#i did the sketches for these all the way back in october LOL

[zincfingermotif]

four of them

[swiftllama]

Oct/Nov Compliments ☀️🔍

[Compliments Masterlist]

Hey guys! And we’re back for another two months of compliments! So let’s get into it :-

October 2023

Forbes Article

So to start off the month the boys done an interview with Jon Youshaei for Forbes and also an office tour. It would be later in the month we would get the full 2hr interview, but first we got the article that included excerpts from said interview, including these :-

Anthony being a softie for their friendship as always. Relatable.

This isn’t the first time they’ve mentioned about how the way they work and ‘fit’ together, they’ve never found in anyone else. I covered it in my first Compliments Post, both during Anthony’s interview with Ian and at Vidcon, they’ve each said similar things. And I love how they recognise that, and how truly special their bond is and something that can never be replaced or replicated.

The second quote of Anthony’s - GAWD my heart! I know he didn’t explicitly say it, but that quote basically boils down to ‘we’re two really close friends who love each other.’ 😭❤️

Anthony Reacts To “Where’s Anthony” Jokes

So this video, whilst funny, was pretty sad. I don’t know if it was just me, but I thought Ian seemed particularly quiet during it and like he was just trying to get through the reaction as quick as possible without dwelling on the clips long. I have said before, but I think the reasoning for his quietness may be down to the fact the ‘where’s Anthony?’ jokes held the most emotions for Ian than anyone else. Whilst he did join in on the jokes at times, there was much more behind it than when the others would make the jokes. In the reaction video they do make reference a couple times about how the jokes affected Ian, which I shall go into, some of it ties into being complimentary :-

[watching clip of two boys doing a tiktok trend and make reference to Anthony leaving]

Anthony: “I mean, that was a 10. Those guys- that joke was amazing. And you [Ian] took it like a champ, all things considered.”

Arasha: “Yeah, 10 for you too, Ian.”

I love them acknowledging how the jokes could of affected Ian but he always handled it well, regardless.

-

[watching clip of Shayne answering that Ian and Anthony are the best ship]

Anthony: “We are a good ship. I’ve read the fanfictions.”

Ian: “Oh yeah, the ship’s great. That ship’s sailing. It’s been sailing for a decade.”

Even they acknowledge it 😏😌

-

[watching clip of Ian pretending to be himself from the past talking to his future self and asking “how’s Anthony?”]

Anthony: “That one kind of made me a little sad.”

Ian: “Awww. Yeah.”

Anthony: “Yeah, cause I’m like thinking back to you actually in 2008 being all stoked about me being part of it.”

Ian: “About all our adventures and be like, “How’s Anthony?” and it’s like “awww”.”

Anthony: “Yeah, I give that one a 10. That was commitment.”

I’m fine. This is fine. Not crying at all…..

Anthony being sad imagining young Ian so excited about them working together and how it would hurt him knowing what happened between them 🥺😭

I like that Anthony gave him a 10 and acknowledged his commitment to the bit, just wish it didn’t have it be for something so sad 😩

-

[watching clip of Ian joking that Anthony was coming back and they would be getting rid of everyone at Smosh and Anthony laughs a lot at the clip]

Anthony: “That was good! That was a good one. That definitely caught Courtney and Damien off guard.” [laughs]

Arasha: “I liked it. Just convinced that they don’t have their jobs anymore. That is good.”

Anthony: “That was a good threat. Yeah. Got ‘em.” [highfives for jokingly threatening your employees lol]

-

[watching clip of Ian in a sketch saying “I should’ve left with Anthony.”]

Anthony: [laughs] “That was good! That’s good. That was a 10.”

Courtney: “That was improv.”

Anthony: “That was improvised?!”

Courtney: “It was.”

Ian: “Oh yeah.”

Anthony: [shocked/surprised face] “Really? Damn, no, that was really good.”

-

[watching clip of Shayne wearing an emo-style wig in a video and Ian saying “Woah, it’s like he never left.”]

Anthony: [laughing and banging hand on table] “That was just a 10. I like it because you didn’t even say the name. You just said ‘he’.”

Notice the pattern of Anthony giving Ian 10s 😌

-

[watching clip from Ian’s funeral roast where he tells Courtney after Anthony left she “stepped up and became the new person who shuts down every single idea [he] has”]

Anthony: “Damn, that was good. There was a lot there. I mean, obviously solid 10.”

Arasha: “There was some tension that was let out right then.”

Shayne: “Only excuse we have there is that we were drunk. That was our drunk live.”

Anthony: [to Ian] “Which is kind of funny though because when we’ve talked, you’ve talked about how I amp up your jokes and encourage you.”

Dads are fighting…😳🫢

But aside from the joking bit of tension of that moment I just want to acknowledge what Anthony said, about how he amps up and encourages Ian and that Ian does recognise that.

-

Got a little Ian compliment towards the end of the video too :-

Ian: [patting Anthony’s shoulder] “Anthony, we’re glad you’re here. And we know where you are.”

Anthony: “Awww… Thank you.

-

At the end of the video Shayne says how they’ll never make another ‘Where’s Anthony?’ joke again, and jokingly says unless he gets lost at some point. Anthony agrees, and then just to be a menace, jokes about them saying it again if he “leaves again permanently” 😩🤬

Ian: [acting panicked] “I can’t go through this again.”

There was then this little sweet moment of Anthony comforting Ian by rubbing his back 🥹

(credit to @ianthoni for the gif)

Anthony: “We don’t want to see that sadness under Ian’s eyes again.”

Ian: “No, never.”

Anthony: “Not anymore. We like happy Ian. He’s back.”

Anytime they bring up how happy Ian is now that Anthony’s back it makes me want to cry 🥹

I love you so much Grandpa #2

So Anthony went to Prague to get more tattoos, and what gift did he bring back for Ian? Covid. Anyways, they’d missed the previous members livestream since Anthony was away and so promised an extended one in this tweet :-

It’s more complimentary-by-extension but the little ‘I love you so much’ I feel could be very accurate to how Anthony’s reaction will have been irl of feeling guilty for giving only Ian covid. Especially given the reactions we have seen on video of them acting sus about it all, or Ian half-jokingly acting annoyed and staring at Anthony when it’s brought up and Anthony acting like he doesn’t know how they got it. A few examples :- (x)(x)(x)

Dixon Cider - Flashback w/ Smosh

In this Flashback they had to take a sip of Dixon Cider everytime they done something sexy in the music video.

Anthony: “Wait. Wait. I know I shouldn’t keep pausing, but what are you doing in the background of this shot?”

Ian: “I’m just vibing, dude. I’m just vibing. You know I should take a drink because I look pretty good there.”

Anthony: “You were sexing it up.”

👀 …okay, Anthony…

-

[Reacting to the breakdown part of the song]

Ian: “Sexy. I’m going to-” [takes a sip]

Anthony: “You know I’m gonna take a swig for that too.”

-

[Song lyrics: “I love Dixon Cider and I will ‘til the day that I die.”]

Anthony: “…Let’s do a 10 year check in. Do you still love Dixon Cider to this day? Do you think that you will until the day that you die?”

Ian: [stares at Anthony] “…Yeah.”

Anthony: “I’m gonna take a swig for that. That’s sexy.”

This video just became Anthony calling Ian sexy and I’m not mad about it.

2hr Interview

Finally the interview came 🙌

It covered a lot of the things we already knew. But of course through talking about these things we’re always bound to get compliments and that’s exactly what we got :-

[talking about how many projects they had whilst under Defy and how Anthony puts all his effort and passion into everything, whereas Ian’s focus was more on sketches and the creative side of things]

Ian: “For me, like, there was just certain things that I wasn’t that interested in so I didn’t really pour that much of my time into, but Anthony like doesn’t know how to not put all of his heart into something. So I think that’s what really just spread you thin.”

Anthony: “Yeah. I think it’s a good thing that you kept your energy in one place where it really showed. You having so much of your energy and placing it in the places that were more visible, the YouTube sketches, those videos are some of our most viewed videos on the channel. You know, 30, 40, 50, 60 million views on those videos. While I was putting all of my heart into all these projects that now I’m like ‘Do people even remember that comic book that we made?’ ‘Do people even remember the games that we made?’.”

One thing I really loved about this interview was the back and forth of compliments to one another. Really pointing out how they recognise each other’s strengths in their unique ways. As the quote above stated, Ian recognises how Anthony puts his all into everything and yes maybe it doesn’t always serve himself in the best way, but it shows just how much he cares about every aspect when it comes to Smosh. And that in no way discredits Ian’s care, it actually works so well when paired with Anthony’s dynamic that Ian focuses his efforts more on where he knows his strengths are and that is going to make the most impact. Which again, is one of the many reasons as to why they do mesh so well together.

Speaking of their dynamic, it’s something Anthony later brings up :-

Anthony: “…Something about just our two personalities just click really well and I think every single thing needed to happen exactly the way that it did for it to end up the way that it did, but the friendship specifically it needed to, we needed to completely separate ourselves from each other and almost find each other by what almost feels like by accident.”

Something about that line - “finding each other by accident” makes me all gooey inside 🥹 the fact they had to rediscover each other and have came out the other side with a newfound appreciation and so much love for each other is so heartwarming.

-

Jon: “I feel like you guys are both Pokémon who evolved.”

[I&A discussing who they would be]

Ian: “I guess I’m Charmander, maybe.”

Anthony: “Yeah? You Charizard now?

Ian: “I feel kind of Charizard now. I need to like work on my upper body strength a little bit more.”

Anthony: “But you do bring the fire.”

This was just a fun little one I felt I had the include! Especially with the reference to ‘fire’, which is something a lot of us have talked about in regards to Anthony calling Ian the sun, and also his incorporation of the word in his tattoos.

-

Anthony: [talking about how Ian had invited him to collab with Smosh but he never wanted to whilst they were under Defy and that he didn’t want to come back if he would have just been an employee]

Ian: “I mean at that point like I, especially cause I had reached out and been like ‘hey we should collab’, and Anthony was always very polite…”

Anthony: [laughs]

Ian: “…but would decline. So I think at that point I had totally resigned myself to thinking that like, you know Anthony doesn’t have any interest in being in Smosh again.”

Anthony: “Did you ever take any of that personally?

Ian: “Umm…”

Anthony: “I always tried to word it in a way where you knew it wasn’t about you.”

Ian: “Yeah, no, I don’t think I ever took it personally. I think I was always like frustrated…”

Anthony: [laughs]

Ian: “…because I was like, this is, ‘we could get views man!’. It was always like-“

Anthony: “Yeah, I was almost like I don’t want to give Defy views like, it sucks though that you, obviously Smosh, it was like I didn’t mind necessarily giving the views to Smosh, but like to Defy and it’s just like a shitty situation because you were obviously under the umbrella of Defy. But you know through that whole process, Ian and I connected a little bit, but I was really kind of just observing from the outside and it was wild to witness this, I still harboured a lot of resentment towards Smosh because of all the Defy stuff, and part of me was like ‘dang, this brand that Ian and I built is just totally on its own like- not on its own, but like it’s just doing stuff that I have no, I’m not a part of it at all, it’s just like this amorphous thing that’s just like evolving, but I will say from the outside I was, I was really impressed with how Ian helmed that ship and making sure that- I was really appreciative too, that Smosh didn’t just end up going to some company that just picked it apart and sold all of our assets, sold our logo to be used in some you know way, god knows what, and then you know the content just starts showing up in all these different ways and it’s all chopped up and bastardised.”

Ian: “Like we now get to do the chopping up and bastardisation.”

