#listen i saw this meme i saw the new art i had to make it i am not sorry

[tinysluttywizardwaist]

[t00thpasteface]

Hiiiii₍⁠₍⁠◞⁠(⁠ ⁠•⁠௰⁠•⁠ ⁠)⁠◟⁠₎⁠₎

Could you explain the hipster Vs fandom war. I've been on here for like four years and I never knew that existed lol and btw I really really love your art and you are one my biggest inspos for how I imagine and draw my Clark.

i'm not sure i can explain it in a way that makes sense, and certainly not in a way that makes you say "i understand why this was such a big deal", but gl'bgolyb knows i can try.

first, let me take you on a sensory experience... picture in your mind the following things... skinny jeans... nerd glasses... a weirdly dapper fashion sense in a time where everything is baggy and neon... boom, you have 2010-2014 online tumblr hipster culture. and also 70s elvis costello, oddly enough.

although admittedly i don't know his stance on pumpkin spice lattes.

anyway. now that that's burned into your brain, consider a significant population of this exact type of person that has already been well-established on this microblogging platform around the turn of the decade. tumblr doesn't really have an app yet because smartphones haven't taken over everyone's life yet, and online fandom culture is still largely dominated by deviantart as the main "fandom hub". most people, myself included, are getting their main meme fixes from facebook (which your parents were not yet on) or the icanhazcheezburger image-aggregator network. THEN EVERYTHING CHANGED WHEN THE FANDOM NATION ATTACKED.

somehow, a huge crowd of people who considered their favorite books/movies/games to be core personality traits began to set up shop on this fair slate-blue isle. i number myself among this crowd, having been lured here by google-image-searching for miscellaneous fanart in 2011. the "old guard" largely belongs to, and continuously attracts new bloggers within, a burgeoning subculture that 100% defines itself by bucking popular trends and social expectations... whether or not this is actually accomplished by purchasing beverages from starbucks and putting old film filters on every photo, i cannot say.

you may be seeing an issue already arising: hey, if the hipsters hate everything that's popular and gatekeep all their interests, and the fandom bloggers are obsessed with extremely popular franchises and are hell-bent making them even more popular, isn't that going to cause a little friction?

well, yes. it caused a fuck ton of friction. a division arose early on between "the fandom side of tumblr" and "the hipster side of tumblr." some people, like myself, played both sides. others abstained from the rigid dichotomy and considered themselves to be on another "side," like the science side of tumblr, known for explaining relatively straightforward STEM concepts in large essays that began with something like "listen up fuckers."

ahhh, unfriendable. such a narrow little window in time where cheezburger sites and facebook had equal sway in the online zeitgeist.

interestingly, as someone who trawled a LOT of aesthetic tags, the most popular of which was simply #aesthetic (it was shockingly consistent in there), i never actually saw hipster bloggers complaining about fandom bloggers. it was always the other way around, with fandom bloggers bragging about how much they're freaking out the squares to get cool points with other fandom bloggers, all while never actually engaging with the hipster bloggers because their tags rarely overlapped.

hi, marge! we're freaking out the hipsters!

regardless of whether there was any material reality to it, or if it was simply a Minitrue level of entirely fictional warfare, this concept entrenched itself into the fandom bloggers, likely as a way to still feel "edgy" and unique while, again, obsessing over extremely popular and mainstream things like doctor who, pokemon, avatar the last airbender, the brand-new mcu, and other decidedly non-counterculture media. even with things it felt like no one irl had heard of, like hetalia and homestuck, those were online juggernauts nonetheless, the former of which had dominated deviantart for years and the latter of which prompted hotels and convention centers across the world to implement very strict rules about unsealed body paint. people treated fandoms like they were some sort of exclusive country club with membership fees and a dress code. and dunking on hipsters became an entire genre of Fake Internet Story, which were already pervasive on this website.

what's the point of being in a clique if there's no outgroup to flex on? #swag

this whole phenomenon ran concurrently, even symbiotically, with other tumblrisms like "tumblr university" and those horrendous "not like other girls" memes...

which means, of course, it was absolutely dead in the fucking water once DashCon happened in 2014. i don't need to tell you what happened at DashCon (there's a million essays and videos about it if you're one of today's lucky ten thousand who's never heard of it), but all across the fandom side of tumblr, it felt like finding out your parents lied about santa claus. turns out the fandoms you're in don't actually say anything about who you are as a person, a bunch of tumblrinas can't just will a fully functional micronation into existence just by wearing tacky merchandise in a public venue, and magic probably isn't real.

i wish i had some grand way to end this story, but really the moral is the same as it ever was: online drama is eternal, inescapable, and completely fucking worthless. if you only post to get mad at shit, especially if you're just making up a guy to get mad at, cut that out. touch grass. look at images of cats. i don't remember any of the enemies i made from this era, but i fondly remember all the friends, and i'm richer for making those positive connections. that's all for today's episode of Tumblr History with Toothpaste Face... remember to tip your waitress and stay minty.

[schismusic]

Joy Division, or: how I learned to stop worrying and love New Order, too

Spring is weird as hell because one time you have this glaring sun that powers you up like being plugged into a wall outlet, then not five minutes later clouds begin to gather and you feel like you're going to die if anything goes south. So the most obvious combination to represent two sides of this same coin, emotional and meteorological, is Joy Division and New Order.

Sometimes you need Transmission or Shadowplay for the sunny days — impassioned jolts, sparks flying everywhere. Sometimes The Perfect Kiss hits harder on a cloudy afternoon, coming back home and in need of that extra push to not fall asleep in the train. It's surprising to realize the versatility displayed by both bands, or the same band in two different iterations according to whomever you ask. Peter Hook says, as late as 1993, that the laziest member of New Order is Ian Curtis. Or again this other person, in the comments under the Atmosphere official video on YouTube, who went to see New Order (Hooky-less New Order, which might be a relevant distinction) at the O2 Arena a couple of years ago and they gave an encore, says "Those of us who stayed got the privilege of watching Joy Division perform three of their songs". Interesting outlook on the matter. I personally saw Peter Hook and the Light play both Joy Division records and, I'm pretty sure, an encore comprised of just Love Will Tear Us Apart at the Arti Vive Festival in Soliera, back when it was still free to attend some of the events. I remember being pretty mad that Hooky had stopped to take pics with basically everyone and then left exactly as I was approaching. In retrospect I don't exactly blame the man, it was like midnight anyway. I remember nothing of the back trip home.

My first contact with Joy Division happened when I was thirteen and very much in my prog era. I was in Rome staying at an aunt of mine's place for my fourteenth birthday and she told me I could get a CD, since I had gotten some money saved up over time. Some Facebook page dedicated to Pink Floyd I'd liked (yeah, Facebook at age thirteen — I literally just wanted to play a fucking Flash game, back when Facebook allowed them, and I ended up getting to be terminally online. Crazy how things turn out) used to share a lot of memes and fanart relating to the Unknown Pleasures album cover, and me being a massive Pink Floyd head at the time I thought "I mean, if these guys are pushing this band so hard, that's gotta mean something". The album cover was pretty striking, admittedly: a far cry from the paisley ass paintings that I had grown to accept as the gold standard for the music I liked, but its simplicity struck a chord closer to The Dark Side of the Moon, or perhaps The Wall. Those were records I liked a lot, probably called them "the best records ever made" to more than one person, not like they aren't but that's a very bold statement to make when your listening experience consists exactly of

Madonna's Confessions on a Dance Floor when I was six;

Daft Punk's complete discography (minus Random Access Memories, which wasn't out yet) when I was twelve;

Pink Floyd's complete discography, courtesy of a CD collection coming out with some Italian newspaper, that same year;

a couple random classic rock records recommended to me by older friends and relatives usually well into their fifties or sixties at the time, random people on Internet forums — which, for clarification, I did not actively attend, preferring to just lurk from time to time — and the OndaRock "milestones" page.

