#who would have thought: my art gets better when i actually start taking classes on how to draw!

[thorns-without-a-rose]

lethargy

[thebibliosphere]

I both believe "poor people deserve art" and "artists deserve food", but it's hard to reconcile those beliefs. I blame capitalism. And I suppose it mostly matters who you're stealing from?

I don't mean to question you at all, I'm against people pirating your stories. I guess I was just wondering if you had more thoughts regarding the reconciliation the two beliefs I quoted above.

I think the reconciliation is working toward a future where things are better, and authors and artists don't have to beg people not to steal from them because they think every author is Stephen King, who wouldn't notice if you stole the pennies found under his couch when in reality most of us are hunting for spare change down the back of the couch because we are earning below minimum wage.

We need people to embrace the idea that art belongs to the working class, both in terms of consumption but also creation.

If you don't support the working-class creators, you'll only end up with rich fucks with no scope of the world beyond their own narrow view of privilege.

Indie creators are actually working very hard to change the way the industry works, and the publishing industry is shitting itself over it. They don't like the success some of us are having. It's why they keep upping prices while slashing corners on their own production (while never affecting the man at the top) to try and stay competitive within the rat race they've created.

They're not interested in the proliferation of art. They're not interested in making sure their authors can afford to live. They don't want more diversity. They don't want inclusion. They want profit at whatever the cost.

And while indie creators very much need to get paid because we live in a capitalistic society and everything is burning down around us, and a carton of eggs now costs more than what I earn per hour, our creativity is directly at odds with the type of profiteering big publishers want.

The money should go to the writers. Not the CEOs. The money should go to the workers in the print houses. Not the CEOs. No one needs the kind of wealth these people have. It's obscene. We need direct action against these conglomerates. We need unionization. We need a means to fight back so that we can make art and make it accessible.

So, how do we do that? I don't know. I'm just a very tired, disabled creator doing my best to keep my head above water. But I think getting people to realize that art and books are worth saving up for would be a good start.

That putting money in the pockets of creators is just as important as your own enjoyment of their art. Because if there aren't any artists, you've got nothing.

Getting them involved with their local libraries would also be a great start. Educating them on how the industry works is part of that. The number of people telling me they had no idea libraries paid authors is staggering. And that's intentional. It's a by-product of right-wing propaganda to make you think libraries are worthless and just sap taxpayers' money.

They're not.

If they were, the fash wouldn't be trying so hard to take them away.

Basically, we need working-class solidarity and for certain people on the left to rid themselves of the idea that just because something isn't borne of manual labor, it doesn't have worth. We need the artists and the dreamers as much as we need to bricklayers and the craftsmen. Otherwise, what's the fucking point of it all?

[eros7hanatos]

➽ Falling Grades

Professor!Dottore x Student!afab reader

Warnings: Teacher-student relationship, modern au, age gap, cockwarming, bribery, smut.

Word count: 1033

A/N: very heavily inspired by a character ai bot and another fic I read, the fic is by actuallysaiyan. She’s a goddess 🧎‍♀️🧎‍♀️🧎‍♀️.Even though I don’t play genshin anymore I’m on my knees for this man.

art creds: IllaOhara

You made a mistake when you decided to be distracted by your phone instead of listening to Dottore’s lecture. Preoccupied by your distraction, the professor’s hand hits your desk with a loud thud, causing you to jump. 

“It seems my lecture on careless students wasn’t clear enough for you.” His voice sent chills down your spine. “Put the phone away.” He said, as he walked back to his desk to continue the lecture.

“And I expect to see you in my office after classes.”

Soon the day was coming to an end, all your classes being finished. You made your way to Dottore’s office, being located on the highest floor in the building. As you knocked on his office door you bit your lip and took a deep breath. 

“Enter.” You pushed the door open, revealing the messy desk, covered in research papers and was that an ink spill? There were also multiple pictures and diagrams of the human body. Dottore was sitting on his chair, writing something on a piece of paper. “Do you know why I called you into my office, miss?” he asks, finally looking up from his papers. “Because I used my phone?” you answered. What else? He smiles, but it was quickly replaced with a stern and cold look on his face. “You’re partially correct.” he simply says as he then opens a drawer next to him, taking out a small stack of papers. He then takes the most top one, revealing it to you. You almost instantly recognize the paper. He slides you your latest test, the low score clearly written at the front of the paper before continuing to slide you other past tests, all low scores. You were clearly distracted by something too much to focus, your phone was only partially at fault. And Dottore knew that.

“Care to explain these?” You bit inside your mouth. “I’m so sorry. I…I had trouble with the material. I’ll do better next time, I promise.” You say as he lets out a sarcastic laugh, leaning back into his chair. “‘Sorry’ can’t fix everything. We should solve the cause of your dropping grades and I believe I know just what the problem is.” he gets up from his chair and walks towards you, towering over you. Your breath hitched, inhaling the expensive cologne he wore as his body was merely inches away from yours. Suddenly you felt small and trapped. Your heart rate increasing by the second. You weren’t really sure where this conversation was leading, but you really hoped that you wouldn’t have to repeat the year, or at worst, be expelled. You wanted to finish your degree, but who would’ve thought that one of your professors would be so goddamn sexy.

“I know I’m a distraction, miss. It’s written all over your face during my classes.” Dottore says, crossing his arms as he watches your expression turn frantic. “Professor Dottore, I-” you start, now worried that you might actually be expelled. “I didn’t mean to! I’ll…I’ll make it up!” you propose, quickly thinking of a way out. Dottore pauses for a moment, carefully considering your words before grabbing your wrist and pulling you forward. Causing you to nearly crash into his perfectly sculpted chest.You look up into his deep red eyes with pleading eyes.

“Seeing you’re so desperate, I have a few options for you.” His lips curve up into a small smirk as you look up at him with hope and desperation. You prepare yourself for what he’ll say next, but no matter how much preparation you had would make you prepared for this.

“You can either stay after classes every afternoon and study, along with a few other students. Learn a thing or two from your peers. Or,” he paused to give himself a smug grin, “You can sit on my cock while I tutor you myself.”

You swear you fainted for a second or two as soon as he finishes his sentence. He can’t actually be serious, can he? You look at him, cheeks flushed as he looks down and laughs at you once more, amused by the events unfolding in front of him. However you surprise him when you choose to sit on his cock.

And that’s how you ended up with his long length so deep inside you as he explains embryology to you. How ironic. Whenever you whined or tried to move he would slap your thigh and tell you to focus. “Do you understand?” he asks, after he finished his explanations. You slowly nod your head, squirming, causing him to harshly slap your thigh once more, the red spot on your thigh slowly growing in size and in shade. You whine out at the slap, trying to stay still but of no avail. “Do I have to remind you again that this is a punishment and not a prize?” You shake your head, keeping still as you grab the wooden desk in front of you, nails scraping on the wooden surface. You can’t help it. The way your cunt pulses around his length drives you crazy. It felt so good but so torturous without any movement. 

Dottore, on the other hand, was entertained by your reactions. He never expected for you to accept his offer so quickly. He knew you had a crush on him but he’d never guess that you’d be so willing to go this far to have this sort of relationship with him. However, he couldn't deny the fact that having your wet, heat around his cock made him more motivated. 

“That’s all for today.” he said, placing down the papers in his hands once he saw the time. It had already gotten quite late. “Today, you did good, amazing even. If this continues, you’ll improve to a B student in no time. And if you throw in a treat, I might consider bumping your grade up to even an A.” You whined as he thrusted up into you at the word ‘bumping’, your cunt convulsing around his cock once more. 

How could you resist such a good offer? 

[luvkyu]

heart stop ( jung sungchan ) part one

sungchan x male reader

sungchan finally talks to his crush !!

content : 1.9k words, fluff, mentions of nudity/mature themes, uni au, gym bro!sungchan x artist!reader

( a/n ) PART ONE OF THE COLLAB W @jaemmphilia !!! just a heads up - part two is nsfw !! so pls take that into account before you start reading <3

part two

"do you think y/n's into guys?"

"huh??" eunseok sputtered at the sudden question, basically choking on his food.

sungchan stifled a snicker, his ears growing a light shade of red. he stared down at the chopsticks in his hand with a love sick smile. eunseok cleared his throat as he watched the other twirl the utensils between his fingers.

"are we talking about taro's friend from his art class?" eunseok asked.

"yeah. i think i have a small crush on him."

"a crush on who?" shotaro suddenly chimed in as he sat with them in the cafeteria.

"y/n," sungchan answered a bit shyly.

"l/n???" shotaro's brows were raised in shock.

sungchan looked at eunseok, as if for guidance, before turning back to shotaro and saying a quiet "yes".

shotaro thought for a moment, then nodded in approval.

"you two would be cute as fuck together," he said before taking a bite of his lunch.

sungchan smiled at the idea of himself with y/n. he leaned over toward his friend eagerly, "do you know if he's gay?"

"how should i know?.. but i'm about to meet him at the art studio to work together if you wanna come," shotaro offered.

"really??"

"sure, why not. we're just taking some time to work on new oil paintings, it's not an actual class or anything so you can come along."

sungchan nodded happily at the idea.

"what are you gonna do if he's straight?" eunseok asked teasingly.

"cry," sungchan muttered in response.

y/n stared at the canvas in front of him. his creativity was having a hard time flowing today. maybe he was overworking, or maybe it was just an off day. either way, it was annoying. he was supposed to be productive today. instead, a blank canvas was mocking him while his hands fidgeted with a paintbrush.

he sighed and set his brush down against his easel.

"what's wrong, babe?"

y/n looked up to see shotaro strutting into the studio, followed by a taller boy he hadn't met before.

"i told you not to call me that," y/n scolded while rolling his eyes.

"you're right. sorry, honey."

y/n turned in his seat to face his friend better, "that's just worse."

shotaro chuckled. as he sat down at his own easel, he grabbed another seat for the friend he brought along. y/n refused to embarrass himself by looking at the stranger for too long, but the small glance he did get was enough for him to conclude that the male was drop dead gorgeous.

"oh, y/n! this is my friend sungchan. he wanted to tag along cause he has no life outside of classes and the gym. sungchan, this is y/n!"

sungchan glared daggers at shotaro, before looking back to y/n with a wide smile.

"hi! nice to meet you. i've seen you around campus a little," sungchan greeted.

"really? i think i've seen you some too."

sungchan nodded, almost giddy at that answer. silence fell on them as shotaro set up his canvas and y/n looked through his paint colors just to have something to do.

"wow, you guys are great at this," shotaro said sarcastically, mainly to piss off sungchan.

"i'm terrible at talking to people, leave me alone," y/n defended with a small laugh.

sungchan watched y/n lean against his easel, resting his chin against his palm in defeat. he looked so perfect, even when feeling dejected.

"is something wrong?" sungchan asked. y/n looked at him again. he was a little surprised sungchan was even asking.

"ah.. i just feel kinda drained. i'm having a hard time working on this, to be honest."

"take a break," shotaro chimed in.

"but i just started."

