#gradient maps i would be nothing without you

[daily-capochin]

[Day 25]

His silly little smile

[ohcorny]

How I Made the Colors in Hunger's Bite So Good

first of all: buy my book. buy it and look at the colors. (if you cannot buy the book, ask for it at your local library or i GUESS you can look at these spreads i posted)

we're gonna talk about colors, but more specifically we're going to talk about overlays. if you're an artist you are probably familiar with overlays. we love our overlays. we love to color a picture and then at the very last minute go 'hm. looks bad. i'm going to put a yellowish overlay on it to make it look less bad :)'

do not do this.

i mean you can, and it'll work sometimes, but all you're really doing is tricking your brain into thinking different is better. you've been staring at the image for potentially several hours. none of the choices you made at the beginning mean anything to you anymore. you're just finishing what you started. one of the big reasons you might look at your art and go 'man, this doesn't look that good' is because You drew it and are intimately familiar with it. you know all the flaws and mistakes because You made them and You know what your vision was. one of the great frustrations with art is that the piece in your head doesn't look like something you actually made. you want it to look like somebody else did it, so you can enjoy it as a viewer, not as the creator.

so when you put that overlay on, and suddenly the image looks very different, your brain will go 'this doesn't look like the thing i've been staring at for 2-3 hours! this is different! now it's good!'

and again, sometimes it Is good. but do you actually understand why it's good? or is it just different?

okay so what am i supposed to do smart guy

i'm glad you asked. the trick to making overlays work is to have them on from the start. this requires knowing what mood you want to convey in your scene from the very beginning. hopefully you know what mood you want to convey. you do, right? and i don't just mean happy or sad, i also mean safe, threatened, familiar, strange, soft and harsh. blue is not always sad. green is not always healthy. yellow/orange are not the only way to convey a companionable warmth.

okay did you pick the mood? do you have an idea of what color you want to use to represent that mood? great. i'm gonna use blue to convey the cool, clean white of a ship's maintenance corridor without making things literally white. and i'm going to stick in two characters whose color palettes consist of bright yellow, brown, and wine red. awesome. i definitely know how those colors would behave under blue lighting.

(here's the thing: no i don't.) this is where a gradient map correction layer comes in. i want my page to be Blue. alright. let's make a gradient map that's Blue.

a gradient map is basically just A Gradient with specific colors connected to specific values. you have your darkest values on the left, and your lighter values on the right. at 100% opacity, this gradient map layer will read the value of anything below it and go 'okay this bit is this dark, so it should be This shade of blue. and this bit is this light, so it should be This shade of blue'.

kind of like a hue or color layer except determined by a gradient rather than one color, so it could also go 'this is light, so it's green' and 'this is dark, so it's purple'. it's math. i don't really get it either. but anyway this is probably not what you want if you want your characters' palettes to be recognizable. emery's sweater is supposed to be a wine red! neeta's skin should be brown, and her shirt should be yellow. these are their Key Colors. generally, i want them to be recognizable. so let's lower that opacity down.

nice! you can definitely now see that emery's sweater is red and neeta's shirt is yellow. and everything is relatively balanced. nothing is too saturated, nothing is significantly brighter than anything else. it's all got a little bit of blue in it. but i've skipped the step of actually picking your colors. because here's the thing with gradient maps.

they hate you and want to fight. when working with gradient maps you must imagine there is a monkey sitting on your shoulder dumping paint in every time you pick a color. the monkey has a tube of blue and he is going to put that blue into everything you paint, but it's not normal paint. it doesn't mix, it overtakes. it won't turn something yellow into green, it will turn it blue. it wants everything to be blue. if you want something to look like the color it's supposed to be, you will have to make it extremely saturated under the layer to essentially fight the paint monkey's blue. hence, emery's sweater is a BRIGHT red, so it will look a little more purpley under the blue. and neeta's skin is very orange, so it can be dulled down into a soft brown.

this is the sort of thing you will have to learn by feel, because it will be different with every gradient map, especially if you start getting into weird ones that aren't monochromatic. you want to know one of my favorite maps to use?

i have memorized where on the value scale all of these colors appear. i can color something using only shades of gray when i have this filter on. i am evolved. if you want to use gradient maps effectively, you'll have to get a lot of practice.

anyway this post got really long and i'm about to go to a movie so i'll talk about how to use screen/multiply/overlay layers later. but gradient maps are the main tool i used to make hunger's bite's palettes so unified across scenes. but you can see way above how they work to turn insane saturated colors into the nice harmonies--and the trick is that i'll never see those saturated colors while i'm working. because i have accepted the paint pouring monkey into my heart, and i trust him. except when i'm coloring wick's coat. holy mother of god every gradient map hated that man's purple coat.

[gxthicupid]

Hi^^

I’m hoping this is the right way to request smth^^But can I request a nezha x younger sibling hc’s? (Platonic ofc^^)

୨⎯ ɴᴇᴢʜᴀ x !ʏᴏᴜɴɢᴇʀ ꜱɪʙɪʟɪɴɢ! ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ [ᴘʟᴀᴛᴏɴɪᴄ ʜᴇᴀᴅᴄᴀɴᴏɴꜱ]

ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇxᴛ: ᴡʜᴀᴛ ɪꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛʜɪʀᴅ ʟᴏᴛᴜꜱ ᴘʀɪɴᴄᴇ ʜᴀᴅ ᴀ ʏᴏᴜɴɢᴇʀ ꜱɪʙʟɪɴɢ?

ᴀᴜᴛʜᴏʀ'ꜱ ɴᴏᴛᴇ: ɪ ᴅᴏɴ'ᴛ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ʜᴏᴡ ᴛᴏ ᴡʀɪᴛᴇ ʜᴇᴀᴅᴄᴀɴᴏɴꜱ ʙᴜᴛ ɪ ʜᴏᴘᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴇɴᴊᴏʏ <3

➨ Just like any other day, the golden hue of the temple, keeping the Map of the Samadhi Fire away from the wrong hands, reflected onto the sky and created a vibrant gradient resembling the vivacity of the sun. The sight of streams filled with crystal clear waters and delicately decorated with bright pink lilies sitting upon round, floating leaves.

➨ Within the corridors of the temple, through the flaming etchings onto golden architecture and marble walls, Nezha guarded patiently for the slightest unusual activity. The soft breeze from outside sounded so loud against his ears that he listened carefully to any eerie movements that echoed in the temple.

➨ A quick swift of wind was felt on his skin; Nezha drew his spear in a flash and pointed inches away from your face, better known as the younger sibling of the Third Lotus Prince. Nezha sighed in relief before placing his weapon down and out of his sibling’s face.

➨ “Y/N. . .Please don’t startle me like that. What if I have seriously injured you.” His body loosens from tension before staring back at you with sincere eyes. His face may not show it, but he feared what would have happened if he proceeded. You only gave your older brother a sly smirk in response.

➨ “I was only testing your reflexes. Nothing else.” Out of the pair, you were the more free-spirited and lenient compared to your older brother, which created an interesting dynamic between the two of you.

➨ Again, Nezha remained stoic during his patrol, and you stood beside him without saying a word. Nezha looked at you and decided to speak. “Aren’t you meant to be guarding the entrance? What if someone gets in and tries to infiltrate the temple?” Nezha reminded his younger sibling about their duties while speaking gently yet solemnly.

➨ You wiped off your smirk and replaced it with a faint frown. “I understand Nezha. It’s just that I don’t want these duties to take away time from you and me being together, alright?” Ever since the Samadhi Fire has been contained within the rings and located far away, you and Nezha have spent little to no time together outside your workspace.

➨ Nezha paused for a minute and thought about what you said. He could understand that sombre look on your face. Then, his hand began to lean over and rested on their shoulder before giving you an optimistic look. “Listen. After completing our duties today, I promise we will go someplace. Somewhere peaceful and relaxing.” After hearing those words, you couldn’t help but hug your big brother and hold onto him tightly.

