be honest with me. what are the chances of a hard launch in june
anon this question goes back years. and the thing is. we have been right once before.
you ask me this this time last year? fuck no. i might even quip that dapg would come back before dnp would hard launch. well. look at us now.
and even then, you look back on the content they started with in the revival--it honestly kind of felt exactly like where we left off, only a lot more explicitly queer (we stan). and then... trying to see without my glasses 2. and bang, spooky week happened. and that shifted the balance. we suddenly got slo-mo replays of handholds. day, after day, after day, finishing with the absolute masterpiece of halloween baking cinnamon rolls. in all honesty it was so much more than i'd've ever expected from them. truly another post-baking universe.
and it never really slowed down. suddenly we had cat prom photos, catboy butlers, catboy dan w/ phil photography credit, theyre 'wrestling' --running us full throttle into gamingmas, the first since 2017. and every day we had a new thing to freak out over: standing close. golf jokes. and then... pinof reacts. i don't know what compelled them to do it but i do have speculations. genuinely, i think they wanted to defang a lot of their history. we treated pinof 1, especially, with this... reverance. and it wasn't talked about too publicly--and dnp didnt do it either. so if they really wanted to move on, to bring down the walls, open the floodgates, define this new era: they had to throw the first stone. and they did. quite heartily too. suddenly this almost taboo part of their history--almost too intimate to be perceived--was on the table. and we were talking about it. joking about it. giving clear signals of 'we see it, it's okay.' and suddenly we existed in a post-pinof reacts world. of anything, i would've never predicted they would've done that. absolutely wild. follow that with it takes two being so chill and fond. incohearant being so blatant and heartfelt. trombone champ being unhinged and chaotic. the genuine and sweet complimenting of each other in the red carpet video. devan wedding... happilyphoreverafter... we crashed forward in time. never knowing what would be next. where is the line? how far will they go.
they teased us with japhan honeymoon and we knew 2024 would be wild. but we didn't know how much. from wdapteo 2023, to specific reminiscing about japan w/ devan, WAD happening, and phil playing a huge role in it all--from the orange carpet hosting, to 'ive been in *sex noises* with phil from the start!', to 'remote crisis manager phil lester', to dan saying he can stay during the thank you.
one of the biggest videos so far this year was the tiktok likes one. i will be forever haunted by the dog eating cheeseburger and willy wonka tiktoks--theres some things i was never meant to know. and yet. they tell us. explicitly.
every single video on amazingphil since the return of dapg has mentioned or featured dan. there's been a palpable shift in the way they interact. have you seen the way phil has been glowing in videos lately? this guy is on cloud nine all the time. it's really not hard to see why.
the energy of keep or yeet w/ dan... the absolute Lack of pretense of it all. phan twitter... watch your step baby girl...
dan and phil fucking crafts. talk about an unexpected return. legacy defining, one might even say. we're still in this tailspin of what everything means and they drop this insanely iconic video on us. from the storytelling to the production to the aesthetic--and its all capped off by explicit handholding. yes, it was part of the sacrifice. but hand in hand, the heart dan ripped from phils chest in one, and the knife that did it in the other... oh boy. we're really in it now. and then they put it on fucking merch. genius. truly no one does it like them.
and the foot has been on the accelerator since. dan and phil connections, shuffleboard & mocktails, getting deep slumber party, acknowledgement & approval of fics (yes previously given but never like this)--hell, even the sims today was wild for 'is their love language horrible banter 👀'.
you didn't ask for an essay but i gave you one. all of this to say, they've been moving the line. quite intentionally so. they intentionally revived their joint branding. they are 'dan and phil' again, and seem happier than ever about it, and i think that means something. they're saying things they never would have before--out of the closet or not.
as for june... 5 years since coming out is a big deal. so is this year being 15 years of dnp. hell, so is this year for being the first out pride month where they're explicitly a duo and regularly making content together. they're sentimental, there will be something.
my craziest idea is reacting to their coming out videos ✌️😔 --but i don't think it'll actually happen. as for more realistic, i could see pride merch. and however that goes will be significant, in my opinion. i'm excited and curious.
