#well. a lot of comments actually.

[autism-swagger]

Presented without comment.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

new year new calne u know how it is!!!!

[feroluce]

So Sampo is canon described as the only person who can travel between the overworld and underground, but it's never actually revealed HOW he gets around.

I'd like to believe part of the reason he's so secretive really is just because of business. One of the best ways to keep your customers is by being the only one to offer something, and Sampo stands to make a pretty nice profit if he's the only one able to smuggle in supplies. Gotta protect the trade routes ☆

BUT the other part is because he's probably one of the only ones that could SURVIVE it. I'd like to think a lot of his routes enter the overworld either in places like Backwater Pass, where it's technically in the city but is overrun by Fragmentum, or on the frontlines, where it's frigid cold and crawling with Silvermane Guards.

If someone manages to get all the way up, and even if they manage to sneak past all of the Guards/monsters and not freeze to death, there's still the possibility of getting caught in the city proper by regular civilians.

And if Cocolia heard word of someone caught in the overworld, I can't imagine there's any way she would just leave that, she separated the halves for a reason. This person would be interrogated, and then the route sealed off, and then the Undergrounders would lose a vital supply route. Sampo has to be extremely careful to not get caught and not be tailed.

And I'm sure he does a lot of shady trading in Belobog proper, but I think a lot of it also comes from him looting the Fragmentum-corroded areas, too. After all, in the Cyrille the Fool quest line, when the trailblazer sees something strange in the Fragmentum, the first person they think to consult is Sampo.

So I love the thought of Sampo being like extremely disciplined and being able to be out there for like days at a time.

Looting is easier in the beginning, but eventually Sampo has to go farther and farther out for supplies. Sometimes he'll be out there for days, and it's not exactly a safe place to sleep, but he can stay awake and alert for absurd amounts of time if he needs to be. Going for 24+ hours isn't unusual for him on a big supply run; Sampo will be awake for a day or two, he'll bring back everything he finds to Natasha, then sleep for a solid 8-12 hours and be back up again. He takes a couple of low key days where he rests or does easy work, then he's ready to plunge into the fray again!

On the rare occasions he sleeps in the Fragmentum, it's not for very long, less than an hour, and Sampo has traps he sets all around him while he sleeps sitting up with daggers in hand. Caelus finds out about this habit the hard way because he gets restless and decides to go explore (I'd like to think with the Stellaron dwelling within him, he's largely immune to any kind of Fragmentum corrosion), and he sees Sampo curled up in a corner, head down. So of course he approaches to see if he's ok, and-

A trap pops and hisses

There's a bright flash of pink

Caelus blinks

His back hits the wooden wall behind him

There's the sound of reverberating metal-on-metal right next to his ear

Caelus blinks again

...and is shocked to suddenly find that Sampo is looming over him, pinning him to the wall, one dagger sunk into the wood and the other blocked by his metal bat.

And they both just stand there for a beat, until Sampo blinks the bleariness out of his unfocused eyes, and then he yawns obnoxiously right in Caelus' face and tells him he shouldn't interrupt people's beauty sleep! How is Sampo supposed to stay so handsome otherwise!?

Caelus only notices shortly thereafter that there's a thin line of blood on his neck, and he belatedly realizes that Sampo really would have taken his head off by pure instinct if he weren't also incredibly quick with his reflexes. No wonder he's the only undergrounder surviving out in the Fragmentum; anything that approaches in his sleep thinking they have easy prey is almost instantly demolished.

[ded-lime]

weird how its harder for me to imagine bride mozart than salieri, but still

[i-may-be-an-emu]

Sfth textposts! :)

The first lot I made

a few more

[wardingshout]

Hi!! I just wanted to say that the way you draw characters/use colors in your art is an absolute dream, I've never seen anything prettier. Do you have a specific way you pick/use colors, or any advice for coloring? You inspire my art so much, and I'd love to learn how to color like you someday :)

@braventheninth gonna reply to both of you here hope that's cool!

aaaah thank you so much I'm really honoured to hear you both like it and that it inspires you anon !! ;v; I don't actually know much about art theory-wise, aside from very basic colour theory that I always forget so most of my choices are pretty instinctual and based on my own preferences!

i can do my best to explain my thought process though! uuh it is. lots of text though just as a warning.

one thing I tend to do with almost everything is pick what kind of colour mood I'm going for! usually, since I love orange and also warm feelings, I'll aim for some kind of warm tone and when doing that I try to slide every colour I pick towards the warm end of the colour wheel. Blacks and whites are especially good for this! As a general thing I almost fully avoid picking any colours along those edges of the colour picker

instead I'll move all my colour choices a nudge into the square for the colours towards the tone I want (in this case warm) (the white is there be warm too I just forgor to type it).

and since I wanted warm colours for this drawing I desaturated the blue of Brain's pants so it would fit in better. I once heard someone say you should always pick one main colour and saturate fully and the further away from it on the colour wheel you got, the more desaturated your colours should be. I don't really do that bc I like my colours to stay bright but I do keep it in mind to mess around with sometimes.

