#but then art block and passage of time

[causeimanartist]

Okay question - would it be weird for me to start answering old asks? Like, I have stuff in my inbox from months or even years ago. Would that be weird?

[cursezoroark]

afterthoughts

[lazicepie]

big fear about me starting any projects that are not research projects. because every moment pie, me, is a unique and different one. each one having to collaborate with the one past pie that once existed.

Every of our ideas are different from one another, disagreements are certain, and each of our leniency to another pie in time, are trouble for the present. for each time, past pie likes to think, and misinterpret just how adoring future pie is towards past pie. and past pie lives as a limbo, more precious as like ones analysable like a museum collection. Though present pie... lived.

mmmmm... it's like a chronic stuck in time.

[saikira999]

headcanons for how Idia and Malleus play Minecraft?

~ Headcanons for twst characters playing Minecraft.

I was a little late, but here are the headcannons! :D

Also, a little friendly reminder that English is not My native language and if you find errors in the text, please write to me about it.

Another parts about :

Azul and Lilia!

Riddle and Leona!

Jade and Floyd!

[Idia]

1) Absolute pro.

2) During the entire game, big bro has already set up His own server with tens of hundreds of buildings, houses and cities, on which all of Ignihyde plays...

But for you, beginners, He will of course make a new one.

3) Lives not in an ordinary house, but in a secret underground complex with hundreds of traps, secrets and secret passages. The entire dungeon is arranged quite professionally and beautifully, in a black and blue palette, using wool, clay, stone and several types of thin blocks and half-blocks, steps and other things. Instead of ordinary torches, he uses blue torches with soul fire.

4) He doesn’t trust his account to anyone except Ortho, but he tries to make sure that his beloved younger brother doesn’t waste any important resources or do anything unnecessary.

5) His favorite and least favorite location is Nether.

6) His base is guarded by three dogs with blue collars.

7) The same walking guide that explains to everyone and everything how to play and answers all kinds of questions.

8) The bro on the server has absolute power... After all, he is the admin here and the main expert in cheat codes.

9) Despite the fact that he feels much more confident in the square world, he still does not like to interact with other players and prefers to play alone. If there are too many players on the server, He either rushes to retire, or barely uses the microphone and hangs around somewhere in the corners.

He is most comfortable playing with Lilia, Ortho, Azul and possibly Yuu.

10) Keeps a joke counter when someone compares His hair to the blue soul fire (137)...

11) Loves block art and other buildings like statues of favorite anime characters.

12) Usually, he plays with a ton of shaders, mods and other additions, but since not all dorms are equipped with powerful hardware, like in Ignihyde, bro have to play with a minimum amount of additional details.

13) Knows all the cool bugs, recipes, theories and locations of Minecraft.

14) In one of the secret rooms he built a cemetery for His pets.

15) Of all the players, he comes to the server most often, and could have reached the dragon in one day, if not for Ortho’s gentle reminder that on a joint server you need to play TOGETHER.

16) His main fear is if His mother somehow logs onto the server.

17) Always swears at updates.

18) Sometimes he seriously thinks about buying the rights to the game...

19) Minecraft is my life!

20) MINECRAAAAAAAAAFT

(Insert audio from that screaming russian schoolboy meme)

[Malleus]

1) He doesn’t know what Minecraft is and when Yuu and Idia invite him to play (Invitation???? He’ll definitely join!), he asks Lilia what “Minecraft” is and what spell can He use to get into this mysterious world?

2) When he sits down at the computer for the first time, he falls into a crisis and looks at the square icon for a long time (3 hours), in sincere bewilderment.

Then he decides to try to figure it out on his own... And accidentally blows up the computer.

(Poor Lilia.)

4) FINALLY having figured out the controls on the phone (Still poor Lilia), he came onto the server and falls into a new crisis and shock from the appearance of the game...

"This is definitely... It will be interesting..."

5) Absolute noob. Bro sometimes even forgets that his character is weak and mortal. Several times, He simply walks into lava, forgets to eat, or swims in the water for a long time and is genuinely perplexed as to why his character is dying.

6) Tsunotaro's house is a simple wooden box made of dark oak logs, vines and flowers. There is no floor - only fragrant green grass. The windows are also missing and replaced with fences. Right at the doorstep is a garden with flowers, and on the roof there will be creepy, crooked figures made of blocks and half-blocks of stone and basalt (Gargoyles were planned).

Perhaps He will try in the future to rebuild the house into something more gothic, but Tsunotaro like architect, is like a Grim like nutritionist... Yuu is His most frequent guest and Draconia, according to all the rules of etiquette, tries to feed the visitor and force him to stay as a guest with Him, like a decent owner.... Oh, Yuu invites Him to visit...?

...He will definitely come and build Yuu a crooked gargoyle as a sign of gratitude... And I hope that a human child will be smart enough not to destroy His building...

.......No, I'm serious. Don't.

7) He doesn’t understand anything and either follows other players 24/7 or gets lost and Idia eventually finds him a couple hundred chunks away from the spawn location, trying to make friends with the bat.

8) Griefers? Who is this? Is there such a crazy person who would try to break down His house...?

9) Oddly enough, his main occupation is taming everyone he can. Cats? Parrots? Dogs? A whole farm with a variety of livestock from small to large? Two little slimes? Strange guy with white eyes behind the tree? Yuu? He will take care of everyone.... Rest assured)

+ Animals in this game do not age and cannot die unless you put them in danger, or play it safe and give them name tags....

10) The same guy whose game constantly crashes for some reason or whose microphone crashes.

11) Belongs to the type of people who can simply take and give another player either a beautiful, freshly picked flower, or incredibly rare and expensive armor or weapons, with several layers of enchantment, which He obtained from an unknown place and in an unknown way.

12) For a reason unknown to anyone, all mobs such as monsters, villagers and pillagers, except animals and children, bypass him.

13) Loves to wander through abandoned villages and mines.

14) In PVP he is not particularly smart and sticks with more neutral and calm players and rarely gets into fights with anyone... If at all anyone wants to fight with Him.

15) He dreams of building a GIANT Gargoyle, but so far, all he gets is another crooked, creepy pile of stones, only of larger sizes.

16) When he learns that the goal of the game is to kill the dragon and take It's egg, his reaction is literally: ....Mother?🤨

17) He doesn’t want to fight with His relative, and when Idia kills the dragon, he bursts into His room with lightning and thunder in order to interrogate the corpse of Gloomurai, which did not survive several heart attacks.

18) Tsunotaro took the egg for Himself and built a kind of temple for It (Surrounded by gargoyles, of course), and sincerely waited for it to hatch, until Lilia, who came to the rescue, said that this was not possible in the game.

19) Conclusion: One was disappointed because He could not atone for the brutally murdered dragon mother and raise Her child, and the second, although He laughed amicably, still grabbed a couple of Vietnamese (Briar Valley) flashbacks.

(Poor Malleus and Lilia)

20) Later, scared to death, Idia will install a mod especially for Tsunotaro that allows him to hatch and tame a dragon from the egg he received in The End 😊

(Poor Idia)

That's it! I am waiting for your new requests :3

Reblog Me, please? <:]

[thoughtspresso]

Oshi No Ko was about Arima Kana all along.

And I think there’s a real possibility she may die at the end.

Or be placed in the way of grave danger.

