic portraits. She is my soft wife and I love her. 

I practically never use the default hard round. Ignore that. 

The roller brush is another one I use for painting. It was my go-to before KT’s gouache, so you’ll find it a lot in my older work (and as a big texture thing in my current works). The “Sampled Tip” below that one I usually use for children’s book styled illustrations. It’s like a really dense, waxy crayon, so it’s fun for textured lines and details.

I always paint in my own shadows and highlights, but I like to use the soft round if I want to blow the shadow or highlight out. It’s for extra large areas.

And finally my pencil. I use it for sketching as well as linework, if I plan on doing a linework-centric piece. I don’t think there’s much of a difference between the two there… one is probably smoother than the other. 

______________

The reason why I like textured, pressure-sensitive brushes so much is because they’re important to how I paint. When I blend, I don’t use a blender brush or a smudge tool. What I do is layer two colors– lightly– then use the eyedropper to select the color between them and continue painting with it. That’s probably the key to most of my work. I’ve gotten pretty fast at it, so I’m constantly selecting colors from the painting and reusing it throughout my painting. 

I still use the color-wheel to hand-pick what I think will look best, though. This is probably going to be a really frustrating answer, but I choose color palettes based on basic color/lighting theory combined with personal aesthetic preference. It can take some studying (of both theory and other artists’ work). If you’re ever looking for a really great reference on the former subjects, I highly recommend Color and Light by James Gurny. Even if you’re not into watercolor or dinosaurs or realism, the guy is a master at explaining all that different stuff in depth. 

Shape and negative space are also pretty important to me, but that's a whole other thing. And as a side-note, I recommend following more children’s book illustrators. Their work may look simple, but a lot of intention goes into how they use color, shape, space, and texture. 

Also, on texture, I hand-draw most of mine. I love to add little scratches and drops and splashes when the painting is almost over. It's one of my favorite things to do :')

____

Now, the other most important tip:

Once I’m happy with the sketch/linework, and once I’ve laid down the basic colors of my piece, I do a Really Terrible Thing. I become a graphic designer’s worst nightmare and collapse everything onto one layer. 

Then I paint directly on top of it, linework and all.

I do this for a lot of reasons, but mostly because 1) my tiny brain is overwhelmed by the clutter of too many layers, and 2) it forces me to approach a piece as if it was traditional media– a process which I find a lot more comfortable and rewarding. I paint right on top of the base colors, and right on top of the linework, effectively redoing and cleaning up what I already have there. Even if I'm working with a blank background, I'll paint a new blank one on top because it gives the feeling of a more unified piece, if that makes sense.

Basically, I approach my drawings as if I’m using traditional media. I like chunky brushes, utilizing (what I personally think are) interesting color combinations and textures, and smashing everything down onto one page so I can just paint. 

Anyway, please let me know if there’s anything specific you’d like me to go into detail on, any pieces of mine you’d like to know how exactly I went about it, etc etc etc. I’m happy to answer ^^

[sunny-m00n]

WELCOME!

[WARNING: this idiot is really stupid sometimes, except them to just disappear sometimes]

[NOTICE: whoopsie forgot to get rid of the notice lol]

so more people are finding my account and I remembered I don’t have one of these sooooooo- here we go

howdy, I’m Sunny! I go by any pronouns you see fit to call me, I’m easy

I make quotes to old movies and random stuff I like often so if something looks wrong, probably a reference (like I made one in the last paragraph)

I love stuff like Deltarune/Undertale, Hollow Knight, The Stanley Parable, kinda FNaF???, and a few others!!

I am forgetful as heck and explain things in the worst ways possible sometimes so please be patient with me-

I have ideas for comics and want to make a game based off weirdcore in the future!

I try to reflect my speech patterns in text so stuff like “-“ is a abrupt cutoff or a certain tone and stuff like that

I make art! I am open to requests as long as it isn’t NSFW, i don’t like that stuff to much- and if you make any art and show me, that will make me super excited and I will save it and show my friends even if they don’t care- because i love seeing other people’s art

I poke fun at people I care about but I know people don’t like that, so I real it in a bit, but if someone I know irl comes or I slip up, I’m being mean in a loving way unless stated otherwise

my brain focus on things aggressively so if I’m interested in something, except a lot of rants, I also rant a lot and go on tangents a lot so be careful- current brain rot is deltarune (specifically the secret bosses [mostly posting spam because I know people like him more but I love both equally, they are besties])

I am ace!!! I don’t understand a lot of “dirty” stuff!! So if I accidentally say something like that I’m sorry I’m just dumb!

I make typos a lot and my autocorrect screws me over [like Queen] some times! So that’s a thing too! Especially when I’m excited!

I use caps for emphasis and to show strong emotions! So be careful if you don’t like that!

v tag meanings! For you kid! v

sunny screams - me blabbering on about stuff, or just showing it’s one of my posts

moony asks - answering asks! Feel free to send me some! Love talking with people unless I don’t! Then I’ll get to you eventually!

inverted reblogs - it’s exactly what it sounds like!

sunny’s art: stuff I drew! I am working on a name for a tag for art people make me! But it’s in the works!-

{NOTE: please have a profile picture that’s not the default or a human person! And please have a header or something! Otherwise you are being blocked! The bots come in swarms!}

{NOTE NOTE: if I find your art or something and I spam-liked your stuff, it’s because it makes my brain’s creative juices explode and I like to use that during art blocks- aka: I like your art style and like a bunch to help give me ideas :D}

-_Fun Stuff!_-

+ OC playlists +

+ OC ref sheets + [more coming soon!]

I think that’s it so without further ado, buh-bye, hope you enjoy your time in my little void!!!

[the-himawari]

A3! Sakisaka Muku - Translation [SR] MANKAI ☆ New Year (1/2)

*Please read disclaimer on blog; default name set as Izumi

---

Izumi: (The season is already upon us, so I have to start preparing our New Year’s cards.)

*door opens*

Muku: Excuse me, Director-san. Do you have a moment?

Izumi: Sure. What’s up?

Muku: I heard from Yuki-kun that our Theatre company made New Year’s cards before. Are we going to make them again this year?

Izumi: Ah. I was actually just thinking about our New Year’s cards.

Muku: Oh, really! Yuki-kun sent some to his older sisters, so I was thinking I’d like to send one to my sister too…

Izumi: Come to think of it, the New Year’s cards were made last year after I told everyone I wanted to create something that screamed MANKAI Company.

Muku: Have you already decided what you’re going to do this time?

Izumi: No, not yet. I just realized we need to make them soon, so the rest is still up in the air.

Muku: Oh. In that case, if you don’t mind, can’t we all make them together? The people you sent them to last year might be looking forward to getting another MANKAI Company-style New Year's card!

Izumi: You have a point. Alright, maybe I’ll ask for everyone’s help again this year.

-pause-

Izumi: …And so, that’s how we divided the tasks last time. I hope we can use that as reference and discuss together.

Tsuzuru: Gotcha. So there’s choosing the kimonos we’re gonna wear and coming up with the composition of the photo and lettering…

Taichi: There’s lotsa different tasks. All of them sound fun!

Izumi: I’m thinking of buying all the postcards first, in the meantime.

Muku: There’s going to be quite a huge amount, isn’t there? Director-san might have a tough time by herself…

Hisoka: …I’ll help too. If it’s shopping, then I can manage.

Izumi: Thanks, that saves me.

Taichi: Alright, alright! I wanna do the lettering! Choosing the stickers sounds fun!

Muku: Okay, then can I try picking out our kimonos?

Izumi: Sounds good to me. Go off, you two.

Tsuzuru: In that case, I’ll be in charge of the arrangement. That’ll affect the overall impression, so I’ll think it over carefully.

Izumi: Thanks. I’ll get everyone’s advice, so let’s do that together.

-pause-

Taichi: Hmm…

Izumi: (It’s Taichi-kun. It looks like he’s writing something…)

Taichi: Ah, Director-sensei! Can I speak with you for a sec?

Izumi: Sure. Could this be about the ideas for the text on the New Year’s cards?

Taichi: Yep! I’ve been wracking my brain over what words to include… Last year, you guys wrote the characters “Happy New Year”, and I thought that looked cool. But it looks like those were written by Juza-san with a brush pen.

Izumi: Yeah. Juza-kun’s calligraphy is cool, isn’t it?

Taichi: And so, I was wondering if it would be better to include kanji, like “New Year’s Greetings”, too.

Izumi: Hey now, you’re the one in charge of it this time, Taichi-kun. I think something with your taste will be great, even if it’s not kanji. Besides, I want to see the words that you came up with.

Taichi: Hehe. I’m happy to hear that! So I started jotting stuff down on this page… Which one do you like?

Izumi: Wow, you’re written a lot! All of them look awesome. It’s hard to choose… …But this one has your vibe, so I’d say I like this one.

Taichi: Got it! I’ll try arranging it with this base!

Izumi: Yay, I can’t wait.

Hisoka: …Are you going now, Director?

Izumi: Ah, perfect timing. I was just about to pay you a visit, Hisoka-san.

Taichi: Are you gonna buy the postcards?

Hisoka: Yeah. I also want marshmallows while I’m at it.

Taichi: …That’s the main thing you’re aiming for, isn’t it!

Hisoka: Yeah.

Izumi: Alright, I’ll buy you some nice marshmallows as thanks for helping me with the shopping today.

