#keeping stuff consistent is hard 4 me and i had to go back a bunch of times bc i missed so much

[lazy-b1rdy]

LOOK LOOK LOOK I DID SOMETHING COOL??/??!??

I'm pretty proud of this rn but DAMN animating is hard and i was confused about the movements half of the time (not to mention that i needed to save all of the frames and put them together separately)

so shout out to any kind of animators out there bc this stuff is pretty difficult lol

[transhuman-priestess]

Sigma-38 is an assimilator unit out on her first raid. Her target: a young man deemed perfect for assimilation as an incubator.

The New Flesh is a gory, violent smut story for consumption only by adults over the age of 18 who are cool with dubcon, noncon, drugging, gore, light cannibalism, surgery, forcefem (kinda/sorta), brainwashing, weird gender shit, and probably a bunch of other stuff i forgot to mention

April 2

0313 Earth UTC

200 Million Kilometers beyond Jupiter

Sigma-38 fixed her vacuum helmet to her chassis. They were 2 minutes out from their target, a John Henry-class mining vessel, the Blair Mountain. The ship carried 2,000 metric tons of platinum-group metals, 20,000 tons of common ores, and 5,000 tons of water ice. None of that would be taken. When the Blair Mountain would be found, several months hence, her cargo would be entirely accounted for. What happened to her crew would be a mystery, the sort of thing that old astronauts talk about in hushed whispers at Jovian saloons.

The raiding party consisted of two K-class interdictor vessels, each containing 10 Gamma-type assault drones, 4 Mu-type engineers, and 1 Sigma-type assimilator. This was 38’s first raiding party, the drone was eager for the opportunity. Raids were one of the few times when command and control of the hive was allowed to devolve to individuals. Like water rushing in to a cave as the tide rises, the party would disperse into the target ship before washing its contents back out to the ocean of stars.

Nobody had to speak the 30-second warning. Logistic commanders were unnecessary for the hive. Antithetical to it, really. They would have a 15-minute window to subdue and extract the crew and whatever provisions they could before the Blair Mountain came out of a dead zone in the deep space network.

10 seconds. 38’s vessel, K-19, was aligning itself with the main crew hatch. The other interdictor, K-13, was covering the emergency hatch. 5 seconds. There was a soft thump through the floor of the cabin as K-19 achieved hard dock with the target. The airlock decompressed and the force field deactivated, allowing Mu units 76 and 45 to go to work wiring into the Blair Mountain’s airlock controls.

Zero.

The door opened, and the 15 drones of K-19 flooded into the airlock. The Mu units immediately set about bypassing the second door. 10 seconds later, the party was in. Sigma-38 pushed her way through. Screams erupted from the cramped quarters inside. Intelligence pegged the number of crew at 20. The hive had calculated a loss rate of 25% would still result in an acceptable gain, but a dead body was only good for its biomass, nothing more. Nonlethal weapons unless absolutely necessary.

38 followed the sound of screaming down the hall to her right, 4 Gammas behind her. 10 meters in, they came upon a small dormitory. She turned the handle on the door, feeling resistance as the 5 crew members behind the door pushed all their weight on it to try and keep it closed. 2 of the Gammas joined 38 and together they rammed the door down. Sigma-38 grabbed her first quarry of the raid. A young engineer’s mate, no older than 20. Tears filled his eyes as he begged, “Don’t kill me! Please! Don’t kill me, please!’

38 did not respond, only applied a shock from the stun rod embedded in her forearm. The engineer’s mate collapsed as 3 of his shipmates tried to knock her down. The assault drones pulled them off, applying their own stun rods to their prey. It was over in 20 seconds. One of the Gammas put magcuffs on the humans. 38 left the room and continued down the hall as a Mu used a gravcart to haul the humans back to the interdictor.

3 minutes had passed since the airlock was first breached. Mu-76 had patched the hive into the ship’s computer. 38 absorbed the data as she walked down the hall, zeroing in on the captain’s quarters.

The ship’s manifest listed the captain as Theresa “Terry” Holder, 37, a 10 year captain in the civil navy. A picture of the captain appeared in the corner of 38’s vision as she walked through the hall. Though she long ago gave up on being human, 38 still appreciated the form of them. The picture of Holder showed a strong-jawed woman with long brown hair and a swaggering smile, dressed in a grease-stained tank top. 38 felt her cock grow warm underneath the armor plating.

38 found the captain’s quarters, opening the door without hesitation, and was immediately met by the noise of a gunshot and a blast of kinetic energy as a .45 caliber round struck her left chest plate. She noted it, but felt no damage beyond the superficial. Four more quickly followed. Holder’s grouping was good. It would not save her.

Sigma-38 made eye contact with Captain Terry Holder as she approached. Something about her sent a thrill down 38’s spine. Holder’s gun jammed at the same time as a curious expression overtook her stubbled face. Not just fear. Confusion, maybe even a hint of recognition.

“What!?” She shrieked, as she frantically worked the pistol’s slide, trying to clear the jam, “You’re dead. You’re dead! You have to be dead! I shot you! I shot you and you’re dead!”

Sigma-38 grabbed the captain by the neck, lifting her half a meter into the air, and spoke, “Do not resist. You will become beautiful.” with a twitch of her wrist, a needle shot a sedative into the captain’s neck. This was the part 38 had been waiting for. The part where the prey knew it was beaten. that help would not come, that there was no more point in fighting. She locked eyes with the captain as the latter slipped out of consciousness. Though Holder could not see it, 38 was smiling

*****

All told, the raid, from infil to exfil, had taken 12 minutes. Only 2 of the crew of the Blair Mountain were lost. Their bodies were taken, their biomass useful for the synthesis of hormones, amino acids, and neurotransmitters. The other 18 would join the hive. They would be kept sedated until their assimilation began. It was a 4 day flight back to the hive’s nexus, and in that time 38 had planned to assimilate around half of the take.

The first, she decided, would be that engineer’s mate. One of the Gammas brought him to the assimilation chamber. 38 looked him over. Young, thin, around 19 or 20. No tattoos, sandy hair. She affixed a respirator mask to his face and, after checking that he was properly restrained, pressed a button on the stretcher to pull him out of sedation.

He stirred slowly, eyes bleary with drugs. So vulnerable, so innocent. 38 couldn’t wait to assimilate him.

“Where am I?” he said, “I...my name...my name is...Phillip Ellis...203243…”

“Your name,” Sigma said, “is of no concern to us.”

“Phillip Ellis, 2-oh-3, uhhhhh, 2-4-3”

“You have been selected to become an incubator for the hive.”

“What?” confusion crossed his face. Soon would come the fear.

“Your body will be modified and augmented to perform the function of incubator in the hive’s breeding chambers.”

“I...what?” The fear was starting to creep in. 38 had a choice now. She could administer the gas, which would clear away all that fear and doubt, or she could push him just a little further into terror. The choice was not difficult.

She waited for a few seconds and then said, “Do not be afraid,” It was too easy, really, “we will alter your body surgically and mechanically. Superfluous limbs and organs will be removed. You will be conscious during this process. You are afraid now, but you will enjoy it, soon.”

Phillip Ellis’s response was simply to begin screaming. A high pitched, entirely undignified wail of dread. With a smile, Sigma-38 turned on the gas.

Ellis could only scream for so long before his lungs ran out of air. When they did, he had no choice but to inhale. His body was operating on adrenaline, he couldn’t have held his breath if he’d wanted to. He took a deep breath, already preparing to scream again, but the gas worked quickly. Before he finished inhaling it had already worked its way into his brain. A powerful aphrodisiac, it would arouse him, making the next step much easier and faster.

38 felt her cock begin to swell, and said, “I am going to release the restraints on your ankles. I want you to lift your legs up in the air and present your ass to me.”

Ellis resisted, somewhat half-heartedly, “No, I...I don’t want to,” he said.

38 frowned. She dialed up the gas and again, said, “I am going to release the restraints on your ankles. Lift your legs up in the air and present your ass to me.”

“I…” Ellis trailed off. His pupils were dilated, his mouth hanging open, a wide, crazed grin on his face.

“If you will not comply,” said 38, “I will compel you.”

Her cock was aching now. She didn’t feel like waiting for him to lift up his legs. He was so blissed out anyway that he probably couldn’t do it on his own. She grabbed his ankles and lifted them over his head. She held them there with one arm, and with the other, she took her cock and pressed it up against his asshole. He provided no resistance, “oh,” he said, “That feels good,” he was smiling. 38 smiled, too.

Slowly, she began to slide in and out of him. His thin, pale body squirmed and bucked in time with hers. He was hairless except for his head and groin, his cock engorged. She felt his ass grip her cock, and began to fuck him faster. As his moans grew louder and louder, 38 felt herself approaching orgasm. To her, this was foreplay. What came next was the main event.

The first convulsion twitched behind her cock, another, seconds later. The pressure began to build. It would be soon now. She could feel the replicators in her prostate working overtime on their payload. Another pang, the pressure now sustained. Ellis’s moaning was joined by 38’s and she felt her eyes close and her cock grow hard before it finally let go. She felt the pump of her prostate and her balls as they shot 10ccs of assimilation nanites into Ellis’s ass.

Ellis moaned, then groaned, and finally started screaming. This part was always painful, but it would only last for a minute or so. The nanites in 38’s semen were already dispersing themselves through his bloodstream, turning his veins a dark grey, his skin pale as they worked their way through his capilaries. In 10 seconds they had found their way to his brain. There, they began working to redirect the pain signals from his body into the pleasure center, and soon his screams of agony had become cries of ecstasy as he felt his tissue being remodeled on a cellular level.

38 pulled her cock out of his ass, a few grey pearls of cum dripping onto the floor of the chamber. Idly, she touched her finger to the end of her cock and brought it to her mouth, licking her own nanites, a metallic rush on her tongue.

“Nooo,” came Ellis’s pathetic voice, “please don’t stop. I need more.”

“You will get more.”

Ellis smiled. Sigma-38 reached for her first tool, a long, curved knife.

The first thing to do would be to cut through the skin and muscle on all four limbs. The last ¼ by the torso would be allowed to remain. She pressed the knife to Ellis’s left bicep, and whispered in his ear, “are you ready, dear?”

“Yes, yes please!”

She plunged the knife into his arm, feeling it slip through the skin and muscle and thunk down onto the bone below. Ellis screamed from the pleasure of it. Sigma allowed herself to remember this feeling from before the hive. It was bliss. She felt her cooling pump speed up just thinking about it. But she had to focus on the task at hand.

The wound did not bleed much, the nanites already replicating, aiding in clotting and building contact points and hookups for later. Ellis would make an excellent Iota-type incubator.

Soon, 38 had carved away a 3-centimeter wide section of flesh around each cut point on Ellis’s femurs and humeri. She put the knife back in its slot on the wall and reached for a circular bonesaw. She held it to his left humerus, but did not turn it on yet. Instead, she reached down and gently stroked the exposed bone, feeling Ellis shudder under her touch, hearing him moan in pleasure. She looked at his cock and saw a drip of precum fall from it on to his taught, hairless stomach. Almost a pity he wouldn’t have it anymore within the hour. Almost.

She turned on the bonesaw and began removing the limb. Bone chips and marrow spattered on her face, she idly licked them away from her lips. The salty, copper taste drove her mad. She lived for this. It was her purpose.

The next step was to install the hookup sockets to his residual limbs. She touched the side of her head to take a lidar scan of each, before sending them to the replicator in the corner of the room. By the time she’d made her way over, four fresh limb sockets were waiting. She brought them back to her quarry and began fixing them to each limb in turn.

These would be hooked into the breeding chamber back at the nexus. They would carry everything this incubator would need to survive. Nutrition, water, power, networking.

“There,” she said to him, “Isn’t that so much better? Don’t you feel so much lighter? Freer?”

“I do, 38.” He used her designation. A good sign, this meant that the neural connection with the hive was already being established. Usually that took longer. Ellis would likely not reject the hive. That was always a concern. Incubators rarely experienced rejection, but fixing it was always a messy proposition that left the hive with a less-than-fully-functional drone.

“Do you know what’s next, Iota unit?” she asked him as she hooked his limb sockets into a temporary life-support machine

“I do not have access to that information at this time.”

38 smiled and said, “Next we install your chestplate unit, dear.”

She walked to there replicator and pulled out the unit. It resembled a mechanical simulacrum of human breasts in shape, although its function was quite different. This would be the Iota unit’s biomech support device. Hormone synthesizers, nutrition processors, oxygenation units, heat exchangers, blood filters, and an assortment of other devices were included.

Gently, lovingly, she lowered the device onto the Iota unit’s chest. Microhooks dug into his flesh, and he let out a moan of pleasure. Grey lines appeared under his skin as tubing and wiring melded itself with flesh and bone underneath.

She cupped his left breast with her hand, squeezing gently. The silicone skin gave little under her touch, but the Iota gasped and opened his eyes, fixing his gaze on her, before lying back and relaxing again.

It was time for the best part. “Dear,” 38 said, “after this next step you will become Iota-723. Do you know what the next step is?”

“The next step is…” the incubator was thinking, “You give me my womb and pussy, correct?”

“Very good! That’s right!” 38 was beaming ear to ear. 723 was doing very nicely already, and 38 was eager to feel as he felt during this part.

She took a scalpel in her hand, “Just so you know,” she said, “You won’t be able to talk out loud after this until the incubator hardware is installed,”

“That’s okay,” she heard, not out loud, but through the wire. This one was learning quickly.

“Alright” she thought back, “here it comes”

She pressed the scalpel into the soft flesh of his underbelly, just below his sternum. A bit of blood wept from the incision. She carved down and around the lower perimeter of his ribcage, down and around his abdomen to his pelvis, then across his belly, back up to the other side of his ribcage, and back up to the sternum again.

“38,” she heard, again through the wire, “I think I might cum.”

“You have to wait, not yet. Trust me.” she thought back.

Tenderly, she reached her fingers under the skin, and peeled it back, exposing the organs underneath. No longer were they the bright pinks and reds of a normal human’s. Grey filaments spiderwebbed across them, the nanites inside already processing them for use later.