I was reading some AquKane shippers say something about how they don’t understand AquaKana, and why the writers and directors keep clearly pushing Kana towards Aqua when they barely share any chemistry. Whereas, in their belief, his relationship with Akane is more honest, deeper, whatever. I’m not here to argue about that. But I get where they’re coming from. And the simple explanation is this:

It’s because this whole story was written for Arima Kana.

I’ve seen some Youtubers talk about how this whole story was meant to be fulfillment for Ruby/Sarina’s dream to become the next great Idol, something about Amaterasu favoring her.

And that’s near what I thought of it. But I really think if the God of Entertainment wanted to bless a child with cancer a second life as the world’s great idol, they’d also give her a great singing voice, y’know?

Spoilers for the manga, of course as we go along on this explanation. So anime onlies, get caught up before you start reading me ramble.

Here we go:

1. Arima Kana is the embodiment of Amaterasu, not Ruby.

Or at least, Amaterasu’s appointed representative, or her favorite daughter.

To give you a run-down of some of the core Shinto/Japanese Mythology that is important for the story, the Creator God Izanaki had three children:

Amaterasu, Goddess of the Sun.

Tsukuyomi, the Moon.

Susanoo, the Storm.

The story goes that Amaterasu and Susanoo had a competition about who could create better gods. So Amaterasu took Susanoo’s Totsuka-no-Tsurugi* (longsword) and split it into three, from which she birthed the three Munakata goddesses.

And woncha knowit, there are three great actresses born in that year?

*A reminder that Kana plays the character Tsurugi, which literally just means Sword. And Akane’s character Saya-hime just literally means Sheath or Scabbard Princess.

In this bet, Amaterasu got clever with the rules and won on a technicality. Susanoo went on a rampage, destroyed Amaterasu’s ricefield, and flayed Amaterasu’s favorite divine horse*, and then threw its body at her loom.

*The name Arima is spelled with the Kanji of Horse & Exist/Live. 

Amaterasu, in her grief, flees into a cave, believed to be Amano Iwato cave, right in the town of Takachiho, Amamiya Gorou’s hometown, and the death place of  Tendouji Sarina.

The being that draws Amaterasu out of there was the Goddess of the Dawn, known also as the Goddess of the Revelry & Arts, a being that Aqua says he knows well, and believes there’s a grain of truth to:

And how does Ame-no-Uzume draw Amaterasu out of her grief?

By throwing an absolute rager, and dancing really wildly that it catches her attention and makes all the gods around them laugh so hard. Just like:

Ame-no-Uzume will later on marry a diety who tried to block her passage before, Sarutohiko, who in Ise is worshipped as the god who illuminates the world.

That’s some divinity-level AquaKana shipping right there.

Just like how Aka Akasaka wrote the story of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War about two lovers who couldn’t be together just like in the myth of Kaguya, but having his characters overcome all odds to defy divine fate, I do believe that apart from the parallels to the mythology like he did in Kaguya-sama, there is very literal divine intervention this time in Oshi No Ko.

I think what’s happening is that the gods, particularly Amaterasu and Susanoo are quarelling again about who could create better gods, just like before, but now more of whose favored child will shine the brightest and be worshipped by the most humans. But just like last time, Susanoo may have been enraged, especially at the sexual assault of his chosen Hikaru Kamiki, that he possessed him with a corrupting force that urges him to destroy shining stars before they reach their peak, hence the murders of Himekawa Airi, Hoshino Ai**, and Katayose Yura.

Which by the way, the name Hikaru means Radiant Light!

And Hoshino means Field of Stars!

Whether it’s because Amaterasu is angry that every daughter she sends to earth is slaughtered by Susanoo’s chosen, or just because she wants to win their competition, she appoints Ame-no-Uzume to assist in safeguarding her new favored one from Kamiki’s clutches. Her new favored one being Arima Kana.

And therefore, Ame-no-Uzume takes the souls of two motherless humans who had passed before they could shine and sent them to become Hoshino Ai’s twin children. It was all anyway happening in her territory of Takachiho at the most opportune time.

Ame-no-Uzume is also known as The Goddess of Dance, as well as The Great Pursuader. And wouldn’t you know, that’s exactly the gifts that the Hoshino Twins received.

An energetic performer who takes the stage with dance:

And a deceptive, persuasive, extremely believable actor, who:

fooled his own sister into believing she had been rejected from an audition

pretended to scout an idol from a competing agency to research them

get Director Gotanda to raise him and train him

make Akane not just date him, but follow him down a destructive path

convince Kana and Mem to join IchigoPro

impersonate Pieyon for several days straight

Anyway, I truly, truly believe that unbeknownst to Aqua, his true mission is just to keep drawing Kana out of her darkness until she shines the brightest. Which is what he keeps doing anyway:

2. The Timing of the whole Oshi No Ko plot is aligned with Arima Kana’s rise to unprecedented stardom.

The story of Ai Hoshino’s pregnancy and meeting of Gorou Amamiya in a quaint hospital occurs at the beginning of Arima Kana’s life, just after she is born.

She meets Aqua Hoshino around age 4, already talented, and already extremely arrogant which could have easily been the demise of her career. But meeting Aqua and seeing his acting was a necessary wake-up call for her, that it brings her to tears. She never forgets this experience that she brought that lesson with her to her adulthood: that she can’t be satisfied and keep working harder, and to be a better communicator with her colleagues. At their first point of contact, Aqua already becomes the reason why Arima Kana’s acting career survives the slump.

They meet again in high school, when Arima Kana has one acting job in a lackluster production of Sweet Today. The ratings had plummeted, if not for the fact that Aqua came onto the set to draw out the best acting Arima Kana could deliver. After this, Arima receives much more respect and recognition from her colleagues in the industry beyond just being cast to bring some legitimacy to their production.

It’s because of Aqua and Ruby that Kana joins IchigoPro’s Idol Division, and her career is reborn anew. Such that, even after quitting B-Komachi, Arima states she never regretted the decision to join, because otherwise the career of Arima Kana would have been already over. 

It’s because of Aqua’s presence that Arima trains to become better and better as an idol. Aqua kept drawing out the light from Kana’s eyes, to the point that it catches the attention of the crowd who previously had no interest in her.

It’s because of her experience as an idol that she regains the confidence and sense of greed necessary to grab the attention of the audience when on stage, such that even Akane recognizes this change in her when Arima takes the stage as Tsurugi for the 2.5 Adadptation of Tokyo Blade.

And it’s because of all of these that she captures the attention of award-winning Director Masanori Shima, who lines up some roles for her when her acting schedule had dried up. It’s once again because of Kana’s dedication towards Aqua that Shima D finds her so interesting that he was most willing to promise her the best role possible.

It was as if Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto appointed Aqua and Ruby to come draw Arima Kana out of her Cave, and bring the Sun out again, just like how the deity drew out Amaterasu.

If you think about the title of the show, Oshi No Ko, it literally means The Favorite Child. God’s favored child. Arima Kana had been born chosen by Amaterasu from the very beginning. And Ame-no-Uzume is sending Aqua and Ruby to aid on this quest.

Which explains why it seems like there had been a mission communicated to Aqua from the very beginning. And why Ai was never going to be reincarnated at all.

You would think that if The Crow Girl, which we assume is the divine guide Yatagarasu, was communicating with Aqua about his revenge plan or helping him find Kamiki, that Aqua would hold a more favorable relationship with The Crow whenever it appears to give advice, no?