I'm not always great at keeping this consistent, but I think it usually makes for pretty decent results... Other things I keep in mind are that when I pick the colour for my shadows I always make a little slide on the colour wheel towards the opposite tone of what I based my main colours on. oh and picking the right base colours ?? no clue tbh I always put every colour on it's own layer and then I spend a couple minutes adjusting them all seperately until I feel like they go well enough together. I usually avoid the bottom to right section of the square fully, bc I find they often get oversaturated and muddy, but that's just a personal preference I guess.

also since I enjoy the way coloured lineart works for my stuff I tend to mess around with layer settings for my lineart! usually the end results will look something like this:

where the clipped layer is clipped on to my colours folder. lineart is the only place where I just use plain black since I'm gonna change it with these layer settings later. it often still shows up as black for darker colours (and especially blues?) but it keeps a slightly coloured edge that I enjoy. if the blacks of the end result don't look good, messing around with the layer opacity usually changes stuff up. sometimes I'll also erase part of the lineart from one of the layers as a way to adjust.

I think what might be more relevant though, is the way I've been picking my colours for most of my recent posts though, which is. very differently. and also quite dependant on the fact I've been drawing on Tegaki! Tegaki has a limited colour palette that looks like this

only the 6 colour slots next to the bottom greyscale can be replaced by your own colours. As shown here I only bothered to add something to half of them; mainly the beige-ish colour I like to use for whites, a brown that I never use bc it's ugly with everything else here and a purple? that I only Think I added. both the brown and purple suffer from being too desaturated for the rest of the palette, which makes them stand out in a pretty bad way when used tbh.

I have. absolutely no idea what I'm doing with colours on this site though ngl. I think it just automatically pushes you to be a little more chaotic with the choices? a simple example is the green I picked for Link's tunic here doesn't really have any good, easy choice for shading imo. most of the "darker" green tones just feel more saturated, and it sticks out pretty bad as a shading colour for the more muted green I picked for the tunic. Removing those, the choice was either a mossy green or a blue.

and while the mossy green is still green, it feels far too dark a shading colour compared to what I picked as shading for the rest of the drawing. The blue has the added bonus of being closer to the purple I used for the black-ish parts.

I think my point is that it's really easy to push yourself to make some fun new choices when the tools you're using limit you a bit in a way? Looking at it now, I'm also seeing that the hands were lined with very different colours. I remember just thinking that I couldn't be bothered to find the exact same purple I used for the first hand so I just went with the first thing I landed on, that being a pink. But now I think it works pretty well since the one hand is lifted a bit more into the light and that goes well for a bright colour like pink. happy accidents and all that right ?

I am fully just yapping at this point 🧍 but the point still goes for most things drawn on this site.

like there was no reason to add the blues or reds or pinks to the heather here but I only had so many purple shades to work with. it might be less realistic but I don't think it would've come out as well if I had stuck to only the purple shades from my reference photo.

This ended up way way too long and I have no idea if any of it made sense or was helpful at all, but it was surprisingly fun to reflect on my own choices a bit more! especially since I often just do whatever I feel like I think it's helpful to sit back and consider what instinct actually tells me it's the right thing to do.

in an attempt to do something actually helpful uuh I recommend messing around with 2 specific things and switching around with them a bit; namely limited colour palettes (like 1 or 2 main tones imo) and then just going absolutely ham and just using whatever colour for everything (make them orange! put some blue and purple on the bark! leaves can be blue if they want to! (go more ham than I did tbh))

I think just messing around does so much for making some kind of sense of colours even without Knowing how they work. it's easy to say we should all study, but personally I'm pretty bad at it and it's more fun to just trial and error it... errors do happen a lot though omg do they happen, but that's helpful for figuring stuff out too!

