#i didn't just do art as a joke and like it

[ckret2]

I might tweak some details later (jewelry? take the ribbon off the bow?) but I've about got a Scalene design I like. The lipstick is really the centerpiece of the design. Now let's infodump! With more art!

🔺 Notice her lines are a a little curvy. It's not for artistic effect. She's got a Fictional Polygon Physical Disorder that makes her bendier than she should be—meaning, among other things, sides that curve and flex.

🔺 It's also the kind of condition with symptoms that are romanticized by people who don't grok that it's a debilitating medical condition. Sides that curve and flex? How exotic! This went to her head in the wrong ways.

🔺 Bill was born with the same condition. You know how squishy and blobby he was as a baby? Thaaat's genetic! He was a lot squishier than most babies! And, consequently, more adorable.

🔺Scalene dreamed of being a famous super model. Was actually a teen beauty queen at mid-tier beauty pageants. She thinks it's always somebody else's fault she wasn't more successful.

🔺 She took Bill to his first baby beauty pageant the day he was born. He did, in fact, have a Best Baby Ever award presented to him by the mayor, but to be fair he was only competing against like 6 other babies and who's going to withhold a trophy from a newborn on his birthday? Anyway the 6-12 month group and 12-24 month groups also each had a Best Baby Ever award.

🔺 This was an absolutely bonkers thing for Scalene to do.

🔺 What's that small scrunkly thing doing at a pageant, he can't even see color yet.

🔺 Their fictional squishy medical condition doesn't just accidentally make shapes cute. It's the kind of condition that affects just about all parts of the body: sides won't stay straight, poor muscle tone resulting in instability & weakness, poor motor coordination & clumsiness, back aches & pains (well, triangles don't have "backs." side aches?), easily dislocated joints, and increasingly skewed sides with age. Just about everyone in Scalene's family is born equilateral and ends up extremely scalene after young adulthood. The rest of her family have normal relationships with their condition, she's the only one who's weird about it

🔺 She was very rough on her body in pursuit of pageantry success, but her physical symptoms & associated chronic pain got a lot worse due to having a kid; she had to retire from pageantry for good. She doesn't blame Bill for this at all. Out loud, to his face. (If she hadn't been so rough on herself in pageants, having a kid probably wouldn't have impacted her health this much. She doesn't consider this.)

🔺 She's weirdly intent on seeing Bill become the success she wasn't. He's her little golden child, he deserves to be seen as the greatest! He'll show them how great he is for mommy, won't he? He won't let mommy down, will he? When he's very young, she takes him to child pageants—he'll appreciate the lessons they taught him when he's older—and this lasts until he finds out he can get out of it by pyrokinetically setting the stage on fire.

🔺 She jokes ("jokes") that she didn't realize that when she was having a kid, she was firing herself from the pageant circuit so she could hire & train her own replacement. These jokes had no long-term impact on Bill at all!!!

(Compare/contrast: how we're told Stan's "You watch the movie, you scare the girl, the girl snuggles up next to you, next thing you know you gotta raise a kid, your life falls apart" is repeating something he heard his dad say.)

🔺 Did you know that squeaky baby shoes are sometimes medical devices? Squeakers help children with poor muscle tone and delayed motor skills learn how to walk correctly: it makes them want to walk on their heels instead of their toes so they can hear the squeak. Did you know sometimes oversized squeaky baby shoes are worn by young kids who need ankle braces? Did you know that kids with poor motor coordination can take a longer time to learn complicated motor skills like tying shoelaces rather than using shoes with velcro straps? It sure is interesting that baby Bill's most defining visual feature is oversized squeaky sneakers with velcro straps and that he kept wearing velcro shoes until he was 16!

🔺 As a baby, Bill's angles were technically supposed to be equilateral,* but thanks to his inherited condition, his angles were so loose his top corner practically formed a right angle. Not good: the closer a triangle creeps to being obtuse, the more likely he'll have muscle strain and medical issues from his organs being squished out of place by his own exoskeleton.

(*supposed to be equilateral: but after receiving treatment, they discovered his angles were still 60º, 60º, and 60.1º, which is mathematically impossible for a triangle... on a euclidean plane. But on a non-euclidean 3D plane, such as in spherical geometry, a triangle's angles can add up to more than 180º... and it's this slight 3D flex to Bill's body that lets him see up into the third dimension.)

