#this painting speaks to me on so many levels it’s insane

[jawz]

i saw the tv glow is legitimately one of the stupidest, most tryhard movies i've ever seen in my entire life. absolute dogshit. and everyone is pretending it's the most lifechanging thing they've ever seen LOL give me a break! the gall to claim this is inspired by fucking DAVID LYNCH??? i can't

[throneofsapphics]

the moth and the flame part two: your summons

Nessian x f!Reader

summary: after meeting Nesta in a bookshop, you find the darkest parts of yourselves bonding with each other.

warnings: small injury, smut, biting, oral (f!receiving), minors dni, possessive behavior

a/n: here's part two :) if anyone would like to be added to the taglist, please let me know!

series masterlist

It wasn’t difficult to find you, Nesta had the right connections after all. Meaning, the bookstore. Apparently you usually went at a different off-time hour, hence why your paths hadn’t crossed yet. She found it easy to break her routine for you. Nesta was more careful figuring out exactly how he’d keep you for herself. If she’d been more level-headed she would have done this step by step, incremental changes until you’d find it difficult to live without her. She wanted you for herself, and badly. But, she couldn’t tell how you felt.

The bookseller told her they wouldn’t get anymore copies of the Sellyn Drake books in for a while, so Nesta approached the bookstore at your usual time. 2 o’clock. Generally she’d already be drinking by now, but she wanted a clear head for this - to remember it and review over every little detail later if necessary.

You were easy enough to find. Nesta took the time to study you from afar, your finger tracing lines across the page, eyes darting back and forth rapidly, lips parted slightly in excitement. Quick as the excitement was there, something like outrage took over and you slammed the book shut, giving it a little shove away from you and glared.

An indeterminate amount of time passed before she approached you. Gods, you really were adorable.

Nesta slid into the chair across from you and held the book up in front of her, the one you’d both reached for just days ago. “You can borrow this,” your eyes lit up and she wanted to make that happen every day for the rest of her life, “if you promise me a date and a review.”

“Yes,” you breathed. Nesta noticed you were looking at her, not the book.

Considering your enthusiasm and the way you flung yourself into her sort-of trap, she skipped as many steps as possible. It made her feel wanted, and it had been a long, long time since Nesta felt that way, and now - 2 days later - the date happened.

Perching on the barstool next to her, raising the glass of wine to your red painted lips, you shot her a genuine smile. Gods, Nesta couldn’t get over how beautiful you were, how perfect you looked next to her, how perfect you would look in her bed. Speaking of, that was the next step.

“What are your plans for the rest of the night?” She murmured, keeping eye contact.

“I’m supposed to-”

“Cancel it,” she interrupted. You’d given the wrong answer. Nesta didn’t care what else you had to do, only cared that it interfered with her time with you. You frowned slightly, and she thought she’d have to push more but you nodded.

“I’ll reschedule.”

She wished she’d let you finish, just so she’d know who else was taking up your time. A tiny part of her screaming this was insanity, but she’d gladly live in it with you.

-

Nesta pushed you through the door, following and kicking it closed. Her hands gripped your waist, fingers digging in as she turned you back around, slamming you against the door.

She knocked the air from your lungs, a flood of arousal following the action.

“Nesta,” you groaned. She didn’t answer, instead slid her fingers into your hair behind your head, roughly yanking to the side, exposing your neck. Goosebumps trickled down your spine, her tongue darting out at the juncture of your neck and shoulder. Then - pain exploded. A hiss, not born of pleasure left your lips this time. As quickly as the pain appeared it was gone, replaced by a pleasant and tingling feeling, the two small wounds stung and instinctively you knew it wouldn’t quite heal like the others would, but Nesta claimed you. It was enough to have you gripping her head and pulling her lips back towards yours, to have you lunging forward, bodies pressed together, as tight and close as you could be.

Nesta was gorgeous like this, hair undone, her hips straddling yours, thumb and forefinger plucking at your nipples. She’d declared she needed the time to test each reaction of your body, to learn every little thing that made you tick.

She wanted to know you so thoroughly there would be no return, she’d said, your core had burned.

“Please, Nes, let me taste you,” you begged.

Her lips tilted, but she reached above you, bracing her hands on the headboard as she shifted forward, lowering herself over you.

Tongue out, you guided her hips back and forth, letting her ride out her pleasure on top of you. You thought she tasted divine. That particularly unique musk and sweetness of a female. She paused, thighs clenched around your head, and you flicked your tongue back and forth over her clit, keeping a steady pressure.

“Gods you’re good at this,” Nesta hissed above you, the words muffled through her thighs, one hand moving to fist itself in your hair and who you exactly how you would like.

Slowly, so fucking slowly, the beautiful creature above you came undone, sweet moans increasing and increasing in volume and frequency.

This might have been the best day of your fucking life.

Later, your sweaty bodies tangled together, your head resting on her chest. She tapped her fingers back and forth over your shoulder, humming a tune lightly to herself. It stopped abruptly.

“What is it?” You lifted your head, her hand pressed against your cheek, pushing you back down to rest on her.

Tongue tracing over your bottom lip, heart rate beginning to increase, you waited.

“Nesta,” you whispered.

“Tell me you’re not seeing anyone else,” her voice was hoarse.

“I’m not seeing anyone else,” the response was quick and true. Since that little encounter at the bookshop you didn’t have enough mental space for anyone. You couldn’t see how anyone else could. Ugly jealousy flared in you at the idea of someone else with her. That was you now. “Tell me you aren’t,” you continued.

A low chuckle, your chest grew red. “I’m not,” she clarified. “I think you’ll be more than enough.”

���Oh?” You pushed yourself up now, propped on your elbows. “Will you elaborate?”

Her firm, ‘no,’ had you pouting, but you’d received the confirmation you desired. At the very least, you and Nesta were lovers. Confirmation you meant something to her.

taglist: @breadsticks2004 @shamelessdonutkryptonite @rowaelinsdaughter @fightmedraco @acourtofbatboydreams @readinggeeklmao

[cressidagrey]

New Pursuits - Chapter 1: Painting

Summary:

The shadows decide that Azriel needs a hobby.

5 times when said hobby-related shenanigans didn’t end so well…and the one time where it may end up better than Azriel could ever have imagined.

Warnings:

Rhys bashing

(super pretty dividers thanks to @saradika)

That’s enough, Master.

The shadows didn’t normally talk to Azriel like that. 

Never, to be honest. 

And when they did, then because he took a stupid risk while doing his job. 

They did not talk to him like that when he was curled up in his bed in the House of Wind…at 6 in the evening. 

He could have gone to dinner with the rest of the Inner Circle. 

He hadn’t wanted to. 

Azriel was licking his wounds. 

About that solstice, about Morrigan and Elain…About Rhysand and about his own fucking feelings…and about everything that had ever gone wrong in his life because why not?

What’s enough? He asked, listlessly. He could do without them badgering him. Seemingly everybody was badgering him. Cassian tried to talk to him about his feelings, Rhysand was glaring at him at any opportunity, waiting for him to say something…Even when he wasn’t.

Azriel wasn’t going to say anything. Or do anything.

It wouldn’t result in anything and…Azriel was tired. 

Azriel was so fucking tired. 

Your moping, Master. It’s enough, the shadows hissed. Either you do something against how the High Lord is treating you or stop moping. 

It probably shouldn’t amuse him as much as it did. 

What do you want me to do? You heard him , he shot back nonetheless. Gods, this was how it ended, wasn’t it? Him having a conversation with his shadows that question his life choices. It couldn’t get sadder than that.   What do you want me to do instead? He asked with a sigh. He blinked open his eyes to find a tendril of shadows curled up on his chest like a cat…he reached out to pet it absentmindedly. 

They were there. They were always there. Regardless of what anybody else had tried…they were there. 

It had pissed up the Illyrian commanders during the Blood Rite to no end because there had been no way to level the playing field so to speak. His shadows were there and they were ready to kill if he commanded them so. And he had done that. Often. 

And still…how fucked up was it that the weapons that he had been honed to use… had been the one thing keeping him sane during these long years in his father’s keep? There weren’t many shadowsingers. Most went insane before they ever even reached adulthood. 

But Azriel…Azriel had always…always Azriel loved these shadows. Azriel adored them. Azriel liked being surrounded by them. 

Azriel trusted them implicitly…and they were the one thing in his fucking life nobody could take from him. Or turn against him. 

The one thing that comforted him. 

And he felt like a child again, when these shadows had coached him through fighting ring after fighting ring, over obstacle course over obstacle course…over getting beat down in the mud and getting back up again. 

And now there they were. Coaching him through a fucking heartbreak. 

Either actually sleep or do something fun, Master, they told him immediately. 

Right. 

Fun? Something fun? 

When had he last done something fun? 

He couldn’t even remember. He couldn’t even fucking think about it. 

What’s fun? He asked, not even joking. 

The shadows nearly sighed, the one tendril he was still petting, twitching against his hand. 

Like a hobby. 

A hobby, he repeated incredulously. 

You need a hobby, Master, the shadows decided matter of factly.

I don’t think so. 

Yes, you do. Like…Painting. Like the High Lady does! They snapped right back. She seems much happier than you are!

Yeah, well that probably had nothing to do with the paint and more to do with her mate and her son. But as the shadows couldn’t procure him either…painting it would apparently be. 

You want me to paint? He asked with a sigh. They were going to get their way. He knew that. It didn’t fucking matter what he thought of it. They were going to get him to paint and it was easier if he was just going to give in now. 

We want Master to be happy! We want Master to stop being miserable!

It was sweet. A bunch of shadows cared about how he was feeling. Who could say that? 

Granted most faes had other faes that cared how they were feeling but hey, Azriel was taking what he was getting these days. 

And you think painting is going to help? He asked them, slightly doubtful but…

Well, lying around in the dark won’t.  They quipped. True. 

It wouldn’t. He turned to his side, staring at the wall. 

Painting. 

Quite frankly…Why the fuck not? 

He had spent hours doing far more horrible things that hadn’t made him happy in the slightest. So why not? 

What was the worst that could happen? 

Fine, I’ll buy some painting supplies tomorrow, he agreed. 

Azriel did do that...  He also bought a book about it, because he figured if he already tried his best at painting, maybe some instruction would be helpful.  

He knew himself well enough that he absolutely would fail at actually painting something realistic…like a horse. It would never look like a horse. So why not…get a book about painting that looked more like blobs of colour than anything else. It seemed to take painting in a way more…spiritual sense. 

The book thinks you should paint your soul! The shadows told him excitedly.  

Right. Azriel didn’t buy enough black paint for that. 

Still, he amused the shadows. He unpacked a small canvas on his desk that he had cleaned off…got himself a cup of tea, some brushed…He plucked up the tube filled with black paint, squeezed some on his new paint pallet…dipped a brush into it…

Well. 

Why not? 

And then he smeared that paint all over his canvas. 

It looked horrible. But who cared, right? 

It wasn’t like Azriel ever actually bought many things. He bought presents for solstice and new clothing if he really needed that…and that was it. So if he dropped a few hundreds of gold coins on painting supplies and nothing pretty came out of it…well, he needed to practice first, right? 

Maybe add some colour? The shadows suggested enthusiastically, swirling around him, poking at his paint pallet, and the few colours he had bought, picking up a tube and squeezing a dollop of brilliant blue onto his pallet. 

Why not?

Red and white and blue later…a gorgeous painting was born. 

If the viewer was blind. 

I don’t think I am particularly talented. Shouldn’t a hobby be something I am good at?  He wondered. 

Go to Rita’s when they have karaoke night and you’ll find lots of Faes that aren’t good at singing and still enjoy themselves, the shadows quipped. 

True. 

Maybe he didn’t need to be good at it. Maybe he could just fill canvas after canvas with colour after colour and watch them swirl together…maybe he could just do that. 

Granted he had no idea what he was supposed to do with them if he was finished, but…the filling process itself, was…therapeutic in a sense. 

“Az… What are you doing?” came his brother’s voice from the door and his head shot up.  “I knocked, but you didn’t answer,” Cassian said drily. 

“Painting,” he answered evenly. That was a thing people did. 

“…I am seeing that. Is there a specific reason for it?” Cassian asked him, pronouncing every word like he thought Azriel had gone off the deep end. Completely insane. Off his rockers. 

“The shadows think I should have a hobby. They suggested painting,”  Azriel answered truthfully. Cassian just stared at him, eyebrows climbing into his hairline. 

“And what is that supposed to be?” he asked, waving to the canvas, filled with swirls of black and red and blue. 

“Me,” Azriel answered. He wondered what Cassian saw into it. Azriel only saw the black of his burned-out heart, the red of the blood dripping of his hands and the blue of the siphons containing his killing power.  Maybe somewhere in there was the gleaming onyx black of Truth Teller as well. 

“Anything I can help you with?”  he changed the topic abruptly. 

“Just wanted to ask you if you are going to Windhaven this week,” Cassian responded. “I know it was in your plans but…” 

He was. He was going to hate every fucking second but he was. 

“Yes, on Friday,” he answered darkly. It would be…fine. It always was fine. Regardless of how many fucking quips about fire and scars any of the Illyrians there made to him…

“Are you alright?” Cassian asked him and he looked up to find his brother mustering him. 

“Why shouldn’t I be?” he responded. He was perfectly fine. Right? 

“Your shadows think you should have a hobby.” Cassian gave back, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “They have never thought that in 500 years. 

True. 

“I am fine,” he promised Cassian with a sigh. He was going to be just fine. Maybe if he just painted another canvas…or something. 