[three-dee-ess]

I love reblogging posts from like 3 months ago with 50 notes and then checking on them later and seeing they have 300+ notes. most of the notes have my silly gimmick reply removed!!! and I think that's beautiful!!

[faunandfloraas]

Seungmin saying they changed song by so it would be easier for people to watch and listen and then me seeing people going "Yes! It's good it's on tiktok and shorts now" and I'm like. Oh. You're all so fucking stupid <3

[spywhitney]

How I sleep knowing I'll never trust anyone that hates Sydney but worships Richie:

[rainingincale]

[rolandkaros]

forever hilarious to me that tennis is promoted as this prestigious highbrow big-brain sport when most tennis fans these days are like. yeah this is my favorite player. yeah i don't know why they're like that. yes they are stupid. no i will not choose somebody else.

[veggidoesart]

snufkin's whole family thinks he's gay- a moomins/bo burnham animatic

by me!

posting it on tumblr first, probably gonna go public on yt tomorrow ^-^

(repost cause i think i messed up the link the first time)

[leviiackrman]

"Fashion is my second favourite F-word."

more edits || character page || x.x

Tag list (ask to be added or removed): @carrionsflower @statichvm @risingsh0t @simonxriley @tommyarashikage @kanos @confidentandgood @unholymilf @florbelles @thedeadthree @shellibisshe @roofgeese @aezyrraeshh @faerune @tekehu @jackiesarch @minaharkers @sergeiravenov @carlosoliveiraa @rosenfey @nokstella @queennymeria @heroofpenamstan @virginlucanis @jamessunderlandgf @d-esmond @solasan @bigbywlf @delzinrowe @fenharel @imogenkol

[dreamfilleddonuts]

You call an autistic coded character a child because you see autism as inherently childlike. I call that autistic coded character MY child because in loving them, I am learning to love a core part of myself and see myself as capable as I see that character. We are not the same.

[tea-cat-arts]

"Madam Yu would be a Karen/ treat minimum wage employees like shit-" literally the only servant she's shown abusing is Wei Wuxian (and that's because he's the victim of a proxy war between her and Jiang Fengmian around the idea of him being adopted into the family, not because of his class). Madam Yu's two handmaid's love and respect her, and Madam Yu actually defends them when Wang Lingjiao tries being a Karen to them. She also tells Wang Lingjiao to fuck off when she demands the Jiang servants bring her tea.

Also, Karens are unpleasant women, but not all unpleasant women are Karens. That term is about entitlement and being unreasonable (and often times, racist). Madam Yu is mean and unpleasant to talk to, but she keeps most of her interactions brief and probably doesn't have the time or mental energy to be a Karen or hold a grudge that long. If you want an actual example of a Karen in mdzs, Wang Lingjiao is right there

[batsplat]

just so you know bc I don’t think enough people tell you this but every time I check your blog (a bit compulsively at this point? your compilations and opinions are very enlightening on the general psychology of those crazy motherfuckers and also the uhhhhhhhh other part) and see that you answered another ask I honestly break into the hugest grin and settle down at the next given opportunity to read the newest batssay (batsplat essay) like it’s an academic paper (it is to us sports scholars, I believe)… please never feel the need to cut short your thoughts on any subject. the longer the better! connect all the dots, bat! we are listening!!

thank youuuuu this is so sweet, I know this ask is a little older but trust whenever I get something kind in my inbox I very much read and appreciate it and it very much makes my day. and I love the term batssay. a lot

so I thought it'd be fun to do a follow up post to the casey/jorge/valentino one where I just dumped a bunch of photos with a wee bit of context... for the culture, y'know. and I'm doing this with just casey/valentino, mostly for 2007-09 but with one 2005 photo chucked in as. build-up. for flavour

we know from the #archives that the two of them did have like. a reasonably warm dynamic pre-casey's motogp debut. they'd talked... also at least one race where casey shows up to valentino's podium and chats to vale's crew chief and fellow aussie jb... I think about it often. what did it all mean

casey's first win!!! qatar 2007, very first race with ducati. he'd gotten very close to a win before - in his third ever premier class race at turkey, lost at the final chicane. casey's goals going into that first season with ducat had just been winning a few races... he notes that valentino congratulates him warmly, but reckons it's just because valentino didn't take him seriously as a threat, which. I don't think that quite stacks up with supplementary evidence from the time, but we'll allow it

