#help under the cut is LONG.

[pastelwhile-art]

it'd absolutely make my day too some makokuu from you (i loved that illustration of them im insane about them)

what about some domestic makokuu 👀 them spending time together at home :3 no pressure ofc

Help I know I asked for saiki k requests TWO months ago and I had a really fun idea for an illustration, but my brain is a smooth cube. so that idea stays up in the air.

For now take a really quick silly crack doodle about one of the many possibilities I think Kusuke/Makoto telling Saiki/Teruhashi would go. Spoiler alert: it’s hilariously horrible.

(Saiki thinks they’re messing with them and Teruhashi is seething. Are they pranking them? Who knows.)

And ya know what? Beneath the cut take my redesigns of these guys and my notes for them because I made several months ago ‘cause I haven’t touched them since :(

Warning: I talk a lot.

A quick note! These designs aren’t meant to say ‘fix’ the original-they’re just for fun! Even if I think elements of mine look better, clearly the original works and are well loved. Also I’m not especially fond of these anyways JAJSJANW

Saiki doesn’t change much other than his palette is a more balanced. Also I really like designing hair, and wanted the idea that Saiki really tries to sleek it down to something very generic and unassuming, but the hairpins get stuck in the way and his hair sorta moves outwards from there. Continuing the idea that his powers make him subtly less normal. It also accidentally made him look A LOT more like his parents, oops.

Also I drew a comparison from his canon hair to his redesign, because I didn’t think it was particularly clear until side by side.

Also I actually gave this one a proper illustration lol.

Teruhashi’s design was actually partly inspired by @lu-kario’s human mlp designs because they’re really good :^ She’s also pretty standard except her hair and color (which I’m not too satisfied with.)

I like the idea of the Teruhashi Siblings being a bit supernatural, so along with weird shine effects, they also get constant wind effects! Like in all the anime where they have flowing hair at just the right times even though it wasn’t windy at all before? Yeah! Except that’s more Makoto’s thing while the shine stays Kokomi’s.

Also what ethnicity are these characters now? To me they’re still Japanese, but I think people don’t ever use a range of skin tones for the same ethnicity. But really these are just fun designs I didn’t really think too hard.

Kusuke! He was the first one I did and an absolute PAIN. He was also the reason I did this, because as much as I love Saiki K and respect the author, I just got to know what is going on with his debut clothes.

Well not like I did that much better… Kusuke is stuck with four alt palettes because I can’t decide which shade of weird yellow and purple to make his head and gown (I’ve resolved to draw his hair a different shade of yellow in every drawing.) His eyes also match Saiki with purple eyes, because I think they look better lmao.

Also, that’s his Cambridge gown he’s wearing. And fun fact-they have a great amount of rules on what color does gowns get an accent of based off what subject people are taking! I decided to not think too hard on that and just gave him a better looking gown.

And I really like the hair I gave him, the original to me just lacks a bit of anime shape style. Also his headgear is shaped like a graduation hat now lol.

He also has a silly little doodle for what he’d look like with his lab coat. It’s not here, but I like to think he always puts a ponytail up!

Last and also least xp, Makoto! He’s uhh about the same with the points I said with Teruhashi. Just very angular now. I swear I tried to design a better fashion for Makoto but I just ended up with the same.

I tried to style his hair how Japanese celebrities would, but I don’t know if I succeeded. His hair as I said is constantly blowing to the left lol. Also he has a hair clip now! In my head Kusuke gives him a telepathy canceller disguised as a hairclip.

Also anyone can draw or get inspired by these designs if you wanted lol Though I don’t really like these, I still use these hairstyle for drawing them cause I think they look cool lol.

[ink-the-artist]

I love your artwork so much! Your colors are so vibrant and none of the white speckles in the paper ever shows, its so impressive and I really dig it! I was wondering if you use any sort of blending medium? Like baby oil or anything? Either way, I really enjoy looking at your artwork and I'm always excited to see whatever you'll make next

I use a colorless blender (prismacolor, which is wax-based so baby oil probably wouldnt work) but my scanner is also rly bad about picking up white specks in a way photographing the art with my phone isnt, so I usually have to do some digital editing to get rid of them as well.

I do this by duplicating the layer, setting the one on top to "darken," and using the mixer brush to blend out the white spots + just use the eyedropper tool to select the color of that area (needs to be a slightly lighter shade of it) and color over the white spots with the brush tool

i edited a small bit of the original scan to show what i mean

original:

with the edited layer:

heres how it looks set to normal instead of darken, I used both the mixing brush and regular brush just to demo it

[gallusrostromegalus]

ok so re: sternritter i gotta ask, whats the plan for my girl gigi? she's a horrible awful gremlin baby but i cannot help but love her immortal tgirl swag.

also, are there any sternritter who got incredibly underused in the story that you've significantly rewritten so far?

As it stands, Gigi gets to live, but she is going to have to sit through a VERY unpleasant lecture about how yes, Gender is Fake, Political Organizations are Fake, and to an extent the 'Line' between living and dead is fake but Bodily Autonomy and Informed Consent are VERY, VERY REAL and you will *fucking* respect them because the Gotei-13 is the home of monsters.

For better or for worse, the person she's getting the lecture from is Tama Nikuya

---

Tama: Sure, you're a Monster too, Miss Gewelle -that's why I like you so much and am even extending you this offer- but I promise there are much worse things serving in the Guard than were dreamt of in your philosophy. Horrors, artificial and natural alike, well within the comprehension of your intellect regardless of gender, but no less awful. Worse, perhaps, because you understand what's going to happen if you put one drop of blood out of line-

Gigi, twitching: Urrgh!

Tama: Don't gurgle at me in that tone! Tama: You do understand, don't you?

(warning for body horror, parasitism, mind/body control, discussions of violence, transphobia and abuse under the cut) (Bleach is a pretty dark series and the Fic is E-rated accordingly)

Gigi, shaking her head as much as she can: Nglk!

Tama: What part don't you understand?

Gigi: Thzzg-? ThhZomg-!?

Tama, head cocked sideways, squinting as she tries to make sense of what Gigi is saying: 'the zog-'? The Zombie? Oh for fucks sake Gigi, we're well past that.

Gigi: Bugh-? Haaauuuu?

Tama: Alright alright, if it will help. The Zombie relies on some of your blood reaching my brain, or replacing a large portion of my own blood with yours, through which you exert your reiki, and thus control my body, right?

Gigi, Blinking Slowly: ... Gigi: Haugh- Haugh gid you vigure thad oud??

Tama, taking a deep, disappointed sigh: Babygirl, it's not that hard. That's very basic Spiritual Dominion magic. Don't get me wrong, you're very good at it and the sheer number of targets you can control is really impressive but as far as techniques go, it's not terribly complex or hard to counter.

Tama, Gestuting at where Gigi is awkwardly kneeling on the floor, paralyzed: Take the thing you've got- that's an enhanced strain of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis- you've heard of Cordyceps, I'm sure- that I've worked with to function inside humans- REAL pain in the ass by the way, Humans are insanely immune to infection and parasitism compared to most organisms-

Akon, holding an extremely large laser gun, not currently cocked but still at the ready: This is your requested reminder to stay on topic, Sir.

Tama: What? Oh, thanks- but Cordyceps is fun because instead of bothering to control the half-assed mess that is a mammal's neural system, it straight-up structurally takes over the large muscle groups! Just suppress the autoimmune response enough by giving the fungus an antihistamine release function too, and that sucker can crawl into every major support structure you have in under a week!

Akon: Yeah, I'm not sure 'Fun' is the right word here.

Tama: Don't knock it until you've tried it!

Akon, debating becoming the server technician for the 9th again: I'll take your word for it, Sir.

Tama, poking Gigi's arm just below where a long spire of the fungus is sprouting out of her shoulder, one of several growing out of her body and impacting her ability to move, including speaking: I'd say you're about 40% Fungus by weight right now, mostly your skeletal muscles, and those do what I say, which is why you're sitting down and listening while I try to change your mind. Tama, giving Gigi an encouraging thumbs up: -And why you still have a mind for me to change! Tama, giving Gigi a comforting pat on the shoulder next to the fungal spire: I have a lot of faith in your ability to make the right choices when presented with all the information, Miss Gewelle. If I thought I had to change your mind for you, I'd have pulled out the Hypomyces lactifluorum!

Gigi, watching Akon visibly shudder behind Tama: ...uhh. Gigi: Bugh. The Zomgee..?

Tama: Oh, right, The Zombie. Yes, yes- Reiki Domination is pretty tough to resist, especially from someone in your spiritual weight class, but, ah- Well, you've run into two big problems here Gigi.

Tama, sitting down on the floor next to Gigi: First problem is the use of blood as an infection mechanism. Tama, cheerfully, as though giving constructive criticism in an introductory art class: Honestly? Not a bad choice! Blood-bourne infections are some of the hardest to resist, and Forigen Reiki is a PAIN to purge from the bloodstream unless you flush the entire system. Most people, as you have seen, are doomed!

Tama, wincing: ...But I'm not most people. Tama, pondering: ... Come to think of it "People" might be a more correct term for what I am, but my situation is pretty radically different from "most" people!

Gigi, still defiant: Whad- Whaddafug ARE yu?

Tama, gesturing to indicate the situation is about as clear as mud, or morphology-based taxonomy: I- Well. It's long and not really all that funny story, but I got stuck on the wrong side of a a version of the Kodoku Bug Thunderdome curse- you know, the inside- for over eight hundred years with a whole mess of Hollows, Obake, and other nasty things and I went to some pretty extreme measures to survive. Tama, with a sad sigh: To make a long story short- I don't have blood anymore. Or a brain. Tama, frowning in contemplation: ...Or I'm ALL brain, it sort of depends on your definition of 'brain'-

Akon: Topic, Sir.