🔺 For his first few years of life he actually had a hypotenuse, until physical therapy and side braces helped him improve his muscle tone. Sometimes he still reflexively refers to his base as his hypotenuse. It's fine, sweetie, it's nothing to be embarrassed about, mommy had a hypotenuse too. Don't tell anyone.

🔺 Scalene took baby Billy to a lot of doctors as a kid, just like how she was taken to a lot of doctors! Doctor for his side braces, doctor for his physical therapy, doctor for his shoes... doctor for his eye when he started talking about seeing white glitter at the edge of his vision. Scalene didn't have that symptom, but the eye doc said their condition does occasionally come with visual problems—blurred vision, lazy eye, visual field defects... It sounds like Bill's main field of vision is unobstructed, but if the visual snow he's getting in his peripheral vision is distracting him and confusing his little toddler mind into thinking it's something real, they can give him a medication that'll narrow his field of view. From the sound of it, he's not seeing anything important at the edge of his vision, anyway.

And she only wants what's best for her golden child.

🔺 Scalene's "bow" is actually a medical device: sort of like a medical corset, it helps tug and press her anatomy into place to reduce pain. Bill started wearing one preventatively—if he can keep everything in place when he's young, it'll take longer for his angles to skew when he's older. Like wearing a retainer when you get your braces out.

🔺 He has a cane for the same reason—he doesn't need it NOW when he's young, but he might as well keep it on hand, by age 35 he'll probably want to stand more often than float and when he's standing he'll probably want the extra support! Even if he doesn't need it by 35, he will eventually!!

🔺 Bill doesn't medically need a bow tie in the third dimension either; but he adapted it to help tie his 3D exoskeleton on.

🔺 A trillion years later, Bill suspects that his mutation to see the third dimension came, at least in part, from his mom's medical condition. Except, she didn't have that vision. Nobody else with the condition on her side of the family had that vision. It's not a known symptom of the condition. His dad had stuff going on with his eye too, did he get it from his dad's side? A mix of both? Just a standalone random mutation? He doesn't know; and with the rest of his species dead, there's no way for him to find out.

But back to Scalene!

🔺 She's not quite red, she's rose gold. However she doesn't like it. She thinks it's a sort of pinkish brown and very dull. She uses makeup to make herself look redder. Note how bright red her sides are: in a species where only your edges are visible, body paint is the most common form of makeup+fashion. She's pleased her baby came out gold-gold, it's much cuter. Bill knows she's rose gold, but he only saw her with her makeup off when she was tired or sick; he remembers her painted red.

🔺 She adores her Billy; but she somewhat sees him as an extension of her will. She thinks he's just perfect and will tell anyone who asks; but she also demands he be perfect and is furious when he isn't. She'll protect him from ANY perceived external threat; but she'll tough love him into being the kind of success she thinks he should be. He learns early that when he screws up, he can often redirect his mother's anger by pointing his finger and saying it's someone else's fault, and she'll bring the wrath of heaven down on them. Woe to the teacher who gives Bill an F on a test.

🔺 I'm on a quest to write Bill as a foil to the entire cast of Gravity Falls, and that extends to writing his family as a foil to the entire cast's families. Scalene's a blend of Pacifica's mom and Caryn: beautiful, proud of her beauty, afraid of losing her youth, self-aggrandizing, quick to lie about her & her family's (false/exaggerated) accomplishments—and very aware of the fact that you can say anything about woo-woo mystical matters and nobody can prove you wrong.

🔺 So she takes it great when they figure out Bill is, like, legit psychic. And by "takes it great" I mean "starts a cult."

There's what I've got on Scalene. Fortunately, I got to keep all my pre-TBOB headcanons about Bill's mom, I only had to change her shape & color. I already had medical trauma baked right into the family!

(Preemptive disclaimer before I get any "but she doesn't look 2D" comments: we all understand that the baby Bill picture we see in the book is a psychically-generated 3D approximation of Bill's 2D Euclidean form, right? And that drawing a 3D baby Bill design alongside rigidly 2D parent designs would make it look like even in the second dimension Bill already had a 3D body, right? So, if we're drawing a 3D baby Bill and want to convey that they looked similar to him, we have to draw his parents in a similar art style, right? Okay, great.)

