#tried combatting my art block with a full piece lol

[ask-nederland]

How many bikes do you own?

“Just one. I don’t see the need to have multiple.”

[missmalice202]

Designing Your Melody - Chapter 01: Mine

Chapter 02

*I’m new to the Lukanette fandom (and fanfic writing lol), but I love this pairing. I started late on the whole “Lukanette February prompts” thing, but I’m going to try to catch up and finish this story. Any and all feedback is welcome and I hope you like this fic as much as I enjoyed writing it!*

Rushing through the streets of Paris like an absolute madwoman, Marinette DuPain-Cheng began to wonder what course of events had resulted in her current panicked state. Then again, she had to admit that it was absolutely her own doing. As usual.

A few days ago, she had received a phone call from Jagged Stone’s assistant, Penny Rolling, requesting a special commission for Marinette to design an outfit for the rocker to wear to promote the release of his latest single. Completely over the moon to be asked by THE Jagged Stone to design the clothes that would be featured on TV and magazines all over the country, she hadn’t hesitated for a second to accept the job and had begun drawing design after design after design. But in her excitement – and feeling the pressure of a job of this magnitude – nothing she had come up with seemed good enough.

So after drawing non-stop and pulling one last all nighter before her initial concept meeting, Marinette had finally compiled a portfolio full of designs for Jagged to choose from. Only for her to sleep through her alarm. Again. When she had finally woken up to her phone buzzing incessantly next to her ear where she had laid her head on her desk to “rest her eyes for a minute”, she had shrieked when she realized that she only had fifteen minutes to get to her meeting. All the way across town!

She had reeled back in such a panic that she flipped her computer chair right over, leaving her dazed and confused lying on the floor on her back. She scrambled to her closet and tried to find an outfit appropriate for an up and coming designer to represent herself and her professionalism, because if there was anything that Marinette needed help with, it was trying to be “professional”.

She grabbed a pair of pale pink skinny jeans with a large black bow where the belt buckle would be, a loose pink top with black lace embellishments on the hem, and a sleek studded leather jacket. Shoving her feet into a pair of black lace ballet flats, she quickly grabbed her portfolio and dashed down her stairs, calling out a greeting to her parents on the way out.

 “Bye Maman, bye Papa! Wish me luck!”

She didn’t wait to hear their response as she made a bee-line straight for the nearest metro station.

Oh my god, Marinette, way to drop the ball! Not only am I going to be late for the biggest job I’ve ever had, but Jagged Stone is probably not going to like anything I came up with! He’s going to laugh at my designs and tell me that he’s changed his mind that he wants me to be his designer! Then I’ll never get another job because who would want to hire someone that Jagged Stone laughed at and I’ll have to work at my parents’ bakery for the rest of my life and I’ll never have my own place and I’ll never get to have a hamster named –

Marinette’s mental breakdown was abruptly interrupted when she turned a corner and slammed head-first into another person. She fell backward, landing hard on her butt as her portfolio went flying into the air, papers scattering around her.

“Aah! I am so sorry!” she scrambled to her hands and knees as she began to gather up her fallen designs. “I’m so clumsy. Please pardon me. I wasn’t watching where I was going and I-” Her apologetic ramblings were cut off when a hand covered her own, stilling her frantic movements.

“It’s okay,” a soothing voice calmly murmured above her downcast head. “There’s no harm done. Don’t get so worked up. Your sound is so chaotic right now, try to calm down.”

Marinette looked at the hand covering her own. It was masculine and strong, with black polish painting his nails and when she slowly withdrew her hand from under his, she could feel the subtle scrape of calluses on his fingertips.

Taking a deep breath, Marinette closed her eyes for a moment to gather her thoughts. And immediately began to panic once again when she realized that SHE WAS GOING TO BE LATE!!! “Thank you for your help! Once again, I’m sorry for almost tackling you while you were walking down the sidewalk, minding your own business. I really have to go. Bye!” She gathered up the rest of her drawings and rushed off, not even glancing back at the boy crouched on the sidewalk stunned by the whirlwind that had just about knocked him off his feet.

Standing back up, he adjusted the guitar resting behind his back and was about to continue on his way when he noticed a piece of paper under his boot. Leaning down to pick it up, he gasped when he saw what was on it. It was – in a word – glorious.

He gazed at the drawing with his heartbeat echoing in his ears, creating a deep baseline for the melody he suddenly heard flowing through his soul. The design he stared at was of a punk rock style outfit. It showcased a male wearing studded and ripped black jeans, untied black combat boots, and a white screen printed tee. But the focal point of the entire design was the absolutely beautiful leather jacket that the designer had made separate sketches of to emphasize the details: teal plaid lining, black lace inserts, studded cuffs and chains hanging from the shoulders. It was a work of art that had the guitarist in awe.

