#this is way more personal than my usual art

[dissapointu]

Hello, I wanted to ask you a little drabble with all the arcane characters.

Like how they fell in love with reader ( like what captured their attention etc)

It would be pretty cool in my opinion.

Have a wonderful day\night.

Aaaugh, I made of made this a bit long-(really long, that was sarcasm) I'm splitting it into two portions

Jinx-

Jinx didn’t know what to make of you at first. You weren’t loud or flashy like the people she was used to dealing with. You weren’t trying to prove anything, and yet, there was something about you that screamed different.

She first noticed it when you didn’t flinch at one of her explosions—not the way most people did, anyway. The boom had rattled the room, shaking dust from the rafters, and yet, there you were, brushing soot from your shirt like it was just another Tuesday.

“Nice touch with the blue sparks,” you’d said, nodding at her latest contraption. “Adds flair.”

Flair? Most people would’ve called it destruction. Most people would’ve screamed or run. But you? You tilted your head, eyes bright, genuinely impressed, and for a moment, Jinx was at a loss for words.

It wasn’t just that you didn’t fear her; it was the way you saw her. You noticed the little things—the care she put into her work, the way she tinkered endlessly to perfect her machines. While others saw chaos, you saw art, and for someone like Jinx, that was everything.

The next time she saw you, it was intentional. She didn’t need to bring you a gadget she’d been working on—it wasn’t even finished—but she wanted to see how you’d react. Sure enough, you examined it like it was the most fascinating thing in the world, pointing out details she hadn’t realized anyone else would notice.

“This is genius,” you murmured, tracing a finger along a carved design she’d barely remembered adding. “You really think through every detail, don’t you?”

Her heart did something weird then, like skipping a beat but more… explosive.

From there, it snowballed. You became her favorite person to show her creations to, the only one she trusted to see her work before it was ready. You never judged, never laughed when something misfired—just smiled and asked how you could help.

And Jinx? She realized she’d fallen for you one day when she caught herself trying to impress you. The realization hit her like a grenade: she didn’t just want you to like her inventions—she wanted you to like her.

“You’re somethin’ else, you know that?” she said one night, leaning against her workbench, tools scattered around her. Her voice was softer than usual, almost unsure. “Most people don’t get me, but… you do.”

You’d just smiled, that easy, genuine smile that had hooked her from the start. “That’s because you’re worth getting.”

And just like that, Jinx knew there was no going back.

Vi –

Vi wasn’t looking for anyone. She didn’t have time for soft moments, not with everything she had on her plate. But then you came along, and she couldn’t help but notice how you carried yourself—steady, calm, unshakable.

The first time she really noticed you, it wasn’t some grand, sweeping moment. It was quiet. You were helping some kids in the Lanes patch up a rickety swing they used to pass the time. Nothing fancy, just you, a coil of rope, and that determined look in your eyes.

She hadn’t meant to stop and watch, but something about you drew her in. Maybe it was the way you didn’t hesitate to get your hands dirty or how the kids laughed around you, their faces lighting up despite everything the Lanes threw at them.

“You’re good with them,” she said after working up the nerve to approach you, trying to sound casual.

You glanced up at her, wiping sweat from your brow, and gave her a smile that hit her like a sucker punch. “Someone’s gotta be. They deserve better than this, don’t you think?”

It wasn’t just your words that stuck with her—it was the way you said them. Like you meant it. Like you actually believed in something better, even when the world gave you every reason not to.

From then on, Vi found herself noticing you everywhere. The way you stepped up when others hesitated. The way you didn’t back down, even when things got messy. You had this quiet strength about you, the kind that didn’t demand attention but earned it anyway.

She started finding excuses to stick around—helping with repairs, walking the kids home, sparring with you in the courtyard when the opportunity came up. And each time, she found herself drawn to you a little more.

“You’re somethin’ else,” she admitted one night, sitting beside you on a crumbling wall, the city’s broken skyline stretching out before you.

You raised an eyebrow at her, clearly amused. “That so?”

“Yeah.” She rubbed the back of her neck, uncharacteristically shy. “Most people would’ve given up on this place a long time ago, but not you. You stick it out, no matter how hard it gets.”

You shrugged, your gaze softening as you looked at her. “Same could be said about you, Vi.”

That was the moment it hit her—like a punch she didn’t see coming. It wasn’t just admiration anymore. It was something deeper, something she couldn’t ignore.

She fell for you in pieces, each small moment stacking up until it all clicked. It wasn’t about grand gestures or dramatic confessions. It was the way you fit—like you were exactly what she didn’t know she was missing.

And when she finally worked up the courage to tell you, your answer came with that same steady smile that had captivated her from the start.

“Figured it out, huh?” you teased, and she rolled her eyes, though her grin gave her away.

Yeah, she figured it out. And she wasn’t letting you go.

Sevika-

Sevika didn’t believe in love. In the Lanes, it wasn’t something people had the luxury of chasing. Survival came first, and attachments were just liabilities waiting to stab you in the back.

But you were… different.

The first time she noticed you, it wasn’t because you were trying to catch her attention. You were too busy holding your own, stepping into a dispute between two gang members over stolen supplies. She’d leaned back in the corner of the Last Drop, watching the chaos unfold, ready to step in if things got messy.

But then you surprised her.

You didn’t raise your voice or threaten anyone. Instead, you stood tall, calm as you defused the tension with a few sharp words and an unflinching glare. You had this presence, like you weren’t afraid of anyone in the room—not even her.

“Bold move,” Sevika had said when you approached the bar afterward, ordering a drink like you hadn’t just stared down two brutes twice your size.

You glanced at her, your lips quirking into a small smirk. “Someone’s gotta keep things from falling apart.”

That was the moment she started paying attention. You didn’t just survive in the Lanes—you thrived. You didn’t let the weight of the place crush you like it did everyone else. And more than that, you cared. Not in some naive, starry-eyed way, but in a way that made you fight tooth and nail for the people who couldn’t fight for themselves.

It pissed her off at first. The way you carried yourself like you weren’t afraid of the darkness around you. She thought it was reckless, stupid even. But the more she watched, the more she realized it wasn’t recklessness. It was conviction.

You weren’t scared of getting your hands dirty, but you never lost sight of what mattered to you. That’s what got under her skin, what kept her coming back to the same barstool night after night, just to see what you’d do next.

She started finding reasons to stick around. Sometimes it was to share a drink, other times to offer backup when things got rough. You never asked for her help, but you didn’t push her away either, and that intrigued her more than she cared to admit.

One night, after a particularly close call with one of Silco’s rivals, you patched up a cut on her arm, your hands steady as you worked.

“You’re too damn stubborn for your own good,” she muttered, watching you through half-lidded eyes.

You chuckled, your touch gentle as you tied off the bandage. “Takes one to know one.”

It was such a simple moment, but it stayed with her. The way you looked at her—not like she was some feared enforcer, but like she was just… Sevika. It wasn’t something she was used to, and it scared her as much as it thrilled her.

Over time, she realized she was looking for you in every crowd, waiting for the nights you’d sit beside her and trade sharp banter over a drink. She fell for you quietly, begrudgingly, like it snuck up on her before she could stop it.

And when she finally admitted it—to herself, to you—it wasn’t some grand confession. It was a gruff, almost reluctant, “You mean more to me than you should.”

Your response? That same infuriating, endearing smirk. “Took you long enough to figure that out.”

Sevika huffed a laugh, shaking her head, but the truth was, she didn’t mind. Because for once, letting someone in didn’t feel like a weakness. It felt like strength.

Silco -

Silco had always been a man of control, ambition, and sharp edges. In the underbelly of Zaun, survival demanded nothing less. Trust was currency, and affection? A distraction. He had long since accepted that power was the only thing worth chasing.

But then you appeared.

You weren’t loud or showy, not one of those people clawing for his attention. No, you worked quietly, efficiently, in the background of the chaos he ruled. You were just another piece in his intricate machine at first—just another person serving a purpose.

What caught his attention first was your unyielding patience. Where others in the Lanes were frantic, desperate to prove their worth, you moved with a calm certainty, like you weren’t afraid of the storm around you. You fixed what was broken—tools, machines, even people—without asking for anything in return.

One night, you’d been tending to one of his injured men after a skirmish, your hands steady as you stitched him up in the dim light of the hideout. Silco watched from the shadows, curious. The man hissed in pain, and you responded with a soft laugh.

“Hold still, or I’ll sew you up crooked,” you teased, your tone warm but firm.

It wasn’t the words that struck him—it was the way you carried yourself. There was no fear in your voice, no need to prove yourself to anyone. You didn’t care about earning his favor or gaining power. You just… were.

For someone like Silco, who thrived on manipulation and control, it was unnerving. People were supposed to want something from him. But you? You treated him like a man, not a king.

