solverse

[solverse]

Stephanie dying her hair black for an undercover OP

Stephanie: So what you guys think

Dick:

Tim: That is so freaky

Jason: You… you look like Bruce’s mom!

Stephanie: WHAT? No I don’t!

Dick: You do! And it’s so fucking freaky!

Tim: It’s a really fucking eerie resemblance. Are you sure you’re not related to him? Like a distant cousin or something?

Stephanie: Your all fucking insane. I don’t look like her!

Jason: Hold on. Alfred! Can you come here!

Alfred: There is no need to shout Master Jason. Now what is all the commotion?

Jason: We just need to know, does Steph look like Bruce’s mom?

Alfred: Bloody Hell. You do bear a very striking resemblance to the late Martha Wayne, Ms Brown.

Tim: Told you.

Dick: Come on let’s dye it brown before Bruce sees and has a fucking panic attack.

[solverse]

ayo i found 2 pages with head angles of humans and animals, could be useful to anyone reading this

hoomans

animals

[solverse]

Ruby Rose lost to....... jaune arc [AUcomic]

WARNING: VERY LONG--

this is just the AU where everything messed up.

[solverse]

So I thought this was commonly known internet navigation (but apparently it might just be those of us who have been using the internet since the 90’s who still know it). Or so it seems based on… a grumpy comment I got.

When you see an arrow like this:

It means you click it to expand out a hidden section.

It’s an accordion section/menu! It’s useful in web design to hide information that may be overwhelming under specific headers so people can only see what they need.

Here I’m using it for people who need the content warnings to be able to check, but for those who don’t need them and don’t want to be spoiled to just move right past without accidentally reading anything.

It’s still the user’s responsibility to click the arrow and read things as they need! But it is all warned. (And, yes, the all encompassing issues are already a tag on the fic, I’m just providing additonal warnings per chapter.)

[solverse]

Some recent bumbleby 🐝 Atlas Blake with long hair and messed up RWBYAU

[solverse]

One of the comms I've done recently I love Seele's design, I truly do, but GODS was it difficult

[solverse]

[solverse]

Art by Alex Twin

[solverse]

On my last Witch Hat Atelier fanart, someone commented saying the swirling design reminded them of Van Gogh's Starry Night, so I thought, why not go all out for the look?

I spent some time updating my Paint Tool SAI to the latest version and created some new Impressionist brushes. I'm super happy with these new brushes and look forward to painting lots of landscapes and skies with them~

The full hours long video recording, PSD File, and HD image will be DMed on Patreon.com/Yuumei on Dec 5th!

[solverse]

grief recognises grief

[solverse]

As amazing as Fantastic Beast is with all of the interesting creatures and additional lore, I loathe the take on the American Magical World. And not because American pride (‘Merica🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅) but because that might work in New York, but that social structure sure as fuck don’t work the farther west you get.

Each state is different, it gives them their charms, and each state also has… drumroll please 🥁🥁🥁🥁

NATIVE AMERICANS!!! Yes the people who’ve been on these lands since before the first of the 13 colonies even existed!!!

Can you imagine Magical America? The creatures who lived alongside tribes? The giant forests? Hell, the other sentient beings like the centaurs, goblins, elves, etc.? Imagine:

The great Rivers and Lakes guarded by the merfolk and swimming with the great salmons, occasionally assisting the tribes along their borders so they all may share what the waters have to offer them

The great Plains and Forests with centaur tribes being mighty and powerful, guardians of the lands and occasionally allying with the human tribes

Elves that are still short but mighty and healthy and who get mistaken for native children when they live alongside human tribes

Goblins living deep in the caves of mountains, living happily with little human interaction besides for trading for safe passages and materials.

Imagine the werewolves loving their inner wolves and having their own tribes and living peacefully in their homes.

Imagine that, for thousands, and hundreds of years they lived in peace, occasionally waring against themselves but things happen of course but they way the magic and earth had never been so healthy as it was. Gods imagine Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon? Or the Mojave Desert? The great basins, the plateaus…

And then, when the Europeans started claiming the land that the magical beings fought to protect the lands they have lived on for centuries, the creatures of the forest hiding the remnants of their great lands from human eyes and hands, protecting the magic that slowly dies as the land gets destroyed and the magical beings who called those lands home started to die and could no longer protect the land.

That they tried to cling and hide and fight for their homes with whatever they could, but when the magical Europeans got involved it just went to hell for the magical beings.

The Native Reservations, National Parks/Lands, and deep into the mountains, are some of the few places that magical creatures can live in relative peace. The centaurs are not as many, and the elves either live on the reservations or the forests. The goblins are not like their European kin, but they are not the same as they were, now instead of trade for safe passage it is trade for protection of human materials or trading for goblin creations. The merfolk have perished in most lakes and rivers where humans have polluted or hunted their food to extinction. The magical creatures who once lived on the land are either hunted down for sport or for being declared born of hell.