So browsing through the surprisingly expansive CDs section of this electronics shop in Rome, and being mesmerized by a vinyl rack in the days when Music on Vinyl was the final frontier of pretending you could re-analogue the digital ("you mean to tell me these are like CDs, but bigger? Whoever designed these truly lived in the future"), I came across that very same album art that had stricken me so hard. I had listened to the first seconds of the album on YouTube, but that weird drum sound — so echoey, so distant, ultimately not particularly powerful, meaning it didn't really sound like Bonzo: it sounded more like my own band, which at the time didn't even exist yet — I didn't really know what to make of. This store I was in had one of those preview listening machines that would scan the barcode on the CDs and give you a small snippet of the song. I pull the CD up to the scanner, the scanner lights up green, I put on the headphones and the solo from this comes up:

Clearly they had to be kidding me. I had come to know, sneaking into infinitely many rehearsals with the band from my mother's town, what it sounded like when someone tried to play lead without something else filling up the arrangement (even though I didn't really know all that, or at least lacked the vocabulary to properly express it) and, for Christ's sake, didn't these guys notice rehearsing? It sounded empty, weirdly so, and it wasn't my thing, I thought. I put that CD away and picked up a band I knew I'd like — Genesis, specifically. So Nursery Cryme became the first CD I've ever paid with my own money, the very day I turned fourteen. Not a bad pickup. I remember being very impressed with the fast blurring lead guitar on The Musical Box and digging the sweet pastoral atmospheres of For Absent Friends and Harlequin. I still think of that record more often than one would probably assume looking at this blog, or my most played on Spotify. At the time, that was the best move I could take, really: why beat my head against a record that, as your average prog nerd ballbreaker, simply wasn't speaking to me?

Then all of a sudden in August of the same year my friend's dad hands me a 16 gigabyte USB drive, full of random music from all eras of rock. A lot of it remains inscrutable to me for a really long time, most notably Tom Waits (see related post), but I spent the whole month reading random folder names, seeing if something catches my eyes, and at one point I come across the Mars Volta. Open the folder up, read the names of their first three records, and my first thought is "Christ, these guys look incomprehensible. I'm about to have some fun". Long story short: I end up having a lot of fun, the Mars Volta turns into my favourite band at the time and finding out that they had previously been called At the Drive-In makes me gain some measure of respect for punk rockers: if they tried hard enough, I must've thought, they could prog as hard as anyone. In the meantime the ghost of Joy Division remains at the back of my head. I feel like I'm missing something, for the first time in my life: it's not them, it's me. Too bad that same realization didn't occur to me when it came to the people in my life until much, much later, but that's being fourteen for you I suppose. Early King Crimson and the Mars Volta were the pinnacle of violence to me, and not even the very few Metallica songs I'd downloaded just to see what would happen scratched that itch. It felt a bit too cauterized for some reason (I would later find out I had been looking in the wrong direction the whole time: the Black Album "sucked", according to my favourite metalhead of the time, who somehow catalyzed my interest from the very second I saw him in the school's courtyard. Hard to imagine why I would imprint on people like puppies do, but what the fuck, not like I've ever outgrown that anyway, I've just gotten better at managing it). But I felt there was more than violence to this, or different forms of violence. When Christmas came around and my relatives tried to get me presents, my mother asked if there was anything specific I was interested in, and I basically told her "look, if they can get me some CDs off of this list, I'm golden". It had some bangers on it, namely Noctourniquet by the Mars Volta — it's one of their best and I will die on this hill, be warned — and The Downward Spiral, which might as well warrant its own post in an ideal world. But the best of them all I think came from a random purchase, once again with the little money I had lying around at the time.

Closer appears to be, right away, a bit more concrete, and if there's something inexperienced music fans like is a pretty packaging that conjures a strong emotional response before they've even played the record. Compare a color-inverted graph of pulsar emissions to a literal funerary monument. Opening up the booklet I was shocked to see that Genesis was used as a negative point of comparison (bad omen, I thought) by people close to the band, and I came across much more detailed information about Ian Curtis's untimely demise — at that time, something far too removed from my experience to be faced with the delicacy and attention it deserves. Atrocity Exhibition hits like a ten-ton truck, a reference which at the time I wouldn't have been able to make for obvious reasons, and Isolation exposes all the nerve tissue under the skin. Passover comes in and strips everything even barer, and then A Means to an End turns… danceable, for some reason? Big emotional moment with The Eternal and Decades, which I thought actually took them closer to my usual tastes. And yet at the same time I kept looking at Colony, Heart and Soul and Twenty Four Hours as the most compelling cuts. Geometric assault sounding like sheet metal if it were music; rhythmically driven emptiness that serves as a minimal backdrop for depressed poetry, and finally a rocking ebb-and-flow that would probably inform a lot of my interest in GY!BE-like post-rock in the coming years. Very interesting to think that the same guys who'd done Unknown Pleasures could think of this. To this day, when asked, I still do think that Closer is the best Joy Division record, but what does it even mean when the records are exactly two, compilations notwithstanding?

It was around this time that it came to my attention that both Joy Division and another band called New Order had a record called Substance out, both published by the same recording company, both coming out within a year of each other. Looking it up, it turns out it's fully intentional, because New Order is simply Joy Division minus Ian Curtis. It would turn out to be a tad bit more complex than that. Anyway, I look New Order up and kind of have to do a double-take. Synthpop? In my Joy Division? More likely than you'd think, considering Isolation exists. But yeah, that sort of seals it — I wouldn't care about this New Order for a million years. Until all of a sudden a couple of years later David Sylvian bursts like a comet in my face, which of course leads me straight to Japan, the same year as I'd come across Berlin-era Bowie, and you can probably guess where this is going, right?

Well, you'd be wrong. I still don't check out New Order. There's a whole new world open to me — vaporwave and therefore R Plus Seven come to my attention, which leads me to dissect that record like an alien tool of unclear purposes. This of course leads me onto an ambient tangent, taking me back to my Tim Hecker listens of that same year, which has the effect of renewing my interest in "pure" electronic music and the then-rising post-dubstep movement. The sheer experience of sound, the dazzling modernity and innovation, is what's in at the time. I have no time for nostalgia-pandering dimwits: the future awaits. Then all that jazz from the first Godflesh post hits, then God pulls the funniest gag in the history of viral infections to my memory, and I have some time to actually look back, a bit less prejudiced. As it turns out, synthpop is not the devil, as some of you might have surmised by now, and as I relisten to Blue Monday I realized I have never listened to either of the Substance record. I do know some, most perhaps?, of the tracks on the Joy Division one, and I do think the New Order one has the more striking cover art — not to mention I knew, by this time, that this was the one to give Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance its name, and that Your Silent Face soundtracked one of the most memorable moments in Nicolas Winding Refn's Bronson. As the ultimate Hideo Kojima stan, I couldn't let this slide, so I pop the record on and get hit with this:

Way to go, guys. Holy shit. I knew that Ceremony was a Joy Division cut before they could record it, but what the hell — Bernard got it, too. It wasn't a matter of singing ability with songs like these, it's just getting it, finding the right energy. They had that right energy. And then it hit me just as many times these dudes have made Blue Monday over and over again before actually getting it right, and everytime I look into it it's funnier and funnier to realize just how many different attempts it took them to finally be Kraftwerk, but augmented — with the stellar results we all know. Everything's Gone Green, 5 8 6, Temptation potentially, all lead up to this one moment in the history of dance music where somehow three dudes and a girl hailing from Manchester managed to out-gay the Pet Shop Boys (by their own admission, apparently), to shake the whole world's collective booty, to do whatever it is they were supposed to do in this last comparison that would ideally make the previous one a bit less obnoxious but whatever, it's 3am as usual, you know how it goes by now don't you? But then after Blue Monday the record keeps going, and thank god it does, because it's banger after banger. How do these guys keep doing it?