It wasn’t long before he started seeking you out. At first, it was subtle. A lingering glance as he passed through the room, a quiet question about your work. You always answered him honestly, without flinching under his piercing gaze, and it left him unsettled in a way he couldn’t quite name.

One evening, after a particularly brutal day, he found you sitting by the docks, staring out at the toxic waters of Zaun. The tension in his shoulders eased slightly at the sight of you, though he didn’t understand why.

“You should be careful out here,” he said, his voice low as he stepped closer.

You glanced over your shoulder, smiling faintly. “And miss the chance to breathe? I think I’ll take my chances.”

It was such a simple thing, but it stayed with him. In a world that demanded constant vigilance, you allowed yourself to simply exist. It was a quiet defiance, one that intrigued him more than he cared to admit.

Over time, you became a constant presence in his life, slipping through the cracks of his carefully constructed walls. It wasn’t grand gestures or impassioned declarations that made him fall for you. It was the quiet moments—the way you never cowered under his gaze, the way you challenged him without hostility, the way you saw him for more than his scars.

One night, as the two of you shared a rare moment of silence in his office, he finally allowed himself to admit what he’d been feeling.

“You’re dangerous,” he said, his voice soft, almost amused.

You raised an eyebrow, leaning back in your chair. “Dangerous? To you?”

He smirked, though there was no malice in it. “You’ve managed to do what no one else has.”

“And what’s that?”

“You’ve made me want something I didn’t think I needed.”

Your smile widened, warm and unguarded, and for once, Silco didn’t feel the need to look away.

In you, he found something unexpected: a quiet kind of strength, the kind that didn’t demand attention but commanded respect. And for a man who had spent his life fighting for control, letting himself fall for you felt like the ultimate rebellion.

Vander -

Vander wasn’t a man who fell in love easily. His life had been shaped by too much loss, too much responsibility. The people of the Lanes leaned on him, and he carried their weight with quiet strength. Love, to him, felt like a luxury he couldn’t afford.

But then, there was you.

It wasn’t some grand moment that captured his attention—it was the small, steady things. The way you moved through the chaos of the Last Drop, keeping the peace in your own quiet way. The way you never demanded his time but somehow always knew when he needed someone to sit beside him in silence.

What struck him first was your kindness—not the soft, fragile kind, but the sort that had edges. You didn’t let people walk over you, but you never hesitated to offer a hand to someone in need. In a place like Zaun, where survival often demanded selfishness, you were a rarity.

He noticed it one night when a brawl broke out in the bar. Two rowdy patrons had nearly overturned a table, and before Vander could step in, you were already there. You didn’t raise your voice or throw a punch. Instead, you placed a firm hand on one of their shoulders, your calm, measured tone cutting through the tension.

“Save it for the street, boys. We don’t spill blood where we share drinks.”

To his surprise, they listened. Vander couldn’t help but chuckle as they slunk off, muttering apologies.

“Got a way with people,” he said later, handing you a drink as thanks.

You shrugged, offering a small smile. “Just trying to keep things from falling apart.”

Those words stayed with him. It was how you carried yourself—like you were always holding the pieces together, not because you had to, but because you chose to.

Over time, he started finding excuses to be near you. A quick conversation here, a shared drink there. You had a way of making him feel… lighter. Like he could let go of the weight he carried, even if just for a moment.

It wasn’t until one quiet evening, after the bar had emptied, that he realized how deeply you’d settled into his heart. You were sitting on one of the tables, cleaning up a spill, humming a tune under your breath. The soft glow of the lanterns lit up your face, and for a moment, Vander just… watched.

“You’re staring,” you said, not looking up.

He chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. “Caught me.”

You glanced at him then, your smile warm and teasing. “What’s on your mind, big guy?”

He hesitated, uncharacteristically unsure. But then, he decided to just say it—Vander was never one for dancing around the truth.

“You. The way you care about this place. The people. Me.” He exhaled, leaning against the bar. “Never thought I’d find someone like you in all this.”

Your eyes softened, and you set down the rag in your hands, crossing the room to stand in front of him. “You’re not so bad yourself,” you teased gently. “Took you long enough to notice me.”

He laughed then, a deep, rumbling sound that made your chest warm. “Oh, I noticed. Took me a bit longer to admit it.”

And when you reached up, resting a hand against his face, he leaned into your touch, his eyes closing for just a moment. In you, he found something he hadn’t realized he needed—a steady flame in the chaos of the Lanes.

Ekko -

Ekko didn’t believe in distractions. The Firelights needed him, the Lanes needed him. His days were spent fixing the mess left behind by Piltover’s greed and Silco’s reign. He had no time for anything else—least of all love.

But you? You didn’t give him much of a choice.

It wasn’t a single moment that caught his attention. It was a collection of them, like the pieces of a clock coming together. He first noticed the way you moved—quick and deliberate, like you belonged to the rhythm of the chaos around you. No hesitation, no wasted motion. Whether you were patching up one of the Firelights after a mission or organizing supplies in the hideout, you carried yourself with a quiet confidence that made it impossible for him not to watch.

What hooked him, though, was your laughter. The first time he heard it, he froze. It had been after a particularly rough raid. Everyone was tense, the weight of the day pressing down on their shoulders. And then you cracked some joke—stupid, honestly, but something about the way you delivered it had everyone laughing, including Ekko.

That was when he realized it: you didn’t just survive the Lanes. You thrived in them. You brought light into a place where most people only saw shadows.

It started small—an extra second spent talking to you, a lingering glance when he thought you weren’t looking. He’d catch himself gravitating toward you without even meaning to, drawn to the way you lit up a room with just your presence.

But it wasn’t until one night, long after the others had gone to sleep, that he truly understood how deep you’d gotten under his skin. You were sitting by the glow of a makeshift lantern, tinkering with some piece of tech you’d salvaged. The light cast shadows across your face, highlighting the curve of your cheek, the focus in your eyes.

“Burning the midnight oil?” he asked, leaning against the doorway.

You glanced up, a small smile tugging at your lips. “Someone’s gotta keep this place running.”

He stepped closer, hands shoved into his pockets. “You do too much, you know that?”

“Says the guy who can barely take a break,” you shot back, raising an eyebrow.

He huffed out a laugh, shaking his head. “Fair point.” For a moment, he just stood there, watching you work. The quiet stretched between you, comfortable and warm.

“Why do you do it?” he asked suddenly.

You paused, looking up at him with a tilt of your head. “Do what?”

“Care so much. About all this.” He gestured vaguely, as if to encompass the entire hideout, the Firelights, the Lanes.

Your gaze softened, and you set the piece of tech aside. “Because someone has to. And because… I believe in you, Ekko.”

The sincerity in your voice hit him like a punch to the gut. You believed in him. In a world that seemed determined to tear him down, you stood beside him, unwavering.

“I don’t deserve you,” he murmured, his voice barely above a whisper.

You smiled, reaching out to take his hand. “Guess you’re stuck with me anyway.”

That was the moment Ekko fell. Completely, irreversibly.

Jayce -

Jayce had always been drawn to brilliance. Invention, ambition, ingenuity—they were the cornerstones of what he admired in others. And yet, none of it had ever prepared him for you.

The first time he saw you, it wasn’t in a polished Piltover workshop or a grand council meeting. It was in a small, crowded market on the edge of the Undercity, where the scent of oil and metal clung to the air. You stood at a stall, bartering for scraps and materials like your life depended on it—because, as he’d later learn, it did.

What caught his attention wasn’t just your resourcefulness or the sharp wit you wielded against the vendor. It was the way your eyes lit up when you held a seemingly useless part in your hands, already envisioning the endless possibilities it could unlock.

He didn’t even mean to approach you. His curiosity had a mind of its own. “What are you going to do with that?”

You turned, a little startled, but you didn’t back down from his inquisitive gaze. Instead, you held up the twisted hunk of metal like it was a crown jewel. “Turn it into something brilliant. You’ll just have to wait and see.”

It wasn’t arrogance—it was certainty. And Jayce, who had spent his life chasing impossible ideas, saw a kindred spirit in you.

From that moment, you became an enigma he couldn’t resist unraveling. Every conversation revealed new layers to your ingenuity, your resilience, your unshakable belief in making the impossible possible. And the more time he spent with you, the more he realized it wasn’t just your mind that captivated him—it was your heart.

You were unafraid to challenge him, to push him, to remind him that the world wasn’t just equations and theories but people and dreams. Your passion reignited something in him he hadn’t realized he’d lost: a love for the why, not just the how.

One evening, as the two of you sat side by side, tinkering with a device in his lab, he found himself watching you instead of the work. The way your hair caught the light, the quiet determination in your expression, the soft smile when something finally clicked into place.

“You’re staring,” you teased without looking up.

He chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. “I just—how do you make everything seem so effortless?”

You grinned, glancing at him with that spark he’d come to love. “It’s not effortless. I just don’t let the hard parts stop me.”