Tama: Thanks Akon! -But from my perspective, your blood is just another snack with a little bit of Reiki spice on top! Which brings me to your other problem.

Tama: You hit hard Gigi! Real hard! And you really should be proud of the degree of concentration you have! But like I said, the Gotei-13 is the home of monsters, and there wasn't exactly a burger joint or an opportunity to farm inside the Kodoku. ...I survived because I kind of literally ate things like you for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

[There is a long moment of silence as Gigi processes that statement, it's earlier compainion statement about what Gigi's blood was like for Tama, and the general implication of those on Gigi's circumstances]

Gigi: ...Gid I daste gud?

Tama, ears flicking up to listen better: What's that?

Gigi: Uck! Gigi, wide eyed with terror but somehow this situation has not ended in catastrophe yet, and she might be riding the adrenaline as far as it will go: ...Gid I datse good?

Tama: HAH!

Akon, turning around because he can't face this at 7AM without coffee: NO!!

Tama, teasing: Yes, you do taste very good, or at least the aperitif of blood you threw in the thing I use as a face did!

Gigi, giggling a bit in fear like a Hyena: Oh! Dhad'z Good! Gigi, stopping as the rest of the sentence catches up with her: Waid. Gigi: Whad Do you MEANg, 'ting you uze az a fage'? Gigi, with increasing horror: Whag- Whag ARE You?

Tama, giving Gigi a light, encouraging punch in the shoulder: You're a smart girl Gigi! You can figure it out if you put your mind to it! Tama, counting off the datapoints on her paw-pads: I don't have blood, or a brain, I lived underground with nothing but corpses to eat for a few centuries and my go-to restraint method is a parasitic...

Gigi, a horrible new world of possibilities opening to her like the lid coming off a tub of very expired sour cream: ...Mu-Mushgroom?

Tama, giving her two thumbs up: You got it! Tama: "Mushroom" is probably more specific than you intended, but you're not wrong! The part of me standing here lecturing you is more or less the organ I use for sex and sometimes paperwork!

Akon: Speaking of, the division W-2's still need to go out-

Tama: Akon, we're in the middle of an apocalypse. If the council tries to make everyone pay taxes on time this year, the Old Man won't have the chance to burn the government chambers down before the peasants do it for him. Chillax.

Tama, returning her attention to Gigi: It's probably why I'm so cheerful and down to party too! You know. Because I'm a *Fungi*!

Gigi, staring blankly: ...

Tama, wilting a bit: -A. Fun? Guy? A Fungi?

Gigi, starting to cry big, ugly genuine tears: Uh-uh-uuuuuhhhnnn...

Tama, trying to console Gigi with a hug that definitely makes things worse: ...You're right it'd probably be funnier if you didn't have a parasitic fungus rapidly taking over your person and forcing you to sit still and listen to a genuine freak of science tell you about Cannibalism. Tama, giving Gigi a little shake of encouragement: But you see how this makes my point, right? This isn't very fun for you, is it?

Gigi, suddenly locking up like a badly taxidermied fox: ...

Tama, staring blankly: ..? Tama, ears slowly rising as understanding dawns on her face: Oh?

Gigi, face rapidly alternating vivid shades of pink and white as her emotions battle for dominance, before settling on 'Scaroused': -Uh...

Tama, delighted: OH!

Akon, enraged: OH. MY GOD.

Tama, pointing at him and hissing: You are the LAST person who gets to kinkshame anyone young man! Tama, pointing back at Gigi: At least SHE knows how to have fun!

Akon: I'm gonna transfer to the Ninth and never, ever leave the server room again.

Tama: If you think you can withstand the emotional toil of leaving the mass spectrometer in my hands, be my guest.

Akon: :(

Gigi: Uh?

Tama: He's spiritually bonded to a particularly finicky piece of lab equipment that hates me, like how some tween girls become spiritually bonded to giant murderous equines, which also tend to hate me. Don't worry about it. Tama: Back on topic, this does explain a few things. You DO understand that your feelings about this situation are unusual and given that most humans and their spiritually powerful derivatives experience pain and fear from having their autonomy restricted and bodies invaded by parasites, How do you think being made into a Zombie feels for other people?

Gigi: ...Bahd?

Tama, nodding enthusiastically and making her ears flop in agreement: That's right! Bad! Tama, settling down a bit more to explain things carefully to Gigi: See, the thing is- even monsters like us need to get along with other people. Tama: I know a lot, but nowhere near enough to enjoy the benefits of civilization all on my own- I don't know how to fix a toilet, or fill out grant applications or stand in the same room as the mass spectrometer without breaking it, so it's really, really good I've got people Akon over there, who like me, who can, and more importantly are willing to do those things for me!

Gigi, annoyed: Gyou woulgnd AVV to-

Tama: hang on, hang on-

[Tama pokes a few points on Gigi's face and throat, using Reiki to disconnect some of the Cordyceps parasite, then pulls the spire that was developing under Gigi's tongue out. It's much larger than it looked, and makes Gigi's throat wiggle as she removes it.]

Tama: Oh hell, that shouldn't have been there. How were you even talking around that thing girl?

[Tama tosses the fungal spire aside and offers Gigi a water bottle. Gigi takes a few sips before nodding and Tama puts it away.

Tama: Okay, try again-

Gigi: Ugh- You wouldn't HAVE to get along with tall, drak and grumpy back there if he was a zombie!

Tama, disappointed: ... Tama, taking another deep sigh: ...Okay, let's say I zombify Akon-

[Akon cocks and aims the Laer Gun, which whines ominously as it charges]

Tama: WHICH I AM NOT GOING TO DO FOR REASONS I'M ABOUT TO ELABORATE ON, PUT THAT DOWN-

[Akon turns off and lowers the lazer gun, still glaring.]

Tama: Thank you. Tama: I know you're still getting used to how most people have conversations, but that was a normal way to discuss a theoretical scenario and not me about to turn you into a Zombie. Do you understand?

Akon: ...Ues, Sir.

Tama: He used to work for an Evil Clown, don't worry about it- Alright, Let's say I was a micromanaging-type moron, and I decided to zombify Akon instead of just getting along with him. I'd lose all his expertise immediately. No more functioning mass spectrometer or bathrooms.

Gigi, haughty: Mine do.

Tama: Pardon?

Gigi: My zombies keep. most of their skills and personality. At least the ones I make out of corpses. Gigi: Akon could still fix the mass-thingie and if you zombify the Grant Committee you don't even have to ASK for funding.

Tama, intrigued: ...Do they? That's good to know, I'll want to hear more about that later-but that still supports my point.

Tama: Alright, HYPOTHETICALLY I Zombify Akon, and the Grant Committee- well now, the person who's choosing when the mass spectrometer gets fixed and who gets grant money I don't need is ME, and I already have WAY too much work to do, I don't have initiative to spare for them! I got stuff I want to do! I can't micromanage everyone, everywhere all the time! Tama: It's literally easier, more efficient and frankly, way, WAY less stressful to just get along with people and live in a society than to try to DIY one out of corpses.

Gigi: ...I guess.

Tama: So that's my question Gigi. Tama: Are you capable of respecting people's bodily autonomy and personal space to get along with them?

Gigi, frowning and biting her lip: ...

Akon: That doesn't sound like a 'Yes'.

Gigi: It's not though. It's not less stressful to just get along with people. Gigi: That's- That's WHY I learned how to make zombies in the first place. I'd. I'd TRY to get along, dammit! But any time I let people make choices, they chose to get up my ass about my name, or cut off all my hair, or send me off to 'camp', or beat the shit out of me, or- or lock me in the mausoleum and leave me to starve instead of just call me my name or admit they had a daughter- Gigi: ... Gigi: So it was- Gigi: -It was easier with bodies. Gigi: Bodies don't insist you're a boy or call you a freak or take you to a 'private institution' to 'help you get better' where they strap electric paddles to your head and run a million volts through you- Gigi: Dead people are SO MUCH EASIER to get along with! They don't think you're a creep! They don't think at all! Gigi: I mean, why should I-? Why should I try to get along with people who have already made up their minds that they're never, ever gonna get along with me??

Akon: ... Akon: ...I mean, you are kind of a creep-

Tama: -AKON!

Akon: Hang on I'm not done! You are a bit of a creep, but it's not the girl thing, it's the zombie thing!

Gigi: Oh, just because you're scared of a dead body-!

Akon: GIRLIE I'VE BEEN DISSECTING CORPSES SINCE BEFORE I COULD TALK I AIN'T FUCKIN' SCARED AND I AIN'T DISAGREEING WITH YOU- YEAH. IT IS EASIER TO TALK TO A CORPSE THAN A PERSON. I SPENT PRETTY MUCH ALL MY ADOLESCENCE IN THE 12TH DIVISION'S MORGUE BECAUSE TALKIN' TO LIVE PEOPLE SCARED THE FUCK OUTTA ME!!

