#overdefined

[fleckjayky]

[justheblueberry]

sunny days ahead

[switch]

look this is what i'm talking about do you get it

[the-library-alcove]

A rather irritating observation I've made over the last few days is that there is a considerable overlap between the group of people who make statements to the effect of:

"Luigi is being charged with terrorism? Talk about overdefining and overusing the term!"

and the group who make statements to the effect of,

"Israel is committing genocide! Look, Amnesty International, Ireland, and several other countries all think so!"

Ignoring the fact that all of the groups trying to make that claim are saying that they have to change the definition of genocide to make it fit.

[callingitquits]

Johan With An Artist S/O—[requested]

My love letter to what it’d be like if Johan somehow ended up as someone’s unwilling-yet-weirdly-perfect muse. “Yeah, I could fix him… or at least paint him.”

Noticing You Don’t Look Away

The first time you stared at him for too long, Johan didn’t speak. He simply met your gaze with that soft, unreadable smile of his. Most people avert their eyes—out of fear, discomfort, or instinct. But you didn’t. That amused him. Over time, your staring becomes his comfort. While others look away, your gaze is a constant hum in the background of his day. And somehow, it roots him.

Allowing Your Stares Without Question

He never asks why you stare. He lets the silence stretch when he catches you, lets your eyes linger on him like you’re trying to solve a riddle. If you stammer or apologize, he simply says, “People always look longer when they’re afraid of forgetting.”

Silently Accepting Your Obsession

He never outright acknowledges being your muse. He acts as if he doesn’t notice the drawings, the staring, the stacks of canvas or sketchbooks filling your room. But he sees everything. He just prefers the power that comes from silence. He never asks to be drawn. He doesn’t need to. You do it constantly, obsessively. And that suits Johan fine. He thrives in the quiet worship of others. Especially when you don’t realize that, in loving him, you’re also unraveling.

Permitting The Projection

He finds your obsession… tolerable. Not endearing. Not touching. Just… expected. If someone is going to love him, it will be like this: from a distance, compulsively, through a filter of their own projections. He understands that and permits it.

Holding Still for Your Attention

He catches you staring when you think he’s not looking. In the mirror. Across the room. At the curve of his fingers around a teacup. Johan never comments. He moves like he knows how light falls. How shadows trace his skin. It’s not vanity—it’s calculation. He lingers, always just long enough for your pencil to catch up.

Testing Your Focus While You Sketch

He shifts just enough to test you—tilts his head, moves a hand, speaks mid-stroke.

“Do you think monsters can be beautiful?”

“Is it easier to love someone on paper?”

You pretend to ignore him. But he sees your hands falter.

Letting You Arrange Him

He sits for you when asked, but never smiles. At first, he’ll move how you tell him to—turn his face, adjust his hands—following your directions without protest. But over time, he lets you touch his face yourself. Only lightly at first, to check angles or expression. But eventually, he doesn’t flinch at your fingers on his jaw, your thumb brushing his brow. He even closes his eyes. Trust.

His expression is always the same: soft, composed, and blank enough to hold infinite interpretations. That’s what he wants: for you to keep guessing.

Learning Himself Through You

He never asks to see the drawings. But he finds them. Looks through pages of himself as seen through your eyes: beautiful, calm, monstrous, unknowable. You never get him quite right. But somehow, each one feels closer than the last.

Reading What You Write About Him

He reads your notebooks and sketch notes when you’re gone. Not to invade, exactly—just to understand.

Margins filled with shorthand:

“Jaw too narrow?”

“Mouth always relaxed. Don’t overdefine.”

“Eyes reflect more light than expected.”

He lingers on lines where your focus slips into fixation:

“Hands almost delicate. Too soft for a man?”

He smiles faintly. You study him like a puzzle.

And puzzles are only interesting when they remain unsolved.

Studying You While You Work

He watches you back. While you’re focused on drawing him, he quietly studies you. The way you chew on your pencil, how your eyes narrow when you’re focusing, how frustrated you get when a sketch doesn’t come out right. He files away every detail. Johan learns people by observing, and you are no exception.

Eventually, he speaks—softly, like it’s not meant to be heard:

“You’re most yourself when you’re creating.”

And then nothing more.