➨ Caught off guard, Nezha was surprised by your reaction over a small promise but slowly gave in and hugged you back while cracking a small smile. As your happiness was his happiness, and he will do anything to be the best brother you’ll ever have. Once the both of you let go and returned to your stance, you smiled and spoke again.

➨ “What do you want to do when we’re finished? Check out the mortals down on Earth or get a bit mischievous~” You then gave Nezha a smug look that reminded him of a certain simian. Nezha groaned the minute he saw your face and looked away briefly.

➨ “Y/N, please stop smiling like that. You remind me of Sun Wukong.” Your older brother said before looking back at you and your usual smile. “I know. That’s why I use it so often.” In a teasing tone, you made the smug face again, leaving Nezha to look away again.

➨ “I know, and I hate it.” He spoke through clenched teeth, holding in annoyance, and you chuckled in amusement. Despite his younger sibling's immature behavior, he couldn’t help but adore and cherish you more than anything. 

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Hi there, your Europe without trade, a worldbuilding exercise was a fascinating and educational read, kudos for all the insights!

One section has left me with dual questions however, namely:

The other rule is that the Gulf Stream still exists, so you can have that unusual European climate which is a fluke. (This also ticked off people? But seriously, to get the gradient of Europe that far north, you need to Gulf of Mexico otherwise the latitude range would look more like the US than Europe, more south, and larger, much larger. And most people don't make a continent that large. Why people get ticked off at true facts is a whole thing.)

I am rather curious about how these factors interplay with one another, IE, how the Gulf of Mexico creates an unusual climate in Europe, what about the climate is unusual and most integrally, what would the climate look like without it?

Sorry if this is a Wikipedia question, weather science is not my forte and I've love to see your take specifically on it, but not pressure.

I learned this in geography class and covered this in my worldbuilding posts, so short cutted it.

See that red arrow going to Europe from Florida-ish. That's the gulf of Mexico Stream. Hot, wet air travels from Mexico to Europe, giving you climates like the Mediterranean, the rain that Brits complain about, but also things like the South of France, Spainish warm agriculture weather.

If you want to build it super racist and cut off all PoC influence, which some people were cursing me about mentioning the Gulf of Mexico and how dare I at the time I made the original post (which was years back)

Then as my Geography professor succinctly put it, you get Siberia. Siberia, has high continentality, is extremely cold in the winter and extremely hot in the summer. You'd be able to grow NOTHING. No Europe for you. Most of the Siberian people or this reason, without the world food supply were Pastoral Nomadic people who lived in chiefdoms and tribes and survived mostly on grasslands.

The majority of maps, including Tolkien's does not include a Gulf of Mexico structure, which means high continentality and miserable weather. You're looking at only Evenk-type of people in Europe year round with probably diminishing trees, and BTW, shamanism is most likely. (or Totemism, if you follow the whole worldbuilding series I did)

If you do want an Agricultural state without The Gulf, you're more looking at China or the United States in terms of latitude, but you'd have to study China closely. This means larger latitude range with a gradual shift towards Mediterranean. But also more extreme weather, such as more deserts, more swamps, etc. And absolutely, you'd need cooperation.

There's environmental politics about China too,but you'll have to research that on your own.

This, BTW, is why I say as the first thing you probably should do is draw a map, the entire world, map the currents, and then you can figure it out. But notice Europe is really far North and the South of Spain, which is typically Warm is about equal to Newfoundland in Canada which is really cold.

And that's what you're going to get if you melt those ice caps. The summer is going to get worse. The winter is going to get even more miserable. You'll get less warm hot rain for England, etc, but crop failure rate is going to skyrocket. Unfortunately, you need those polar ice caps back ASAP because if it desalinates too much, the Earth will do everything to try to rebalance itself. And do you want that?

Read the geography worldbuilding post I put up. I got up through government loosely.

To get monsoons, you do need high continentality, which is why India, China, etc gets monsoon weather. So if you want that weather feature, understand you need more land mass, but there is the trade off of some place being like Siberia.

BTW, it's climate, not weather. Only saying it because my geography prof would be on my case if I didn't differentiate. You're looking for climate differences which are dictated by latitude, physical features and currents. Another way to screw over Europe is to Destroy the land bridge on the tip of Mexico, thus changing all of the currents and flood it.

[livpoid]

oops!! i also forgot to add something to my previous ask about the brushes you use :D may i know what brushes and/or textures you use to sketch, doodle and fully render? please and thank you :3

sure! here are all the brushes ive been using for the past two or so years! all of the brush packs were free when i downloaded them:

(note: the flat color brush is actually called ETF but the pack has ETF and ETR - which i also now use aswell)

+ as for textures i use these:

+ i use gradient maps and other adjustment layers to make the colors look as pretty as possible (though lately ive been trying to not abuse those as much). my go-to blending mode for gradient maps is hard mix (12% or 11% opacity) on top of the perlin noise.

aaand i sharpen some of my rendering to make my brush strokes more visible and look ''higher quality''

shoutout to all the artists that made these brushes - my art would kinda be nothing without them...

and there you go anon! :-))

[raeygina-george]

All the questions you wanna anwser

(this is from an old ask game)

1. When did you start creating art?

erm idk.... 2019 or so?

2. Do you do art in any professional capacity? (Graphic design, commissions, animation, etc.)

not yet but im planning on being an art teacher

3. What are your favorite subjects to draw? (OCs, your fan faves, etc.)

anime characters..........

4. What's your least favorite part of the body to draw, if any?

hands or really any part of the body that's in perspective

5. What piece of art are you still proud of to this day? (Show or describe)

i'm not particularly proud of any of my pieces but here are some that i still really like :) (i also really like that one mari & sunny lily of the valley piece that i'm not attaching directly bc i don't wanna trigger tag)

6. Favorite and least favorite angles/perspectives to draw?

i don't really have any... what's easiest is just straight-on, but that looks boring, so I can't realistically say it's my favorite... but if it's hard then I don't like it either.... sigh

7. Who are some artists that have inspired you?

see okay the thing is. artists that inspire me seem to always have an art style that i Can't Really Replicate. like i've seen so many of those painterly-style ethereal anime girls and pieces with the most gorgeous fucking colors ive ever seen in my life and they look SO PRETTY but i just Don't Understand Them At All 😭😭

so i'd say rixypill because recently i saw one of their art pieces and the amount of relief it brought me was insane. it was a gorgeous gorgeous art piece AND it looked like something i could realistically achieve. i didn't even really realize it but for such a long time i was trying to turn my art style into Something Completely Different and idk it just made me realize that i could make beautiful art Without having it stop being My Art

8. How would you describe your art style?

pink (with guest appearances from purple, orange, yellow, and blue)

9. What's the longest you've ever suffered from artblock?

several months

10. How do you deal with art block?

i don't <3 (I do challenges with predetermined prompts, and you can add deadlines if that helps you)

11. Have you ever drawn a meme with your OCs or canon characters from a fictional media?

yeah, i think i've made mini-animatics for like 2 vines. i don't do enough art shitposting tho

12. Ever participated in a multi-artist collaboration (3 or more) such as a multi-animator project?

i mean i did like 2 meps when i didn't understand what the fuck I was doing but i don't think those can really be counted........ i've done like art telephones and 3-person art trades but nothing really outside of that

13. What kind of art do you personally not see the appeal of, and why?

i think all art has appeal if you look hard enough

14. Do you prefer to make fan content or original content?

fan content

15. Do you/have you participated in Artfight or art trades in general?

i've done artfight in the past but i don't think i'll do it again because i'm usually really busy in july and even if i'm not i really struggle with doing anything for artfight 💀 i've done a good amount of art trades tho and if any of mutuals are interested in art trading with me feel free to ask :D

16. What was something you used to struggle to draw with confidence/ease, but have now mastered?

i don't think i've mastered anything really 😭 but i'm definitely a lot better at eyeballing colors than when i first started!!

