#(not the art itself; that only took few days lol)

[pjo-hoo-toa-freakazoid]

what are some of your Octavian head cannons?

Hi glassssssss :D🌸

I have quite a few lol. I will resist only writing the crack ones. That deserves a post of it’s own lmao

He’s Korean Italian.

He can speak over five languages. Italian, Korean, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, bits of Japanese.

His birthday is on the 8th of August. Hence his name.

Octavian is not his actual birth name. It is a second name given to him by the head of the family as per their tradition.

Only child (this I consider self projection, cuz I’m an only child and I dunno how to write siblings so fuck it) has a lot of cousins tho.

His mother is mortal, and is quite a famous model. But they are rather estranged.

He’s a daddy’s boy. Extremely close to his dad. His dad calls him August (only he can call tav that)

He’s Bi/Ace. But thinks exploring that aspect of himself is a waste of time.

Octavian has loose curly hair but he straightened it. He also bleaches his hair from time to time. His hair is very damaged.

When tav first came to camp he didn’t know English well so Micheal (who ho knew a bit of Spanish) helped him. They primarily speak Spanish with each other.

Octavian and Micheal actually arrived only three days apart. So they were assigned together. Which sort of was the start of their friendship.

Octavian was only 14 when he was assigned as camp Augur. And right after that he was assigned as Jason’s caretaker.

When Reyna first arrived he took her under his wing, primarily because of her abilities.

The three became quite close. Octavian genuinely loved his two siblings. Sadly that’s only because he thought lowly of them. So when they both were appointed Praetors, something in Octavian snapped and they were never the same again

He’s a bird dad. He has three birds at home. Sadly he couldn’t bring any of them with him to Camp.

He is also a legacy of Victoria.

Performing Auguries has left him with dry and strained eyes as he’s staring into the fluff for several minutes at a time.

The after effects of every augury reading and prophetic vision often takes a huge toll on him. Causing nosebleeds, nausea, migraines, fainting episodes.

He very occasionally sleep walks. It’s a camp inside joke that carrying him back to his room brings good luck and has become a sort of tradition. Octavian has no clue of it.

Everyone thinks he can glow. He can’t he’s just very pale.

The only time he actually does glow is when he’s getting prophetic visions.

Primarily his eyes glow. And also the prophecy itself that etches on his skin which leaves marks after the visions end. It’s a bit painful and itches a lot but they tend to fade after a few minutes.

The first time he went to karaoke with his friends he sang for ten hours straight. And he was perfectly fine, no vocal cords damage no nothing.

Octavian’s biggest insecurity is not having enough traits related to Apollo. But he constantly ignores and undermines the ones he has. He also has the most negative Apollo traits out of anyone.

He curses like a sailor, but the catch is that he curses in every language except English.

Octavian was forced to play the piano as a kid. He actually wanted to learn the drums but never could.

Octavian has a tattoo of the Camp logo. Left of his stomach. He got it at 16 thinking it would be so cool. He regretted it soon after.

He has a very high spice tolerance. Shocking but it’s very funny.

Was an ice hockey player but he quit so he could focus on his plan to become Praetor.

(This is a sort of inside joke HC) He plays COD, a lot. Die hard fan. Has posters and stuff. Micheal was the one who introduced him to the game. Totally has a secret art account where he posts his soapghost fanart PFFT AH-/jjjj lmao

Probably has like two boxes worth of yaoi manga hidden under the floorboards of his bed/jjjjj PFFFFT

I think I should stop here cuz like I have so much lore for this guy and the hcs are so specific😭😭 we’ll be here for days bro lmao 😭😭

[imtrashraccoon]

It's here!

The long awaited chapter 2 of The Nightmare of Apathy is here!

While actually it's on my AO3 because it's way, way too long to put here...at 5,439 words. Chapter 1 was only 4,712 words and I thought that was a long one. Sheesh.

Anyways, I drew some art for some of the flora I ended up creating for it. Maybe go read the chapter first to avoid potential spoilers? I can't stop you though lol.

Star Fruit:

- This is the fruit of the wild growing Star tree. It's on the smaller side as far as trees are concerned and it's fruit emits a soft glow. The fruit has many facets and is shaped like a tubular star. It's peel is orange and almost waxy in texture while it's flesh is yellow and tart. It's leaves are dark blue and it has coiled vines on its stems. It is commonly baked into desserts or made into jams.

- Technically, I took inspiration from lantern fruits from Subnautica and the real life starfruits.

Glow Berries:

- The fruit of common wild bushes of the same name. These bushes have lots of small thorns on the stems making gathering the berries slightly difficult. The berries are purple and are most known for the bright glow they emit. The flesh is bright pink and it tastes slightly sour as well as acidic. They have dark blue leaves and grow the berries in small bunches at the ends of its branches. They are commonly baked into desserts like pies and other things, as well as eaten on their own.

- The name and idea was inspired by the berries of the same name from Minecraft. Otherwise, they are shaped like cherries but without the pit.

Moon Pears:

- Named for when the tree grows it's fruit, Moon Pears are a carefully cultivated fruit tree. While the tree itself can grow rather large, it is generally kept in arboretums and is trimmed to remain at a manageable size. The leaves are pale and go from gray to pure white as they mature. They are very rare and only a select few people keep them. As a result, they are very expensive and not many get the chance to try them.

- The fruit only grows when the moon is out and best when it is a full moon, meaning it takes a while to be fully mature. It is white and is sweet and juicy. They are basically like real life pears just attuned to the cycles of the moon.

I have like ten more plants and herbs I have made, four of which were featured in the chapter itself. If I end up drawing them, I'll definitely be posting them in the future. Would you guys like more lore? Cause I have lots more...it took me several days to write lol.

[elspethdekarios]

BG3 Tav Backstory Bash

This is a challenge to help people flesh out their Tav’s backstory by exploring their past. It is organized into four sections with seven prompts. You can treat this as a monthly challenge or a general project. You can write headcanons, fics, or share art based on the prompts! You can interpret the prompts however you want. If you want to share use the tag #bg3backstorybash

Thank you @lolthslover for tagging me in this forever ago!! It had taken me literally a month (or more??) to write all of this, so I'm sorry it took me so long!

I have no idea who all has done this already, so sorry if you're getting tagged again lol. I tag @mumms-the-word @waterdeepwhiskey @loserwitchbitch @lewdisescariot @fantasyfictionfables @orangekittyenergy and anyone else who wants to do it <3

I didn't answer all of the prompts, so make sure you check @kelandrin's original post for all of them!!

Elspeth Dekarios (née Vaidelark)

Age: 35

High Half Elf • Cleric, Corellon Larethian, Nature Domain • Noble • Chaotic Good

✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧

This is long, read under the cut!

Baby:

Parents

Elspeth Vaidelark is the second and youngest child of Lord Rodorick Vaidelark and Lady Selma Vaidelark. A high elf sorcerer born to low-level nobility in idyllic Evereska, Selma always longed to live in the hustle and bustle of a city. So, when a noble family in Baldur's Gate was seeking an alliance via arranged marriage, she volunteered. Selma is a cold woman, and an even colder mother. Rodorick, a human paladin, is a touch warmer than his wife, but aloof and distant from his daughters. He is about 60 years old, and Selma is about 200. They are both more than okay with this age difference, given their marriage has never been one of love, but of convenience and rank.

Birth

Elspeth was born 5 years after her sister Ariadne. Selma's first pregnancy was a breeze--no morning sickness, no swollen feet, and the birth itself was smooth and quick... but her second was not so easy. When she was pregnant with Elspeth, she was constantly sick and absolutely exhausted. Towards the end of her pregnancy, the midwife insisted Selma needed bedrest. When it was time for the baby to come, Selma was in labor for days, in pain and sick as a dog. When Elspeth finally made her appearance, Selma wanted to feel the same motherly love she felt with Ariadne, but when she held her new daughter for the first time, she felt only resentment. She thought perhaps their bond would strengthen later, once the trauma of her pregnancy subsided, but it never did.

First word

The Vaidelark sisters had a private tutor as small children before they started attending school. Little Elspeth's favorite part of tutoring was storytime, and she'd often wobble over to the tutor with a brightly colored children's book clutched to her chest. She'd thrust the book out in front of her, silently asking the woman to read to her. After months of tutoring, Elspeth had picked up a few words, but her speech was mostly babbling sounds, until one day, she handed a story to the tutor with a word, clear as day: "book."

Tantrum

Elspeth wasn't much of a tantrum-thrower--that was Ariadne. Though she did once throw a mighty fit after tossing her favorite doll down the stairs, breaking its ceramic head in the fall. She didn't know it would break, and it was her first lesson in actions having consequences. Her parents offered to buy her a new doll, but she didn't want a new doll. She wanted that doll, unbroken as it was moments before. She screamed and wailed and cried until her red face was wet with tears and snot before eventually falling asleep.

Childhood:

Friends

Elspeth had a consistent group of childhood friends, including her best friend, Hera. They met at school in the Upper City when they were about ten years old, and have been friends ever since, even living together in adulthood. Hera is a high elf with bronze skin and deep chestnut brown hair that has always been impossible to tame. Early in this friendship, Hera chased down a group of boys who were making fun of El's upturned nose, poking their own noses up and mocking her with nasally voices. El turned away, mortified and trying to hide her tears. Hera ran after them, kicking each of them in the shins and dragging the ring leader back to El by his collar to apologize. Elspeth credits Hera with teaching her to stand up for herself.

Siblings

Ariadne is older than El by 5 years. They've never been close. Ariadne was always the golden child in their parents' eyes. She realized quickly that she could do no wrong, and used it to her advantage. Their parents wanted Ariadne and Elspeth to follow in their father's footsteps, so they were both trained to become paladins from an early age. Where Ariadne found sword fighting and shield bashing natural, Elspeth struggled. She became decent with a weapon, but it never came easy, and she would often retreat to her room bloodied, bruised, and crying. Always being compared to her sister, Elspeth grew up knowing she was second best in everyone's eyes but their housekeeper, Tessie.