i don't know if they'll hard launch. it's hard to put all of the implications, complications, and speculations back into the box once it's opened. dan's talked about it before--wanting to be able to fuck up and not be publically executed, instead, being able to learn and grow and work it out. i think that's a very understandable stance to have. very grounded. we'd have to ask him if tour/dapg has changed that now. i do think he's had some sort of life epiphany--whether it's about that specifically, only he can say. but i think it's there.
even if i portray a lot of level-headedness, i wear my clown nose with pride. sometimes the only option is to go with whatever is funniest at the time. they're both jokesters, so they could commit to a bit like that. but it's also like, it can be too serious for them to want to joke about. i don't know. i think we're in this almost beautiful state right now--the we know you know of it all. there's no expectations, no demands to be met, no obligations of types of content. they're happy. we're happy. it depends on if they feel ready. if they want to. we'll be here, always.
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I've seen a couple of takes about Disco Elysium being copaganda going around recently, and beyond the fact that DE is relentlessly critical of the police force in general and makes explicit reference to the failures of the system that allow the officers in game to abuse their power, I also think it's important to note that there very literally is an in-world version of copaganda that the writers of the game use to parody that romanticised view of the brutality of policing. The RCM at their inception were structurally inspired by in-world copaganda- their culture, their "fashions, even weapon preferences, borrow heavily from classic Vespertine cop shows." Every investigation is it's own little drama, every officer imagining themselves to be the bad-ass hero of their own crime serial. Detectives name their cases like they're naming episodes of a TV series in a "robust but literary system"; a title that "draws inspiration from snoop fiction and Vespertine cop show staples". They give themselves nicknames to sound like cool, suave fictional officers- Ace, Dick Mullen, etc.- from the cool, suave world of copaganda.
The legend of the RCM's inception, the "point of contention" over its uncertain origins, is even an extention of that; the whole organisation is shrouded in this self-fictionalising mythos that allows for distance that in turn obfuscates much of its violence to the officers that participate in it. They get to convince themselves that they're not abusing their power; they're the hero of the story! The dichotomy of "good guy" taking out the "baddies," a manifestation of the libertarian fantasy of the "good guy with a gun" who does what it takes, just like in Annette's detective novels, and at the same time who rails against oversight bodies like Internal Affairs/'the rat squad' because due process slows down the immediate satisfaction of Swift Justice, despite Internal Affairs existing to protect the citizens from overreach on behalf of the police. "Wanton brutality" from police in their real world is a cold bitter reality but Dick Mullen was "made to crack skulls," "bend the rules and solve cases no one else can," and which version of that story is more comforting to the overworked, underfunded officers of the RCM?
The level of fantasy and detachment required for the cops to still see themselves as the good guys after everything that they do in the line of duty mimics The Pigs and her breakdown too; she parallels Harry so clearly. Both "did right by the kids" in the past, hoping for a better future- Marianne (The Pigs) by looking out for Titus and the Hardy boys when they were young, Harry in his role as a gym teacher. Both abandoned and left behind by the system that the RCM uphold- a brutal capitalist landscape with no safety nets. Both turning the source of their trauma into a costume, a performance, a shield, shaped by "radio waves and cop shows." The Pigs uses RCM items scavenged from the Esperance where they'd been thrown away, while Harry uses the Dick Mullen hat that Annette gives him but both are essentially in costume.
Harry identifies himself with the fictional detective as a kind of wish fulfilment; Dick Mullen is "wicked smart." He doesn't fuck up his cases and when he's sad it's not pathetic; it's effortlessly cool brooding and everyone sympathises. Everyone loves him. His violence- "skull crack[ing]"- is justified because he's a "good guy" enacting that violence against the victims of police brutality sorry "bad guys". He doesn't ever face repercussions; "Dick Mullen won't be sent to the clink for the sake of some legal niceties!" So if Harry is Dick Mullen then his failures, his breakdown, they're all just a part of being a "bad-ass, on-the-edge disco cop." He's not wrong, he's a hero! This idealised fictionalised idea of the police force, this "new, sadly better, reality" that both Harry and The Pigs cling to is "escapist stuff," "receed[ing] into a ludicrous fantasy world," so far removed from the brutal material reality that they're in.