"take a longer break. we've had a lot of assignments back to back lately, go rest for the day."

y/n thought about it for a moment. he sighed and nodded at the idea before starting to pack up his supplies.

shotaro turned back to sungchan, gesturing silently toward y/n in hopes that his friend would get the hint. sungchan looked at him in confusion. shotaro, in turn, huffed at his cluelessness. he pulled his phone out and went to his messages.

taro :

BRO, GO.

ask him out, go 'rest' together 🛏️

sungchan rolled his eyes at the texts. he gave the male another stink eye before typing a response.

sung :

I DIDNT WANNA TALK TO HIM JUST TO GET LAID

taro :

but it is part of the reason right

sung :

osaki shotaro istg

taro :

ALRIGHT ALRIGHT BUT STILL ASK HIM OUT, U HAVE THE PERFECT WINDOW RIGHT HERE

sungchan looked up from his phone, biting his lip as anxiety shot through his body.

y/n finished packing up his bag and showed the two of them a tired smile.

"i'll see you guys later. it was nice to meet you, sungchan."

sungchan nodded and smiled back, now watching his crush exit the studio. his smile fell as he turned back around to see shotaro giving him a disappointed frown.

"you're a dumbass, sung."

"sungchan!"

sungchan looked up as he took a drink of his water, seeing eunseok and shotaro walking toward him.

"hey guys," he greeted while getting up from the bench press. he wiped around his face with a small towel as his friends came closer to him.

"did you just finish up?" shotaro asked.

"yeah, i'm gonna head back to the dorm now."

"boo, we could've worked out together."

sungchan rolled his eyes. "it's a good thing you still have each other then," he teased, patting shotaro's shoulder as he slung his gym bag over his back.

"hey, how'd it go with y/n yesterday? you ask him out?" eunseok asked before the other could leave.

"no, i-"

"he chickened out," shotaro teased.

sungchan sighed, but nodded. "i was too nervous."

"well we just saw him sitting outside by the campus arboretum if you wanna go try again," eunseok said.

"really?"

eunseok nodded, "go for it."

sungchan smiled a thanks and grabbed his water bottle before finally departing.

"..i doubt y/n is straight," shotaro mumbled as he and eunseok waved him goodbye.

"oh, me too," eunseok agreed.

sungchan began walking in the direction of the arboretum, looking around for the boy that had been on his mind way too much lately.

finally, he spotted y/n on a bench sketching a few flowers. he took a deep breath and walked over to join him.

"hey y/n!"

y/n looked up from his sketchbook, almost choking on thin air. sungchan's muscle shirt didn't hide a thing, and his slightly messy hair and tall stature worked well in his favor. with the way y/n was staring at him, or practically gawking, sungchan was now pretty certain y/n was attracted to men.

y/n quickly cleared his throat and averted his eyes. he looked down at his sketchbook, then back up strictly to sungchan's face.

"hi," he said quietly, "what're you doing out here?"

"was just on my way home and thought i'd take a walk through here. it's really pretty."

y/n nodded happily and took a look around. "yeah, i love being out here."

"can i sit with you?"

y/n nodded almost instantly. he moved over a bit to give the other more room on the bench. sungchan sat and sighed, actually very much enjoying the fresh air. he leaned back for a moment and let the sun wash over his face. one arm was hanging off the back of the bench, while the other raked a hand through his messy hair.

y/n was in awe, needless to say.

"so what're you drawing?"

"just some flower studies," y/n answered. "i wanted to add some flowers to my next painting so i'm just practicing a little."

"is it okay if i ask to see?" sungchan asked cautiously.

"oh, sure! you can look through the whole sketchbook, i don't mind. it's mostly random sketches."

sungchan nodded eagerly and took the book from y/n's hands, making sure to brush against his fingers just a little bit. he smiled to himself, now knowing the effect he had on y/n.

sungchan flipped through the pages delicately. he was trying not to crinkle or smudge anything, especially the ones done in pencil. y/n was right though - the sketches were pretty random. from people, to small household items, to cloud formations.

it was when sungchan found a more interesting page that he stopped flipping through. the sketches showed a naked man in two different poses, one leaning against what looked like a washroom counter, and the other laying on a bed with a messy sheet draped just over a couple parts of himself. sungchan looked up with wide eyes.

"oh, that's um," y/n didn't know whether to be proud or embarrassed. he was somehow both. "that was just a guy i had a thing with a couple months ago."

"these are amazing, y/n," sungchan praised. he continued flipping through, though his mind was still on the nude sketches.

"thank you," y/n blushed a bit as sungchan finally got to the end of the book.

"i really like the nude ones. you draw people really well," sungchan complimented while closing the book. when he looked up again, his face was closer to y/n's than he thought. his eyes instantly shifted to the male's lips, it was as if there was a magnet between them.

y/n could hear his heartbeat in his ears. sungchan was even more beautiful up close, and he was growing more attracted to him by the second.

sungchan lightly cleared his throat after a moment, trying not to stare at the pair of lips he so desperately wanted to kiss. making y/n uncomfortable was the last thing he wanted.

"are you going to the bonfire party tonight?" sungchan asked.

"i dunno, my friend invited me but i'm not usually into parties."

"well, i think you should go."

y/n met sungchan's eyes again, "hm? why?"

sungchan blushed. he didn't mean to blatantly give away that he wanted y/n there, but he might as well roll with it now.

"cause i'll have a much better time if i get to see you," sungchan answered with entirely pink cheeks. he could tell y/n was a blushing mess as well, despite how confident he tried to seem.

with a sigh, y/n looked up at the clouds. "is this how you pick up all your guys?"

sungchan laughed lightly, "actually no, my heart is pounding more than it ever has, i think." he let out a large exhale with this, which triggered more laughter between the two.

y/n found it endearing how obviously nervous sungchan was. here was this hunk of a man trying to hit on him, but he was so jittery and smitten that it really just made him adorable. y/n smiled as he thought about it. his eyes met the other's again while nodding, "alright, i'll be there."

sungchan's smile quickly grew at his crush's decision. he nodded and started getting up.

"i'll see you in a little while then," he said while giving y/n's head a gentle pat, his hand lingering against his hair. y/n nodded and watched him begin to walk away. he was speechless as he stared after sungchan. let's just say, the view from the back was just as good as the view from the front.

taglist ★! :

@kssyivo @jaemmphilia @vkooksupremacy @haocovr @astrozuya

[bellamoooon]

Childhood best friends to lovers, i love this concept a little too much and got carried away lol <33

She’d never know, at least that’s what he convinced himself of.

She’d never know that she was like a breath of fresh air after drowning for hours, that she was like the first bit of light rising up in the morning, that she was like the feeling of warmth when getting praised, that talking to her was like hearing his favorite song for the first time again, that her laugh was engraved in his brain and he could hear it even when she wasn’t around, that her presence radiated light that seeped right into his bones, that seeing her was like a shot of espresso immediately waking every nerve in his system, that her smile gleamed with such brightness it could light up the whole world in an eternal darkness, that her eyes said so much more than anything she had ever said, that she was a perfectly aligned harmony when everything else was out of tune.

She’d never know, but he did.

She lived within him; His whole life had been reduced to her.

“Wow Art, this is really good!” his literature teacher spoke as she read his paper, “y’know, if the whole tennis thing doesn’t work out, you could be the next big writer, I mean it.”

For his literature class, as a “creative exploration exercise”—his teacher calls it—they had been assigned to write a paper on someone of something which they could understand as unrequited love, of course he had chosen you, because what better example than you and Art.

You and Art have known each other since diapers due to your parents being best friends from their college days up to the present day, which sort of brought the two of you together one way or another, but you wouldn’t have it any other way, and neither would art.

Growing you with you might’ve been one of the best things he has ever been able to experience, he wishes people could actually get to feel what its like to be shined on by your light, for him, it truly is unearthly every time.

Sure, you two had distance shoved in your faces when he went to MRTA, but when he returned home for breaks, it was like nothing changed, it was just you and Art.

And of course as cliché as it may be, the inevitable happened, Art began to fall in love with you.

At first, he tried to convince himself that it was just the affection he had for his best friend, but he had no way to deny it. From the second he stopped just seeing you, but when he started seeing you.

He could try to blame it on his hormones and being a teenager, but everything else contradicted that.

In the summer, seeing you in your two-piece swimsuit didn’t seem the same, especially since you had started to grow into your big girl body, as his nana said.

At Christmas when he saw you walk into the living room dressed as Cindy Lou who from shoes to hair, with a goofy smile, but why did it make him blush? You seemed the same, you did this every year.

Patrick mocked him for having a small picture of the two of you in his wallet, but he didn’t care, whenever he was having a bad day, or missed home, he’d look at the picture, instantly erasing anything that disturbed his thoughts.

But you’d never know that. And he was okay with that. For the most part.

A couple of weeks he went back home for spring break, he was feeing at ease, he’d see his parents, his nana, and…you.

“Artie! My sweet boy!” his grandmother called out as he walked out of the car to the front porch with a suitcase in his hand, and a wide smile. His grandmother ran up to him wrapping her arms around him, her warmth immediately transferring to his skin, he was home.

“Nana, hey, how’ve you been?” he spoke with a sweet tone as he hugged her back. Sure, tennis was his whole life, but coming back home felt like a weight was lifted off his back, he doesn’t have to be THE Art Donaldson, he was just…Art.

“You look so tired baby boy, let me take your bags, go take a shower” his nana said as she shut the door behind her.

“Nana, seriously don’t worry—“

“Will you just let me take care of you while you’re here? You’ve gotta do all this yourself at school, but not here Artie” and well, there isn’t much arguing with nana Donaldson, it’s just how it’s been his whole life.

After his shower, Art walked in his room with a calm breath and loose muscles, how he needed that warm shower, as he walked over to his bag, which was placed next to the window he began to look for some clothes.

He wasn’t one to feel prying eyes on him but by reflex, Art lifted his head as he looked through the window, it was you.

You covered your mouth clearly giggling as he looked down at himself completely naked only covered by a towel wrapped around his waist, “fuck me” he muttered as he looked up once again but now face completely flushed and the tips of his ears burning red.

He waved awkwardly as he pulled the curtains closed feeling flustered, he wanted to get his mind off of her, so he said, how’s that going? Not great.

His nana looked up as he came downstairs with a puzzled expression, your name left his lips.

“What about her?” She asked as she left a plated grilled cheese in front of him.

“Why didn’t you tell me she was home for the break?” She laughed, why is she laughing?

“Sweetie, I thought it was obvious, she always come back home for breaks” she shook her head as she smiled playfully, “though, I think there’s something about her being here that bothers you”

“What— no, no, it doesn’t bother me, I just— would’ve expected something else, I don’t know”

“You sure?” She slid the paper across the counter with delicacy, “are you absolutely sure baby?”

“Nana! I told you to stop snooping, come on!” He said taking the paper as quickly as possible, could this day get any worse?

“One, I wasn’t snooping, it fell out of your backpack, and two, Artie, you know you can tell me anything, right?” He lowered his head ever so slightly as he grabbed the sandwich to then take a bite.