Anthony: “Yeah, that’s our- that’s my god damn right! Um… but you know also I got to see Ian step up as a leader in many ways and decide on the creative direction and at a certain point I feel like you know because Ian you were so like [shrugs] ‘well you know we’re pretty [mumbles]’, like I don’t know, I think that kind of sums up the way that you kind of uh [laughs] thought about the leadership [shrugs and mumbles again giving an impression of Ian’s nonchalantness towards the leadership role], and I think that was one of the things that silently frustrated me that I never openly spoke about. I was like, ‘I wish you had more of an opinion, more of a drive to creatively, you know to see this go in the direction that you see creatively’, so when I saw from the outside Ian taking this lead and having you know opinions that he put his foot down on and leading this entire cast and elevating everyone for their strengths and also showing up himself as a host, and a leader, and a boss… and a daddy.”

Ah shit, here we go again…

The daddy thing aside, what Anthony said about watching Ian step up into that leadership role from the outside is something he’s spoken about many times and will forever be something I love. Just that recognition of the role Ian had to play for Smosh to be exactly where that is now. I love that it’s something he continually brings up and as stated in the quote above, tells Ian how he appreciates the fact he stayed with Smosh and the hard work he put in so that they could once again own what is rightfully theirs.

Anthony: “…I think that was one thing that really made me interested in the prospect of coming back in and joining forces again. I think there was a while, especially because we didn’t communicate, where I felt like if I did come back in like ‘it would all be up to me again’ and I would have to figure everything out and you know Ian wouldn’t necessarily have the input because he’s so grateful for just being there in the first place that he wouldn’t necessarily want to put his foot down but I saw that would be something that you would take, you know help me take the lead on and it’s been really cool coming back together and feeling like we are two entities who are completely on the same page with everything but also we can separate from each other every once and a while and take our own lead in doing things working towards the same goal, but I didn’t feel like it was all on my shoulders anymore, Ian had, you were forced into that position, and you were forced to learn very quickly, but you did, and now we’re able to run this thing as a duo who also have independent ideas and you know creatively are able to put our foot down where it needs to.”

-

Jon: [asks why Anthony decided to come back despite having his own success independently]

Anthony: [talks about seeing old clips of their sketches online and how he had resigned himself to thinking their old content was only good because of the nostalgia making him imagine it fondly] “…but watching the clips I was like ‘wait, our writing…’ , there was obviously a lot of shitty stuff, but our writing at times was really, really solid and our, the chemistry we had together off-camera and on-camera was really strong, and we fit together in this way where we kind of balanced each other out and we were able to create stuff that was really, really solid that I hadn’t found in anyone else separately. I’d found also that Ian you told me you also realised the same thing, that the way that we work together is kind of like this magical combination that we haven’t really found anywhere else.”

They make me fucking SOB 😭 I cannot resist when they talk about their connection with one another and the chemistry they have together, and how it’s something they’ve never found in anyone else. It’s so special. THEY WERE MADE FOR EACH OTHER!

-

Ian: [talking about how they want to make content they believe in and not just to make money and how their focus now is quality over quantity]

Anthony: [agrees and talks about how their approach is on being excited about the content itself and what viewers would most love to see rather than thinking of only pleasing the inventors like it was in the past with Defy]

Jon: “Yeah, it’s amazing how, I mean feelings matter when it comes to a creative business.”

Anthony: “Yeah, especially when you’re operating from a creative place, you know it’s not, we’re not just in the operations of the business, in fact I think it’s really good that we are, you know our faces are attached to it, our creative endeavours are fully public, our friendship is public. All these things, you know I feel like if all these things weren’t fully visible I could see some world where I’m like well, you know operating from a place of like ‘we’re just investors’, but I’m really glad that we, we’re in the same position now that we were in when we first started, which is us being two really, really close friends who love making each other laugh, love spending time together, love creating stuff together, love capturing the magic that we feel when we’re hanging out together and enjoying our time together and displaying that for other people to enjoy as well.”

Oh look, it’s me crying again 😩

I know I already included this quote earlier in this post, but of course had to touch on it again. It truly was just a roundabout way of Anthony saying ‘we’re two really, really close friends who love each other.’ But also talking about how they feel it’s ‘magic’ when they’re together and how they want to share that with others 🥹😭

-

Ian: [talks about how great the efficiency of the Smosh office space is]

Anthony: “It’s really cool, we almost have a blank slate to build out this place and make it work perfectly for exactly what we need and when we have multiple other channels; we have Smosh Pit, which is the channel where a group of people, you know we have a cast of really incredible people that helped in many ways keep the Smosh brand alive while I was gone, and you know Ian you helped elevate all of these really talented people and performers.”

A little 2 for 1 compliment from Anthony there, both for the cast and for Ian, of course. Again, something he’s mentioned before and think it’s really great how much he recognises everyone’s efforts in keeping Smosh going as well as Ian’s.

-

[I&A alking about their writing process]

Anthony: “I’ll be sitting there with the laptop writing out all our ideas. We’ll kind of be, lately because this is this very early stages, we’ll go back through some of our old videos, I’m like ‘here I really like that one element of this old sketch, this kind of idea’ and it’s usually like us going head to head on something, us working together to solve a problem, us going against some kind of like- us joining forces to go against some kind of evil thing, or us like trying to one up each other, and mess with each other, and ruin each other’s day, like we’ll figure out one kind of a through-line for the plot and then we just start throwing out a bunch of ideas. But I’ll start writing it out and then Ian will, he always gets, like actually the thing that always happens is Ian goes [imitates Ian’s laugh] ‘this is a really stupid idea’ and I’m like ‘what is it?’ [fakes typing] and I’m ready to type it out and he tells me the idea and it’s usually really, really funny, and if it’s not then I usually get an idea, I’m like ‘okay, I see where you’re going with that but I don’t think that works because of this, I think that we could go somewhere down here’ and I think that the interesting part of that process is it doesn’t ever seem like any of us is just like ‘no, that’s stupid’ or anything like that…”

Again, another thing Anthony continually brings up is the “stupid” (according to Ian) ideas that Ian throws out. Which are something he’s mentioned being his favourite, and how those are the ones he’s always most excited/intrigued for.

Anthony: [continues on about their writing process and how he’s in charge of the formatting and feels he’s good at picking out which ideas work and which don’t]

Ian: “Yeah, and I think some people would get- could get frustrated at something like that but I think Anthony and I have a specific shorthand, and I think we understand each other in a way that we never other found creative partners that quite clicked with us like we do in the time that we were apart. I feel like I didn’t quite, I felt like I was kind of like operating at like 70% and I never, like I still had great people that I was working with and really, really funny people that I was working with, but I never felt like I was contributing at a level that I should’ve been, that I can with Anthony.”

Once more them bringing up this connection with one another that they’ve never found with anyone else. I’ve said it so many times, but it’s so special. And Ian and Anthony realise how special it is.

-

Jon: [asks if the change in the algorithm is something they think about when writing jokes that could ruin monetisation for them and how they protect themselves against that]

Anthony: “Yeah, every once and a while we run into something where we’re like ‘that’s pushing it a little bit’ and what we do because we have the backup of having memberships, it gives us a little bit of leeway to be like ‘but that’s the funniest joke.’ But I think it’s actually really interesting and one thing that Ian and I do really well, is we work really well with limitations, like the more limited something gets, as long as I have freedom within that limitation, I think that our stuff gets really strong. In the early days we were literally making things out of cardboard, we created you know that Boxman character because we didn’t have any budget all we had was- we were looking around for props in my bedroom and we have this cardboard box there, like we work really well within like confined spaces and every once and a while it’s like ‘oh that joke it’s kind of pushing it in a way that might not really do well, it could get the video just like- not even just demonetised but blacklisted and like then the audience doesn’t even see it’ and we’re like ‘is there a funnier way to do this that still works?’ and 9 times out of 10 we think of a funnier idea that I’m like ‘if I were given these two options I would choose this one anyway’ so it doesn’t feel like a compromise, it feels like a bonus.”

You know I live for the individual compliments they give to one another, but every so often we get these compliments where they compliment themselves as well as the other and I love it because it goes back to their dynamic again and how well they work together to solve issues as a team.

-

[I&A watch old news clip of them from 2006 when they were creating the first Food Battle]

Anthony: “… but it was so cool, you know that was, that literally showed where the first videos that we ever made happened; It was in my bedroom at my mom’s house, and that is what our life was like, just sitting there on the computer getting excited about ideas and I think Ian was the one that suggested the ‘2006’, you know so I was there implementing these ideas and I would have a great time editing these things and learning how to edit in the process and Ian would, because he wasn’t editing, his brain was free to come up with all these insane ideas and he was like ‘oh do 2006 and have it crash together!’ and then I learned how to make the graphics come on-screen and like all these explosions and sound effects and I think that showed the dynamic between us, of me sitting there implementing these ideas and finding a way to one-up or guide some of the ideas, throw out the stuff that didn’t work super well, telling him like ‘I think we could do better with that one’ and Ian just sitting there and spitballing ideas and it’s just really cool to see that.”

And again, more talk of their dynamic. It’s definitely one of the things they recognise most about their connection with each other, and how it balances them and the way they work out so perfectly.

-

Jon: “The number 6 seems to be really important in your journey.”

[I&A laugh]

Jon: “I don’t know what is up with that, but 2005 you guys uploaded your first video. 2011, 6 years later, you sold. 6 years after that, 2017, you [Anthony] left. 6 years later, you guys bought it back. And I think it was 6 years and 6 days to the date, when I was looking at it…”

Anthony: “For the announcement? Yeah.”

Jon: “For the announcement.”

Anthony: “None of those things were planned to be 6 years. It just was.”

Ian: “Was it in June too?”

Anthony: “Yup.”

Ian: “Sixth month.”

Yes!! I was so excited when this was brought up! Gonna refer you guys back to this post I made about Angel Numbers. Know it’s not the type of thing everyone believes in, but I don’t think anyone can deny there is a pattern there with them and the number 6. And it’s something they notice themselves too.

-

Anthony: [talking about comments of people finding that same joyful absurdity in Smosh sketches again that they felt when they were kids] “I think a lot of us got kind of trapped in this cycle of looking at really dark content for a long time, and we started to feel like the world was a dark and scary place and just kind of feel shitty, and creating this stuff and consuming this type of content I hope it can help remind people that there is a little bit of light in the world, and capturing, like having that special dynamic with a friend, or with a group of friends is really special.”

“having that special dynamic with a friend” just wanted to point out that he looked over at Ian when he said this 🥹

And with one last reiteration of their special dynamic, that brought us to the end of the interview.

Submissive and Breedable

Yes. It is time to talk about ‘that’ moment. And don’t tell me there wasn’t something complimentary in it! That’s why I’m including it. Anyways, yes, Anthony called Ian “submissive and breedable” 🫠

You’ve all probably seen the clip by now but just to provide the context anyways. In the BTS they’re sitting on the couch together and Ian jokes about not being able to get up :-

Ian: “I’m almost 40, I can barely get up. Help… help… help…”

Anthony: “You’re on your own.” [laughs] “Why do you look so submissive and breedable right now?”

I hate him, I really do (affectionate) 🤦‍♀️

So yeah, that was a thing that happened… 👀

Stuck In A Toilet - Flashback w/ Smosh

After a week of Twitter shenanigans (x)(x)(x)(x)(x)(x) (x) and a roundabout way of promoting Food Battle, we got another eps of Flashback. This is when they were beginning to get sick but I don’t think realised they had covid yet. Anthony wasn’t too bad but Ian was sneezing and yawning throughout it. The one little complimentary moment I wanted to include was from one of those moments where Ian yawned and Anthony reached over to rub his shoulder which was very sweet ☺️ I actually posted the clip here for anyone interested.

-

Another small little moment that I took as complimentary happened towards the end of the video was them discussing their old hairstyles and Ian was asked whether he’d ever bring the bowl back and he said that he doesn’t think his hair has the same thickness so he doesn’t think he’d be able to achieve it. He then tries to style his hair back into a bowl :-

Anthony: “Oh shit, he’s doing it! He’s doing it!”

Ian: “My hair’s pretty long right now.”