Hisoka: …Really? I’m so happy. Thanks.

Izumi: Fufu. Keep it a secret from Homare-san.

Hisoka: Sure. I’ll eat them secretly.

Taichi: That’s great, Hisoka-san! Take care, you two!

Hisoka: We’ll be off.

Izumi: See you!

---

| next

[ruleofbirds]

𝚍𝚎𝚟𝚕𝚘𝚐_𝟶𝟷.𝟸

Birds of a feather ...

So before we jump into all the specific bird behaviour I want to simulate, here's a coding exercise I did a while ago that demonstrates a principle aptly called "flocking".

It requires writing a "class" (basically a code template) for an entity, in this case a bird, which is represented by a vector (that's a direction with a magnitude, for those who don't remember high school physics) in what for my purposes here is a 2D space.

Nerds like me refer to these entities that exist in a flocking context "boids." Craig Reynolds circa 1986 is the guy to blame for that one.

The important point about how boids exist within a flock is that their behaviour is defined by three properties; alignment, cohesion and separation.

𝚊𝚕𝚒𝚐𝚗𝚖𝚎𝚗���� : 𝚋𝚊𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚟𝚎𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝚟𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝚘𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚋𝚘𝚒𝚍𝚜 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗 𝚊 𝚋𝚘𝚒𝚍'𝚜 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚌𝚎𝚙𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚛𝚊𝚍𝚒𝚞𝚜, 𝚝𝚠𝚎𝚊𝚔 𝚟𝚎𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑.

𝚌𝚘𝚑𝚎𝚜𝚒𝚘𝚗 : 𝚊 𝚜𝚒𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚊𝚛 𝚙𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚌𝚒𝚙𝚕𝚎, 𝚝𝚠𝚎𝚊𝚔 𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚐𝚎𝚝 𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚝𝚘𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚘𝚏 𝚗𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚋𝚢 𝚋𝚘𝚒𝚍𝚜.

𝚜𝚎𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 : 𝚊 𝚗𝚎𝚐𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚌𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚊 𝚋𝚘𝚒𝚍'𝚜 𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚊𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝚗𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚋𝚢 𝚋𝚘𝚒𝚍𝚜. 𝙸𝚗 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎 "𝚌𝚘𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚟𝚎" 𝚏𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚔𝚜, 𝚜𝚎𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚊𝚜 𝚊 𝚜𝚖𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚊𝚖𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚝𝚘𝚙 𝚋𝚘𝚒𝚍𝚜 𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚕𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚎𝚊𝚌𝚑 𝚘𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚋𝚞𝚖𝚙 𝚘𝚏𝚏 𝚎𝚊𝚌𝚑 𝚘𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚘𝚛𝚐𝚊𝚗𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢.

Another important tidbit is that I can code in the radius that a boid sees the other boids around it and decides to act according to these collective-focused properties. I'm realising now that the perception radius for separation should generally be the smallest of the three.

This being said; here's the flocking exercise, based off of code created by the wonderful Dan Shiffman of the Coding Train YouTube channel. Please check this guy's stuff out if you want to learn p5, processing, or coding for design in general!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhjuuHl6qHM

I changed the code up a bit for the style, added some buttons and sliders so you can mess with the values, and set the defaults for how I imagine the extinct Moa bird would have acted - quite independent, with a subtle alignment drive, and a little more separation than cohesion. This resulted in them seeming to follow the same direction when two boids meet each other at a similar enough velocity, and "scrambling" amongst themselves a bit when more than two or three boids run into each other. Since these rules govern collective behaviour, this individualistic leaning was a challenge - boids are fundamentally social entities and follow a constant velocity on their own!

All in all, really interesting principles for how simulated groups of creatures can act. I think I'm going to jump straight into a game engine space from here! Have fun spamming the +boid button, ad feel free to steal my code to go outside of the limited variables I've given you within runtime.

Okie. Coding brain deactivate now.

Next up: Natural history rabbit hole #1!

[atomicsuperrobot]

I have like, zero reference images of any of the characters. Which is gonna be kind of important, if I want to be able to draw the characters at all; I’m nowhere near as invested in this series as I am in KJ at the moment (brain rot still going strong at over three years now, hh), and I don’t know if I care enough to rewatch the series (gonna have to figure out episode order to boot...), but I still wanna like, do stuff with it, maybe. I wanna do a KJ crossover with it, bc both series are pretty crossover friendly, and also KJ is incredibly silly and goofy and with a cute, relatively simple style that I wanna try to mesh the DP style with a little bit, mostly bc B*tch’s style is kind of ugly most of the time, thinking about it. Wanna give the cast a glowup, lol.

I also need to establish headcanons and references for the base of the AU, first; this would probably be my default base AU of the series going forward, the basic details of which would be included in any crossover I’d decide to create with it (I have ideas for at least one); plus depending on how it turns out, the style might be reused for other projects. Idk yet; I’m... not even really that good at drawing rn; I’m stuck at the bottom of a massive hill, so to speak, and I’ve yet to find any way up it for the past several years, now.

[dkettchen]

completely random ask that might be worthless idk but,

I really really like your style it scratches my brain nicely, if you could please tell me how you draw eyes/hair i would greatly appreciate it

okay have a great timezone goodbye

nO SELF DEPRECATING ON MY BLOG!!!!! 

that’s like a huge area you’re asking about ummm... reference, default photoshop brush, and 20 years of practice?? I guess??

if it’s about my style specifically, a lot of it at its base comes from disney and anime/manga styles (general proportions & shapes, expressions, gender cues, etc), which works well for my comics & animator background: if someone else managed to draw the thing many times then that kind of design is likely easier to replicate en masse than high-detail illustration-y stuff. It's all about looking at reference, both from real life & other people’s work.

Ex. for fanart and meme redraws I often try and match the original art style as closely as possible (unless it is offensively far from my usual style and won’t be posable properly in which case I will take my liberties with some of it 😅), which is also great as a style study from reference!

(vv specific eye & hair advice under cut vv)

((yes I will be using this opportunity primarily to gush about my comic character designs))

generally what I think about for eyes is default eye shape (ex. Diego’s eyes are a different shape from Leon’s, the middle bit of the upper lid goes down earlier/at a different angle)

expression (what emotion are we experiencing, what are the lids doing, how do we stylise that (this is where I get a lot from anime/manga))

and other facial detail where applicable (ex. I made sure to include double lids or lack thereof in the style for my comic (which I often don’t bother with in fanart etc, cause lids is just another line to draw, ain’t got time for that x’D) in order to be able to better differentiate between different characters’ ethnicities (important when you’re stylising away a lot of information like colour schemes & various bits of face structure, I know many examples of both western & eastern cartoons that fail at communicating that stuff via design alone (which is obv not limited to eyes alone also)))

Also when in doubt: dot eyes are your friend!

for hair, think about hair texture (how do we stylise straight, wavy, curly, tight-curly hair?)

hair style (how does this person use their hair? how does their hair behave and what shapes does it make when you do that with it? various lengths of hair (really short hair like Zoros will look different than longer hair of the same texture)/hair sections (like undercuts), gel, straightening/curling, ponytails, various types and styles of braids/plaids, ex. I like to stylise protective hairstyles like on current-day Kelly & Nate’s designs as just nice big chunky shapes for each dread/twist/braid, etc)

and shape language you want to use (ex. both Leon & Al have a similar hair texture and length at times, but I use a pointy shape language for Leon (lots of strands sticking out from the main shapes, bangs, layers) and a rounder one for Al (she has very few strands separating out from her main chunk of hair, it’s a wavier looking shape instead) to differentiate more between them)

[lichfucker]

2, 7, 12, and 22 for Ingot~

2. what's their current hairstyle? has it changed? do they change it often?

ingot has long straight hair that he wears down and it’s pretty much always been that way lmao. the way his horns kind of hug the side of his head basically acts as like a headband holding the hair there so it’s not. the easiest thing in the world to style his hair any other way. that being said, though, while he was a soldier he wore it back in a low bun, and very rarely (like, only ever on dates w z’ress, and even then mostly not) he’ll tie it into a low ponytail or something, nothing fancy, just something a little different to mark the occasion. but 99% of the time it’s just down. ingot takes good care of his hair, he likes it the way it is

7. how would they react to eating something that was spicier than they expected it to be?

g-d it’s so funny bc ingot has +3 constitution but they fail con saves so often that like any little Bad Sensation makes them throw up, so I honestly have a hard time gauging what their tolerance for spice would be. like on the one hand we’ve got posh little dandy boy who grew up eating food specifically made to their exact tastes, but on the other hand we also have someone who canonically doesn’t wear coats in winter because their blood runs so hot that they’re not really affected by the weather. either way though I think they’d react the same way I do, which is to just cringe and grit their teeth and not mention it at all because they don’t want to make a whole Thing out of perhaps not being able to handle it (in my case particularly it’s bc I’m weenie and I never know how to rate my tolerance compared to others’ so I perpetually live in fear of commenting on how spicy something is and having everyone look at me like I’m insane; I think for ingot it’s less of an insecurity thing and more of a pride/stoicism thing)

12. what color would they paint their room? would there be a design on the ceiling?

