#and then started leah

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

Finishing the last fifty pages of Leah on the Offbeat at 4am because I'm feeling gay and nostalgic

[retquits]

winter leah!! wife wfie wfie fwife wi

[babyangelsky]

I love that Phu was wearing his teddy bear pajamas when he got blown by Cir

And I love it specifically because it flies in the face of a rather unfortunate trend that's always been present but that has been on my mind a lot lately.

A couple of months ago, I came across a post that referred to Teerak from Your Sky as "basically a child" and went in on the show for portraying him in any sort of sexual light and then went in on Muenfah and criticized him for wanting to do anything remotely sexual with Teerak and just—

No. NO. NO!

Listen, I don't give a fuck how someone interprets a character even if I disagree on every possible level. Art is subjective. How someone sees the art they consume and what they get out of it is none of my fucking business.

But there's this awful tendency to conflate cuteness with immaturity and to infantilize any character that exhibits any traits or preferences that can be read as cute. Hell, sometimes even a character's appearance is all it takes for them to be infantilized.

And it's always the same shit. If a character is shy, soft-spoken, bubbly, cheerful, or sweet, they're seen as a child. If they have plushies and enjoy lots of color, they're seen as a child. Act cute? Child. Like cute things? Child. Shorter than their love interest? Child. Younger than their love interest? Child.

Fucking STOP.

The person who made the post I referred to used a screenshot of Teerak hugging his Snoopy plush to somehow justify their interpretation and you know what? LIKING PLUSHIES AND CUTE THINGS DOES NOT MAKE SOMEONE """"BASICALLY A CHILD"""".

Whether or not a character (or a real actual person) likes cute things or happens to be sweet and soft-spoken and shy has nothing to do with how mature they are and it certainly says nothing about their sexuality and sexual desires. I turn 31 years old in just over a week and there are plushies on my bed. I put hearts all over my blog. Liking cute things just means you like cute things! That's all!

Teerak is adorable and colorful and sweet, and he's also a young man who's deliriously in love and HORNY for his boyfriend. He ALWAYS wanted to fuck that man and if he hesitated at first, it was due only to his lack of experience. Nothing else.

Which is partly why this scene:

Was so fucking great to watch. Not just because Teerak wanted to fuck his boyfriend and made his intent crystal clear and took the initiative, but because he was allowed to by the story. @iguessitsjustme wrote a great post about it, go give it a read.

More and more we're seeing BL's where both characters (THE CUTE ONES INCLUDED) are allowed and shown to want each other sexually and it's been amazing to see. Mutual horniness will never not be amazing to see.

Allll of that is why I love that Phukan was in his teddy bear pajamas in his love scene with Cir. Because like Teerak, Phukan is exactly the type of character that gets infantilized and that people get all pearl-clutchy about when he's portrayed doing anything sexual.

Phu is adorable and colorful and he likes being babied and he collects those cute little trinket things I can't remember the name of and he ALSO REALLY WANTS TO FUCK CIRRUS. To quote @poetry-protest-pornography , he was an active and enthusiastic participant in his first blowjob and that's exactly as it should be regardless of what he's wearing or what he likes! He's a full person with a functioning libido and I'm so happy and grateful that the story isn't infantilizing him.

TL;DR, some of ya'll have got to let go of the notion that a character being/acting cute and them experiencing sexual desire are mutually exclusive.

[mydairpercabeth]

they planned this

[lily-s-world]

It is unbelievable to me that two months away from the release, people are still complaining about the casting of Annabeth Chase. Specially, when the only justification for their complain is “she needed to be blonde”. Because no. She didn’t need to be blonde.

The whole reason for her appearance was to represent the girls that get overlooked or face bad stereotypes just because of her physical traits, and not only blonde girls face these issues. Do you know who else does? Women of color, especially black girls.

The casting of Annabeth is perfect to show representation of black girls being wise, driven, resourceful, strong… and all the great qualities she has. Yet, you keep reducing her as if only her hair color mattered.

Honestly, Book!Annabeth would totally throw you to the floor judo style if she saw you saying that being a blonde is all she had to offer.

[crumblingshale]

a friend made me post this...

[mmetacarpals]

here's whatever this is

[heynhay]

thinking abt kleah. and like, on one hand i like the idea of everyone else being the same gender-wise in vld except them. but on the other hand i always love the bits where keith's gaydar is too dookie to realize lance is bi or lance has to have a bi crisis so maybe i can make allura SO butch that kat is like damn....leah likes him..... and not women...... meanwhile leah is essentially walking around in a butch bait t shirt whether knowingly or not

[bykm]

hey so i am alive and well in pjo now haha

this is a redraw from an annabeth i never posted on tumblr

[panlight]

Another Bella-as-narrator problem is Irina.

In the books, Bella doesn't meet her until the not-fight and only saw her once before that, at a distance. To Bella, she's just the person who ran to the Volturi and reported what she thought was an immortal child. Bella has no reason to like this person or to care that she died. Probably blames her for everything that went down and you know what, that's fair.

But the Cullens? This should have been a much bigger deal to them. They've known Irina and considered her family way longer than they've known Bella! Decades longer! Hell, they've known her longer than they've known Alice and Jasper! They met the Denali coven in the 1930s, Jasper and Alice in 1950.