So I spend some time with that record, then it fades down, then it comes back up last month, when the weather calls for it and its parent company. Which is when I find myself watching the Control movie for the first time, surprisingly enough seeing as I already enjoyed the work of Anton Corbijn as a photographer. Looking at all that, it is revealed to me that Joy Division never really having died is not a bug, it's a feature. Everyone is gasping, I get it, but please pick your jaws up and check this out: the band has never learned how to play their respective instruments. One might go so far as to argue they play their own stuff their own way, and that's basically it. Nothing could be further from the truth. These guys jammed, a lot; that's how Joy Division wrote songs, that's how New Order wrote songs, even going as far as having Bernard Sumner fucked up on acid so he could find the chorus to Temptation or the whole band bombed out of their minds on X in Ibiza clubs to write, basically, the entirety of Technique — and even then, not really, there's a couple jangly tracks that the X would most likely render unlistenable but what do I really know? Point being: it might now have been sparked by a music teacher or instructor, it might not have been the product of a process comparable to that within Television, which led them to organically seek out better, more "by the book" musicianship, but New Order were incredibly familiar with their instruments, had formed an element of comfort and understanding that counterbalanced the alien-ness to music terminology.

Peter Hook recently uploaded a Yamaha-sponsored video to his Instagram, which I am pretty sure has a say in running, where he jams on a Yamaha bass and, you know, it sounds like Hooky alright, but it's never a discernible bassline until he kicks into the A major strumming that opens Love Will Tear Us Apart. Before that, he just strolls around the neck, leisurely strumming away at power chords imbued with that thick chorus and reverb combo he became renowned for. I would never, in my wildest dreams, have imagined I'd find myself thinking "okay, awesome, stop talking — I want to hear you jam a bit more" referring to one of the musicians who were part of possibly two of the craziest storiest in the history of contemporary rock'n'roll, also notorious for playing the rockstar whilst carrying the minimum possible baggage of technical knowledge he could. Once again, this is nowhere near a knock to the man — quite the opposite. Ian Curtis asked "persistence, well, what does it matter?", and Hooky (and, of course, the other members of New Order) found a way to constructively answer that question. Moments before Coil, but a bit later than Israel Regardie, they said "persistence is all" and built a brand on finding a way to consistently sound like splendid, eternal, golden children: "like crystal", impassionate, tightly-knit performers with the purity of a child's heart. Ian Curtis had, in certain ways (at least artistically), the purity of a child in his heart, which some might even argue was a distinguishing feature of most of his literary idols — if you think about it, William Burroughs could be your dirty-minded classmate who walked in on his parents sharing an intimate moment in the bedroom (had his parents been gay men, the metaphor would probably fly better, but that most definitely wasn't the case). So the heart of Joy Division remains untouched, if a bit more naked. Heroes of post-punk, sons of the silent age, you can sleep soundly tonight.

[doubleappled]

About the blogger meme

Thank you to @bioloyg for the tag and the fic callout! Team Pete forever and for always!

Star Sign: Libra, but it never resonates the way my enneagram 2 does

Favorite Holidays: Groundhog Day. I love those little dudes (although I wish we could leave them in peace so maybe let’s just celebrate their existence and not force our way into their homes)

Last Meal: Enchiladas for dinner

Last Music Listened To: Waxahatche’s Great Thunder

Last Movie Watched: hmmmm in the theater? I think Bottoms, which I adored

Last TV Show Watched: Shameless. I’m in the beginning of season 9 and it is messing me up in 5000 different ways. The acting is great (sometimes) and the writing is awful (mostly) and the storylines are ridiculous (always) and it’s at least 5 or 6 seasons too long. But every once in a while it really makes you think, and it’s completely gotten under my skin. And I will finish it if it’s the last thing I ever do. And it might be, because wow.

Last Book/Fic Finished: I just finished Justin Torres’ Blackouts and I LOVED it. And the most recent chapter of @glitterslag’s It's Been You and Me Since Before I Was Me — is a witchy creepy Appalachian Gothic MASTERPIECE that I adore. Oh and Blissymbolics’ Colorless Richie Jerimovich, also a masterpiece even though it is sydrichie and that is giving me a teeny tiny identity crisis okay moving on

Last Book/Fic Abandoned: I am thisclose to giving up on Lessons In Chemistry. I do not get this book at all.

Currently Reading: nobody ever got my soul right like she could by seh28

Last Thing Researched for Art/Writing/Hyperfixation: Quite a bit about what happens to children of people wirh narcissistic personality disorder (hi Donna, yes I am armchair psychologizing and pathologizing a fictional character) for the fic I’m currently writing. I’m not a really intense researcher, but I’ve read all about elevator mechanics and ancient marriage rites and British parking tickets and EMP’s 2019 spring menu and how to cook uni and where pastina comes from, all for fics. I love that aspect of writing.

Favorite Online Fandom Memory: It’s embarrassing, but it’s probably the first time that one of my favorite fic authors commented on one of my own fics, ca. 2018. I was on the subway, and I dropped my phone on the disgusting wet floor when I saw the incredibly lovely comment they’d posted.

FaNvorite Old Fandom You Wish Would Drag You Back In/Have A Resurgence: I really only have two old fandoms, but I do miss HP quite a bit. It’s such a robust space, with really nice people, and so many different fests and prompts and challenges. I still read a bit when my favorite authors post, and would like to write for it again someday. (Also, if you’re the anon who’s messaged me multiple times to tell me that my new fics aren’t as good or creative as my HP, and that I “used to be a good writer” — please stop. That’s not the way to convince me to go back, and it makes me feel bad)

Favorite Thing You Enjoy That Never Had an Active or Big "Fandom" but You Wish It Did: Truly I’ve never experienced a hyperfixation like I have with The Bear. I wish fanfic had existed in its current state when I was younger, or that I’d been cool enough to figure out the concept and write it on my own. I would have been VERY ACTIVE in a Dead Poets Society fandom if it had existed when I was obsessed with that movie, a decade after it came out, when I watched it practically every day for a year 🤪

Tempting Project You're Trying to Rein In/Don't Have Time For: I just have 15 different Bear WIPs, none of which have any plot, wooo!

Anyway this was all very fun to think about. Tagging @amieraisposting @kdbleu @justabovewater20 @yannaryartside @glitterslag — only if this is your jam — and anyone else who wants to join in.

[ikoarts]

October 2023 Art

for some reason i wrote a novel under the cut, for those of u actually reading, thank u for being so patient x

vvv dates + info under the cut vvv

1 - 03/10/2023 : another of my faves of last year, was trying to get better at drawing trainz, so just Edward and Toby hanging out, displaying the duality of old men x

2 - 04/10/2023 : got a new puter! one of the first things i set to doing after getting set up was to draw a Ru, of course, it was also just me trying to get used to the new MS paint..... it feels very odd

3, 4, 5 - 06/10/2023 : part 1 of redrawing random pics i have of Edward on my phone with my human version of him, this was really fun tbh, and the third here is one of my fave drawings of the year probs.. like sir.. those look heavy... what big uhh.. Glasses.. you have

6, 7, 8 - 07/10/2023 : part 2! i think i just like drawing his face... dare i say this train is cunty or will that get me exiled

9 - 08/10/2023 : something stupid i thought of and couldn't get out of my head for days so had to draw it..... little johnny from oingo boingo's only a lad, doing what he does best, fantasising about radios he wants oh so bad and running people down with a boyish craving for blood.. based on that 1 meme of the guy driving and thinking of a thing then making that insane face

10 - 09/10/2023 : based on that 1 silly vargskelethor song (that could not be less specific), had Shed 17 on the brain and was reminded of the milk song where the skeleton comes out.. thomarse dank 2 much milk and died..

