#what to use for urban sketching

[dianakingsley]

Urban Sketching

[headspace-hotel]

I hate a lot of trends in climate-change-aware nature writing, but this is one I particularly detest: works insisting that we live in a "post-natural" world.

The lostness, bewilderment, aching, and searching in this piece is understood by the author to be an all-consuming and universal dysphoria, when it is actually a highly specific predicament that the author put himself into: He tried to understand the universe exclusively through the point of view of white people.

I mean that Purdy takes the colonizer point of view without realizing that it is a colonizer point of view. He thinks the colonizer point of view is a universal document of the authentic, naive encounter of "humanity" with "nature," instead of burning wreckage left over from the apocalyptic destruction of a rainbow of ideas and cultures.

It feels weird to be talking about this as a white person, but it shouldn't, any more than it should feel weird to say (as a white person) that aliens didn't build the pyramids.

Very little of what he's writing about would exist or make sense without European colonization of the world. Purdy constantly says "we" and "our" in reference to things that are very restricted to a particular cultural point of view, as if totally oblivious to the idea that other cultures and other perspectives even exist. When he searches for historical references to chart "human" relationship with nature, history goes like this: Pre-Christian religion in the British Isles->British monarchy-> George Washington-> Industrial Revolution->Thoreau.

He manages to repeatedly stumble over giant hunks of colonialism embedded in every concept he's thinking about, like boulders obstructing a pathway, and pretends so hard that they don't exist that his points are janky and meandering. For example, his discussion of Helen Macdonald's book H for Hawk, touching upon human identification with the landscape and with non-human "nature," blunders into this:

Those who love (certain parts of) nature are often making a point of preferring it to (certain kinds of) human beings. The problem is not only literary. Macdonald describes an encounter with a retired couple who join her in admiring a valley full of deer, then remark how good it is to see “a real bit of Old England still left, despite all these immigrants coming in.” She does not reply, but is miserable afterward. The meaning of landscapes is always someone’s meaning in particular. Confronted with all of this, Macdonald tries to shake off the complicities of her own identification with the terrain: “I wish that we would not fight for landscapes that remind us of who we think we are. I wish we would fight, instead, for landscapes buzzing and glowing with life in all its variousness.” The alternative that Macdonald wishes for is, of course, not an escape from political-cultural projection onto landscape, but another approach to that same practice — really, the only one a 21st-century cosmopolitan is likely to feel comfortable embracing. 

AND THEN HE JUST SEGUES INTO THE NEXT POINT LIKE NOTHING HAPPENED. Like don't worry about it :) We will simply project onto landscapes in a non-racist way :) because we aren't racist anymore in the 21st century :)

The next book he discusses is Landmarks by Robert MacFarlane, which is basically about how the vocabulary of landscape in English is sterilized and monoculturized, and contrasts that with Scots Gaelic. This is how Purdy explains the thesis of the book:

 Our sense of what lies outside ourselves has been blunted by “capital, apathy, and urbanization” — enemies likely to draw a range of friends, from cultural Marxists to Little Englanders to those who would like to see a bit more effort, please. But behind this scholarly sketch, Macfarlane’s work is testament to a pretheoretical obsession with unfamiliar ways of encountering places. We disenchanted and distracted (post)moderns describe terrain, he complains, in terms of “large, generic units” such as “field,” “hill,” “valley,” and “wood." (...) Many people who have lived intimately with landscapes have had words for nuances of form, texture, and use. Macfarlane’s purpose in Landmarksis to gather these words as proof of how precisely it is possible to name a place, and so, perforce, to know it.

Why is Gaelic endangered? Because of an effort to extinguish its speakers' culture. This article I found on it talks about the history of the language's decline, and it's strikingly similar to what happened to indigenous people in the Americas and Australia, with children being put in schools where they were beaten with sticks for speaking their native language.

This whole essay is about Purdy's general disappointment with nature writing, his craving for an ineffable Something, some sort of magical, primitive identification with the natural world. In the very first paragraph he claims that the pictures of animals on nursery walls are "totemic" and quotes a guy saying that zoos are an "epitaph" to the relationship between people and animals. It's never very clear what he means, but he uses the term "animism" repeatedly, such as when he says this about MacFarlane's goal in writing Landmarks:

His quarry is an animistic sense that Barry Lopez once identified in “the moment when the thing — the hill, the tarn . . . ceases to be a thing, and becomes something that knows we are there."

Given that ambition, Landmarks, which Macfarlane calls a “counter-desecration phrasebook,” can be disappointingly thin as a lexicon. Too many of the terms are simply dialect or Gaelic for some generic form, such as “slope,” “hilltop,” “stream,” or “tuft of grass.” The effect is less pointing out how many things there are to see than cataloguing how many names there are for the same thing.

This is Purdy missing the point, perfectly crystallized as though frozen in amber. He is oblivious to the clear subtext of a language showing a culture's connection to its home, and of the violence against that culture. The Gaelic language doesn't make him feel primal and mystical the way he wants it to, therefore it doesn't mean anything to him. MacFarlane doesn't make him feel a magic animistic connection to nature, therefore his book must have failed at its task.

Who gives a shit? Gaelic isn't FOR you.

He discusses another book about a guy that hikes a bunch of Cherokee trails, but I don't know what to say about that one, observing it through the sludge of the reviewer's unwillingness to recognize that historical context exists. He summarizes his disappointment in a confusing way, using the Gaelic language as a symbol for an obscure and inaccessible place where the answer to your personal emotional cravings lives (???) Then he talks about a kind of epistemicide, or extinction of knowing, of nature, but again, totally oblivious to any relationship to colonization.

Every inhabited continent has been denuded of ecosystems and species. Most North American places have shed wolves, elk, moose, brown bears, panthers, bison, and a variety of fish and wild plants, which were all abundant four hundred years ago. 

Wow, I wonder what happened four hundred years ago?

This writing acts like the dominant Eurocentric attitude towards the world is universal, but the author is haunted by this nameless specter of the possibility of a different way of thinking, which he treats as some kind of mystical, primordial state hidden in the past instead of just a different cultural perspective.

Not only does he not recognize that his own cultural perspective of Nature is dysfunctional and unsatisfying because it was created by exploitation and genocide of other cultures and their symbiotic relationships, he acts like other perspectives don't exist. Take his perspective on forests and the mycorrhizal network:

Wohlleben’s emphasis on interdependence and mutual aid is part of a recent tendency to recast nature in an egalitarian fashion — as cooperative, nonindividualist, and, often enough, hybrid and queer, in contrast to the oaks of generals and kings. Nature does answer faithfully to the imaginative imperatives and limitations of its observers, so it was inevitable that after centuries of viewing forests as kingdoms, then as factories (and, along the way, as cathedrals for Romantic sentiment), the 21st century would discover a networked information system under the leaves and humus, what Wohlleben calls, with an impressive lack of embarrassment, a “wood wide web.”

Listen, I don't think this is accurate to how Europeans thought of forests throughout time, let alone "humanity" in general. The emphasis of power and competition in ecosystems emerged after Darwin, in collusion with capitalism and "race science." Trees have been symbols of life, wisdom and selflessness, and regarded as sacred or even sentient, for centuries before that. But on top of that, this is just blatantly pretending that only white people's ideas count as ideas.

It's the same dreck as all the other "literary" writing about climate change: self-pityingly and unproductively mourning "Nature" and a fantasized "wild" state of the Earth, ignoring colonialism, treating human influence of any kind on other life forms as something that either destroys them or makes them soft and "tame."

I'm tired of reading nature writing from people that obviously do not go outside, or if they do, they do it in such a suffocatingly regimented, goal-oriented way that they can't just sit outside and relax.

Maybe I shouldn't be such a hater if I want to do nature writing. But my love of nature is WHY I am a hater.