Now imagine Ilvermorny, created by a mother who wanted her children to learn magic, and turned into a way for tribes to take shelter and teach their ways as well as learn other ways for magic. The school cropping up in the midst of Magical Americas downfall becomes a place that the few tribes not driven out of their home learn different form of magic while creating a foundation for Native American magic to survive and be taught in the school. Imagine multiple sister schools (because America is too big for there ti be only one school) to the original Ilvermorny being created to teach, to embrace and preserve a culture they refuse to let be erased.

Years later and it is a core course that gets taught, and keeps a part of a culture alive that was on the bring of complete erasure.

Imagine that when African slaves started appearing and become enslave, those who escaped and found themselves at Ilvermorny schools, they started teaching their magics as well. Then as more minorities started to appear in America, so did the lessons in certain Ilvermorny schools where these minorities were prevalent.

America is a cauldron full of magical cultures being mixed, and Ilvermorny is the first to openly teach different magical cultures. The southern schools involve more Mexican, Spaniard, some French, and African magical courses, while the north is more French. The east coast is more influenced by British magics, while the west coast is influenced by the Spaniard, Chinese, and Russian.

They all had their own mix and all have the main course shared by the people who lived their first, but magical america is sooo much more more fascinating and so young still! There is still so much that I can’t possibly cover without a month of research! And we haven’t even reached the southern hemisphere!

Fantastic Beast is great, but it’s missing the uniqueness and complexity of America. And I can only dip a finger into the endless possibilities of the magical American world.

[solverse]

You know what? I'm bored, and I've got some ideas, so here are my Ilvermony headcanons.

The separate houses are treated as little more than an aesthetic difference by the students. While there might be rivalries and prank wars between the houses, it never gets to the levels of near discrimination that it gets to at Hogwarts. The students all just consider themselves students of the same school and members of the houses intermingle and hang out with each other all the time. They're even allowed to be in each other's dorms for limited amounts of time each day. The teachers encourage it as they often say that each house represents a part of what every great wizard needs, and coming together helps bring them all together towards the ideal wizard.

It's not uncommon for there to be students from other countries who don't speak English perfectly. Thankfully, there are charms to help translate their speech for the teacher, and the only part of their work that needs to be spoken English are their incantations. Though some might still ask for help in getting the pronunciation correct.

The dining hall students eat in is vastly different from Hogwarts's Great Hall, being a large room with mahogany walls filled with multiple circular tables covered in red tablecloths with gold trim and set with silver untensils, fine blue China plates, and crystal glasses. In the center of the room is a vast roaring fireplace with a picture of the Sayre family overtop of it. During feasts, the Pukwudgies bring out platters and pitchers of food and drink that stay magically hot and cold until the students serve themselves from them. Students are allowed to sit at whatever table they please, and the staff eat at a massive table in the middle of all the others.

The dorms are just different buildings of the castle that have five floors of T-shaped hallways with long red and gold rugs bearing the houses symbol. Along the walls of each hallways are dorm rooms for each years students. Students are assigned two each to a dorm, with their roommates's names being included with the letters they receive at the start of each new year. Roommates can't be changed unless two students agree to trade with each other. The dorms all have two large half poster beds with red and gold sheets and blankets, the blankets also carrying their houses symbol and pillows with blue pillow cases. There's also two desks, half dressers, wardrobes, and a set of three shelves above the dressers on both sides (the rooms are enhanced with expansion charms to give them extra space). The halls for younger students all have a dorm manager in them, an older student who was chosen to sleep on their floor to act as a chaperone and disciplinary figure to the students.

The students get to the school by way of multiple magical single decker busses that all arrive at Rockfeller Center in New York. They drive for around an hour before making a stop at a magically hidden pit stop where the students can get snacks, drinks and use the bathroom before the rest of the journey.

Thanksgivings at Ilvermony are always huge. The decorations include fall leaves that flutter and blow themselves through the halls, realistic turkey figures that jump around and gobble, and in the center of each dining room table is a red and gold hat that plays music. Each table gets its own turkey to carve (any leftovers are served over the next few days as sandwiches) along with boats of gravy and cranberry sauce, bowls of corn, mashed potatoes and carrots. And for dessert, a veritable buffet of pies, including Ilvermony's famous cranberry pie, the recipe said to have been invented by Isolt Sayre herself.

Any students without a wand before coming to school is allowed to select one from the hall of wands just past the sorting room. The hall holds hundreds of wands stacked inside their case along the walls. The room holds both wands so new they were just ordered yesterday and so old they were created at the very start of the school. After each sorting ceremony, the head of the school helps each first year's find a wand that "chooses" them, a process that can take up to an hour at most. It's also heavily guarded at all times by both a pair of heavily armed, muscular Pukwudgies and a rotating member of the staff as it's a prime target for thievery either by students or dark wizards.

