thefingerfuckingfemalefury

[ynackerman9499]

Hello! This is me! 𝕪/𝕟 𝕒𝕔𝕜𝕖𝕣𝕞𝕒𝕟! This is my tumblr in case you don't know me i have a youtube channel which I upload texting stories videos to it! And this is my first post here in tumblr (original)

Some male Hashiras + kagaya reaction to you sacrificing yourself for them

⚠ Warning : spoiler in kyojuro and kagaya, take of death, blood, injuries, crying, some of them are really short

Giyu Tomioka

You and Giyuu were fighting against 2 demons who used a blood demon art

You killed one and Giyuu killed the other one

Or so you both thought...

"You did well giyuu_san!" You said smilling putting your sword in place

While giyuu just nodded humming as a silent 'thank you'

This only made you smile even wider. You've been friends with giyuu with great amount of time now

You both actually gets along very well Despite your different personalities

So you got used to his comforting quiet gesture

"All right! Let's head back n-"

You suddenly stopped sensing that something is wrong While giyuu looked at you wondering why you fell silent so suddenly

"Wh-"

You breathed in sharply, catching a glint in the air watching it whizz towards Giyuu.

"not on my watch!"

You yelled, quickly drawing your sword breaking the unknown object in half.

Giyuu's eyebrow twitched, taking his sword out of its sheath.

"giyuu, there!" You shouted, pointing to the direction of the demon that was currently perched on one of the trees.

The two of you gave each other a knowing nod, rushing towards the trees and jumped landing on one of the branches,

"come back here you coward!" You barked, skillfully jumping from tree to tree, following after the demon.

The demon hissed, sending metal shards towards you and Giyuu, which the two of you dodged with ease

"breath of ice..." you mumbled taking a deep breath

"dance of frozen crystals!"

Streams of sparkling diamond-like figures flowed out your sword as you jumped upwards, holding your katana over your head as you swung it effectively cutting half of it's body;

sadly, not his neck, as he covered it with a steel-like substance.

"Y/n!"

Giyuu called out, causing you to look back at him wondering why did he sound so worried

You saw he was looking horrified looking at your chest rather than your face

'why did he sound so-'

You were caught out of your thoughts by yourself coughing something liquid out of your mouth

You looked down at your chest, a large sharp metal shard piercing through the middle of your chest

"uh.. F-fuck.." you muttered stumbling back and falling against a tree vomiting even more blood feeling it a bit hard to breathe

"y/n! No!" giyuu shrieked running at your slumbering and bloody figure against the tree

"giyuu.. The d.. emon" You mumbled, coughing out a worrisome anmountof blood, the crimson liquid spilling out of your lips in mouthfuls.

"i cant leave you..." he whispered as of scared of starling you

"i cant you are in_" "... Dying"

You corrected him. Mastering the last energy you had to cup his face with your bloody hand while lying in his embrace

"i am.. Dying, Giyuu..."

"no.. No you are not.. You can slow the ble-" "my lungs are... damaged giyuu"

Tears burned his eyes, hugging you close to his chest and placed his hand over your cheek

"i.. Love you... Giyuu... So... Much.. " you confessed as you started to lose consciousness and struggling even more to keep your eyes open

You took a deep breath but sadly... It didn't come out again...

"y/n.. Y/n... Hey.." giyuu said with shaky voice as a couple of tears escaped his eyes

"hey...don't do this to me, love... I–i love you too... Why did you do this... I–i don't deserve this..."he said as he closed your lifeless eyes with his fingers

"i am sorry i am too useless to be able to protect you..." he was now on full mode sobbing

Oh how cruel is it that you didn't even hear the person you love saying thing you wanted to hear from him the most...

Obanai Iguro

No...

No no no no...

That wasn't supposed to happen...

The hit was meant for him...

It was meant for him damn it!

Why did you have to take it for him

He doesn't deserve it

He doesn't deserve to live

Why would he live while you are here dying in his arms gasping and wheezing for air

He is enraged

His fear tends to come out as anger

So while you are literally dying he is shouting at you for how stupid you are, how foolish to waste your precious live over his useless one

His shouting you mutter out an Inaudible : 'sorry... '

Just then the anger turns into tears

"you idiot..." he wailed... Actually wailed.. Something you never thought you'd see, not that you wanted to in the first place

It was supposed to be him...

"don't you dare apologise..." he hugged you even tighter feeling you fading away from him as you tried to breath but it only come out as a horrible choking sound as you choked on your own blood

His cheek rested on top of your head

"o-oba... nai.. " you said chocking in the middle of word as the hole in your chest began seeping even more blood

"g–give them.. H–hell for m–me... Yeah?..."

Oh he would...

He would make them pay for taking you away from him

For making the only person who kept him moving forward...

Is now cold and limb in his arms...

Sanemi shinazugawa

Fuck!

Shit! Shit! Shit! Fuck!

He physically can't handle what he is looking at

As he refused to stop saving you even after you already stopped breathing

"shit! Shit!" he pressed harsher on the wound, the blood was slowing but not because of his relentless attempt...

You were gone... Not even being able to get a word out because of how harshly he was crying

For some reason... Even in your final moments you found it kind of comforting that he was try his best to save you

You felt your heart break looking at him from the other side hugging your cold, lifeless body... Trying to squeeze some warmth into it even though he knows its useless

Kyojuro Rengoku

You coughed out blood as akaza hand went through your stomach

"Y/N! NO!"

You took the hit for kyojuro

I mean... How could you not... You just couldn't let someone like him die

You just couldn't...

Gripping your sword harder, you slashed it against his neck making his eye widen

'she got in my way! And she still has the strength!

Akaza thought as he was amazed at how you still has the strength to even breathe

'Kyojuro, im going to die. I know. We had a life planned in front of us, but..l couldn't let you die. I just can't'

You thought as The demon tried to punch your face, but you stopped it with your other hand

"Y/N!!"

'you won't get away... Akaza!'

Looking behind the demon, but still applying force on the neck, you looked behind to see Rengoku with the boy from before charging at you with their swords.

A smile got onto your face.

'I wont ever let go off the sword ..Until I cut his head off!'

"INOSUKE MOVE! MOVE FOR Y/N-SAN!"

The boar now charged at you with speed His attack cut the demons arms, your sword still attached to his neck.

He was running away, clearly.

The boy threw his sword at the demon,.

stabbing him through the chest. Followed by Screaming of how he was a coward by running away and that both Rengoku and you were stronger than him.

You felt two gentle pair of hands gripping your back, drops of water, or tears, to your cheek as kyojuro took you in his embrace trying to stop the bleeding even though he knows it's a fatal wound

"Y/n.. No. No..please don't leave me! Please! I beg you! I will go down on my knees if it have to!"

"kyo... It's okay..." You say voice barely a whisper as you gathered all the strength you had trying to put your hand on kyojuro's cheek.

He quickly took your bloody hand in his and put it over his cheek

"no no... The hit was meant for me to take... Why did you have to get in the middle... Why.."

"i just couldn't.. Let–" vomiting blood "y-you... Die"

You said panting feeling like you can't breathe anymore...

Kyojuro the brust out sobbing burying his face in your neck as your body laid lifeless in his arms

It was supposed to be him dammit!

He was supposed to be the one protecting you!

Not the other way around!

On the other side tanjiro watching the scene feeling his heart break over and over again

Another love story between two lovers was ruined by those disgusting Creatures

Tengen uzui

after a long and hard battle you had ended up dangling off the side of a cliff barely holding onto an also seriously injured tengen.

He could feel your fingers slipping from his.

you were both tired and injured it was a tough battle and despite the demons head being cut off you had taken some heavy blows and now you were dangling off the side of a cliff, barely conscious as tengen held onto your hand with his

"dont worry y/n! ill pul you up Soon!"

you could see him struggling to hold your hand and knew that if he held on any longer he might go down with you

watching him struggle above you made your heart ache as you couldnt do anything to help

"Ten.."

the both of you made eye contact with each other

"thank you for being with me... I love you so much"

his eyebrows twitched at your words

"why does it sound like youre saying goodbye? y/n. You better hold into my hand!"

his jaw was clenched as he spoke to you

you couldnt leave him

if only he had killed that demon sooner

if only he could have protected you

in this moment he hated the gentle smile that was on your face

because to him it meant he had failed

"we both know we'll both fall if you dont let go, neither of us have enough strength left to do anything."

"its okay ten, im ready. i love you and I'll always be watching over you. live well"

he could feel your fingers one by one letting go of his hand and he tried as hard as possible to not let go

"y/n please! I.. I can't do this without you... "

you just shook your head

"im sorry ten but you have to, i know you can. you're going to do great things, with or without me."

"always remember that i love you... And i'll always be watching you"

With that, the last grip he had on you failed

the serene smile on your face was the last thing he saw as you fell to your probable death,

shattering his heart

he screamed your name on the top of his lungs as your hands disconnected followed by painful sobs

Not again...

First his siblings now you..

He lost so many loved ones

of course he knew that he was too injured to pull you up and the most he could have done was just hold onto you until help came,

If help came...

he hated this,

he hated himself

what was the point of being strong when he couldnt even save the one person he loved most in this entire world

"Live well" it was one of the last things you told him hed try his best to because you asked him of it but to him living well meant being by your side which was something he couldnt do anymore.

Muichiro Tokito

poor baby doesn't really know what to do

he's kneeling beside you with a worried look

he's sweating and his hands are clammy

he remains silent for the most part

"Y/n?"

He is right next to you, hand nervously taking your own

"Don't worry."

you give him a weak smile as scary as it was, just his presence was enough.

"|-what do I do?"

The fear in his face made your heart clench.