38 went about removing 723’s intestines, stomach, liver, lungs, pancreas, kidneys, bladder, and spleen. Soon, all that was left in the hollow chest cavity was 723’s heart. It was beating fast. Though its owner was quite unperturbed by the situation, the heart itself seemed terrified. 38 once again allowed herself to remember her own assimilation.

Lying on the table, a strong feminine hand reaching inside her, up under her ribcage. Pleasure aching through every remaining fiber of her flesh. Her heart pounding as if trying to knock down the wall of some impregnable fortress. She let this memory swim to 723, letting it communicate through feeling rather than words what was to happen next.

38 reached into 723’s ribcage, and gently clasped his heart in her hand. She reached the other hand in, the one holding the scalpel, and quickly cut through the vessels and ligaments holding the heart in place. It kept beating as she slowly pulled it out and presented it to him.

But 723 didn’t see. He was screaming, or rather, trying to, the pleasure overtaking him. His eyes rolled back into his head and the muscles that remained in his body flexed rhythmically as he experience the most powerful orgasm of his life.

When 38 had been assimilated, her orgasm had lasted for 12 minutes and 22 seconds. She sat there, stroking 723’s short, sandy hair, for more than 15 minutes, until the last waves of ecstasy left him.

When he finally relaxed, 38 stood up and retrieved the incubator hardware from the replicator. The main part of it consisted of an expandable tank, for growing embryonic drones. Other equipment included amniotic filters, immune augmentation, and a vocal synthesizer that would hook up to the throat to allow the unit to speak normally.

She lowered the hardware into the cavity, easing the accessories under 723’s ribcage and attaching the mount to his lower spine. When she was finished, she gently caressed the small window of the tank. “You’re going to make us such beautiful drones, dear.”

“That is all I want,” said 723, out loud now, “to serve the hive.”

“Well,” 38 replied, “you’ll need a pussy to be a proper breeding device, won’t you?”

“Yes!” he cried, excitedly, “give me my pussy!”

38 went to work. She opened up his scrotum first, removing the testicles and gently placing them aside. The next step was to remove the erectile tissue from the penis. She took great care while doing this not to cut the nerve that ran to the head. Damaging that would mean there wasn’t anything left to make 723’s clitoris, which would be a shame not just for him, but for the entire hive. An incubator that could not feel pleasure was no incubator at all.

She pressed the now-inverted penile skin up into 723’s abdomen, and felt the incubator hardware grasp and attach to it. She opened a small tube in one of her fingers and injected pleasure nanites into the cavity. They would lubricate and protect the birth canal, as well as make it more sensitive for both 723 and 723’s end user.

38 took some nano-suture and sewed small details into the skin outside, she placed the clitoris under a nice little hood, sewed small wrinkles into 723’s new lips, and, rather tastefully she thought, bunched up the pussy lips so they were nice and plump.

“723, would you like to see your new pussy?”

“Yes! Yes I would!”

Rather than hold up a mirror, 38 simply showed 723 how his pussy looked through her eyes.

“Oh god, it’s so cute!” he said, “I can’t wait to use it.”

38 smiled, “All in time. For now, you need rest.”

“Understood,” 723 said. He closed his eyes and slept while the nanites in his body finished up the finer details of installation.

Sigma-38 picked Iota-723 up, and carried him to the adjacent conditioning chamber. Gently, she hooked him into a wall mount, before turning and making her way to preprocessing.

723’s assimilation had taken only an hour. Incubators usually took less time than full drones, though. 38 stepped into preprocessing, and looked over the remaining 16 humans, (Sigma-47 was working on assimilating another) held by mag restraints on vertical beds. Her gaze fell on the captain.

Terry Holder’s sedation was just now wearing off, as 38 had planned. Groggily, the captain opened her eyes and fixed her gaze on 38. She struggled, ineffectually. The drugs were still in her system, still keeping her slow and weak. There was that look of confusion again, from her quarters, and recognition. Her eyes grew wide as it dawned on her, and she said, “Jenna? You’re alive?”

“Hello Terry,” said Sigma-38, “The Jenna you knew is long, long gone.”

[faeriekit]

Questions for Fic Writers ✏📝💻

@chromatographic tagged me! ...And then I was at work and forgot about it by the time I got to my laptop! Sorry 😅

How many works do you have on Ao3?

My works tab claims the number to be twenty two, but at least one is a screen-reader-friendly duplicate of a Percy Jackson themed Reskin of Kids on Brooms, so it's more like...twenty one. I'd also take off of Blister Pack one-shots because they're tiny but they are one shots and those are technically valid, so...

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count?

355,110. Thank you, Blister Pack and Trade of Trickery!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Naruto.

...So I what I usually write and what I actually publish to ao3 are pretty different 😅 I've been doing a bunch of dp x dc fics as of late, and one dc x marvel fic, but if left to my own devices, I go back to Star Wars and Naruto and a lot of Naruto, and I have a surprising word count on a Supernatural fic which is odd considering I've never actually finished an episode of the show before.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

No idea! Lemme look:

#5: Dig Three Graves in Apartment 31C. A spooky and classic contender!

#4: The Firstborn Son. My excuse for writing a almost-canon dp x dc fairy story!

#3: The Haunting of Drake Manor. Nice 😎 You may have noticed, but I'm a sucker for baby fic.

#2: You know 'em, you love 'em, it's The Health and Wellbeing of Hybrid Entities! Who doesn't love a dissection recovery fic?

#1: Which leaves, of course, Blister Pack to reign supreme o'er the ao3 account. Who's shocked? Not me.

5. Do you respond to comments?

...there's 1,900 in my inbox right at this moment.

I want to. I love responding to comments. but it's just not feasible in the way I want it to be, and that blows.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Patchwork Memories! I don't think this counts because it was just a snippet, but, you know. Angst for the sake of angst n' all that.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Blister Pack!! Find joy in packing up and getting the fuck out of there! Who needs 'em?? Hit the bricks!!

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I've received stuff I honestly consider worse than hate, which is people who believe that I should think exactly what they think and write the fic as they believe canon should be interpreted, but here is the funniest exchange I've ever had on any fic ever:

9. Do you write smut fic? If so, what kind?

Once. I will occasionally write stuff for myself, but the reviews on the one posted smut chapter were generally that it was very, very funny. This does not give me much feedback to work off of lmao

10. Do you write crossovers? If so, what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

The answer to both questions are dp x dc and also dp x dc. And that's generally tame as far as crossovers go.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of. 👀

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I know of! 👀 But I'd be way more amenable to that than thievery lmao.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I would never bog someone down with my symptoms disorder. I don't trust me enough to be helpful in any creative endeavor ever

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I don't believe in genuine OTPs, but whatever Desiree!Janet and Bruce have going on in Drake Manor is hysterical to me. I hope they get divorced and then break up and then get back together and then break up again.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I want to finish Trade of Trickery. I think it will take time. But I am determined to do it. We're halfway through the Sea of Monsters and I am delusional enough to think I can make it if I just power through in some distant future

16. What are your writing strengths?

I am the recipient of divine visions which keep me going. The hard part is staying consistent when I lose steam.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I am the recipient of divine visions which keep me going. The hard part is staying consistent when I lose steam.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

Google translate is my friend, and I don't necessarily believe in providing translations. There's no irl subtitles. If the characters are meant to understand, I'll leave stuff around to make the context and content clear, but like, no creo que es necesario en todos situaciónes.

19. First Fandom you wrote for?

...Naruto...maybe...? No I'm wrong. It was Fairy Cube. My first divine visions/early fic thoughts were from Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness series and my first fandom I actually wrote/published fic for was Fairy Cube. Don't ask what account it was on. I borrowed my friend's ffn account. I don't remember the username anymore.

20. Favorite Fic you’ve written?

....hoo boy. Tie for Quiet Respite and Trade of Trickery. I love Comets and Drake Manor has a special place in my heart, but QR feels uniquely mine in ways that my dp x dc fics sometimes don't, and Trickery really is a love story about Sally Jackson and forgotten Demigod kids. Nothing else hits. Nothing else is the same. It's about collecting what you can in your hands and taking it with you.

@newgraywolf @cyrwrites @mysterycyclone @songue85 Anyone else want to play?

Thanks for asking, Chroma! It only took...what, a week, two weeks, to finally get to it?

[jmflowers]

My dash has been a bit sad lately, as if we’re all simultaneously going through a shift in our lives that’s making us feel off-kilter. So, in pursuit of finding the good in my own life…

Gratitude Challenge!

Here are 10 things I’m grateful for and/or proud of myself for accomplishing since the start of 2023 (and/or in the last year if 5 months is too short a period of time for your brain). Please feel free to play along!

1. I finished college with a 4.0GPA after 3 years of hard work. I can’t wait to walk across the convocation stage in June. (And I’m the first in my family to have a diploma from a post-secondary institution!)

2. I directed a large scene in a short film as part of the graduating class’ final production. It was difficult and exciting and we were able to work with cinema-level equipment. I’m so incredibly proud of what my team and I were able to accomplish. (3 7/8 pages in 3 hours!)

3. When I started to feel my mental health deteriorating back in February, I sought support and counselling to help myself cope. Being honest about the pressures I have been facing for years is allowing me to place necessary boundaries as those pressures resurface. Taking care of yourself is difficult in this industry, but making choices to hike and run and exercise when possible are other great ways I’ve been protecting my overall well-being.

4. I completed another large piece of fiction that required several weeks of work and attention, with additional background efforts to fully form two of my own original characters. I am really proud that they read fleshed out and honest alongside characters that are already known from the source material.

5. I became an aunt again two times over. I was able to adjust my school schedule in order to be present with E as C was arriving, and then spend the first week of C’s life with them both. Once I finished school, I made the time to go meet L as well and spend time with her mum, one of my oldest friends. My first nephew is due to arrive any day now.

6. When situations were uncomfortable, I made conscious choices to leave and excuse myself from the discomfort or actively stay and rewrite the traumatic memories that were making me uncomfortable. Having the power over my reactions in situations that make me feel out of control is wildly liberating. I look forward to working on that more as I continue to grow.

7. I’ve leaned into being vulnerable more often in the last 5 months than ever before in my life. It’s terrifying every single time and yet I keep doing it.

8. I read a book a day one week when I was feeling really anxious, as a coping mechanism. I haven’t read that fast or that consistently since I was a teenager. I can’t wait to do it again.

9. I started practicing writing amidst changing locations and constant distractions with the three sentence fic challenge (while TAing). I had a lot of fun and got some interesting stuff out of it. I’m really looking forward to writing a bunch more again, especially in less-than-ideal conditions.

10. I won a scholarship! That was elected by the teaching administration I was working alongside at my college. The money, whenever I get it, will be really beneficial to help pay off my growing debt.

Consider this a formal tagging for anyone who would like to do this, too! I’m going to call out @lacallemojada, @cuteasducks9, @slipperygaloshes, @drlaurenb, @englishstrawbie, @trying-to-get-somewhere-real, @thebroken--soul, and @heyfarfallina

[dead-air-radio]

Rant tw

Don't get me wrong I love this girl as a friend but she gets so annoying I need to fucking say it to someone.

I've known her since like freshman year but we only like just started like talking talking to her like a year ago and like I try so hard to be nice cause like don't get me wrong I don't mind hanging out with her.

She's very fucking sheltered and I think it's just a me thing and my own issues that makes me look down on like religious shelter kids but like she is a fucking adult.

She only wears one outfit and it's not like her family doesn't have money they offer to get her things and she refuses and then gets upset about not looking "cool" and it's like maybe if you didn't wear the same white shirt everyday for like 4 fucking years. She acts extremely sheltered and as if her family would kill her for liking fucking anime. I was friends with her brother who is a metal head literally grimey like atheist dude and I've talked to him and he says his parents are into it with him like that they bring him to concerts and stuff. But she acts like they'll kill her for liking anime cause it's weird. And it's like okay? She refuses to drive on freeways and at night or be out past 4 fucking pm. She's going on 19 btw. Calls her dad anytime we decide to hangout somewhere to ask for permission. And at first I didn't mind it till it was literally my birthday and my friends went to the mall and I invited her and the whole time she's like "guys wait can we keep track of the time I can't be too late home" We had to cut off my birthday earlier for her because she wanted to be back by like 6pm at the latest home. You are a grown adult. I get being anxious and stuff but like I offered to go to the mall a different day for my birthday and that we could hangout closer to her house so she didn't need to worry but she insisted. And anytime we are out in public she gets on my nerves she almost starts crying when me and my friends split up in stores shes like guys can we stick together and it's like we are literally getting things at the opposite side of the store just go with one of us. And she whines the whole time we are in stores like when can we go 🥺 or will follow me every fucking where. During my birthday we went to a really big mall and I have only been there once before then so I wanted to see a bunch more of their stores I only got to see like fucking 5 tho cause she got upset.

Cause we had to split up cause one of my friends had to leave to get bandages for her feet so she was like dw Just keep shopping me and the other friend I brought will ve back. And the whole time the friend I've been talking about (I'll just call her 6) was like guys can we just stay in one store while we wait and it's like tf no? And eventually they're like I need to get home it's 6pm and it's like 6 I told you I was staying up late for my birthday the mall doesn't close for fucking hrs. Anyways we left early.

And then she went home and was upset she couldn't have dinner with us and it's like no one's forcing you to leave? And she gets upset when me and my friends hangout and no one wants to drive with her. And it's like you refuse to go past the speed limit your car doesn't have ac and you refuse to go on the free way so it takes like an extra 30mins to get where we need to be cause you take surface streets. Also her playlist consists of 5 fucking songs and they're shit. She refuses to get youtube or Spotify premium which idc or mind it's expensive but she won't get an ad blocker either and complains about ads so instead she downloaded 5 songs and has them on repeat. And they're so fucking boring. It's like indie rock that's like on the verge of being emo but is like tx2 type shit like "you wouldn't like me if I take off this mask and broke my facades I'm so dark and twisted deep down" iykyk. And she's one of those people that when she gets mad her "ancestors" come out and she speaks in an English and Irish accent and it's like...stfu.

