#and the graphic design...... like were talking basics here!!

[miulore]

Yeah I remember something about his solo tour that’s why I assumed it was last minute but just his solo in general, he just dropped the video and that was all like I want to know the company’s plans or what would’ve been. I know they had the tour but something else could’ve been done for him -wheretfisknk

....... i despise 143 @wheretfisknk

[doorhine]

Ok so I wanna talk about the guy we all know and hate, Abijah Fowler, because there are three scenes that do a fantastic job at characterizing him and speaking to the story’s themes.

*SPOILERS BELOW

The Chapel Scene: Fowler’s whole “prayer not prayer” is so interesting because he presents it as a business deal (which says a lot about how individualistic and apathetic he is). And honestly, that speaks really well to the use of christianity in imperialism, colonization and capitalism. If anyone here is familiar with Antoine Fuqua’s version of The Magnificent Seven (which is based on Seven Samurai), Bogue’s speech in the beginning of the film does a similar thing. In the case of Blue Eye Samurai, Fowler basically says, “we’re not friends but these people are ‘godless’ and if things go my way you’ll have a nation of souls to convert.” And I really liked that wording “a nation of souls” because it shows how imperialism and colonization, in the process of stealing other country’s natural resources, are, by design, meant to pose a threat to the entire culture and livelihood of the people that live there in order to do that. And a major way it’s done is through the spread enforcement of the colonizer’s religion over the ones of the people they invade. Which leads me to…

The Finale Monologue to the Shogun: because Fowler literally spells it out how the process of these systems, how white supremacy, is meant to twist and erase the culture and beliefs of those they invade to the point where they conform and assimilate to the invader’s culture and view them as superior. It also creates the idea of a white race in the first place that has its own ethnic and religious hierarchy that determines what the “best” kind of white is. I really liked the detail where he mentions spreading their shame because so much of white culture and its interpretation of christianity, whether or not it was the dominant form in its country of origin before being enforced on others, thrives on shame and enforcing that on other people (just look at the US). Lastly there’s…

The Famine Monologue: Something I really like about Fowler’s character is how he was written to be Irish rather than some posh English guy. It’s a nuance that adds a whole level of depth to his character and role in the story. Ireland was colonized by the English, which Fowler discusses when he mentions the Tudors. One of the ways that colonization was enforced was by replacing catholicism with protestantism. In this scene though, Fowler talks about the intentional famines that killed his parents and sister. It’s a graphic memory that shows how a victim of colonization will sometimes use the same tools used against them, to gain a sense of autonomy and control at the cost of other people’s livelihoods. This is compounded by the fact that Fowler is able to assimilate into the concept of a white race that was created to justify these systems and the oppression/exploitation of people of color that maintained them. Fowler is fictional but there were plenty of Irish people who took part in Britain’s colonization of other people one way or another. You’ll hear elements of Irish vernacular in places like Barbados for a reason to bring up a small example of the consequences of that. On a side note, this is also an interesting video on how the habitual “be” is used in both AAVE and Celtic languages. 

Long story short, Abijah Fowler is a very nuanced and well written villain.

[lovelyhan]

— thirst trap ⟢

pairing: seungcheol x reader

summary: when your boyfriend posts a deliberate thirst trap for millions to see, you end up feeling just a little bit sulky.

word count: 2.8k words

tags: established relationship, fluff, smut

warnings: implied hand kink? graphic sexual content (minors dni!!)

notes: cheol ghosts us all on ig for almost a month then comes back and drops those fucking selfies like it's no one's business!?!?!?!?! i want to BITE him !! heads up that this isn't proofread :')

smut tags: phone sex, mutual masturbation, dirty talk

svt taglist: @wonderfulshinee - @misssugarlips - @yourfavoritefreakyhan - @jeanjacketjesus - @just-here-to-read-01 - @hanihans - @venusrae - @taestrwbrry - @minnie-mouser22 - @dreamhannies - @thvhannie - @kkooongie - @gae-uls - @lenireads - @gaebestie - @ryusha-rose

seungcheol taglist: @changk6un - @renjunphile - @pluviophile-xxx

Seungcheol updates his Instagram page sparingly—this is a well-known fact.

Though he's, by no means, an inactive user, your boyfriend often leaves his fans and followers wondering when he's going to bother dropping his next selca because of how long the intervals between his posts are. He uploads an average of two pictures per month. Three if he's feeling generous.

So when he finally posts one after almost a month of radio silence on his socials, it's practically a godsent miracle.

You still have his post notifications turned on, despite the fact that he often asks you to choose from an assortment of shots before posting them altogether.

After all, there are instances where Seungcheol has to make quick PR, when he doesn't have the time to ask which boyfriend pics you'll allow him to post for the world to see, and which ones you wanted to keep for yourself.

Times like this, for example.

You don't get to check his latest post right away when your phone dings with the notification—as you were wrapping up some leftover work you decided to continue at home. Although, you were half-expecting another brand collaboration of some sort. He's been getting lots of those lately.

But when you finally find the time to pull up on his Instagram page, you're greeted by an adorable mirror selca on the first slide, and it has you pouting at him.

Well, adorable isn't the right word for it, really.

Seungcheol's head is tilted upward while he stares down at the screen of his phone—looking smug as hell especially with the way his dark hair fall over his eyes. But he's finally using the cherry patterned phone case you got for him last Christmas, as well as the Shin-chan popsocket that Jeonghan gave him as a souvenir from his trip to Japan. Coupled with his natural curls, you're able to overlook that tantalizing look on his face in favor of gushing about those other details instead.

You double-tap the picture before checking out the other photos. There are three slides in total, and you can already picture Seungcheol showing off his dimples or making a kissy face to balance out his borderline sultry expression in the first slide. He knows damn well that he's daddy-coded and tends to even that out with some aegyo here and there.

The second photo gives you a better view of his whereabouts—one of the boxing gyms just a few blocks away from their company's office building.

Seungcheol has taken you there once before to give you a feel of the basic training regimen, but after a few sessions, you concluded that you're just going to have to stick to your regular workouts after all.

You snicker when you realize he's wearing that silly designer Pop-Eye cardigan—showing off his dimples as expected. You've been together for so long, that you practically have Seungcheol's go-to poses engraved in your mind.

When you finally swipe to the last slide, however, the smile on your face vanishes in an instant.

The cardigan is off, and you're met with the sight of your boyfriend donned with a fitted gray shirt. It's not your first time seeing it, and it's not his first time wearing it, but you're pretty damn sure his followers have yet to see this particular form-fitting shirt while he's at the gym.

You puff out your cheeks in some form of indignance. It's only been three hours since Seungcheol posted the pictures, but he's already racked up 900,000 likes in that timespan. You're not sure if you feel happy about it or not.

Heat prickles the back of your neck as you scroll down to see the caption he attached to the post.

Mind over body🖤

"Mind over body my ass," you scoff before taking a nosedive into his comment section. If Seungcheol's showing something off here, it's definitely not his mind.

Reading through all the thirsty things his followers are saying about him used to be a past time of yours, where Seungcheol would turn red from embarrassment as you recited each one aloud with a scandalous tone. If you play your cards right he's perfectly easy to fluster.

But now, as you scroll through the fifth comment asking him for a headlock, you feel a nasty feeling coiling in your chest—one that you immediately realize is possessiveness.

You knew that dating an idol means that you're virtually sharing him with his fans until he decides to quit. Even if Seungcheol has never made you feel like he's anything but yours, the fact still stands that he's being perceived by thousands of people all over the world.

He knows that. He knows that damn well, so of course he'll treat everyone and their mothers to a goddamn thirst trap on what was supposed to be a quiet Friday night.

You scroll back up to the collection of photos Seungcheol decided to grace the world with—biting your lip when you realize just how well his biceps fill out the sleeves of that stupid shirt. If only he hadn't taken off that stupid Pop-Eye cardigan, you wouldn't be having such a dilemma right now.

It doesn't help that you're starting to notice how nice his hands look in every picture. Fuck.

Despite being on break from group activities, Seungcheol has had a couple of solo ventures keeping him occupied over the past few days. It's been about a week since you last saw him in person, and a month since the two of you fooled around in bed.

Surely, the jury won't condemn you for becoming all hot and bothered because of how tempting Seungcheol's thick fingers are in those photos, right?

Just when you're about to put your phone down and schedule a relaxing evening with one of your vibrators, a text notification hovers at the top of your screen.

Cheol: hey, baby, how was work? is it ok to call now?

God fucking dammit.

Me: just finished. yeah, you can call :)

It doesn't even take Seungcheol a full minute before your phone starts vibrating in your hand. You sigh, answering without another thought.

"Hi," Seungcheol says.

"Hi," you tell him back. "Aren't you tired? You went to Music Bank today, right?"

Your boyfriend sighs, and you hear some rustling on the other end of the line. He must be in bed by now.

"A little, but it's not like we were the ones performing at the music show today," he chuckles. "If anyone's tired, it's definitely Seokmin, Seungkwan, and Soonyoung. They haven't had a proper rest day since the album was released."

You sigh. "And you're having a group comeback in a couple of months, too. Poor guys."

"Yeah. That's why I asked Wonwoo and Mingyu to come with me to check on them. Idiots don't usually have a proper gauge of their own personal limits."

"That's rich, coming from an idiot leader who doesn't know how to take his own breaks either," you interject, rolling your eyes even though he can't see it. "Speaking of breaks, what made you hit the gym today? You usually don't go that late."

Seungcheol is quiet for a moment—probably trying to figure out how you found out about his plans for tonight, before realizing that he just dropped the world's most unsubtle thirst trap in the history of thirst traps.

"Oh, you know. Just to clear my head and stuff," he says, before quietly adding, "That, and Mingyu told me the fans were starting to miss me on Instagram."

You can't help the huff that escapes you. So Kim Mingyu is the mastermind behind this after all.

"What?" Seungcheol laughs airily. "Don't tell me the photos I picked were ugly."

"It's the exact opposite actually," you say before clearing out your desk so you can settle yourself on your own bed. "You did too well and now I'm going to have to fight the thirty-thousand people in the comments asking if you can suffocate them with your arms to establish dominance."

Another laugh—this time, a low rumble in his chest. "Oh? Did you like the pics I took that much, princess?"

Now that you're under the covers, you feel more comfortable—more inclined to be honest about the inappropriate reactions you had to those stupid fucking mirror selfies.

"Mhmm," you whisper. "Your fingers looked really nice in them, Cheol..."

The sound of him groaning at the other end of the line shoots straight through your core, making you clench your thighs together. These damn work schedules. If the two of you weren't so busy, he might already have those thick digits buried inside you by now.

"Yeah?" He questions huskily. "You've been thinking about my fingers, baby? Where do you want them?"

You take your lower lip between your teeth, inching your legs apart as your free hand starts to glide between your thighs. The gusset of your underwear is starting to get soaked by the minute, but you feel no semblance of shame for it.

"Inside my pussy," you gasp a little when you press down your clit through the fabric of your panties. "Love it when you finger me while we make out, Cheol. Always so hot..."

"Fuck," he sighs, and you hear more rustling in the background. "Put me on speaker phone, princess. I can't go to you right now, but I can still help get you off. That sound good to you?"

You whimper before removing your panties altogether spreading your slick along your glistening seam. "Yes, please."

As the two of you get comfortable, you hang onto the sound of Seungcheol's voice like a lifeline. There's just something so unbearably arousing when he's talking to you with his sex voice. Though it doesn't sound that different from when he's performing Hip-hop Unit songs, you know the desire laced in his words is reserved for you, and you alone.

Those people in his comments can only dream of getting what Seungcheol spoils you with on the regular.

"You all good, baby? Can you hear me well?"

You swallow thickly. "Uh-huh."

"Good. Now, I want you to tease yourself just a little. Make yourself wet enough first," your boyfriend commands, and you can practically picture him licking his lips.

In return, you let out a soft whine. "You already made me wet because of those pictures..."

"I did, didn't I?" He laughs, that evil, evil man. "But you're not wet enough, princess. I want to hear your cunt squelching around those tiny fingers through the phone when you fuck yourself. You can do that for me, right?"

You let out a shuddering breath when you gather some more of the slick trickling out of your hole—using that to rub your clit in tight circles. If you listen hard enough, you can hear a rather...suggestive noise on Seungcheol's end. Thinking about him pumping his thick cock in his fist sends another rush of arousal through you.

"'M playing with myself, Cheolie," you whimper. "Are you, too?"

He lets out a sigh so sexy, it makes you yearn for his presence even more. "You bet I am. Hearing you admit that you got all worked up because of those pictures made me so fucking hard, princess. Been so long since I last had these fingers shoved up your needy cunt."

"C-Can I put them in now?" You practically beg. "P-Please, Cheol. I need—"

"Go ahead, baby. Slide in two fingers for me. I know you can take 'em."

The soft moan that tumbles out of your lips is pornographic even in its subtlety—burying two digits to the hilt as you continue rubbing your clit with your other hand.

It isn't enough. Your own fingers can only reach half of what Seungcheol can, but you're going to have to make do.

"Shit. That's what I'm talking about," Seungcheol groans when he picks up on that telltale squelch he's been yearning to hear again. "Your pussy's always such a mess, isn't it? Doesn't matter if you don't have a cock to split you in half right now. You'll get wet from just about anything."

"That's not—ah! That's not true," you mewl as you curl your fingers inside in an attempt of finding your g-spot. When the pads manage to graze a sensitive patch of flesh that has you writhing on the mattress, you know the effort isn't entirely fruitless. "I only get wet for you, Cheolie."