11, 12 - 10/10/2023 : chooshada again :333 first a little doodle on my phone bc i was wondering about her livery, i do think she'd have originally been NER apple green but then painted NWR colours, butttt with a twist... coz i can do whatever i like... the twist is just that she's painted dark blue rather than a sky blue, coz its more her colour x

ALSO MS paint shada, wanted to draw her more uh, idk, detailed ig, idk i love this one, it also served as more train practice

13 - 13/10/2023 : previous one, but with COLOUR!! not much 2 say other than that shes very cute

14 - 18/10/2023 : saw a tweet abt old photos of engine crews posing with their crashed locos and how the NWR crews would do that, made me think of how, if Toni was (choo)shada's driver, she'd do that.. probably x .. very like her to slay in the midst of a terrible accident

15 - 22/10/2023 : predictably, i have some playlists for the ttte engines, one for Diesel which is notable here, so uhh, i have the scrapped song from the lorax "biggering" in there, bc i see it as like a Duck vs Diesel song, ik im surpassing several layers of cringe here but hear me out ok... i drew this at 2am coz i couldn't stop thinking of Duck lecturing Diesel

16, 17, 18 - 25/10/2023 : speaking of playlists, think i was listening to my Robin one here, and felt like drawing him, i have "the land of make believe" in there, which ive always found to be an oddly haunting song, so this is semi based on that, though that wouldn't be apparent if i hadn't just told u x .. this looks like vent art but tis not i was just having fun

also tiny chooshada, i was in the middle of writing something which i have literally Just remembered now and i was writing a scene where Ru is stuck between some characters who shes not looking forward to working with bc they're about to bicker the whole fuckin time and one of them thinks shes a dick, so i drew her being sad that shes forced to work with morons..... and speak of the devil, 3rd drawing is here with 2 of the aforementioned morons :D i think D+D take a liking to her, they're just a little obnoxious (love them for that)

19 - 27/10/2023 : a quick(ish) digital thing of Chooshada again that i did on the side of another project, more engine drawing practice he he, she'll be out of proportion and lacking detail but really it was just to not be too hard on myself about that, it did help i think to understand how to draw her more, plus just look at her lil face... also she has a number here, doesn't mean much other than 8 being her lucky number, other than 11, like those are just her numbers, suppose i could have it be 1188 to ref her bday, idfk x

[skylolacreativespace]

Friendship love

I finished watching Dream's new song and had a smile on my face the whole time seeing our lil Green guy grow up with his family made me smile

And to continue on with @aninklingof's reblog about it. I wanted to do one to do a similar one and to thank my friends I feel grateful for. Jus saying this will be veeeeery long!

First is @aninklingof my big brother Seany I love you so much you helped me so much throughout the year you listened to my dum useless rambles, saw me me a flustered mess, or mess up my words, seeing me keyboard smash, and helped me with my lee moods and me being giggly in messages. I love when ever you do big brain on space, or tell silly lil loveable stories. You are an incredible online big brother and I love you so so so. So. Much. Words can't describe how much I love you.

@snugglyfluffle You are also one of my big brothers and I have to say big brother fluffy you are so sweet and kind every time I talk to you in DMS seeing us being silly with each other makes me giggle in a happy way and makes me fondly smile. Watching you improve any time you post art is amazing. I love you.

@joker-anon Lastly, big bro Joker. When I text you you are always there for me in anyway you can. Even if you're doing something else you always do be there for me when you can. And I appreciate and love you so much. I love when we both get to be silly and go completely chaotic for Literally no reason and I'll always cherious those funny times we had. Love you big bro!

@kasey-writes-stuff Kasey, you are an amazing friend. Thank you for always being there for me! I love when we talk to each other and how we always tease each other when ever we can. Seeing you In my inbox makes me so giddy.

@mushiewrites Mushie!! Fellow mutual 💜 I may not be that close to you but you share a place in my heart. Your art is lovely, and any interaction you do with everyone is so sweet. I love your fics, you are amazing and wonderful in your own way. Chase your Dreams.

@fizzler-of-oz Fizzy!! My bestie!! ILYSM! Our DMS are always so chaotic and hyper even I don't know what's happening most of the time. That's what I love! It's the energy we always have around us to make the environment happy for the both of us.

@midnight-the-goth-artist Midnight, omg. I love you so much. You are so teasy hehe it's unreal but I love you a lot! I'd do anything for you to make you be happy because you are just you.

@an0ma1y-d0ma1y hello you little idiot <3 what can I say? I love you sm. As one of my friends. You are so much fun to talk to and your stoopid smol memes when ever you post on the server makes me laugh. Your art? AMAZING fantastic!! I love you! Talking about the Ninja and then being ticklish and giggly makes us both smile. And that's really special.

I'm really sleepy and sorry if I missed anyone else but you are also a friend to me 💜

[thegoofyfanaticus]

(( Art is commissioned from the incredibly talented ArtReplicant. Original story by me. )) Damion, now satisfied that Liam was out could, casually inverted the unconscious former champ, grabbed Liam's right ankle with his right hand and held Liam aloft by said ankle. The unconscious fighter's arms dangled above his head as his left leg fell to be parallel to the ground. Damion subtly pointed towards Liam with his left hand, "Code 18," he smirked. Those techies in the crowd were astounded that Damion knew their lingo, but quickly lapped it up in the form of memes and videos on Scrap. Code-18 soon went viral as a definite jab to the former tech champion. Tech fight fans had to explain to the unknowing that Code-18 meant that the real issue with a tech problem was not the tech but 18 inches from the screen, or the user themselves. Once fans realized that Code-18 was making fun of the person using the tech, they couldn't get enough.  Damion nonchalantly tossed Liam aside in a crumbled pile of bones and muscle as he left the scene without any interaction with fans. As fans videoed his exit, they noticed that Damion updated his scrap profile by deleting the image of Liam from his gallery. Scrap fans quickly went to speculation mode about the images still remaining in his gallery. There was a ginger-haired Canadian champion who was moving to Florida in search of new challenges; a brown haired fighter that traveled around like Damion fighting freely wherever he could; two black haired dudes with stubble that were easily twins; an older blonde; an older bald gentleman who hadn't been in any recent fights, but was known for his skills; a marine with a penchant for fist fighting; and others from around the world. Damion's fans however, were disappointed that there was not another target yet. They would have to wait and see. If any were close enough to peer over Damion's shoulder, they would have noticed that Damion was flipping through Scrap looking at the latest underground fight news. He paused when he came to an image from a beach fight that showed how the winner was straddling the dominated loser about to knock him out with a punch followed by the winner posing over his brother. Damion smiled at the information that the two were basically even when it came to their fights. "Perhaps..." He whispered. He then scrolled and saw the ginger fighter standing with multiple belts over his shoulders. It was an interview about how he had decided to go to the states following an invite to what he considered the most premier fight gym. "Interesting..." Damion muttered. Damion was then interrupted by the call. As Damion walked, he answered, "Yes?" Damion continued to walk out of the woods while listening to the voice on the other end. "I have........You think he will?..........We shall see just how worthy they are...." Damion ended the call and started down the road headed towards his next destination. 

[hihimihwa]

Tried making a meme template out of this photo my mom took when my lil brother and I were younger- Hehe it literally looked SO memeable I had to

+ wips I have!!

Slide 3: drawing of a stranger i saw(more info on slide 4), my ver of the template i jusf made- listen to mha podfics a lot, so I thought of drawing baby izu and kacchan. Uhmmmm next are mlp drawings teehee. And and Pyramid Game comic, im working on, the episode I watched made me so giddy i couldnt NOT draw something

Slide 4: There was this pretty lady with the prettiest fit I've seen that day, so I started drawing her on my notebook and then decided to draw digitally at the same time to really see the difference yknow? Drawing in a new notebook too, I'm trying out some markers I took from my older brother's old pencilcase hehe

Slide 5: This cafe had a 2 for 1 breakfast platter deal($10!!) so my mom and I went for it rq! The fruits were delicious, my mom loved the coffee, and the scrambled eggs were yummy. The waffles were kinda dry, which ye its expected, the deal was probably to use up all the leftovers. It was easily saved with the maple syrup, butter, and strawberry jam tho!

Slide 6-8: Jax x Zooble Jax x Zooble Jax x Zooble

1st comic's abt Jax almost getting abstracted? Zooble saves him hehe and then uhh they have a moment, Jax is being a baby but Zooble's made of baby toys so it worked out. He played around with her a bit, she agrees to help whenever he gets overwhelmed again. 3rd comic is them being a thing, the groups reaction, and them cheering each other on for games! I am cringe but I am free.

Slide 9-10: sketches I sorta inked enough to post! Im not actually allowed to watch hh but uhhh im mature :> Haven't watched sweethome kdrama, but i LOVE the webtoon. Hyun went through so much, just lemme put 3 versions of himself in a battle to duke it out. Talentless Nana manga is also rlly cool rn, I love the character development going on!!