She's also a clean freak and she went to my house and like the way she acted is not how you treat someone in their own fucking home. She was shaking when she saw my room and was pacing cause of how 'disgusting' it was. She was like how do you live so dirty 😰 and it's like bro a pile of clothes is fucking nothing compared to the usual. And she ruined the hangout when we went to a friend's house cause she wouldn't stop complaining about how messy her house was and refused to sit down which sorry but that's so fucking disrespectful.

The persons house we were at was not dirty in the fucking slightest but she brought the whole vibe down cause she refused to sit and was like sorry guys I can't concentrate with all this dust. And wouldn't stop pacing and until we just told her to go home.

Not only that but like she's one of those girls thats like guys I can't have sugar I'm too dainty ill have a sugar rush and shake and she had a monster one time and that bitch was vibrating for like 5 hrs and it's like bro that monster a rehab monster mind you did not just do that to you.

Also she refuses to have an open about things like I fucking hate neutral people like that. And with the clean thing it's making it so she doesn't even want a job. She wants to go on this big fancy trip to see her friends but it'll cost like 500 dollars which is a singular fucking paycheck as a part time host at a dingy diner (from experience) but she refuses to get a job cause she doesn't want to work retail or food cause she says it's gross. And refuses to work during the week and only wants to work weekends and it's like you can't being fucking picky as a 19 year old when it comes to working and the fact you didn't want to go to college or a trade school either. Like life is life. But she complains about needing that money and a job and she opened up commission for art but this bitch doesn't have anything like PayPal or cashapp and she doesn't want to promote her work either... like she wants to do solely cash and in person art and it's not like she doesn't know how me and my friends who also do commissions have offered to help set it up and she's like but I can get scammed on those things 🥺 and it's like bro you can be scammed on almost anything no one's gonna buy from you. She doesn't have a card either. Strictly fucking cash like? And she acts so fucking sheltered. ITS CALLED SEX YOU ARE 19 FUCKING ACT LIKE IT. Like she doesn't understand anything and it's not like she's uncomfortable with that topic or anything it's the fact she genuinely acts fucking stupid. She's also super religious and her parents aren't that much like?

I was the first person she came out as trans to and I can understand the religious guilt but she has the audacity to still like side with chirstians on most things cause she doesn't want to look bad. She constantly rants about hating being trans not cause she feels guilty or anything but because being trans is a sin and it's like she knows I have religious trauma and she still acts like that and it pisses me off.

The thing that pushed me over the edge was when my friend was visiting and I've talked about him before and how I only got to see him for a day and when he was visiting she asked to hangout with us and some other friends and she got a fucking flat tire and instead of like calling her dad she asked my friend that only has 5 fucking hrs to visit us to help her and she just watched him do it for her....he was only allowed to stay 5 fucking hrs and most of it was fixing a goddamn tire. I've never felt so pissed and I genuinely didn't even want her to go like I was contemplating yelling or crying at her cause this was my one day to see him type thing cause he lives in a diff stay.

[keefwho]

May 25 - 2023

8:29 AM

I had a dream that I was with my Montana friends and a bunch of other people setting up a really big Halo event where it was the UNSC vs the Covenant. It was meant to be done with small scale figures like legos and stuff, it was sort of an RP thing. My job was to set up this one base that was made out of lego which I didn’t get around to in the dream. Mostly I was with others planning out the event before setting up. I remember wanting to go with a certain group of guys that consisted of pals I didn’t hang out with much on my own. It turned out they didn’t really enjoy being around me in the sense that I didn’t fit in. They would ignore what I said and actively try to avoid me. It sort of made sense though because they weren’t MY friends, they were friends of my friend. 

11:58 PM

Today was okay. I had another bologna sandwich for breakfast and cooked it well, and had some fiber one on the side to help process it better. I’m almost out of cereal though and it’ll be a few days before I can get more. I started my stream like usual and did my warmup but I couldn’t figure out what to sketch so I worked on one of the things on my desktop. I want to get better about sketch more though. I also ended the stream right after because I had to use the bathroom and I just don’t like to put up with that in the middle of streaming. I could have started it back up after but I also just wanted to work without eyes on me today. I ended up calling Daisy while she played Roblox and I finished up work. I only went 90 minutes instead of the usual 2 hours, mostly because I can afford it. This is the last commission and I still have 4 more days to do it. I don’t like to feel like I’m slacking but I also want to take it slow if it’s reasonable for me to. After the call I did some yard work which went much harder than I thought. The weed whacker mom picked up for me sucks, the handle is short for some reason so I have to bend over and swing it. It’s pretty exhausting to do for a whole yard. Mowing resulted in a sort of patchy, uneven yard again but I noticed it gets better if I keep going over it the next few days. The abundance of dandelions is also ruining it, they are everywhere and very unsightly. My dog is out of heat now so I gave her a bath and myself a shower before making rice a roni with beans for lunch. By this point I meant to work on the current YCH I have going and some projects but I slacked off hard. I took a gummy right before starting lunch and felt it kick in at around an hour. It partially contributed to me slacking off even though it wasn’t very strong just like last time. Instead of being productive I kicked back and ate a frozen coke while watching a stream which was probably the high point of my day. It was so cozy and delicious and I started feeling really mushy. I messaged Daisy sweet things while I ate it. Lately I feel like mushy has been too abundant only because I don’t think it’s good for it to be on full blast all the time. It makes it less meaningful. But at the same time sometimes I can’t stop feeling it so I let it out. After that I did end up working on the YCH for a bit, making it possible to finish tomorrow. Then Daisy and I played TOTK until bedtime like we have been since it released basically. It’s been very fun. I still want to find time to do VR in the evening alongside Zelda, probably earlier at around 6pm or so. 

[justtryingtolosesomeweight]

TIme for whatever thoughts...

but diet first- what’s that diet I save a few months ago? Let’s see..

day 1: 900. Day 2: 800. Day 3: 900. Day 4: 1000. Day 5: 950, Day 6:1100. Day 7: 1100. Imma do 600 for Day 1 and 2 and I’ll feel better. I’m also going to fast for probably just 16 hours today. Luckily I have shit to do so I’ll be distracted. 

On these days, I just get stuck thinking about how much I ate so I’m not sure I can talk about anything else. I looked in the mirror and the damage isn’t as bad as I thought but it’s not looking good. Tomorrow I might look bloated but I cover it up anyways. I need more fruit, no more salt and fake ass sugar, please. I told my sibling that I was considering dropping the gym. They said I should do whatever I can stay consistent with. so maybe I’ll try some at home workouts. I should try to go to bed before 3 a.m. today. That might help. Although this blogging shit doesn’t help that case. But it’s good I have been getting some of my feelings out since I can’t really talk to my family about everything, especially not the diets, and I don’t have friends. Well, I have one friend but we just text and I can’t say that I feel like formulating my thoughts over text.

Ah, what else? Oh, I decided I would take the L on all of my assignments this week because I left them to today even knowing that I wouldn’t want to do shit after hanging out with family. So, I’m brilliant for that one. It’s not going to be a good semester... Well, I’ll pull through somehow and if it involves an occasion instance of me starving myself then whatever. Eating 1000 wasn’t so bad that one month. I just have to care more and not get so discouraged. I want to break this plateau for real this time.

Lowkey want to say fuck and do the anorexia and tell myself that funny joke where I’ll go back to eating to high 1550 or something after I lose a bunch of weight. A big inspiration is to drop like twenty pounds during the semester and maybe my professors will notice that I might have a problem. Ah, isn’t that the dream? Being pulled aside and asked if you’re alright? Unlikely, except for one professor. But you need to try hard for that one. Ah, what can I expect? 145? If I seven pounds a month for the next three months then that would be good. I need to expect more from myself when it comes to losing weight because I keep telling myself it’s fine but it’s not.

I wish I kept better records of the calories I was eating when I first got into this thing. I know I often stop at 900 and would eat until 1100 so I wouldn’t be that low. I just added up things in my calculator and called it a day. Sometimes I wrote down how much I had but not very often. And every time I considered dipping below a thousand for more than a day I got scared because of all those posts. Ah, but if I’m not skinny then what kind of life am I leading and is it worth it? Perhaps. I need to buy some vitamins if I’m going to be doing this. Potassium, b complex, iron is in multivitamin, d3, collagen, and magnesium. I’m always anxious about this stuff but you know when I’m here I know there’s someone with me in the same struggle. I often think about Jennette McCurdy’s book and how older people with eating disorders must have felt much more isolated. I also think about how her mom ate steamed vegetable for dinner every night. Or something to that degree. So maybe I don’t want to be that skinny where that’s my life. Or maybe it just shows you can live like that. I’ll figure out how skinny I want to be once I get there. And I will get there

[comicaurora]

Hello Red! I'm happy to say you've inspired me to start drawing comics, but the biggest issue I've encountered is that it takes actually forever. I'm always really happy I did it when I'm done but it's hard to convince myself to start when I know a couple panels is gonna take me days. So I was wondering if you had any advice regarding streamlining the process for time efficiency or keeping up motivation for long projects, and, if you remember, how long a page took you when you first started vs how long it takes now?

Hoo boy. Yeah, I can help out with that. The very first page of the comic took me, if I'm recalling correctly, a full week. No other projects or pages, just this.

A lot of work went into details that are frankly impossible to see, though I am still glad I did it, both as a learning experience and because I felt like I owed it to Vash to do it some justice before I squished it in twelve pages.

Hell, if you look closely, you can even see the cavalcade of little visual errors I missed because I didn't have it in me to do a seventeenth cleanup pass after a week straight of drawing tiny houses. Getting faster meant I'd have more energy left to polish the pages and get them looking nicer.

The process of getting faster has been kind of a fits-and-starts situation. Drawing that many humanoid figures over and over again eventually means you just get better at the parts you're less sure of, so the process of lining the pages has gotten rather faster since I don't need to burn as much time getting the character poses and lines right. Currently, depending on page complexity, I can fairly consistently get 3-5 pages fully lined in one night. Backgrounds have also gotten faster, and I tend to do those in large batches, sometimes filling out entire chapters with location backgrounds and skyboxes because the scene location isn't going to change and that makes it easier to keep it consistent.

Initially my backgrounds were both more complicated and worse-looking, which is a bad combination.

I ended up deciding between chapters that painstakingly lining a bunch of background trees probably wasn't worth the effort, and worked on finding a shortcut that would work better. I ended up doing something a little more lineless, a shortcut I initially discovered because I didn't want to plug in my drawing tablet and was playing around with things I could do with just my trackpad.

It was simpler, faster, not too jarring, and it meant my clearly-lined foreground figures were more naturally visually separated from the distant background. Win-win-win.

For the style of coloring I do, I tend to shade before I add color, though this is a shortcut I didn't figure out until something like chapter 6. This process is also pretty fast, all things considered, though I've had a lot of practice doing this kind of cel shading which is why I can hammer out a lot of pages' worth of shading quite quickly.

I like working in batches of about one scene, often broken up into subgroups of 4-6 pages at a time, so I can't give a front-to-back turnaround for an individual page - but I also think this kind of assembly-line process has sped up the process overall and makes it more fun for me, because I can storyboard basically as far in advance as I want to, which in turn makes it easier for me to motivate myself to keep going, because I know there's all kinds of good stuff I'm looking forward to drawing down the line. There's some good shit I'm excited for in Chapter 21, and bursts of enthusiasm on the storyboard end of things often translate to enthusiasm on the page-finalizing end which makes it easier to slog through even the tedious bits.

As a bonus, working ahead means the story's got a better chance of making sense and having good pacing when it's read back as an archive. Another win-win.

Overall the greatest optimization tool I can recommend is just working on the project. There's no better way to identify the parts that feel unnecessarily slow and could be changed, or the parts of your art you're unsure of that need polish to get more speedy. If you're planning on publishing the comic anywhere, I recommend building up a buffer beforehand - something like the first chapter (or in my case, first three chapters) will give you a very good sense of what parts need more practice or improvement as you move forward. And it is genuinely easier to motivate yourself to continue if you have an audience giving you positive feedback and/or panicking at what you're doing to their darlings.

[mayihavethisdanse]

“What is this, the Dark Ages?”

Or, Arthurian themes and allusions in the Brotherhood of Steel mythos as seen in Fallout 4. (But that’s a lot of words.)

Yep. We're doing this. 

First, some obligatory caveats: there is no single Arthurian canon, just 1500 years of assorted fanfic based on the whims of whoever was writing at the time. For this extremely highbrow Tumblr meta, I have ignored most of it and drawn on my favorites. Also Wikipedia.

Also, I am not an expert in Arthurian literature (or Fallout lore, come to that), and I preemptively beg the pardon of anyone who is.

Finally, in no way am I claiming that all these parallels and thematic echoes are deliberate or even significant. In fact, I'd break it down into:

Clearly deliberate allusions, whether in or out of universe;

Probably coincidence, but could be someone deliberately capitalizing on a coincidental similarity;

Almost certainly coincidence, but fun to speculate about; annnnd

Blatant Monty Python references. (Because of course there are.)

I'll start with the big one.

Arthur Maxson, boy king and unifier

(source)

So across all the retellings and variations of King Arthur’s life story, there are a few consistent elements, particularly in his early life and rise to power. Some of these threads are echoed in the Fallout universe, specifically (and unsurprisingly) in the person of Arthur Maxson.

Both the legendary King Arthur and Arthur Maxson were born with a claim to power lying in their ancestry, both were fostered away from their families, and both proved themselves in combat at a young age. 

King Arthur united the warring kingdoms of Britain into a single entity, making them stronger against outsiders and receiving general admiration and acclaim. Arthur Maxson united the divided factions of the BoS after the events of Fallout 3 and is held in similarly high regard by his men.

The name Prydwen is a reference to the ship of the original King Arthur. Presumably, Arthur Maxson (or someone in the BoS who anticipated his promotion) christened the airship in a deliberate homage to the Arthurian myth.