[tungledotedu]

prismatic bell is shamelessly doing genocide denial again (archive org version), with some points such as:

'the keffiyeh is a symbol of arab colonialism'

'Every civilian killed is a travesty to be laid on Sinwar’s bloody hands. But…it’s actually also REALLY GOOD for urban warfare'.

no amount of 'it's tragic, i know it sucks, it's heatbreaking' will make up for the fact that xe LITERALLY SAID THERE IS A 'GOOD' AND 'PROPORTIONATE' NUMBER OF DEAD CIVILIANS. including children and babies. and this is right after xe called them colonisers.

xe's still desperately trying to deny the death toll. 'the numbers as given have been proven false. Someone was literally able to show they’re generated with a math formula. (I have articles backing this up, but again, will have to add when I’m off mobile, sorry.)'

also known as 'i can't add more sources right now, but i DEFINITELY have them!' (uses memri tv as a source)

'actually it's completely legal for israel to target hospitals because they fabricate evidence of weapons in those hospitals.' who's going to tell xir about how the iof mistook an arabic calendar for a list of names. also, legality=/=morality.

'DELIBERATE TARGETING OF HOSPITALS: yes, Israel has bombed or raided several hospitals because they were being used as weapons depots or missile launch sites. This is completely legal—what would be illegal would be raids on hospitals not being used as military sites.'

'hamas is the one that's committing genocide! if israel was really trying to eradicate all of gaza it would be done already!'

62% of homes and 84% of healthcare facilities have been damaged or destroyed. as well as more than 80% of schools.

'what is happening in ukraine IS genocide! but not palestine!'

since this person seems so fixated on 'proportionate' death tolls...

ukraine has a population of 34 million, and the 2022 russian invasion has resulted in around 34,000 civilian casuallties as of june 2024. that's a lower ratio of civilian casualties to total population (1:1000). mariupol and the rest of donetsk oblast (population: 4 million) have sustained the highest number of casualties, with over 25,000 dead. this means the ratio is 1:160. according to this user, this is enough to warrant the label of genocide.

(edit: the number of dead ukrainian civilians may be higher at 100,000, making it 1:340).

but the gaza strip had a population of 2.4 million in 2022 (see the quote below), and the estimate of around 40,000 deaths has been outdated for some time now due to israel's destruction of gazan healthcare infrastructure and staff. even without a more accurate death toll, the ratio is higher (1:60). but for some reason (racism), it's not enough to be called a genocide.

the death toll in gaza is estimated to be much higher. according to the lancet,

Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186���000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2 375 259, this would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip.

and this is a conservative estimate.

also, according to this user's 'logic', with a lower ratio of casualties, russia is actually 'doing urban warfare' better than israel. so much for being pro-ukraine.

all of this disgusting vitriol is tacked on a post with artwork of jesus christ, because one of the sketches depicted him with a keffiyeh. i don't think prismatic bell has anything of worth to say about christianity.

(edIted on 20 july)

changed pronoun to xir. explanation here.

i've added a link to a source for 100,000 killed civilians in ukraine.

but still, given the choice between an academic article and an internet user, i'm going to trust the academic article to have actual research with sources and not 'fake numbers' for gaza.

i wrote a bit about how the alleged 1:1.5 civilian death ratio is incorrect under the read more, but then i realised, does it actually matter? should this be the metric by which we measure proportionality in the first place? should we forget how more palestinians have been killed by israel since its founding than the other way around?

if we only focus on this, we overlook the bigger picture, the alarming number of people who have been killed or left sickened and disabled. we have to keep the total population in mind, and the fact that israel also mass murders palestinians 'indirectly'. through starvation, cutting off electricity and water, blockading medical supplies as well as other resources, denying life-saving healthcare, and other means. what prismatic-bell said about russia targeting aid workers applies to israel too.

what about how israeli militants rape and sexually torture palestinian hostages? how they don't distinguish between combatants and civilians, and their 'definition' of terrorist includes elderly men and kids they've captured and stripped to their underwear? or how they've maimed people as part of rabin's 'break the bones' policy since the first intifada? or when the iof lied about letting an ambulance rescue hind rajab, only to kill the paramedics and shoot 335 bullets at the car where she was hiding? or how they haven't stopped bombing and sniping people despite orders from the icj and credible evidence of them committing genocide?

and 'fake numbers'? sounds like projection to me. here's what prismatic-bell said:

'And finally, let’s look at the civilian-to-combatant death toll. [...] With that said, the best data we have at this moment suggests one civilian killed for every 1.5 Hamas militants.'

no source given, but i'm guessing it came from wikipedia (where the sentence is unsourced as well).

here's an actual analysis by yagil levy on ha'aretz. it's outdated, but it argues that even early on in the genocide, the israeli army failed to show restraint in targeting civilians. none of that 'it's actually also REALLY GOOD for urban warfare' or 'entirely proportionate', or however you want to cruelly dismiss human life.

It follows that with a high proportion of noncombatants among the total number of those killed, we can conclude that the principle of discrimination was not adhered to, and an unusually high rate will reflect either a departure from the principle of proportionality or a highly flexible interpretation of it. [...] Thus, rather than this being a case of "collateral damage," it was the reverse: Because most of those harmed are civilians, what was produced is "collateral benefit," in the form of a low number of Gazan combatants killed.

This calculation shows that out of the total of 6,747, at least 4,594 individuals of both sexes who can be categorized as noncombatants were killed – 68 percent of the total. 

this is a different way of calculating the ratio. it takes civilian deaths and divides it by the total number of people killed, not by combatant deaths (as the 1:1.5 ratio does). with 2,153 combatants killed, the ratio is actually around 2:1, meaning it is biased towards civilians killed. this is an outdated estimate and is probably higher in reality.

or take the iof's more recent but probably inflated estimate of 16,000 dead hamas fighters, meaning 24,000 civilians out of the 40,000 killed. the ratio would be 1.5:1. or 170,000 civilians if we go by the lancet.. that's 10.5 civilians dead for 1 militant. (if anyone has better sources let me know.)

[yeopoet]

MEET ME IN THE HALLWAY

`౨ৎ~ pairing: ateez x gn!reader genre: forbidden romance, fluff, kinda suggestive if you read between the lines ౿ ׂ ִ warnings: kissing (?) word count: 2k.

author's note: highly inspired by this post. ps: the divider does not belong to me.

﹒ ◠ ✩ hongjoong ⊹ ﹒

Two powerful families competing fiercely in the construction industry, locked in a never-ending battle over urban development projects: his family prioritizes large, luxurious complexes, while yours is dedicated to eco-friendly, sustainable initiatives. The differences between you go beyond business, turning what should have remained professional into something personal and deeply entrenched. Your parents have made it clear—they never want you anywhere near the Kims, and his parents share the same sentiment. But Hongjoong couldn’t care less about the rules. He sneaks to your bedroom window in the dead of night, not with malice, but driven by an irresistible urge to explore what he’s been told is forbidden. You’ve tried pushing him away, again and again, but nothing works. He’s relentless, and despite all the barriers that should keep you apart, to him, you’re the only thing that matters.

“You can’t just show up here like it’s no big deal,” you whisper-yell as you open your window. “They’ll find out, and that’ll be the end of both of us.”

“I’ve tried to forget about you, but it’s impossible.” Hongjoong exhales deeply, slipping through the window with ease, like sneaking into your room is something he’s mastered. “I missed our midnight talks.”

You raise an eyebrow, crossing your arms, your voice dripping with sarcasm. “What? Are you in love with me or something?”

He smiles, stepping closer until he’s near enough that you can feel his warm breath on your face. “And what if I am? Would that be so bad?”

﹒ ◠ ✩ seonghwa ⊹ ﹒

Someone born into a life of luxury, with a future carved out by endless wealth, isn’t supposed to waste his time with people of "lower status." As the heir to a well-established hospital chain, Seonghwa has never had to worry about anything—not even the clothes on his back. His sole purpose in life, as dictated by his family, is to follow the path toward taking his father’s place. But with dreams of his own, he somehow ended up in your studio, signing up for a beginner's sewing class. It wasn’t exactly the best first encounter, especially since your classes weren’t designed for heirs of empires, but over time, Seonghwa managed to capture your attention. He now pays for private lessons, driven by his passion to become a fashion designer. He shares sketches of outfits with you, designs he’s never dared to show anyone else. What was supposed to be a professional relationship between teacher and student gradually became something more. And honestly, how could he not fall for you?

“I know I shouldn’t be here, but I couldn’t stay away.” His words spill out the moment you open the door, sadness pouring at your feet. “Please, just give me a chance to fix all of this.”