Anthony: “Yeah, you can do it. I really think you’d be able to rock it just the same.”

Just love how Anthony’s always bigging him up to make him feel more confident LIKE YES! YOU TELL HIM ANTHONY!

Extended Livestream

So this livestream was to make up for the few that they’d missed. They had a lot to cover, including the “submissive and breedable” moment :-

[chat comment: ‘Is Ian looking submissive and breedable right now?’]

Anthony: [looks Ian up and down] “Yes.”

Ian: “You think so? Aw, shoot.”

Anthony: “Yes, he really do be looking submissive and breedable right now.”

Anthony needs to relax, I swear 😩 (we love it tho)

-

[reacting to Ian pulling out a hammer in the Cursed Magic 8 Ball sketch]

Anthony: “This was such a random moment. This was definitely an Ian joke, I love it though.”

He truly loves that boy’s humour so much, it’s one of his most favourite things about him ☺️

-

[talking about Anthony’s hideout in the sketch]

Anthony: “The secret hideout looked cozy as fuck.”

Ian: “Yeah, dude. It was hot as hell in there too, right?”

Anthony: “It was hot though, yeah, cause there were lights obviously. So these Christmas lights were not LED so they were producing a lot of heat and uh, my body, quite warm…”

Ian: “Cause you’re, submissive and breedable…”

Anthony: “Yes. Yes, Ian.”

THEYRE SO ANNOYING 😩 just had to include this moment since the shoe was on the other foot and it was Ian’s turn to call Anthony the now infamous quote.

-

[chat comment: Ian’s gone from looking like a depressed middle-aged dad to super happy and sparkling]

Anthony: “Awww, you’re sparkling.”

That’s right Anthony! And it’s all because of you 🥹 he lets him Bejeweled ✨

-

[signing out the livestream and Ian says he still has covid brain because he can’t get his word out]

Anthony: [talking about seeing everyone in the next livestream] “And until then, I will nurse Ian back to health.”

Ian: “Please. I am submissive and healable.”

🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Very cute how Anthony said he’d nurse him back to health though.

And on that note, that brought us to the end of October…

November 2023

Food Battle Trailer Watch Party + Tier List

So November rolled around and it was time for Food Battle promo. In this livestream they watched the 2023 trailer, plus ranked all the previous Food Battle’s. And in it we got this moment :-

[reacting to this still]

Ian: “Yo, that butt though.”

Anthony: “Yeah, that donk goes hard.”

Okay Anthony… 👀😏

Food Battle 2006 VS 2016 (Flashback w/ Smosh)

So this Flashback they had Courtney and Chanse on for, in which we got this moment :-

[watching Food Battle 2016]

Ian: “This hair though. Not a vibe.”

Chase: “The hair’s not a vibe.”

Courtney: “You figured it out.”

Ian: “That’s Ghostmates. That’s Ghostmates hair.”

Chanse: “You figured it out now.”

Anthony: “Oh, you figured it out, daddy.”

He does this to torture me I tell you.

Also I’m all for Courtney’s suggestion at the end of the video for them to stare into each other’s eyes for 4 minutes whilst calling each other ‘daddy’. Just tell us how many views to make it happen boys!

We Roast Anthony With Memes (Who Meme’d It)

I have been dying to talk about this! Because it was a crossover of all my favourite people Ian and Anthony + Taylor 🙌 I actually made a video out of these moments here. So they had Anthony on ‘Who Meme’d It’ with Courtney and Angela, along with a lot of the cast and crew watching from the sidelines.

One of the memes was this one comparing Ian and Anthony to Taylor and Travis, and Angela explains the meaning behind it to Anthony about the whole ‘Taylor put Travis on the map’ meme and how people only started caring about him when he started dating Taylor, and in this meme they were comparing Ian to Travis and Anthony to Taylor 😭

But Anthony was not having that!

Anthony: “That’s not fair to Ian. That’s messed up. Ian carried this company for 6 years!”

You tell ‘em Anthony! 😤

But yes I was living for the crossover plus Anthony defending Ian on top of that! It was like that moment was specifically curated for me 😌

-

Another moment of Anthony defending Ian in the video was when the meme about Ian’s very limited clothing options popped up 🤭

Again, Anthony was not having it :-

Anthony: [laughing] “That is fucked!”

Ian: [comes out to compare the current shirt he’s wearing to the one’s in the picture]

Anthony: “He has a fourth [shirt].”

Ian: “No, that’s a different shirt [on the board].”

Anthony: “Yeah, there’s no pocket on that one.”

Ian: “Yeah, see the no pocket?” Different shirt. Different shirt.”

Anthony: “Wow, Ian has five shirts.”

Love Anthony sticking up for him here! Just like shouting over everyone else to be in his corner, it’s very sweet ☺️

Food Battle 2023 Watch Party

Food Battle 2023 finally arrived and of course we got a livestream with the boys which included some complimentary moments :-

Ian was unhappy with how his hair looked in the scenes where they were on the roof in Food Battle because the wind was blowing it. He mentioned this in the stream and Anthony kept trying to reassure him that it was fine and saying his own hair was messed up 🥺

Ian: “I just hate how the direction of this wind was blowing was not ideal, I did not take that into consideration when we set up this shot.”

Anthony: “Yeah, Ian was not happy that his hair was all fucked up.”

Ian: “My hair is massively fucked for this entire [scene].”

Anthony: “But I was like it works for the final scene.”

Ian: “Yeah, it like makes me look insane, that’s fine.”

Anthony: “Well me too, when I stand up. I’ll show you in a bit. I’ll point it out.”

…

[watching the bit in question]

Anthony: “I look insane with my hair there.”

Ian: “Yeah, but, you think your hair looks insane. Look at this, look at this bullshit. What is that?”

Anthony: “It just looks like the wind’s blowing on you. Or it looks like you’re like an infant in a cartoon and that’s how they draw your hair.”

Ian: “What even is that? What would you even call this?”

Anthony: “The floof. The wispy floof.”

Just love Anthony trying to make him feel better 🥹

-

[cuts to the end screen and the close up shot of Ian and Anthony’s asses in the BTS]

Anthony: “Oh. Oh man. No, it’s so good.”

Anthony’s got a thing for Ian’s assets 😏

And in saying that it leads me on to the last compliment from this stream :-

-

We finally got Anthony’s thoughts of Ian in the maid outfit :-

Anthony: “Okay, alright, thoughts on the maid outfit.”

Ian: “What do you mean thoughts on the maid outfit?”

Anthony: “I thought it was a pretty good outfit.”

Ian: “Yeah, it’s hot. I think we both agree on that.”

Anthony: “It accentuates all the right places.”

Told you he loves Ian’s assets 🤭

Try Not To Laugh Challenge - Ian’s Birthday

So Anthony along with the cast, crew and some special guests done a TNTL for Ian’s birthday, it included multiple moments of them cheering, clapping and celebrating him but a lot of their bits were roasts to him, but of course his bestie came through as always :-

[Anthony comes out for his bit and starts playing music from the keyboard]

Anthony: “Hey, so you know when you found out that we were going to be buying Smosh back and you decided to get hot.”

Posted a clip of this moment here.

Have nothing more to add, what Anthony said speaks for itself.

Zach Sang Show Interview

So the boys went on the Zach Sang show and covered a lot of different topics and talked about their YouTube journey, and of course their reuniting was brought up :-

Dan: “How did you guys reconnect? Like who reached out to who? Or did you guys sit down one day together?”

Ian: “A friend of mine, I was talking to her about Anthony and she was like ‘you should reach out to him, like what are you doing’.”

Anthony: “What were you saying to her about me? Like ‘oh this old friend of mine’.”

Ian: “Well cause I was like telling her about, I was telling her about Smosh and you know talking about you and yeah I think she could kind of like saw, you know there’s still like, I still, you know I spoke fondly of you and everything, so she was like ‘you should get back together with him’.”

I know we already knew this story, but now with the inclusion of the fact that Ian was speaking fondly about Anthony is so sweet to hear 🥹

-

Zach: “What have you learned about each other from this second Smosh chapter? Or whatever you would describe it, this… rekindling? Or resurrection?”

Anthony: “One thing that stands out to me is how much Ian was forced to step up into the leader position, cause you know for so many years as we were working together, you know Ian was really like ‘go with the flow’, and that’s where we actually excelled was that dynamic between us, was I would take a little bit more of the leadership role, little bit more like rigid, like ‘get this thing done. figure out this thing. I have this to-do list and these goals’ and I was like kinda doing that kind of thing, all the programming and stuff. While Ian was a lot more focused on just being creative and shooting out ideas, and that’s where I think the dynamic between us really flourished, but now, you know I’ve kinda been, because I’ve been off on my own I’ve been forced to kind of hone in on that creative, go with the flow side, while Ian’s been forced to hone in on that leadership mentality, and I think it’s really cool to see that side of both of us flourish.”

Know we’ve also heard this multiple times before, but I just love when Anthony admires how much Ian stepped up into that leadership role after he left, even though it wasn’t what Ian necessarily wanted. But that recognition now from Anthony is such growth, and I love how it’s something he continually points out and praises him for.

Ian: [talks about how he felt he was thrown into the deep end to be a leader when Anthony left, and even though it was hard he’s glad he stuck with Smosh as he still saw the potential it had]

Anthony: “Yeah, and I really respect Ian pulling Smosh through just so many years of all that difficulty, kind of like tredging through this like swamp with this company and turning it, and keeping it alive, keeping it thriving, creating new formats and shows and highlighting the cast and you know growing it into what it became when I decided that you know it was time, we could do this again, and I think in the final years of me being at Smosh I started to resent everything. I started to resent you know the parent company and kind of what they turned Smosh into, and how Ian and I lost our friendship in some ways because of it, but also because of ourselves, and I think because I in part of that I was resenting Ian in part of that, I think I forgot to really respect and honour the work that Ian had put into it, and I think part of me because I felt like so much of it was out of my control and you know I felt like ‘if it was all in my control this would have been fine’ you know what kind of a story that I built in my head, so I think I started to resent Ian and the way that the company had went so it was really cool to be watching from a distance and as I started to reconnect with Ian and everything to kind of start to understand that mindset that he had, why he stuck around, what he has built it into, and you know growing into this leadership position and taking all these roles on that he didn’t want and you know all these positions that I felt like I was thrown into Ian was now being thrown into…”

Again, that recognition for all Ian’s hard work and about how difficult it must’ve been for him to be thrown into that role when he left.

Anthony: [talks about how he feels his upbringing affected him resenting and being frustrated with that leadership role when he was at Smosh because of the responsibilities he had to take on for his family due to his mom’s agoraphobia] “So I felt like I dealt with Smosh like that to a certain degree and I think that part of me was trying to have Ian be like co-running it entirely, like 50/50 and I got in my head like ‘it needs to be 50/50’ because I think that I wanted that kind of in my childhood home, so because Ian was so much more focused on being more creative and in many ways keeping Smosh fun, which I feel is at the heart of Smosh, I think a part of me resented Ian for not taking on that leadership role with me as much, and you know I think one element of us reconnecting is Ian really has taken on that leadership role and I don’t feel it’s on my shoulders anymore to that same degree and Smosh, you know Ian kept Smosh alive and thriving for 6 years while I was gone, I don’t feel now like it’s hanging on by a thread that I’m holding on to, it feels like it can live and thrive on it’s own and Ian’s there to back me up whenever I need it.

I’ll forever love this dynamic between them now, again it’s something we’ve heard from them before, how they share that leadership now. I’m so glad they have that in each other, because as they’ve spoken about, it’s a lonely job being the boss, so having a partner in that, someone who is your equal to share that load with makes all the difference, which is something we’ve seen manifest over and over again, especially in regards to Ian, and it’s something he’s spoken about himself, just how much happier he is that he knows he has Anthony there backing him up. I just think it’s so special that they have that in each other.