"And I only pop a boner when my needy princess starts to get worked up without me," he growls. "You like the pace you've set right now, baby? Now, imagine it's my cock hitting you over and over—making a mess of that perfect cunt while you squeeze me like a vice."

Your rhythm falters at the image he plants in your mind. Fuck. It's just now occurring to you how much you missed being spread open on his cock.

"Seungcheol," you whimper, hips starting to gyrate on the mattress. "I miss you so much, fuck."

He hisses through his teeth. "I miss you, too, princess. Can't wait to see you again."

"Can I use one of my toys?" You ask, half-hoping he'll relent even though you know his answer's still going to be:

"No," Seungcheol replies firmly. "You're gonna get off to your own fingers and the sound of my voice like a good girl. You understand? Now get on your knees and lie on your chest."

His instructions confuse you a little, but you still do as you're told, pruning fingers never straying too far from your slick heat as Seungcheol mutters the dirtiest things on the other line.

"You always come so hard when I fuck you from behind," he growls. "Try fingering yourself again, princess. You'll understand why."

You press your cheek against the cold sheets, easing three fingers into your sopping entrance before establishing a pace you're comfortable with. The moment you finally settle into the new position, you curl those digits again before your back practically arches into the mattress—ripping out a pretty little moan from your lips.

"You can reach a lot deeper now, can you?" Seungcheol laughs but you're still floored by the pleasurable sensation and the fact that he knows your body so well, he can tell you how to make yourself fall apart even if he isn't with you. "Keep doing just that, princess. You'll be coming on the sheets in no time."

"Fuck, Cheol," you breathe, thighs quivering as you continue to thrust your soaked fingers in and out of your pussy. "Wish you were here with me... Want you to blow my back out so fucking bad, shit—"

"I will, baby. I will," he promises, just as breathless as you are. "It's sad that I'll end up coming on my stomach instead of inside you, but it's the yearning that makes it all worth the wait, right?"

Fuck. He's so...

"I'm so close, baby," Seungcheol continues. "Play with your clit and come with me."

You don't need to think it through—tireless moans spilling from your lips as you obey your boyfriend's instructions. The lovely angle that Seungcheol just introduced to you coupled with how hypersensitive your puffy clit has become is sending your brain into a frenzy that you didn't think you were going to experience tonight.

"Your cunt sounds so goddamn tasty, princess. You're close, aren't you?" Seungcheol babbles, and the deep sound of his voice only serves to turn you on further. "That's it. That's my good girl. You'll take everything in that greedy pussy. Be it your fingers or mine, those little toys or my cock—you take them all so fucking well. Don't even get me started about whenever I dump my load inside your needy hole."

How are you supposed to last long when your boyfriend has gotten the art of dirty talk down to a T? You didn't even think it's possible for you to get off without any of your toys, but the sound of Seungcheol's voice whispering all that filth into your ear has the electric impulses of an orgasm skidding across every synapse in your fucked out brain.

Your boyfriend lets out a long-winded groan on his end, and you can picture those white hot streams of cum dribbling from his tip and onto his toned stomach. And you're not even there to see it.

"That's it, let go for me, princess," Seungcheol whispers hoarsely as you slowly sink down from your high. "I promise I'll stuff you full next time we see each other."

"Promise me you won't post any more thirst traps, and we'll call it quits," you interject, still feeling a bit blissed out, but coherent enough to carry on your initial sulking.

"Hm? Why's that?"

"Because news flash: I actually don't like sharing my hot as fuck boyfriend to his own fans," you growl. "If you're gonna take pictures like that, send them to me and nobody else!"

Seungcheol barks out an incredulous laugh. "Aww, my possessive princess doesn't want me to post gym pics anymore? I don't wanna let down the fans, baby."

"Oh? Which one do you want more, your fans' attention or this pussy?" you proposition him.

Your boyfriend groans. "Baby, if you rile me up again, I might end up sneaking one of our cars out just so I can pay you a visit."

"What's stopping you then?"

Seungcheol sighs like he doesn't know what to do with you.

"Alright. I'll be there in twenty."

⟢ end notes: i...don't know what came over me tbh i saw those pics of cheol and thought, i NEED to write something and voila! honestly thought i was a jeonghan n shua stan but i've been feeling so rabid for cheol these days that i might just be a 95z stan after all 🥹 i hope you guys like this horny brain child i finished writing at exactly 2:43 in the morning of dino's birthday LMFAO i definitely did NOT plan to write this, so let's thank ig user sound_of_coups for sponsoring today's content 🤭 edit: i wrote a lil sequel of sorts here! the chelrot just won't stop yk...

[not-quite-normal]

How difficult was Miguel to animate? I read somewhere that he is 6’9 and over 300 pounds haha what a beast. Were there any specific things to take note of when it came to animating him? It’s insane how through his movements he just exudes power and strength. Even the way he walks just makes him seem like a guy not to messed with. Did his frame hinder anything in animation that would not occur on the smaller models?

miguel was SUPER FUN i loved animating him!! i feel like a lot of 3D animation defaults to super skinny characters that are basically just tubes, so it's fun to work with a character that lets you design the shapes into something more graphic

we had to think a lot about how someone that big moved, but also how they carry themselves when just standing and talking. we referenced idris elba:

when a person has very well defined and built up chest muscles, their shoulders tend to be pulled forward. i did some posture tests early on to help out with finding a good slumped but still powerful, natural standing pose

a lot of tweaking had to be done too whenever he was doing any kind of dynamic action because of how defined his muscles are, extreme poses tended to get off model pretty quickly. here's an example with one of the shots that i animated, i tried to recreate what his model looked like without any shaping adjustments:

i wanna give a special shout out to eric de carolis, who animated a lot of fantastic miguel swagger, he really helped set the bar for how we should handle miguel's massive everything when walking. he animated this shot:

so, yes! there was a lot that went into finding his character through movement and it's always a challenge to animate subtleties on someone this big while still making them feel heavy

[menhera-info-archieve]

in case you haven't seen it yet, here's the menhera 101 article by HoshiCandy from Kei Club Issue 3. not sure if i'll post the other menhera related articles from this issue or not, so consider checking the link in source if you're interested.

i'm also leaving a text transcription under the cut for anyone that may benefit from that

Menhera 101

Menhera fashion has quickly been gaining popularity worldwide! This fast growth has come with its fair share of misunderstandings about the community and style. Menhera artist and designer HoshiCandy is here with a lesson on menhera’s origins, history, and basics. Find more of her work on the pages before and after this article!

What is Menhera? 

“Menhera” can be thought of as “a person who seeks mental wellbeing”. 

The word “Menhera” was born in Japan in 2001, on the “Mental Health” board of anonymous forum 2ch, where users discussed their wellbeing. The users of this board were named “Mental Healthers” which was shortened to “Menhera”. 

The Menhera community covers anything that might cause one mental suffering, such as: physical illness or disability, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, bullying, hyper-sexuality, sexism, homophobia, etc. Importantly, there is no need for a formal diagnosis, as the focus is on how you feel, and that you want to feel better. 

It is difficult to talk about these topics in Japanese society without being heavily stigmatized. Menhera is a community to speak safely without that stigma. Of course, this stigma and need for community when it comes to one’s mental wellbeing is not limited to Japan, and that is why menhera has grown in the west as well. 

Since the creation of the word in 2001, there have been several manga published with “Menhera” in the title, many Visual Kei songs about it, Menhera idol groups, and several menhera fashion brands. 

However, an unfortunate addition to all this has been the discovery of the word in mainstream media...

Just as the topic of illness is heavily stigmatized in Japanese society, the word “Menhera” itself became quickly stigmatized and stereotyped as “an attention seeking, troublesome person” or “an overly attached girlfriend” (aka “yandere”). If you were to speak to a Japanese person about “Menhera”, this would most likely be what they would think you meant. This stereotype tends to be referred to as “Menhera Kei” in Japanese which is why we avoid the use of “kei” for Menhera in particular. 

Despite all this, the true menhera community has continued to grow. 

Menhera Motifs

Artists in the Menhera community created many works of “Vent Art” art that expresses their feelings and suffering. When this art was printed onto clothing, Menhera fashion was born. 

These are some themes you will commonly see in Menhera: 

Medication

Suicide 

Self-harm 

Hospitals

Sex and BDSM

Social Media Addiction

Heartbreak 

Wearing Menhera art printed on clothing serves as a way of literally wearing one’s feelings on one’s sleeves. It turns invisible suffering visible, and fights against the stigma driven silence. This means that Menhera fashion is highly confrontational, with graphic depictions of illness symptoms. Although the onlooker may feel discomfort, the Menhera style says “this is my true reality, don’t pretend it doesn’t exist!”

Depending on the feelings of the wearer, Menhera fashion also says “although I am sick, I can still be ‘kawaii’” or “although I appear ‘kawaii’, on the inside I am suffering”. 

Turning the invisible visible, forcing the silence to be broken, and challenging kawaii culture, these are the goals of Menhera fashion.

The Menhera Silhouette

Carefully avoiding a highly theatrical or OTT (over-the-top) look is important for maintaining the integrity of the goals of menhera. Menhera is a very casual style, with few accessories and light makeup. The key is for a coord to centre on Menhera imagery, whether vent art or text-focused designs, printed onto clothing. 

Be careful not to dress up as the characters depicted in vent art, who are often costumey, gory, and OTT. 

Menhera Coord checklist: 

Printed Menhera art

Byojaku/Minimal makeup

Not OTT/Few accessories

Flat Shoes 

[optional] Oversized top

[optional] Hime bangs 

[optional] twintails

Colors can vary: a pastel yume look, or a gothic yami look, both are fine!

The makeup style is called “Byojaku” meaning “sickly/weak”. Reddish colors are applied to areas around the eyes to give the impression of crying or illness. The rest of the face is kept plain without much color. 

A Note of Caution

The Menhera community is about healing, and seeking recovery and wellbeing. It advocates getting help, medication, therapy, and receiving support through your recovery journey. 

True Menhera never encourages or enables harmful behaviors, and never glorifies them. Menhera fashion is an alternative way of expressing your suffering without self-harm. Menhera fashion empowers the individual through their recovery, but does not empower harmful behaviors. 

There are some, sometimes labeled by the community as “Wannabe Menhera”, who mistook the meaning of “menhera” after seeing its rise in popularity, as it being trendy to fake mental illness. They engage in behaviors such as posting self-harm photos (real or faked) to social media with the tag #menhera, and other attention-seeking behaviors. 

While this is the opposite of what the Menhera community stands for, is harmful to the unfortunate viewers of these photos, and creates further stigma against the community...it cannot be ignored that these “Wannabe Menhera”, too, need help and healing. 

The Menhera fashion movement is to help you feel comfortable, unashamed, and kawaii in your skin, scars and all. It is NOT for encouraging people to create new scars “for the aesthetic”. 

If you are struggling with mental or physical suffering, thoughts, or behaviors that cause harm to yourself or others, please seek help. If you do not believe you deserve help, you do, please seek help. If you believe you are faking it, you likely are not, your feelings are valid, please seek help.

Don’t have access to therapy? 

We found a comprehensive list of suicide prevention hotlines at https://ibpf.org/resource/list-international-suicide-hotlines [link no longer working]

There are also free and affordable counseling services online like Better Help and Pride Counseling! Look online to find what option could work for you! 

Alternatives to Menhera

After reading all this you may be thinking “the Menhera community sounds good but all the fashion is too restrictive for me” and if so, you’re not alone! But the good news is that you don’t have to wear Menhera fashion to be in the Menhera community. 

Look up any of these alternative styles online for examples and more information:

Yamikawaii (“Sickly-cute”) is essentially the aesthetic of Menhera without the activism, a corrupted dark kawaii. Unfortunately the word was trademarked and now suffers from copyright takedowns. 

Yumekawaii (“Dreamy-cute”) an aesthetic evolved from Fairy kei to describe everything pastel and kawaii, but with a slight edge, described as “fairytales with poison”. 

Marekawaii (“Nightmare-cute”) created as an alternative to Yamikawaii to avoid the copyright issues, and as a counterpart to Yumekawaii. Marekawaii is specifically defined as being open to your own interpretation and style. 

Medikawaii (“Medical-cute”) a pastel kawaii aesthetic focusing only on medical motifs, such as medicine and hospitals. 

Gurokawaii (“Grotesque-cute”) mixes frightening and disturbing imagery with kawaii. Kyary Pamyu Pamyu helped popularize it. 

Iryouu Kei (“Medical Kei”) a Visual Kei substyle with lots of gore and hospital theming, very OTT and theatrical, such as dressing like a nightmare nurse. 

Living Doll artists see themselves and their bodies as a canvas to create art and express themselves, often with intricate makeup and body painting. This is a good one to look at if you’re into heavy artistic makeup.

[reel-fear]

Bendy And The Power Of Representation

So those graphic novel pages huh? Seems I posted my cover post at just the right time because literally minutes after I was informed the preview pages came out and uh. This is Buddy and Norman!

Oh dear... I'll put the full graphic novel pages down below but I have so much to say on how awful this is it'll need several posts. However, right now I want to mostly talk about representation and briefly touch on why it's so damn important + inform others about the current shit Mike and Meatly are saying about the books n such.

Now note: All the things I'm saying below are based on my personal experience, maybe some people don't care about seeing the representation of their identities in the media they consume. Maybe some will think I'm merely being dramatic and I might be but I'm not lying when I say I personally believe being represented and seen in the media you consume can be one of the most wonderful feelings in the world.

