#perspective scares artist away from doing background

[oobbbear]

Perspective sucks eyeballing shit is good and valid and we should do that more often

[1shirt2shirtredshirtdeadshirt]

Today on popping the corn and feeding the children, what do you folks think of this discussion? :)

I'm always curious to hear what other Trek fans, especially queer Trek fans, think about our place in Trek history and how we fare as the queer participants within our fandom. What have your experiences been like?

Overwhelmingly I've found a great reception and a welcoming attitude, but I admit that has increased considerably since the 90s. However, there are still some Trek fans who seem to be vehemently in denial about queer history in Star Trek, or the fact that anyone who has worked on Trek has pro-LGBT attitudes. This always surprises me considering some of the blatant queer content we have already seen in Star Trek such as the Jadzia Dax and Lenara Kahn kiss.

Anyway, I enjoyed the discussion that followed and seeing the overwhelming outpouring of support coming from Star Trek fans in response to this thread.

Here was my two cents contribution:

"No, what they said was factual.

Have you forgotten Nichelle Nichols was indeed an African American woman in the core seven bridge crew back in 1966?

Or the fact that Gene Roddenberry went out of his way to write The Motion Picture Novel, creating the term "T'hy'la: friend, brother, lover" so that fans could choose which interpretations of Kirk and Spock they saw fit? He also embraced K/S fans and hired a number of them to write the earliest Star Trek novels, including the very first official one (The New Voyages Vol. 1 & 2) which included slash fiction as well as Gene's approval/forward in the books.

In case anyone has forgotten, here's a little bit of background on Gene Roddenberry and his perspectives on queerness in Star Trek.

He admitted that in his early life he was very affected by how society and culture treated the LGBT community, and that he too found himself subjugating and judging others for that lifestyle because it was what people did at that time. As he got older and had more life experience, he began working with a number of queer artists in Hollywood -- and through TOS, a number of queer individuals began asking questions about Kirk and Spock.

Instead of vehemently shutting down this perspective, Roddenberry was intrigued, and saw potential to tap into a large audience (LGBT) that most others didn't want to go near or acknowledge publicity-wise. He saw it as an opportunity to expand the fanbase while also pushing yet another envelope.

But with the heat already on the show for what they'd already pushed, he found he was often stuck between what he'd like to do and what production would let him get away with. There are a number of Kirk and Spock scenes in scripts that got cut out for leaning a little too obviously romantic. Tiny trickles of that content still made it in were infamous moments like the backrub scene in Shore Leave. Even the 2009 movie had a K/S moment while Spock Prime and Kelvin Spock talked that was written and filmed that was cut out of the final product.

Queer subtext and coding has always been relentlessly weeded away at with an excuse ready to go for why they always try to cut us out, but we all know it's because they are scared of the homophobic backlash and ratings hits. Look how violently homophobes went after the gay romance episode of The Last of Us **just this year**. This has always been our reality, so for someone like Roddenberry to make efforts in the 70s? That was massive.

But Gene as well as the queer/slash Trek community managed to accomplish some things in the 70s which I'm surprised more folks don't talk about or give much credit.

In the same TMP novel which features "T'hy'la" and the famous footnote, Gene cleverly wrote Kirk with a bisexual/pansexual lens: Kirk describes himself as *preferring* women but being open to "physical love in **any** of its many Earthly, alien, and mixed forms." (Direct quote from Genes book). Basically, Captain Kirk was DTF with whoever if there was a connection, which was a very progressive take for a character in a novel written in 1979, but made sense for the future which would have a lot less hang ups about sex and love compared to our current rather puritan/conservative society.

I also prefer women, but I married a man. Shout out to Gene Roddenberry for giving us a seat at the table back in the 70's when folks *still* try to insist there is no place for K/S or queer concepts in Trek, because he made efforts -- however small -- to employ queer people and show queer perspectives. According to David Gerrold, LGBT+ representation was a big thing that Gene personally pushed for in TNG and wanted various depictions of love/couples in the Risa scenes, to name one example.

In the 70s, fanzines led to meetings and swapped fanmade magazines, which got so big that they needed hotel centers, then convention centers, then one day the TOS cast came to one and what we know as modern fan conventions were born -- inspiring even George Lucas who attended Trek conventions in the 70s and saw how popular Trek was in syndication; it was a great climate to launch his Space Opera. Star Wars then became so huge that we got TMP.