Daddy 2.0

So everyone has been simping for Ian in his priest costume for Anthony’s Funeral Roast, and rightfully so :-

Andrew Scott who?

And of course Mr No.1 Ian simp himself, Mr Anthony Padilla is at the forefront :-

Numerous other Smosh members commented on the post, but Chanse and Amanda’s were the thirstiest two :-

And who was out here lurking in Ian’s comments liking each and every one including those^^ two…

Real subtle as always, Anthony 🤭

Ian’s Birthday

Just wanted to include a little bit about Ian’s birthday since I did for Anthony’s, and similar to his, it was more complimentary-by-extension, but still as utterly cute ☺️

Of course as his No.1 fan this day must be just as equally exciting for Anthony - a full day to celebrate Ian! (Not that he doesn’t do that every day tho)

We got this adorable birthday post from Ian of Anthony giving him his gift :-

Of course inspired by the recurring joke created by Shayne in this video that Ian is Chumbawamba’s No.1 fan 😄

And Anthony’s comment

‘Birthday boy’ gets me 🥹

Another sweet little moment from the day was this video that I posted here of the cast and crew bringing Ian a cake and singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him, I put this in my tags at the time, but notice how Anthony’s right in there front and centre to celebrate him 😭 It’s also the first birthday Anthony has properly been able to celebrate with him in so long given they had only just re-connected before Ian’s birthday last year so things were still new, so I’m sure this time around it was so special for them to be able to celebrate both their birthdays together for the first time in so many years 🥰

And with that, that brings us to an end on October and November. One more month left of this year and I can’t wait to see what that’ll bring us. I’ll see you guys next time 💖

[synthshenanigans]

woah hey a year has been passed wowie :0

First two weren't posted here cos they were too long ago & not CJish related but love the way he took up 70% of the year lol

[ Full images + templates below :} ]

[TW for Bright Colors, maybe blood & very very vague themes of depression/suicide for like 2 drawings I believe]

Long text about the arts if anyones actually curious!!

January: An old OC I completely forgot about until making this. He's based on old radio like things :}

February: Played Person 5 Royal last year & drew Joker cos idk he's neat. Fun fact, the same day I fully finished the game was the day Storm & a Spring came out. Also while grinding in the game, I had his Bidding & VoaC covers on repeat. Which was a bit annoying to do since they weren't on Spotify yet & YT on mobile didn't have looping then.

March: The Hawaii Part ii album cover :} I did post that eventually but that's the time I actually made it. Had listened to TME a couple of months before then which got me into the album, so months later I drew it cos why not? [Also the month Vol.1 fully released on everything. What's funny is my gallery for that day was a handful of memes I saved at 4am before I fell asleep. And then the next image saved is when I woke up which was a screenshot of the whiteboard in TfaR lol]

April: First main Jash art !!! And its not even with any of the songs from Vol. 1 lol. I had his Moss cover on repeat again & now that all of Vol. 1 was out, I drew Heart in some moss. Or really in the image from the video.

May: Lil animation I made of Heart with the song Don't Hit the Lights! Link to my post & the song can be found here :}. Still really like the song & even the drawings. Might remake em eventually idk

June: Sky/socialc1imb's Clue AU! I like murder mysteries & this one was real interesting so I drew it a lot lol. Might remake that one or one of the others I made at somepoint? It'll be a bit later if I do but ye

July: A redraw of a HMS piece I originally made back in May, based on the Three Wise Monkeys thing. I like the idea of it so I keep wanting to remake it.

August: I honestly can't remember if I posted that art or not. Actually yea I don't think I ever did PFFT. It's one of the few drawings I did of myself this year & its from CJs Not Perfect cover [as you can tell by the lyrics on it]. Also one of the very very few vent-ish arts I made. I like the background more than anything but its still neat ig?

September: Art for one of the best songs ever. I love Fine, I'm Fine its so good & I listened to it for like 70% of the 20+ hours it took me to make the drawing. Still proud of it so there's the sketch I drew on paper, the one on my tablet & then the final versions.

October: There was a lot from this month due to Jashtober. I still like this one lot & it wasn't insanely rushed so I picked this one to show lol.

November: I have no idea why I made a fun lil soul. I was having an identity crisis over my art style & ig decided to draw the guy who is a walking identity crisis/j

December: Same as September. One of my favorite songs ever was covered & released, so I made a drawing like everyone else lol.

[starredanise]

approaching my tumblr 10 year anniversary next month?! so for fun i browsed through my art tag to categorize what kind of art i’ve posted 🫣 and out of 186 #my art posts:

most of them (41) were original - self portraits, drawing from life, ocs, school stuff, et cetera.

the month with the most posts was january 2016 (11) after watching fullmetal alchemist brotherhood and star wars: the force awakens that winter break. close behind was october 2014 (10), when i attempted inktober for the first time.

i’ve made the most art for percy jackson + heroes of olympus (22) which is fitting given that’s how i got into drawing! by sketching the characters from the books for my friends in middle school.

besides “other fanart” (anything i only ever made 1-2 posts for, 18) the next highest category is avatar the last airbender + legend of korra (sensing a pattern with the formative media here LOL). before 2020, i made only 3 art posts for it and all of it in 2014. after 2020, that number is now 16! #renaissance

next is aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe, with 15 posts (!!) clearly i loved that book and wanted to contribute to the small art scene for it.

i’m surprised that h*milton has the same number of posts as m*rvel (catch-all for comics, mcu, agents of shield, and spiderverse) with 10 posts each… sometimes you have to acknowledge your past to move forward 🫡 tbh i think drawing for both at least strengthened my skill in capturing real faces (vs from a book description or an already stylized animated face). that also reminds me, irls came too close to coming to this blog because the musical’s official accounts reposted my art because that was the year i started trying to crosspost to twitter SKSDJSKDK

longest time between posts is 508 days (between jan 14 2022 and jun 6 2023) whoops...

post with the most notes is still my s&seasian atla piece (~46k) and i hope it stays that way <3 i recently rearranged my shelf so I could put up the prints i made of it on display.

i think that’s it, interesting numbers wise. other observations:

overall, i started off posting more traditional stuff by way of sketches in the margins of my school notes or on the blank backsides of worksheets, and also i was in art class at the time. i did post digital art drawn on my tablet, but not as frequently as I now draw/post with my ipad since 2018 (and notably the app procreate since 2020, actually a gamechanger) and a lot more art in full color since too. i wouldn’t mind making more traditional but it’s more time consuming and now i want to post art that’s more finished-looking (quality vs quantity).

did i expect myself to still be posting art on tumblr 10 years later? probably not? i did try posting on twitter and instagram but got cold feet sooo now i’m still here. glad i’m still here! i’m glad i can look at old art with a fondness (though i would prefer no one else scroll or reblog that far back please 😭 just take my word for it that i posted all that PLEASE).

thank you for reading if you made it all the way here!! thank you to everyone who liked or reblogged or followed or commented something nice in the last 10 years! and thanks to the artists and writers and gifmakers and other creators who inspired me too! even if i stop posting on tumblr, i hope to draw for the rest of my life!!!!!

[theposeknowsart]

December 07th, 2023: November and December Doodley Review!

I haven't drawn nearly as much digitally as I did in October or September, but I've done a lot more in my sketchbook. I love watching the pages fill up!

I'm learning more about non-digital coloring with my Crayola markers and crayons lol and hopefully my sketchbooks will start to look pretty colorful from here on out! I can't wait to be able to flip back through this year's books like I did last year!

I don't usually post sketchbook pages, but I've really been enjoying a lot of the doodles I've been doing lately. I'm a big fan of drawing lines and shapes until you have a picture and it's been a lot of fun!

I've been doing a lot of new shapes and learning more about expression and style through trial and error! (A lot of error lol)

I've also been doodling new characters! And I discovered I draw a lot more freely on loose papers because they're not bound to my sketchbook, so I have a lot of loose leaf sketches now lol!

I decided to try drawing with my laptop trackpad on MS Paint, and I was super surprised with how fun that turned out to be!

---

All in all, I'm super happy with how my art has been progressing! Things that were harder last year at this time are way easier now!

I have plans for a cutesy comic in 2024 called The Adventures of Bean and Echo! (title still pending)

And I've also found a lot of help in sketching out animation stuff too! Just doing a line of keyframes for lil guys has been so fun, and I'm hoping to do my first walk cycle soon. (I've done bounces and leaps, melts and squishes, switches and hops, but never a walk)

.

I can't wait to see what the rest of this year brings for my art!

[emeritus-fuckers]

Ayyyy congrats on the 1k followers! 🍾 I’m going to join in on the Ministry Role if that’s alright (:

1. Would you say you're more likely to be a Sibling of Sin or a Ghoul? Why

Both? Sibling for not feeling like a person at times. And Ghoul simply for the fact I feel like a creechure but not all the time. It’s a little hard to explain with words.

2. Which Papa would you prefer to work with? Why? (Sister Imperator is included)

Primo or Copia. They both have a more laidback vibe that would save me from keeling over with terrible social anxiety lol. And both would be great to talk to if they ever wanted to speak with me. I like listening to people and their stories.

Maybe Nihil as well if he ever needed assistance. Im mostly open to whoever needs the help the most.

3. Are you an introvert, ambivert or an extrovert? Tell us a little more about it.

Extremely introverted. A few hours of being around more than two people is overwhelming and requires rest else overstimulation becomes physically painful.

4. What chore do you like the most/hate the least?

I like doing things with my hands. Sweeping, mopping, dusting, even pulling weeds from a garden helps put my mind at ease.

I don’t like doing dishes as much. The textures can make me cry lol.

5. Do you like to travel, or maybe you prefer to stay at home?

I’m in between. I love traveling and seeing new places. Especially restaurants and museums! And I love staying put to keep the same repeat patterns.

6. Freebie. You've got five sentences to tell us anything you want about you

I have several hobbies that I always shift between sketching, writing, reading, sewing, growing plants and even making bracelets to give out as gifts. I am spending a lot of time sketching up designs and creating new projects. Music is a huge part of my daily life and I often listen to help me calm down and stim. I was diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety and autism at a very early age and do struggle a lot with social interactions and need frequent breaks.

This post is part of the 1000 followers whats my role in the ministry event. Entries (asks) for the event close on 23rd October

Your role in the ministry is… Assistant gardener to Papa Emeritus I

Primo always allocates you a part of the garden that he knows is out of the way of most people. This means you get to work in peace.

He will come and join you though. He enjoys your company a lot so you often go for a tea break together.

He’ll also happily tell you stories while you work.

You can listen to music as much as you want when you work.

Primo is very laid back you can take as many breaks as you need whenever you need. All he cares about is that you feel happy and comfortable.

You made him a bracelet taking inspiration from his favourite plants in the gardens. You used colours of their leaves and flowers and have it to him. He was so touched by the gift, he wears it all the time now and he gave you a big hug.

The Ghouls who work in the garden love your bracelets they took to following you around from a distance (making you tea bringing anything you needed to you). Primo had to explain it was their way of asking if you’d make them bracelets. Which you did. The Ghouls loved you anyway but now they totally adore you.

Primo has told you that you can write and sketch in the garden whenever you like. He and the Ghoul’s decided to move a garden bench to a more secluded part of the garden so you can sit there whenever you want. Whenever you decide to sit there the Ghouls seem to know in advance and you always find blankets and cushions laid out for.

~

Written by Nyx

[suekre]

Some personal rambling.

Soooo.