I tried to imagine ingot exerting that level of aesthetic control over a space and my brain short-circuited, which I know sounds contradictory based on Everything Else about ingot, but when we were first planning on going to brogana, jd and I spent a lot of time talking about what brogan keep looked like, and I was struggling so hard to find any reference photos that felt like what ingot’s bedroom would have been like, because they were all so... grand and ornate in ways that just didn’t feel right? and then I realized that a) a lot of emphasis would have been placed on the idea that public spaces are meant to be precious but private spaces are meant to be practical (grand foyers and lavish parlors because they’re on display, versus plain and undecorated bedrooms because they are purely functional), and b) many many generations of brogans have all lived in this same keep-- plenty of people lived in ingot’s bedroom before it was his, and more inevitably will after, as well; even if he’d wanted to, the space was never his to decorate, it was always borrowed. and even his bedroom now, in a house gifted by the emperor, is a space borrowed. all I can imagine are plain white walls because that’s all ingot can imagine. if you asked him to pick a color that feels comfortable and safe, he couldn’t

and there is not a single g-ddamn universe in which ingot paints a design onto their ceiling

22. when they speak, do they have a default tone of voice? if yes, do they try to change it? why?

ingot has to try very hard not to sound very arrogant and aggressive with everything they say, which is difficult because they are both very arrogant and aggressive lmao. they’re insightful enough to know that by default everything they say sounds condescending, but they’re not charismatic enough to have... a lot of control over their tone without concerted effort. it doesn’t matter how many times ingot shoots their friends (read: z’ress) with arrows, because they know that the times they’ve done the most harm to the people they care about have been the times when they’ve just. spoken freely and without regard

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2020-05-19

Figured an upd8 was coming, it’s felt like enough time has passed for one.

Huh, looking at my last post I’d completely forgotten I was supposed to play through Pesterquest sometime... work is busy and stressing me out a bit, I’m not sure when I’ll have the energy on the side to do that.  (Maybe I’ll livetweet it like I did Undertale a while ago, but this time not looking at my twitter replies so I don’t get spoiled by One Guy™?)

Also, including bonus commentary on A Threat Sensed.

Okay, going in completely blind.  I’d guessed from context that we’re hopping over to Meat side to get a chapter there before we can come back to actually see Yiffy?

Yep.  Okay, what is this about exactly?

(Agh, dammit, I’ve been copying and pasting so much at work remoting into Windows lately that now I’m automatically trying to hit control-C instead of command-C to copy.)

> CHAPTER 9. How Goes The Eulogizing, Dear?

CONTENT NOTE: This chapter contains Child Abuse.

Which one???

Wait

JANE: (Where is he?) JANE: (It's a question I've found myself asking many times in recent days.)

Holy SHIT we get two Candy chapters in a row???  So we might see her right away??  No, it’s gotta just be another tiny glimpse.

(Has two Candy chapters in a row happened before?  Future Boots, scroll back up and put this here. FUTURE BOOTS: “I forgot to scroll back up and put that here.” EDIT: Also, not the first time with two in a row, but it IS the first time with THREE in a row, huh.)

So Jane has to be talking about either Tavros or Dave.  --Oh, if this was a Candy Side chapter title, I guess Rose or Jade is eulogizing Dave for John?

> (==>)

JANE: (Where now is our merry savior?) JANE: (Where is the horn that was honking?) JANE: (Where is the cape and the codpiece, and the...) JANE: (The...) JANE: (Oh, fiddlesticks.)

What?  Is she reading a childrens’ book?  --Oh.  She’s eulogizing Gamzee.  So that gives us a third option, where the rebellion crashes the funeral somehow, probably audiovisually rather than in person.  (Which would make sense, given Candy practically began with Gamzee crashing Dirk’s funeral.)

> (==>)

Ah never mind, she’s still writing it.

That sure is a single button drama-remote that’s going to be pressed at some point.  Oh, and who the fuck keeps a spork in a pen cup???  --No no, don’t say it’s one of those pens with a spork at the eraser end, either ready-made or rubber-banded to the side.  That would make sense.  You totally know it isn’t that and is just a spork.

JANE: (Okay, poetry is out.) JANE: (What else?) JANE: (Hrm...) JANE: (I've always been pretty good at crying on cue.) JANE: (Could I try staging an emotional breakdown?) JANE: (That could work; playing to people's humanity.)

Why were you crying in Jake’s arms about his death if you didn’t care that much?  Did you just want him to hold you and kinda make him feel in on things again?  Or did you just cry yourself out about him?

JANE: (Or whatever is the more inclusive term.)

I bet the rest of Earth C figured out a more inclusive term millenia ago FUCK I accidentally added millennia to my dictionary misspelled instead of correcting it hold on--

...There, killed the entry for it.  ...Huh.  Take a look at my Chrome dictionary’s custom-added words over the years, apparently:

Caliborn Eridan Kanaya Matriorb Meenah Tavros alchemiter dichotomic nephilim reblogged uncaptchalogues uncaptchaloguing

That’s fun.

Okay back to reading. Millennia.  Phew!  Where was I.

JANE: (One really good and calculated weep could do it, I think.) JANE: (But then there's the danger that I might get carried away and do it for real.) JANE: (And I can't risk that.)

So still feeling something, just too used to calculating over the past years.

JANE: (What can I say about him that will stir up their emotions?) JANE: (Do I mention the stuff about the milk?) JANE: (Think Crocker, think.)

WHY would you-- how much did Gamzee normalize adult breastfeeding?!

JAKE: Ahoy over there!

Not the best time.

(The thing with the divorce papers from the Epilogue and John implying he was planning with Jake to execute something that sounds like a divorce... is that going to be sprung here?  Did her lawyers send the divorce papers way back when she was in a fit of pique, and he just had them available to sign now at the tactical moment? Or... let me pull the exact text...)

JOHN: now, harry anderson, i know that you and tavros haven't always gotten along. JOHN: but i am going to have to ask you to try and look out for him for the time being. JOHN: your uncle jake and i... well, i'll explain later. JOHN: let's just say that gamzee isn't the only family member jane is losing today.

(So is John going to submit the papers? Or did they already go through a while ago and default custody to John or something who’s going to adopt him too or some nonsense?  And did he plan this out with Jake NOW, or a while ago, and if only a while ago, is Jake going to KNOW whatever John’s about to pull in that respect is about to happen??)

> (==>)

Butte

Janepalme

> (==>)

JAKE: Er... how goes the eulogizing, dear?

Gah.  I completely forgot again that capitalized-first-letter chapter names don’t mean KANAYA is saying them.  That probably makes a lot more sense out of my wondering about the chapter title earlier to those of you who didn’t realize I was making that mistake.

JANE: It turns out that it's mighty difficult to find touching things to say about a person, the relationship with whom was predicated on deep-seated mutual loathing.

Hah!

--A loathing you regarded as largely more important to you than Jake ever was, by the way.  You asshole.

JANE: I imagine this is one of the reasons no funerary tradition was ever established on Alternia, besides the barbarism of their culture. DIRK: Jesus christ. JANE: Not only did a significant proportion of their interpersonality depend on romance in the form of hatred, but it was a society based on cruelty and violence. JANE: What reason could they have had to provide for the dead? JANE: What kind of last rites could they have even imagined?

I wondered for a moment why (bg!)Dirk of all people would react to a single line of her starting to bring up prejudices, but then I realized that (1) Brain Ghost Dirk is a little more Jakey, and (2) Dirk knew that more ranting would follow the first line.

JANE: I can't think of anything good to write about him because deep down, I hated his guts. JANE: But he was and is beloved of the multitude, so I have to think of something regardless. JAKE: Im not sure i understand. JANE: Don't worry your pretty little head about it. JANE: This is politics, Jakey. JANE: Lying through your two front teeth about people you hate is about as good a definition as it's possible to get. JANE: But, by gum, is it tiring work.

Mm.  It’s a position Jane put herself in, but it’s still a legitimate position once you’re there.

JANE: The funeral is tomorrow, after all.

Got it.

DIRK: Dude, the bowl. JAKE: Hm? JAKE: Oh, right. JANE: What is it now, Jake. JAKE: I brought something for our guest as well. JANE: You mean the prisoner. JAKE: Y...es.

Wait, bowl?

Oh god damnit which of you had the idea to feed her with a DOG BOWL.  Either of you could have thought of it, and either of you would be horrible for it.

> (==>)

Huh, that outfit on Yiffy looks familiar, like a reference to something.  And a black tail?  This definitely isn’t quite the look I was expecting from Jade Plus Rose, but I suppose the snazzy tie is a Roseish vibe.  Also reminiscent of Jade’s old Dead Shuffle dress.  Formal wear and soccer cleats??

JANE: She's over in the corner. JANE: Don't worry, she won't bite. JANE: I've seen to that already.

WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN.  I don’t see anything over her mouth!  Did she stick something in it, or drug her?  File her fucking teeth???

I mean I did forget the Child Abuse trigger warning to be fair.  Hoping whatever would be on her mouth is just not shown in-panel yet for stylistic reasons.

> (==>)

JAKE: Its only mac and cheese, sorry. JAKE: Its all I know how to make, haha. JAKE: ... JAKE: I um... hope you can safely partake of cheese? JAKE: ... JAKE: Well, JAKE: Bon appetit.

How the fuck did Jake eat on his island then?  --Oh right, preserved food cans that Grandma Jade stored up, I think I remember.  Why would cheese not be a thing for them, if it’s fine for Jade?  I know he’s probably not just worried about lactose intolerance.

Either way, if she’s drugged here, that’ll mean we won’t get a good idea of her for a while, so which is it...