But it’s exactly the opposite. Because The Crow is guiding him into something that is different from his personal goal that Aqua doesn’t understand.

And this is where I think Arima Kana could be put in danger.

3. Arima Kana is Hikaru Kamiki’s next target.

There were earlier theories that thought Kurokawa Akane was the one to die next, because of what people have now learned of Kamiki’s serial murderer profile targeting big celebrities before their peak, and because Akane had received a bouquet of white roses from him when she won an award.

The chapter when it was expected to happen was a fake-out from Aka Akasaka, and some people think it’s still possible that she’s the target. In fact, I keep seeing recent theory videos who discount Kana and say she’s “the safest”. Hah! If only!

The scenes with Shima D weren’t just a mere plot point to bring scandal to Arima’s name, and threaten her career and life enough that it pushes Aqua to reveal his mother’s secret in exchange. But it’s there because this is the upward path for Arima Kana. So far, the only people who have witnessed her dazzling star power have been fans of the Sweet Today manga, idol otakus, and people who attended Tokyo Blade. That’s not really masterpiece-of-the-century, performing-at-the-dome level. None of these gigs have placed her center stage in what could be Film of the Year, and a Best Actress spot. Now, the chance is here, and it’s real:

I think, The 15-Year-Lie will attempt to draw out Hikaru Kamiki, or that Aqua intends to reveal himself in the movie looking like him, and reveal the identity of his father.

But I also think what would happen is that they would be unsuccessful at taking him down completely. Instead, from the movie, he would be interested in Arima Kana, and target her through the course of her Shima D movie, and plan to kill her before an important awards night.

Alternatively, now that Kana is changing her focus to film, she may consider moving agencies, and ask Frill Shiranui about her agent. And if we’re right, she is likely represented by Kamiki Productions.

Either way, Kamiki will pay attention to her and try to kill her just before she reaches her highest.

But I don’t think Arima Kana will die. I think instead of being saved by Aqua, it’ll be Kana who takes Kamiki down. Echoing back to her getting mad at Aqua for thinking that avoiding her was protecting her, and Aqua believing that Kana doesn’t need help since she’s strong enough to take care of herself.

And then maybe, it’s Arima Kana who draws Aqua out of the darkness too.

And, just like with Kaguya and Shirogane Miyuki, Aka Akasaka is once again writing a story about two people who will defy a fate of divine tragedy, and come out of it being more truthful with each other than they’ve been with themselves all along.

[jelzorz]

Heads up to any returning fans or to new fans who are joining us for s6: the fandom troll is making the rounds again under multiple new accounts (usually new blogs [named two descriptors and noun as per tumblr's suggested blog names, eg. sparklynerdpirate]*, that are empty except for one or two posts picking a fight with someone or sharing an opinion that shits on Rayla and glorifies Callum). This asshole has has a history of

Harassing people across platforms

Attempting to hack other people's accounts

Copying and pasting passages from other people's work and using them in his own

Shitting on other people's work in his own work

Gifting work he knows will provoke someone to that someone

Sending anon asks to provoke an argument

Reblogging himself from separate accounts to back himself up

Leaving rude comments on AO3 from multiple guest accounts in succession

Using AI to generate fic and art

Circumventing attempts to block him by creating new accounts to continue an argument

Impersonating people

Pressuring artists into commissions by transferring money before an artist has agreed to do the commission

Obviously this is quite a List of Crimes, this jerk does not know the meaning of stop and obviously has enough time and energy to keep this shit up for four years, so please be wary of new blogs with questionable takes. Please keep yourselves safe and sane and DO NOT ENGAGE. Just block and move on, your time is worth so much more than dealing with this bs.

*unsure if this blog name exists and has already been blocked or if I made it up, but I've literally blocked more than 150 sock blogs from this asshole so who knows 🤷🏽‍♀️

[thatuselesshuman]

Casper's 101 guide to improving your writing

So uh I'm not at all qualified to tell you how to write but someone irl told me I should make a guide so here it is. This is how I learned to write, and I like to think I'm not that terrible

Step One: Read

It's difficult to learn to write if you don't have the base material. It's like cooking, if you never eat different foods then your food will be bland cause you don't know what flavors are out there. Reading is the best thing you can do to when you start getting into writing. It'll tell you what your preferences are and it'll expand your vocabulary (both very important steps!). It'll tell you what POV you want to write in, certain words that give you the ick, plot points you enjoy, genres you like, how many mistakes you can tolerate, styles of writing you enjoy, etc.

Note: don't just read prim and proper books. Read fanfiction, read manga, read manhwa, read webnovels, read anything and everything that catches your eye. They all have their different qualities, and they're all better at doing one thing or another. Read, read, and read some more.

Step Two: Start Small, and Start Enjoyably

No sane person starts out writing massive novels out of the gate. A novel is a massive undertaking, and if you do it incorrectly it's a great way to kill your enjoyment though writer's block. What you're going to want to start with is short stories, one shots on Ao3, etc. Write small stories that are manageable and write a lot of them. Write stuff you enjoy as well, since you're not trying to impress anyone. This step is to dip your toes into the world of writing and kindle a good starting flame so you don't crumble into the ground the first time you hit writer's block.

Note: Don't be afraid to start with nitty gritty stuff if that's what you enjoy writing. I personally started with heavy angst, whump, torture, and the like because that's what interested me. That's what I wanted to write. There's nothing wrong with writing whatever the hell you want. I stand by the fact that censorship is the death of art.

Step Three: Practice Detail

Have you ever looked at a passage while reading and thought 'huh, this description is really bland'? Well I have. A mark of a good writer is being able to describe everything down to the dirt (not that you always should, but that's another lesson for another day). You may think that it should be easy to describe things in detail, but trust me when I say that it's a skill. Some ways you can practice are:

Describe your room in excruciating detail through brush strokes (like you would a painting)

Describe a mundane object through the lens of someone from the far past

Describe the nature around your house in abstract shapes

Describe a waterfall through the perspective of someone who has never seen one in their life

There are plenty more, but here are some to get you started.

Step Four: Grammar

Trust me when I say this is most people's least favorite step. It's boring, I know, but knowing how to utilized commas, ellipses, — <- these things, semicolons, etc, is a relatively easy way to instantly boost your writing. No one likes to read a story where it seems like the author hasn't seen a period in their life.

Note: This is just general advice, but if you wouldn't want to read it, then don't write it. That's another reason why the first step of reading is important.

Step Five: Share Your Writing With People

Whether you share it with strangers (like I did) or people you know, sharing your writing is an amazing way to get advice and feedback. It's also a great way to meet people who have the same interests as you. Writing is a bubble with no outside interaction makes it harder to get better at writing because it's easy to have rose-tinted glasses about your writing. It's also easy to think your writing is ass, even if it's really not. Having people around you who will tell you the truth is great as a reality check whenever you're blind to how things are.

Step Six: Write Until Your Hands Hurt

This is the step that always shows up on writing how-tos, and I'm not immune to it either. The reason everyone says to write a ton is because you're never gonna get better or have a passion for writing if you never do it. It's like art or a sport, how the hell do you expect to get better if you never touch a pencil or never pick up the ball? Divine intervention? I mean that is possible but unless you're writing the Bible then I don't think God is going to bless you miraculously with amazing writing skills. It's like anything in life, practice makes progress.