As I’m convinced that I’m going to spend the rest of my life all by myself, I decided to actively figure out ways to make the single life at least bearable. I have NO clue how I’m going to do that, but at least I figured out a few things that I can start right away and that might help me to feel a little better about myself again:

* I am going to go to the gym. Regularly. To... actually work out. Not to get super athletic (come on, I’m still me) but to get a little fitter and to have something to fill my week with. I kinda fell into perpetual idling mode because of the COVID restrictions, which are no longer a thing so it’s probably time to get out there and do something. I hate sports, I really do. Might be good for me, though, even if it’s only to force myself out of my flat 2-3 times a week and to keep the nagging, self-destructive thoughts at bay. Concerts and sit-ins with friends don’t happen every other week after all, so I need to try something else. Why not pick something that is hopefully going to have a positive effect on other aspects of my life? Such as my health? Which is pretty good overall, but hey, I can do something to keep it that way.

* I am going to draw more comics, in addition to what I am already doing. I have an awesome set of characters (not being very objective here ofc, but who cares, I just love my idiots!) who deserve to be seen. Standalone illustrations are fine, some bad writing is nice, too, but after sketching out a few pages, I feel liiiike... things are... falling... into place? I mean, it’s a shitload of work, I realised that, too, but it’s fun and it’s what feels most rewarding so far. (My past “I’m NEVER ever going to draw comics lol” self is outright shocked.)

I dunno, I realised that there’s no perfect time for these things, nor is there a certain skill level required. I can just start somewhere, and that is kinda what I did now. I don’t owe anyone perfection, I don’t owe anyone a regular update schedule either. There are no strings attached, I can just do that shit for fun, like I do everything else for fun.

* I decided to take myself out on dates again. To go and have breakfast/lunch/dinner/whatever all by myself, whenever I feel like it. Another thing I gave up during COVID (not by choice, of course). It’s time to get back into it. Went out to have lunch last Friday and it felt so GOOD. I always loved it, and only realised how much I have missed it.

* Also, I’m going to Ireland for the first time, with some of my gal pals, in October! That’s a dream coming true. Well, one of them. I’m super excited already! :D (Scotland is next, hopefully!)

Well, that is what I have got so far.

I’m not saying things are looking brighter right now. They are not. I have good moments, sure, but the sadness is still on. I do know, however, that walloping for all eternity won’t get me anywhere. I need to treat myself a little better, I owe myself that. Kinda forgot that over the past few years. It was easy to forget, I give myself that, but now there is no room left for excuses, I’m afraid.

Sigh. I’ll keep on trying my best, I guess.

[aspidities]

It’s good to be back. 👋

So I did the whole ‘where I’ve been and how I’m doing’ post on Patreon a week or so back, and now it’s finally time for the Tumblr Version, in bullet points for your benefit!

1. Where have I been:

Well, like, still here. But just….I don’t know, not motivated. I moved in October (big yay!) and we got ourselves the puppy, both of which are great and also big life things. Do you know what no one tells you about raising a puppy? It’s like raising a baby. But WORSE. Babies can’t bite you or your furniture or destroy an entire $20 toy the second your back is turned—at least so I’m told.

And yes, I knew this going in and I still had much to learn, lol. Non stop sleep deprivation from nightly poop runs and lack of energy due to constant puppy supervision is a real drag on the old’ creative engine.

Is it worth it though?

Yes. Oh yes.

So 2. How is the puppy?

Great! Cloud took a long time to learn to sleep through the night but honestly he was otherwise an angel to deal with. Never had many accidents indoors, loves every dog and person he meets and is my girlfriend’s dog’s best friend. He’s now fully housebroken, sleeps through the night, knows about ten tricks, and mostly leaves the cats alone. He’s 6mos and a massive hunk at 54lbs and is the absolute best boy ever. Just the dumbest, sweetest, most obedient kid on the block. I love him and he’s my son, and I am his Dad.

So yeah, he’s doing great. You can even follow his Instagram @forecast_of_cloud where I am a huge Best in Show Dog Dad and post nearly every day.

3. Why haven’t I been posting here?

Well, aside from the puppy madness as described above, I have been going through several different creative and emotional journeys, and, as usual, have been totally unable to articulate any of them. Despite writing words being…y’know, the thing that I do.

First, Supergirl ended and that was kind of a wake up call in a way. I didn’t know what else to write once it had finished. I had existing ideas and I wanted to finish them but then….what next?

I’ve been writing fanfic for almost five years now, after a long hiatus from my teenage years, and it’s been wonderfully cathartic but ultimately I saw it originally as a means to an end: to get myself writing more original work. But that’s scary. Honestly, it is. Fanfic is so safe—you can rely on that framework of someone else’s plot, even a barely sketched out one, to hang your own design on. Writing your own work? Hard. Much harder. And no one cares as much as they do about your fanfic—with good reason! It’s harder to break into something you don’t know about.

But lately I have this feeling like I need to try. I’m not done writing fanfic (I still have to give Arcane and Yellowjackets a shot!), and i’m not done writing Supergirl—I just think my priorities have shifted in a big way. And it took me a long time to come to terms with that.

In addition, I found myself feeling more comfortable on the masc side of the non binary world than I ever expected, and the growth and change from that has been huge.

Luckily I have a lot of support and love in my life to help me along that way. ;)

Which brings me to 4. How are things in my relationship?

Awesome. 🥰

J is a wonderful partner and she’s been the main cheerleader for my original work. She is fierce wit, morbid humor, a devilishly good dress sense and a warm little weight on my chest all wrapped in a lacy package that smells of lavender and Yves St Laurent Black Opium. She cares so much about my well-being, both as a person and an artist, and she’s also supporting me in my masc journey by gleefully dressing me up every chance she gets. In return I make her breakfast almost every morning and rub her back every night. We make a beautiful pair of symbiotic creatures. I am a shrimp and she is my goby and we danced to Frank Sinatra while putting up our little Jewish Christmas tree and squeezed each other’s hands while singing along to Hedwig and the Angry Inch on our theatre Valentines date. It’s love, baby. What more is there to say?

So that’s the news from Asptown, where the women are beautiful and the men aren’t cis! I hope you all haven’t missed me too much. I’ll be posting more regularly and i’m STILL going through my messages so just hang in there with me if I haven’t got to you yet. It’s a good thing to be so well regarded, even if it can be overwhelming. I appreciate the heck out of you all. ❤️

[corpsentry]

january: an art retrospective

i did some stuff last month (but it’s a lot of stuff and there’s a photodump + some Serious Fucking Reflection, so it’s all below the cut)

so ok, let’s start with this. here are some heads. each head has a red arrow. that red arrow is what i call the red line of the devil. it’s the slope of the face from the side of the eye to the cheekbone and then down towards the chin. up until like 2 weeks ago, i couldn’t draw it. i couldn’t fucking draw it. i would edit over that part of the face over and over again until i was frustrated and tired and i had a raging homosexual headache and it still never looked right. notice that each head is different. notice that each head looks wrong.

at the start of 2021 i finally admitted to myself, as per the image above, that i was deeply, deeply unhappy with my art. what was the problem? i dunno. but i decided i was going to fix it and i was going to do so via another one scribble a day event wherein for every day of january i would find a photo of a human head, and i would draw it.

january 1st, 2021. i was embarrassed to tweet this even on my private account where like 5 friends and a rock would see it. in retrospect, you can also see all of my bad habits emerging like dicks from a hole in the ground. it’s disproportionate. the brows look flat. the eyes are slanting upwards. the entire drawing looks flat, like this isn’t a 3d person but a caricature of one.

january 2nd, 3rd, 4th:

on the 2nd i decided to start a separate thread for doodles and applied learning. here’s the first set of tests

the rest of the week is kind of uneventful so we’re going to skip those. fast forward to january 11th

this one is especially bad. i am acutely aware, suddenly, that i am not changing anything at all. i’m stressed and miserable about it because i’m still trying to see people as people and trying to draw people that look attractive and proportionate and hot. my friend, leny, reminds me that i need to think about faces in terms of planes. i have a moment. my other friend masha sends me some links to anatomy tutorials. i have another moment.

january 11th. applied sketch

january 13th is when i start the troubleshooting process. the link above drives me mad because i’m pretty happy with the face but then i realize that there’s something very fucking wrong with the shape of the head LOL and then i realize that i’ve never had any idea what the proportion of the face to the rest of the skull is so i grit my teeth and i open a new canvas and i

bald studies. it seemed like the right thing to do. can’t draw heads? ok draw some heads. look at some photographs. i traced each photo but tried to stick to straight lines so that i could replicate the shapes more easily. i broke each face down into shapes. i thought about airplanes

i got really excited. i started doing studies, then applied studies, then stylized studies.

sketches. i’m not sure what’s going on (as always) and it’s very rough, but they look different from the sketches i did on january 2nd. that’s a start

january 16th’s daily study. looks more like a person now. juuuuuust a bit

more applied studies

on the 18th i take a break and go stare at some lips because i don’t understand how the fuck they work. again, i focus on shapes, on volume, on the fact that these things exist in 3d. holy fuck lips exist in 3d. holy fuck we are real

january 19th. i’m working on it.

january 22nd. some sketches + a daily study. it has finally occurred to me that heads can tilt up and down and that things look different accordingly. yes i was not aware of this before. yes i have been drawing for over a decade.

january 23rd. by this point after doing my daily sketch i almost always go back and do an applied study which is basically to say i drew a lot of fucking links. this one looks kind of okay. i’m kind of proud

january 25th. links. trying to make sense of everything i’ve learned

26th, 27th, 28th. daily studies

january 1st. january 31st

The End Of The Photo Dump (dab)

ok NOW i get to talk about what i discovered while studying the shit out of human beings

FIRST OF ALL, there is something precious and magical about drawing shit without the explicit knowledge that you’re going to tweet that shit out to 45 people later. it takes the burden of perception off your shoulders and that does something to you, or at least that’s my theory. i told myself i wouldn’t post any of this stuff until the end of the month (if i wanted to post it at all) and kept everything off my public social media accounts and that meant i could draw ugly as hell without worrying about who would point and laugh, which i absolutely fucking did. a lot of these are fucking trainwrecks. most of these are fucking trainwrecks. why do they look like that?? why??? this doesn’t look like the work of someone who’s allegedly been drawing since they were in kindergarten, does it?????

here’s why: because that person took a huge motherfucking swing at everything they’d ever known about art and spent a month building something new in its place. the abstract explanation is that i grew up on shoujo and weird old anime and my understanding of anatomy was unironically kamichama karin and while i love kamichama karin, when kamichama karin is your rule even if you try to break it, you’re going to end up going nowhere. “you have to know the rules to break them”, yeah? well i didn’t know shit. the abstract explanation is i’ve been miserable about my art for a few years now because i saw other people doing things effortlessly which i couldn’t and instead of going back to the basics, i tried to do what they did (not plagiarism, mind you, i mean i literally tried to copy the red line of the devil i mentioned above because i couldn’t even make that happen) and then i fucking failed.

the simple explanation is this. i had to unlearn everything, and relearn it again (like some kind of new renaissance clown, what the fuck is this?)

take this for example. all my life i’ve drawn faces in the order: eyes, nose, mouth, face shape, head. this works for some people, im aware, but it was something central to how i had always drawn, so i decentralized it. i said fuck you to the old me and changed the order up. now i start with the nose, then the eyes, mouth, the chin line, and the sides of the face. now i force myself to think about the human head as a series of parts interacting with each other instead of a bunch of disparate features which i want to look pretty.

or let’s use this zelda from last year. something about this looked wrong last october, the way something about all of my drawings looked wrong, but i couldn’t pinpoint it for hell the way i couldn’t articulate Any of my feelings about the visual arts. now, looking back, here’s what i see. that nose is sticking out far too much given how she’s not really facing very far away from the camera. that ear at the back shouldn’t be there. her forehead is too big. she doesn’t have a forehead. what the fuck is up with the shape of her head?

so apparently reject modernity embrace tradition has its roots in alt-right terminology and i’m not very horny for the alt-right (you understand), but the spirit survives here. you know sometimes you have to admit that you have no idea what the fuck you’re doing and draw people for 31 days. i’ve spent my whole life drawing stylized people and while again there are artists who have no issue with this, i veered off the track of the Good and the Holy and couldn’t get back on. i had no point of reference because i’d never thought about what an actual human being looks like, so i had no way to fix what i knew in my gut looked wrong but wouldn’t come out better.