#art #artist #illustration #sketch #comic #digitalart #digitalartist #digitalillustration #digitalsketch #digitalcomic #traditionalart #traditionalartist #traditionalillustration #traditionalsketch #traditionalcomic #meme #tadc #hh #sweethome #talentlessnana

[lightyearssurrogatedaddy]

Should I make a New Year's appreciation post too? Cus I saw someone else do it.

Idkkk this year was pretty wack, I met God for five seconds, met God again, improved my art, bawled like a baby, had sixteen sexuality awakenings before I decided to go unlabeled, and met some pretty incredible people that I plan on canibalistically consuming.

Started last year hating myself and crying, started this year feeling grumpy but that's prolly just because I woke up early today. I learned this terrible, terrible fact that I'm allowed to be loved and I spear fought that for a good few months ngl.

Learned that being cringe is awesome

Learned how to write

Learned that people are more terrifying than what I previously anticipated but that just makes me love them even more

I know the meaning of life (no I don't) (I've scraped it up to "fuck around and find out" and I suggest it as s tier advice) (actually no I don't)

Learned how to make a boiled potato (singular)

Life's pretty cool I didn't expect this at all. It threw me a curveball at half time and I got all my teeth knocked out. It's been a weird experience so far, I think I, did that thing, yk that thing humans do, yeah I think I shed a few cells and grew a little bit. Whoa. Crazy.

I learned that in hindsight this post doesn't really matter, but that's not gunna stop ME from giving a smooch to everyone I love. They like, changed the way I exist. I don't remember feeling this loved and thought of before, it's eerie, really eerie.

Learned how to like myself even a tiny bit, because of all of you. I owe you a lot.

(am I allowed to tag people?) (Sorry I'm still borderline new at this) (I don't wanna bother anyone with my silliness) (maybe I'll just say your names instead of tagging you and hope it magically summons you) (or maybe I won't)

@crunchontoast (for yk, everything. If I even attempt to write it all out we'll be here for days. Summing it up feels inadequate but I realize that I don't have to explain anything in a post to strangers online. Cus you already know and that's awesome)

@karineverse (for being a real one and listening to me ramble. Helping me figure out shapes for characters. You're a silly sills)

@fl0w3rg0at (for being one of my besties for almost three years at this point, I think. Whoa yeah. And for sticking with me through all my crappy phases)

I'm feeling awkward I hate emotions (‼️‼️‼️)

My Mom (thank you mom. ✨How did you survive me✨)

My Cousin (for getting me Hollow Knight for Christmas. And also for texting me once per year) (a real one fr)

My Cat (for giving me snuggles when I most needed it)

I wanna tag Tacol0ser can I tag Tacol0ser? Anyways (for being the silly guy in my Ao3 comments section and giving me bursts of confidence. You're cool)

My Bestie Since 1st Grade (for being like a sister to me, our lives are pretty rough and I'm glad we have each other. Let's hold hands and go downtown for pizza again)

Oh sorry did you expect more people? My b most of them are off Tumblr. Anyways I tried tell me when to delete this cus my nerves are getting the best of me.

Ah wait and thanks for Tumblr for giving me a shitton of new memes to bother folks with.

[wrecked-fuse]

Hey Fox! So, I’m very much in love with your work, it’s amazing and your speedpaints is one of the most educational out there. You build anatomy like flipping legos, it just mind blowing and it makes sense xD

You did a year of studying every day, right? Did it had an order to follow on the fundaments (perspective , shapes, values , etc) or you just listened to the voices in your head (lol)? Any advice on studying?

Aaaand, on a more polemic topic, what are your thoughts on the AI art situation ? 👀

Thank you for sharing your amazing work 💖💖💖

Thank you so much you’re so kind😭❤️❤️❤️ I wouldn’t tell that I took a year of study everyday, it’s more like I had been drawing for long period everyday lol. I just had a major art block for several years and then I joined one fandom im summer of 2017 and became more active and made some friends who were drawing too and I just started to draw and they were helping me out with redlining and advices on anatomy, perspective composition etc. Then after s3 came out harringrove hit me with new force and I just “listened to voices in my head” as you said and I really drew A LOT in that period and I think then in that time I had my major drawing spurt (but I wouldn’t recommend bc that’s really exhausting and I had had to deal with some of consequences later). Somewhere in between I watches some videos about perspective and values but this is still vague for me and time passed so I don’t remember videos and can’t share the direct link for them sorry (and I’m still struggling with my perspective hahaha). I sketched from photo references practiced in gesture drawings using sites like this one http://reference.sketchdaily.net/en or just from pinterest. Then there was a period I tried to learn all the muscles and what they do but I decided this one was not exactly for me (but it’s still good as a cheat shit that I can compare with if I think something I drew is too strange lol). I always recommend these two YouTube channels https://youtube.com/@EthanBecker70 https://youtube.com/@MohammedAgbadi they good tips that helped me, but you should scroll up back to 2020 or so I think. Also this twitter helped me a lot https://twitter.com/taco1704 . In conclusion I can’t give some wise advise and tips because I’m not a teacher myself all my learning is going to using references, watch how other people draw, collecting in mind tutorials so I can use them in future and draw (almost) everyday bc there’s a ship that doesn’t let you go 😭😭😭

About AI I try to be short, it was fun when I saw some memes on twt, but then oh gosh that sites have to learn some other skin tones other than white fr. As for situation with some sites gather and recycling info from art that are on these platforms or/and someone Ai recycling others works and then claiming it as their owns — these situations is no better as the cr¥₽to dudes do and everyone hopping on that fucking train of hype again, smth I don’t like. 🙃

[inceptionart]

Featuring the super talented Rusty @oceans-foundfamily​ today as our artist! Read on for her thoughts on art, and you can find all of her artwork here and here!

🎨 When did you start creating art for the Inception fandom, and what is your inspiration?

I kind of stumbled upon Inception's fandom presence on the tail end of Inceptiversary 2020, which was a pretty big deal being the tenth anniversary and all. I saw all the amazing content people were making for the event, and I immediately wanted to join in. I think my first ever Inception art piece was the one where I drew the characters as animal crossing villagers (a most professional and dramatic beginning, I know). After that, I started experimenting with style and color and some more dark/serious stuff, trying to find a balance. I've found a lot of inspiration in the movies of Makoto Shinkai and some other anime-style stuff. While I don't exactly have an anime art style, his work's color palettes and large-scale cityscapes have always been something I admire. I think those aesthetics show in a lot of my work.

🎨 Tell us about your creative process, and which part do you enjoy the most about it?

I wish I had a consistent creative process, but usually it adapts to my mood, the weather, how much time I have, what I had for breakfast, and the position of Venus relative to Jupiter /j. If I'm in the mood, I'll browse pinterest until I see something with a vibe I want to replicate, I spend a couple minutes listening to music and cementing in my mind what I want to try, and then I fiddle around on my iPad/paper until the piece starts to come to life. My favorite part has to be seeing that process all the way through. I'm all about experimenting with new things, so I'll put on some music to keep my stim brain happy and get to work. I can usually draw for three to five hours at a time on a good day.

🎨 Link us to your first and latest artwork, and how your style has evolved since then?

My first Inception artwork was the animal crossing one, where I was just kind of messing around before I really got into Inception content. My most recent non-meme fully finished piece was the ocean one with Cobb and Saito (I'm so good at titling art, huh?). Looking at it now, I think some parts of my original style have stayed intact, like the rounded, thicker outlines. But besides that, I think I've really come a long way since 2020. I learned how to color things, and fell in love with Inception as creative inspiration. I think that love really shows in the art.

🎨 What is your absolute favorite piece of art that you've made, and why?