17. Your personal favorite works of art (not made by you) are...?

there are lots of really awesome works in this world that i really like and if i didn't list like 500 different artworks i wouldn't feel like i'd answered properly so im gonna sit this one out lol

18. Do you typically use filters on your art?

yeah, i use saturation filters + gradient maps + blending modes at the end of every piece

19. What's your biggest insecurity when it comes to your artwork?

i have so many 😭 i'm in the "i hate all my art" stage of improvement rn..... aside from that, i hate that a lot of my art is so boring.... like there's not a lot of interesting perspectives or actual Meaning... that's the main reason why i made ychallenge! i want to make pieces that invoke emotion & mean something to me and aren't just there to look pretty

20. What motivates/inspires you artistically? (topics, emotions, etc)

fandoms mostly! if i was doing solely originally art i'd make maybe like one thing a year

[ar-mage-ddon]

Hi! I was wondering if you were willing to share any tips/advice when it came to your art processes? Whether it be lineart or composition or anything else really! I’m obsessed with how good your art is dhdhdhd Thank you for your time!

HAKJSD THANK U!! i kinda do most things by vibe so idk how coherent this is gonna be but i'll try my best ajhsdha (these also aren't gonna be the traditional rule-of-thirds/color-theory type of advice because frankly i don't think i'm qualified to give advice on that stuff LMAO this is just what's sitting in the back of my head when i draw)

i'm probably not the best to ask about composition because 99% of the time i'll just be flipping through concepts in my head like a slideshow instead of actually thumbnailing things (which you should absolutely do to help you visualize things better if you're unable to in your head); i literally just operate on a scale of "i think it would look cool if i did this" either based on symbolism (ephemerweek 1 vs 7, for example, where it looks like ephemer is reaching out to bring player/the viewer towards the light behind him vs ephemer facing the light on his own without looking back — in both of these i wanted it to look like he was being blotted out by a harsh light, like when you try to hold an object up to the sun and it becomes impossible to see) or a neat concept (i.e using transparency to make it look like a character is coming through the screen, or something simpler like in my last skuld post where i vaguely wanted her hair to make the shape of a crescent). why am i already rambling. BASICALLY i encourage you to think about what exactly you wanna portray and the methods you can use to reinforce your idea; try to play with the medium if you can! think of themes! be dramatic!!

don't be afraid to mix up your lines when it comes to lineart! you can vary your lines depending on the piece to match the kind of tone you wanna use; sharp and bold for something that's energetic and flashy and colorful, light and thin for something that's melancholic, etc

doing a basic, quick skeleton sketch first to get an idea of the pose you want will save you so much time and headache good lord. i often still find myself getting carried away and not doing the basic sketch first because i wanna hurry up and get to the Fun stuff (especially if i have no specific plans and just wanna doodle), but having it genuinely makes things so much easier and also helps to avoid ending up with stiff poses; personally i like using planes/rectangles more than stick figures since it helps more with the actual figure (and use a box instead of a circle for the head, it's easier to visualize the exact angle you want that way). be better than me and remember to do the basic sketch

this is probably a personal thing but honestly there is nothing more important than having satisfying Shapes. i don't even know how to explain this but it's like . have you ever looked at how a line curves and thought "fuck that's a nice line, i like that line"? i sound insane i think i'll just put some examples under a readmore but i guess the gist is visual appeal?? like if something felt satisfying to draw, whether that's a curl in the hair or a curve in the silhouette or how clothing wrinkles flow, then chances are it'll be satisfying to look at, too (and on the other hand maybe you could take advantage of this to go the opposite direction to make something feel more unsettling?)

be aware of where the viewer's eye will tend to go first and try your best to do that part well; unless your composition is specifically pointing to a certain place or isn't character-focused, it'll likely be the character's expression/face

learn how to use gradient maps, tone curves, and color balance layers they will save your life when it comes to coloring

i think i'm running out of tips now but if you use clip studio paint, use this if you need help on figuring out perspective for objects or backgrounds

that's all i can think of atm HAKSJDHK hopefully some of this actually made sense !!

and here's some examples of lines or smth that i like that will hopefully make me look less insane. triangles are the best shape btw

does any of this make sense. is this thing on

[natsmagi]

☆:: Okie dokie I'm starting all my asks now with a star thingy, anywho!! I'm really curious about how you do your backgrounds because they have that whimsical sort of feeling of being in the boundary between reality and within a dream.. the colors you choose are always real nice ww

/ᐠ. .ᐟ\ฅ — @enchantedmirage

OH MAN. ill be so honest i 100% just brute force my backgrounds. i have no idea what im doing. i use filters like my life depends on it. sometimes ill add things like sky dust or sparkles or particles or just anything along those likes to make it feel a little more alive and whimsical

gradient overlays are ur best friend honestly. just slam that badboy with appealing colors over ur canvas, experiment with various layer modes and hope it made things look better

i do tend to work with alot of purple and yellow hues though!! i feel it adds a layer of Whimsy yanno. ill show examples below the cut actually!

lets use this one as an example!! im going to COMPLETELY ruin the magic behind it for a second but uh

heres. what the background looks like without any of the added flare KUASJHFASHDGKAHSKDHJ

and here it is again now that ive smacked 534796 filters over it (plus lighting from the lantern)

^the filters in question (plus blur and environmental lighting, such as highlights on the trees from the brooms lantern and light illuminating the small city). what filters i choose to use will depend entirely on the vibe and what i think would best suit the piece. here i used a colorful overlay set on soft light, while on my latest drawing (biker thing) i used a gradient map that had a bit of a harsher (but still fitting my aesthetic) feel to it

i dont even really use rulers often or anything. im being so serious when i say my backgrounds are nothing but pure brute force. i make the most half-assed background and then bullshit my way into making it look good

the beauty of art is all u gotta do is create a semi-believable illusion of the thing infront of u. how u get there doesnt matter. Plus i have more of a painterly style, so i tend to just paint over the bits i dont like or re-defining things later on, hence why i tend to be so messy

AND THERE U HAVE THE FINISHED PIECE ONCE AGAIN! all i did was add some little sparkles here and there to emphasize the magic and that was that!

[tanadrin]

I think this is wrong in the worst way--that it's superficially plausible, if you aren't really paying attention, but doesn't engage with the actual substance of the problem, and doesn't approach the problem in a way that would actually give us the tools to solve it. And it narrows the blame far too much! It exonerates the huge numbers of people in the US who think the current system is fine, who actively vote for it, but who don't happen to personally benefit from it.

Rural towns which bid for prisons to be built nearby, simply are not numerous enough--not even with prison populations inflating the size of their electoral districts--to shape law enforcement policy across the country. That policy is shaped by prosecutors, judges, and lawmakers, is reinforced by police departments and a media that is extraordinarily hostile to any attempts at reform (cf. the fight over bail reform in New York and the way media outlets have flagrantly lied about and misrepresented the consequences of bail reform, often repeating claims of cops and former cops without any kind of fact-checking). And the people who elect those prosecutors, judges, and lawmakers--whose opinions are shaped by stories in local news--are the larger body of voters, many of whom are urban and many of whom vote pretty reliably Democratic.Voters who are scared silly about the Crime Bogeyman, voters who often have strong implicit racial biases when it comes to imagining what the Crime Bogeyman looks like and where it comes from.

That this is a more diffuse phenomenon is important! Because the problem isn't a single set of greedy evil small-town racists, it's the general American media environment and the general American perspective on crime, which still believes that tough-on-crime approaches work and that progressive attempts to reform law enforcement do nothing but cause crime rates to spike. And while some of that can be blamed on bad reporting and cops lying (both of which are pretty common!), there is a broader and deeper cultural attitude that makes those lies and bad reporting particularly plausible to American voters, and particularly effective as political tactics. And unfortunately it's the same attitude that makes suburban whites in favor of school integration in principle, but causes them to freak out when you propose integrating the schools their kids attend, and it's not the product of shady manipulation by a small clique of oligarchs deliberately perpetuating racism to get rich.