Look I'm not here to argue with people who think that Norman in particular was never meant to be a person of color, I would argue he is very coded but the points I'm making here are not about how Norman particularly had to be black. The point I want to make is the lack of diversity in our cast in general and how Norman's design has heavily dwindled it considering most people [including myself] rightfully assumed he was at least one of three black characters in our cast. Not according to this though and looking at the the rest of the pages our chances of seeing any kind of decent diverse character designs dwindle more.

So firstly... Buddy a character who has been said to experience discrimination for being Jewish, lacks any kind of ethnic features at all. That's... Cool but yeah I think this shows a rather grim future for the character designs as a whole.

Also, Norman... As I mentioned he was largely assumed to be black due to his southern dialect, his voice, and other factors. But nope, he's a generic white guy. With... Gross looking hair tbh...

Sadly this is not the first time the topic of poor representation has come up concerning Bendy either.

[note how he disregarded the other mentioned minorities and specifically cites LGBTQ+ characters]

This sucks as a response but sadly considering Mike's recent behavior it seems to fall in line with the Bendy team's general lack of care towards representing anyone who isn't straight and white.

So how did Mike respond to all of this? Well...

TDLR - "Who cares if the Graphic Novel we're selling to our fans for full price sucks, we now no longer consider the books canon."

This is horrible, I know Mike and Meatly are only really in this for the money, the fact BATIM is in the state that it is proved that, but they really couldn't have been less obvious about it?

So basically when it benefited them, AKA when it meant people would have to buy the books to understand important lore like Boris' identity... [the character you spend all of chapter 4 trying to rescue] They were considered canon... At least the author sure thought so.

Hell even in the tweet Meatly made here he doesn't say the books aren't canon, he just says they're not needed to understand Bendy's world. Now Mike is using that as a shield instead of doing the right thing and saying "You're right, the poc in our fanbase deserve better we'll have it fixed right away!" Like most reasonable people would considering how his studio has literally been accused of bigotry, poor rep, and general lack of diversity before. Why risk making more people avoid this franchise?

Also just... Imagine how insulting it would be to be an author who helps flesh out so much of this world and gives its characters depth like NONE of the games have managed to do, filling in plot holes, creating a timeline for events, etc... Then because they couldn't bother to change the graphic novel for ur story to be better they instead throw out all ur writing and declare it non-canon.

If I were her to put it bluntly I'd feel insulted and horrible. Why make her do all the work of making sure her works align with the timeline and game's canon if they're not part of it?

I can't speak for her obviously but Meatly and Mike know of her account, so speaking out against this could very much risk her being fired or at least not allowed to work on Bendy anymore... So I would take all her tweets on this situation with a grain of salt. She very much is not in a position where she could be honest if she was against this.

So with all that history now, the question I'm sure many are wondering is... Why does this even matter? Who cares how diverse the characters are when it doesn't affect the story?

Well for one thing, if you think like that consider having more empathy for your fellow human beings but also it does affect the story. One of DCTL's themes is about the bigotry of the period it is set in.

Now the Bendy team has managed to make the discussion of this book centering around their bigotry which is ironic in a way I almost find funny... Though this entire thing is just a bit too hurtful and upsetting to find any humor in, at least for me...

But another thing is representation can bring people such joy when it's done with care. It really shouldn't be understated how far it can go to make people feel more comfortable in their own sense of self to have a franchise choose to represent them and their experiences. I know this from personal experience.

Now if you've been following me for a while, you know I'm a big fan of Transformers. I no longer engage with it much due to baggage from the fandom's awful treatment of me, but before I left I remember being able to witness the release of Transformers: Earthspark first few episodes.

These introduced the Maltos the family who meets the Transformers and serve as our protagonists and guess what?

It's a family of Filipinos!

Now look I'm not Filipino, but I am half Mexican and I have a lot of love for that part of me. So seeing the representation of any Spanish culture in this franchise I loved made me so happy! I remember just watching the first episode I was happily telling my partner how fun it was to see people like me and my family in a world I love!!

But it didn't end with the Maltos in fact... There was another character who spoke to me, their name was Nightshade. Their pronouns are They/Them and they spoke about it on the show! Not just mentioning it and moving on but actually sitting down to speak about their experiences...

This clip in particular really turned them into an absolute favorite among fans and well... I'll let you see it for yourself.

This scene... Fills me with a joy I cannot describe. It is the creators of a franchise I love telling me they see people like me and find the stories of people like me important enough to include in this series. There really is nothing like being able to say there are Non-Binary characters in a franchise I have so much love for. I was far from the only one too.

This is amazing, this is wonderful, this clip and character were moving to so so many people and...

This is a joy the Bendy creators have no interest in giving their audience. They don't care how you feel as a queer and/or black person, which... Hurts...

I... Discovered I was trans while in the Bendy community... It was where I learned the word Non-Binary and started using it for myself. To me Bendy will always have that connection... But the devs themselves seem to hate the idea of being forced to actually represent that in their games... And I still haven't really gotten over that pain or betrayal if I'm being honest.

So...

With Norman now being portrayed as white here, we are down to two black characters. Thomas [who Meatly has claimed is white in the past] based on a vague conversation with Sammy in DCTL they could easily ignore... And Jacob.... A book exclusive character which according to Mike means he is non-canon.

If we don't count Thomas' vague talk with Sammy about disrespect as confirmation he's black [which the devs don't seem to think so] then we have one black character in all of Bendy... And he recently got retconned into non-existence. Great.

Look... The Bendy fanbase has always been full of wonderfully diverse designs for the staff and even more diverse people creating them. Bendy's fandom was built with the work of queer people from all kinds of places.

If the Bendy team continues to show how little they care for anyone who isn't straight or white... I wonder who they are counting on to buy this book or in general financially support their franchise?

I know right now, I am furious, I am hurt and I most certainly don't feel like buying a book that's currently just a massive fuck you to the fans and I hope I've expressed why I feel this way in an easy-to-understand way here...

Either way, I will not be forgetting this anytime soon and I hope the fanbase does the same. Maybe just maybe, if there's enough backlash to this series of horrible decisions they'll learn better.

Right now, it's kinda of our only hope for a better future, and if you know any poc who are into Bendy right now... Maybe consider making sure they're feeling okay.

I know from experience how much this sort of thing hurts, to have the creators of a world you love straight up tell you they don't intend to fix the fact no one in their stories represents your identity or life...

What I'm trying to say is...

This is a really low point for Bendy and its fans... Even more for the poc who have to witness such ignorant and careless attitudes from Mike and Meatly towards their feelings.

Please don't forget them when you discuss these tweets or this situation. That's exactly what Mike and Meatly want right now.

For them to be unrepresented and therefore... Unheard.

[prettyoddfever]

This off-white t-shirt that was for sale at some shows during the 2008 Honda Civic Tour was really popular and was usually the one you'd see people asking other fans to grab for them in late spring because their show sold out in their size. This is the shirt that was sewn into a vest for Ryan that season btw:

FBR added this shirt to their webstore in August 2008 and some sizes sold out quickly but then got restocked. I remember some people complaining that FBR's shirt was a slightly different color than the one on tour, but others said it was the same. Idk, it looked like the same general off-white color to me. The band's name was still on the back of the right sleeve:

I liked this design because it was SO different from most t-shirt designs in this era (like in general, not just PATD) and was way more minimalist. A fan created some pngs that we could print out to iron on our own shirts, so I'll add them here if anyone wants them. They used the "Big Noodle Tilting" font and created their own heart:

That fall Hot Topic also came out with an off-white tote that had the same large "reinvent love" design on one side. Then the design of the band name (from the t-shirt's sleeve) got a heart added and was enlarged to be the graphic on the other side of the tote. The inside of the bag was a floral pattern that reminded me of the striped hoodie's lining:

FBR clearly loved how successful this whole design was. The webstore included a bonus sticker in the order packages for P!ATD fans in fall 2008:

The Rock Band Live Tour shows in fall 2008 used the same type of graphic:

And the shows on that tour had a black tote & shirt for sale:

Spencer did an interview with Out.com this season that had this question:

The most popular items at your merch booth seem to be a t-shirt and bag that say “Reinvent Love,” which is such a strong, inclusive message. Tell me about how that became the band slogan. It started out as a lyric in “Mad as Rabbits.” It was the last song we were recording for the album, and as we figured out how to fit it into the end of the song, it took on some more anthem-style cheer. As we went on tour, me and Ryan [Ross, Panic’s guitarist] talked about making a “Reinvent Love” shirt. At first it was just going to be on the Fueled By Ramen web store, just a limited edition thing because it didn’t have our band name on the front, and we didn’t know how many people would want to wear that. It ended up being a lot more popular than we thought it would. We were ending all of the concerts with that song, so that was the last thing that people were hearing. We wouldn’t want to be a part of anything that wasn’t that kind of that message. If there’s going to be some saying associated with our band, that’s a pretty good one. It goes along with everything we want to represent and the way that we feel.

This bracelet was added to FBR's webstore in December 2008 (after the Pretty. Odd. era had basically ended & around the time that Live in Chicago was released):

By the time this necklace got added to FBR's webstore in January 2009, a lot of fans were tired of this theme:

The necklace spawned more fan jokes about what was coming next at that point... my favorite was still the musical toaster:

So in March 2009 FBR just added the black shirt & tote to their webstore (the ones that were sold at shows in fall 2008) and then let the phrase rest so they could soon move onto overusing the return of the exclamation mark. lol jk.

[ronearoundblindly]

Time and Tines (2/3)

Reasons (see previous or series)

Steve Rogers x Villain!Reader

Summary: With the Winter Soldier on your side, Steve races against time to figure out why...and how to stop you.

Warnings for basically DARKFIC: talk of unspecified terminal illness, medical malpractice, gaslighting, revenge, gun violence, not overly graphic death but still death (not of Reader, Steve, or Bucky), and decidedly too-little editing. MINORS DNI. There's plenty for you to read on my Light Masterlist, but this isn't for you! WC 5242 (which is, yeah, way longer than it was supposed to be)

Steve will do anything to avoid a fire fight with the Winter Soldier. There are too many people involved now, and he has to approach this situation delicately from all angles.

Steve just does not understand yet.

After hours waiting with agents in the dark of Doctor Avani’s house, convinced you’ve ordered Bucky to come right over and kill the man with brute force, nothing happened. There was no sign of anyone. Steve has to try something else.

A small army protects Salvatore while he searches your apartment. If the key to activating his friend is here, he needs to find it, destroy that information, and get a handle on why this is happening.

“This can’t be right,” Steve mutters, pushing past Agent Palmer (who drove) for a better look. “It’s too clean.”

Your one-bedroom would pass a white-glove test.

There’s so little…everything. It’s a far cry from the chaos Steve woke to find in the police station. His head throbs at the memory. He forgot what it was like to have his bell good’n’rung.

“Supe says she’s been selling off furniture,” Palmer calls from the doorway, “but he thought it was replaced. Boxes kept coming.”

Steve inventories a mattress with no frame, half a dozen hanging garments, no shoes. What were you buying? Where did it all go?

The desktop is bare. You’ve taken any laptop with you, it seems. That’s a small comfort. You clearly planned contingencies for your attack andor escape; it’s fitting you had the foresight to hide your research on the Winter Soldier.

Steve is still scared, however, because he sat with Bucky many times, listening to horrible tales of being trapped in his own mind, powerless, isolated in the midst of everyone, unable to control thoughts much less actions.

This one’s gonna take a few more beers for the friends to contend with, but with any luck and quick work, they’ll get through without bloodshed. He and Bucky will decompress somewhere peaceful. It’ll be okay.

He hopes.

Steve scans the lone bookshelf. The most curious edition is a history book about WWII, a few flagged pages open to reveal passages about Bucky’s service record, an underline beneath the location where the sergeant fell from the train, and a mail receipt for an address on Forsythe Avenue keeping your page. That’s all.

It’s not even a unique read. The book isn’t any more specific than an average school text. No other notes are made in the margins, so Steve turns the book upside-down and shakes, hoping for something to fall out. He rips the other books from the shelf and shuffles their pages until a picture comes loose—a polaroid of three women.

You’re on the right, fuller faced but it’s you. On the back is scrawled “the girls” with hearts on either side.

The book is handwritten, no label on the cover or spine, only an embossed mandala design. Steve’s stomach drops, but he opens to the front flap.

Property of Faith Williams

He swallows roughly and closes it, unable to step over that line of privacy. At the moment, he needs evidence of where you could have taken Bucky, and slow-reading someone else’s diary won’t give him that.

Forsythe Avenue might, but that’s just one tiny piece of the puzzle. 

Steve checks a different unlabeled book, but it, too, doesn’t have your name inside, just a ‘Z’ fancifully drawn amidst doodles.

Damnit. This is no help.

“Palmer, you finding anything?”

“No, Cap. Bills all paid. Nothing under the mattress. No mention of Barnes on any papers in the drawers. Not even a Cyrillic symbol.”

No trace, just like how you two disappeared from surveillance.

Steve shuts his eyes, head still throbbing from how hard the Soldier landed a blow to knock him out.

The agent wanders through the tiny kitchen. “Fridge is empty. Doesn’t look like she intended to come back here…if…actually, it looks like she barely ate. No condiments, no spices, nothing.”

“How long has she rented here?”

“Over two years.”

Shit. This is a dead end.

“Keep looking,” Steve orders, but he takes the two journals and heads for the car, pulling up your thin file again. You don’t hold any clearances or a government footprint. You were let go of from your last job with a severance package. Nothing overly generous. No medical leave mentioned. Benefits, including health insurance, would be intact. Based on your appearance earlier versus you in the photo, Steve chews on a few wisps of theories, but it’s not solid proof. Without more, Steve has no leads.