Ilvermorny boasts a massive roaster of international magical studies electives. In each one, students can study the government, magical creatures, and magical history of the country of their choosing. Some even go on summer trips to those countries to further their studies.

Rather than O.W.L.s, Ilvermorny students takes the W.I.T. or Wizarding Intuition Tests, something similar to an SAT tests. The tests are taken twice, once during sixth year and once during seventh year for each class the students take, and the combined scores of each year are added together, and that average becomes their score. The better the score in certain subjects, the more job opportunities the students have.

To receive mail, students go to the mail room in a tall tower at the southern side of the castle where every owl goes to bring packages and letters for their deliveriees to receive. The mail room is student run and students are selected at random to do the job.

[solverse]

Ok question of the day that I wanted to ask since forever

Who came first ? The Muggle-born or the Squib ?

Who was there first ? Muggles or wizards ? Because if it is the former, why would Purebloods despise them so much since every wizard would have muggle blood in their vein ? Would Purebloods even exist ? And if it is the latter, how did Muggles outnumbered the wizards ? How did they forget the existence of magic ?

So much questions...

[solverse]

I like a setting with character. Not a fantastical one, necessarily—the real world has plenty of character, and magical settings can be written to leave little impression. The HP universe has a great deal of character, but so does 20th c. Britain. Both are exciting to me, and I love to read and write them as leads in the story.

See, the thing about the original HP books is that they don’t do a compelling job of tying these two together. Our heroes and our main villains are both magical. The magical world operates its own governments and public utilities and private businesses and schools. Muggle-raised children don’t talk much about their Muggle families once they start school; magical people who marry Muggles (not Muggleborns—Muggles) tend to fall off the wagon and be left out of magical society, as far as we’re told. The interest is all in magic.

Which leaves us in a sort of strange spot, with respect to Muggles, because some of the strongest connections we have to Muggles are, well, villainous. The Dursleys—villains. Severus Snape’s father—abusive Muggle, and Snape’s a Death Eater. Tom Riddle’s father—probably abused, and Tom’s the big bad. There are more Muggles, like the people Tom knew at Wool’s, Hermione’s parents (absent and then obliviated), vague mentions of others, etc. Most of our representation of the Muggle world suggests we should dismiss it.

And that’s what most HP fic does, fairly enough. There’s lots of thoughtful takes on the structures and norms and idiosyncrasies of the magical world.

It’s just that I like 20th c. Britain, and I like the question of what it might be like to be tied to both of these places. I started down this path with Snape, his childhood in Cokeworth and what it might mean to him to have kept his family home there throughout his life. Clearly, living in a Muggle neighborhood is not disqualifying for membership in the Death Eaters, going by him and Regulus Black. So when my focus shifted to Tom, well—Tom’s got a Muggle parent, is raised Muggle, and lives for many years in London as both a child and an adult. I know he’s Lord Voldemort, yes, but… why couldn’t he keep some ties to that part of his heritage?

I like setting with character, and mid-century London has so much of it to offer. Much has been made of how Tom might have experienced the war years, but the recovery from the war took just as long. The last of WWII-era rationing ended in 1954, well into his adulthood. I wonder how the magical world fared in comparison to that. The landscape of urban housing also radically changed after the war years—was there council housing put up in Knockturn? I like to think about how Tom might have been affected by the arts and culture of the era, reading Tolkein and getting a kick out of a Muggle version of fantasy or watching The Third Man and agreeing with Harry Lime about the inconsequentiality of human life.

He’s magical, right, but he still lives in the city. I can’t see anyone spending all of their life on two streets. Getting out more means, well, interacting with Muggles.

And shouldn’t he? As much as Tom might resent his childhood, it’s a world he knows, versus one in which he’s marked as an outsider. There might be relief in no one reacting to his name. Perhaps he even keeps up with some of his fellows from Wool’s, or Mrs. Cole—unhappy relationships can still feel like family. Perhaps he cottages during they heyday of cottaging, because there’s anonymity for sordid sex outside of the magical world, or maybe he likes a pub with a football match on the wireless. Perhaps the right magical friend is even invited along.

I’ve seen lots of acceptance of the idea that Lord Voldemort’s platform could be one of circumstance and opportunity, that blood purity is not his personal agenda. I think that’s exciting, something that adds breadth to the realm of how he’s written.

I like setting with character, and Tom is born of two of them. His story sits at the tension between the Muggle and magical worlds, and the difficulty of reconciling them to one another. We’ve seen so many takes where Voldemort tips fully into magic; what about when he can’t let go of the parts of himself that are Muggle?

[solverse]

his mood went to zero

[solverse]

just daphne in the snow for today

[solverse]

the slytherin girls when they were younger