> (==>)

DIRK: Bon appetit. DIRK: Seriously dude? JAKE: (What? Did i pronounce it wrong?) DIRK: Jake. DIRK: You put the food in a fucking dog bowl. JAKE: (It was all there was, ok???) JAKE: (I feel awful enough as it is without you getting on my case about it.)

Ah, missed the bone pun.  AND, yeah, Jake, you’re a fucking idiot, you could have put it in a cup or something.

JAKE: (So far ive yet to see anything come of that brilliant plan of yours.) JAKE: (Are you sure sending that message to the others was enough?)

Okay, so he IS coordinating this slightly.

> (==>)

Horrifying image to contemplate, eh Jane?

Or anger-inducing?

> (==>)

Seems about right!

> (==>)

Oh that’s a GREAT exasperated Jane face.

JANE: I hope you're not expecting dessert, young lady.

I like how Jane didn’t notice, comment on, or care about the bowl.  How can you hate a kid so much??

> (==>)

Oh I know why I felt like I recognized the outfit style, it’s because it’s ANIME AS FUCK.  Feels like some Persona 4 Arena nonsense, and I say that not having played any of those games or even remembering what they looked like.  Also, white hair, black fur’d dog parts?  Nice change of pace.

YIFFY: GRRRRRRRRR... JANE: Oh no you don't.

Red text?  What color exactly... “#D00009”?  Huh.  That’s nowhere near Alt-Callie’s #FF0000, and darker than Dave’s #E00707.  In fact, let me go back and check those spilled color pins the commentary pointed out from an update or two ago...  no, the red pin is #E63225, closer to Dave’s color.  (Also, is Yiffy blocking the doorway out?  That’s a pretty slack chain then.)

Did Jane see to it that she wouldn’t bite with like, a water spray bottle?

(EDIT: Oh my FUCKING GOD, THAT's why it's #D00009...)

> (==>)

FUCK I didn’t notice the shock collar in the Yiffy image!  FUCK YOU, Jane.

> (==>)

Keeping someone in line with collars, especially ones that punish whenever one strays out of line, has always been a decent way for her to mix in some Doomy control of others to show how she’s “grown” to balance her main role and her Tiara-controlled-like inverse for more power.  Doom in part represents boundaries that you can’t cross without getting hurt or punished.

> (==>)

FUCK, those little buck teeth!?  D’:

JANE: That's more like it.

She HAS to have more of a reason for hating her than hating her parents, right?  Like, more than that and general racism applying to partdogfolk?

> (==>)

Hey fuck off with that!

> (==>)

This is a pretty cool ima-- are those piercings on her dog ear?  I didn’t notice that in the first shot, neat.

JANE: You've been a thorn in my side ever since I agreed to enroll you at the academy, little madam. JANE: Back then, I was doing a favor for two old friends who made a disgusting mistake. JANE: I'm no longer going to play nice with you just because of your parents, however. JANE: That truce is over. JANE: Do I make myself understood?

What the fuck?  WHY would you do that?  Why does Jane run "Ms. Paint’s Home for Inconvenient Girls”?  What did Yiffy do to piss her off so much there, how much trouble could she have caused?

I don’t know if she’s referring to the behind-Kanaya’s-back part as disgusting or she’s just being MORE racist.

> (==>)

JANE: We don't want you passing out during the ceremony, do we?

Oh, just showing the hostage off during the clown funeral, huh?  Classy much?

> (==>)

JANE: Now, be a good hostage and get some rest, Yiffany dear. JANE: We've got a big day tomorrow.

For a politician, Jane’s not good at looking at herself in a mirror.

> (==>)

JANE: Night night. JANE: Hoo hoo.

> (Yiffy: Lights out.)

Huh, dream stuff is gonna be relevant out in Candy then? *click*

Okay, dark background all of a sudden.  Properly dramatic?  You even have to highlight the non-link “>” part of the Next link to see it.

> (==>)

-- thespiansGlamor [TG] began pestering adamantGriftress [AG] --

Well, I don’t know WHY it’s happening, but the white-backed pesterlog suddenly on the dark site framing is certainly evocative.  Of like, a mood, or something.

TG: i thought he was pretty quiet down there. TG: we'll make a rebel of him yet! AG: Lol. AG: I think it's more that he can't sleep. AG: I know how he feels. TG: yeah. TG: today was a lot. AG: ... TG: do you wanna talk about it? AG: Ugh, not you as well.

It’s really jarring to transition between Homestuck’s “kids jarringly mentally resistant to freaking out about the end of the world” to HS^2′s more realistic “kids traumatized by their first firefight even though it was an overwhelming victory-escape”.

TG: but seriously, do you? AG: Not really. TG: not even about... you know? TG: her? AG: No. TG: ... are you sure? AG: A8solutely. AG: What are you, my moirail? AG: Just leave it, Harry. TG: ok.

Are they about to have an “I wonder what Yiffy’s like” talk?

> (==>)

Very similar Tav/Vrissy convo to the previous one.

GG: I havent ever shared a bedroom before,,, GG: Not even for a slumber party,,, AG: Tavvy, you are just a8out the saddest person I've ever met.

Well, we have an even better idea how horrible Jane can be with kids, now.  From Nanna to THIS is quite jarring.  I wonder how the double Nannasprites that must still be around here somewhere feel?

> (==>)

TG: nothing about my dad is cute. TG: what are you even saying. AG: Lmao. TG: seriously! TG: i think he has something against that word, even. he gets super weird about it. AG: He's a strange and funny m8n. TG: yeah. TG: ... TG: i think something bad must have happened.

...um.  What?  Why would John have some sort of trauma about the word cute or being called it?

Did John dress up as a hint of his buried June ambitions as a kid and Dad lavish him with “SO CUTE” praise in an epic supportiveness backfire that caused him to shelve the idea of wearing non-masc clothes and being happier on the flipside of gender ever again???  Because if that’s how June gets canonized as promised, it’s a little harsher than the back of my mind was hoping.  I guess it kind of had to be though from the premise of how it was read into his childhood for the original idea, though.  Fuck, I hope this Cute business is about something different from that (like a Terezi reference or such) just to get less John Sads.  (But still June.  Definitely still want to get June.)

> (==>)

Oh, and now Vrissy is doing nothing but talking about what she said she didn’t want to talk about, of course.  (Also I like how JANE’s now being called the Batterwitch.)

AG: And the worst part was they didn't even fight a8out it! AG: That made me madder than 8nything else. AG: It felt like I was the only person who even W8S mad! GG: I dont think thats true,,, AG: What would you know a8out it?! GG: Maybe nothing,,, GG: Sorry,,, GG: Its just,,, GG: To me,,, all the way through the conversation,,, aunt kanaya looked even angrier than you,,, AG: ... AG: Adults are so fucking weird.

Guh, I don’t want to be reminded how hurt a good chunk of the fanbase is by Kanaya getting hurt this badly.

Original Tavros was always SLIGHTLY perceptive of others sometimes, but maybe perceptiveness is being hinted at as a Tavros specialty?  We still don’t know his classpect/hero-title or have any firm guesses based on purely him evidence.  (Also, frightened kids of abusive households tend to learn to get perceptive pretty fucking quickly I hear.)

> (==>)

TG: dad was sitting in the cafeteria with aunt jade and your moms. TG: it looked like they were discussing something important... they were whispering and stuff.

[etc etc] Alright, the what-happened-to-Dave bit.  And I imagine they’re kind of helping John grieve there, since Rose and Jade have talked that out already.

TG: aunt kanaya's was the only face i could see. TG: she was standing next to them, but she wasn't looking at what was going on. TG: almost like she couldn't bear to. AG: I doubt it. Kanaya's got a8out as much Emotivity as a very reclusive stone. TG: ok, i think that is bullshit but whatever. TG: she saw me standing there, but didn't say anything. she just shook her head slightly, and pointed back out into the hallway i came down.

Yep, giving them some space to grieve.  Also-- gosh, shouldn’t Vrissy have the same emotive senses that Aranea implied Vriska shared with her?  Kanaya isn’t that EXPRESSIVE but she’s certainly full of emotion.  Also, I hope part of her not bearing to watch wasn’t lingering anger toward Jade and Rose mixing with that, but there probably was a bit of that too, though Dave being gone is so much harsher than that. --I just realized they might not have broken the news to Karkat yet, either.

AG: I guesadxcxzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz TG: vrissy?

Put to sleep by someone slumping down on your phone keypad, or surprised by something about the other conversation?

Oh shit, “other conversation” reminded me I didn’t look at Tavros’s chumhandle:

glutinousGymnast [GG]

HHHHHhhhhuh.  Hm... huh? hhhh.  huh?  what, but.  Why would.  ?????

I really don’t understand what that chumhandle or any of its entendres should signify in this context.

Also, this means for our new four kids we have TG, GG, AG, and ??.

> (==>)

GG: I think she might have succumbed to sleep quite suddenly,,, GG: It would explain the,,,,,, interesting messages I've been getting for a while,,, TG: hehe. TG: i guess that tracks. TG: she does that from time to time.

That’s... strange.  Homestuck’s taught us to be suspicious of that.

TG: ... TG: tav? GG: Yes,,, harry anderson,,,? TG: what does it feel like to know someone who's died?

Who is Harry referring to? (EDIT: Yes I know Gamzee for Tavros, but I meant Harry talks like he's worried he'll have to feel that way soon?)  Is he just kind of inferring that something bad might have happened to Uncle Dave?  Got that perceptive “parents are about to tell me about a death in the family” vibe?  Or did he overhear more than he let on to Vrissy?