“I know.” He said once he swallowed, she leaned against the counter with curious eyes.

“She’s good, she’s smart, and really talented, did you hear she put out a song?” He lifted his brows in surprise, you really had picked music, over psychology, huh…

“Huh…well that’s great, I’m sure she’ll do great with all that” his nana scoffed as she muttered a small “art…” with a warning tone, “what? I mean it”

“You gotta give me more than that after that thing you wrote, Art, I taught you better than this.”

“I just—! I don’t know what to say, Nana, that’s the problem. Not to you, not to Patrick and most definitely not to her” he spilled, fiddling nervously with his hands, “I’d screw our friendship, one sided feelings aren’t worth risking years of trust.”

“Well you never know Artie, sometimes holding onto those feelings is painful, even if something is on the line, it isn’t worth it if you’re hurting” she was right, but Art would never say that out loud, this was all too much for him.

“It’s just…it’s not easy”

“Well my boy, no one said love was easy, and sometimes, just sometimes, the most complicated loves, are the most beautiful ones” he listened intently as he finished off the grilled cheese, she was right, maybe all he needed to do was tell her.

You had to know.

So there he was at 2:34 a.m throwing small pebbles at your window, just like he did years ago to then go the skate park at midnight and sit at the top of the ramps while you talked till sunrise.

“Stop throwing rocks Donaldson, you’ll wake the dog” you came out the door in pjs but wrapped in a jacket, he turned with a confused expression “I came running down when I felt the first two rocks” you laughed softly as you blushed slightly, God you missed this.

It’s like being kids all over again.

“So how’s tennis and all, Mr. Stanford?” You asked as you swung your hanging feet off the ramp.

“Y’know tennis is the same always, trust me, you don’t care” he laughed as he shook his head, “but Stanford is nice, just not the same without you and Patrick on my ass all the time”

“Ah, of course, because that’s the biggest change you’ve had since we were kids up to today” you rolled your eyes as you tucked a strand of hair behind your ear.

“Yeah…” he chuckled dryly as he looked away, could he be more obvious, goddamn.

“What?”

“No— no, it’s nothing” he insisted.

“Art I know you, it’s not nothing, what’s up?” You pushed as he looked up at the sky biting his lip while humming, “Art?”

“Hm?” He turned to look at you again, you lifted a brow silently asking once again, “ah…I— I love you” he blurted out unable to stop himself.

You opened your mouth but nothing came out.

“I have since the summer you turned fifteen, you just— you kinda started to seem different to me, and I— I fell in love with you.” He sighed, “and I know timing sucks and it’s gonna make things weird, but if I didn’t tell you, it would eat me alive, y’know it’s been so long—“ his rambling got cut off as your lips crashed onto his almost immediately.

His body tensed up completely, the feeling of your lips foreign to his, but so familiar at the same time, the reality was better than any dream he had ever managed to build up in his mind, your plump lips tasting faintly like cherry lip gloss, he was most likely dreaming, he thought, cause there is no way he had told you how he felt, and even less probabilities of him kissing you.

As you pulled away, he found himself instinctively following you with parted lips and eyes shut, he was so high with your mere presence, a soft giggle from you snapped him back to reality as his eyes opened up slowly, pupils blown, he looked as if he had just seen God.

“…Did you just—“

“Kiss you?” You ask slightly tilting your head with a giddy smile, “seems like it”

You shrugged as you snorted softly.

“Oh.” Oh was the only thing his brain could process for him to say still stunned.

“Okay— so you tell me you love me, but I kiss you and all you say is ‘oh’, I mean—“ you said as you licked your lips as you thought.

“I just— I didn’t think you’d— like…you…like…” he fumbled as he tried to pull a thought out of the back of his brain.

“Art, you’re telling me you didn’t expect me to kiss you, when I’ve literally had this…I’ve been in love with you since we were kids, and I’ve been as subtle as a marching band” you tell him as a blush creeps up your face while you chuckle nervously.

“You’re kidding, right?” You shake your head with a small grin, he scoffs as he covers his face with his hands, “am I just that dense?”

“Not dense, more like…oblivious” you laugh as he glares back playfully.

Then there’s beat of silence, that moment where suddenly everything had fallen into place, he’s been pining over you for years, and you’ve waited for the right moment for as long as you can remember, but then the question settles in, what now?

“Uhm…art…?” You turn to him with hesitation, he hums in response “what now? I mean, you’re going back to cali after break and I’m going back to New York…”

“Hm…I hadn’t really thought that far into it” he said softly turning to look at you with gentle eyes, “what now?” He asks back softly.

“I— I like you, Art, I’m in it for the long game.” You spoke honestly as you fiddled with your fingers.

“I’ll play the long game. You’re out there, I’m out there too, we’ll see each other in summer, thanksgiving, and Christmas…I mean it, I— don’t just like you.” He confessed as he chewed on the inside of his cheek nervously.

“I can do that” you said softly, smiling back at him, letting out a small breath, “long game…?”

Your hand cupped his cheek making him face you, he smiled as he nodded, looking down at your lips and back at your eyes “long game.” He muttered as he leaned in kissing you once again, holding you gently in a fear of breaking you.

That right there. That was it, you were the living proof of unrequited love for him.

[wardenparker]

At the Ballet

Joel Miller x female reader A PedroStories Secret Santa Gift!

Rating: General audience, but please remember that this blog is always 18+ Word Count: 1.4k Warnings: Cursing, one that got away, slight angst from yearning. Summary: When Tommy's girlfriend gets tickets to the ballet, Sarah is excited to attend. But Joel never could have expected who he would find there, or that he would find himself grateful for a night at at the ballet. Notes: Happy PedroStories Secret Santa 2024 to @pascalispretty! I hope your holiday season is lovely and bright, and that you enjoy your story! Swan Lake was one of the first ballets I ever saw, so that really stuck in my mind, and I loved the idea of Joel finding his way to the arts because Sarah loves them.

“I don’t understand why the hell we’re doing this.” Joel grumbled, inspecting himself in the mirror as Tommy tossed his well-loved plaid flannel back onto the bed and put a sports jacket into his hands instead.

“Because she’s my girlfriend.” Tommy reminded him for the fourteen time.

“Okay, fine.” Joel huffed. He rolled his eyes at the jacket and hung it on the nearest piece of furniture, wondering if he even had a clean button-down shirt in his closet. “I don’t understand why I’m doing this.”

“Because you’re my fucking brother.” Tommy shot back. He’s actually got a real tie on, not a clip on or a bolo, and he’s trying so damn hard for this girl. “And because Sarah is excited to go. So finish getting dressed, you grumpy ass, and I’ll buy you a drink at the theater.”

“You should have led with that.” He’s busting his brother’s chops, but it’s worth doing. Tommy’s girlfriend has been around long enough that she’s been introduced to Sarah and started coming over for dinner semi-regularly, and she had somehow gotten ahold of four tickets to the ballet. Sarah had been thrilled at the news and immediately started planning what she was going to wear and begging her Dad and uncle to take them all out to dinner as well.

And, well, Joel Miller has never been able to deny his daughter anything in the world.

It’s with that in mind that Joel is begrudgingly cleaning himself up tonight. Because his little girl is down the hall putting on a dressed and doing her hair, and she looked so damn much like her mother when he had passed her room earlier that it had made his heart ache. Anything for Sarah. Anything at all.

Ballet Austin is a little bit of a drive away since they live on the edge of the city, but he doesn’t mind. Of anything, Joel actually does like driving. It gives him a sense of peace. Or at least it usually does – right now Sarah, Tommy, and Tommy’s girlfriend Sonja are chatting animatedly about the show that they are all going to see. Swan Lake apparently has a hard plot to follow, if he’s overhearing this right. Or maybe it’s just that ballets have no dialogue. Either way, he doesn’t really care. He’s going for all of them to enjoy themselves, not to understand what the hell is going on onstage.

At least, that was what he thought.

He had never expected to open the program in his seat and see you there. Clear as day, though, your photograph and name with the character name Odile were listed right there on the page listing principal dancers.

Suddenly, Joel is the biggest ballet convert in the world.

There is plenty of good reason for it, though. More than just being you, the dancing is gorgeous. Not that he doesn’t remember what a good dancer you were when you were younger. Teaching him how not to embarrass himself at the homecoming dance. Doing the choreography from Footloose and goofing off instead of playing whatever sport was supposed to be the assignment in gym class.

He knew you had taken dance classes, but he had never really bothered to find out more. To ask what kind. To pay some damn attention and get to know you better. He should have been so much better. He knew it even then, which is why he could do nothing but kick himself in the pants when Alex Draper asked you out at the beginning of junior year of high school before he could summon up the courage.

That was the year Sarah’s mother had moved to town, and he had started dating the new girl instead. The whole thing stank of what might have been.

******

Sarah begs Joel to take her to the stage door after the show, hoping to meet some of the dancers and tell them how amazing their performance was. She’s always liked theater and this wouldn’t be the first time that he took her to a stage door, but the chance that he might run into you has him smoothing his shirt and straightening his tie and practically thanking Tommy for forcing him to dress nicely.

“What’s got Joel so self-conscious?” Sonja whispered from the top of the alley where she and Tommy waited and cuddled in the dim streetlight.

“You accidentally managed to lead him right to the first girl he ever loved.” Tommy whispers back, chuckling quietly into her shoulder as he leaves a kiss on her neck. “One of the dancers that Sarah wants to meet so desperately.”

“And we’re back here?” Sonja huffs. She smirks and nudges Tommy, obviously trying to point him down the alley. “Joel Miller as a boy in love? I gotta see this.”

Sarah is, in point of fact, the only fan at this stage door tonight. And while Joel hates that on principle because it means that she doesn’t really have anyone to share her unbridled enthusiasm with, he’s also glad. Her presence there is delighting the dancers and every single one of them is stopping to sign her program and take a photo with her, all of them giving her a big hug in the process.

The young woman who danced Odette is lingering, seemingly waiting for something or someone, or maybe just enjoying the attention, when the stage door opens again, and you walk through.

“Sweetie, come over here!” Odette calls, waving you over. This is what she was waiting for, apparently, and her smile beams as she introduces young Sarah Miller to the dancer she became so enamored with during the show.

It really isn’t too often that you’re asked to sign programs, and you are beyond flattered to have Sarah ask for an autograph and a photo. You stand and chat with the young teen for a few minutes before even registering that she is young enough that she should have chaperones nearby, and that is when you look up to find him staring at you.

“Joel?” It has been almost fifteen years since you saw him last. Since your high school graduation day. But you would still recognize him anywhere.

“Hey.” His hands are in his pockets, but he still has that lopsided grin and perfect single dimple that made all the girls swoon. He still aims it like a weapon, always able to make the whoever he was talking to feel like the only person in the room.

“Hey yourself.” The warmth in your cheeks is unmistakable, and for good reason. Joel Miller didn’t just grow up good, he grew up damn sexy.