Like I don't deny there are people who probably benefit from structural inequalities in American society. But there is a very big difference from being in a position to benefit off preexisting inequalities, and creating those inequalities. If you could somehow erase every small, racist Southern town from the map, you would not stop the phenomenon of mass incarceration in the US, because small Southern towns that are supported by prisons are a symptom, not a cause.

And this is what I meant in my response to @alkatyn. For someone like you, who must divide the world into Manichaean categories of good people and bad people, it would be enough to disempower or to punish the right bad people, because bad things come from bad people, and not from more diffuse social attitudes or incentive gradients. But that's a comforting lie: in fact, the world is full of people who are good in some respects and ignorant and foolish in others, and it is not a matter of identifying and dethroning the power-wielding bad people, because the obviously bad people are like at best 20% of the problem. They give you a satisfying emotional and rhetorical target, but the world is mostly bigger and messier and more complicated than that.

And I won't lie, it annoys me a little that you can't name specific examples, you can't even put broad ballpark figures to your attempt at arguing against my post, that all you have is vibes. Like my back of the envelope math shows that prison labor in the US just isn't that profitable! It's not that big of an industry! $11 billion a year, the estimated fruits of all prison labor, is like 0.04% of U.S. GDP--not 4%, 0.04%. 80% of that labor is spent in prison upkeep, so that's what, $2.2 billion available to line private pockets? This is not a load-bearing part of the American plutocracy. Even private prison contractors aren't that big a portion of the prison economy--only around 8% of U.S. prisoners are housed in private prisons.

And none of this is an apology for the American prison system, which is brutal and inhumane, or for the American justice system, which is deeply biased against poor and minority defendants. But I wish people who had been whipped up into a frenzy with rhetoric about the vast machine of the American prison-industrial complex would try to put some relative figures to their intuitions, because you talk about it like millions of prisoners are being worked to death in sweatshops, and that's. Uh. Not true.

This is not just dumb evil shit, but a hundred and fifty years old technique to control Black population and a tool for the white elite to compensate themselves for the loss of slaves.

This rhetoric just histrionics. The total U.S. prison population is about 1.2 million; IIRC about 800,000 prisoners are employed (again, 80% of those in prison upkeep!). So not only is the replacement for the whole system of slavery a fraction of the number of slaves held in the South at the time of the Civil War--about four million; and keep in mind 800,000 is the nationwide prison population regardless of race, not the population of prisoners in the South--it's gone from about one-third of the population of the South to 0.6% of the population of the south (again, if all prisoners in the United States were held in the South. Which they are not).

And what also annoys me mightily about this is that I paid attention in U.S. history in school, and I know that there was an actual system imposed to try to replace slavery in the post-Civil War era, and it was a combination of sharecropping and Jim Crow laws. Which were much more effective, because they actually worked to keep black agricultural workers working in agriculture--you know, the whole industry slavery existed to support in the 19th century! So not only is your rhetoric hyperbolic, it's historically erroneous.

Please read actual American history (there's some really good leftist American history out there!), and don't get your understanding of the American political economy from tumblr posts and twitter.

Saw someone claim in a comments section that something like 25% of Louisiana’s GDP comes from prison labor. Which would be insane if it was true. They must be running the most technologically advanced prisons in the country. They’re using prison labor to build microchips or some shit while everybody else is still using it to make license plates.

[starlightshore]

hey so like. I’ve been sorta… studying?? Other artists’ styles, like especially ones that have like… a good grasp on color expression and stuff and I’ve been looking at your comics and I was wondering if you have any tips on working with color and contrast? Because I really like how evocative (is that the right word) the colors were in some recent AFR pages

been sitting on this ask (and well, every ask I ever receive, i like to answer on desktop and i'm never on desktop on this account. oops.)

well, for the most recent pages idk if you meant the one where Asriel has a panic attack and the colors changed in every page (warning for eyestrain!) or the consequential fire afterwards.

panic attack scene: Honestly I just used some pre-made gradient maps asldfsadl but usually just to enhance the colors I already put down? hm. so my logic is "i want one color to be bright and as i color pick more to the opposite side (complimentary) i'd make it less saturated. so, if i pick Cyan Blue as the brightest color, then orange would be closer to grey. Purple/Pink would be a halfway point. More likely leaning towards saturation than grey. I spam overlays and a color layer of solid color sometimes to balance things. I like purple, orange or a mid sky-blue as these colors. But yeah, throwing a graident map and having it as an overlay or just plain normal at 30% is a great way to balance things quickly. I also shade with one color (yellow, orange, on the lighter scale.) and shade with the complimentary color. (blue-ish purple). tho, if you're using artifical lights ofc the light source color would be different. but yeah: shadows first: usually light source is from above but can be different depending on context. use your shadow color and (personally i use the default flat painting oil brush) to shade in and keep it at multiple 30-50% depending on how harsh the shadows need to be. (painted lightly typically) light layers -> glow dodge + duplicate at additve at 10%-30% range. Nothing too overblown. I like to select the shadow layer and then use ctrl-i to inverse the selection and then color the lights. tho, i'll sometimes add a soft paint spray without using that selection. because colors aren't fully cut outs, things mix and bounce around u know

bedroom fire scene

same logic but i actually forgot to add shadows kept the pallet simple. the lights are harsher and the fire is drawn above the lighting layers so they're not affected.

i believe i had a general multiply layer of a orange-red gradient and then used a gradient map with harsh contrasting colors to make the darker colors more "green." as for the actual colors, i kept the pallet extra simple!

Literally just used 6 colors on repeat (maybe some lighter tones here and there) it kept the coloring process waaay more simple and keeps the whole pallet monochrome and pretty~

[mystic-blue]

// ayo it's been a minute but uhhh follow up to this piece i did because i wanted to and also i'm still always thinking about starchild casey <3 as always this au belongs to @ashwii i am merely writing bc i'm obsessed with the au!

"Careful, Raph," Donnie's voice filtered through the darkness that weighed Leo's eyes closed and muffled everything around him. "I think he's a little numb right now, he might not feel it if you burn him."

"But he's so cold," Raph's voice rumbled against Leo's cheek where he was curled up against Raph's chest.

A hand touched Leo's arm, the weight barely there against the detached awareness Leo currently possessed. He wasn't sure if the hand was testing the temperature of his skin or trying to wake him, but he couldn't seem to summon the energy to care. Everything felt syrupy slow, and his body was far too heavy for the task of lifting his head.

Leo was used to pain. He grit his teeth through it every time a star died, and breathed in tune with the sting of new stars blazing to life. Pain was constant, ever-present, and (unfortunately) reliable.

But this? The numbing detachment, the rattling chill, the press of constant fatigue, and hollow absence of a connection lost? Somehow the emptiness hurt more than the pain.

Leo was prone to wandering the cosmos, but ever since the attack, he hadn't left his brothers - both for lack of want and lack of energy. Raph kept him close because Leo thought maybe the heat would find a way through the paralyzing chill, but it had yet to do so. Still, Leo kept trying. There was nothing else he could do. This had never happened before, and he didn't know where to even begin in terms of bringing his stars back.

Part of him knew they were still out there, but his connection to them was gone. They didn't decorate his arms and legs anymore, not since the Kraang. Worse yet, there was no sign of them returning any time soon, either. He finally forced himself to uncurl from Raph's hold and blink blearily up at his brothers.

"It's been days," Leo murmured, drawing their attention. Donnie moved closer and placed a hand on Leo's starless knee as Raph gave him a careful squeeze of a hug. Leo flipped his palms up and stared down at where his hands trembled in his lap. They looked so lifeless, so dull and starless. The inky gradient still spilled up Leo's forearms, but the endless map of glittering stars remained mostly absent. Leo had hoped they would start flickering to life relatively quickly on their own, given the average rate of creation, but nothing changed.

