#i will be drawing their designs instead of working on my thesis

[qualek]

PRINCESS BRIDE AU CAST LIST HERE WE GO BOYS We'll start with the easy ones first and my reasonings of why- Buttercup -> Miles Edgeworth Stubborn, prideful, rude towards 'Westley' at first, dramatic, sarcastic, smart, related to Von Karma more than anyone else (I'll explain more in the Prince Humperdnik casting). Westley/Dread Pirate Robert -> Phoenix Wright/Shelly De Killer Resourceful, bluff (just... the whole scene with the cups and the poison is a very Phoenix move), devoted, selfless, brave, witty, stubborn, could survive something that would kill everyone else out of sheer will. ---- Tell me Phoenix wouldn't be the guy to say "As you wish" with all that tenderness and devotion to a guy who is objectively a jerk. --- Okay, supporting cast now! the sillies and the goofies- Inigo Montoya -> Diego Armando/Godot I have less of a personality analysis and more of a setting that makes sense, but bare with me. First off, well, he's the most likely to want to kill Phoenix and then help him later. Secondly, they both carry physical wounds that are related to a deep loss. Thirdly, he uses Godot for the whole time until "My name is Diego Armando. You killed my true love, prepare to die." Fourthly, Mia Fey was killed by someone with a heart-shaped pendant ;) Fezzik -> Dick Gumshoe Tall, strong, dumb man. Miracle Max and Valerie -> Mystic Maya and Pearl THEY ARE SILLY AND GOOFY AND MAGIC AND PEARL WOULD 100% PUSH MAYA TO HELP FOR TRUE LOVE TELL ME IM WRONG --- Now, we get to the assholes y a y :) Prince Humperdnik -> Manfred von Karma and Franziska von Karma In this AU, Prince Humperdnik is divided into Manfred Von Karma and Franziska Von Karma. Manfred is the current king and is trying to cause a war with the nation of Khura'in, like Humperdnik in the movie. However, he does not marry Miles himself and, instead, fiances him to his daughter Franziska (which neither are particularly happy about btw). He is the one who goes on the hunt and organizes the promises, torture, wedding, etc. Franziska is less involved and is forced to remain in the castle by her father. Count Ruden -> Dahlia Hawthorne She would want Mia dead 100% and would have no qualms about hurting Phoenix. Also, she is responsible of blinding Godot in Ace Attorney and in this. The Albino -> Iris Hawthorne She would help Dahlia but doesn't have the blood-thirst that she seems to possess. Vizzini -> Damon Gant I just want him to die. Also, he laughs a lot and thinks he's much smarter than he actually is. Also, also, everyone in the crew would be against a defense attorney, so it's in theme B) --- And, finally, in the real world, the beloved. The Grandson -> Trucy Gramarye She is my beloved, my dearest girl and she deserves a good story. Also, idk why, but she sounds like she would refuse a kissing story at first and then just get into it. The Grandfather -> Magnify Gramarye He is her actual grandpa and the character has a little mystical side that Magnify most certainly has.

[lieutenantselnia]

Current mood <3

[sanctus-ingenium]

answering asks vol 2.

'Smiths' can encompass enginesmiths (mercury), armoursmiths (mars), alchemists (saturn) and some others - generally a smith is someone who works with engines or metal in any capacity, whether by constructing them, managing their fuel, making armour, etc. all of them have a completely degendered role in the church. They are supposed to be wholly devoted to their craft & church, to the point of becoming almost unpeople, sexless.

-

I like pantera :) he's the main character beast sure (alongside leun) but he's got a lot of interesting history and has been through a lot.

To start out I do some basic sketches while looking at bestiary diagrams of the animal type. Then I draw the base proportions over a photo of the animal's skeleton. Once the joints are all in place and I could imagine it moving relatively freely, I pick a motif and design the armour shapes with that in mind (i.e leun's trefoils, taurus's waves). The motifs come from a bunch of sources - if I see them in medieval art around that animal, the beast's use purpose, the culture that built them and how it might differ in art styles to the 'basic' designs from the heart of the Mezian theocracy. Fun stuff like that.

As an exercise I have taken (human) characters from other settings and made holy beast versions of them, trying to imagine what animal it would be, what weapons, what armour designs, etc. Behold, Bowman:

It's a fun exercise! I recommend :>

-

Hi! Thank you for the suggestion! I actually did try to use OneNote for my thesis but I found that it ended up an extra step that got in the way. Instead I organised my reference papers manually (and wrote up all my bibliography by hand as well). I haven't heard of Notion so I might look into it :> as someone with adhd I find that the best way for me is to make it stupid easy, which is why discord works because I already use it for talking with friends and I like the mobile app.

-

SO true!! You can make whatever the hell you want forever and that sounds really cool, I'm glad I was able to help in some little way >:) (although, holy beasts are not robots.. i think the best description for them is just. exotic vehicles.)

-

lmao it's totally fine!! I love to talk

Sir Heaven had such a profoundly negative experience with Leun that he struggles with the concept of making anybody else do what he now considers to be his burden. He also feels that taking any new people inside Leun would endanger them.

The bishop of Salvius cathedral is the guy Heaven answers to, and his superior officer. The bishop has reported the matter to the pope and they're still working hard presenting new potential novices to Sir Heaven, but the thing is that Sir Heaven rejects them for seemingly valid reasons. He doesn't just say 'no I'm not taking apprentices', he says 'this one's reaction speed isn't good enough' or 'this one is too prideful'. But the longer he tries to keep this up, the more suspicion he heaps on his shoulders. If the time came, no, he would not be able to deny a direct order from the pope.

Ketjan was selected at random, one of a large group of other children who were not raised in the church. This is to ensure that there is no per-existing bias or knowledge of how holy beasts work. And he just happened to be the only one of the group who could master Leun's very demanding dialogue tattoo. The recruiting enginesmiths, who designed Leun's systems, were the ones to train him, but Ketjan was the one to write most of the procedures for operating Leun based on feedback from the dialogue.

-

Replies from THIS post:

@ospreyonthemoon @kicks-tiktaalik-back-into-water

Krokodilos had an amazing high-tech ventilation system that used active air pumps to keep it circulating. But exactly like the second reply says, it broke down frequently. And because of how it worked, the interior of croc had to be air-tight so that the pumps could work efficiently. And, of course, if it broke down, and it was air tight on the inside, it instantly became a more dangerous deathtrap than your average passively ventilated beast.

There were valves that could be opened in an emergency but these were only added after the first Incident. The pumps would break down from the fabric seals degrading, lose efficacy, and then the parts furthest from the pumps would suddenly not get enough air anymore because air couldn't be moved such a distance with faulty pumps. The reason his enginesmiths want him to be re-commissioned is because the only barrier was the material used for the seals, and they believe they can innovate some new materials or try something different and have it work. They were even thinking of trying natural rubber, which would have worked perfectly, but they never got approval for it.

[flowersforabel]

Finneas as Rossetti's Venus Verticordia ✨️

My final piece for my intro drawing course, tying in with my Pre-Raphaelite studies and my special boy. All 100 flowers are hand painted, cut, and placed!!

Art history rant/final thesis under the cut!

I had intended on several different plans for my final, but my pre-raph prof was showing us some modern interpretations of Rossetti's stunner pieces and I was so annoyed I had to make this.

The Pre-Raphaelite artists had a very particular type of model (which Finneas also doesn't fit) that was seen as a rebellion against the common Vicortian ideal of beauty. Their entire ethos was "truth to nature" with minute detail and special attention paid to both the literal nature around them and the perceived human nature of their subjects..

