#neo makes things

[hollygl125]

William Petersen in TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. (1985), dir. William Friedkin SHORT SHORTS

[darewolfcreates]

mmm... many thoughts...

[lunarneo]

Poor Neo- "Wait a Second...."

[wpmz]

* DO YOU WANNA BE A [Heart] ON A [Chain] YOUR WHOLE LIFE!?

[rafyki]

Part two of the Goth! Nico/Surfer! Percy!! @neo-kid-funk liked it so much I couldn't not post another part so soon!! That's what your art does to me!! Pure inspiration!!!

This time it's Percy's turn to be a huge loser with a huge crush lmao

Part one, if you haven't read it~

~~~

Percy threw himself on his beach towel, trying his best not to spill his precious drink even in his excitement.

“Annabeth, he smiled at me!”

His friend looked up from the huge book she was reading, a skeptic but fond look in her eyes.

“Percy, he works in retail, smiling at customers is literally his job”.

Percy groaned, took a sip of his drink - not alcoholic, but maybe it could make him forget his huge absurd crush on a boy he didn't even know.

The prettiest boy you've ever met though, his brain usefully supplied. What did it even matter that they didn't really know each other and that they had exchanged perhaps a total of twenty words to each other? Nothing, not when said boy had the prettiest features Percy had ever seen, the most enchanting eyes, the deepest and most beautiful voice, and the most charming shade of pink coloring his nose and cheeks. And, finally today Percy could add to the list that he even had the softest and cutest honest smile ever - because Percy could tell the difference between a “customers smile” and an honest one, and the way Nico had smiled today? It couldn't have been anything but honest, and it had made warmth bloom into Percy's stomach, made his heart grow ten sizes.

“No, Annabeth”, he said, at the cost of sounding like a petulant little child. “He smiled for real! He even laughed a little!”

“Did he?”

“I'm telling you he did!”

She seemed to consider it for a long moment. Percy waited with as much patience as he could muster for her opinion. He could always count on Annabeth being horribly and unapologetically honest with him; he could definitely trust her to be the one to offer him a cruel but needed reality check to bring him back to earth.

She had been the main witness of Percy’s fall into the hopeless (or maybe not so hopeless?) rabbit hole that was his crush for the kiosk boy, had been listening to him ranting on and on about him for probably almost a month now, and had been dragged on the beach way too many times against her will for Percy to ignore her valid as always opinion.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean he likes you, Seaweed-brain, you know that, right?”, she said, and Percy knew, but his heart fell anyway. “Still”, she added, and Percy couldn’t help but perk up at the tone of her voice. He knew that tone - it was the tone she used when she was about to say something optimistic even against her better judgment. 

“I guess it is weird for him to smile like that at customers - at least, I’ve never seen him do it - and we do spend a whole lot of time on this beach and at the kiosk”.

She said the last part with just a tiny little bit of annoyance - but Percy knew her well enough to know that she would forgive him eventually.

“I need your support, Annabeth, you know that!”

“You could take Grover with you next time”.

“I did once, remember? He was even more nervous than me”, Percy said. “Not exactly the best wingman”.

Annabeth rolled her eyes at him. “It’s not like you’re doing much but staring at him and daydream anyway”.

Well, that was a low blow, but true.

“That’s not true”, he still said, just for the sake of it. It earned a raised eyebrow and the most skeptical expression he had ever seen on his friend’s face.

“Percy”, she said, slowly as if she was talking to a kid. “Showing off your surfing skills and hoping he’ll find you so incredibly hot he’ll fall on your knees for you is not doing something about this”.

Ouch. Alright, maybe Annabeth’s reality checks were a little too honest and harsh sometimes.

“You can’t know it won’t work”, Percy said.

She was right, of course - she always was, and Percy hated and adored her for it. 

He sighed, setting aside his drink and looking at the kiosk, his eyes finding Nico right away with practiced experience. He was serving someone, and Percy’s first thought was I wonder if he’s smiling like that at them too - which was stupid, and he knew that too, but knowing it didn’t really change anything. Percy was perfectly aware of how ridiculous he was being, but despite what Annabeth might have said about it, knowledge wasn’t always all that mattered.