Everyone starts out terribly, and there's always going to be that 8 year old prodigy who's better than you, but that's not why writers write. We write because if we don't, the voices hunt us down-

Anyways, jokes aside, that's my guide to writing. I don't think it's too terrible, but that could just be the glasses I mentioned in the fifth step speaking.

[seirindono]

two questions.

one, HOW DOES ONE COMIC/STORY BOARD??

IM OBSESSED WITH HOW YOU DO IT ITS SO BEAUTIFUL

two, HOW DO YOU SO IT SO FAST( that’s question is more just me being super impressed oh my goodness)

you’re very good😳

Aw, sweet, a board question *puts on serious glasses*

Ok, bring it on anon.

So, the first thing to ask yourself when starting a comic, as I see it, is what type of board are you dealing with. Webtoon? A4 pages? 4 panels? There are many ways to go about it, and each involves different processes. For example, pages will allow for more superfluous scenes, whereas the webtoon format has to be super succinct because of the reading direction. I personally think that's the main reason I do pages, among other advantages: •narrative density •variety •Tumblr-friendly format

There are quite a few disadvantages too but you have to go through the process of trials and errors to really find out what suits you best!

Then there's the ambition of the sequence you're boarding for. And it goes from 1. how used I am to boarding this kind of sequence/drawing these characters/setting and backgrounds, to 2. is it an emotional sequence? Dialogue-heavy? Or more contemplative?

It changes the way you work and how you should approach your board! For example, in TMS, the very wordy chapters (4 and 5 for ex) generally called for simple and narrow framing. Of course, you don't want to bore the reader so you can spice things up to match the characters mood and reactions once in a while, but you have to bear in mind that the sequence aims to provide dialogue and information = the text bubbles are key and WILL take a lot of place. So let them.

( then again, it's all about pacing and balance. A page full of dialogue and one with too much happening are equally hard to read and boring to do)

Only dialogue, simple squares, no compostion, the focus is on Mel's reaction

On the other hand, parts 7 and 8 are all about action and atmosphere! This makes for wider and more varied shots!

They're fighting, things are going fast so why not use a single line to show many actions! They're still basically squares and rectangles but the pacing is totally different!

Or why not give the action a full page to really show its sheer impact

You can also split things, with a zoom or small time gap, depending on if it's a gag or if you want to put the focus on a reaction. Here, the asymmetry helps reinforce the unstable, jerky aspect of the scene. The situation is getting out of hand, and visually, the pages are affected too.

Now, these are case-by-case examples. And I never work on my pages separately.

For context, this-

-is the "first" board I did for part 8.

The drawings are very small and frankly difficult to make out, but the intention is what matters at this point lol I have the script (very important) next to my canvas, and I scribble the pages one after the ither. This allows me to see if the actions flow well, if the compositions are varied and also whether certain passages are too long or too short in regard to their importance. Which scenes can be merged? Removed? Toned down or if they deserve more bite?

This is a really fun and creative part but, I'll say it again, made a lot easier with a solid scipt. And I'm talking about a text document with clearly defined dialogues (or at least outlines) and actions.

I can't really explain how to write a script, it really depends on your work flow and how confortable you are with writing, but it's too important to just rush through it. No matter how much it changes before, during or after your finish boarding (cuz you gotta break your own rules sometimes and you'll often realize some things don't work as well once you put them on paper/sometimes art block can be resolved by writing the scene and just taking the time to imagine) but it's still your one guideline.

Aaaand, that's about it.

Other than that, I can only highly recommend reading lots of comics, Webtoon, books, watching movies, paintings, illustrations, animatics or listening to music, to inspire you and expand your own "personal library of references". Professional or not, anything your find inspiring and well executed. Boarding is at its core, telling stories. No art skill involved, just pure subjectivity. At the end of the day, it's all about squares, rectangles and bubbles so you gotta work on your creativity. The rest is gut feeling!

Constantly ask yourself how to tell this story, and how you want to tell it. How this sequence should be perceived? What do you need to show to make pages and pages of words appealing and interesting.

Be patient, be bold. Start with easy stuff to get some confidence if you need to. Accept that "boring" pages are smt necessary and that it's up to you to build up tension for a scene to really pop. Try new ideas and be ready to scrap many of them, the result will be worth all the work!

Now, concerning the "fast" part, I'm flattered but I personally think I'm super slow xD You prbly get that impression bc I finish the whole chapter before posting it, but behind the scene, I'm just working at a very regular pace.

Thank youuu anon ♡( ◡‿◡ )

[redd956]

When writing feels stale and unfamiliar...

Ever be trying to finish a WIP, update a fanfic, or push out something for school, but writing just suddenly feel so stale, almost like your own writing doesn't sound like you...

Well I'm here to help you break that cycle!

This feeling usually happens when either two things happen

Imposter Syndrome

or

You're Simply Improving

That's right, it's not you doing something wrong, you're just being a skilled writer. How do we get out of this dull feeling though? There's a lot of different tactics you can try. Here's some potential options.

Read your own writing

Read your own writing. Do it! Not only does it cause you to realize how much you like your own writing, it forces you to refresh. it's a great way to remember where you were going in a piece, and any potential themes or writing style you accidentally dropped. It makes it easier to pick up some lost mistakes too, and discover some places to improve.

(this one works twice as well after a break or some passage of time :D)

Change of Atmosphere

Not exactly a change of location, but instead a change of atmosphere. Play a new lo-fi playlist, try writing without any sound at all, indulge in thematic video essays in the background. Sometimes in order to regain focus the atmosphere needs to change.

Consume New Content

This goes for all creatives who are stumped. To output constant creative creations and ideas you require an input in the first place. For some people it may take awhile before they feel the brunt of creative block, but it will eventually come for all. The best advice I can give is to consume new media. Read a new book, watch a TV show, play a video game, find a new artist you like. This is all input. Input becomes output.

Take A Break

Not everyone has the privilege to do this one, but if you do, don't turn your nose from it. Taking a break isn't exactly something everyone does creative-wise, especially those who deal with a quick working skill regression. I've been there.

Taking a break from something is a great way to make it feel fresh when you return. Breaks don't have to be long. Depending on what calculates as a break for you is what you should strive for (even if it's only a day or two).

Acceptance

Accept that you are not going to create the top most, polished stuff 24/7 Every artist and writer creates and dumps ton of unfinished art, erases pieces, and makes lots of mistakes. Often times the best work that we admire takes a lot of time, refinement, practice, and drafts. Sometimes we just have to write badly in order to come back and do it again good.

[mmoodd-jobutupaki]

*takes a deep breath* AHHHHHDKAJFKSJA

I JUST WATCHED BOY AND THE HERON AND I LOVE IT SM AND IT'S SO GOOD.

So obvs, it's studio ghibli, it's gna be some of the prettiest stuff you've ever seen. So many scenery frames made me think "I'm gna scour the internet for them and repaint them as art practice. It resembles smudgy oil paintings rather than studio ghibli's gouache style (see spirited away, Totoro) but it's honestly beautiful nonetheless, and seeing it on the big screen made me feel like I was in the movie. There's even a stone passage that looks like the one from Coraline. The animation works so smoothly to make the film an overall wonderful immersive experience.