Many modern iterations of Rossetti's Venus are just... Instagram models upholding the pinnacle of beauty. It completely dismisses that act of rebellion while trying to retain the aura of cool that comes with going against the grain. I do not like these interpretations.

While Finneas is also far from a model that the PRB artists would have used, he's also decidedly not the instagram girlie type. His skin is flawed and aged from living life, he has scars, there are bags beneath his eyes. But he's one of my personal favorite character designs, and I find him stunning.

While the concept of Rossetti's stunner series as a body of work which shows beauty for beauty's own sake can place women as an object of spectacle instead of as their own people is problematic, he was also placing women who were not idealized in Victorian society in a spotlight, highlighting what he found beautiful even when it was not in keeping with others' views.

Finneas is true to his own nature, which is something I wanted to highlight through his top scars and his props (the orange he peels for Maron to show his adoration for him; the sword he weilds as a guard and a blacksmith's son) as a new interpretation of that truth to nature.

It isn't a perfect work, but I'm extremely proud! And covered in glue from those flowers!

[mayakern]

hello!! if you don't mind me asking, what was your professional art journey like? (esp the earlier years) was MonsterPop! your first big project online? were you still taking client work when you opened up your shop? you're a very inspiring artist and I hope to be in a similar position as you one day! thank you so much for your time!

oh boy this is a doozy! and also a lot of this involves devin bc our success is completely intertwined

i went to art school (MCAD) from 2009-2013. i majored in comic art but had a secondary unofficial focus in illustration, specifically product design, and i interned at paper bicycle (the company of my product design teacher) my senior year, the same year they opened up light grey art lab. i mailed out a LOT of tarot decks. they didn't have a label printer so this took forever.

during that time i took some freelance illustration and comic gigs and also created some comics that got an amount of traction online (mostly on tumblr but i also got an io9 article written about me iirc). i also started making monsterpop (in 2012 i think?).

in 2012 i ran my first kickstarter to crowdfund an anthology of some of my short comics (how to be a mermaid, the little robot girl, fairyfail) and got my first taste of proper self publishing. sadly this was before i created redden (which was my senior thesis comic) so it wasn't included. i didn't have label printer so mailing out the books (i think i sold around 200) took forever and i ended up throwing a pizza party with my friends and having them help me.

after graduating i moved to the LA area in search of work. it honestly sucked ass and most things didn't pan out but eventually (2014) i got a remote job contracting for gaiaonline and i moved right back to minnesota bc i absolutely hated LA.

i met devin (my wife) 20 days after moving back to minneapolis. in 2015 i ran a kickstarter to fund printing the first volume of monsterpop and people bought almost 400 books. it was insane. i was dying under the stress of trying to mail it all out those packages and didn't own a label printer yet. between having to hand write the addresses, being both dyslexic AND slow, and getting headaches from the fumes, i could send out a max of like 10 packages a day. once again i was planning to throw another pizza party to have my friends help me out, but devin swooped in and got 100 packages done in just a couple hours and when i tell you that no one has ever done anything sexier for me in my life, i truly mean it.

at the time devin and i were both broke living paycheck to paycheck. gaia didn't pay well and the patreon money i got helped, but wasn't that much. i took some freelance/commissions and got some store and convention sales, but i was making around 22-26k and was constantly overworked. devin was in significant credit card debt and was barely scraping by between managing a gas station and school. i started making my very first skirts and then at the end of 2015 my arm, the thing that made me what little money i did make, gave out.

i couldn't draw anymore. this could have literally ended my art career, but instead devin stepped up. they took a look at all the things i was already selling in my store and figured out a way to repackage/bundle the items together in a way that was fun and appealing. and people actually bought the bundles! at that point the vast majority of my sales were at conventions and i wasn't very good at selling online, but that was the beginning of a new era. devin started working with me part time to manage the online store and go with me to conventions and things started getting better. at some point during this saga we finally bought a goddamn label printer.

by 2017 devin started working with me full time. we also got married and moved across the country to upstate NY. in 2018 we got a CPA and became an SCORP and monsterpop became a finalist for the prism comics award, which scored me an invite as a guest at SDCC. i really wish i had enjoyed that experience, but unfortunately i was dealing with some Bad Medication Issues and was extremely sick the whole weekend. otherwise it was great tho and devin had enough fun for the both of us. this is also around when i officially stopped taking freelance work. prior to that i'd only been taking a couple jobs a year, but the store was finally making enough that i could stop.

in 2019 i made the difficult decision to end monsterpop. this came with a lot of heartache but it was the right thing to do. i am much better now for it. i think 2019 is also when we became an SCORP.

we hired our first employee (lindsy) in, i think 2021. it might have been the end of 2020. and in 2022 we hired our second employee (ariel), who had been modeling for us already for a couple years bc she is our very close friend and actually the reason we moved out to NY in the first place. in late 2022 we started working with ash, who now manages our product supply chain and also is patterning new garments for us.

there's probably a bunch of stuff i've missed but this is roughly it! neither devin nor i were able to succeed until we started working together. our strengths and weaknesses complimented each other well and somehow things just worked out.

and if you take away nothing else from this, please leave with this info: if you sell and ship any amount of product online buy a goddamn label printer

[bamdelune]

Genshin boys as uni students + content creators 🎧🎬🗯 (Sumeru edition) headcanons!

— this took a while to post because I saved the draft the moment my wifi cut off and I had to rewrite the whole thing.

— these are my personal headcanons, you may feel free to disagree with me ! little wonky when it comes to talking about what they do in uni because a high school student wrote this 🔥

Al Haitham ★ Law Major + Day in My Life

As much as I want to assign him to being a literature major, I believe he would choose law over it because he believes in practicality and plans WAY ahead into the future. It's not that he was forced into it, he chose it himself to survive in society and he's somewhat fine with that.

He's passionate about his course to a certain/decent degree but I image it's not even measurable to his interest in books & analyzing literature.

Naturally excels in his class and is commended for majority of his thesis papers and projects.

Adding to the last bullet: Whenever the professor assigns those scenario based requirements, the teacher will always get shocked from reading his works because he finds the most unexpected ways (and uses the most unexpected constitutional statements) to answer the question and somehow they always turn up reasonable.

In terms of content creating, he doesn't upload on a schedule but gets irked when the date between today and his last upload is a little too far so he uploads one when he feels today is gonna be a productive one.

Doesn't talk a lot in videos and just shows himself going about his business (mostly studying in the silence of the library or in the bustling environment of the nearest cafe, he still manages to concentrate either way)

When he reads new books with really good plots, he somehow incorporates them into short videos along with his usual routine and talks about what he thinks of it so far (which prompted a few not so pleasant comments on some of his videos because of his unbiased opinion)

Absolutely despises bullshit and problematic authors and problematic plot points and he makes no effort to hide that.

He likes silence. he finds the silence of his room with only the sound of his mouse and keyboard clicking and clacking as he edits his videos. he finds both the lack of sound and the activity very theraputic.

Posts study with me videos — believes in the power of the body doubling study method and it's a win-win for both him and his followers.

Examples of his videos would be something like what saranghoe or kai notebook would post on their channels (check them out! they're so cool omg)

Kaveh ★ Architecture Major + GRWMs & DIML

Be honest were you really expecting another major for him...

Okay, maybe he would fit as a fashion/art student.

If it's not obvious enough, his blueprints and structure plans are immaculate. Whatever the prompt is, he would ALWAYS find a way to make it fit into both the theme + his distinct architectural style or draw it even better. This man is so full of ideas and genuinely loves his major.