Gigi: WIMP! YOU HAVE NO IDEA-

Akon: NO, I THINK I FUCKIN' DO! Akon: YOU KNOW WHERE URAHARA HIRED ME OUT OF? Akon: PRISON. Akon: I GOT THROWN IN PRISON WHEN I STILL HAD ALL MY BABY TEETH, *JUST* BECAUSE I WAS SO CURIOUS ABOUT BODIES. JUST BECAUSE I MADE PEOPLE UNCOMFORTABLE! PRISON-PRISON! THE MAGGOT'S NEST, WHERE THEY KEEP WAR CRIMINALS AND WORSE! Akon: YEAH, TALKIN' TO LIVE PEOPLE SCARED THE SHIT OUTTA ME, BECAUSE THE LAST TIME I TALKED TO SOMEONE, I LITERALLY GOT SENT TO HELL!

Gigi: -!

Akon: Captain Nikuya is RIGHT, the Gotei-13 is the home of Monsters- and the twelfth has got some of the most freakish and frightening ones of the whole guard! Akon: But I'll take the self-vivisecting, species-transgressing, only-barely-human Monsters any day of the week over the maggot's nest because we're all shamelessly, gloriously monstrous together, and the ONE damn rule of the monster's ball is to ASK before you fuck around with someone's stuff, especially their body. Akon: Not "Don't mess with someone's body", Not "Don't be weird", Not "try to be normal". It's "Be freaks and monsters, but also friends."

Akon: God help me if Nemuri ever finds out, but that's why Mayuri is still in that flask. Most of us have a pretty good idea how to isolate his consciousness again, but they way he- I'd have killed him the week after he took over if I had any idea how.

Akon: That's the rule Gigi. No violating anyone's right to live as they are. Akon: That's the difference between a monster- someone people are scared of just for being how they are- and the kind of FILTH that needs to be scrubbed off the earth. Akon: Do you understand Gigi? Nobody gives a shit if you're a girl on purpose or whatever- Fuck, I can think of a few colleagues who'd put themselves on a list for you to reanimate them when they die no matter how much of them actually comes back. It's overwritin' people's minds and controlling bodies BY FORCE. Akon, putting down the gun and patting his coat for his cigarettes: If I understood you right, that's more or less what people tried to do to you, isn't it? Tell you how to act, who you were, by whatever means necessary?

Gigi: ...fuck you.

Akon: Fuck me yourself, you coward.

Gigi: ... Gigi: So what am I supposed to do when someone gets up in my face again? Smile and play nice? Roll over so they can kick my guts out?

Tama: Oh, no- If they violate the "Don't mess with other people's autonomy" rule, all bets are off! That's why when you tried to murder me and Akon a few minutes ago, I was right to infect you with a parasitic fungus to protect myself and stop you! Tama: In fact, the sooner and harder you react to that shit, the less people will try to cross that line, so if anyone tries to fuck with you, you absolutely can and should make an example of them!

Akon, holding up his cigarette to ask if it's alright, and wating for Tama's nod: -If anyone tried that shit with me I'd absolutely turn them into a living educational exhibit on why people need to have skin, but genuinely? Nobody in soul society gives a shit what's in your pants unless they're your doc or fuckin' you.

Gigi, rolling her eyes: Sure, sure-

Tama, laughing: No! Really! It was a surprise for me too.

Gigi: You're lying to me.

Tama, shrugging: Okay, don't believe me, believe your eyes- Tama, ticking people off on her paw-pads: You saw the peacock earlier, he's a seated officer and Baldy is his Husband. Tama: Their boss is the most rampantly bisexual slut I've ever had the pleasure of meeting and the primary load-bearing member of the captainacy polycule-

Akon, starting to giggle: -Yeah I bet he can bear a lot of loads-

Tama, casually plucking off another fungal spire to half-heartedly throw at him: Oh, and the guy who had this job before me IS pregnant with his second child!

Gigi, incredulous: ...The guy with the stupid hat that looks like off-brand Shaggy from Scooby-Doo? That looks more a beer belly.

[Akon: Loud, Snorting Laughter]

Tama: Okay, you're right, it looks more like a beer gut than a baby right now, but PLEASE don't tell him that- He's in the weepy mood swings phase right now, and won't get his sense of humor back until the third trimester. Tama: We' re all placing bets on when Baby Kegger is gonna be born if you want in on the action.

Gigi, Biting her lip and grimacing: I- I don't-

Tama, taking Gigi's hand: -You know firsthand how weird my body is. I'm not properly male or female- I've got at least 21,837 sexes within me because of the insane way I have to metabolically regulate my body. Tama, shrugging: I'm just female in conversation because language hasn't evolved the 12th-dimensional pronouns I'd need yet. But when I brought this up at a meeting, the only question I got from the old man was if my uniform would need altering. Tama: I mean. It did, but that's because I'm 4'6" and i get all my clothes in the children's section, but I'm still amused that that was the captain-general's polite way of asking if I'd need any accomodations.

Gigi: ...Promise it'll be okay?

Tama: I don't know how the war is going to turn out, but if you help us and stop making zombies, I promise I'll do everything I can to make it okay.

[Gigi manages a weak smile]

Akon, wheezing, and doing a terrible Scooby-Doo impresson: Ruh-roh! Rhe Rexperiments Breached Containment, And Raggy's rust Whadder broke!

[Gigi, snorting and giggling in spite of everything}

Tama: See? Now you're laughing. When was the last time a Zombie made you laugh?

Gigi, sniffling a bit as she giggles: ...never.

Tama: So, are you ready to give an alliance a shot?

Gigi: I- I guess?

Tama: You guess? I can't go to the captain-general with a mere hypothesis.

Gigi: ...Yes. Yes, I'm ready.

Tama, grinning: So you're going to be a good girl and keep your bodily fluids to yourself unless asked?

Gigi, turning bright pink: Y-yes!

Tama: Yes, what?

Gigi, going even redder: Yes, sir!

Tama, patting her head and releasing the hold on the Cordyceps, at least for now: ...Very good girl.

Akon, rolling his eyes: Uuuugh....

Tama, helping Gigi up: Hey! You know damn well that positive re-enforcement-

Akon, hefting his Lazer-Gun back onto his shoulder: -is an important part of interpersonal communication, reward the behavior you want to see yeah, yeah-

[Akon is about to turn to leave when a thought occurs to him and he stops and glares at Gigi]

Akon: ...You DO hit like a fuckin' truck.

Gigi, blushing and twirling her hair: Well, I mean-

Akon, pointing accusingly at Tama: I KNEW IT! YOU'RE NOT RECRUITING HER FOR THE WAR, YOU'RE RECRUITING HER FOR THE SHINIGAMI WOMEN'S ASSOCIATION INTRAMURAL CRICKET TEAM!!

Gigi: -the what?

Tama: And what if I am? It doesn't matter to you- The Shinigami Men's Association couldn't keep their wickets up if their lives depended on it!

Akon: -Call me when Matsumoto-taicho can bat out of the pitch!

Tama: Yeah, the fact that Rangiku and Hiyori both suck at it and you STILL lost by 203 points to us is not actually helping your case here.

Gigi: Is. Is cricket a sport?

Akon: SPORT? Cricket is an entire EVENT! It's a Way of Life! It's the philosphical ideal of-

Tama: Yes. Tama: It's a very silly sport, and his team sucks at it.

Gigi: Ooh! If we all live through this, I can be a cheerleader!

Tama, causing problems on purpose: Yeah!

Akon, sputtering with fury: I- That's- CRICKET DOESN'T HAVE CHEERLEADERS!!

Gigi, pouting with her index fingers pressed together, rocking her hips: -But I wanted to cheer for YOU Mr. Akon!

Akon, freezing like a deer in front of an oncoming 18-wheeler: -! Akon, turning ever-so-slightly-pinkish about the ears: ...I'll think about it.

Gigi, grabbing onto Akon's arm: Yay! Gigi, hanging off Akon and babbling: What are the team colors? Do you think like Majorette uniforms are cuter or something more like a miniskirt and halter-top?

Tama, letting them get a bit ahead of her as she dials the main camp: Anyone on the horn? It's Nikuya.

Nanao, on the other end of the communicator: Status report?

Tama: Good news! I've eliminated an enemy, found us an ally AND a new batter for the team if we all live to see spring training.

[tardxsblues]

Clara? You asked me what we're going to do. I told you -- we're going to hell. Or wherever it is people go when they die, if there is anywhere. Wherever it is, we're going to go there, and we're going to find Danny. And if it is in any way possible, we're going to bring him home. Almost every culture in the universe has some concept of an afterlife. I always meant to have a look around, see if I could find one.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[ask-enchantingdelights]

Canela continues to laugh nervously, trying to laugh off the moment as her own thoughts race in her head. What do I do, what do I do now! A sharp, pulsing pain quickly enters her head, causing her to groan and hold her head. She tries to shake it off only to be met with a dark, foreboding voice that whispers into her mind.

Canela’ shallow breathing transitions into slower breaths, as she concentrates to drown out the voice that torments her mind. Her spatula fizzes and sparkles, changing in hues as she chants a familiar song repeatedly to herself. One. Chill. Two. Chill. Three. Chill. Four. Open your eyes and worry no more. 

After a couple minutes, she brings the spatula close to her mouth, giving it a gentle peck as a glimmer of light starts to glow faintly. Canela raises it high and takes a long, deep breath. The tip of the utensil glows brighter, lighting up the area like a lamp piercing through its dark corners.

From her mouth, a thin light follows the breath as she exhales. As it floats out, the breath glows as if strings of light trail out and around the spatula. As soon as the strip reaches the orb, it expands and swells. Soon after, the light flares out from the spatula, and wisps of light and magic swirl around Canela and Charade.

The braixen mumbles a command and the light fades from around the girls, and disappears from Canela's tool. She straightens up from her bow slowly, and stretches her arms over her head while a big smile spread on her face. She then continues to stuff her spatula back into her tail, before planting her paws on her hips and saying quite loudly,

"Damn, that felt GOOD!!!"