Getting into trouble

El got in trouble for everything even though she tried her best to stay out of it. Eventually, she realized her parents would find a way to use her as the scapegoat for anything they possibly could, and she stopped trying--though this didn't happen until she was a teenager.

Teenager:

First love

When she was about 15, Elspeth developed a massive crush on a human boy at her school. He was tall with deeply tanned skin and tousled black hair, and he looked at her like no one had ever looked at her before. Like he wanted her. He was the first boy she ever dated. They would sneak out of their upper city homes late at night and meet in the park like some kind of forbidden, secret love story (even though it wasn't forbidden at all). They were only a couple for a short amount of time before the infatuation faded, but she did love him--as much as she knew what love was at that point in her life. It was love in the moment.

Rebellion

Once she realized that she could never do right in her parents' eyes, she stopped trying. This really came to a head as a teenager. El didn't hold her tongue anymore, and she wasn't afraid to speak up for herself any longer. She got in heated arguments with her sister regularly, she stopped her Paladin training of her own accord, and she started spending as much time as she could away from home. As she got further into her teenage years, she started partying. She spent many nights out at dance halls with her friends, indulging in whatever mind-altering substance was offered to her--alcohol, dreammist; she even tried silkroot a few times. As she neared adulthood, these habits imbued her with a bit of a party-girl-socialite reputation in the city.

Reckless behavior

This incident actually happened in adulthood, but it's the most fitting thing for "reckless behavior":

El's partying habits continued into her 20s. Despite her strained relationship with her parents, she was still nobility, and she was a bit naive to the world outside of her upper city upbringing. One night, El and her friends attended a ball in honor of a diplomat's visit. Always looking for an excuse to wear her absolute best clothes, El was dressed in an extravagant lavender gown adorned with silver vines. When she bought it, she knew exactly what necklace she needed to wear with it--the one kept in the family safe, white gold with hanging droplets of shining diamonds and alexandrite. She always loved that necklace and the way it seemed to sparkle the most in moonlight. It was an heirloom from her father's side of the family, and worth an obscene amount of money. She wore it to the ball, got compliments on it all night, and when she and her friends decided to venture to a pub afterwards, didn't think twice about the fortune of gems that she wore around her neck.

She drank far too much wine that night, and possibly indulged in some other things as well. Most of it is a blur, but she remembers ending up in a card game with a stranger--a large man with a scar on his face. She remembers being certain, absolutely certain, that he was bluffing. She remembers being so confident that she would win that instead of betting gold, she bet her family's jewels that adorned her neck. And she remembers losing.

She came clean to her father the next day when the haze of the night wore off with the morning. He sent his toughest men, with the help of the Flaming Fist, the track the man down and pay him off. The jewels were secured and back in her father's safe, but Elspeth's relationship with her family was essentially over. They granted her her inheritance and she was told to leave. She didn't speak to them for years. Painful and embarrassing as the evening was (it landed her on the front page of the Gazette), it was a wakeup call for her to get her shit together.

Adulthood:

Serious relationships

El dated and slept around a little bit during her party years, but she never really fell in love until she met Leon. He was a paladin who trained at the same academy she attended to channel her divine magic (more on that in the next couple sections). Leon was charming, funny, treated her well--she fell in love with the way his auburn hair fell loosely behind his slightly pointed ears, the freckles dotting his skin, the chiseled muscles of his body....

Leon was good for her, she told herself. He encouraged her to try to repair her relationship with her family, and to show them that she'd grown and learned from her mistakes. She was much more mature now that she was in her 30s, and she always hated that her parents still probably thought of her as an obstinate, reckless child. "Redeem yourself," Leon would tell her. "They need to see how much you've changed." So she did. Bit by bit, she began stitching together her family ties until she and Leon were biweekly dinner guests at her parents' table. There was still tension, sure, and she would never see eye to eye with her mother, but her father seemed to actually grow fond of her in those months.

While Elspeth grew closer to her family (even Ariadne was tolerable most of the time), her and Leon began to grow apart. They were both invested in their own work, and their relationship fizzled out. It was an amicable breakup, though it was hard to remain friends, so they mostly avoided each other. El wasn't really hurt by the breakup, but she did miss him. She did feel like second best again, since Leon continued spending time with her family--her father especially took a liking to him. Even though she didn't love him anymore, she still carried a fondness for him... until he proposed to Ariadne.

She was in love with Leon, but she never experienced true, soul-binding, unconditional love until being with Gale. Neither of them had. What she had with Leon pales in comparison to her relationship with Gale. She had to process the betrayal, of course, but she doesn't miss him at all.

Work

Elspeth is a healer and assistant instructor at Ambrose Academy of the Divine--a post-secondary school for clerics and paladins of Seldarine deities to hone their skills and knowledge. Being a healer is her calling (literally lol). More on the Academy in the "Leaving Home" section.

Finding your place

Since Elspeth spent a lot of time with the housekeeper, Tessie, she picked up lots of skills that nobles don't often need to learn. She learned to cook, do laundry, basic cleaning skills--but most importantly, she learned about healing. Tessie worked as a healer for years before she began working for the Vaidelarks, and she was often the person El would seek out after being injured in training with her sister. Tessie would hold her small, work-worn hands over El's bloodied skin, and El would watch in awe as a turquoise light radiated from her palms and warmed her skin as it regenerated. Tessie taught her how to soak her bruised, sore body in a warm bath of epsom salt and herbs, how to make balsam ointment for burns, and how to stop bleeding quickly with pressure and bandages. Healing spells eventually became second nature to her.

Elspeth's mother, hailing from a land of elves, was a devout worshipper of Corellon, and raised her half-elf daughters to be the same. El always found peace at the small shrine her mother had built in the courtyard, and devoted herself to her own private worship for years. One night, as Elspeth kneeled at the stone statue of the Elffather under a clear, crescent moon, she felt a presence of overwhelming peace and certainty envelop her. She was spoken to without words, but somehow knew within her body that this presence was her god, and that he, in that moment, bestowed his favor upon her. The moment felt like it lasted for hours, but it was only a few seconds. When she opened her eyes, her palms were glowing golden and small, white flowers started sprouting from the ground she kneeled upon. For the first time in her life, she knew who she wanted to be.

Leaving Home

When Elspeth told her parents about her divine experience, her mother was--possibly for the first and only time in El's life--happy for her, even if she seemed a bit jealous that the god she spent her life worshipping revealed himself to her daughter instead of her. Regardless, her parents enrolled her in Ambrose Academy of the Divine where elven and half-elven clerics and paladins develop their skills, knowledge, and faith. Ambrose consists of the school, a healing center, and dormitories for students/instructors if they choose to live at the academy. Elspeth has lived, worked, and studied at Ambrose for over a decade, and it has truly become her home. She shares a suite with her best friend Hera, also a cleric of Corellon by coincidence (they've been best friends since childhood). Working in the healing center is her favorite, but twice a tenday she serves as an instructor assistant--something she's learned to enjoy, even if she was unsure at first.

Staring a family/found family

Hera is definitely El's found family, but now, of course, her companions are found family as well. She's especially close with Karlach and Shadowheart (though they had their fair share of arguments before she turned away from Shar). She and Gale have worked tirelessly to find a solution to Karlach's infernal engine problem, and hope to one day bring her home from Avernus for good.

As for starting an actual family, I'm not sure if El and Gale want to have kids. I think if they did, it would be years down the road, and they'd only have 1. I think they would love being parents, but I see them wanting to focus solely on each other for a long time before/if that ever happens.

[ryuichirou]

Replies

We gave you a break from my art but not from my replies lol

Anonymous asked:

Will you draw more Scott Pilgrim content?

Not in the nearest future. Like I wrote in the post itself: we haven’t watched the show yet; and probably won’t for quite some time (I’m positive it’s not something we’d be able to recover from to jump back into twst). But Wallace’s anime design is adorable, so I really wanted to draw him with Todd. We’ll definitely watch it though, and then I might spam more art with them... or keep it to myself.

Anonymous asked:

Out of curiosity, do you have like a genderbend tag or something to see all your works with the twisted boys as girls together 👀

I do! It’s not strictly about twst, but it’s the only thing I post nowadays, so it probably doesn’t matter: #genderswap

I do have quite a lot of drawings of twst boys as girlies, but we haven’t posted much of them… I hope we will one day. 💪😔

Anonymous asked:

Do you think that Fem!Jamil would have less complaints than Regular!Jamil about those times where Kalim tries to dress her up? My guess is that she would simply see it as Fem!Kalim wanting to "play dolls" and wouldn't really think much past that. Annoying, yes, but nothing more than a childish whim. Also, if this requests involve crossdressing, I imagine that her male counterpart would make more of a fuss about it than her.

(we talked about fem!KaliJami in our reply yesterday)

At first yeah, probably. She’s definitely more comfortable with it than the regular Jamil, because it’s easier for her to rationalize it in a non-romantic/non-sexual way. It really is as if Kalim just treats her like a pretty doll, and it’s nothing unusual: they used to play like this a lot when they were little. But when she’ll realise that whenever she’s dressed in pretty silks (and sometimes quite revealing ones), Kalim looks at her in an amazed but also clearly enamoured way. The moment Jamil realised that Kalim probably desires her, she’ll start treating these little dress up games differently.

Anonymous asked:

Ortho got a new card for new years. So picture him with Vil in his new years. Same goes with Rook in his new year. You know what? Have the three of them together in new years?

Ortho’s been getting so many new cards recently! He deserves all of them. The best boy lol Really liked the new year’s one!

Vil’s New Years outfit was so good that my heart actually stops whenever I remember him, and I’m super excited that he could be paired up with either Rook or Ortho now. Or both~

Anonymous asked:

Hey Ryu and katsu, did you guys read the translation for the previous jp event 'Playful Land'? I haven't seen you guys talk about it or mention it, so i'm curious to hear your thoughts and opinions on this event.

personally, i enjoyed most of the event  This is basically falling into the Black Butler territory lol (But i heard rumours that Yana wasn't involved in this event and a few previous ones apparently?).