“Friday, any connection to properties on Forsythe?”

He adjusts to get comfortable in the back seat of the SUV alone, firing up a view screen.

There’s a low, sad sound that means the AI found nothing in your records.

"For her or him?"

Womp womp, it comes again.

Steve lets out a tense breath, “Where are we with bank statements?”

“Authorizations just came back,” F.R.I.D.A.Y chirps.

“What about medical records?”

“That one’s a lot harder, Captain Rogers. We have to—“

“Just analyze the financials first,” Steve sighs. His head throbs again, and he knows he needs sleep. There’s no time though. If he could just get answers…

Protections exist, of course, for good reason, but Steve feels the frustration of any detective. He’s trying to find a bad guy, and by 'bad guy,' he means you, not the man you’ve taken, not the man you are certainly going to order to kill for you.

Steve rests his head on the chilly glass and pinches his eyes shut. He’ll take a minute, review the money trail, and then interview the doctor. It seems a miracle that man was able to go home to his wife and sleep, even with security inside the room, down every hall, surrounding the house…Steve wouldn’t do it; he can’t even keep his eyes closed long enough for the dry sting to subside.

How could he be so stupid?

You weren’t staring at him from across the room; you were watching your mark, waiting for an opening. Sadly, it occurs to Steve that if he’d just let you inject Avani, Bucky would be fine, here by his side, and safe.

You are the threat, not his friend, but that’s a hard distinction. If anyone else sees James Barnes—who is the stealth assassin Winter Soldier, as far as they know—they’ll shoot. No questions. Steve has to find him first. He has to get to you first.

Bucky is compromised, but Steve won’t let it come to that. Buck shouldn't do anything he doesn't want to do just because some enemy hijacked his mind and body.

“Feel better?” You twirl in the chair as soon as the motel bathroom door opens, steam billowing out.

Winter’s face is shadowed, pointed to the floor.

“Or…at least, okay? Here—“ you offer the seat next to you at the tiny table “—sit. Eat. Let me—I’ve got bandages for your knuckles.”

“Heals,” he grunts, sitting easily but with stiff posture, “fast.”

You let out a heavy breath, muttering, “makes one of us.”

The soldier reaches out for the file in front of you, but your hand pins it down.

“Uh-uh. Food first, and palm up here, please.” You wait for him to flip open the takeout container then blot antiseptic on the split skin. “Does that hurt?”

He shakes his head, focused on the meal before him.

Several months ago, an article was published about Bucky Barnes’ affinity for this one particular deli in Brooklyn, a third-generation shop. It listed his usual order.

You’ve made sure the bread isn’t soggy. You kept the spicy mustard on the side.

He makes a strange face, looking around for your portion.

“Not hungry,” you assure him, “I’m rarely hungry.” You secure the bandage like boxing wraps and spin the file around.

“Eat your food—” The command is soft, encouraging. “—while I tell you the story of how we ended up here.”

Buried in the file you’ve put in front of the Soldier is several lifetimes of horror. Maybe not everyone agrees with you, maybe not everyone cares, but that bastard Avani has to atone. For the next hour, you explain what’s expected of him, glancing every so often at the fancier hotel entrance across the street from your motel room.

It’s too early; you’d be very impressed if the Captain had followed those bread crumbs yet.

You planned so carefully for every obstacle. You anticipated so many setbacks. Men like Avani go down like great stone pyramids, not houses of cards, because their lives are built with safeties.  For him to fall, a thousand others have to be damaged, and each one of them will put up a fight to remain untarnished. That approach—the truth, and nothing but the truth—has gotten you nowhere. Diaries aren’t enough proof. The placebo effect is not a crime. Two women are worth far less than a functional, marketable drug.

Plus, they’re two dead women. The pyramid is now their tomb. Nothing ever changes.

No.

You alone cannot topple a pyramid. You’re too far gone. You’re just one person. For justice, you have to go straight to the top, to the man himself. One on one.

Well, one on one-plus-one. Your addition is the sharp-shooter who can get you the top, the target, Doctor Avani.

Winter’s mission is very simple, but he’s thorough, asking all the right questions, thinking of all the right options. You knew he would be perfect.

“Now,” you clap at the end of your story, rubbing boney hands together, “a rundown of my meds. Sound good?” You grab a zippered case from the foot of the motel bed. “Nothing complicated, but here—“ nudging out a syringe and one glass vial “—this is the emergency one. Use 10 milliliters of this if I pass out. Got it?”

The Soldier takes an enormous mouthful of his sandwich and nods, eyes flickering back to that single bed.

You smile sadly. “I…rarely sleep. I’m keeping watch for now. You’re safe. You’ll need the rest.”

He chews and adds more mustard before his last bite.

“Okay? Good.” Your smile fades, fatigue and restlessness swirling in your empty gut as you remove another medication. “Next is this one. Every four hours, twent—wait, no, I’m up to thirty CCs now…”

“Sir,” Steve grits out with far less patience than he intended, pinching the bridge of his nose as if it will stop the throbbing inside his head, “you realize I am trying to save your life?”

Dr. Avani purses his lips in annoyance. “And you realize I am required to keep my patients’ confidence, right?”

Yes, Steve thinks, he’s said that several times.

“Are they current or former patients?” Steve tries to clarify.

So far, Salvatore slipped up only once. When Steve showed him the photo from your apartment, the doctor muttered something about ‘Faith’ and ‘Ziva’ knowing each other, looking confused, then immediately shut down.

Steve has to switch tactics. He doesn’t have time for this.

“Ok. We found over a dozen hotel reservations made with your assailant’s credit card, so look at this list—” Steve taps the smart screen to lay out a map with the names highlighted “—and see if anything stands out.”

“What have this crazy woman’s travel plans to do with me?” Avani bites out, rattling the tea his wife hands him.

A tremor. Not unlike how your hands shook at the table last night. Steve wonders if yours was because you are ill or because you were lying to him.

“Darling, your blood pressure…”

Steve sighs sympathetically to Mrs. Avani. “Thank you, ma’am,” he whispers, taking the next cup and saucer and clearing his throat. “Doc, please. I’m just hoping you can narrow this down for me. We still have no motive.”

“Insanity. Jealousy, maybe!”

“Jealous of what? Do you know what she might want?”

No answer, but Avani chews his cheek, eyes wide, while staring northwest on the map of hotels. Steve files that away in his mind.

The doctor returns to sipping his tea. “Do you know what they call people obsessed with finding patterns in chaos?”

His wife drops the plate of biscuits unceremoniously down on the side table between the men’s chairs.

“Salvatore,” she snips with the same frustrated fatigue wrapped around Steve’s neck like an albatross, “behave.”

“No. None of these are familiar,” the doctor grunts.

Steve can’t accuse the man of lying unless he wants to risk an all-out breakdown in communication during this active threat, but he’s running out of options. He needs real information.

Usually Steve would have more respect for a man staying within the parameters of his vocation, but this is a unique and complicated situation. This is Bucky on the line. Steve’s had enough of secrets and red tape.

“Any idea why she’d mail something to Forsyth Avenue? Do you know anyone there?”

“Forsyth Avenue? No, I’ve never been in that area before, as far as I know.” Though Avani wrings his hands together, no indicates that’s a lie.

Wonderful. Steve’s never been this unsuccessful at gathering intel, and Avani’s status as the newly-appointed Avengers’ lead physician makes it tricky to push harder.

So Steve recommends Avani and his wife consider staying in a more secure location before he sets off to personally check the hotels in the northwest quadrant of the map.

He takes Agent Palmer, riding in the SUV while the two diaries sit in his lap, knowing now—as sure as he can be—that ‘Z’ is for Ziva, and she knew you and Faith Williams. Those are ‘the girls’ in the photo.

Without Ziva’s last name, he can’t do a general search, but there is a death certificate on file for Faith.

Three women. One confirmed dead. At least two ‘former’ patients of the doctor. All visibly ill in either the picture or in person. One mourning the loss of person(s) and out to kill the doctor.

The pit in his stomach grows. Something very bad is happening, yet while Steve has anything else to go on, he will not be reading another’s diary.

He can only hope that your medical records are finally available once the hotel searches are complete.

There’s even a possibility he’ll find Bucky at one of these. Maybe he won’t have to concern himself with the rest at all. Maybe he won’t have to think so hard about your motives for activating a Soviet sleeper agent.

Steve does think, however. He thinks hard enough to spiral as each reception desk is questioned, as all security footage is combed, as every building is cleared. He has to make some assumptions to make the pieces fit.

You believe Avani is responsible for your friends’ deaths—both of them, since when Steve interrogated you, you accepted his condolences—and believe their cause of death was whatever treatment Avani administered.

It’s sad, of course, but it happens everyday. Experimental treatments are just that. If you’re concerned about gross negligence, the doctor could easily be reported to the Medical Board. Considering the amount of research, forethought, and planning required, the Winter Soldier is one of the slowest possible solutions to your problem.

But…Bucky was just your contingency plan. You had an opportunity to kill Avani yourself, yet you still set other options in motion. You used a weapon theoretically deadly to only the doctor 

Steve still can’t understand, and it’s driving him nuts.

Finally, after the hotel reservations prove fruitless, Steve sees no other choice. He has to read the diaries.

He combs through the pages, growing nauseous as darker and darker layers of the situation reveal themselves, disturbed by everydetail except updates from the units on Forsyth Avenue or those stationed at the doctor’s house. Nothing is unfolding save the landscape in Steve’s mind.

He asks F.R.I.D.A.Y about the disease Faith and Ziva mention. He asks about the public records of the drug trial Avani lead and its results published just six months ago, after the last entries of the diaries. He notices the treatment was a huge success…for those not in the control group. Finally, he can’t continue.

His head pounds while his stomach churns.

In the early afternoon, Steve lays down to rest his eyes and reevaluate, but he’s met with only a blank  canvas and drifts to sleep instead.

He’s woken by a shrill ring of his phone.

“Yeah, Palmer, what’s—what? What do you mean he’s gone?” Steve jumps up, straps on his shield, and races to his bike. “The hell were you thinking letting him make a house call today? Where did agents—“

Steve’s foot slips right off bike for an instant.

“Avani led the driver to some suburban neighborhood. Forsythia Commons.”

It dawns of him just as the garage door squeals open.

Steve never showed Palmer the receipt. No one else saw the numbers to the address. Steve’s rattled brain finished the label with a street name he knew.

He was wrong.

Including battles in Germany way back in the day, he has rarely driven so recklessly, but Steve is nearly a half-hour behind now. He has to catch up.

Palmer tells him Avani went into the residence alone—for patient confidentiality—and after a while, agents couldn’t get an answer at the door. Upon forced entry, they found the woman who lived there bound to a chair with tape over her mouth and the doctor nowhere in sight.

Steve gets lucky.

On his way to exit the freeway, he notices a hole in the noise barrier wall past a slope of grass. He pulls over and asks Palmer what the backyard of the residence leads to, but Steve can hear the reverb of agent comms before anyone is visible through the brush.

“Friday, I need traffic camera footage from my location from thirty-five minutes ago. Were there any vehicles stopped on the side of the road?”

“Yes, Captain Rogers. A standard maintenance truck with the department’s logo shows up and leaves seven minutes later, based on ten second intervals.”

“The license plate, can you read it?”

“Quality insufficient.”

“The highway department, do they have any registered cars out here today?”

A long pause follows.

“Friday?” Steve barks.

“Negative, Captain. Inspection is slotted for the end of next week, not today.”

“Alright, follow that truck on the cameras. Tell me exactly where they went.”

He doesn’t bother to tell Palmer where he’s going because Steve doesn’t want them to know really. He needs a head start to find Bucky—to make sure it’s Bucky who is found and rescued, not the Soldier who is cornered and subdued.

The trail ends at a dilapidated office park near the river miles outside of the city. With his own, short fingernail, Steve peels away the Highway Department magnet slapped onto the white truck parked by one building.

Nobody else is in sight, and the truck cab is empty.

Across the nearest door is sun-shriveled lettering. “-alv—re Ava—, M.D” marks the third name in a list.

Steve doesn’t hesitate. He can’t. He walks right in, eyes adjusting to a cave-like darkness without electricity.

The voices are faint behind another set of double doors, but he hears them.

“I don’t owe you anything, bitch. I hope you die like they did.”

There’s a sharp slapping noise and someone spits loudly.

“Admit it. Admit what you did and you won’t die today.”

You don’t beg him to talk. You don’t plead with him. You sound weak but sure.

“Rot in hell,” Avani annunciates, and Steve flings himself through the doors, knowing what comes after such a taunt.

You give him every opportunity to come clean. He could save himself, but Avani refuses while the camera records behind you. He calls you names. He calls your friends worthless. He says they were ’whores,’ but you will still send him back to the correct authorities if he tells the truth.

He doesn’t, he won’t, and you’re honestly pleased this is how it ends.

You don’t have a choice really; you must honor Faith and Ziva somehow.

Instead of the truth, Avani curses you, though not much could be worse than your current fate, even with Winter standing a few feet away, his gun drawn.

You have readied the syringe in your unstable hand and lift it to the doctor’s throat when—crash—Captain America bursts in and scans the whole room.

“Don’t do it,” he tries plainly. “You don’t have to kill him.”

You’re impressed. That’s faster than you expected, but Steve is looking at his friend to stop, not you.

“Shoot him, you idiot,” the doctor snarls.

As if Winter thinks the order somehow applied to him, he turns toward an open palm and a raised shield.

“SHOOT HIM!”

Winter doesn’t move the gun away from you and Avani.