My favorite piece of art I've ever made is also the biggest one I've ever made, and the one that took the longest. It's called Leap of Faith, and it's not just my favorite because I like the way it looks--it was probably the most fun I ever had making art. If you were following me or on Discord around this time, you know I was hyper and posting progress pics every five minutes because I was so excited about it. This was a big experiment with lighting, mostly. A fun secret about this piece is that the entire color palette is taken from a scene from the movie Your Name. I've used Your Name as inspiration for a lot of my Cobb x Saito stuff, both art and writing. I don't know what it is about that movie that makes me think of them, but it's something about connection against all odds. Also pretty colors.

🎨 What is something about Inception that you really want to make art for someday, and why?

Another big artist inspiration for me is Simon Stålenhag. I read his book The Electric State, and I'm obsessed with his ability to capture emotions in art that sometimes doesn't even have living entities in it. He can show everything from hope to despair in just a cityscape. I would love to make art like his portraying limbo, or Saito's castle.

🎨 Give a shoutout to your favorite Inception artists here!

It's so hard to pick only a few, but I will never get tired of @lemon-yellow‘s watercolors. Lemon has made all my ship dreams come true, and I owe a lot to her. Also, @katribou has some amazing and hilarious Inception art that really got me into the fandom. Finally, shoutout to @dingdangit who brought the Muppet Inception screenplay to life.

🎨 Anything else you'd like to talk about art and the Inception fandom in general ❤

I really owe this fandom so much in terms of all my art. I rediscovered my love of both painting and writing through Inception, and everyone has been cheerleading for me since the beginning. While I may not be active as often in the fandom, I'm now designing tattoos and working towards a career as an author, and I can't say I'd be doing any of this if the gang hadn't hyped up my fanfiction and convinced me that I could draw. Shoutout to everyone in this fandom, even if you don't create and simply comment and leave likes on other people's work. It's all so inspirational, and incredibly important for emerging artists. Having this space to create and experiment in has been so good for my art. Also shoutout to all the smaller ship folks. In a mostly one-ship fandom, we're still going strong and making art, and I think that's awesome.

[odinspattern]

👀🛒😅😬📚🎨🎢🏆 and 😈 for the fanfic ask meme!

Oh man, thank you! This was really hard but also fun.

👀 Tell me about an up and coming wip please!

So many!

Currently writing about a character coming up against Dragon Age demons for the first time, greatly enjoying that.

A character study about Michael the Distortion and also Helen.

Oh, and I am also writing about two characters discussing asexuality and relationships.

🛒 What are some common things you incorporate in your fics? Themes, feels, scenes, imagery, etc.

Trauma, grief and mentall illness is a cornerstone in anything I write. There are so many things to consider with it, and what it means for your life. Like was it always with you, or did you develop it? Was it a violation and what does it mean now going forward?

Furthermore I get a kick out of really obscure refrences in my work. Like I have referenced Koschei the Deathless, The Killers lyrics, Karen Sundt, Laika, Ivo Caprino jokes… it’s fun not only for me but to see the rare case where people make the connection. I get the enjoyment either way.

😅 What’s a story or scene you’ve created that you’re a smidge embarrassed exists?

Redbark No-Chief.

Let me explain. In the Kahvi comics, which are not considered mostly non-canon anyway, we saw a minor character be pronounced chief of Two-Spears splintergroup of Wolfriders. Redbark, said character, looked to be same age as Kahvi, and his design was similar to Graywolf, who had recognized Willowgreen II. So naturally I concluded that he was their child.

In the comic we had a big Flash forward, and was told that Willowgreen had cleaned out their wolfblood, and that every chief after Two-Spear’s descion had been left wanting.

I was very intruged and was trying to write about Redbark holding the legacy of his mother’s crime… but turns out it was incorrect. It was just a coincidence that he looked like the same age and design. Redbark was no one. Which I discovered bust as I was going to publish the third chapter.

It completely took the wind out of my sails. To loose that familiar connection between them made my story fall apart to the point where it never recovered.

So yeah. You live and learn.

📚 Would you ever want to turn writing into a career?

Writing books has always been my dream, but honestly, the last few years I have heard stories about how publishing really works and. It is really discouraging and confusing? It is putting me off writing proffesionally for the first time since I was six =/

🎨 How do you feel about fan art of your stories?

Love it.

🎢 Which of your fics would you call your wildest ride?

Oh, hmm. I am actually uncertain of how to judge this one. Maybe Shade of Smiles? It is a fanfic that explores a happening that is treated as small in canon but is really anything but just that.

🏆 What’s your most popular fic?

In all honesty it’s a Harry Potter crack fic. 🙃

The other most popular I made was a Skyrim fanfic where my Listener had a hard time breaking into Aventus Arentino’s house; https://www.archiveofourown.com/works/8044882

😈 Has there been a point in a story where you did something just to be playfully mean to your readers?

I used to always end with cliffhangers, but that was mostly because I needed that to propel me forward. I had to finish a new chapter to find out what happened next than being cruel =P

[thuganomxcs]

scenarios meme / accepting / @regnantlight​ : EMPLOY

Oh it’s going to be hard to get the funds he needed to evolve his independent business which is why he opted for a side job, something temporary until he found the fundings he needed to kick start his business properly. “Ugh..” He groaned under his breath as he laid upon his back on the sofa with the newspaper opened over his face as his ears caught the sound of the tv. It was the news again..the familiar blond that’d always feature upon the news was on once more discussing politics among things like forging an alliance with their government to help clean the streets of crime. Something Hyrulean forces could aid Japan’s police department with when it comes to mobs, gangs and the yakuza.

Yusuke spotted their princess: Zelda. He remembered her during his school days..a few years yonder when she was younger and visited the country. Hell it was even before Yusuke’s first initial death that he aided the very girl from gangsters that were bigger than both of them. Upon witnessing his fighting prowess she thanked him and even insisted that he would make a wondrous bodyguard should he wanted to (which was probably a joke). “HUH!!!!” That’s when the idea flew into his mind, a flight to Hyrule couldn’t be out of the question..he’d have to fly West but still IF he actually lands a job as a bodyguard then..yeah HE’D definitely make the money he’d needed to start his own culinary job. “That’s the best idea I’ve ever had.” 

A few days later the paperwork was done, he hopped on a plane after packing and flew towards the country. He could only hope that she remembered him. She must have been younger but it was still more than 7 years ago when he was just 14..she looked..probably a year or three above him at the time if he went by her manner of speech back then. It was going to be quite the trip when he got there. And yup just as he guessed it WAS quite a trip once he arrived considering Just like with ANY kingdom there were guards and Yusuke was a stranger to them, of course they would reject his entry on the spot.

But the ex spirit detective did not take a ten hour flight to hear a ‘no’ before he even arrived at the door, so Yusuke did what he did best. “Listen t’ me asshole, you're gonna let me see the princess and you’re gonna do it…NOW.” With a headbutt he manages to break out a fight, once again Yusuke showed great skill in martial arts as he was able to disarm each of the guard’s even dodge projectile fire fighting his way one guard at a time through the manor until he finally arrived where he needed to be within the princess throne room with a multitude of her guards unconscious behind him. 

“Heh, found you. Remember me Goldilocks?” Huh..she’s changed a lot, matured greatly from the last time he saw her..no matter though he came here to humbly ask her a question. “Oh, yeah sorry for the mess but these assholes really didn’t believe me when I told ‘em I knew you..kinda. Either way as you can see I easily fought my way through here which brings me to my point, would ya like t’ hire me as a bodyguard?” HELL even the guards that protected her NOW were baffeled by Yusuke’s audacity and simply waited for the order of removing him from the premises.

[magnificentstrangerchaos]

‘To Do’ List (Summer of 2022)

So, I found the ‘To Do’ list I made at the end of June/start of July. It was shoved /as I anticipated it would have been/ among my other sheets of paper haphazardly thrown into a folder. 

I’ll go through all of the points and talk about how things have been going, adding things I have done along the way to make it look like I actually did more than I planned for my own pleasure. 

1. Fix Laptop

At the start of December 2021 my laptop started getting really sad. Like, bluescreens and tells me there is no Windows installed kind of sad. I took it to a place my dad usually fixes his laptops and I got a new HDrive and a new battery because the old one said “Goodnight” one evening and stopped working. It’s pretty good, well... better than it was before, faster too.