[puttersmile]

Crittertember Day 16: Sleeping

Yes have some more Puppylove! And a oneshot to go with it!

When the skies darkened Dogday had a sinking feeling it was too late to leave.  He’d lost track of time and without warning a sudden  thunderstorm rolled in. The thunder rumbled, making Dogday tense up and his tail sag. He had always tried to hide his fear of storms, even though his friends knew. 

Bobby didn’t like it much either, but as the storm intensified and it became clear that Dogday couldn’t leave, she nervously suggested,

 “Why don’t you, uh, stay the night? We could… keep each other company?” Bobby saw the rain pouring in sheets outside her window. “ Like maybe we could–”

“S-sleep together? Like… in the bed? Under the covers? The same bed? The both of us?” Dogday stammered, trying to play dumb to mask his own nervousness. 

Bobby blushed but nodded.. “Yes, in the same bed. We’ll be more comfortable that way, and it’s not like I want to face this storm alone.”

Dogday gulped. “I mean, I can always take the couch…”

Bobby shook her head quickly. “No, really. I’d feel better if you were with me. It’s already late enough as it is.” Bobby genty pulled his hand. "Promise I won't bite."

Dogday couldn’t help but laugh, albeit shyly. “Well, when you put it that way… Okay, I’m in. But fair warning, I might need to hold onto something if the thunder gets too loud.”

Bobby raised an eyebrow, feigning nonchalance. “Well, as long as that ‘something’ happens to be me, I think we’ll be just fine.”

She lead him to her room, the storm outside seemed to boom only half as hard as Dogday’s heartbeat. Yet it also made the space feel cozier despite the crackling tension in the air. They settled into bed, a timid excitement bubbling up as they cuddled close. 

Dogday was hyper-aware of her warmth, the scent of her fur, and the steady rhythm of her breathing. It felt right, yet the newness of it all made his pulse race.

Another boom of thunder rolled through, and Dogday instinctively pulled her closer. 

“You weren’t kidding about needing to hold onto something, huh?” Bobby teased.

Dogday smiled sheepishly. “Guess not.” He glanced around, “You know, this is pretty scandalous. What will our friends think?”

Bobby grinned, playing along. “They’ll probably be jealous they’re not getting a warm hug from someone as awesome as me.”

Dogday snickered as he eased his side into one of Bobby’s oversized pillows. “You’re probably right.”

At that moment, Bobby leaned in and began peppering his face and neck with soft kisses, each one sending a thrill through her dog friend, his tail thumping against the blankets wildly. Enraptured by her affection, he managed to joke, 

“H-hey, Bobs! You know, I’m starting to think you wanted the storm to get me into this kind of position!”

Bobby pulled back just enough to smirk at him, her eyes gleaming. “That’s a strong possibility, but I’ll admit nothing.”

A comfortable silence fell between them, the storm outside no longer feeling like a threat but more like a backdrop to this moment.

Bobby broke the silence with a soft voice, “You know, I’ve imagined this… falling asleep with you. It’s nice, even if I didn’t picture the thunder.”

Dogday’s heart swelled, and he pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. “Me too. And I don’t care about the thunder as long as you’re here.”

Bobby giggled. “It can’t hurt you as long as I’m around.”

Dogday yawned. “My hero.”

Bobby smiled, feeling a warmth spread through her that had nothing to do with the blankets wrapped around them. “Well, in that case, I guess we’ll have to make this a regular thing.”

Dogday chuckled, the sound soft and comforting as he started drifting into sleep. Finally his tail rested.

“I wouldn’t mind that at all.”

AN: I doggedly continue making Crittertember art. They should be under the blankets but I drew them first and didn't want to erase half their body lol.

[sasswonfp]

This joke came to me in a fit of laughter (ALT description provided :3!)