( @ask-dream-fighters , @iamyourdoubt, @ask-meowscarada )

[venbetta]

Help wanted 2 spoilers

Cuz I won't shut the fuck up about it

GOD I FUCKING... AM A SIMP FOR GLAM FREDDY'S VOICE

IM JUST A GIGGLY BITCH RIGHT NOW GOD DAMNIT GRAAH

"Is it just me or is the room getting hotter?"

FREDDY... FREDDY... PLEASE

PLEASE

HELP ME

[kheprriverse]

New fullbody for Time! + some info.

I'll work on his other outfits as well, especially the one I draw him in the most. Hero chart has also been updated!

Below the cut is some doodles of what FD looks like when Time uses the mask :>

I've had a few people mention FD having Time's braid and it was smth on my mind for a while as well, especially while working on Time's ref. So I decided to indulge on the idea! Also that his appearance differs depending on who uses the mask so I was gonna mess with it eventually anyways lol.

[imagine-knb]

we all know that Seirin doesn't have a manager, but what if they actually secretly DID have one? the manager was only ever in contact with Riko, as they felt more at ease working behind the scenes, and the team only finds out much later about this arrangement. the second years are like "?? we've had a manager this whole time?" and the first years are all "is it a girl? is she cute??" while Riko's being all smug and secretive

A/N: First post of a new era! Admin Neon

“Who are you texting?”

Riko squeaked a bit, fumbling with her phone as she tried to hide the screen against her chest. It was too late however and Hyuuga, who had been peering over her shoulder, had already spotted the nickname of her contact – Manager-chan <3.

He furrowed his brows, a single finger pushing the bridge of his glasses up his nose as he fixed a glare on Riko. “Wait, we have a manager now? Since when? Isn’t this supposed to be something you discuss with your team’s captain?”

“Not really,” Riko responded with a shrug, her free hand moving up to shove Hyuuga’s face away from hers. “As coach, all decisions I make for the team overrule yours.” Her statement was punctuated with her tongue sticking out at him. With her thumb, she pressed on the side button of her phone, shutting off the screen so he could no longer pry.

Hyuuga’s lips pressed into a thin, annoyed line. “Well, where are they then? Practice started over an hour ago. Shouldn’t a manager be, I don’t know, watching over us?”

Riko was about to retort with another sarcastic comment, but her words were interrupted by Koganei’s curious, “Wait, we have a manager?” She sighed, knowing that the little secret she had been keeping for well over a year was finally coming to light.

She’d have to apologize to you later for being so careless.

Koganei’s voice had carried throughout the gymnasium, his question bouncing off the polished floors and hard walls. Soon enough, Riko found herself surrounded by half the team, their eyes full of curiosity and their mouths full of questions. Who was this mysterious manager? When did they start? Were they coming to practice today? Had they watched any of their matches?

“Wouldn’t you guys like to know,” Riko snarked, interrupting the onslaught of questions she was receiving. She intended to keep your secret for as long as possible, the team’s curiosity be damned. “And no, they won’t be coming to practice today. Or ever.”

This answer only earned her more questioning gazes.

“Kind of hard to manage a team you haven’t actually met,” Hyuuga mumbled, arms crossed over his chest. He quirked a brow at Riko, his look of annoyance shifting to one of disbelief. “How are they supposed to do their job?”

“We’ve gotten a lot of practice matches in with a variety of other schools, haven’t we?” At Hyuuga’s slow nod, Riko continued, “Well, that’s all because of them. They handle more of the business and paperwork side of the team while I get to deal with you guys. It’s not a conventional way of doing it, but they prefer to stay anonymous.”

“Ah, a shy manager,” Izuki guessed.

This got the guys buzzing once again. More than a few of them flushed at the thought, color dusting their cheeks as imaginative images of a bashful manager hiding behind a clipboard filled their minds. More questions spilled from them, curious voices filling the gymnasium instead of squeaking sneakers. Practice had come to a halt, more of the team catching on to the interesting conversation at hand. Was she a first year or a second year? Did she ask to be the manager or was she roped into it?

Was she cute?

“I said nothing about the manager being a girl!” The huffed out response from Riko had the guys deflating. “Now get back to practice, we’re wasting daylight!”

The shrill sound from Riko’s whistle pierced their ears, drowning out the grumbling voices as the guys slowly made their way back onto the court. Riko nodded, satisfied with their quick departure. After checking behind her shoulders for more prying eyes, she pulled out her cellphone once the coast was clear.

‘Sorry, the guys know they have a manager now, but they don’t know it’s you.’ She sent the text off quickly. Then, as an afterthought, she added, ‘Maybe it’s time you met them?’

When no response was received within a few minutes, Riko merely shrugged. Placing her cellphone back in her pocket, she turned her attention back to their current practice. You’d answer her eventually.

She hoped you’d say yes to her request.

Later that day, as practice had ended and the team had packed up to leave, some of the team found their curiosity taking hold once more. It was hard to let go of the thought that they’d had a mysterious manager working in the background all along. Some of them half expected it to be a joke – some kind of prank Riko was pulling that wasn’t all that funny to anyone but her.

“Who do you think the manager is?” Furihata asked as the first years slowly trailed after the second years outside the gym. “Do you think they’re actually a girl?”

“I hope so,” Fukuda responded. Thoughts of having someone cute always on the sidelines during practice were filling his brain. He wondered if they were anything like Touou’s manager.

“Man, I don’t care,” Kagami drawled. One of his arms was up, a hand picking at his ear. The other had a basketball tucked neatly between his elbow and his side. His fingers twitched, already thinking of the next practice match this secret manager would eventually schedule. “As long as they keep getting us games to play. That’s all that matters.”

“Yeah, maybe to you,” Fukuda deadpanned. He leaned forward as he walked, looking past Kagami to quirk a brow at the team’s blue haired shadow. “What about you, Kuroko? Got any ideas on who the manager might be?”

Kuroko blinked, answering Fukuda’s question with a noncommittal shrug. It was enough of an answer to have his teammate sighing, relenting to the fact that nobody seemed to have any clue who the manager might be.

Of course, Kuroko would never say that he’d started to notice a familiar face in the crowd at every game they attended. He’d never mention that he’d spotted Riko chatting intently with another student, handing them off papers he knew contained their player statistics. And he’d definitely never talk about the time he’d bumped into you exiting the gymnasium after school in a hurry, desperate to leave before the team could arrive.

You wanted to stay anonymous, after all.

[volfoss]

the big and long miss yucky restoration post, part 1:

early february, i got a very damaged (what i thought was) ddh-10 (dollfie dream head, model 10) head from yahoo japan auctions. i had never seen a doll with such damage EVER and even though i hoped someone else may buy her (i did not want to pay the shipping fees), i ended up buying her. for your viewing pleasure, images of miss yucky at the start of this with explanations of what exactly is the damage (or what i thought the damage was at the time)

[ID: Four images of a severely damaged doll head.

The first image is of the head facing straight forward. Her face is very unevenly colored. She has small patches of a darker and more yellow vinyl tone showing on her face, from the paler paint cracking away. Her face is very simple, with big eyes that have cartoonish eyelashes and a small smiling mouth. Noteably, her nose is barely there. She has many spots of dirt on her forehead. Her eyes are dark blue and round, with unsmoothed white clay above the iris.

The second image is inside the doll's head, showing the eyes being held in with hot glue, gray clay, and blue sticky putty. Her headcap is set to the side and the true more yellow vinyl color is visible on the rim of the head that is open.

The third image is her head at an angle that better shows the eyes. The eyes themselves have a weird bumpy texture on them and her face looks very shiny from this angle.

The fourth image is her head in profile, showing that her nose has been almost completely removed. The discoloration is more visible in this photo than the first, with patches of bright white along the head seam right beside dark patches where the paint appears to have been scratched away. In this picture, it is most clear where the headcap has been replaced from the original, as there is a lower seam running around her head, with the headcap being much smaller than it should be. /end ID]

Hopefully her nickname makes more sense now lol. More elaboration on the issues and her process to looking a lot better under the cut, because it is long :)

As for the issues, I assumed it was either a sealant issue or just something mysteriously wrong that was causing the sheen (once I got her in the mail, I began to assume that it was all the plasticizer leaking out of her head, leaving it rock hard). Plasticizer is what keeps vinyl (which is what her head is made of) squishy, and when it leaks out, it leaves a sticky residue on the vinyl, a lot of sheen to it, and most importantly, when it is all leaked out, it leaves the head hard. Her head was as hard of a rock (or as hard as my resin dolls) and that was the only thing that made sense. It couldn't be age, as at the time, I believed she was a DDH-10, which had only begun production around 2016 (and most of the heads that had hardened over age were at least 5-10 years older than that).

Her eyes were stuck in in some mysterious way. The white on the top being not smooth threw me off, as I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be clay or just something to stick the eyes in. I hadn't really seen white sticky putty used on eyes super often but it is something that was used. The other obvious issue is the modding. At the time, I fully believed she was a DDH-10, so was shocked at all the modding that had been done to her. Her eyes had been widened, nose completely sanded away, chin seemingly sanded a bit, and her head cap was from (what i thought was) a different company. We will return to the true ID of miss yucky shortly.

Once I got her, I became aware of a few more issues:

She was INCREDIBLY sticky when I touched her face. This is not normal with vinyl dolls, and I could really only pray it was a sealant issue (as the most popular sealant in the BJD hobby, MSC, can seal glossy if it's used improperly (I've had the same issue when spraying it too close to the face or in too cold of weather)). The shininess was far worse in person as well.