this was hard. this was like oikawa tooru swallowing his worthless pride and admitting that ushijima wakatoshi had gotten the best of him for the last time in his high school career, but in haikyuu!! by furudate haruichi oikawa tooru fucks off to argentina and then joins the argentinean national team, and you know what, i think i’ve made it to argentina (not the team just the country). as per the golden rule of dont fucking move until you’re at least two thirds of the way through the month, i only started trying to draw Shit shit on like the 22nd or something, but i was happy with that i created. i am happy with what i’ve done. i’ve posted like 2 things this month that involve people with what i now call ~applied Knowledge~~ and they’re, like, not perfect obviously (perfection is an unattainable ideal), but i’m fucking proud of them. i didn’t spend 5 hours hunched over my laptop adjusting the red line of the devil because it’s not a devil’s line anymore. because i finally sorta get how people work. because i sat down and i said ‘we are not going to fuck with this misery shit anymore’ and then i did that. it’s just a line now.

here are 2 collages tracking my painstakingly carved out progress from january 2nd to february 2nd because i’m a slut for collages

and here’s what i’ve done to my art! the same person drew these but also Not Really! you know! for the first time in a year i don’t immediately hate what i’ve drawn. you know what guys? art is fucking fun. zelda’s forehead doesn’t scare me anymore because i know how foreheads fucking work now, and i don’t know everything, and i’m going to keep troubleshooting stuff as i go (i want to draw a skeleton. like a. i want to draw a goddamn skeleton guys) but i’m honestly and genuinely proud of what i’ve done in the span of a month, and i’m also in disbelief. i started this month-long challenge out as a last ditch effort to make peace with my art because i’ve been tired for a long time and i was ready to kick the bucket on drawing people altogether. i didn’t think anything would happen. nothing’s happened for years. i’ve been miserable for years.

this was the caption for january 1st, 2021. i was super, super fucking embarrassed and it looks like super fucking shit, but you know what, i think i did in fact triumph over the bullshit. surprisingly enough, when you put in consistent effort into something, You Will See Results. didn’t see that coming, did you? i know i didn’t.

this isn’t a success story. it’s a happiness story. i never gave a shit damn about the institute of art or whatever, i was just mad at myself because what i saw in my head didn’t match up with what was on the canvas. and now it’s getting better. now i’m calibrating the compass. now drawing not just backgrounds but also people is exciting to me, and i can stick my links in your face and tell you ‘they hot’. i’m going to keep doing that. i’m going to keep going until i drop off the side of the earth and then spiral towards mars like some kind of fairy, and then i’m going to create something beautiful.

thanks for reading. here’s a pr department link for sticking around until the end

[tea-darling1]

A redesign of nurse Ann, kinda. I modified her outfit to an actual nurses outfit and decided to write a little story for her that’s more canon related and realistic then the famous fanon one, of which yaguyi and Delucat said they did not like. So I raided deviant art to find as much canon info as I could to but into the story. I have to clear up that the image on the left is not meant to be sexualised, please do not take it that way. It is meant to show her injuries. I’ll probably remake this, into a coloured and more detailed version, this is just a rough sketch/idea. The story I’m about to share is just a summary. I’ll post a full version if people want me too.

Nurse Ann Lusen Mia, was a nurse at a New-York hospital of which we are unable to specify. She was born in new York on October 31st. She is female, and is currently 24 years of age. Her family is American, all the way back to when the european immagrants ‘inhabitied’ the place. She has pale skin, brown eyes; Her original hair colour is black and she has dyed it a vibrant red. She worked as a nurse, helping patients with their medication, and doctors during their surgery. During a very intense surgery. One of the other nurses tripped as they were passing the scalpel, Ann just so happened to be in the way and was imp-ailed in the heart. She was rushed out and into emergency. She survived, barely though. That week just so happened to be a reincarnation of ‘a series of unfortunate events.’ There was a gas leak in the kitchens, as the stove was turned on, near said leak. It exploded. Fire catching around the area, spreading throughout the hospital. Due to Ann’s condition she wasn’t able to be rescued. When they went through the ashes of the building they found her. Still somewhat breathing. Her limbs and the majority of her body however, were burnt to a crisp. Beyond repair. She was taken to a near-by hospital and treated, she had to get all her limbs amputated, due to the amount of deaths during that fire, they were able to find a couple donors and helped rebuild her body. Of which being different skin colours and races. Giving her a multi-coloured complexion. After she was fully recovered she was unable to continue working as a nurse due to her condition. She was pissed off about this and stormed out, seaking refuge at an abandoned hospital in the area. She claimed this place as her own as no one else was there. She found an old nurses outfit and claimed it, it becoming her iconic outfit. She modified the outfit to her desires, she ripped off the sleeves, replacing it with elbow length gloves, she also cut/ripped off a portion of the skirt, making it shorter and easier to move in. She tries to cover most of her body as she hates how she looks. She wants to be perfect. She tries to fix her-self with whatever she can find, trying to make herself look more human and less monster like. She goes outside only to collect food/supplies and to convince people that she’s a professional, able to help them if they’re hurt. Of which she takes them to the hospital. Killing them, and using their corpses as dummies to ‘take care’ of like a patient, and perform surgeries on. To make herself feel useful. 

Lol hope this is alright, I just had a random burst of motivation and wanted to do this. I really like the design I gave her. :)

[meandmyechoes]

hey, just wanna jot down something. can't believe October has run halfway already. Been weathering and, bothered by real-life things to sort of put it aside here. I planned to take a break from SW after Visions came out, did I miscalculated and somehow pulled into Thrawn-verse. I want to finish Chaos Rising and Greater Good before Lesser Evil comes out, but it's not a real deadline. I will persist to opt print over audio so I can voice Ziara on my own. I've also listened to Outbound Flight and slowly making my way through Heir to the Empire. Borrowed Survivor's Quest from the library since I heard the audiobook is abridged.

Spent sometime confined to a chair and the physical Chaos Rising last Sunday and found I really like/miss that feeling being absorbed in that world. But I can't read somewhere too quiet (i.e. too little distractions) or I fall asleep quickly. Reading on my phone en commute is very convenient and facilitates it, getting to highlight the book, but I do forget to blink. But all in all, I like that my reading is recovering.

Onto merchs. I took Captain Rex home two weeks ago but I'm the same indifference towards it. I don't know, I only ordered him as an accessory to Ahsoka and I just don't really have an idea what to do with him. I do love the character of course but spending money is not how I express it for him lol. It isn't even sitting on my shelf beause I haven't even cleared the space for them. I'm a bad collector I know haha.

And, ordered bunch of things. should've the rest of October's day so had a couple of craft projects in mind. stomping on the brakes is HARD. Well, 4 to 6 outfits. plus finally baby lekku. dyeing, painting, makeup, and film the whole thing. and a bit of baking, sculpting, props-making. Gonna try some new materials. Quite ambitious process really. I hope I can pull it off.

Fine, let's jinx it.

ordered three cheap dolls to try my first customizing. making... human characters first :) Zero confidence in actually drawing a face but I'll wing it. Then, restarting the baby ahsoka project because I found the right body now. lol had a fit thought I ordered a size too small. It was slimmer than I remembered but oh well. 

Thinking of re-bodying FOD Ahsoka but not sure I can actually bear to do so. I do hold out for acquiring a mint-in-box for display in the future though. Either way, looking for a back-up body for HT Ahsoka becuase I'm preparing for - none of her costume is removable. (saw the recent Harley Quinn release, nightmare if it's a fashion doll lol). I think I will check out the FOD Endor Leia first since it has agreeable articulation and hopefully similar body build. But that's not assured since except her all the girls have molded on tops or pants thus individual sculpts. Other bodies on the market are less muscular and I'm afraid that'd make Ahsoka's head look even bigger and disproportionate. First, I need to decide between a doll body or a figure body. BJDs doesn't really apply since it's mostly quarter scale or up. It's not my cup of tea anyway. The doll bodies I'm looking at are inexpensive, but I don't mind slightly better grade plastic. The major concern is still most of them being too thin. The good thing will be a wider option of shoes for small feet. For figures, the results I'm seeing isn't very, well, kid-friendly. On the opposite side of the spectrum, stuff I see are usually too busty or anatomically accurate. Kind of want to avoid seamless joints with stories about them cracking, and that filter out some more choices. Right now, the runner-up is Obitsu 27. The price is reasonable, bonus extra hands, while on the small side. But I can't find much user information about it, and I prefer to see/touch the real thing before purchasing it. I... I don't really like soft busts, I find it a very strange idea.

I have some really vague pieces of idea about a Halloween outfit because last year's sketch ended up staying on paper. But the actual process might depend on whether I will go through with the mid-autumn season dress first. HT Ahsoka has been in the pot more than two months now and she could release any time. I'd probably break down crying then.

CWArchives is not dead I'm just lazy to restock.

[franeridart]

Anon said: How are you just like "Oh these are just some warm up sketches" and post a full finished piece, while I'm over here sketching a triangle person and calling it a finished piece.

I dunno if this was a legit question asking for a legit answer, but I do happen to have a legit answer so I might as well give it! If I wanted to go into detals with it it’d take me forever though, so allow me to separate it into two points to make it easier

I learnt how to be very fast in putting down my lines and trained myself into not overthinking every single dot I put down. This took about five or six years of drawing daily and a whole life of drawing occasionally before then, because to do so you need to reach a point where you’re drawing something you’ve drawn so many times that by now your hand sort of goes without you needing to think about it much, so it’s not a fast process, but boy is it worth it. Mostly learning how to not overthink it, overthinking it used to be 90% of my time spent on a drawing and dear god did it suck the joy out of everything I drew

I have two very distinctive ways of approaching a drawing, one where I actually put effort in it and the other where I just want to let the squiggles out of my pen, and warm ups are the second one - the lack of effort I’m putting in can have different forms and show in different ways, so a warm up could be a fully colored piece as it could be just a pencil doodle, depending on where and on what exactly I’m being lazy: it could be the type of tool I’m using that allows me to draw without having to line, it could be a very tiny canvas that lets me avoid a ton of details a big canvas would demand. I might be cutting the time I usually put in making sure my anatomy is correct, I might be using a shading technique that takes a tenth of the time my usual one would, I might be using a style that’s just easier and faster to draw, or drawing characters I’ve drawn a trillion times in extremely generic poses and clothes. There’s a lot of things that I can do to make things faster for me! It’s skills you gain as you draw a lot - you learn how to draw things the hard way, and then you realize that along the way you learnt how to do them the easy way too

hope this actually answers your question! If it was a question at all lol if it wasn’t then sorry for rambling, please pretend I didn’t say anything hahaha

Anon said: I love your newest comic!!! So adorable!! I noticed Bakugou's mom does the affectionate hair rustle thing to him in the manga/anime, do you think Bakugou subconsciously does the same to show affection cause of it? I love the way you draw faces and poses, it's so expressive!!

Ahhhhh thank you so much!!! And yeah, it might be! After all we do take a lot from the people we live with even without realizing, and he’s already so similar to his mom!

Anon said: I saw your bakushima comic from October 9th (2019) where Bakugo falls asleep studying and Kirishima sets him down on the table properly and it was so soft my heart is crying

;;;;; !!!!!!!! I’m glad you liked it!! <3<3

Anon said: If it not to much, could I possibly get a Ochamina doodle pls? I just love some sweet lesbeans 👉👈

Awww I’m not taking requests right now, but I’ll keep it in mind for next time I want to doodle and don’t know what!

Anon said: I love your art! I envy you.

Please don’t! There’s a lot of reasons why being me isn’t a lot of fun - if it’s just my skill you envy, then all you gotta do is draw a lot! 