one of my fave photos for a reason, idc it's sweet. I was trying to figure out when this photo was from through like, normal means of reverse image search, but then instead I had a horrifying moment of 'oh yeah I'm pretty sure I remember that specific presser backdrop is at mugello that year' and. I was right. which. god. anyway yeah mugello 2007 pre-event presser. by this point casey was 21 points clear in the championship standings

more mugello 2007!!! look at casey constantly sipping from his lil cup. this will have been after qualifying, where casey snagged pole. I'd forgotten valentino actually makes front row in qualifying because he makes a typically horrendous start. I'd also forgotten that this race is like. proper good. one of the best that year. slows down eventually but the first ten or so laps are some of the most exciting of the entire alien era

catalunya 2007, which unfortunately I also dated solely through the presser backdrop. idk I just like the vibes of this photo. anyway!! this race is ofc the one where casey won an all timer late race duel against valentino (+ dani). it is after this race that valentino said casey was, and I quote "riding like a god". a seminal moment

the championship is already extremely over by the time they get to estoril, but casey still needs to formally wrap it up: this is his first match point race. depicted here is valentino getting one of his few Ws that season. an account of this event: “valentino was playing table football in the yamaha hospitality and somebody spotted casey outside. so they invited him for a challenge. it was all good fun”

motegi 2007. valentino had managed to put off the inevitable the race before and temporarily stopped casey from sealing the title, taking his last win of the season (cool duel with dani in that one). but motegi... well honestly it's just a bit of a flop all round, nobody's bike is working the way they want it to, casey seals the title with his worst result all season of a sixth place (the horror) and in his autobiography he was kinda like 'well I was very happy but also. meh race' (I paraphrase). but really, who cares, he had his title

bit of a time skip!! after both of them have put their sketch early 2008's behind them, the pair of them had a proper fun fight at catalunya for p2. a continuation of the battle the year before with valentino once again coming from lower down the field, this time he gets the better of casey. still, things are finally looking up at ducati... and the post-catalunya test might be enough to put casey right back in title contention. the above photo is from donington, where casey confirms the progress ducati made by winning his first race of the season after the opener in qatar

still donington, both of them watching each other etc etc. valentino is in a much better place than the year before, given both casey's rough start to the season and how they're both now on the same tyres. but it's not a good sign if casey's hitting his stride... at assen, valentino makes his one mistake of the year and crashes on the first lap, remounting to finish eleventh (he still beats casey's teammate melandri). this puts dani in the championship lead - and with casey's second win in a row, he is now very much closing in

look at them chatting here!! cute imo. this is casey's third win in a row, at the rainy sachsenring. dani crashes out from a few miles in the lead - while casey had stayed sensible and brings it home for a pretty straightforward victory. valentino needed to fight his way through from further down the field and in the end he loses too much time to put any serious pressure on casey, but it's still damage limitation and he retakes the championship lead from dani (who will miss the next race due to an injury sustained in the crash). and yet, momentum really is firmly on casey's side now... and the rest of the calendar does looks like pretty casey-friendly territory. next up, they're headed to a race track where casey had won very comfortably the year before. would he seal his fourth consecutive win at laguna?

now with my sincere apologies to casey stoner, every photo that came out of laguna 2008 is objectively pretty funny. I have limited myself to a mere two podium photos, but lbr there's a full collection. casey had already rejected valentino's handshake in parc fermé - which some might have taken as a social cue to give him some space. whereas valentino, local dickhead, just will not stop yapping at casey on the podium. this is quite possibly as genuinely delighted as he gets after a race, and it's simply a beautiful contrast with casey who is not quite rude enough to actually tell valentino to shut the fuck up - but may be fantasising about pushing valentino off the podium. this, to me. is art

gather around body language experts, we need to have a conversation. this is at the pre-event presser of the race immediately after laguna, aka brno. by this point, casey's less than flattering remarks about valentino's riding at laguna had already been distributed near and far... everyone's been talking about them, people have Opinions. the captions for these photos are all something along the lines of 'stoner extends olive branch to rossi to apologise for his post-race comments after losing laguna'. now, I don't know if he literally is apologising in these actual photos - though of course he did publicly walk back his comments, saying all riders can react badly to losses and that he'd overreacted when he'd said he'd lost respect for valentino. he has since walked back his walking back, doubling down on his criticisms of valentino's comportment at laguna