Affinity to classical and dainty architecture styles.

Enjoys doing interior designing as well — he tries to include them in his initial exterior designs if he has the time but majority of the time, he doesn't.

He's a self-care babe. Already has an estsblished skincare, haircare, nailcare, and even makeup routine by the time he starts content creating.

Trust me, if his course didn't entail straining his hands a lot from sketching and nails getting accidentally cracked (to his dismay), he would've painted them a LONG time ago. Instead, he paints his friends' nails for fun.

Is the type to upload anytime without a schedule like he genuinely enjoys making videos and such. Even if those updates last for about 30 seconds or a minute, he uploads them.

His videos are motivation to get your life togjether just because his looks like it.

It's not. He lives off of lattes and convenience store snacks on his off time. (He also films himself even when he doesn't look as put together as he does in his usual videos).

Examples of his videos would be the content Song Jia (free지아) would post. Drops effective tips, recommendations, and even advice from time to time.

Cyno ★ Criminal Justice Major & Tighnari ★ Med Student + Vlogging & Mukbang

Cyno

I decided to write these two as a duo because I headcanon them as roommates as well in a modern au.

Cyno despite his kind of intimidating course takes it very well and has always been a fan of solving stuff related to criminology. In serious moments, he's able to give his two cents on social topics.

The fastest in his class to answer and solve scenario-based questions.

He's a fucking pain in the ass (said in a loving tone) to watch action/thriller movies with because on top of the puns and jokes he makes, he ends up spoiling the plot because he's already deduced what's going to happen.

Tighnari

Tighnari is a tired medical student, taking up a pre-med course in either biology or medical devices.

He's the type to have the messy-neat room, papers neatly but at the same messily sprawled on areas in his room but it adds to his personality so it's alright.

The one med student who makes his notes as neat as possible because he believes that it's better to understand during his first year and the one who relies on a distant memory to decode what he wrote in his notebook that looked like it went through 7 failed situationships, 3 divorces, and lost the custody of 3 children in the later phases of his academic career.

Despite that, he remembers the names and uses of medical treatments and supplements at the top of his head.

Tighnari likes to be precise in practice operations during the later years in med school after pre-med.

-

Cyno introduced the idea of content creating to his roommate.

Tighnari agreed because he's drowning in student debt.

They would mostly do vlogs when they go out with friends or play board games (Tighnari cheats his way to the top whilst Cyno is left to wonder how he, the master at card games and alike, is losing to someone who just learned the mechanics 5 minutes ago).

Their viewers enjoy that bit very much.

When the weekend pulls closer, they like to plan the food they want to eat at home for a video or the restaurant/food fair hopping they'll be doing on a random Friday. It's a routine they do to unwind from the stress of academics.

They also gossip together while filming and eating.

The type of content they would post would be like the videos Stephanie Soo posts.

Scaramouche/Wanderer ★ Performing Arts + Gaming & Covers

He's so K-pop idol coded, did we as a society forget one of his hobbies was dancing in canon

He has a background in contemporary dancing/ballet and hip-hop dancing.

His voice is angelic and his professor really likes his vocal color (probably would have TXT's Soobin / SVT's Minghao's tone).

Scara ensures that dance moves are always clean when he performs and makes sure that there isn't any idle part of his body when he dances. His right hand is up? His left arm has to be placed somewhere at the same time. He hates it when he looks awkward on stage.

A really wide vocal range and can comfortably shift vocal tiers. He only strains his voice when the following note is unbelievably high for his pitch.

Shines the most in slow and r&b type performances, and is extremely flexible physically and in terms of genres.

When he posts content, Scaramouche takes interest in horror games as well as fixed-world (I'm not sure about the word) RPG games (ones like Persona 5, Honkai Stsr Rail). He screams (much more than he likes to admit).

He posts dance covers and song covers as well and gets a lot of praise for it online, urging him to become an idol (little do they know that he's studying to do just that).

Books really nice dance studios for covers and goes all-out for outfits.

Examples of his videos would be what Tuonto/Jake and Antony Chen would post.

© bamdelune may 2023. do not repost or plagiarize any of my works, thank you so much! reblogs, notes, and comments are always appreciated!

(main masterlist)

[kustas]

ok, without spoilers if possible but i'm EXTREMELY curious about your "this is how fights work in hxh" tag under the recent post, could you explain?

(the post, for reference)

HxH, like many battle shonen, has its own unique power system, called Nen. It stands out for several things, among which being extremely complex with an at-times mathematical precision, and for the creativity of the powers it create. This is because, in essence, the superpowers it creates are designed by their users, and strength essentially comes from training, unlike a system like Jojo's stands where characters are born with their superpower. Following this, said abilities tend to reflect who each character is like as a person, the same way that say, you could guess a bit about a scholar based on what they are doing their master's thesis about: it's something you are dedicating years of your life into digging into, it usually means something personal! In the world of HxH, skilled artisans end up using that magic even if they don't know about its existence (the training method used by the heroes is a gatekept secret), because their concentration and dedication to their craft helps inherently develop it.

How this ties into battles is that superpowers wielded by the characters are rarely directly related to combat - unless your character has a reason to dedicate years of their life into being the best fighter, it's unlikely they'll have created their abilities around this. Instead, you get more indirect and creative things. I won't give examples because I wish to respect your request for no spoilers! So we will stay in theory only.

With this, fights pit out OP anime characters but who's OP anime abilities are not "hit hard", so combats immediately go to strategy planning. Unless you already know your opponent by heart, which isn't always the case, you cannot know what extremely niche thing they've achieved (and boy does it get niche) so the classic "mid fight description of strategy" monologues of HxH are famously long and ridiculous! Let's use OP as an example: assuming we read their bragging on Tumblr and therefore know everything about their ability, we can make a profile. First, their ability revolves around killing, and they compare it to death note, we can infer they're someone with muddy morals and a sense of superiority: Light of the show kills because he's got his god complex of knowing better than the rest of the world. Drawing skill also plays into this ability, so OP must be an artist and a confident one too, why else would you link the aim of your ability (killing things) to drawing skill level?

The other thing this post features that is shared by HxH and perhaps my favorite aspect are the limitations. At it's core Nen works by "I have decided I wish to do this thing and will concentrate hard enough to willpower it into existence" (tying in to your passions, personality, and skills), but just as artists can reach heights by limiting their tools, you can reach higher power levels by limiting what you can do. It's a self given vow: I will not let myself do X, and in return I'll do what I want to do more powerfully. Here, the limitation is about the intelligence level of the target, and the art you have to draw to kill them. These limitations are brought up mid fight as part of the strategy planning, often from the POV character of the moment about their own ability, as they have to judge the terrain before they strike!

This makes for a text heavy manga at times, which has been memed a whole lot, and laughably long fight blabla. Given that post immediately starts by describing a niche anime magic attack and took up my entire phone screen, the comparison sprung fast to mind...

[avocodas]

I am DONE

Hello yall😭 I missed you and i missed the tumblr fandom so much.

As yall know i had a tough year aka the graduate year.. after all the hard work to sustain and lift up my Computer Science breath techniques, i want to announce

I AM DONE AND HAPPILY GRADUATING✨🧚🏼‍♀️

It feels like a dream😂 one that i am afraid to wake up from.. I can’t believe I finished 4 years in this hellish country in studying a major that i hated but found the route to combine it with my passion 🙏❤️

Which came to be

VIRTUAL REALITY GAMES

My BS thesis was to create a VR meditation experience targeting anxious and overwhelmed college students. I loved the VR technology and i wanted to do my senior project with it instead of the cliche websites and image detectors projects .