In that moment, he knew he was a goner.

Jayce Talis, the golden boy of Piltover, had fallen in love with you—not because of what you could build, but because of what you built in him: a renewed faith in the beauty of dreaming big, of chasing the spark no matter where it led.

And it apparently led to you.

Viktor-

Viktor didn’t notice you at first, not in the way others might have. He was too focused on his work, his mind consumed by blueprints and equations. But you… you were patient, always there in the background, asking questions no one else dared to ask, seeing things no one else cared to notice.

It was one of those late nights in the lab when you caught his attention. He was hunched over a schematic, frustration etched into every line of his face. You, seated quietly at the far end of the room, had been watching him—though you’d never admit it aloud.

“Did you eat today?” your voice broke through the silence.

Viktor didn’t even look up. “I’m fine,” he replied, a rote answer that wasn’t convincing in the slightest.

You set down your work and crossed the room, standing just out of his peripheral vision. “Fine isn’t food, Viktor.”

When he finally looked at you, there was something in your eyes that made him pause. It wasn’t pity or condescension—two things he’d grown accustomed to. It was understanding, genuine and unyielding, as if you knew exactly what it felt like to lose yourself in something bigger.

That was the first moment he realized you were different.

It wasn’t the last.

You had a way of grounding him, of pulling him out of his own head without judgment. Your presence was quiet but powerful, a steady force that didn’t demand his attention but earned it nonetheless.

What truly captured him, though, was your mind. You didn’t just accept the world as it was; you questioned it, challenged it, sought to understand it. You weren’t afraid to debate him, to push back when you thought he was wrong, and yet you did so with a respect that made him listen.

He found himself looking forward to your late-night conversations, the way you’d linger in the lab long after everyone else had gone home. You’d ask about his work—not just the mechanics but the why behind it, the hopes and fears he buried beneath his relentless drive.

One evening, as you sketched out a rough design on a scrap of paper, Viktor caught himself smiling. Not at the drawing, though it was clever, but at you. The way you bit your lip in concentration, the furrow of your brow, the quiet hum of satisfaction when you got something just right.

“You are remarkable,” he said softly, almost to himself.

You glanced up, surprised. “What?”

His cheeks flushed, and he looked away, fiddling with a wrench. “Nothing. Just… your ideas. They’re… innovative.”

But it wasn’t just your ideas. It was you—the way you saw the world, the way you saw him. Not as a man constrained by limitations but as someone capable of more.

You believed in him, not just in his work, and that was something Viktor hadn’t realized he craved until you offered it so freely.

And as the days turned into weeks, then months, he realized something else: He believed in you, too.

It wasn’t some grand epiphany or dramatic moment. It was in the quiet, shared glances, the lingering touches when you handed him a tool, the way his chest felt lighter when you were near. Somewhere in the midst of late nights and whispered dreams, Viktor had fallen in love.

Not just with your mind or your presence, but with the way you made him feel—seen, understood, whole.

And for a man who’d always fought against the odds, loving you felt like the greatest invention of all.

[natsukishinomiyaswife]

So I don't think I ever mentioned this, but whenever I get in the mood to write (but can't write something in full due to being at work or away) I'll literally just type a sentence or two in the notes app on my phone, and it's usually always an OC x Canon belonging to my friends/mutuals lol ♡ So... here's a compilation featuring a few of them! ♡ (Maybe I'll turn them into full fics one day, if my mutuals are interested 👀)

@crystallizsch - (Jamil x Yuusha x Jade)

For some people, dancing was an art, a talent they honed over time. You'll have to forgive Jade for stepping on toes, he's not as familiar with the concept... Perhaps some practice with Yuusha would help, she seemed to be an expert, after all. Always dancing around her feelings for Jamil, all the while pulling each other closer.

Surely, Jamil wouldn't mind if he took over... It would be impolite of him to keep the dance floor to himself.

@/crystallizsch - (Jamil x Yuusha x Jade)

Sharp teeth and eyes that scream dangerous, lingering beneath his gentleman facade like the depths of the sea. What started as a game has turned much more interesting now... a development he hadn't expected. He doesn't normally get attached, but... there wasn't anything normal about this, was there?

It was certainly an amusing situation to be in, a metaphorical wedge between Yuusha and Jamil.

@anbaisai - (Jamil x Mayu)

It would be easy to approach her, acting nonchalant as he tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. She was so focused on the task at hand, looking down in concentration. All he could do was stare at the hair hanging in her face, longing to hold it, to push it away. Like curtains covering the sun, he longed for her light. The brightness of her eyes, the glow of her smile.

And then she turns, feeling his eyes on her... and he looks away, as if the moment never happened.

@/anbaisai - (Jamil x Mayu)

He slips up once, twice, his mask continuing to fall under her. He wasn't even sure when the cracks started, his feelings breaking through, piece by piece.

@/anbaisai - (Jamil x Mayu)

It was just him and her tsum now, alone in Scarabia's kitchen. He wasn't sure where Kalim found the tsum, or if Mayu even knew she had one. And yet...

Seeing that cute face stare up at him, patiently waiting to watch him cook... It made his heart ache, silently wondering if this was the "cuteness aggression" people spoke of.

I think I'll make onigiri tonight, he thinks, subtly putting on a show for her. It's a shame the tsum couldn't enjoy it.

@/anbaisai - (Jamil x Mayu)

It wasn't enough, was it? It wasn't enough that his plans got ruined, that he's stuck in the same situation as before. No, he just had to get attached, developing feelings for the one person he shouldn't have... Unnecessary feelings at that.

Of course, Jamil thinks, looking across the room at Mayu. It just had to be her...

@/anbaisai - (Jamil x Mayu)

He wrote hundreds of letters he'd never send, each one ending up in the trash. They were always addressed to her, the name Mayu written neatly on each envelope.

Her name was like a memory, flooding him with feelings of affection... and regrets. If only he asked her to join him...

@skriblee-ksk - (Jack x Kiyuu)

It was late now, later than Jack would have liked, making his way home. Kiyuu would be asleep by now, her face coming to mind as he passed by a convenience store. It's sign brightly displayed that it was open, making him pause.

Perhaps he'll get her some snacks, just in case...

@/skriblee-ksk - (Jack x Kiyuu)

Jack was an early riser, waking at sunrise to go on his morning run. He made sure not to wake Kiyuu, getting ready for the day once he returned. He was making breakfast when she finally awoke, entering the kitchen with a yawn.

She must have been cold, he thinks, noticing she was wearing his cardigan over her pajamas.

There's tons more, but these are the ones I'll post for now lol ♡

Thank you! ♡

[evangelina830]

Meet the Bandit!

(RP Blog for them!)

Name: Evan

Age: 23

Weight: 112 lbs

Height: 5’0”

Role: support

Ethnicity: Mexican/American

Origin: California, USA

Primary: Machine pistol

Secondary: RPG

Melee: Bowie Knife

Speed: 95%

HP: 150

Personality:

Despite sneaking around, being apart of their stealing technique, they have a usual very silly personality similar to Scout, except without such a big ego and a try-hard habit for women. They joke around a lot, and sometimes get loud depending on their mood.

Abilities:

Stealing

Trading

Sneaking

Likes:

Piano

Art

Comics

Animals

Making deals/Money

Dislikes:

Tomatoes

Big bodies of water

Backstory: as a baby, they were picked up off the side of the road, but they looked a little strange. Growing up in California, they were raised by a family of one mother, six sisters and one brother, being the third oldest of the group. They wear a human disguise because they are a secret alien shapeshifter exploring earth! (They are actually born from Venus…)

Appearance:

Evan’s brown eye color matches their hair, although Eva’s eyes are a lighter brown.

Both of their hair is the same brown, but a blue and red/pink ombré.

BLU bandit, aka Evan, has somewhat crooked teeth (and find the excuse to wear their scarf more often to hide it. Mostly, to hide their smile). But Eva’s teeth are straighter, being the cloning process. Evan also has rather sharp canines.

Both bandits have beauty marks (moles) in the same spots.

Eva’s skin is slightly darker than Evan’s due to being in the sun more

Red bandit’s hair is a bit straighter, and shorter In the back. Blu bandit’s hair is more wavy

Facts:

both Bandit’s use they/them pronouns.

The BLU Bandit is actually the original, the RED being the true clone. Both bandits often, casually, switch teams because they get along with them better. They only kill their friends on the battlefield. (My headcanon is that the blue team is all clones of the red team, being born into the mindset of war, which is why some mercenaries may be more serious than the RED team.)

A strange fact about Eva, is that during Evan’s cloning, they were recognized as a human, therefor, they are not an alien like the BLU Bandit.

Eva is rather monotone and speaks a lot less than Evan. Although, they are kinder if you get to know them, despite looking angry as a resting face.