The aforementioned head as hard as a rock. For people unfamiliar with vinyl heads, this specific type of doll has a headcap (which is the thing that you can kind of see is ill fitting in the original photos) that you are supposed to be able to squeeze the head to remove. These kinds of heads are VERY squishy. For example, my other vinyl doll, Beatrix, has a head so soft that I can easily remove the headcap with little effort (it's about the squishy levels of a Monster High head if that helps). At this point, I was very worried I would be completely unable to remove her headcap. But since the listing photos had had it removed, I was moderately hopeful

Her eyes were in odder shape than I thought. Prior to getting her, i had assumed her eyes were the ones you see in an average stuffed animal, just simple ones you sew in. With her modded eyes, it was pretty clear that she would need some kind of custom eyes, so this had made sense to me, that someone would have gotten those eyes and popped some clay around them. But upon getting her, I saw that they were custom eyes that were usually made for these kind of anime BJDs (term used loosely but most vinyl bjds like this have stylings closer to anime artstyles rather than the realistic ones that resin bjds have) and had some weird residue on them.

Her eyewells (the bit of vinyl between her eye and eyeball, where your waterline would be if she was a human) were much deeper than expected, which was why her eyes looked so deep and far back. Most of my resin dolls have similar issues due to that being how the company sculpts them so I wasn't too worried about that as much as I probably should have been lol

[ID: Two pictures of the same doll head.

The first picture is from an upwards angle and shows that she has a somewhat thick line of vinyl between her bottom eyelashes and her eyeball itself. She is being held by a pale hand and the photo is under harsh lighting.

The second picture is facing from the front and is being held by a pale hand. She is noteably very shiny and is about the size of the person's palm. /end ID]

You can see here the way the vinyl is thicker under the eye than it should have been in this case. The second picture is there because she was MUCH bigger than I anticipated, about the same size as Beatrix's head. Quick explanation on why this is odd: The DDH-10 sculpt is meant for 1/4 or MDD scale bodies (BJDs have different scales, all compared to the human body. 1/4 scale dolls are less than 2 ft tall, or on average, 45 cm tall. MDD is the type of body that the company that produces the DDH-10 that is made for the 1/4 scale), but the DDH-03 (the head model Beatrix has) is meant for 1/3 scale (on average around 60 cm or around 2 ft). Everywhere online had said that 10 head model was smaller but I didn't think much of it at the time.

The day that she had arrived, I had made a post on a big BJD forum, as a sort of project journal as I worked on her. The members were IMMENSELY helpful and the hunt for her true identity had begun. A few members were convinced she wasn't a DDH-10, but to me, I really was convinced she was, as she had been listed as such, had arrived in a box for that head type, and the way that she could have been modified made a lot of sense to me with that sculpt. This was not the case, as she ended up getting id'd as an Obitsu 60 cm girl head. I'm including this for a reason (and not just because I wanted to do a big post writing up the specifics of my journey fixing her)

[ID: A blank doll head. It has the same smile and nose of the doll head shown in the photos prior, but noteably does not have any eyeholes carved in. Her vinyl color is much warmer and closer to a typical peachy tone than the very pale paint covering the prior shown doll head. /end ID]

This photo is taken from an old Mandarake listing, as one of the forum members had linked me to it. The most noteable thing here, is that unlike the head I have, the eyes are meant to be painted on (much like a Monster High head). Which means the customizer before me had hand carved these eyes (and somehow got them as even as they did). Other good news with this- the body I wanted to put her on was an Obitsu body, so somehow, they matched perfectly (each vinyl BJD company has different skintones, so I was not expecting that much of luck).

Her ID aside, let's dive into the restoration! I had to give a bit of backstory before we got into the good stuff lol

First step was getting her headcap off, as I wanted to remove her eyes before cleaning her face, just to not cause more damage to them than what had already happened to them (at this point, I did not know why the eyes looked like that). Thankfully, a hair dryer was able to heat the headcap and get it loose enough that I could pop the headcap off and get my first look inside her head.

[ID: A closeup of the inside of the doll head. There are thick globs of hot glue holding the gray clay in, a mysterious clear shape that is the back of the eye, and blue sticky tack holding it all up. /end ID]

Getting a better look at it, I just decided to dive in and start prying the hot glue off. Once I did that, it revealed that the gray clay was in fact Apoxie Sculpt (which dries VERY hard when its cured all the way. This was the worst case scenario, as I did not want to deal with removing that) and that one of the eyes came out all the way.

[ID: A closeup of the doll eye out of the head. It is surrounded by white clay on the top, with some of the Apoxie sculpt on the top. Above the doll eye, there is a piece of Apoxie sculpt that has browned and has some of the blue sticky tack on top. Two pieces of the hot glue are below the eye and the head is off to the side. /end ID]

I was SO relieved to see it was coming out, but the other eye did not come out as easily sadly. There was still a big chunk of clay that was presumably used to hold the eye in. I have no idea why the eye mechanism was like this at all to be honest. That clay was NOT coming out at all, so I moved to get her cleaned up.

At this point, I had noticed some black spots inside of the head. I was praying it was not mold because that would be nigh impossible to get cleaned up (given I could not just do what you do with MLP and heat the vinyl up and squish the mold out with using Oxi-Clean. Her head was too hard for me to do that). I had also been hit with an overwhelming "new vinyl" smell, which was another sign of the plasticizer being completely gone/leaking slightly, so I was pretty sure that was the case.

I cleaned her up with warm soapy water, but it didn't really get anything off. My next step was to remove the faceup with acetone, which is a little stronger than what most people use to remove faceups but I am very careful with it so please do not try using it unless you are cautious as well. I needed something strong to really get the layers of paint off. With how many dolls I've removed full body/full head paint off of, I have the method down pretty well (a short list of painted dolls I have had to deal with: my own Cordula head, as her head is bright white and needed to match her yellowed body; the body I have for my big guy (which was just a LOT of blue paint); Clarimonde's body (which was painted mostly to hide the top surgery scars from the modification but I wanted to remove the paint)). It came off pretty smoothly, and was revealing a gorgeously yellowed vinyl underneath. Quick clarification here, most people do NOT like their dolls yellowed. I do because it's easier to blush and work on because it is not stark white and I feel it makes the skin look a bit better for the most part (most of my dolls are yellowed but maybe 2 of them). She had some minor staining around her eyes and mouth but nothing compared to what I expected.

[ID: The aforementioned doll head, now much closer in tone to the listing photo. Her face is all cleaned up and her headcap is resting besides her. There are some faint stains by the eyes left from the eyelashes but she is otherwise completely cleaned and is blank. /end ID]

The difference was stark, as she looked much better with all the discolored paint removed. What I had worried was mold was just paint from the faceup and came off completely with no worries (I am convinced I kept lucking out with her because she was thankful to be cleaned up and taken care of).

I had, weirdly enough, been very worried that she would lose all of her charm and cuteness with no faceup, but she did not. Now that I had cleaned her up, I could return to the to do list. With no faceup, it was clear her eyes were slightly uneven, and the modding had left some scratches inside of the head that i wanted to clean up (namely because I felt bad for her for having to have those inside her head). Her nose was something that I definitely wanted to resculpt (which was partially why I wanted to get this doll, she was a big project and an excuse to learn skills that I had been too scared to learn prior to this, sculpting being one of them), but the shape was something I was super uncertain of. She would need custom eyes that were made to fit only her eye shape (her eyes are carved very low on her face in comparison to the original, so normal round BJD eyes would not fit properly) and I would want to make her a wig. I also needed to get her on the body in a specific way modification wise, which will be something we will cover in a later post (as I have not done it yet lol).

Starting with the eyes, I started to work on getting the chunk of clay out of the head. I was immensely glad I had gotten a dremel to help restore my big boy (if you remember me posting images of getting the clay on a chest piece sanded down, that is the same doll) as I had to pretty much sand away at the clay for about an hour or more. Eventually I just gave up and pried it out of the head with a small sanding tool (as sanding it down was just not working too well and it was kind of my last resort). I sanded the inside of her head and outside of it, but neither of these differences show up a lot on camera, so I won't be including images. I sanded the outside of her head to get a few of the areas that were stained a bit to be a tiny bit less stained, as well as wanting a fully clean and sanded surface before I started sculpting.

[ID: Two pictures showing the inside of the dolls head. The first one has a large chunk of white clay visible under the right eye and the second shows the same spot with no clay, as it has been removed. /end ID]

You can see how big of a hunk of clay it was! It was BAD lol. I got through maybe 3 long youtube videos while getting this thing out.

The eyeballs themselves turned out to be made of resin, and thanks to one of the members suggestion on the forum, I cleaned them with acetone. They believed it was just sealant sprayed while the eyes were still in, and the acetone cleaned them up beautifully. They were still not the right fit for miss yucky, but I was very relieved to see that they cleaned up okay.

This photo was before cleaning them up, as I was so confused what could have even been going on here and needed to get advice.

[ID: The eye close up. There is an almost foggy texture over it that obscures the colors a bit. They are a dark blue. The surface is very bumpy and there are some remnants of the white clay that surrounded them still attached. /end ID]

And this photo shows them cleaned up! The left one has been cleaned and the right has not.