“Dad, you know her?” Sarah wheels around with a bright, excited look on her face.

“Dad?” Your eyebrow is raised, but you do remember hearing about Joel getting married shortly after high school, and something vague about him having a kid. Your mother had given you the news she heard while out grocery shopping one day. Just the same way that she had given you the news a year or two later when that same habit of grocery store eavesdropping yielded the news that Joel was now single again after a nasty divorce.

“This is my daughter, Sarah.” He introduces her proudly, both hands on her shoulders and a puffed up chest saying more than simple words ever could about how much he adores his little girl. He introduces you to Sarah next, explaining you used to be friends in school. “She—we— really loved the show tonight.”

“Well, thank you. Everyone in the cast is just incredible.”

“Yeah, you are!” Sarah chirps, her eyes wide as she looks between you and her father. “Dad! You should invite your friend to come have ice cream with us!”

Joel’s smile grows, tucking into the corner of his mouth like a secret, but he lobs that fastball of an offer back to you politely. “I’m sure she has other things to do tonight, honey. Maybe another time, sweetie.” He doesn’t want to say no. He can feel his heart hammering out of his chest and he wonders how you managed to get even more beautiful when you were already the prettiest girl he had ever seen in his whole life.

Looking back to your friends, you lend them a quick smile before facing Joel again and shaking your head. “Not at all,” you tell him – both of them, technically. “Free as a bird.”

Your smile grows, and Sarah matches it. “Free as a swan,” she insists.

“Right.” Joel joins in that laugh, air rushing out of his chest as he gets nervous all over again. “Free as a swan.”

He’s not going to fuck it up this time. He’s not. He’s not going to let you slip through his fingers a second time…

[justatypicalwizard]

Meta-isekai | K. Bakugo ✧ Act II Scene I

-`♡´- In which Bakugo gets isekaied into a shoyo romance. -`♡´-

Peak stupidity ⋆ ˚｡ ⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡ ⋆

Act II ༊*·˚

Scene I: Winning the martial arts competition (easy)

ʚɞ “Okay, so you said I’m a part of the martial arts club, yeah?” Bakugo whispered to The Cat sitting on his desk. He was currently getting ready for school and scheming the first move in their big plan.

“Yes, and there’s an upcoming event connected with it today.” The Cat answered, its tail drawing lazy circles in the air behind it.

“The school sports day, I’ve heard about it from others. I learned that the previous Katsuki signed up for tug of war.”

“Yes, but because you haven’t been to a training yet you don’t know that in the morning, during the sports day, you will be competing against other schools in the finale of the regional martial arts cup.”

This made Bakugo turn around and crook a brow. Getting to kick some asses early in the morning only to get to kick more asses in the afternoon? What a pleasure.

“Not a problem.” He shrugged.

“It will be extremely important. The school didn’t really gain any significant wins for a while now so everyone is rooting for your club to break the hoodoo. With my boost to luck Crush will also be watching.”

“Not a problem.” The blonde repeated turning back towards his wardrobe.

ʚɞ Certainly, winning the martial arts cup wasn’t a problem. Bakugo, although trained in many forms of contact force, refreshed his memory on the rules of the particular style that he was competing in. Finding the training clothes in a locker at school he went to extra-early training just before the cup. It was mostly good stretching, briefing about the strategy, pairing and rules, as well as some light combats to get the team into a fighting spirit.

ʚɞ Some of the faces of his teammates looked familiar, as if he saw them previously. They must have been people from his UA but from other classes, that he only passed on the corridors. Anyway, they all seemed to get along well while not being too intimate with each other.

ʚɞ Curious students quickly filled the gymnasium. Most were from UA, but there were also a bunch from other schools as guests cheering for their players. It was getting louder and louder up to the point when the overlooking coach began the competition.

ʚɞ No all of the present competitors were actually taking part. Some of them came as substitute players, others weaseled their way in to skip school. The chosen group was fairly slim, Bakugo being one of them.

ʚɞ All of his combats went quite quick, no one standing a change against him. It made the crowd cheer every time he stepped onto the mat. People pointed fingers at him, girls whispered and dudes clapped their hands loud every time he won.

ʚɞ When the cup was over, the medals were handed (gold for the blonde) and respects were paid, Bakugo got swarmed by his teammates and their friends.

“How did you do it? Did you get superpowers overnight?” One of his teammates laughed.

Some of them started to point out how shaken they were with his form. He was good, that’s why he played a part in the finale, but not that good! At one point the discussion got loud and out of Bakugo’s control. They started asking questions.

“I trained at home.” He gave them a white lie. He did train at home - back in his universe, with the thought of encountering actual villains, being in danger and relying his life solely on his skill and power. They didn’t need to know that part.

“Soo cool! Did the coach help you?”

“No, I’ve done it by myself. Just did some research.” He shrugged it off.

“But why didn’t you tell us?” Another one of his teammates, a rather thin guy who sat the whole tournament on the bench, asked.

This stirred some interest. You could have trained with us. We would all get better. You could have at least showed us where you learned all these things so we could try ourselves.

“Have you done it to be the best? Behind our backs?” The thin subsidiary crossed his arms on his chest.

All of them looked his way. Some had eyes wide, the thought never occurred to them but now, when it had been said aloud, it was the only scenario they could think about. Others glanced away and clammed up, they seemed to have expected it. Did the other Katsuki have had some quarrels with them before?

“Tell them you trained to impress someone.” Suddenly, Bakugo felt a weight on his shoulder. The Cat’s whiskers tickled his cheek. “She’s watching.”

From the corner of his eye he saw her, the Crush. Indeed she was standing with a group of friends, the same from the classroom Bakugo noted, and listening to the conversation. The quarrel must have created a small commotion. 

Bakugo shrugged to get The Cat off but it clawed his collarbone making the boy bite the inside of his cheek not to hiss in pain.

“Say it!”

“Is it true? Did you do it to outperform all of us?”

“Say it, she’s watching!”

“Don’t be silly, you’re accusing the person who gave our school a gold medal of training on his own, in his own free time? If anything, you should be ashamed you didn’t think about it yourself.” A guy too tall for his own good (and his back) smirked and pointed an accusatory finger towards the slim subsidiary.

At that time nobody, including Bakugo, knew that the tall guy, in a green shirt with the number 10 on the front and back, was a secret fan of the explosive blonde. The previous Katsuki might have recognised him. Number 10 tried to join the martial arts club but his physics were not the best for such a sport. The coach did try him out but soon they both realised he was not meant to be. At that time he shrugged it off as too-tall-for-this but in reality he was too-lazy-for-this.

Number 10 was not eager enough to overcome the weaknesses that made him a mediocre individual sports’ player. Instead he opted for disciplines where one competed with a team, a team that would make up for his imperfections. He was fine with it. He was tall and had long arms which gave him a headstart in basketball. Still, Number 10 admired people who could become stars on their own. It was a jealousy free type of admiration. Adding his natural nonchalance to the mixture, he had no problem standing up for Bakugo.

“I’m not even surprised he didn’t tell the team. Everybody knows that your manager has a boyfriend in a different school and she tells him all the juicy stuff. If I were Bakugo I wouldn’t want the enemy team to learn about my technique either.”

Another thing that nobody, including Bakugo, knew about Number 10, and what saved the day, was that he was a massive gossip.

“That’s true. Sorry.” Someone caught up with the basketball player and the air shifted from anger and disappointment to cheers and back slaps once again. 

“So, did you really train on your own to win for us?” His teammates pried.

“Hah, as if I ever told you nerds!” He clicked his tongue but smirked.

It was not meant to be mean but cocky, playful. The blonde had no clue what the other Bakugo was up to but now he was in town and he will simply be himself until he achieves his goal. Grabbing his water bottle he sprayed some of it on his hand and combed the wet fingers through his hair making it slick for a moment.

“I’m out.” Bakugo threw over the shoulder as he turned towards Crush as her group of friends only to walk through them with a short glance her way. It made everyone turn around a watch as he exited the gymnasium into the sunny day outside.

Katsuki didn’t know what happened behind his back, whether they were still looking the way he disappeared, if they were talking between each other about him, did the girl blush even? It didn’t matter though, he’s done his part and done it sharp, on point.

The Cat sat on a fence in the distance, its lazy swaying black tail caught Bakugo’s eyes. It gave him a thumbs up. 

Tag list: @ita606 @blueberrysoaps @bakunianadecorazon

[miss0atae]

Random Thoughts about Gelboys EP1 : The excitement of teen love, nail art and queer identity.

I made the decision to watch this series because it was centered around the turmoil of teen romance with nail art as the basis for the story. If you ask me nowadays if I have any interest for nail art, I would answer with a firm “no”. I have no interest with nail art anymore, but there was a time when I was younger and it was really important to me. I had several nail polishes of so many different colors and I used to change them a lot. I tried to make few designs, but turns out it's far more complicated to draw on your own nails than it is on someone's else nails. I forgot how I liked it back then when I was a teen. This long introduction that has nothing to do with the series, is to show you that I believe the creator of this series made a conscious choice when he decided to put nail art as the basis for the story and that's what I want to talk about in this “random thoughts” about the first episode.

I will make a quick summary of first episode, but you have to know there isn't much happening. This is mostly an introduction of the series' “world” and characters. We get to meet Fou4Mod aka Sakolphat Phlaphithak, a teenager boy who, in the first minutes of the series, discovers that the person he thinks he is dating, is actually seeing someone else too and he ends up blocking them from all his social media and crying from the heartbreak. Then, you'll watch him being a normal teenager: being embarrassed by his mom(‘s old taste in music) as many teens are, going to school, taking the public transport, spending time with friends, being bored in class and socializing. The first day he takes the BTS, he meets Chian and he noticed him because he was wearing nail art. From this point, he became really interested in him and it steers him to try nail art too. Unfortunately, this attraction may cause him some pain too as Chian is described as a “player” by his own friend “Bua”, another character who is a “friend” of Chian and certainly the future “love rival” of Fou4Mod. There is also another important character Baabin Saebal, Fou4Mod's friend.

So as you can see, nail art has its importance in the series. There has always been a social relevance of nail art in our society from a very long time. Unfortunately, I'm not an expert in this, so take everything I say with a grain of salt as my passion from nail art died with me discovering I had allergy to most nail polishes and I stopped caring for this when I entered university. Despite this everyone can agree that nail art is a form of creative expression. It is a way of creating its own identity through fashion because nail art can be seen as just another accessory. The color choices, the length and the shape communicate something about what you like and who you are. It's an easy way to show your individuality, and even if you're not making them yourself, it also shows your taste in art and creativity as you still get to be the one who chooses the design. In the series, the characters' nail art is made with what seems to be gel nail polish technique (I don’t know yet if it’s going to be relevant).