Also, what do you guys think of the two new characters? Fellow and Gidel. I swear Gidel looks almost identical to cheka :'DD

Anon!! Sorry that it took so long to reply. We haven’t seen this event yet, so we edited out some of the parts of your ask to keep it spoiler-free; I don’t know when we’re going to finally watch it, but we’ll keep your ask in the askbox so we could share our thoughts when it happens. It might take quite a long time though, so I’m sorry.

I’ll reply to the rest of the things you’ve mentioned.

I’m not sure about the rumors, but I think Yana mentioned in her twi that she and her team was involved in the writing + design work for the event? But she has to do a lot of things these days, so I can’t say for sure.

The Black Butler vibes are very strong though, the whole circus/carnival theme is like a classic Yana setting, especially when it gets dark and traumatic lol Very excited to learn more once we watch it.

Fellow and Gidel look great!! Really love their design, their sprites are also great, Fellow especially has great expressions, and I really really love sleazy characters in general. Gidel has a lot of Cheka vibes lol but Cheka is more of a >:3 kid, and Gidel is more of a =w=, also I trust Gidel much much less. But in a good way, because once again, sleazy characters = good.

Anonymous asked:

So I've seen this hand held octopus citrus wringer, let's just say it looks like something else, so I'd like you to imagine Azul shoving a tiny octopus up Idia's ass

You mean… this one? Wow, it really looks like something else…

Poor Idia and his poor butt. Come on, Azul, it’s not an orange!!

Anonymous asked:

Neige could be Cady, but in universe fans would probably say he's a good fit for Regina George bc of his beauty

Either way Janis cusses both of them out so Vil gets paid to insult Neige on-screen

Let’s be honest, his fans would be so scandalized by Cady-Neige turning into “the second Regina” during the course of the movie lol I don’t know why I keep picturing his fanbase as a 90% wholesome people but. Still, he would absolutely be celebrated for that role and for going outside of his unproblematic box.

But yeah, if Vil got to play Janis in this scenario he would probably enjoy his opportunity to vent lol

[centrally-unplanned]

(Reposting from the twitters)  There is this "admin bloat" fact going today, which is always positioned as a problem at US universities and an explanation for their high tuition:

Which, well Harvard has 20,000 students, its 2/3rds grad students - that is a very selective figure to quote. But anyway it comes from this MRU post quoting a Harvard Crimson editorial, which follows with this framing:

Yet of the 7,000-strong horde, it seems that many members’ primary purpose is to squander away tax-free money intended for academic work on initiatives, projects, and committees that provide scant value to anyone’s educational experience.

For example, last December, all Faculty of Arts and Sciences affiliates received an email from Dean Claudine Gay announcing the final report of the FAS Task Force on Visual Culture and Signage, a task force itself created by recommendation of the Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging. This task force was composed of 24 members: six students, nine faculty members, and nine administrators. The task force produced a 26-page report divided into seven sections, based upon a survey, focus groups, and 15 separate meetings with over 500 people total. The report dedicated seven pages to its recommendations, which ranged from “Clarify institutional authority over FAS visual culture and signage” to “Create a dynamic program of public art in the FAS.” In response to these recommendations, Dean Gay announced the creation of a new administrative post, the “FAS campus curator,” and a new committee, the “FAS Standing Committee on Visual Culture and Signage.”

Regardless of your stance on the goal of fostering a more inclusive visual culture, the procedural absurdity is clear. A presidential task force led to the creation of an FAS task force which, after expending significant time, effort, and resources, led to the creation of a single administrative job and a committee with almost the exact name as the second task force. I challenge anyone other than the task force members themselves to identify the value created for a single Harvard student’s educational experience.

This approach is very obsfucating in a way typical of this genre. The 'task force' thing here is a Gish Gallop - 24 members! 26 page report! 500 people meetings! Bureaucracy run rampant!

Which, yeah true lol, but not due to this. The use of "task force" here is meant to sound all formal, but at universities everything is a task force, its just what we call a recurring meeting - a bunch of people meet a few times w/ free lunch, that is it. 500 people polled? Harvard’s population is ~40,000, these ‘meetings’ we 20 minute zoom calls, on people & time spent that is a rounding error. That 27 page report is 50% copy-pasted appendixes, easy, it took someone maybe a day to write.

And the culmination is they hired a full time staffer. So ditch the jargon and reframe: a large org met multiple times and surveyed stakeholders before creating a new role. Literally all big orgs do this! This is standard procedure, if you gonna expand a team you need buy-in + role definition. Unis are overrun with this task force stuff, they are inefficient, but it is almost no one's job to do only task forces. They are 5% at most of every fac-staff's time, bullshit provost agendas or overwrought due diligence that you shake your head at and suffer through before getting back to your real job. Stupid, but nowhere near an explainer for 7k admin roles.

When you look at the Crimson source article, it really tips its hand on the analytical error:

Wrong. Harvard has instead filled its halls with administrators. Across the University, for every academic employee there are approximately 1.45 administrators. When only considering faculty, this ratio jumps to 3.09. Harvard employs 7,024 total full-time administrators, only slightly fewer than the undergraduate population. What do they all do?

Most administrators have a legitimate function. I will happily concede that the University does need administration to operate effectively. No professors want to handle Title IX compliance or send institution-wide emails about Covid-19 protocols. Yet of the 7,000-strong horde, it seems that many members’ primary purpose is to squander away tax-free money intended for academic work on initiatives, projects, and committees that provide scant value to anyone’s educational experience.

Oh, ~most~ have a legitimate function? How much is most? 65%? 85%? ...99%? Big world of difference there, if its 99% this article doesn't make sense any more. Of course it never says...just 'many'. And it names...one, the new FAS role. Lets look at that role, from the famed 27 page report:

That is...a public art manager. Harvard has a metric ton of public art! You think wall murals and statues and banners paint, hang, and rotate themselves? Its Harvard, its 30% museum, its a high prestige venue, its in demand from artists, it *trains* aritsts. This is a real job!! Its not fake at all. Harvard wants to expand how diverse its public art is so its expanding its team.

Now you might think universities should be bare-walled office buildings, which you can think...except you don't, if you had to send you *own* child there and are the running to pick Harvard as that option. Suddenly all this 'bloat' is a beautiful campus with facilities to provide happiness and status for your kid. Suddenly...the branding makes sense. Suddenly this role generates value. That is the issue all the 'admin bloat' arguments run into; when you actually have to spec out the numbers, you see 95% of the staff increase is because what unis *do* is different. Harvard wasn't an art museum in 1950, but it is today. It *makes money* from that role. 

What I am not saying is unis don't have an org problem - they absolutely do. It stems from unis serving this three-tier job as status/credential certifier, teaching institution, and research facility, which we only pretend aligns, they don't really.  Which is the frame admin 'bloat' must be understood through - as unis changed faculty pushed back on having their job change to meet it. But there was way too much money at stake, so admin were expanded to fill the gap the old ‘faculty-as-owners’ model was exposing, and that gap has grown over time. The bloat model doesn't capture this dynamic at all. It just holds up fig leaf arts/humanities roles as synecdoche for all admin when they are the exception. Unis could be massively restructured, absolutely, but as of now only 2-3% (at most) could be fired before revenue, operations, research, etc. were impacted.

The ‘problem’ at US universities is baked into their core structure and incentives - if it was trivial to fix, they would have done it.

[spnstillstudies]

Hi! I love your blog and think this concept is so cool!!! I'm just curious, what has been your most popular still so far, and did you expect it? <3

hi, first off thank you very much!! the most popular still (by a lot, actually) is the very first one i posted. and yes, it surprised me a lot and to this day i’m not really sure why it took off! i’ve only ever had a few pieces of art break 1k notes over the years i’ve been on tumblr. don’t get me wrong i’m proud of it and think i did good work, but idk how it happened before i had any sort of following when i didn’t even have any spn mutuals on my main. it was pretty wild!

i try to tag high and low note count posts so i can keep track of what people like the most and what disinterests them. if you’re curious what my other most popular stills are you can check that tag out! the ones that take off almost never seem to be the ones i expect to do well or spend the most time on, so that’s a trend in itself lol.

[crazy-lazy-elder-sims]

Okay so next day thoughts on outer wilds:

i improved landing my space ship by 0.1% but it helped alot i think the main issue is that the game is optimized for controllers and i dont have one so keyboard controls are a tiny bit janky i might consider buying a controller even though i've never used one lol

The game itself is so much fun! I did not play much because i had work to get back to but i managed to experience a few loops and gather alot of info ! One time i was ontop of a mountain and turned around and the [redacted] was right on top of me usually it seen from the sky and takes a bit of time till it hits you on that palent but this time it only took a few seconds and it filled my screen entirely and it freaked me the fuck out lmao

Cant wait to get back to it !

Oh and i thought the art and music was familiar and i was right its made by the same people who made what remains of Edith finch arguably my fave game ever so im so fucking happy about that i adored thier story telling art style and extreme attention to detail and its so obvious they put the same love and care into outer wilds but on a much bigger scale!!!

Play it if you can guys!

[shipskicksandgiggles]

45 or 49 for the prompt lists. Idk about characters except Eddie has to be involved for 49 lol

LMAO of course Eddie would need to be involved with the nipple piercing prompt, it's too good. I hope you love this as much as I do

prompt: “What is the purpose of nipple rings?” “Decoration.” “Like a Christmas tree!” (from this list)

Family Video Paradise also on ao3

Thursdays were, without fail, the slowest day of the week at Family Video. 

It took about a month of working there for Robin to notice the pattern. 

Fridays were the busiest. Families having movie nights, teenagers going on dates, adults eager to unwind from the work week. 

Saturdays and Sundays passed in a similar fashion, with more people wanting breaks from reality before work and school started up again on Monday. 

This is where the pattern diverted from where she expected it to lead. Instead of Mondays being slow, Mondays were busy with the people returning their movies from Friday. 

Then Tuesday with the returns from Saturday. 

And Wednesday with the returns from Sunday. 

There weren’t many checkouts that happened on those days, maybe a few here and there for sick days and vacations, but by and large, those first three days of the work week were for returns. 

This left Thursday as the odd one out. The reset day. Hardly anyone came in because most everything had been returned, and the public would be back the following day to check out something new.  