Lying to Shape Your Perception

If you ask about his past for inspiration, he lies strategically. He’ll tell stories—half-truths, poetic distortions, letting you imagine him as a tragic, beautiful figure. He knows how your mind works, how a bit of mystery feeds creativity. So he becomes the myth you crave. 

Leaving Subtle Critiques

He offers critique, but only rarely. When he does, it’s subtle and specific: “You hesitate with my eyes.” he murmurs, not quite looking at you. or: “My hands… are never that gentle.” He says it softly, intimately. Not to hurt you—just to stay in your mind. You redraw him again. And again. Not because he asked. But because you need to see what he sees.

Discouraging You from Sharing

He never forbids it. He just says things like, “Art loses something when it’s put on display. Don’t you think?” or: “Letting them see this—it’d be like letting them see you.” It sounds thoughtful. Protective, even. But the hesitation it plants is intentional. He doesn’t like the idea of being shared, even in ink or oil.

Keeping One of Your Drawings

He keeps a drawing of himself that you gave him. He won’t hang it. He hides it inside a book he never finishes. Not for the art, but the moment it came from.

Your version of him—more beautiful, more wounded, more human than he believes he is.

Sometimes he wonders: Is this what I look like to you? Or just what you want to see?

Using Praise to Keep You Unsure

He rarely praises. But when he does, it’s calculated:

“This one feels honest.”

Or sometimes, quieter still:

“You finally saw something most people miss.”

Just that. And it’s enough to unnerve you. Enough to make you question if the others were lies.

Avoiding You When He’s Vulnerable

He never lets you draw him when he’s upset. If he’s agitated, fractured, slipping—he vanishes. Because he knows you’ll see it. You always do. He’s not afraid of being seen. Just… being captured in a way he didn’t approve.

Never Confirming If You Got Him Right

He never tells you what he thinks of the final pieces. You’ll never know if you got close—if you really caught something true. He leaves you wondering. That, after all, is the most reliable way to keep someone looking.

Asking to See a Drawing Midway

For the first time, he interrupts your work and asks to see a piece before it’s done. You hesitate. He insists. He studies it long and hard, then hands it back without a word. When you resume, your hand shakes. You’re not sure what he saw. But you know it was enough.

Choosing to Stay Close While You Work

He learns to sit beside you, not just for you. He reads while you draw. Lets your knee brush his. Leans his shoulder into yours. Just slightly. Quiet contact. Barely-there affection. But for him, it’s intimacy. 

Y/n: “Don’t you get bored just sitting there?”

Johan: (glances at you) “No. Watching you work is… clarifying.”

Y/n: “….. Clarifying?”

Johan: (slight smile) “You show me what I look like without even meaning to.”

Associating You With the Act of Drawing

Over time, Johan begins to associate you with the act itself—not just the sketching, but the rhythm of pencil to paper, the scent of charcoal dust, the rustle of turned pages. When you’re not around, he notices his hands still and his mind quiets. You’ve trained him like a Pavlovian response. Art means you. You means attention.

Forgetting His Own Reflection

He catches his reflection in a mirror one day and pauses. Frowns slightly. It doesn’t match what you draw. Doesn’t match what you see. You’ve been sketching him for so long that he begins to believe in your version more than the one in glass.

What if I’m more him than I am myself?

He wonders.

And then decides not to question it.

Showing Love Through Stillness

He never says the word love. But his version of it lives in these still moments, in shared silence, in the way he looks at you when you’re lost in creating him. It lives in his acceptance of being seen. And in his secret hope that, maybe, you’ll never stop.

Y/n: “Do you ever want to be drawn differently?”

Johan: (softly) “No. I want to be seen as you see me.”

Y/n: “Even if it’s not accurate?”

Johan: (a long look) “Especially then.”

[d0gwithabr0kenleg]

me (lying to myself): his skin and hair r totally not too dark or orange, and will look fine when i finish! It's not overdefined!

WHY did i not fix it before i inked 😭😭😭 in my defense? This is literally my 6th acrylic ever

[paperandportraiture]

Little practice using potters pink (maimeriblu), smalt, titanium buff, and Florentine green ( from poems about you) in a Paul Rubens cold press sketchbook. @adorkastock pose reference.