"Just stay with me. You dont need to do a thing..."

You squeezed his hand with the last bit of strength

you had, smiling softly

"Be careful okay? There are still a lot of demons left"

You didn't fear death,

but you did fear what would happen to those you

loved once it got to you.

Kagaya ubuyashiki

This took place before the explosion in the final battle era

Your husband's hand is cold in yours. You squeeze his

fingers and watch the moonlight bleed out the color of

his skin into silver.

"Are you well, love?" you ask quietly. A washbowl rests to your side, the cloth draped over the side dripping droplets of water down the floor. You take it and wrangle the water with one hand as best as you can,

laying it atop his forehead after. Kagaya closes his eyes and smiles beatifically. It looks painful.

"I will be fine," he says. A mere whisper; it runs wild in the echoes of the night. "| am certain... After tonight, everything will be fine again." You hum thoughtfully. Your heart turns like a clock,

mechanical, a slave to fate. You dare not tell him anything.

"I wonder. . " Kagaya starts. "How does the sky look tonight, Y/N?"

You looked up at the sky as the clouds moved to reveal the beautiful moon

"it's beautiful..." you said as he leaned into your hand as you caressed his cheeks

"he is here..."

A long shadow blocks the moonlight. You look up.

Plum red eyes stare back.

"It's finally nice to meet you, Kibutsuji Muzan," Kagaya says casually.

A chuckle flits in your ear, honey-thick and suave.

Muzan's jacket rests precariously on his shoulders,

and the wind picks up, as if trying to steal it away. The sleeves whip around him uselessly.

"Well;" he says. "You sure look terrible, Ubuyashiki."

If you do not look too closely, you can still delude

yourself into dreaming that this is a normal family.

Your twins have not stopped playing, and their

laughter mingles with the song.

*after the speech because i cant recall it 💀*

"Kibutsuji" You incline your head, a mockery of respect. "You may have prepared for everything.. But there is one thing you didn't prepared for.."

"and what would that may be?"

"this–" you pulled out teh explosion monitor and jumped on kagaya and just before it explored a room open under kagaya's bed and you both fell into a room underground where your kids were waiting for you to come and there was a secret door which led to outside

But it was quite the fall, but you shielded kagaya's body with yours as you he fell on top of you

"Uhmm... " Kagaya groaned from the pain of the impact but more at the though that you were hurt from the fall and his weight together

"it's okay... It's okay..." you said as you cradled kagaya's fragile body

"i just need you to hold on for me... Can you do that please?"

The explosion was loud on top of you but what was more terrifying was the piece of wood of the selling above you that was about to fall

So you quickly pushed kagaya out of the way just as the piece of wood fell on your lower body completely breaking it

"y/n! " Kagaya yelled as best as he could as he heard your crying of pain

"i am fine! I am fine!" You shouted as you tried to stop the tears from dropping from the pain

"kiriya! Listen! Take your father and run out of here!"

"b–but mo–" "no buts! This piece of seilling completely crushed my lower par! You won't be able to get it out! Even if you did i'd be just a burden! I won't be able to run! No go! Go!"

Kiriya quickly carried his father on his shoulder as best as he could

"no... Y/n... If we die... we die together.. That's a promise..."

"well.. Look like i have a change of plans, sorry love"

You said as you smiled sadly at him even though he can't see it

*time skip*

"CAW! CAW! KIBUTSUJI MUZAN IS DEFEATED! KIBUTSUJI MUZAN IS DEFEATED! THE FINAL BATTLE IS OVER! CAW! CAW!"

Kagaya opened his eyes at the sound of the noisy crow.. And for the first time in years...

He sees the sky clearly as the curse marks started to fade from his body...

He quickly tried to ran into the place where his estate is supposed to be with only one though in mind...

'y/n...'

He opened his eyes clearly for the first time in years and the first face he wanted to look at was yours

"oyakata_sama! Wait! You are not fully recovered yet!"

The kakushi tried to warn him but he just didn't care

He wanted to see you, to touch you, to tell you how much you mean to him even though words cannot describe, to make sure you are alright

But what he saw made him stop and his blood run cold...

The estate.. His home... Your home.. Is now crumbled to pieces with you under all that

he quickly took off and tried to dig into the rubble in hopes maybe.. Just maybe.. You are still alive...

"master..."

The kakushis and the remaining of the hashiras felt thier heart break looking at thier master like this...

Nevertheless, they started to help thier master find his wife.. I mean.. You were like a mother and a big sister to them all...

"I found something!" one of the kakushi shouted as he saw your bloody hand sticking out of the rubble

They quickly ran to where he was and started digging even more, just as they reached your head they all stopped and stepped back for thier master to take a look at you...

"oh my dear..."

Kagaya quietly knelt down where your bloody upper body only was visible

He caressed your bloody

cheek just as you did with him a few hours ago...

Oh how beautiful you looked... Even if you were cold and pale with your lips starting to get blue..

He missed you so much that he almost forgot the way you looked...

You looked even more beautiful than he remembered even with the black circles under your eyes and the few wrinkles that appeared on your face and the grey hairs despite how young you are...

"oh love... How many times did i tell not to worry to much about me..." Kagaya whispered as he caressed your cold skin with a few tears falling from his eyes "like this you will age before time..."

He hugged you one last time before the kakushis free your body completely from the rubble and take you to bury your beautiful body

Today the world won peace.. But he lost his...

[qwertyprophecy]

hi !! i recently played storyseeker and really loved it !! i was curious about how you went about designing the story for it ?? was it hard to keep track of all the moving narrative parts ?? how did you decide where to reveal what info ?? hope you dont mind me asking -- i really love your art !! have a great day !!

I'm glad you enjoyed Storyseeker! Old as it may be, out of everything I've made it's still the game I'd most like to make a spiritual successor to.

Answers to narrative design questions after the cut:

It's funny, Storyseeker's design process was so organic that realistically it should've turned into a right mess. But just as organically it lead into design principles that made organising the story a breeze, honestly.

What I mean by organic: As touched upon in this reply regarding worldbuilding, the story kept writing itself as long as I kept asking it questions, so I just let it do its thing. The player is meant to experience the narrative in much the same way, with me imposing as little control over them as possible while they travel as they please and narrate to themselves the story of what they see.

It sounds freeform and terribly unstructured, but I established a principle of design that aims to help the player connect the dots instead of feeling lost in a cacophony of random details. While making the game I called them "paths": routes the player is likely to take or subtly guided to take, that connect together related parts of the narrative. Visually some are literal paths or roads, but they could be anything that the player might follow. Footprints, streams of bubbles, the line of sight of an NPC, the sight of something irregular peeking at the edge of the screen...

A path presents both a question and a direction to go look for the answer. Oftentimes, the exact questions I was asking myself when building the world piece by piece. Where does this road lead? Where are these weasels swimming to (or, approaching from the opposite direction, where did they come from)? What dislodged itself from this hole in the ice and where did it go? What kind of a body are these giant toes connected to? Ie., to answer your question of when to reveal information: when the player asks for the information by moving towards where it's revealed, whether on purpose or unknowingly.

If the player follows the direction they must end up on another path because good answers beget more questions. The single most important design document I had was a piece of scrap paper with a rough sketch of the map and a whole lot of coloured lines flowing across it to mark the paths I was prepping for the player. (Lines, not arrows, since I couldn't predict which direction they'd be traveled in.) By visualising them I tried to make sure none of them stopped abruptly or looped in a circle, and that all the places of interest were covered.

(The biggest exception to this design is of course the dead end of a room that is the game's final area: the temple interior that can only be found by completionists. That's why it "completes" the game by being a narrative dead end, too.)

I genuinely didn't even plan it this way on purpose, but it turns out that it really helps keep track of a narrative when you make a game where webs of cause and consequence are all visually illustrated on a literal map. :D If you're the type of person who benefits from visually organising things, I don't see why you couldn't draw abstracted maps of your narrative even if it's not so visual in nature.

I know I definitely need to do more of that! Just last week I rescued my current project's dialogue rewrite with visualisation and arrow doodles. It had grown into an overwhelming mess of unplanned splitting and rejoining branches and microreactivity, so to have any chance of looking at it without inviting a migraine, I closed the document and instead mapped the whole script into a single page outline of what each conversation is supposed to convey to the player. It's so much easier for me to think about the shape of the story when I can see it in one glance!

[bentosandbox]

Lappy fancam animatic blogging/production notes

now that wolfgirlyaoi is out on global its rambling time about my powerpoint presentation

Concept

Originally I wanted to do an (Tex & Lapp) animatic with the boss theme (broken wall/Signore dei Lupi .mp3) ever since the event dropped but I thought 1) by the time I finished anything someone else would have probably already done it first (lol, lmao even) 2) I remembered the song exists and how much i looped it then while listening to the group's new album drop and thought the lyrics fit Lapp a little too well and also doesn't end abruptly like the boss theme + was shorter so yea

initial stickman storyboard where i put down the lyrics with event dialogue/happenings that i felt would fit nicely together > hastily scribble the images that form in my head

storyboards were basically what i wanted to see (same rule as my comics) lol especially if they weren't shown in the event CGs, eg. there's a CG of the truck crashing into the courtroom so I didn't do that but they didn't mention her physical acting in that scene + the song I used has a bow/salute at that exact part in their live choreo with the very similar line so I wanted to do a homage even though-

-I was like it's going to be such a pain to figure out an economical hand twirl and bow but I have to do this I need to transplant the image in my brain onto the screen because official media did not do a—

Honestly still don't know if its a common phrase and action combo because I was having so much trouble finding external references that wasn't just scrubbing the live video over and over anyway

part of the storyboards were 'recycled' from comic drafts I did (of the chocolate scene because ofc) when the event was running on CN

Originally I wanted to draw Lapp feeding Texas for The Girlyaoi Funny but I wanted to reference the plaque you get which is a Creation of Adam reference right but I also saw people saying it's referencing the scene from Silence of the Lambs lol so...peel the layers to your liking!!