Nail art can be an allegory of queer identity. The fact that you can use different colors and shape to suit your taste, can be seen as letting go of your past self; the one where you couldn't be who you wanted or you had to be the way your parents/caregivers choose for you to be. In choosing some specific design for your nails, you're creating your new self, something that could be more aligned with who you want to be. It's a form of protest too, where you can reject the gender norms. If nail art can be tied to the idea of “femininity” it doesn't mean that it's only meant for this “purpose” (I'm sorry I don't a better word here). In the story of Gelboys, Fou4Mod starts doing nail art because he has developed an instant crush on Chian who was wearing it. It's probably a way of feeling connected to him that steers Fou4Mod to do it. In a way, he is self-expressing by doing nail art that he wants to become closer to Chian. I wonder if in the upcoming episodes, the choice he is going to make in his nail art will be showing the turmoil of his love life. I also want to know if there is going to be a larger discussion of his queer identity. I'm not saying it has to be shown, but I admit I would really like to see it. I feel there is a common pattern with LoveSick 2024 where I felt like young queer love can be mixed with the identity development associated with the transitional stage that is adolescence. Here in Gelboys the identity development could be seen through nail art.

Anyway, I’m pleasantly surprised by this first episode. You can see how I liked the introduction of nail art as I believe it can be queer performativity.

[pyrlemon]

Ven and Vel getting jobs xD

Dancer AU!! (technically Veneer isn't a dancer in this but my explanation will be on the bottom! TLDR it was just cool so yippee [there's lore!!!!!!!])

Also! sorry@imadumdumjewel for the late reply!

If you guys req anything, I'll get to it, just may be a tad late...

Anywho! I ran a lil poll on Twitter to decide on the types of jobs they would have so here we go:

So I actually forgot to put dancer Vel/artist Ven because I kinda thought Ven would kinda fit the thing but after I finished this art I was pretty happy I didn't put it on there lol.

I honestly think that the other job options seemed pretty interesting, but no one really suggested any other jobs, and almost everyone was enthralled with the idea of dancer Ven & Vel.

For Veneer:

At first, my friend and I were planning this, but nothing really felt right to us. I did suggest Ballerino, but it didn't feel like something Veneer would do without Velvet, because they kinda come in pairs. Gymnast was also a suggestion, but after a couple minutes, it was swiftly discarded because I didn't want to draw Veneer's toes.

Anywho, while searching for other options, ice skating appeared, and my friend suggested an interesting idea as to

Lore time:

When Veneer was young, his parents pushed him towards traditionally male hobbies, such as sports and more sports. When his dad saw a flyer for an ice hockey team, he signed him up immediately. However, some mischievous kid had taped a different number to the hockey flyer, so Veneer's father ended up signing him up for figure skating instead.

At first, Veneer thought he was out of place, after all, the ratio of boys to girls was significant and he found himself to be the only one in that class. He didn't enjoy it much and regretted that he didn't join Velvet in her breakdancing course. However, as he unwillingly went to classes, he slowly started gaining a love for the sport and noticed how beautiful it was.

That led him to go down into professional figure skating and join competitions, eventually leading him to go down in history. For Velvet

My friend suggested swapping traditionally male and female dance styles, which led to the eventual conclusion: breakdancing. Velvet is a strong-willed character who would definitely try to get her way (as shown in the trailer of the movie) and take the classes that she liked.

Lore time:

When Veneer got signed up to do ice hockey, Velvet felt like she didn't have to deal with her little brother all day, and felt that she had a lot of time to herself. At first, she found a lot of things to do every day, running to places, going to parties, and just generally having fun.

At this point, Veneer was still unwilling to go to figure skating classes, (turns out Velvet was the mischievous kid who changed the number on the ice hockey flyer into a figure skating course phone number) but since his father had already paid for a year, he had to go anyways. Velvet would purposely use this to upset Veneer when she didn't get what she wanted, but then would accidentally make Veneer cry, resulting in her getting lectured by her parents, and Velvet holding back tears as she apologized to Veneer (she was totes in the fault here tho).

She realized that the more free time she had, the more her parents would lecture her. She decided right then and there that she would sign up for a class. She spent days, scrolling her phone and watching videos of different skills to decide what she wanted to do. However, nothing caught her eye.

Then, one day, she saw a kid do a flip, and slip and fall miserably. First, she took a video and laughed, and then thought to herself, "Hey, I could do that waaaayyyyy better. That kid's a failure!" And so she threw herself into learning it, but unsurprisingly, she fell flat on her face.

She was unhappy with this result, so she immediately went to her parents and asked them to sign her up for a breakdancing course. However, she had a tendency to give up when things got annoying/hard, so her parents turned her away each time. However, both the nonstop pestering and the fact that she no longer was bullying Veneer (because she was too busy following her parents around and throwing tantrums), they finally gave in.

From then on, she started breakdancing classes, and Veneer was upset because now his sister got to do something she liked, but Veneer was stuck in ice skating hell. He was very unhappy for some time, but then decided, "If she's gonna be happy, I gotta be happier. I gotta upstage her". So, he took to ice skating and started focusing all his efforts on it.

Velvet, seeing her twin brother become increasingly devoted to learning the trade she had forced him into while she had just started to get bored of breakdancing, felt a spark of competition and decided to practice harder.

Her parents were really impressed. Periodt. Now they are famous both nationally (Veneer) and on the streets (Velvet, for breakdancing, not giving up). YIPPEE

THE END

[iikisa]

Hi! I love your BE art, especially Tightrope AU! Rin💔

Do you have any other details you wanna share? I'd love to know more... Teacher!Rin is something I never knew I needed in my life. I know now:3

Hihi! I accidentally deleted my whole paragraph answering this, I’m sorry it took so long to answer 😔 I’m so glad you’ve asked though! It always makes me so happy seeing others just as interested in Teacher!Rin AU 😆

I’ll start under the cut!

So, it wasn’t actually Rin’s idea to become a cram school teacher, much less a teacher in the first place! I mean, who would let the spawn of Satan, prince of Gehenna, unstable half-demon child near a bunch of teenagers? Mephisto and Shura.

He doesn’t even trust himself to take care of Kuro, but thankfully Kuro is a demon who can very much take care of themself. So why would the Vatican trust him near future exorcist children? They didn’t! Shura and Mephisto surprisingly collaborated together to kidnap Rin and slap him into True Cross to do an urgent mission: teach teenagers.

Yeah, they thought it’s be a great way to spice up his depressed lifestyle after all the beatdowns he’s gone through. Safe to say it worked.

Now, you’d probably expect him to teach a practical class considering his talents, but nah! Shura doesn’t want him feeling any more of a weapon than what be probably thinks he is, so he’s teaching.. drumroll, please….. demon pharmaceuticals!!!! 🎉

Haha… guess who chose that.. Mephisto, that bastard.

You see, I wouldn’t say I know everything about what it takes to become an exorcist, but writer’s freedom and all that! Teacher!Rin is knowledgeable in other areas other than just being a knight. His weakest link is probably scripture, because he lacks the patience to be an aria. He’s a proactive guy!!

Let’s talk about some Shura-Rin sibling stuff shall we? You may have noticed Shura has already gotten her haircut from my posts, thats because that whole arc happened already. Yep, Rin and Yukio go on like normal and help free Shura from her curse before Yukio defects and shit hits the fan for Rin! Shura thinks of those two like brothers, so being the oldest trying to take care of Rin, who literally lost everything now, she takes it up on herself to care for him (in her own rough-love-with-hints-of-soft way). She takes him out to go get matching earrings to help distract him from his new image, safe to say it’s the one thing he likes about himself for a while, and it cheers him up whenever he looks at it!

Yikes… poor Rin. 😓

Shura is an anchor for Rin’s current lifestyle, and she helps him in a lot of different ways. Dragging him to be a teacher with her is one of the many things she’s done!

And thanks to that, he gains an even greater pillar of support from it. Although his relationship with his students started off looking like the introduction from Assassination Classroom… he made it work out with his amazing charm. The cram school students gradually warmed up to their semi-unstable, depressed demon prince, son of Satan, demon pharmaceuticals teacher! Learning about his situation and the unfairness of it all brought them to become even more determined to help their poor teacher. Thanks to the help of his amazing students, Rin starts to gain some light into his shadowed life. He starts to let himself relax, have fun bringing back old passions, mourn, and enjoy the life he has even now. His brother may not be there with him just yet, but when he does, Rin will be ready.

And that’s one of the biggest changes I wanted to make clear for this AU! Teacher!Rin doesn’t have the same support system Canon!Rin does. He didn’t have friends, he didn’t have his brother, and he barely liked himself. But when he finally started to gain even just friends, Rin started to get better.

Because Rin thrives off others.

He wants to see his loved ones happy, even if it means he may not be. I really want to bring out these aspects from his childhood. Because while he did love cooking, everyone made it seem like his only good trait. And that’s just messed up, guys. Rin lived for his family at the monastery, despite not amounting to even half as much as his brother, and being reminded of that fact regularly, I’d assume, he still loved them. He loves his brother even after everything he’s done to him. He loved Shiro even after learning about the secrets he’d kept from him. Because Rin can forgive anyone so long as they can be happy, even if it means hurting himself doing so.

Now, this is my take on Rin’s personality, and others may have different perspectives; I’d love to hear them all!! There’s always room for improvement in my viewpoint and opinions, so please feel free to initiate some friendly debate and share some ideas! I love love love seeing everyone enjoy Teacher!Rin just as much as I do!!!!!

I’d also like to mention that this story is focused on healing, meaning this will probably be categorized as a hurt/comfort with necessary hints of Rin whump!! Woo!!

Thanks everyone, for listening to this ramble!! I’ve got lots planned for this AU, but with life’s unpredictability, time flies out the window. I hope to hear more from you all!! 💖

[the-100-days-of-junkan]

Day 98

What’s better than this, girls havin fun by Oxidize

That’s right our final piece in the fanfic marathon is once again from Oxidize! A fact that surprised the fuck out of me when I found it out, given the drastic difference in tone between this and Burning Lungs.

It’s also a Chatfic! Which like, how the fuck do I draw that?? I’ll tell ya! I didn’t! What I actually did was I made art inspired by the fic rather than actually based off of it. Does that sentence make sense? No fucking idea! 

But you all know what this is. It is THE fic, the one that started everything off. Until I found this story my connection was Junkan was thinking it was a no good, toxic as hell ship, but also something that could be pretty funny if you played it as “Junko derails her entire plan because she thinks Mikan is hot.” And when I say prior to this fic I’m talking like, 2017-2018. Since that joke was based on a convo that was had in a server I’m no longer apart of and have no plans of returning too, which I left in 2019. 2019 was a real blank year for me and Junkan from what I remember. 

Anyway, there is just a little build up to this fic, but it isn’t Junkan related so I’ll try to keep it short.