...alright, that’s the last page of this update.  Looks like this chapter is going to continue to have a good bunch of grieving, or talk around it.

---

Now for Bonus Commentary for A Threat, Sensed.  For some reason I have a dim memory of like... reading this myself without commenting on it?  Or skimming it?  But I’m pretty sure I didn’t do that.  Weird.  Must have imagined doing it.

Ah, I think I saw the opening paragraph scrolling Patreon, and my mind kinda filled in the blanks, this is still looking new to me.

Okay, mostly banter and japes in the commentary here.  About Dirk “throwing a huge tantrum in his philosophy cave”.

We’ve had quite a bit of speculation on whether this is “really” Andrew. To that, I think we’d say that it doesn’t “really” matter.

Really?  That was speculated about?  :/

Here we discover that Dirk has not, as some people have speculated, been directly intervening into the Candy timeline, or influencing it in any way. In fact, he has a very hard time seeing anything going on there at all.

Mhmm, and that was a pretty important thing to learn.

A couple of years ago I might have agreed with the take that everything happening in Candy is simply too outlandish to ever happen naturally, without direct, villainous interference, but that was before literally every fucking batshit insane thing that has happened on Real Life Earth started going down, and now I will believe literally anything. 

This is a nice bit of distraction from the idea that at least the opening parts of the Candy story were written/narrated by Original, Alive Calliope over on meat side.  To refresh your memory of what was pointed out to me:

ROXY: back when jade first got all effed up callie saw somethin and it made them freak out ROXY: it took me weeks to convince them that it was safe to come home ROXY: but now we got the opposite problem and they arent leavin the house at all ROXY: they stay home all day with the blinds drawn paintin some weird ass shit on the walls TEREZI: WH4T? ROXY: its not as bad as it sounds i promise ROXY: some of it is like ROXY: weird and violent?? ROXY: like lotsa nasty purple blood and um ROXY: nudity???? TEREZI: >:? ROXY: yeah yikes ROXY: but MOST of it is cute stuff like... various combos of all of us being happy and gettin married and shit ROXY: anyway thats kept callie kinda busy

Which tracks with the initial out-of-character-seemingness of almost everyone at the start of Candy, and how they kind of tried to railroad things back onto the “Happy??” track after Dirk derailed it with his weird self-accumulation suicide, along with some of the flowery-idyllic descriptions of characters seeing each other bathed in a halo of light and such.

Of course, they’re not going to out-and-out STATE that Calliope was at fault for that narration, helping the Candy story not necessarily fall out the way it did “naturally”, until we finally get a glimpse of her on the heroes’ ship in Meat probably still painting the continuing Candy events, inspiring them into the void of the singularity with her latent powers.  Til then, it’s a bit of misdirection whenever the topic is to be brought up.  Along with a mix of Roxy’s late-Candy point to John of more or less “why COULDN’T we have done this naturally? you don’t know”.

He might even think that he has more direct power over the narrative than Hussie does himself. Surprise, motherfucker, you are a fictional character. 

:p

I’ll quote this next part in full:

There’s been talk of whether or not this bonus was written in the two days between its release and the Yiffy reveal chapter. The answer is--no. It was written over a month ago. But I think the things it addresses were not difficult to suss out. Obviously, Dirk is highlighting the issues that the readership are having with Yiffy, in his typical Dirk fashion. If it seems a little defensive, well...I suppose it is. Yiffy is one of the two hard lines drawn in the sand, and all of us love her, and we’re hoping that everyone else will love her too. But more than that, it focuses on the fact that update culture has a rhythm to it--shock, revulsion, acceptance (or not), and then excitement (or not). Will it follow that pattern this time? Who knows. I guess we’ll find out. 

Yeah, given what was going to be dropped on us I expected they would have had exactly this lined up, especially because Andrew specifically mandated Yiffy.  --I wonder why they aren’t mentioning that somewhere in the commentary and only on one of their Twitters?

Also quoting this:

There’s something both incredibly “cringe” and self-indulgent, as well as philosophically intriguing, about the author arguing with his villain, especially since he’s writing both halves of the conversation himself. You are, for all intents and purposes, trying to solve a problem that you have created for yourself. You are looking an aspect of your personality in the eye and asking, hey, what the fuck, man?

But in the end, isn’t that what every story is? Trying to untie knots that you put in the rope yourself?

Since it’s part of the central struggle of this story, and kind of the question Andrew’s tried to imply with every Homestuck work about what right we have to keep these characters trapped in a story, and if they’d be better off escaping it.

I’m really trying to avoid quoting so much of this, since the commentary is paid...  but I think we can make an exception here?  I’ll have only quoted about half of it; just, the really plot-important half.  Plus, I left out a LOOOT of japes.

Dirk has a certain idea of how stories are supposed to go. That’s pretty much what the Epilogues is about. The audience also has a certain expectation of how a story is supposed to go. In a way, the Epilogues were also about that. They were taking a story that had reached the traditionally “acceptable” happily ever after, and saying, wait, no. What happens next? Thinking past happily ever after in any story is a terrifying prospect. Once Cinderella marries the prince, what then? Sure, she got what she wanted, but who knows that it will be everything she dreamt it would? What if she changes her mind, if not today, what about ten years from now? What if the prince dies of malaria? 

And I’m...

Yeah I don’t have anything else to add here, I’m kind of out of brain juice to think about this tonight.  BUSY day I had.  Y’all take care!

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

The End of Year Awards Are Back... and This Time, It’s Personal!

And so we approach the end of 2020, the year that never really began. On paper, at least, it looked incredibly promising. There were lots of great movies slated to come out; culture seemed slightly less paucity-riddled and pointless than usual; good things were in the air. Then COVID happened, and basically fucked everything. Actually, that’s not quite true: my personal year has been fucking spectacular. I’m in a long-term relationship with a gorgeous woman for the first time in forever- no more abrupt trysts and stolen moments for yer humble narrator: I’ve got a sumptuously plus-size lady-friend who actually wants to spend substantial amounts of time me (and has knockers you could sled down, were you so inclined). I also started a Youtube channel where I upload performances of magic tricks I’ve designed and a few people seem to quite like it. Oh, and I’ve written four novels, with a fifth well on its way to completion. Unfortunately, that’s my life, not the life of our civilisation and culture as a whole. The fact that bugger all happened in that makes this end-of-year round-up a little hard to write. With that in mind, I’m going to hand out the gongs for 2020, but I’m also going to do my usual dodge of giving end-of-year awards to things that I discovered in 2020, even if they came out the year, decade or century before. It’s not like any right-minded person gives a hoot about my opinion anyway. Right then, everyone clear on the rules? Then let’s roll up our sleeves and plunge elbow deep into the fetid trough of our decaying society to ferret out the best and worst of the Things That Humans Have Done Recently.

The ‘I Like It Because It Confused Thick People’ Award for Best High-Concept Sci-Fi Movie... … Goes to the sterling Tenet, a spy film that used entropy inversion and symmetric, opposite-direction timelines within the same physical space the way most spy films use hacking and guns. Christopher Nolan films are always intricately constructed and meticulously-executed, but this one must have had Japanese Master Puzzle-Box Makers crying into their breakfast cereal. Is breakfast cereal a thing in Japan? I honestly I have no idea. For some reason, all I can imagine is a sort of dry kedgeree where all the ingredients that aren’t rice have been removed. But I digress. For all its intricacy, Tenet is actually really easy to follow once you’ve grasped the basic premise that there’s a machine that lets people move backwards through time, and that this makes them appear to move in reverse to the rest of the world while they perceive the rest of the world as moving in reverse. Nolan maintains a mastery of cinematic visual language that makes even the most abstruse concept easy to wrap your head around. Nonetheless, following Tenet’s release, dumb people took to the Internet on mass to complain that the film was confusing and stupid, never once realising that their inability to conceptualise time in non-linear ways was their own failing, not Nolan’s. I find that refreshing. It’s nice to see a sci-fi film that’s actually made for smart-cookie sci-fi fans and doesn’t give a hoot if it alienate thickos.

The Award for Most Inexplicably Compelling Web Comic… … Goes to Questionable Content. I originally started reading Questionable Content because I’d heard that the female lead and love interest was a plus size lassie and that shit’s my jam. However, the art style makes everyone look like a skinny indie-type, regardless of their actual, in-universe size, so it doesn’t do much to titillate my Fat Admiring Titillation Centres. And yet, I’m over five hundred ‘episodes’ in and still reading. The thing is, I couldn’t tell you why for the life of me. Maybe it’s the hope that the art style will evolve to the point where the people look like actual human beings with different body types (but then, why would I care unless I was invested for some other reason). Maybe it’s the fact that when I get one of the many, many obscure band or pop culture references, I feel a little buzz of kinship with the writer. Maybe it’s the fact that it takes place in a universe where robots and superheroes are things that regularly happen, yet most of the strips are just normal people chatting shit in a coffee shop and the slice-of-life narrative/sci-fi setting appeals to my sense of juxtaposition. I don’t know, but I find it really compelling to the extent that I’ve pissed away entire days reading it. I have a horrible feeling that it’s a short step from this to really angsty hentai. If I start singing the praises of that, somebody please shoot me in the crotch.