[ID: The two eyes laying flat on a gray countertop. The left one is still moderately foggy but is much much clearer than the one to the right. There is a slight gradient in the iris and a small light blue highlight towards the bottom. The right eye is much foggier and is still very bumpy. /end ID]

As for the nose, I was originally planning on doing a larger nose (at least for an anime doll. Closer to what a Dollfie Dream Alna looks like versus the typical very skinny pointed nose) but the more I looked at her, the more I felt she resembled Pinoko from Black Jack. The eye shape, nose shape, and mouth shape (as well as how the eyelashes were painted) felt near identical, so I took inspiration from how Tezuka drew her nose when I was sculpting. I wanted it to flow into the rest of the profile naturally (that does not make much sense but it will once I show the pictures, or so I hope). I didn't want to do a super big difference with her nose, and stick to the original aesthetic as much as I could (which was my goal for most of this project, stick to the original but make it look a bit less "haunted doll" (as one forum member described her)).

[ID: Pinoko from Black Jack. She looks surprised or startled in the photo. She is a pale young girl with a orange-brown bob with bangs, wide brown eyes, a small round nose and a round face. She is wearing a blue shirt. /end ID] (This photo is from the All of Black Jack artbook if anyone is curious)

^Pinoko for reference. I hope the similarities are clear to see! I took some "pre-op" photos of miss yucky (she still does not have a name) and then got to work with some superfine white milliput.

[ID: Images of the blank head from the front and both sides. The first three photos show what the head looked like before the nose, and the second three photos show what she looks like with the nose. The nose is a very stark white compared to the rest of the head and is fairly small. It is upturned and has a slightly rounded tip. It flows into the rest of the profile smoothly, causing it to look very natural from the side. /end ID]

I was not perfectly happy with the nose but it was pretty close to what I had wanted, and I hoped that painting would just fix my issues. It is hard to see here but her eyeholes are also more evened out, although it is a VERY small difference.

The next step was a faceup, which was admittedly very scary. I got nail brushes to help get the fine lines a bit better than what I could do with my usual brushes (my hands are IMMENSELY shaky and have not wanted to cooperate at all during this project, thus the faceup has taken forever because I want to get it right) and wanted to pretty much just redo the previous faceup but with eyebrows and not the scariest skintone situation known to man.

For some context here - normally with faceups, you start with using chalk pastels to shade the head, then go in with watercolor pencils to get the lines, and then do acrylic paint last before doing the final sealing and glossing areas that need to be glossed. I normally follow this to a T, you can see that in my past faceups, I do most of the blushing and the eyeshadow colors first, then go through the rest of the steps.

This was not the case with this head, as I started off with trying to sketch her eyelashes with a watercolor pencil (this did NOT want to cooperate with her head texture/sealant texture) and then eventually just gave up and went in with watercolor paints on a brush. This was ALSO a pain (she wanted to be so so evil to me during this step I think lol) so I just went in with acrylics before doing anything else on the head. Her faceup was going to be mostly acrylics (minus the blushing on the cheeks) as I wanted to keep a similar look to how Tezuka paints Pinoko (he was a very big inspiration during this project, and is why I am doing certain steps, such as the nose and eyes (when I get there) the way I am) and keep the head's cartoonish and cute appearance. The eyelashes were the worst part of it, as I wanted to keep them symmetrical or as much as I could, but it was very hard. I got through the faceup immensely slowly, but to be fair, I was working on another faceup as I did hers (as I wanted to redo both of my anime style heads).

The eyebrows were OBJECTIVELY the worst part of this faceup though, as even in the mockup, I really struggled to paint ones that I felt suited her. At this point, I was really empathizing with the previous faceup artist as with her eyeshape, good eyebrows were hard to do. My other struggle was matching the nose to the vinyl. I am normally somewhat decent with color matching (again, doing Cordula's faceup around 3 times and having to color match the head to the body with paint each time helped here), but this was just very rough, as even with sanding, I felt the nose didn't blend into the face the way I wanted it to. The color was off and I couldn't figure out exactly HOW which was a very big pain. Admittedly, in lower lighting, the nose mod looks GREAT but up close with harsh lighting (which is how I do my faceups), it looked pretty rough. I'm not done with the faceup just yet, so I'm really including a few WIP pics, as I will be tossing the finished faceup pics in when I make the part 2 of this post :)

First off, the nose painted pics:

[ID: The head, now with the sculpted nose that is painted over, on a messy desk. The first image is in harsh lighting and the line where the nose mod begins and the vinyl head is more apparent. The second image is in darker and warmer lighting, and the mod looks more natural. The third image is under the same harsh lighting and shows the head tilted on its back, showing the side view of the nose that is painted. This angle makes it look better than in the first image. The paint is nearly perfect color matched but is slightly off. /end ID]

For my very first attempt doing a mod like this, I was very pleased with how it looked. Milliput is NOT as bad to work with as I anticipated and with the paint, the nose looked pretty natural. It definitely encouraged me to want to work with it more in the future, which is good (as I need to go back and fix Aca's top surgery a bit lol, as I was too scared to do the sculpting at first for him, but now I feel moderately confident about it). It was pretty fun to sculpt it but the painting was a bit of a pain since it was just off in a way that I couldn't put my finger on.

Next up, the most recent WIP

[ID: A closeup of the head, with the same cartoonish lashes painted on in black that she had before. The lashes are incomplete, with the left eye being painted partially with dark brown paint and the right in black paint. Both eyes have the bottom lashes fully painted in black and faint brown pencil marks serve as guides to place the lashes. The right eye has the first two eyelashes painted in black, whereas the left only has the pencil marks. She is very faintly blushed with a light pink on her cheeks. Another doll head in the process of being painted is in the background of the photo, mostly out of shot. /end ID]

I did dark brown paint first, in hopes that I could just outline it first and then do the blushing I needed to, but the stupid paint was NOT going on solid. So i had to jump right into the black paint and pray for the best. The best thing about acrylic paint is you can wipe it off with water easily. The faceup has been taking days, not just because of my chronic pain flaring up and making it hard to move my hands in a way that would work to make these eyelashes right, but because I am doing one lash at a time. This makes sure that my prior work isn't erased if I need to redo a lash but it makes it take a lot more time. I did this for both the heads I was working on, as they both are very fine motor skill required and I needed to get them perfect. The nose mod is also a bit more visible here, it really looks good in certain lighting and bad in others which makes it frustrating lol.

That's all for this VERY long post, ty if you have made it this far! The next post will hopefully be including progress on:

The faceup (hopefully done lol)

Eye making (this will be a VERY miserable time for me I fear)

The way I'm working with my personal modifications to the body to get the head to fit on there

Wig making/styling a wig I have to be her temp wig

And as a little bonus treat, her with Beatrix before I got her cleaned up :)

[ID: A pale vinyl BJD with an orange wig holding the project head. The doll holding the head has green eyes, and a very orange toned faceup. She is sitting on a white shelf and is wearing a white turtlenck and a striped yellow and white skirt. Their heads are around the same size. The project head has had no work done on her in this photo, so the contrast between the heads appearances in this photo is quite stark. /end ID]

[bizarrelittlemew]

clenching my fists tighter and tighter while listening to this year by the mountain goats because so far:

(i'll apparently list this as extremely bad - more trivial - extremely fucking bad)

my sister nearly bled to death from a surgical wound (very routine surgery too)

our savings are constantly being drained by 1) enormous energy bills last winter, and 2) replacing everything that just keeps breaking, first it was kitchen appliances now garden tools?? and 3) stupid sewer work documentation that should've been in order 3 years ago before we moved in but which we now need to pay for too and they discovered stuff that means ANOTHER big bill within the next 3-5 years, constantly setting us back on the projects we want to do

i'm getting worse and worse and yeah finally going to the doctor for it (but like taking two whole months off work in the spring didn't help, hope something else will)

feel like i'm getting nowhere with the phd (normal halfway-through experience i think but still) and every time i try to do something it goes nowhere and gets rejected so now i've just. stopped making an effort and don't know how to come back from that

and now yesterday we learned my mom has incurable cancer and i can't even describe all the things going on so i'm not gonna try here

obviously the last thing is by far the worst (since my sister is completely fine again now) like points 2-4 are nowhere near that level but it's like everything. one thing after another. and things i'm forgetting because the last one just overshadows everything else. it keeps coming and maybe if points 3&4 weren't there i'd be better equipped to handle the rest?? but here we are

it's like the only positives so far have been all you lovely people i've met and gotten to know through fandom and the community and support here <3 and getting back into writing fr and the support you've given there too. need the distraction and positives more than ever now so thank you for being your excellent selves <3 (almost wrote elves skdfjdks would've been cool though)

ok this got super long sorry i probably won't post about this now that i've gotten it out and i'm so glad i have ofmd in october to look forward to mostly because i get to be unhinged about it with all of you <3 and THERE WILL BE FEASTING AND DANCING IN JERUSALEM NEXT YEAR

[sourearth]

yuno & nijirō art post update 3!! part 1 part 2

after taking a render from my perspective camera into photoshop, i used the vanishing point tool to set up some planes!

(absolute legend @wrenbii​ passed me the tip that if you put a big cube in there it is easy to get planes from!! this saved me a fair bit of guesswork)

after that i spent a lot of time lamenting that the perspective was more fucked than id realised at first, and painstakingly fixing it with the help of the vanishing planes

after that i managed to get it mostly fixed - heres a gif for comparison:

(also brightened it a bunch because wow i did not realise how dreary the colours were)

its interesting to me to see that the perspective was alright around yuno but just sorta got more & more distorted around the edges lmao. i thought i could eyeball most of it and i thought wrong!!!!

i then decided to try changing the lighting a touch to see if i could find something that works a little better, and came up with this:

i think the first lighting is a bit more even and might make for a stronger composition, but i think im gonna go for the second one because it feels more character-ful

yuno is a goblin being lit by her screens and nijirō is a cat lounging in the sunshine

next up im gonna add more clutter & refine stuff past being vague shapes!!