Evan has a tortoiseshell cat named Molly, back at home

They shake violently when having caffeine, and since they have anxiety they either get a burst of energy, or get anxious (choosing to ease their nerves by running or dancing), so they ‘aren’t allowed’ to have it, but would do anything to get their hands on coffee cause they love the taste.

Oddly enough, BLU Bandit melts (literally) when they feel a strong emotion (like nervousness, excitement, or extreme pain - so they often melt when they die during battle), but it’s somehow a normal thing to the others. (Melts into a puddle, but always returns in one piece)

Relationships:

Scout: He’s just too much similar to Bandit. They often bicker (usually in a playful way). Though sometimes, they like to talk about comics together.. they have a relationship similar of siblings.

[Bandit calls Scout; Chucklehead (to mock him), Jerms, Jay. Scout calls Bandit; Bandy, four eyes, amigo (to mock them), Copy-cat, Ban-Ban]

Their duo name would be called Comic Twins

Pyro: Bandit and Pyro love to craft together! Even if it’s with the blood and guts of their enemies. Evan is also a good translator to his mumbling.

[Bandit calls Pyro; mumbles, py, señor loco]

Their duo name would be called Gender who? (Lol)

Soldier: These two often play fight like animals, but Bandit teases him more than actually doing something. They bond over their love for raccoons and rockets! Bandit sees him like an uncle or a ‘stupid older brother’.

[Bandit calls Soldier; Solly, Sol, Jay-Dee, soldado, sky man. Solly calls Bandit; Rookie, Rocket pal, cadet, sneaky little thief]

Their duo name would be called Raccoon Rockets

Demoman: they are Very close with him - If Demoman isn’t with Solly, he’s with Bandit or both of them! And Bandit seems to have a little crush.. they exchange platonic kisses sometimes and play piano together, but perhaps it’s a bit more than friendly.

[Bandit calls Demoman; Demo, Guapo, Tav, Dee, Tavish-ing (like ravishing). Demo calls Bandit; Bandy, lad, Bonnie, Bee (to mimic the way they give nicknames), Ev]

Their duo name would be called Piano 4 Hands!

Heavy: Bandit and Heavy have a family like relationship. Like they do to others, bandit likes to mess with him, but he doesn’t react as much as the rest do. So taking that into consideration, Bandit is calmer around him and nicer.

[Bandit calls Heavy; Señor viejo, H, pesado, Hev. Heavy calls Bandit; маленький вор, подлый енот, small Bandit]

Their duo name would be called Sticks and stones

Engineer: The last thing this Engineer needs is for a sneaky thief to steal parts of his machines! He gets frustrated with them sometimes, but they’ve got a silly thing going on. Bandit sees Engi like an uncle, and he sees them like an annoying little nephew.

[Bandit calls Engi; ingeniero, Engi, Dell pepper, robot man. Engi calls Bandit; Bandy, little thief, Ban, sneaky trash panda]

Their duo name would be called Astronomical Smarts

Sniper: While sniper studies aliens, it doesn’t help that he works with one, though he doesn’t know for sure (even though he’s correct). Bandit knows of this, since Sniper sometimes tries to call them out, but they ignore it, protecting their secret, by playing it off as a joke. Besides that all, they’re quite good friends.

[Bandit calls Sniper; Monday, francotirador, Snipes, Em, Vanny, hombre sucio. Sniper calls Bandit; Bandy, crook, Space-man, sneaky critter]

Their duo name would be called Alien Exploration

Medic: The Medic may be the only one Bandit is afraid of, just a little. Half of their interactions are passive-aggressive. Though, on some occasions they get along relatively well, and like to talk about silly things.

[Bandit calls Medic; Doctor, El, Doctor L, lewd-wig (to immaturely mock his wild behavior, and name). Medic calls Bandit; hinterhältiger Dieb, kleine Ratte]

Their duo name would be called Anxiety diagnosis

Spy: Their favorite thing to do is talk about romance and banter about how more sneaky one is. And sometimes, they secretly gossip to one another…

[Bandit calls Spy; Spy-der, French fry, espiar, Señor, hombre cangrejo. Spy calls Bandit; petit voleur, Monsieur?, Thief, raton laveur sournois]

Their duo name would be called sneaky Romanticists

Pauling: Bandit has always admired Miss Pauling, and even hates when Scout flirts with her. Not because of jealously or anything of the like, but because they’re aware there’s a much better method to charming a woman like her and it’s almost offensive how he always fails (LOL). The two are friends that don’t interact so often, but bandit respects her

[Bandit calls Pauling; Señora, Pauli, señorita violeta, Señora P.]

Their duo name would be called Cat-Eye lenses!

[afreakingdork]

Soft Spot - Chapter 17

RotTMNT Donatello x Reader

Incredible blink and you'll miss it chapter art by @garbagemilkshake this week~

Rated: Explicit

Warnings/Tags: Romance, Established Relationship, Married Couple, Married Life, Aged-Up Mutant Ninja Turtles, Villain Donatello (TMNT), Love, POV Second Person, Babies, Pregnancy, AFAB reader, Vaginal Sex, Rough Sex, Penis In Vagina Sex, Creampie, Breeding Kink, Multiple Orgasms, Angst, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Fertility Issues, Pregnant Sex, Pregnancy Kink, Reader-Insert, Cunnilingus, Fellatio, Cum Eating, Turtle Noises (TMNT), I have a Biology Degree and I’m Using it, Menstruation, There WILL NOT be any Miscarriages

Synopsis: First comes love. Then comes marriage. Then comes the next step about as smooth as the others arrived. The baby-oriented sequel to Weak Spot.

Also available on Ao3

First 💜 Previous

You opened the door to the bathroom and let out the steam in a comical puff. You hadn’t felt like you had taken a particularly hot shower, but there were all sorts of factors. The main one being you forgot to turn the vent on. The moisture had thickened while it was trapped in the space with nowhere to go. You hummed lightly as you finished toweling off and addressed your after-shower products.

Skin care went by easily and you switched over to lathering yourself with lotion.

‘The earlier, the better,’ was your mantra and you were sticking to it. You squirted a healthy amount into your hand and hiked up a leg to start there. You worked your way up to your thighs before needing to reapply. Getting another glug, you then addressed your stomach and paused at the angle.

You stood a little straighter.

There was a clear curvature that wasn’t there before. It differed from your stomach’s usual hang and had a certain shape to it that was distinct. You reached up with shiny fingertips and fanned them out over the bump.

That was your baby.

You tried not to get too weepy and finally applied that lotion as it felt like lead in your hand.

After that area was sufficiently soaked in the cream, you sought the mirror which had mostly cleared. You turned for a side profile and refused to slouch. Even with your back perfectly straight, the bump was still there. You welled up again and walked out, nude, to where you left your phone charging. You knew the dates, but you had to double check.

It was a simple search and quickly read what you had hoped.

Just as everything else there was obvious disagreement amongst mothers, but for you, at 17 weeks, your bump was showing.

You brought your phone up to your lips and sat in the knowledge.

Your fetus, as of yet, had been nothing more than something you glimpsed in digital images.

You saw it grow and the parts of it delineate more and more.

You listened to the pitter of its little heart beat through a sloshing sound.

Seeing it on your body was a different experience.

“I wonder how my internally estimated pounds of water vapor compares to calculation.” Donnie wondered as he rose from the couch.

You turned so your back was to him. “You gonna figure it out?”

He thought about it with a hum and you heard him tap his gauntlet for a screen. “Current humidity level is 76% versus 53% prior which means…”

You meant to wait through his experiment, but suddenly couldn’t. “Hey, Donnie?”

He made a soft noise that he heard you as he continued to work the numbers.

“Stop.” You whispered as delicately as you could.

Your husband was slow to take in the tone and you heard his arm fall loose beside him. “Darling?”

“I have something to show you.”

“Other than…” He began to step forward.

“Wait!” You turned only your head.

He stood at full attention with one hand curled for an underhand pitch.

You knew he had meant to grope your butt and smiled to yourself.

You guessed you were nude.

“Stay there.” You let a bit of your excitement leak through so he wouldn’t worry.

You saw his head tilt. “Alright.”

Your vision went into the wall and you tapped your phone to your lips a few more times before you set it back on your nightstand. “Okay…”

You heard him shuffle at the ready.

“Look…” You were slow to rotate and kept your arms out of the way to show him your profile. “… at this.”

If he did a once-over, you didn’t see it.

If he looked somewhere else, it never seemed apparent.

Your husband appeared to look right at your stomach.

“This means… I’m showing…?”

He reached out anew, but froze somewhere in the process. 

From where he was stuck, his lips moved. “At this stage it’s more likely your abdomen is filling out due to uterine expansion. Your bowels are being shifted because of it. The distinct bump you are probably hoping for is more likely to appear around week 20. Then your uterus can be felt in the area of umbilicus…”

“Right!” Your hands flew to cover your stomach instinctually. “Forgot I said that!”