Did that girl draw this? He wondered. He clenched the paper in his fist as he quickly turned and tried to run after her. Reaching the end of the block, he looked up and down the street trying to find out where she had run off to. But she was gone without a trace. With a sigh, he once again looked at her design. Narrowing his eyes just a bit, he noticed in the bottom corner, three small letters, the only clue to the mystery designer’s identity. MDC.

Smiling softly to himself, he folded the paper he held and stuck it into the back pocket of his jeans. I have to find that girl. I have to find her and get her permission to make that outfit for me. She doesn’t know it yet, but she made that jacket for me. And if I have to, I’ll just have to convince her that it’s already mine.

Chapter 02

[velveetacrackncheese]

Hey, Rad... Alex... Alexlememe? I know that's the name you used to go by and I know you've kinda disconnected yourself from Viv's fanbase after ZP ended, and I remember your memes and such but I kinda just wanted to get your take on the Hazbin drama since you reblogged the headcanon blog's post on the subject. More or less regarding the issue of her being uncharitable to fans and non-fans alike, plus that one callout post on twitter?

So this is weird. I wasn’t expecting to get asks on the subject since like you said, I’ve generally been disconnected from the fanbase aside from the few reblogs here and there retaining to Hazbin and its more recent developments. But yeah I guess I could give my take on this since I mean.. old fans still follow me. Idk why, but they do!So, really. In regards to that callout post (which is now deleted) I really, really don’t care that much. For one thing, Initially I did because I really hated to see someone be slandered so viciously with inaccurate and uncharitable attacks, but I kinda just stopped because even when I linked the addresses from both Viv, and the Ken dude regarding all the drama mentioned, it was either ignored and resulting in me being called a “pedo sympathizer” or “It wasn’t even an apologyyyyy weh” and like, whatever. I stopped giving a shit.

Terms of the traced animation thing... Lol, ok. I mean homages do exist, and her animation thingy was based on a meme so whatevs.

Anyways,I knew from the very start that the whole “tracing” and “stealing designs” stuff was nonsense since there was an entire like, tumblr drama arc on the issue, and albeit Viv’s post is gone, there’s evidence of legal contracts regarding Jiji and that whole nonsense that was years ago. In regards to her drawing pictures of Blaire White and Shoe… Eh. I mean, yeah, fuck em, but she’s made it clear that she doesn’t support those views anymore, and she wasn’t even really aware of the other things they’d done at that point, and I see no real reason not to believe her because what does lying about that gain her? Yeah her comment on the “blackface” thing if you wanna call it that was dumb as shit, but considering 2016 was a rough year for her in terms of trying to find where she fell in the political sphere, I can relate because I was in the same boat. A lot of sjw cringe comps, shaming feminists, and purposely misgendering transpeople… Not a good time for me either! Course I’ve changed. I went from being a reactionary alt-centrist to an anarchist so. Whether that’s an improvement is up to you.

As for the whole pedo/zoo shit, I really don’t see it. I mean like, look, obviously porn art portraying people fucking feral animals is disgusting right. Not saying it isn’t problematic or anything, but to be fair, she did draw this shit like 8 years ago. I’ve seen worse from even more well-established artists and I don’t see people trying to cancel them? Also, the art was suggestive for one thing and not necessarily 100% porn. I mean it’s still creepy and gross, and I’d understand scolding them if they continued to do so but a lot worse, but I haven’t seen anything like that from Viv past those 2 drawings. As for the pedo shit… The relationship between a 17 year old and a 19 year old is… hardly creepy and reminiscent of pedo shit. So yeah no fuck that. Now with the drawing of Mirage and Kestrel and the tag that said something jokingly like “Mirage and her pedo tendencies” or whatever… Yeah idk, I can’t defend that lmfao. Again, Viv said she disapproves of those drawings and doesn’t care to think about them, but that one piece of artwork definitely had some baggage to it that made me feel uncomfortable after reading the tags.Only issue I took in terms of her addressing that, is that she was very adamant about it being an inside joke… Which if that’s true, you must’ve had some fucked up friends like damn.

I would also like to state that cub art is legitimately disgusting and I am of the belief that it can cause harm depending on the context since I assume the consumption of cub art can reinforce the urge for pedophiles to act on their desires instead of finding healthy coping mechanisms for it through therapy. There have been stories from younger users on the internet that older people have tried to groom them and have the notion of pedos preying on them be normalized by sending them art depicting kids in sexual acts with adults. Of course in isolation cub art isn’t as harmful as the actual act of raping a child, and I would argue that people have their priorities kind of messed up since the illustration being acknowledged should be part of combating pedophiles preying on children. However, people, typically twitter wokescolds tend to focus on the art solely and I don’t know why. There’s a lot of MAPS trying to find their way into LGBT spaces and it’s fucking gross.