“Good. Go back to your…artistic pursuits then,” Cassian said with a shit-eating grin over his shoulder as he went, closing the door behind him. 

Azriel sat there, staring at his painting, picking it up. 

Painting always seemed to calm Feyre. Feyre loved painting.

But Feyre was good at it. She had an inborn talent for it. Her paintings were so real, that he felt like he could reach out and pluck the leaves of the trees, feel the sunrays on his own skin…He could feel what the people in her painting felt. He could…nearly taste the smells of the river or the meadows…he could…

Feyre was good at it. 

Azriel…Azriel slapped paint on a canvas and called that art. 

And it wasn’t. 

And he got angry at himself that he thought he could do this, because he couldn’t, because he was bad at it or at least not good enough and…

That’s enough, Master.

The shadows warned him, as his hand twitched in the direction of Truthteller. 

Feyre relaxed when she painted.  Azriel…Azriel just got angry. And wanted to stab his fucking canvas. 

“You know what? I don’t think painting it for me.”

[tenjiiku]

not the kaiser thoughts 🫣

claws / au

tw: dubious content, murder

There is a certain awkwardness to you that Michael Kaiser finds indisputably adorable. A few things, actually. The way your eyes lift up to stare at him, even when the two of you are on the same level. The small tremor of excitement that goes through you when you watch him murmur profanities under his mouth as he leaves the guidance counsellor’s office — reprimanded after making some poor, unassuming kid spill blood across the lot after they made a pass at you. The small hands that run through his hair, the withdrawn eyes that stare down at him as he lays his head in your lap — the almost bashful, diffident, meek smile that paints itself on your equally timorous features as you whisper to him your version of sweet nothings;

“Use your left fist, next time. You’d have drawn more blood that way.”

Michael finds many, many things about you utterly, irrefutably darling.

You are not like the rest. Not like anything he has seen before. A marvel only he knows the truth about. And you are a generous giver. You tempt him just right, proving he is just as much of a deity, to you, as you are, to him.

When you do not show up to school at your designated meeting place (behind the bleachers of the old abandoned field no one in the school utilizes after a viral wireworm infestation), Kaiser skips first class and heads to the isolated trailer park your dilapidated house reside. His poor angel, what a benevolent person handed such dirty cards. It was only right he be your saviour — your salvation.

He manages up the wilting wisteria tree with ease, considering he has done it many a time in the past — and he knocks at your window. Michael knows it was not any good news. Your curtains were drawn — and they were never closed for him.

After a few seconds of no response, he coaxes you softly. How he knows you like it.

“Darling, let me in.”

No response. He lays his lips flat, and knocks on the window pane which threatens to break at the slightest touch. He could, if he wanted to. But he cares too much for you to scare you away at this point.

“Baby. It’s me. Let me in, okay?” He murmurs — coos — gently.

A second passes. Then another. Then, a hand pulls the curtains away. The sight of you takes him aback.

“Michael…” you mumble, brows furrowed from confusion. Michael only can stare. At your bruised eye, at the wound on your forehead, the gash at your cheek. Your skin was clean when he touched you. He has seen your scars on your body, before. He has made sure for so long, now, that no other arises.

He’d slipped up, somehow.

“My baby,” He whispers, a rarity considering his voice is never anything but loud. He has you in his arms now, resting himself on your mattress and you, on his legs. “What’d the bastard do to you? Tell me.”

His tone changing from warm to frigid in less than a second, you laugh. And while under any circumstance he would find it to be cute, he finds it anything but that.

“Michael.. what—,” you still, looking down at your trembling hands, bunched together. You look small, like this. Michael could kill you and no one would know. “I—It’s. It’s whatever. You know how he is when he’s drunk.”

You speak in a low tone. This is the first time he has seen you so, truly timid, he thinks. Michael finds his stomach contract. His arms tighten and he feels a fire burn in his loins.

“Give me the go.” He mumbles against your temple. Sensing you tense, he lets you pull slightly away so you can look up into his eyes.

“Give me it. I’ll bring you his head.”

“Are you fucking insane? Michael—.”

“I don’t know,” he cuts you off, pressing your forehead against your bloody one, eyes unblinking, “You tell me.”

“Seeing you like this might make me do anything,” he whispers against your cracked lips, covered in dry blood. When he hoists his shotgun from his holster around his waist and feels you flinch at the audible sound, he can’t help but smile at the way your eyes flit to the side to get a closer look.

“What the fuck… where did you get that?”

Michael places a hand on your cheek, tracing your cheekbone with his thumb. He moves it to your bottom lip, adam’s apple bobbing at the gesture.

“My old man’s parting gift. Ma shot him with it. She kept it under her old dresser, too scared to do much with it.” He tilts your chin down, placing a kiss on the wound on your forehead and tightening his hold around you, “I think it’d be fitting if it killed another piece of shit. It’s been feeling lonely.”

Before you can say anything else, the sound of clamour downstairs renders you quiet. You recoil. And the sight makes Michael a bit annoyed. He does not want to see you that way, unless it is him making you so.

“Baby,” he murmurs, forcing your head to his chest, “close your eyes.”

The footsteps begin to grow closer.

“Michael…”

A pounding starts on the creaky floorboards.

“We’ll go on a small trip after this. Just the two of us, okay?” He mumbles, slotting something into his mouth.

The screech of your name. It makes him furrow his brow and lay his lips flat.

“Michael!” You say, louder now. He whips his head down. You wince. Michael does not know why you are making such a petrified expression, but, he realizes he is not repulsed by it like he is with so many others. He has seen many sides of you. This may begin to be his favourite. “I, I—.”

Forcing your chin up, he presses his lips against yours. You thrash against him for a few seconds, probably out of surprise, but settle into him when his tongue slots itself into your open, begging mouth. It is almost too easy to slide the pill into your throat. You were almost too meek for your own good.

Not saying anything else, Michael sighs as you resign yourself into him — your only place, your only comfort.

He gives a small kiss to your forehead as you slump against his body, eyes dozing off into unconsciousness. He lays your insentient frame on the mattress, leaning over you as the light from the open door behind him blinds you.

“That’s my girl.”

Not even a shot is heard.

[m0cktails]

hello!! first let me say im obsessed with your kerry art!!and you play death stranding!??🥺❤️and i hope this is okay to ask. how do you achieve that painterly look on your works? it looks so good- nice textures but also very subtle. i’m curious. do you paint traditionally as well? xx

Hey there! Thank you so much 💖 DS was such a "right place, right time" game, I'm not even sad I discovered it so late (only like... three months ago?). It isn't showing, but there might be a mild obsession going on, haha.

...probably not the wisest choice for a PC player. Re: traditional art, the only medium I'm somewhat proficient with are pencils, I don't have the patience for learning how to handle real paint. Though if that's something you're interested in, this channel can't be recommended enough. A lot of advice offered can also be applied to digital art (any kind of art, really), and how to make it look more "traditional" and "painterly".

Speaking of which. Step one: you might want to follow the "traditional" process and stay away from special effects and creating too many layers. Step two... Textures. The problem with digital brushes is that the marks they leave are uniform, while real paint never sticks to the canvas the same way twice, allowing for many happy accidents. The solution is to create an artificial chaos by layering brush strokes with different textured brushes (or just one, depending on what you're aiming for or feel most comfortable with). Here's what it looks like at the INSANITY skill level.

Oh, and last, but not least. You might want to avoid relying on lines too much (something I'm struggling with, hah) and vary the edges instead. Hard/soft/vanishing where appropriate. The more edge variety you add to a digital work, the more artsy and painterly it will look. And I honestly can't get enough of the already mentioned Yizheng Ke's artwork in this regard as well.

(Lol. Just noticed the process in the video imitates charcoal and not paint, but, you know. The principle is the same)

[saneabandoned]

Diving into Star Wars: The Clone Wars

“Good soldiers follow orders.”

This seems to encapsulate the whole seven seasons of the series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. If you haven’t seen it, haven’t heard of it – in short, it’s an animated series set between Episode II and III of the prequel saga. However, the aim of this is not to be a guide – you can go to Wookiepedia for that; this is supposed to be an essay – analysis, some kind of a deeper-ish dive into the philosophy and meaning of the series, that frankly is one of the best things to happen to this film universe, perhaps ever. I have, time and again, tried to explain for myself the meaning it carries and just why it has me in such a strong chokehold, but I have failed, or at least haven’t reached a conclusion. Maybe it’s not possible, maybe it’s just the magic of being a fan – you see and feel things not everyone would understand, because it speaks to you on some personal level, that even some (more chill than me, at least) fans won’t be able to entirely relate to. I have yet to meet a person as obsessive as I am over all kinds of different media – don’t get me wrong, even though Star Wars is without a doubt my favourite universe, there are many more I have indulged in, wrote about, watched, listened, theorized and all that good stuff throughout many years. But as I have recently come to realize, I have spent the last ten-ish years of my (not that long, to be fair) conscious life thinking about this universe, this whole galaxy (pun absolutely intended) of characters, morals, and plots.

Speaking about morals, that’s where some of the importance of The Clone Wars comes for me personally. Ever since I can remember, Star Wars has been a huge deal in my life – I watched the movies at a very young age (thanks, mom!), but started reading more and more into the whole world as I got older. I thought I’d reached the peak somewhere in high school when I would literally rewatch the prequels every single weekend, and the OG movies about once a month too. I just found it mesmerising, I always have – being a person with a huge imagination, that never quite stops working (and that’s caused me some trouble as well), I found a haven in this world, a place where nothing is too weird, everything is just so brilliantly imagined and thought of, written and painted so vividly, that it feels like someone has taken the insides of my brain, turned them into a whole painting, adding stories, characters and just overall putting into words and pictures the things that I can’t really understand and explain for myself. I found a mirror in this world, a sanctuary for all my thoughts. I used to listen to the soundtracks whenever I felt anxious, and it would transport me directly into the universe I felt so safe in. It was an escape from reality; still is – not that reality was or is particularly scary or unbearable for me; but sometimes I wish I was elsewhere; somewhere where there is courage, bravery, adventure, love, all the things I longed for while being quite honestly, mostly a bored teenager at school.

I have always loved writing, loved expressing my thoughts, putting them into words (as is becoming obvious by this text) and have always greatly appreciated when films, books or other media would reciprocate that – when the words on the screen or the page would feel like I wrote them myself, so true, so real, so incredibly close to me, that I would get literal shivers and wonder if telepathy is actually possible. But hey, that’s The Force for you!

As of now, I have just finished completely rewatching the whole Clone Wars series and as always, I have many thoughts on it. The first time I watched it was right after the final season came out because at that time, and especially during the pandemic, I was going deeper than ever into my interests, rewatching all my favourite things, while also searching for new ones to keep me from going absolutely insane (I think I maybe have succeeded in the opposite though). So, stumbling across this series, I thought I’d give it a try. The rest is history – after absolutely and hungrily devouring it, I continued to Rebels, and every other possible piece of media under the sun. Fabulous times.

Now, one thing I’d like to make clear – I’m not a pro. I am not in any way a certified critic, a writer, or any other sort of person authorised to make such an analysis. I am but a fan, a fan for whom this universe means more than I could ever hope to be able to put into words; a fan who after years of contemplation, has reached a point where I can’t keep it inside any longer. I’d love if this piece of writing makes it out in the universe, reaches as many people who enjoy Star Wars as much as I do, but even if not, I am writing it for myself, I am trying to step out of my comfort zone, reach deep into myself, and in a life of struggling with the loudness of my thoughts, trying to put something down, manifesting my emotions and creating something physical from them; these characters that mean so much to me will never be real, I can never hope to speak to them, touch them, or see them in real life. They have although shaped me as a person and largely formed my psyche and morals, view of the world, inner monologue, even some of my characteristics.

So nevertheless, for me they are more real than a lot of people I know are.

***

To begin, I don’t intend to focus on the Jedi’s role in the war – it is of course vital, but I think the discourse about that is to be found more detailed in relation to the movies, namely the prequels, as CW is very much about the clones themselves. When I first started watching it, I will be honest, I didn’t think I’d find what I ended up finding – and that is such depth that I couldn’t imagine finding again, after being a fan of the movies, both OG and prequels, for so long. But was I wrong!

But let’s start with Ahsoka, since I started by mentioning the Jedi and she is one of the first new characters to appear (besides Rex and many others, of course). First, I wasn’t convinced that I liked her much – she was a bit of an annoying youngling for the first few seasons, after all. I wanted Anakin and that’s about it. Well, I got what I wanted, I think, as I am firm in my opinion that Anakin’s arc is so widely explored that you get a whole another view of his character, something I didn’t think was possible, after all – isn’t the entire saga about him? It is, but still – what I saw in CW, through characters such as Ahsoka and Rex, contributed so much to Anakin’s development as a character and leading force in the saga as I don’t think anything else ever did in the movies, any of them. So, yes, I got what I wanted, but also, I got so much more – Anakin is not my main point of discussion here, I think as main of a character he might be in this series, he is not THE main one, at least not for me. And as Dave Filoni is quoted saying – The Clone Wars is about Ahsoka and Rex.

Who are they? That was my main wonder when I first started watching – why would I care about a random clone captain and a youngling? They are both not present in the movies, and the clones themselves have very little personality there, they are just side characters, until they end up executing Order 66, which is of course devastating. But after watching CW, I completely changed my outlook on it, but more on that later. So, Ahsoka and Rex – admittedly, in the beginning, I didn’t find that much since it’s just mainly classic Star Wars battles and a loose plot that is not absolutely VITAL to the end result but brings so much deeper insight into the clones’ personalities, and ultimately through that to the whole feel.