It was quiet. Peaceful even. Keith wasn’t as strict about the movies she and Steve put on in the store because no one else was likely to see them. 

Steve would flip through the magazines the store got in the mail, usually some pop culture, borderline tabloid thing that he found entertaining, and she would pick up a film she probably wouldn’t watch on her own time. 

Because as much as the store had a pattern, they had a pattern too. 

A pattern that started to involve Eddie Munson a little under a year after it had cemented itself into their lives. 

Eddie had also picked up on this pattern, and would choose that day to come in and bother them about something or other, which did add a bit of variety to their day, so neither of them seriously wanted to kick him out, even if they threatened to do so. 

That’s just how it was. 

So this particular Thursday wasn’t out of the ordinary whatsoever when Eddie walked in the door, already making noise like he was going to be a nuisance. 

Steve was flipping through his magazine. Robin hadn’t seen which it was that day, but she heard the glossy pages turn as if he hadn’t registered Eddie’s presence. 

Not that she had stopped in her task either. She had two movies she was trying to decide between, although one of them was an action movie thrown into the ring for Steve’s sake since she never let him pick. 

She probably wasn’t going to pick that one, but she was trying to be fair. 

The sound of Eddie picking up a VHS almost made her break. He checked out movies with the kids on Fridays, but maybe he was checking something out for himself. 

He set the case down in front of her. Only then did she look up. 

“Munson,” she greeted. 

“Buckley. Have you considered the merits of-” he glanced at the tape “-Cinema Paradiso.”

“I speak French and Russian, not Italian.”

“You don’t have to speak a language to appreciate art, birdie.”

Robin glared at him for a moment before adding it to her pile. Without her asking, he took the generic action movie she’d grabbed for Steve. 

Before she could protest, he interrupted her. 

“Don’t give me that, we both know you weren’t going to pick it. Humoring Steve is nice but don’t hurt yourself.”

Steve let out a quiet huff that Eddie probably couldn’t even hear, and she suppressed a smile. 

She rolled her eyes instead. “Whatever. Put it on the cart so it gets reshelved correctly this time.”

“As you wish, Bluejay.”

He did as she asked, and before he could go back to bothering her, Steve tapped on the counter. 

They both looked over at him, giving him their full attention. 

“What is the purpose of nipple rings?”

That wasn’t at all what she was expecting him to say.

Robin choked on nothing.

Eddie had yet to make a sound. 

She realized that this was because Steve had asked the question while staring directly at Eddie, as if he was asking him the question, rather than just throwing it out to the room. 

“Decoration,” Eddie answered easily as if this wasn’t the most exciting thing to happen in the store on a Thursday. 

“Like a Christmas tree!” Robin chimed in helpfully. She’d gotten her voice back, and was curious to see what would happen next. 

Steve nodded and went back to reading as if nothing had happened. 

“Not so fast, Harrington. I want to see what you’re reading that made that particular question occur to you.” Eddie swiped at his magazine, blocking Steve’s attempt to get it back. 

He angled it towards Robin, who was grateful to have an ally in these kinds of situations. 

“Hmm. Rolling Stones. I guess that sort of makes sense,” Robin said. “Some of those musicians make eccentric style decisions.” She looked at Eddie pointedly. 

He ignored her. “So, there’s a perfectly plausible explanation for why he asked the question. I do have a follow up question though,” he stage whispered conspiratorially.

“Which is?” Robin stage whispered back.

“Why did he ask me?”

Steve, to his credit, looked a bit embarrassed, but remained silent in favor of glaring at them. 

“Do you have a theory, Munson?”

“Well,” he had a look on his face as if he was trying to contemplate the state of the universe, “perhaps he thinks it’s the sort of thing I would be attracted to.”

“Could be.” Robin tried to look equally as contemplative. “Or maybe that you know someone with them and might have some knowledge on the subject?”

“Ah yes, stereotyping the metalhead, I see how it is.” 

Steve let out an irritated sound which Eddie finally cracked and directed the question at him. “Which is it Stevie?”

“Neither,” Steve retorted.

“Then why did you ask me?”

He didn’t answer for a moment, staring Eddie down as if he would drop it. 

Eddie however, refused to do such a thing. 

After another minute, Steve gave in. “I thought you might have them and wanted to know why,” he mumbled, clearly embarrassed.

Robin burst out laughing while Eddie’s jaw dropped. 

“You’ve seen me shirtless!”

“A while ago, you’ve gotten more tattoos since then.”

“A tattoo is not on par with a piercing, you weirdo. Anyways, the government never gave me my one nipple back and it wouldn’t be worth it unless I could get both pierced.”

“The bats took your nipple, not the government,” Steve reminded. 

“Tomato, potato.”

“That’s not the saying-”

“You could get a tattoo of a nipple with a piercing to even it out,” Robin interrupted.

“Not helping,” the guys said in unison. 

“It was just a suggestion, geez.”

“There are easier ways to ask if someone has a piercing, Harrington.”

“I was just thinking about it! No better time like the present.”

“You’re thinking about me shirtless? Damn, Stevie, I didn’t know you had it in you.”

This was another thing that had become routine. The flirting. 

Robin could have done without that.

Steve flushed a light pink, and Robin gave up. 

“My god,” she muttered, throwing her hands up. “I’m going on break. By the time I get back, whatever this is needs to be sorted out. You have 15 minutes.”

And with that, she walked back into the break room. She was glad she’d packed a book and a snack today, so she settled into the beat up couch she was sure upper management found at a thrift store, and glanced at the clock so she knew when she had to go back out. 

She gave them a few extra minutes while she finished her chapter, but they probably didn’t really need it. 

When she walked back out, Steve was smiling at Eddie like he was the only person in the world, and Eddie’s face was so red it was almost purple. 

It took her a second to realize why, and then Steve pulled him closer to kiss him on the cheek before shoving him away with promises of picking him up at the trailer park later that day. 

Eddie nodded and stumbled out of the door, groping a few times at the handle before he was able to push it open since he wouldn’t stop staring at Steve. 

Robin let Steve keep watching out the door until Eddie’s can tore out of the parking lot before she finally made her presence known. 

“Jesus Christ, finally!”

Steve smacked her with the magazine, and she squawked. 

“Shut up or I won’t tell you a single detail of that conversation.”

She just gave him a look. 

He seemed to genuinely resist for a moment, but then his facade cracked. “I’ll tell you everything, just put whatever movie you’re going to pick into the player so if anyone comes in there’s actually something on the screen.”

Robin looked down at the two movies she had to pick from. She didn’t remember why there had been such a debate in the first place. She chose Cinema Paradiso.

[lunaprincipessa]

ENTRY 205

Part One (Continued on 206)

From January on, I've been in an emotional whirlwind as I've learned more about Peter Steele. I've been blogging about it lightly here on Tumblr.

First, the fun stuff.

❎ Entry 169 - Meme

❎ Entry 175 and 181 - Pics

❎ Entry 194 - Fan Art

❎ Entry 204 - Type O Eyeshadow

❎ Entry 208 - Meme

❎ Entry 214 - Intro w/ Singers

❎ Entry 222 - Introducing Myself to Both of Carnivore's Albums

❎ Entry 250 - October Rust Mentioned

❎ Entry 264 - Pete Loved His Fans

❎ Entry 307 - Gifs of Steele

Then, the others.

❎ Entry 74 - Learning for the first time about who he was as a person after research inspired by comments from fellow fans.

❎ Entry 170 - Experiencing the first death anniversary since having a better understanding of who he was as a person.

The fun stuff is pretty much just a vague, visual representation of my middle-aged self rediscovering Peter Steele, seeing him in a new light, and appreciating him in different ways than I did before. The others are a light walk through of what I started seeing and how I started reacting. There was so much I didn't know. And once I thought I got the jist of it, there was more.

Entry 74, I see comments on Instagram prior to deleting my profile, accusing his last gf of negligence. Seriously disturbed due to the shock of it from the lack of knowledge, I tried looking it up to see if it was true. Couldn't find any info on that but found lots of info on Peter himself.

This is when I found out Peter Steele was the full package. Men that have beautiful faces like that often accompany them with cruel tongues and empty minds. Not Peter.

Intelligent, wise, kind, and humble to name a few. The full package. Making him one of the most gorgeous men to ever exist. A rare find indeed. Combine that with his voice, talent, style, and presence, and you'll soon see why women everywhere would fall to their knees in love and lust for him.

Unfortunately, that full package came alongside an ample amount of heartbreak.

It bothered me to my core to think about a man like Peter suffering so much at the hands of any toxic women he may have given his heart to in the wake of everything.

I took temporary comfort in assuming he was surrounded by friends that would help lift him up if ever he was down, especially his band mates whom I heard he grew up with. I assumed, and life continued on as normal for a time.

The 14-year death anniversary rolls around and as I said in Entry 170, I'm feeling it more than ever before because now, I have a better understanding of who died, making his loss that much more deeper and tragic.

Not only was a kind heart lost, but a pure soul that suffered greatly, making the pain of the anniversary rival even the death itself.

You see, I'm heavily reliant on what I hear, read, and watch because of the obvious fact that I didn't know Peter Steele personally and I wasn't there when certain things were taking place.

I learned more about him and started to favor him above all other singers, including Trent Reznor who I've worshipped since the teen days. I started looking up more pics and performances (eventually inspiring a blog consisting of nothing but pictures of Peter, telling myself to stop lol).

All bittersweet and intriguing but then, a recent article and an older vid that I ended up coming across paved the way for that dreadful feeling at the beginning of the year to return.

This is why I said earlier that I took "temporary comfort." But at that time, I didn't know it was temporary and I didn't know what else was about to cross my path.

My heart broke for him all over again. I'm suddenly reminded of those scary pictures circulating on Facebook with a caption that reads, "the longer you stare at it, the worse it gets."

I'll start with the article, which was released on May 6th of this year (2024), featuring an interview with Sal Abruscato, Type O Negative's original drummer. Word for word, this is what he said and mind you, I'm reading this for the first time while still learning about Peter.