Now with Hazbin itself… It’s meh. Initially I watched it with rose-tinted glasses and loved it. After watching it for like… the 3rd, 4th, 5th time? It’s alright. I don’t hate it, but it’s far from perfect. Now ofc I know it’s a pilot but a very lengthy pilot I’ll say. My biggest gripe with the pilot is that the editing is really fucking weird. Like the editing where Angel tells Alastor “I can suck yah dick!” and the scene that followed was really off. It seemed like too many cuts were made in that instance and seemed very cluttered. It also feels that way during Charlie singing “Inside Every Demon is a Rainbow” and how many little animated bits were like almost wiped off the screen by how fast it came by, and ntm there was just so much happening all at once on screen as well. I had to pause at points just to process everything that was happening. The palette is also very, very, verrrry red. There’s so much red going on and like… I get it, it’s in hell. But lemme rest my eyes on something else besides red, please. The palette they use needs to be better diversified, and the same goes for the characters too. Every character seems to have red on them. Whenever Baxter shows up later he’s gonna look really out of place. Some of the jokes were ok, and others seemed non-clever. I didn’t think Angel’s joke about sucking Al’s dick was funny. I did like the joke with Pentious and Angel though. “SON??” Some of it could’ve been written better too.

Regarding the drama with the show itself… Personally I don’t get it. Like, I don’t feel as if Angel is homophobic as a character since his queerness isn’t at the face of the jokes he makes? He just happens to be sex worker which… sex workers are fine? Support sex workers y’all, seriously. There’s also nothing intrinsically wrong with being sexually active either? As long as it’s within reason and you’re being trustworthy.The issue lies in the fact that people viewed the things I just mentioned as negative, and associate it with gay people as said negatively portrayed thing to push the sentiment of “Gay man do sex a lot therefore the gays bad” or that sort of thing. Also there’s a bit where it shows there’s more emotional depth to him and I’m hoping they’ll expand on that later. Honestly though, the criticisms in regards to that have been pretty uncharitable. Same with the criticisms for Vaggie. Apparently Vaggie is racist because… she’s loud and angry? Again, this is a case where people assume those traits are negative, and because it’s assumed to be negative, the negatively portrayed thing pushes the sentiment of “Being a loud fiery woman made, and latina women are that, therefore latina women bad” or some shit.  There are stereotypes that are bad no matter what the context is like sambo-esque caricatures of black people. Then there are tropes that are applied to certain demographics that have the capability to be written well into characters without it being offensive or disrespectful. Vaggie is literally angry because she’s protective of her gf. Like. C’mon.

So, I think that settles what I think about that? It honestly seems like superficial shit to me tbh, and I’m saying this as an sjw-y beta cuck anarchist.

The only REAL gripe I have, is with what the mod from @zpheadcanons posted. Because I know this is probably true as much as it hurts me to say it. Faust def has a history of being pretty petty and bully-like to people she deems undesirable, and Viv harbors it by not criticizing it, and if anyone else within their friend group does it then you’re scolded vehemently and treated like garbage. Her attitude also stretches to harboring an audience full of white knights that I personally don’t approve of.

There’s also this

Faust has hurt distant people I personally know and… yeah. Maybe I’m biased but I can’t vibe with that. Sorry. If you don’t make an effort to criticize abusive behavior within your own friend circles then that makes you just as bad, because then you’re just a bystander to things you could have prevented.

This isn’t to say Viv herself hasn’t dealt with bad faith actors, or people who had the intention to hurt her, or very uncharitable criticism. Particularly from the badwebcomics forums which is honestly 4chan like in how they operate. It’s vicious as hell, and a lot of their criticisms boil down to insults and personal attacks, which serve to be nonconstructive. That’s not to say Viv has been kind to even the more charitable criticism though. I know because when I happened to send an ask to the zoophobia criticism blog (where did it go???) regarding something relatively minor and superficial, she blocked me from her blog. I’m still blocked lmfao. I’m not blocked on twitter though! (not yet anyways). Faust has me blocked there though, and I have no idea why. She’s had me blocked for years even though I haven’t spoken out against her till recently. So, there’s that.

As for her apology itself, I feel like it was fine. I think it could’ve been worded better? The take I disagree with in terms of that is like… If I made a mistake in the past, and I make it clear that I don’t care for what I did, I don’t feel as if me explaining why I felt compelled to do certain things negate me from still not caring for my past actions? That’s just me providing context. That’s a really weird take, but I guess that could be viewed as an excuse idk. Personally I think people are holding the bar super high to a state of irrationality.

*sigh* So yeah there’s that. I miss the old days where honestly I could be ignorant about this, but at the same time I look at my old obsessive posts and I kinda just… cringe. I was such an irrational stan I almost hate myself for it. Fuck XD

Edit: I’d also like to point out that I’m not saying Viv or Faust are totally awful or totally good people, and I know they’re capable of being better. It’s a matter of whether or not they wanna be better.