In my university we never got to learn game development, so i had to learn all the technical things by myself without a team, mentor, or even a laptop or a VR headset🥲

I felt alone, i climbed up to my university to work in the lab even on holidays to learn about unity, VR design, 3D modeling..etc and of course deducting an objective research about mindfulness and breathing techniques

Oh right.. BTW..

here i’ll borrow@demonslayedher ‘s pun

My ✨research ✨ was fully inspired by Demon Slayer.

The idea of superpowers with breathing techniques sounded odd to me when i first watched the show, i was like “ Are the industry really out of ideas for superpowers’ sources and causes?” .

And as I understood the show, and my gym class’s teacher integrated meditation to our curriculum and stressed that we need to learn to breath properly, because we live in a rushing world that we forgot how to even breath and take out the tense from our souls.

This was one hell of a senior project, it got me separated from gym, tumblr, and even drawing😭but i am grateful i found that my passion could be reflected in my degree and find amazing chances to grow as a storyteller.

If you read my tags in my posts, I always always make my art with a story in it. Each piece I’ve made there is a story that i often summarizes in the tags. That’s why most of you feel the sincerity ( and fun) in my art.

I want to thank two people that I thank God daily for their existence

To The GD instructor, who we met by chance, introduced me to VR by chance, but she willingly cheered me all along my journey 💖

And Huge Thanks to Buriko! Her blog, closet play, cooking attempts, and her spontaneous arts’ posts notifications, drew a smile on my face in the midst of dark and hopeless moments where I thought I could never be happy again @demonslayedher. 💖🤍

Welp, here we go for new journeys!

[star-shooters]

Old Art of Star Shooters

I recently cleaned my DeviantArt, GoldStarProduction, of all of my art since 2013 and found a lot of good art. I haven't gotten around to making new art that I am confident in sharing yet. So, I will post the digital art of some of the characters within Star Shooters.

I constantly altered between a cute simplified design to a more detailed and realistic one. I am still working on what style to draw these characters in, and some characters don't have a design yet. So far, all the art I have is old designs of the characters and do not reflect who they are in the current version of my story.

Apologies for any watermarks shown below. The old tablet that I used to draw with doesn't support the art app I once used.

Left: Gold Gemitaurus and Silver Kentaurus-Sirius | Right: A more recent drawing of Gold Gemitaurus

I originally had the idea that their cores, souls, would float above their heads. Now their cores are inside their bodies. Gold had an antenna instead of a horn and Silver was always sad.

Compared to the rest of the crew, I found myself constantly drawing Gold. This was also my attempt to make a drawn model of Gold when I was messing around with Blender. I haven't gotten around to fixing my old laptop, it was misplaced sometime before the break.

Gold Gemitaurus and Copper Cephei:

I didn't know what I was doing when outlining these characters. There was just a black outline with inside lines being darker than the color inside. I also had a thing for black belts or rings/bands on characters too.

Left: Ube Cephei-Sirius | Right: An older version of Ube Cephei-Sirius with Lumens, late-spirits of young Stars or Stellars

I had trouble choosing colors for Ube, either having a vibrant purple or a dull purple. So far, I had stuck with the more vibrant shade of purple.

Bone Aratumi:

I don't think I ever got around to digitally drawing Bone Aratumi. This is the most recent drawing I have made. He is similar enough to Gold's brother, Bone Gemitaurus. Bone Gemitaurus is the same type of Star, just with different tattoos and other physical differences.

Left: Yellow Andromeda-Eridanus | Right: A more recent sketch of Ube Cephei-Sirius and Yellow Andromeda-Eridanus

Yellow was very hard to draw in other poses, her hair was something that changed a lot before I got the hang of it. I did have a different type of hairstyle for her but I can't find the sketches. Perhaps at a later time.

Left: Lapis Asclepius | Right: Ube Cephei-Sirius and Lapis Asclepius

Lapis was the least character I drew, along with Bone Aratumi. I do plan to majorly redesign her along with everyone else.

Lavender Pink Veloctan:

Excuse the misspell, I was too interested in drawing and designing. But this was the only drawing I had of Lavender Pink, originally named Lavender Magenta. They'll have a major redesign as well, I am not happy with their hair and body proportions.

I never designed Sky Microscopium, despite describing its appearance in my senior thesis creative writing piece. Sky will be designed as well; I'll have to force my Chromebook to work with me.

I will have sketches of all the characters when I get the chance. I am open to any feedback so please tell me any suggestions, questions, or anything else.

[insertdragonpun]

Hey!!!!

This is part of the apocalypse series, but is also not.

Long story short: This is an au where the only difference is that Dim isn't the main character

Here she is, pre-tutorial

Her name is Dimity aka Dim

She's a grad student studying dendrology (study of trees). A good chunk of her classmates (and professors) are convinced that she photosynthesizes since she rarely seems to sleep. Her apartment doesn't even have a bed! (It does. It's just a very well hidden Murphey bed)

She works at the Zeus lab (the same place as Kim) and is writing her thesis on the local flora and how they're affected by the Zeus Phenomenon.

She has a major crush on the haphazard meteorologist who works in the same lab. She doesn't know how to flirt, but she always gives the scientist some of the prettiest blossoms and/or the best tasting fruit she grows. (Kim absolutely loves it and also doesn't know how to flirt. She responds in small gems made by the Zeus Phenomenon. The entire lab is just waiting until one of them finally confesses)

During the tutorial, she used a poison extract from one of her trees (she called it the Persephone blossom, and yes, it grows a pomegranatelooking fruit. You can'tactually eat it, though.) on one of the griffins attacking the lab (it's a necrosis type of poison, so it died pretty gruesomely)

Kim was the only survivor at the lab in the story which means that it would've been only Dim and Kim in this AU.

With Kim not being alone, [REDACTED] wouldn't have happened, and the pair would just live in the lab, never following any of the questlines and just being some self-sustaining lesbians living out the apocalypse.

Dim would still be a dryad but would be a rogue instead of a knight. Her general design would also be a bit darker since she used a different plant with a much different method. I'm thinking her white hair and her soft green eyes would be the only matches from her real design. I'm thinking her antlers will be wilder as well.

I think in this AU, Kim and Dim would be like a safe zone for this world's version of the main group. A friendly couple of scientists who look Hella scary and could rock your shit if you dared to mess with what they have going for them. They may be relevant in [REDACTED] like Vee and [REDACTED] are for the [REDACTED] questline, though they wouldn't actually be participating in any of the questlines as players even though they still count as some. In fact, the [REDACTED] will occasionally just pop in as a spectator whenever it wants to watch cozy gameplay.

In other news, the main group wouldn't have really gotten together. Natasha would escape [REDACTED] with the aid of the twins. Vee and [REDACTED] would still be working for the [REDACTED] group for longer than in the original story and would only escape during the [REDACTED] event. [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] would still end up in a group with the twins and Natasha, though they would now be the only adults in the group.

Only 1 from the main group would meet Dim and Kim in this AU, and no, I ain't saying their name. But the girls would've adopted them like the group does during the [REDACTED] questline, just a bit after they team with Vee and [REDACTED]

Maybe I'll draw her after the tutorial later, along with the Kim of this AU.

Btw I only came up with this because of my art final. We're putting everything we learned into one piece, and I decided to do Dim's iconic chilling under a tree. Except for this one she's reading a book and doesn't have her necklace.

I'll post it when I'm done.