[bravevolunteer]

VERSE — MOVIE ( CONTAINS SPOILERS & CANON DIVERGENT, tw for canon-typical themes & suicide mention )

just to get straight to the point : it's mainly canon divergent in the sense that i will be altering details in order to make mike an afton. do i think this is going to happen in the movie timeline? no. do i think it's more likely that they're going to explain the oddly personal kidnapping through mirroring the emilys? probably. but it's MY michael afton blog and i can put on my tinfoil hat as much as i want about it. of course i am willing to adapt based on other's info / preferences but given that this isn't my main canon anyway it is meant for those that are interested.

Mike thought he knew everything there was to know about what happened to his family: what he was never told is who his real father was. He was too young to remember anything about William Afton before his mom separated herself from him entirely ( one night stand, breakup, what have you, i'm not picky- ), so he always thought of the father he grew up with as his dad, the reality never changed anything about that.

Until he was twelve years old and Garrett went missing, and everything fell apart. William followed the Schmidts there, taking Garrett in a targeted attack ( whether or not he was trying to grab Mike, took him out of spite, anything else is also flexible ). Everything grew solemn and tense, each of the Schmidts lost in their own individual grief. Slowly, they stopped having dinners together, stopped going out as a family, stopped being able to feel like things were normal. The grief and guilt only added to Mike's developing anger issues and depression. Although it wasn't on purpose nor with any malicious intent, his dad was the more distant of his parents at the time, serving as the first hint towards his biological parentage and simply because as much as he cared for mike, he was grappling with losing his biological kid ( think tse henry- well meaning but drowning in grief enough for the child to pick up on it ).

This is where Abby comes in, where the Schmidts have another kid in an attempt to feel like a normal family again. It almost seems to work, although there is still that underlying sense of collective grief. Mike was older by then, too ( while he graduates high school, he either doesn't go to college at all or doesn't finish it ).

Their mom dies and the brief sense of possible stability disappears again. It's when Mike is staying at home again for the funeral/to help with Abby that their father commits suicide, unable to take the grief. Mike has had custody of Abby since then.

The events proceed as they did in the movie, William's recognition of Mike in the office not only stemming from the kidnapping but the fact that it's his kid, although Mike doesn't find anything out beyond the fact that it's the man who took Garrett. There is potential for more hints towards this in past interactions with his aunt or birth records or even his dynamic with Vanessa, but for the most part this specific realization is left open.

Following the movie's events, he... does come home to his aunt in the living room. After reporting her death, Mike actually goes back to Freddy's one more time to get security footage in order to prove his innocence. Afterwards, he does his best to hold down another job to keep taking care of Abby in peace, but something about Freddy's gives him the sense that he'll come back to make sure nothing like this happens again.

[crescentfool]

some scribs based on things i saw at kawaiikon 2023 last week, i had a lot of fun! (in which i use minato + my squidkid as stand-ins for myself)

bonus comic + some thoughts about the con under the cut!

gotta love when u think it’d be cool to cosplay but then completely forget to get anything for the cosplay (i forgot to go to look for yellow fabric for a ryoji scarf)!! so u just go as just some guy (my wardrobe has a few items that remind me of my faves).

ANYWAYS for the con itself, i had a lot of fun! something about it was very humanizing, just knowing that there were other people in hawaii who also like persona (and the other things that i am into). i got to pull out my beloved minato nui/plushie and share him with other people which was. fun!!

the cosplayers were super cool too! the femc cosplayer was super sweet and they had!! a p3 protag itabag and it was so ?? heartwarming and cool for me to see that?? and the akechi + kokichi cosplayers being in the same proximity was also very cool to me (idk i feel like they’re just both interesting characters).

and of course the artists were very lovely... i was very surprised 2 see so much persona 3 (thank you p3p for being put on modern consoles) there, haha. i paid the minato tax™ aka that’s what happens when your favorite character is like. the protag. i have so much beautiful minato art in my home now. i am so happy and normal about this. my heart is sold to him. he has such incomprehensible boy swag that transcends the universe. but anyway.

this is very rambly but um idk im just! grateful and appreciative! that other people are out there that enjoy media that i like especially since they were so scarce and far between (other fandoms showed up more frequently). would i go again? dunno, depends on what im into by the time next year rolls around. but i’m glad that i went this year, for sure 💙

[shikai-the-storyteller]

I know Quackity said "Don't stress if you can't watch every single POV and if you don't know all the lore" and all that, but it genuinely frustrates me so much that I cannot, realistically, know every single detail of the QSMP storyline. Even trying to just focus on the "main" story isn't possible since so many people are doing things tied to it, and so many unexpected things happen.

I don't really have a point to make with this post, I'm just venting my frustrations. I like knowing complete stories and knowing I can't do that with QSMP frustrates me so much.

[dallonwrites]

[image description: a picture of a snow forest with evergreen trees. the photo is  dark and tinted a slight blue. in the middle, in a white serif font reads in all caps “WINTER’S SLAUGHTER”. at the bottom of the photo, in all lowercase reads “nano update #1” /end id]

Winter’s Slaughter – Nano Update #1

Word Count: 15,262

Goal: Originally wasn’t planning to write 50k but now I really want to try!

Feeling: A bit burnt out but also kinda euphoric. I need to slow down my word count but also this story has awoken something in me <3 I love her

Here’s my fave excerpt of the week! Check under the cut for more excerpts + lots and lots of ramblings on my process this week!

But he also likes the quietness in summer’s ending. Summer to autumn is like a gentle breeze, a chance to inhale. Besides everything, at least there’s space to breathe before the brutality of the cold. Because unlike summer’s slow, delicate ending, autumn always darkens into winter like a candle, snuffed by someone else’s hand.

nano is really weird this year but i’m still having fun

That’s really all I can say at first! Like, this is Not a normal month for me. I had a very life-changing event happen recently and I’ve been v lucky to be able to take most of November off to navigate that and recuperate (would not have been able to do this without some extremely generous donations, if you were one of those people I am so so grateful and will be reaching out personally soon <3). So whilst the circumstances, really, really suck, I also do have a lot of “free time.” I’m not trying to think about productivity or use that as measure of strength/success but having a personal project is very comforting and having a tangible goal like Nano brings some much needed structure. I don’t want to take that for granted and I think I will back on this draft very fondly <3

Anyways, besties, one thing you’ve gotta know about me is that I am Not good with novels. Like, I’ve only ever gotten to 30/35k in a first draft. A couple months ago I was actually considering giving up and thought I just “wasn’t meant to be” a novelist. But I love novels, especially this one.15k is also where I burnt out during my last Nano attempt and is the furthest I’ve got during NaNoWriMo specifically. So like, I’m a little bit amazed, because whilst I’m a bit burnt out I can see myself finishing this book at some point. There’s just so much I want to say and do with it I’ve barely scratched the surface! And I think letting go of being a published novelist helped as well, I do want to be published one day but not with any of the current novel ideas I have and certainly not that one. I think that’s really lifted the pressure off. 

Anyways, because of said Circumstances you’ll see that my word count is pretty up and down. I’m writing my progress day by day so I can keep plot stuff to myself, and also because I wrote non-linearly this week. 

day one

My only goal was to write more than 1667 because I felt that if I didn’t do that on the first day I’ll find it harder to do on the rest of the days. I’ll also use this section to talk a bit about the plot premise so we’re on the same page! WS follows two communities that live on the opposite ends of a dense, confusing forest. Both communities were in a pretty nasty conflict, but the aggressors on either side are long gone and both communities are trying to heal. They both agree that conflict benefits nobody and they need to maintain some kind of harmony to protect themselves and the forest they share, which they believe gives them a great deal of protection. However, there are still a lot of personal grudges and distrust between certain people, which they’ll have to confront when Plot EventsTM force both communities to work together. 

Also, whilst we’re here, WS is an AU in the sense that whilst it has many original characters, the main characters are from my other WIP Revelations, Revelations. There’s not really any plot similarity between the two at all besides character relationships. The only notable thing is that, like in RR, Felix and Dorothy grew up on a Christian commune that was starting to drift into cult territory. The group they’re apart of are based on that commune and are trying to distance themselves from its past. 

Not gonna lie, my description and internal narrative prose feels so clunky, which I suspected with fast drafting but also, description and internal narrative is usually what comes the quickest and easiest for me so it was a little ?? but I’m mainly chalking it up to brain fog and a weird mental state. I’m not too bothered and am just trying to immerse in the story and get it done in whatever way works. I do plan to edit this after the first draft bc I love editing and I think it’ll be SO much fun. A lot of the somewhat successful prose was more just trying to build on one line/image, like here it was the last line about the forest’s underbelly:

(cw for implied animal death/hunting)

Beau’s learnt how to tune himself to the forest’s rhythm. He knows how the wind sounds when it weaves between its trees, he knows how the leaves sound as they breathe it in. He know how the rabbits sound when they twitch between brush, how they sound when they squeal in their traps. He knows the sound of the water rush, and he knows how many steps it takes to reach the riverbank. He knows how his boots sound against the ground and he knows where all the cracks and holes in the earth are. Sometimes, people tell him that the first rule of survival is to never go alone. At the start of summer, Luca was still apprehensive about letting Beau, letting anyone, out on their own. But Beau isn’t alone, he always says, he’s with the forest. He knows the forest, he listens to the forest. He’s walked over this dirt and grass before, zig-zagged between these trees before and yes, he’s deep in the forest’s underbelly, but he knows when it’s safe to stop and breathe in the pine.

