#usually for over 24 hours

[jonathanbyersphd]

Really hoping that s5 breaks the cycle of Joyce forgetting about Jonathan from episodes 4-7

[justa-regularuser]

Since Black Friday is coming up....

Pls click on the image and turn your brightness up bc tumblr killed the quality skdhsdj

(Alt version and closeups under cut)

[bbb-bbbbbbb]

another album art inspired one- all colorpicked aside from benreys eyes

[zytes]

odds n’ ends

[thedrotter]

not-yet-dead-person

silly comic of a conversation in-game i thought was too funny not to make something proper for instead of a doodle ww

(timelapse + wip images (thus silly process commentary in read more if you like artist commentary :3)

i think the sketch looks silly and goofy and funny so i find it important to share with you the mere presence of the faces i drew on it. i drew it on top of the boxes without staying inside its borders because i find my proportions can get wonky if i draw them cropped in a restricted space. and I feel trapped otherwise and i will draw BAD!!! give me spaceeeee to go wild!!!!

the head circles are there for emotional support

very low res speedpaint because truth is the canvas was much bigger than the space where my comic was placed. i didnt account when exporting my timelapse in 720px that that tiny space would look so pixelated ... but it's able to be percieved, so its okay.

(i will now comment on my process and it is not brief sorry)

usually i would try to clean up my sketches and figure out what goes on top before jumping into linework, but since there are multiple panels and drawings i chose to jump into inking right away for the sake of brevity. i just went in with a brush that uses pen pressure and drew what was needed. i added extra line thickness and contrast in areas around the face because it helps direct your eyes there more easily that way.

according to her equipment rei has a chain belt but i only remembered it existed once I was going to color, and i did not like that discovery... I chose to ignore it to maintain my peace. i already have the color palettes for these characters figured out, and i didnt really want to think about a new element at the moment www I tend to overthink those things a lot so i skipped it

the rest is rather straightforward! not that anything else wasn't, but in here i could turn my brain off and sing. linework and sketching require mumbling so i cannot turn my brain off. just block in the characters with a solid color so i can have a mask (something along those lines,) where the color can stay inside. then just color in !!!

Base colors just had slight cell shading on the skin, and for the hair i airbrush a bit of the skincolor in low opacity near the forehead... I'm not sure what it means, but i can look at the faces easier with it somehow. i like the gentle subtlety it adds even if you cant really tell. it makes things look nice.

background was just me blocking in the color of the wall and floor, shade the wall a bit, then slap a noise and free use wood texture on top. work smarter not harder ! yet it took a bit to make it look stylistically fitting with the characters, and even now i think bottom middle panel looks odd. whatever!!!

for the middle panel i thought itd be funny if the background was a solid silly and colorful one to contrast the next panel's sketchy black one. a contrast to how the word widow is seen. on that note my handwritting is not pointy. i gaslighted my hand into thinking that it was indeed pointy in that moment so i could write "not-yet dead person" in letters that didn't seem cute. my hand did not fall for it but it complied anyway

that's basically it! I'm not sure what else i could say that doesn't feel barebones because it really is that straightforward. if you're curious I used clip studio paint for this. only special brush used was for linework (a brush named Lemon Brush), the rest used were just the default. my computer gets the least credit. it was trying to convince me a 20mb file was going to nuke it all the time and hardly let me save multiple times so i do not appreciate it

[beneathashadytree]

I have a confession to make…

The best fanfic I’ve ever written—and the only multi-chapter, comprehensive one too—is a Brian May fanfic that I’ve been writing on Wattpad (yikes, but you gotta understand that Wattpad used to be all the rage) for the past nearly half a decade. To be entirely fair though, I went on hiatus for a long while (since 2018 I think!!) and only got back to writing it last summer.

Yes, this Brian May. Queen’s guitarist, funnily enough.

[the-wereraven]

I hate you, Intergrated Marketing Communications

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

Yay freedom!!!!!! Missed you!!!!!!

WAAAUHH I MISSED YOU TOO!!!!!

[gamebunny-advance]

Baseless NSR Theory #82: Gigi & Mystery Man

Y'all should know better than to get me hyped up about my own theories, but let's run with this since I haven't done one in a while.

---------

After thinking about it some more, I feel pretty confident that Gigi is NOT Mystery Man (MM). The stained-glass portraits are a little abstract from the characters they represent, but the broad strokes are always there. No character is depicted with a completely different skin hue, and Gigi's face and features are a little round for the angular MM.

