#and see you all next week <3

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

MDZS Height Poll: Who is (technically) the tallest character. Please remember that these polls are for fun!

[vaggieslefteye]

FINALE ↳ from Hazbin Hotel Season One (2024): 1x08 - "The Show Must Go On"

[skrrtscree]

I really need to draw her more, she has a great design 🥲💗

[miusato]

Ahh yes, the autism brothers 🤝🤝🤝

[dennistakesamentalhealthday]

feeling called out right now

[ghosttotheparty]

love me softly p6

tags from @theamazingannie on part five i apologise and here’s the the next one love u <3

@dazedandinked :)

Eddie can’t stop thinking about it.

The way Steve slid down the wall of the van after a while and wrapped his arms around Eddie tighter as they laid on the floor together, the way his cheek pressed to the top of Eddie’s head. The way their legs twined together, their bodies pressed together completely. The way Eddie slept that night with Steve’s heartbeat against his cheek.

It’s all he can think about all weekend. It’s all he can think about on his way to school, when he sees Steve’s Beemer in the parking lot. It’s all he can think about when he catches Steve’s eyes in the hall, when Steve smiles softly and his eyes sparkle.

Eddie feels fucking bashful. Like a fourteen year old girl whose crush made eye contact with her. (Which… is unfortunately accurate.)

Steve keeps leaving him drawings.

On Monday there are two in his locker at the end of the day, both on folded, lined paper. One is in pencil, a messy sketch of a hand that looks like Eddie’s, complete with scribbled, indistinct rings, the other in pen, an abstract colourful drawing of some flowers.

On Tuesday, there’s one, neatly folded and resting on his textbooks. It’s in pencil, dark and heavy and intense in a way that makes Eddie stare. He can’t tell what it is, but it doesn’t matter. It joins the others on his wall.

On Wednesday, there are two. One in pen of Eddie’s van in the parking lot, neat with meticulous lines crossing and overlapping, and the other of a messy crowd of people in pen with one person in blue highlighter. Eddie can tell that it’s him, thin lines of blue swirling for his curls. He manages to wait until he’s in the car to squeal like a fourteen year old girl.

And then on Thursday.

On Thursday, Eddie opens his locker, already smiling, excited, and he unfolds it to find Steve’s slanted, pretty handwriting.

hope i did him justice

- steve ♡

And even in his confusion he dies a little on the inside at the heart. He rereads the note again, furrowing his brows before he flips the page over and his heart stops beating.

It’s his character.

That he told Steve about.

Carefully drawn in black ballpoint pen, accurate to every word Eddie said on Friday, down to the bow in his hand, to the shape of his ears.

Eddie stands there too long, staring and staring and staring and falling and falling and falling.

He goes to Gareth’s. His hands are shaking.

Mrs Gareth’s Mom lets him in again, directs him to Gareth’s room after pushing a soda can into his hands with a smile, and he finds Gareth at his desk.

“Hey, Eddie,” Gareth says, glancing up, and Eddie doesn’t respond, setting the soda down and pulling the drawing out of his pocket to slap it onto the desk in front of Gareth. His hands are still shaking.

Gareth opens the paper, his eyes finding the drawing before they light up.

“This is really good, man.”

“Flip it over,” Eddie says, biting his thumbnail anxiously, his breathing short. Gareth raises an eyebrow at him, curious, suspicious, and Eddie just swats his hand, prompting him. Gareth flips it over and reads the message, his eyes widening.

He looks up at Eddie, jaw slack.

Eddie’s eyes are burning. Somehow he hasn’t cried about it at all, but the dam breaks when Gareth says emphatically, “Holy shit.”

He turns away, wiping his face.

“He likes you,” Gareth says.

“Do you think?” Eddie asks, his voice shaking. Gareth gives him a duh look.

“There’s a fucking heart on it, Eddie.” He holds the paper up and shakes it. “A heart.”

“I know,” Eddie says, bouncing slightly. “I know, I know, I know.”

“Steve fucking Harrington,” Gareth says dryly. “Drew a D&D character for you.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says weakly.

“You’re gonna turn him into a nerd aren’t you?”

“I might.”

Gareth grins almost mischievously before he flips the page back over and looks at the drawing again.

“God, this is really good.”

“I know,” Eddie says. “He’s so good, I can’t even…”

Gareth is still grinning, and Eddie falls to the floor, groaning, covering his face, rolling around. Gareth laughs.

“Everything okay in here?” Mrs Gareth’s Mom asks, popping her head in the door. Eddie just groans again, rolling so his head is under Gareth’s bed.

“Eddie’s getting closer to obtaining a boyfriend.”