What I really find devastating about this series is the nagging feeling of doom you inevitably carry with you – you spend so many episodes and seasons watching your favourite characters win numerous battles, you root for them, you cry and laugh with them, you grow so attached to them; but you know how the story ends, you’ve seen Anakin become Vader, again you know about Order 66, you know the Empire rises after all and Palpatine’s plan works – and every time you hear someone say “you’re going to lose this war”, you hope for the opposite, but you know they’re right and there’s nothing to be done – evil wins in the end of this. And as I read somewhere – this is a story that happened a long time ago – it’s over, it has already happened, there is no hope, at least in this series, which I find frankly terrifying. Amazingly done, but still heartbreaking.

Clones, war, and choices

The point about choices and what it means to be a soldier gradually becomes more and more pronounced as the show goes on – one amazing example of this is the Umbara arc where the 501st is led not as usual by Anakin, but by Pong Krell (who later turns out to be a traitor of course). This is one of the darkest moments in the show, as clones are made to kill one another, to sacrifice themselves without reason, and for the first time to face an incompetent, and frankly evil general, and to choose to disobey. This is for me a crucial moment, as the clones have never before chosen to disobey direct orders – they were, after all, made to comply and to follow what their generals tell them to.

"I used to believe that being a good soldier meant doing everything they told you. That's how they engineered us. But we're not droids. We're not programmed. You have to learn to make your own decisions."

But here, we can see the conflict – especially in Rex, as he is the captain and has to face the general and answer for his deeds. He looks him directly in the eye and tells him they are not willing to go on a suicide mission, that they will not follow his orders, after he’s made them fight and kill their brothers unknowingly, and even ordered Fives and Jesse to be executed. However, Rex struggles with killing Krell, when he decides to; he orders him to kneel and points the blaster at his back but is unable to fire the shot. Once again, Star Wars proves that its plot has much deeper nuances and philosophies; for the first time here, we are faced with the harsh truth – the clones are people. We know that, but it somehow gets lost in the movies, as the focus there is on the Jedi’s end, which is just as tragic, of course. But before now, no one has considered what it really means to be a clone. They were made for war, they were made to die, their lives and their deaths were planned. Are the Jedi and the Republic, in that case, really the “good” side? That’s what I, at least, started to reflect on when I reached this point in the series, and it changed my whole outlook on the saga, on everything I have seen thus far. Yes, I still think the Jedi are cool and whatnot – but did they not deserve what happened to them for so blindly exploiting their soldiers? They didn’t know about Order 66 of course, and Palpatine is in no way right – but how come the Jedi are innocent in this? I don’t think they are, at least not fully. They could’ve stopped so much suffering and helped so many more clones, if not for their narrow views, which are all the reason for the clones’ suffering, Ahsoka’s leaving and consequently, Anakin’s betrayal.

"Sometimes in war, it's hard to be the one that survives."

Oh, Cody, Co-dy! The friendship the clones and in this case – Rex and Cody – share is truly precious and very accentuated in this arc especially (here the first arc of the last season) – it is Cody who Rex confides in about not wanting to lose any more brothers, as he knows he is one of the few ones who will understand him fully, what it means to be a soldier, to have to live with the morals of war, to have never known anything but loss. This is what makes Rex dive and slightly recklessly (thank God) search for Echo, proving that he’s alive, saving him from the tortures. They are brothers, and they never leave their own behind. But he is not possessive or jealous, and when he senses Echo’s pull towards Clone Force 99, he is ready to give him the push he needs to join them. He knows his brothers, as I said, and he knows the trials of war, so if Echo will feel even an ounce happier with this squad, he deserves it, after all he’s endured – “If that’s where you feel your place is, then that's where you belong."

Therefore, I love the Skako Minor arc and Echo’s retrieval, not only because it sets up the ground for The Bad Batch (I’m not even going to begin trying to explain what it means to me, as it deserves to have another huge debate on its own), but because it shows Rex’s devotion to his brothers – all of them. Even though he tries to be just a soldier, to live through the deaths, he still cares immensely, and that’s what makes him a good captain. His bravery is unmatched, he is always the one leading his men, and looking out for them, because he knows his men, he stands and fights side by side with them, and he’s ready to die on the battlefield, thus setting the example for everyone.

The philosophy of war is extremely complicated – this is what I enjoyed so much about the series (and the movies of course, politics and war is the main theme), among all other things; the fact that we see war as destroying, as a necessary evil, as a tragedy by itself – but war also created life in this case and its ending brought much more death than any of the battles ever did.

"The mission... the nightmares. They're finally... over."

I’m sorry, but I think I have never witnessed anything as remotely tragic as Fives’ arc – Palpatine told only him the whole truth, fully knowing no one would believe the clone hasn’t lost his mind; but the sacrifice the trooper made ultimately saved so many lives, mostly Rex’s, one of his closest friends. Fives never got to reunite with Echo but losing him made Rex realise how important every brother is to him, and in consequence, he never gave up on any of them (not that he was inclined to do so before of course). In his last sane moment, Rex begged Ahsoka to “find Fives”, and she understood. She knew the clones better than anyone and knew exactly what that meant and never doubted it for a second. Fives saved her life, too.

Fives’ arc is the first time the show begins to become darker and more sombre – it is also the point when we as spectators begin to realize what Order 66 actually means, having seen before only its results; but this time we see its execution, through the eyes of the clones themselves. They are forced to kill all Jedi, after being their most loyal soldiers, and honestly – incredibly loyal friends as well. They can’t control it and it’s not their choice – but that doesn’t mean they don’t realize what they’re doing – Rex said he couldn’t help it; Wrecker said he tried to fight it (The Bad Batch); Bly shot Aayla so many times, so she wouldn’t suffer and her death would be quick; Cody didn’t even check if Obi-Wan was dead; Wolffe didn’t kill Plo Koon. They were people, they were made to do inhumane things, but they found a way, they made a choice, so that they could somehow live with it after.

We get all of this through the clones’ perspective, rather than the Jedi, and it’s just as painful, if not more – we are used to hearing “the army betrayed its generals”, but what happens when we realise, they couldn’t do anything about it? What happens when we see the struggle, when we can almost feel the pain of having to betray? The clones, the most loyal creatures ever created, made for loyalty, have to turn on their generals, on their comrades, on their closest friends.

So, I come back to Ahsoka and Rex. We see them in the very first moment of the show, and they have already formed a bond, which is unlike anything else. They fight side by side the whole war – from the battle of Christophsis to the Siege of Mandalore – and Dave Filoni is truly right when he says this show is about them; but I think also in a broader sense. It is about two creatures who were destined to fight all their lives, who no matter their completely opposite backgrounds, turned out to be the same things – soldiers. Through and through, in their own ways. Their friendship transcends beyond all of this, they have a unique connection, that’s never shaken, even in the direst of moments; even years later, when they meet (in Rebels), you can feel their love for one another, the purest friendship there ever was, somehow ironically created by the ugliness of war and constant fight. Both Rex and Ahsoka suffered losses we cannot imagine – Rex says he tries not to hold on to any of his brothers, and Ahsoka is a Jedi, so it is forbidden for her to form such attachments; but we know. We see it in their eyes, we can hear it when they speak. Rex can never forget Fives’ death and the fact that he died thinking no one believed him; he ran to Skako Minor in an instant even though it might have been a trap, but the chance to save Echo was not one he was going to miss out on this time. And he saved his brother, against all odds. And he saved Ahsoka, as she saved him, time and again. Because that's what brothers do.

“I’m no Jedi” – an interesting phrase for Ahsoka and Rex to have in common, given how different both their roles and backgrounds seem to be, but it is indeed the one they unexpectedly share. Spoken first by Rex here, and then a lot later by Ahsoka in Rebels, it is highly unprovable that it’s on purpose. However, I don’t think anything in Star Wars is done without a reason, so I choose to believe there is some thread connecting them – after all it is Rex and Ahsoka, and that will always matter. What it means for both of them is simultaneously the same, yet different – Rex is the clone closest to the Jedi, there is no doubt about this; he’s used to their ways, he has as equally as strong a moral code, so it is somehow thinly implied that he acts similar to them, despite (or thanks to) being one of the strongest and most respected clone leaders. His closeness to both his general and commander is widely known, so no one seems to pay attention to the fact that he is actually a clone, as he makes his own decisions, and often chooses to fight where a Jedi would opt to step back.

Ahsoka and Anakin

For me Ahsoka became the best character in the whole saga, no ounce of doubt, sorry. She is the embodiment of the Force, she is fierce, loyal, but also incredibly wise for someone her age, and someone who is still learning. On many an occasion, she proves to be more experienced than Anakin (and in my book, experience outranks everything) and I feel like he’s learned as much from her as she did from him – if not more. She is the one keeping him sane and grounded, and I’m a firm believer that had she not left the order, he wouldn’t turn. Ahsoka’s presence brings so many new layers to Anakin’s character, that have not been explored before that and had she stood by him, he wouldn’t be able to become what he became. So, yes – ultimately, I blame the Jedi order for Anakin’s betrayal, I always have, but after watching this series, and seeing it from another point of view, I simply cannot be shaken. They took everything from him and left him alone, which has always been his weakest – he has always been this little child, terrified by the dark, later consumed by it, now unable to fight it anymore. The Jedi made him, and they unmade him too. In my opinion, he shouldn’t have ever been a Jedi in the first place – he is not like Obi-Wan, not like Yoda, not even like Ahsoka (who is not the traditional Jedi either, being trained by him) – he is so powerful and so weak at the same time, and that’s where his dilemma lays – who am I? Which side am I on? He doesn’t know, but no one is there to help him – Ahsoka included, as she (rightfully so!) leaves the order when she sees the truth about it. But she carries that guilt ever since.

She blames herself for leaving Anakin, she blames herself for not fighting alongside him when he needed it; for leaving her friend, her brother. If I were Ahsoka, I would have done the same – she was betrayed by the Jedi, not by Anakin, not ever, but still. He stood with the Order when she needed him by her side. And that is what destroys him too. The loss of his padawan, his most loyal friend is unlike anything else, and for her, leaving this life that’s all she’s ever known, transforms her view on everything. And when she inevitably returns, because that’s where she is supposed to be in order for the prophecy to happen – she must be there, but not by Anakin’s side; she doesn’t fit anywhere else, but she doesn’t fit there anymore either; and she can’t follow him, so she’s sent to Mandalore, again alongside the clones, her brothers, she goes down fighting with Rex. She’s always been his sister more than a Jedi; she didn’t ever belong anywhere else but on a battlefield. She may not be a clone, and she wasn’t meant to be a soldier either; but just like the clones, the war is all she’s ever known, and even though she was meant to be a peacekeeper, peace was something she never knew, especially after Anakin’s turn to the Dark side – even though there is no longer a war, she is forever tormented by the voices she heard in his last moments as her beloved master and the pain she felt when he left.

She knew it was over in that moment – Order 66 is by far the most heartbreaking arc of them all and I can never watch it without then spending weeks thinking about it – it’s genius, really, how Palpatine had this evil plan, dictated the whole war without anyone noticing; and it worked. It worked and changed the whole entire galaxy, and nothing could have prevented it – except maybe Anakin turning; and that is what Ahsoka can’t get over; she feels it is somehow partially her fault that the dark won; if only she hadn’t left, it haunts her forever. She doesn’t know Anakin is Vader, not until she meets him after, so she thinks he’s dead like the rest of the Jedi – and when she finds out what truly happened to him, she passes out (in Rebels; another terrific moment) because the pain is just too strong – the mixture of his known presence in the Force, and his new persona, that is torn from pain and suffering, feelings so intense and unknown to her she can’t understand them. It’s not her master, but it is undeniably Anakin. And he feels abandoned, he feels alone, he is guilty and sad and in constant pain, he is no longer there, not really, but then – he is. And the memory of what he once was, what he promised, everything he taught his padawan brings such pain for Ahsoka.

She may not think she is truly a Jedi, yet she is for me the only one of them I came to respect – she is never hypocritical, doesn’t leave anyone behind, not ever, and she fights for good, always for what she deems right, never feeling like she has to change for others, but in the end always blaming herself for their fate. She could never forgive herself for what happened to Anakin, and she can never forget her brothers, the clones, she suffers and grieves for every one of them, she knows their names, they were her whole world. And the only thing she had left, because they never judged and never tried to change her, they simply stood by her. Even when they had orders to kill her.

Rex and Order 66

Ahsoka’s master was gone from that moment on, and all she had left was Rex. The other main character, and I accept no objections to that statement. Rex is... the best one ever. He is, without any doubt, my favourite from this series. Putting aside my Ahsoka obsession, I didn’t expect to grow as attached to him as I did. Then again, I can’t separate them – for me, they are a team, the best one, and I don’t think I would have liked them as much had they not been the amazing pair they are. The connection between Rex and Ahsoka is what makes this series so different and so much better than the movies for me. It shows a level of true depth and caring that we haven’t really seen before – the type of platonic trust that few people find in their real lives. If I get to have just one friend that is as loyal, I don’t think I’d need anything more. Their story is so real, so touching and beautiful and sad – I think it is not only the best one in the series, but in the whole saga, and in any storyworld, really, for me personally. They meet a kid and a soldier, but they leave the war (or maybe the war leaves them) as equals, friends bound by experiences so unique and traumatic that they can never forget them, their bond can never be destroyed. They are soulmates, and they are forever. I don’t make the rules, sorry.