But none of that would have happened without the level of organization, passion, and creativity that those fans poured into Star Trek and their characters after it got cancelled and went into syndication.

Without queer folks we wouldn't have George Takei, Theodore Sturgeon who gave us Tribbles, Bill Theiss and his amazing TOS costumes, Mike Minor's art direction, Merritt Butrick, David Gerrold (writer for TOS, TAS, TNG) to name a few of many queer contributors to Trek that Roddenberry respected and tried to go to bat for wherever he could in a climate that was absolutely impossible to gain an inch in.

At a time during the 70s and 80s when so many people resented and feared the queer community and wanted us to disappear, especially in the 80s during the AIDS epidemic which many homophobes claimed was "God's punishment to the gay community" or "Gods's answer" to our "hedonism", thinking we'd gotten our just desserts and should just disappear . . .

During that time, Gene Roddenberry gave us queer folks a place to say: "You know what? Sure. Write your stories. TV says you guys shouldn't exist, they pull books with queer people off the shelves and burn them. Laws exist specifically to forbid you guys from loving each other, and call you mentally ill. You can't even hold hands in public. But I'm going to validate you guys and invite you to write novels or work for me, try to see what we can get by production, and allow you to see yourselves in my characters if you want to. There's a place for you in our fandom."

He gave us bi/pan Kirk, he gave us K/S is open to interpretation. In Phase 2 Kirk's surviving nephew Peter, son of his brother Sam from Operation: Annihilate!, was going to be written as gay and living on the Enterprise with his partner -- that also got chopped and reworked into a script that wouldn't get used until decades later. That was huge at a time that being queer was officially listed as a mental illness, and villainized due to the AIDS crisis.

So before you try to dismiss or tell K/S + queer Trek fans whether or not they deserve a seat at the table, remember that Gene Roddenberry was among the **first** to pull that seat out for us in a climate that was ruthlessly against LGBT+ folks." -- 1Shirt2ShirtRedShirtDeadShirt

P.S: Have some cute bisexual/pansexual K/S pride gifs. :) Pride month is a hop, skip and a jump away.

LLAP!🖖💚

[pioneeroverc-my-5000th-sideblog]

Summary of April:

Was away at the beginning of the month and then when I got back got really unmotivated. I joined a Discord study check-in chat two weeks ago which helped get me back on track - hoping that my extreme competitiveness will help me at least get through the DAB stuff without giving up. I was really off track for finishing stuff, but I managed to pull it together in the end, and I think I actually managed to finish more of my monthly goals than I have in a really long time!

My drawing skill is kinda all over the place atm, which I'm hoping means it's going to consolidate itself into something better soon xD

Plan from April:

3x 100 comp ✗ forgot to do two of these AGAIN

5x scared ✓ didn't technically do 5 but they were longer than 5min anyway

DAB Lesson 7 - 2 vehicles ✓ YEAHHHH

Proko - shoulder bones ✓

DrawThis - 2x 2h videos ✓

Rough sketches for all 5 FEH alt ideas ✗

1x background sketch/screencap study (1h timer) ✓ well I drew over a bunch of rooms and discovered that I can't do it in an hour

1x simple form studies (1h timer) ✗ did do some form studies though not 1h

Look at how FEH artists handle small details/trims with lineart ✓

May plan:

at least one day/week playing games (not art but important to relax with)

Draw May 4th/5th pieces

Rough (pose) sketches for all 4 FEH alt ideas and finish current one before 8th

10x scared

4x 100 comp

Proko - review notes + watch shoulder critiques

Proko - pecs and breasts I guess

4x Ges Draw Party

DAB Lesson 7 - 4 vehicles

1x master study - comic background or screencap study with perspective

notes and improvements from finished stuff:

USE PHOTO REFERENCE FOR EXPRESSIONS and try more open mouths ✗ did expressions but not referenced, do more hair studies ✗, use photo reference to figure out stylised ¾ eyes AND NOSE ✓, push unhorizontalness ✓, see how other (FEH) artists handle trims ✓