“Shut up,” Eddie says loudly.

Mrs Gareth’s Mom laughs.

“What’s his name, Eddie?”

Eddie sighs.

“…Steve.”

“Steve,” she repeats lightly. “Is he nice?”

“He’s so nice.”

Eddie tries to sit up, but he hits his head on the wood of Gareth’s bed frame with a loud ow, and Gareth bursts into laughter.

Eddie flips him off and manages to get out from under the bed to glare at him.

“Oh dear.” Mrs Gareth’s Mom looks at him, sorry in her eyes and a suppressed smile gracing her lips. “Let me get you some ice, hun.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Eddie calls after her before he looks up at Gareth. “How’d a lady like that raise an asshole like you?”

Gareth just cackles.

Even with the ice pack, his forehead bruises. It’s not too bad, soft purple and yellow under his bangs, but Gareth keeps trying to poke at it. Because of course.

Steve catches his eye in the cafeteria on Friday.

Eddie is trying to listen to what his friends are saying, but he gets distracted, obviously, suppressing a smile when Steve tilts his head at him like a confused puppy.

Bathroom? Eddie mouths, and Steve grins, nodding.

Eddie covers his face with his hair, nodding back, and he turns to Gareth as Steve gets up. Gareth is already staring at him dryly.

“Going somewhere?”

“Uh. Yeah, I have to, uhm. Bathroom.”

“Is bathroom code for sex?”

“Wha— No?”

“Are you sure?”

“…Screw you, Gareth.”

Gareth pokes him in the forehead as he’s getting up, and Eddie smacks the back of his head.

Steve is leaning against the wall when Eddie walks in, his hands behind his back, and he looks up with a sly sort of smile that gives Eddie butterflies.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” Eddie says quietly. “Uhm.”

He pushes his hand through his hair nervously, and Steve watches, his brows furrowing, and stands up straight.

“What happened to your forehead?”

“…What?”

Steve moves forehead, carefully pushing Eddie’s bangs out of the way to see the bruise, his thumb brushing over it lightly.

“What happened?”

“Oh, uhm.” Eddie takes a breath, every nerve in his body lit up like a sparkler. “I, uhm. I was laying with my head under my friend’s bed and I… tried to sit up.”

Steve stares blankly at him for a moment before he snorts, looking away and stifling a laugh. Eddie’s jaw drops.

“Wow,” he says. “Wow.”

“‘M sorry,” Steve says, still laughing. He’s still touching him, standing too close, his fingers in Eddie’s hair.

“I have a head injury,” Eddie says. “And you’re laughing at me.

“I’m sorry,” Steve giggles. “It’s not funny, sorry.” He stops laughing, trying to suppress a smile, and Eddie tilts his head at him, raising his eyebrows. “Here.”

He pulls Eddie closer, lifting his chin, and pressing a soft kiss to the bruise. Eddie’s brain goes out like a light bulb that’s been left on for too long.

“All better,” Steve says softly, his thumb brushing over the bruise again before he pulls away, carefully fixing Eddie’s bangs.

“Thanks,” Eddie breathes.

“So.” Steve leans back against the wall. “Did you get the, uhm, the drawing? Yesterday?”

Eddie blinks, snapping out of it, feeling the ghost of Steve’s lips on his skin.

“Oh,” he says, shaking his head. “Yeah, I— That’s what I wanted to talk about, I’m—“

“Was it okay?” Steve asks almost shyly.

“It’s fucking incredible, Steve,” Eddie says passionately, reaching out and grabbing Steve’s shirt. “You’re so good, you’re so— you’re so talented, Stevie, it’s, like, the best thing I’ve ever seen.”

Steve is staring back at him, his eyes wide, shining the fluorescent light of the bathroom.

“Really?”

“Jesus, yeah.” Eddie hesitates, looking at him anxiously. Steve is a little taller than him. Eddie likes it. “Thank you.”

Steve grins shyly, his hand finding Eddie’s on his shirt. His fingertips brush over the back of it, over his knuckles.

“I, uhm.” Eddie hesitates. “I keep all of them. They’re all up on my wall.”

“Really?” Steve asks in a small voice.

“Yeah,” Eddie says lightly. “They’re beautiful.”