"Well, I've known no other way. Gives us clones all a mixed feeling about the war. Many people wish it had never happened, but without it, we wouldn't exist.”

Rex says this to Ahsoka moments before he is forced to execute Order 66 and it makes me shudder every time I hear it. Knowing what follows, knowing that the clones that have been created for war, are humans with so much more nuanced feelings that they let themselves express, that they fear the war ending as much as others might feel a war beginning is incredibly twisted. They are not machines, they are much more than that, they have feelings, and they have morals, and they are afraid. Rex has never doubted his loyalty to his commanders, and never gave any reason to be doubted – never hesitated, never showed anything less than immense courage and skill. But now he stands before the only person he’s never been able to deceive, and he voices for the first time what probably has been torturing him for a while – the knowledge that he is expendable, that his life might be over, and that this might be what he’s always fought for – the end of himself and his brothers. Victory and death, indeed.

Viewers have witnessed many a clone death, and these last episodes are the culmination of it all – from that point on, every favourite character is in danger. Of themselves. One thing that the series does marvellously is bring personality to so many seemingly identical characters – in the movies we never get any detail about their lives, their characteristics, even their looks – but now I could recognize Fives from Echo in a second; they might have the same features and the same voice, but they are not the same. They are brothers, forged by the same essence, they share the same blood and the same heart, but they are individuals with thoughts and passions so diverse it’s impossible not to notice, not to adore.

Rex is Ahsoka’s best friend, as she reassures him moments before everything went to hell. He is the man who stood and fought by her side, and who watched her grow up. Who, when faced with the order to kill her, removes and drops his helmet in a desperate try to fight Order 66 (perhaps unconsciously, as he is being mind-controlled), and so she could see his eyes, see his tears, his struggle, his shaking, and know that he had no choice, know that on some level, he is asking for help for the first time ever, the soldier he is – he removes his helmet so he could look her in the eyes, his best friend, his sister, his commander; and she knows.

She’d ran to him, when sensing there was something wrong – of course, Ahsoka would run to Rex, because he’s Rex, he’ll know exactly what to say and what to do, and maybe he could contact somebody who can fix this; this can’t be real, the war is almost over; she’s still a child after all, she can’t face this now, not alone, not without Rex. She’s never had to face anything without Rex, it’s just unimaginable – but she runs to him and in his eyes she sees someone who is not Rex at all, and suddenly all the men she trusted with her life more times than she can count, are not the men she knows, and they want to hurt her, and Rex wants to hurt her, even though it makes him suffer. She sees his tears; she feels in him what she never believed she would.

The parallels in their relationship are just amazing – one of their first interactions is when Rex says to her “good luck, kid” on their first ever mission together – and it shows just how much he already cares for her, how he understands that beneath all her witty remarks and wish to prove herself to her new master (and his soldiers!), she is still a kid thrown on a battlefield – an unnatural atmosphere for anyone, but especially for a young child with no experience whatsoever. From then on, they just keep getting closer and their friendship grows stronger until it reaches a point where they can understand each other without even speaking.

“Yeah, kid, I’m okay”, Rex says, moments after Ahsoka has removed his inhibitor chip and essentially saved both their lives, all while putting herself at a great risk, just because she cares and she can’t do this on her own. In this moment, in his eyes, she is again the kid he first saw, scared about her friend, trying to prove that she can do it all on her own – this parallel is so important to me; she has never been in such a situation alone before, because she’s always had Rex, and now she’d almost lost him, after just reuniting with him; when for a split second there was something in his eyes that she’d never seen before, the only thing that saved her was Anakin and Rex’s training (shown in Tales of the Jedi). Anakin taught her how to fight enemies much stronger than herself, her brothers taught her how to defend herself, not knowing that she’d ever have to, especially not against them. It’s truly heartbreaking.

“Ahsoka, it’s all of us” – just seconds after she has saved him, Rex looks her in the eyes and apologizes for almost doing the undoable, for almost killing her, for being okay when she almost wasn’t. How would he ever live with himself, knowing that he betrayed his best friend? The animation has developed so much by this point, that in this last episode, it’s almost like watching real people acting, at least that’s how I’ve always felt; it feels real, the emotion is just so intense and so palpable – especially with this being the first time Rex says her name. She is his friend, she is the only one who cared enough to save him, thus saving herself, proving again and again her loyalty, the thing they have most in common. They understand each other like no one else can, they have been through everything together, and now, in these crucial moments, they have both proven it – she never gave up on him, she trusted him enough to save him, and in return, he is ready to follow her anywhere and die protecting her. From his own men. Barely awake, he’d reached for his blasters, shooting his own brothers to protect her, not even fully conscious yet. They are equal, they have become one through the Force, and if it wasn’t clear before, it is now – they are sticking together to the very end, no matter what they must do, no matter how. They are forever. Loyalty means everything to the clones.

This and what follows on the bridge of the ship as it’s coming down, are my favourite scenes from the series.

“I hate to tell you this, but they don’t care! This ship is going down, and those soldiers, my brothers are willing to die and take you and me along with them!”

Even though it’s animated, even though you can’t see his face, and the only thing is his desperate voice, you can feel the devastation when Rex utters these words, touching his chest, as he says “brothers” – he has always cared for them, his family, and has mourned every single loss, but now, when there is no other choice, he knows protecting Ahsoka is the most important thing there is – the mind-controlled clones can’t tell apart their own from a traitor, so what’s the point?

There is always a right choice – and Ahsoka proves it, when she gently removes his helmet, only to show what everyone but also no one suspected – Rex is crying, he is afraid and in pain, and she is the only thing he cares about. He’s lost so much; he can’t lose her too. But she always has a plan, and she is probably the only one who cares about the clones as much as him; they don’t need to explain themselves; she doesn’t want to be the one who is responsible for so much death; there’s been too much already. They have lived a life of war, facing death and loss every single day, and enough is enough. She wants to live, but not at the cost of murder. There is no doubt in her voice when she says that.

Burying brothers

What follows is truly devastating to watch – Rex facing his brothers, as a traitor in their eyes, as some of them stand before him, still wearing their helmets with Ahsoka’s Togruta design on them, the colours of the 501st closely resembling her lekku. They’d painted their armour as soon as they knew Ahsoka was coming back to them and they were getting their commander, and little sister back, their best friend, the only one who cares enough to remember all their names, who never turned her back on them, even now, when they are against her, she still tries to save as many of them as possible; she’s been the one whose hand they’ve reached to when dying, their last memory on this world her face, her bright eyes, full of life and care, her presence calming them in the face of the inevitable, as she will have to do now as fell, at the very end.

How must it feel to lose everything you’ve fought and hoped for, in a span of hours? Palpatine’s plan is truly ingenious. The war might have ended, but only on the outside; a much larger, much more painful fight has begun, inside, for Rex and Ahsoka, who now have to navigate a life they haven’t ever considered; they may have wondered what life after the war might be like, but not like this, never like this; not as heroes, not even as fighters – as traitors in the eyes of their most beloved brothers and the new control of the Empire. But they choose to fight until the end, crashing down, falling with the cruiser together, hand in hand; the parallel of them hanging on to each other in the hanger is precisely mirroring the moment of Anakin and Obi-Wan trying to push each other away during their legendary fight on Mustafar, which is happening at the exact same time. But these two don’t let go, they simply cannot face losing each other, not now, not after all of this. They’ve fought for years, so many battles, losing track of what the fights are about – but this last one is clear; they are fighting for each other. And when they are the only survivors, they take to bury their brothers, and grieve the colossal loss side by side, silently watching, because there aren’t words to describe what they feel, and it’s not necessary, so they don’t speak. They know.

"I don’t want to bury any more of our brothers."

The devastation and sheer exasperation we hear in Rex’s voice when he says this much later, in The Bad Batch, when talking about the inhibitor chips nonetheless, is all we’ll ever need to know about him. Laying low after the end of the war, separating from Ahsoka, believed to be dead; in fact – being dead to the world in every sense, this is the choice he makes. He’s witnessed almost all his closest friends dying, he’s lost his general, he doesn’t have a purpose and a goal anymore; he has to deal with the realization that the war is over, but it ended at way too high a price, and he’s a soldier – he will fight every day, until the end, because it’s all he knows. He’s the most loyal soldier, survived Order 66 at the highest price there could ever be, and he can’t lose more. He wants to keep fighting, and he will, but not to lose. Rex doesn’t want to feel this awful feeling of loss, not ever again.

The same goes for Ahsoka – even though she quits the order and never officially finishes her training, the Jedi life is the only one she’s ever known, so her path even after leaving, after the war ends, and after she separates from Rex, is one lead by the code to a large extent, even if done so unconsciously. She claims to not be a Jedi when she faces her master as Vader in Rebels, wanting to avenge him; but she doesn’t end up doing it, she can’t possibly kill Anakin. So, she goes on, living in this middle ground – she is not truly a Jedi, but what else could she be? She has led her troops in many battles, fought by their side; even when they didn’t have to, they still called her commander, as loyal to her as ever; recognizing that she stood by them, even held them as they died.

When The Resolute crashes after Order 66, we are aware that her and Rex took every single one of their fallen brothers, buried them, and displayed their helmets, putting Jesse at the very front, the one who’d wanted to kill them the most at the end. But they know better, it was not him, not after literal moments before that he almost went insane from Maul’s questioning because he didn’t want to betray Ahsoka; he deserved a recognition, even in death. Every single one of them did, and Rex and Ahsoka gave it to them. She lets go now of her lightsaber, the Jedi weapon that bears her identity, and lays it to rest next to the fallen soldiers, because she doesn’t want to have any more connections to this war, there’s been enough fighting. She dies here too – for what it’s worth, she fell with the clones. I can’t imagine how traumatising and terrible it felt, pulling body after body out of the debris. For both of them.

Brother after brother.

***

No matter what I say, or how much I write, I don’t think I will ever be able to express properly what this world and this series in particular mean to me. Of course I love all things Star Wars, but The Clone Wars will always hold a very special and exceptional place among them. It is a unique feeling, one I cannot put a word on, it feels too big for me, as if there is some kind of a boundary that is at the verge of explosion, it’s holding so much emotion, and there isn’t enough space for it inside. Perhaps it’s the depth and the exploration of the clones, their relationships, the empathy their lives evoke – creatures bred for war, individuals barely recognized in life. But still human, as Rex and Ahsoka remind us of the entire time – especially when we see them watching the arranged helmets of their dead brothers – the clones have not been just pawns, they are people; people who died for a cause they couldn’t have any say in. Their lives were not their own; but Ahsoka’s life wasn’t her own either. This is the tragedy of The Clone Wars, but there’s also an ironic beauty about it – Ahsoka wouldn’t have had her master or her best friend, if it wasn’t for the war. It’s a story about the philosophy of choice, hope, good and evil of course, friendship and loyalty. Victory and its highest cost, death; the consequences after a life spent fighting, which no one usually thinks about.

When the final shot rolls and we see Vader’s ominous figure step on to the same place where Ahsoka and Rex were last, as he digs his apprentice’s lightsaber and holds it, we realize what the moral of the story is. We see Anakin’s eyes behind Vader’s mask, and we feel the cold he feels – he ended up alone after all, after all his trying, he had an army, he led troopers, he cared for an apprentice, but he lost them all. He won the war, but he would rather have died with his friends – who he doesn’t know are still alive, and they don’t know what happened to him either; instead of being their enemy. But the time for choosing is over, and there is no going back for him now.

His reflection hits the clone helmet, and we see the image of Anakin, walking away from Ahsoka and Rex.

It doesn’t end with the war; it begins with it.

[waveridden]

okay I'll bite. what's the deal with the life series. what's the lore. what's your favorite thing about it. I wanna understand the Posts

huge win for the me community let's go. okay. idk your minecraft knowledge level so i am going to explain as though it's zero bc mine was basically zero when i started watching.

so. the life series (also known as 3rd life, bc that's the first season) is a minecraft survival multiplayer series, which essentially means it's a server where you can die. in fact, it is a death game! everyone on the server has three lives; if you die three times, you're out of the series. your goal is to be the last one standing. additionally, when you're down to your last life, you are expected and honor-bound to engage in pvp and ruin your alliances. your goal is Murder.

there are five seasons out right now with different gimmicks, each one has the same core cast with some changes - essentially it's a bunch of friends who will take any excuse to kill each other, but with increasingly weird and complex political factions and interpersonal dynamics. people are out here swearing fealty. there are betrayals. there are team banners. there's a season where they build a complex net of paths in the sky and drop tnt on one another.

it's one of those things where there is some lore/plot and you can take it as seriously or not-seriously as you want! yay! i for one love to go the "let's take this to its logical horrifying conclusion" route but some people are here for the sillies and that's good too. the fanart game is insane, people are making renaissance paintings and stuff.

anyways, this explanation is a mess, so i will go on to reccing povs, because there are ~15 people in each season and they're all posting videos and that can get overwhelming! there's not really a "right" order but when i started, @charaznablescanontoyota gave me the excellent advice of "start with the winner of each season and then whenever you're curious about something watch that next" - if you like that route and don't mind knowing who wins,

er4df444444444444 sorry that's my cat. he's been watching along with me. he has a lot of opinions.

anyways here's the list of winners, the wiki is a pretty good reference to have on hand. HOWEVER. i will also add that everyone has a different style! some people edit things very short, some people do long videos, some people are builders and some are very into the roleplay - i bounced pretty hard off the first pov i watched but switching to someone else worked for me, so in a way having so many options is great bc it means you can shop around, so to speak.

and i will close this out with a few of my personal favorite seasons! just for funsies.

inthelittlewood 3rd life (s1) - probably my personal fave. in which an early game alliance becomes an intensely charged king/knight relationship that they both take WAY too seriously (honorific)

smallishbeans last life (s2) - have you ever wanted to watch someone do a very, very bad job at murdering a lot of people?

pearlescentmoon double life (s3) - in a season where everyone has canonical soulmates, pearl ends up the odd woman out because her soulmate doesn't want to be with her. it is an insane and compelling character arc

ldshadowlady secret life (s5) - diversity win! this woman is so so bad at "what if minecraft were taskmaster"

and as a side note i tend to prefer the tightly edited stuff, so if you know that you Do Not prefer that, i would point you towards ethoslab secret life or grian 3rd life! or tbh still towards pearl double life.