(The chocolate flavour choice was from asking my Columbian friends what the worst chocolate flavour they ever tried which was white coconut)

my sorry attempt at colour keys > final spreadsheet to keep track of progress and paste all the dialogue i put in

Art Direction

A bunch of shots/colour schemes are references to Måneskin's stuff or other media tehepero I'll just put a few here

At first I was going to limit red/blue to tex/lapp respectively but since Omertosa is blue I just did away with that rule and lapp gets to have both (and more!) these two colours have pretty obvious emotional readings I think but also

red = self blue = society Siracusa or: red = yaoi & blue = yuri

for the others:

Purple = Alberto/Saluzzo, its not orange like the fruit he keeps holding because see below; I needed the colour for something else LOL Also the Saluzzos are iirc nobility or whatever and they have purple hints in their clothes so I think it was a good fit anyway

Yellow/Orange = Its supposed to be representing the last word in the story which apparently, yostar went with 'Savagery' which is Correct I guess but (laments again about how nuance is lost in localisation because imo savagery has a more derogatory kind of connotation while I think 蛮荒 in context of the story also has a 'nature/untouched by civilisation' side to it) which is why Texas setting the house on fire was not (entirely) red but orange (and it complements the blues both visually and thematically) and it's yellow at the end when they're frolicking(?) in the wilderness lol

(these colour rules don't apply to the penglog shot and technically a few frames like the shot with shocked penance, the one right after and 'im just lappy' because...i forgor my own rules lol)

The greens/teals were just a reference to the shades in the 3DPV I think

The silhouette/general style was inspired from the 3D teaser thing they had at the beginning of the 3.5 anniversary stream and the card suits that I..forgot to move to the other layers which is why only the green one had them (supposed to be 1 per set 💀)

The clash bit is basically the same as the event CG but with a flipped camera/POV sorry for world's worst screenshot lmao. Couldn't imagine the poses in my head so I ended up posing 3d models in CSP pretty good posing practice

These shots got rendered extra because..they were the first frames I started on and I was still figuring out how much to simplify lol

I also posed the chairs shot for some inexplicable reason…my file was lagging so bad

Headcanon part (kind of)

The childhood flashback scene is probably the part I took the most liberties (headcanon) on since it's not explicitly canon like the rest...the sequence/how I connected the scenes itself to fabricate a timeline of her childhood was kind of inspired by some weibo post musing about how (iirc) texas's sweet tooth maybe came from when she was being fostered at casa Saluzzo and Lapp treating her like a pet essentially and giving her a lot of treats since...you know what happened to her actual pet hehe except maybe texas offered her a stick first and then Lappy just reciprocated endlessly because its one of the few 'acts' she knew that wasn't violence haha yeah this section was basically a stealth doujin sorry

It's mentioned that she was brought up as the ideal Siracusan or whatever and she does the cute doodle in the 3DPV so I thought she probably had the Forced Music Lessons as a kid (The music sheets are Bella Ciao and of course)

The bow choreo was the one thing i really wanted to animate but the music sheet segment (based on that one split second shot above) ended up being my favourite part even though compositing the motion was a mini hell on it's own (ended up compiling a long png to scroll by with the red doodles layered over)

Other things

I will never live down my (self-imposed) shame of misspelling the title (I fixed the title on youtube but its why the ending shot in the upload says ZittE e Buoni instead of ZittI e Buoni) don't rush your fancam in 10 days 😔

I didn't look through the entirety of the EN loc but Idk why they had Lappy say 'Then go.' to Texas when it's supposed to be more like 'Let's go.' as in, 'let's go together' as opposed to 'alright off you go to the greyhall alone' lmfao also her saying goodbye forever padre when addio is right there

I don't think I'm insane enough to do another ppt soon but man this pair really makes the 'imagines a whole music video while listening to music' part of my brain go wheee like first it was Starset's Manifest then Signore de Lupi then this and while working on this one i was thinking how Måneskin's Torna A Casa would be another good track

ok ty for reading #GIRLYAOIREAL

[enemyoflactose]

To start this off, I want to mention the extremely weird obsession you have with watering Ryou down to this dumb Femboy for having feminine characteristics. God forbid a boy- yes, a BOY, a 16 year old, anorexic and confused guy to not be the manliest guy alive. Also all the overly sexual things directed to him or in relation to him? They are just downright revolting and can be in no way justified. You wonder why people can’t recognize your Ryou art when you dumb him down to a fucking femboy. Ryou bakura is based off many other characters and is supposed to be ANDROGYNOUS. (hence his Female VA and overall appearance.) he is NOT a girl. Also, stop making him to look really fucking dumbed down. If you even read the manga, ryou is actually really fucking smart. He isn’t a bimbo, he isn’t some kind of fucking stupid silly uwu boy. HES A TEENAGER GOD FORBID HE EVEN EXISTS

The next thing I wanted to allude on, Marik's mischaracterization, oversexualization (again) and woobification? How are you gonna dismiss one of the best written Characters in the entire show just for a few petty arguments, rude and impolite at that too. You’re also a giant hypocrite. Being as Yami Bakura (your favorite character) is a bad person AND I WOULD EVEN SAY, HES AN AWFUL PERSON. more so compared to Marik. His redemption arc i can get as to why you’re so pissy about it but you need to realize that this is also a kids show with limited writing due to 4KIDS, manga is more well constructed. Honestly i just have a giant problem with your Marik. I’m not even gonna talk about the thiefshipping, angstshipping, and opinions abt YM..why is Marik in your head like a fuckass. Like, your perception of him is so weird. Marik is equally as bad as every villain in Yugioh, you constantly make him out to be a hypersexual sex craved MANIAC. Also not to mention the blatant racism on your blog (it’s self explanatory.) I don’t understand all the hate, from his arc to the character design…pick a side, do you hate him or do you only like him because he pounds ryou in your head :T

Also the pure, unadulterated watering down of SA in your "crimes of marik/yami marik" post? I can't put into words how extremely shameful it is, to disregard such an important and scary topic and to make a joke of it honestly. IT WAS NOT SA? the scene was ryou bakura about to FALL OVER because he is INJURED. Marik isn’t trying to do anything to him. Thanks for dumbing down real life situations you’re an awesome person

Where did you get that Ryou was anorexic? Being thin and not really eating a lot doesn't make you anorexic. I would know, I was almost diagnosed with it.

I head cannon Ryou as a femboy not because I'm sexualizing him, but because I want to draw a character that I like and relate to in outfits that I just want to see him in.

Do I end up drawing Ryou in sexual outfits? Yes. I'm sorry this upsets you, but I find certain typically sexual outfits such as maid outfits and MEIKO's Blue Crystal model to be very pretty and cute. Not to mention they're just fun to draw.

I have plans to draw Ryou in other dresses and skirts that aren't sexual, I wouldn't have this head cannon if I didn't.

I'm well aware that looking androgynous doesn't automatically make someone a femboy or tomboy. I may be dumb, but I'm not an idiot.

The kind of stupid that I think Ryou is, is the kind that makes you unable to see certain social cues or just be ignorant about a lot of things. I give him the same stupid that I have because I'm projected on to a character that I like and relate to.

I'm also still new to writing, so the way I characterize Ryou hasn't been shown to its fullest. I write him and acknowledge him how he's already written, but I add things to make myself happy. That's how fanfiction works.

I never said that Ryou was a bimbo, I said that he's stupid because he makes objectively dumb choices like keeping the millennium ring and not telling his friends about it. Also, yes I do know that he's being abused. From an outsiders perspective however, his choices just come across as looking stupid.

I am making light hearted jokes about a fictional character and projecting myself on to that same fictional character, and you have a problem with that?

And to talk about your insults to my art, I know that the reason I'm scared people won't recognize Ryou is because I draw him to like this:

Instead of this:

I'm well aware of that because despite my low intelligence, I can understand that he doesn't really look like Ryou.

Also, why are you so intent on telling me that Ryou is a boy? I know he's a boy. I constantly say that he's a boy and acknowledge that he's a boy. You need to identify as a boy to be a femboy 💀.

For your Marik takes, I have no clue what woobafication is. I also don't hate Marik because he's a bad person, I "hate" him (it's fucking theatrical you dumbass) because he has a poor redemption that needed to be explored more. Marik is a character that I genuinely like and I think he's fun and hilarious, I just have problems with how he was redeemed since in my eyes, he did nothing to deserve it.

Yami Bakura is also not my favorite character. Weevil and Joey are. I just talk about Yami Bakura way more because there's more for me to say. I like Ryou more than him as well because Ryou is my projection character.

I'm well aware that Yami Bakura is a worse person than Marik, he did almost kill all of Egypt is I'm remembering things right, but that doesn't mean that Marik isn't also a bad person.

Just because someone is worse than another, doesn't mean that that person's sins are cleaned completely.

Of course you don't wanna talk about the angstshipping thiefshipping discourse you little pussy.

Marik is objectively worse than Pegasus, Noah, Gozuburo, and the Douma trio. He kidnaps, brainwashes, steals, kills, abuses his brother, and all the while he still blames Yami Yugi for how he is.

Marik being hypersexual is just a fandom trop. That's why I think he is, because a pretty big number of people also think that way.

Where is the racism? I'm genuinely concerned about this one it is not self explanatory.