Steve’s cheeks flush a lovely shade of pink.

part seven

read the whole thing on ao3

[enluv]

a quick note from me to you !

hi friends, I hope you’re all doing well. I just wanted to come on here and say a big thank you to everyone who has messaged me, inboxed me, left comments, etc. sending me love and condolences, it means a lot and I appreciate it so much <3 I’m still not feeling 100% myself and I’ve learned that I won’t for a while but I’m taking the days as they come and just letting it all flow in and out naturally. I hope you’re all well, and stay that way! I’m going to pop in here and there to post on this account, but for the time being I won’t be actively posting or updating anything, just random posts here and there. I’m a bit sad about this because I had plans for this account but it’s okay, I know I need to put myself first in this situation and I am learning that that’s best for me! moots if you’d like to, I have a twitter and also another account on here that I am normally active on/actively logged into (I don’t post often but if you need to reach me that’s a better place to do so), or I have discord (but I can’t promise quick answers on that!!) that I will gladly share with you <3 once again thank you for the kind messages and I hope you’re all staying safe and healthy!

tagging some moots so they know: @atrirose @hoonvrs @isoobie @laviesm @nhularin @odxrilove @i-luvsang @kyuzuberri @writingmeraki @junityy @avis-writeshq (more to be tagged)

[icewindandboringhorror]

Some (late) holiday photos of the boye~!

[levbolton]

Yatora looking at his bank balance

same boy, same

[alluralater]

hey everyone, i won’t be as active for a while. got home last night super late after being on the road for 20 some odd hours. dealing with some family things and as an older sister, my priority of taking care of my siblings comes first before anything else. being on here is amazing for me but i don’t think i’ll have much time for it. reminder to please treat those in your life who are battling addiction with patience and care. i lost my older brother (sweetest person i’ve ever known and he remained that way up until his last night) to suicide and alcoholism, trauma and ptsd, depression and his feelings of hopelessness. talk with the people you care about. another of my siblings is dealing with the same and i refuse to let it escalate to such a terrifying end twice in less than a fucking year. remind the people you care about that there are beautiful things to live for. show them kindness and love. there is all kinds of misinformation out there but know this, you can make a difference for someone. don’t let them suffer in silence.

[sydney-carton-of-sour-milk]

The Many Illustrators of A Tale of Two Cities 7: A. A. Dixon

"'Collins' Clear-Type Press, let me ask you a question.'"

This is a very long post.

This week's edition has, in my research, become quite the edition.

Sadly, this image is the best source for the cover wrapper illustration that I could find.

You are likely familiar with Arthur Augustus Dixon's illustrations for the 1905 Collins Pocket Edition of A Tale of Two Cities. Several of them are very common to find in Internet searches and articles about the book, if not other editions of the book itself.

But the question raised by my research for this week's edition is: Are you familiar with all of them?

Thing is, as the source above states (read the whole article if you have the time, it's very interesting!), Dixon created twelve illustrations for this novel.

And sure enough, this source from the Internet Archive and this source from @oldillustrations (hello!) both have eleven of the same illustrations - with the twelfth presumably being for the wrapper, as seen in this source (previously cited) from the Victorian Web.

Alright, so that's three separate sources, all with (effectively) the same set of elaborate illustrations from 1905. Neat!

...

...but if you start counting...

...you'll notice that this seems...

...like a lot more than twelve!

Basically, there are five illustrations by A. A. Dixon that are completely unaccounted for in any of the three sources previously cited.

For the purposes of this post, the cover wrapper is considered #0 and is not pictured in these banners.

In full-size set of illustrations in this post, this source from Google Books is the source of four of those mystery illustrations:

#3: "'He stared at her with a fearful look.'" #6: "'Drive him fast to his tomb.'" #7: "He said, 'Farewell!'" #12: "'She appeared with folded arms.'" #9 ("'Patriots and friends, we are ready!'") and #11 ("'You are consigned to La Force.'") are sourced from Google Books in the full-size versions in this post simply because the Internet Archive versions of those two illustrations had cropping issues.

To me, this is mystery enough on its own. Why would another version of the book suddenly have more than the originally-stated number of illustrations by this artist? Especially considering that the Google Books source does not have #13 ("''I know you, Evremonde!''") - why would it be missing one of the "main" set?

It gets even more interesting.

As you'll notice in the banner, we're still one off: Keen-eyed observers of the full-size set of illustrations might have already noticed that #14 ("'Carton and the spy returned.'") looks a bit different than the rest of them - a bit like what happened in the previous edition of this series!

That's because that Dixon illustration comes from this completely random source - a post from a blog called the Paperback Palette dating back to 2018 - that I happened across on Google Images of all places while sitting on an airplane trying to set up this post last week!

And to top it all off, that source is missing #6!

At this point, if your first instinct is, reasonably, that perhaps Dixon didn't actually illustrate these extra five and that it was someone imitating him for later editions, then know that that was my instinct too - until I (dare I say it again) checked those signatures!!!