King Arthur is associated with his legendary sword. I think it’s notable that Maxson’s legend is associated with a bladed weapon, too. ("He killed a DEATHCLAW with a COMBAT KNIFE!”)

Probably coincidence, but fun: the historical emperor Magnus Maximus, who pops up a lot in early Arthurian legend, was known in Welsh as... Macsen. (⌐■_■)

Round Table, but make it dieselpunk

(Continued under the cut.)

Moving away from obvious allusions and into some looser parallels:

Like the Round Table, the Brotherhood is an exclusive knightly order with its leader being the one able to open it up to his chosen few.

Like the Round Table, the BoS sees itself as defending human civilization against forces of chaos. (I’ll touch on their tech-hoarding tendencies when I get to the Grail stuff.) This idea of civilization in the face of chaos goes back to the BoS’s founding, even though the level of isolationism we see in most of the Fallout franchise is not exactly what founder Roger Maxson had in mind: “Notably, Maxson's ultimate intention was to establish the Brotherhood as an organization that works closely with people outside of the Brotherhood, as guardians of civilizations, not its gatekeepers.” (source) In a lot of ways, Arthur Maxson represents a return to his ancestor’s original ideals.

Renegade knights? Internal politics? Traitors within? We gotchu.

In both the medieval legends and in all chapters of the BoS we’ve seen, there’s a big focus on bloodlines (ew). Ironically, it’s probably Arthur Maxson’s unquestionable ancestry that allows him to be more progressive than either of his East Coast predecessors when it comes to boosting Brotherhood numbers by recruitment (even though you can still see a clear division between “born Brotherhood” and recruited soldiers, but that’s a topic for another day). Maxson sees himself as an Elder who "cares for the people"—however misguided and patronizing that attitude might be—and whatever else you might say about the guy, you can't say he doesn't believe he has a duty. Which brings us to…

Know Your Enemy: Danse as Gawain

Before I start this section, an acknowledgement of authorial bias:

Gawain, as portrayed in the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, is my very favorite of King Arthur’s knights. (Other stories aren't always as flattering, but like I said at the outset: I'm sticking to the ones I like.)

That poem is my very favorite piece of medieval Arthurian literature. In this section, I'll refer to the modern English translation by Simon Armitage.

...that’s it, I have no other biases to disclose. 

What? 👀

(Art: Clive Hicks-Jenkins)

All right. So in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, you’ve got this himbo loyal knight of Arthur’s who finds himself caught up in... you know what, let me just paste in the Wikipedia summary. (The Toast, RIP, also did a pretty entertaining and more-or-less accurate recap.)

It describes how Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Round Table, accepts a challenge from a mysterious "Green Knight" who dares any knight to strike him with his axe if he will take a return blow in a year and a day. Gawain accepts and beheads him with his blow, at which the Green Knight stands up, picks up his head and reminds Gawain of the appointed time. In his struggles to keep his bargain, Gawain demonstrates chivalry and loyalty until his honour is called into question by a test involving the lord and the lady of the castle where he is a guest.

Don’t worry too much about the plot details, though; for this post, I’m more interested in the thematic parallels. The Green Knight story is full of contrasts: order vs. chaos, civilization vs. wilderness, mortal man vs. Other... but let’s start with Gawain himself. 

Some stuff to know about Gawain:

He was "as good as the purest gold, devoid of vices but virtuous and loyal". Gawain took his principles more seriously even than the rest of Arthur’s knights, not out of pride but out of humility: "I would rather drop dead than default from duty," he says. 

He’s faithful and honorable and never even tempted to betray an oath, even when offered every variety of seduction and riches, except for a single moment of weakness in a desperate desire not to be executed for random shit by powerful forces for reasons he doesn't understand.  

Even though he doesn’t really understand why he needs to die, he sticks to his oath. Gawain's one weakness is a moment of desperate, private, human desire for survival. He'll submit to the headsman’s axe if he has to, but he'd still rather live. 

Above all, Gawain is the ideal of a human man: he might be the bravest and loyal man there is, but he’s still fundamentally human.

You can probably see where I'm going with this.

A few more fun facts about Gawain that resonate with Paladin Danse’s story:

He’s got a bunch of really shitty brothers. (No comment.)

Gawain (SPOILERS!) doesn't actually end up beheaded, but he does willingly kneel for his execution and gets a cut on the throat as a reminder of his sin. And, uh, Danse can also get his throat cut! It doesn’t end as nicely but it’s, you know, a thing that can happen.

Gawain might be a really good guy, and he tries really hard to be one, but in the end he’s nothing more than that: there’s nothing supernatural about him, he has no special powers beyond his own principles and devotion. He’s just a dude doing his Best. 

Wait, why not Danselot?

Oh, that guy? Here’s the thing.

Lancelot personifies the continental ideals of courtly love that became popular in the High Middle Ages. Central to his story is the prioritization of personal relationships and romantic feelings in a way that you don’t really see in Gawain's, at least in the Green Knight tale. (Later stories hook Gawain up with an extremely delightful lady, but even that is a different flavor of romance than Lancelot's and has more to do with Gawain honoring his word and his egalitarian treatment of women (hell yeah). In the poem, Gawain is impressed by Bertilak's wife but resists her temptation; in fact, the biggest risk is not that he'll yield to her advances but that he'll be discourteous to her, i.e., violate his principles and cause dishonor to his king and his host.)

Lancelot is driven by passions over principles in a way that Gawain never really is (at least in the stories I’m talking about; later writers have committed character assassination to various degrees). Yes, you could argue that both Gawain and Lancelot betray their oaths, but Lancelot’s betrayal is never, um, blind. He knows what he’s doing and makes a deliberate choice to prioritize his love for the queen over his love for the king. It doesn’t make him a bad guy—he too is an ideal knight with one fatal flaw—but his character isn’t as comparable to Paladin Danse. 

Yeah, Gawain is (in most stories) a prince and a kinsman of Arthur’s, but he’s ultimately a native boy who doesn’t break the mold of a Knight of the Round Table. Likewise, Danse is portrayed as competent and valuable to the BoS, but not exceptional or breaking the mold of what a BoS soldier should be: he simply represents the ideal. Meanwhile, Lancelot is a foreign prince who was marked from childhood as special and fancy, and his storyline goes alllll over the place. (Much like this post.)

For example, Lancelot goes to absolutely absurd extremes to prove his devotion for no other reason than to prove it. (“I’ll do any useless humiliating thing you want. I’ll betray every oath except the one I made to you. That’s what love is!”) Gawain would never. Danse would never.

Ultimately, Gawain's tests are of his character and not of his love. And like Gawain, Danse’s devotion is to service and his principles, not to another person—even Arthur Maxson.

All that said, there are some similarities: both are beloved by Arthur, both are held up as the ideal of what a knight should be. And even if their fatal flaws are different, both make the point that no matter how good and brave and loyal they might be, no human being can be perfect. 

(Except Galahad. Who is, as a result, very boring.) 

I’ll conclude this section with a quote from someone else’s take on the Greek Knight poem:

I like Gawain. He’s not perfect, but he’s trying his best which is all any of us can do. He’s not like the other knights in the Arthurian legends who occasionally ‘accidentally’ kill women on their little adventures and then feel hard done by when they have to deal with the consequences of that. Gawain holds himself to a high standard – higher, it seems, than Arthur and his knights hold him to considering how hard they laugh when Gawain tells them how bad he feels about the whole thing.

I think Gawain is very relatable in this story. We all want to be better than we actually are.

And that, more than anything else, is Danse.

The Grail myth

What’s that? Lost relics of power? Better send some large armed men after ‘em!

The parallels to the BoS’s tech-hoarding ways are obvious enough that the games themselves lampshade them (albeit by way of Monty Python). But it also ties into the larger themes of “purity” versus “corruption” and the BoS’s self-image as a bastion between civilization and chaos. (See Maxson's line in response to the Sole Survivor’s quip about the Dark Ages: “Judging from the state of the world, it wouldn't be a stretch to say we're living in that era again.”)

But the ultimate futility of the Grail mission is also worthy of note. The BoS might want the power of prewar tech on their side, but they’re no more to be trusted with it than any other group of human beings. No matter how they try, the “corruption” of humanity can’t be overcome as long as they’re striving to harness power for their own ends. You can only achieve power by surrendering control of it.

The death of Arthur

The nature of gameplay being what it is, it's not guaranteed that the Arthur figure will be fatally betrayed, bringing Camelot down with him—but it's not unlikely, either.

Awkward.

Some final spitballing:

Outside the Brotherhood, there are some fun parallels of the Arthur myth with the rest of Fallout 4. Betrayal by one’s own son, for example.

The key difference between the BoS and the legendary Round Table: King Arthur’s knights, for all their flaws and human weaknesses, are usually presented as unambiguous Good Guys. The BoS is... a little more ambiguous...

...but damn if they don’t think they're the good guys. 

A-ad victoriam, fellas!

[torikengel]

Thomas Hewitt x Reader (Part 1)

a/n: thank you so much for your support <3 you make me motivated to continue, parts 2/3 and 4 are already on my profile <3

You were traveling with a group of friends across Texas. You were all from a big city, so they decided to go on a road trip. There were five of you in total, two girls, two guys, and you. At first, you refused to go and wondered why they even bothered taking you because they were two couples and you were just the fifth wheel. Well, you weren’t very familiar with one of the couples, but you knew the other one. At least you knew the girl, cause she was the one to invite you to this trip. It was known that you were well off and they desperately needed more money for gas and food on this trip. You weren’t dumb and it was very clear soon enough that the sum of money you were required to bring was much higher than the one of your so-called friends. So why you decided to go? You thought some adventure in your life wouldn’t hurt and you were yearning for some fresh air outside of the city. And it wouldn’t be bad to make some friends along the way, you thought. But soon you realized that wasn’t going to happen. The boys were eyeing you up and down and the girls weren’t happy about you. You would like to think that you were fairly pretty with an attractive face and a nice body. And since Texas is hot you were simply wearing a tank top and shorts. You were sitting in the back seat, buckled up, and looking out of the window as your companions didn’t seem keen on talking with you. “Hey, Emma, can we stop for a while, I need to go… you know,” said Chloe who was sitting next to you in the back seat with her boyfriend Matt to the driver, Emma. “Sure,” Emma responded slightly annoyed. You stopped in a remote town in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t seem that many people were still living there. Emma drove to the nearest shop and parked. The place was swarming with bikers and as soon as Chloe stepped out of the vehicle they whistled at her. “Wait babe, I am coming too,” Matt said as he spotted their sly smirks and how they hungrily looked at his girlfriend. “Y/n? Are you coming too?” Emma scoffed, “I am definitely not stopping again just because of you.” And she vanished in the shop as her boyfriend Chris followed right after her.

Someone should stay in the car and guard our stuff, you thought for yourself. But you really needed to drink something, so in the end, you grabbed your purse and walked in the store as the bikers kept catcalling you on your way. On your way there you saw Chloe and Matt whispering to each other, well if it could be considered whispering, cause you heard them. “Look at that old hag! Bet she never stepped out of this hell hole. Jeez, this town smells bad.” Chloe laughed and Matt added “Yeah, disgusting, now imagine living here babe, I bet they are all diseased.” You turned to the elderly woman behind the counter, you intuitively knew she could hear everything. You grabbed a soda and went to the counter, “I am very sorry.” You said with your head down as you didn’t dare to look her in the eyes. “Don’t worry ‘bout that darlin’, my family is used to this.” When you finally dared to look at her, you could see that her eyes were traveling up and down, scanning your body. Oh well, your clothes weren’t the most appropriate for this traditional part of Texas. “My name is y/n…” you said giving her the money for your soda. “Please keep the change.” You added as you wanted to vanish into thin air from embarrassment. The change you were talking about was like triple the price of soda. “Oh no, m’dear, I can’t accept that.” She finally smiled at your generosity and politeness. “Please, I insist… Mrs.?” You stuttered. “Luda Mae,” she helped you out. “Mrs. Luda Mae”, you repeated, smiling back at her. “Come already, we don’t have the whole day to wait… or we will leave you here!” Chloe shouted from the car and Emma honked. You jumped up and rushed to them while waving at Luda Mae, cause who knows, they might actually leave you there.