“You’ve already caused enough damage.” You take a deep breath, holding back tears. Watching him beg for something you both know he can’t change feels like a knife to the heart, and if you’re not careful, you might cave. He steps closer, and you know this is the moment to slam the door in his face—before his father shows up again, threatening to destroy everything you've built if you don’t leave Seonghwa alone. But your heart wavers, seeing the redness in his eyes. “Don’t make this harder than it already is, Hwa. We can’t be together. If anyone sees us, it’ll be the end for both of-”

“Just one last time.” He’s crying now, his hand gently cradling the back of your neck like he's afraid you’ll disappear. “Let me be with you one last time.”

﹒ ◠ ✩ yunho ⊹ ﹒

It’s not easy having parents who watch your every move as if you’re incapable of taking care of yourself. But if it weren’t for their overbearing protectiveness, you never would’ve met Jeong Yunho, your bodyguard—the one who pulled you out of your monotonous life and gave you a taste of freedom. He sneaks you out for daring, late-night adventures, always careful not to push things too far and jeopardize both your lives. Yunho tried to keep his distance; he was never the kind of employee to cross the line. But avoiding his inevitable downfall with you was impossible.

“They warned me about you,” he says softly, tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear, his hand gently cradling one side of your face. “But I didn’t listen.”

“And I’m glad you didn’t.” You smile openly, wrapping your arms around his waist before pressing your lips to his with intensity.

﹒ ◠ ✩ yeosang ⊹ ﹒

When the extravagance of your world becomes overwhelming, you find yourself seeking a place to breathe. Conveniently, that place always ends up being in the arms of Yeosang, the butler of your household. You've known each other since childhood, long before he took over his father’s role and before you were promised to marry someone you don’t love. The quiet meetings behind the tallest hedges in the garden offer you a peace you’ve never experienced around your family. The love that has never faded grows more painful as your wedding day draws near, and no matter how much you both long to escape, you know you've been condemned since the day you were born.

“This is the last time,” you whisper, casting a sorrowful glance at the man lying beside you. “We can’t keep doing this.”

Yeosang doesn’t respond right away but holds your gaze with a quiet tenderness. Then, after a few torturous seconds of silence, he presses a kiss to the back of your hand. “We said the same thing the last time we met,” he murmurs, leaning in to kiss you slowly, lingering. “The truth is, I’d have to move to another continent to ever be able to stay away from you.”

﹒ ◠ ✩ san ⊹ ﹒

He fought hard to get where he is. It wasn’t easy landing a job at one of the most prestigious networks in the country, and once inside, he quickly realized why the selection process was so difficult. His bosses are strict; they don’t tolerate irresponsibility and push him to the brink of exhaustion. Still, the salary makes it all worth it. San is building his life, shaping his dream career as a reporter, doing everything he can to avoid trouble. That is, until you, the boss’s daughter, showed up and threw all his plans into chaos. It wasn’t your intention to disrupt anyone. You’ve always kept a distance from the company’s employees, taking your duties as an heiress seriously. But who could have predicted that at a party with over 100 people, you’d end up kissing the newest intern?

“No one can know about this, promise me,” he whispers, gripping your elbow as he keeps the two of you dangerously close. “That was a mistake, and it won’t happen again.”

“As if I wanted it to,” you fire back, your breath mingling with his as your gaze locks onto his—eyes that are saying something completely different. “But if you keep pulling me into closed-off spaces out of nowhere, people are going to get suspicious, and it won’t be my fault.”

“Right, we should keep our distance,” he says, yet doesn’t move an inch. “I just wanted to make things clear.”

“I got the message loud and clear.” With every passing second, your faces inch closer. San tightens his grip on your arm, though not enough to hurt. He tilts his head, muttering a soft “good” against your lips before making the mistake of kissing you again.

﹒ ◠ ✩ mingi ⊹ ﹒

A friendship that has lasted for years could never be shaken by something trivial—or so you thought. But could your feelings for her brother be enough to ruin everything? She’s always made it clear that Mingi is off-limits. He constantly breaks her friends’ hearts, and they always end up drifting away. So, to keep the friendship intact, she put up a wall between the two of you. Too bad it only makes things more exciting from his perspective. You try your best to resist Mingi’s advances, but he makes it nearly impossible when he walks around the house shirtless after training, or when he finds lame excuses to touch you at random moments—like holding your waist to squeeze past you when there’s clearly plenty of space. It’s ridiculous.

“You really need to stop doing that,” you say, crossing your arms like you’re throwing a tantrum. Mingi looks at you, eyebrows raised, with that same clueless expression that drives you insane. “I’m serious, Mingi.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he shrugs, leaning forward to reach something in the back of the fridge.

“There are literally two other ways to get to the fridge, and you chose the tightest spot—right where I’m standing.” You stomp your foot. “And not only that, you—”

Your sentence is cut off by the sound of the fridge door closing. Mingi steps closer, and you hold your breath. “And I what?” he asks, leaning against the counter without breaking eye contact. “Last I checked, this is my house, and I can walk wherever I want.”

“You know exactly what I mean,” you mutter, avoiding his gaze and staring at your toes. Mingi gently lifts your chin, forcing you to look at him again.

“I thought you liked it when I touched you.” He tucks a loose strand of hair behind your ear, his hand slowly trailing down your shoulder, along your arm, until his fingers entwine with yours.

“We shouldn’t…” your voice falters. “Yena is—”

“I know, but I can’t help it sometimes.”

﹒ ◠ ✩ wooyoung ⊹ ﹒

He’s never been the type of guy to care about his friend’s girlfriend. It’s one of the most disloyal things you could do to a friendship. But when it comes to you, Wooyoung loses every last shred of honesty within himself. Falling for you was never part of his plan, and he tried everything he could to push those feelings away. If he had known that taking care of you when his friend messed up would spark such a dangerous affection, he would have let you handle your problems on your own. You, on the other hand, are deeply grateful for the countless times Wooyoung has saved you, and for showing you that love isn’t what you thought it was. All the lingering hugs, unfinished sentences, and the longing to give in to something forbidden have made you both question how much you're willing to sacrifice for each other.

“Every time I see you, I have to remind myself that you’re not mine,” he says, standing just far enough away to keep himself from giving in to his darker desires. He’s held back all this time, never crossing the line—but here you are, at his doorstep on a Saturday night, minutes after his best friend just left your house.

“So please, don’t make this harder than it already is.”

“And you think it’s easy for me?!” you explode, pushing his chest hard enough to make him stumble back a couple of steps. “You decide one night that you’re going to cut me out of your life, and you expect me not to react?”

Wooyoung grabs your arms, stopping you from hitting him again. “I’m trying to make things easier,” his eyes fill with tears, or maybe it’s yours—both of you just staring at each other, struggling not to sob out loud. You finally weaken, collapsing against his chest, muffling the sound of your pain as Wooyoung holds you tight, the way he always does.

“There’s no easy way out of this. No matter what we decide, someone’s going to end up hurt.”

﹒ ◠ ✩ jongho ⊹ ﹒

The life of a celebrity isn’t always glamorous. The fear of appearing in the tabloids caught in a dating scandal can feel more terrifying than the fear of death itself. After appearing on a variety show with you, Jongho developed a silly crush that, over time—fueled by risky texts during award shows and innocent meetups while everyone else was asleep—grew into something much bigger. To keep things discreet, you both decided to act indifferent toward each other, even though it’s become nearly impossible for him.

“Every moment we spend together is a risk, but I just can’t stay away,” Jongho says as he plants a flurry of kisses across your face. He made sure to clear out everyone from the dressing room just to have a few minutes alone with you before the show.

You laugh, trying to pull away from his eager touch to keep him from messing up your appearance. “Jongho! I have a performance in half an hour. You can’t mess up my makeup!”

He immediately steps back, placing his hands behind his back in an exaggerated effort to keep them off you. “You’re right. Sorry.”

“We’ll see each other later, okay?” You give him a playful, reassuring smile.

“Okay, I’ll try not to die until then.”

© yeopoet.

[creativepromptsforwriting]

hi!!! I love your prompts I use them for short writing exercises and even on sketching challenges! can you do prompts that we can draw too? anything will do!

Hi there! That is so lovely to hear!

I'm not really drawing anything myself so I'm not sure exactly what kind of prompts that could be in particular. But I do have my monthly prompts which you probably already know that I intended for writing and doodling.