Steve steps closer. “Bucky,” he starts slowly, “I’m not going to do that. I’m not here to hurt you. No one has to die.”

You need to buy more time.

“Soldat, show him.”

Only then does Winter lower his pistol and reach into a pocket at his chest, revealing the tuning fork that controls his own mind. Doing this will forfeit your exit strategy, but you’ll accomplish you mission. Winter’s mission is now secondary.

Steve’s eyes flicker from the fork to you.

After a tense breath, you give the command, confident the soldier will obey, locking your focus on Steve.

“Fetch.”

Winter sprints to the other end of the room and explodes through a wall and then a window to the lawn banking the river.

Cap makes a choice, his sad blue eyes full of pity, and it’s then you realize he knows.

He read the diaries. He understands what Avani did.

Steve bolts after the Soldier.

The doctor shrieks for his Avenger to come back, to protect him from his earned fate, but the hollow thuds of a vibranium arm and a vibranium shield colliding hum through the hole in the building.

The sound of fighting continues as you return the syringe to Avani’s neck.

Enough. Enough excuses. Enough lies. Enough time has been wasted on this man already. Enough is enough.

The end is more peaceful than he deserves. It’s quick and not nearly as painful as it should be. There’s no time left for suffering.

Salvatore convulses after collapsing on the stained industrial carpet, foam gently dripping from his mouth, a symptom of his condition when mixed with a common resuscitative cocktail, one you have to take frequently, one that spiked Steve Rogers’ adrenaline and nothing more. It kills Avani. His heart nearly explodes in his chest.

If there was ever a human that medicine should fail…

You only know he’s susceptible because Ziva knew. Heart conditions and caring for them are the sort of thing one knows about a person they love.

Avani promised to marry her, to leave his wife, to be with her after the drug trial succeeded. He promised she’d live, but he told Ziva she was taking the real medicine, ensured she took the placebo, and then gaslit her until the day she died.

Ziva spent the rest of her life loving a man who would make her happy and healthy, but instead, Avani made her life as short as possible.

He was not even that kind to Faith.

In her own words, Faith wrote how dying scared her, how she begged the doctor for the actual medication, how she offered anything to get it. Avani accepted. Faith did whatever that bastard wanted for months, all the while told she was healing.

Relief never came.

Faith was bedridden when a package arrived for her—a diary willed to her by a friend she’d lost touch with once you three weren’t gathering in the same hospital suite for the old treatments. That’s when she put it together, but Ziva had passed two months prior. Faith lasted only four more days, just long enough to bequeath the two journals to you.

The victory doesn’t feel as euphoric as you expected. You thought somehow you’d know that Ziva and Faith were proud and at peace, but you’re just empty and tired.

You stare down at Adani’s body, unfazed, when the tuning fork slams against a dangling metal doorframe and Cap shuffles through the rubble.

He’s scraped and beaten which isn’t what you ever wanted, just a necessary evil to fight evil. He watches as Barnes walks in from the grass.

“It’s me, punk. You can put that thing down.”

Bucky doesn’t wait for Steve, snatching the prongs right from his hands and tucking it back in his jacket.

There’s a moment where they almost hug before Steve remembers the doctor and rushes to the man at your feet.

“Call for help! I'm starting CPR.”

Barnes simply holds your gaze.

More sad blue eyes. It brings you hope that he will complete his mission.

You step away from the others to make for a cleaner shot, nodding that it’s okay, breathing a rough but weak “please” for emphasis.

“Buck?” Steve looks up as Bucky points his gun at you again. “What are you doing? STOP. It’s over!”

“His mission was never to kill Avani,” you hiss, unable to take your eyes off the perfectly-centered muzzle directly in front of you. “He’s here to kill me.”

“The hell—“ Steve climbs to his feet “—why would you shoot her?”

“I’m not going to jail!”

“You know what they’ll do to her, Steve.”

Both men take one step closer.

“There has to be another way.”

“I did this because it’s the only—“

“—can understand doctors who taking advantage and manipulating their patients better than anyone—“

“Put the gun down!”

“Pull the trigger! It'll be—“

“—told me he could do better than me,” Bucky barks. “Doc said, to my face, that he could make a better me. He wanted to make soldiers, Steve. More soldiers. Avani didn’t give a shit about what was right.”

You jump in. “If you found the diaries, you know what he was capable of.”

“That’s not how this works. We don’t condemn a man from—“

This time you step toward Barnes. “Just do it. Shoot me now.”

Steve lunges to take your wrist in his hand, your limb comically thin and delicate beneath all his enhancements.

“She doesn’t deserve to rot while they sweep this under the rug,” Bucky adds, voice low and serious.

“This is for the best.” You look at Steve now, and something heartbreaking swims in those morose pools, something unspeakable.

His head shakes, dirty, sweaty hair falling in his face. “What if there’s another way?”

“I don’t want to be saved, Cap. Let me go.”

You offer one final, soft smile, and Steve moves just as Bucky pulls the trigger.

Steve completes his testimony before the panel opposite him. None of the questions are a surprise.

They’ve painted you as completely insane, demented, psychotic, and he can’t argue. What would he tell them? Yeah, but she had kind eyes, so, you know, remember her fondly? No, he can only remain quiet until he has something pertinent to add which is very little. Bucky had far more to offer, and he already spoke.

When Steve steps out of the counsel chambers, Maria Hill is waiting for him.

“Shame she ordered the Soldier to dispose of her body. Took the coward’s way out.”

“You make her sound like a rabid animal that had to be put down,” Steve grit out. 

“No, you’re right,” Hill admits, “but it was lucky she left the sound thing for—”

“Tuning fork,” he snaps, “which I destroyed. No one should have that. No one should even know about it.”

Buck does his best to calm Steve down with a heavy hand on his shoulder. “S’okay, pal. The interrogation footage has been wiped and unless someone with perfect pitch was walking by observation--”

“You know that’s not reassuring, right?”

The two huge men look at each other.

Steve finally mutters, “what about Avani’s widow?”

“All the blackmail sent to his mistress in Forsythia Commons was removed before Gloria even knew Sal was kidnapped, and I think it’s fair to say that lady is so grateful her name wasn’t dragged through the press that she won’t be bothering the wife. Good thing the doctor put her car and house in her name, or legally, this would get ugly.”

“Yes. We’re very lucky he was such a skilled adulterer,” Steve quips dryly. He regrets handing over the diaries for evidence. They weren’t mentioned once in any of the hearings.

Bucky flashes Steve a warning glare that reads, don’t start.

Hill obliviously flips through the folder in her hands, nodding. “All in all, this report amounts to an incredibly long lead-in of ‘use that PTO, boys!’ You earned it.”

“Understatement of the century…and I would know.” Bucky is a much better liar than Steve.

Thank god, they are fleeing to the middle of nowhere indefinitely.

Hill heads back to her office. “We’ll be here when you get back. Keep in touch.”

“No,” Steve counters. “I don’t think I will.”

Bucky and Steve leave in an old truck the next morning. They can’t seem rushed or impatient to get to their destination.

Casually accumulating supplies, Steve loads their bags in the flat bed with space for all repair materials they are likely to need. The cabin needs some work; the guys need to get their hands dirty and live simply for a while.

The team is happy for Steve; it’s been so long since anyone saw him moving forward in life, and, of course, he and Bucky deserve some peace and quiet.

No one else has any idea how hard-won this vacation is.

The drive takes all day because they can’t be in a hurry.

Steve takes pictures at every scenic outlook. Bucky climbs up onto some rock ledges to take selfies which Steve is not into. This earns him being featured as a blurry grump in the background of all of them, purposefully.

Eventually, the GPS-free truck pulls up to the place, a large A-frame style cabin that should be plenty big for two super soldiers.

Parked on the gravel path, Steve is careful not to ding the other car when he swings open his door. As Bucky heaves two duffels from the trunk, he calls out, “got the meds, too” and heads inside. Steve gathers up the remaining bags and trudges over, smelling something hearty and delicious cooking, listening to the tinkling, copper-coin wind chime hanging somewhere above him.

He doesn’t stop looking at his feet until they hit the top of the porch, spotting two smaller bare feet on the welcome mat.

There you are, holding the door open, layered in warm knits, more tired before but better than expected.

“Hey,” Steve breathes finally.

“Hey,” you say, your mouth twisted to hide an excited smile.

“Yes, hello,” Bucky grumbles from the living room. “Now shut the damn door. I’m hungry.”

Steve steps inside.

[Last Part]

[Main Masterlist; Ko-Fi]

a/n: Sorry this took so long a fucking year! Tags will be in a reblog.

[tenderlady]

Hi there! A while ago, you said in your tags to this post that you believe David Lynch would be one of the best suited directors for making a movie about the Beatles. What can I say, I've been thinking about this ever since, vaguely-yet-passionately agreeing, without putting my thoughts into actual sentences...Would you mind elaborating?

You ever get an ask so good you have to break out your laptop to type up your thoughts with greater alacrity?

My friends and I have this concept that we call "trapdoors," which are basically concepts or things that, if brought up in conversation, will cause whoever is talking to you to tumble into an abyss of information that you are duty-bound to provide. Beatles biopics happen to be one of mine, so if you would like to join me in the abyss, the trapdoor is under the cut.

I actually have a few working directors that I think would do a great job with a Beatles movie, including Sofia Coppola, Peter Greenaway, Park Chan-wook, and even, potentially, Martin Scorsese. But the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the best-suited director working today for making a Beatles movie is actually David Lynch.

I think a lot of this ultimately comes down to what you want from a Beatles biopic, and what you haven't liked about Beatles movies in the past. For me, I'm tired of Beatles-biopic-as-hagiography and I want more stories that approach them as fully-rounded people. And one thing that is very specific to me personally is that I'm interested in the moments when the Beatles story has occasionally tilted toward the magical and mysterious, for lack of better phrasing. So an ideal Beatles biopic, for me, would be one that is dedicated to showing the Beatles themselves as holistic human beings and doesn't shy away from showcasing their bad behavior, but also one that is concerned with portraying those magical realist elements that I find so fascinating.

Enter David Lynch. Lynch has a well-documented fascination with the pop culture of the mid-20th century and an interestingly sumptuous eye toward production design (I'm thinking about the ambiguously midcentury setting of Blue Velvet in particular here), so I think at the bare minimum, if he were to make a Beatles movie, it would look right. But I'm more interested in Lynch's directorial choices and pet themes than I am in how his films look.

Much of his work is concerned with fame, be it the attainment of it or what it means to have it (ex: Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire), and also with the production of art and what it does to our psyches to create (ditto the above examples). These themes would obviously come to bear in any serious film about the Beatles, but I think David Lynch has historically had interesting things to say about these topics.

Lynch's films (and work in general) often veer into horror in their sudden depictions of graphic violence and sexuality, but that would actually be a more realistic depiction of the Beatles' history than most of what we've gotten. I think a gritty, Wild at Heart-style Lynch movie about Hamburg could be very fun. The leather and the 50s and the weird sex stuff of all of it is very Lynch, but all very true to the reality of what the Beatles' lives were like. Their story is full of these seemingly random spurts of violence (Stu getting kicked in the head, the Bob Wooler incident, the cherry bomb at the concert, John's murder, George's stabbing, just to name a few), to the point where reading about them can feel occasionally Lynchian in itself.

For me, though, the biggest draw of having a Lynch-directed Beatles movie is what Lynch is best known for, which is that dream-(or nightmare) feeling that so much of his work has. Something that drew me to the Beatles as an overeducated adult with lots of music listening behind me now is this strange sense of the mystical that hangs over so much of the Beatles narrative. The story of Paul's premonition of the dream with the gold coins, the John and Paul being mirror images of each other, people in the Beatles circle being visited by dead loved ones in their dreams, John and Paul claiming to have SHARED dreams, the whole Emperor of Eternity thing; like I could go on and on and on. These stories are all so fascinating, but often get underexplored in the (legitimately) very rich text of the Beatles story, so I get it, but I also know that Lynch would see these moments and do something really fucking cool with them.

Primarily, I see a Lynch-directed Beatles biopic going one of three ways: a Blue Velvet-style gothic set during the Beatlemania years about a naive black-Irish twink biting off more than he can chew in the pursuit of fame. David Lynch loves doubles and doppelganger imagery (Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks, Inland Empire....), so I think he would get a lot of mileage out of the matching Beatle suits and haircuts and all the merch with their likenesses on it. I also want to see some real horror mined out of the hiding in meat vans and getting mauled by girls with scissors trying to cut off your hair for relics. Shit is crazy.

Option two would be a Mulholland Drive-style psychological horror set during the height of the Beatles' Swinging London decadence, like around 1967, potentially including India. It would definitely 100% include the Emperor of Eternity acid trip and would be primarily focused on the strange relationship and identity sublimation between John and Paul. Again, Mulholland Drive-style. Gayest potential option imo.

The last option, and the one that makes the most sense with where Lynch is in his career rn, is a Twin Peaks: The Return-style meditation on nostalgia and memory and time. I think this one would probably be getting a little too close to the present day to be feasible, but I think a lot could be done with the idea of current-day Granddude Paul constantly seeing reproductions of his own younger self and dead friends and lovers everywhere he goes. As much as I love Now & Then, the whole thing does how a weird techno-gothic, Black Mirror sheen to it, one that I think Lynch would recognize and have something to say about. Would this make Paul Coop and John Laura Palmer? Hard to say and much to unpack there, but still.