The ‘Forest Gump Debating Peter Andre’ Award For Most Sustained or Elongated Instance of Stupidity… … Goes to Donald Trump. I was tempted just to award this gong to his entire presidency, but that wasn’t just stupid: it was also venal, corrupt, horrifying and punctuated by terrible moments of low cunning. So, instead, this award goes to his ‘soup’ rant. For those of you who missed it, the former President of the United States spent a really, really long time (in the run-up to the election) wittering on about protestors throwing cans of soup at police. What was dumb and weird about it was that he appeared to be extolling the virtues of soup as a siege weapon, going into really specific detail about how it was better than a brick because it could be thrown with more force, finishing with the utterance that protestors would just argue that “this is just soup for my family” if they were caught with the cans… which is phrased wrong in such a subtle and inhuman way it’s hard to imagine that anyone actually ever said it, at least in those words. I have no idea if protestors in America were throwing soup cans at police (which would be entirely justified considering how many innocent people American police have murdered in cold blood quite recently) or if this was a fantasy dreamed up by the former president in the cloudcuckooland that is his diseased little brain. Either way, the connected rant was balls deep in dumb.

The Most Disturbing Unintentional Impression of Vincent Price Award… … Goes to the narrator from One Step Beyond, a Twilight Zone-esque anthology of weirdness that purports to be based on true events and has to be seen to be believed. The stories are oft-disturbing instances of spooky-inflected human drama and can occasionally be quite disconcerting… until they’re book-ended by a dude who sounds like Vincent Price reading a children’s book in a really earnest voice. It’s weird and no, it didn’t hit our screens in Space Year 2020, it dates back to Ye Olden Times of the 1950s or 60s, when men were men, women were women and technincolour was a distant dream that could get you strung up for witchcraft. Nonetheless, I only encountered it this year, so it’s getting its prize. I warned you I was going to pull this shit, but you foolish fools didn’t listen.

The ‘It’s Not Gay If I Don’t Clench’ Award for Cognitive Dissonance… … Goes to Amazon Prime, the content-making branch of evil, tax-dodging, anti-monopoly-law-breaking megalith Amazon. You see, while Big Daddy Amazon is off being incredibly sinister and worrying, like a shifty vampire hanging off the economy’s throat, the creative people at Amazon Prime are busy making or acquiring some of the flat-out best TV ever committed to a streaming-service, from the extra-weird slice of fun-pie that is The Tick, to the entertainingly horrifying cultural dissection of The Boys to the utterly unique Carnival Row, to the superbly adapted American Gods. It’s a bit like discovering that Geoffrey Dahlmer single-handedly created a body of artistic work to rival Vincent Van Gogh’s when he wasn’t pouring acid onto the brains of emotionally vulnerable young adults. It gives me a headache.

The Clint Eastwood Award for Most Effective Older Gentlemen… … Goes to Joe Biden, for unseating dipshit in chief Donald Trump with the casual badassery of a Wild West gunslinger shooting a baddy (probably played by Leonardo Di Caprio) in the balls. I mean, he’s not the best Prez America could ask for but a) as a Brit I don’t have to care and b) anyone who ousts Trump gets mad props from me.

The ‘It’s a Pity Everything Else is Shit Now’ Award for Best New Ongoing Series… … Goes to my own Youtube series, Victor The Magician, in which I claim to be a reality-hopping, interdimensional wizard on an endless quest to… perform magic, basically. I’ll admit that the quality is super-variable (Youtube algorithms and their constant demand for fresh content be a harsh mistress, etc., etc.). However, when I’m good, I’m really good. If you’re looking for a punch-line other than the fact that this whole bit is a self-promoting plug, it’s this: my Youtube series really was the best thing to come out this year. Not because I’m great or anything, just by default. A promising year really did turn into a cultural wasteland the moment COVIDius Rex reared its scaly head.

The Zombie Ian Curtis Award for Most Crushing Disappointment… … Goes to Rick and Morty Series 4. As I think I’ve said before, it was still good, but it just didn’t reach the dizzy heights of nihilistic lunacy achieved in series 1-3. I think the problem is that the audience is meant to learn something from Rick’s poor choices, even if he doesn’t, because the creators saw the amazing success of Bojack Horseman and decided they wanted a slice of that sweet, tangy deconstructionist pie. It worked up to a point in the climax of Series 3, but having made their point, the showrunners probably should have moved onto a different point. They forgot that the appeal of Rick Sanchez is his combination of ‘entertaining car-crash of a human being’ and ‘unstoppable superbeing’. Push him through an arc and you risk breaking the thing that makes him and the show so endlessly watchable. Rick, unlike Bojack, just wasn’t built for heavy introspection. Also, the team hired on new writers who were less than familiar with the characters, setting and subtext, and that’s always an invitation to disaster.

The Special Sir Mixalot Award for Posteriority… ...Goes to… my girlfriend and glamorous assistant, Mystic Miss Terri, who’s arse is gorgeous and majestic.

The ‘Are They STILL Making That?’ Award for a Show You Forgot Existed And is Now Back… … Goes to Supernatural, which never technically went away and whose final series is apparently being broadcast on one of the 4 channels (though who knows which one, any more), It’s kind of nice to realise it’s still out there and be reminded that there are still people who care deeply about what happens to it. It’s like when you remember ‘oh yeah, [insert cute animal here] actually exists and isn’t just an internet meme. That’s nice’. Also, it’s good to see Jared Padelacki working steadily. It can’t be easy to find acting gigs when most producers just want to shoot you and mount your antlers over a fireplace.

The Irritating Magician Award for Something That Just Won’t Fuck Off… ...Goes to this blog entry, which is three pages long in Word. Good grief. Bye y’all! See you next year, assuming that the last few days of 2020 don’t culminate in a civilisation-destroying attack by giant space-ants. If that seems worryingly specific, let’s just say that- as Leonard Cohen would say “I’ve seen the future and, brother, it is murder”… by giant space-ants.

[myfandomrambles]

Adora & Parentification

This is partially a response to this post by Redrikki on DreamWidth.

Adora does have a parentification part in her emotional & psychological abuse by Shadow Weaver. Mainly in the way, Adora has responsibility placed on her as a child she can’t handle and is expected to be in charge of others. She shows a large degree of feeling that she has to be in charge and protect others.

Mainly this shows up in her forced responsibility of Catra. The abuse placed her as an authority figure for Catra as much as and if not more than a peer and sibling. There are some more direct “mother/parent” dynamic in the support she offers when they are young kids though as time passed the forced unemotionality of life in the Horde took away some of this emotionality since weakness is quashed.

This parentification leaves Adora being a perfectionist, a need to control, a lot of respect for the rules of how things are done and feeling like she is responsible for other people. We see the need to be the perfect soldier and to protect others carry on to her other life. She feels like if she isn’t playing the hero she was told she has to be then she is failing. Adora takes responsibility for others failings like she was taught to for Catra, this makes her deal with a lot of self-esteem problems and anxiety.

The rift is very visible with Catra too as common with parentified siblings Catra resents her being trying to get her to fall in line and listen. Adora has some power over her witch makes Catra’s need to rebel go against Adora. The way Adora acted as her only emotional support also makes the lack of trust shown by Adora causes profound reactions. Adora deal with this loss of contact by continuously feeling like she is responsible for Catra’s mistakes and wants her back up until the end of season 3.

Martyrdom another common parentification trait is also seen. Adora wants to throw herself on the pyre a lot and has to be the one to do it, this, however, is important to plot as she is the chosen one. There doesn’t seem to be a real ability for her to reject this job. And the environments of child soldiers and magic hero alter this from a dynamic in a normal family. I mean it's sci-fi and it's got some great fantasy elements on top of some of the real-world elements also removed from general psychology.

I think there is one major part of parentification that doesn't show up. Shadow Weaver is a consistent figure of authority who does offer guidance, parentification is not in reality usually making a child into a tool, which is the method of psychological abuse we see, but turning a kid into an adult as a support figure. Adora is highly adultified and parentified but she is even more so objectified.

A way to understand this might be:

Objectified: I am the possession of a bigger person and have to be who they told me to be

Parentified: I have to fill in for the missing piece. I need to be who they can’t be and who they need me to be.

Generally, a parentified child is parenting the other kids but also has to parent an adult. Adora is not materially or emotionally parenting Shadow Weaver. So she doesn’t take on a full adult role between them. She is also not literally a parent like Nani from Lilo and Stitch, in this case, it's a complete absence due to their parents' early death and huge age gap.

Shadow Weaver is perfectly responsible and totally in control, not a disorganized personality. A Caregiver/parent's own trauma, mental illness, addiction or just absence tend to be the parents who form a parentified relationship. Emotional immaturity is also often an aspect in this, an extremely lax parenting style and/or treating a kid as a peer as often or more than a kid. I think extremely good examples in media are Fiona Galagher in Shameless, Molly Johnson in Swing Vote, Helena in The Ocean of Helena Lee and Rory Gilmore in Gilmore Girls. The parents are unable to be a parent, authority or guiding force. Shadow Weaver, on the other hand, is a force of almost complete control over Adora, emotionally absent of course and expects self-reliance but the self-reliance is pushed into the brain due to psychological manipulation, not by default.

Another key aspect is emotional enmeshment the child has to be more mature things like job stress and even sexual/romantic relationships by adults are expected to be understood by the kids. Essentially boundaries are too weak instead of with Shadow Weaver the boundaries are thick because she is not letting them be kids with her using affection very sparingly. So while Adora’s whole identity is based on who she is told she has to be making her identity unstable, it’s not really because of role reversal but extreme roles of authority and subordination.

