#Chalcy stuff

[cha1cedony]

Found this in my drafts

??????????

[cha1cedony]

They call me the anonymous writer they way I love to set my fics to anonymous just so I don’t have to see them on my own AO3 profile anymore 🤗

They call me the anonymous asker the way I. uh. love to send anonymous asks 🤗

[sandpaperoctopi]

Amble and their mom Chalci

[pushthequorumbutton]

Book 14

agamemnon: let's leave; Odysseus: *argues for the sunken cost fallacy*; me: HAH

once again, the one thing a woman does in these poems is seduce a man. actually i guess athena doesn't do this but so far i'm pretty sure every other time a woman is mentioned it's bc of this

"ox-eyed Hera" i was imagining like all black sclera but actually oxes have very human-looking eyes?? guess it's a pretty good descriptor then

Sleep perched there, shaped like the clear-voiced mountain bird which gods call Chalcis, but people name Cymindis.

bird mention!!!

Zeus 'complimenting' Hera by mentioning all the other women he slept with.... ok my guy.... my dude....

... Earthshaker Poseidon led them, gripping in his powerful fist a fearful sword, with a long edge, like a lightning bolt, which no man in grim battle could withstand—his fear would hold him back.

Is this a real type of ancient greek sword? i wanna know...

“I don’t think that spear flew in vain from the strong hand of Panthous’ valiant son. Some Argive has got it in his flesh. I think as he goes down to Hades’ house, he’ll use it as a walking staff.”

how much of a burn is this? is it like 'yo mama' level or more like 'then perish'? does that scale comparison even make sense

a spear is thrown THROUGH some guy's face and KNOCKS OUT HIS EYEBALL this is so brutal

AND THEN HIS HEAD GETS CUT OFF AND HELD UP WITH THE SPEAR THROUGH HIS EYE "LIKE A FLOWERING POPPY" damnnnn

Book 15

Zeus just straight up spoilering the rest of the war lmao (laughing to not cry at patroclus & achilles' fates)

“You idiot! Have you lost your mind, gone mad? Do those ears of yours hear anything at all? Where’s your common sense or your discretion?

athena always ready to go at ares loool

i feel like usually i like reading about the gods interacting with one another but this time, where they're all working through a bunch of warriors for a (relatively) pointless battle i'm just like. eh. whatever.

when the narrator directly speaks to the gods!! that's the good shit

Should one of you meet his fate and die, stabbed by a spear or cut down with a sword, let the man die. To be killed defending one’s own native land is no ignoble act. The man’s wife is safe, his children live, his house and land remain, if Achaeans leave,

starting out a bit cold there, hector

a LOT of hunter/prey similes in this chapter

Zeus drove Hector, son of Priam, against those ships, something Hector was furiously keen to do. He raged like spear-fighting Ares or deadly fire in the thickets of deep mountain forests. He was foaming at the mouth. Below his eyebrows the eyes were raging fire.  The helmet round his temples    shook with menace, as Hector battled on, for Zeus,     the god of heaven, was his protector, giving him glory and honour, though he was but one man among so many, for Hector’s life would soon cease. Already Pallas Athena was pushing forward that fated day when he’d die at the mighty hand of Achilles, son of Peleus.

this is the stuff i'm here for!! hector straight up foaming at the mouth in a beserker rage due to the gods' influence is /chef's kiss

[romans-art]

I really love how much details you put in your work and I'm wondering how do you practice it? Or what did you do when you first started? Cause details just scare the shit out of me and I don't know how to go around it.