I do actually like Marik as a character, it's not because he pounds Ryou in my head, it's because he's entertaining. He's fun, I like fun villains. (His purple shirt is ugly as hell tho)

Now to talk about my biggest issue with you. You think I can afford to just read the manga and watch the sub, don't you?

Well guess what chuckle nuts, I'M FUCKING POOR

I don't have the money to buy more of the Yu-Gi-Oh manga or to pay for a Crunchyroll subscription.

I'm broke, no money, poor, jobless.

You're making the assumption that I can fucking afford to buy the manga. I have to ask my family to buy it for me as gifts for birthdays and shit. I literally have no money.

So let me put everything you need to know in a little list so you, and anyone else, can understand things about me.

I project onto Ryou

I think pretty boys in pretty dresses is cool

I actually really like Marik

My favorite character is Weevil

I happen to like angstshipping

I happen to not like thiefshipping

I think certain sexualized outfits are pretty or look fun to draw

I have media literacy

Fuckass is not a word in my vocabulary and I don't know what that means

Please block me 💕

[cozylittleartblog]

Just wanted to mention this to someone who does art and get their opinion on it:

Sometimes I see some artists do redraws of their old artworks or characters and think "Wow, uh... their older art looks better." Sometimes it's only mildly better, but other times it's vastly better. Like the Upgrade, Go Back! meme.

I understand that art skills are supposed to develop and change, hopefully for the better, but sometimes it just feels like they got... worse? Somehow? Idk. Maybe it's because they were copying another artist's style while finding their own, and it's their own style that doesn't vibe with me? Just curious what your thoughts are about this.

Also, your art has consistently been great, so this isn't directed at you.

I do see this on occasion yeah! usually (in my experience anyway) its because people take a sharp turn towards a stylization that either isn't to your or most people's tastes, or that they don't understand or are still developing. switching up how you stylize your art is like starting over in a sense, you're changing from what you have practice with and that's always going to cause you to revert some as you have to re-learn things you understood in your previous style. i had a pretty big style shift in 2014 when i took up the basis for how my art looks now, and i remember feeling like some of the stuff i was drawing might have looked better if i was using my older style instead. that's something artists just have to push through and figure out, and they'll likely come out of it a better artist than they were before. constructive critiques are a good way for them to figure out why their art might not be as "good" as it used to be, if they're open for those.

art is not always a linear journey, and i would also say things like passion and motivation have a part in it too. feeling inspired sparks you to make something the best it can be, if you're not feeling it (and esp if that feeling lasts for a long time) it'll leave you making decisions you otherwise would not have let fly, and that can result in worse art. and some of it is just personal preference! it's not that their art is better or worse, it's just different now, and maybe that doesn't vibe with you the same way their old stuff did. and that's fine 👍

(thank you! :3 i admittedly struggle a bit with Not Feeling It sometimes like i just described, so it's nice to know people still enjoy what i make when that feeling hits.)

[untoldsoup]

Hi! I was curious about how you organise work with your comics, including the writing parts :)

Idk if my process is how it's supposed to be done, but I'll share what's been working for me so far!

So for the btb comic, I got it written last year before the 'change' comic was done being drawn. I learned alot about how I wanted to do storytelling with that comic and it influenced how I organized the sequel.

One thing I learned from the 'change' comic is I absolutely loathed drawing the same location too much. Most of that comic is the wedding and by the end of the wedding I was so sick of drawing the wedding scenes (it almost caused me to quit a few times lol).

So when writing the script for the sequel I told myself every chapter would indicate a scene change. This would help me get through drawing a chapter knowing a new scene location would be drawn for the next chapter.

A scene change can be as small as a different room or as big as a new location, as long as *something* changed about the background I would have to draw.

Each chapter is its own word document (well google docs now, i switch over)

I write my stories in movie script format. When researching how to write comics I found the most helpful advice was screenwriting advice. I highly encourage people to watch youtube videos on screenwriting. I also watched a ton of videos aimed at screenwriters that talk about plot, how to write interesting characters, and the three act structure.

I made sure i could answer questions such as "why is my character doing this?" And "what motivates them?" And "how does their wants and desires change throughout the story?" I made sure that each character's motives and personality could answer these questions with a few simple words. I needed to make sure I have a clear understanding of what they wanted.

I go through a TON of edits in my chapters. I even edit alot when I finally start drawing, if I think some dialogue would work better rephrased once I see it next to my art. Editing is huge. Your first draft really is just getting the "dumbest" version down. Once you get over that hurdle, you can mold the script into what you need.

I remove a lot of dialogue during edits. Comics are a visual story telling device, so i try and make sure the words and art work together, and that the words don't feel like they could exist without the art.

There is nothing I hate more than when a comic page is a giant block of text. I find large scary blocks of text uninteresting, So I will often go out of my way to draw more panels if it means breaking up the dialogue.

I also try my best to write realistic dialogue. Would this character say this? Why are they saying this?

If you notice with my stories alot of characters are not direct in how they speak. In real life no one tells you directly "i am mad". They deflect, lash out, say things because they are jealous or hurt ect ect. I wanted to do my best to have my dialogue reflect how each character would realistically handle the pain they are dealt.

When I start drawing, I have the script for the chapter I'm working on open on one computer screen, and my art tablet with my program open on the other. This way as I'm drawing I can easily reference my script.

If I'm drawing an action heavy scene, I will often start paneling out on paper some crude sketches just so I can keep track of where everything should be. It's easy for things to get lost in the action so I try my best to make sure I am aware of where every character is in busy scenes.

These drawings are extremely crude but really really helpful. I don't mind sharing these as they are so abstract they don't really give anything away lol. But they do help me organize.

I use clip Studio to draw and from there start drawing my pages. Each page takes about 2-3 days to finish depending on complexity. I think I get about two pages done a week, more if I have vacation days or something from work.

I have a full time Quality Analyst job, so I'm only able to work on my comic between the hours of midnight and 5am lol. It's why you always see me updating and posting at horrible hours lol.

Anyway I hope that helps? Hopefully I answered your questions!

[wasyago]

Hey it's me again lmao You were wondering what specifically I was struggling with and I had to kinda take a moment to think about it, these are some of the examples I have digitally (there are a lot more traditional examples but I felt bad putting them on here already lmao). The reason I suppose I struggled to articulate my issues with drawing him kinda just boiled down to "it doesn't look right" I'd say my biggest struggles are the face shape, hair and just proportions of everything. Sorry if this is a bother, you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but thank you for taking the time to understand in my last ask.

hehehe don't worry its not a bother, i love analyzing art so this is basically enrichment for me >:3!!

(a little disclaimer that all im saying will be from my perspective and according to my preferences in designs. its pretty obvious since you're asking me, but i feel like it needs to be said. also im sorry if im too harsh with anything)

face shapes can definitely be tricky, because even the slightest changes are super visible... you (in these drawings) tend to draw longer faces and define the jaw and chin. it might be worth it to try and bring out the cheeks or cheekbones a little. cheeks add roundness to the face and take some of the attention from the chin. cheekbones make the face feel more defined and sharp.

also try to leave some space between the eyes and the hairline, so they don't go over each other and have some space for expression. im not directly saying to draw a bigger forehead, because its really up to your style if the eyebrows sit where they should anatomically be or if they're more cartoony and go up higher, so there might be a lot of space that isn't actually considered a "forehead".

i really like the nose shape you draw for him, this sort of "v" shape, its super cute and looks interesting! so im not touching it, i like it.

another thing, you draw the guidelines for the face, like the lines that go through the middle vertically and horizontally, and its really good and helpful! but remember that those are just guidelines, they don't define the face, and sometimes they can be more constricting than helping. sometimes the face features go below or above them or shift because of perspective! not saying to completely not use them, especially if you're not feeling confident, but lowering the opacity on them or making them thinner would help!

and somewhat relating to the guidelines: you know how you draw the corners of his eyes on this middle line, but then the upper and lower eyelids go around it? this makes the eyes feel much higher on the face than they are. the inner corners of the eyes i would call one of the more charismatic parts, because they feel like the place where the eye starts, and then the direction the eyelids take is what brings in the character.. if that makes sence? by having both the inner and the outer corners of the eye on the same line, it removes the character, because none of the corners are dominant and they're not dynamic. by making one of the corners higher or lower than the other, it creates a more dynamic shape. and also removes the problem where the eyes feel like they're too close. this really is much easier to explain in a drawing....

sorry im on my phone rn

for the hair i think you're doing well! just remember to leave some space for the back of the head and above the hairline, because the face sits on the head but it's not the head itself, so there should be some area around it too. and also that hair have weight and volume and they go over the shape of the head and don't stick to it.

also don't foget to leave room for the neck! there's space between it and the chin, and there's space between it and the back of the head. and head doesn't have to sit directly in the middle of the neck, it can move from side to side and create interesting shapes depending on the angle.

and i guess yeah! experiment with shapes, sizes and dimensions, if something is wrong you can always erase it and draw again!

[spatio-rift]

So you see i only got to (and finished watching) knb recently. Through the power of algorithm i'm now on a kasamatsu phase. And so i stumbled on your STRKY arts and i'm obsessed! I love how you draw them!! Expresionss!!

Side note i kept reading the acronym as "streaky" even though that's probably not how it's supposed to be read.