In Redrikki’s post, she mentions how Adora tries to reform her bond with Shadow Weaver with light hope but a parentified child isn’t really going to seek out the same dynamic. They are more likely to look for a more traditional parent to fill the missing role or reject the need for guidance sense they never needed it as a kid why now?

She is expected to play one role and this is actually replicated by her next environment. I don’t think even by shedding some of the ingrained guilt she can really move on from this objectified state till she is no longer in the role of someone's weapon. A Horde weapon to start with but now she is the rebellion's weapon/leader and a First One's weapon. We will also see if she will blame herself for Angella’s death which I think could just shift her guilt from Catra to being the next Mara witch she still fears.

A way, however, this also fits is that the powerful moments of rejecting Light Hope and Shadow Weaver is very much “you don’t own me”, “I won’t be controlled by you” and “I’m my own person” instead of a “you were never there for me”, “I shouldn't have had to care for you/them” and “I was the child, you were the adult”.

She is forced to take on a parent role with Catra, but she is not the parent of Shadow Weaver she is seen as a possession. Redrikki notes the objectification aspect in her being a tool but I think misses that these aren’t the same kind of emotional position I think. I also think she is a literal child soldier, not just a metaphorical one (i agree with her sources that all childhood trauma can feel like at war) which is going to steal a child’s innocence and make them have played an adult role way before they are ready, but the psychology of the child of an alcoholic and a child soldier isn’t the same.

I also think anxiety, panic attacks, hypervigilance, a need to control everything, and identity issues are developmental trauma symptoms as a whole. These are dynamics within child abuse and trauma which is always important. And as I noted before within the sci-fi context some things are shifted because of non-realistic portions and even the realistic concepts like imperialism and child soldiers are on a huge scale. It is meant to be grand and awesome, which it is in my opinion.

Also, I object when people don’t denote Shadow Weaver as a mother or at least primary caregiver. I think we don’t want to recognize her as a parent, but to not at least understand she was their primary caregiver since birth and Adora even references her role sense she does “mother stuff”. Rather victims of abuse call their primary caregivers by mom and dad and refer to their family of origin as "family" in an emotional sense is up to them, but I think recognizing that Adora, Catra & Shadow Weaver function as a familial unit is important.

Requested by Simon+Buchan on AO3

[irageneveart]

hello! i was wondering what program&brush settings you use for your artwork? im new to digital art and i really like the way you colour! Especially those light effects they're so extra cool!

omg Anony you’re such a wonderful being, thank you for liking my art enough to ask me that!

now watch me failing trying to explain things to you lmao. I’m self taught and I’m in no way the best at this, so what I’m going to tell you might still be flawed but this is how I do things o/

hmm it’s gonna be long so I’ll put it under a cut!

1) I’m using Paint Tool Sai for everything in my art but if I still feel the need to, I’ll use Photoshop to correct colors and lighting. for example in this progress gif:

you can see where I decided “no, I don’t like this cold blue feeling” so I went to Photoshop (because it allows changes much easier than Sai when it comes to colors) and I changed it to a warmer purple! you can always play in Photoshop and try to see different versions of your art, different colors will give off different feelings

most of my artworks don’t look the way they do at the end because while drawing I tend to be focused on other things (line, where to place shades, lighting, etc) while when the picture is done I can focus on the feeling I initially wanted it to have!

2) My usual brushes are really basic. also ignore my ugly writing.

Sketch: I use this to sketch because it has a nice and easy flow, I can get messy lines that look good (the latest Brahms Heelshire drawing I did is entirely drawn with this one!)

you can always switch between your brushes depending on what feeling you want your art to have

Lineart: this one has nice, smooth and bold lines. I like to play around with it’s size. I believe it’s the basic one Sai has

little advice: if you’re not happy with your lineart try to alternate heavy lines with tiny ones. for example:

you can see how bold her hair is, but adding thinner lines to the glasses, the folds of her clothes, hair etc. it will create a better dynamic of your picture and will leave the eye of the viewer to run around it! I’m honestly awful at explaining stuff fdkjsnjkfds ofc this is a personal preference but my linework improved since I started to think like this

Base color: this is the color tool sai gives you, I changed my names so I can’t remember its default name. I like it to be bold because when I was little I used to color entire coloring books, so even now digitally I like to color every bit like I’m using crayons haha. time consuming and useless but shhh. basically I put down every base color with this one

Acrylic: now this one is tricky, when I got it the first time I wanted to use it to shade, but using it I discovered it’s much better for blending. after I put down the main colors and shades I just use this one to blend them together and I sometimes paint with it too

Blending: it’s literally the blur brush Sai provides you xDD

now keep in mind that using its settings (the things near the “Normal” option!) you can get different types of blur! always play around to see what looks good in your art. also remember that not every shadow has to be blurred or blended out, there are many ways shadows can look, using both blurred and heavy (cast) shadows in your art will definitely improve it. using real life references might help

Airbrush: the very brush Sai gives you. I’m using this one mainly for lighting. what I do is basically put down a hard light, like literally take a light color and place it where I see fit on the character, then I give it a bit of glow with the airbrush. one thing I noticed is that depending on the surface, the glow will change!

in this one you can clearly see the light on his cheekbone, but then there is a much weaker light on his face, that’s made with the airbrush and then blended into the structure of the face.the glow on the cheekbone and the ear is made with airbrush, using orange and playing around with the layer modes (overlay and luminosity, these are your best friends when it comes to lighting!)

lastly I want to present another best friend for us artists, the eraser

you can make highlights with the eraser too! you can cut the light in different shapes to give different feels and many other things, the eraser is definitely your best friend and not only in erasing mistakes. try to play around with it sometimes

Other things I learned:

try to use a different color for shading, using the exact color but darker will only make your art look dull, lifeless. the same goes for lighting! there are lots of tutorials on color theories and practices out there to help you with it

don’t be afraid to get wild, use oranges, reds, blues, purples in your skin and play around with the layer modes, you’ll see how much more alive it will feel. also don’t be afraid to try different styles, constancy is not the friend of a creative mind. experiment, try things, go out of your comfort zone. make it fun, make it personal. if you like drawing dogs then keep drawing dogs and enjoy it! don’t let labels and others to influence you and your spirit

ik this is obvious but never compare yourself with others. your journey is yours, you have a different hand, a different brain and a different being. this also goes to drawing things others did already! who cares there’s 0284e4895 other pictures with Kitbull already? draw yours, it will be unique and special because it has something from YOU in it, and no one can replicate that not even with tracing

watch people online! of course when you sit down to draw it will be completely different, but involuntarily you’ll learn and exercising you’ll find your own way of doing things. there might be much better ways for drawing lighting than I do, but this is how I feel good and I like to do it!

I know you hear this everywhere but really, practice, daily if you can! in October 2017 I tried to to the inktober challenge for the first time, I haven’t finished it and I was late anyway but I can tell you that trying to draw daily definitely improved my art. now I’m able to draw a picture per day with not much effort (yesterday I was able to draw three pictures with pretty good quality! o/ always start small and be proud of every step!!)

lastly, don’t be hard on yourself. every picture is a lesson, doesn’t matter how it came out. maybe the anatomy is wonky af, but you learned and your brain will remember what not to do next time. try and try and try and never say “my art sucks”, say “this pic doesn’t look how I wanted, but I still like it. I’ll do better next time!”. the moment you start to like your art you’ll see how much it will start to shine hehe

I might come out with more stuff but this is already really really long xD  just be yourself, love your art and enjoy it!! lots of luck for you Anony, I hope I didn’t bore you and this will be helpful for you and others! :D

[twentyghosts]

Another Meme? Why Not

@sallyidss tagged me for this, thanks for asking! 

1. How long have you been writing fanfic?

I suppose about 20 years, off and on?

2. Who most influences your writing style?

Hm. Well, like @sallyidss said, I try to match whatever canon I’m writing for. I think (I know this is an uncool answer but whatever I am what I am) Kevin Smith and Joss Whedon really influenced my affection for pop culture reference-y banter from a young age. More recently, I owe a lot to many YA and/or romance authors, particularly those who are outspoken about how important/valid/nice it is (particularly in These Trying Times) to read a story with a happy ending in favor of something that’s relentlessly gritty in pursuit of realism. Meg Cabot, David Levithan, Alyssa Cole, etc. I definitely used to feel like I needed to be more grimly realistic and now I’m like, what if just a string of pleasant things happens to characters I like? (Not to say that there isn’t a place for the grim angst, but I used to buy more into some kind of idea that it was better to write some sad shit and now I don’t.)

3. Favourite type of scene to write?

Nonsense dialogue banter, snuggling, AU worldbuilding infodumps.

4. What trope is your favourite to write and/or read?

A gentle low-stakes AU. Mild hurt/comfort. There Was Only One Bed/We’re Snowed In And Must Cuddle To Preserve Body Heat.

5. What is one trope that you dislike?

I’m pretty squeamish about body horror and things like that.

6. What AU do you wish to write but feel like you won’t manage?

Why doesn’t this question believe in me :(

IDK I intended my Bruce/Tony Fae/vampire AU to be a one-shot but a few folks kindly inquired about more and I’m thinking about it but there would be a lot of magical rules to work out etc. Also I deliberately stopped writing before vampire blood stuff happened because SEE PREVIOUS QUESTION so idk I’ll let that simmer for awhile.