The character design was so good. You have your classic ghibli, countryside, apron wearing girl. Your boy with spiky hair. And probably the best addition of a butch seafarer, Kiriko, dubbed by Florence Pugh (oh my goodness I am too gay for this). The grannies were so inexplicably lovely and visually distinct I just want a hug from them. The wizard (Mark Hamill having this otherworldly yet grounded design and amazing hair. The heron was oddly grotesque without being scary (this is such a gift only japanese have.) and his various designs fluctuate along with the story. I was surprisingly intrigued by the fact that even in crane form, he had human teeth. And ofc THE WARAWARA.

GOSH THEY ARE ADORABLE I LOVE THESE DAMN TAPIOCA PEARL LOOKING THINGS THEY HAD ME SQUEALING IN THE THEATRE EITH HOW CUTE THEY ARE.

The score is beautiful and I dare say that it's on par, maybe even better than the Spiderverse score (and that's REALLY HIGH praise coming from me, I love the Spiderverse score to the point where it's on my Spotify wrapped.) I loved how the use of motifs, especially in relation to magic in the film. And definitely need to go give it more listens. 11/10 would recommend listening to it even outside of the film, it's just that great, give it a Grammy or smth.

Humor in this film is hilarious without being corny. It's very on the nose, what's currently happening in the scene humor. Characters (won't say who) also have amazing dynamics that supply a lot of humor for the film. Obviously we have that last snippet from the trailer and I'll give you this out of context "Mahito's turned into a parakeet"

The story is very easy to follow. The first half of the story is very grounded. And even in the second fantastical half, the visuals and little sprinkles of just the right amount of information help to guide us through the amazing fantastical world. Nothing ever feels too spoonfed to the audience or too overwhelming.

Spoilers below the cut

Character was great too. The main cast each have a very touching emotional aspect and nothing is what it seems, not from the trailers and not even within the show. Characters go on journeys you never could've expected from the beginning of the show. Such as the heron, who I genuinely thought from trailers was gna be the bad guy but turned into a genuine, squat goblin companion. And the parakeet king goddamn I thought he was gna be a good guy with his "we must protect this world" gig, not some giant cannibalistic parakeet with a surprising penchant for sneaking. Anyway, I especially loved how we meet characters almost multiple times with how we're introduced to different versions of them. Kiriko>>>

The moral of this story had me confused ngl, but I'm fcking dumb and need to go read some analysis so ignore this. The main message I got was that "Life is shit. But it's worth living and I can make it better for myself. Through friends, I don't have to be alone through it all" which made me tear up ngl since I've been struggling with life this year and seeing how our boy Mahito went from being a closed off lil squat to that *cries*. Personally I interpreted the great granduncle and his blocks as seeing what's wrong with the system the older generation has built, and demanding more from it/straight up turning away from it. Also Mahito learning to let go of his mom. The pelicans wanting the best for their children and not always liking what they have to do for survival as a link to war soldiers @hamable . I also read from @simplysparrow14 and @rockpaperimpala the film is also Miyazaki coming to the realisation that 'studio ghibli will be his legacy and it will be put to rest, it won't be the same if continued without him and that's okay' and ow I just got hit in the feels.

To summarize the boy and the heron excelled, slaps, is show stopping, brilliant, awesome, a true work of art and soul and 11000/10 go watch it ON THE BIG SCREEN I am not joking.

[dyrewrites]

Before Deluca -- home sweet home

There were other areas of the house important to us, of course, and we’d enjoy every one. Working for years to make them ours, years which would lead to a vast library, an art studio, and a delightful sitting room. As well as his insistence I learn to play the piano we kept in the living room—followed by an instructor growing too attached to my heat, and Lucient’s subsequent devouring of said instructor—but the yard was most important to my love.

He planted bushes in the front, but in the back he had a greenhouse installed to cover all the greenery and create his own. One with an adjustable tint, made solely in response to an increase in vampires joining society. With a simple command, a dark, translucent color would grow in all the glass to block the sun. Another command dissolved it, keeping him safe in his greenhouse throughout the day if he wished it.

And he did. He spent many mornings and evenings in that greenhouse, dressed in thick fabrics, thicker gloves, with all of his gathered curls hidden under a comically broad hat—how I miss it—tending to his flowers—as our flower does now.

Many withered and died before he was able to figure out how best to care for them, but he kept at it. Insistent that he needed to grow them, “you bring such warmth, such life everywhere you go, treasure, while I am but cold, sharp death.”

“Mm, delicious death it is,” I tried with warm lips and warmer hands.

Each he allowed, while pleading at me with eyes so chill and bright, “and I revel in it, truly. But I wish to have something pretty I can look at and say, ‘I made that, that lives because of me.’”

“Am I not something pretty you made?” I teased with more kisses to his cheeks, nose, forehead.

And he slapped at me, “Chose coquine, you horrible flirt.”

“I love you, Lucient, and your garden is glorious,” and it was, a delicious display of every flower he adored, and many more beside—for our coffin, I would learn, “whatever you need to keep it thriving, I will hunt down for you.”

“Mm,” a kiss to my cheeks, and lips, “ever my perfect treasure, how I love you.”

“And I you, my beautiful dream,” My smile earned me another kiss, and another. “Glad you made me?”

My words, however, earned a scoff and icy swat, “of course, you beast, now scurry off. If you keep near me too long I’ll tend to you and not my flowers.”

“Terrible incentive to leave,” I muttered, grinning for his narrow eyes.

But he was serious and shooed me with both hands, shoving me ever so, “Pschtt!”

“Va bene, vado, vado,” I conceded, hands up as I made for the door, “but I’m coming back…”

“And taking me with you, oui, mon amour, I’d expect nothing less.”

While I lost him often to his garden—as he lost me to my painting—we enjoyed most of our days together. Playing music or listening to music in our sitting room, reading passages aloud to one another in our library, stargazing on our roof, and countless walks through the city—or rides through the canal.

It was bliss, our life.

For years that blended beautifully into decades, seeing us into new technologies where I was able to capture his voice. To record his haunting beauty and listen to it again—and again, and again. He’d record me as well, playing piano largely but there is at least one record somewhere of my caterwauling and to whoever finds it...I am terribly sorry.

Photos as well. Newer cameras meant crisper photos without the sigils, but color hadn’t quite made it into mundane technology in our time. Still he took so many, ignoring my insistence that he had an eye for it, could make an art of it.

But you’ve grown weary of syrup, haven’t you, dear reader? You came for adventure and I’ve drowned you in sweetness so much these last chapters.

There is reason. Personal as all of this has been. I’ve been stalling, in a way. That page number is creeping into ludicrous, however, so we should get on with it.

To the night my moonlight was stolen.

Our bliss ended…

My life forfeited.

--

Full Chapters of Before Deluce Here

→Before Deluca Taglist<-

// feel free to ask to be added or removed ^.- //

@watermeezer @starbuds-and-rosedust @thespacelizard

@your-absent-father @mr-orion @cowboybrunch @olliexwrites

@rowanmgrey-author @the-golden-comet @wyked-ao3 @leahnardo-da-veggie

@lychhiker-writes @aziz-reads

[azsazz]

Dorian Havilliard and dark academia fit so well together *chefs kiss* who’s your favorite TOG man?

Oooh I love this. Hmmmm Fenrys is my man 💙

So I’ve never written dark academia nor rlly kno what the genre is but hopefully this turned out alright 💙

You dislike Dorian Havilliard very much.

It didn’t matter that he was son to the king or that his royal guard was also a lord himself or that he excelled in his classes or that he made the ugly, pristinely pressed uniform way too good.