But I don't want to be so literal this time, so here are some new ones. I hope they are prompts that you can actually draw with.

Drawing Prompt List

Catching feelings

Not illegal

Playing our song

Heart of gold

Choices to make

A toast to us

Binding them together

Stuck in the past

City lights

Ocean vibes

Extinct entities

Surreal desires

Morning routine

Box full of dreams

Finding a treasure

Permission to let it out

Showing emotions

A silly little things

Family event

Making the dream work

Rain dancing

Beloved pet

Urban legends

A moment in time

Field of flowers

Keeping the peace

A midsummer nightmare

In the eyes of the beholder

Just a mistake

Hugs and kisses

A day to remember

Have fun my friend :)

- Jana

[lunarriviera]

Big Dumb Hot Cop & Effete Possibly Sociopathic Genius Consultant: A Manifesto

So it has recently come to my attention that this, my archetypal pairing formulation, has broken containment, probably because I've been flinging these terms around like a deranged person wielding a blunt instrument. Therefore it behooves me to explain what the hell I mean by all these adjectives, and who are some classic and contemporary examples of the idiots under discussion—who are by the way extremely in love with one another whether they realize it or not. (Don't you say "bromance." Don't you dare SAY that word to me.) I will use blorbo from my shows to illustrate.

I first realized that I am in fact a Big Dumb Hot Cop whisperer thanks to Chinese police procedural 猎罪图鉴 | Under the Skin (2022). Right away, it's very important to note that Big Dumb Hot Cop is NOT in fact all that dumb. He's only less intelligent IN COMPARISON to his Effete Slightly Sociopathic Genius Consultant, who is, as already stated, a genius. Big Dumb Hot Cop is in fact ruthlessly good at his job. He's driven, he obsesses about cases, he can walk into a crime scene and pick up on the one thing everyone else has missed. There is no suspect he cannot intimidate upon investigation. And he's even better when he's working with (or against, depending on what stage they're at) the genius consultant. They need each other, whether they're fighting or collaborating. They can only clear cases together.

Here are, then, police captain Du Cheng and his genius consultant, sketch artist Shen Yi, eyeing each other significantly as some witness is, I think, lying his face off? Honestly I can't even remember what's happening because the important thing here is their nonverbal communication. This is crucial for this pairing. They can think circles around each other without saying a word. Love that for them.

Effete Possibly Sociopathic Genius Consultant has two levels of Possibly Sociopathic. Most maddeningly of all, he has secrets. Sometimes many secrets. So at first, Big Dumb Hot Cop is going to think he's the criminal, or in some way involved in the wrongdoing. The second level is that he'll find Genius Consultant just worryingly, disturbingly good at predicting criminal behavior. And he will continue to be suspicious of him for exactly one or at most two episodes, until he's then swept off his big dumb feet by the rapidity and correctness of Effete Genius's deductions. There's nothing Big Dumb Hot Cop loves more than solving cases. Well, maybe beer. He also loves beer. Once he sees that Effete Consultant is useful, he'll do a 180º and stop complaining to his chief of police, and instead start demanding that Effete Consultant be his forever. He'll start hanging out in his office. He'll literally drag him to crime scenes by the wrist.

(And did I mention Effete Consultant must be very pretty? Did I mention that? He is lovely. Long, thin fingers to steeple while he thinks. Delicate features. Haunted dark eyes. Never sleeps. Shocking self-neglect. You may see where I am going with this.)

Another important attribute of Big Dumb Hot Cop: he's big. Or anyway strong, or a gifted fighter. Let's face it, he has to be, because Genius Consultant is going to be reckless with his own personal safety to the point of stupidity (now who's dumb, huh?). For example, consider another Chinese procedural, S.C.I. 谜案集 | S.C.I. Mystery (2018). Captain Bai Yutong is sort of impossibly physically talented (former fighter pilot! national sandu champion! runs over moving cars and then shoots at them, like some kind of weird urban biathlon!) and, like all good Big Dumb Hot Cops, his entire life is thrown upside down because he now has to drop everything to protect his effete consultant, criminal psychologist Dr. Zhan Yao, who's so careless with himself that in any another drama he would probably be driving Bai Yutong to drink. Thanks to the danmei on which SCI Mystery is based, however, we can safely assume Bai Yutong is taking it out on Zhan Yao in blow jobs.

Note that Bai Yutong is the cook, even though he's the gong, and that he moves in with Zhao Yan to "protect" him from...something, I can't ever remember what, and then just sort of forgets to move out again. For the length of the entire series.

I would argue that 镇魂 | Guardian (2018) is a procedural, even if it also has ghosts, a talking cat, snake lady, eerie dark energy that gets flung around like paintball splatters, and a whole bunch of other supernatural stuff that was not approved of by Big Red (it's based on a danmei of the same title by Priest, a novel which has been pulled from circulation for censorship). Further confusing matters, Zhao Yunlan isn't particularly Big or Dumb, nor is he even really a Cop, technically; but I'm claiming him for this genre not least because of his Effete (drop-dead gorgeous) Possibly Sociopathic (Chief Zhao thinks he's a suspect for a good third of the story) and Definitely Genius, Later Gangpressed into being a Consultant, chock-full of secrets Professor Shen Wei.

Once they finally team up, though, they do this genre/pairing proud. Why, there's nothing they can't solve except how to stay alive. Look at them here enjoying some fine nonverbal communication: "Oh my god, you're just like me—you too will fling yourself directly into bodily harm in order to save a clueless civilian. Okay this could be inconvenient for both of us. Also wow for a genetics professor you're really fucking built, do you lift my bro." (Yes. Yes he does lift.)

A final example: the cruelly short-lived 光渊 | Justice in the Dark (2023), which like Guardian is based on a danmei by Priest, 默读 | Silent Reading. I got baited into watching the eight (8) existing episodes by seeing a cut of Captain Luo Wenzhou taking on like forty guys with a champagne bottle, a pair of curtains, an axe handle, and a birthday cake, like some kind of cultivator. He's so big and hot, and he's so very dumb. He's also a cop, and ACAB (which is sort of the plot of Silent Reading); and Fei Du is possibly using him for his own nefarious ends (cf. possibly sociopathic and secretive). But underneath all of Fei Du's "I am the abyss, fear me, rawr!" scary posturing, like a puffed-up kitten, he's just a very pretty tender-hearted effete genius, and you can watch Luo Wenzhou melting, and practically pinpoint the exact moment when his whole heart flies out of his eyes and he decides: Yeah, okay, that's it for me. That one. The annoying little traumatized fuerdai with some kind of a death wish that I do not understand. I'll be throwing myself in front of bullets for him and/or cooking him dinner for the foreseeable future, thanks.

Priest is gonna mess with this dynamic of gong/shou caregiving and safeguarding, because that's what she does; but the fundamental beats are still there. Look at these ninnyhammers, just this second figuring out they're actually kind people who belong to each other.

Here they are confronting a suspect together. (You will notice the large butcher knife wavering in the foreground.) Luo Wenzhou, highly trained, nonetheless cannot de-escalate the situation. It takes a pretty playboy in an arm sling to come wandering into the room, and then, using his superb personal knowledge of what it's like to be traumatized to the point of insanity, getting the suspect to disarm. I just love the way they look at each other, incredulous (Luo Wenzhou) and mock-fascinated (Fei Du). If I ever meet the person who directed this scene I'm going to need to kiss them on the mouth.

Once you accept the gospel of Big Dumb Hot Cop and Effete Possibly Sociopathic Genius Consultant into your media-based life, you'll find it has many applications, not all of which have to be procedurals. Consider: characters from the Daomu Biji franchise, possibly (Hei Xiazi is the biggest dumbest hottest not-a-cop I've ever met). Leverage, in a weird OT3 way. Assorted combinations of Avengers. Teen Wolf fic, absolutely. Various Stargate incarnations. Several other Priest danmei, not only procedurals. Definitely Mysterious Lotus Casebook. Et cetera. (You're on your own with MXTX, though.)

This has gotten long and there are still so many nuances and features and wrinkles and problems with the theory that should be ironed out, but it'll have to do for now. I'll simply close by saying: yes, there is also a classic example and you already know exactly who it is.