[soapdish290]

Just read Blindsight by Peter Watts and I going to piss off a lot of Sci-Fi / Speculative Fiction fanatics.

I think my main thesis statement here is that, whilst I like 'hard' sci-fi, I prefer my reading to be a discussion with the author. Blindsight is the author handing me a reading list and telling me to go to work. The ideas and concepts present are interesting, but they almost don't seem to actually drive the plot overmuch. Sometimes here on Tumblr we see short vignetted bullet point fiction, generally created to get across a vibe or an idea or a character beat without having to write a story around them. This is the format I think Blindsight would work best in, and almost what it is already. We're given a bunch of cool things to think about, often in fragments we need to piece together ourselves first, and then we're moved on to the next. Thematically all these pieces come together (and absolutely masterfully so honestly) to inform and create the novel's central sci-fi 'thesis', but the same can be said of a good poetry anthology and I don't go to those looking for a narrative story either.

Overall, so many of the disparate ideas have been used elsewhere to the point that I very seldom found myself doing the "huh pause for a second I need to think about the implications of this philosophy" thing. Watts can create an amazing atmosphere, and I'd be remiss not to point out the way EVERYTHING builds up to the central 'thesis' at the end of the novel - by the time you get there you've been so saturated in different angles of the thing that it falls into place effortlessly and naturally. This is 100% the best part of the experience and I GUESS I can see why people laud it for that alone. However I don't really have many compliments on the novel as a story. There's absolutely no warmness to the novel. There's no emotion present in the entire thing. The characters barely HAVE character to speak of.

To Watts' credit, it's a novel he's designed to fit his style - the characters are all post-human in ways that strip them of humanity, the PoV character literally hasn't any emotions, and the universe in which they live is a deeply cold place - unfeeling in the literal sense. If there was ever a novel in which the characters could conceivably be characterised by a lack of character, this is it. The issue remains that it Isn't Very Fun To Read.

I'm also not the first person to point out that it's exceedingly difficult, on a micro level, to work out what is going on. Where characters are in space, what's occuring to them IN that space. Watts just doesn't do a good job of making the micro actions make sense. I have absolutely no visual imagination, which probably hinders this further. On a macro level it's easy enough to follow what's going on and what happens when, but don't you dare ask me to draw you a picture.

This was supposed to be a really brief "get my thought in order" but instead I've written half a review only reviews get editing passes and don't suck arse

[pokemondiscoveryupdates]

Welcome to Uredei

You are a university student studying to become a Pokemon professor. You decided your thesis project is to go to a rather young region that doesn’t have a complete Pokedex or a registered professor, because of this, it does not have a regulation Pokemon league. However, the people there are just as fond of Pokemon battles as anywhere else. Your mission is to study the Pokemon of this region and take on their gym challenges.

Instead of a Pokedex, you have your handy Rotom-tab which allows you to write notes on new pokemon you find.

This brings us to the starters of this region, Foaliedge, Squebrun, and Sluggune. While their first and second forms are named and well known, their final forms are elusive and rarely seen in the wild. They are an evenly matched triad of water/fire/grass so you think they would make good starting Pokemon for new trainers. However, You need to train them before you make any firm conclusions.

You will be able to choose one to be your partner for your journey, while the other two will go to your classmates, Vince Fir, a history major, and Neveah Holly, a battle major, who are also working on their theses with you. The three of you will make your way through the region, discovering Pokemon, people, and history alike.

You may even find a legend. Good luck, professor.

META SECTION

This game is a hypothetical at this point, something I’m doing for fun tbh as Idk how to make a game, I just write funny little stories and draw. If I were going to make this a game, You would get to pick a last name as well as a first name because I hc that professors legally change their names to tree names when they get into grad school. You’d be mid to late 20′s in this game, originally, I was going to leave the starter’s species names up to a poll but I think it would be more fun if in the hypothetical game, you got to name the starter you choose by yourself, the other two’s names would be decided by rng by the preset names you can pick (obviously so you can’t name the species assclown duh). However, later, when I post the current designs for the stater lines (need to finish Squebrun’s), I’ll give you my ideas and be open to suggestions under THAT starter’s post.

[dreadnotau]

Happy one year of Dread Not, everyone!

Yeah, it really has been that long already. It honestly doesn’t feel like it’s been a year at all! Even if you just recently found the comic, or stuck with it since the first promotional post, thank you. This project has been one of the most fulfilling I’ve taken on in a long time. And, as usual, I’d like to say some things on this occasion.

Firstly, hoo boy the numbers are bigger than I imagined they’d be. As of writing this, the Tumblr account has 295 followers, and the Twitter account is sitting at a comfortable 41. That is a LOT of people. As some of you may recall, I made a milestone post when we reached 100 followers on Tumblr, and I genuinely thought that would be the biggest milestone I reach that year.

I didn’t even notice when we got past 200 followers (most of whom were coming from my youtube channel of all things), and now we’re close to 300! That’s madness!! Especially for a project like this that’s being handled by exactly one person with minimal help from a friend. (That friend is @meowchela btw I feel like I don’t promote her enough. She’s basically the reason this comic exists at all, she’s wonderful).

Obviously I don’t want this whole post to just be about the metrics, I wanna talk about other things that surround this comic. Like how much of a mess working on it tends to be. I don’t wanna turn this into me whining about school but, long story short, I’m in my last year of high school right now, prepping for college and writing my thesis (I think that’s the right English word…) and it’s all VERY hectic.

I’m not gonna pretend that I’m trying my hardest at all of this, I will be the first to say my time management is awful, I’m just bringing this all up for anyone wondering why updates are so slow, and why I missed the page upload on catholic Christmas. It all gets a bit hard to keep up with sometimes, but I won’t stop working on this comic, that’s for sure! Paradoxically, somehow I’m more motivated to work on Dread Not if I should be doing other things. I think it’s pure spite at this point.

Speaking of responsibility, I promised more bonus content both on Tumblr and on Twitter on several occasions and, as you all can probably see, that has not happened yet. The simplest explanation is that I often don’t have ideas for what kind of bonus content to even make. Sketches of the characters? Finished drawings of the characters? Scrapped scenes from the comic? Non-canon scenarios and scenes? The characters’ design references? Canon facts about the characters and the world that I wasn’t able to include in-comic? More speedpaints??

I’m sure these all sound great on paper, but I have no idea how much time and energy I’d have to potentially allocate for each, and how much they’d actually impact people’s interest in the comic. For now, the bonus content will stay minimal until I can think of something reliable and interesting to release as said bonus content.

If you’re really invested in Dread Not, though, I’d recommend joining the discord server! It’s not too big, it has around 20 people in it so far, and I like to think it’s a fairly casual server! The reason I’m promoting it here is because it helps with my motivation to work on the comic a LOT. It really makes a world of difference when you can talk to people one on one instead of just relying on numbers on a post.

If you don’t want to join the server but still want to share your thoughts on the comic, the ask box is always open, and so are my DMs! Both here and on my main Tumblr. My main Tumblr got a bit of an upgrade recently, so I’ll maybe be more active there than I was before. Maybe. No promises.

On the bright side, I have nearly the whole story planned out now! I know that might not sound like much, but the story has been very loose with it’s structure so far (as you may have noticed). The story jumps from character to character at near random, some ideas are left hanging for tens of pages on end until they’re picked up again, and the narration in the yellow boxes feels arbitrary at best and out of place at worst, at least when I go back and reread it myself. This is because act 1 was sketched out in it’s entirety before I started actually fully rendering and releasing the pages online. So, the story of act 1 was made in a very “explorative” way, in that I had only vague concepts I wanted to get down on paper eventually in my head, and a blank canvas to work with. The pacing and structure of it has been a little lacking because of that, and I’m doing my best to right that wrong by planning out acts 2, 3 and 4 before beginning to sketch them properly.