Regardless: I think David Lynch is the only one out there doing it in a weird, fucked-up way that the Beatles would deserve. (Also he literally got into transcendental meditation because of the Maharishi, so there's definitely some six-degrees-of-Beatles happening there lmao)

If you read all of this, thank you, and I'm sorry, and here is a picture of Kyle MacLachlan as Paul from the David Lynch Beatles biopic that is currently screening in my heart for your trouble

[sirfrogsworth]

It's hard to be nostalgic about Tumblr without remembering my friend Tru.

Truett McGowan.

What a fantastic name.

We met each other because we were both tech geeks following Leo Laporte. He was the very first live streamer. Originally he hosted a TechTV cable show called The Screen Savers. But once G4 took over and focused more on video games, Leo's show was cancelled and he was looking for a new way to broadcast content.

So he built a studio near his home and created his own infrastructure in order to live stream video on the internet. He called his new show "This Week in Tech" or TWiT for short.

Along with his new streaming venture he created a TWiT community using an open source microblogging platform called Laconica. It was a form of Twitter that you could create specifically for a single community. Basically a custom niche Twitter feed. I was trying to be a web designer back then, so I created custom themes for Lacnonica.

This was my own personal theme for a website that I ended up never launching.

Leo called his custom Twitter, "The TWiT Army." And I was his graphic designer and webmaster. I made all of the cute little graphics for the website.

I also did fun holiday themes...

For the Thanksgiving theme, if you hovered over the Turkey it would change to being cooked.

I also took it upon myself to photoshop a little army helmet on the avatar of every single user of the site.

This was the zombie avatar I made for myself during Halloween.

The TWiT Army was also where I started posting my first attempts at Photoshop comedy. Many of them related to The TWiT Army.

And The TWiT Army is where I met Tru. He used a space invader avatar. I made him a couple of different versions.

You may have seen his avatar on the sidebar of my main Tumblr.

We became fast friends. We finished each other's jokes. We talked pretty much all day, every day. He loved Apple back then. I was strictly PC at the time. So we debated about that quite a bit. He would probably be astonished I have a MacBook and that I really love it too.

Our friendship lived in a little text box. We never talked outside of instant messages. But it was one of the most profound friendships of my life. I loved Tru just as much as any friend I've ever known in real life.

Tru started blogging on this brand new site called Tumblr. He reviewed apps for the iPod Touch. Not the iPhone, as that wasn't yet a thing.

I made the banner for his Tumblr.

He kept trying to get me to join Tumblr, but I was busy trying to create my own custom comedy website. But my site kept getting more and more complicated and I could never quite finish it. I was trying to arrange guest authors and create 3 months of content and I was always futzing with the theme and never happy with it.

I was getting frustrated that I could never launch my perfect comedy website and Tru suggested just making a Tumblr and posting funny stuff so I could be creative and have an outlet until my big site was ready to launch.

Little did I know Tumblr would end up being my big comedy website. Eventually I abandoned months of work and just stayed on Tumblr. All of my success here is pretty much because that little space invader pestered me to join when I was being stubborn.

Unfortunately, as some may have figured out already, the story gets sad from there. Tru mentioned briefly that he had a heart defect, but he never said it was serious. He acted like it was no big deal so I never thought too much about it.

We always talked through instant message and email, so we never exchanged phone numbers or addresses or anything like that. Tru was a very private person so he never even published an image of his face online. I only knew him as a space invader.

One day I woke up and sent him a message and got no reply. He usually woke up before me and answered as soon as I said hello. This had been our routine for nearly a year.

An hour went by. Two hours. Three hours.

It was odd for him not to respond for that long. I was really worried but all of my TWiT friends told me I was being paranoid. But there was a huge knot in my stomach telling me otherwise.

But then those hours turned into days. Days into weeks. Weeks into months. My worry grew exponentially as more time passed. I didn't know what to do. I tried finding his family. I even looked into hiring a private investigator. I don't know if I have ever felt a combination of depression & anxiety that intense.

In my heart, I knew what had happened. I knew that heart defect took his life. He was only 26 and it just didn't seem fair. But the not knowing for certain ravaged my mental health. Before all of this I had lost nearly 90 pounds and I gained it all back.

I think maybe a year or so later I found a friend of his who knew him in real life. They were finally able to confirm my suspicions. He passed away from his heart condition. That was my first real experience with grief. But I was so thankful for that bit of closure. I was finally able to let go of my anxiety and mourn him properly.

But Tru gave me such a wonderful gift. He pushed me to just start making things. To stop stalling and just create things to make people smile.

And you all probably know the rest from there.

[commodorez]

What kind of work can be done on a commodore 64 or those other old computers? The tech back then was extremely limited but I keep seeing portable IBMs and such for office guys.

I asked a handful of friends for good examples, and while this isn't an exhaustive list, it should give you a taste.

I'll lean into the Commodore 64 as a baseline for what era to hone in one, let's take a look at 1982 +/-5 years.

A C64 can do home finances, spreadsheets, word processing, some math programming, and all sorts of other other basic productivity work. Games were the big thing you bought a C64 for, but we're not talking about games here -- we're talking about work. I bought one that someone used to write and maintain a local user group newsletter on both a C64C and C128D for years, printing labels and letters with their own home equipment, mailing floppies full of software around, that sorta thing.

IBM PCs eventually became capable of handling computer aided design (CAD) work, along with a bunch of other standard productivity software. The famous AutoCAD was mostly used on this platform, but it began life on S-100 based systems from the 1970s.

Spreadsheets were a really big deal for some platforms. Visicalc was the killer app that the Apple II can credit its initial success with. Many other platforms had clones of Visicalc (and eventually ports) because it was groundbreaking to do that sort of list-based mathematical work so quickly, and so error-free. I can't forget to mention Lotus 1-2-3 on the IBM PC compatibles, a staple of offices for a long time before Microsoft Office dominance.

CP/M machines like Kaypro luggables were an inexpensive way of making a "portable" productivity box, handling some of the lighter tasks mentioned above (as they had no graphics functionality).

The TRS-80 Model 100 was able to do alot of computing (mostly word processing) on nothing but a few AA batteries. They were a staple of field correspondence for newspaper journalists because they had an integrated modem. They're little slabs of computer, but they're awesomely portable, and great for writing on the go. Everyone you hear going nuts over cyberdecks gets that because of the Model 100.

Centurion minicomputers were mostly doing finances and general ledger work for oil companies out of Texas, but were used for all sorts of other comparable work. They were multi-user systems, running several terminals and atleast one printer on one central database. These were not high-performance machines, but entire offices were built around them.

Tandy, Panasonic, Sharp, and other brands of pocket computers were used for things like portable math, credit, loan, etc. calculation for car dealerships. Aircraft calculations, replacing slide rules were one other application available on cassette. These went beyond what a standard pocket calculator could do without a whole lot of extra work.

Even something like the IBM 5340 with an incredibly limited amount of RAM but it could handle tracking a general ledger, accounts receivable, inventory management, storing service orders for your company. Small bank branches uses them because they had peripherals that could handle automatic reading of the magnetic ink used on checks. Boring stuff, but important stuff.

I haven't even mentioned Digital Equipment Corporation, Data General, or a dozen other manufacturers.

I'm curious which portable IBM you were referring to initially.

All of these examples are limited by today's standards, but these were considered standard or even top of the line machines at the time. If you write software to take advantage of the hardware you have, however limited, you can do a surprising amount of work on a computer of that era.

[yuffi369]

Co-DM

P03 x GN!Reader

In which P03 realizes that, for as much crap as he's talked about for you not appreciating his game design, you may actually know what you're talking about, sometimes.

Since you'd managed to keep a back-up of Inscryption's files after... everything, P03 had managed to worm his way onto your computer system's drive. At first, he acted a lot more maliciously; accessing permissions to just about everything, your webcam, your microphone, any files... he looked through just about everything, and began to make moves to even take over your computer entirely.

You were smart, though. You'd managed to get to where the backup copy of Inscryption and all of its files were, and upon threat of deletion, he cooperated. He agreed to only hang around your computer and not tamper with any of your files, or compromise your computer's integrity, but he still wanted to hang around. You didn't mind this for two reasons; one, it did seem rather cruel to keep him locked up in the files with nothing to do, and two, you didn't mind the company anyhow, seeing as most of your friends were over long distance.

One evening, you'd decided to get some work done on a campaign you were running for your friends. The game was in two weeks, so you had plenty of prep time, but there were some maps you had to make, encounters to plan, and you had to figure out some plot ahead of where they were going. The next session would be taken up in the first half by traveling, so it was mostly technical things like potential encounters, which was probably your least favorite part of game writing. You didn't hate any part, necessarily, but your strong suit lied in the story parts.

You were so lost in your struggling thoughts, staring at the VTT interface with a stumped expression, you almost forgot P03 was there. "Hey, idiot, you going to move the mouse, or are you going to let the computer screen fall asleep?"

You blinked rapidly, sitting up straight. "Huh?" You looked down at the tiny P03, who was staring at you as he stood on top of your task bar. "No, I was just thinking."

"What're you even doing, anyway?" he asked, looking at the grid on the screen.

"Writing encounters for my next game session," you replied, scrolling through another webpage you had open where you had access to stat blocks available to you.

"You write games?" he said, incredulously.

"Oh, right, I haven't had a session since you've come around and started living rent-free on my desktop."

"What do you want me to do for money, use your graphics card for crypto mining?"

"No," you replied, curtly.

"Anyway, given your criticisms about my game design, I didn't think you knew a thing about game design." He crossed his arm over his body, rolling his eyes.

"This isn't exactly a card game," you replied. "It's a tabletop roleplaying game. It's based on war gaming, with roleplaying added in. So it's a mixture of tactical gaming and story-based gaming. Not quite a card game like Inscryption."

"Interesting," he replied.

He continued to watch you work- or, well, the more accurate words would be struggle to work. You tried, several times, to put down tokens on the map, only to take them back off after a few minutes of deliberation. Sick of watching you struggle, P03 hovered up to your cursor, dragging it around to get your attention. "Hurry up. I'm sick of the ambient work music you've had in the background for the last hour."

"Sorry, P," you sighed, genuinely feeling a bit bad that he'd watched you do basically nothing this entire time. "I'm not exactly the best at planning encounters..."

"Lemme help, then. Pull up the webpage with the stat blocks."

"Fine. But aren't you programmed to write for Inscryption, not this?"

"I'm a fast learner." He scrolled through the webpage, looking through the stat blocks. After looking over a few stat blocks, he pulled up a stat block for an undead creature, that had an interesting mechanic. "Here. This should keep your players from falling asleep."

You took one look at the stat block and shook your head. "No. I can't use that."

He looked at you with exasperation. "Well why the f#%& not?" he said, the little beep censoring his cursing through the speakers.

"Those are undead creatures," you explained, using your cursor to point at the stat block's creature type. "They're just traveling through grasslands. I can't justify a random group of these just showing up out of the blue."

"I dunno what to tell you. This stat block's probably your best bet for an interesting mechanic that's low-level enough to not kill your players. Maybe have them, I dunno, take a shortcut through a graveyard, or whatever."

"Shortcut through a graveyard..." you repeated, under your breath. After a brief moment, you bolted upright in your seat, pulling up your document and beginning to write at an accelerated pace. P03 probably clocked you at about 90 WPM at your fastest. Once you were satisfied with the narrative text you'd written out for yourself to read upon arrival to the location, you pulled up the VTT and began placing things all around the map, taking your time to make sure things were placed in logical, good-looking locations, making sure to add terrain in places for your rogue to hide behind and take advantage of. Finally, you put the group of undead creatures on the hidden layer to pull up later, and then typed out what loot was to be found in the graveyard as well as on the bodies of the creatures.

Once you were satisfied with your work, you leaned back in your chair, gazing upon the zoomed-out map with pride. "Wow," P03 let out a whistle-like beep, looking at the map with you. "Once you got started, that only took, what? An hour? I would've been able to make the fight really easy, but all that other stuff probably would've taken me the better part of an afternoon."

"Well, I mean, it does take me a while to write something good. But when inspiration hits, I sort of just... go, and don't stop. But I don't have those moments often, or at least not enough for my liking."

P03 turned and glared at you. "Take the damn compliment."

You laughed. "Alright, alright, geez. Thank you."

"Now, let's celebrate with a movie." He pulled up a window with a video player, ready to play the file.

You raised an eyebrow. "Where did you get that?"

"Downloaded it off yarhar.net while you were writing."

"P!"

"What? I scanned it for viruses, it's clean. What do you want me to do, pay for Netflix? With what money?"

You just laughed, shaking your head. "Let me go make some popcorn."

"And I'll... pull up a jpeg of popcorn, I guess."

[ventingfanfics]

The Wrong Paper (Part 6/Finale)

Part 5 Part 4 Part 3 Part 2 Part 1

“If you want Y/N’s attention, you have to do more than trash talk whoever this other girl is,” Dean said. “It’s not the flex you think it is.”

“I’m not trying to flex, I’m looking out for her!” 

“Okay, okay,” Dean said, holding up his hands in surrender. “Breathe, Scotty. Breathe. All I’m saying is don’t make it about the other girl. Make it about you. Show her why she should pick you.”

Scotty mulled over his words. She decided that she agreed with him. Maybe trying to warn you how bad Professor Shuri was for you would only increase your desire for her. Scotty could relate. Her own mother was telling her you were bad for her, yet she was undeterred. 

“You’re right. She’s at this club now, I’m gonna go and see what’s up with it,” Scotty said. She figured she couldn’t go wrong with showing interest in your interest. 

In the auditorium there were were about thirty students spread into groups. Everyone looked like they knew where they belonged. You spotted Scotty first and your face lit up. While you had mentioned the Design club to her, you didn’t think she’d care to show up. It’s basically the same thing as making and building things, you’d pitched to her. 

