#i felt kinda shitty for not being able to draw as much cuz my art feels more simple than rendered stuff

[yonpote]

ok i literally only did two prompts but thats it for now i will get to the ones in my inbox tomorrow ✌️✌️

[dirtreally]

top 5 manga/doujins

okay i spent a lot of time thinking about this and i don’t think i can really rank them in any significant way other than the order that they popped into my head after reading this and hopefully that will speak for itself

1. Fukaboku

its fuckiiiiiiiiin fukaboku babeyyyyyyyy!!!! the first chapter of this dropped a couple of months after i began understanding myself as nb and it just continued to kill it for like 8-ish chapters afterwards, during which i ended up finding the courage to actually think of myself as an nb person rather than [assigned gender]. i feel really weird about putting this as #1 cuz as the months go on, it’s becoming increasingly clear that what i want from fukaboku and what it wants to do with its premise are gonna become harder and harder to resolve with each other, but it’ll always have a special hold over me cuz it was the #1 thing i was looking forward to reading every day for like 6-ish months www

2. My story of being loved

yeah this kinda sucks. i reread it just now and one of the dramatic plot twists actually made me burst out laughing. but there’s something really sincere and sweet about it?? i don’t like reading into works in this way but it really does feel like the author just wrote this to communicate something to a specific type of person in the most blunt way possible aka a thinly-veiled author insert character who spends most of the oneshot reacting to the other girl. i think a lot of why i like this one so much is cuz even all of its’ weird writing decisions feel like the manga tripping over its own balls because it’s so excited to sell you this specific story

3. Her Pet

this one’s a little rough because while it’s not overtly horny about its high school-aged cast there’s definitely a lot of horny undertones to it and i dont want to eat my own ass for her pet because its absolutely written and marketed with that in mind but it’s also the only story about bullying that i’ve ever actually connected to specifically because of this, because of how it shows how bullying fucks up your ideas of romance, intimacy, and sexuality, because of how it showed a character who got abused for so long that she was unable to create an intimate relationship with an entirely different person without recreating aspects of that abuse, because of how even the happy ending where she gets over all of this has her relapse into this sort of thinking (its played off as kind of a joke but it still sticks out in my mind a lot because MAN). it’s genuinely a really dense piece of work, narratively, but it’s really worth it and imo it’s one of the best manga/comic/manhwa out there about abuse because even though it’s steeped in melodrama all of the neat narrative choices about the aftereffects of gayoon’s shitty school life bleed into the text in a bunch of really subtle ways? there’s definitely some narrative tension into Wanting To Do A Melodrama With A Whacky Slightly Horny Marketable Hook and Wanting To Be Tasteful And Frank About It(which, to its credit, is the one that wins out most of the time) but it gets resolved really well by the time the whole thing ends off.

4. Girl’s last tour

If girl’s last tour didn’t exist i absolutely wouldn’t be doing art right now. I spent 2 years feeling extremely exhausted with contemporary pop art (both in anime/manga and broader pop culture) and images in general because i felt like i was looking at the same images repeated ad infinitum reduced into the barest of shapes like some night in the woods type thing. artistically, girl’s last tour felt like the one thing that actually understood what i was going through. reading the manga, yuuri and chiito are both drawn as these vague shapes that are definitely meant to be people but feel like they are animated by the wind rather than by like, muscles, or something. their shapes bleed into each other, and into their surroundings, and it feels like if you poked a spoon into any page of the manga you could stir it around and see these shapes swirl into each other before slowly becoming even more indecipherable. even the architecture feels vague, meant to give off the IMPRESSION of a building/monolith in such a way that it sometimes feels like the drawings are barely holding themselves together. like if you looked at a road too hard it would break in half. this is a really hard thing to communicate but i hope that you get what i am saying. the art of GLT felt like it embodied the same feeling i had for years at that point, where i felt like my lineart was barely holding myself together, and if i let my guard down for a second i would spill into the floors and drains of the buildings around me and only be able to exist by being acted upon. with that in mind, it was absolutely lifechanging that the actual narrative content of glt is about two people who are alienated from their environment in every meaningful way and no doubt have the same variety of brain shit i do, but are still able to find happiness even just by being alive. There’s a longer version of this part where i go on to talk about what the narrative actually does and the larger tkmiz mythos surrounding it, and how THAT became it’s own obsession that used to be an extension of my love for glt but now exists as the main thing and w glt as an extension of THAT. but this is maybe getting too long and i think you probably get the idea now. i know this is a lot coming from someone who only does one okay art thing every other month but like even though it makes me feel like shit 90% of the time drawing stuff is the one part of my life i feel like i actually have some Ws in, and without glt and without tkmiz’s larger work in general, i wouldn’t even have that much going on