Speaking of, I can finally put a somewhat number to how long this story will be! All of what’s been released so far, and what I’ll release in the foreseeable future, is only part of Act 1. Act 2 will be a bit more hectic, and although I don’t have the exact number yet, I’m *assuming* the overall page number of it will be similar to Act 1. Act 3 will be a doozy, as it’ll technically have two intermissions as well. And Act 4 is a beast of it's own. It’s all almost too long to even think about without getting stressed immediately. But I know it’ll be worth it! Now that I have an actual path set out for me, I can try and tackle this growing giant of a project with more of a plan than I had when I started.

Although this is Dread Not’s first anniversary, I’ve actually been working on the comic for quite a bit longer than that. If we don’t count the concept phase, then just the comic itself is nearly two years old! (Jesus, time flies) But I do want today, the 23rd of January, to be the proper and official Dread Not Day. It doesn’t have any significance other than bringing a smile to my face, though. And hopefully to yours, too!

Here’s to another great year of working on this behemoth of a project, and probably several more after that because this story isn’t gonna be done anytime soon! Pour one out for my drawing hand, folks, it’s a long road ahead.

And, again, thank you for reading. Thank you for sticking with me and for enjoying what I’ve made. I hope you’ll enjoy what comes next just as much, maybe more. Stay tuned!

[behindyourbarrette]

like you a latte - matcha latte

← previous | series masterlist | join my taglist | next part ->

pairing: spencer reid x fem reader

a/n: SURPRISE i felt like dropping this a DAY early!!lololololol but here it is! i appreciate the love on the last two parts so so soooo much :) can’t beliEVE WE ARE HALFWAY DONE!! reblog if u enjoyed

—

Needless to say, Twilight Time isn’t very crowded on Thursday afternoons. 

You rarely pick up closing shifts anymore—for reasons totally unrelated to the doctor who almost exclusively arrives in the morning—but you’re covering for Sally, and it’s a nice day out. The rain has let up in favor of mild weather, the sun just barely peeking through the clouds as people drift past the shop. Despite the fact that there’s more foot traffic on the street, not many people come in to order. You don’t blame them. Why have hot coffee on a day like this?

Your back is turned when you hear a group enter, and your heart soars at the prospect of tips. For whatever reason, most people are more inclined to tip when they know their friends are watching. You call out to let them know you’ll be right with them, and after you’re done fidgeting with the settings of the coffee grinder, you turn. 

It’s Spencer. But he’s not alone.

There are a total of four people before you, each intimidating you in slightly different ways. They’re all agents, as evidenced by their not-so-concealed carries. You recognize a few of the characters. Spencer’s told you about JJ, who you assume to be the friendly blonde, and Penelope, who is a vision in fuchsia. That leaves Emily, who’s whispering to JJ, eyes fixed on you. You try to absorb the sight, them together. Spencer looks at ease, a wide smile on his face as he looks between you and the group.

“Hey, Spencer. These your coworkers?” You crack a nervous smile, knitting your fingers together. He nods, introducing them each in turn. JJ grins in your direction, and Penelope waves at you with a fingerlessly-gloved hand. Emily reaches across the bar to shake your hand. You get the sense that there’s something Spencer hasn’t told you.

“What can I get you guys?”

Spencer shrugs, defaulting to JJ and Emily. Penelope pipes up, eyes bright as she peers at the menu above you.

“Do you have matcha, sweetheart? I’ve been meaning to try that. It’s great for your skin.” You nod, pulling a cup out and inscribing Penelope’s name on it. JJ and Emily both order americanos, exchanging a sheepish grin. After setting their cups aside, you turn to Spencer.

“Genius, you should really try the matcha. It’ll give you brain power. Not that you need any more.” Penelope does jazz hands to emphasize her excitement, and Spencer shrugs. You watch them interact for a moment before you realize he’s turned to you for your approval.

“Oh. I really like matcha. It’s green tea, and a matcha latte tastes light and sweet. I think you’d like it.” He nods, and orders it hot. Penelope orders iced; you smile as you consider that they compliment each other, eventually turning away to prepare everyone’s drinks. They’re all relatively simple, and you manage to include latte art in the hot drinks. Spencer’s is last, and you flick your wrist to finish the design. Crossing the bar, you hand each agent their drink in turn. 

Penelope sips at her drink first, the bright green matching one of her rings perfectly. Spencer eyes his dubiously, poking at it with a wooden stirring stick. 

“It’s very green.” He whispers to Penelope, who cackles in response. 

JJ catches your eye as you watch, lingering between the bar and their seats. With a smile, she waves you over. 

“You’ve totally ruined other coffee for Spence. We had to come try it for ourselves.” She whispers, leaning down. You aren’t sure how to feel about her tone; there’s a glint of something in her eye, something playfully secretive. You’re not sure what part of this you’re not in on.The idea of Spencer mentioning you at all is foreign—sure, you’ve told your roommates, and your coworkers found out that you do, in fact, have a favorite regular. Still, you never considered the idea that you bleed into other parts of his life. You steal a glance at him while JJ compliments her americano. He’s sipping at his matcha, a green mustache left behind. 

“You have a magic touch, Y/N. I don’t think I’ve ever had coffee this good in the states.” Emily flashes you a grin as if she can sense your nervousness. You relax a little, asking her about her work abroad instead of getting lost in your head. She strikes you as a diplomat, and a compliment from her feels like something to be savored. Penelope raves to you about the health benefits of matcha, and you immediately feel welcomed by her. If you were to run a study comparing the approachability between pink polka dots and pantsuits, you're sure that polka dots would win.

“Are you an agent, too?” You ask, stirring your own iced coffee with a straw. Eyeing the clock, you’ve decided that this counts as your break. Tyler be damned. Penelope giggles, shaking her head.

“Oh God no. Well, technically. I’m a technical analyst, so I work on the computer and tech end of things.” She explains, and you nod. It makes a lot of sense. While both JJ and Emily exude the energy of most cops—authoritative, with a critical eye—Garcia does’t fit that mold. It’s this that draws you to her.

You learn that JJ has a son named Henry, a surprisingly Southern boyfriend to match, and that Emily has a cat named Sergio. Despite their highbrow titles, you don’t feel out of place. It’s easy to sip at your coffee, the cup cool against your fingertips, and listen.

“Are you in school? Spence mentioned that you majored in literature.” JJ sets her cup down, flexing her fingers against the air. You feel yourself flush now that the attention is on you. The fact that he chose this detail to divulge sticks between your ribs. You haven't told him much about your work—he insisted on reading your thesis, and even reread the source material to better discuss it with you—but apparently, what you have discussed has made an impression.

“Yeah, actually. I’m in my second year of law school.” You admit. Emily nods in approval, reaching out to high five you.

“Damn. With all the assholes you deal with in customer service, you’ll make a great attorney.” You high five her with a small smile on your face, stealing a glance at Spencer. He seems elated, clearly enjoying the dynamic he’s observing.

“Do you want to go into criminal law?”

JJ asks, eyes wide with curiosity. You shake your head ruefully. They take it well, shrugging their shoulders. To their credit, their branch of law enforcement deals with the process prior to prosecution. You shudder at the idea of what happens after they catch the bad guys.

“No, not really. I’m looking at either the entertainment or environmental sector.”