There's a lot of issues in this sketch, but I kind of want to iterate on it and make a larger finished piece from it? Though now I'm realizing that I was using the adorkastock sketch app, which serves you random poses, and have navigated away from that page, so I might never be able to find the reference again. Going off of this sketch might not be good enough though. Oops.

Babbling about process, materials, things I want to practice, paper, etc under the cut.

Colors:

I've traditionally stuck to very clean paints (m graham and Sennelier are my usuals) on hot press paper but I'm in my texture era I guess.

I wanted to use my lapis lazuli Baikal from poems about you, but it's expensive and I've been using it a lot in these little sketches lately so I used smalt instead, which also granulates like mad but is a much brighter blue than I was in the mood for, which I think you can tell. The overall colors don't hang together that great. This isn't helped by the random green willowy stuff I added at the end. I just wanted to make it more of a scene for some reason, and then because the green was so different in both color and texture I had to make her dress at least reflect some of that green. And then I had to add green into her shadows. Admittedly the shadows until that point were way too blue and the green probably helped some - if I had either wanted to spend a lot more time tying it together or had started with the green as part of the vision, it'd probably actually be pretty good.

Underlying sketch/drawing:

The sketch here turned out looking okay, but I have to admit that I sat down with the intention of practicing getting a sketch scaled to the page correctly. It's a full body pose and I wanted the entire thing in there, and positioned in the rectangle of the page nicely. Clearly I did not succeed - she doesn't even have the bottom half of her legs. I think my main issue with doing this is that I always want heads to be bigger than they are. If I lay down shapes focusing on the body first, when I start in on facial and skull details I end up going way too big with them and then adjust everything else to fit, which often puts half their limbs off the page. Maybe I should try starting with a head that feels super small, putting in a higher degree of detail than feels safe, and then blocking in the body.

I mean the actual thing I should do is just more quick figure practice. Do the actual timed ones and everything.

I also struggled a lot with the drawing of the book and mug. I'm happy with where they landed (the mug is too small but at least it's recognizable) but it was a major struggle. Objects just have much harder angles than people. More practice needed in just getting the form down of made objects.

I should also work on putting clothes on the pose reference models. @adorkastock is such an amazing resource and when I'm just practicing I don't usually try to add outfits, but I think that's something I should work on. I also feel like I used to be a lot better at this - I think the fact that I haven't worn a skirt since 2018 means I have forgotten how fabric drapes.

Painting technique:

I might say that I overworked the painting here, but I think the actual issue is handling the extreme granulation. These paints reactivate a lot more than I'm used to, so I ended up pushing pigment around super carefully a lot, so that contributes to a sort of "overdefined" look. It'd be possible to balance it out by building up midtones, but with how re-workable everything was, that felt very risky and like... I'm not going to that much work for this kind of practice. I think in my enthusiasm to play with granulation, I am using too heavy of a hand.

The tacked-on green willow stuff is just funny to me, I know it doesn't fit in well.

Paper:

Okay this $10 watercolor journal from Paul Rubens is shockingly good. I don't like perforated pages but I know a lot of people do and I guess if I ever really want to take any of these out, its easy. I just like a sketchbook to come with the emotional security of "nah dont worry, this is for practicing and you can hide it away forever if you'd like". Not to mention since I don't usually tape the edges in a sketchbook, when paint bleeds into the perforations its just so ugly.

But it's 100% cotton that behaves exactly how I would expect (side eyeing you, bee paper). And so comparatively cheap! It works! It does the thing!

When I got into watercolor (2019? ish) I feel like there just weren't decent cheap paper options, especially not in a bound sketchbook, but maybe it just took me a while to find them. I literally learned basic bookbinding to make my own sketchbooks with paper I liked.

Student grade cellulose paper just doesn't work - paint literally does not behave in the same way so if you are trying to practice watercolor technique, you kind of...can't actually do that on "student-grade" cellulose paper. But you totally can on this stuff, it's great.

The binding is a little weak, but that's small potatoes at this price.

I don't love how regular the grain is, I feel like it makes too much of a pattern and I can't un-see it. Then again, since I'm way more used to hot-pressed, maybe this is just me being picky. Is there cold pressed paper that has a texture that is enough to give granulation something to play around on but subtle enough not to bug me?

Anyway, if I can find that pose again I might try a full piece. Maybe put in an actual planned willow or plant stuff background. Put actual thought into the whole composition.