My point is, idk. Disco Elysium is so far from being copaganda. It is a multi-million word long dissection of it, of the purpose of policing, of state sanctioned violence and its interaction with capital and the fallout experienced within the wider community as well as the trauma cycle created for individual officers. A dissection of how copaganda interacts with RCM culture and perception, and by extension how we interact with irl perceptions of police through that lens.
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SHAKES YOU how do you draw taurs. i need help i genuinley cant wrap my head around the anatomy of it. optionally i need help with fat taurs but any kind of taur is okay
Ooh, I love these sorta questions!!!
So there are two main things folks usually struggle with when it comes to drawing taurs as a whole. 1, they struggle with quadrupedal anatomy and 2. connecting the humanoid upper body to the quadrupedal lower body. Obviously there's no shame in either of these things, drawing four legged animals, especially if you're more used to the anatomical structure of something more humanoid is quite tough! And finding the sweet spot where humanoid and quadruped meet to make a taur is a bit of a struggle for folks who're still figuring it out.
So! The first thing you wanna do really is just familiarize yourself with quadrupedal anatomy. Look at the skeleton of the creature you're trying to taur and see how things like their limbs bend differently or how they're just differently naturally posed as compared to someone who walks upright.
This is a very simplified skeleton of a cat, but you can pretty immediately see how differently everything bends. And I'm not saying it's something you have to perfectly master to know how to draw a taur (especially when you get to drawing fat taurs), but i highly recommend becoming familiar with how a quadrupedal body is structured, the silhouette of most animals is quite misleading! And absolutely use reference!
Heck, our first go at drawing taur Riley was super heavily referenced (I'll even share the ref image if anyone is interested!), and this still came out real jank. Practice makes perfect!
As for connecting the upper body to the lower body, this is a little more subjective and up to you, but I'll lay out some general guidelines.
Generally speaking, you wanna put the humanoid torso where the base of the neck is, the front of the torso kinda merging with the rest of the taur body just after the tummy, basically just before the crotch starts.
As for the back, you're gonna want to shoot for just shy of where the butt starts, waist having curved back outwards. It gets a little awkward if you go higher or lower than that. And obviously, you wanna make sure the torso is firmly planted in the center of where the neck should be, ehehe.
That's pretty much the basics though! As always, i recommend looking at how your favorite taur artists draw the creatures and studying off of that! Familiarize yourself with quadrupedal anatomy, and use reference!! You will absolutely get it down with time. I will absolutely cover fat taurs if there's interest in it, and ofc, lemme know if there's anything I missed or need to go over! I hope this helps!
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Here's a little snippet from a tattoo shop/bakery au that i got kinda stuck on and i dont know if ill ever finish.
some context: Chrissy and Eddie are best friends that live in different states, Eds is taking two weeks off work for Chris' visit, he won't be at his tattoo shop which means he won't see the cute baker from next door
Chrissy's in the middle of answering and he's stretching his arms above his head when they hear the front door opening and the little bell above it chiming.
Eddie left the sign up front switched to "CLOSED", which can only mean-
"Eds?" Steve calls into the studio
Eddie immediately gets up from his seat and goes to meet him at the lobby, missing Chrissy's surprised look.
"Hiya, Stevie." he greets, bumping his knuckles against the front counter where Steve is standing just to the side of it.
He's secretly been hoping Steve would stop by just so he could see him. Just so he could hear his voice one last time before he has to go on for days without it.
Steve looks good too, in a plain white shirt, his blue apron and the absolute best pair of lightwash jeans in the whole entire world (if you're asking Eddie).
"I thought I saw you come in" Steve says, "You've been here for hours and you didn't come by to get breakfast, so i brought you this" he lifts the tray in his hands.
There's a mug with coffee, several sugar packets and two chocolate croissants.
"Aw, Steve, you didn't have to" Eddie says, genuinely touched. His heart flutters even though this is typical of Steve. He's just the sweetest.
"Oh, stop it," Steve protests, sounding bashful "these are from yesterday, I can't sell them" he says, placing the tray on the counter. A blush colors his cheeks and Eddie smiles, he looks so pretty.
Eddie knows by now how a pastry looks when it's fresh. He can't be fooled anymore.