Without his connection, he couldn't even tell if stars were being created or dying anymore - just that ever present numbness that permeated his limbs like static. He never thought he would miss the pain.

"What should I do?" Leo choked out, looking up at Donnie and Raph again. They both looked to be fighting back emotion, knowing well enough that Leo didn't want their pity. He wanted answers - something none of them had.

Leo wanted to scream, the sound aching and straining for freedom at the back of his throat.

"Master Leo?" A tiny voice piped up, shaky with fright. Distracted from his misery, Leo looked up on instinct and found Mikey nearby with little Casey in his arms. Casey's eyes were bright pools of nebulous starlight, wide with concern for their primary caretaker. "Are you okay?"

"Hey Case," Leo managed, voice strained and smile forced. He held out his numb arms with clumsy coordination and nodded at Mikey. He passed Casey over to Leo carefully, and Leo clung to his little starchild, curling around Casey protectively. Raph pulled Leo closer, creating a cosmic matryoshka doll of vigilant embraces.

"Are you okay?" Casey repeated, placing gentle, tiny hands against Leo's jaw. "You aren't sparkling."

Leo swallowed a sob and choked it up as a laugh instead. He gave Casey what he hoped translated as a light squeeze of a hug and nodded jerkily.

"I'm not feeling too great, bud," Leo confessed, because he knew better than to lie to Casey. His little starchild was far too perceptive for their age. "But I'll be okay soon, promise."

Casey frowned up at him before looking down at their sparkling fingertips. Their skin was a swirling collection of cosmic dust interspersed with the flickering, fitful bursts of new stars. The more developed a star was against their skin, the closer the light moved to their fingertips or settled on the bridge of their nose. Eventually, the light would disperse and make way for yet more starlight, but Leo loved seeing the freckled patterns traipsing across his starchild's skin like a dance.

"I can share until you feel better!" Casey cried out abruptly, startling Leo and his brothers. Leo looked down at Casey with confusion as they wiggled around in Leo's hold.

"What--?" Leo started to ask as Casey wrapped their tiny hands around Leo's forearm. Their brow furrowed, tongue poking out from Casey's lips as they concentrated on pressing their palms against Leo's arm.

The return of sensation to Leo's limbs was a sudden, unpleasant rush of prickling heat. He gasped and fought the instinct to yank his arm away from Casey, not wanting to hurt them. His brothers moved forward but stopped just as quickly, their eyes wide and fixed on Casey.

Where their hands were wrapped around Leo's arm, starlight spilled from Casey's fingertips and melted into Leo's inky skin in a puddle of silver. From the mass of light, pinpricks broke free and rushed off to various positions, rebuilding constellations that Leo had lost to the Kraang.

With Casey's shared starlight, came the familiar call of the universe. Leo could feel his stars calling out to him, joyful and worried and clinging to his presence. They had never lost connection with him before, and now that they could reach him again, they wouldn't let him go so easily. Leo reveled in their presence, choked by relief and joy and a thousand emotions he couldn't begin to put a name to.

Sweeping Casey up into a tight embrace, Leo tumbled out of Raph's arms to spin Casey in circles and laughed as starlight tears dripped down his cheeks. Casey squealed with joy and wrapped stubby arms around Leo's neck as they spun.

With the return of his connection came the ever present pain, but Leo embraced it with a joy he did not know he possessed. He would take feeling anything over the emptiness.

Nuzzling his face into Casey's faintly starlit hair, Leo huffed a watery laugh and squeezed his starchild a little tighter.

"Thank you, Casey," Leo said through tears. His brothers pressed in around them, hugging and speaking over each other in wondrous excitement.

Casey grinned a sweet, gap-toothed smile up at Leo and squeezed him back. "You're welcome!"

Leo's limbs burned as stars were born and died while his brothers hugged him. In that moment, it didn't even hurt.

[thrown-away-opinions]

Artists when artists are copying & distributing art from companies for their own use and profit without paying them: 'Lol, theft removes the original, this doesn't. Copying art is not a crime! yo-ho yo-ho!' Artists when companies are copying & distribuying art from artists for their own use and profit: 'What! Collage is a crime! You wouldn't download a car!' Good to see that the God of Irony still has a job!

I was going to write something about this subject too, but I got hung up on that gofundme thing.

Up front, I think there is some legitimate complaints about artists not wanting their shit scraped and fed into an algorithm. That's not an unreasonable demand. Datamining is out of control on the internet. There needs to be way less of it.

But also... All this bitching and moaning about ethics and morality is hollow as fuck. The piracy thing right up front. How many scanlated manga or fan-subbed shows you think the average seething artist has read/watched? How many movies did they pirate? How many ads have they blocked? How many streaming service passwords shared? How many second-hand things have they purchased? How many college textbooks downloaded? How many programs have they cracked and used for years without ever paying a sub fee? How many little things have they shoplifted? How many immoral and unethical things they've done without ever making up for it?

Short version is blatant "rules for thee, but not for me!!" bullshit. It is an ethical nightmare that some programmers have in some way appropriated raw data from something made by someone else because they, the artists, deserve payment and royalties for their art being viewed in any way they don't approve of, even if it's just some ephemeral fragment of something they made once, did not license, did not copyright, did not commercialize in any way.

Every other artist and employee who worked on and produces all the shows and products and services doesn't deserve payment because... uhh.. because late stage capitalism or whatever!!

It's a double standard that doesn't hold up to a moment of scrutiny. Some of this hysterical bullshit would even be forgivable if it were just about not being happy about having their work used in a way they don't approve of. Instead, they had to go with this moronic, exaggerated ethics angle, they had to pool their money to try and get the US Government involved. All this constant wailing and gnashing about losing jobs and work when nothing has actually changed and no one is making 6 figures yearly on an AI Art patreon. No one is losing commissions to some now world famous prompt expert who charges even more money.

We've long accepted piracy as an unavoidable aspect of the digital age, but suddenly that's not okay because it might (but not actually) impact some freelancer/indie artist's ability to get work that they either aren't losing because of AI (remember that the global economy is falling apart), or they might lose jobs that they don't have, they aren't trained for and/or aren't pursuing anyways.

But you know what else is kinda fucked about all of it? Most of these artists wouldn't be where they are today without technology and software advancements. Do you have any idea how many artists would be fucking hopeless without all the custom photoshop and CSP brushes they downloaded for free (and never credited the creator)? Do you know how fucked these people would be without all the built in color correction settings and filters and gradient maps? They can't even imagine drawing in procreate without all the built-in tools for correcting their sloppy-ass linework. There's SO MANY successful and highly paid webtoon comics out there that wouldn't be where they are today without the CSP asset store allowing them to drop in 3d background assets and pre-set pose and hand guides.

These whiny fucks are up to their eyeballs in technology that props up their entire profession/hobby, but they are screaming at the top of their lungs because someone downloaded a booru or scraped pinterest to feed into an AI Training algorithm.

tl;dr - They're a bunch of immoral hypocrites who badly want to dress up their impotent outrage as some kind of meaningful, ethical catastrophe.

[elis-corner]

Hi El!! Beef is literally my favorite hermit so I rushed to your asks lol-

Anyway! Would you consider writing something where Reader finds Beef working too hard on his maps? Maybe he’s been skipping sleep to keep building/generally just not taking care of himself, and then Reader forces him to take a break?