[alexilulu]

Books I Read in 2024, #8: Moby Dick (Herman Melville, Independent Publisher (originally Harper & Brothers), 1851)

A sprawling narrative of the narrator Ishmael's time on the whaling ship Pequod, Moby Dick is the story of Captain Ahab's obsessive quest for revenge upon the whale that maimed him. Drawing upon elements of contemporary naturalist writing of the world and whaling, Ishmael paints a sharp picture of the whaling culture and industry of the time and it's foibles and the world it brought into being.

You'll be able to tell eventually based on my to read list, but Limbus Company is partly to blame for my reading this one. I'd long thought about going back to classics, and have done so plenty in the past, but the game by one of my favorite developers drawing upon 12 different classics of literature from across the world was a pretty good reason go step it up a bit more.

And in fact, this one was meant to be posted before Wuthering Heights, but I got swept up in how good that book was and posted it first right after finishing it. Which is not to say that this isn't good. Moby Dick is a fucking banger. Truly crazy. May have given me some grist to work with in some other projects, even.

Moby Dick is a sprawling bastard of a novel, at times lapsing into stage direction, epistolary and direct address of the audience by Ishmael, our near-silent and yet deeply wordy narrator. It feels like the production of a hyperfixation (which on some level it is) and a genuine love for the material, a piece of rock carefully sculpted around a vein of gold that gives you glimpses of what lies underneath without simply laying it all bare. Moby Dick is a novel of small, momentous moments.

Famously, Herman Melville made significant changes to the novel after speaking with Nathaniel Hawthorne (author of Mosses from an Old Manse) to deepen it and draw in elements of human nature, more directly drawing a parallel between Ahab and Moby Dick as a war between Man and God. It's probably felt the strongest in the beginning and the end, when faith and circumstance are both questioned the most. Ishmael is warned against the black end that is coming for the Pequod by Elijah but cannot begin to fathom the reason why, but by the time they arrive in the seas of Japan to hunt Moby Dick, Ahab has forged a harpoon quenched in blood in the name of Satan to slay his foe.

Much of the body of the novel is an exhaustive, frankly beautiful description of the circumstances of whaling, oceangoing and the process of whaling across the world. It would be a mistake to say that this is not necessary to the narrative, though I can imagine so many teens being forced to read this in high school english finding the task tedious in the extreme. And yet, it informs the story directly. Without these things, you would not come to an understanding of Ishmael himself, though it would seem superfluous. It's a labor of utmost love for the people who do this frankly insane and borderline suicidal thing, something that was considered necessary for the time by society at large and represented unerringly in its brutality and horror.

And yet, the novel understands that the pervasive whaling is on some level evil. Moby Dick is a punishment by God himself, a brilliant white avenger of humanity's evil. It strikes like the wrath of god when other whalers engage in the act against other shoals, utterly devastating and driving off the virtuous and sinful in equal measure. The other boats that encounter Moby Dick all survive because they fear it, the representative of God upon the ocean. Only Ahab's singular obsession drives him to ruin, even in the face of being offered the opportunity to repent in the form of the Rachel, the opportunity to turn away from ruin in the pursuit of saving a human life imperiled before them.

The fault lied within you all along, Ahab.

[manhattanspeaks]

[ AUTHOR COMMENTARY ]

Times Sq is the first "building" character I went with for Manhattan Speaks simply because there's so much you could do with the place and I feel like it has characterized itself well enough. Like most people probably know vaguely what it is and might have some impression of it even if they've never been. I dislike it fundementally (especially after Disneyfication in the 90s) but man I can't not admit that from a historical lense it really has grown on me as a place of interest.

I just think there's something so devastatingly visceral about it. It's changed hands several times, has been repainted over and over and over with the NYC land development equivalent of landlord white paint to hide all the flaws. It's a capitalism cash cow and a total waste of energy but no matter what they do it's so flawed... and everyone in the city knows it's flawed.

I think being a major place of interest for tourists and shopping and commute while being hated by the people who should care about you so much while having a notable (but controversial) past and only being cared about because of your worth in the advertising world would make anyone neurotic. You don't get to be flawed because its bad publicity but its still So incredibly obvious that the facade isn't as strong as its made out to be.

Like the prime example of how well this place lends itself to characterization imo is looking at One Times Sq (pictured below) through the years. Gorgeous intricate flagship building that was put in a cage and then increasingly hidden from the world through bright flashing screens.

The times I have been in the area and walked by this building Ive always had to take a moment to look through the cracks, anything to get a glimpse of what once was. It's insane to me on a narrative/symbolic level that you can still see what's underneath and compared to the flashing ads it looks bleak!

It literally took them decades to care about the inside of the building again, only very very recently have they decided to renovate it. AND EVEN THEN ITS BEING USED FOR MORE ADS.

Here's a pic I took a couple years ago of the One TSQ facade. I think one of the screens shut off really adds to my point but anyway you can see the rounded windows from the 70s peeking through!!

There's so much more I could say on this but all in all it just circles back to me going insane about the city's architectural history and how interesting I find it.

I highly recommend looking at stuff from TSQ in the seventies or looking into the project "Messages to the Public" by the Public Art Fund. It's fantastic and the gallery Im gonna link here has some great examples, many of which are still relevant to this day.

[fellhellion]

Not to be obsessed with a poorly written character but the sheer unwillingness on sm2099's part to interogate the sum of Dana’s parts, or even explore how she moves between wildly opposing stances, vs how other women are written in the series just makes me insane. like i WISH i could chalk this up to simple misogyny! but other women in the series are afforded coherent and interesting flaws, even minor characters!

Father Jennifer ministers to the Downtown residents but also speaks of them with a level of condescension. Conchata clearly cares for her sons and tried to protect them from a violent father and yet refuses to interogate her own physical violence or how her actions could emotionally hurt her kids. Xina lashes out at Gabriel for the cheating when he's as much a victim of that decision as her, because it's better than acknowledging how much it hurts. Lyla's sentience is actualised from two notable moments (realising she loves Miguel and overwhelming pain when she plugs into the wider news cycle and is subsumbed by how much suffering is reported) and the mini arc of her going on a rampage is sourced from those two emotions.

And then you've got Dana who has so many compelling actions and absolutely no interest from the narrative in painting a coheisive picture with them.

[paladin-of-nerd-fandom65]

Pretty good answers :) spoiler alert: Mario wonder didn’t win lol

1: does the duo like to make gingerbread houses?

2: are they fans of the YouTube series Death Battle?

3: if they were in death battle; separately of course, who would you choose to go against them?

4: imagine this scenario: Kon-El is a fan of the hip-hop group insane clown posses, & decides to paint his, & when they were little, Chris’s & Jon’s faces like juggalos, what would be Clark’s & Lois’s reaction be?

5: between the duo, who’s the better gamer? Or are they both equally good?

6: if the answer above is equally: the duo play five rounds of any fighting game, the loser gets stinkfaced by the winner, or since they both “dislike” gross out humor, I say Jon or Kon does it instead.

7: not a question but new powers for the duo:

Chris: I saw a ghost au from you earlier & think that’s pretty cool; he’s able to become intangible by sending his real body like kamui from naruto. He also has a transformation Similar to Naruto’s nine-tails charka mode, but blue.

Jake: At full power, he creates a massive tamaran warrior made of out starbolt energy that surrounds his body like how Superman did a few action comics books ago

Oh…ah well at least it was a nominee which is what truly matter lol @gothicghost2000

But anywho, onto our main program….

1) Oh yes they will but each with unique twists to them. Chris for instance based his on the Fortress of Solitude while Jake makes a gingerbread Titans Tower. And they’re big ones too, easily covering about half the dinner table in terms of how big they are. They thankfully take pictures of them before they gobbled up entirely by the end of the week.

2) I say the Duo will be fans of that show ever since way back when it used to be under the Screwattack under website. Their favorite matches from have been Guts (from Berserk) vs Nightmare (from Soul Caliber), The MegaMan Battle Royale, and Mario vs Sonic II.

3) Hmmm…..

Nightwing Phantom (Chris Kent) vs Son Gohan (Cell Games Saga, Dragon Ball)

Three Way Match: Skybird (Jake Grayson) vs Sarutobi Konohamaru (Shippuden Era, Naruto) vs Dai (Post Second Battle with Baran, Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai)

4) Lois would be rather intrigued and genuinely curious about this trend going on. A tad bit of concern once the boys are into it but not on the same level as Clark is.

Speaking of whom and putting it a bit mildly, he’d be very concerned. He’d use his super speed to quickly wash that paint off the boys’ faces and then fly over as Superman to ICP’s place for some questioning. Don’t worry he doesn’t use the red eyes as he’s not entirely there to intimidate them. But that doesn’t mean he’s not exactly in the best mood when asking.

5) Chris and Jake are just about equal in their gaming prowess on many fields and types. The only game genre that Jake beats Chris in will City Building simulators including but not limited Tropico, Surviving Mars and Cities Skylines. In turn, Chris usually tops out between them when it comes to JRPGs as evidence by the fact while Jake had so far made it halfway into his play through of Dragon Quest 9, Chris had already beaten it three times over.

6) Well and I dearly have to apologize to you friend but there’s no way any of them are doing Rikishi’s finisher as the loser’s prize for losing some video games. For me I see more likely that if the Duo were streaming on their Twitch channel like say a Five Round Match on say Mortal Kombat (Each Round has Three Matches, best out of three), it’s more the case that the loser will instead serve the winner a parfait both in the stream itself and for the next few days of the week.

7) Now having Chris create an aura shaped like that Nightwing entity itself with him at the center of it is such an amazing visual to put into comic book artwork, let alone maybe even a full animated series. A display of dark blue, black and sapphire that can potentially be on par with the awe inspiring visuals of a Super Saiyan transformation

As for Jake’s Starbolt construct that surrounds him, I say for bonus points, his eyes can be glowing very tightly (Either Blue or Green or even, pink, depending on how you views his Starbolt colors) to further to the fact he’s no longer playing around. I like it. I like it A Lot XD

[pansy-placebo]

This is insanely cool on so many levels but that (presumably ancient) cave painting is sending me.

The clean outline, the nice hooves, the attention to detail to matching the horse's colouring pattern, even giving it black (albeit, stubby) legs. And then. And then. Itty bitty head.

Just the teeniest tiniest head they could have possibly given the horse.

Itsie bitsy teenie weenie ancient horsehead cave paint-ini.

I wish I could speak to the artist who made it and ask why the head is fucking miniature.

It looks like something out of a political cartoon.

Did they start with the head and the rest turned out bigger than they intended?

Is it artistic style? If it's a stylistic choice, then, why so smol? Is the head less important??

I just... I just want to know. I have to know. Why head so tiny.

Watching Przewalski's horses run free on the Kazakhstan steppe for the first time in 200 years

[m1ckeyb3rry]

No fr it’s funny because even Ego says that like “you guys live in the comfort of Japan where you’ll never worry about surviving” so good that bllk is self aware but I agree the stakes in the beginning fr felt a bit intense which was refreshing!! Yeah im still a little irked about himizus backstory too like that could’ve been a gorgeous karasu panel instead but NOPE wtv also makes me a little sad that we won’t see karasus backstory animated since its in epinagi

HAHA its funny when you remember he has a second lead role in one of your reqs he will not get his happy ending quite yet it seems LMAOO but also I JUST SAW we literally called it yuki and Karasu certified gentlemen FRRR yayoi knew what she was doing!! I bet it’s also because granny Karasu lives with them too so he’s constantly surrounded by older women and learning to respect them! No because what am I supposed to do with the info in hioris profile he what?????? Hospitalized y/n era next /j I’m crying it just has me imagining like does that include like a whole ass full body cast where you can’t even see the person but yeah anyways and we all thought Karasu was the weird one for commenting on his leg this is a different level of freak

I’m convinced otoya is the animators’ fave because he looks so good?? Like they make him so majestic too I see so many edits of him trust yuki and nagi will get their moment when we see their match!! Very excited to see all the clips from there! Some scenes of Shidou are actually INSANE did you watch through the ep? Towards the end they have pics of the top 6 and when I tell you I fr got jumpscared by Shidou but I also could not care less like yesss save the budget for Karasu pls!!!

FR like how are they even connected…actually ik a lot of people ship megumi and sukuna because of sukunas plan for megumi and how he didn’t let him die etc but Karasu is wild…maybe someone mistook megumi for Karasu and went to town with it idk LMAO

IM CRYING THE STOCK PHOTO thats fr me whenever i have to be productive im crying well at least the sufferings over now!!! You made it!! LMAOO wait im kinda excited for when you have to get to the Isagi req too not just to read but to hear your commentary as you write LMAOAOA I love the classic Mira foreshadowing hint drops i like picking them out and being like “oh yk someone’s dying” or something LOL

AGAIN WITH THE HISTORICAL REFERENCE your research game is too strong but I loved the story overall I mean you know I’m not a Kaiser fan either LMAO but I certainly didn’t mind reading that!! Another win in my book wait again the Kunigami cameo LMAOOOO fr had me like “omg what are YOU doing here??” LOL

Wait your process for making the layout already sounds complicated to me LMAO ibis paint is fr pretty insane though for a free app!!