Emma was driving and chatting with her friends, not paying attention to you, even though it was she who invited you on this trip. And not only she wasn’t paying attention to you, but to the road as well, because she didn’t notice the spike strips across the road. Everyone yelped and held their breath when the van slid across the road and fell to the pit on its side… on your side. In the brief moment of despair, you regretted not being buckled up for the first few minutes of the trip. Your cheek smashed on the window that broke into shards, cutting up your skin. The worst part was that both Chloe and Matt fell on top of you as well. You squirmed under their weight but to no avail. “Shit, shit, shit, shit,” Emma screamed as she lost control of the vehicle and saw her boyfriend falling head forward on a sharp shard of glass, piercing his flesh. After a few minutes of shock, Emma got out of the car, seemingly okay, and helped Chloe and Matt. After that, they all hurried to help Chris. Nobody cared about you. You could feel the blood gushing out of your wounds on your arm and cheek. In the end, you managed to scramble the last bits of your strength and got out of the car without any help… Emma was in utter shock as she felt that her boyfriend didn’t show any signs of life. You didn’t know how to react, because you didn’t feel any pity. They didn’t help you and wouldn’t mind letting you die there on that backseat. You just shook your head and turned away, confused at what’s about to happen. “What’s wrong with you y/n! You look completely unphase by all this, explain yourself!” Emma screamed at you suddenly, letting out all of her anger on you. Before she could insult you any further you heard police sirens. “Thank god,” she calmed down a bit. Chloe was just shaking in Matt’s arms. The hope you all felt as the police car made its way towards you was slowly exchanged with fear. An older man with a sheriff’s uniform stepped out of the car with a shotgun. “So what do we have here… a bunch of lowly cowards it seems.” He spat on the ground and aimed the gun at you. “Get into the car, now!” he pointed at the police car, “The big guy in the back with two girls and this sexy babe in the passenger seat.” He aimed the shotgun at your head. “Wait, mister Hoyt, there’s my boyfriend still in the van!” Emma walked up to him trembling, apparently not grasping that this man isn’t here to help you. “My, my, do you think I care about your fucking boyfriend, bitch?” he turned down her request and took her by the wrist, “Maybe I will just take you next to me since you are so dumb, you need a lesson.” He tightened his grip on her wrist. “W-wait m-mister.” She stuttered, fear enveloping her. “T-take her instead… I swear we won’t tell anyone; you can do anything you want with her, even kill her, we will make something up, please just don’t hurt us.” She pointed her dirty finger at you and looked at Chloe and Matt, still in a tight embrace. “R-right guys? We won’t tell…” she desperately looked for a sign of approval from them. “Y-yes! We definitely won’t tell! I mean look, she’s way prettier for you sir!” Chloe added, throwing her pride behind her, Matt followed with a quick nod. “My, my what a friend you have,” Hoyt nearly died from laughter. He threw her aside on the hot ground. She slowly exhaled as she thought this was his way of saying yes. “I don’t like these types of bitches.” Without any hesitation, he shot Emma in the leg. She squealed and held her leg close to her, “You old bastard! We had a deal!” He only laughed a bit more before turning to the rest of you. “Now get in the car if you want to live. NOW!” he shouted and aimed the gun at Chloe and Matt who protectively stood in front of Chloe. “We have another hero here it seems.” Another shot followed, straight into Matt’s shoulder. He dropped to his knees in pain. “Who else?” he looked at you. After thinking for a few seconds, you dropped your eyes to the ground and went to the passenger’s seat of Hoyt’s police car. You decided to be smart about it. You didn’t dare to look back at him, all you heard were screams until everything was quiet again. Hoyt dragged your so-called friends’ bodies to the backseat. They were all breathing, just unconscious, their heads bloody. He probably hit them to make them easier to transport. He dragged Chris’s dead body out of the van as well, putting him into the trunk. After that, he sat in the driver’s seat next to you. “Come on, look at me. I don’ bite.” He licked his lips as you turned to face him. “Good girlie.” He said as he pressed some cloth over your nose and lips. You struggled for air, but then finally gave up and passed out as well.

You open your eyes to an unbearable headache which made you wish to never wake up at all. Where am I… shot through your mind as you tried to recall what led to your current situation. Right, your so-called friends tried to use you as their ticket out of this, as a bribe, as if you were a piece of meat. Your eyes were swollen and weak, so it was awfully hard to keep them open. You tried your best to inspect your situation a bit more. You couldn’t move your limbs, that’s for sure. So, you looked around again, adjusting your eyes to the dark atmosphere. It must’ve been a basement of some kind as there were no windows. You could see other metal tables except for the one you were tied to. There were various shiny metal tools around you consisting of cleavers, knives, and other stuff. Then you glanced above you to the ceiling. What you saw made you gag in disgust. Meat hooks, and on them two bodies hanging… Matt and Chloe. Then it hit you… out of confusion and tiredness, you didn’t pay attention to it before, but the whole basement smelled like death, rotting flesh, vomit, blood… everything mixed. Matt was missing half of his body and under him was a pool of blood, he was already dead. Chloe was missing one leg and one arm, seemingly still breathing, but not for long you thought for yourself. Sure, you were scared, because the same thing was going to happen to you, but you felt slight happiness in the back of your mind, no pity to be found. They abandoned you, they emotionally abused you, they used you for money, they would let you be raped and killed in exchange for their pathetic lives. They didn’t care about you. And now, despite their best efforts, you were here, alive, with all of your limbs, breathing while they were all almost dead. You couldn’t help to wonder why you were the last one to be butchered. You smiled for yourself “That’s what you get… even though I am going to be next, I still outlived you for long enough to laugh last.” And also, you didn’t know them before this trip except for Emma who wasn’t there right now. After these thoughts dispersed in your mind, you realized you could hear voices from above you. When you woke up, you were a bit groggy and didn’t pay attention to all of your senses right away. You recognized the female voice; without a doubt, it was Emma squealing in pain and disgust. “Let me go, let me go you ugly old bastard!” she screamed so loud it was piercing your ears. Instead of pitying her, it was more annoying to you, because you wanted the last minutes of your life to be as peaceful as possible. “Shut up, stupid bitch, or I will make you!” a familiar voice shouted back. Hoyt. Yeah, it must’ve been that guy, Sheriff Hoyt. Even though you assumed he wasn’t the real sheriff. You figured out what was happening upstairs. From the moment you met this Hoyt guy, you knew he was a pervert and a violent one. Even though he spared you in a way when he didn’t shoot you, well, you complied so he had no reason to. Then you realized that you checked your surroundings to the best of your ability while you didn’t even look at the state you were in. Your wrists and ankles hurt real bad. The leather cuffs were rubbing tightly against your sensitive red skin. Your cheek hurt as well as your arm. You weren’t sure if the glass shards were still in your arm or if someone took them out. You tried to position yourself in a way you could see the cut. It was deep and your skin was all bruised. Your whole body felt squished and sore, because of how Matt and Chloe fell on you during the accident. You were so tired… the screams above you got quieter and quieter each second as you fell into sleep again.

Loud footsteps in the basement woke you up and when you managed to lift your eyelids a huge man was towering over your lying body. He was wearing a bloody apron, shirt, and tie… very neat you thought for yourself. He smelled bad and there was a human-like mask on his face. He had greasy black hair that reached to his shoulders and partially hid his face. What captured your attention were his piercing blue eyes. He was scanning you, but you did the same as you stared deep into his eyes. He expected you to try to jump up, squirm, or make disgusted faces. He was used to it. All his life people called him names and bullied him, from his childhood to his teen years, and while he worked in the factory as an adult. He was always a monster, animal, disgusting freak in their eyes. Women made gagging noises when they saw him and then laughed in his face. Men picked on him, tried to fight him to get him in trouble. He suffered through it all until he finally unleashed all the pain and anger. Since then he saw people as either family or food, there was nothing in-between. You could see it in his eyes, the awaiting of your scream. But it never came, even after you noticed the cleaver in his hand. You had a neutral expression on your face while watching him. The pain was undeniable in his eyes. He wanted you to scream as it made it easier, so much easier… if you just called him a freak, if you tried to spit in his face… too easy. Finally, your lips parted, air leaving your mouth as you exhaled. He hated it, everything you did, he hated it because you made it hard. You had a beautiful face, perfect skin, attractive body, silky h/c hair, and shiny e/c eyes. You looked like one of the girls that would make fun of him and kick him again when he was already down. All the memories kept flooding into his mind as he raised the cleaver and prepared to swing. Now he expected you to squirm, shout and plead for your life, to at least cry or call him something nasty. But you peacefully smiled at him. “This is my end isn’t it?” you accepted your fate from the moment you woke up for the first time in this basement. You closed your eyes and prepared for the pain that would inevitably come with the blow. The man was confused like never in his life. Your sweet smile towards him melted his resolve. Here he was standing, all bloody with a cleaver ready to end your life and your perfect form was just lying under him in a dignified position without regrets. His eyes were full of sorrow. Nobody smiled at him before, laughed yes, mocked him too, but he never got that smile, smile without any prejudice in your then open eyes. There was no pain, just a wet feeling on your hurt cheek. For the first time, you yelped at the sudden touch and shot your eyes open again. There he was, standing over you, wiping the dry blood off your face with a wet rug. He stepped back, startled by your reaction. You could see how hurt he was… you couldn’t believe yourself. In this situation, with a murderer in a room with you, your instinct was telling you to pity him more than the couple hanging from the meat hooks. ”Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that; I just didn’t expect it… thank you.” You murmured under your breath. His eyes widened, first that innocent smile, now the honest tone in your voice as you apologized for being held captive. “My name is y/n. But I guess you don’t need to know that as you know…” your eyes pointed to the cleaver that was on the other table now. He didn’t say anything, but he shook his head. You didn’t know if that meant you would be spared or that he was content with knowing your name, you figured it was the latter though. After he calmed down, he stepped up again to clean your face and arm. You hissed a bit, but he knew it wasn’t at him, but at the pain. You didn’t know why he did all that when you are certainly going to be killed, if not by this man then by that Hoyt.

“What’s your name, if you don’t mind?” you broke the awkward silence. He shrugged, not replying. “You can’t speak?” you figure it wouldn’t hurt to ask and you wanted to know if he couldn’t or simply didn’t want to talk. You got a slight nod from him. “I see… But I can try and guess if you help me.” You came up with a solution. “I will say the alphabet and when I will get to the first letter of your name, you should touch the palm of my hand.” He seemed unsure but nodded again in the end. “A, B, C…” you continued until you got to T. He softly put a finger on your palm. “T…” you repeated, “That could be Tim, Tony, Thomas.” You wanted to continue, but he grabbed your finger when you said Thomas. “Thomas… Tommy.” You smiled at him. You didn’t know what got into you, but you were enjoying this sweet, tender moment. He was very gentle with you and didn’t kill you yet. Maybe it was because of how different your behavior was from everyone else.

He didn’t believe it. What was he doing, what were you doing, what were you doing to him? You were supposed to be another meal, just food, a piece of meat. But he couldn’t treat you like that when you were the first person outside of his family who treated him like a human being, without disgust and hate. Even Charlie and Monty sometimes treat him like a dog. He could sense that you were sincere. Some girls tried to seduce him before to save their lives and then stab him in the back. Once he fell for it, only for the first time though, he learned his lesson. But you didn’t try, you accepted that you were going to die here, and he couldn’t bring himself to end your life on his own.

“Damn what’s taking you so long down there, boy?” Hoyt opened the door to the basement and threw something on the stairs. “Don’ tell me you were able to finally man up?” Thomas seemed to be a bit lost, but you knew what he meant by that. “Anyhow, I am finished with it, it’s all yours now.” Hoyt pointed on the floor. You weren’t sure what he threw in the basement until now. It was Emma and she was still alive. Her mouth taped shut and hands tied behind her back. Hoyt descended into the basement and got rid of the tape on her lips. “You liked it bitch, didn’t ya?” he squeezed her cheeks and put a finger into her open mouth. She bit him as soon as she got the chance. A loud slap followed and he walked back up cussing her out. Hoyt was so focused on his finger, that he didn’t seem to care about why you were still alive. “Oh y/n! Help me, help me, please!” she trembled and smiled at you in disbelief. She obviously thought you were dead. Then she looked around to see her dead friends and screamed. Thomas grabbed her with his huge hands ready to hang her on the meat hook next to her friends. “You ugly fat bastard, let me go, stop it, you animal!” she kicked him wherever she could with both of her legs as they were tied together. You couldn’t hold back your laughter. However, your laughter stabbed Thomas in the back. So, you were the same after all. He thought about it and then realized it was for the better. But then you spoke “She looks like a fish out of the water, doesn’t she?” you giggled a bit more and then finally stopped. Thomas smiled under his mask before he realized what were the consequences. You indirectly stood up to him and it was funny and clever as well. “What… why would you laugh y/n? We are both going to die you dumb slut!” as the last word left her lips a shriek of pain echoed as Thomas stabbed the hook into her back. With the last strength, she spat in his face. “F-filthy animal, m-murderer, you and your damn fucking family can all burn in hell…” she mumbled. “I bet he would be a better friend than you.” Before she could come up with a comeback of any kind, he slit her skull with a cleaver. He grabbed a chainsaw and started dismembering her. You actively watched, fascinated by the situation. You weren’t a sadist, not at all, but it just all seemed like a weird nightmare to you. Maybe you passed out during the car crash and you are still dreaming. However, the smell of blood brought you back into reality. After Thomas was done, he turned back to you, freshly bloodied. He expected to see a disgusted face, tears, fear. He did it on purpose… to make you scream, to make you hate him like everyone else. “To be honest… she deserved it. Imagine, she tried to give me to Hoyt to save herself. She wouldn’t mind killing me.” You shrugged as you were very stiff from holding your head on the side. 

No, no, no, no, no… it was all wrong. Thomas’ heart raced as he looked at you in disbelief, your e/c eyes piercing his soul. You saw him kill your friend, well at the very least your companion and then you also witnessed al the gory stuff that came with it, but you looked unphased, maybe a bit satisfied with his work... you didn’t scream, didn’t curse, didn’t hate him. He grabbed the cleaver and held it above you, then swung and…

[meruz]

Aforementioned long ask post please excuse me while i try to figure out tumblr's new text editor. I’ll get into the art meme questions first and then the rest at the end.

Ok first of all thank you all for sending in questions! Giving me an excuse to talk hehe. I’ll address these in number order. Here’s a link to the ask meme for reference but also I’ll restate the question for ease of reading.

1. When did you get into art?

Super cliche answer but I don’t remember a time where I WASN’T the weird art kid! I started keeping a dedicated sketchbook when I was about 12? But here’s a page from my kindergarten journal about what I want to be when I grow up.

2. What art-related sites have you ever signed up for? 

LOL this is a weird question. Not sure why so many people want to know. Anyways I definitely had a dA. more than one dA account. I used to browse oekakis when I was a kid but I think I was only signed up to some small ones that internet friends owned. What else...? Mangabullet,Tegakie, Paintberri, iscribble back when that was a thing, instagram if that COUNTs, I used to post art on livejournal and dreamwidth too. Patreon, I guess. Gumroad, inprnt, bigcartel, storenvy all for selling stuff.

In terms of resources.. I have a schoolism account that I’m sharing with friends. Used to take classes on coursera for free. I signed up to textures.com for work recently haha. I can’t remember if I ever had an account on posemaniacs. Did they have accounts...? I definitely used to visit all the time.

3. Show us your oldest piece of art you have on hand.

Alright here’s me actually logging into my old deviantart account. These are from September 2008 So I was 13 years old. I don’t have a deviantart account from before then because 13 was the required age for having an account and I didn’t want to lie about my age because I wanted people to be impressed by how young yet clearly incredible at art I was LOL.