[egophiliac]

so on the subject of the "Crowley is secretly Revaan/Laverne/Levin/please Twst give us his name" theory, I think my feelings are best summed up as "I don't really buy it, but it's funny". like, in all seriousness, I'm not opposed to it; I have enjoyed the writing in Twst so far and I'm willing to trust that whatever happens will, you know, make sense and not be terrible. but I'm just not really convinced by the current evidence! maybe that'll change once we learn more, we'll see!

with that said, may I propose a few alternate theories about the possible Crowley/Revaan connection:

[shimmershy]

Happy Let Papyrus Say Fuck Day 🎉

[scoliosisgoblin]

I'M QUITTING ART‼️🗿

MY FRIEND SAID MY YB LOOKS LIKE ANIMATED ADAM SANDLER‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

I HATE THAT GUY‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

DO YOU SEE IT ⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️ I DONT 🙏🙏

[lilydoesdrawsometimes]

Hey Hi Hello - I just wanted to make another post for Paratober sharing my absolute favorites from this month. For one reason or another I think these ones really just hit the spot when it comes to my art, and all contain things that I'm pushing to work towards with it. Please enjoy another look at them - and no I'm not censoring shirtless Thierry this time, LOOK AT HIM, PERCIEVE HIM NEOW!!!! Also small, arguably funny anecdote: I had day 4's image set as my background/wallpaper, and while I was traveling I hadn't changed it. I sat down on one of my planes and was sitting next to this sweet old lady, and I turned on my phone and she looked down and just stared for a second, before looking at me with an awkward smile. She was sweet about it, but I wanted to decease in that moment. Anyways, now Day 31 is my background.

[a-really-cool-blog-name]

My art isn't the best but I thought this was a painfully accurate funny idea that I had to get out

Textless version

[kirby-the-gorb]

[zzyriphian]

I occasionally think about that trend that existed for a while (still exists? Idk I dont use other social medias) that was like "Standing in front of art I could make". On tumblr it was mostly people being upset about it.

Like, obviously that's kind of a shitty and thoughtless thing to do, but my first thought about it is always "How could I subvert this meme to make it not shitty?"

Probably these have all been done, since subversion of trends is fun, but these are my ideas for how you could do that meme without being an ass:

1. Film yourself entering the art museum, then immediately cut to you leaving. Bonus points if you come out talking about your favorite piece of art there.

2. If you're an artist, standing in front of the piece(s) that you yourself created.

3. Standing in front of your friend's piece of art (while giving that context that you actually know the artist) (Assuming you have a relationship with that friend where making that joke is acceptable)

4. filming yourself walking around talking about the art, but not claiming you could do any of it. Can combine with 2 and/or 3. If 2, optionally go "Nah I could never do that" to one of your own pieces.

5. Holding a terrible drawing you made of a famous masterwork while standing next to it.

6. Getting a bunch of artists with art on display and asking them "could you do that?" About their own art.

7. Stand in front of a blank wall. Big bonus points if you paint walls for your job.

Hardly an exhaustive list, but I think it's a fun thought experiment to figure out how to make bad trends less bad.

[st4t1c-d1n40z]

hello wings of fire community

haven't seen you in a while (I have I just haven't posted anything related to wof in...months...)

anyway

(cw/tw: blood, gore(-ish?))

(art under cut btw)

this came to me in a dream

[ckret2]

I know that this is probably because you don't render Bill's body hair (you specifically mentioned his unshaved legs in the text!), but for some reason I'm disappointed that we don't see any fuzz poking from the bikini. Not, like, for sexual or scandal reasons, it just... feels like he'd be showing fuzz. It's so hard not to if you don't shave. Possibly intentionally, if it let him put another yellow triangle on his body.

Yeah, that's a detail I specifically thought about. I assume that Gravity Falls is much like the rest of the US, in that the women shave/wax their legs, pits, and bikini lines, and the vast majority of the men don't.

So, since Bill doesn't shave either, I figure that (after excluding beards & chest hair) he looks exactly as hairy as the average man in Gravity Falls. Such as the hair on the pits, groins, and legs of all these men:

Notice that (minotaur fur aside), all their pits, legs, and happy trails are baby-smooth.

When Gravity Falls wants to indicate EXCESSIVE hairiness, they do it through chest hair and, rarely, arm hair, on occasion making that hair look as thick as fur:

And that's it. (Notice that in the fire hydrant scene, which was used specifically as a "Dipper Wishes He Was This Grown Up & Masculine" scene: still no pit hair.)