I might have to take it to the same place again. I tried installing Genshin on it once and it BS-ed. I uninstalled it and commenced with my work but it seems that ALSO if it overheats it bluescreens again. It’s been manageable, I have a fan and everything. All data is backed up. 

(Side note I have this USB flash disk that is really messed up and all my art files/refs are there. I need to fix it and get them OUT or else I’m going to cry. I didn’t have time to back it up before the last drive died and this was the only storage unit that could suck up all 200K of my files.... Don’t ask, I’m a hentai writer and draw-er)

I don’t want to push for a new laptop of any kind because a dream for a ‘FUTURE’ experience is to have an actual PC. Doesn’t matter gaming-intended or not (probably not) that inevitably means I need to find a permanent place to stay since it’s a hassle to carry an entire PC around. Two-to-three more years this buddy needs to survive. 

Might get a new keyboard though, literally anything side-bought so far would be implemented into the new boyo anyways. And as I name all my PC periphery, I will call the new keyboard Antoine (current one being called Antonio). Guess A’s run in the family C:

2. Fix tooth

At the end of my exams I thought I found myself a cavity. Turns out my teeth are perfect (according to the dentist) and it’s one of those small cavities that is fixable with good toothpaste and mouth-wash. To be fair, the mouth-wash I got (rec by the doctor) freaking does a whale of a job but it also tastes like every medicine you will ever taste at the time time. I’m 1/3 way through the bottle and it’s SO COOL because it’s the type that comes with a pre-installed cup. You squeeze it, fill it up, sip, do your thing. I’d buy it again. 

3. Herbarium

...

I mean... I got a couple new flowers to add. 

Petals of a rose a friend of mine got me over a sleepover we had; A tiger-rose from our garden (side note, I need to go pick some of its leaves because I only managed to harvest the blossom); A damascene rose; Two types of orchids

I think I’m going to spend a while just going through the entire book sticking rice paper between the pages where the flowers would go, just to have it over with. I’ll concentrate on it over spring when everything blooms anew.

4. Go out at least once a week

...

...

This is a personal attack

5. Go paint the seaside

Will do, that’s probably what I’ll be doing for the three or four days I’m there other than reminiscing stories/fics. 

6. Paint the mountains

I took photos of places I’ve been, so that will happen in the future as well. 

7. Finish the ZhongChi fic (Ch. 3)

Listen here, you little [redacted].

Alright, okay. So, I TRIED. ‘Dragon Gazing At a Sea Of Clouds’ was a great story, I really enjoyed writing it when I was in my Childe rut days a little before getting him in Genshin. Chapter 2 - ‘The Fox That Stole The Dragon’s Heart’ was also a success that I don’t even know how I came up with. 

This entire thing was a gag, a meme I saw someone post on twitter about regarding Zhongli’s magic portable onahole (it’s a fleshlight) being connected to Childe’s backside while he’s in a meeting with the Tsaritsa. I got invested. And then pretty much slipped out of it. 

I WANT to finish it, I absolutely do. I have an outline of what will happen - their Chinese-themed wedding, their wedding night, both tied up to each other, ears, tails and horns all out in display. HORNY hours, you know?

So, I really need some stimuli to get going. I’ve been unable to play Genshin for a couple months and while I’m obsessed with KNOWING about the game (I have it on my phone), it’s been hard to get inspired. I’m doing my best, I want it to be good. It just feels like I’ve been repetitive in other fics or I somehow accidentally wrote what I intended for ZhongChi other places. 

Call it deja-vu of an unfortunate writer. 

8. Edit ‘Aster Tataricus’

That’s a future project honestly. I wrote it in December/Over Christmas and the responce was SO GOOD. The person who inspired me, Wiann on Twitter is a gem and they still follow me. I also adore watching their works in general, they have their own writing done as well and it’s *bites fist*

9. Write Ch. 2 of ‘When The Owls Cry’

I still can’t decide if I want to make it ‘Owls Cry’ or ‘Owl Cries’, both have a meaning for me.

Haven’t gotten to that part YET either, but I did go back to Chapter 1 and I redid it after the event to feature the whole eyepatch secret and sending letters.

10. Finish ‘Lullabye For My Feeble Heart’

I usually never outline works and just write them out in one breath when I figure I want to, but this one is indeed outlined. I have the entire plot ready, each chapter sorted. All I need is to execute it, but as you can see if you read everything so far - I want to finish those that are on the VERGE of completion and then latch onto longer works.

11. Finish ‘Wish Whispered Upon A Star’ 

Aye... I recently posted the chapter before the last, so we count that as progress. I’ll force myself to finish writing out my missing lectures this week, so I can spend Saturday and Sunday on that (27-28/08)

12. Take part in 2022 MXTX BDSM week

I DID, but the last story is missing, because I took a hiatus due to personal reasons. You can find the series here days 1 to 6 available.

(Can you feel how happy I am for the easy access to hyperlinks? I borderline was forced to code to figure out how to insert stuff in AO3.)

13. Make the FengQing threadfic

Mmm... I wrote like.... two additional pages for it in my google doc and then scroll past it as if it’s a scratch that I want to itch but I just hover it instead.

14. Draw the Izora mural digitally

Haaahahahahaha.

I have to if things with CSP are getting as serious as they look. I can’t decide if I want to push around with art or press on with fics. Maybe I will take until December to complete whatever I have WITHOUT (lies) adding any new ones, so I can then concentrate on drawing again. It’s a pre-drawn thing on paper, but I want it digitally, because colouring would be so much easier.

15. Make new sketches for CandleHeart and Nyrian Thantis

I’m rather proud of those honestly. I want more portraits so I can use them on the different accounts. 

16. Write at least one fic with mermaids

I accidentally forgot about this and when I read it I was like “!!!” 

It’s on twitter, but you can check out the teaser here, because while it is complete in the sense of a thread fic, there is more that will be included in the final version that’s going to AO3.

17. Work on the VN maybe?

Yeah, this was a ‘maybe’ since the Visual Novels I have planned will be absolutely pushed back for until this problem with CSP has come to an end so I can know which programs to use and which tools to pick out.

18. Play League of Legends with M

WE DID AND IT WAS SO FUN, I love her. She’s a sweetheart. That’s all you need to know.

19. Read MDZS

I’m at... Book 2 maybe page 130. Book 3 came out not even a week ago, so I’m waiting to see which website is going to offer me that sweet, sweet money-sucking service of delivering it to me. 

20. Things I HAVE done as a side-project include

-I got to stock up on clothes I’ve been ignoring my need for.

-I ordered amazing stuff off Aliexpress and while you may think ‘How amazing CAN it be’, I’ll do a little show of them when they arrive. I’m really excited, most of all for the pins I ordered, because I want to stick out like a sore thumb with them.

-I finally bought my brother his birthday present. He’s been waiting for it for SO long. After I finish with my work tomorrow I should zoom to the other tech-shops I know are around town so I can get two more things I need and then I can proudly go back home.

-I set a goal to hit 40 fics by the end of the year, currently we’re at 34, so finishing the stuff above will probably skyrocket me above that number.

-I finally got a new phone case, needed that because the other one was falling apart.

-Got two new wrist-watches because I’ve had an itch to wear one since Autumn last year.

-I’m getting a third piercing on my ear in October.

[ifuckingloveryoshu]

Hi I saw ur tags on my posts lol 🔥😭😭 thank you so much for liking my ryoshu and oc arts, but can I ask where did the name of yuzuki for ryoshu's daughter came from? I don't think hell screen mentioned her name?

Thank you for helping me get up this morning. Very short tldr but vauge answer: Hell Screen has been translated and adapted enough you could have read the a translation that keeps called Yoshihide's daughter, "Yoshihide's daughter"

If you read the Little Penguins Books Publishing, they did not use Yuzuki as the name from what I can see, but Yuzuki exist somewhere.

Lazily doing a half-baked investigation under read more.