So once upon a time I had just gotten into Danganronpa, conveniently I also discovered AO3, a treasure trove of stories about girls kissing. This was at first used for me to read as much Tokomaru as possible, something which would totally have no massively scaled effects on me as a person such as say, my egg cracking and me realizing I’d be happier as a woman. But we all run out of fics eventually, and it didn’t take many insomnia fueled binge reads of the Tokomaru tag for me to run out of stories. So what did I do? Get addicted to Chat Fics!! What the fuck else would I do, right? I just looked up Danganronpa and Chatfic and went to town, I initially avoided them on my Tokomaru binge because when it comes to ships, I’m pretty much always going to prioritize a fic where they’re the focus rather than a fic where they have like, 5 paragraphs of screentime. I would see a Fic, check the tags to see if it had Tokomaru, and if it didn’t, I moved on. And funny enough given current events, if it had a ship like Junkan, I also skipped forward. Oh how the fucking times change. 

I got addicted to these for like, a month or two I think. I would find one, start reading, and couldn’t fucking stop reading until it was finished. I just loved seeing the stupid antics the different classes would get up to, moreso when they interacted with eachother. I vividly remember laughing my ass off at one storyline where a few of the characters get lost in either an ikea or a costco? Hard to remember but god it was funny. These fics could change tone rapidly, had their own series of tropes and plotlines that’d recur throughout different ones, one fic got really fucking dark out of nowhere and it was jarring as hell, they were amazing. I kinda miss the days when I read them in such excess, I always kind of wanted to make one but also god no I could never.

If there was one perk to these Chatfics, aside from more Tokomaru, it was that it definitely broadened my horizons for what ships I was interested. Prior to this I liked Tenmiko and Tokomaru, that was about it. But through these chatfics I got into stuff like Irumatsu, Celesgiri (Fell off of that though), and most importantly and relevantly, Ikuzono.

So I of course, would eventually go on a quest throughout the Mukuro x Sayaka tag on AO3, sometime during early 2020. And unfortunately that was a significantly rarer pair to find fics for, especially for me at the time who was a lot pickier and only looked for Fluff on most days. 

So of course, I see this fic, and I almost skipped forward when seeing the Junkan Tag. But then I read the rest of the tags, emphasizing that it wasn’t gonna be abusive. So I thought “Fuck it” and went for it.

And thus the second domino fell.

Ironically while reading it I wasn’t focusing on the Ikuzono parts, helped partially by the fact that the relationship wasn’t established yet. But the Junkan? It wasn’t the deepest thing I had ever read at that point. It was like most Chatfics, silly, goofy, probably a little out of character, the usual stuff. But this felt different, it was something I had no experience with, and why would I? Up till now I was under the impression that Junkan was one of the most bottom of the barrel ships available in Danganronpa. Y’know cause I was like, only 2 years past my teens so my brain was still made of soup. 

But this was god damn adorable. Mikan was sweet and adorable, Junko was silly and showed nothing but support and love for Mikan. She calls her a Cinnamon Apple! And the fact that I’ve never stolen that nickname is a fucking crime!

There isn’t really a lot to talk about in terms of what actually happens. Junko does cute stuff with Mikan, Junko dropkicks Hiyoko in the head because she’s bullying Mikan, and Junko gets in detention, resulting in antics. It is just a really cute, pleasant fic that makes me really happy to read.

As you can tell that makes doing art based on this, as chatfics don’t lend themselves super easily to visuals. The best I could do is the aforementioned Junko dropkicking Hiyoko while Mikan watches, but it’s been a few years and I don’t have hatred in my soul for Hiyoko anymore.

So I opted to make something inspired by the vibe of the fic instead! And also add in some 2000s energy! Because I have an obsession with the 2000s aesthetic, and it has as much of a violent grip on me as Junkan. 

To capture that 2000s energy I tried to make this look like an ancient, shitty photo taken off of a flip phone. Cause I love flip phones, and hate Smart Phones. Which is why there’s a third version of this art that was purely an excuse for me to draw a Flip Phone. I don’t care if a chatroom like this realistically wouldn’t exist on them at this point in time, I hate Smartphones and I will be petty about it. 

Adding to the attempt at making the photo feel aged as shit I also tried to recreate the red eye that could be sometimes found in old photos from this era. As for the designs, ya’ll probably noticed by now that I drew Mikan similar to how I did for the Burning Lungs art. That’s because ever since I found out this fic was made by the same author, I’ve just kind of headcanonned that this fic is takes place sometime after where Burning Lungs would have ended, which I assume would have involved the two getting together. 

Now, the keen eyed reader will probably realize that wouldn’t make sense because Mukuro and Sayaka were already together in Burning Lungs. Whereas in this fic they aren’t together at all. And you’re right, that is in fact a big flaw with me considering these to take place in the same timeline.

But also. Look at the past 97 fuckin days. And all the other shit I drew while these were posted. It is safe to assume that when it comes to details that conflict with something I’m really into, I am just a little willing to ignore those details.

So Mikan gets her cute little bandaids, her itchy sweater which I imagine Junko would really enjoy cuddling into by this point, and a small detail that was only noted for a moment during Burning Lungs, but a chipped tooth as well. It was really nice gettin’ to draw this version of the characters again! Even if I still lack a lot to talk about with this piece, I simply hope ya’ll enjoy it!

And with that I think I’ve told all there is to tell in terms of how I got into this ship. Only took me 98 fucking days to explain it all properly, and backwards no less! Almost like this wasn’t thought out super far in advance or something! I feel like I should have more to say here but really, I kinda just, don’t? Hope ya’ll have enjoyed the Fanfic Marathon! As I’ve said before I really wanna show more love to the writing community for Junkan in the future, both for currently available fics, and the fics that have yet to be written! 

For now though, there are only 2 days left. And I have hopefully saved the best for laugh in terms of my own personal contributions. Ya’ll ready for another comic? 

As always, Reblogs, Comments, and Little Notes in the Tags are appreciated!~ They always make my day!~

[artist-issues]

Someone just reblogged a really old post of mine that I’d forgotten existed and when I checked what post it was I just couldn’t stop cringing because I had some really bad takes on Snow White, like bad as in “I think I watched the film with my eyes closed” kind of bad. Since reading so many of your posts on the original Snow White my view of the film has changed a lot and I feel bad that it gets so much hate (less so now the new one is making people go “hold up the original was actually good and we don’t want live action crap”). I just feel like because so many of us watched it when we were so young and then forgot about it as we got older we missed a lot of points in the movie. It’s a shame that so many films suffer from “if people were a little more media literate this would actually be so enjoyable to watch” and also “we are so used to animated storytelling we take it for granted”. Anyway I don’t know where this ask is going I just thought it was interesting how our views on media change as we get older

That’s true, it is! I think it’s easy to speculate on why our views on stories change as we get older, or even come to the (I think incorrect) conclusion that “it’s all a matter of taste” or “it’s subjective.”

When actually the simplest explanation might be the right one:

These are stories made by adults. In the case of animated movies, it’s whole teams of adults, who have dedicated a huge chunk of their brainpower every day for several years to honing and fine-tuning these stories, and all the details.

So Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a distilling of the creative thought and life-experience and storytelling skill of seven hundred and fifty people into one hour and twenty-three minutes.

It’s like showing a drawing you spent all day on to your mom. She’s only going to appreciate the way it looks as a whole, in general, and her appreciation is only going to last for a minute. But it took you hours, and erasing and re-choosing how lines were going to go, over and over, until you got it right. It was making “no, not that way: this way instead” choices; hundreds of them, for hours.

But now imaging your mom took an art class. Then she comes back and looks at your drawing and starts to see why you made certain choices—so she’s appreciating it on a deeper level.

With animated movies and stories in general, the beauty and the tragedy is that they’re made to meet you at your level. When you’re a kid, you’re not going to understand all the levels of what an adult is saying. Much less a team of 750 adults and all their life experiences and skill set in visual communication. But when you’re an adult, you get closer to what they were when they started communicating. So you understand them better.

It’s not that they were never saying deep things. It’s that you didn’t know how to listen or understand, yet. That’s all. And that’s fine.

[avaantares]

Wait, Zhao Yunlan's gun is actually a...?!

(I've never claimed production meta for @guardianbingo before, but after the amount of time and research I put in on this, I feel like I've earned the "Zhao Yunlan's Gun or Whip" square, haha)

SO. GUYS.

Maybe this is something fandom as a whole figured out back in 2018, but I, who didn't hear of Guardian until 2020, did not realize until now and I need to share the knowledge because when I finally noticed, I made an unholy sound.

I've tracked down where Zhao Yunlan's gun came from -- or at least, what it most likely started as. Not the in-universe dark-energy-maybe-uses-bullets-maybe-doesn't-device-that's-best-not-thought-about-too-long, but rather the actual fake-steampunk-revolver-that-is-best-not-looked-at-too-long-because-it's-awful prop.

Y'know, this disaster:

I was actually working on a different Guardian Bingo fill and needed to look something up for continuity, so I'd flipped through a couple of episodes at super high speed trying to find a scene. As luck would have it, one of my skips forward happened to land on the scene I screencapped above, when ZYL confronts Zhang Shi.

Normally we don't get this clear (or this stationary) a shot of the godawful gun prop. I'd assumed all along they had just taken a plastic gun, glued some extra bits and bobs on it to make it look fancy, and hit it with some dry brushing (fun fact: you can watch the paint flake throughout the series; check out the top of the barrel and the side of the cylinder in the above screenshot!) to make it look #steampunk like the abandoned aesthetic of 25% of the show (as I've said before, I have theories about what happened in preproduction, but that's another post). This sort of thing is exactly what I've done for cheap cosplay weapons or background props for film work that aren't going to be seen at HD detail range.

Anyway, since the detail showed up better here than in other shots, I paused the video to look at the random screws and hex bolts (why??) they'd glued on it, since I recalled that I had the aforementioned gun/whip bingo square to fill.

That's when I noticed a detail that had eluded me before: An inverted V shape at the bottom of the grip.

Only looking more closely, that's not an inverted V. It's a symbol that I've seen a whole series of variations of over the past 15+ years... every time there's a new installment of the Assassin's Creed video game series:

So I started hunting. The principal weapons in each game turned up no matches, but eventually I found a gun that looks almost exactly like ZYL's:

It's not a perfect replica, but the details are certainly all there: The stylized logo; the leaves and swirls on the grip; the feathers up the back; even the Victorian scrollwork beneath the barrel.

Now, what's really interesting is that this gun isn't actually from the AC game series. It's part of an elaborate fan project by artist David Paget that started as a class assignment back in 2014. Even though it gathered a bit of steam in the AC fandom and generated a couple of forum role-play groups, OCs and the like, nothing about this artwork was ever connected to a real Assassin's Creed title. So why would there be a physical version of a gun that was only someone's fanart?

This is where the smoking gun (*rimshot*) goes missing, because I can't prove any of this, and it's been long enough that digging through the archives of the internet to find answers is going to take way more time than I can afford to spend on a project I'm not getting paid for. But there are two likely possibilities:

Scenario A: Some employee in a toy factory somewhere in China got told, "This Assassin's Creed franchise is really big, so we need to be producing replicas from those games to sell. Work up some designs." So the employee Googles "assassin's creed gun," finds David Paget's very professional-looking art, and whips up a replica to mass-injection-mold without realizing it's not actually from a game. Later, someone on the cash-strapped Guardian production team needs a gun to mod, and finds a cheap toy revolver on clearance after several years of sitting in storage because there was little demand for a replica of a gun that was never in a game. They buy several, glue hex bolts on the cylinder for reasons unknown, and poof! Instant pseudo-steampunk!