5MIN SCARED IDEAS: find good hair examples and trace ✗, find ¾ photos and trace eyes/nose ✓, trace torsos for gesture ✗, review/learn leg muscles ✗, trace thigh high boot opening contours from actual photos ✓

knoll: not detailed enough (did a drawover to add details which made a BIG difference), hand unintentionally too wide, browbone doesn't go in to lead into cheekbone

h/ux: not enough ribcage space, crop looks like his forearm is just really thin, eyes aren't in perspective (not lined up + eye area is a bit too wide and flat), hand wasn't referenced and it shows

elan: values too close, REALLY BAD HAND, antennae shouldn't be that swivelled, folds don't make any sense

t/ana: tried to do too much of a dynamic pose and made an unnatural twist between upper + lower halves, eyes aren't looking at viewer, arm holding bouquet/shoulder/underarm area is flat and too far off to the side, lighting not consistent + shading on skirt too conservative (should have pushed the back of it way further into shadow to bring out the roundness), sash thing has no texture and is placed really awkwardly because I realised during the colouring phase that the entire skirt was off-centre, value contrast too low (not engaging to look at). HOWEVER I did try to clean up my lines AND shading at the end, and also used a much smaller brush (doubled canvas size to A4 and used a 3px/1px brush) so it looks a lot neater overall

ACTIONABLES: USE PHOTO REFERENCE FOR EXPRESSIONS!!!!! JUST DO IT, do hair studies, decide whether majority of piece is going to be dark or light and base contrast around that, draw out ribcages (+ shoulder bones) for every sketch, use photo/RL reference for EVERY HAND - even doodles, do a separate detail pass the day after 'finishing' something, use photo reference for folds

5MIN SCARED IDEAS: find good hair examples and trace, trace torsos for gesture, review/learn leg muscles, draw one hand, identify fold type in clothing photos

[jaythelay]

This scene is what Horror is. It is the best possible scene to show. The perspective to have is one from the period, maybe as a child, in the dark alone, the buzzing and humming of the Playstation, the disc spinning, the optical drive clacking, your CRT monitor producing a constant whine that eventually deafens away in your mind.

And you just got to this massive ass plant monster coming out of the cieling. By this point you’ve only fought Zombies, Crows, Dogs, and a massive snake. All of those were mobile however, you never had to worry about the fact there’d be something so big every part of the room was attackable by it, without it moving at all.

It has all these tentacles, this music sting kicks in and all you can think is how the fuck do you kill this? You run around, and acid falls from the ceiling giving you little time to shoot and scoot. All the while tentacles are attacking you.

After what feels like a very long battle and despite all your efforts, It grabs you, and as your character and you struggle, he dies, you fail, and he squirms whilst being squeezed even more, lifeless. After a fade to black from white, you see your character, cut in half.

What works is the fact they have a “toy” design, while most may laugh at it, if it doesn’t work for you, it just won’t, but that’s why I enjoy this era of design more than modern standards, what I’m looking at is such a personalized perspective of a character that everyone’s is different. It’s kinda like how despite your toys as a kid only displaying one face, they still had a variety of emotions in your mind. Suspension of disbelief is vital to plot, character, setting, etc, an addition to that phrase I don’t think most think to add is that: Limitations Enable Creativity.

If you tell an artist they have complete creative control with no direction what so ever, they’re never gonna get past the concept phase, there’s so many options that there’s no options. But if you tell them to draw a cat, they’ll draw a phenomenal cat. In that same mindset, when you have “toy” designs, your mind is actually allowed to put some character and feelings onto them. I think this is primarily because of the fact there’s only room for interpretation, and letting the mind wander.

What makes horror great isn’t what you can show, it’s what you can imply. Always and everytime. If you imply enough, the audience/player will create the horror themselves with only you as the guy who pointed them towards it.

I don’t think anything can beat this with modern graphics and standards. Plain and simple, the “lack of” control, despite being extremely tightly and smartly made, the fact the backgrounds are images that also lead to a furthering of SOD and LEC due to perspective, forcing you to map out a game with no 3d environments. There’s a reason people want a real life Resident Evil Mansion. They’d literally know where to go everywhere.

Games like “the evil within” and “amnesia” always bothered me because they don’t really seem to get it. Evil within is just dreadful in multiple departments, but Amnesia just annoys me. What’s scary about it? Describe the Literal One Thing that’s scary about Amnesia. I will literally name multiple examples that beat it. Slender, yes, Slender. Mock the game as it is shit, if you played it then, and even now in the right conditions, it takes everything SOD and LEC and makes it almost modern for it’s time. Slender being a halfway identifiable figure that you’re not supposed to look at, causing you not to get a good image of him, is pretty much just genius, had YT not made ever polygon known to man.

Lemme put it to you this way. If you did this same exact scene, but made it with modern graphics and animations, it’s implication is boring. Oh no. He got squeezed and cut in half, and I know absolutely every detail about it and what the developers wanted me to see (which is everything). Oh yes. How scary, that’s what horror is right?? Knowing everything? I love being scared because I know! That’s what creates tension too right? When I know the colors of my characters fucking internal organs? That really adds to the horror!