It was that sly tongue of his that always got him out of trouble. The teachers loved him, ate up any excuse to get into his good graces. Everyone laughed at his jokes, floundered over his words. Girls fell to his feet at the charming way he spoke to them, flirtatious to the bone.

And he was smart too.

You were nothing like that. Intelligent, yes, but your lips didn’t curve around the words like Dorain’s did. They were his long-time lover, held close and cared for. An ages old love poem, like he’d been an esteemed writer in his past life, the way they flowed so easily for him.

Not for you, no. You could write beautiful sentences, transform letters into works of art, ones that brought tears to the eyes, but it was speaking eloquently that always tripped you up. Sure, you knew how to structure a sentence as good as Dorian, but you lacked the emotion, the power, to really make your words hit true.

So, you hated Dorian. Because surely no one was that good with words.

You saw the way he was sometimes, when people were laughing to each other at one of his jokes. Eyes gone dark, face stoic as he watched them all with a menacing stare. His fingers curled into fists, and he looked completely other. It was like he was something entirely other, instead of that overly charming boy everyone saw him as.

No one noticed except for you.

Chaol followed him around like a dog and the two of them ruled your school. There hadn’t been a single time during the semester you’d seen them apart. They were even in the same classes.

You started watching him more. You had classes with him, and you rivaled each other for top grade, glaring at the other after every assignment turned in, giving the other a cocky smirk at every question answered correctly. He’d noticed you.

Of course, everything Dorian saw was surface level. He didn’t know your background or the fact that you’d been kept here over the summer because your parents couldn’t afford for you to come home. He didn’t know that the lunch special wasn’t really anything special at all. You’d snuck in to watch the cook make it one evening, and decided you’d never eat it again. He didn’t know that late at night you’d sneak out of your rooms and into the library. There was a hidden door in there, tucked away and ominous. You hadn’t found the courage to step in there yet, but you found yourself entertaining the idea for the rest of the summer, as well as with trying to find any more secret passages.

You startle as he steps into your path, blocking the way to your next class.

“Where are you going?”

“To the library.” This was the night, you were going to go into the secret passage and find out what was going on.

The mention of the library made him stiffen. Pupils growing wider, black consuming sapphire. His spine lengthened, growing stiff, and it made him tower over you even further. His jaw set and his fists curled around his books, nearly tearing through the thick covers.

You look around him, frantically searching for Chaol. You don’t understand what’s going on, why he’s changing like this, so suddenly. You were utterly intrigued the first time you saw it, but up close like this, you’re horrified.

He’s no longer Dorian.

“No, you’re not.” His voice is cold, dark, and unlike his own. It makes you want to take a step back, but he follows.

“Yes, I am,” you answer, mustering up all of the courage you can.

“Then I’ll come with you,” it’s not a suggestion, but something in him snaps, breaks the hold on whatever’s made his eyes go black. He blinks once, gaze focusing on you before his stature melts into that of cocky Dorian once more.

“Please,” you narrow your eyes, tracking his every movement. Dorain leans against the wall, staring down at you with that infuriating smirk he always wears. When you move towards the library, he follows, seemingly having remembered your conversation.

So he wasn’t at a complete lack of control, then.

“You’re only coming to flirt with the librarian,” you scoff, rolling your eyes. You don’t want him coming with you, but if he does, you suppose that you can pretend to study until he grows bored and leaves.

Dorain’s grin is wolfish, but still completely unlike the…the beast, you just saw push through. “Why would I flirt with the librarian, when you’re right next to me?”

[talentpiper11]

Work in Progress Wednesday

Good evening, all! Thank you @rimeswithpurple, @monbons, and @roomwithanopenfire for the tags.

I’ve had a bit of writers block this week— I haven’t been able to do much with my written works, but I think it’s pretty temporary. I just need to find some time to open up the projects and sit with them. Legitimately, the only thing I’ve written that’s worth sharing from this week is a little variant on the typical Carry On swears:

Eight fucking snakes and a basilisk.

But! I have done a few other things this week to keep the creative juice flowing. I’ve taught myself Somebody That I Used To Know on my ukulele (I might post a recording here once I’ve perfected it, if anyone is interested.)

I’ve also been working on a fanwork-of-a-fanwork: an art piece based on @0lympus-mons’s Check Please fic, On This Rock. I can’t recommend that fic enough— it’s still in progress but it’s absolutely wonderful— and there was a particular passage that struck me as a great inspiration for a bit of art. Here’s the (spoiler-free!) passage:

"There's a glow somewhere in Kent's ribs, warm and tangible as he sits back down on the bench. He feels like a kid again, playing shinny on the ponds with his dad's friends' kids in upstate New York while his dad watched and cheered. It's a hazy memory, painted in oil and watercolour rather than something real, but the stars glimmer in halos of white amid a velvet blue sky and the ice has visible lines, from brushstrokes and skate blades."

And here’s the line work I’ve laid down in advance of adding paint:

It’s not perfect, but I’m having fun with the project.

I hope to be back on Sunday with some new project progress but we shall see!

No-pressure tags and hellos:

@monbons @rimeswithpurple @larkral @raenestee @youarenevertooold @simonsnowsfreckles @prettygoododds @roomwithanopenfire @ebbpettier and anyone else who’d like to post something but hasn’t been tagged yet!

[terushimooo]

BREATHER

A composition on the decomposition of mind, body, and soul 

vampire!Jean x human!reader

t/w: lots of blood, open sores, vague allusion to self-harm and domestic abuse, implied tortured and depressed reader, activation of potential trypophobia, one bug eaten, eating/drinking of blood, noncon vampire bite, implied abduction. Please let me know if I missed anything!!!! 

a/n: thank you to both @iwaasfairy and @seijorhi for inviting me into your collab! I’m super excited to be back for my yearly contribution! I dedicate this piece to Rhi, my wife, and the eternal victim to my fics. I swear this is one of my most normal drabbles!! Happy supper early birthday my love!!!

And, of course, thank you to @bontenten for being my ride or die beta for life!!

w/c: 1.3k

Check out the events masterlist HERE and the corresponding art piece HERE 

Stagnant, lifeless, putrid decomposition.

None are words that should be associated with someone entering their so-called “prime”. 

And yet, here you are. 

Every morning slowly becomes harder than the last, every day more painful. 

Unseen to others, sores wrack your body, oozing and scabbing over in an almost religious fashion. 

And yet, unlike religion, or maybe more like it than anyone else would care to admit, no matter how hard you pray, scrubbing and disinfecting the lifeless skin of weakened limbs, your body refuses to heal. 

But that’s just the way Jean likes it.

On dark days when the clouds block out the sun, when the cool drizzle of rain thumps heavily onto his sun kissed skin, Jean can’t help but catch a glimpse of an unspoken truth. 

You’re just so fragile… so weak… so…

So painfully human…

But, that’s precisely the way Jean likes you.

It’s on days like today, with goosebumps prickling your skin and teeth chattering violently from miles away, that a gnawing voice burrows its way deep into the crevices of Jean’s mind. It’s like he can’t control it, can’t stop the compulsion that has him seeking you out in your only time of freedom, the only time he lets you out of your confinement.

Even a moment without you is too long. 

The strong breeze carries the smell of rain, renewal, rejuvenation, but most importantly, reward. It carries the scent of you, his dearest companion… his favourite, most precious pet. 