Scenario B: Other fans were involved in the design. Someone did build a 3D model of David Paget's design that's still available on Sketchfab (screenshot below), and it's not unreasonable to assume that other fans could have thought it looked cool and built 3D printable models. Later, someone on the cash-strapped Guardian production team needs a gun to mod, and acquires the 3D print file of one of those models from the interwebs. They mod the file a bit, print some, glue hex bolts on the cylinder for reasons unknown, and poof! Instant pseudo-steampunk!

Personally, I find Scenario A far more likely than Scenario B, for two reasons: First, the hero prop looks more injection molded than 3D printed, especially given the technical state of 3D printing back in 2017-8. And second... Budget-challenged dramas do have a history of picking up bulk video game replicas and using them as cheap props. I made a post back in 2019 about the WoW Horde shields we spotted in a different drama...

Anyway, no firm answers about the source of the hero prop -- the world may never know! -- but we have now confirmed that in some alternate universe (possibly one of the first eighty?), Zhao Yunlan and/or Zhao Xinci is an Assassin.

Wait, wait, wait... *recalls mechanics of how the whole Assassin's Creed frame story is supposed to work* Uh... so... who wants to write a genetic memory explanation for the whole Kunlun -> [lots of lifetimes] -> Zhao Yunlan thing?

.

(I did actually check the catalogue of a friend of mine who makes replicas of props from various media franchises to see if he'd done a commission of the David Paget design, since a surprising number of his custom pieces actually do end up on film and television, but while he has a gorgeous replica of a revolver that actually appears in an AC game, it appears he has not done the Zhao Yunlan gun. I didn't really think it likely, since he's in the U.S., but you never know.)

[sapphic-agent]

Saw your thing about mha rewrites, thought i'd throw my hat in the ring. I've had a fic in mind for a while now that involved keeping midoriya quirkless, but instead of him just waiting for a quirk to happen, he'd actually been taking martial arts classes and such in preperation ( something that i find baffling that it didnt happen in canon) where the main issue for Izuku is pushing himself to far to prove a point. but in this, he distances from bakugou, the martial arts training giving him a better sense of self-esteem or atleast a better sense of where his energy is best spent. I plan to try to focus more on the ORIGINAL trio, uraraka, Izuku, and Iida....and i wanna give uraraka OFA bc i think playing around with what improved gravity manipulation could do. i think she'd get it after the torunament arc. Given how smart Midoriya was shown to be early on, I figure he'd make a lot of use of gadgets. infrared goggles, bo staff, head gear for better threat detection, and other possible improvements that he figures out throughout the year. All Might in this basically supports Midoriya's dream by providing the funding for the needed suit and gear. and instead of HIM having the iron man suit with everyones quriks somehow....lets give that to Midoriya, to represent his entier class pushing him forward as a symbol of hope for anyone who thinks they cant be a hero just bc their quirk sucks, or bc they dont have one. Nedzu is the traitor instead of aoyama, bc hes playing a game of 5d chess with AFO and knows once allmight loses his power, everythings going to go to shit, so he engineers events to happen at school with the lov to force the students to where they will have to be to survive the dark times to come. ie, doing a horrible thing, but he believes he has a solid reason for doing so. Bakugou loses to uraraka in the tournament. seeing midoriya so sucsessful without a quirk has made him impatient and desperate to prove himself so he goes at uraraka full boar. now, im not going to make this an insta win, that just dosent feel right, BUT this loss will be the second in a series of losses for bakugou to start going ' what am I doing wrong?' one of the other losses being that Midoriya completes the test with him and bakugou fighting allmight, but with Bakugou unconcious bc like in canon, dude flew off the handle and tried to solo the worlds strongest hero, while Midoriya was more tacticle in his approach. subsequently....bakugou dosent get kidnapped by the Lov, Midoriya does bc they think ' hey this kid is quirkless we can get him to turn' and its bakugou that fails to save Midoriya bc the students that failed their exam were all asleep during the time of the attack of the training camp. he wakes up and comes up short of saving the day, bc he blew his chance of victory. but heres the problem. i have the first couple chapters hammered out...but this is all a lot, and theres so much more that i know is either going to need to be covered. like the hero comercialization, the hero system relying solely on allmight to keep things in check, the lack of proper aid to those with quirks that would require some extra guidance etc. I have the idea....but the idea of writting all of it feels daunting to say the least XD if youd like i could also ramble more on other points i have in mind for this fic idea

Ngl, this sounds really good. OFA!Uraraka isn't something I see often, it's nice to see her get some love. Izuku working hard to become a hero on his own merit is always nice to see, and we love supportive All Might. I'm a firm believer that if Izuku had asked at any other time All Might would have given him a different answer. Izuku just happened to catch him when he was in a place of self-loathing and immeasurable chronic pain.

No, it doesn't excuse his actions. But it's realistic. He also tried to suggest that Izuku seek out a similar dream, like becoming a cop so it wasn't like he said what he did out of malice.

Also, don't be afraid to completely rewrite Horikoshi's terrible canon system! It's filled with a ton of contradictions and inconsistencies anyway so if you need to change it all to make sense, 100% go for it

[sombra-conlangs]

I just had a thought I want to share: I don't think the conlang community is great at helping beginners to get into conlanging, and while the art form is kind of esoteric and requires lots of knowledge I also think there's probably better approaches for tackling the huge task of learning how to create an entire language.

I can't figure out a way to say it concisely, I'll just spew out all my thoughts on this so hopefully others can see where I'm coming from and share their thoughts, I'm curious to hear what y'all have to say.

First let's look at something that I've noticed is pretty common in other artistic hobbies and communities:

When people decide to learn a new skill there can be a lot of excitement that builds up initially, they may have never touched an instrument in their life but they have this burning desire to jump right into writing and recording an awesome guitar solo, just like the ones they hear in their favorite songs, or they may not have any drawing and writing experience at all but the first thing they wanna do is start working on an entire webcomic series drawn in a highly detailed art style because they came up with an idea for a story that would be amazing. Whatever the skill is, it happens often that someone sees a work of art that is so inspiring that they want to make something just like it themselves.

Of course, when people try a new art form for the first time the results don't tend to be very good, when you've never done a thing before it's unrealistic to expect yourself to be able to replicate the stuff that people with a few years of experience and practice can make.

And that can be a pretty frustrating experience because if someone tries their hardest to create that dream project of theirs with no experience it'll inevitably end up taking a huge amount of effort (due to the person not knowing how to do things in a more efficient way) and then it won't even be as good as they envisioned anyway, and some can walk away from these experiences with the impression that music is simply too hard or they're just not made to be artists or writers or game designers or whatever the craft is.

I think this is why when you take a class on the subject or you hear advice online people often try to get you to lower the scope of your first projects, they emphasize the importance of practicing your fundamentals first, because you may be super excited to jump right into painting hyper-realistic portraits, but if you don't build any familiarity with your tools and you don't train those basic skills you're never going to be able to turn the awesome idea in your head into a reality, and your expectations are going to be too high for you to enjoy the process because you just won't be able to meet those expectations.

Starting with a scope that is far too big ends up just being a frustrating experience that doesn't actually teach you a whole lot, you gotta work on a bunch of smaller, simpler stuff first before you move on to making more advanced things. In other words, you gotta build up to the higher levels, you don't start at level 100, you start at level 1 and then you slowly go up from there.

You may see where I'm going with this: we don't tend to do that in the conlang community.

People who become interested in making languages may be familiar with the concept of conlangs from hearing about Klingon, High Valyrian, Sindarin or similar works, and so they get excited to jump right into making a naturalistic artlang as their first conlang, or they may not even know what the term "naturalistic artlang" even means but they try to make a detailed, fully speakable language for a fictional setting, which is kind of the same thing, or at least it's in the same spirit.

I think tons of conlangers start that way (myself included), it's super common, but I had the realization earlier that starting with a naturalistic artlang is actually kind of crazy, that's a project with a huge scope, it requires you to have so much knowledge beforehand that I'd argue it's the equivalent of trying to play a Paganini piece live in front of an audience on your first time playing the violin ever, of course it's gonna be seen as an impossibly difficult or complex hobby, you're jumping into level 100 right off the bat, no wonder lots of conlangers end up hating their first conlang.

I legit had a moment earlier today when I was thinking "conlanging is not that hard, you just gotta learn the basics of IPA, then learn about syllable structure and phonotactics, then become acquainted with the different mechanisms of how sounds can change over time, then learn what a romanization is and how to make one based on your phonology, then learn how words get grammaticalized.. then learn about all the different types of writing systems... then... huh wait a minute..."

I had this realization that the amount of knowledge you're expected to learn on your first conlang project is kind of ridiculous, it's easy to lose track of how advanced the stuff you're doing is when you've grown so used to it, it's like that xkcd comic.

Yeah this one. Like, the diachronic method of conlanging might not seem that complicated if you're using it for the 47th time, but for a newcomer there are a ton of things they need to learn first in order to even start using the diachronic method.

And even if you don't evolve your conlang from a proto-language there's still a ton of details and moving parts in a naturalistic language: the syntax, the morphology, the phonology, the different levels of formality and social aspects, writing systems, etc.

I feel like trying to capture all of the different nuances of a natural language on your first attempt at a conlang is just too big of a scope in the same way that making your first videogame an open-world RPG with multiple endings tends to result in people quitting game development because they get overwhelmed with the amount of new information that they need to learn and so they lose all their motivation.

All of this came to my mind because I was having a conversation with someone who doesn't have a background in linguistics and I was trying to help them figure out how to make their first conlang, and as the conversation went on I realized that even the posts aimed at beginners I write on my wordpress site are actually way too detailed and complex, like, my post that teaches you to read IPA- let me stop right there, the fact that I have a single post where I expect people to be able to learn IPA just so that they can start conlanging says it all.

And ok, you may be thinking that's just a me issue, but honestly I started to re-watch various youtube videos on how to conlang aimed at beginners and I feel like if I had zero knowledge of linguistics I'd struggle to follow along with the majority of them, in each video there's usually multiple new concepts being introduced at a very rapid pace and a number of things that you're already assumed to be familiar with.

No shade at people like biblaridion and artifexian, I personally find their content helpful, my point is that most learning resources for beginner conlangers (including the stuff I make on my website) do this thing where they infodump a ton of technical information and introduce a lot of new jargon fairly quickly and while that can work for some people I'm starting to think that that's not the best way to go about things.

This may seem kind of random, but I remember this very old video by extra credits where they explained how a good tutorial in a videogame doesn't front-load all of the information you'll ever need, they segment it into smaller chunks so you only learn the few bits of information that are immediately relevant, you get to immediately apply that knowledge, familiarize yourself with the concept at your own pace, and then once you've had some time to play with it you are introduced to a new small bit of information. I know learning an artistic skill is not identical to learning how to play a game, but I find that I learn better this way in general, the knowledge just sticks more, I think that introducing concepts in more bite-size, applicable chunks would probably go a long way to make this hobby more accessible to more people.