I mainly worked on the opening scene which sees Beau and Felix bumping into each other in the woods, Felix delivering a “peace offering” of flowers and petals for brewing tea and Beau being pissed bc he thought Felix was following him (that was somebody else Beau <3 you will meet him later <3). At first I’d have described Beaulix as rivals to lovers but honestly they’re SO complicated it’s just ?? but the easiest way to describe their relationship at the start is 1) distrust 2) only knowing each other through the lens of an old conflict neither of them actually wanted and 3) I think in a world that’s constantly changing, they find comfort in this “rivalry” and moving on from that rivalry would force them to confront and process a lot of what’s happened in their pasts. They’re messy! LOVE reimagining them like this though it’s so different to RR Beaulix but suits them just as well?

Beau glares. “You talk too much.”

“And you always look at me like you wanna slice my throat, but I don’t complain.” Felix glares back, but then he grins. “You think so lowly of me, Beau.”

Felix is much more confident and generally less pathetic LOL in this story and I’m like who ARE you?? It’s because in WS he’s stayed in the same place his entire life, whereas in RR he’s plunged himself into an unfamiliar place where everybody else seems to know what’s going on except him. I also think he and Dorothy really dove into survival because it gave them agency & a chance to escape their childhood. They honestly kinda flourish in the apocalypse which is? Something? But I absolutely love him he is truly just vibing SODIFJSDKF

“Fucking with you? I didn’t even see you there.” Felix looks up, meeting with Beau’s eyes. “Just washing my hands, see?” He lifts his hands as if he’s surrendering, like he feels a need to affirm his innocence. “Zombie guts. Awful under your nails.”

Reading back on this chapter did make me realise that a big part of it doesn’t make sense which has me wanting to rip my hair out but it’s fine :) we can fix it later :) the painting is still crooked but we are looking away :)

day two to five

Nothing to report here! I was going through it mentally and also hadn’t worked out what helps me the most in writing consistently. I did on all these day but sometimes it was just to keep the Nano streak, and the stuff I did write feels Off.

day six

This was day one in Fighting For My Nano Life, where I wrote 3-4k every day until I was on track with the Nano progress chart. I also technically restarted the whole thing (All I did was slightly rework what I had already written. What I had so far felt like a crooked painting on the wall like yeah, I could move past it, but it was annoying to look at). This day I wrote about 4.2k new words but because I typed everything from the start I technically wrote 7k? Rest in peace to my wrists.

I completed the first two chapters and made a start on the third which is where the plot really starts kicking in. Technically the inciting incidents (there are 2 lol) happen in Chapter 1 and 2 but Chapter 3 is where this starts to get realised and is the first High Emotion point. Honestly she’s been giving me TROUBLE lol. Here’s part of a plot-irrelevant paragraph exploring how, when the apocalypse broke out the first thing Dorothy wanted to do was ransack an art store. Queen behaviour

Her reasoning was that nobody would ransack an art store, and since God obviously couldn’t be real anymore, that meant she could do whatever she wanted. She could paint whatever she wanted. How the moonlight glitters the lake and how she would look floating in the middle of it, alone. How her reflection would look with short hair and lipstick stains. A hand study with rings and varnish. Her and Felix aged five, on the rocket ship they designed together. The moon cycles. Self-portraits in the form of Tarot Cards. A dragon aboard Noah’s Ark. And girls. She could paint girls.

day seven

On the second day of my fight for my life, I hit 10k. 10k was my “testing the waters goal” AKA, if I hit 10k relatively quickly I would extend my goal however appropriate, but if I was struggling I knew that writing consistently for a month would get me to 10k. I was definitely starting to get burnt out though! It was difficult managing this alongside the first important, high emotion moment in the plot because I was like man, my brain is too frazzled to even fast draft this bit. I got some of the framework done and I think I’m going to rework this chapter entirely the same way I did chapter one. Another wonky painting on the wall moment <3 These two Dorothy/Jolie moments killed me though

“We should mash the raspberries up. Try and make a shitty mocktail with mashed up raspberries and boiled rainwater.”

Everybody give it up for the Raspberry Rainwater Mocktail 

“You know, I don’t mind if a date night out just means sitting on the forest floor a few feet from the gates. Hell, we can even bring our raspberry rainwater mocktail.”

Jolie grins. “Well, yeah, but I’m gonna come up with something better. You’ll see.”

This is where I officially gave up with writing linearly for now. I had a scene in my Scrivener doc I’d started in October just called “beaulix homoerotic wound tending”, and was keeping it as my Get Out Of The Linear Narrative Free card because I knew I wanted to work on it at some point so I could add those words to my Nano Count and have the whole doc be Nano Words. “beaulix homoerotic wound tending” sums up the scene perfectly LOL. I also know now that this scene will go near the end of part one, so it was like envisioning where Beau and Felix need to reach by the end of that part. Honestly it’s more about physical attraction + trusting each other than anything romantic, but you can tell that ~something~ is growing. I also think at this point they’d still lean into their Rivalry(TM) in a more joking way, but like, because they both know it’s comforting to them in ways they could never explain your honour I love them

Felix’s voice trails off when he realises Beau isn’t acknowledging his words. So, he tries a different angle. He leans closer, his voice is a whisper. “If you pass out now, I’ll have to carry you through your own gates. And that would be really embarrassing for you.”

This is an edit of what I wrote in October and previously posted on here, posting again because it is still one of my favourite parts so far like the phrase “lantern-lit haze” literally rewrote my brain chemistry. I think about it everyday. I’m this close to making lantern-lit haze my brand. HELP!

Beau has a birthmark, just below his shoulder. It sits in the same spot where freckles dot Felix’s own skin. Without thinking, without seeking approval but also, without feeling like he has to ask, Felix’s thumb moves up, grazes over the mark. It feels like another one of their shared little intimacies, like the light flickering on Beau’s chest and Felix’s hands; like Beau’s blood stained on Felix’s nails; like the air between their lips. Like how he sits on Beau’s bed, how their thighs touch and how Beau looks in Felix’s eyes when he asks if it’s all okay. How he keeps looking, even after Felix nods. Both cloaked by the night, cloaked by their silence. Here they are, breathing together in their own lantern-lit haze, and a thought creeps into Felix’s head, that he could do it right now. He could close the distance the distance, let Beau taste Felix’s hawthorn tea on his lips. How would Beau even react to that? How did Felix even get here?

Here’s a bonus line that I cut because whilst I love it I don’t think we’re at the stage emotionally where Felix would acknowledge this YET. Yet.

How, every time Beau’s asked if it’s all going to be okay, Felix found the answer in Beau’s eyes.

And obligatory on the nose referral to the season description in Chapter One:

He could end this, whatever it is they share, as quickly as snuffing out a candle. The warmth in Beau’s eyes would darken into something cold.

The eye imagery is starting to turn into a Beaulix Motif which like, interesting! It mainly comes from this one dialogue line that I haven’t written yet but I referenced here. BTW Felix’s weapon of choice is a bow and arrow and he uses it so often it feels like an extra limb to him it is at least 90% of his apocalypse personality. Anyway take a shot every time these lines say “Felix’s eyes”

How Beau had said that whenever he looks into Felix’s eyes, he sees an arrow pointing at him. What does he see in Felix’s eyes now? He keeps looking in Felix’s eyes.

Scream. Love Felix having his oh fuck, I think I’m attracted to you and I don’t know what to do about this but also I’m sure it won’t develop into anything else HAHA. Wait are you attracted to me? Wait a minute? moment. 

The scene ends with Felix being unable to return home because of the weather, and Beau telling him to just crash here (Beau has two beds in his room, can’t wait for them to transition from two beds to one). Felix does so and they have a really nice conversation about what Beau thinks Felix’s preferred method of killing him would be <3 

“I thought you would like, think I’d plan to kill you in your sleep.”

“I don’t think that’s your style,” he says to the ceiling. “I always thought poison would be your most likely move. I mean, you have all those flowers and you’re always talking about the concoctions you guys make. And the name you all picked? Foxglove? The literal, poisonous foxgloves tied to your gate? That’s a threat.” Beau’s eyes meet Felix with a look on his face that Felix could only assume was him trying to say I’m just joking. Please go along with it. Please. “You’re sly like that, you know? You would welcome me in your home, all nice and smiley, luring me in with honey.”

day eight to ten

And nothing to show again! On day 9 I hit 15k and was on track with the Nano progress chart, but today I literally wrote 100 words to keep my streak and took a day off because my brain is going through a lot and needed to rest <3 It was actually very hard to do that because I was so invested in this story and the comfort it brings me as a distraction, and also working towards a tangible goal like Nano made me feel like I had to “earn” a break, as in, be ahead in the word count. But I think this fluctuating word count where I write a lot over the course of a couple days and then write much less for a couple is suiting me more than consistently writing 1167 at least every day. Idk! We’ll see! My brain already feels a bit clearer. I’m also looking for some cool post apocalyptic stories to read that aren’t like, the really obvious famous ones, if anyone has any recs I would love to hear! (zombie apocalypse preferred but I’ll take anything with the right Vibes)

The plan for the next 10 days (was going to do weekly updates but in being fashionably late I realised 3 updates every 10 days makes more sense because I can end on Nov 30) is to get back into the linear narrative and just. Write! There’s so much fun plot stuff that I’m just DYING to get to and I can’t wait to watch it unravel.