The group murmurs, and the conversation devolves into small talk about law. You look to Spencer for an escape, and he suggests that they take a walk. Once the girls have trickled out of the room, each hugging you goodbye, you’re left alone with Spencer.

“Hey.”

You laugh at the simplicity of his greeting, turning to toss your empty coffee cup into the trash. Spencer flushes a deep shade of red, raking his hands through his hair.

“Your friends aren’t how I expected. Really cool, though. Especially for like, Quantico professionals.” You wipe the counter down, and the reality that you’re on the clock hits you, a little dizzily. Did his coworkers really just want to meet Spencer’s barista? The realization tastes a little bitter, and you bite back any further questioning in favor of looking up at him.

“Yeah. They’re like family.” He looks out the window, hands deep in his pockets. His whole demeanor is stiff, and you resist the urge to reach out and force his shoulders down from his ears.

“Did you like the matcha? I wasn’t sure you would. I used the oat milk you like.” Slowly, he relaxes. With a small smile, he nods.

“It was good. I like most teas, I’m finding. It wasn’t too sweet.” You add matcha to the mental list you keep, of drinks he likes. It’s become your mission to expand it. In the months since he started branching out, you’ve managed to add a few drinks to his core rotation. 

“You know you’re one of my friends too, right?”

This catches you off guard. You pause in the motion of sweeping the floor, carefully raising your eyes to meet his. While nervous, he sounds sincere. When met with your silence, he continues.

“I just wanted you to know.” 

You nod carefully. The implications of this are something you’ll consider later, when you’re alone. He’s only confirming something you’ve already known, but something about it stings. The word crosses your mind briefly, but it sticks. It’s bittersweet.

“I know.” Your voice is low, soft against the din of the coffee shop. Spencer doesn’t look satisfied, opening his mouth to say something then closing it again. He glances between you and the window.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

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[felikatze]

gosh overthink huh. do you mind writing about cheese man, maybe? could be about anything! i love him a Whole Lot and i just.... mmmmm chesed aaaaaaaahhhhhhhHhhhhhhh

OURGH THE CHEESE MAN. SO MUCH

this post is Late bcuz word empty and getting distracted by things such as exams, video games, driving, and semi regularly going to sleep at 8pm. anyway

I prepared this one in a libreoffice doc this time hooray for structuring

My main thesis for Chesed as briefly touched upon in my netzach post was this: "Activist Burnout."

i actually went wayyy overboard on uh. just lobcorp itself without LoR, so I'm cutting this particular post off with his Core Supression so I actually post something. But. I do have more. Also I feel like this is mainly recap instead of digging but you may like it anyway? Maybe? Dunno.

"I'm just gonna rewatch his LobCorp scenes to refresh my memory," I said, making this post entirely about LobCorp

The lovely brainworms anon even put this into context of Lobcorp's main symbolism, which I have transcribed from an eaten ask for reading ease.

"It makes sense as well based on the Kabballah, (Disclaimer: I am no expert on the subject matter and am only using what knowledge I've managed to scour on the internet.) Chesed is supposedly the Sephirah of loving kindness whose mercy and compassion balanced out by Geburah the supposed Sephiroth of strength and justice. The two of them needing each other to balance each other out lest  they each go too far. Geburah by going on a rampage and wanting to punish the abnormalities even at the cost of employees. And Chesed as you said, falling into despair, guilt, and activist burnout by putting the blame for things way outside his control onto himself."

Thank you brainworms anon, you are very smart. Though because neither of us are jewish (which i presume from your disclaimer) I'm not the person to go in depth on that particular aspect, but rather take this as confirmation that a major aspect for Chesed is compassion, and an overabundance of it.

Now then, what is activist burnout? A definition I could find courtesy of alive magazine was “when long-term activism-related stressors deteriorate activists’ physical or emotional health or sense of connectedness to their movements, impacting their effectiveness or abilities to remain engaged.”

Another source lists symptoms as

"Exhaustion: Feeling emotionally and physically drained

Cynicism: Having negative associations with the work that once seemed so important

Inefficacy: Doubting self-worth and lack of activist achievement"

The first even notes that prolonged trauma in these environments can even lead to PTSD.

So, why am I saying specifically activist burnout, and not regular burnout?

Because Carmen's crew were activists, easy. Daniel came from a place of privilege as a citizen of a Nest, but recognized the unfair conditions of the world around him and sought to change them for the better through Carmen's great project. The setting of the City and associated Wings is once again a potent satire of the most extreme capitalistic society possible, thereby drawing attention to how the less murdery version affects us in the current day. Of course they're activists.

However, by the time of LobCorp proper, we see all these aforementioned traits. We can see how tired he is from his design alone, as the only Sephirah with bags under his eyes, and always clinging to a cup of coffee to get started in the day.

For the second point, from his second story section onward it becomes clear that he is disillusioned with LobCorp's work. He has an attitude of "why bother wasting effort being mean when it'll be over soon enough" from Chesed's very first interaction with X. He says himself that he's feigning niceness though; he's utterly distanced himself from everything, seeing all of it as "wasted effort" because this cup of coffee went cold a long time ago.

He doesn't see any worth in what he's doing. At all. It seems like he has really low expectations for everything, and acts accordingly. This includes the manager; only when they actually fulfill his tasks does he seem pleasently suprised. In his third interaction, he mocks Angela's meaningless speech of "contributing to something better"

Now the last point is where we get spicy. "I hadn't even developed a taste for coffee back then. Should I say I developed that taste after learning the bitterness of life?"

From flashbacks, we see that during the early days, Chesed was extremely passionate. But, every measure he took failed, courtesy of Angela's sabotage (later revealed to be all in the name of the script). His efforts were doomed to failure in the first place, because human sacrifice wasn't collateral damage to be avoided, it was a necessity.

Chesed has a rather unique position as Sephirot of the Welfare Team. It's literally his duty to help the employees and keep them safe. Unlike most other teams, he directly confronts how death can be minimized, and thus has the greatest awareness of how unavoidable it really is.

"It's a good thing that everyone has such clear-cut assigned roles. It makes it easy for them to be faithful to their task with no unnecessary contemplation or distraction."

"Lady Angela does a very good job at keeping everyone in check in her play. Anytime someone tries to rid themself of their assigned role... Well, she becomes merciless."

Again, his position in the Welfare Team is what allows him to contemplate all this at all, combined with the fact that we know Chesed is already much smarter than he first appears. From his theatrical metaphor, we can even glean that he either came to the conclusion of a script himself, or managed to glean it from Angela's actions. The other Sephirah simply do not have the space to think about it to such a degree.

Angela tells him the truth about how LobCorp creates its energy not only because Chesed was already onto it, but because showing a passionate young man that his every goodwill is useless and will be sabotaged is the best way to break him.

(Another youth broken by the sharp jaws of capitalism~)

We only do things efficiently. Be happy you have this job at all. Just drink some coffee, you'll feel better.  "What's the point of it all?"

By the end of it all, he just gave up. If he went against Angela, if he told the employees the truth, she'd just kill them. And it will be his fault.

During Chesed's fifth segment, we actually get to see his relationship with Gebura, as touched upon by Brainworm Anon.

Angela herself says that "Gebura has failed to control her enmity, and has now lost her way." Chesed's kindness had made him unable to act, unable to rebel for fear of consequence. Despite saying he doesn't care for the welfare of employees, who else could it be for? "I hope you continue to rot until the day you die, succumbing to your fears like the servile bastard you are," says Gebura, hitting the nail on the head while also being very mean.