"He was a good guy. He was a sweet guy. He had a good heart. At the end of the day, he had a good heart, but he was also very vulnerable. He was vulnerable. He knew deep down inside becoming successful was gonna be his demise, because I'll tell you, one thing I did see from being on the outside of Type O Negative, watching the deterioration that happened over the years, people used him. He was a nice guy, he was generous, they fucking used him. And everybody was using him, even his own band members were using him, because he was a workhorse. And everybody tried the best they could. He had a very bad problem, and I know everybody tried the best they could, but it was too little too late."

That wasn't easy to read. Neither was the next part. 💔

"I remember talking to him literally two weeks before he passed, and he told me that all he had left was $3,500 bucks to his name. So he died basically in Pennsylvania alone, in a way. Yeah, he had his girlfriend, yeah, whatever, but all the way out there. Everybody dissipated when the drugs were over, 'cause he had to be sober and clean. He was clean for nine months when he died. And when he told me that, it was like... And he told me people that I'll never name. He told me that he lent money to people, that people never paid him back because he had a good heart. Friends took advantage of him. And it's a shame that it ended like that for him. Had he maybe went to the doctor's on a regular basis too, maybe he could have... But again, the damage was done. But that was the side of Pete was that he was a good guy and a prophetic artist, a prophetic lyricist. Had a vision that went three steps ahead of everyone else. A brilliant guy, very smart, very smart guy in a lot of different ways. Not like 'doctor book smart,' but smart in other ways, artistically and the way he saw things. He was very intelligent."

Vulnerability; pain and love can do that to a person. The thought of this gentle giant who was generous and a hard worker being surrounded by snakes literally makes my stomach turn. "They used him," it said.

"Deterioration that happened over the years," oh my heart. Is that part of the reason why he deteriorated? Were people just taking pieces of him until there was nothing left to take? I despise the thought of the people he was counting on attempting to drain him. Imagine if his millions of fans knew he was being hurt. There would've been an unholy uprising. His fans love him.

I want to ask if Peter Steele would've been around the right people, would success still have been his demise? If he was surrounded by protectors and healers, would the outcome have been the same? I said it in my 74th blog about Peter when I first started learning about him. Men like this, regardless of how big and tall and strong they are, need to be protected. Their bodies are hard but their hearts are fragile.

The creator of something timeless, original, and legendary had $3,500.00 left to his name. Simply criminal after everything Peter had created throughout the course of his career. I was wondering about his income though. I saw a brief home vid of him and one of his cats and I couldn't help but notice his surroundings. It wasn't what I assumed. It just didn't look like a place where an accomplished and famous singer and musician should be living. I was unknowingly soon to get detail on that.

I saw another quick vid of him talking about building a nice, big house in a beautiful wooded area a while back. I looked it up given the home vid I just saw, "that can't be the place he wanted to build." Come to find out he lived in a duplex before he died and that $3,500 would not have afforded the house he wanted to build.

I saw it when I googled where he lived before passing. I thought the entire house was his at first sight and then my jaw dropped to the floor when I read that he lived "on the right side." Peter deserved a monstrous Victorian mansion with beautiful gothic interior, with millions more in the bank to build and decorate with. Criminal and unfair to say the very least.

Aside from this article, I read that Peter was a little awkward growing up, as was I. You grow up knowing friends are often hard to come by. It probably felt good to him in adulthood to be around people and to form connections and to do good things for them, but some of those people were the wrong ones to be that kind of person with.

I can't imagine how disappointed and heartbroken he must've felt finding out many of those people were merely around for drugs and money. Just more loss and abandonment for a good heart and a pure soul. He deserved better.

Sal called him a "prophetic lyricist." Prophetic! In considering the meaning of that word, it makes the lyrics, "life is killing me" gut-wrenchingly sad.

"The way he saw things," that statement was regarding his creativity and intelligence but how did he see his life? How dark were things for him? And the million dollar question, was Peter Steele safe anywhere?

Sal said even his band mates took advantage of him. I wondered about the dynamic between them and Sal. I also wondered if perhaps that's why his last gf didn't want them talking to him before he passed. Although, I did continue to wonder if people were still accusing her of neglecting Peter. There's a lot to wonder and there's a lot of angles to wonder from too.

Wonder, wondered, wondering; it's all speculation. I wasn't there. Lots of questions are gonna accompany me to my grave, unanswered, and I better make my peace with that asap but it's hard. Not like it would change anything, but I still want to know what happened to this man and who was around him.

Who truly had his best interest at heart? Anybody? That's something else I may wonder forever. Who was fighting for him? Who was fighting for his health? Who was fighting for his life?

The whole process did leave me a little suspicious that perhaps nearly everyone around him dropped the ball at some point, in some form or fashion, maybe even when he needed them the most.

People obviously wanted things from him, but who wanted him? Who wanted him to be well? Who cared for him outside of the celebrity? Who cared for him as Peter and not the singer of Type O Negative?

I mentioned the older vid alongside the article I just responded to, but I think I'm gonna break this up into two parts because this already turned out to be quite lengthy.

All in all, his story is weighing on me and I cannot believe that I've loved his music for so long but never knew any of this, and I mean any of it. I just never knew.

And finding this out for the first time makes me wish in such a childish way that either I, or the army of his fans could just somehow go back in time and scoop him up, getting him to safety but as Sal said, "too little too late." He's gone. Still here through music and memory but physically gone, and we can never get him back to fix things for him.

He would be 62 years old if he were alive today. And if he were, I would hope he would have everything his heart could ever desire, especially true love, reverence, happiness, and inner peace.

Eating healthy and staying sober to keep himself going, maybe even a solo project so he could call the shots and have a schedule he's comfortable with. He could hire people that respect him, that will listen to him.

He might've even started a family with a good woman who loves him outside of the celebrity and will take good care of him and his children. That's what I would've advocated for, but who knows.

We can all daydream on what might have been out of desperation for comfort and solace. Comfort and solace from a grueling reality that none of us can change no matter how badly we miss him.

If it was that hard to read about, I couldn't imagine what it was like to go through.

For what it's worth, I'm so sorry Peter. RIP

Part Two and more thoughts later.

[opheliajupiter99]

Lil' Gid - A Fanfic to go with my voodoo doll Gid art

(Not sure when in the timeline this'll take place. Also I know I've done like, seven posts in two days but damnit, had a lot of inspiration lately lol)

It was a remarkably quiet night, for once, in the fetid swamp that surrounded the Inn at the End of the Road. Bugs buzzed about and the murky water bubbled, little frogs bouncing from lily pad to lily pad and ribbited as they went along their merry ways, some hoping in pairs and others alone. It was calm, peaceful even, which even in the safe areas of the Feywild wasn't exactly common.

A sudden, albeit small, noise cut through the silence though. Wet soil crumbled and cracked away as a small, cloth hand bust up from beneath the earth, a few fireflies buzzing out of the way in surprise as the tiny figure clawed its way free of the muck. As it crawled out from the soil, the area around it was illuminated by a soft, flickering light.

The little figure was a red cloth doll, a pair of large dark grey buttons sewn in place of eyes, and a stitched smile along its face. The flickering light came from the bundle of pitch-black string tied to the top of its head, as if it were hair, and while it was indeed merely string, the potent magic that gave the doll life in turn set its mop of string hair ablaze.

As the doll moved forward, the little metal chains that were shackled to both of its arms dragged along the ground, leaving marks in the mud and occasionally grinding against pebbles that were stuck amongst the muck. It had only one article of clothing; that being the black and red pair of overalls and suspenders, stitched quite expertly and of the same quality leather that real version wore, and upon its revealed chest was a stitched black heart, put precisely where one's heart resided to indicate where to land a lethal blow.

The doll took a moment to brush itself off, patting away bits of grime with its mitt-like hands, before turning its gaze towards the inn. It wasn't too far away; there was no need to emerge at a distance when there was soil all over the place, especially given it was so small that even a short distance could take forever to travel. It waddled its way up to the wall of the inn, looking WAY up towards the window, pondering to itself silently why even living voodoo dolls had to be barely a foot tall. It thought for a moment how to get up, then looked down to the chains on its wrist, and got an idea. It swung the little chains up; it took a few tries, but it managed to hook onto a crooked piece of chipped wood and began to pull itself up.

Sometime later, Kremy laid in bed in his room, his hat gingerly placed upon the bedside table, his arms curled up and supporting his head. He was having a hard time getting to sleep, truth be told - something about tonight just felt...off. He hadn't heard jazz, and things weren't anymore misty than they usually were outside, and beyond Gid's room he hadn't smelt any cigar smoke, so he figured he was just being paranoid, but even still, he couldn't quite settle his nerves.

He was suddenly startled by the sound of something metal rapping against the window, several clack-clacks in quick succession. He tensed instantly at the sound, his fists clenching instinctively. That...was metal; not a bird's beak, not a pebble tossed, not a fingernail knocking, that was -metal-. He again tried to convince himself he was just being paranoid, but even an expert lie couldn't make something up at this rate. Paranoia was usually a fine answer to worries, but in his case...

He sat up, and after a few deep breaths, slowly turned his head to look towards the window. He didn't see anything at first, but after a moment of staring, a flickering light came into view, illuminating the foggy darkness beyond the glass, quickly followed by a pair of button eyes, and even though there were no pupils, he could just -feel- that the doll was looking at him specifically. Normally, seeing a little ragdoll that's barely a foot tall in a window would be at most creepy, and at least downright silly, but for Kremy, that sight was enough to plummet his heart right down his gullet.

Kremy sat there for what was probably just a few seconds, maybe a minute, but what felt like forever, just staring wide eyed at the doll as it climbed up further into view, until it fully stood in the windowsill, staring at him with that stitched little smile. Kremy just...kept on staring, a million thoughts racing through his mind in a contained, but very, very real panic.

What had he done? Had more time passed than he expected and he'd already run out of time on his debts? But if that was the case, why couldn't hear the telltale ominous jazz? Why wasn't an eerie fog filling his bedroom? Why wasn't there the heavy scent of cigars and rum? He supposed the Baron could be trying to be subtle - but why in the hell would the Baron of all Loa want to be subtle? Usually when the Baron took a soul you could tell from the next town over; he was just too theatrical to not make it into a big production.