Probably wouldn't use the same palette - I think I'd actually build it around the florentine green and potters pink, but maybe bring in a warmer yellow? Not sure what blue though - I want to keep messing with heavy granulation but I think the smalt is the wrong temperature, and the baikal lapis lazuli might constrain the available values too much. With the green maybe I don't need to worry about it though. Also the mug in the reference is a bright aqua color and tbh I like that in the overall color impression, which actually suggests that the lapis I have is too grey. Really I think this mean there will be multiple blues involved (reader, did you know that you are not actually limited to using at most 4 paints at a time?). I might have a cobalt teal that granulates a little.

I think I would have an easier time with the colors if I weren't also trying to get a lot of granulation. Maybe I should scale back that desire and just use potters pink to get that effect in there?

Side note - I do really like potters pink for its hue, which I'm surprised by because its such a soft color. It's known for having a super weak tinting strength and essentially being a way to sneak granulation into warmer colors, but I think I've been mixing this hue at a weak strength often enough in portraits that it's actually a really convenient color for me.

[capnportofficial]

shrinkwrapped abs are NOT hot. i just saw a drawing with abs so overdefined it made me go and remove abs from one of my character designs. ive never had my attraction to a character instantly drop like that.

[callmrmorrow]

hiiiii it’s me again i am really liking white collar 🤍 throws this at you and runs away

𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫-𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 & 𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 || 🏺

little snippet from a thing im working on. neal caffrey study……….yay! please be nice to me ive never written for this show before. i hope i convey my idea of neal correctly…

The first painting he’d ever attempted to replicate was Ivan the Terrible and His Son, Ivan. It hadn’t been stolen, he had no intention of changing that, but there was a certain unnameable quality to it that stuck to the back of his mind. Sins of the father, maybe. He’d sequestered himself in some dingy apartment in the Garment District for two weeks straight before letting Mozzie know where he’d wandered off to. He’d wanted critique on his first piece, and who better to ask than the man who had made him?

Mozzie spent all of five seconds looking at the painting before shaking his bald head.

“It’s the eyes, Neal.”

“What?”

“There’s no…” Mozzie trailed off, his hand spinning on the wrist as he looked for the word, found it, chewed on the implication, and then spit it out. “Life.”

Some part of him wanted to retort with the fact that one of the men in the picture was, in fact, lifeless. He physically held his tongue by rubbing the neglected stubble on his jaw, evincing a thoughtful frown. “Okay, eyes. What else? I feel like I overdefined Ivan the Terrible’s silhouette, but it’s hard to tell in this lighting…”

Mozzie shot him an unreadable look as he set down the wine on a rickety table. “All art is feeling.”

Neal had been around Mozzie enough to know that it was better for everyone involved when he quoted or paraphrased some famous figure. That, he could understand, could learn, could embody. It was when he spoke from his own allegedly-nonexistent heart that Neal felt the most uncertain. “Right.”

“Why do you think Kate… disappeared?”

Neal forced his eyes shut at the question, feeling irritation flare up between his rubs. “Mozz, that has nothing to do with this.”

“Neal, it has everything to do with this.” Mozzie gestured wildly at the painting, nearly knocking over Neal’s wine glass. His stubby finger found the bloodied temple of Ivan’s son, the paint still wet. “It’s a perfect copy.”

Neal swallowed his pride. “I don’t follow. You just said—“

Mozzie withdrew his finger, now smeared with crimson, and sighed. “Yes, Neal. It is a perfect copy. But it’s not the original. Of course, you could sell this for millions of dollars and no one would be the wiser, except for you. You know the truth. And once everyone else does… it loses all that value. It’s just paint on canvas. Two-dimensional. Fake.”

Neal’s eye twitched. “I’m the painting.”

“That is an infinitely more succinct way to put it,” Mozzie admitted with a dip of his head, a semi-bow, before turning his focus back to the wine. “I mean, it really is a great painting. You have a talent for imitation. You just have to be… more than that.”

How? was the question he wanted to ask. How do you expect me to supersede imitation, if I’m safest in someone else’s skin?

What he voiced instead was, “Easier said than done, Mozz.”

“A lot of things are,” Mozzie replied, popping open the bottle and scanning the room for a clean glass. “But done it shall be! There’s someone behind those eyes of yours, Neal. You just gotta find it.”