Maybe we should be recommending newcomers to practice with naming langs, minimal conlangs, personal conlangs, relexes, ciphers, codes, or idk something else to let people become acquainted with the dozens of concepts that show up in languages in a way that doesn't immediately become overwhelming.

Like, maybe this is a hot take, but I feel like in order to make your first conlang you probably shouldn't even worry about what a place or manner of articulation is, you probably don't need to evolve it or add any irregularity or allophones or any of the stuff we're so used to including as conlangers, you can slowly learn those later.

Think about it, in order to learn how to draw realism you practice the most basic fundamentals first; drawing circles and cubes in perspective over and over again, trying to break down complex images into simple abstract shapes, etc. I think we could do the same in conlanging and teach the necessary skills with projects of a smaller scope.

I just remembered about quothalinguist's choose your own adventure type book for teaching beginner conlangers and I think that's awesome, I haven't read it but I definitely will, we should probably get more introductory material like that, stuff that's more manageable and doesn't require a huge time investment in order to teach you a lot, I think that's a really good approach.

And for that matter I've been curious about the conlang year thing, maybe that'd also be a more manageable way to introduce someone to conlanging.

Just spitballing a few ideas here but imagine teaching about basic morphology by encouraging people to make a sketchlang where they only use sounds present in their native language. Without needing them to know any IPA or anything about phonology you can get them started on experimenting with certain things, like putting words together, compounding, affixing, etc. Remember that the results don't have to be naturalistic, that's not the point, the point is to avoid the situation where people need to learn a thousand concepts before they can even set pen to paper, they get to start experimenting and playing with different concepts in a more manageable way.

Maybe as a way to slowly introduce people to the idea of phonological evolution someone could make a small set of proto-words using a very basic inventory like /p t k m n s j w a i u/ and then you give people a set of pre-designed sound changes to pick from, and they can mix and match which changes to apply and in what order, so this could be an exercise to get acquainted with the way that sound changes work and the way the order in which they happen matters.

Y'all can let me know if I'm not making any sense or if my ideas sound weird or bad, the main point that I want to make is that the way we approach teaching beginner conlangers seems to require a lot of front-loading of information, which is not great.

I honestly forgot how long it took me to learn everything that I currently know about conlanging, I only stuck with it because I had actually consumed a lot of pop-linguistics content before getting into conlanging, so I already had a lot of the knowledge you're expected to learn as a beginner, meaning that the infodumps weren't as much of a brickwall for me as they can be for other people.

I feel like with the way things currently are there's probably a subset of people who have tried to get into conlanging at some point but then gave up and left with the impression that it's simply too complicated and nerdy for them when that may not be the case, I don't think making a naturalistic conlang is that much harder than learning how to draw realistic portraits of people; sure it's hard and time-consuming but it's definitely doable if you practice all the fundamentals first.

In the art community there's people who try to keep their sketchbooks all pristine and perfect looking, but that's not actually super helpful for learning, sketchbooks are meant to be where you practice and get to experiment, it's ok if it's messy or ugly or disorganized, it's not meant to be where your masterpieces come from, it's generally understood within the art community that in order to make drawings that are very well made you have to go through a loooot of crappy, low quality drawings first.

I think that essentially what I'm saying is that there should be a way to encourage beginner conlangers to do the same, make the equivalent of little sketches and practice basic doodles instead of jumping into a highly detailed complex naturalistic artlang right off the bat, that could demystify the wonderful art that is language creation for newcomers.

[nr1chaedickrider]

And then I go and spoil it all, by saying something stupid like - i love you.

Tzuyu never thought that a walk in the snow could turn into talking with the nerdy pianist of the school band.

Love is a strong feeling.

It can do you good,

It can hurt you.

So is hate.

Two strong feelings that can affect you, that change how you talk to a person, how you think about them, how you feel about them.

For Tzuyu, however, these feelings are too strong.

She tries to ignore them.

Emphasize, she tries.

Desperately, she places her brush on a small table next to her.

She doesn't like what she has drawn on her canvas.

And it's not because it looks bad, no, Tzuyu would say of herself that she's actually pretty good at it, there's always someone to compliment her on her work.

It's more that the drawing looks too much like that one girl.

Better said, Dahyun.

Very talented, loves music and plays in the school band. Tzuyu has English and art with her.

Tzuyu is also in love.

Whether you can even call it being in love is the question.

Tzuyu would probably never say "I love dahyun" because she thinks it's stupid.

They are friends, have met up several times, sit next to each other in English and Art classes.

But for Tzuyu, it's one-sided love - because Dahyun would definitely not love the quiet girl who isn't good at anything except art.

Tzuyu lets out a sigh and looks beside her, out of the window.

The streets full of snow, the sky dark blue, a few lanterns illuminating everything.

She decides to go out, maybe it will help her get inspired to draw something.

Something that has nothing to do with Dahyun?

She puts on her coat, a scarf around her neck.

She turns off all the lights before closing the door and going out.

Every time she takes a step in the rather deep snow there is a muffled sound, somehow annoying but somehow also so pleasant.

Sometimes an old couple walks past her, or people walking their dog.

And Tzuyu thinks about how all these people have their own lives, how interesting it actually is.

And as she walks on, she hears a voice calling out to her.

At first she thinks it's her mother nagging her for dressing too thinly for such cold weather.

But when she turns around and looks at who has actually called her,

she is standing right in front of Dahyun.

She has a smile on her lips, and just like Tzuyu, she's also wearing a coat and a scarf (which is actually too big for her, but Tzuyu thinks it's cute).

"Oh, Dahyun," Tzuyu replies with a smile.

She hopes the smile doesn't look too fake, because she wasn't planning to meet Dahyun during the walk, when she actually wanted to let all the things disappear from her mind in peace.

If you want to be a little more extreme, Dahyun is actually the reason why Tzuyu is out here at all, even though she could be at home, in the warmth, alone.

"What are you doing here?" Tzuyu asks as the two start walking side by side, because she knows that Dahyun lives much further away, she knows that Dahyun has a small park pretty much next to her, so why is she right here?

"Honestly, I have no idea. I'm looking for inspiration for a song, a project in my music class, and I was thinking I need to go somewhere, somewhere I don't go often, for new thoughts" she says with a small smile, "and you?" she asks.

Tzuyu ponders a little, thinking about how she should phrase it.

Because somehow Dahyun has the same motive as her.

Only with slight differences.

"I wanted to draw, but I couldn't concentrate," answers Tzuyu.

It's not actually a lie.

But Tzuyu prefers to leave out some details.

"It looks like we're here for the same reasons," says Dahyun and laughs a little.

Tzuyu would like to turn around right now and find an excuse why she supposedly has to leave.

Because she doesn't want to make pointless small talk, she doesn't want to hear Dahyun's laughter, which only makes her fall in love with her even more.

As the two walk on, Dahyun stops in front of a frozen lake.

Tzuyu looks at the lake first, it's beautiful, something she could draw.

But she is quickly distracted by Dahyun, she looks at her, examining her side profile.

And when Dahyun suddenly looks at her, she blushes, quickly looks back at the lake and hopes that Dahyun doesn't think too much about it.

What happens inside Tzuyu is that she says the next sentences, that she dares to say something she was senselessly afraid of.

"I like you"

Tzuyu says, her eyes focused only on the lake, she's too scared to look at Dahyun.

"I like you too, of course" Dahyun replies, but she's immediately confused when Tzuyu lets out a laugh.

"Not the way you think" Tzuyu says, and Dahyun looks at her, a thousand questions in her head.

Tzuyu is still looking at the lake.

"I love you" says Tzuyu.

It's silent, except for the breathing of the two of them and Tzuyu's words, it's completely silent.

This scene is like a cliché, like in those high school movies, Tzuyu thinks to herself.

And maybe she also hopes that it ends like in a high school movie - that Dahyun loves her too.

Dahyun doesn't answer, but just lets Tzuyu talk.

"I.. I don't know how it happened, but I hate it. Maybe I should hate you because you're good at everything, because you're somehow so perfect.... But somehow..." Tzuyu starts to say, her eyes full of tears, gaze still fixed on the water in front of her.

"I'm sorry" she says.

"I never wanted this" she adds.

"So please, just stop giving me hope, don't go for a walk here, do it at your place..." she says.

Dahyun feels like she has even heard a sob.

She looks at Tzuyu.

And maybe it's stupid what she wants to do, but Dahyun couldn't care less.

"Tzuyu," she says, but she doesn't respond.

"Tzuyu look at me" she says, and this time she responds, she turns to Dahyun and looks at her, a tear running down her cheek.

Dahyun stretches out her hand and Tzuyu feels like she's about to get a slap in the face for being so stupid, for having feelings for Dahyun.

But no.

Dahyun runs her thumb over Tzuyu's cheek, wiping away her tear.

Tzuyu looks at her in confusion.

"You're stupid," says Dahyun.

Dahyun stands on her tiptoes and comes closer, her lips landing on Tzuyu's.

Dahyun's lips on Tzuyu's?

And before it can come to anything more - Dahyun pulls back, goes back to her actual size.

Tzuyu looks at her, confused.

"I'll see you on Monday," Dahyun says and walks away.

Tzuyu doesn't move, she thinks over everything that has happened in the last few minutes.

And before she can somehow, finally, react, Dahyun is already out of sight.

-

The sunrise looks beautiful.

Usually people stay awake to watch the sunset, but Tzuyu always preferred the sunrise.

She doesn't know why.

She looks at her canvas, and this time it is not a person who is painted on it.

On the canvas you can see a frozen lake.

Something that to other eyes only shows beautiful nature is much more to Tzuyu.

At the bottom, in a small corner, she paints a little heart.

And she smiles, because this time it has something to do with Dahyun, and this time she wanted it that way.

Dahyun has inspired her to do something that Tzuyu should have done a long time ago.

Her thoughts are interrupted when she hears her cell phone ring twice.

'Two new messages:

Dahyun:

Tell me what you think,

*audio file attached*'

Tzuyu blinks once, then twice, and then a third time to see if it's really true.

The title of the audio file is what shocks Tzuyu, something that gives her a tingle in her stomach.

'Frozen Lake - A love song'

Tzuyu picks up her cell phone and lies down on her bed, cell phone beside her as she turns the volume all the way up and listens to the audio file.

The melody played by the piano, something that immediately reminds you of winter.

Tzuyu feels herself smiling like an idiot.

Dahyun sings softly, gently, and yet so pleasantly.

Words about love, about a sudden confession.

And when it's finished, Tzuyu picks up her cell phone and writes -

'So I inspired you?'

'Always.' replies Dahyun.

Tzuyu smiles as she stares at the messages.

Suddenly, however, Dahyun's words come back to her.

"See you on Monday"

And Tzuyu suddenly realizes,

Monday is a public holiday.