The doll rapped its chains against the window once more, pulling Kremy from his thoughts. The doll made a lifting motion with its stubby arms, indicating him to open it up. After a bit of hesitation, Kremy moved up oit of bed and towards the window, lifting it open, half-expecting a skeletal hand to jut out of nowhere and drag him away. That didn't happen, however, instead the doll simply hopped off onto the floor at his feet, staring up at the man in an almost expectant fashion.

"Look...I dunno why you're here, but if I've done anythin' wrong, I swear I can make up for it." The doll shook its head, leaving Kremy even more perplexed than he already was. "So...why the fuck ya here then?" The doll looked about for a moment, then waddled over to a small worn crayon near the bedside table, likely left behind by Hootsie when she'd came scampering in after a nightmare earlier that night. It picked it up, having to use both hands since it lacked fingers, and moved over to the wall, beginning to write upon it clumsily. It wrote 'HeLp' upon the wall, then turned towards Kremy and pointed to him.

"...The Baron, sent ya to help me?" The doll nodded enthusiastically. Kremy let out a deep breath of relief he'd been holding since the first knock upon the window came, putting a hand to his face. "Oh thank the fuckin' gods...ya scared the shit outta me, lil' man." He said with a chuckle, the doll putting a hand to its mouth in a silent chuckle of its own. "Well uh...shit. Wasn't exactly expectin' company but...ya can hang out in here, I guess? I know ya don't sleep but, ya can chill in here til mornin', then I'll tell the others about ya, okay?" The doll nodded, then held up its hands joyfully as if to say 'uppies!'. Kremy sighed with another chuckle and carefully picked the little doll up, the stitched smile upon its face seeming much more genuine now.

[physalian]

(decided to throw this ask here since ur last post encouraged me to lol)

tl;dr: going thru a breakup with my current WIP so I'm in limbo and can't move on to a new one

I'm actually not working on anything right now because I'm going through a form of breakup with a WIP I had worked on for so long (6+ years).

My beta readers (3) deemed it uninteresting and full of plot holes from the start. I thought the amount of editing and rewriting I put it through helped with that, but now I believe the problem runs deeper. Maybe it's the plot itself that's too underdeveloped or something.

Long story short, I decided I didn't want to give the trilogy more time (I've given it enough already) so I'm moving on. But it's kind of hard to pick up something new when all I've known for so many years is this one WIP. I even had noncanon fanfic about it just for fun.

Any thoughts, takes or advice is welcome really! And thank you for your time ofc 🌸

I actually had this happen. I had a WIP I started in 2016, unofficially abandoned last year—mentioned it a few times across my posts as the sci-fi WIP with multiple POV. What had happened was that I started writing it my freshman year of college, and the person I grew into through college had completely different goals from freshman me, which meant the very foundations of my world and my characters were no longer meshing no matter how many times I tried to fix the plot.

It didn’t have any holes and my betas said they were interesting enough, but it was a five-book series and upon starting book 3, I just could not figure out how to move on. I had too many characters with conflicting arcs, too many directions I wanted to take it, and it was deeply political (shaped by the 2016 election year) and I just got exhausted with the tone and the parallels to the real world. It wasn’t fun anymore, and a couple of my characters were my therapy stress balls, and I put them through hell that I wouldn’t be comfortable publishing today.

So it sits there, mostly abandoned, while I steal names and themes and a few monologues that fit in Eternal Night. The breath of fresh air I had when starting Eternal Night, a brand-new world with brand-new stakes and brand-new characters that could be whatever I wanted? 100k word first draft was written in 31 days and went straight to beta readers. That sci-fi WIP had multiple magic systems, was deeply political with a lot of moving parts, a rather large ensemble cast that had nearly doubled by book 3. I designed my own alphabet and language, I had cover art and maps done for the first book, I was writing fanfic crossovers in my head with my characters and other media I liked. It was my writing career, everything centered around it.

Eternal Night actually began as me ripping my two favorite characters from that WIP and tossing them into a kind of ‘fanfic’ and seeing what happened. To this day, I still accidentally think of my protagonist and deuteragonist using their original names from the old WIP, and my protagonist's name was only updated like, last week on my character excel sheet, because I never noticed. Whenever I need a new fantasy word in my much-less-robust fantasy languages for Eternal Night, I consult the language matrix I made for the old WIP and change some letters around where needed so in a way, it lives on.

It took me until about halfway though Eternal Night to start actually caring about the new iterations and the rest of the new cast of characters, going through the motions with zero plan, until it kind of hit all at once. Suddenly I could imagine their faces and how they sounded and what dreams and aspirations they’d have. I was rooting for them to succeed and daydreaming about different ways I could take their arcs, what themes I wanted to explore with them.

And now Eternal Night is due back from my editor, today, and it’s about to go up for preorder on Amazon.

So, advice? Just because you abandon a long-running WIP doesn’t mean it was a waste of time. That’s six years of practice, six years of trial and error trying to make it work. There’s no reason you can’t take your favorite aspects and blend them up into something new. Write your own ‘fanfic’ with your favorite characters. Hell, make it a coffee shop AU, and see what happens. You might find yourself onto something to reignite that spark.

[genericpuff]

Do you have any current voice claims for the Lore Olympus : Rekindled characters you've introduced so far?

Also, kinda just curious, you can ignore this one: Are you slightly worried about Rachel finding out you're reworking her story, seeing how she doesn't take criticism well?(genuine q)

LOVE your art work, btw!

Fun question, but unfortunately I don't really have any sort of neat answer to it. I don't tend to think in the realm of voice acting/live action when I think of the characters I write, it's just not really where my brain goes. When I read scripts internally to myself, they tend to just be default imaginary voices that I use. The technical sound of the voice itself isn't so much important to me as the line delivery and how they communicate (so like, 'voice' in the sense of writing rather than auditory). So like, how often do they pause, do they use lots of filler words, do they breathe heavily in between sentences, do they speak in short or long sentences, do they get to the point or speak in run-on sentences, do they speak eloquently with bigger words or do they prefer fast-paced conversation with slang, do they have a stutter or any other vocal block/impediment, do they approach conversations with cockiness or modesty, that sort of thing.

More often than not my inner voice when reading dialogue to myself just tends to be variations of my own voice lmao My brain doesn't have much imagination in that department unless I'm imagining a specific person from the very beginning (so if you ask me to imagine Will Smith's voice in my head while reading dialogue, yeah, I can do that just fine, but if you ask me to do it in reverse by assigning a specific person's voice to the characters I write, I'm just gonna draw a blank LMAO) The only other voice that pitches in on the reading process is my husband when he's doing dialogue exchanges with me (so basically I'll read a few lines of dialogue to him, which will turn into him going "lol imagine if it went like this..." which then turns into us doing casual improv, it makes for a great way to come up with organic conversation or re-write punchlines). But my husband's voice definitely doesn't pop into my head when I'm reading my dialogue to myself, again my brain just automatically defaults to my own mind voice.

If there's a specific actor you imagine when you read Rekindled, though, I'd love to hear it!

Regarding question #2, yes and no? I'm less worried about her (because legally there's nothing she can do about it, it's literally just fanfiction lol) and more worried about her fanbase, people call ULO toxic all the time and yet it's the fanbase who have historically done all the shitty things like doxxing people, witch-hunting, dogpiling, bullying, etc. so I'm basically just waiting for the day that I get a flurry of asks or hate directed my way and I can go "yep, they found out about Rekindled" LMAOOO

But on the other hand, it is just on Tumblr and it's not even really parodying LO, it's basically any other AU fic with the exception of it being in comic form. Like, if someone found an excuse to bully Rekindled on the basis of it just existing, it would be pretty hypocritical (and hilarious) when AO3 is full of LO AU's from people who detest what LO has become just as much as I do. As much as Rekindled was born out of criticism, the comic itself is still just its own thing, telling its own story, none of what's in it is meant to directly mock LO or even outright criticize it - it's just aiming to take things in a different direction than the one LO took, with the motivation of giving the fans who have dropped off LO due to its lowering quality some catharsis (and a new reason to look forward to Saturdays). I think the pettiest thing about Rekindled on its own is that it updates 15 minutes before LO does LMAO

Of course, all that stuff about Rekindled not generating hate will only last if I stick the landing. So far so good, but we'll see how it goes as it diverges further away from OG LO (mostly with the plot as it drops a lot of the things that seemed to be used as distractions especially in S2 onwards, and we're not even really tackling S3 because of how much of a mess it is; we're still very much in the 'prologue' section of it where a lot of it is closer to the OG version, but we'll start seeing more diversions as it goes on).

So, yeah, I am a little worried sometimes about the "what ifs", but it's not a constant fear that lives in my head rent-free. I was definitely more anxious about it when I started, but so far it's been great and I know ultimately that when people do act out in my inbox, often times they're just fundamentally misunderstanding what my intentions are or the fact that I'm not trying to make them hate LO or "dethrone Rachel" (though I do make jokes about that LOL) I'm just doing what many artists have done before me - expressing myself and doing something in my own way with the disappointment I've felt over the past year due to LO.

Frankly, I also don't think any of the problematic stans of LO are even on Tumblr. I find most of the toxicity so far has been on reddit and Facebook (°ー°〃) So I think Tumblr has made for a very safe platform to post it to. I think if it were on Webtoons it would ABSOLUTELY generate a lot more hate, there are other H x P comics that have nothing to do with LO that get harassed by the LO fans just because it exists and happens to be about H x P (as if Rachel herself invented the myth).

[melverie]

if you get this, answer w/ three random facts about yourself and send it to the last seven blogs in your notifs. anon or not, doesn’t matter, let’s get to know the person behind the blog! (sorry if you already got this!)

Sorry it took a bit to answer anon. College and work have been killing me these past few days^^;

01 - I speak five languages (German, French, English, Japanese and Korean) at varying levels of proficiency. I actually had my Korean final yesterday and I'd say it went pretty well 👀 Also I learned Italian for a while, though I only remember some basic phrases, how to say one idiom & how to flirt

02 - Ever since the Sins of Flesh update I've been SO obsessed with Cult of the Lamb again. These past few days the game icon just kept staring into my soul while I was trying my best to stay strong and focus on studying Speaking of being obsessed over games, once the new Professor Layton game releases I'm going to be SO annoying. Those games were my childhood :)

03 - When planning out a story, I have the habit of writing the plot details out on flashcards and putting them up on my walls. I get embarrassed over it whenever someone other than a select group of friends come over though, so when someone else visits I usually end up taking them down only to hang them back up once that person is gone lol

Bonus fact!