STRKY IS LOVE STRKY IS LIFE... if youre enjoying my stuff then i strongly recommend reading the novel chapter about the formation of the team... 'formation! team strky' from replace VI... its really great to see how the senpai are doing at uni and how imayoshi got everyone to play together for fun its so silly and funny. did you know imayoshi initially planned to recruit okamura but not kasamatsu but when he saw them together kasamatsu was too good a potential teammate to pass up on so he changed his own position to make room for him on the team. smiles. did you know kasamatsu had been feeling completely lost and out of his depth since entering uni and it was imayoshi who gave him confidence and a sense of direction in his life again. smiles. did you know it frustrated imayoshi so much to see kasamatsu wander aimlessly when the answer is Right There that he just HAD to meddle. smileesss

theyre so great. sorry im blatantly pushing my imakasa agenda but theyre the heart and soul of strky and they have an incredibly fun dynamic in strky i want to share my enthusiasmmm other than that it really is a nice read for kasamatsu alone. but if you ever get curious about imayoshi and kasamatsu together i have a translation of imayoshis drama cd that surprisingly features kasamatsu a lot and its great too. its a very interesting piece of content to me because their only 'canon' interactions are on the court when theyre in direct opposition so its nice to see that they are on great terms off the court and clearly respect each other a lot.

also.... its pronunced 'starky' (st'r'ky) ^_^ so i like to think of strky having a star motif 🌟 i think of them as the 5 branches of a whole star lol

[darsynia]

🔥 Stephen Strange x Female Reader (or if you feel like it, one of my OFCs 😉)

"I swear when I planned this, it went much more smoothly than how this turned out!"

Please and thank you 😘😘

So uh. I like this one SO much, I hope you love it! (I chose Stephen/Reader) Thanks for requesting a blurb for BLURB WEEK! Credit to @doctorstrangegifsparadise!

Summary: The bad guys Stephen has been warring against have finally caught up with the two of you at the worst possible time, and neither of you are going to stand for it.

Length/Warnings: 1,618 / LANGUAGE, haha.

Ruin Your Day

Stephen looks from the flower crown in your hair, the colorful sundress you’re wearing, and the flimsy sandals on your feet to the iron shackles around your wrists and says, “I promise you, this was not the way the afternoon was meant to play out.”

He’s just an astral projection, so you can’t do anything more than glare at him. “I thought you said they couldn’t find us! Are you okay?”

“I--” he starts to say, then looks over his shoulder. When he turns back toward you, his expression is fearful. “I’ll be right back.”

“Stephen!” you hiss, but he’s gone.

It’s cold in your new dungeon habitat, which is just cinematic, at this point. You and Stephen have been dating for just over eleven months, six of which have involved his fight against a pair of interdimensional travelers in search of the green stone he always wore around his neck. You’d taken to never saying its real name even in your head, Voldemort-style, not that this had ended up making much of a difference. 

Today was meant to be a break, an escape from the stress of those battles, a chance for you to finally see the sun. You’ve been holed up in a suite of rooms at the Sanctum for months, for fear of a mole at Kamar Taj.

At least today’s turn of events has made it clear that Stephen wasn’t being overly cautious by keeping your existence secret.

Well, Stephen wasn’t the only one keeping secrets.

You take a deep breath and clear your mind, connecting yourself to the fount of power all sorcerers draw from when they use the Mystic Arts. Your boyfriend doesn’t know that you’ve spent every free moment studying the texts in hopes of unlocking the abilities he uses with such ease. It was hard, and you’d only made the breakthrough a few weeks ago, but you’ll be damned if you’re going to play Damsel in Distress to these thieving, kidnapping assholes.

You’re not playing your hand early, either. In order to keep your abilities secret, you’d focused more on the subtleties of the Arts, things like eavesdropping, Far Sight, and the like. Honestly, if he’d waited another ten minutes, Stephen would have found you in seeming repose, your consciousness having gone walkabout.

As you pull yourself free of your mortal body, the thought that you haven’t actually practiced this very much occurs to you, but what are you supposed to do? Wait to be rescued??

Don’t be absurd.

Stephen has been counting to calm down for a good five minutes now, with no calming in sight. The necklace he’s wearing may be what his adversaries are seeking, but there’s another piece of jewelry in his pocket that’s just as valuable to him, and he doesn’t appreciate his plans being disrupted.

It took far too long to recognize that they’re in Sokovia, and even longer to contact Wong to gather an attack force. He appreciates the fact that he was able to connect so easily to you, and thus find the place you’ve been taken, but though that validates the question he’d intended to ask today, it doesn’t help the cavalry show up any faster. The whole building is warded fairly heavily, and the anti-portal provision stretches miles in all directions.

Either Wong’s going to need to call in the Avengers to borrow a Quinjet and a few supersoldiers, or they’re all going to walk to the rescue. He doesn’t know which is more insufferable.

Stephen drifts through a wall and finds a meeting, which is both useful and extremely insulting. There isn’t even a guard outside your ‘dungeon’ door! Safe in the knowledge that they can’t see him, he floats angrily around the table, swiping his incorporeal hand on the back of a few necks from time to time, just to make the (ahh yes. HYDRA. Completely unsurprising) goons in question feel uneasy. Once he’s finished gathering all the information there is to glean, Stephen makes his way back to a safe place so he can rejoin his body-- and runs into your astral form, on the way.

Your eyes are wide and surprised even though your jaw is set at a defiant angle, and god, he loves every infuriating, beautiful, inexplicable inch of you.

“Hi,” you whisper.

“Marry me?” he blurts out, right there in the middle of a HYDRA base, while you’re both incorporeal and very fucking busy. “And, for the love of Cagliostro, get back to your body so I can rescue you!”

“Goddamnit, Stephen!” you whisper-roar, throwing your hands in the air and sighing like he’s just demanded you invent time travel. “Yes, of course, but you haven’t heard the end of this!”

With that you float off in a huff, as if the two of you are in the Sanctum arguing over whether to order your favorite takeout again and risk someone figuring out where you are thanks to how specific your fucking food order is.

It takes Stephen a second to gather himself (was it ‘of course I’ll marry you’ or ‘of course I’ll head back to my body??’) --and then he can’t find you.

“First things first,” he mutters to himself, and heads over to his body as quickly as he can. Once he gets there, he does the thing he’s done every single day since he’d put the ring box in his pocket: feel for it, to make sure it’s still there.

That sends him into a Moment, as well. If he could, he’d draw on all the power that there is, draw it all into himself, and destroy everything and everyone that’s threatening you, molecule by molecule. Except, he knows if he does that, his own chemical makeup will be so compromised, he won’t be the man you love anymore.

That’s not acceptable.

“All right. We’ll do it the old fashioned way.”

Your astral form is busy drawing on little bursts of power to completely fuck up the electrical system in your captor’s rather quaint castle in Sokovia when a thunderous voice sounds from seemingly everywhere.

It’s Stephen.

You may think you are safe because you are numerous. You are wrong. Give me back what’s mine, and I will be merciful. Harm her in any way, and you’ll wish you’d never been born.

You fucking love it when he gets possessive.

It takes a little more effort than you should expend at once, but you manage to finish your task of complete electrical sabotage ten seconds after Stephen’s reverberating voice fades.

The only catch? You can’t see anything either. You roll your ghostly eyes in the dark and lift yourself up into the air, intending to float around until you find a window, and search for your barred dungeon room from the outside.

Unfortunately, the energy you spent affecting the real world in your astral form was too much, and you lose consciousness with just enough time to curse yourself for forgetting to read the warnings.

The power cuts out so soon after his speech that Stephen instinctively knows you had something to do with it. It reminds him of something he’d said three months into your relationship:

‘I never thought disobedience was sexy until I met you.’

He can’t wait to see you again, but it’s a toss-up whether he’ll yell or kiss you quiet. Probably both. Probably more.

Stephen doesn’t have time to contemplate in exactly which order he’ll punish you, or how much he’s going to enjoy it, because as he stands in shadow outside the castle waiting to hear from Wong, an aerial armada appears overhead.

The Avengers aren’t any more inclined to be merciful than he is.

You wake up in your bed in the Sanctum, weak as a kitten and almost as blind. You’re immediately filled with terror-- has your careless, untrained use of the Mystic Arts harmed you permanently?

“Shhh, sweetheart, I’m here, you’re safe,” Stephen says, his comforting hand brushing your cheek seconds before his lips press against your forehead.

“If you made that threat before backup showed up I’m going to kick your ass,” you say weakly.

“I would expect nothing less, darling,” he says placatingly. The fact that he doesn’t sound the slightest bit defensive tells you volumes about how worried he’s been about you. 

That prompts you to get emotional, and to cover it up, you dredge up your most indignant voice as you say, “Did you save me anyone to vanquish?”

“You’ll have to take that up with the Avengers, I’m afraid.”

“Jerks,” you sniff.

There’s a long silence, during which the two of you communicate mostly in hand squeezes and caught breaths.

“I’m proud of you,” Stephen says, finally.

“You shouldn’t be. I was reckless.”

“That’s just the thing. You weren’t constrained by me. I have a lot of power. I don’t want a subordinate. I want you to fight back. I want you to feel safe to get angry at me. I want--” He breaks off, and you use all of your strength to roll over and open your eyes. Stephen is sitting beside you, eyes bright with emotion, both hands clasped around yours.

“I love you too,” you whisper, “--but if you even dream of proposing again while I’m this much of a mess, I will marry Wong just to spite you. He’ll do it.”

The smile Stephen breaks out into is as relieved as it is bright. “He would, the asshole.” He pats his pocket and nods soberly. “Point taken. Maybe I’ll let you choose the spot, this time?”

“As long as you’re there, I’ll be the happiest woman in any dimension. Even if something else tries to ruin our day.”

[joz-yyh]

Blight kisses!! Not Bigby covering Damian in smooches 💚

Tardif/Damian is cool as well! Thinking about it now, Damian has *very interesting* standards, boy is always seeking out for the danger, or is the danger seeking out for him? Who knows really!

him dating the most intimidating men in the Hamlet /hj

Love your art always!

They're exchanging vital life essence! It's necessary for survival. Stack those blight tokens boys! 