I will never claim to know anything about translation and I had too little sleep to do things today. I'm also broke so I can't go cross refrence evey translation and adaptation of Hell Screen. I hope someone better than I can could look into this or help out. Ill come back to this maybe

This is absolutly not how you do research or go off of things but Penguin Publishing version reviews don't use the Yuzuki name so I'm thinking they don't use her name there. The Jay Rubin Translation doesn't use Yuzuki. I say that because I'm re-listening to this while cross refrencing a pdf I found. Im guessing their one in the same.

This archeologist/writer named matthewrettino uses Yuzuki when talking about Hell Screen

Haunted Places Ghost Stories did a reading on this and unrelated but they pronounce Monkehide how an american would so its, "MONKEY HIDE." But anyway, they use it. They just spell it liker Uzuki

Portrait of Hell or Jingokuhen make Yoshihide Korean, apparently. I wanted to put that here, it''s not really important, just an example of an adaptation changing something. You have a story for so long and things get changed.

It's part of human history and how we tell stories, we like adapting things and giving thigs new meaning just like Ryoshu. She's not named Yoshihide but we're all thinking, "Yeah, she's Yoshihide, she likes art, she has fire, shes sadistic, that's Yoshihide." But she's not an old man, Yoshihide never spoke in acronyms, Yoshihide's not a woman. Jesus Christ was never white. He was born in Jerusulm in a dessert, it would be strange if he was white. Most people living in the middle east and closer to the sun normally have darker skin because they have more melanin in their skin to protect from the sun. The image has been passed around so much that, at least in our Eurocentric culture, I can't find the word for it, Jesus is commonly depicted as white. Yuzuki could have never had the name in the original language, or the inverse, she could have had a name but time let it go through the skin of its fingers and it was lost to oblivion. We just need to rediscover where it's orgin came from.

Meme - A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another

The name Yuzuki might as well be a meme. If it wasn't in the orginal version of Hell Screen, it just exist now. That's why people are like, "Yuzuki, that's the name of Yoshihide's daughter. That sounds right!" Because idea's spread from text, imagry, music notes, whatever you have come to life like a spark of flame from a lighter and drift off from its starting point. The co2 particles relase into the air and up to the clouds, and when enough people emmit co2 at a rate thats unsustantable for our planet, big things happen. Really big things happen. Or you just scream so loud that no one hears you and much like the effects of smoking, damage your lungs.

I hope it doesn't feel like I'm pulling stuff out of my ass. I'll come back to this and when I have a solid answer, i'll tell you or reblog this. No worries.

[i--antimony]

tuesdaypost

tried a new thing this week where i started drafting this as i went - so any time i read something that i wanted to put here, for example, i just slapped the link in to expand more on when i got around to finishing the post, yanno? i liked it, i think it made the whole process less "??? what did i do this week???" i also think i do like tuesday, actually, because it means i can put all my various weekend craftings/watching/playing in while it's still fresh in my mind.

because i noted things down as i went this is a RICH tuesdaypost, buckle up

listening

up to partizan 15! also been listening to fatt soundtracks as background while i work, it's very good for that.

reading

a looooot of bloodletter this week, notably all the tgcf and most of the mdzs fic, but especially both ways open jaws: delicious, pun intended. found it through this tumblr post of the art that's in one of the chapters. (saw dreamwidth user rigormorphis in the acknowledgement notes on there!!! [leonardo dicaprio pointing meme] i follow them on dreamwidth!! hello!) also read you were not mine to save by factorialrabbits: this isn't really how i understand nhs as a character, personally, but i liked the narrative structure a lot! read it because bloodletter wrote a fic that was inspired by it and i liked that one a lot too.

read some of the tgcf donghua just because i wanted to look at pretty pictures.

the poster's guide to the internet of the future by david pierce: interesting. i've never much thought about having all platforms be cross-connected and cross-interact-able and i'm not sure if it's something i would want, to be totally honest. i like certain things to be separate. we should all go back to geocities. (jk) (unless....)

caught up on the soft news newsletter by joy alicia raines, one that's been sticking in my head is the bit about 'but and therefore rule' from may

i started 'the house on vesper sands' by paraic o'donnell while i was at my grandma's because she had a copy in the guest room, read about the first 100 pages or so, liked it enough that i rented it from the library but we'll see if i finish it haha

playing

oh i'm DEEP in pokemon go again :p send me friend codes if you wanna be pokego friends!

watching

my grandma has been recommending peaky blinders to me for ages so when i visited her last week for thanksgiving i decided that if we started watching it while i was there i might keep watching it when i got home. i probably will! we watched the first three episodes while i was there, definitely has the Drama and Intrigue that i would expect, doesn't hurt that cillian murphy is easy on the eyes, etc.

as promised last week, i've watched the new tgcf episodes! as you can probably tell from my reading section, i am fully back in the tgcf brainworms, frothing at the mouth waiting for new episodes to get released

finished cowboy bebop with my bf, it was so good :( i think our next show is finishing kill la kill, i had him watch the first threeish episodes a while ago but might as well. also on the list to watch together is jujutsu kaisen, mob psycho, space dandy…feel free to rec!

making

continued progress of my big scarf! started what will hopefully be a very quick winter headband knit for my roommate's mom, i'm spending time with her over christmas and i'm absolutely sure she will get me a gift so i need something to give to her lol.

after tragically missing the deadline for secret samol i sent the tumblr account a message asking to be put on the pinch hitter list and it turned out that they were able to slide my entry in after the deadline!! so i got my secret samol assignment in my email on saturday and i'm VERY excited, there are some really good prompts and i have to figure out which is tickling my fancy and what medium to do it in…the funniest part of it is probably that my assignee is a geologist. like, what are the odds, right? (i am not a geologist by training but the research i do now for my phd is way closer to geology than i ever thought i would be. i wonder if they'll be at AGU in a few weeks…it's such a big conference so odds are slim but there's definitely a funny universe out there where i run into them without either of us realizing :b)

i spent most of sunday cozy inside because it was snowing out, and i did a lot of little mending tasks! i finally blocked out the tank top that i finished knitting a few months ago, fixed the lining for a cowl that i made in 2021, darned some socks + some holes in a shirt that i like…

(the Cowl Saga: i finished the object in 2021! it was a little scratchy so i made a cute lining out of matching plaid fleece! i never fucking wore it because it was too small and pressed on my nose uncomfortably and sucked to pull over my head!!!! so i went, damn, wait, i didn't block it. i bet i can make it a better size by blocking it. so this summer i took the lining back out and blocked it (and laid it in the sun to dry, so it FADED UNEVENLY because the yarn was just dyed with turmeric in 2020!! i am not a professional!!! so it definitely isn't colorfast!!!) and lo and behold, now it fits better! however now the lining was too damn small! so finally, FINALLY, i used some leftover plaid fleece scraps to patch in an extra panel to make it big enough! so now i can wear it! i wore it yesterday because it's finally cold enough!!!)

no pictures of me wearing the tank top because i don't love the fit…i have some spare bra inserts at home that i can get when i'm there for the holidays so hopefully sewing those in will help? i can't really wear a bra with it otherwise. despite using an old norwegian cast-on, which according to google is one of the stretchiest options, to wear it the hem is stretched completely taut so i probably should have sized up >:\ it was a fun project otherwise, might try it again with a different size/yarn/cast-on, perhaps without the waist increases.

also, started writing again?? something about glancing at my decade-old nanowrimo last week tickled my brain and i started poking at something inspired in that direction. no promises.

misc

i was thinking of getting a small keyboard for my ipad so i don't have to bring my whole laptop to a conference next week, i was discussing with my roommate, she was like "ah but they're sooo small…" i said "we have tiny hands, it's not a bad size for us", she goes "but they're scared of each other" which made me crack up. will probably try to go to best buy or something, one of the little logitech ones could be good, but also do i Need a keyboard?? will i actually type ANYTHING while i'm at this conference????? i doubt it. so maybe not huh my current week looks like powering through my poster for AGU, that way i can spend next week tweaking as needed and print a few days before travel…….fingers crossed. i laid that timeline out for my advisor yesterday and she nearly cried from how reasonable it was, apparently her last phd student was a "finish the poster on the plane and print the day of the presentation at the conference" kinda guy oops. :")