You turned back to face your phone.

“That’s embarrassing! I can’t believe I forgot! I even checked!” You rattled off a laugh. “I guess my search wasn't specific enough…”

“Y/N…” You felt Donnie approach.

“Let me get dressed!” You continued to titter and moved to flee.

Instead of catching you, Donnie’s arm rose to block your exit.

You stopped shy of his limb with your gaze to the floor. “I was excited… I’m sorry…” 

“No…” He urged.

“I’d like to get dressed.” You whispered in a way that haunted you compared to the last time.

You felt a flicker of his despair in your wedding band. “Of… Of course…”

He released you and you moved to get comfortable clothes.

The moment you pulled your shirt down the tiny bump disappeared.

You yanked at the hem.

It was like nothing had ever been there.

Even when you stretched the fabric, the thin layer covered up what seemed like an enormous growth.

Your guts, you reminded yourself bitterly.

It was just your intestines.

You turned to find Donnie standing very much in stasis.

He had inadvertently made you vulnerable, but he was also the one best suited to fix it. “Wanna cuddle on the couch?”

“Yes.” He moved immediately.

It was only a few paces to you before he was stuck again.

It showed on his features.

You couldn’t help but smile and walked to direct.

He followed closely after.

You parted at the couch as he moved to his side and you went to yours.

He extended himself out and invited you into a space along his body. You tucked into it and rooted down against his plastron. His arm came up around you and you felt your torso press against his. There was nothing inhibiting the space between your bodies and you could easily meld to his shape. You hiked a leg up atop him just to offset the sensation.

“Y/N…” Donnie tried.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” You told his equivalent to pecs.

“I may have incorrectly discouraged you-”

“Don, please…”

His mouth closed with a sad puff of air.

You nudged his chin with the top of your head. “Hold me?”

“Right.” He seemed to remember the entirety of your request and both his arms came around for a hug.

You settled against him and let the negative emotions leak.

You sorted them as they filtered through.

You weren’t really showing.

Nonsensical.

There was nothing there.

Patently untrue.

Donnie didn’t care.

He was actively upset by his mistake.

You knew he cared.

This was his greatest dream.

Its achievement had nearly toppled him.

He was a usual mess at the mere mention of the upcoming baby.

He used pregnancy facts to calm himself down.

Your eyes opened to cotton.

You repeated the last thought in your head.

Donnie’s beak was pressed lightly to your hairline and he was dotting light affection there.

Non-intrusive.

Data soothed him.

You peeked up at him so as not to immediately alert him.

He thought little of your adjustment and continued to tap his beak on you with closed eyes.

You studied the fine lines in his face.

He still had his telltale bags despite years of good sleep at this point.

He was developing tiny crow’s feet from his routine joy.

He had pockmarks of dimples from the same source.

He was currently unnerved.

He was trying his best to focus on you, but you saw past the usual etchings of his face.

His lids weren’t seated comfortably; they twitched with his unsettled nature.

His brow, though covered with his mask, bunched from nervous pressure.

His lips, sat seemingly neutral, had a hint of his tight teeth behind the line.

You moved your head enough that he couldn’t keep brushing you.

His lids were slow to open.

He reviewed you for a quick study before he found you well enough that his mouth quirked into what was almost a smile.

He wiped down your back and settled a warm weight against the lower half.

“Are you okay?” You asked him.

He blinked a single time. “Y/N.”

“Wait… let me…” You wriggled.

He loosened his grip.

You squirmed until you rolled over and laid your back against him. Slightly reclined, you lowered your waistband first before hiking up your top. You were bent at the waist which accentuated the thing, but your bump appeared, a clear countercurrent shape to the rolls on your abdomen from the position.

Since you were on top of him, you felt every inch of your mate very obviously stiffen.

“Yeah. About that.” You told him with a tip of your head.

He was in the top left of your vision. “Well…”

He licked his lips.

You looked back down at the bump and traced a finger over it.

The lotion had long absorbed and was no longer giving the same glide.

A hand appeared to your right.

You drew a small squiggle below your belly button.

The limb disappeared.

You laid your hand flat over your stomach. “Talk to me, Sweet.”

“I watched you dress.”

You smiled at his odd starting point. “You were right behind me.”

“No.” He adjusted your weight with a small lift.

You were barely disturbed.

“I watched.”

“Not that strange.” You stroked your bump.

“I can’t tell if you don’t or won’t hear the connotation.”

You slowed, but didn’t impart him more attention. “You’re saying you watched with… What’s the word? Lustful? Intent?”

He was quiet.

You tipped your head back to glimpse him again, but predictably read little more than what was already seen. “That right?”

“Yes.”

“Oh no.” You steeped yourself in sarcasm. “Not a loving husband who lusts after his partner.”

“Not because you are my partner.”

“Lately it has been because I’m pregnant.”

Silence took over.

“Does that bother you?”

He didn’t say.

“I don’t mind.” You leaned to the side so your head would touch his chin. “I can’t say that’s new. You’ve been like that for pretty much as long as we’ve had sex. We’ve talked about what it means. I know I still get nervous sometimes about the whole being reduced to a womb thing, but you always remind me that’s not true.”

There was the faintest noise of his mouth opening and closing.

“I’m the important factor. It’s not a pregnant person. It’s that I’m pregnant with your kid.” You dotted your belly with each note.

He nodded.

“What’s bothering you?”

His hand appeared in your periphery again, but only hovered.

You moved yours free of your bump in case he had thought you were the only one that wanted to touch.

His fingers twitched hesitantly before the hand disappeared again.

This time you turned to see where it had gone. He’d thrown his limb all the way off the couch. You stared after where it fell over the cushions and out of view before you went to seek the other. Instead of far away, he’d tucked his other arm half underneath your body where it was pinned. You tried to move to free it up, but he lifted his opposite leg so you’d stay in place.

You frowned once to acknowledge that he was purposefully keeping himself away.

The question was why and you sent it up to him with a flutter of your lashes.

“I’m unsure myself…” He whispered that anxious curse to you.

“Yeah?” A small dose of its fear was shared.

He only exhaled his agreement.

It took only a drop of the poison for it to seize you. “You’re… not…?”

His head pressed gently into yours as the worry dripped through your bond.

“You haven’t… changed your… mind… right?”

You didn’t move a muscle, but there was a black and green blur around you.

When everything settled, you were reclined in exactly the same way, but you were no longer laying on your mate. He had switched out pillows for where he needed a facsimile of his body to keep you comfortable. You blinked out at the same space that no longer held his legs and turned to find him on his knees beside you.

You had still been lowered several inches to the couch and couldn’t comprehend how you hadn’t felt that.

“That was… new…” You told him with wide eyes.

“I’ve been practicing.” He responded like a plea.

Your head gave a slow nod as that made some sense, but left out another why.

“For diaper changes.” He went on.

“Oh.” The sound was the information clicking into place.

You guessed that was useful.

“What’s your record time?”

“Dependent on the mess.”

“You’re testing different messes…?” Your insides were getting gooey while the vestiges of your anxiety hung around like décor.

“As with all of this, there are far too many factors. We don’t know anatomy. We can’t know size. Weight…?”

“But you’ve still been-?”

“Practicing? Yes.” He held up a hand and his ninpo formed a few different sized constructions that reminded you more of flour sacks than children.

You couldn’t help a small chuff. “Donnie…”

He flinched and there was a chipping of pixels away at the edges of the forms.

“Oh… I’m sorry! I didn’t mean-!”

“No! No… That’s… I did it wrong… They’re… malformed… I still haven’t…”

“Okay…” You turned and your shirt twisted along with your body as you reached for him.

He easily caught your arms.

“You’re practicing which means-”

“I want this-”

“I know-”

“Our child!”

“Of course.”

“That you would think otherwise-!”

“It’s just scary because it seems like-!”

“I’m scared.”

“You’re afraid of them…”

“I am.” He spoke as if you unlocked the answer for him.

Your lips wrinkled.

His gaze fell to your belly.

“But you watching me…?”

“How can these hands touch something so perfect?” He whispered softly.

You tackled him.

His carapace hit the coffee table, but he seemed uninjured and he held you close.

“Donatello…!”

“Bloodstained… Dirty… Filthy…”

You broke out of his hold so you could grab his face. “Hey!”

He sent a weary gaze to you.

“You don’t regret what you’ve done.”

“Didn’t.” He corrected.

“When did this start?”

“Now.”

Your fingers loosened where they were pulling his cheeks.

“When I saw you. When I moved to share your joy. I was paralyzed. I saw visions of myself and what I’d done. Smearing that very sludge on your form. On a child’s cheek.”

You thumbed the dimpled space. 

“I need a way to atone…”

“Donnie.”