Manotaurs aside, I was only able to find two examples of men depicted with leg hair. (And, in Sprott's case, maybe pit hair, though it's ambiguous.)

In both of these cases, the leg (and pit) hair are drawn on as jokes about how disgusting these men's near-naked bodies are.

I doubt that every male resident & tourist in a rural Oregon town waxes his pits & legs. Stan, the Manotaurs, America guy, the cops, Old Man McGucket who lives in a junkyard?? They are not shaving their pits. All the men pictured above probably have normal quantities of body hair; they just aren't illustrated in the show, because that's a detail the show decided wasn't significant to illustrate—like irises, or fingernails, or half the characters' ear folds.

The only time men's body hair is illustrated is to indicate that it's excessive and the only time it's added to pits or legs is to indicate that it's disgusting.

I did my research before deciding how to draw Bill! Based on the visual language that the show uses, if I had drawn his body hair—pits, legs, bikini line in any combination—I would have indicated that he's hairier than everyone else in town, and that it's disgusting enough to warrant rendering in greater detail than anybody else's body hair.

And going "HEY EVERYBODY! LOOK AT HOW THE CHARACTER WITH TITS DIDN'T WAX HIS BIKINI LINE!! ISN'T IT UNIQUE AND NOTEWORTHY HOW HE DIDN'T WAX HIS BIKINI LINE? EVERYBODY CHECK OUT ALL THAT HAIR POKING OUT! THIS SURE IS WAY MORE NOTEWORTHY AND DISTRACTING ON A CHARACTER WITH TITS THAN IT WOULD BE ON ANY CHARACTER WITHOUT TITS, SINCE WE NEVER BOTHER TO DRAW THEIR HAIR—BUT LOOK AT THIS ONE'S HAIR! IT'S WAAAY MORE ATTENTION-GRABBING THAN IT WOULD BE ON SOMEONE ELSE'S BODY!"

... is the exact opposite of what I want to do.

And I offer that as free advice to other artists, because this is something I keep seeing artists do: if you're giving a character a detail that isn't usually depicted in your chosen art style—body hair's a really common example—ask yourself if you're adding that detail on to every character that has that detail. If you are, great! But if you aren't, and if it turns out it's only one or two characters whose body hair you've fixated on... maaaybe ask yourself why, and what signal you're sending by highlighting that detail with them and only them.

[licorishh]

Replayed Modern Warfare 3 2011 on Veteran tonight and goooooooood night. Blood Brothers never gets any easier to watch no matter how many times you've done it and the ending really never misses huh

I apologize for the amount of yapping in the tags I reread it all on mobile and started giggling because it went on for so long but eh. Blessed are those who won't shut the freak up and all that

[moe-broey]

That one meme but it's Moe lore🧍

Directly reffed some battle scenes for the bgs! (Under cut!)

Askr castle and tbh Askr motifs as a whole you are so. Difficult.

[egophiliac]

LEON

LEON YOUR EYEBALLS

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Mordecai probably lives in an apartment or something, but my first thought when you brought up the Caves on that post was that he won’t tell us because he’s been living in the Caves the Whole Time. Even tho he’d hate the slime mold.

yeah a Whole Damn House would be a bit much, and probably not as useful for the nightly bootlegging related goings on: see, freckle needing to stand around waiting for a ride before he can go shoot people. whereas mordecai can show up to the maribel hotel on foot, or at least have started out somewhere he could get a cab or whatever....and this is probably the closest to any relevant Living Situation Glimpses

someplace with a bed, and one with an art deco headboard....a modern style, so it's neither Antique nor unfancy enough to have less identifiable stylings at all. like just by guessing surely he lives in some apartment that's unassuming enough to live unassumingly in, with whatever alias, so something large & fancy would be unhelpful....plus if he's gonna be fairly rigorous in his domestic upkeep, it wouldn't really help to have a huge place, even if for the same reasons it wouldn't be too small (or old or otherwise unpleasant; hard no to slime mold, slime, or mold....) and like re: the rotating aliases, maybe he moves places fairly regularly for good measure, been at this like, a decade....tl;dr probably has some apartment/s that's roomy but not huge, nice but not Fancy fancy, at the nexus of practicality, resources, and preferences

but it's important to think about "what if mordecai's been living in the caves the whole time" b/c that's funny lmao