Granted, given the mysterious nature of MM, I can't completely rule out that his portrait is an outlier. Let's consider that the only (human) characters depicted with gray skin are also the nameless NPCs: the ones that are almost literally supposed to be a part of the background. If MM's nature is truly about secrecy and blending in, then having a giant accurate portrait of him in your main office would probably work against that.

Still, in other "official" pieces of art depicting MM, he's always shown with sharp, angular features that Gigi just doesn't have, so I'm going to go forward with the assumption that Gigi and MM are not the same person.

(Art by Ddaddystar, a concept artist for No Straight Roads, Source: 1 | 2 | 3)

However, they could still be related in someway. It's possible that MM has underlings that help him with whatever he does. Even though we never see them, we know that DJSS has at least one other person working under him related to his work as a rocket scientist, so it's very possible that all or most of the other Megastars also have staff directly under them for their non-music roles in NSR.

If MM's role in NSR is related to secrecy, perhaps spying, given his stereotypical spy outfit, it's possible that MM has set several spies around the city to aid in that work.

(duckduckGo image search of "cartoon spy")

And since this is a setting that works on "cartoon logic" where the spies might have a uniform, it's possible that MM's underlings have calling cards connecting them to him. Perhaps, something like a hat and glasses and a toothy smile.

Oh, would you look at that.

Of the evidence that Gigi is working for NSR under MM, there isn't a lot to directly connect him to them. However, he has a few of the same, "he knows more than he should" moments that also implicated Kliff as untrustworthy in the opening parts of the game, so I do believe that the player is supposed to have some doubts about him even if it's only to be a red herring.

For starters, he's one of the few NPCs that force-triggers an interaction to continue the story. The same thing happens when Zam stops you to join the revolution. This implies that in both instances, it's the NPC stopping you to talk instead of vice versa. Given how casually they all talk to each other, the implication at this point is that he was friends with B2J before the events of the game, but as will be revealed later, this isn't actually the case.

Mayday and Zuke later mention that neither of them are actually familiar with Gigi and just assumed he was a friend of the other. This never gets commented on further, but it does confirm that Gigi is just so naturally charming that he infiltrated their friend circle without either of them really noticing until much later.

Mayday isn't even certain about his name while Zuke doesn't know it at all, implying that he may have never directly told them, or didn't tell them unless asked. This would be natural behavior if he assumed that they already knew his name, but then is this a case of Gigi also thinking that Mayday and Zuke are supposed to know him, like they've met in the past and B2J just forgot him, or is he purposefully concealing his identity?

Let's also consider the meaning of his name. "Gigi" in Malay translates to "teeth/tooth," an obvious reference to how his teeth are always showing. While it's possible that this is his real name, it's more likely that it's a nickname or an alias. So the matter is if he told Mayday that that's his name, or if she and others just started calling him that when they realized they didn't know his real name. Something like people originally calling him, "That guy who's always showing his teeth." then morphed into just calling him "teeth." Either way, he's concealing his true identity, which would be necessary for a spy.

I do assume that most of the time the characters are actually speaking Malay, but is shown in English for the benefit of the player. When Mayday encounters DK West, she doesn't ask why he speaks a different language, she asks why he speaks with a different accent, possibly implying that all the characters are actually speaking Malay, DK West just has a different dialect.

Both times Gigi stops you, it's to talk about how he's seen what B2J have been up to (first their audition and later their battle with Sayu) and to offer them a drink. He seems really insistent on giving them those drinks he offered, since after he was turned down the first time since B2J were busy, the next time he prepared for another rejection by having the drinks with him and just inviting himself to the underground hideout, which is supposed to be secret.

Granted, (I lost the source, but I swear this is at least *80% true), the reason why Kliff found out about the hideout without being directly told is that Mayday apparently posted that info online, so it's not impossible that Gigi found out about it the same way. B2J didn't react to him knowing about it the same way they did Kliff, but it's possible that by this point they realized that their hideout just wasn't as secret as they originally thought.

*I can't remember if it was just that she posted her phone number online so that's why Kliff was able to text her, or if she posted all their info. Either way, she's unintentionally created a paper trail that could lead people to her.