And sure, they can be angry and upset that she ran to the Volturi without talking to them first, they can resent her for being the reason the Denali wouldn't help in Eclipse. But that doesn't erase decades of family ties. She's also horrified, ashamed and apologetic when she realizes she made a mistake. These people who considered her a 'cousin,' family, just watched her be torn apart and burned. That . . . that should leave some kind of mark!

But she means nothing to Bella so her death means nothing to the story. It SHOULD, though, if the Cullens were given space to have feelings outside of the Bella Bubble. Hell, only Tanya and Kate are upset by it; even Eleazar and Carmen don't seem to care! "The atmosphere of celebration was too much for Tanya and Kate. They needed time to grieve for their lost sister."

I get they're all relieved and happy not to have been destroyed by the Volturi and all, but Irina's death should have been a bigger deal to the rest of the Cullens (and to Carmen and Eleazar).

It would be so easy, too? "We're safe now, Alice and Jasper are back, why is everyone still so glum?" "We've lost a member of our family." "Irina? But she betrayed you!" "Families are complicated, love."

[dumbpuppyfag]

sweet little puppy who couldn't hurt a fly and the much scarier puppy it keeps on a leash to terrorise subs who start catching an attitude

[anna-scribbles]

cant watch the show yet but i CAN draw las vegas illegal animal truck percabeth

[fishyfarms]

“But there’s still time, it’s not too late // Nothing will change until I change”

Guysssssssss I love Maru SOOOO much you don’t even know. It’s hard for me to pick favorite bachelors/bachelorettes bc I do genuinely love them all (Harvey only wins by a MARGIN and that’s just bc he’s just like me fr) but Maru is literally so high up for me I’m always so intimidated about romancing her bc she’s just so cool! But also CA…can we talk about the bob. Why did you give her a BOB! She would not have a bob I’m sorry I had to change that. Anyways she’s my favorite cutie patootie I had SO much fun drawing her honestly 🫶

[patheticbatman]

I haven't seen any posts about this yet but l've seen some fan art that makes me feel this needs to be said:

Don't forget Leah Sava Jeffries has darker skin when making Annabeth Chase fan art!

She is much closer to Lupita Nyong'o than Zoe Kravitz when it comes to shading, reflection, and complementary color usage :).

Lighting for dark skin is different on light skin. Light skin gets changed by lighting, and dark skin reflects the lighting. Below is a lovely shot of Nyong'o's character from Wakanda Forever in mourning. The filmmakers emphasize the umber qualities of her skin in contrast to the funereal white and (arguably harsh) light across her shoulder below.

Try to pick spots that aren't directly in or near the light, and try mixing 3 or more! You can put it into a color mixer online, or even color pick, lower the opacity, and lay the shades over each other until you find one that fits. And of course, the more 'realistic' you want to go with shading and lighting, the more shades you're going to want to be able to explore vivaciously :D.

Let's take a look at the same 3 beautiful actresses I mentioned at the beginning, with a bad color picked area and a better-ish color picked area. (Please keep in mind, these are not perfect comparisons, as I was not able to find pictures of all 3 actresses under the same kind of lighting.)

Kravitz's has a clear difference between the two, but they aren't too far apart, in comparison to Nyong’o’s and Jeffries’s. Note the dullness in the poorly picked shades as opposed to the better ones. Also keep in mind that while Kravitz has a rosy undertone (at least in that picture - it’s from The Batman, which has stylized coloring) Nyong’o has a slight cool undertone (I can’t pin down quite what, but the picture is definitely not stylized like Kravitz’s).

Jeffries runs more ochre or russet, but neither of those are pink. They are more red than terracotta or umber, but to call Jeffries’s face rosy would be wrong. Err more towards the golden when drawing her.

^^saved an image from a writing tutorial long ago, but can’t seem to find it. If someone recognizes it, I’ll link it. EDIT: it’s from this post. Thanks @autumnrowancollector ! <3

And also, the darker skin gets, the less likely warm undertones are going to appear. Don't be afraid to use blue or purple or even green on occasion!

Additionally, cool lighting on dark skin is always a win imo.

(I was going to use that picture of Jeffries as Annabeth by the lightning bolt, but then I realized the lighting on her face doesn’t quite match up with where it should hit from that angle, and I realized they kind of just turned everything bluer, so screenshot time!)

(Also if you want another really great live action example, check out anything Aldis Hodge is in, like Leverage and Black Adam)(and of course there’s Spiderverse <3 but I want to post pictures of Hodge)

Now, to here’s a list of more experienced people’s advice:

Black facial features & hair

Shading digitally for a (somewhat) monotone Black character

Stylistic choices and places to start looking for inspiration (besides a search engine).

Coloring Black people’s lips

A better coloration tutorial

Also a nice tutorial for Indigenous skin tones, just in case yall want to draw Piper or use this information for other dark skinned characters :).

EDIT: Some actresses who are closer in skintone to use for Annabeth, provided by the lovely @blackfemmecharacterdependency ! If you can’t find a reference for Jeffries in a specific lighting, maybe check out these ladies’ pictures! It’s a reblog, so scroll down.

TLDR: Don’t make Annabeth pink and pale, make her dark and golden.

[mydairpercabeth]

PERCABETH ALREADY CHOOSING EACH OTHER OVER THEIR GREATEST DESIRE

[brotherconstant]

FOUNDATION | 2x05 | The Sighted and The Seen Welcome, Hari Seldon, Gaal Dornick and Salvor Hardin of Terminus. You are our guests.