No worries if not, love your writing by the way! :-D

I'm glad to have gotten a request from you! This was loads of fun, and I love your writing too <3

For the next week, I am writing for who I believe are underappreciated Hermits, a task provided to me by @boop-ity! Writing for new people was loads of fun, Beef especially! Beef is a highly entertaining, charismatic hermit with his own unique charm, and is working currently on a Pokemon style card game. Check him out! On the topic of this specific fic, if someone reading this is not aware, Beef’s parents are from Portugal, and growing up he spoke Portuguese. There is more info about this roughly 39 minutes into Episode 48 of the Mindcrack Podcast. Around 40:40 he says something in Portuguese to Millbee, and the response it has gotten from people including myself resulted in me using it in this fic. To anyone who knows the language, I apologise if I got something wrong, I was going off what the comments said.

Underappreciated Hermits #1 - VintageBeef

The wind fought against you, trying to flip you backwards as you flew down the nether tunnel. For somewhere with no real sky, the breeze always surprised you, and heat from the nether was sometimes hard to glide through. Landing by the isolated portal your frequent journeying leads you to, you step into the swirling mist of purple. A burning feeling like a cold flame enveloped you. As you close your eyes and breathe deeply, the image of the portal is imprinted in the back of your head. The image warps, taking the form of a person smiling at you, mouth moving speedily and hands gesturing wildly, and yet you could hear nothing. It was but a memory, a moment from the past eternalised within your mind.

Your eyes fly open as you hear a voice slowly grow louder. You hop out of the portal and creep towards it. You spy a tall figure placing an assortment of blocks, all with similar colours and yet a variety of textures; sandstone and sand, terracotta, and more. The sky surrounding the two of you is a gradient of a warm orange to a cold midnight blue as the sun began to set. You’d been in the tunnels that long? He was much too far from spawn. Much too far from you. 

‘Talking to yourself now, are you? Have you really been here that long?’

Beef spun around, jumping slightly at your voice being so close behind. ‘Y/n! I wasn’t expecting you today! Now what brings you here?’ He wiped some sweat from his forehead with his left hand as he bent down to place the shulker he held on the ground.

You gently take his now empty hand in yours. ‘I’m here because a certain someone has been out here for weeks without even coming back to spawn, not even to check their highly successful shop’s profits. You didn’t even visit me,’ you added softly.

‘Ah, shoot,’ he exclaimed, quickly stepping forward. His arms enveloped you in their warmth. The hug was tight, as they always were; you were pressed up against his chest so closely you could barely turn your head from its awkward sideways rotation. ‘I’m so sorry, love. I was so distracted with my maps, and I just really wanted to get a few more completed first. At least before you came over, that is. Uh- fly up with me, how about, and get a better look.’

Beef stepped back from you and lit a rocket, jumping up for a mere moment before he was propelled up into the deep sky. You followed moments after, continuing to glide upwards. Your lover’s hand brushes against yours. He calls to you softly to look down and you do.

The large platform you had been standing on loomed below you, and yet not as an assortment of random materials. It took the form of an artwork, a masterpiece, each block placed meticulously to get exact shades and shapes. The person on the card was stunningly portrayed, more gorgeous than you’d assume them to be in reality. The person on the card was you.

Beef looked at you nervously, fiddling with his suspenders as he hung midair. ‘It’s not done quite yet, but–.’

You spun around to look at him, beaming. ‘It’s wonderful, really. Although I must say I reckon you’ve exaggerated a few things. I can’t be even close to that good looking.’

‘You’re more than that in my eyes. Your eyes are stunning, your skin is flawless. I could never create something that even comes close to looking that wondrous.’

You smile softly at him. ‘You’re biassed–.’

You’re cut off by an ear-splitting shriek speeding towards you. Phantoms. You draw your bow, assisting Beef in felling them from the sky, one by one. The ghostly creatures–how else could you describe them?–were menacing, and you were glad they could be prevented. And you were preventing them by sleeping. At least, you should have been. They couldn’t have been yours.

You and Beef landed softly on the platform he used to create his cards. He grabbed your hand and ran, ran, ran, leading you to the nether portal. His arms circled your waist as you both waited to escape the impending doom caused by his mistake.

‘You haven’t slept?’ you questioned him. Your voice broke the awkward silence that had slowly begun. ‘You should have been looking after yourself, Beef! Have you even been taking breaks from that thing?’

‘Yeah, of course. I’ve just been forgetting to sleep the last few day is all!’

You grabbed his wrist and tugged him gently in the direction of the main portion of the hub. ‘Come home with me and get some rest. Please, love.’ Beef’s arm relaxed and he nodded, letting you guide him through all thirty segments of the yellow tunnel and back to spawn. Back to where you had all started. Back to home.

You both ran through the night to avoid a second disaster, leading Beef to your starter home. ‘I haven’t been here in a while,’ he stated, walking around slowly with his head tilted slightly above eye level. ‘You’ve done quite a bit!’

‘And I’m about to start my megabase.’ You gesture towards the plans hanging loosely from the wall outside your bedroom. ‘You really haven’t been here for quite some time.’ You grab some clothes from your wardrobe–either they just so happened to be his size or he had forgotten them here, who knew?–, and tossing them to him you went to go change in a different room.

Upon your return, Beef was lying in your bed on his side, facing you. He extended his arm–as if you needed to be invited into your own bed–and slowly lowered it again once you were next to him, so that he’d be able to keep you close while the night flew away. The grin that had been conjured onto his face by your arrival showed a small sliver of white. As you looked up at him, his smile closed and he bit his lower lip for a moment, before whispering into your ear. His voice was deep and slow, sending chills up your spine and your cheeks to burn.

‘Y/n,’ he whispered, his large hand resting above you moving to rub slow circles onto your cheek, ‘A tua cara é tão linda, eu quero te beijar.’ His hand rotated to tip your chin upwards. He kissed you gently, head tilted slightly to the side. His rough beard scratched against your chin, but every other sensation you were experiencing made it barely there, nor any form of inconvenience. ‘Goodnight, my love.’

You closed your eyes, and let sleep take you, held tightly in the arms of the man who loved you more than life itself.

[primaverabutitalreadyexists]

Prima you're so talented! The way you do lighting, coloring, shading and even how you draw that helps guide the viewer's eye onto a focus point is just beautiful.

Is there any tips/tricks/advices you could so graciously bestow onto others who are struggling?

If there was advice you could give your past self about drawing, what would it be and why?

Thank you in advance Prima, and as always, keep up the amazing work! :)

~With love <3

Thank you for the ask, and thank you for the compliment, you’re very sweet!

Im not the holder of the universal truth, so what I’m about to say is to take with a grain of salt, but here’s what’s working well with me and what I learnt:

I know this has become a joke among the art community, but I flip my canvas a lot lol. The eye tends to get used to the image it sees, so it’s getting harder to spot mistakes as you keep working on your piece.

Learning values!! From the moment I started working in grayscale, it made me realize how important it is to understand how values works, and how they will define your entire piece. Values are directly linked to the light, which is the most important part of a painting, it’s what will give your artwork « life » and its dynamic. Lighting is my first priority when I start something, I always choose a light source first and then I start the process. Learning how light works allows you to understand how it will affect and interact with its environment, how it reflects on some objects, and it helps a lot to construct an homogeneous piece. There are different types of lighting, with variable degree of intensity, and they will set the mood you chose for your piece.

When I start a sketch, I work with shapes first, I make a very messy line work and exaggerate curves instead of trying to make a perfect lineart first. The goal is to « catch » the dynamic of the pose, and to emphasis where the eye is supposed to focus on. It helps to get the proportions right as well.

Now tools speaking, I use Procreate, and I rely a lot on the liquify tool, to make minor changes on my shapes, the lasso tool is very useful to create sharp/smooth edges and for a lot of things actually, to work on some areas without touching their surroundings, the smudge tool, Gradient maps/color balance/curve/Hue settings are pretty uselful throughout all the process, I have no real advice for that, just tinker with it and see what fits you the most. And for the layer modes I use Multiply/Overlay mainly for the shades or to add colors to my grayscale thumbnail, and color dodge/screen/add for the ambiant light, vfx and rim light.