“A baby! Impressionable youth and I only considered myself among the leagues of piss poor parental units!”

How were you supposed to dissuade that?

You knew he would be a good father.

You had told him so.

You couldn’t disagree that what he had done in the past was bad.

You couldn’t tell him that was okay.

He knew it wasn’t.

He had always carried his choices.

They were facts of their time.

You also couldn’t tell him it made no difference.

You had already wondered if it would.

You were ready in case he had a stress response.

You still wanted him to have that option to run and process.

He would come back.

You knew he would.

How did you explain that to a child?

Especially if they were having an event of their own.

It wouldn’t be Donnie’s fault, but how would someone, new to the world, understand?

Your tears finally broke free from the confines of your eyes.

Donnie’s forehead pressed into yours.

“A little late… for that…” You hiccupped.

He sternly scrubbed the tip of his beak to your nose. “No regrets.”

You were quiet and checked in with his blurry image.

He dotted your face and retreated so he could come into some focus.

“Yeah?”

“I would never regret this.” He told you. “I’d do it all the same.”

“You can’t atone.”

“I know.”

“Will you be able to touch them?”

“Of course.”

“Donnie.” You weeped a little from confusion.

He wiped a few tears from your chin. “I might wear gloves…”

“No…!”

He nosed into your cheek. “Poor joke.”

“Bad timing.”

He nodded in a nuzzle.

“You… won’t though… right?”

“When changing a diaper, yes. Otherwise, no. Skinship is of utmost importance for bonding and socialization.”

“Promise?”

“Swear.” He spoke without hesitation.

You pulled him as you leaned back.

He set you on the couch and came with to barely squeeze in beside you.

He looked over where your belly was still exposed.

“There’s the continuing chance my sins will spill over. The danger is not gone from you. It won’t be for them…”

“It was never going to be totally gone. We knew that.”

Donnie nodded, his focus locked. “I don’t want them to see anything like I have.”

“They won’t.”

“We can’t be sure.”

“Is their life going to be perfect? No. They’re always going to be part mutant, but even if that wasn’t the case, kids come up with stuff. Kids are mean. I don’t want to say that’s normal because it shouldn’t be, but it happens. We are never going to be able to protect them from everything. Life’s like that, but Donnie, nothing like what happened to you will happen to them. They have us. They have more. Friends. Family. Even if we weren’t in the picture, they would have all these people. There’s also Shelly and he gets to be in his own, basically indestructible, category.”

Donnie shook with a little laugh. “A child raised by S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N.”

“They’d sure get your morals then.”

Donnie’s lip twitched for a bit of a smile.

“No hands will pass over them and they’ll only get dirty if they want to. I'm talking puddles or mud pies or lake days…”

“Children are messy…”

“So dirty.”

“Do you think… they’ll like to garden…?”

“With you?”

He looked at you.

“Of course. Kids crave that attention and can sense how important something is to you. Maybe they’ll be bored, but even if they are, it’ll be a precious memory for them, with their dad.”

Donnie searched you with a glistening eye before he cleared his throat.

He was methodical in returning his gaze to your stomach.

“Memory…” He spoke in a whisper.

You nodded.

“Stored recollections that can be warped by time, opinion… any number of factors.”

You kept quiet.

“Past events… What happens to the present…” He reached with shy, extended fingers.

You leaned your head against his shoulder.

He let a single pad brush your stomach first.

He waited for something to happen.

Nothing did.

He rested a microscopic amount of weight against your skin.

He looked to be pointing.

“All clear.” You murmured to him.

His other finger came down and then his thumb.

You closed your eyes.

You felt as he settled his hand against the bump.

He encompassed far more than just it.

He easily covered entire strips of your torso with his fingers alone.

His palm perpetuated warmth.

“It’s just my guts.” You felt compelled to say.

“It’s more.” He churred and spread his fingers out.

“Good?”

His hand left and your lids cracked.

He reviewed his appendage backwards and forwards.

It didn’t have a single mark.

He returned it to your stomach. “Perfect.”

(Check out behind the scenes for this fic and more on my Patreon. You can follow me there, here, or the tag #softspotfic for updates)

Foghorn to the betas @tmntxthings and @unrestrainedhotsoup

[canmom]

This an interesting angle. I've never been particularly taken with trying to determine True Art from False Art on the basis of specific qualities of the piece.

(I did ok-ish but not exceptionally on the AI art quiz, probably with a slight bias for misattributing human pieces as AI ones - like many other respondees, I found the Impressionist pieces hardest to distinguish, since they very much play to the AI's strengths.)

There are many different ways you could describe "art" as a human activity, I'm sure there's a post somewhere where I make a list, but a really big one is its communicative function - one purpose of art is to somehow pass on some aspect of our 'inner world' to another person, through a lossy and limited channel.

That a signal can be easily imitated doesn't mean it doesn't carry contextual information. For example, I could ask a yes/no question of enormous emotional importance - "should I take the shot", "has the baby been born", "will you go out with me", "am I a good girl" - and be answered with either "yes" or "no". It would be trivial to generate a machine which randomly substitutes for this communication - that's basically all a magic eight-ball is.

The amount of information that can be contained in an image of a given size and colour depth can also be calculated. For example, the number of fullscreen images that would fill my current monitor at 8 bits per channel would be 2^(3440 × 1440 × 24) ≈ 3 × 10^35788372 - about 15 megabytes uncompressed. It's a number that seems astronomically huge, though effectively the amount of information is much less than you'd calculate since all the likely pixels are correlated. The same goes for other art forms, like novels (encoded as, say, UTF-8 strings or PDFs) or pieces of music (encoded as sound files, MIDI, MuseScore files, etc.). The exact number is complicated, you end up getting into Kolmogorov complexity and shit like that, but the point is that it's finite.

If we want to claim that all the information about a human life that Hofstadter describes (grief, despair etc.) is in there somehow, we're claiming that this finitely many bits is adequate to capture all the nuances of a human life. I don't know that that's true!

This, however, doesn't really seem to align with how we interact with art. Human production and exchange of "art" is a social act - I would describe it as being continuous with "play". When we observe a piece, we are opening a communications channel - at least a one-way channel. The person on the other side sends some information into the channel, and we process it somehow.

Since it is a lossy channel with limited information, we must infer various things about the other mind on the opposite side of it. If I show you an artwork that I made, we might have a conversation about how I did it, why I made the choices I did. If I feel something looking at the work, I might imagine that you felt something similar, and designed the piece to evoke it intentionally (a guess that will often be wrong but sometimes still productive). I might also look at what specific choices you have made, compare them to the choices others have made in the same medium, etc etc.

We form these inferences on the basis of experience - the more you learn about making art, the more you learn to appreciate other peoples' art and vice versa. And we project these experiences, usually plausibly, onto other artists.

(Perhaps I am saying all art is in a sense performance art? Seems like a tasty soundbite, though I'm not fully sure I wanna commit to it.)

I'm not meaning to claim that a computer couldn't simulate this kind of 'how did you make it' interaction too. This line of argument was anticipated by Turing in his original 1950 paper on the 'imitation game' that someone links in the comments above, where he describes a poet undergoing a viva voce test interrogating their word choices, and argues that a computer might be programmed to give convincing answers to such a test. I imagine he's right - for a paper written in 1950 he makes some surprisingly sharp predictions for how future AIs might be made, such as the idea that an AI could be built to be 'educated' like a child. (He also thought the evidence for ESP is 'overwhelming', but hey, can't win 'em all).

A lot of the context around art would be quite easy to forge, had you a mind to. For example, suppose I go to a film screening, and someone is introduced as the director so we can all clap them. Did they really direct it? I don't know! You could totally send an actor. Less conspiratorially, if someone says they made an artistic choice for x or y reason, they could be lying about it, or misremembering, or most likely oversimplifying a complex and inscrutable process down to a simpler story.

At some point you have to take something like that on trust, or else simply accept that being lied to about it is part of the game you're there to play! (c.f. Oshi no Ko.)

Anyway, the sudden arrival of a new process that can produce, at least sometimes, near-indistinguishable output to various types of communication, throws a spanner in the process. If we're feeling uncharitable, we could call it something like a DDOS attack, stuffing the channels with spurious inputs that don't fit our design assumptions. I think that goes too far, though. AI gen doesn't preclude communication, but it does need we need to think differently about what is being communicated.[1]

So to consider that last question, if art is like a game, could you train an AI art to produce art that is meaningful to humans only by 'playing against' itself, like AlphaGo Zero? I don't think this is so likely. The rules of Go are strict and well-defined; the rules of what humans find meaningful are inseparable from the history of interacting with other humans, which is why art constantly evolves. Training an AI on existing human artworks is training it to compress and interpolate/extrapolate that dataset; training it to optimise for "making novel art that expresses something in a form that its interlocutor could understand" requires it to be interacting with someone.