[sanctus-ingenium]

Just wanted to ask, please forgive me if you've already answred this, what program do you use? Your art fucks HARD and like. I was looking at your art of the two moths over the city they die in and I was hit with the wave of "oh that looks really fucking fun actually." Like i know my art program can't do some of those effects and like, I'd love to try fucking about with them.

hi there, thank you! all my art is done in procreate and paint tool sai

because you mentioned that drawing in particular i thought it would be fun to break it down and show ppl what exactly went into each part of it so check this out

sketch & lineart - the brushes come from georgbrush.club and the urban sketcher is my most commonly used lineart brush, it has a nice irregular shape. the square brush is nice for big blocky sketches.

the cityscape was REALLY hard but basically I got a photo of the skyline of florence, traced some basic building shapes, then bullshitted the rest using the vertical symmetry/mirror tool to cut down on the amount of work (so i only had to sketch one half of the city). then for lineart I turned off vertical symmetry, turned on the two-point perspective tool, and got this:

the rose windows were made using the radial symmetry tool.

I didn't like it being so flat, so I used the liquify tool to make a kind of fish-eye effect (limited success tbh). I liked how it looked but the buildings in front needed something to cover them up to make the liquification less obvious...

first pass colours. I felt they were very washed out, aside from the sun which i loved. I use the spectra brush (default procreate) for skyscapes a lot, I love the texture. Although the clouds were filled in using the lasso selection tool, I softened the edges using the square pencil again and added texture using true grit sampler grainy brushes. The translucency effect comes from my setting the brush as an eraser. The sun rays come from the radial symmetry tool.

Blocking in the moths' colours was done with the urban sketcher again.

Something people may not have noticed is the labyrinth hidden in the sky! yeah I had a bunch of versions where it was more obvious but I found that it clashed a bit and was too busy, so I made it subtle. But yes. I searched for "royalty free labyrinth" and picked one.

The toner grit brush is one you've seen before if you've looked at any art on tumblr lately (this is such a popular brush) and it's from the true grit fast grit set. The pointillism brush is from the true grit free sampler pack, like my grain brushes.

I added shadows to the moths, increased saturation overall, and changed the clouds to a translucent blue (you can even see in the sun where I forgot to block in the sun itself because the clouds over it used to be opaque lol). Moon rays were drawn using the radial symmetry tool but this time with rotational symmetry off. I also moved the moon down closer to the moths because I felt that it was a bit far away, and this served to visually divide the drawing into three equal parts, so I chose to lean into that and divide the sky colours too, to show passing time, or an endless moment - morning, evening, night, etc.

And then the oroborous, I tried a few different effects on it because I wanted it to be very clearly separate from the main scene - I settled on a dot matrix newsprint texture, using procreate's onboard tool, and some heavy chromatic aberration. This is because the oroborous isn't real, it's purely symbolic and the moths' demise started when they became photographers so I liked the print media aspect there as well. The story itself is about grief without closure, cyclical violence, and sunk cost fallacy, while everyone explores an endless labyrinth, so an oroborous fits I think

what makes art fun to me is thinking up ways I can tell a story using just a single image. and sure a lot of it will be lost to an audience who isn't familiar with the characters or backstory but i want to leave enough in there that even complete strangers to my work will be able to construct a narrative about what's happening here, rather than it just being a cool image. that's my goal.

Finally I exported it to sai on my pc to give it a once-over. this is really important because the retina display on an ipad is oversaturated on purpose, to make everything look amazing and vibrant. but what this means is that on other screens, your work might look washed out. it's especially bad at displaying yellows! so i look at it in sai on my pc and i make minor adjustments, in this case I actually added another multiply layer on the moths and an overlay on their non-shadowed parts to increase the contrast there.

finally if you've read this far, I played a little trick with the caption of the drawing. yeah, THEY die... but only one of those moths is a theythem pronoun haver... the other has to survive. he isn't given a choice in the matter.

[sothasil]

Ma'jahrann's parents I drew for ToyHouse. Also, a little tidbit about why she looks like this and an unposted sketch!

Mama: Elaahni, anequinan dancer. From a large clan. She used to be quite the local star in competitive fields before moving away to start a family. It was quite a fuss but she's an expert at getting what she wants and winning over the crowds.

Papa: Qa'Husar, from urban Pellitine, store owner and ferryman. His family are estranged from him. He was traveling for work when he fell in love with Elaahni and asked for her hand.

They live together in a small town in the Topal region. Here, they're both dressed in southern fashion!

[aura2023]

👉👈 do you have more content from your DW/Hijack crossover?

[ Edit January 2024 -> This was an ask from june 2023. I didn't realized that I left this ask in the drafts for more than 7 months and didn't post it. I'm so sorry anon :,( ]

Hello! And yes i do! Here are some of the sketches :D I don't have written down how i want the interactions between the characters to be yet. I choose the 10th doctor for now but i'm still in doubt of which regeneration i want hiccup to meet

I don't have like an AU or a story planned (? but i can share some little ideas under the cut.

The first time they meet is by accident. Hiccup and toothless got separated. It's the night fury the one that hears a strange sound. Following it into a cave there were dragons in cages along with a man with strange clothes opening those cages. The man sees the dragon and greets it, He calls himself The doctor. And tells toothless to get away before the dragon trappers get back to the cave.

The doctor invites hiccup and toothless to travel with him. Promising an adventure not only far away from the archipielago, but far away in the stars. When they see the tardis for the first time hiccup couldn't believe that it was bigger inside. He even started to take measures and making notes.

Hiccup learns that the doctor can speak dragon. He watches as the doctor and toothless hold a very long conversation. When he asks about it the doctor just says "Isn't it obvious? I speak dragon. Don't worry toothless was just saying good things. " Hiccup wants to learn dragon speech.

Hipo at first goes traveling with the doctor without telling anyone since they can go back home 5 minutes after leaving, time travel stuff. This is perfect for hiccup, he can go and have this crazy adventures without compromising his duties as the son of the chief.

Of course if you are observant you would notice that the boy started to became more taller really fast, and when asked about things that happened in the day he wouldn't remember those very well. This starts making problems.

- Hiccup and toothless go with the doctor and see different worlds, space whales and dragons surfing through the stars. The technology and the change of scenery can be too much but they are de terminated to explore and learn.

For the hiccup and jack ship in this Doctor who crossover.

This is in our time present (2023). When jack first appears, he is like a ghost. Can't be seen so he is always alone. Like a wind. He spends his time doing pranks and helping missing kids go back home.

His body is trapped in an old alien machine but his mind is " roaming free" in the world. That machine is inside an alien spaceship that fell into the earth many years ago. Jack "found it" when he fell into the frozen lake +/- 300 years ago. Jack like in the movie has seen the world go forward.

Jack can't go time travel into the TARDIS since his connection with his body will be broken. They can still travel around the globe.

In between adventures Hiccup and the doctor visit Jack. It's the most "normal life adventures" they can get lol. Jack teaches Hiccup about the technology and what the 21st century has to offer. Videogames, comics, how he spooks people in old buildings. Hell they can even go and urban exploration. Stop the typical alien invasion with the doctor. Jack meeting toothless. Hiccup talking about his life back at berk and his adventures with the doctor.

One day a group of aliens attacks a city searching for this machine. The doctor alongside Hiccup, Toothless and Jack try to stop the enemies plan. They discover the machine and that jack's body is inside of it. If the enemy finds it they will kill jack in order to use it themselves, the doctor wanted to destroy the machine but now they now is the only thing that is keeping jack "alive."

Now i don't know what they will do after that. Haven't thought much about it. But i know that i want Hiccup to meet both jack in the future, and in the past (before getting trapped in the machine) Maybe he does time after jack is gone. The doctor takes Hiccup 300 years in the past and meets Jackson Overland the week before he falls into the lake and into the machine.

He can´t stop what's going to happen to Jack but he can prolong it. So one day he asks him if he would like to join them. He does. Until jack decides to go back with his family and the day after that he falls into the ice.

I'm sorry that Jack/Hiccup doesn't have a happy ending. My friends told me that i can be a little angst machine.

Edit January 2024 -> I kinda remember that i made another ending but i can't remember where i wrote it. I'm so sorry anon, perdoname por las tardanzas y las respuestas largas. And please forgive me if there are grammatical mistakes and not correct use of words. Tried my best.