(I edited the colors to prevent flashing.)

All five of those illustrations bear Dixon's signature, so it's safe to assume that they are A. A. Dixon originals - from 1905, even.

Interestingly, #s 1, 10, 13, 15, and 16 don't have signatures! Does this mean anything? Probably not - as an artist myself, I often forget to put my own signature - but still, I can't resist mentioning it!

So the most likely explanation here is simply that the publishing house originally commissioned A. A. Dixon for more than twelve illustrations and then held on to some of them, eventually choosing to publish them in other editions. Still, we can't say for sure.

And as to why some are missing from the more "complete" sets - human error, most likely!

If you scrub through the Google Books source, you'll notice that #s 11 and 12 actually repeat (one even changes color, which I have no explanation for) - it's most likely either that the book was accidentally printed with repeats of #s 11 and 12 where 13 and 14 were supposed to go or that the person scanning this edition made a similar error.

As an aside, it's so interesting that the illustrations are evenly spaced throughout the book - I had not noticed that until now!

And as for the Paperback Palette source, it's most likely that the blogger accidentally skipped over an image while combing through their edition or just glossed over it when posting the batch (I understand that from experience!) We can see this by adding up the letters in some of the illustrations' captions - doing so reveals that the letters are meant to go to P, the sixteenth letter of the alphabet.

Thus, one must be missing! Case closed!

Except... It's actually (going by both the chronology of the book and the order in which this set was found in Google Books) missing the wrong letter! Here, it seems that In the Google Books source, #7 in the full set is given the seventh letter in the alphabet, G - whereas in the Paperback Palette source, "#7" is labeled as the sixth, F:

This implies not only that #6 is absent from the Paperback Palette source but also that there is a missing mystery illustration located between this source's H and K - that is to say, before or after #9!

EXCEPT... For one, this isn't the only inconsistency I've noticed - there are several places where the letters seem shifted in a strange way. I've seen #2 listed as "C" and #9 listed both as "H" and "I2i" (???), just as two examples. (My theory is that the cover wrapper and the frontispiece may be at play here, but who knows?)

More importantly, though, it seems that, for some mysterious reason, all of the sources with relatively consistent use of these letters (i.e. all but the Victorian Web) - even the sources with only eleven interior illustrations - still give #15 in the full set the fifteenth letter, O. Which, of course, may make all of this pretty moot anyway.

Dare I say..."Oh."

Suffice it to say, just as much as major sources like the Internet Archive and Google Books are vital to this sort of research and preservation work, so are smaller websites and bloggers! After all, without the Victorian Web and the Paperback Palette, we as collective netizens likely wouldn't have ever known about the cover wrapper or illustration #14 (not to mention that the versions of the illustrations from the set posted by @oldillustrations have by far the best image quality and standardization that I've found! Please go check them out if you haven't yet!).

As for the reasons behind Collins' Clear-Type Press not publishing all of the illustrations from the beginning (if that's the explanation we're to go with here), I suppose the question I'd like to ask is:

why? why would you put us through this?

& the standard endnote for all posts in this series:

This post is intended to act as the start of a forum on the given illustrator, so if anyone has anything to add - requests to see certain drawings in higher definition (since Tumblr compresses images), corrections to factual errors, sources for better-quality versions of the illustrations, further reading, fun facts, any questions, or just general commentary - simply do so on this post, be it in a comment/tags or the replies!💫

[skrrtscree]

'Happy' December 2nd and here's to DAY 7 of Ryomina Week 2023: Afterlife/Domestic

...Let's all pretend nothing bad happened today and that they get to be happy and together... :,))

[tianhai03]

havent been able to draw at all lately so heres a messy doodle... i got my hair dyed properly for the first time ever yesterday so i figured id draw my sona with it...

[nightwingcouldyounot]

Managed to get some sneaky comic reading time in and got through Gotham Knights Gilded City so time to return to the last of the Batman Adventures tie-in comics with Batman Adventures The Lost Years:

Oh and after this (5 issue series) I've hit the end of my currently planned comic reading list. I do have some ideas of what to do next (Injustice, Constantine, Harley Quinn) but now if the time if you want to suggest anything be put to the top of the list.

[jula483]

Y'ALL. this pic is from yesterday

[zenmai--jikake--no--komoriuta]

♥♥♥ BOBGOB ACQUIRED ♥♥♥

how did you all fare this window? if you weren't able to hook one, you're in luck-- there's another window up in ~12 hours and due to timezone shenanigans that means it still falls within Valentines Day but for the US and similar timezones, so you still have a shot at catching a Premium Valentiones' Bobgob for you and your paramour(s) this year ♥