5. vector spectacle

to be honest, vector spectacle isn’t nearly my favourite touhou doujin(at chirei no contest), but it feels so special just because of how unlike anything else i’ve read it is. There’s so much energy in the pages, it’s basically a pop-up book. i can feel the almost nauseating, manic, energy bouncing from page to page, that itself feels directed at nothing and everything all at once; at whatever point in time this was drawn, wherever in the world it was drawn, the person who drew this felt this exact emotion

[shipper-trash-bag]

Don’t Forget Me

Sam snuggled closer into Gabriel’s back, drawing the shorter man into the warm blankets. Gabriel didn’t need to sleep, but he indulged Sam in the snuggling, mainly because he loved it as much as his giant boyfriend did. When they first started doing this, Gabe would stay until Sam would be deep asleep before flying up to heaven to sort out some issues, then heading back down to wake Sam up with gentle kisses to his face. He was like that - Gabe. He normally would be his annoying, crass self, but in the soft moments with Sam, he allowed himself to be a happy cloud and be as affectionate as possible. He was a big romantic at heart, and it was one of Sam’s most favourite parts of the archangel.

Tonight, however, Gabe wasn’t needed anywhere, so he stayed in bed, reading something on the phone Sam had lifted for him, being the ever present little spoon in their bed. Sam normally would be able to bury his head into Gabriel’s back to hide the light from hitting his eyes, but something was off. He cracked open his eyes to notice Gabriel shaking minutely.

“Hey, Hey, Hey. Baby, what’s wrong?”

Gabe stiffened, phone being shuffled out of view. “Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. Just.. go back to sleep, Sam.”

Sam may be just a human, but he was no idiot. “No, come here,” he asked, gently turning him over to face him. Sam flicked the lamp his nightstand on, the warm glow showing him the tear tracks on his boyfriend’s face. “Woah, what happened? What’s wrong? Gabe..”

“Gah! It’s nothing.” Gabriel waved Sam off with one hand, trying to smirk but the expression fell flat. “I’m okay, just... you can go back to sleep.”

“Please,” Sam gently wiped away a tear from Gabriel’s face, voice pleading. “Just tell me.”

Gabriel knew he would lose this battle. Sam’s puppy dog eyes alone were powerful forces of nature. So he simply sighed and told him. “Was reading a story.”

“What kind of story?”

“It was in this newspaper. They were talking about how relationships fail from external forces? Like, no one cheated of abused the other, but like disease and natural disasters, that kinda thing?” Sam knew they weren’t questions, that Gabriel was holding something back, but he nodded in understanding anyways. “So, there’s this one woman, and her husband gets diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s, and within three years of the diagnoses, he can’t remember anything about her, or their marriage, nothing. They were friends for ten years before they got together, and were married for 10 more and then, poof! Can’t remember her name, who she is, nothing. And I just,” The tears were coming faster now, his hands hiding the most of them, flush creeping on his cheeks. “I just- please-“ he rubbed at his eyes furiously, looking at Sam once he was done. “Please don’t forget me.”

Of course, Sam thought. Of course this all powerful being would actually be scared of that. But he knew it was true. Knew that Gabriel cared about him, but how much was kind of vague until now. Sure, they did things together, for each other, slept in the same bed in the room that Sam called theirs instead of just his own. But despite the sex and the make-outs and the bed sharing, Sam and Gabriel had never been out on an actual date. It was always running errands together, or if they went out to eat, Mary or Jack would be there, sometimes Dean and Cas, sometimes all six of them. Sam felt like kicking himself. “Gabriel... what do you think I’m doing with you?”