It's been so long of them doing this dance though, and Eddie knows if he mentions it Steve will just get embarrassed, so he keeps his mouth shut about it.
"Well, they look really good." Eddie says instead "Thank you, sweetheart" he adds softly, his eyes drawn to the pink blooming on Steve's cheeks and focusing on the flour smeared across Steve's nose. He wants to kiss it and get flour all over his lips.
Eddie leans towards the tray and breaks away a piece of croissant, taking a bite.
Yep. Either Steve made these this morning or he's got magic abilities.
" 'M sure gonna miss these" Eddie says around his mouthful, gesturing with the bit of pastry still in his hand.
"Ugh, don't remind me," Steve groans "the shop already feels dull today"
Eddie laughs softly "You flatterer" he accuses
"Just trying to get you to visit" Steve defends, leaning against the counter and into Eddie's personal space to tap the rim of Eddie's reading glasses.
"Like I could stay away from your shop" Eddie says, tries his best not to sound breathless. He thinks he fails, and he must be blushing too, judging by how Steve's eyes are roaming his face.
"Good. Cause we need the business this month" Steve jokes.
That makes Eddie snort and laugh, Steve's shop is filled to the brim with costumers at least twice a day, five days a week.
Steve smiles at him again and then he peers around Eddie.
"Oh, hi!" Steve greets, straightens up and waves a little.
Eddie turns to see Chrissy leaning against the lobby partition, observing with her arms crossed.
Fuck.
"Chriiisssyyyy!" Eddie draws, and she narrows her eyes suspiciously "C'mere!" Eddie soldiers on,
Chrissy eyes him warily but walks to the counter and smiles sweetly at Steve, "Hi!" she greets "I'm Chrissy."
Steve's eyes widen "Of course! Eddie was picking you up today! I'm Steve, it's nice meeting you!"
He's such an angel, Eddie wants to cry.
"Likewise, Steve. I'm so sorry, I don't think Eddie's mentioned you yet" Chris says, but directs it to Eddie, glaring at him.
Eddie's about to answer, offended, but gets stuck on Steve's crestfallen expression for a split second and then Steve beats him to it.
"Oh, it's okay" Steve says, his smile reappearing, "I own the bakery next door" he supplies.
"He brought croissants!" Eddie tries to redirect "The best croissants in the state I'd say" he offers, succeeding in lightening Steve's mood again, judging by the twinkle in his eye.
Satisfied, Eddie asks Chris "D'you want one?"
Chrissy looks at him weird but mutters "sure" and grabs the one still whole.
"Well!" Steve exclaims, softly clapping his hands against his sides,
"I was just dropping these by, I won't take up any more of your time." Steve says "Chrissy it was really nice meeting you, I hope you have a great time in our town."
He turns to Eddie then and reaches out to squeeze his arm "And Eds, I hope you get lots of rest during your break. And visit us." he adds, moving his hand up to softly pull on a stray bit of hair that fell off Eddie's bun "The place won't be the same without you"
Eddie deflects so he doesn't melt under his gaze.
"I'm not dying, Stevie." he says, grabbing him by the shoulders and bodily turning him around as Steve softly laughs.
Judging by how his own cheeks are burning, Eddie's sure that he's the exact shade of a ripe tomato.
"I'll be back before you know it." Eddie adds, and with that, he gets Steve out the door.
Steve turns to say "You better" to Eddie. And once again, he peers around him to wave his fingers at Chrissy "Bye!" he says.
Sweetheart.
Eddie forces himself to not watch him walk the few steps between their shops.
When he turns back to his best friend he's relieved to see she's not glaring at him anymore.
She's got chocolate in the corner of her mouth and she's nodding.
"These are really good" Chrissy says, lulling Eddie into a false sense of safety.
He walks towards her to pick up and continue eating his own croissant, but as soon as he's within reach, Chris smacks the back of her hand against his bicep.
"OW!" Eddie protests, leaning against the counter and rubbing his arm.
She's been an athlete ever since they were in middle school together and she's never pulled her punches with him, it's a big part of why he loves her so much.
"You never told me you had a boyfriend!" she accuses, her mouth still full.
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