However, after he enters the hideout, Gigi is effectively written out of the game as he has no other interactions with B2J besides seeing them off when they leave.

This seems odd as the other two guys who join the hideout but do nothing (Robot and Yiruk) still appear above ground to talk, whereas the two guys that actually do something (Zam and Kliff) only appear underground after they're recruited. If Gigi also wasn't doing anything important in the sewers, then you'd think he'd also stay above ground to talk like the former group.

Unless he is doing something.

It's possible that Gigi is collecting intel in the hideout. Since Kliff is apparently already monitoring how the fights are going, Gigi could theoretically just get the info he needs from Kliff instead of directly watching himself as he appeared to do earlier. That would also give Gigi the time to focus on other areas of interest. Perhaps something like leaking B2J's main source of outside communication: Zam FM.

When Tatiana calls into the radio show, she admits that she's been spying on them the entire time, though by what means aren't elaborated on. At the time, the implication seems to be that she was just listening to the show, which theoretically could be listened to by anyone who knows their signal and wouldn't necessarily need additional spying to achieve, but that doesn't exempt that she could have had other spying methods.

Let's consider that Tatiana didn't consider B2J a threat until after DJSS's defeat, but doesn't get actually angry about them until Sayu's defeat. Gigi's first attempt to get info from B2J was directly after DJSS, but he failed to stop them from meeting with Kliff who gave B2J the tools to defeat Sayu. After Sayu, he finally just forces his way in, possibly as a response to Tatiana's rising stress over the situation.

However, I must concede that if Gigi truly is a spy for NSR/MM, then why wouldn't he report about Kliff's involvement? Even if he didn't know the personal history between him and Tatiana, I think it would be pretty important to report that they have a significant ally that they should keep tabs on and then naturally Kliff's involvement would make it to Tatiana.

But also keep in mind that in this theoretical, Gigi is still reporting to MM first. So if MM disregarded anything he deemed irrelevant and then sent that revised report to Tatiana, then Kliff's involvement could have been lost even if Gigi made note of him. The message could have been diluted from, "Kliff is an ally of B2J." to, "An information specialist is an ally of B2J."

It's not like NSR was trying to destroy B2J from the inside. NSR's main goal was to have B2J defeated by a megastar to strengthen NSR's political support/make an example of B2J, as to maintain order. To do this, they needed to prove EDM's superiority over rock by its own power. Using any sort of foul play to defeat B2J would conflict with those ideals and likely lead to chaos irrupting in the city had they won or even significantly hindered them in this way.

For example, an easy way to discombobulate B2J could have been to shut down Zam FM, which they actually tried to do before he got in contact with them. However, after he was able to get set up, there wasn't much they could do without rousing suspicion. Gigi theoretically could have taken down the show while he was there, but if something had suddenly happened to cut off B2J's communication with their fans, then the fans might suspect NSR of foul play and start revolting on their own or at least spread the word that this happened, which could weaken NSR's support.

With that in mind, Gigi's orders might have been to report on B2J's activities and plans, but not to directly interfere, thus explaining why B2J didn't have many major set-backs and why NSR didn't have any meaningful advantages over them even if they had someone on the inside.

In conclusion, I think there's a strong case that Gigi is actually an NSR spy, and a weaker but still compelling case that he's also connected to Mystery Man, who might be the director of NSR's spies.

[heyitslapis]

I need to get more Normal

[sincerelyyellingback]

My latest fanfic only has 22 hits. No comments, and not even any kudos. I don't know if anyone has read it at all 🥺

[oblivion-wonderlust]

the last hour of le mans this year was more intense than the last 3 seasons of F1 combined holy fuck

[floral-hex]

hi it’s my birthday tomorrow

[loumauve]

sorry I've been unhinged lately and cursing your dashboards with all manner of posts. I'd love to promise it'll get better soon but that would probably be a lie

[mwagneto]

Not sure if thisll help you mate but i get mad secondhand embarrassment (assuming thats what youre talking about in the ofmd post) from media all the time and ive found that listening to music at the same time really helps not sure why

ohhh no it's not second hand embarrassment i just genuinely get too overwhelmed to watch things sometimes like the second i sense smtg i want to happen in media might happen i have to like hit pause and go through the 5 stages of grief first. it literally took a herculean effort to unpause gomens after i realised they were about to dance

[deus-ex-mona]

kawareeeeeeeeeee~~~~~~~~~