To my past self, I would tell to learn the theory alongside the practice. It’s a lot easier to understand how things work. To try everything, even if it might fail, even if it might take time to learn it. I think that’s the only real advice I can give, try again and again, do not feel discouraged by failure and if things become too overwhelming and if you start feeling you might never succeed in the task, just take a break, do something you know you’re good at, it will boost your self confidence and you will go back to the previous task with renewed confidence, and more willing to keep trying. Learning is a long process, we learn things throughout our entire life, so be patient, you have your whole existence to succeed. Do things at your own pace and even though it’s a completely human thing to do, try to not compare yourself with the others. They also had their hardships, and they also worked hard. Do not be afraid to get inspiration from them tho, we are all influenced by something or someone, so if you want to recreate something you saw, for your own learning process, there’s nothing wrong with it.

I hope this helped, I’m sorry if some things didn’t really make sense, I suck at explaining and at synthesizing. Have a wonderful day! ❤️

[madam-melon-meow]

Bisexual Kyoshi is something that can be so personal, actually

Panel edit by @flagellasturbation

[image I.D. : An edit of a comic panel of avatar Kyoshi. On the left in the image is a close-up of Kyoshi from the torso up, contained within an upside-down trapezoid shape. She wears her full battle uniform of olive and emerald robes, dark gloves and bracers, and a golden headpiece in a fan-like shape. Her eyes are the same emerald shade as her robes, she has black hair billowing to the left edge of the image, and her black eyebrows have been dramatically lengthened by black face paint. Her face and neck are artificially whitened with chalky makeup, she has black winged eyeliner, red eyeshadow that sweeps upwards to her temples and down the sides of her nose, and red lipstick outlined in black. This is the classic Kyoshi makeup. Her arms are crossed, the left arm behind her head pointing a golden fan away from the viewer, the right arm extended in front of her face, another golden fan pointed towards the viewer. She appears to be looking upwards and towards the right of the image. Above Kyoshi’s eye level and in the top right of the image is a comic text box. It reads in all caps: “even avatar Kyoshi- who by all accounts loved men and women- was unable to effect any kind of real progress.” The background art and color has been replaced with the Bisexual Flag, a thick horizontal line of pink on top, stopping at Kyoshi’s cheek level, then a thinner line of purple ending at her shoulders, and a thick line of blue that extends to the bottom of the image. End I.D.]

(If someone does not find my image I.D. sufficient, please let me know. This is my first time trying to make such a thing, as i am a lurker, not a poster)

Rise of Kyoshi by F.C. Yee, page 99 (text copy / pasted from the b&n ebook version)

““Are those . . . fire lilies?” he said, a wide, knowing grin spreading across his face.

Kyoshi flushed beet red. “Stop it,” she said.

“That’s right,” Yun said. “The Ember Island tourism minister brought a bunch when he visited two weeks ago. I can’t believe you simply shred the flowers once they dry out. I guess nothing goes to waste in this house.”

“Knock it off,” Kyoshi snapped. But it was too hard keeping the corners of her lips from curling upward.

“Knock what off?” he said, enjoying her reaction. “I’m just commenting on a fragrance I’ve come to particularly enjoy.”

It was an inside reference that only the two of them shared. Rangi didn’t know. She hadn’t been there in the gifting room eight months ago while Kyoshi arranged a vast quantity of fire lilies sent by an admiral in the Fire Navy, one of Hei-Ran’s friends.

Yun had spent the afternoon watching Kyoshi work. Against every scrap of her better judgment, she’d allowed him to lie down on the floor and rest his head in her lap while she plucked deformed leaves and trimmed stems to the right length. Had anyone caught the two of them like that, there would have been a scandal that not even the Avatar could have recovered from.

That day, entranced by Yun’s upside-down features dappled with the flower petals she’d teasingly sprinkled over his face, she’d almost leaned down and kissed him. And he knew it. Because he’d almost reached up and kissed her.

They never spoke of it afterward, the shared impulse that had nearly crashed both of their carriages. It was too . . . well, they each had their duties was a good way to put it. That moment did not fit anywhere among their responsibilities.

But since then, whenever the two of them were in the presence of fire lilies, Yun’s eyes would dart toward the flowers repeatedly until he was sure Kyoshi noticed. She would try unsuccessfully to keep a straight face, the heat coloring her neck, and he’d sigh as if to mourn what could have been.

Today was no different. With a wistful blush on his own cheeks, Yun stared her down until her defenses broke and she let out a giggle through her nose.

“There’s that beautiful smile,” he said. He pressed his heels into the floor, sliding up against the wall, and straightened his rumpled shirt. “Kyoshi, trust me when I say this: If it turns out not to be me, I’ll be glad it’s you.”

~~~~~~~~~

Rise of Kyoshi by F.C. Yee, page 210 (text copy / pasted from the b&n ebook version)

“You think you don’t deserve peace and happiness and good things, but you do!” Rangi yelled. “You, Kyoshi! Not the Avatar, but you!”

She closed the distance and wrapped her arms around Kyoshi’s waist. The embrace was a clever way to hide her face.

“Do you have any idea how painful it’s been for me to follow you on this journey where you’re so determined to punish yourself?” she said. “Watching you treat yourself like an empty vessel for revenge, when I’ve known you since you were a servant girl who couldn’t bend a pebble? The Avatar can be reborn. But you can’t, Kyoshi. I don’t want to give you up to the next generation. I couldn’t bear to lose you.”

Kyoshi realized she’d had it all wrong. Rangi was a true believer. But her greatest faith had been for her friends, not her assignment. She pulled Rangi in closer. She thought she heard a slight, contented sigh come from the other girl.

“I wish I could give you your due,” Rangi muttered after some time had passed. “The wisest teachers. Armies to defend you. A palace to live in.”

Kyoshi raised an eyebrow. “The Avatar gets a palace?”

“No, but you deserve one.”

“I don’t need it,” Kyoshi said. She smiled into Rangi’s hair, the soft strands caressing her lips. “And I don’t need an army. I have you.”

Psh,” Rangi scoffed. “A lot of good I’ve been so far. If I were better at my job you would never feel scared. Only loved. Adored by all.”

Kyoshi gently nudged Rangi’s chin upward. She could no more prevent herself from doing this than she could keep from breathing, living, fearing.

“I do feel loved,” she declared.

Rangi’s beautiful face shone in reflection. Kyoshi leaned in and kissed her.

A warm glow mapped Kyoshi’s veins. Eternity distilled in a single brush of skin. She thought she would never be more alive than now.

And then—

The shock of hands pushing her away. Kyoshi snapped out of her trance, aghast.

Rangi had flinched at the contact. Repelled her. Viscerally, reflexively.

Oh no. Oh no.

This couldn’t—not after everything they’d been through—this couldn’t be how it—

Kyoshi shut her eyes until they hurt. She wanted to shrink until she vanished within the cracks of the earth. She wanted to become dust and blow away in the wind.

But the sound of laughter pulled her back. Rangi was coughing, drowning herself with her own tears and mirth. She caught her breath and retook Kyoshi by the hips, turning to the side, offering up the smooth, unblemished skin of her throat.

“That side of my face is busted up, stupid,” she whispered in the darkness. “Kiss me where I’m not hurt.”

~~~~~

I include both these quotes because i've seen a few posts about the “gigantic lesbian” avatar, and although i am glad my sapphic sisters feel connected to Kyoshi (as well they should!), that doesn't mean i wish to simply be quiet on the matter of her textual bisexuality. I understand that not everyone has read her novels, nor has everyone read legend of Korra comics, but Kyoshi is *textually* bisexual.