Yay, glad you like them too! Whenever I am faced with a difficult decision, I always choose both! Death itself covets Damian afterall. It's a revolving door of one seeking the other. Lol, imagine dating the grim reaper, literally a spirit almost everyone fears like it's no big deal. 

Thanks, I love you! 😭🙏💕💕💕 Sorry, it's not art this time, but here's more of my Bigmian Role Reversal AU~ (They're on a first name basis!) XD

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Um, my name's Bigby, what's yours?”

The creature idles there, as if it's never been asked it's name, having no need for words until now.

“Can you speak,” the monk asks gently, understanding of their language barrier, “it's OK if you can’t.”

An idea comes to light, the creature shuffling over to one of the large boulders that form a thick perimeter around its den. 

Long bloody nails draw a series of rigid lines, scrapes that Bigby can hear, but can't see taking place, poking his head around trying to follow along from where he's standing behind him. 

The carving stops, the wechuge's lanky hooves stepping aside to reveal the extent of his efforts.

There, etched into the gray rockface, is exactly what the little human asked for. 

- D  A  M  I  A  N - 

The monk sounds it out, one dark brow raised.

“Da-mi-an? Is that your name?”

The creature huffs, nods.

“Suppose it's nice to meet you. Um, so you want to be friends?”

The religious boy tries not to look as scared as he feels, because if this creature truly wanted to eat him (not for lack of trying), it would have done so by now, right? 

More carving ensues, continuing alongside his name.

- Y E S -

Bigby releases a breath he didn't know he was holding, his chest filled with relief. 

“Guess that makes it official. Friends it is.”

The unlikely pair fidget, unsure of where to take the conversation from here, standing there awkwardly until one of them figures out what to do next. 

Bigby is first, having the advantage of speech, fumbling nervously to fill the silence. 

He assures himself that this situation was no different than it would be if he was with anyone else, the same general rules for introductions apply, regardless if it was a cannibalistic beast or one of his fellow monks. 

“Well, since we're friends now, we should probably get to know each other better. So, uh, what sort of things do you like? I like tea and books.”

A pause while the wechuge chisels out his reply. 

- H U N T  M E A T -

This is not a topic Bigby wishes to die on, swaying the subject matter in another direction before Damian decides to hunt him for meat. 

“How old are you? I am 25.”

- U N K N O W N - 

“Oh, that must be hard, not knowing. Maybe, you're around my age?”

- O L D E R -

“How can you be so sure? Thought you said you didn't know? Maybe, you're younger.”

He's getting just a little sassy at being treated like a grade schooler, Damian tapping the word, ‘older,’ again in confidence.

Along with embarrassment, this exchange demonstrates the immediate flaws in such primitive methods of communication.

“We're going to run out of stone if you keep answering my questions like this.”

The resourceful monk muses for a moment, finding a patch of soil and a stick nearby, Damian watching him curiously. 

“Here, come draw it in the dirt.”

Chains rattle as the tortured beast kneels down, residing next to the human, an illustration taking shape as the monk draws a stick figure with horns.

“That's you,” Bigby explains. 

If the wechuge had eyebrows, surely they'd be quirked at such simplified depictions.

“And this is me.” 

Another stick figure, the two appearing to hold hands in camaraderie with twin smiles on their faces. 

The wechuge shifts, capturing their height difference more accurately by redrawing himself with longer legs. 

“I get it, you're tall, I am short,” he sighs, not the crucial point he hoped to convey, but taking the critique nonetheless.  

“What should we talk about next?”

As Bigby embellishes his artistic vision, adding flowers, grass, and a sun, a red glow emanates from Damian's bloody claws.

It instantly grabs the monk’s attention, watching as symbols appear, what looks like runes scorching the very air around him, bright and smoldering like a branding iron.

“Wow,” says the mystified monk, “I didn't know you could do that.”

Usually, only acts of divine intervention display themselves this clearly, which leads him to his next inquiry, “It doesn't drain your energy, using magic like that?” 

More runes manifest, translating into words he can recognize. 

¬  N O  ¬

“Can I touch it?”

He's already reaching out, fingertips tingling, passing through their ancient figures despite the hellfire they're crafted from.

“What else can you do?”

The words come pouring out of his mouth before he can stop himself, utterly fascinated because it was a rare thing,  finding one with powers like himself. 

Damian is more than happy to oblige, vines growing from the center of his palm, creating winding sprouts and tiny leaves, a tiny flower unfurling at its peak.  

“So pretty.”  

The monk smiles, mindful of his touch, tracing out their shapes. The roots are strong and coarse, the petals soft and delicate, as close to the real thing as he can get. 

“Thank you for showing me.” 

He leans a little closer to Damian, the monster fixated on him, returning the bloom back inside his ghastly flesh, freeing up his hand to write. 

¬ YOU ¬

“Me,” the monk sounds surprised. “Oh, is there something you want to ask me?”

¬ WHY HERE? ¬

“You want to know why I was in the woods? I was summoned. A nearby parish said they had urgent need for me. I just hope they're alright.”  

Suddenly, Bigby is burdened by guilt, knowing it was Damian’s fault he never arrived, but still seeking solace in the creature's rags, worried for what tragedy befell those crying out for help.  

[hornsketch]

hey there! ive finally made an art blog! im going to try post more just… stuff, as usually i reserve my art posts for either special occaisions or specifically public-oriented works, and it kinda bums me out to not just have a place to dump my art anymore, so here you go!

(more details and helpful info below!)

who are you?

in hopes of providing some relevant lenses to view my work through, ill give some personal details here. if these lenses dont suit your interpretation of the work, thats alright! view as you please, though i do still think these will always be important context in said viewings.

my name is zelda (she/her) and im a queer jewish 20something who struggles quite a bit with illness both physical and mental.

ive always been kind of enthralled by impressionism and what it really means to use suggestion and spirit as a stronger tool than portrayal and form.

i have a particular draw to fantasy and magical aesthetics, especially the world-building within.

i am a serial overthinker, and tend to see alot of meaning and symbolism in things that plainly do not have them.

while yes i am jewish, my relation to faith is complicated. if you see me type “god” im using it in a turn of phrase with no meaning. if you see me type out “g-d” i am being religious. yes i know thats not how its supposed to work. its meaningful to me.

what will you post?

as previously mentioned, here im trying to make a concerted effort to post a broader variety of things with a wide selection in quality and topic, so unfortunately here the only real uniting theme is going to have to be that i made it. still! to help navigate the space, listed below will be a list of tags i will try to keep to, all of which this post will also be tagged as, since i know tumblr search can be finicky.

#the self and the other

these will be about me, my friends and loved ones, or possibly both

#differing mediums

these pertain to other works or universes, as well as fan content

#harsh tones

this is gonna be the rough stuff. topics will be tagged as needed.

#jaunty doodles

funny business. shenanigans, even.

#lesssfw

listen this blog is for a wide breadth of content, so please if you do not want to, or otherwise should not be seeing mild to moderate nsfw content (i dont rlly plan on posting straight up porn here) block this tag.

wait— is there anywhere you do post more direct nsfw?

maybe, yeah. but before any of that i would like to set some ground rules. these are my spaces for me to share my work for others to see. if you arent a fan of what i post, ill make no attempts to dissuade you from that. your discomfort is your right. I would however request that you dont make your discomfort an issue i am epxected to remedy. ill have no harsh feelings if you arent a fan of my less safe for work content, or even anything it may tangentially relate to, and need to take the necessary steps to curate your experience in those regards. i will be far less than happy if people cant behave because i post content that is not to their personal tastes, within reason.

all of that being said, yes, if you are an adult fan of my other work, feel free to check out @shinyspadetiptail

do you take commissions?

yeah, usually. im not really at the point where i have to close and open them for availability reasons, so shoot me a dm and ill usually be able to give you a response pretty quick on.

price tends to vary by project, and i always set $20 per hour of canvas time as my baseline, but generally simpler stuff like limited detail icons and emojis run in the $20-$30 range, while fully detailed halfbodies tend to run in the $40-$50 range, and fully done fullbodies range more $70-$80. aside from that, backgrounds are a little too context dependent to put a full price estimate on and extra characters can and will cost extra.

usually whatll happen is after laying out the basic price range we’ll talk, and ill thumbnail until we have smth we can agree on, and once weve got an idea of what were going for ill give an estimate that ill try to stick close to, barring any major changes or complications. from then on ill try to send updates whenever i work, and then when im relatively close to finished ill ask for the payment either through paypal or cashapp, after which ill send on the finished piece and any expected variations. in some cases, this may be changed, and payment may be done half at the start, and half when relatively close to completion.

[el-michoacano]

only the dead know

Takes place during Plan and Execution, and it's mostly canon compliant!

Ship: Lalo x Nacho

Rating: T, primarily for gore

Partially inspired by a gorgeous art post by @chomchomcherrybomb that was inspired by @sn4ilbitez and @rwsucculent. Hope it's okay to tag you guys!

READ ON AO3

.

Nacho-- Or this thing that looked like Nacho-- was riddled with bullet holes. Moonlight filtered through them, dappling Lalo's chest and the concrete walls of the sewer in silvery light. Lalo had been seeing it for quite some time, but getting used to such a thing didn't seem possible. It was small, only as tall as Nacho had been, and it was shrinking all the time, ashen skin drawing tight around its bones as it rotted. Some of those bones were exposed, bleached white from the desert sun. The radius and ulna were visible in its right forearm, and though Lalo couldn't see it from this angle, three vertebrae were exposed at the back of its neck, where a coyote had gotten it. Its left eye was missing, and much of the eye socket was visible, too. It was grisly, and Lalo looked away.