This one is probably going to MASSIVELY wrap everyone's view of me, but I feel like half of the more creative school work I submitted ended up being fandom related:

In eighth grade, we were supposed to write a two page long story about a murder case, and I just made it a Professor Layton x Phoenix Wright crossover. I even took one of the cases from Phoenix Wright as the base for my story, and I only barely changed the names, so you could EASILY tell that it was fanfiction

I got my English teacher to watch Assassination Classroom because we had to give a 3 minute presentation on something we liked. That's the same teacher that made one of his tests entirely about Batman btw, he was great <3 I also got my math teacher to watch the anime AND read the manga because I asked him about one math problems from it that I just didn't get. He wrote down the solution and literally programmed a little something to help me better understand how to get there. Another great teacher <3

Had to write a three-word story (you're given three words as prompts and have to built a short story around them), except one of the words was "chinchilla". I ended up writing about a "killer chinchilla" which is just the nickname my sister gave Minccino

I once ended up the state winner in a nation-wide art competition with a Pokémon ORAS-themed watercolor drawing I did (that piece was graded, so I'm counting it toward school work)

We were tasked with drawing a picture inspired by a song. I took My Hero Academia's first ED and made the drawing itself about My Hero Academia as well. Burnt through way too many pencils for this one. They hung it right next to the teachers' room, idk if it's still there tho

That same year we were also tasked with "building a creative trash can", and so I decided to make a little Korok that collects paper waste in a little bag. I also learned how to sew in order to make the bag, so that's cool (pic below!)

I somehow convinced my teacher to let me write my seminar paper on My Hero Academia

In elementary school, my friend group came up with a play set in Animal Crossing, and I ended up writing the entire thing (as in literally writing it so that you could act it out in Animal Crossing itself). That wasn't school work by any means, but regardless, I still very much did print it out just so I could give it to my homeroom teacher, so there's that

Also not school work, but once again in seventh grade I wrote an Animal Crossing New Leaf fanficiton (???) where you could vote what would happen next on the end of every chapter. A good portion of my class read it and I also made my PE teacher read the first chapter

That's by far not all of it but those were the first few things that popped into mind. Anyway, here's the pic of my little Korok paper waste collector!

[the-sun-and-the-sea]

I have just read your fic 'Dulce et Decorum Est' and I am absolutely losing my shit. This is a work of art, that's the only way I can explain it. I was absolutely sobbing through most of it lol.

I absolutely love how you wrote Ada, including the little parallels to Rue (both cared for Katniss/Finnick even when they were passed out for days, both used a trap involving fire etc.). It got me imagining what sort of speech Finnick would give on his victory tour after, specifically when faced with Ada's family. Also omg the bit towards the end where though he didn't have to kill Corrinne, he still blames himself because Sigrid was angry at him, I am crying.

Another thing, I think it makes perfect sense that Finnick was trained to be a victor but was reaped earlier than he should've been! I never would've thought of that, but even in catching fire, he has some skills that seem more taught over time rather than learned hands on in the arena.

Sorry for the long ass paragraph, I just wanted to let you know how much I love this fic and how well written and emotional it is. I don't cry much but this fic got me lol.

Hi, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts! It's so incredible to hear how my stories resonate with people and I am always down to talk about them. If you don't mind a bit of a ramble, I'd like to talk about how this fic was created. (I put it under the cut because it ended up being long - I just love this fic and want to talk about it!)

So I've been writing about Finnick and Annie for over three years, but I've never really touched on Finnick's Games, partially because I hadn't been super interested and partially because it was a situation I couldn't make a lot of sense out of. How did he end up in the arena at fourteen? More importantly, how did he actually win?

The scenario I present in the fic makes the most sense to me and honestly it's the only way I see it now. I definitely feel like he's a Career, but that doesn't account for him going in so young. But him being reaped (along with being fourteen) is what allows him to fly under the radar, with his opponents not taking him seriously until it's too late. It's a logical but unfortunate progression of events, but here we are.

Crafting Finnick's Games took a lot of thought because I didn't want to get it wrong. And I know we have basically no canon information on his Games, so actually violating canon would be pretty hard to do. I just felt such a connection to the character and his story that I wanted to present everything—from the reaping until the time he goes home—in a way that felt true, organic, and did his story justice. That's probably also why I took so long to actually write his Games; I wanted to get it just right.

I love the arena itself, and again, it needed to be the perfect balance of advantageous for Finnick but not obviously so. Finnick's victory was partially riding on his opponents underestimating him, so he needed an arena that wouldn't make people target him immediately, but it needed to be something he could still work with. So that's what I tried to do, and I think that balance ended up being super important. Because winning the Games, for anyone, is about many factors. Everything has to line up just right, even for someone as skilled as Finnick. That victory could've been Sigrid's, or Corinne's, or anyone's. So I also had to spend a lot of time within the story proving why it was Finnick's.

His relationships with the other tributes became important to me because we know from canon that Finnick loves deeply and that his relationships are important to him. The few days he spends alone in the arena take a toll on him because he needs community, and he finds that again in Ada, which I loved exploring. Pretty much everyone who's commented on the fic has said they like Ada, and that makes me so happy to hear. I like her too.

You mentioned seeing Finnick's Victory Tour, and honestly I might continue in that direction. I've never explored Finnick at this point in his life but I found his youth here so interesting to work with, so I definitely might give the Tour a try! No promises but if I do continue, I will make sure to post it here on Tumblr.

The story is 18k words and I wrote it in about three days because it just absolutely consumed me a few weekends ago. I could not stop thinking about it and developing new ideas. Once I got the arena down it was smooth from there, because that arena ended up inspiring me so much. I loved the vibe of it, and how Finnick functioned within it.

I know you did not necessarily ask for this overenthusiastic explanation, but I do feel like I've been dying to share it, so I hope you don't mind. Thank you again for your kind words, they mean a lot to me!

[feline-evil]

To try and make my memory issues less Annoying i'm going to start cataloguing what i watch and my opinions on said things, i forgot to do it fresh after watching these first few things but in the future ill try and do it more soon after. You can block the tag jay tv time if you wanna filter this out and not see it!

POST NUMBER ONE: THREE THINGS WATCHED IN JANUARY 2024

YURI ON ICE

I'd heard vaguely about this way back when on tumblr and hadn't had any interest at the time; this was back when i was more interested in getting involved in discourse than really taking any media recommendations from my peers around me lol, older days on tumblr were a dark time huh. Anyway, watched this with my boyfriend this year because i have an interest in ice dancing, i like the sport, i wanted to see some sports anime drama around it!

So, my opinion and review. The show's opening credits are nothing to write home about, very clean looking yeah but kind of bland in a sort of mid 2010's corporate fashion- the show itself though starts with a boatload of charm and a very likeable main lead! The atmosphere was charming and fun and bubbly, everything felt very cozy; LOVED our main leads internal little monologues with little diagrams, loved his family his mom is like peak platonic ideal of an anime mom, loved the tongue in cheek nature of it! Aaaand then we hit what i would call the lowest point for the show, and one that i fully understand if it would be a complete deal breaker for people. That's right folks, we get fatphobic comedy! Whoo. This isn't the WORST i've ever seen but in those first two episodes or so it was prevalent enough to have me rolling my eyes, feeling uncomfortable and saying yeah, if this continues on we might drop the show. If not for how charming the rest of the show was I'm sure we would have dropped it right then and there! But what i am glad to say is that yeah, it drops off; of course it comes with the caveat that it only drops with the main lead losing the weight he was being mocked for, SIGH, but it at least started to feel less like we were going to have to sit through endless weird attitudes towards NORMAL WEIGHTS FOR A GODDAMN HUMAN BODY TO BE, and more like 'oh yeah these hardcore professionals in these fields have shitty attitudes towards bodies. That makes sense. Wish we didn't have to linger on it still because i dislike it thoroughly.' So anyway. Moving onto the next episodes the show really started to pick up for me and got me invested in the ice dancing; while a lot of characters come and go during the lead up to and the competition itself i found so many of them likeable and charming that i was rooting for them each time they took to the ice! I adored the 'rival' of sorts, fifteen year old yuri (not the titular one, different yuri) and we were cheering him on a lot; he's just a little angry kid that loves cats and wants to be the best!!! We wanted him to do good and have fun!!! And we found we were rooting like this for so many people, really feeling the vibe of watching a sport you enjoy and feeling the love for the art of it all.

Now speaking of art i will say i found myself not always totally in love with the animation during the skate segments; this show is really pretty looking for sure and certainly TONS of hardwork went into it so i don't wish to say anything against that- i don't even know if there IS a better way to animate this but. Well on occasion it felt as if the background slid at the wrong speed or angle or direction and didn't fully match the figures skating, making some of the speed and elegance of ice dance evaporate. A lot of animation also felt a little reused, a lot of the same motion being done with little variance aside from what the commentary dialogue says over top, but again i respect a ton of hardwork no doubt went into this and i'm sure animating competitive ice dancing is a daunting task so i'm not making any statements against effort or skill on part of the animators!! Just stating that i myself wasn't too taken with the animation during these segments.

Of course, at its core, what yuri on ice is really about is a blooming relationship; and oh my god. Okay so i'm kind of used to things tumblr called gay back in the day being....mmmm metaphorical, subtextual. Sometimes even not gay at all. So i wasn't prepared for how openly gay this was! There is clear romantic and sexual intent shown from JUMP, it is not shied away from nor shown as something to be demonized or to bring doom on the characters they are just Gay. Like REALLY gay. And maybe you're going 'well duh of course' but hey. I didn't grow up watching anything with gay characters or people in it, i still am not used to seeing open and happy gay people in media. Its still fresh to me! And it makes me happy! I don't know how they got this show to be SO gay, i would be surprised at something gaining mainstream popularity with 'THEY STRAIGHT UP GET ENGAGEMENT RINGS' level of gay nowadays never mind back then so i'm just sort of taken aback! That's cool!! That's still new to me!!