Gebura goes hard in the exact opposite direction. Chesed is consumed by fear, but she won't let herself be afraid. Ever. She'll confront everything head on, she'll punish each and every Abnormality as much as she can. The flipside to this is that "lack of fear" doesn't just mean for herself, but also for others. Her initial task as Kali was protecting others, and by refusing to show fear and setting her focus on raw strength, she accepts any casualty, completely contradicting her initial mission. But that's a topic for another post.

From the wise words of Brainrot Anon:

"But the way both Geburah and Chesed both grow into being healthier more balanced versions of themselves makes my heart swell with happiness in knowing that all our hardwork in LC did pay off when it came to helping our friends."

Indeed.

Speaking of growing into a healthier version of yourself, we have arrived at the turning point!

"Everyone has their own battle in this place...," he says after Gebura storms off, "But I can't seem to shake off this feeling that I'm the only one who just observes this situation from afar, not taking any action."

Wu oh! We've finally arrived at the self loathing! In a way, this is both completely out of his control, and a prison of his own making. Angela's sabotage was a delibarate effort to break his spirit, and yet Chesed himself tried to distance himself from the harsh reality as much as possible.

This dear statement shows us that his unique position, the most aware of the truth of LobCorp amongst the Upper and Middle Sephirah as well as seemingly unable to do anything about it, was eating him up inside.

Flashback to Garion. She tells him flat out, it doesn't matter whether he opens the door or not, because Garion will just do it herself if he doesn't. Eerily similar to the exact previous moment of Angela asking Chesed to lower the Qlipoth Detrrence. Hell, it's both about setting the Abnormalities free!

Daniel doesn't resist, because he has no choice, right? Resistance's all pointless, right? Daniel was consumed by fear, the same way Chesed was.

His core supression, his rebellion, is about taking the reins back into his own hands, about moving past the burnout and actually acting again. To him, every word of praise for his cowardice was just another pile of guilt. And the manager kept fulfilling his tasks, kept reducing casualties, kept showing him that its possible to act and to succeed!

"I don't want to undertake dirty work for Angela's show, or be a puppet who gets praise and applause from everyone. Nor do I want to be your "aide" who can't do a single thing. All of this has been a series of shame for me. Manager, this shall be my rebellion against you and Angela."

He was sick of taking a step back, of letting the shame pile on and on. We also see a bit of survivor's guilt from Daniel, regretting he was the only person who survived the initial attack from Garion.

Making this post, I'm seeing that Chesed's story is about how one gets burned out, and how one breaks out of it. How too much compassion results in guilt, and that with enough external pressure, compassion is discarded because of fear. You can try to change the world all you like, but the world will chew you up and spit you out. If you let it, that is.

"Why did I never come to the realization that I myself could be my own saviour?"

"I'm still afraid, manager. I'm still unsure if I can truly fight back against the fear I may face in the future. But I've decided not to run away, at the very least."

Chesed's Seed of Light is called "Those who are Faithful and Trustworthy." He reevaluated who he should really believe in, whose orders he should really follow, without just giving up and rolling over. In the end, if he decides to place his trust in the manager, it's of his own volition.

In a way, my initial grasp of his character may have been lacking..... I mainly focused on the first half of it, without touching upon the important aspect of reconcillation and regaining the passion thought lost. Only once he starts believing in his work again does Chesed not only act but feel like he is kind again.

One thing I may have mentioned about Chesed in regards to LoR, is that he still distances himself from other's suffering... but I don't think it's a bad thing as it was in LobCorp. It's all about the scope. LobCorp was something Chesed was directly involved in. A lof of "What if Daniel tried to resist Garion? What if Chesed tried to resist Angela?" and in the case of Chesed vs Jae-heon, the Library is the thing Chesed decided to place his trust in, which Jae-heon tries to destroy. Them standing in direct opposition leads Chesed to fall back on the attitude of "why waste effort being mean?"

As a final note, I find his Core Supression incredibly ironic, as all Core Suppressions are, since his is damage amplification. He's not hurting Angela or the manager, just the employees. Maybe that's why he needs to be supressed in that case in the first place. Well, it's always darkest before dawn, and every Sephirah is most batshit before enlightenment.

[zmartiarty]

Oooooh, if you're ever up to answering those questions on full detail I guarantee I will be all ears but until then that all was super fun to know and I will happily look forward to the lore thesis 😍

I did want to ask some more questions but about the hunt ritual that caused Dream to start spiralling. Is that what caused it?

Who was involved in exorcising all the dreamon(?), why did they do it and what exactly is it? Did they know this would split Dream's soul or did they even know that Dream was harbouring a Dreamon? Did Dream know what was happening and try to get rid of Order in time or did it just hit him by surprise?

Did Order control Dream when both their souls were whole? I don't really know how their arrangement works. Did Dream go to Order and ask to be possessed or something? Was it get more power or was he jus lonely?

Is there a way for Dream to get rid of Order completely and stop the corruption or would that have killed him because he only has half a soul?

Does George have any clue about Order? Because he knee Dream prior to being corrupted right? Does George have his own Dreamon? I noticed his legs and arms were a bit galaxy-like in his final form but not as dramatic as Dream's. (I really like your George design, I have such a soft spot for bird wings and the ears are so cool!!!)

What are Dreamon in your au? Cuz they seems connected to the gods if they can possess em but they relate to the in-between? (Was that drawing of the white cloaked person the in-between?).

Maybe I should just wait for the thesis tbf XD. It's just the more I reread stuff the more excited I get and the mroe questions I have. Your storyline is so much fun!!

I can't give away everything, but I will give you a hint that may clarify things....

Order is Zero (0)

"Order" was their original name when I started working out the pieces of the hc/au, and I finally settled on Zero.

NOTE: The Angel XD thread is a little outdated I will admit. So not everything about the Dreamons, Zero, and their effect on Dream entirely lineup with the current hc. A lot has been scrapped or rewritten for logistical sake and with the actual canon lore progressing/updating.

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What are Dreamon in your au? Cuz they seems connected to the gods if they can possess em but they relate to the in-between? (Was that drawing of the white-cloaked person the in-between?).

-Dreamons are a subspecies of Enderman. (Look up Enderman vision and that's what they look like, the color inversion of Enderman)

-Enderman and Dreamons were the original forms that Zero and One took on before reincarnating into their mortal forms as Dre & Gog

-Zero = Enderman, One = Dreamon.

-The White Cloaked version is a scrapped design for Zero wearing the Angel XD garb.

-The Inbetween and the Otherside are the respective domains of Zero (Inbetween) and One (Otherside).

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Does George have any clue about Order? Because he knee Dream prior to being corrupted right? Does George have his own Dreamon?

- George is the mortal reincarnation of Zero, Zero still exists beyond time and space as a separate entity from George (literally half of the server's code as a metaphysical being), while also being George and Angel XD... (Tbf even some of my own lore confuses me, I still have a few things to work out)

-Zero would be George's "Dreamon". Zero acts as George's subconscious and God lore voice. When George reascends/awakens his godly power, Zero/George are renamed to HD.

I noticed his legs and arms were a bit galaxy-like in his final form but not as dramatic as Angel XD's

That's because HD is a more mortal version than Angel XD. Instead of being a Spectral projection, HD is actually flesh and blood, a solid form.

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-"Who was involved in exorcising all the dreamon(?), why did they do it and what exactly is it?"

See the Dreamon Hunters arc on the smp. Fundy, Tubbo, and Sapnap were involved.

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There are a few things I didn't answer, but you've given me a lot of material to work with and answer in the thesis. :D

Also Anon, give yourself an Emoji identifier.