For awhile I was batting around a Mean Girls AU but I might have worn out my high school AU mojo and/or just lost interest in the idea.

A summer camp AU maybe? That’s for sure in my wheelhouse but IDK if I’m feeling it.

My Bruce Banner bingo card has a TON of AUs on it, including some I’ve never really thought about before (soulmate tattoo AU, fairytale, restaurant, flowershop??) so IDK I’ll think about this...at least enough to get a bingo anyway!

7. Do you outline, or write as you go?

Mostly write as I go. For longer stories I usually have at least a rough arc in mind but I don’t always know exactly how things will go from point A to point B until I get there.

8. Past tense or present tense? Why?

I default to past tense for adult POVs and present tense for YA POVs, which is sort of the trend for published fiction (obv not universal) but generally that makes sense for me? Sometimes I’ll flip to present tense if I’m writing something action-y or that I just want to feel more immediate.

9. Do you prefer to write one-shots or multi-chapters? Why?

I mean I prefer to write one-shots because they are less work? But I like the satisfaction of completing a longer story.

10. What is the kindest comment you’ve received on a fic? (Feel free to paraphrase or generalize!)

Well, anyone who comments along as they read a multi-chapter fic (rather than just 1 comment at the end, or a kudos or a nothing) is a true light of my life <3 I know a few folks (including @sallyidss!) have mentioned they tried a book or movie or music or something that I name-dropped in a fic, which of course releases a potent dose of dopamine in my librarian brain.

Also @godlessondheimite commissioned fan art based on one of my stories which is not technically a comment but was very kind!!! (LOOK AT IT)

11. What is the most gratifying aspect of writing fanfic for you? 

The real fandom is the friends we made along the way!!!! I guess specifically I love gift fics in both directions, I love writing weird niche shit that I know will delight one specific person and I love receiving my own weird niche gifts (shoutout to @fourteenacross for writing me so many cat-self-insert fics over the years)! I’d rather write something that one person will LOVE than something that 10 people will mildly enjoy. (Also sometimes that one person who loves it is just me and that’s fine too.)

tagging (only if y’all wanna do it—no pressure): Sally tagged a lot of folks I would have tagged, so, you’re double-tagged, and I’ll add @godlessondheimite @fourteenacross @rhysiana and whoever else might be laying around uselessly soaking up air conditioning tonight, or whenever (time is a flat circle)

[hotforhandman]

Lowkey writing a ShigaDeku mpreg fic right now, but having trouble thinking of some future scenes. Any ideas/prompts/head canons? (Anon because I’m a wimp)

See my brain automatically defaults to ABOverse when faced with that trope but idk if that’s actually what you’re doing so… take it or leave it I guess??

-If Shig is the Omega, that’s probably why he was abused/abandoned… go as dark as you like with this. He is a villain, after all. He’s probably got some bottled up trauma. 

-If it’s Deku, well… couple that with being quirkless (Bakugou would have been even MORE of a dick, let’s face it) and you’ve got yourself a recipe for some real nasty bullying. 

-So being that whether they’ve been abused or not they’ve been through some shit, you know they are THE MOST supportive and protective, either way around.

-Shig as a ‘mother’ would be probably quite resistant to the idea at first. Honestly even once he warms up to the idea, he probably refers to the kid affectionately as ‘the parasite’. He’s demanding, he’s stressy, he WILL spend all day gaming and get Deku to do all the legwork claiming pregnancy as a valid reason to do fuck all. He also has a stupidly high pain tolerance so the actual process will probably be more complaining and threats than actual suffering (UNLESS you wanted to go full angst and give him complications. With a body like his, too skinny and abused and generally unhealthy, I can imagine there’s some pretty high risks in there. Google it. I have.). 

-Papa Deku would FREAK OUT. You know what this guy is like. As soon as he got over the initial shock he would be SO overprotective. Honestly Shig’s laziness is not helped by the fact that Deku is ready and willing to do everything for him anyway. Also… honestly, he’d probably be more than a little concerned about Shig as a parent, based on the whole abuse-creates-abusers idea. Enter angsty convo about Shig’s childhood, hurt-comfort style. 

-On the other hand, mama Deku would instantly be horribly worried that his behaviour would hurt the kid, and would be constantly torn between living his life and metaphorically (or literally) wrapping himself in kid blankets. He also has a high pain tolerance, but he is going to be far more the grin-and-bear-it type over the complaining type. He’s also going to cry the first time he sees the kid, regardless of what parenting role he has. You know he will. Spends hours preparing the kid’s room months in advance. Calls for help every single time something even slightly unusual happens. Probably gives Shig multiple heart attacks overreacting to stuff. 

-Think Papa Shig, think VIOLENTLY PROTECTIVE. Think threatening murder on anyone who even LOOKS at Deku funny. Constantly has Deku in his lap, wraps himself around him possessively at every possible opportunity, even if technically inappropriate at the time. Probably uses his family as an excuse to do bad things (“Come on, you wouldn’t want to do us dirty. I have a kid to provide for.”). Would be genuinely terrified to hold the kid at first. Probably has nightmares about it. Being that he received a ‘caring’ mentorship/parental figure from AfO, I can imagine his first instinct with the kid would be to raise it as the most terrifying thing to grace the earth. Whether or not Deku would be on board is up to you. 

[stutterfly]

Hey I sent an ask before but I guess it got swallowed? I was wondering if you had any advice on editing headers for fics? I’ve loved the ones you’ve done in the past and I’d really like to do something like that for my own fics too! Hopefully this one gets to you💓—🦋 anon

Hi!!!  

I actually design things and work in printing for my main job so I have access to things like Adobe photoshop and Adobe illustrator (I do my painting/retouching in photoshop and everything else in illustrator). But it’s hella expensive so I try to look at free alternatives.

I have a bunch of asset/resource sites I use for photos and fonts. Sorry I tend to ramble so here we go.

Firstly I have a lot of free resource sites that I can get high-res assets from. I often am using things for commercial purposes because I get paid to do what I do. But for most people, they don’t have to worry so much about it bc they’re making it for themselves, but it’s always nice to have high-res assets still.

When I get a concept, I look for imagery that inspires me from sites like these and I can usually find what I’m looking for. The amount of beautiful, free, high-res images out there is amazing. 

Good rule of thumb is that you can always make a big image smaller, but never make a small image bigger, so always download the biggest size you can and size to your needs. -holding SHIFT when resizing keeps things in proportion when scaling-

I usually use pexels and freepik as my default. There are sooo many image sites I could list but here are the ones I use.

https://www.pexels.com/

https://www.freepik.com/search?dates=any&format=search&page=1&selection=1&sort=popular&type=photo

https://pixabay.com/

https://unsplash.com/

https://www.rawpixel.com/free-images (There’s free and premium images, but you can download 5 images per day are labeled free)

https://lostandtaken.com (textures that you can tile!)

For BTS photos I look via google for images over 4MP (usually dispatch or official photos are my go-to).

I use photoshop to cut them out and retouch, but there is another editing tool I’ve been experimenting with called Photopea, which is a FREE online editing tool that’s just as powerful. It even looks like photoshop so it’s pretty comfortable to use.

https://www.photopea.com/

I make my banners at 1600px x 350px, but i realized tumblr auto resizes anyway [LIKE A BITCHASS PUNK IM MAD ABT IT AND FOUND A WORKAROUND thats for another post tho]. I keep my DPI higher in case I want to use it for printing at some point, but that’s optional -72 is perfect for what you’re doing.

Reference:

300DPI= GREAT PRINT QUALITY - (work brain loves this but it’s useless for what we’re doing)150DPI=GOOD PRINT QUALITY 72=OPTIMIZED FOR DIGITAL USE ONLY (standard screen resolution)

_

Custom fonts can be your friend or the enemy. If you’re using a scripty one, try to make sure it’s legible with your title (there are some really terrible ones out there, but there are so many good ones too). 

The easiest and quickest font place I use is dafont bc you can choose fonts based on the style you’re going for and you can test your text before you decide to download. They can be loaded into photopea! Also they’re free:

https://www.dafont.com/

As far as editing goes, I tend to choose a color theme based on feelings and adobe has a site that can help you by showing you palettes based on search terms. ( you can even search for things like happy, sad, angry, etc)

https://color.adobe.com/explore

I tend to use fuzzy edge brushes on everything to make it look soft, especially in lighting. The trick is just layers upon layers with different blending modes

I use “Color”, “Saturation” and “Overlay” modes a lot.

Ignore my layer names: I’m a mess.

This is what it looks like in reality. I just blob brush everything.

So in steps you can see 1)original cutout

2) adding effects like busted lip (a brush i downloaded for PS–I don’t think these import to photopea unfortunately), bruising (textures set to overlay/multiply using different colors), earrings (hand-painted over the originals for a cleaner edge), and EYES (eyes i tend to cut from the main layer, copy above, lighten/contrast the shit out of them and change the color using “replace color” or “hue/sat” or blob color on a new layer and set it to “color” blending mode and then paint over –there’s a lot of ways to do it– but then blend them back into the photo in a natural-ish way)

3) lighting overlays give color to the skin and you can use colors from your background to create interesting pop effects (in this case i used purple)

I hope this helps??? But if you want more like in depth help with editing and stuff, let me know!!! It can get overwhelming, but it can also be really fun!