[aloevhello]

Nueva York in ATSV Script

1. Nueva York

Nueva York’s art style is inspired by the work of Syd Mead, a neo-futurist concept artist who often portrayed utopian designs of streamlined urban settings. The ATSV art book also cites other artists from the 70’s and 80’s, such as John Berkeley, John Harris, and John Bell, adding to the retro futuristic look of the city.

The city being reminiscent of Mead’s sketchbook is shown through the sketch lines presented in its architecture to Miguel himself, creating the image of an unfinished world. This style likely reflects Mead’s work in concept design, the idea of the future being susceptible to change, and Miguel’s 1992 comic run being cancelled and in turn his story being left unfinished.

The script also describes Nueva York as being bilingual, which is exemplified later in ATSV when Miguel speaks to Miles fluently in Spanish. This indicates that Spanish is at least a secondary language used in Nueva York, along with the city having a high Spanish speaking population.

The foyer is described as brutalist, an architectural style that emphasizes functionality and structural elements, along with giving a cold and imposing impression. Brutalist structures are often used for utilitarian purposes, which works in tandem with Miguel’s philosophy of utilitarianism regarding canon events.

2a. Downtown

Syd Mead is also known for his darker cyberpunk designs found in films like Blade Runner (1982), which inspired the look for the underground portion of Nueva York; a fitting choice since the comics portray this section of the city being riddled with crime. The use of one main artist to present the utopian and dystopian aspects of Nueva York allows for a visual connection between these disparate parts of the city.

Considering the pistons in this scene, one questions what kind of function they serve for the city? What if the industrial aspect of the city’s underground is focused on providing an energy source that fuels the upper level of Nueva York? What if these pistons are meant to help fuel the city’s lower level?

It’s also interesting to note the script’s use of the word “underbelly” when describing the lower city, since that phrase was used to describe the same area, which is named as Downtown, in the comics. (Below a panel from v1, #45 from sm2099 July 1996)

At least, this region would be called Downtown if the script had not already named this place as…

2b. Viejo Nueva York

In the script, Downtown is renamed as Viejo Nuevo York which translates into “Old New York” in Spanish. The name change likely occurred to reflect the bilingual nature of the city and its inhabitants.

The name Viejo Nuevo York could also provide more insight into the city’s history, considering how the script referred to this section of Nueva York as the “old city.” Maybe this will lead to further exploration into Nueva York’s history and its juxtaposing aspects. Viejo Nueva York is a fitting name to describe this portion of the city, since the comics state that it was once the island of Manhattan before Nueva York was built on top of it.

Viejo Nueva York is also set in “permanent night” due to the upper level of the city being constructed on top of their buildings that prevent any sunlight. This acts as a clear differentiation from the blue sky’s portrayed in the city’s upper level as seen in the film.

3. Anyr

These two scenes present the spider-like contraption, Anyr, found at the Go-Home-Machine. The script’s usage of words like “cocoon” and “spidery arms” gives the robot an organic and animalistic quality, which differs from the other technology presented. The directors’ commentary adds to this point as they state that whale noises were used to make Anyr sound more like a living being than a machine.

In the commentary, one of the directors state that Anyr’s design was inspired by a stop-motion resin spider, The Widow Of The Web, from a sci-fi adventure movie called Krull (1983). Anyr’s namesake was inspired by Ynyr, a character in Krull who climbed across the spider’s web. Considering how Krull was from the 80’s, the retro aesthetic continues despite the robot being in a futuristic setting.

The directors note how Anyr is meant to be this mystical technology Miguel found from the deep future of 3000, potentially from another dimension. While the commentary states that Miguel found the robot instead of creating it, considering how akin to a spider it is, Anyr might lead to a future plot point that goes more in depth about the nature of the Spiderverse.

[dont-offend-the-bees]

Spinning on That Dizzy Edge

So I was NOT gonna write one today. But then I had a train ride, a notes app, completionist tendencies and no self control. So I'm gonna keep the commentary short and sweet, as I am writing/posting all of this on my phone xD

Short, sweet, somewhat suggestive (the M rating is probably over-cautious, but Charles is feeling frisky!), no warnings off the top of my head. Bon appetit!

Title/various lyrics referenced in the fic are, of course, from Just Like Heaven by The Cure. The other lyrics referenced are A Little Respect by Erasure!

1k, M-rated, also available on Ao3. Thanks again, @painlandweek !

There was a haunting at the old Lamplighter's Arms. 'Least that's what the locals said.

It was an ancient place, older than the dirt, all bare brick and low beams. Inside there was an old upright piano, and it couldn't have been as old as the building, but no one could actually prove that. Dark wood and centuries of drunken etchings, a little warp and wonk in the keys that lent it a honky tonk air. No one knew how it had survived so long, and no one had ever had the heart to replace it. Or the courage to disturb a piano that, supposedly, on a dark and stormy night, was known to play itself.

Urban legend had it that it was the spirit of Susie Shipton, the old innkeeper's daughter - mournfully playing for her husband who went to sea, never to return. Singing sweet songs to lure his wandering spirit home from the troubled depths.

Unlike most pub-haunting legends Charles had come across, this one was actually bang on. Or at least it had been. They'd met Susie Shipton last year; lovely girl! And with a little help from the Dead Boy Detectives, she'd been able to shuffle off to her lovely afterlife. Hand in hand with that wayward soul she'd been singing to all those years. It was dead romantic — Charles might've had a bit of a cry about it.

Susie had moved on, but the Lamplighter still had a haunting. It had just swapped the one resident ghost for a couple of part-timers.

"Bit gloomy this one, innit?" said Charles, swaying on the spot. It was about as close to dancing as he could do when the tempo was this bloody wistful.

Edwin hummed, not looking up. His hands spidered effortlessly along the old wooden keys, picking out interesting little harmonies like it was nothing. He handled the notes like he was crafting a spell. "Mother used to play this one." His brow furrowed. "At least, I seem to recall..."

Charles leaned on a table, smiling at the back of Edwin's bowed head. He remembered the way Edwin's eyes had lit right up when they first spotted the old upright piano. How he'd watched Susie's hands on the keys with barely-disguised envy. He'd been eyeing up her spot on that piano stool since the moment he clapped eyes on it.

"The legend of Susie Shipton has long been a staple of this establishment, Charles," he'd said, all pretending to be casual, as he'd suggested what they ought to do with the first stormy night since solving the case. "It would be a pity to let it die out, don't you think? One must consider historical preservation..."

They'd been coming ever since, showing up with the thunder and lightning. It was one of Charles' favourite things to do. Dancing around, having a laugh. Or even just lounging against the bar, listening to Edwin's music pattering along with the rain on the rattly old glass windows.

Edwin lifted his head a little, tilting his ear back like he was listening for Charles. Then, his playing shifted, smoothly. Slow, meandering melodies gradually becoming faster, more repetitive. Sketching out a familiar riff...

Charles laughed, clapping his hands together. "I tried to discoooover!" he sang, cheerfully off-key.

"A little something to make me sweeter," Edwin joined in softly, throwing a smirk and a twinkle of his eye over his shoulder.

"Oh baby refrain! From breakin' my heeeeaaart!"

Edwin chuckled as he played, watching Charles dance around out the corner of his eye.

"Mate," Charles gushed, a bit breathless after belting out the chorus. "When'd you learn to play this one?"

"I'm quite good at picking things up by ear," said Edwin, smiling as he threw in a few little flourishes that weren't there on Charles' record. "And you've certainly listened to it in the office enough."

"It's brills," Charles grinned, sloping on over to drape an arm round Edwin's shoulders. "You're brills."

Edwin smiled, a lopsided flash of his teeth, and he played on - finding ways to work in some more of Charles' favourite eighties riffs into some sort of medley. When he meandered into The Cure, Charles, tongue in his cheek, tucked his face into Edwin's. Sang the words into his ear, quiet and personal.

"Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick, the one that makes me scream, she said..."

Edwin shivered, just a little, eyes dark as they flickered to him. "Charles," he said, sternly. "You're being very distracting."

Charles grinned. "God, I hope so." He stepped up close, fitting himself into the sliver of space between the piano and the stool, pressed as near to Edwin as he could manage. Fingers teasing the hair at the nape of his neck. "Show me how you do it, and I promise you, I promise that —"

"I'll run away with you," Edwin chorused, smiling eyes and smiling voice.