You could imagine a training process with an "artist" AI and a "critic" AI (a sort of more sophisticated GAN, where the adversary is optimising not to distinguish human/AI art but to judge it on aesthetic grounds) - but how would you get the "critic" AI? Whose taste would it express?

Admittedly, the developers of image generators are constantly refining their models in response to users, so they are being optimised to appeal to someone, not just interpolate existing artworks. But I think it would be very hard to remove humans from the equation entirely. And the present means of providing feedback to the AI are very crude.

For an AI to learn from interacting with other AI (and the world), I feel like you'd need a whole new process that isn't about minimising loss against input-output pairs. Romantically, I imagine it would be closer to how humans learn from life, but I don't really know what will 'work' in the end.

below: some other remarks that were excised from the main post.

[1] We can view AI image gen as another channel for communication between humans, with its own set of inferences to make. If someone shows me a picture they've generated with AI, there's no point asking why they painted this bit that way, but I might approach them more as a curator and ask why they chose this generation over others, or how they went about prompting it.

The AI artists who go to the trouble of finetuning their models with LoRAs for a specific end goal, or using more involved processes with multiple stages of generation, probably have most to 'say', either through the work they generate or how they'd discuss it. (I find it very endearing when someone trains an AI to serve up a hyperspecific fetish.) And the more I know about how AI images are generated, the more I can probably have a productive conversation.

In this light, the "problem" of AI is mostly one of deception, insofar as it tries to look like something else and thereby tell a misleading story. That's probably a big reason why why it brings the rancour it does, although it doesn't explain all of it. It's not (usually) a forgery of a specific human's work, but it is designed to forge spurious communications in this channel in general, so the channel is 'noisier' - and this could be thought to undermine many of the contexts, i.e. the operating narratives and social games, which are why we exchange art in the first place. Over time, we'll presumably end up renegotiating the 'games', and spawning new ones, as humans always have.

And of course, the issue of provenance and plagiarism in art - particularly when prestige and money get involved - long predates AI and is full of all sorts of bizarre contortions when you look at it closely.

More intriguing is whether there is some possibility for "real communication" between humans and AIs - that is, could there be an AI output that does respect the 'rules of the game' in some way. This is harder to imagine! Like, if you ask why we aren't solipsists, we could point to how much we resemble other humans and say, all things considered, seems very unlikely we aren't the same type of entity. But I only know 'what it's like to be' a human. Conversely, while I know a reasonable amount about how AIs work, the attention mechanism and latent-space vectors and so on (thanks 3blue1brown), the analogy isn't so clear anymore, so I don't even know how I'd determine whether there even is a 'what is it like to be' under all the 'noise' of communications aggressively optimised to fit the patterns of something a human might say. If there is, it's probably very alien to all of my experience.

Ironically I feel like the current model of 'AI', which teaches us to regard any generated output with suspicion of having 'nothing behind it', would make it harder for any 'real', agentive, subjective-experience-having AI to make itself known to us. But perhaps it's good that we're forced to sharpen our criteria of what we're looking for out of these things.

Anyway, all of this is probably just idle imaginings, because nobody can figure out how to make anything like enough money to justify the exorbitant costs of training and operating AIs, so at some point this whole speculative bubble will go up in smoke and whatever AIs continue to be in use will likely remain about as good as they are today, or stupider - at least until the next 'AI summer' when a new paradigm emerges.

Thinking about that that "slop accelerationism" post, and also Scott's AI art Turing test.

I also hope AI text- and image-generation will help shake us loose from cheap bad art. For example, the fact that you can now generate perfectly rendered anime girls at the click of button kindof suggests that there was never much content in those drawings. Though maybe we didn't really need AI for that insight? It feels very similar to that shift in fashion that rejected Bouguereau-style laboriously-rendered pretty girls in favor of more sketchy brush work.

But will we really be so lucky that only things that we already suspected was slop will prove valueless?

As usual with AI, Douglas Hofstadter already thought about this a long time ago, in an essay from 2001. Back in 1979 he had written

Will a computer program ever write beautiful music? Speculation: Yes, but not soon. Music is a language of emotions, and until programs have emotions as complex as ours, there is no way a program will write anything beautiful. There can be "forgeries"—shallow imitations of the syntax of earlier music—but despite what one might think at first, there is much more to musical expression than can be captured in syntactical rules. There will be no new kinds of beauty turned up for a long time by computer music-composing programs. Let me carry this thought a little further. To think—and I have heard this suggested—that we might soon be able to command a preprogrammed mass-produced mail-order twenty-dollar desk-model "music box" to bring forth from its sterile [sic!] circuitry pieces which Chopin or Bach might have written had they lived longer is a grotesque and shameful misestimation of the depth of the human spirit. A "program" which could produce music as they did would have to wander around the world on its own, fighting its way through the maze of life and feeling every moment of it. It would have to understand the joy and loneliness of a chilly night wind, the longing for a cherished hand, the inaccessibility of a distant town, the heartbreak and regeneration after a human death. It would have to have known resignation and world-weariness, grief and despair, determination and victory, piety and awe. In it would have had to commingle such opposites as hope and fear, anguish and jubilation, serenity and suspense. Part and parcel of it would have to be a sense of grace, humor, rhythm, a sense of the unexpected and of course an exquisite awareness of the magic of fresh creation. Therein, and therein only, lie the sources of meaning in music.

I think this is helpful in pinning down what we would have liked to be true. Because in 1995, somebody wrote a program that generates music by applying simple syntactic rules to combine patterns from existing pieces, and it sounded really good! (In fact, it passed a kind of AI turing test.) Oops!

The worry, then, is that we just found out that the computer has as complex emotions as us, and they aren't complex at all. It would be like adversarial examples for humans: the noise-like pattern added to the panda doesn't "represent" a gibbon, it's an artifact of the particular weights and topology of the image recognizer, and the resulting classification doesn't "mean" anything. Similarly, Arnulf Rainer wrote that when he reworked Wine-Crucifix, "the quality and truth of the picture only grew as it became darker and darker"—doesn't this sound a bit like gradient descent? Did he stumble on a pattern that triggers our "truth" detector, even though the pattern is merely a shallow stimulus made of copies of religious iconography that we imprinted on as kids?

One attempt to recover is to say Chopin really did write music based on the experience of fighting through the maze of life, and it's just that philistine consumers can't tell the difference between the real and the counterfeit. But this is not very helpful, it means that we were fooling ourselves, and the meaning that we imagined never existed.

More promising, maybe the program is a "plagiarism machine", which just copies the hard-won grief, despair, world-weariness &c that Chopin recorded? On it's own it's not impressive that a program can output an image indistinguishable from Gauguin's, I can write such a program in a single line:

print("https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gauguin,Paul-Still_Life_with_Profile_of_Laval-_Google_Art_Project.jpg")

I think this is the conclusion that Hofstadter leans towards: the value of Chopin and the other composers was to discover the "template" that can then be instantiated to make many beautiful music pieces. Kind of ironically, this seems to push us back to some very turn-of-the-20th-century notion of avant-garde art. Each particular painting that (say) Monet executed is of low value, and the actual valuable thing is the novel art style...

That view isn't falsified yet, but it feels precarious. You could have said that AlphaGo was merely a plagiarism machine that selected good moves from historical human games, except then AlphaGo Zero proved that the humans were superfluous after all. Surely a couple of years from now somebody might train an image model on a set of photographs and movies excluding paintings, and it might reinvent impressionism from first principles, and then where will we be? Better start prepare a fallback-philosophy now.

[feli-052]

Love struggles

[theoldkyokodied]

Uploading all my Tomgreg art at once from the past few week before season 4 hits, who knows in what kind of mental state i'm gonna be once it does :')

[chocokano]

it is officially the one year anniversary of hz episode 16, aka THE spinel pokemon episode, therefore!

a redraw of my very first (08/01/23) digital drawing of spinel (*'▽'*)

plus cool overlay hehe

i can't believe it's been a whole year since he got his big episode ∑(ﾟДﾟ) i don't think i'll ever be as excited for any episode as i was for 16

here's to another year of this freak !! maybe he'll actually show up soon outside of a 5 second appearance that sets up him being suspicious just for it to be forgotten for months

og under cut! (old art alert)

[vagun1ka]

i have finished watching g-witch and Belmeria is person I relate the most to.

[mortellanarts]

We live and die in the fog alone

[pyrosomatic-metamorphosis]

almost all the badboyhalos i drew last year + one i never actually posted ! the character i have drawn the most of Ever. especially when you consider . this:

[kukuandkookie]

HSNGMSJDK I have mixed feelings on this… 🤔

To start off, I admittedly didn’t vibe with Beloved Enemy that much either. If I were to briefly get a bit more into my own personal tastes here, it might be surprising to people who know me that I didn’t like Yuan Yang as much, because he’s dog-coded (wolf-dog) and usually that’s a character type I gravitate towards.