Although your lips never truly part, never except to cry out and whimper in pathetic attempts for mercy, you call to Jean. Like a siren’s song, the soft trickle of blood from wounds beaten open by the rain’s percussion lures him in. One step at a time. One foot in front of the other. Jean pushes his way through chest-high blades of grass, wet stalks brushing up against haphazardly buttoned flannel and his best denim. An odd combination, but you weren’t there to help him dress in the morning. Clearly, Jean thinks with a scoff, a scoff soon replaced with a smirk and throaty chuckle, clearly you wanted a head start in the game he likes to call life. Or rather, your battle for it.

As Jean stares down the traces of limp foliage, grass and branches disturbed by previous passage, he can’t help but wonder just how far you’ve gotten this time. His eyes light up with his first trace of reward, with a gentle puddle of blood cradled perfectly in the cracks and crevices of the abrasive bark of a towering oak. 

He knows he shouldn’t, but how can he stop? How can he stop his tongue from darting out, from finding its place upon the crimson stained wood. A soft groan slips past his lips as Jean laps at your taste, as he furiously seeks out every last drop of your blood.

He can’t stand to waste it. Can’t stand for anyone else to have it, not even the earth or the trees that in turn, give you life, give you something crucial—breath and oxygen.

Pure ecstasy flashes behind Jean’s eyes with every drop. It’s almost enough to have him forget about the scrambling bugs and maggots, the beatles and bark shavings he crunches between his teeth in an attempt not to waste your treasure.

If he had a working heart, it would beat only for you. If he had a soul, it would be tied only to you. And if he had any sense of compassion, of a true fondness and love for you and your wellbeing, he would let you die. 

But Jean doesn’t have a heart. He doesn’t have a soul. But most importantly, he doesn’t have compassion—not enough to grant you mercy.

His love is selfish. His love is unstable. And his love is everlasting. That much is made clear by the quickly hardening shaft of his cock, stimulated only by the quickly passing taste of your blood.

Jean loves the chase, the little game you two play. 

It’s one you’re not even aware of. 

Taking off through the woods, bare feet rubbed raw against the rough floors of the forest, nightgown torn to tatters, sores opened and oozing down your trembling body, rain chilling you down to your bones—this is no game. To you, this is real. This is a battle for life, at least, what you have left of it… 

But this time, this time you’ve gone too far. This time, there's no coming back.

In his mind, Jean would find you thrashing through the thicket, eyes wide and heart racing, blood leaking steadily from unsealed and revisited wounds.

In his mind, you’d scream. Cry out. Beg on your hands and knees for mercy, for his love. 

But never could he imagine the scene in front of him. 

When he finds you, when he sees your wounds ripped open, and wrists torn ragged by a branch, he can only imagine you used to try and find freedom. 

When he finds you, Jean’s not mad. He thinks nothing but how childish you are. How foolish you are for trying this. How much you’re going to regret this.

It’s clear now that he can’t trust you, that he can’t leave you alone for even a second. Not while you’re like this. Not while you’re still human.

Heavy lidded eyes begging to rest for eternity shoot open as you're made aware of Jean’s presence. He calls to you with soft coddling and reassurance, but all you hear is nails against slate, an agitating and grating sensation and you’re wrought from your slumber. 

“P-please,” you beg, voice soft and inaudible to even your own ears. “Don’t.”

But Jean doesn’t negotiate with incoherency. Even if he claims to care, your pleas fall on entire deaf ears. Instead of evoking a sense of pity, they just serve to drive his cause, to stake his claim. 

It’s all a flurry of limbs. 

Wild, desperate, bleeding hands. Bare feet swinging in abandon. Mouth left open in mid scream. Fists covered in open wounds and split knuckles claw desperately at their captors embrace. Sharpened fangs piece through bleeding gums, only seconds before they find their way into the crook of your neck.

For Jean, it’s euphoria. It’s everything he’s always wanted, maybe even more. But for you, for the poor, weak, and battered body coddled tightly in your captors embrace, for you its torture.

Fire runs through your veins as your eyes roll back into your skull. Gritted teeth are cracked open in an attempt to rob Jean of what little pleasure you can, to rob him the pleasure of seeing your pain.

But inevitably, all your actions were in vain.

As you lay shaking on his chest, gentle convulsions wracking your already worn out limbs, blood continuing to flow freely from the numerous sores and wounds littering your paleing form, Jean can't help but smile in content.

This day, this hour, this moment, this second, on February fourteenth… It’s at times like this where he thanks the gods, the gods who cursed him to an eternal life of indentured sorrow and suffering. 

The only sounds coming from your cracked lips are gargled groans of pain and distress. Tears stream readily down your face as Jean sucks from his own wrist to provide to you his one gift—the gift of life. Eternal life. 

Forever by his side. 

Cold, dead lips press against yours in anything but reverence. It’s hard, aggressive, and mixed with passion. But to Jean, to Jean it’s perfect. In fact, he could almost swear that your pain is really just pleasure. Your lips aren’t moving out of spite, but finally requited love.

As Jean continues to watch the seconds pass, to watch the life slowly drain from your quivering, whimpering lips, Jean thinks to himself that this must be the first time in the hundreds, maybe thousands of years in his pathetic existence that finally, with you turned and bound to him for all of eternity, finally, Jean can take a breather.

[qourmet]

hello, hope you’re doing well :D! i’ve been obsessing over all of your art and hcs of the mdzs older gen and i was wondering what your thought process of the names you chose for them were because they’re really cool!! like i was thinking how yixi’s name is probably referencing that she came from tibet or how qhj’s courtesy name is maybe referencing his position as heir then later sect leader, like him inheriting the responsibility of leading the lan clan, and maybe the night character is in reference to his quiet personality but also his future loneliness in seclusion? or maybe im just looking into it too deeply (Ｔ▽Ｔ)

hello hello!! i've been very busy, this new years is starting off with lots of farewells on my end & promises to see friends as they settle in to their lives, i hope you are well & i hope you've had a good holiday & will have a good year.

WAH you're too sweet 😭 i'm gonna be honest, a Lot of my thought process when Naming characters in general has been:

• "follow the naming process of mxtx," which means you can bet your butt i've been Carding through Tang Dynasty poetry for Months • making Absolute Sure that None of the names i settle on are homonyms for anything with a double-meaning such as: modern swear words, innuendos, or just anything in general that would make them look like a clown • do NOT be Airplane (Shang Qinghua) when naming characters- which in essence if you haven't read svsss means do Not give characters names that spell out the core of their origins. no "risen from the frozen river" names, "don't be too on-the-nose i'm Begging you do research" @ me • do your absolute Best not to choose characters with a ridiculous amount of strokes Especially for given names (a rule i've struggled to actually live by) • do your Best to not have too many overlapping characters that Canon names use • sparingly looking at the tao te ching because i'm too scared of being culturally insensitive to nitpick a name from any pinyin i might come across

i won't claim ever to be a native chinese speaker: i have enjoyed the incentive to learn characters that are the building blocks to actual words that reading mxtx's works (& subsequently other cnovels) have given me, but it is not a culture i was raised in and it is not a language i read fluently. can't speak mandarin or cantonese or suzhounese or any other dialect and have been blessed with multiple friends who do and have done their best to help steer me in the right direction. all that being said, here's some dumb facts with the names:

• regarding the last-most point, i've picked ONE name from the tao te ching. i'm glad you enjoy Chengye/承夜's name but i've deliberated over it too long and have come to the conclusion that it Will be changed. taking inspiration from qiren's name, there needs to be a verb in there paired with something abstract but innately Human & i've found a passage in the tao that i Really liked that i feel alluded to my own characterization of him had the phrase Yǒuqíng/有情 which is Just as abstract and ridiculous as Chengye (which i cannot remember where i pulled that name from), but comes with the added bonus of being from the Adjustment of Controversies. to Have affections but understand where they should be going or how they should be distributed, to question why a person favors One thing over Another despite the inevitable conclusion that All of it is working towards an inevitability completely out of a person's control, it all feels just absolutely peachy to thrust that onto qingheng-jun when he couldn't in his lifetime maintain the favor between his family & his wife. plus Wangji's name being tao-derrivative made me feel i needed at least one of the prev gen in this boat with their successors. i've studied the tao in a scholarly setting Once for a semester, and Once more for a week or two on my own time so Please do Not take my word as any level of expertise i'm begging you. • I Do remember when picking out a name for Qingheng-jun, coming across a name that in essence meant "Bear the Night" felt a little too on-the-nose. there was no double meaning though i tried applying one. he's a Leader, he's a Cultivator, it's Expected of him to bear this and bear it as if it weren't a burden. and the more i thought/think about it, the less it made sense especially when All cultivators are expected to soldier through the same conditions, yanno? • Cangse-Sanren is the only girl i've headcanon'd so-far with a courtesy name! and i Really Really wanted it to be something to do with celestial bodies Exclusively because Xiao Xingchen has the Most celestial name on this show outside of Lan Xichen but he doesn't count in my head. i also wanted it to have Anything to do with the moon because Xiao Xingchen's name has a good chunk of sun radicals in there, but also Moonbeam is what you'd call a fairy and she's a fairy and i Will Never let that go. the most buckwild batshit fairy you've ever met but a mortal worthy of being a celestial being. her Surname means Wish, so go wishing on the moonbeams because her husband certainly did. • Cangse-Sanren in my headcanons named herself. She was a whimsical child, she named herself something outlandish for her surname, & she was obsessed with the cowherd & weavergirl story as a child so she named herself Liu/浏 with the milky way in mind (here i go breaking my Not Too Many Strokes rule). • tragically Yixi's name was more utilitarian than anything else. i needed something that worked in multiple languages based on my headcanons of origin & with the limited selection i had to work with, 益西 was by & far my favorite. plus the implications of her having value, of being benificial to some far-off location that was as far away from Gusu as you could possibly get, how could i Not see the poetry in that? • Yixi has no surname. Yi is not her surname, her full name is Yixi. where i headcanon her From, surnames weren't particularly commonplace outside of nobility and i don't headcanon her family to be of major importance (though i believe they're relatively self-sustaining). She might be associated with a specific clan her family works under or for & that may come up in the future, but for now it's just Yixi until or unless you think of her as already a married Lan. jury's out on whether the Lan clan would've ever called her Madam Lan tho. • confession: Bu Xin's name was directly inspired by Unchained Love's Bu Xin. different spelling but iirc it's completely a homonym. second confession: i have yet to finish watching Unchained Love please go Easy on me

[fettesans]

Top, page from Raymond Buckland, Solitary Seance: How You Can Talk with Spirits on Your Own, 2011. Via. Bottom, photograph via NASA, Toroid inflatable station concept during testing, 1961. Via. More.

Using the pendulum is known as radiesthesia—also rhabdomancy, or cleidomancy. One of the best-known uses of the pendulum is in dowsing, in finding where to drill for water. But it is also used for many other things, not least of all for communicating with spirit.

Unlike many other early space station concepts, this design actually made it out of the concept phase and into production, though no models were ever flown. This particular station was 30-feet and expandable. It was designed to be taken to outer space in a small package and then inflate in orbit. The station could, in theory, have been big enough for 1 to 2 people to use for a long period of time. A similar 24 foot station was built by the Goodyear Aircraft Corporation for NASA test use. The concept of space inflatables was revived in the 1990s. Via Wikipedia.

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‘If an artist who conceived a work says that it is unfinished and should not be exhibited, it isn’t – and shouldn’t be.’ The court felt differently: ‘When an artist makes a decision to begin work on a piece of art and handles the process of creation long-distance via e-mail, using someone else’s property, someone else’s materials, someone else’s money, someone else’s staff, and, to a significant extent, someone else’s suggestions regarding the details of fabrication – with no enforceable written or oral contract defining the parties’ relationship – and that artist becomes unhappy part-way through the project and abandons it,’ wrote the presiding judge, Michael Ponsor, ‘then nothing in the Visual Artists Rights Act or elsewhere in the Copyright Act gives that artist the right to dictate what that “someone else” does with what he has left behind, so long as the remnant is not explicitly labeled as the artist’s work.’ (...)

Essentially a horrific readymade, Barca Nostra sunk in April 2015 between Libya and Lampedusa with an estimated 1,000 migrants onboard, of whom 28 survived. The Italian government recovered the wreck in 2016 and moved it to a base in Sicily before it was placed under the care of the Augusta municipality, a landing site for Operation Mare Nostrum, Italy’s response to the Mediterranean migrant crisis. Mare Nostrum, or ‘Our Sea’, cost the Italian government a reported £7 million per month, and ensured safe passage for over 100,000 people within a year of its launch in October 2013. But after Italy appealed for assistance, EU states criticised the operation for encouraging people to risk the sea crossing, so EU agency Frontex replaced Mare Nostrum with Operation Triton in 2014, with a slashed budget and focus on border security.

Effectively a policy of nonassistance, as Forensic Oceanography concluded in their 2016 report Death by Rescue: The Lethal Effects of Non-Assistance at Sea, Triton created a situation where commercial ships were increasingly called into rescue missions they weren’t suited to conduct – such was the case with the sinking of Barca Nostra in 2015, they found. That year, European Parliament president Martin Schulz called for ‘burden sharing’ based on the fact that five out of 28 EU member states were taking in 50 percent of refugees to Europe at the time. Yet no effective cooperation manifested. Neither in creating humanitarian responses to a global crisis, nor in mediating the ultraright sentiments and movements that rose as a result – as demonstrated in 2018, when Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, launched a campaign to block search-and-rescue vessels from docking in Italian ports, and drafted a hardline anti-migrant bill adopted by the Italian government.

It was within this desperate context that Barca Nostra was brought to the Venice Biennale – in cooperation with Augusta’s municipal council and Comitato 18 Aprile, which lobbied against government plans to scrap the ship – with Büchel covering transportation costs. Presented with little information – not for the lulz, it seems, but out of contempt for a wilful ignorance – the vessel’s arrival was lambasted as ‘tasteless’ by those at the vernissage, seemingly more concerned with the insult of its presence – and those taking selfies with it, like a Martha Rosler collage come to life – than discussing the exclusionary policies that brought it into being. (Granted, as curator Alexandra Stock wrote in a scathing takedown, ‘The optics [were] bad because Büchel set it up that way’.) While the stunt drew international attention – including responses from Salvini himself, countering the idea that the Venice Biennale is an ineffective stage for protest – it also revealed the limits of internationalism, whether in the artworld or the world at large.

Stephanie Bailey, from Christoph Büchel: Fear and Loathing in Venice, for Art Review, April 14, 2024.