It was late, but he hadn't been sleeping. He had never been much of a sleeper, and here lately, the insomnia had gotten even worse. He had loved it once, had found it useful, even, but it was getting old.

Not that sleep was a refuge. The thing that looked like Nacho was in his dreams, too.

Betrayal could do that to a person, Lalo supposed. It haunted you, having someone you trusted turn on you like that. He should have seen it coming, but he'd been blinded by something he still firmly refused to name.

He missed the way things had been before. He missed his bed. He missed his hacienda. He missed Cecilio and Miguel and all the others, even Ciro. He missed Yolanda most of all.

And Nacho-- He missed Nacho, too. It was something unforgivable.

Was this rotting creature truly what had become of Nacho? Was it a ghost? A hallucination? Was it simply the result of regret and too little sleep?

Whatever it was, it said, "This is your fault."

Lalo ignored it, his binoculars held to his face as he scoped out Lavandería Brillante. He'd been here two days already, watching Fring and his men come and go and come again. Paciencia, he told himself. His time would come. His revenge would come.

"He's gonna kill you," the thing that looked like Nacho said. It was at Lalo's side, down on one knee, close enough that Lalo could smell the rot on it. The odor lingered sickly-sweet under the familiar scent of Nacho's cologne. It made Lalo's heart clench in his chest.

He spared a quick glance in the thing's direction, asking, trying and failing to keep his tone light, "Is that a threat or a promise?"

"Both." It was looking at Lalo with its single eye, its head tipped to one side. The other eye had been taken out by a bullet, as far as Lalo knew. A flower grew from the grisly wound, a desert bluebell, incongruously alive amongst so much dead flesh and rotten blood. "When you're dead, you get to know everything."

Turning his gaze back out of the storm drain and across the street, Lalo asked, "And you're using this to, what, warn me? You wanna protect me, Nachito?"

It didn't seem to have an answer for that, and instead, it said, "I tried to keep them from killing everyone else. I wanted it to just be you."

"Que amable," Lalo drawled.

"I'm glad they didn't get you," the thing that looked like Nacho said, and a shiver of something that was far too much like longing to be comfortable raced down Lalo's spine. It felt hot and sharp, like a million tiny needles, like Nacho's name was being tattooed onto him, deep and inescapable. "It would have been quick. It's gonna be quick this way, too, but at least you'll suffer a little. It's still better than you deserve," it added, almost as if it was a mere afterthought.

Lalo hummed to himself, but it did nothing to block out the thing's voice. It was soft, but there was a gurgling sound beneath it. Tío Hector had held the gun himself, the rumors had said. How he had managed to lodge a bullet perfectly in the hollow of Nacho's throat was unknowable. A miracle, maybe. Was there a word for a bad miracle? Bad luck on Nacho's part. Mala suerte. At least he'd been dead when it happened.

"I know you think about me," the thing said.

It wasn't wrong. Lalo thought about Nacho often. He thought about avenging his staff, about getting even for what had been done to his staff and to Tío Hector, about being the one who had gotten to put Nacho down like the dog he was.

"I know you miss me," it said, its voice soft. How could someone so treacherous have such a gentle voice?

That wasn't wrong, either. But it was a secret, held tight to Lalo's chest, where no one would ever find it. How could this thing possibly know about it? It would have taken a switchblade and a pair of pliers to dig it out of him.

"You dream about me." It stepped closer. "You call out for me in your sleep." It reached for Lalo, and when it touched the back of his neck, at the same spot where its own vertebrae were exposed, he shuddered. Its fingertips were so cold they burned. Lalo would have done anything to have Nacho touch him like this when he was alive, and it felt traitorous now. This wasn't the Nacho he wanted. But, he thought, it was better than no Nacho at all. "You pray for my soul when you think God isn't listening."

Lalo's chest hurt. He'd hoped he'd never have to hear that voice again, and to hear it this way, half-dead and full of dirt and blood and regret... He sighed, his hands white-knuckled around the binoculars. He wasn't even looking through them anymore, though he did his best to keep his gaze trained on the guard who was trying to look casual in front of Lavandería Brillante. Neither the guard nor Lalo himself were handling their tasks very well.

The thing that looked like Nacho-- No, it was him, wasn't it? It was full of bullet holes and coated in old blood, but it was him.

Was this a punishment? Was this Nacho being cursed to roam the earth due to his betrayal? Was this him returning willingly to seek revenge?

Nacho hadn't even gotten a proper burial; He'd been left to rot in the desert, his bones picked clean by vultures and bleached by the sun. He deserved better. He was a traitor, yes, but he had been young and full of promise. It was a tragedy, though Lalo couldn't say it was unexpected after what had happened.

"You miss me," Nacho said again. He was watching Lalo now with his single eye. It was the same deep, warm brown that Lalo remembered, but it was clouded over. It got worse every time Lalo saw him. "Even after what I tried to do to you, you miss me every damn day."

Lalo missed him every damn second, but he didn't say so. Nacho would know anyway, wouldn't he, if death had really given him all the answers?

"I know," Nacho said, as if reading Lalo's mind. Could the dead do that? Lalo's hands shook around the binoculars, and he released them, letting them clatter to the floor and supporting himself against the lip of the storm drain. The concrete was rough under his palms, and he used the feeling of it to ground himself. There was an especially sharp bit digging into the underside of his ring finger on his left hand. It felt like a wish that would forever go unfulfilled; It stung like betrayal. He could feel blood dripping down his hand, and he squeezed his eyes shut, willing the ghost away. It did no good. He'd been seeing that decomposing face behind his eyelids since he'd heard the news of Nacho's death.

Softly, his voice almost lost to the sound of a car rumbling by, Nacho asked, "Who're you trying to fool?"

Lalo said, "Myself." It wasn't working.

[stars-tonight]

hello! if you have the time i’d love to get one of your haikyuu match ups please :DD - @mocha-ghoooul

long matchup

romantic

I am genderfluid and use any pronouns so anything works with me

i’d like to be paired with one of the guys

my ideal partner is someone who makes me feel heard/ lets me be myself around them, someone i can banter with / tease, and is very understanding + attentive of me. i tend to like people who can make me laugh.

last i took it my mbti was ISFT if that helps. uhm aside from that im a pretty quiet person and only really open up to people after i get to know them/ am comfortable around them. with my friends i tend to be a lot more talkative + have a tendency to ramble about the things i like (adhd moment), get a lot louder and a lot sillier. i love to tease and poke fun (light heartedly) at my friends and make them laugh. i am dense and very clueless when it comes to romance directed at me but i do like seeing romance in media i enjoy. i also get distracted easily so its very easy to lose me in a crowd (im 4’11 TT).

i love to draw and am learning how to roller blade. i also like to bake esp because it’s something i can share with others and am almost always listening to music.

my love language to others is acts of service (like making sure my friends are eating, giving them food i know they like, paying for stuff for them, etc.). my love language receiving is words of affirmation and acts of service.

idea date… id be chill with doing anything with the other person as long as we get to have a fun time but some of my favorite places to go woudl be the ice skating rink (because i love to ice skate) and the aquarium. i’d also really enjoy visiting a planetarium.

take you time if you get to my request!! thank you sm for doing it :]] have a nice day/night!

headcanons

🥛 i feel like suga fits your "ideal partner" list TO A T

🥛 totally non judgemental, loves you for you

🥛 absolutely is going to tease you

🥛 sometimes can be a lil cheeky brat

🥛 regularly pokes fun at his teammates and friends and he'd love that you do the same

🥛 would seem like the kind of guy to put some sort of marker on you when you go to the store so you don't get lost

🥛 i saw this video once of a guy who clipped a balloon to his wife so he could see the balloon floating through the aisles and know where his wife is at all times lol

🥛 suga seems like he'd do that

🥛 but ofc he's very caring and attentive

🥛 not called the "mom" of the karasuno team for no reason lol

🥛 i don't know if this is canon or not but i feel like suga is associated with baking a lot

🥛 would absolutely just have baking dates at home

🥛 picture this: it's midwinter, the two of you have put a pot of hot chocolate on the stove, christmas music playing in the background and the smell of cookies starting to waft through the house. suga spontaneously grabs your hand and pulls you in for a little dance 🥺 the cookies, which were supposed to be a gift for daichi, actually just end up being eaten by you two. instead, daichi gets store-bought sugar cookies lol

🥛 i think i've said this before but suga seems like an avid reader / kpop listener / watcher of anime

🥛 if you watch something romantic together he'll jokingly make faces at the cheesy parts

🥛 will probably make a dramatic proclamation of love to you like the ones he sees onscreen or in the books

🥛 he doesn't strike me as a really good drawer but i feel like he could do some doodles

🥛 post-timeskip when he's a teacher, he'll probably do some arts and crafts with his students

🥛 suga just seems like the guy who's good at everything yknow?

🥛 like i think he wouldn't be too bad at rollerblading either

🥛 same with ice skating

🥛 could totally see suga going on an ice skating date (same with aquariums and planetariums; he just seems like a chill, kind of artistic guy)

🥛 i see him loving winter in general (maybe his hair subconsciously reminds me of snow idk)

🥛 i've said this before but suga's love language is probably quality time or acts of service

🥛 finds it very endearing when you do things for him to take a bit off his plate

🥛 he's used to taking care of others so he finds it kind of cute that someone else wants to take care of him for a change

🥛 on the flip side, praising and taking care of you also comes very naturally to him

🥛 spends as much time with you as he can

runner up for you was iwaizumi hajime!

A/N: there you go, i hope you liked it! sorry it took so long; my productivity levels unfortunately have dropped recently ;-;

[zenchii]

What do ppl see in climate criminal swift I'll never understand 😭

[hmslusitania]

It tightens its grip when things go unsaid

A soft (??) 5x14 coda built on like a dozen posts I saw on my dash this morning. It sure went. A direction.