4. What defines your artistic style?

You guys are probably more equipped to answer this than me but uh... I wanna say... Focus on colors. And... a slightly heavy hand? Like confident... not always well-considered mark making HAH...

Also I think I have a pretty healthy mix of american comics/manga influences. I feel like people who are into american comics always think my art is too manga and people who are into anime/manga always think my art is too american. And I’m taking that as a good sign.

5. Do you practice other styles/have you tried other styles in the past?

I like to think I switch it up a bunch! I mean, these are pretty different, right?

I think I’ve mentioned this before but one thing I really took away from art school is that, for an illustrator at least, art style shouldn’t be consistent. Your greatest weapon is changing the aspects of your style based on the task, the emotions and message you want to illustrate etc. So depending on the project I’m working on, the fandom I’m drawing for, whether I want something to be funny or serious or dramatic, I’ll change things about my style all the time.

One thing I don’t rly post on here is really tight polished work and that’s because I do that for my day job haha. If you’re not paying me... I’m probably not gonna color in the lines.

6. What levels of artistic education have you had?

I have a whole ass diploma LOL. Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration. from the Rhode Island School of Design. And I had a great college experience tbh. Besides the student loans. If any of you guys are thinking about art school feel free to e-mail or message me questions or concerns, I’ll be happy to help. Be as honest as I can be.

7. Show us at least one picture you drew or sketched recently that you did not put on a public site.

heres the wandavision kids. Uhh what else do I have...I feel like I’m rummaging for loose change here...

assorted valentines prep doodles

8. What is your favourite piece that you have done?

Well, obviously this is gonna change all the time and generally it’s gonna be my most recent piece LOL. So yeah, why the hell not. I’ll say it’s this one. I have a pretty short memory which I count as a blessing for an artist. I don’t dwell that long on older work and it keeps me moving forward.

10. What do you like most about your art?

I like that it’s something that only I would make! I had this thought fairly recently and I wrote it down in my sketchbook, it’s pretty cheesy and rambling but it felt revolutionary at the time:

So yeah. I like my art best when it’s the most me and for me. And I like it least when it feels like I’m just making something for social media or for other people’s expectations or whatever.

14. What do you like drawing the most?

Kids in baggy clothing are like my go-to LOL idk if that’s obvious. but also I like being challenged so lately I’ve really loved drawing multi-character compositions, environments, weird angles, etc.

oh i LOVE drawing the underside of shoes lol. And bandages. People that are kinda beat up.. I think it comes from getting a bunch of cuts all the time. I’m always patching myself up and I want to patch characters up too.

15. What do you like drawing the least?

mmm I try to find something to like in every drawing but lets see... I don’t like doing commissions of people’s dogs. Just because it’s normally like... a family friend and my mom volunteered me without my consent and I don’t even really know what they’re expecting me to draw and I don’t even get to meet the dog. Also I’m not that great at dog anatomy. Trying to learn though.

18. What is your purpose for drawing?

This could have a million answers! Uhhh to GIT GOOD??? But also to express myself... and also to make money... I mean it depends on what the drawing IS. I draw fanart mostly to connect to people in the fandom so if you ever see me drawing fanart please take it as like an open invitation to talk to me about the character haha. 

20. How would you rank your art? (poor, mediocre, good, etc.)

Good!!! I have a lot of self-confidence primarily born out of ignorance and a short attention span. If I don’t think too hard about how many other artists are mindblowingly unfathombly good... its easy to think I’m good too! LOL

In all seriousness though, I think the opinion a person has of their art is like a crazy balancing act, right? Like you have to think you suck enough to want to get better but also you have to think you’re good enough to not want to give up. I think we’re all walking that line, I know I am! But also I’m a glass half-full type of person so. Most of the time I feel good about it.

22. List at least one of your “artspirations.”

This is a good question because I’ve been trying and failing to put together one of those “influence map” memes for like a full month now. What’s giving me a hard time is I feel like none of these are actually really obvious “““influences”““ in my art? Like it’s hard to see a lot of them in the work I make...? But idk maybe you guys’ll see what I can’t.

And these are just a couple! God there’s so many more. I could talk about other artists for ages, from all different genres of art. Daumier, Rockwell like every illustrator out there, Dana Gibson, Alex Toth, Hiroshi Yoshida, a lot of the Brandywine School. Lots of current working artists too, Karl Kerschl, frikkin Masashi Kishimoto lol, Jake Wyatt, Richie Pope, Edouard Caplain, Matt Cook, Sachin Teng, - lots of big internet artists, Sophie Li, Freddy Carrasco, Milliofish, Angela Sung... like all my friends from art school too. I could just keep going but I’ll stop for now lol.

24. Do you have a shameful art past? (recolour sprite comics, tracing art, etc.)

I mean if that’s how we’re defining shameful?? sure LOL. It’s not sprite comics but I used to do pokemon sprite recolors all the time. And I used to trace manga panels and color them... Granted this was all when I was like under 12 yrs old so it’s not even embarrassing. Can you really call it shameful when a 7 year old wets the bed or whatever? Not really. In fact some of these are cool as fuck. Look

25. Draw a picture!

Man I’m so tired now but here.

I used to get a lot of compliments for drawing people smiling lol but I don’t think I’ve drawn a lot of smiling lately.. here’s proof I’ve still got it.

OK MEME DONE. onto the rest.

I read this ask first thing when i opened my computer in the morning and it made me really emotional.. I’m so glad my sketches could help you!!

I think a lot of artists on social media talk about the struggle of making art but imo not enough people talk about the joy! Like I know it’s corny but. I really meant what I said at the beginning of that sketchbook about re-contextualizing art around process and progress > product and perfection. I think its super important..! The strength of messy, unfinished, and energetic art! For the feeling of it, for the love it!

That's crazy!!! I hope you like 'em. The whole line of x-books is really good rn imo.

Hi! I totally have the answer for digital stuff on my faq lol. But in terms of drawing on paper.. it varies! I tend to use sketchbooking and any on-paper doodling I do as a way to loosen up/warm-up or experiment. But right now my go-to aresenal is:

from top > bottom

- kuretake no.55 doublesided brush pen

- tombow fudenosuke

- muji 0.38 ballpoint

- medium size poscas

- grey tombow double brush pens

- good ol bic mechanical pencil

not EXACTly sure which inking you referring to from my sketchbook but if I had to take a guess it'd probably be the kuretake no55. That's been my main inker, lately. Great for sketching with the thin end too.

You can print out and eat my art if you like. Just please don't mass produce or re-sell. <3

Thanks! I've come to accept that my art is always gonna be sort of gestural and painty naturally. It's getting it to tighten up enough to be legible that's hard lol...

uh yeah lol I agree actually. I think yolei is great.

I assume these asks are related? LOL

1) Yeah totally true. I love David.

2) I don’t take requests, sorry! But if you want to commission me to draw Legion i would be MORE than happy to. Just e-mail me at isellhotdogs@gmail.com.

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[ribbononline]

Horrible high school kids

You thought it was bonus doodles, but twas I ! another long hc post! This one is mainly about my personal HC’s for their childhoods and teenage years. Now edited to be slightly more readable! 

Also, for clarification- I’m from the Netherlands, so that’s the school system I’ll be using. I just don’t understand other systems well enough, so bear with me. We’ve got elementary school from ~4 to ~12 , high school from ~12 to ~18, and college after that. 

-Archie comes from a rather large family. His household consists of his mother, one older brother, one older sister, two younger twin sisters and one younger brother. His father used to be a sailor, but ended up in a shipwreck, never to be seen again. When he was still around, he was the one who caught a Carvanha for Archie.

 Despite his mother being a stay at home mom to take care of the children, due to being well insured and having a large network of aunts and uncles money never ended up being a problem for them. His mother did end up taking on farming on the side, mostly for themselves, but selling extra’s to the neighbourhood. Once Archie’s eldest siblings ended up getting jobs they also helped keep the family afloat.

Their house is right next to Slateport. They own their own patch of land and dock there.

-Maxie came from a pretty bad household. His mother and father didn’t meet under happy circumstanced, and his father ended up leaving the household when he was ~8. This left him alone with his mother, who fell further into a bad state. Due to not being in contact with other family members, it was just the two of them. Their house was an apartment in Mauville. They got in cheaply when the town was just partly done being rebuild. He stayed out as much as possible, preferring to explore the routes nearby whenever he could which is how he obtained his Numel. Back at home, the Houndoom his father left behind with them ended up having two Poochyena pups with the neighbours Mightyena. 

-Archie and Maxie went to the same high school in Mauville, which is where they met (around 14/15yo). Archie was the kid who passed all classes despite never even studying. Maxie was a problem child at school. Due to not having a healthy outlet, he mostly took things out on those around him, leading into him getting into fights a lot and being rather disrespectful towards the teachers.

-Neither of them really interacted until they ended up in some of the same classes. 

Due to Maxie keeping to himself and Archie already having a friend group, they still didn’t really talk to each other unless it was for class projects. Maxie didn’t care, and Archie just knew Maxie as the kid that liked to pick fights with people.

-The first real talk they had was when Archie ended up in detention due to being late with an assignment. Despite liking to act tough like any teenager would being put in detention for the first time kind of freaked him out! Maxie who also happened to be in for detention ended up striking up a conversation with him before the teacher came in.

They mainly ended up talking about Pokémon a bunch, and ended up promising each other a battle once they both weren’t stuck here. Archie assumed that meant once detention was over for the day, but Maxie decided he didn’t feel like sitting around there for an hour and left trough a window, leaving Archie to explain to the teacher what happened there.

(Due to always picking fights and never really turning anything in on time or being on time, Maxie was more or less in detention daily- or at least supposed to be. More often then not he didn’t feel like going, or left the moment the teacher stepped out of the room. He was kind of the personification of a problem kid.)

-After that, they did in fact have their battle later that week which ended in a tie, and they started talking in the hall sometimes. The year after their shared classes didn’t include any of Archie’s other friends, meaning they ended up sticking together more often as they gradually got closer. They started hanging out more after class, and kind of became an infamous duo- mainly thanks to Maxie- around the school.

Archie wasn’t quite as hyped at the idea of his mom being called about bad behaviour though, so he did his best to make sure they didn’t get in too much trouble. They butted heads over it sometimes, but overall kept getting closer.

This was also around the time Maxie got invited over to the Aogiri’s household more often. (Yes, I’m just using their japanese names as their last names, I don’t trust myself to name anything so this is just what it’s gonna be)

-From the way Maxie never invited Archie over to his house/the way he avoided talking about his home situation and family, Archie eventually figured something was up. After some awkward attempts to talk to Maxie about it (that mainly ended up in Maxie going on the offensive and yelling a lot) he one day showed up to Archie’s house crying and talked some about it. After that Archie became the only person he ever really confided in and even then not that much- preferring to talk about other things. Archie did his best to support him, but as a teen himself with his own issues it admittedly did take a toll on him as well.

-Somewhere during this time friendship turned to dating! It ended up being natural progression more then anything so it wasn’t the biggest change- they were already all over each other at that point anyhow. Now they just could be slightly more obnoxious about it PDA wise.

-Archie’s mother ended up noticing some things off about Maxie’s home situation over time as well, and after Archie explained some things to her, Maxie ended up being invited over even more. The Aogiri’s did their best to let him know he could stay here whenever, and he ended up being really close with all of them.

-Maxie started eventually doing a lot better in school with the support of the Aogiri’s. He mellowed out a lot and started getting better grades too. Despite trying harder in class, doing well in them never came as naturally to him as it did to Archie, so Archie ended up helping him majorly when it came to studying. That said, Maxie would never ever admit to that.

-At 16, Maxie officially stopped ever coming back to his own house. Most of his stuff was already with Archie’s family anyhow. He took the two Poochyena pups they had at home and his Numel and took off. His grand master plan was mainly just to live either outside or stay in Pokémon centers nearby- with all the 10yos running free in the world, it wouldn’t look that out of place. He figured he’d just keep himself monetarily supported by battling.

-As it turned out though, that was a lot easier said then done. Archie and his family however knew Maxie was on his own now, so they ended up being the ones providing for him. At that point there already was always a mattress laid out in Archie’s room for him and he had a corner of it to himself for all his stuff he couldn’t carry on him, so it worked out. They invited him in to officially live with them, but the anxiety of living in a house with others again was hard for him to deal with. So to keep his peace of mind he ‚officially’ stayed homeless. That said, he stayed there more then half of the time, and Archie’s mother always joked about how Archie was the first of her kids to bring her a child-in-law.

-Maxie ended up helping Archie’s mother on her mini farm a lot. He really enjoyed the work, and she appreciated the extra helping hand.

-Archie meanwhile ended up feeding stray Pokémon around their house a lot. This meant more and more would show up there each day, especially once his younger siblings started joining him. His mother wasn’t the happiest about it, but as long as they caused no harm saw no reason to stop them. It’s where he met his Zubat!

-Maxie met his Zubat when off on his own once in one of the school vacations where he ended up exploring a cave. 

-Despite Archie trying very hard not to let it be noticed, and not even being entirely sure himself why, somewhere in high school he ended up first getting kind of depressed and feeling down. Due to having the support of his family and Maxie, it never ended up getting too bad, but he refused to truly confide to people about it, so it never truly left either. He did his best to ignore it and hoped it’d eventually go away on his own. (it didn’t)

-Once the kids turned 18, the Aogiri’s ended up helping fund his college education. Unbeknownst to anyone else, he also ended up sneaking back into his own parents house and stealing a large sum of cash from them to help with that. 

-Despite having a rocky childhood, the support shown to him by so many different people throughout the years made Maxie grow very fond of community and humanity. He didn’t really have any big grandiose ideals at these ages, but it helped lay the groundwork. 

Archie always kind of felt the opposite, being upset that the system led down his friend and worrying about what would have happened had his family not been there. 

-While Archie and Maxie ended up getting different degrees- Maxie in Geology, and Archie in Marine Biology, they got an apartment together where they lived together pretty happily! It was mostly a calm time for the both of them. They both had some odd jobs on the side to support themselves, still looking for the actual dream job they wanted to end up in after graduating.