still, for all the talk that the feud properly started after laguna, it's kind of fun to have the presser immediately after it showing... well, it does look like casey is actively engaging valentino in conversation, right? whether he's apologising or not - this isn't just valentino yapping at him, if anything it's the reverse. laguna had been right before the summer break, so casey had been given a month to cool off... and also be viciously criticised by the press. brutal, isn't it? it's not just the loss that sucks, it's also being excoriated by the press and fans for having the audacity to get mad over it. is all of this just him being forced into pretending to play nice to get the press to leave him alone? were there any genuine regrets over his laguna comments? what ARE the vibes between them like at this time? what story do these photos tell us

casey went on to crash out of this race from the lead, the first time he had done so in the premier class and his first dnf with ducati after their one and a half seasons together. when he crashed, he'd had a fairly comfortable lead over valentino - though valentino was steadily closing in, and the commentators were already rubbing their hands in anticipation of another laguna

the next race is at misano - and casey is struggling with an old hand injury, see the bandages in the photo. the previous year had been the first time valentino had gotten the chance to race at this circuit, so close to his home... but he'd suffered a mechanical dnf, not his first or last in a frustrating season. this year, everything is different - and casey once again crashes out of the lead as valentino takes victory in front of his worshipful home fans

another trip to america, this time for indy: their first time racing at the track. after the double whammy of brno and misano, casey's title charge is essentially over... but you never know, right? indy kinda gives off the vibe of being a good casey track

in the end, the race is extremely wet and very, very windy and is eventually red-flagged. because of how many laps they still have to go, it is initially unclear whether they would restart... at which point first valentino (who was leading), then casey (in fourth) go to dorna ceo ezpeleta to tell him they have less than zero interest in going out in that weather again. a beautiful moment of solidarity - long live the power of unionising, capable of overcoming even the bitterest of feuds. blast the internationale over the footage, I've seen enough. the race is called off and valentino wins his fourth consecutive race

by the time they get to phillip island, valentino has already won the title, courtesy of his fifth consecutive win at motegi - the same circuit casey had won the title at the year before and the home race of valentino's old enemies at honda. a couple of nice photos of jorge congratulating his teammate and casey spraying vale with champagne here. casey, known phillip island goat, would of course finally end valentino's win streak at that circuit, which is where the photos are from. idk they're fun to me, like this is still not that long after laguna. I'm aware being able to chat normally with your coworkers and share a smile with them isn't normally that high a bar, but canonically valentino has been known to completely blank some of his rivals. it's not like casey is particularly cold towards valentino either, eh

case in point. this is from sepang 2008. #TheEstablishment does not want you to know casey and valentino canonically still regularly yapped in pressers post laguna. they won't silence me. sepang was valentino's last win of this season, after a good scrap with dani - and the season is rounded off with a casey victory at valencia

jerez 2009, where valentino gets past casey with a block pass at the final corner on his way to victory. unlike in 2005, he actually manages to not barrel into his rival. this is just a fantastic photo... I don't even have much to say about it. a+ vibes

a lot of the photos from this season were already included in the jorge/valentino/casey post, which reflects how casey wasn't consistently a factor in the same way the other two were. this one's from assen, the race right after catalunya when all three of them were tied on 106 points. very good side eye here, excellent job casey. unfortunately, casey is now in mystery illness territory - and he can't really compete with the two frontrunners in this stretch of the season

this is the first race after casey's return to competition - valentino goes up to casey after qualifying at estoril to congratulate him for his front row grid position. casey would win an early race scrap with valentino in the race itself, eventually finishing second behind jorge and swiftly silencing all the people who had declared him mentally weak and done for in his absence. a race that brought back suspense to that year's championship

phillip island 2009, another important moment in the canon where I've limited myself to just the one photo. casey wins just his second race back - and he also hugs vale pretty warmly in parc fermé. jorge was kind enough to crash in the opening lap, meaning valentino can very much be pleased with a second place here

and at sepang, valentino seals the title, while casey wins another race. casey ended up crashing in the warm-up lap of valencia, apparently due to an issue with the tyre warming? just kinda... the general vibe of his 2009, really. valentino closes off the season with another podium at his least favourite track, while dani takes the win

anyway after that they spent three years getting into increasingly. dumb arguments. like. so dumb. by the end of 2012 you feel you're killing your brain cells by even engaging with this stuff. it's beyond undignified. there's zero competitive justification, but they just couldn't shut up about each other. that being said, they're still capable of doing a small talk with each other even during the dark years, so that's something. maybe one day they'll finally be able to get that dinner and talk about all the good times