Kyoshi had a loving romantic relationship with her firebending friend Rangi, but this does not erase her feelings for her earthbending friend Yun, even if neither of them were able to properly express it due to their respective “status”. (For context if you haven’t read, the masters believed that Yun was the avatar, and though he was bodyguarded by Rangi, and though Kyoshi was his servent, the three of them were simiar ages and thus close friends until the discovery of Kyoshi’s true ability destroyed their former lives). Hell, Kyoshi and Rangi do not become intimate until after fleeing their former lives. Who is to say what would have happened, had Yun not been captured by father glowworm ?

I know that there is a chance you will scoff at this, will write this off as comphet, accuse me of disproportionately weighting an almost-kiss with a true relationship, but these above quotes (as well as the comic panel from “the legend of korra: turf wars- part 1”) serve as proof that Kyoshi, “by all accounts loved men and women” (see panel directly below)

[image I.D. : the same comic panel as the edit above, this one without the bisexual flag edited in. Directly behind Kyoshi, within the upside-down trapezoid shape, is an olive to lime gradient, darker around her head and lighter near the bottom. Around and to the right in the image, outside of the trapezoid, is an aerial shot of buildings within an Earth Kingdom city, and what appears to be the lines of troops on the ground far below. the text box in the image is the same, but I have underlined the word “men” in blue, the word “and” in purple, and the word “women” in pink, to reflect the bisexual flag. End I.D.]

I am making such a big deal over this because Kyoshi is a massive figure, her long shadow cast over Aang’s life alongside Roku’s, and even before her novels came out there were often jokes about her “bloodthirsty” nature. I implore you to read the novels and see why Kyoshi believed in deadly justice at times, but also so you can see what a dynamic, loving, and beautiful character she is.

Some members of fandom have taken a “step on me” attitude towards Kyoshi, who has, even if the 7 feet tall thing is more fanon than canon, been explicitly described as “exceptionally tall”, and “towering” over others. This “strong woman who will break me and I thank them” attitude is one that butch &/or physically imposing sapphics, as well as trans women with similar statures to Kyoshi have expressed discomfort when applied to themselves and characters like them. I would love for more people to acknowledge her flaws and multi-faceted nature, that she is more than a “warrior goddess”, just as Aang is more than a living relic. Flattening her out to the easily-fetishable parts erases the depth of her character and the complexity of circumstances that led to the instances of deadly force.

There are very few bisexual characters in media, especially women, and especially in children’s media. Bisexual women have often been caricatured as loose, promiscuous, good for a threesome and not much else. (This is mot to say that i think any lesser of my fellow bisexuals who are proudly promiscious, nor can an actual live bisexual person be considered a stereotype for living their life, but media’s portayal of us as obsessed with desire is incredibly harmful). Knowing that a strong, beautiful, and important character in the avatar universe is a bisexual woman is amazing, even more so to have her first lady-love described in the novels with such care. F. C. Yee, the author of these novels, has my eternal gratitude. I sincerely hope that the new generation of fans, whether they are drawn to the cartoon or even the hypothetical live action show, will pick up these novels and discover the kind of bisexual character that I wish existed in my early days as a reader, and if a small fraction of them resonate with Kyoshi’s reciprocal on Yun and love for Rangi, then the world becomes a little bit brighter for it.

I mentioned her importance for the simple reason that Kyoshi IS important with the text of ATLA. As one of the avatars, she is one of the most historically important figures in that universe, one of the few avatars that Aang knows by name, and one of the only avatars to speak through his body. The fact that she has two whole novels to herself testifies to that effect, making her bisexual representation all the more important than a simple background character might be. 

If or when the ATLA live action tv show occurs, we can expect some mention of Kyoshi. After all, there is a whole episode dedicated to exploring one of her missions, and the way that the descendants of her enemy have recolored history. It is my sincere desire that enough discussion is made about her canon bisexuality , that fandom trumphets it from the roof with as much force as crackshipping zukka, that when she does make it to the screen, there is some subtle nod in her bisexuality’s direction, even if it is something as meta as casting a bisexual actress for her. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

edit by @flagellasturbation​

[image I.D. : An edit of a comic panel of avatar Kyoshi. This is like the first image, Kyoshi and the text box of the comic panel untouched, the background color and art replaced with the bisexual flag. However, this version has the words “by all accounts” blown up large and placed diagonally in the image, directly under Kyoshi’s face and stretching from one side of the image to the other. The bottom third of the image is similarly obscured, the words  “men” , “and” , “women” blown up large enough to fill the panel and cover most of Kyoshi’s torso, as well as the purple and blue areas of the background flag. End I.D.]

[takoyakitenchou]

past sunrise

@j3nnt those drawings deserve the whole damn world so i attempted to do justice for your incredible art (and ryoali lol)

“good morning,” they said simultaneously while gazing into the other’s eyes.

It was thanks to being married to a man who’d lived a lifetime of pre-dawn trips to the fish market that Nakiri Alice could roll straight out of bed in the mornings looking fit for the Met gala, but she only chose to exercise this talent on rare occasions.

Despite her fervent claims that she could sleep past noon on any given day—something to do with beauty rest—Alice’s biorhythm had been finetuned such that she was always up by four thirty, five at the latest. Ryo would do his best to be quiet when he got up to head out to Toyosu, but she’d be watching his wide back as he pulled on his clothes and grabbed his ice chest.

He would always stand looking over his shoulder for a long moment, one hand on the doorknob, and give an apologetic grin as her vermilion eyes opened to meet his in the darkness. Ryo had never once left the condo without glancing back at her figure sprawled across 80% of the bed. It had become something of a tradition between them; then he’d leave and she’d debate cooking breakfast for another hour or so before she finally mustered the will to get out of bed.

But all machines, however well-calibrated, have hiccups.

It was a warm August morning and the sun was high in the sky by the time Alice woke. She was roused more by the blinding rays filtering through the curtains than anything else, and to her surprise, Ryo was still sleeping like the dead, his neck at an awkward angle with the right side of his face pressed into his pillow. Alice stifled a laugh at how uncomfortable he looked, and then took the opportunity to memorize every bit of him — as she’d done countless times. 

To think that they’d met by chance; god, it was horrifying to even think about. But that just went to show how fleeting life was. Alice had no idea if and when he’d flit back out of her life, just as easily as he’d entered with all the pomp and circumstance his bandana could muster, so she supposed all she could do was make the most out of every second she had with him.

She refrained from prodding him awake and instead lay watching him and the meticulous rigidity of his features. His jawline could cut diamonds. Each angular contour was carved like delicate roses into his figure, each shadow an elegant dance routine mapped on his skin. Everything clashing in crude chaos; goddamn did she love this guy.

It was impossible to express, how much she loved the man beside her. There was something in his eyes, those rubies scintillating with telltale signs of all his reserved emotions, that had long since rendered her completely head over heels in love. To be honest, even love was too light of a word to describe the flaming intensity of her feelings for Kurokiba Ryo.

Better left unsaid — nothing would do it justice.

Maybe sensing said passion, Ryo yawned and blinked his eyes open. His smile was soft, all the sharp angles fading into hazy gradients. 

“Good morning,” they said simultaneously while gazing into the other’s eyes.

Ryo grinned and tucked a lock of Alice’s hair behind her ear. “Guess we’re not eating fish today, huh?”

“Obviously not,” she replied.

He must’ve taken that as license to stay in bed for the rest of the day, because he pulled her to his chest and pressed his nose to her forehead. “What would happen if we didn’t go to work?”

Distracted by his musky aroma, some unique blend of his cologne and all of Alice’s beauty products (“Ryo, could you spray perfume on the back of my neck, please? Don’t forget to turn the nozzle in the right dir—or not. You should probably go rinse your mouth. And while you’re at it, bring me my hand lotion, please. Thank you!”), Alice hummed, “Better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

Ryo chuckled. “There might be something to watch on Netflix,” he suggested. “One of your rom-com shows updated yesterday.”

“Sounds good,” Alice agreed. Both of them knew she’d be fast asleep with her head against his chest before they got halfway through the recap of the last episode, but that was the whole point.