And from here on out it’s to be continued for whenever I finish the next HC post about their Rocket years! ＼（°▽°）／

[powdermelonkeg]

Hi I had a question but idk if you'll be able to answer? I was going to post a little mini-fic I wrote but my writing sideblog has literally 2 followers lol. Do you have suggestions as to how to tag the post? Whenever I make standard #loz #botw etc. etc. posts they get like.. At most 7 notes lmao. How would I tag zelda writing properly to get it more attention? I know you post fics so I was curious tysm

Okay, so the answer to this is...complicated.

A few weeks ago, I was exactly where you are. I have 300+ followers now (milestone, woo!), but that's because my breakdown post got me a HUGE audience, and my theories resonated with a lot of people who stuck around after that.

So, if you want an audience on Tumblr, there's a couple of things you should do.

Pick a theme and stick to it. If you're posting about a bunch of topics all at once, like reblogging serious news, talking about mcyt, ranting, then posting fanfiction, it's going to be hard to get an audience that goes to you for anything specific. My blog is mostly Zelda-themed, because that's what people who followed me for the breakdown post followed me for. That's not to say that I can't post about other things, but 90% of my content should be along those lines, that way people know what they're signing up for.

Consistency is key. If you only post once a week, people aren't going to recognize your username, icon, or content style when it shows up on their dash. For all they know, you're just another reblog from someone they followed 2 years ago and forgot about. Try to at least reblog stuff that follows the theme you're going for; if you post a Skyward Sword fanfic, go through the Skyward Sword tags (best advice is to go under the Recents tab, because those are people that are for sure active) and reblog stuff that catches your fancy.

Build a community. No, seriously. It's surprisingly easy to do; find a popular post in the vein of content you like, go through the notes, and follow the most recent likes and reblogs. Not only do you fill up your dash so you don't have to wait an hour between getting new content to look at, but you also get a handful of follow-backs! Just make sure that you unfollow people who put bad stuff on your dash after; not all people in the fandom have the same beliefs as you do, and it's up to you to curate your social media experience.

Keep variety in mind. I know I just said to pick a theme, but you have to explore the FACETS of that theme. Like, I post Zelda fanfiction. But I ALSO post Zelda theories, Zelda breakdowns, Zelda wishlists, and I reblog a lot of Zelda art.

Another important note: When you reblog something, add fun tags! It makes people's day, just like comments do! A keysmash, a "this looks really cool," a "hey op you made me cry," something like that goes a long way! HOWEVER If you're looking for quick validation on your fics without a lot of followers, then Tumblr is not the place to post it. Getting your content out there REQUIRES followers to make sure it circulates; you can't count on it being a 1-hit wonder like the spicy takes with 10k notes. Those are outliers, not the norm. If you want to get your fic out there, I recommend building a backlog of about 3-4 chapters, then posting every few days on Ao3 or Fanfic net. That's the kind of community that actively seeks out fics, regardless of who comments or likes it. Know your platform, know what you want, and know what your limits are. It takes work and dedication. Good luck!

[sevensided]

how did you get into writing fic? i'd love to start but idk even where to begin! I loved adats so I was wondering do you have any advice?

Oh my goodness! I am so flattered you’ve asked me this. Yes, I can absolutely help. I’ll throw a bunch of rambling under the cut.

I started writing fic probably when I was... sixteen years old? A lot of my early works were oneshots. I couldn’t figure out how to do anything plot heavy for the life of me, so I just stuck to AUs or whatever I felt like. I wasn’t in any particular fandom -- I really wrote whatever I had ideas for. I remember I tried once to do a plot-heavy story and I received a review absolutely ripping it to shreds. Like, it was so cruel I cried lol. I ended up deleting the fic. Years later, I get what they were trying to say (basically, more substance, less style), but at the time it cut to the quick. Really, it was only when I was in my twenties that I started writing work that was longer and/or better.

The fandom that helped me actually write plot heavy work was a historical-based fandom. As I’m a historian, it was perfect. I got to use my research skills and knowledge to create works that, above all, aimed to feel authentic. I mainly read historical fiction, so I was familiar with how that genre worked. Miraculously, people loved my work. I think I wrote about ~200k in the period of a year? These were several short stories (20-40k) and a few oneshot filler fics. While I was part of this fandom I also helped organise a Big Bang which was a lot of hard work but was extremely rewarding. Along with that, I interacted mainly with other fic writers, so I spent a lot of time chatting to people about ideas and encouraging other writers, and it just created a lovely medley where no concept was impossible or any line of dialogue too difficult. We supported each other and it was truly like a little commune. I gradually stepped away from the fandom mainly because it was just a part of my life at a very specific time, and almost as soon as that time was over, my love for that story/ship faded, but I firmly believe I figured out a lot of how/what I do now purely through that experience.

Regarding ADATS

With ADATS, it stemmed entirely from wanting to “explain” three months in canon (at the end of season three). I was interested in the idea of season four setting up Will/Mike in canon, and I wanted to test the source material to see if I could draw from what already existed to create something authentic. I began with that simple idea: what happened from July to October in 1985? Then I thought about the major themes I wanted to hit -- family, friendship, coming of age, sexuality -- and I nested them around the bigger concept: how do I get Mike from being ostensibly straight to realising he is gay? That meant thinking of two steps: Mike discovering his attraction to guys; Mike discovering his attraction to Will. Those two concepts were separate “arcs” that needed addressing in different ways. Balance was key to weaving them together and making the reader feel like they knew what was coming (and that they felt smart for putting the pieces together) without just rushing through and going “now kiss!” That’s partly why ADATS needs a sequel, lol: because it’s not finished!

Writing process

The first thing I do when I start to get an idea is I write it down. Sounds obvious. But when you have a killer line of dialogue come to you in the shower and you think “I’ll remember that” -- reader, you will not remember it. You gotta get it down ASAP! I do that the whole way through, as generally I’ll be thinking of scenes I’m stuck on and then it’ll just come to me and I’ll quickly jot it down.

The next thing -- or what I do in the meantime -- is start structuring. I plan. I try to plan a lot. Sometimes it’s okay to write “and something happens here to get them here”, because you’ll figure it out later, but for the most part I’ve discovered that planning is like gold and you can’t get enough of it. I break my work up into generally 3-4 parts/sections, and I treat each section like a mini story. So each part needs a conflict and resolution, and it needs to flow into the next section. You need to have a feeling of things evolving and maturing. Once I’ve planned those little bits, I start thinking about the bigger plot arc and how I can drop in hints along the way. I’m probably not a subtle or skilled enough writer to yet pull off that sort of gasping twist you get in really excellent books, but I’m trying to get there. It’s hard, is what I’m trying to say, but that’s okay, because we’re all learning.

Then I generally do aesthetic stuff. Sounds stupid, probably. But nothing helps me get more into a mood than doing a Pinterest board or -- most of all -- making a Spotify mix. I start thinking about the vibe and the general atmosphere, and then I almost exclusively listen to that mix when I’m working. Sort of like muscle memory? Just to get the creative juices associated with that particular selection of songs.

Another thing I’ll do along with plot structure is character structure. This is a biggie. I mean, a story is nothing without characters. So I’ll just jot down a bunch of bullet points of characters and particular aspects that I want to highlight or remember. I hate continuity errors in fiction. Like, if someone says they work on Maple Street but later in the fic they’re working on Pine Street. I hate that. So I keep note of specific things that my main character might notice at repeated points in the story (colours, places, smells, names, sounds -- so they’re all consistent even as the narrative evolves). That’s another thing -- your characters’ motivations. Not everyone is going to be a huge player, but they all do serve a purpose. The most important character is obviously your main character. I personally think it’s important to let your M.C. be an arse at times. They’re going to be mean, they’re going to misinterpret things or fly off the handle... just let ‘em. Let them be wretched humans, and then bring them back and make them realise what they’ve done. Let them learn! I love consequences in fiction, lol.

At the same time, I’ll probably start writing. We’ve already written down some snippets of neat dialogue or descriptions, but now we should start the actual process. For me, I used to start at the beginning. Usually this was the most fleshed out anyway: I’ll have a clear idea of the beginning and the end, but nothing in the middle. These days, if I have a scene in mind that I can’t forget, I’ll just write it. It will possibly get scrapped or rewritten, but that’s okay, because at least you’ve got it down and now you can devote your brain power to something useful (like figuring out what the middle is supposed to be). I’ll have half a dozen of totally out of context scenes just littered in my Word document that I’ll add to as I go along. Eventually, though, you’re going to start writing properly, and that’s when you write your opening scene.

Opening scenes: super important. Every time I write a scene I think: what is the point of this? What do I want the reader to learn or takeaway? Sometimes you do have filler scenes, but they also serve a different purpose (perhaps to establish a group dynamic or to explore/describe a character’s surroundings). Mainly, though, every scene should push something forward in some way, whether it’s character development or a plot point. So, with an opening scene, I always think you have to establish: where you are; who you are; what they are doing; where they’ve come from (in a philosophical and practical sense); and where they’re going (ditto). That doesn’t have to happen in the first paragraph -- that would be silly. But if you sprinkle that information in over time it’ll gradually build up a picture of your character and that way the reader can get an idea of who they are. You basically need to give a snapshot of what your story is about. This also goes back to the character creator stuff: where they are at the start should be different to where they end up. How that happens is, of course, because of plot, and because you’ve structured everything to the nth degree, we’ve got a very clear progression of that character’s growth (/s easier said than done lol).

General advice

Write down everything: every idea, a bit of dialogue, a description, whatever. Write it down. Doesn’t have to be neat. Just has to be on paper. You can’t remember everything, so if you’re spending time trying to hold those things in your head, it’s taking up space for new ideas to come along.

Structure, plan, structure, plan. Sometimes it’s boring and I hate it. Other times, when I’ve not written in a few days and I open the Word doc and think wtf is this supposed to be, I am very grateful for Past Me for leaving such detailed notes. Seriously, it helps so much. Oneshots don’t really need planning, in my experience. You just get those out there. But multi-chaptered stories really do, even ones that “just” focus on a relationship.

Whatever you want to write, commit to it. Space goblins invade Hawkins? Do it. Eleven and Max find themselves in a cult akin to Midsommar (2019) and must escape? Yes. Just... whatever you want to do, remember that you’re writing it for you. Write what most interests you, what makes you when you reread it go AHHHHH I LOVE THIS!! Because that makes it a thousand times easier to actually get on with the writing when you enjoy what you’re doing.

Write a lot. Every day, if you can, or at least at designated times. Occasionally I have a very specific headspace/vibe I have to be in, but sometimes it just hits me and I’ll say to my partner “I need to write now” and just disappear, lol. The more you write the more you write. It’s so, so, so true. Cannot emphasise this enough. When I wrote that ~200k in twelve months? It was because I literally wrote every. day. Or near enough. Remember that some days you’ll write 200 words, and other days you’ll write 20k (this happened to me with ADATS -- part of the reason I finished it so quickly was because I had sprints of writing 10k+ at a time that only happened because I was in the rhythm of it). Write, write, write. Who cares if it’s crap! No one will see it until you are ready. In the meantime, just write!

Probably last of all (although I could go on and on) is connect with other writers. If you’re struggling to start, sometimes just talking about it can help a huge amount. I hope it goes without saying that you can message me whenever you want, anon or not, and I will talk to you. We can talk about ideas or I can beta stuff, whatever you want! Find like-minded people and talk to them about what you want to do. Another thing this helps is in advertising your work when you do publish. I see a lot of first time fic writers get super down because they publish their magnum opus on AO3 but no one comments. Honestly, it’s because no one knows you’ve published! You don’t have to be tooting your own horn every which way, but just actively talking about your work and even collaborating with other content creators with get you hyped and other people too (and the input and encouragement other fandom members give is just... out of this world. Anon messages helped me finish ADATS when I was really worried I wouldn’t [that’s the truth]. Seriously, support is everything). When you have people excited about your work, you get excited. It’s really as simple as that.

I could go on but this is already horrendously long. I hope even a bit of this helps! If you want to chat or have any more questions, just hit me up any time.

[tmntgirlie]

TMNT x Reader

Helping You Bleach Your Hair

Prompt: Heyoo :) hope you are having a fantastic evening/morning/afternoon/timeless endeavor in the void, could I request hcs of the boys helping their s/o bleach/dye their hair? In the process rn and would love some helping hands tysm ❤️❤️

Oh my gosh, why haven’t I thought of doing this one sooner? I’ll try to use laypersons’ terms as much as possible and not too much hairdresser lingo. Hope you like it! (Pro tip: please don’t bleach your hair at home. As a licensed cosmetologist, I wouldn’t even do so on myself)

Leonardo

“Y/N? Hon, where are you- what are you doing?”

“Uh-”

“What is that stuff on your head?”

You quickly explained what you were doing

It really wasn’t that big of deal- you wanted a chance, and you thought that lightening your hair would bring that change

Plus, once you got to blonde, you wanted to try all sorts of fun colors

“Is it supposed to look like cake frosting?”

“Saturation is key. Can you help me get to the back?”

Leonardo gingerly took the color brush from your hand

“What do I do with it?”

“You take thin slices of hair and brush the product on. Don’t get too close to my scalp, though, stay an inch away. That part is supposed to be last, I think”

You never had somebody more gentle working on your hair

You had your fingers crossed the entire time

It’s just hair, you kept telling yourself

What’s the worst that could happen?

Maybe you should have recorded yourself in case you screwed up

You could be the star of a new Brad Mondo video that way, make some coin

Twenty minutes later, Leo handed the brush back to you

“What now?”

“Wait another twenty minutes, I think, then do my roots- then rinse and tone”

“Tone?”

You had so much to teach this terrapin about hair

Raphael

“What the fuck is on your head?”

“Raphie! Baby! I’m just bleaching my hair!”

“The fuck is that?”

You scoffed

He was not in a good enough mood to appreciate your creativity

“I want to color my hair bright red, but I have to bleach it first so it’s really bright”

“Any particular reason you want red?”