Charles felt fizzy on the inside, like someone had grabbed him by the heart and given it a shake. Sometimes Edwin just had to look at him, and all Charles could feel was bubbles. "Oh, oh I'll run away with you!"

Charles let him finish the first chorus without interruption. But before Edwin could sidle into the next verse — the proper sad one — Charles took his face in his hands and kissed him.

Edwin's hands came down in a clumsy thonk on the keys, before getting with the programme and getting all over Charles, instead. Well, not quite all over — so far, he was keeping them settled oh-so-politely on his waist.

Charles made to lean on the nearest thing — which just so happened to be the keyboard — but Edwin stopped him with a pointed clear of his throat at the first hint of discordant notes. Edwin reached around him, with both hands, and carefully lowered the wooden lid over the keys.

"You may proceed," he said primly.

Charles laughed, propped himself up on the piano lid, and got right back on the job of tempting Edwin into doing some very impolite things to him on it.

Give him a minute or two, he'd have Edwin forgetting his manners good and proper!

~~

Thanks for reading beloveds!! I shall see you tomorrow for the grand finale of Painland Week! 💛💛💛💛💛

[0hmanit]

ive seen you post a lot about rw development and stuff, so i was wondering - do you have a collection of concept art for regions? im currently working on a level inspired by a memory crypts concept art and i was thinking it could be cool to do the same for other concept art of regions

If you're talking about the official region concept art, there is a lot of them in the wiki/devlog. These two posted by Joar I believe, one showing the pit room in Outskrits and the other is an early sketch of the overall map.

"Shadow Urban" is the original name name for Shaded Citadel and it is placed near "Garbage Dump" which is Garbage Wastes. Superstructure is Five Pebbles Ofc, being a triangular shape instead of a giant box, and Sky Islands connected to it. If I have to guess "Ancient Urban" is probably was supposed to be what now we know as Memory Crypts/the exterior. And "Dense Urban" being subterranean.

This is an unused region art for the Communications Array, I like to think that it was originally a sub region within Sky Islands.

In the Downpour Unused/Concept art category you can find some beautiful art pieces. And some scrapped region thumbnails. The left image is for Slient Construct and the right image is obviously a concept art for Metropolis.

More room designs from the Devlog. I'll recommend you check it out sometime, it contains a lot of info about the level editor and early plans regarding various regions. I think it counts as concept art too? A lot of scrapped rooms inspired regions like Sky Islands, and uses different palettes that you can use.

If you also interested in different scrapped props there is a lot of them too that you can take inspiration from. I'll actually advice you to learn how to create and insert your own props into the level editor. Since you want to make levels, adding your own personal touches to your rooms is quite a neat addition.

[anim-ttrpgs]

Chase Mechanics Overhaul in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

Some screenshots and sketches from a playtest of the new overhauled chase mechanics from Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy.

This one was specifically for car chases, and we did three total playtests in one session because they were short enough that we could do that: One with all the PCs in one car chasing all the NPCs in one car in a city/town setting, one with all six characters in separate vehicles in a town/city setting, and finally one with two motorcyclists chasing each other across a straight stretch of highway.

The first three screenshots you see here are from the second one, and the last screenshot is from an earlier playtest a week or so ago that dealt with foot chases.

An unarmed mundane PC in a normal car, an unarmed pyrokinetic in a normal car, and a vampire armed with a semi-automatic pistol on a motorcycle all trying to flee from an NPC armed with a semi-automatic pistol in a regular car, an NPC armed with a semi-automatic pistol in a van, and an NPC armed with a machine pistol on a motorcycle.

For a super short breakdown of how chases work, the fleeing characters start a little bit ahead, and also get the first turn.

Each character has a Speed, based on what vehicle they have and their skill at driving that vehicle, which determines how many actions they can take, with moving one space equaling one action, though they can at most take one combat action per turn.

Then, there’s Obstacles, which are scattered randomly around the map by the game master as they are rolled on a table. These obstacles range from simple potholes to jaywalkers to traffic to fruit stands to trains, and some can be just as likely to take out a character as gunfire. Thanks to a set of stretch goals we hit in the Kickstarter, Eureka will have four separate tables for the GM to roll Obstacles on, each for different environments and different types of chases. I have been working on them for the past couple of weeks and their inclusion is part of the reason for the chase mechanics overhauls in the first place.

Each playtest lasted only a handful of rounds. In the first one, the fleeing NPCs got a huge head start but the PCs managed to catch them by taking a shortcut across a side road(where they nearly ran over a guy) and head them off, ending the chase by ramming the NPCs’ car with their own, using a new rule called a Vehicle Attack.

In the second, more complex one, the the biker NPC chased after the mundane PC in the car, repeatedly spraying him with bullets and causing him to lose his glasses. He is extremely, extremely lucky he was only hit by one of those bullets. (all sketches by team artist @theblackwarden)

Meanwhile, the vampire PC pulled over in a side street and waited for the pursuers to catch up, ambushing one of them and shooting him to death as he passed. The hunters would become the hunted.

All of this shooting brought the police to the scene after a few turns, thanks to the new Heat mechanic that determines how likely the police are to intervene in any given situation. The two non-vampire PCs had to Charm roll their way through the new obstacles created by the police to get to safety, while the other two NPCs were arrested before the vampire could hunt them down and kill them both. Oh and one police officer crashed into a fruit stand and died.

Here is one more sketch of the pyrokinetic using her powers to set the wheel of a pursuing vehicle on fire.

In the last playtest, both motorcyclists kept expertly dodging obstacles, with the fleeing one steadily increasing the distance between the two, until he got hit by a train and died.

In an earlier playtest, this one taking place on-foot, a lot more characters were taken out by obstacles. One goon was run over by a malfunctioning cybertruck, and another got stuck in wet cement and then shot to death by police because he was holding a gun.

Even devoid of any story context, these were incredibly fun sessions to run, which perfectly emulated a Hollywood chase scene while still remaining within Eureka’s realistic constraints, and we have gotta set more of these up in future adventure modules.

If you want to play Eureka with these rules, you can get the most recent version that includes them for only $5 on our patreon! There’s no better time to sign up, since we just released a big update to the beta rulebook, we just launched the Gorgon Initiative! Long story short, the playable gorgon monster type is a Kickstarter stretch goal we didn’t hit, but if we can reach 50 total patreon subscribers before the end of June, we’re going to be adding it to the book anyway! At the time of writing this, we’re at 45/50! You could make the difference, and get all this new Eureka content to boot!

You can also join the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club, where we nominate, vote on, read, and play TTRPGs like a book club, and vote for Eureka in the upcoming round. (Starts on the morning of June 12th, 2024.) There is no time commitment or schedule requirement, as we group people based on schedule compatibility, making it extremely flexible and schedule-friendly. Plus, it’s just a cool play to hang out and talk about RPGs.

We also have a ko-fi and merchandise if you just wanna give us more money for any reason.

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #28 – The Dead Take The A Train by Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey

Oh I wanted to love this book so very much. On paper it’s basically made for me – incredibly messy fuckup of a heroine, cosmic horror through the idiom of wall street corporate sharks, grimy and gory urban fantasy full of knifing people in back alleys, the works! For the first fifty pages or so, I thought I was in love – which just made the disappointment as the wheels came off all the more bitter.

The book follows Julie, ‘barbed wire magician’ (it’s at least as unpleasant as it sounds), professional monster hunter, and all-around personal disaster. Her life takes a turn for the even messier when a) her best friend/comically oversized unresolved crush shows up at her door begging for help running from her abusive husband and b) unrelatededly but more or less simultaneously, her ex-partner-and-also-boyfriend, looking up to clean up embarrassing loose ends on his rise up the elldritch corporate ladder, baits her into trying to summon a guardian angel from a sabotaged tome and ends up releasing a metaphysical parasite that starts murdering its way through the city’s occult underground. From there things just get messier.

Drilling down as much as I can, my issues with this can be summed up as it feels like a first draft. There’s stuff there on the page – character arcs, relationships, bits of scenery and action setpieces, even themes! - but it’s all just..there. Exaggerated line sketches no one ever went back and turned into full illustrations. It’s most painful with the characters – every one of them is a caricature, precisely and exactly what they first appear to be with the same beats hit again and again every single time they appear on screen. Which more or less for the quirky supporting cast but like – we get multiple chapters from the perspective of the aforementioned abusive husband, and something like a fifth of the book is from the POV of the sleazy corporate striver ex. At no point does either one get the slightest bit of nuance or pathos – Tyler’s chapters in particular end up reading like bad SCP field reports, with so much self-destructive instituional backstabbing and betrayal it all ends up being slapstick.