“What a surprise,” You said after motioning her to come over to you. 

Scotty didn’t quite agree. The way she saw it, she would go wherever you were—when she wasn’t working. Nonetheless, she let you give her a rundown. There was interior design; graphic design; fashion design; and industrial design. 

“I think you’d love the industrial design club,” You said. “You get to come up with a product’s features and form, and all of that.” 

“You know me too well,” Scotty replied with a soft smirk, moving closer to you. “Are you gonna be in the club, too?”

You smiled, noticing more of an assertive side to her. “Well, not just that because I’m overseeing everything for now. I’m helping Shur—Professor Shuri run the program, so right now I’m helping see how things are going and what the groups need, and stuff…” 

Suddenly as if on cue, Shuri walked over to you two. Scotty shot her an icy look and Shuri raised her eyebrows before chuckling to herself and focusing on you. “Hi Y/N, how’s it going?”

“Good! Just catching Scotty up. She may join.” 

Scotty looked smug, which Shuri chose to ignore. “Oh, I see. Well, I wanted to tell you, unfortunately, I have to go. Are you okay for the rest of the time? I can end it early.”

You stared at Shuri, taking in this development, and scanning the auditorium. “I think I got it…is everything okay?”

Shuri sighed and shook her head no. She glanced at Scotty who wouldn’t go away. “Walk with me, Y/N.” The two of you walked to a secluded area of the space. "So, Tasha had an accident…she’s not at the hospital, but I need to see her.”

This caught you off guard. “Oh no, what happened to her?”

“I don’t know what’s going on. I’m hearing different things. I need to get to the bottom of it and see what the hell is going on.” You nodded in understanding as you two stared at each other. 

“Well, I hope she’s okay. You go ahead. I’ll be fine here.” The last thing you wanted was for Shuri to leave, but you understood. She moved next to you, lowering her voice just for you. “Can you come with me to my office?” You saw desire flash in her eyes. Even at a time like this, she wanted to have you in any capacity. 

You laughed and she did the same.

“What?”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? You should get going.” “You know you want to kiss me, too.”

You felt your skin warm up. She did know. “It’ll only take a minute,” she said. “I have to get my things.”

“I can’t just leave.”

“Yes, you can, you’re getting ready to step in charge, and need my guidance.”

It all made sense. By appointing you as ambassador and assistant manager of some sort, it wouldn’t look suspicious for you two to interact a lot. Shuri knew what she was doing. 

“Why don’t you tell Scotty to step in? I’m sure she’ll say yes.” The professor smirked.

You turned your head to look at the front of the room where things appeared orderly enough. Scotty’s back was to you, so you couldn’t see her face. You could only imagine the thoughts running through her mind. 

“You have two minutes,” You heard Shuri say.

So as to not seem obvious, you waited until about thirty seconds passed before your legs took you to your professor’s office. She had on her overcoat and looked so smooth and irresistible as she seductively took you in. “Come here, sexy.” 

She didn’t wait for you, she tugged you forward and kissed you urgently, as she gripped your hips. Never before had someone aroused you so much with their kisses until you met Shuri. 

As you caught your breath, you managed to say, “Why must you always kiss me like that right before you have to leave?” It came out like a whine, which made you feel childish. 

“To show you what you mean to me.” Tucking her finger under your chin, she held eye contact. Did she want to make your heart flutter? It was working.

“And to drive me crazy,” you added, earning a grin.

“That too.”

“So you admit it.” 

The two of you delighted in the banter. “It’s only fair, sithwanda. You drive me crazy also…” She softly whispered and placed a light kiss under your eyes. “Thank you for the sugar. I’ll call you later.”

You tried to clean your mind during the walk back to the auditorium, however, you liked remembering your moments with Shuri. You felt like you could soar.

~~

When Shuri arrived at her house, she was met with Tasha’s family. They glowered at her in her own home. 

“Where is she?” She asked, keeping her composure, and expending her energy on what mattered. 

“In bed, where else?” One of Tasha’s sisters quipped. 

“Christine,” Tasha’s mother lectured mildly. 

Shuri hung her coat up and went to the master bedroom. Tasha was in a night gown and head wrap, visibly in pain as she laid down and attempted to watch a Nigerian talk show. She sucked her teeth upon seeing her wife.

“What happened, Tasha?” Shuri demanded, cutting to the chase. 

“Don’t expect an answer with that tone.” “Fine, then don’t tell me. Continue to make bad choices!” 

“I knoooow you are not trying to accuse someone of bad choices…if that ain’t the pot calling the kettle…have you lost your Wakandan mind?” Tasha sat up, wincing and hissing in the process. Shuri noticed. 

“This ain’t about me right now.”

“I got into an altercation, big deal. Now what I’m really mad about is that I have doctors putting me on bedrest because they think I’m stressed and acting out. I’m just a woman in a broken marriage who manages over a hundred people.”

“…Tasha, you punched your sister. Your own sister—“

“So what, sisters fight!”

“It’s not just the fighting, is it? You don’t come home until around 4 in the morning. And you still go to work. You are sleep deprived and it’s causing you to act out.”

“Why am I so called ‘acting out,’ though? Wanna talk about why that is? That my wife’s vows don’t mean shit to her! You really decided to throw us away all for some student pussy?” She argued and coughed. “I hope it was fucking worth it, Shuri.”

Shuri was quiet for sometime. “I never wanted to hurt you, Tasha,” she said sincerely. 

“You’re selfish. Period. I’ve been nothing but good to you, holding you down even when I work just as hard if not harder, and this is how you repay me? Don’t you know that ihule (slut) could run and cry harassment? You’re too smart for the dumb shit, Shuri!”

“She would never do that.”

Tasha was amazed at how quickly Shuri defended you. 

“Okay. Let’s see. I won’t be here for you when the shit goes down.”

Shuri closed her eyes. “You may hate me, but I want you to get well, Tasha. I don’t like seeing you fall apart. We have to do something.”

“Therapy.” Tasha smirked like she trusted Shuri would oppose it.

Shuri looked at her thoughtfully. She didn’t love the idea, but if it would help, she’d at least try it. “Okay. I will find us a therapist.”

“You will?” 

“Yes. Just please get some rest and drink your fluids.”

Tasha didn’t say anything. Shuri took a breath as she returned downstairs, bracing herself for another negative exchange with Tasha’s family. To her surprise, however, they had left. 

You texted Shuri that the club faired out well once she’d left. She simply liked your message and reluctantly moved on. 

~~

The judgement Scotty’s mother had for you practically wafted in the air. This had gone on for the past week when you’d show up with Scotty to her home. She would hesitantly say hi to you and give you side-eyes when she thought you were and were not looking. 

“Miss Scott, is there a problem?” You heard yourself say.

She furrowed her eyebrows like she was trying to process your question. Then she looked directly at you from her seat at the kitchen table. “There are all sorts of problems. Maybe you should be more specific.”

“I know you’re not a fan of me,” You started. She didn’t deny it, just looked at you curiously and amusedly. “The only reason I come here is because Scotty wants me to.  I’m sorry you hate our friendship so much.”

“I don’t hate you nor the friendship. I actually think you’re a nice girl. However, I don’t take well to my child falling for someone who is messing with a married woman.”

“What’s going on here?” 

The two of you turned to see Scotty deeply frowning at the kitchen entrance. 

“Y/N here started it…asked me if I have a problem.”

“It just came out, but I wasn’t trying to be rude.”

After a stretched out silence, Scotty spoke. “Y/N? Wanna tell me what happened?”

You started to speak but she pulled your arm, leading you in the living room, sitting and waiting for you to explain. “It just came out, as I said…I got tired of her hating on me.” You frowned this time. 

Scotty struggled to hold in a laugh. “My mother isn’t hating on you, silly.”

“Well, she’s definitely not loving on me.” You looked at Scotty when she turned quiet after her amusement calmed down. She looked lost in thought. “I apologize. Maybe I should stop coming here.”

“No!” Scotty quickly said. “No, you don’t have to stop. I know you’ve been unhappy this week…”

She wasn’t lying. Most of this week so far had annoyed you. And a particular gorgeous, Wakandan professor was at the center of that annoyance. What else was new?

Shuri had shared with you that she and her wife would be getting therapy. In your mind, this meant they were working on repairing their relationship. You’d decided to fall back, but what hurt was Shuri didn’t chase you. She was keeping her own distance. Her eyes would only glance at you in class. When class ended, she took so long talking to other students that you had no choice but to leave. She would stay for roughly 15 minutes in Design Club before departing (and not invite you to her office.)

You felt discarded. 

“Let’s lay down,” Scotty suggested. You let her take your hand and steer you once more. “I’ll be right back.” She most likely went to tend to her mother. As you got comfortable on Scotty’s bed, the tears came. 

When Scotty returned, she had you cry onto her chest. You inhaled her fresh laundry scent as you weepingly cuddled into her. 

“You were right.”

~~

The only reason you’d accepted Erik’s invitation to indulge another outing with his friends knowing Shuri would probably be there was because you were allowed to bring Scotty. Even still, you didn’t plan on staying long. 

This time the gathering was held at Nakia’s condo. 

“Would you look at that, Y/N got herself a lady friend!” M’Baku. “I should confess I am jealous.”

“N***a, please, you never had a chance,” Erik said.

“I probably had more of a chance than you did.”

“Ooooh,” everyone cooed.

“Actually, neither of the men could have a chance,” You said.

“That’s right, tell them, Y/N!” Nakia said while everyone collectively spoke among themselves, "ooh'ing" again. Afterwards, she showed you and Scotty to the kitchen where the catered food wrapped in foil containers awaited. Shuri was posted up with a red cup, chatting with W’Kabi and Okoye.

She stopped laughing, her eyes glued to you. Her eyes darkened when she saw Scotty before a smirk appeared. 

“You all remember Y/N, right? And her friend….”

“Scotty,” she said.

“Scotty and Y/N,” Nakia said warmly.

“Yes, the student,” Okoye said, making you blush. 

You and Scotty helped yourselves with plates and then left the kitchen, feeling awkward. You found an available seat next to an unfamiliar woman. She was beautiful.

“Hi, I’m Tasha,” she said with a vibrant smile. 

Your plate fell to the floor causing commotion. 

“It’s okay,” Scotty assured you. “I’ll make you a new one.” She went to the kitchen. 

You apologized profusely as you, Riri, and M’baku cleaned up. You were  embarrassed, so you excused yourself to the bathroom. Holding the sink, your thoughts of you being a home-wrecker barged in on you. What if Tasha wanted to fight? Somehow it didn’t compare to Shuri removing herself from your life. You wouldn’t let her see you cry, though. 

When you finally left the bathroom, you saw Tasha, who gave you a blank look before entering. You returned to the living room where everyone was watching Bad Boys. 

“Are you okay?” Scotty asked you as you sat on her lap.

You offered a soft smile and nodded. She kissed your cheek, her arm draped around your own lap. Your eyes couldn’t help to land on Shuri. Her eyes were narrowed as she looked at Scotty.

It wasn’t clear to you whether this was motivated by Shuri’s observant eyes or just purely her own desire as Scotty rubbed your thigh. 

~~

Later that night

Shuri impatiently stood behind your door. Yes, it was late, but did you have to take so long? She needed to see you and now. Your phone only rang and sent her to voicemail. She then messaged you, letting you know she was outside. 

“What are you doing here?” You glared at her, hands on your hips when you finally answered. You looked so cute in your little T-shirt and joggers that hung off your waist. 

“Obviously to see you, Y/N.”

“Well, I don’t want to see you.”

“Why are you whispering?”

“It’s 2AM!”

“Ha,” she said, inviting herself in. “Do you have someone in here?”

“That is none of your concern,” You sharply replied.

She ignored that comment and started going upstairs. You gaped at her, following behind. You hurried after her and pulled her back causing her to spin around to you. 

“Am I right? You have someone in here?”

“There is something wrong with you.”

“Answer my question, entle.” She smirked. “Who is it? Scotty?” 

“You need to stop!” You warned. “Go home to Tasha!”

“My home is not with her, it’s with you.”

“Nope! I’m not doing this. I’m not doing this with you—“ Your words died in your throat as she pinned you to the wall in the corridor. She kissed you roughly. She then softened her kisses. “I’m sorry, usana.” Her forehead rested to yours. 

“It’s too late for that. Go back to her.”

She pulled back. “No, I do not want her, I want you.” She peered at you pleadingly. “Just allow me to make it up to you, baby. Please.” She descended to her knees, holding your legs. 

“No, you’re only going to play me again. I deserve better.”

At that, she jolted up to her feet. “Who’s better? Scotty? She can’t love you like I do. We both know it.” She proceeded towards your room again, not letting you pull her back this time. She was shut up to see there wasn’t anyone in your room. You smirked widely and she took off her coat and pants, knowing you didn’t want anyone sitting on your bed in outside clothes. She stripped down to her sports bra and boxers. 

“Good girl, you know you better not have had anyone else in here.” She got in your bed holding up the covers for you to join. “I need to talk to you. Please.”

You hated that she was tempting. “Talk to me from here.”