[malachite834]

This guy from Breath of the Wild 💥

YEAH SMASH

Definitely suffers from some design elements that I'm not a fan of (very disproportionately small legs and weirdly overdefined muscles with only the slightest whisper of fat) but not enough for me to be too bothered to say absolutely yes

[taelonsamada]

So @thatlesbeanjew bought me a new keyboard, so I wouldn’t lose the progress I’d gained on my credit card, and would also get said keyboard faster. It’s gonna take a few days to get here, but when it does I am absolutely leaping on those updates 😅

Until then, have Guy in Honey’s leather jacket, as a thanks for her buying that keyboard 😏 😉 ♥️

He’s such a little shit, I love him 😆 he absolutely stole Honey’s jacket 😈 it took me way too long to get around to drawing him, considering how much I love him

(I’m not used to drawing slim muscle, this was tricky 😆 I kept wanting to overdefine the abs 😅)

[cocajimmycola]

i love your jyugo analysis

he's a very interesting character. i havent even touched on his lack of greed and want channeling into his "desire" to catch the man with the scar being the only thing that he's wanted to do, and that's why he's obsessed with it. and, how likely, when or if that does happen, he won't know who he is anymore, because he's built his entire life on finding scar guy.

i think "want" and "greed" and other such themes are a big big part of nanbaka. there's not a single character who doesn't have a big, overdefining Want or Greed. which is definitely on purpose, because it's trying to show how weird it is that jyugo doesn't and can't feel greed.

[the-only-way-out-is-through19]

trans leo valdez hcs pt 2

. he tried out soooo many different pronouns before he found the ones he is most comfortable in (he/him [changes occasionally])

. i hc that he has known piper since around 12 or 13 years old, and at the time he was very confused and she helped him a lot with that stuff

. calypso was confused when he told her and said “but im not a lesbian??? i only like males” (yes im anti-caleo deal with it)

. at first he felt uncomfortable wearing or doing “feminine” things because he felt that since he is trans he must be fully masculine (definitely not speaking from experience /s)

. eventually thought he got much more comfortable; piper doesnt like to do much makeup on herself, so when she has an idea, leo is always (very willingly) her model. alsoooo, leo loves wearing dresses

. piper and leo wore matching dresses to the barbie movie. i will die on that hill.🫡

(sorry i got a bit off-topic anyways)

. he used to have a super transphobic foster home and the things they would say sometimes ring in his head and he hates it

. its like he just cant escape the tiny voice whenever something nice happens that says “you dont deserve this. you are disgusting. attention-seeker. you are such a fake. you cant just change your name. etc etc”

. ahem anyways-

. he doesnt have super “feminine” features (EX: big curves, soft fluttery face, round waist)

. although he does have a chest and slight curves, he feels lucky not to be overdefined

[poobit]

i think the problem with how ppl misinterpret "dont overdefine yourself by your disorders and your trauma" is that they think this is a matter of pride rather than the fact that when we take our disabilities and disorders and trauma as The Unique part of ourselves it can lead you easily towards a path of Inmutable individualism, it can lead you to making tonedeaf remarks or saying incorrect information about other people who share the same conditions as you Because You Know yourself the best thus You wouldnt/would act this way or this is what makes you specially tortured or worse or better than others, a disorder can influence aspects of your personality and everyday life, but They Arent your personality, they arent the full extent of your desires, its just how it affects your body n mind , the input of energy in your day to day life and Intensity of pain or emotion, its why even though people with schizophrenia can have patterns of religious delusion none of those delusions are gnna be always the Same thing on each person , or even how you react to those delusions, they wont dictate the subject, just easily factored in by how society teaches religion to a lot of people from young age , your identity is often more defined by what emotions you take the most, your culture, the things you want to absorb from the world around you, will they be impacted by your conditions? yeah, but this Isnt inmutable

[beeelderly]

i should start internalizing that im a meat mech and my Self Construct is piloting me around bc i feel so overdefined by my fatigue

[wazzuppy]

i love not having to overdefine the complexities of my queer identity anymore. i love the term aroace and i love having it as my identity. literally the most freeing shit on the planet to realize i dont owe anybody an explanation of what i feel when i'm not hurting anyone. highly recommend finding a term u feel comfortable with and just going with that