Sarah the love interest gets a special anti-shout-out here. Like, I know I’m just picky about and have a low tolerance for romances, but I swear – the single most important dynamic in the book in terms of both wordcount and narrative signposting is her and Julie’s romance, and it is just So. Bad. Every single scene she’s in is dedicated to rubbing your face in how fragile and traumatized and selfless and adorable and good-hearted and damaged she is, and the entirety of the romance is essentially one of those jokes about how lesbians will spend six years living with each other awkwardly waiting for the other to ask them out but stretched across 400 pages. I spent half the book patiently waiting for any hint of hidden depths or surprising twists to her character, but nope! Just a perfect domestic angel.

The setting actually has something of a similar issue. It feels like an exaggerated pastiche of urban fantasy, assuming the reader is already familiar with all the tropes and conceits and making only the most perfunctory possible gestures towards exploring or justifying them. This can absolutely work, but if you’re doing it you kind of need to use the genre as the background or setup for something else that the book is actually about – deconstruction or satire or character study or Wacky Hijinks or something. When what’s gruesome action and drama is supposed to be the star attraction, the grounding and verisimilitude of the world is actually pretty key.

A really tight, tense plot could have absolutely redeemed the whole but, well, nope. The literal entire plot hinges on Tyler, in the course of one conversation several drinks in at a crowded bar, baiting Julie into looking for a particular type of tome from a particular store so she’ll try the ritual he had swapped out with one to curse her – but then also that he didn’t know what the ritual he swapped in actually did. The big evil wall street law firm has a corporate culture that should have collapsed about 48 hours after it was founded, and absolutely nothing about it makes sense for a place with lasting institutional power. Everyone’s morality and perceptiveness changes as the plot requires. The pacing feels like they had to pull a happy ending out of their asses at the 2/3 mark and shove the rest of the book into a sequel. It’s just, it’s bad!

Also the prose starts at fun and evocative and keeps pushing into Lovecraftian levels of adjective-addiction, and neither the A-Train nor the dead are actually at all important to the story.

Just, argh. This could have been good! The first 40 pages were a really fun schlocky monster-of-the-week story! The first ritual summoning the Proctor was basically perfect! I wanted to love this!

[dyrewrites]

Writeblr Intro

Hello! I am a sad monster what writes uncomfortable stories about terminally disturbed people (and not people). These come in a few flavors with fantasy, horror, romance and cyberpunk being the big ones.

I have four published short stories and a novella, all horror, available as ebooks on Amazon and Itch.io if you wanna buy some spookums. You can also read some free stuff on my website -- or buy me a coffee, if you're into that sort of thing.

I use this place to share bits and bobs of whatever I’m currently writing(which, as of now, is a vampire romance novel, a vampire detective series, a long list of horror shorts, a dark fantasy series, two separate urban fantasy series, a dark fantasy/romance novella, a children's book and like three things it would best no one asked about), as well as cover images, character sketches and the occasional audiobook test. (I also run @sipofsnips so if that breaks, you can yell at me)

So if you’re into the dark and weird, or enjoy characters going through traumatizing events over and over again, you might like what you find here.

//This place be full of adult things, enter at your own risk//

You can find links to all the stuff, what I just mentioned, below.

[operationtimeguard]

the unknown lore

Olivia's master's thesis was on urban legends and their origins. She believed they shared similarities with traditional folklore and picked one to illustrate her point. The Unknown was believed to be a mysterious evil so heinous that investigating it almost immediately invited death. At least that was how the story went. And there were many stories. One story was of a woman in Greenville who disappeared without a trace on stage in front of a room full of witnesses. Her friend disappeared weeks later while trying to investigate what happened. The police were stumped. They had no clues or leads, and that mystery created the perfect storm for amplifying and spreading an urban legend.

Instead of going back home for spring break, Olivia headed to Greenville to investigate. She drove to the second-cheapest motel in town and began to set up in a small room that smelled of cigarette smoke, mold, and booze. She turned one wall into a kind of evidence board. She taped up articles and various theories on similar disappearances attributed to The Unknown throughout the country. She made connections with red string and yellow thumbtacks. Anyone walking into the motel room would think she had lost her mind.

There were many theories as to The Unknown's origin. Some said it was a malevolent entity conjured long ago by an ancient cult. Others believed it to be an alien that escaped from Area 51. Legend was it thrived in darkness and stole the voices of those it consumed so as to lure others to their doom.

The first newspaper articles Olivia found referenced a disappearance at a séance held in the 1800s. In the late 1950s, several college students mysteriously disappeared from a movie theater. Witnesses saw them go inside. Some remembered seeing them in their seats. But when the lights came up, they were gone. No one saw them leave. No trace of them was ever found. A projectionist claimed to have heard voices in the empty darkness of the theater later that night. But when he turned on the lights, no one was there. Then in the 1960s a group of teens disappeared while exploring an abandoned hospital believed to be haunted.

Stories and speculation arose to explain these mystifying disappearances. Some talked about a top-secret government research program run by the Office of Strategic Services in the 1950s. Project Apple-Pie. Mind control experiments using hallucinogenic drugs. Most of the records were destroyed in the '70s, but witnesses claim that experiments were performed on unsuspecting civilians in various settings and locations throughout the country, including movie theaters, hospitals and universities. Many believed these unethical experiments opened doorways to other dimensions which allowed evil things to enter the World.

Olivia wrote observations to pin to her evidence board. The Unknown dwells in darkness and can mimic its victims. Was it an evil entity? An extraterrestrial? A failed government experiment? Or just a garden variety serial killer allergic to publicity? She wanted to prove The Unknown was nothing more than modern-day folklore. And that investigation led here to this night, to this place, to this shabby motel room.

Yet she couldn't help but notice that the disappearances in Greenville included one detail the other stories didn't. The fog. And she half-remembered another urban legend with a thick, unnatural fog that somehow made people disappear. Maybe, she mused, the Greenville disappearances didn't relate to The Unknown but some other darkness.

For a moment Olivia wondered what would happen if one urban legend encountered another. She laughed at the idea and tempted fate by sketching a picture of what she thought The Unknown might look like. Then she pinned the sketch right in the middle of her evidence board, laughed nervously and waited to be consumed by The Unknown for having tried to define it. Anxiously, she stared at the windows and front door for seconds that turned to minutes and minutes that turned to hours.

But nothing happened.

Now it was after 2AM and Olivia was exhausted as she examined the articles and sipped cold coffee. So, when she first heard the whisper, she wondered if she imagined it.

"Olivia…

It seemed to come from the bathroom.

"Help.”

The lights in the room flickered.

"Who's there?"

Olivia stared with wide eyes at the closed door of the bathroom. Her mind was

playing tricks on her. Or-

Her friends had shown up to prank her.

"Ariella? Sean? Stop messing around…”

The lights continued to flicker as she edged closer to the bathroom. Fear spread in long waves through her, and a terrible realization bloomed within her that The Unknown was behind the bathroom door, was preparing to make her pay for her hubris. Something began to whisper her name again. But then the voice rose, cracked, and distorted in sudden panic as if the brooding creature behind the door were under attack.

An unknown horror filled Olivia's heart and left room for nothing else. She breathed deeply as cold sweat beaded on her forehead. She placed her hand on the doorknob. The lights turned off, but she could still hear the strangely inhuman cries. Then the lights turned back on, and she could see a strange black fog seeping through the bottom of the door.

Hesitantly, Olivia creaked the door open to see a bulky shape with frenzied tentacles being pulled into a thick mass of fog, vanishing slowly into the darkness like a dying shadow. The shrieking stopped suddenly, neighbors banged on the wall to turn down the TV, and Olivia stared intently at the black abyss that yawned before her. She wasn't sure what to do. Part of her wanted to run. But the other part wanted to know more. And as she considered what to do next, dozens of voices began to call out to her with promises of the unknown and the impossible and of unearthly things beyond human experience.