Seeing you were serious, she agreed. “I only agreed to do therapy because I wanted to get to the root of me and Tasha’s issues. I wanted to understand how I was able to fall for someone else so quickly. It could not have just been your story. Yet that is what brought us together. It was destined. I know that now. I needed to do some deep-reflecting and, unfortunately, that involved distancing myself from you. Don’t think though that for one second, it was easy for me. It was one of the greatest challenges of my life, being away from you or being around you yet not doing anything about it. Seeing you at the function tonight really forced me to confront myself and my feelings. I should have been your date. You should’ve been sitting on my lap, cuddled in my arms. I miss the way you look at me and talk to me and touch me…the way you get shy yet freaky for me. I miss the scent of your hair and sneaking around with you on campus…but I’m a grown woman, I shouldn’t have to hide how I feel…I told Tasha that I want to move on. I wish her all the best, but I don’t see a future with her anymore. And more importantly, it’s not what I want.”

You shot her a look that said you were unconvinced, though you were in awe at what she was saying. “You really want me for me? It’s not some little fantasy for you?”

“No, usana. I wouldn’t be going the lengths I have if it was just a fantasy to me. You didn’t even look in your purse, did you?”

Your skin heated up. You had burned the bag Shuri gotten you. 

“That means no,” she laughed. 

“What did you put in it?” Your curiosity was piqued. 

“Something special from Wakanda. Why don’t you go get it and see?”

The room got quiet. Shuri sat up.

“You got rid of it,” she guessed.

“I didn’t want anything to do with you anymore.” You shrugged defensively. “You hurt me, Shuri. I was in immense pain. I felt weightless.”

She frowned deeply. “Come to me, princess, come to me.”  You didn’t move. You cried instead. She went to hold you, gently kissing your hot tears. “I’m truly sorry, Y/N. You’re right, you didn’t deserve that.”

“How do I even know I can trust you?” You pushed her arms from around you. She looked saddened and laid down. 

“I have to work to earn your trust.”

You sighed and got under your covers. This was a lot. 

“I’m not going anywhere, usana,” she said when you shut the light. "You're stuck with me."

AN: Thank you so much for reading, liking, commenting and/or reblogging! I was so into this lmao.

[chalkeater]

I think you need to have a serious read of this post:

http://undertale-science.tumblr.com/post/137797519093/ive-settled-the-issue-of-frisks-design-once-and

This is a racist post?

The reason yellow is used because the first “smiley” was made to boost moral,so a bright yellow color was used as a green face often represented poisoning or sickness, a red face was evil or angry, and a blue face was sad. Black on yellow stands out the best compared to other basic colors. It’s why our school buses are yellow, so they are easy to find and see. Because of this and the historic use of yellow for smileys, that shade of bright yellow gold is what is considered the standard for race neutral.

I was talking about how Frisk being drawn with yellow skin is way too close to racist propaganda. I am talking about Yellow Peril and Yellow Face. The color theory of SYMBOLS and graphic design in Logos is a stretch when talking about HUMAN representation.

The yellow face has nothing to do with Asians, or with race at all.

In emojis it wasn't meant to present any one Asian at all- this is especially because there is more than the -_- emoji. When I talked about yellow face I'm talking about yellow peril and how yellow face was used against Asian people. Asians never PICKED yellow, it was assigned by racist people.

Instead of making a bunch of options and eating up coding time to make it so you can customize the sprite to look as much like you as allowed by the options, Frisk’s design relies on something far stronger: your imagination. such a blank face can be interpreted in a number of ways. It’s a default poker face, watch poker, people actually make the real life version of that face, squinting a bit, trying to have relaxed eyes, flat mouth.

No one is saying to make Frisk customizable BTW!

I bolded "squinting a bit" because this is where this post admits that people will interpret it this way. And I never said that people were even inherent malicious for seeing it this way-- it is racist, but it's INGRAINED into our society to read stuff like this AS Asian. Just like how Goblins and what we associate them with are so normalized to us and we don't see it as anti-Semitic even though it is.

Frisk cannot be a caricature of any race, because by design, they are as close to raceless as possible while still maintaining a form instantly recognized as human, which is important considering the monsters versus humans story of the game.

There's a reason why POC have said that Frisk is heavily implied to be POC, even if they're bright yellow. Since this post mentioned Color Codes, I'm going to point at the difference between Frisk and Chara.

Chara is literally closer to white. I bring this up because I've said before that Chara being pale-skinned next to Frisk is ODD and can imply that that Frisk is a POC! Especially matched with their face/eyes design. If Chara is white-skinned (how humans classify white skin colors) then it's odd that Frisk, who literally in the color codes is darker than Chara, is colored in yellow.

Asian people are nowhere near that color. Just like how Native Americans are not actually naturally beet red, Africans are not actually pitch black, and Caucasians are not actually printer paper white.

Yeah, Asian people are not yellow! And while I know this post is not directed at me, you sent me this post to review carefully. I'm happy to tell you that yes: obviously Asian people are not yellow. I look at the mirror and don't think I look yellow at all. that's the point of what I'm trying to say, too! Asian people aren't yellow. Trying to explain that "Frisk being drawn with yellow skin and closed/squinted eyes has weird coincidences with yellow face and yellow peril" does not mean I think Asian people are yellow or that Asian people are literally yellow.

I don't think white people are Gesso-paint white, either.

But here's an article that briefly mentions how Dr. Seuss had to have his work edited to remove the yellow skin because it was racist to depict this.

According to the facial muscles, the “-_-” face is about the closest way you can depict the resting face when you only have 6 pixels.

Not really. I'll add on to this in a bit.

you are at the base “neutral” face that most people have when completely unconscious.

So is this an argument for Frisk is unconscious? I'm not saying it's a bad headcanon or that no one can use this. I think it's a fun idea that Frisk might be unconscious the whole time, but I'm not sure why this was mentioned.

Your eyes do not actually squeeze shut all the way when sleeping, some people even have eyes that do not squint as much and appear to be sleeping with their eyes open.

Yeah, this is the kind of thing asians, especially east asians get made fun of for, and it's been a long-time issue. "Can you even see?" "Are your eyes even open?"

"Appear to be sleeping" "appear to be closed when it's actually open" in order to excuse Frisk's face design? People with monolid eyes or epicanthal folds are not closed.

This is racist! Hope it helps.

Going for such a neutral character, Toby would not go and give the character a canon iris color. The only way the eyes could be changed is to make them 1X1 black pixel with no white pixel sclera (white part of the eye) to avoid making it appear like they have black colored irises.

There are people out there who have REALLY dark brown eyes that it looks basically almost black. There's nothing wrong with that. Also, as pixels, like this post suggests, we as humans have seen black colored irises in media ALL the time, and make our own interpretations.

See: Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, Loud House, etc. Adventure time doesn't need a white sclera to be seen as eyes, and Something like Gravity falls are still seen as eyes even with a sclera. If you look up Fanart of any of these media, a lot of people make their own interpretation of eye colors even if their irises are black.

A 4x4 eye is too big for that size head, as we see when Chara shows that look with their creepy face. 2 tall by 1 wide eyes would look too surprised and awake. When making a neutral face, this was the best way to go while still looking relatively human.

There is no mention of 2x2, so I feel like this is an unfair argument. Below I edited their eyes to quickly show how even this part isn't so hard.

If someone draws Frisk yellow with slanted eyes, just imagine them with whatever race, sex, gender, and emotion you have in your “headcanon”.

If people draw Frisk with yellow skin and slanted eyes, I think we should be upset, or at least tell this person not to do this.

Here is the image Dr. Seuss illustrated, again. This has gone through several revisions years after it was first published because of the racist depictions.

There is no true race or gender or sex or emotion or age or body type. It’s done on purpose.

This ignores one of the most widely spread headcanons and/or analyses of Undertale: which is that Frisk is their own person (which Flowey and Chara reinforce), and while we start the game by projecting ourselves on them, we literally learn through the pacifist route, that Frisk is NOT us. We play AS Frisk. Especially because no matter what name we give the True Name, Frisk will always introduce themselves as Frisk when asked by Asriel in the end of the game.

Again, we are NOT Frisk. We play AS Frisk. As we play the game through Pacifist, we learn more about Frisk- they like to Flirt, they are the ones who choose to call Toriel "mom". Players might just not associate these with being Frisk traits, because we originally project onto them until the reveal.

"No true gender" is also frustrating to see, because this is going to be the same argument to say that Frisk does NOT use They/Them, and that we shouldn't advocate for people to use They/Them for Frisk.

I also saw in another post on their blog that they believe that Chara does not necessarily use They/Them either (that Chara is also someone to project onto), even if Asriel uses it for them during the epilogue. "[Name] wasn't the best person."

Source: Undertale, images derived from this dialogue dump.

When it comes to Deltarune, if this argument was used for Kris as well it would be incredibly false due to the fact that it's even more so canon that Kris is NOT the player, and that the player is NOT Kris.

That's all! Thanks for the post. It was frustrating to read.

Here's some sources I also looked at to make sure what I'm saying made sense; some of these are repeated links that I mention earlier just for reference.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/dr-seuss-got-away-anti-asian-racism-long-rcna381

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691140315/becoming-yellow

https://caata.net/yellowface-what-it-is-why-its-bad-and-action-steps-to-fight-it/

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/09/asian-eye-surgery-and-media-racism/279770/

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newzealand-passport-error-idUSKBN13W0RL/

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article249528800.html

https://digitalgallery.bgsu.edu/student/exhibits/show/race-in-us/asian-americans/asian-immigration-and-the--yel

https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/fox-eye-trend-asian-cultural-appropriation-trnd/index.html

[skywerse]

very random question but making the whole recent animatic you did (which was AMAZING btw) how do you feel about it in terms of progress you've made on your art skill? because like I've also very recently started getting into making animatics and it seems like a constant flow of working on the art and personally I've felt a shift in how I approach making normal pieces of art, so I was just wondering how much of that feeling would be there for you after finishing such a big project? I'm sorry if that didn't make sense lskdjfal i just kinda want you to talk and ramble about your thoughts and all during making the animatic sjskla

-🍪

no one's ever asked me about this stuff before, so buckle up because this might turn into a lengthy fucking ramble

to start, if we were to talk about progress, I'd have to talk about it more in retrospective than just my latest animatic. it's been three years since I started animating, and this particular animatic was more of a silly and short side project, I didn't put much thought into it really.

before diving into animation, I had a foundation in graphic design, four years at a tech school. this gave me a strong grasp of the basics and by that I mean visuals, colours, composition, and more. but yeah, when you transition to animation your view on art definitely shifts, at least mine did. because animation, at its core, is storytelling through visuals. so you're basically delving into film, and now you're not just thinking about static elements, you're considering movement, pacing, cinematography, even sound design. and as an animator, you're the director, the cinematographer, the storyboard artist, and the editor. each role requires specific skills. you need an understanding of visual storytelling, character design, motion graphics, timing, and so on and so on! and you're learning them along the way as you work on your projects. I'm learning all that still, and if you take a look at how my animatics looked in 2020 and now it's so much progress. HELL, both in my animation AND my drawings.

if you really think about this riptide animatic in retrospection you're basically seeing 10 years of my hard work on perfecting those skills combined into one silly video lol BUT without it, for me it's just silly thing that I did and I'm just glad people seem to like it, I'm not dwelling on progress here

now, when it comes to how I feel after finishing a project? in general? it's a mix. there's a sense of achievement, sure. like here I have to mention my short film again. I spent a whole year on it, mostly working on my own but with some guidance from my thesis supervisor. the film is 7 minutes long, and I worked on animating it from march to august. and when I compare the start to the finish, I can SO clearly see the improvement, both in terms of skill and artistic vision. BUT I also tend to look back and think about what I could've done better or differently. and while I see areas for improvement, this self-critique pushes me to get better with each project. eeeh it's a bit of a love-hate relationship with my work really. that's how it always been for me lol

[tenfluenza]

Art programs you have but don't use

Blender :( i wanted to learn it ever since I beefed my computer, but it turns out 3D sculpting isn't my thing

AutoCAD! i was so cracked at it in high school, and I'm kind of picking it up again so I can do a little graphic design with it. I'm planning to get recertified soon for fun (since it turns out my cert expired like... 4 years ago)

Revit. I also had a Revit phase but we don't talk about that (the misanthropic version of sims)

honorary mention for Medibang/FireAlpaca. i got csp and never looked back, but they were my og's

another honorary mention for krita. i tried to get into it but it never clicked. maybe i'll try it again if i ever have to get a new computer or something

10. Favorite piece of clothing to draw

this might be obvious but i am such a skirts and dresses person. bonus points if there's an apron or pleats. basically any loose, baggy clothing is such an enjoyable thing to draw. i also prefer clothing that bunches up around the elbows! (oddly specific ik but i love it)

my overall specific favorite thing to draw is a haori/fishing jacket because it's got a very simple construction (i looked up how they're made traditionally, and no joke, it's literally 4 rectangular panels sewn together in a row)

bonus small collage of some nice clothing i've drawn

12. Easiest part of body to draw

... i really don't want to be that guy but if i had to pick it's gotta be hands, but i also think my bar for decent hands is a lot lower than other people's, so it's ok, right? when i get to hands i feel like im actually drawing because they're so detail heavy (compared to the rest of the body) and i feel confident that it really "grounds" the pose so that's why i say they're the easiest.

but on the other hand (lol) my hands sketches are atrocious. after i get the gist of it down i can take the rest of it from there. something something... i can explain more in detail if anyone ever asks but this ask game response is getting long as is

but here have some sketch -> line demonstrations and a short collage of hands too since i really like drawing them <3

that and ummm skin folds? if you understand what i mean. i think they give a lot of personality/fluidity to bodies and i feel like i can find these folds pretty easily if i think about it a little. it's one of the first things i like to mark down when i do gestures, too

on the contrary, i think the hardest parts for me to draw are the face, hair, and the hip/crotch area

thanks for asking! @lotus-pear @silver-tounges-and-golden-lies @ixxy-artemala