That panel is so good speaking of I can’t wait to see that animated too omg

LMAOAOAOA you are correct in fact those two edits actually made it to my fyp which was pleasantly surprising but YEAHHHHHH THAT KARASU SCENE CHEFS KISS he looks so good and LMAOOO the “mama a girl behind you” audio is so funny and it works perfectly with otoya being sneaky

- Karasu anon

LMAOO ego calling them out will always be funny to me like bro was not playing around 😭 but agreed it added a bit of self awareness to the show!! and yeah…idk why we needed an entire focus on himizu when we know he’s irrelevant moving forward…just another example of how bllk ends up on focusing on too many characters and spreading itself too thin 😫 it was a perfect chance to expand on karasu and/or kiyora who are both playing in the current match 🙁 but maybe i’m biased because i want more karasu i’m sure the two himizu fans out there were happy abt it

HFJDJSS KUNIGAMI FOREVER SUFFERING at least he’s entering the miraverse though…maybe one day he’ll debut in full probably not though because alongside being ginger he’s also kinda boring i fear 😭 perhaps if the wildcard backstory makes him rlly fascinating i’ll change my mind but idk…ANYWAYS YESSSS YUKI AND KARASU MY GLORIOUS KINGS also i think it’s funny that the rankings are voted by other blue lock characters and karasu’s constantly an asshole to like all of them?? yet they still voted him as the number two gentleman KDCNDJS bro has no enemies fr i love him 🥹 HAHAHA PLSSSS ngl the more i learn abt hiori with his ln and now his profile the more i’m like nah karasu is JUSTIFIED in fucking around with him LMAOAOA everyone thinking he’s the weird one when he’s just a slightly sassy guy who likes to say goofy stuff to his friends meanwhile hiori is like actually lowkey a freak 😰

SHIDOU CONSISTENTLY JUMPSCARING HE’S SO GOOFY I CAN’T 😭 pls i just know they’re going to do yuki and nagi so well in the next episode they show up in…okay but i saw a panel of manga karasu and i was fr like 😫 as glorious as he is animated he fr hits diff in the manga for some reason JSDHSJSJ anyways yeah they’re really eating it up with the otoya scenes ngl good for them otoya would be proud

yeahhh i think that’s why it’s such a popular ship!! since sukuna was all like “megumi absolutely cannot die” ofc we know that wasn’t romantic but when you’re a shipper anything works ig 🙂‍↕️ my only thought is someone who ships sukuna and megumi together started bllk and put the pieces together and created the rare pair of the century

I LOVEEE THAT PHOTO a guy sent it to a gc i was in whenever he had to do computer science hw and i IMMEDIATELY saved i think it’s hilarious 😭 literally me seeing all of my sae requests and zero nagi ones 😔 but YESSSS I’M FREE FROM KAISER AT LEAST not sure what i’m going to work on next but we’ll see!! hopefully it won’t take as long as that did to come out 😫

HISTORICAL REFERENCES ALWAYS #trust LMAAOOA yeah i don’t love kaiser as you know but he is fun to write abt sometimes he’s more on the karasu end of things where he lends himself to more plots…HELP i was thinking of leaving the guard anonymous but then i was like nah let me let kunigami get his first name drop KDJDJDDHJS anyways fun fact in the very first scene when reader takes kunigami to the art gallery and they leave the other guard to watch over her father the other guard is meant to be barou!! also if she didn’t get sick and meet kaiser/literally die she probably would’ve ended up marrying kunigami 🙁

SPEAKING OF HISTORICAL REFERENCES…rin said his fav historical figure is oda nobunaga apparently??? aka the person hollyhock y/n is based on 😭 rin is a hollyhock y/n stan wait imagine we were joking abt what it would be like if hollyhock characters met their bllk selves but imagine RIN meeting hollyhock y/n he’d genuinely glaze her i fear 😰 probably hollyhock karasu too since he’s also one of the three unifiers 😜 probably feels bad they got reincarnated into such “lukewarm” modern time equivalents

yeahhh ibis paint x fr goes hard i love it!! and it’s not too bad DJFHDJ the hardest part is picking what panel i want to use 😭 it wasn’t hard for kaiser because he doesn’t have that many panels with the long gold hair which is what i imagined him having while as an actual angel but i’m sure i’ll start to run out of sae panels at some point HAHAHA

UGH barou goal animated is going to be so good they always do him and his goals SO well i have full entire faith that he’s going to look amazing…barou my handsome amazing boyfriend…I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE KARASU SPAWNING INTO EVERY CELEBRATION TOO he’s literally in ALL of them (except nagi’s i think that’s just his fist pump and then we see isagi and chigiri running towards him) IT’S SO FUNNY LIKE BRO IS IN THE MIDFIELD WHERE DOES HE EVEN COME FROM 😭

THAT KARASU SCENE IS SOOOOO ugh he carried the episode i’m trying not to rewatch because i plan on rewatching all of s2 at once after it’s all out but it’s so tempting i want to see him again 😫 and the mama a girl behind you audio for otoya CRACKS ME UP it’s so him also wait lowkey is it just me or does otoya kinda look like rin 😭 maybe it’s the hair idk they’re kinda giving twin

[imnayeonjaem]

1978. | the one who caught my likeness

"..is he painting us?"

minors dni. ageless blogs dni. blank blogs dni. you'll be blocked. <- previous | 1978 masterlist | next -> character(s): kim hongjoong, jung wooyoung (ft. park seonghwa, jeong yunho, kang yeosang, choi san, song mingi) tags: explicit language, painter!wy, alcohol, drunk behaviour, hj drunkenly runs across a busy street (he's fine!), awkward moments, slight emotional angst word count: 5.9k summary: the time hongjoong met a painter who was capturing his likeness from across the street.. a/n: so this is somehow the longest chapter i've written so far lmao.. tbh it's more context than anything else but i also think i hold this chapter near and dear to my heart so, i hope you enjoy!

you say i captivated you don’t understand how that could be true when it was you and how your colours bled into my view i don’t know how you did it but you painted me in a way i knew was true

× April, 1974 ×

“Oh, darling, I cannot believe it! When you told me you had a surprise, I never once imagined it would be this!”

Hongjoong could hear his ma’s astonished tone, full of love and pride, and it made tears bubble up in his eyes.

“Aw, thank you, ma. Do you see now why I couldn’t reveal anything?” he asked with a chuckle.

“Certainly! I am just.. I am just so incredibly over the moon for you. You should be incredibly proud of yourself for how far you’ve come.”

Hongjoong blinked back the tears that threatened to fall and sniffled quietly so his ma couldn’t hear. “Thanks, ma. I’ve worked so hard on this album.”

“You’ve worked so hard to get there in the first place! I knew you wouldn’t give up on your passion for anyone.”

There was a hint of melancholy in her tone and it made Hongjoong’s chest feel heavy. Anyone meant his father.

He had never been one for confrontation, and he didn’t want to act smugly in the face of his father. He just didn’t have the heart to be like that.

There was a faint sound of movement on the other end, and Hongjoong could hear another voice talking to her. He straightened his back: speaking of which..

“Oh, Hongjoong, your father wants to talk to you quickly..”

Hongjoong caught the tension in his ma’s voice. She was worried her husband would pick a fight with her son over the phone.

“That’s okay, ma,” he said, an act of reassurance, “you can pass him the phone.”

The waves in between their two receivers seemed to pull taut at the idea. His ma exhaled, and after a few seconds, his pa’s voice rang through the speaker. “Hello?”

“Ah, hello, pa. How are you doing?” Hongjoong scratched the back of his neck.

“I’m not doing too bad. And yourself?”

Hongjoong hated the formal way in which they spoke to one another. It wasn’t cold, it was just still. “I’m doing.. really well, yes.”

His pa gave a faint smile. “That’s good to know. We heard about the release of your first album. It’s quite maniacal to imagine that you’ve actually done it.”

Hongjoong scoffed a laugh in his throat. That was one thing they could agree on. “Indeed. I wake up every morning and still think I’m in a dream.”

Much to Hongjoong’s surprise, his pa laughed a little. “You’ll feel like that for a while, I suspect. Heck, five years down the line you might still feel like that.”

Five years..

Did his father genuinely believe Hongjoong would make it to five years as an artist? Did he really have that level of belief in him?

“Gee, five years would be insane, ha..”

“It would be, absolutely, but I think if you put your mind to it, you’ll make it anywhere.”

Hongjoong drew back in shock. What leaf had his father turned?

“You really believe that?” he wondered, not holding back on the amount of confusion in his voice.

Eventually, his father sighed. “Hongjoong.. I’ve had many months to think about everything that happened before you left for Seoul. I recognise that I wasn’t always the most.. supportive person towards you and your ambitions.”

Hongjoong felt dizzy. He took a seat on the couch.

“I asked myself, ‘what kind of father would I be to continue being so dismissive of my son?’ And so, I will try to be.. more supportive.”

Something churned inside Hongjoong. Initially, he wondered if his father had been prompted by his mother to say something, but in the end, Hongjoong realised he didn’t care.

This was the first step, and he would take anything above his own pa acting like he doesn’t exist.

“Pa.. I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say a word. It’s not you that needs to make up for anything.”

Hongjoong’s heart disintegrated in his chest. He gripped the receiver until his palm hurt and cried quietly into his shirt sleeve.

At that moment, Seonghwa entered the living room.

In an instant, Seonghwa dropped down beside Hongjoong on the couch. Hongjoong was on the verge of tears, and quickly said goodbye to his pa with a promise that they’ll talk again soon.

“Talk to you soon, son. And good luck.”

Once Hongjoong put the receiver down, he fell apart in Seonghwa’s arms.

“Hey, it’s okay.. What happened?” The ease and comfort in Seonghwa’s voice helped calm Hongjoong down fairly quickly, and when he lifted his head, Seonghwa was shocked to see a gleaming smile on his lips. “Um.. You okay?”

Hongjoong sniffed. “Couldn’t be happier,” he said. He put space between the two of them as he mopped up the rest of his tears.

“Right..” said Seonghwa, laughing nervously. “What exactly happened?”

“Pa spoke to me. He said that he thought a lot about what happened before I left for Seoul, the argument we had, and he said that he would try to be more supportive of me going forward.”

Stunned, Seonghwa curtly said, “Wow. So he apologised?”

Hongjoong stopped. He thought back on their conversation. No, he hadn’t. “Um, not exactly..”

“So, he said all of that without an apology?” Seonghwa flexed a brow.

Hongjoong looked over at him. He could understand Seonghwa’s perspective, but at the same time, “I’ll take anything, Hwa. The fact that he even said that to me is huge.”

Seonghwa stared at him for a while until his eyes softened. He recalled how Hongjoong broke down just now. He couldn’t take this moment away from him. “Okay, just.. don’t let him get away without apologising properly,” he said, softly.

Hongjoong smiled. “I won’t, don’t worry.”

Seonghwa mirrored his expression and let out a sigh. “Good. I’m happy that you’ve had this conversation with your father.”

Hongjoong looked back at the phone on the side table. He breathed out, a tinge of hope in its wind. “Me too, Seonghwa. Me too.”

×-×

San was the reason the six of them found themselves outside Mountain Top Merlot celebrating the release of Hongjoong’s first album.

So much had happened in the past few months alone, and Hongjoong was struggling to keep up with most of it.

When he saw Yunho from across the way holding a shiny new copy of his first vinyl - not signed, because Hongjoong refused to make a deity of himself - boasting a smile full of immense pride at his best friend’s achievements, Hongjoong felt the world stop around him. Yunho was eager to show it off to anyone who would listen, just so he could spend five minutes waxing lyrical on how talented his lifelong friend was, and how thrilled he was to be holding a tapestry to the blood, sweat and tears said friend had put in to make it happen.

Hongjoong couldn’t run away from the feeling that he hadn’t done a damn thing, and that he had just been extraordinarily lucky.

It was Yeosang who broke him out of these thoughts with a hand on his shoulder. “Staring at your pride and joy, huh?” He was nursing a glass of red wine in his other hand, and took a sip of it before letting go of Hongjoong’s shoulder.

“Hm?” Hongjoong blinked and looked at Yeosang. “Oh- Oh, yes, yeah, uh.. Quite crazy, huh?”

Yeosang immediately detected the light warble of his words and the way they didn’t fully resonate with the level of happiness he had shown before now.

Hongjoong stared at the bottle in his hand and lightly shook the contents before finishing the last few drops. In the split second between emptying the bottle and removing it from his lips, he saw Yunho and the vinyl through the bottom of the glass. Warped and blurry.

Yeosang nudged him. “Feeling out of sorts?”

“You could say that,” replied Hongjoong. He kept staring at the bottle. “One minute I’m over the moon and immensely proud and all of this is a dream and whatnot.. The next I’m tripping over myself, wondering what I even did to make it this far.” He glanced up. Yunho was still brandishing the vinyl as if it were his own. As if Hongjoong’s name wasn’t on the front.

But Hongjoong’s name was the only one coming out of Yunho’s mouth.

The beer swirled in Hongjoong’s stomach and it almost made him feel sick. He put the bottle down on the nearest table.