But there were a couple reasons for this:

The first is that Yuan Yang’s crematorium didn’t personally satisfy me because I prefer the ones with full-on regret and sobbing and all that good stuff (I have learned of myself that I enjoy regret as a theme when done well MSKSFKHS). But Yuan Yang actually went for…an asshole route??? Which didn’t exactly work well in my opinion.

I feel like that’s maybe why I prefer Yu Fengcheng despite him not being all that dog-coded. He takes the badass top and even military man “bad boy”—or at least, hooligan/sexual deviant—and does it better in terms of loyalty and eventual regret. Plus, I like his occasionally nurturing role but also how his stoicness makes his moments where he acts cute all the more memorable (kind of like how it also is with Li Yu). He’s not that popular in the overall 188男团 fandom but I actually have a lot of things I like about Yu Fengcheng—even though I know the whole “conflict” over Huo Qiao is a bit weird and weak HSMKFSHS.

(And yeah, when speaking realistically, a lot of what Yuan Yang does is very despicable. Although it didn’t quite affect me the way it may have for OP.)

But the main thing is that Beloved Enemy itself is…quite cliché, in my opinion?

Office workers and then the top being gruff and aggressive and possessive and a “bad boy” aren’t anything new, and when I read the kidnapping plot, even though I know that and the ICU are kind of staples of the 188男团, I still went, “Ah, this feels a bit forced…” (I also felt the same way about a slightly similar scene in My Little Poplar, but a bit less so because it contributed to some of the themes you can glean from the novel in a way I didn’t feel like Beloved Enemy’s kidnapping plot does).

So funnily enough, Beloved Enemy is a story I actually think is better consumed via the manhua???

I love manhua as a medium but I fully admit, a lot of the manhua that directly adapt a novel can lose some stuff in translation, mostly in terms of expressing thoughts—especially when they’re rushing to adapt every important novel scene. But the Beloved Enemy manhua, aka Tit-for-Tat, softens Yuan Yang a lot by really upping his puppy dog side, with chibis and facial expressions and stuff. And the artist translates characters’ thoughts into the visual medium quite well!

I can actually see how Yuan Yang and Gu Qingpei are falling for each other and into each other more than I felt it in the novel itself.

It’s thus not a surprise to me the manhua artist is a huge YuanGu lover—you can see the passion in their adaptation DKGNSKSJ. I am still kind of dreading the actual crematorium part, which we’re nearing, but I have hopes the manhua artist will continue to soften him via the more expressive nature of art.

And well, speaking of a visual adaptation…

The other reason I have my reservations about this is just kind of mixed feelings about some of the out-of-country adaptations in general??

This is a personal thing because I have a frustration at BL drama fans calling Chinese BL cdramas “bromance” due to the censorship when the intent is so clearly BL, so even when I like getting an uncensored adaptation, I do find some people’s disregard for Chinese media being Chinese in origin a bit frustrating. Like how when you’re a fan of the adaptation (whether it’s Thai, Taiwanese, or maybe even a game/donghua getting a dub), people don’t think about the original.

Another for live-action adaptations is just that I prefer animated/drawn, and I’d honestly be way more into getting an audio drama than a live-action drama (still rolling, screaming, dreaming for an official My Little Poplar audio drama…). 😆

Again, these are completely a personal gripes though LGNSKDJS.

I do find it interesting to hear again and again about how My Stand-In disappointed actual Professional Body Double fans because of the sanitization, but also that gap between the drama fans and the novel fans where novel fans notice drama fans condemning parts of the show as toxic even though it was toned down.

If I were to go into a tangent here, I don’t believe characters and plots doing bad/dark things is automatically “problematic” or a sign the author condones it and I wish people wouldn’t just judge characters via “did I like them/did they annoy me/did they do a bad thing,” but that’s a completely separate topic. Still, it does show how people just can’t handle “darker” stuff without finding it condemnable.

So…yeah idk how that’ll go with Beloved Enemy ALFJSKFHS.

I can kind of get why they chose this for adaptation though. It may have its clichés, but hey, clichés are popular for a reason, and YuanGu are really popular. I could see most BL fans enjoying it because even if the toxicity will get criticism, some people seem really drawn to office workers and a young bad boy topping an older cunning man?

I do find it interesting though one YuanGu fan on Twitter had reservations because they felt like Beloved Enemy is really culturally Chinese and that could get lost in translation… Which I feel like could apply to a number of danmei, but also I guess it shows how mixed feelings about this drama seem to apply overall in both fans and non-fans of Beloved Enemy?? 😆

Anyway, sorry for hijacking your post, OP, especially when our thoughts may diverge on some aspects. This just got me thinking, and when I do thinking in such a way, I tend to ramble to try and express those thoughts. 🙈

I will say that seeing Zhao Jinxin get adapted could be so fun! He can indeed be quite cute~

Thoughts on Beloved Enemy Getting a Thai Adaptation

Originally this was a response to another post but I think it deserves its own. To be honest I'm not confident about this project at all. This is (imo) not one of SQC's strongest works and is really really really not fitting for today's BL audience. To demonstrate what I mean, here's an alignment chart of 8 of the (current) eleven gongs/tops in the 188 series (courtesy of a moot of mine on X, link to the original thread in the description).

Ming is the guy highlighted in purple. Look at how high he is situated relative to the other guys (and this is his novel counterpart btw). Now I love (most of) my 188 blorbos so it is with true affection that I say Ming really is pretty mild for 188 standards but I remember everyone losing their collective shit over Ming and he was already sanitised in the show. Basically 99% of you can't handle Yuan Yang (or whatever his name will be in Thai). It's not even just the non-con. I'm not sure how familiar people are with the original plot of the Beloved Enemy novel but without spoiling too much, the main conflict is so vile that even I, a resident toxic yaoi enjoyer, was traumatised by it. The moot who made the chart even explained that they added the 人渣 scale specifically because of Yuan Yang. Is he uniquely bad, no, not really actually. He's just really bad in a boring basic way that I lost interest and couldn't even stand to read the extras.

Seriously, why THIS particular IP (I know why, it's for money) when Winner Takes All is right there. Look at him, Zhao Jinxin is the cutest red flag, he's not even a red flag, he's a pink flag. He will gaslight you, he gaslit me, he's the gaslighting king (actually no, that's probably Luo Yi or Shao Qun but Jinxin actually won me over so really who wins).

[lilacerull0]

i feel like reading/watching mbf immediately means knowing who i am as a person and... i cannot allow this

[technofantasia]

Baffled by how the general perception of programming is that it's not a creative hobby, as if it doesn't involve making countless decisions based on your vision for the finished product just the same as any other art form >:U

When you live on computers like so many of us do, programming is literally bending the fabric of reality. It's MAGIC! You can do LITERALLY ANYTHING* with it!!! I cannot stress enough how much the world opens up when you realize what sorts of things you can write or use programs to do. Sure, you can make tools that are generally practical (and yeah, those can be really nice), but you can also make things that are really only useful to you, or not useful at all and just fun! It's not like you're limited to only making boring things you'll never use, no matter how dull and confusing online programming tutorials make the process seem.

((* Except tell when a program will run forever. You can't do that. You can do most other things though!!))

And even when you only have one specific thing you want to do, there are as many ways to implement it as there are people to give it a go. While there are generally accepted "good ways" of doing certain things, really, there are no hard and fast rules. If you write something that does what it needs to do, it's usually fine no matter how you accomplish it. I always end up putting a lot of myself into programs I write, and I imagine it's the same for other people. Programming is EXTREMELY creative, and artistic, and fun!!!

For such a popular thing, the public perception of it as a hobby is horrible, and I think that's just a shame. Not only is it not too hard for most people to learn (the usual worry), it's ALSO not boring (or for professionals only, for that matter)! Programming as an artistic hobby deserves better rep fr

[inkats]

Hiyori Tomoe + I was feeling weird about drawing and then saw a handsome woman and died a little bit.

[xmaruu11]

sometimes you just wanna gush about your favorite artist and let them know everything you adore about their art

sometimes your favorite artist is your best friend, and now they have no choice but to know about all the good things their art does and how much you adore it

thats me with Doody btw. Ill always remind them how they are my favorite artist and wont believe me.

But thats the truth, and I think more people should shower their favorite artist in compliments to remind them that YES!!! theres people out there who go insane with their art, even small little sketches, that you pay attention to every detail in their work! Even if its incredibly unnoticeable, it shows an artist how much you care for their craft and makes them feel like their work has been appreciated.

Cuz yeah, you can support and artist with all the likes and RBs in the world (please do) but also, replying to the art, commenting things that you love about it, means SOOO much more, even just a simple key word smash bc you just love it so much you cant put it in to words makes a difference.

Show your favorite artist love, they deserve it