He sighed, forcing himself to look away.

“What do you think I should do?”

“Well, you really only have two options”, Annabeth said.

It wasn’t exactly hard to guess what she was referring to.

“Either giving up or finding the courage of asking him out?”.

“Precisely”.

“Ugh”, Percy groaned. “You’re not much more helpful than Grover, you know?”

Annabeth laughed. “You know I’m right, Seaweed-brain”.

“I hate you”.

“Hating me won’t make you date the boy of your dreams”.

The boy of your dreams - oh, he really was, wasn’t he? Percy didn’t even know when exactly he had started to be unable to think about Nico, to want nothing more than to talk to him and get to know him for real; things had degenerated pretty fast - one moment Nico was just the cute goth boy working at the beach, and then the next he was Percy’s newest obsession.

It was weird - Nico wasn’t exactly his type; he seemed to be all dark and sharp edges, cloaked in black like he was constantly trying to hide in the shadows even under the bright sun. He looked like the kind of person that kept everyone at arm's length, and it only made Percy want to get closer and closer.

He realized his eyes had turned to him again, following his every move. He was talking to his friends, his words accompanied by wide hand gestures - Percy had noticed this habit of his before; it was adorable, really. Percy wanted to talk to him and see it from up close.

“He’s so pretty Annabeth, I’m gonna die”.

That was probably the thousandth time Annabeth had heard him saying that, so the roll of her eyes was definitely justified.

“Then go talk to him and ask him out”.

Percy groaned. She made it sound so easy.

He got up, took his surfing board again. “Maybe”, he said. “But first I’m going to see if my plan of being too hot to resist is gonna work”.

“You’re ridiculous”.

“Thanks, I didn’t know that”.

Annabeth rolled her eyes again and went back to her book. Who even preferred reading a book on a beach instead of going into the water? Percy would never understand that.

He walked towards the water with his mind still fixed on the same thought. He wondered if Nico liked the ocean - maybe they could enjoy it together, maybe Percy could teach him how to surf.

Maybe. If he could actually find the courage of asking him out.

[can-of-slorgs]

I'm personally blaming @starbiology and everyone who has reblogged or commented the other piece for this.

Bonus comic featuring my grundo:

[ctl-yuejie]

"It will just end how it started"

[danielsarmand]

NEO TRAI and MARK PAKIN ONLY FRIENDS (2023) Dir. Jojo Tichakorn and Ninew Pinya

[kowtownart]

In an alternate timeline…

One where Basement Birb-NEO kept his sense and i was able to get through to him! He’s still stuck in his huge, spooky scary body… but we’re working on that

(Bonus with silly strings below)

[bctoastyyy]

more <3

more beat (wanted to redraw it but got eepy) the reapers ever kariya and uzuki, beat in a dress that he rocks, doodle(s) from a fic im writing, and warm up sketches pertaining to an animatic im making and dont get distracted from working on!

[dinopepitah]

I checked and yeowwch I haven't drawn him since November :[[[ here he is again, redesigned and confused

[hollygl125]

William Petersen in TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. (1985), dir. William Friedkin

[slyandthefamilybook]

I think we need to have a serious re-evaluation of what "leftist" means bc there ain't no fuckin way authcoms are on the same left as me lmao

[drgnbnd]

neo. friends

[itsclydebitches]

Let's tally things up, folks!

Ruby's entire depression arc is "resolved" by a one sentence exchange wherein she just... decides she's better now? 'Is this the message?' Ruby asks, on her knees in front of a not at all subtle broken piece of glass. 'That I'm just supposed to give up?' and then literally the next moment she sees Crescent Rose, the weapon she's been flinching from because it represents all the failures she hasn't actually grappled with this season, and decides that depression and suicidal ideation are for losers. Let's go fight a randomly evolved cat!

The group still doesn't care about Ruby's Volume-long struggle. What are you talking about, evil kitty? Ruby's never been confused, or weak, or feeling like she's broken. We're oblivious to all that. That's why we follow her, because we can easily ignore everything that's going on in her life and instead just focus on ourselves. Didn't she have a breakdown a couple of hours ago about having to lead all the time? Should we really be announcing the moment she steps out of the tree that we expect her to be in charge again? ... nah, it's fine!