Anon said: i just went through your entire kiribaku tag and omg it was beautiful seeing the progression in your art skills but still keeping the same funny/cute/heartwarming/etc traits you thought up for their dynamic!! i hope that makes sense haha !! love your art keep it up

It does make sense!!! Thank you so much both for looking through the whole tag and for thinking so, it means a lot to me!! ;;; <3<3

Anon said: Hey fran! I hope you're doing well(especially with quarantine and all)!! I really love your anatomy and how fluid and stylistic it can be! It's super fun to look at! I wanted to ask you if you ever did any in depth studies on anatomy? Like muscles and bones. I've heard a lot of artists mention the necessity of studying bones/muscles, i'd really like to know your opinion on the subject

Ahhh god thank you so much!! And... hmm let’s see if I can word this properly and have it make sense - always keeping in mind that this is just my opinion, of course!

If all you want to do is to draw, then all you need to do is to pick up your pencil and draw - it’s really that easy as far as I’m concerned. You don’t need to know anatomy in depth to just draw, everyone has seen a person, everyone knows how a person looks. That is, if all you want to do is to draw for the sake of drawing. If you want to draw an anatomically correct looking human being, though, you do need to know how anatomy works - and the deeper you’ll go into studying it the more correct your people will look. It’s kind how everyone can draw a bicycle, but if you want to draw a realistic bicycle you’re gonna need to look up references for it, you know? It’s all on the level at which you’re interested in drawing, the more technically skilled you want to be the more you’ll have to study

As for my personal experience with this, I hate studying with a passion. Studying puts a damper on my enjoyement of everything, and drawing isn’t excluded from this - you put a book in front of me expecting me to study it and suddenly I never want to pick up a pencil again. This means that I never sat down and studied anatomy in depth and all in one go just to learn how to draw a human being, but it doesn’t mean that I didn’t, slowly and now and again and in bits and pieces, study parts of the body to get a better understanding of it. I know better about the skeleton than I do about muscles, and I still have enough to learn about everything that anyone who’s studied anatomy properly would find a trillion mistakes in everything I draw, but my way of going about drawing has always been and always will be putting my enjoyement of it first and foremost, so I’m not interested in putting myself through a tour-de-force to learn everything there is to know about anatomy just to make my doodles look appealing to someone with a medical degree haha I’m just doing me, and when the mood is right I look up how to properly draw something, but until then I just do it as best as I can with my limited knowledge, being fully aware that what I’m producing is far from accurate but being willing to make that compromise for my own comfort

So that’s my opinion on it lol it all boils down to how important it is for you to know how to properly draw the human body - of course it’s gonna look more professional and better if you’ve studied it, but everyone has their own priorities, you know?

Anon said: Thank you for your hard work, seeing an upload from you is so nice, and the colors are so pretty

Thank you so muuuuccchhhhh!!!! TTATT <3<3<3

Anon said: Opinions on Tokoyami Fumikage 💕

One of my top faves in the whole manga, actually! I have a drawing in the making of him, I should get back to it..........

Anon said: HOLY SHIT FRAN THE TOES HOW YOU DRAW THE TOES SO WELL FEET ARE THE DEATH OF ME AND YOU’RE OVER HERE DRAWING TOES THEY’RE SO GOOD PLEASE TEACH ME YOUR WAYS!!! -❤️

Thank you!!!!!!!! So pretty much my way of learning this specific skill was being obsessed with elves when I was fifteen and wanting to draw them all the time  and also for whatever reason being convinced that they were not supposed to wear shoes so I just drew a lot of feet with references and tutorials and stuff till I could draw my elves properly. Which isn’t necessarily what you need to do to learn how to draw feet, but, I mean, it worked for me lol

Anon said: I love ur Bnha ships and all but what would u do if some of them didn’t become canon??

Oh, I actually don’t care about that at all? I don’t expect most of them to become canon anyway - like, ochadeku sounds reasonable and kamijirou seems to be getting there, but everything else I never even considered it as an actual possibilily. I don’t really ship because I want to see my ships become canon, I just like the potential in what I can make with them? If that makes sense? They’re just fun to think about and I like making fancontent, that’s all there is to it really haha honestly if I had my way no ship would ever be canon ever ha ha ha

Anon said: Slep is for the wek

No actually sleep is for Frans who want a chance at getting up tomorrow morning without an headache for once, so I should do that and go to sleep already lmao

[convenientalias]

2020 Creator Wrap: Favorite Works

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 (or so) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

I was tagged by @rain-hat. Thanks for tagging me!

Hm. I’m quite arrogant about my work and I write a lot of short oneshots, which means a lot of separate fics have built up. 

...I’m going to just cheat and go higher than 5 things I guess lols.

Some long-ish fics first:

My current project, Like having fangs is something to regret

My Country, Seon-ho/Hwi/Bang-won. Still a WIP. Technically a Bisclavret AU, definitely a werewolf AU. Will the OT3 ever happen? Who knows. It’s about 30k right now and it’s been really fun writing it bc I just crammed in a lot of scenes/concepts I thought would be tropey and fun. A fic of passive-aggressive wolves, unexpected stripping, home invasions, devastating betrayals, etc etc. Also I started the project in October so for Inktober reasons I’ve been drawing illustrations of each chapter, although it’s really really not October anymore.

My last multi-chapter project, The Only Hoax I Believe In

My Country, Hwi/Seon-ho. What if... Seon-ho got amnesia?!?!?! Lols, that’s basically the whole concept of the fic. It’s like 25k of me going “can’t tell if this is karma targeting Seon-ho or Hwi but it’s definitely karma for someone” and then swerving to fangirl over Sung-rok. It was fun to write bc it had angst and lies.

A three oneshot series, I Was a Lover (Before This War)

The King: Eternal Monarch, Jo Yeong/Jo Eun-sup. Just 8k of me going, “what do you mean the main ship people took away from this show wasn’t the self-cest???”

But seriously. What do you mean the main ship people took away from TKEM wasn’t the Jo self-cest ship? Eternally pining for more fic of this pairing. Okay, it was crack, I admit it. (But so is almost every fic in this post anyway.)

And a 30k fic from back in March/April, Computer Parts

Gen fic for Circle: Two Worlds Connected. About 28k. This fic was written about what my theory for Woo-jin’s disappearance had been (the obvious theory, that Human B had kidnapped him) before the show Jossed it. When I was writing it, trifoliate-undergrowth and I called it the Fic of Doom bc it was 28k for a fandom that didn’t exist and therefore a fic that no one would read except me, and that was mostly accurate. But it was fun to write, although a bit less fun to reread, given it’s a fic about a guy being held prisoner for twenty years and a bit claustrophobic.

And some oneshots that I just think came out pretty good:

Left Undiscussed

My Country, Hwi and Bang-won. Five ways Bang-won didn’t talk to Hwi about Seo Geom’s death, and one way they still didn’t really talk about it. I like this one bc the form is weird, five scenes sort of from Bang-won’s imagination (with a justification for why they didn’t happen) and then a brief discussion of canonical events. Basically it’s like 5 canon divergences and a melancholy ramble crammed into a 2.4k fic. Fast oneshot goes zoom zoom.

Separating and joining, O walls of gray

Nirvana in Fire, Jingyan/Mei Changsu. Your basic cave-in fic. Nothing deep to say about this one it’s just tropey and snuggly and I like it.

Seven Red Palms

White Christmas (the kdrama) ensemble fic. A fic about resurrecting a certain character from canon using Necromancy. I wrote this for a fic exchange that encouraged crack and honestly it was just a good time. Also writing scenes with seven characters bouncing dialogue back and forth is something I don’t do often and it’s kind of tricky but it’s a lot of fun if you like all the characters. Which, for White Christmas, I really do.

...I think I might watch White Christmas again this week. It’s seasonal.

Uhh I guess that’s it. I mean I also did do a couple nice My Country pencil sketches bc I’ve been trying to do more art. But I’m about done rambling. It’s been a fun year for writing and drawing for me :)

Tagging: @trifoliate-undergrowth @avauntus @staidwaters @ihamtmus @flo-nelja @general-sleepy @aboxthecolourofheartache and anyone else who wants to do it.

[twilightvolt]

Well....that was one way to start a new decade, i guess. >  >’

Ok, from the death and destruction to the quarantine caused by viral disease to large parts of the world literally going up in flames, this year was like an ominous beginning that revealed the true ugly colors of everyone around us.

But there’s something telling me that that was just the universe releasing all of it’s built up rage from the last decade, so to think on the bright side, the only way to go is up now, right?

Regardless, pushing all the crap that happened this year aside, this feels like one of my best years yet in terms of art. i don’t think there’s any wedge of this clock that i wasn’t completely satisfied with and i had a TON of tough decisions on what to put in said wedges cuz i just luved almost everything i’ve created this year.

If you’re up to it, i’ll have my usual month to month reflection under the cutoff, but if you’re not, i hope to keep giving y’all even better art next year! ^  ^

So without further ado, let’s review!

January: ~ Days ~

Runner up: Team Solar Rises Again! (drawing in celebration of PMD finally returning with a remake of the first game)

Kicking off right where 2019 left off, i was hot on the heels of my Beastars phase, still cranking out countless drawings and doodles, mostly featuring Legoshi, and even hanging around the Beastars Amino and making some new friends there. this piece in particular i think encapsulates what i was mostly doing at the time, making up stories and stuff within canon to give myself more wolf boi content. which is something that i rarely do normally since i’ve mostly just done OC related writing before this.

February: - Sk8ter Wolf -

Runner up: Re:Hukaro (That thing i drew for Moon)

Ahh yes, the day i peaked with punk rock energy and created something in a highschool notebook sketch style. ngl, with the release of Beastars’ english dub on the way and the fandom quickly growing, i felt like i was on fire with the amount of stuff i was drawing. i felt so inspired and things can’t possibly go bad.

Or can it?

March: We Can Be Heroes

Runner up: One More Day, Emo Bird Boi Sketchies

Ahh yes, the month the worldwide quarantine started because they discovered the virus around this time. from this point onward, time pretty much meant absolutely nothing since i was stuck indoors for a majority of the year, only going out if i had to. on top of that, i tried a little attempt at a fandub and got picked on immediately by yahoos on Youtube. it...wasn’t fun.

I tried doing a little challenge i made up called Animarch where i drew a drawing representing anime i liked every day, but i only got about 5 days in i think? ehh, whatever. i did try, so that means something. lol

April: - ANOTHER SIDE -

Runner up: BEAST CROSSING ~Legoshi & Raymond

This was pretty much the final month i drew anything Beastars related as i slowly started shifting back to Pokemon due to the wait for season 2. but not before getting the new Animal Crossing and drawing a thing with Raymond and Legoshi that would blow up with hundreds of notes and interactions across every platform i posted it on. lmao

Regardless, i feel like Another Side was a perfect way to end that phase of my art journey. it’s like a nice finale to a long string of ideas that i will totally return to once season 2 drops next year.

May: - KOUJI -

Runner up: Fashion (that sketch of Alex and Jet in casual clothing)

What happened this month again? oh right, i went back to Digimon for a hot minute cuz i continued playing the copy of Cyber Sleuth Complete that i won from a giveaway on Twitter and created Alex and Jet, my latest Tamer and her Hawkmon partner. i should really do some more stuff with them.

ANYWAY,

June: - DOUBLE TROUBLE -

Runner up: “No Time to Waste! HENSHIN!” (AF attack against IonicIsaac on Twitter), Cafe Mix ~Ace, Yagami, Lance and Seliph

Art Fight. third year. and this time i kicked things up a notch and beat my old record from last year!...after uhh....cramming in 8 attacks at the very last night and totally going insane from the amount of sleep i lost. ^  ^’

But trust me when i say i will NOT do that again next year, i swear.