Yeosang caught Hongjoong staring, and for a brief minute, he physically turned Hongjoong on the spot to look at him.

“Hongjoong, folks may have been kind, but that doesn’t mean you deserve no credit for the work you’ve put in and the determination you’ve had to make this a reality. You came all the way to Seoul to pursue your dream; that takes a hefty amount of courage and a certain confidence. And you have the skill. You’ve connected with people. The reviews on your first album have been glowing. People enjoy your work, and like you for the way you’ve presented yourself. Of course, they’ll never know the full you, not the real real Kim Hongjoong. But the heart you’ve put into your work hasn’t gone unnoticed. And that is something noteworthy.”

Hongjoong stared at him, then glanced over at Yunho. Yunho, full of zeal in his inebriated state, pointed to the vinyl, then pointed at Hongjoong and mouthed you fucking did it.

Hongjoong laughed despite himself, and took a deep breath in.

Yeosang, with a smile on his face, shook his head at Yunho’s antics before looking back at Hongjoong. “Give yourself a bit of credit. Afford yourself the space to be proud of yourself and what you’ve done. Lord knows, we all are.”

Hongjoong looked around. He was surrounded by friends. They were all here to celebrate his achievements.

Hongjoong never particularly liked being the centre of attention, he just wanted to do what he was passionate about.

Maybe, just once, he can give himself the time of day.

×-×

An hour had passed, and shockingly, it was Seonghwa who suggested they start playing drinking games.

Sat around a table outside the bar, as they had been since they first arrived two hours prior, they played a few rounds of flick-the-cap. Yunho won twice, San won once and Mingi also won once before they all decided they’d had enough soju to last them a month.

Hongjoong’s mood had picked up, and he was keeling over in laughter at every joke Mingi made.

That was, until, someone caught his eye from a distance.

The second they locked eyes, the stranger glanced back down. He was sitting in front of an easel with a palette in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. He looked to be hard at work. Through the cloudiness of his drunken state, Hongjoong wondered what he could be painting.

Yeosang plucked him and everyone out of their thoughts with an announcement that he was going to get them all a pitcher of water. He’d had the least amount to drink, and one look around the table was enough for him to know that he should get something to sober them all up.

San openly protested this, loudly exclaiming that he hadn’t had that much. Yeosang politely reminded him that not only had he had the most to drink, but that he also had the weakest tolerance. San’s face went bright red, and he folded his arms across his chest. His head was fuzzy with alcohol, so much so his better instinct kicked in. “..Alright,” he muffled under his breath.

Hongjoong for one, welcomed the pitcher of water, and when it arrived he went to gulp down a glass when Seonghwa stopped him.

“Don’t.. drink it all.. down in one..” His voice slurred every syllable. “You need-” He belched, to which the others grimaced. “You need- to- sip it..” He leaned over and brought his hand up to the bottom of Hongjoong’s glass, giggling as Hongjoong took slow, small sips as instructed. “Yeah, see? Baby sips, baby sips.” Seonghwa laughed and took his hand away, then sipped on his own water.

“My God, you are so drunk,” remarked Yunho, equally tipsy.

“Hey! I’m not that drunk, I’m just.. buzzed!” Seonghwa’s head nearly collapsed onto the table and Yunho had to save him. Hongjoong finished sipping his water then put the glass down.

His eyes turned back to the stranger.

The stranger was watching them every so often. There was a smile on his face. He turned back to the easel.

Is.. Is he painting.. us?

Hongjoong was ultimately too curious at this point to leave the question unanswered. He stood up, much to everyone’s discouragement, and told them that he would be back in a few minutes, he just needed to check something.

He stumbled away from the table, past the other people also congregating outside the bar, and towards the edge of the road. It was probably against his better judgement, but he just needed to know if this stranger was painting them.

“Hongjoong!” called a voice from behind him. The stranger’s head snapped up and his face fell in panic.

Hongjoong looked back. Yeosang was standing up straight, beckoning him to come back and not be such an idiot.

“It’s fine! I’m fine!” shouted Hongjoong in response. Yeosang was unconvinced, and set everything aside to join Hongjoong at the curb.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked the instant he was by Hongjoong’s side.

Hongjoong didn’t want to draw any more attention to himself than he already had, so he leaned in close to Yeosang’s ear and whispered, “I think there’s someone across the street painting us.”

Yeosang furrowed his eyebrows. He leaned back and looked directly at Hongjoong. “Are you sure?”

Hongjoong nodded fiercely, then turned back to the man on the other side of the street.

The painter, now very flustered and embarrassed, was quickly throwing all of his supplies into his satchel with little care.

“Hey! Wait!” yelled Hongjoong. Talk about not bringing any more attention to yourself.

The man glanced over, then immediately rushed to pack everything away and run. Hongjoong helplessly ran out into the street.

Yeosang let out a yelp at the sight and sound of car horns and vehicles coming to a screeching halt just inches away from the hapless drunk steamrolling across the road. He clutched his chest and took a deep breath in when he realised Hongjoong had somehow made it to the other side in one piece, then turned back to see not only their friends, but the rest of the patrons outside the bar look on in horror. Eventually, the patrons carried on with their conversations. Hongjoong’s friends continued staring.

The painter was seconds away from making a break for it, but was caught by Hongjoong stopping dead in front of him; his long, black hair fell in front of his eyes and his cheeks became a very deep shade of pink.

“Um-” he uttered. The canvas was still precariously leaning against the easel. Hongjoong saw it in his peripheral vision.

His eyes widened. “Holy shit..” he muttered under his breath.

“Uh-” The man eyed the floor in shame. He swallowed the lump in his throat. “I- I can-” He tripped over the lump and choked on it. “I can, uh.. I can explain.”

His voice was low and timid. Guilt radiated through every inch of his skin as he held the satchel close to his stomach.

Hongjoong stared at the painting again. Between the drink-induced nature of his curdled brain and the adrenaline in his blood from running what felt like half a marathon, all he could think to say about the painting was, “That’s so fucking good.”

The man glanced over at him. “W-What?”

Hongjoong coughed into his clenched fist then pointed at the canvas. “That. That’s a really good painting.” Hongjoong eyed him. “So you were painting us.”

It was a statement above a question. Less accusatory than expected, but it still made the man look away. “I.. I people-watch and paint,” he shrugged. “It’s what I do.”

The explanation was purposefully vague, owing to Hongjoong’s inebriation, but it was enough at that moment for Hongjoong to say, “Wow. You’re really talented.”

His eyes met Hongjoong’s once more. Ultimately puzzled but nonetheless grateful, he said, “Thanks. Look, I’m sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable by painting you. It was just..” He sighed. “It seemed like a happy occasion. I like to document happy occasions.”

Hongjoong’s brain was all over the place. He couldn’t think much about the reason given and instead just said again, “You’re really talented.”

A smile betrayed the man. “Thanks. Again.” He picked up the canvas and set it aside, then disassembled the small easel and tucked it under his free arm.

“Could I have the painting?” blurted Hongjoong. “I think my friends would like to see it.”

His tone of voice wasn’t degrading nor condescending, merely opportunistic. Friendly. The painter wondered if the man were a lot more sober would he be so gracious.

Not wanting to take advantage of such a moment, the man politely declined.

“Um, I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” He held the canvas in his free hand. “But thank you for being so interested,” he said, earnestly. “And I hope you enjoy the rest of your night. Your friends seem like great people.”

Hongjoong, a little foggy, watched the painter as he walked past him and into the distance. The air surrounding them seemed to grow much quieter, much darker, the further he walked.

As he prepared himself to head back over to the bar, one thing looped in Hongjoong’s mind incessantly.

Your friends seem like great people.

Hongjoong saw his friends across the way, still looking at him blankly like they’d just seen the dramatic climax of an opera.

They are, stranger, Hongjoong thought to himself, they are.

By the time he looked back in the direction that the painter had gone, he had already disappeared.

Hongjoong hummed. He wondered if they’d ever cross paths again.

Hongjoong would find that he’d think about it a lot over the coming days.

If only to see that painting again.

if only to see that painting again a stroke of luck i think about every now and again you said you like to document happy occasions and now you’re a part of my happiest times

The incident had kept Hongjoong up every night since it happened.

In the wake of his sobriety and incredibly dense headache the following morning, he could remember every second of it in what felt like excruciating detail. None of his friends decided to ask him about it out of respect for his dignity; he did almost risk his life for the sake of talking to a painter.

There was no getting away from it. It circled the back of his mind every day.

He just wasn’t expecting to run into the man again exactly a week later.

Hongjoong stopped in the middle of the street. The stranger was sitting on a stool and looking out towards the Han River. Much like that night outside Moutain Top Merlot, he had an easel in front of him, with a canvas secured tightly to the frame.

From afar, Hongjoong watched as the man dipped his brush in water, then in paint, then in water again, before spreading it quite liberally over the canvas. He noticed that it was a faint wash of blue. For the river, Hongjoong thought.

He didn’t want to disturb him in the middle of his work, but Hongjoong was so curious at the same time. He needed to talk to him and ask him about that night. I like to document happy occasions.

If only to see that painting again.

Step by step, Hongjoong gradually made his way over to the painter, who saw Hongjoong in his peripheral vision and paused.

Hongjoong also froze. He wasn’t close enough to make any kind of comment without raising his voice, but he’d been spotted.

Putting the brush down, the man looked over at Hongjoong. “Can I help you?”

His voice was oddly neutral for someone who should probably be weirded out by this. There was also, if Hongjoong wasn’t imagining it, the soft lilt of genuine curiosity in his voice. Nothing mean or standoffish about him at all.

“Um-” Hongjoong took a careful step forward. “I- I’m sorry, I- I didn’t mean to disturb.”

“Nah, it’s alright,” he said, standing up from his stool. His demeanour was as calm as the river they were adjacent to. Hongjoong didn’t know if he should be thankful or freaked out himself. “You’re the guy who ran across the street last Friday, right?”

Hongjoong tried to hold back a fluster at that question. “Yeah.. That was me,” he chuckled nervously.

The man opposite smiled brightly. “I must admit, it was quite scary. I legitimately thought you were gonna get hurt..” He then frowned and swallowed anxiously. “I don’t know if I’d forgiven myself for making you dart across the road like that..”

Hongjoong closed the distance between them some more. “To be honest, I feel like an idiot for doing that. I shouldn’t have been so careless.. But I was also drunk, so..”

“I could tell,” said the man, boldly. He then coughed on his comment and added, “Sorry- It just- You seemed-”

“No, no, it’s okay, it’s fair to point it out.”

The two men smiled at one another. It was strange. Odd. Pleasant, in many ways.

“Wooyoung.” He held out a hand.

Hongjoong stared at it, then looked back up at him. “Wooyoung?” he repeated. Wooyoung nodded. “Hongjoong,” he replied with a grin, shaking his hand.

Wooyoung knitted his brows. He recognised that name. “Ah! Like the singer!” Hongjoong froze solid. Wooyoung dropped his hand and shoved both into his pockets. “I bought his first album the day after it came out ‘cause I heard one of the songs on the radio. It’s so good. Have you heard of him?”

The words got caught in Hongjoong's throat as he stood across from Wooyoung.

Is he talking about me?

“Um-” Hongjoong didn’t mean to stutter. He just had no idea how to respond.

In the seconds before any of them said anything, Hongjoong let the words spin around his head, trying to conceive of any other possibility apart from the one where Wooyoung is indeed talking about him and not some other well-known artist named Hongjoong. Were there any other artists by that name? Hongjoong really had to rack his brains.

“I.. I guess not,” said Wooyoung with a nervous chuckle. Hongjoong became a block of ice. How did he even ask if it was him Wooyoung was referring to? Wooyoung was about to return to his easel when Hongjoong blurted out his name. “..Yeah?”

My face isn’t on the cover art of the album. Hongjoong pondered this for some time.

“You said, um, that you bought the album a few days ago?” Wooyoung nodded. “What does the album cover look like?”

Hongjoong knew it by heart since he had taken the photo for it. It was the view from his bedroom in the apartment he and Seonghwa shared, overlooking the tall skyscrapers of Seoul. If Wooyoung’s description of the cover art matched, it was his album alright.

When Wooyoung described it back to him, the description was identical.

Hongjoong’s jaw dropped.

“..That’s my album,” he uttered shamelessly.

Wooyoung’s head felt like it just grew three sizes.

“I-I’m sorry?” Wooyoung furrowed his brows and took a step closer to Hongjoong.

Hongjoong almost kicked himself for just letting it out like that, but there was no taking it back now. Better to just own it. “That’s my album. I’m Hongjoong.”

The way he said it carried the same level of surprise Wooyoung felt upon hearing this revelation.

“No fucking way..” he muttered under his breath. “No fucking way!” he said again, louder this time. “You’re Hongjoong?” Wooyoung started to fret. He turned this way and that, glancing back and forth between the easel and Hongjoong. He had painted Hongjoong. He had painted Hongjoong. He had painted Hongjoong!

Hongjoong noticed the panic on Wooyoung’s face and closed the distance between them. “Hey, it’s okay! Yes, I’m Hongjoong.” He placed a hand on his chest. “The cover art you described matched the one on the album I released a few days ago: up so high i can’t breathe, but-”

“-i don’t wanna come down,” finished Wooyoung. Hongjoong smiled knowingly. “Holy fuck.” Then his eyes became sceptical. “Wait.. How do I know for a fact you’re really Hongjoong?” He folded his arms.