Now my overall review is: This show is a good fluffy watch, nothing too complex or complicated, might not blow your socks off but if you want something feel-good it's worth a try! Obviously with the understanding that if those first few episodes leave too bad a taste in your mouth i compleeetely understand and would not begrudge anyone switching off at that point, you'd be well within your rights because good lord we didn't need that put in. But yeah! Show's gay! Show's got ice dancing! Someone should take Yuri Plisetsky to the rainforest cafe!!!

DUNGEON MESHI

OK SO THIS WILL BE A SHORTER REVIEW BECAUSE WE HAVE ONLY SEEN ONE EPISODE VERSUS YURI ON ICE BEING A FULL SEASON, ALSO DO NOT FUUUUCKING SPOIL DUNMESHI STUFF MY BOYFRIEND HAS READ THE MANGA BUT I HAVENT.

Dungeon meshi is something i've known about for ages and known that i'd like, but i also knew it had a plotpoint adjacent to something that (genuinely depending on the day, its like a damn coin toss) can squick me out OR trigger me a bit, SO! I'd never read it, which i know is a damn shame! But my boyfriend really wanted to watch the first episode of the new dunmeshi anime and i really really wanted to watch with him and i'm really glad i did because it is SO good. It is so fun and witty and bursting with charm, every character is so likeable and it feels like you've known them forever from jump they settle so easily within your fondness for them! I adore how much they do not shy away from Laios being a very passionate weirdo, i love that the guy who is pretty much our main lead in our cast is. A PECULIAR MAN WHO YOU JUST REALLY CAN'T HELP BUT HAVE A SOFT SPOT FOR. I've been this man before, the guy who's really into something nobody else gets!! I get it Laios i get it! Marcille Chilchuck and Senshi are all absolute delights too and each has their personality show vibrantly different from each other, feeling like individuals all with so much to like about them all; Marcille as the person to constantly be unsure about the CLEARLY PECULIAR THINGS THEY ARE DOING is especially great!! Not only is this show a romp so far but it looks DIVINE, the animation knows exactly when detail and motion is needed and when a minimalist approach is needed to sell a gag; each character is rendered PERFECTLY from manga to anime, they are translated over with an expert touch that loses none of their charm- and according to my boyfriend this anime is a very straight forward adaptation, beat by beat following the way things are laid out in the manga's panels the way they are presented within that medium, and that's SO cool to me that they're managing to make precise things that worked so well on paper work just as well in motion! I can't say too much about this story-wise or plot related just now as again, we've only seen the one episode, but it has left me hungry for more and really excited to watch the rest of it, and that's fantastic!! PONYO

Oh wow this is three for three animated entries for the jay tv time list; not intentional but that's pretty cool co-ordination! Animated January..... ANYWAY!

CAN YOU BELIEVE I HADN'T SEEN PONYO YET! I've seen Spirited away and My Neighbour Totoro, but this was my first time watching Ponyo and ohhhhh my god it's wonderful. Every character is a joy, the world around them looks gorgeous, its all so sweet and nice and aaaaaaa Sometimes small kids can be. Grating in movies, or the plot can be moved along in ways that are annoying to watch a toddler progress through, but not with this movie; the kids are SO cute, Sasuke is such a sweet lil kid and Ponyo is so fun- also the line early on at the daycare where the one lil girl says 'you don't have a job you're FIVE!' KILLS ME! This movie portrays little kids in a way that never crosses into the annoying small child thing that a lot of movies can do; and that's not all it does right! It's conflict never feels contrived or irritating, it always flows nice, it's characters never feel boxed into Bad or Good everyone is just a person trying to do what's right, the world never feels Too hostile or Too cosy it just feels nice and balanced! It's a joy to watch it really is, it's not a complex nor complicated tale but it doesn't need to be, its a movie to watch when you want to have a big happy smile on your face; it makes you want to clap and go yayyy!!!! So often because you love what's happening so much! Sasuke's mom is SO FUCKING GOOD. Spoke about platonic ideal of anime mom earlier but Sasuke's mom takes the award for Coolest mom; she's driving fast and furious, she never once judges Ponyo for being a fishy, she's cool!! Ponyo's dad is equally good, i love a well meaning man who just can't help but come across as a Total Weird Asshole because he is just so much of a tired grumpy mess; and i love that he's not portrayed as evil or mean, just protective and misguided in places but ultimately just as kind as everyone else in this movie! And that's something i really appreciate, so much kindness flows through this movie, so much love for your fellow man (or fish); the community feels like a community because of it, families feel like families because of it. Kindness is so wonderful and the kind of kind, gentle understanding in Ponyo makes it's characters come alive! The final moments when Sasuke accepts Ponyo makes so much sense, he's a sweet lil five year old, he doesn't have any prejudice engrained in him, he likes his fishy friend!! And the world is saved by that!! And isn't that just delightful! Also hey if we may get unprofessional Sasuke and Ponyo's moms had a little something going on between them, i think they could've had a lil something something. I'm just saying. I also love Ponyo's dad SO Much. I couldn't fix him but. well. nay, i shan't say. ANYWAY!!! REALLY GOOD, SWEET MOVIE! Definitely one i'll revisit on days when i want a nice sweet pick me up! It's gorgeous, it's heartwarming; oh my god and the ANIMATION!! THE ANIMATION! Every frame a delight, i appreciate so much of how well done the creatures of the sea are and how much are filled into every scene, making it feel bustling and alive, i appreciate how unafraid to make Ponyo look WEIRD they are it really adds to the charm, and the animation in general is just so perfect, its a work of art... I REALLY ENJOYED THIS MOVIE! AND I THINK THAT'S IT FOR NOW, STAY TUNED FOR UH. MORE THINGS I WATCH I GUESS.

[carpetcat2]

Want yo know your fusion knights better! 😲

16. What makes their stomach turn?

21. Why do they get up in the morning?

B) What inspired you to create them?

D) Have they always had the same physical appearance, or have you had to edit how they look?

Sorry for the long wait ^_^u 16. What makes their stomach turn? They're all toughies! I'm sure most of them could handle things the average person would find creepy or crawl-y. Most of them would agree that whatever degree Parasite is awful, though.

21. Why do they get up in the morning?

Hiber: To appreciate nature <3 and to take care of basic health needs that's really important too. Snare: Sometimes he doesn't. Wheel: Spite. Psilo: For the thrill of discovery! Every new day is an opportunity to learn plenty of new things! Like "hey, did you know there were a billion spiders under your porch?" Very cool. Train bros: Well, they've got a business to run, don't they? They have to make sure the trains run on time! Lumin: There are always new stories to be collected. Tales of treasure and tales of woe, of fortune and of fate. Parasite: "Oh boy! I can't wait to make other people's lives miserable! On purpose!"

B) What inspired you to create them?

I wholeheartedly love character design exercises and this was one of my favorites.

D) Have they always had the same physical appearance, or have you had to edit how they look?

I have plenty of concept art for these guys lol. I think Hiber, Wheel, and Steam are the only ones that basically didn't change too much from their initial concepts.

Design notes -

Hiber was a lot skinnier before, but she has a lot more meat on her bones now bc I wanted her to fit more into her hibernating theme. Gotta have enough meat survive the winter.

Snare was always gonna be big and tall and imposing, but it took a lot more finangling than I first thought to finalize his design. His earlier concepts had a more armored and ragged look. One cool idea that I scrapped was that he'd have his head and hands in a pillory, but he had extra arms on his back that he could use instead. Another one was that he’d carry around a giant coffin and smack people around with it the same way Puzzle used his compass. Those were overhauled bc they leaned into Specter a bit too much, and felt incohesive with his theming. I ended up taking more design notes from BodySwap Specter since they had a bit more design overlap with Puzzle. In was a fun decision in the end bc I think that caused him to look a little like Luan too.

I think I had a pollution theme going on in Lumin’s early concepts. He was and still is based off of siphonophores so I imagined he would steer around some long train of boats absolutely filled with human garbage and human treasures, but underneath they’d be attached to some gigantic eldritch sea monster. I think his earlier concepts had mechanical arms for some reason. I think I’ve solidified him into being a vaguely eldritch creature cosplaying as a goofy pirate trope, but his design itself is still a bit of a work in progress.

Coal and Steam were supposed to be one guy, but I couldn’t decide between making the one guy a conductor or an engineer so I had to split them up. I don’t think they changed too much from their initial designs except for some tweaks, like giving Coal a belt and fixing his hat, or shaving off a few inches from Steam.

Wheel’s design is mainly based off bikers and medieval jousters. One thing that didn’t make it in was her also being a cowboy(?????). I got rid of that pretty quickly bc trying to fit too many concepts into one character would be really messy, but I mourn the fact that I couldn’t figure out how to fit in wheel spurs in her boots. Her final design didn’t stray too far from her first concept, but some stuff was reworked.

The funny thing about Psilo is that I specifically chose Plague, Spore, and Prism as his components bc they had a lot of similar design elements. That turned out to be more of a challenge rather than a convenience bc I had to actively work to make Psilo Not look like one guy over the other. He still looks too much like Plague Knight, but I will keep convincing myself he is not a Plague clone. I wanted to go for a witch-y design for him at first, and I settled on that for a while. I don’t really remember why I went in a different direction but I guess it’s bc I wanted to represent Prism and Spore more in the design. I think his final helmet was actually based on concept art of Plague Knight from the SK artbook where he had a bottom visor that made him look like he had a big toothy grin, which was really cute and convenient for incorporating Spore’s visor.

A Lot happened with Parasite. I was gonna settle on "grouchy old man" Parasite, but he was being developed to be used in a friend's DnD campaign as an enemy and said friend characterized him very differently to that idea, so I wanted to make him fittingly look unhinged. The way I draw him now vs his current "official" render is a bit different, but that mostly comes down to me getting a better idea of his proportions rather than any significant design changes. Sorry about how disorganized this concept compilation is. I'll try to organize these by character later.