Honestly companies that look at gore and military stuff to “be more realistic” bother me because they simply miss the fucking point and are a bit depraved. Like yes I don’t like see my internal organs, everyone, doesn’t. The reason is known, we know that when that happens it’s bad.

We don’t know, however, how those internal organs came out. That’s scary, not knowing. Not that we don’t know how, that we don’t know, in general.

Seeing all the organs fly out is boring. Because now I can’t envision anything that would personally traumatize me. That fade to white is genius because I don’t see what happens. I have this moment of silence to recollect, followed by the grim visual of my reality. And it does it without me seeing literally any gore.

This is why I love PS1 horror titles, and games that try, and even fail, to replicate it. Because my mind and yours is infinitely scarier than Douchebag Mike and his criminal understanding of internal organs.

[tsu1404]

Shaping moments behind the lens

Michelle Ha

March 13, 2024

David Bailey is a British photographer and director, most known for his work in fashion and celebrity photography. Most of his photographs are high definition and high contrast black and white portraits of celebrities and models taken with a simple solid background. He started his photography career back in 1959 and he is still an active photographer in the present at the age of 86.

Shaping the Sixties

David Bailey began his photography career in 1959 after he was discharged from the Royal Air Force where he was serving in Singapore.  At the start of his career, he worked as a photographic assistant and photographer at different studios before becoming a contracted photographer for British Vogue in 1960.

David Bailey has contributed mostly to pop and social culture through his photography of celebrities and fashion. The photos reflect the era that they were taken in through the celebrities, makeup, fashion and scenery during that time. His work, Box of Pin-Ups back in 1964 captured the swinging sixties pop culture by photographing portraits of celebrities in the 1960s. Some of his subjects during the time included Jean Shrimpton, Mick Jagger, and The Beetles.

Portrait of Jean Shrimpton. 1965. © David Bailey

This black and white portrait of english model and actress Jean Shrimpton is apart of his collection in Box of Pin-Ups. The subject, Jean Shrimpton, was a prominent figure in the fashion world during the swinging sixties, she was also one of David Baileys muses as they have taken a lot of photos together.  Even though the photo is in black and white it captures the visual aesthetics of the swinging sixties makeup and fashion through the lighting and contrast. I chose this image because I think that it is a good representation of the sixties look in black in white photography.

I’m not really good at telling stories. I do it with my work.

Actresses Francois Deloreac and Catherine Devenue sitting on a set. 1966. © David Bailey

The subjects in this photograph still stand out even in black and white. I think the choice of the background and hair play the most important roles into making the actresses stand out in the photograph and balance the photograph. The subjects in this photo look natural, they aren't posing and they don't look aware that their photo is being taken yet Bailey still managed to capture a photo where they both stand out through the use of the backgrounds behind them. Francois Deloreac with the brown hair stands out from the white background and Catherine Devenue with the blonde hair stands out from the black background.

Marie Helvin posing next to a blow up doll. 2001. © David Bailey

Even though David Bailey’s photographs are mostly in black and white, he isn’t scared of using color. In his colored photographs, he uses bold, bright and saturated colors to make his photos stand out. He also still manages to process the photos in a way that give the photos that high definition and contrast that his black and white photos have. I chose this photograph to showcase something different from his black and white photographs. This photograph drifts away from Bailey's known style of black and white portraits and introduces something more unique and artistic but even with a different approach to photographing his subjects there are still hints of the photographer through the processing of the photo.

Photographs are not just images captured by a photographer; they are moments frozen in time that define the photographer's perspective, creativity, and ability to evoke emotion and storytelling through visuals.

In the eyes of the photographer

I respect the statement that the photographer shapes the photo. The photos would look different if they were taken by other photographers with the same subject. I think the process that the photographer goes through to capture photographs is what shapes the photograph because each photographer has their own distinctive style of photography they like. We can see this through David Bailey’s photography; the way that Bailey processes the photos, the lighting, background and subjects that he chooses is what shapes the photo into what they are.