Detail work is super meditative for me!! There’s nothing I love more than finishing figure lineart and being able to lose myself for a few hours in adding whatever the heck detail work I want to that bad boy! (I curse myself later when I have to colour it all in but anyway)

The first trick is to look at a lot of references for inspiration. And I mean A LOT. The second trick when actually drawing the details is to Start Big. And by that I mean: pick a larger basic shape/repeating pattern, and then start filling in the smaller details around it. Here’s a post where I talk about it briefly. I’ll go into more detail on specific references for Yellow Diamond below the cut.

ok so, to start I usually fall back on Egg and Darts or Arabesque when I’m doing detail work. (here and here are links to the wiki pages for some very basic referencing). Please note that the pictures I show you below are just a sample of what I’ll be looking at for these kinds of drawings. I hoard this kind of stuff. 

For the latest Yellow Diamond Gambeson design I wanted her to have a more relaxed outfit she might wear when holding Court, but which was also practical because she’s That Bitch. Ergo, I ended up picking a brigandine/gambeson look, under the assumption that she could throw her plate armour over the top of it and hop right into battle if she wanted. 

A brigandine is a coat of heavy cloth or leather with plates hobbled along the inside with nails. Here’s an example from the Met below (reference link here)

This bad boy is from around 1470 found in a fortress on Chalcis, part of the Venetian empire during the war with the Ottomans. You can see the studs riveting the plates through the velvet. Below is another view of a brigandine:

Except the plates inside probably would’ve been covered in cloth so as not to be so owchie. 

Now, brigandines wouldn’t normally have been worn under plate armour, so I decide I’m going to mix it up to create a sort of hybrid reinforced gambeson. Normally gambesons are just padded jackets combined with mail or plate armour. They’re designed to act as cushioning for heavy blows and were often quilted. Here are some examples:

Sidenote: I wanna look as awesome as this lady one day ^^^^ 

Anyway! At this point I figure Yellow Diamond still needs 2 very essential things for her outfit to be complete: 1) her sword, and 2) her gem.

For the sword, I already have an idea of the pommel and hilt design from previous drawings. I just need some more inspiration around the belt and how it would hang from said belt, as below:

For the gem, I go with a livery collar (also known as a chain of office) because it fits with the time period, the overall courtly theme, and would fall in the right place on her chest, which is where her gem is supposed to go. Here are just a few examples:

I can hang the gem off the chain, call her a poncey dunce, and be on my merry.

[moodymerboy]

Because I'm totally a person who has a life, I thought of two new Crystal Gem characters, complete with backstories!

I know fan ficcy stuff can be cringey sometimes, but bear with me. I wouldn't say either of these characters are my gemsona per se, because I don't really identify with either of them. I was just hungry for content, and my creative juices got flowing. Unfortunately I do not have an illustration for you because I have very little artistic talent (at least in that medium). Obviously you're welcome to draw them if you feel like it, but I wouldn't be able to pay you because I'm currently unemployed and can't spend money willy nilly.

Anyway...

Tourmaline was a scout for Pink Diamond. She was sent to Earth to find good locations for various gem constructions. Like Rose and the other Crystal Gems, she had some ethical hesitation because of the life there, and Pink's zoo solution didn't do much to soothe her. When the Rebellion started, she sought out the CGs and joined them.

Early on in the Rebellion, Chalcedony was sent to Earth by Blue Diamond kind of as an assassin in an attempt to shatter the Rebellion’s leaders and nip it in the bud before it could become a full-on war. She defected and joined the CGs as well.

Tourmaline and Chalcedony fell in love and occasionally fused to form Turquoise.

During battle, Tourmaline was poofed and cracked, and Chalcedony picked her gem up to protect her. This was shortly before the Homeworld gems left, so Chalcedony was affected by the Corrupting Light while Tourmaline was not, as she had not yet reformed.

Tourmaline woke up, unable to speak intelligibly, to an abandoned battlefield and a corrupted Chalcedony.

She took Chalcedony to a remote rainforest that she had known about from her scouting. Over the years, she was able to “tame” Chalcedony. She built a treehouse with a spiral staircase for them to live in. Humans have very occasionally stumbled upon her, so there is folklore in the region that tells of a colorful woman in the forest who speaks gibberish and has a strange blue dog.