“I’m starting to rethink it, actually”

“Well, who am I to stop you? Here, let me help”

You carefully handed him the color brush, hoping this wasn’t a mistake

Sure, he had his creative side, but he wasn’t this sort of creative that you knew of

“Thin slices, away from my root”

“Got it, babe. How thick do you want it?”

You grinned

“Thick as you can get it. It needs to be saturated so the lightener can penetrate better”

“Oh, penetration? That is something you know well”

He was kind of rough with your hair, but was it bad that you liked it?

Little tug here, a pull there

Your hair was probably not the only thing getting penetrated that night

Donatello

“Donnie! Donatello! Baby! Honeybuns!”

Your purple-banded turtle boyfriend ran into the room like it was on fire

“What? What is it, baby, what’s wrong?”

“Can you check to see if I got all of it?”

“Got all of it?”

You gestured to your hair

“How do you want me to look?”

You gave him a tail comb

“Use this, make sure every single strand is covered and that the roots aren’t touched. Can you do that for me please, baby?”

Donatello was certainly up for the challenge

He took that comb and ran the pointy end through your hair, inspecting every single strand of hair

He licked his thumb and wiped away anything that was even close to your scalp

“Isn’t this not safe to do at home?”

“Someone could say the same thing about your lab experiments”

He didn’t respond, just smiled and kept working

“What’s your goal with this, exactly?”

“I’m thinking of going for an icy blonde color”

“You’ll need to go a lot lighter than this”

“Well, yeah, it’s supposed to sit on for forty minutes. Sixty minutes max, I think”

“Did you even read the instructions?”

Donnie quickly researched ‘bleaching your hair at home’ and found out exactly what to do

If his baby wanted to be icy blonde, they were going to be icy blonde, dammit

Michelangelo

“Aw, you’re doing your hair without me?”

This turt thought himself to be a professional

After all, he had seen all of the Brad Mondo videos and bleach fails

He knew what to do, he knew what not to do

Dare I say he had more of an idea than you?

“Don’t tell me you got the T-18 toner- that’s a permanent color! Way too high ammonia for freshly bleached hair!”

“Don’t worry, babe, I got a demi gloss”

“What’s the goal here, babycakes? What are we working towards?”

You showed him a picture on your phone

At this point, he had completely taken over your home project

You weren’t complaining

It was hard to keep your arms up for that long

“Oh, easy peasy! Do you want me to throw in a few lowlights as well for dimension? You don’t want a flat hair color”

“Do you know how to do those?”

“Ooh! What about a balayage? I saw a bunch of videos on how to do them-”

“I already started the all over bleach, but maybe we can do that next time?”

“Next time?”

Oh, he was so excited

He didn’t have his own head of hair to screw with, and now he figured he had your permission to do your head

“This is going to look so bomb. Should I do a root tap so that it grows in better?”

There were days you questioned his knowledge of the world

This was a day where you questioned why he had this knowledge

Again, not that you were complaining

-

A/N

I’ll admit, this one was fun. I could totally picture the guys wanting to help you or being easily convinced to help their partner do their hair. In all seriousness, I do not condone bleaching/lightening your hair at home. BUT if you absolutely must, here are a few tips

Slow and steady wins the race. You don’t need 40v developer to get where you want to go. 10v works just fine

In short, developers determine how fast the hair will process. In my country, we have 4 kinds- 10 volume, 20 volume, 30 volume, and 40 volume. You can mix them (using math, yay!) to get to any volume inbetween or you can dilute them with water- but never use more than 1:1 ratios when doing so! You could kill the developer

10v developer will lift the ‘slowest’, but will cause the least amount of damage and can be stretched/left on a tiny bit longer than manufacturers instructions. As long as you can’t stretch you hair more than 70% elasticity, you should be okay

Follow mixing ratios stated on your color/bleach, but when using bleach, these ratios are more like guidelines. The product will work BEST if used as stated on instructions, but you can put in a little more developer to create a runnier consistency or a little more powder bleach to make it thicker. It will still work

When using foils, you don’t need a cake-frosting thick bleach mixture. You can do with a runnier consistency as long as it sticks to the foils and doesn’t slide right out

Use a thicker consistency for open-air processing or processing just using a cap or plastic bag. The outside will harden, but will keep the inside moist inside

Follow instructions from the manufacturer on timing. Start the timer when you start applying- if you take 20 minutes to apply and the bleach needs to process for 45 minutes, that first piece you bleached will be done when the other parts have 25 minutes to go

And for the love of God, use a demi permanent color and 10v developer or LESS if you are toning

Plus, toning needs to be on level or lower in order to work

Happy coloring!

[femslashhistorian]

SuperRojasCorp Fic Recs

In this fanfic rec have collected 5 amazing SuperRojasCorp (Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor/Andrea Rojas) stories. This polyamorous ship came as a surprise for me and is the latest (and probably last) addition to my Supergirl (TV 2015) ship obsessions.

While SuperRojasCorp is a rarepair, it is a rarepair with several amazing and long AUs (and a good amount of smut) that made it relatively easy to fill this fanfiction recommendation. The only imperfection is that at the time of writing this, several of the fics are incomplete. (see my individual comments on the respective fics).

I am not really familiar with canon Andrea Rojas (as I haven’t really watched the last seasons of the show), but fanon Andrea in the three no-powers AUs seems pretty consistent to me across the three AUs, and I like her and the chemistry she has with Lena and Kara a lot.

 Featured stories - Detailed recs and links after the cut

a falling star fell from your heart (and landed in my eyes) by Valkyrees: The Hiking AU

You, Me, Her by BiFelicia : The Quarantine AU

Two Doors Down by karalovesallthegirls: The Other Woman AU

Just between us girls by Marieke_things_dreams_and_stuff: The Smutty Canon Adjacent One

Something to Be Earned by Evilsnowswan: The Kinky Smutty One

 The Hiking AU

a falling star fell from your heart (and landed in my eyes) by Valkyrees ( @valkyrieskwad​ on tumblr)

Lena Luthor/Andrea Rojas, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor/Andrea Rojas (SuperRojasCorp)

Completed, 4 chapters, 34k words, 2019-2020

Explicit, no-powers AU

 To be honest: Lena fucking hates hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. It's twenty-six hundred miles of blisters and heat and frostbite, an incorrigible cocktail of bro culture and toxic masculinity and being judged in a judgement free zone. It's dehydration and migraines and shit sleep and shit food, and some days it's hard to find a reason she shouldn't just book a flight out the first chance she gets reception and the elusive phone charge.

To be honest: She also fucking loves it. It's beautiful and breathtaking, the most rewarding thing she's ever done, and the hardest she's ever pushed her body. It's camping with Andrea, perfect sunsets, views, trail angels and it's... Kara Danvers. In fact, this whole thing might be worth it just because she meets Kara Danvers.

OR, post college hiking au, where Lena's hopeless, Andrea is a mess, and Kara's just along for any ride.

 No-power AU. Andrea and Lena are best friends (at least this is what they admit to themselves) on a very long hiking trip. Where they meet Kara. Lena is young and cute (no crimes and betrayal of Lex and she is scared to admit that she is in love with / into women.

This is a lighthearted true poly fic, no angst. An amazing, beautifully written story.

Lena's frustrations and exhaustions on the long hike feel so real. I have not done such a long hike the Appalachian trail but I have done something vaguely similar (once, many years ago) and this fic brought back so many memories.

Note: I had originally somehow mixed up Pacific Crest Trail and Appalachian trail - for whatever reason; corrected now.

 Favorite Quote:

"Did you make it this far your first time?" Andrea asks, looking up, setting her beer on the counter and twisting it in its own ring of condensation as the droplets pool on the bottom. 

"Yeah, I finished my first long thru-hike, but it wasn't easy and I'd done a bunch of shorter stuff beforehand."

"How'd it feel when you were done?" she asks.

"Good," Kara says. "I was mostly just glad it was finally over."

"I'll definitely be glad when this is over," Andrea whispers, and Lena walks over to hug against her. "I just, fuck, I don't know. I think what keeps me going at this point is knowing I'll have stopped so close. But I'm fucking exhausted and tired and tired of talking about hiking and shit meals and miles and Canada, I just wanna go home."

 The Quarantine AU

You, Me, Her by BiFelicia ( @deadbiwrites​ on tumblr)

Lena Luthor/Andrea Rojas, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor/Andrea Rojas (SuperRojasCorp)

Incomplete, 4/5 chapters, 47k words, 2020

Completed, 5/5 chapters, 64k words, 2020-2021

Explicit, no-powers AU

 Andrea's trying to adjust to a lot. The world being locked down when she's 6,000 miles from home. Not being able to go to work. Oh, and living with her girlfriend, Lena. And her girlfriend's other girlfriend, Kara, who is the last person Andrea ever expected Lena to settle down with. Not that there's anything wrong with Kara, exactly. Andrea almost gets it, in a way. Kara's pretty and perky and she cooks like an angel... But still. Then again, Andrea supposes she doesn't have to get it. After all, just because Lena's dating both of them doesn't mean they're dating each other.

 This is a slightly different take on a polyamory story than most of the other Supergirl poly fic: At the beginning of the story Lena is in an established relationships with both Kara and Andrea, but Kara and Andrea on the other hand hardly know each other.

I love this amazing story. I rarely read incomplete fics but I was really intrigues and after the first chapter I just couldn’t stop.

I love this no-powers AU Kara: She is cute and sweet but neither oblivious nor an idiot. She is a secure and successful woman with a striving career. I love the scene when Andrea does not (fully) know what Kara does for a living.

Update 10/2021: The story finished with a satisfying and quite smutty ending in chapter 5. Highly recommended.

  The Other Woman AU

Two Doors Down (they're laughing and drinking and having a party) by karalovesallthegirls

Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor/Andrea Rojas (SuperRojasCorp)

Incomplete, 1/3 chapters, 16k words, 2020

Mature

 Andrea Rojas hasn't spoken to Lena Luthor in a decade, but that doesn't stop her from reaching out when she realizes she's being played. And when Lena asks for her help uncovering just how deep that betrayal goes, well - who is Andrea to say no?

or Three women work together to bring down a bastard of a man and just so happen to fall in love along the way.

 I have not seen the Movie The Other Woman and while I can’t comment on similarities between the story and the movies, this is not a problem to enjoy the story.

This is a brilliant story. It is both hilarious and emotionally heavy at the same time. In the first chapter there is a is a lot of fake dating (with old, buried feelings) between Andrea and Lena, Lena pining for Kara, Andrea being jealous - in other words: perfect.

The end of chapter one works very well as a satisfying break point. Ironically at the end of the first chapter the only one who is actually doing polyamory (so far) is Mike. Thankfully, we hardly get to see Mike directly in the story.

  The Smutty Canon Adjacent One

Just between us girls by Marieke_things_dreams_and_stuff ( @thingsanddreamsandstuff​ on tumblr)

Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor/Andrea Rojas (SuperRojasCorp)

Completed, 1 chapter, 15k words, 2020

Explicit; smut, top Andrea, top Lena, sub Kara

Kara gets stuck at work and finds Andrea and Lena in Andrea's office. Andrea's not so eager to let her go and has some interesting ideas on how to spend their time.

Kara's pretty much fine with anything, and if it makes Lena see Kara in a different light? Well, then that's just an added bonus.

With Andrea’s help this is a different (canon divergent) way how Kara and Lena can reconcile their relationship. Funnily enough the smutty fic is the only one of the four fics that is somewhat canon compliant/adjacent.

This is a beautifully written story that I very much enjoyed. Mostly smut with a bit of feelings and a hint of something more.

 Favorite Quote:

Kara looked at Lena for a little bit, eyebrows scrunched as if she couldn’t figure something out. As if she couldn’t figure Lena out.

Andrea paused and waited.

Now was the time to see whether or not Kara would take the bait. Would she be too embarrassed and leave – potentially leaving Andrea stranded with a sexual harassment complaint in the morning – or would she stay? And by staying – get caught up in the web Andrea had so carefully spun. Andrea desperately wished for the latter.

 The Kinky Smutty One

Something to Be Earned by Evilsnowswan  ( @evilsnowswan​   on tumblr)

Lena Luthor/Andrea Rojas (RojasCorp), Eventual Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor/Andrea Rojas ((SuperRojasCorp))

Incomplete, 5/? chapters, 15k words, 2020

Incomplete, 31/? chapters, 147k words, 2020-

Explicit; smut, dom Andrea, sub Lena, spanking

Early season 5. Betrayed by the people she thought were her friends, Lena is devastated. She is spiraling and making all the wrong decisions— until someone from her past steps in, steps up, and offers to catch her.

RojasCorp AU. It’s kinky. Eventual SuperRojasCorp.

 According to the author eventual SuperRojasCorp. Up until chapter 5 Andrea/Lena, and Kara get’s to hear and see things she never knew she wanted.

This one is a really good smut fic and really kinky.  Read the tags, warnings and author’s note before you proceed.

Update 10/2021: One year in and the story is still going strong and continues to be very enjoyable. It is overall probably a bit less smutty than the first chapters, there are also angsty chapters and an Andrea centric plot that I did not expect. Lena's and Andrea's relationship is explored in more details and there is a lovely slow buildup for Andrea/Kara (and ultimately SuperRojasCorp). Highly recommended.

Favorite Quote:

She shouldn’t look. It is none of her business, and she really has all of this work to do, but with every second longer her chances of focusing on anything other than what her eyes are currently riveted on become slimmer and slimmer.

They are still talking. Miss Rojas doesn’t take her eyes off Lena for even a second, and the pit in Kara’s stomach catches fire, flames licking up into her chest. By the time her mind has caught up with the sensation and is trying to snuff it out, her pencil is already in two splintered pieces on her desk.

 -------------

This was cross-posted to tumblr and my WordPress blog

Change log

Originally published 2021-01-11

Updated 2021-10-24 with additional comments for two of the incomplete fics: You, Me, Her (now competed) and Something to Be Earned (still WIP).

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