“Huh?” The question threw the angel off guard, sitting up straight, Sam slowly following. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, why do you think I’m with you? Why do you think I stole that phone for you, or sleep with you, or have you in my bed on a random Tuesday night snuggling in the dark together?”

Gabriel blinked at him, dumbfounded. “Is this a trick question or something?”

Sam sighed, letting out an exasperated groan. “No, Gabe. It’s because you’re important to me. I’m not just biding my time with you cuz it’s convenient - actually, it’s anything but, especially when you decide it’s time for a tickle party in the shower when I’m scraping ghoul guts out of my hair - but that’s not the point.” Sam took Gabriel’s face in his hands. The archangel stared at him in awe, a look Sam only usually saw after sex with the dork. “I need you, Gabriel, but not like how you think. I need you because... because you...” He sighed. “I’m no good with words. I just..” he trailed off. He whispered the words into the dead of night, hoping Gabriel wouldn’t ask him to repeat them again. “I love you, Gabriel, I’m in love with you. That’s why I need you.”

He was not expecting Gabriel, archangel of the Lord, the great angel who told Mary of Nazareth that she was to bear the son of GOD, the one who made a porno on how to avert the apocalypse, to cry. Big fat tears streamed down his face, hot and endless as he shook, hands coming up to grip at Sam’s sleep shirt. “Please, please be real...”

Sam pulled Gabriel close to his chest, wrapping strong arms around the shivering angel, rocking him slowly and peppering kisses in his hair. “It’s real, I’m real, you’re okay. You’re safe here.” Gabriel had had a lot of hallucinations ever since he’d left hell, and he often needed to be rocked to be reminded that he was out, that he was safe. “You’re safe, baby. I got you. I love you, so, so much.”

Gabriel laughed, wet and choked off. “You love me, oh fuck, I love you too, Sam,” he gasped. He pulled away to pet at Sam’s face. “I love you,” he chanted over and over again, peppering kisses all over Sam’s face. Sam couldn’t stop laughing at how happy he was, Gabriel in his lap now, kissing every little inch of his face, his neck, his hands. Gabriel even kissed his earlobes. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Sam brought him down for a proper kiss, a deep one full of love and promise. They fell back down into the bed, their kiss turning soft and languid, slowly breaking apart at the mouth, legs still entangled. 

“You know,” Sam started, twirling a piece of Gabriel’s hair on his finger. “We haven’t been on an actual official date yet.” Recognition sparked behind Gabriel’s eyes at what Sam was proposing. “I’m thinking we make a whole day of it tomorrow. Get breakfast first, then we can drive to the art museum in Denver and you can complain about how shitty all the artists used to be back in the day,” Gabriel chuckled at the very notion. “And we can get dinner and then go for a walk with some ice cream after.” 

Gabriel hummed, reverently touching Sam’s face with his fingertips. “And then drive back to the bunker for six more hours? I don’t think that you’ll be awake enough for that, babe.”

“Oh, I won’t drive back,” he agreed. “We’ll get a motel room.”

“I’m not having gross motel sex with you.” Gabriel wrinkled his nose at the thought of the last time they’d tried that. It had been something awful with how disgusting the sheets were and the headboard nearly snapped clean off the rest of the bed. 

Sam rolled his eyes. “We wouldn’t use it for sex, Gabe. Just sleeping.”

Gabriel thought it over for a second before leaning forward and kissing Sam on the tip of his nose. “Sounds perfect.”

And it was. breakfast was great, the museum had some of Gabriel’s favourite pre-columbian ceramics - “this looks just like him! He even had the same teeth!” - dinner was amazing despite the pricey entree, and the walk around the park was very romantic. It was a bonus that the motel they picked turned out to be 4 star instead of the usual 2. Snuggling into the bed that evening, Gabriel had done a complete 180, smiling into Sam’s collar as his hunter told him the story of the time Dean walked into a glass screen door so confident it was just a regular open door, that he’d broken the whole thing with his face.