It’s not the camera that takes the picture; it’s the person

References

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2024, March 11). David Bailey. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Bailey

British Fashion Council. (n.d.). David Bailey and the story of fashion photography. Google Arts and Culture. https://artsandculture.google.com/story/david-bailey-and-the-story-of-fashion-photography-british-fashion-council/JQXhztVGSo0WLw?hl=en

David Bailey. (n.d.). Dellasposa. https://www.dellasposa.com/artists/134-david-bailey/

Vanderhoof, E. (April 29, 2019). David Bailey let his pictures do the talking. Vanity Fair. https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2019/04/david-bailey-portraits-book-interview

[defdaily]

Arena Homme+ Magazine September 2021 issue featuring JAY B: Nature, Dreams and Music

Translated by defdaily.

That day, JAY B’s world was filled with grass that came up to his knees, sunset that briefly peeked through the dark clouds, and ghosts of the silent campsite. Insects flew about in the intimate conversation of creation, dreams, and the future. An interview with JAY B amidst the passing seasons.

So you are working on an album?

The album is almost finished. I couldn’t release it at the beginning of the year, so I’m releasing it now in the second half of the year. I’m thinking of preparing things early on for next time so [we] are preparing for the production of another album.

There was a big change this year, you moved from JYP Entertainment to H1GHR MUSIC, right? What did you expect before becoming a part of H1GHR MUSIC?

At first I was worried. and was concerned over what to do if I couldn’t adapt. My goal for this year was to adapt to the agency and its artists, but everyone has made me feel comfortable. I thought I would have to do a lot of adjusting to the new agency staff, but I was surprised by how understanding they were of the system I had experienced. The way there has been no problem in our communication has far exceeded my expectations. Things are flowing smoothly.

It must feel like a fresh start. You must be looking forward to getting to do what you couldn’t do previously, but on the other side you must also have hopes to learn more. Is there anyone that could provide you with blunt advice?

I’m not the demanding type. And I have never strongly demanded anything from the company either. But that doesn’t mean I accept anything the company makes and provides me. The difference is that my opinion is reflected in my work more than before. If I was going to lead everything at work, there would have been no need to join an agency. Joining the agency means communicating with their staff. I also think we should listen to other people's opinions a lot. And you have to give feedback too, of course. I am working well with the company. Be it a push or advice as help, I learnt a lot from my previous company. Since I have learnt a lot from there, I should trust myself a little more now. I try to relay what I know and learn about things I’m not knowledgeable of. I rely on Jay Bum hyung a lot. I contact him right away when there’s something I don’t know, and we have a lot of conversations.

Is it important that an artist is stubborn? Do you feel the need to emphasise your own music and personality?

Artists have different personalities, just as people have different preferences. I don't want to diss an artist who is stubborn, nor do I want to tell anyone who isn’t stubborn that they are not an artist. I acknowledge everyone. I, personally, want to express the way I live. I like making music. An artist should be clear about what they want to do. Whether it be to become a star, or to express themselves through music or to earn money, it has to be clear.

What is your clear stance as an artist?

Whether it’s fiction or reality, I want to make stories. I’m the type that wants to tell a story. It was like that too in my GOT7 days. I believe one should create and establish their own path in life. I think that's fun. It's hard, but it's worth it. It adds more meaning to my job and I think it becomes more valuable. If I didn't do it myself, I would feel less attached to it.

There’s nothing more fun than one’s own work. Showing your work and waiting for the response must also be thrilling.

Exactly. I love hearing that my music is good. I’m very shy so I cannot express it very well but I’m very thankful and proud too. And it reassures me that I’m not going down the wrong path.

It does feel like all the hard times disappear when you hear good feedback. But feedback isn’t always good. There are even people who avoid them because of fear of criticism.

To be honest, when it comes to unpleasant feedback, it kind of makes me feel… “ouch!” But I accept it because it is still an evaluation. It also gives me a boost. It’s fun.

You are a solo artist now. Do you feel a burden or pressure?

I don’t feel pressured, but I do feel the burden. I joined H1GHR MUSIC and I feel a sense of belonging. I gain something from this company, but I think this company should gain something from me, too. I have worries about things like whether I’ll be able to benefit the company or not. I feel slightly uneasy about possibly not meeting expectations too.

You feel a sense of responsibility.

There's always a reason and a purpose to start anything. Everyone starts music because they like it, and if they start, there must be music they want to make. So if there is criticism, one would feel down, but if the final product is good, the people that worked on it would feel good. That’s what I hope for.

You uploaded a bunch of your Def. songs onto your YouTube channel. There was quite a lot. Are you the prolific type?