I guess the overall message is that any and every horrific act is excusable because you're just being yourself? Sorry we doomed a Kingdom and have actively helped Salem in trying to take over the world. The horrors we've enacted are good things though because it means we're being ourselves.

Ruby is conveniently the only Ascended who retains all her memories. Can't have the protagonist undergoing any kind of actual change, after all.

Neo throws herself into the tree despite that going against every iota of her characterization. Will we ever see her again? Who knows.

Is the blacksmith lady Alyx? I still have no idea.

Jaune is made young again, because of course he is. Love that they act like this is some curse he's suffered from - "It's been so long..." - and not an actual life lived across several decades. If I got stuck somewhere for twenty-ish years and then someone tried to magic me back to my 18 year old self I'd be like wtf? No? I'm not a teenager??? Will the show ever acknowledge that Jaune is actually an old man in a de-aged body now? I doubt it, considering this plot-line had no impact on his personality, skill, or outlook.

Also love that the brothers' story is treated like this wonderful tale of growth and exploration. The blacksmith is going on about how amazing it is that you don't know what you'll get when you create something, tone all fond for the demi-gods that have left her world to toy with new ones, and I just wanted one of the characters to start screaming about all the horrors they've caused. They killed an entire population in one fell swoop and have cursed two individuals for funsies, with the entirety of Remanent permanently under threat of annihilation if they don't meet the Gods' ambiguous standards of unity. Oscar didn't fall into the void because if Ozpin had been there he would have gone feral and attacked the blacksmith with his bare hands.

We're heading back to Remnant and Ruby still doesn't know that Jaune killed Penny! Ruby didn't even get her sword back. Or consider her in the tree therapy session. Why was killing her off necessary again? Oh yeah, Jaune angst🙃

We got a "when you're needed" from the blacksmith, so expect that time-skip in Volume 10. Can't wait to see how much important stuff the story skips over...

Also, this is so minor in the grand scheme of everything else, but I YELLED when Summer admitted that she'd lied about the mission. For nine Volumes these characters have been dragging Ozpin for every problem under the sun including, in Volume 7, for the mysterious disappearance of Summer, only for it to turn out that she LIED about where she was going and on whose orders, setting him up to take the fall when she doesn't come back. Who's going to have Qrow apologize to Ozpin for blaming him for years? Who's going to have Ruby unpack that her whole family is made up of liars and she was foolish to think that anyone, including Ozpin, could survive this war with a completely clean record? Hell, who's going to have Ruby simply tell anyone - including her sister - what she now knows about her mother's death? Not the RT writers, I'd wager.

Especially when they gave us a scene of Summer leaving on what she recognizes may be a suicide mission and leaves a token of affection for one daughter but not the other. Summer is Yang's mom too! Yeeeeeaaah the story is really bad about actually writing that.

Overall this Volume just feels like a colossal waste to me. The story ignored most of what was set up in Volume 8, introduced a world it didn't have time to flesh out, threw in an unnecessarily shocking story line about the hero trying to kill herself, 100% dismissed the ramifications of that, reset everyone so that none of the characters have to actually grow or change, and has now implied that all the plot important stuff - the Atlesians' survival in the desert, trying to ally with Theodore, Salem's next attack on Remnant, the development of most of our B Team, etc. - has occurred off screen.

The only thing this Volume accomplished was getting the bees together, which was something we should have had years ago. That admission hasn't changed their dynamic in any way, or introduced new conflicts (remember, no one cares about Ruby's breakdown, including her correct accusation that Yang has cared more about her girlfriend than her struggling little sister). It's just... there, not queerbaiting anymore, thankfully, but that feels like a very low bar to meet.

2+ months later and all I'm feeling is

[can-of-slorgs]

caw 🦅