Tourmaline has pink skin with dark green hair in a braid. She’s medium height with a sturdy build. Her weapon is a blow gun which shoots taser-like darts. Her gem is on her left bicep.

Chalcedony is periwinkle with short pale lavender hair. She’s shortish and thin, very light on her feet. She has the ability to turn invisible, and her weapon is a slingshot. Her gem is on her right bicep.

So yeah! Tourmaline lives in the woods with her corrupted gf/pet and with no way to heal her cracked gem, and she's completely oblivious to the fact that Pearl and Garnet survived (or that Amethyst and Steven exist). I feel pretty confident head-canoning this since it has no effect on anything currently portrayed in the show. If you have any suggestions for changes or additions, let me know! Especially if something I've said contradicts information we have from the show or from the Crewniverse.

As an aside, I kind of like the idea of Chalcedony being nicknamed Chalcy. It kinda sounds like Chelsea ^.^

[cha1cedony]

Finally taking a creative writing course this semester, and this excerpt from the introduction of our textbook is really hitting close to home lmaooo 😭🥲

[cha1cedony]

I know I’m a broken record with all my Lincoln life speedrun simulation posts/fics, but I just think he and Nicky should bond over their shared experience of having lived two lifetimes, one of them in a timeline that no longer exists

[cha1cedony]

Being both aroace and a huge nerd, it irks me a little that 99% of the asexual and/or aroace headcanons I see (and not aroallo headcanons interestingly, which could be its own post but I digress) are about characters who spend all their time working/studying/etc…. scientists, academics, introverts, shut-ins, even. I assume the common reasoning is that these characters only care about their work and don’t have time for things like relationships and sex. But like. You know that’s not what asexuality is… right 😀

Obviously it’s fine to headcanon these types of characters as ace, but I just always wonder about allo fans’ reasoning for it and what it implies about their opinions of asexual people. When the ONLY characters you can think of as ace are just nerdy, quiet/socially awkward characters with no other canon implications that they’d be ace, to me it just sounds like you think people are asexual because they can’t attract sexual partners? Or because they don’t have time for relationships??

Anyway it just annoys me a little that this is the VAST majority of the ace representation I see, both in canon and fandom. I’m an aroace academic, but I’m not aroace because I don’t have time for people or because I’m shy or awkward or lonely or whatever. I’m aroace because I’m aroace lol

Tl;dr, asexual/aroace people aren’t all innocent nerdy introverts (and aroallos aren’t all extroverts with a long history of one night stands, btw). Let ace characters be loud and stupid. Or try headcanoning a loud and stupid character as ace (you can do it, I promise)

[cha1cedony]

Had a dream last night that someone wrote a fanfic (and recorded a podfic of it?) in which Darryl Wilson goes on a date with FIVE bears simultaneously. Good for him I guess

[cha1cedony]

Yeah so I actually headcanon [insert character] as aromantic—

“Nooooo my ship 🥺🥺”

I don’t care 💞🧚

[cha1cedony]

Mutuals are asleep post gnc Darryl Wilson

[cha1cedony]

> Eating lunch with new friends on choir trip

> Joke about how you’re the only non-music student

> “So what’s your major?”

> Tell them you’re a writing major

> One guy asks if you write poetry

> You do

> “Oh, I’m a composer. I’d love to set some of your poems to music”

> LITERAL DREAM COME TRUE

> Send him poetry samples dating back to 2021

> He chooses an older one (one of your least favorites)

> You forget what you even wrote it about

> Reread it

> It’s about a fucking Danganronpa ship

There is going to be an art song out there in the world with lyrics secretly about Ouma Kokichi. Help me

[cha1cedony]

A million things I should be writing but I can’t stop playing Fields of Mistria…… I love you Ryis

[cha1cedony]

Hearing Anthony Burch say Superwholock and Homestuck is hurting me physically

[cha1cedony]

Grnant Wilsog