Hongjoong blinked. “Um- Well-” His mind went blank; he couldn’t think of a way to legitimise his identity.

Then, a lightbulb went off in his head. Wooyoung relaxed his arms.

“Say, have you picked up a copy of Rolling Stone lately?”

×-×

Wooyoung couldn’t believe his eyes.

There he was, standing beside the Hongjoong, and staring at a page of the newest import edition of Rolling Stone. He had a tiny box dedicated to him in the Up-and-Coming Stars section, with a small summary about his first release and a quote from Hongjoong himself about how excited he was to be kickstaring his career. Beside that, a small picture of him holding a copy of his vinyl in the lobby of Kang Arts & Co.

Wooyoung glanced over, his jaw on the ground and his eyes twice the size of his head.

“You really are Hongjoong.” He was practically starstruck.

Hongjoong’s face flushed, and he timidly eyed the ground. “..Yes.”

“I- I can’t believe it.” Wooyoung glanced back at the page. There Hongjoong was, the vinyl nestled in his palms. It reminded Wooyoung of how he would hold his finished paintings. He closed the magazine and placed it back on the shelf, then turned back to Hongjoong. “I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”

“No, don’t apologise, it’s totally fine. I can see why you were sceptical. But, uh- now that we’re here, I guess I should thank you for buying my album and enjoying it so much.”

They turned to leave the shop, standing shoulder to shoulder. Hongjoong was helping Wooyoung carry his supplies around, and had the easel tucked under his arm. It made him think about the painting, and whether he would ever see it again. He needed to admire it in full sobriety.

Wooyoung smiled. “Thank you for releasing it. It’s some of my most favourite music I’ve ever heard.” Hongjoong’s heart spun in his chest. Some of his most favourite? It was completely beyond Hongjoong to even consider it. “It’s so nice to just sit and paint to. It really helps get the creative juices flowing.”

Hongjoong was vibrating with sheer happiness. He’d heard plenty from his friends about how much they enjoyed his music, but to hear from someone else that not only did they enjoy it, it actually helped inspire their creativity? Hongjoong was a damn puddle on the floor. He imagined Wooyoung listening to his album while peacefully painting a new work of art, and it made him feel flustered with elation. So much so, he couldn’t even properly convey it with words. “That makes me so happy to hear. Thank you so much, that’s all I ever wish for when people listen to my music.”

As they left the shop, Wooyoung said, “Your music is really easy to connect to and relate to. It’s.. helped me unpack some of my own feelings of loneliness and not knowing what I want out of the world, or what I want to do in the world. As a painter, I’ve struggled with the realisation I might not be able to make a career out of it. My parents have always told me I should just take up medicine or science, something more substantial, as they put it.” The desolation in his voice made Hongjoong’s stomach churn. It was heavily reminiscent of how he felt over a year ago, how his parents - or more his pa - treated his passion for music. He remembered the conversation he had with his father some time ago, and how much it felt like the tides were finally turning.

He frowned. He found himself wanting the same for Wooyoung.

“Well.. I’m so thankful that you’ve found something to relate to in my music. Trust me when I say that I’ve been there before myself.” Wooyoung looked over at him. “I know exactly how you feel. It’s definitely hard to carry on pursuing your passion when the whole world is against you. But you shouldn’t give up on it. For your sake more than anything.”

Wooyoung gave a faint smile, then turned his eyes back to the ground. He kicked his feet across the pavement and sighed. “Thank you. I’ll definitely keep it in mind.”

Hongjoong then thought of the painting again, and smiled. He wanted to talk to Wooyoung about it, perhaps get some insight on what inspired him to paint their celebration from across the street. Selfishly, he wanted to see the painting again, but that took a backseat for the time being. I like to document happy occasions.

“Hey..” Wooyoung glanced up. “The painting you did of my friends and I last week.” Wooyoung’s cheeks warmed up. He turned away in embarrassment. “I would really like to see it.”

That threw Wooyoung for a loop.

“W-Wait, really?”

“Mhm. I’d love to know what inspired you to paint it. I know you said you like to document happy occasions, but I want to see the painting again. I want to know how you put it together and why you chose to paint it as you did..” Hongjoong recognised he might be getting too far ahead of himself in his proposition and reined it in a bit. “..If you don’t mind.”

Wooyoung beamed, and it was as though the heavens had opened. “I would love to.”

×-×

The minute Hongjoong stepped into Wooyoung’s apartment, his jaw fell to the ground and his eyes sparkled.

 “Holy shit..” he mumbled to himself, but Wooyoung managed to catch it, and a whisper of a smile reached his lips.

“Welcome to the abode,” he announced, shutting the front door once Hongjoong entered. “You probably won’t be surprised to find that most of the apartment is filled with supplies. I literally live in one corner and everything else is just.. art,” he chuckled.

Hongjoong couldn’t answer, he was fascinated by everything; he wanted to ask so many questions about each and every painting he saw.

But, that would have to wait. He knew exactly what he came here for, and he was itching to see it again.

Wooyoung led him through the mess of his apartment. Paint pots, palettes, blank canvases and torn bits of newspaper were strewn about the place, the true mark of a creative. Hongjoong likened it to the bits of paper that were scattered across the table in the café where he and Mingi spent hours writing songs. Or his own desk.

Once Wooyoung reached one particular room, he stopped in the doorway and said, “Ah! Here we go.”

Hongjoong trailed behind him, and he realised once he followed Wooyoung into the room that this was supposed to be the lounge. Instead, it had been flipped upside down and turned into a makeshift art studio.

“Mind yourself, there’s lots of shit on the floor I have yet to clear up.”

Hongjoong paid it no mind whatsoever, he liked the fact that it wasn’t so neat and tidy.

Wooyoung made his way over to the other side of the room, and dug around for a few seconds until he found what he was looking for. “Ah- here we are!” He pulled out the canvas and brought it over to an easel that was permanently set up in the corner of the room. Securing it in place, he turned to Hongjoong and said, “Without further ado.. The Happiest Times.”

Wooyoung stood to the side, revealing the artwork behind him.

Hongjoong was floored.

“Oh my God!” His hands flew to his mouth and he leaned in to take a closer look. “Holy shit, this is- This is fantastic!”

Wooyoung cleared his throat. “The Happiest Times: a watercolour painting, filled with washes of mainly warm colours, reds, oranges, yellows, as well as some blues and some greens. The painting focuses on the delight of a group of young men, perhaps in their early 20s, sharing in the joy of a celebratory event or an accomplishment. The setting is a popular jazz bar in downtown Seoul, and the event takes place at night, as shown by the navy of the sky and the blur of streetlights. There is laughter, and joy radiates through the canvas, as the men depicted are clearly elated with whatever or whoever they are celebrating. The wash of colour surrounds this focal point like a vignette, where the men and their happiness take centre stage.” Hongjoong reflexively looked over as Wooyoung finished his explanation. He smiled wholeheartedly at the commitment to illustrating this occasion, and it only widened when Wooyoung added an extra bit of information to his speech. “Much like the singer at the centre of it all.”

Hongjoong straightened his back and applauded. Wooyoung bowed his head, his hands behind his back.

“My God. Fantastic. This is absolutely incredible. I adore this,” said Hongjoong, sincerely.

Wooyoung shrugged a little. “It’s nothing.”

“Nothing?” Hongjoong uttered in complete shock. “This is amazing. Your work needs to be put in galleries, I swear.”

Wooyoung swallowed the lump in his throat. “..Thank you. That means a lot coming from you.”

Hongjoong scoffed. “Please, I’m just a guy from Anyang who likes to write music.”

“Music that captivated me.”

Hongjoong stilled. He glanced back at the painting again.

With fresh eyes, he noticed every detail. Upon an even closer inspection, Hongjoong could make out every single feature on his own face. He had been depicted so brilliantly, so truthfully from such a great distance that it left Hongjoong floored.

Turning back to Wooyoung, “And I say: your work has definitely captivated me.”

Wooyoung froze, then smiled. “Thank you. So much.”

An idea popped into Hongjoong’s mind, and it made his smile grow twice the size. “Hey, when it comes time for me to release a new album.. would you be interested in painting the cover art for it?”

Wooyoung could have fallen through the floor. He was so stunned he could hardly think for a second.

“You’re- You’re serious, like- no- like- you actually- wait a second-”

Hongjoong laughed. “I’ll let you think about it, of course.”

Wooyoung covered his mouth with one hand. “I just- That- That would be amazing, I-”

Hongjoong’s laughter died down to a grin. “And.. If it’s okay with you, I’d really like to show my friends your painting.”

This time, Wooyoung was more than happy to accept.

“Absolutely. The painting’s yours.”

The two men smiled at one another.

Wooyoung wished he could document this happy occasion.

a part of every little vignette you flooded every corner of the page i thank you for the way you knew how to capture everything that was true

taglist: @bikerjongho × @viviixlyy

× silverdune (ave). do not repost. ×

[glngrbred]

Almost all p8rnography is good art

OK, so you might've read that and been like OOOP not my topic of choice, wich is fine. but hear me out

What makes art good? (generally speaking)

most people agree that art wich is visually interesting is good, alor of landscapes, abstract art, and cubism can quallify as amazing art solely because they are increadably visually interesting. rothko (spl?) is a good example.

Another pretty common thing that makes art good is if its thought provoking or draws a reaction, this aspect is best represented by dadaist art from the early DaDa movement (we'll get to why only the early art is amazing). There was and still is nothing as groundbreaking as early dadaism was for the art world. Literally every day people talk about it, and that is very obviously increadably successful.

Last note, originality is insanely important, that's why later dadaists and (nowadays) modern art are seen so negatively. We all feel like we've seen it before, wich really truly ruins the art in many ways.

So why is p0ornono such an easy media/art to be Increadably successful with? well, literally what else is as visually interesting as a very high level painting of to animal people F*cking. NSFW artists are literally out here making some of the most successful works I've ever seen for like 50 dollars on patreon, its crazy.

also, what makes you reavt more than a grotesquely detailed... uh... anyways. What's more original and easy to iterate upon than UHHHHHH. and Yeah, I do think that art specifically made to be sexy quallifies as visually interesting and thought provoking. So yeah, Pornographic artwork is an especially easy way to create very good artwork, and no that doesn't mean its literally easy or simple, it just means that once the minimum level of quality has been met, no conceptual failings will ruin the work.

Also no, this is not a c80mer take. I simply apreciate the quallities that mhmhmhm imagery has artisticly.

[kipo-lacks-thoughts]

rant ☺️

thinking about how when I went to a luncheon there were large cardboard boxes for the kids to play with in the living room, and I immediately climbed in one. My mother scolded me for being so childish, "get out of that box, you're (my age) not five." and then I got out of the box and sat down on the bench. About 4 seconds later the lady that owned the house told my mother that that box had been practically lived in for the last 2 weeks days by a child my exact age am I not living how I should? Is the childhood given to me devoid of the youthful activities I should've been allowed? she looks at me weird when I do anything that isn't well mannered, and then says "well she's a teenager, teenagers" and she'll scoff at me in public. I'll remind her, im not. Im not a teen, im a child, and the fact im taller than her doesn't help. I act mature because I was raised to act mature.my height is beneficial to nothing other than outside opinions at this point. She'll tell me im too big for a playground, when I'll show her the sign and im still young enough to play. She'll tell me I need to act my age, but I am, im not as old as you treat me, woman. She'll talk to me about nothing positive ever, she only compliments me when it's necessary, completely visibly mandatory that her duty as a mother requires a level of support for a child, nothing she's ever complimented me on has ever came from her honest opinion and I can see it in her face and hear it in her voice. I put a selfie in a group chat and my friend told me I was beautiful. I almost cried, because nobody other than my mother or father has ever said that to me to my face in my life, and they do so less and less and less as the years go by. One moment that really stuck with me is when I told my mom I was painting 6 Potoos on canvases. She blankly said "ugh, what a waste of canvases." Those words are the clearest sentence I can remember anyone ever speaking to me in my life from that long ago. I got to art class and never finished the birds, honestly, they do look like shit, really, not joking, and it was genuinely a waste. Of paint. A waste of paint, not of canvases. Pretty fucking hard to waste two $2.50 packs of three 4x6 inch canvases. from dollar general. Another thing she talks to me about is her problems, and I listen, and I should, she deserves someone to talk to. But when I'm the only one she does about these things, it makes me feel like she talks to me as someone that's simply commanded to listen and not her child. When she learned I knew what sex was, it's game over. She talks to me about sex every other fucking day and it drives me insane. I don't want to know my father's cock size, I don't want to know the biggest penis she's ever seen and the smallest one she's ever seen. I don't want to know about sex with my dad and how annoying his libido is. I also dont want to hear about the politics, the government. 90% of our conversations are one sided rants about politics or sex. She sat down with me at a chick fil a this week and talked to me about politics for an hour. I wanted her to shut up so I could eavesdrop on the people behind me who were talking about Mario lore and shit. Another thing that disturbs me is her book collection. It's got so many books on parenting. I'll open one every once in a while, and like clockwork it's something that she's used on me. Nothing that ever made me feel anything but worthless ofc. She listens to podcasts talk about people. Usually descriptions of terms that would qualify on a lot of my friends or just random things like trends or jokes or memes. Like mewing. Doctor nurse momma did NOT have to teach my mother how to mew. Then there's things that would describe me, talking about furries, or different sexualities or genders, people that change their names. These podcasts never have anything true or nice to say about me or the people I know. Human beings who claim to be loving of their neighbors can still make them feel like they want to die. Don't listen to people that claim to be so good yet make you feel so shitty