July: Squad Up

Runner up: Comin’ Out to Stun (Jet the Hawk sketches)

So after playing and beating PMDX, i started fleshing out Lance and Selpih’s characters and made more art and stories surrounding them and the rest of the team. one of those being a drawing for Mystery Dungeon Day, which happens the day after Odaiba Day. which is in August. why did i put this down for July then? some questions just don’t need to be answered.

August: - TOGETHER -

Runner up: In the Storm

You can tell by now just how uneventful life was this year cuz i have literally nothing else to talk about other than the art parts. no life issues, no big adventures like moving or something. just....indoor stuff.

It’s...kinda sad, now that i think about it. but hey, at least i was making the most of my time, trying new things and getting around a bit more.

September: Small World

Runner up: Rescue Together, PMD Forever!, Midnight Adventuring, Down Time

So this year, i turned 21, which a lotta people say is important. not really, if you can’t do much i guess. though, i did crank out a ton of art i’m super satisfied with as you can see by how hard it was to frickin’ pick one to use for this month’s wedge on the clock.

October: Feathers of the Shadows

Runner up: PAPERMOON - Final Mix - (not picked because it’s a touch up of an older drawing)

Hoo boi, this month was crazy. cuz i drew a whole lotta e d g e .....and a whole lotta Murkrow. lol

It was fun letting my inner edgelord out this month. even if nothing really significant happened in reality.

November: ~ One More Game ~

Runner up: UPokerap Project: Frogadier, - LEAF STORM -

This month....was actually kinda rough. it was basically me falling into a depressive episode after a scare at the dentist made me worry about my self image and insecurities again. but this time it really hit me just how much permanent damage i’ve done to myself in that aspect of my appearance. i know i shouldn’t worry so much, but it’s not great when people tell you to smile when the most i can do is grin since i’m just so....unhappy with my teeth.

But then around the end of the month, i stumbled upon a Pokemon themed Discord server with people that made me feel....not as alone as i suddenly felt i was. which i’m glad i could meet them even after only knowing them for a month now. if they’re reading this, i hope you know i’m thankful for raising my spirits when there’s still things i just can’t do due to financial issues.

December: Colors of the Heart  + Happy Holidays! ~Grovyle ver.

Runner up: ~ After the Battle ~ (the two part KHII anniversary drawing), - XIII -, Sketchmon: Buizel

And now this month. on top of my insecurities, i’ve now been struggling with my frustration with not being noticed as much as i should, watching as some people quickly climb up in following when i’m going much slower. honestly, i feel like the months when everything started lightening up for the world....was when things started falling apart for me. yeah, i know. pretty depressing way to end, huh? i hit 300 before the year ended thanks to the support from my new friends though, so i’m actually pretty happy.

But that doesn’t mean i’m not still scared of the future. i mean i have my teeth to worry about and also my wisdom teeth are coming in. so next few months...might be kinda rough.

Though, that’s not to say i didn’t soldier through it. this month i pushed myself, plowed through as many commissions as i could get to raise money for my new computer and made some of the best drawings that to me, feel like a great accomplishment. even if a couple of them weren’t as grandiose as some of my previous work. it was a big step forward for me as an artist. at least in my eyes.

And i have a feeling....that it can only get better from here.

[csrolereversal]

CS Role Reversal Halloweek 2019 Roundup

It is time! Halloween has passed and all the art and stories have been posted! I am so grateful for those who took part in the event, I couldn’t have asked for a better beginning.

I really want to thank everyone, Artists and Writers and also Readers - yes, always capital letter, everyone is Amazing.

And now, what you’ve been waiting for days - the Roundup (I have no idea whether it is just round-up or round up, I just went with what wordreference told me, that’s my curse lol)

October 25th

- @courtorderedcake ‘s wonderful mind conjured this awesome world and @awkwardnessandbaseball found the perfect words to describe it in:

→ A Fan of Every Part of You

Summary: Killian Jones has a really loud, destructive upstairs neighbor, and he’s about to lose his patience with them. But when he discovers that it’s a beautiful witch with a soft spot for his dangerous familiar, Captain, that complicates things just a bit.

- @clockadile showed us that watercolors can create something stunning right here, and @swanslieutenant dragged us in that world with:

→ caught in irons

Summary: Cursed to become a monster at the rising of the full moon, Emma enlists Hook’s help to venture across the sea to find the only one who can cure her. But with the secret held tight to her chest and the full moon edging closer, sometimes secrecy and lies can be worse than the darkest curse. 

October 26th

- @darkcolinodonorgasm brought back to life her undying love for vampires in her piece and @sherlockianwhovian brought the whole piece to life in:

→ Dawn Is A Feeling

Summary: Princess Emma has always heard tales whispered about the crumbling castle in the mountains and with adulthood comes independence, giving her the opportunity to discover the castle’s secrets once and for all. Will she find her end or perhaps her beginning?

- the first contribution to the event of @hollyethecurious is this wonderful ghostly piece which @capnjay21 has turned into a wonderful mysterious ghost story:

→ A House is Never Still

Summary: Five years ago, Emma Swan disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Killian Jones’ disappearance, well, not so mysterious – given the denizens of Storybrooke all but blamed him for her murder. Drawn back to town by a series of strange events, he soon realises the story of what really happened the night she vanished is beginning to unravel, and what’s more: it isn’t over.

October 27th

- inside a wonderful, bright pumpkin, @allons-y-to-hogwarts-713 gives us all the family feels @stahlop then brought us into with her:

→ Not all Treasure is Silver and Gold (sometimes it’s chocolate)

Summary: Killian takes his children on a trick or treat treasure hunt to learn about the town’s history and reflects on his own in the process.

- the bloody brilliant @artistic-writer blows us away with her bloody wonderful wolfman!Killian, for which @lillpon wrote:

→ To Give One’s Trust

Summary: Captain Hook has been a werewolf for centuries, in control of his wild state. When he gets kidnapped and experimented upon, his desperate actions to escape have dire consequences for him. When Emma Swan meets a feral werewolf on a night with a full moon, she can sense that there’s something more to that creature. Perhaps, with the right amount of trust, she can help him help himself.

October 28th

- @clockadile and her watercolours hit us again and though at first you can see peace in her art, if you look closer, you can see there’s so much more to it, and that more is what @wellhellotragic explored in her amazing fic:

→ Dead in the Water

Summary: Killian Jones may have just had the worst year of his life. The loss of his hand, of his career, and of his pride were almost more than he could take. In a bid to reclaim his life, Killian decided it was time to face his fears, and get back on the metaphorical horse, or in his case, back on the water. Only, the purchase of a haunted second-hand boat may just come at the cost of his sanity.

- @courtorderedcake drags us to Victorian London with her majestic art of which @snowbellewells tells us the story in:

→ The Case of the Heart in Armor

Summary: Killian “Holmes” Jones is rarely surprised or shocked anymore, but that all changes when he meets one very stubborn - and very beautiful - pickpocket, and trouble brews in the distance, hidden by the London fog…

October 29th

- for whump lovers (and not only them!) @cocohook38 created bloody brilliant art which you can feel as you look at it and which @hollyethecurious​ brought to life in her:

→ In the Darkness of my Mind

Summary: It still struck Killian as an oddity that a town created by magic and surrounded by its craftings day in and day out would throw itself so fully into the customs of what this land referred to as Halloween. Emma had told him about the holiday’s origins, the belief many held about the veil between worlds being thin enough for the dead to pass over into the land of the living. Never did he imagine that such a phenomena would actually occur, or that he would be the one responsible for allowing an old, formidable foe return from the bowels of the Underworld.

- @kitsunewingstar​ ‘s entry has me widen my eyes in shock and my jaw drop, and yours will too when you look at it. All we have to see if whether or not @gingerchangeling​ will find out the truth behind the art in her:

→ The Misthaven Witch

Summary: When Will Scarlett drunkenly accusess KIllian Jones of being afraid of the town’s local legend, he of course has to set his inebriated friend straight. Because there is nothing to fear about the ruins of Misthaven…… and the witch rumored to reside there.

October 30th

- another piece from @allons-y-to-hogwarts-713​ , another piece that has me shocked because of its beauty, just like @profdanglaisstuff​ ‘s words do in:

→ come sit at our feast

Summary:It’s Halloween, when all the weird and wondrous beasts of the world creep out of the shadows and throw themselves one hell of a party. For Emma Swan and Killian Jones, witch and shapeshifter respectively, it’s a chance to kick back, get high, and watch the mayhem unfold…

- another amazing piece from @hollyethecurious​ for which @theonceoverthinker​ created a magnificent poem:

→ Doppleganger on the Docks

Summary: Even in Storybrooke, the town where most anything can happen, Killian doesn’t expect much chaos when he and Emma go sailing together. But hey, for good or ill, that’s their town, right?

- @cocohook38​ hits again! Another beautiful, magnificent and amazingly detailed set of sketches for which @darkcolinodonorgasm​ created more words that she thought she would - and it’s not over! - in:

→ Kiss the Hell out of me

Summary: Princess Emma had been warned not to seek the Devil of the seas, the pirate captain whose thirst for revenge left only one man alive after every attack so he would tell the tale of the demon that had taken his brothers’ lives. But desperate times call for desperate measures: she has a kingdom to save, and the man who carries himself as a horned king is her only hope. Too bad that Killian Jones is not a man anymore. 

October 31st

- @carpedzem​ ‘s art melted me, I’ve basically turned into the hearty-eyed pumpkin you can spot right here, and @lassluna​ ‘s wonderful fic didn’t help! Get even more fluffy feelings in:

→ The Pumpkin Incident

Summary: It was supposed to be a quick trip to the pumpkin patch. Quick in and out, grab the pumpkins and get home. She was not supposed to meet newcomer Killian Jones. She was certainly not supposed to end up trick or treating with Henry, a pirate and little Robin Hood. (But why does he look so damn good as a pirate?!)

- and there’s no Halloween without a black and orange piece, which is what @darkcolinodonorgasm​ did in her last contribution to the event from which the amazing @thisonesatellite​ took all the angst from to give us the utterly amazing fic that is:

→ All The Darkness In The World

Summary: Love is the greatest weapon of all.

- and last but not least, is @mariakov81​ ‘s wonderful, simply beautiful pieces with colours so warm they make me feel warm inside and for which @pirateherokillian​ created lovely kinda (no, okay, totally) drunken banter in:

→ Witches and Romans

Summary: Halloween keeps throwing the unexpected at Killian Jones.

And that’s a wrap on the first Role Reversal event ever! Again, thank you so much to all of you, and... keep your eyes open, because something fluffy your way comes ;)

[ladylannisterxo]

Did you see the new cast for Stranger Things? The plot? I'm not saying Billy is alive. And I'm not getting my hopes up either, just in case Billy is officially dead. Which he probably is. But.. if he is actually dead... the plot plot is upsetting, because, in my opinion, I could imagine Billy in the whole Satanic Panic era. I would've loved to see that.

Heyy love! So I’ll be honest, I haven’t seen much in regards to S4. A lot of the Stranger Things blogs I followed on here aren’t as active anymore and I rarely use Twitter but every once in awhile, something crosses my path.

I do know we are to be seeing a few new faces this coming season; not sure if that’s because the gang is heading to high school or if the creators feel an incessant need to bring even more people into the mix. Imo, there are already too many characters to keep track of (that scene where everyone reunites in the mall during S3 proved that to me).

I haven’t seen really anything about the plot though so if you have, do you mind sharing what you know?? All I do know for certain is that Hop is still alive (thanks to Stranger Things Twitter for legit giving that away... which I still find incredibly sketch but whatever).

I did come across this post back in October which hints at reasons why Billy may be returning for S4 but at this point, it all still seems so up in the air. Either way, until I get direct confirmation by watching S4 when it arrives, I’ll be sitting pretty with my clown shoes on waiting for Billy to return to us lol