“Oh my god, you kept this?”

Eddie freezes in place, paused with his hands and the broccolini under the frigid water of the tap.

“Kept what?” he asks, attempting for casual. It had been a lot easier to maintain a calm disinterest before Frank but as it turns out, part of getting better was giving up playing numb.

Buck pulls the drawing off the fridge, and Eddie squeezes his eyes shut. Gives himself that much longer to deny it.

“Eddie,” Buck prompts, and there’s laughter in his voice but there’s something else too. Something softer, gentler.

“It was — Chris said I—” and he pauses again. Because yes, Chris had said he should keep Buck’s heart drawing, but that wasn’t why Eddie had done it. And he’s spent enough time filtering his feelings towards Buck through Chris. “I liked it.”

Buck snorts and pins it back under the magnets. “Makes me feel bad. I shoulda drawn you a better one.”

“I didn’t draw you one at all,” Eddie replies which is probably nonsensical.

“It’s not like I’ve got a fridge to hang it on anymore anyway,” Buck points out.

He doesn’t. Not with the way he’s been sleeping on Eddie’s couch since he ceded his apartment in the breakup. He’s been in Eddie’s house for two weeks now and Eddie can’t fathom how Buck has missed the drawing so far.

It’s later when they’re on shift, and everyone else is passed out, that Eddie gets the idea. They don’t exactly keep craft supplies around the station, but he finds some paper and a pencil and by the time Bobby wakes up to come get started on breakfast, Eddie’s gone a bit overboard. Partway into the exercise, he’d noticed one of Hen’s surgical textbooks lying in the loft and flipped it to the relevant page, and as it turns out, the art classes he’d taken in high school — the ones he’d insisted were just because he was crushing on a girl, which made them acceptable — hadn’t quite worn off.

The piece of art he’s scribbled down in graphite isn’t quite an anatomical heart and it isn’t quite a photorealistic depiction from the textbook and it isn’t quite the cartoony simplicity Buck had given him. It’s not nearly so digestible and easy to accept. He thinks the thing he’s supposed to do with something like this is being it to his therapist the way a pet cat brings a dead animal, but he doesn’t. Instead, he avoids Bobby’s questioning gaze and takes it downstairs. He tapes it to the inside door of their locker, and forgets about it seconds later because the bell goes.

He doesn’t think about it again until the second Buck opens their locker after their shift is done. He pauses, head tilting sideways, and Eddie considers ducking behind the shelves and hiding his face in the stacks of towels.

“I didn’t know you could draw,” Buck says. “This is, like, cool.”

“What?” Eddie asks.

“It’s cool,” Buck says. He gently unpeels the tape from the locker and just stares down at the drawing. “Would it be weird if I got this as a tattoo?”

“If you got it as—seriously?”

Buck looks guileless when he lifts his gaze to meet Eddie’s eye. “I don’t have a fridge.”

Eddie almost points out that this is why he’d put it in the locker, but something in Buck’s face stops him. He almost points out that Buck’s skin is not interchangeable with a fridge, but he doesn’t do that either. It’s the visual representation of Eddie’s still battered but healing heart and Buck wants to ink it onto his own flesh.

“If you want,” Eddie says finally. “But I won’t be offended if you change your mind by the time you actually get in to see an artist.”

Buck grins but it’s too soft around the eyes to be a real flippant smile. “I won’t.”

[studiothetics]

Drawing People

Eeyyy its ya boi. We probably don't know each other. I'm Evan. Real quick, lemme borrow your eyes, please. Look at this. This look like anything?

a character sprite for the prototype we submitted to indiecade

... Yeah, you're thinking what I'm thinking. It’s not there yet… Getting There is a whole thing isn’t it? Getting Here sure was. Difference is I can talk about Here. I can’t talk about There yet. There is a mythic place. Here's charted waters.

Who this, anyways? I tell. This is Petra, the protagonist’s war buddy and a three pronged pain in my ass for months. This is the story of how she came to be.

We knew very little about her when we started writing. The basic prompt was as follows: Got 3 spears and sort of an absolutist. This kind of setup begs so many questions. What do you do with 3 spears? Is it extraordinary that someone uses them? Is it practical? Absolutist about what? Why? Our initial instincts said this was either some kind of self-destructive twentysomething wunderkind or a soried fellow getting past his prime.

literally the second ever sketch page for this project

Sasha remarked how tenderly I drew this nude fellow. This made me happy. I'm a classical art guy, I've spent a lot of time trying to make nude people evoke some emotion.

We imagined you'd have to put in a lot of work if you were going to fight with three spears, so no matter what, this person had been doing this a long time. To us, the age difference spoke to the society that allowed and incentivized this work. Did we want to put a point on the mechanisms that enabled a young person to get really very good at war, or did we want to investigate someone’s ability to perform in that society past their expiration date? So much of our interest pointed to the society, and martial prowess as an extension of the state’s will, so dressing Petra as a warrior of the Hydratic state made a lot of sense.

The Hydratics are a weird bunch. They faced down a real apocalyptic threat and they did it as a people. This is utopian in some ways and deeply freaky in others. For a people to be that ready to repel an anime scale war of extermination, I reckon they’ve gotta be a little borked. I found this really fascinating in concert with our discussions of their politics and aesthetics. The Hydratics are all about community, the individual being the result of a community, and local politics and commerce being dependent on the network of people who support or enable an individual. “It takes a village” as Sasha is fond of saying.

The hydratics don't really like hero worship, or really idolizing anybody if they can help it. So how do you respect the influence of a community and an individual's contribution to it without building up any one individual too much? Their aesthetic solution is baffling and self-contradictory and I love it. They do iconoclasm by just spamming icons. Hydratic people all have an individual story that’s written for them at birth, and from that story they pull an image, an icon which they will identify them for life. The assembly of these icons implies a community, a Polis. And if more people affect your life, you add them to your Polis. Simple.

I really love birds but I don't draw em much. It shows.

We decided Petra’s icon was gonna be some sort of raptor. I really wanted something that communicated inertia, or driving force, drawn with an art nouveau sort of density. But this posed a problem. We’d decided that the Hydratics' big industries were war, food and textiles, and this was supposed to push them into a more modern look. Icons had become more like brands than illustration. This sort of style didn’t fit. Moreover the overall direction of her clothing wasn't quite right.

I'm not a concept artist at all, so this is the fidelity I can get when going for maximum speed.

Trying to aim at sort of greek flavored warrior junk was just making boring things. More charitably, we wanted something with a bit more specificity and personality. Something that felt uniquely Hydratic. Well a warrior is the same as anything else Hydratic, it’s a job supported by people. And being a big hero means working on behalf of a lot of people. There was something interesting about portraying Petra as the ideal Hydratic hero, wreathed in all this meaning, being reverent of and caring about all those icons, but underneath all that being sort of one dimensional, workmanlike, doing the damn job of heroing without fanfare.

I say one dimensional with love. A life lived in dedicated, high-skill service is a life without a lot of variety or a lot of time for anything else. After some work we found that the twentysomething hypothesis gelled a bit better with all this. We liked thinking about a very absolutist character in the prime of their life, having accomplished their great mission needing to reflect on their internal makeup. Petra is one dimensional in that she is absolutely dedicated to her craft, wholly zealous for the state, and the problem is that stuff's not entirely working for her now. She's got to address those ingrained values and reassess her self image to move forward.

I'm really happy with her portrait here. It's so much the women in my family when they were young, absolutely fuckin stone cold driven.

It put me in mind of my mom and my aunties growing up. Women doing an insane amount of family work without any fanfare, who never really had a chance to stop, reflect or just break down for a good while. I liked the idea of portraying an indian woman who was absolutely regarded as a hero for her work and abilities, and who could just suck for a while without it being a blemish on her person or her achievements. After all, DT2 takes place after the big apocalyptic event. Petra's legacy is already enshrined in Hydratic history.

Having those ideas in place helped a lot. She’s a workman with an important uniform. She doesn’t need to be this ceremonial greek hero looking creature, she just needs stuff she can fight in and places to wear the most important people and communities in her life.

While the armored version is definitely more developed, there was something more interesting to me about keeping it covered with that almost t-shirt like form. It was understated. She could wear as many overstatements as her societal role dictated on top of that.

Fabric is hard. I wish I didn't like the way it looked so much.

This is where the design actually settled. Modern = pockets. That’s my big takeaway. More pockets, more fastenings. Weirder cuts. Simpler overall shapes. It’s still trying to evoke the silhouette of greek wrapping but trying to break up that form in more angular, modern ways. It also turns out adding more overall form to clothing makes it more interesting to decorate. Rather than just deforming a tapestry across the body, there's architecture to highlight, things to accentuate. That's conversation for another time though.

You might have notice another pass at her icon in those previous drawings. In trying to get her closer to a modern aesthetic it turned out I needed to reduce and simplify a whole lot.

Even with their more modern mutations, I wanted Hydratics to have an old-world fascination with the natural world. If you look at animal drawings across cultures, you see a lot of odd fixations. People really wanna draw every feather on the bird or show the wildness of it's patterning, or some odd crook of its neck and most of the time it is weirdly complex for how utterly inaccurate it is. With these designs I wanted to get a little bit of that flavor by fixating on the pattern of a falcon's underside, and the strange tilt of the head.

Now here’s the thing. This is a solid design base but it’s got a ways to go before its an asset… Maybe this is a part two kind of thing. Check back in and I can tell you where it all went wrong and maybe we can talk about what I learned. Getting it There might be mythic but gently faceplanting Here sure gave me some real good compass headings.