I used to be but… I guess I’m still the type to make many songs. (Laughs). But compared to back then, my production has decreased a lot. My stamina can’t keep up. (Laughs). I used to be able to start and finish working on a song at dawn and when I felt like I could do more, I made more. Nowadays, even when I’m working on only one song, not only is it hard for my body, but I also feel drained so I can’t make many songs.

Isn’t it really fast to make even one song at dawn?

Ah, that’s true. I used to work like that three or four times a week, but now I work once or twice a week. Come to think of it, I don't think I'm the prolific type anymore.

Being able to make a lot of things means you have a lot of ideas.

Having run out of ideas is also a reason for having less work done. There are five mixtapes I’ve uploaded onto YouTube with four to five tracks each. At the time, I not only worked on those but music for GOT7 too. After hustling so hard, I feel like I’ve run out of material. I look around wondering where to find inspiration. When I finish making the melody and want to write lyrics, I feel lost.

In order to be prepared for those situations, creators keep a collection of material. How do you collect resources?

I often read or use my imagination. These days, I often put myself in others’ shoes. When watching a movie, one would empathize with the protagonist. It’s only natural since the plot revolves around them. But I would pay attention to the supporting roles or passerbys in the background and think about the story from their point of view. I would think about what I would do if I heard those words and if I were in that situation. I also pay close attention to any words that might be a good source of inspiration. In the past I would focus on how the plot developed, but now I look at the words that the author uses repeatedly. When I think of any useful words or ideas, I jot them down.

Observing the supporting roles instead of the central narrative is such a novel idea.

I suddenly thought of it while watching a movie at home. The protagonist had said some harsh and rude words to a supporting role. It was something like “Get out of my way.” I thought “How would it have felt to be the one moving out of their way? What would they feel?” These were the thoughts I had.

Has anyone told you that you have a unique perspective?

I’ve often heard that my personality is very unique.

People can say they don’t like something despite others saying they like it. That could come off as unique and fresh ideas come from an uncommon perspective too.

I think it’s 50/50. There are times when something might not feel like much for me while others like it, and times when everyone else seems quite indifferent while I like it. A song I recently liked the idea of is “Smile, Wait for the Flash” by Giriboy where he used the ‘kacha’ shutter sound as gunfire. Using ‘kacha’ like a gunfire as a metaphor for wrapping up your feelings after a breakup was a refreshing idea. It was great.

Do you also often use your instincts?

I try hard to. I don’t naturally use my instincts, but I try to look at things through a different lens. I tend to have random thoughts, and I had one today during the shoot too. This is a camping site, but there was no one camping. So I imagined how it would look when full of people moving about. Also during the shoot, there was a long blade of grass under my feet on a field of grass. I should have avoided it but I accidentally stepped on it. I felt sorry for the grass that got stepped on and out of instinct I said “sorry…”

Seems like you have keen sensibility.

I wish I could be sensible. I’m too cautious to say that I am sensible, though.

I think you would be considered a sensible person because you make music. But I noticed that the comments are disabled for Def.’s mixtapes on YouTube.

The songs that I make under “Def.” are 100% music that I personally wanted to make. I didn’t want to receive feedback, so I disabled the comments. If I release an album under “Def.” in the future, I probably won't be able to disable the comments. I don’t know. The reason I have disabled the comments is because I don’t want to see any praise nor criticism. I don’t look at the comments for my SoundCloud tracks either. Because they’re very personal projects, I’m worried I could be swayed by it so I don’t look at it on purpose. I don’t want to be swayed by anything when it comes to my personal projects. I guess that’s my way of being stubborn.

So it sounds like you’re saying the songs that are made under the name Def. are like a part of you. I can feel your sincerity towards your music.

I would pretend to be indifferent to evaluations, but I’m really scared of receiving negative comments. Not the criticism but I’m scared to look at comments that decide something as ‘not good.’ If they say that it’s not their style, then it’s just personal preference. There may not be songs that match their preference within my discography. But it’s difficult for me to hear people say ‘this is not good, bad, or meh.’ After all, those songs came from me and are like my children.

I remember many tracks with gentle melodies and discovered JAY B’s delicate side. Is this surprising to hear?

This is the first time I’ve been called delicate. I do have several sensitive/vibey songs. I want to try something like a pop, hip-hop, or smug and cocky vibe but I’m not good at that. I don’t think it’s my personality.

What is considered a good melody to you?

Something that feels good at the first listen. My music taste has been so diverse recently that even when I talk to my friends about music, the songs that we all like are different. It’s hard to reach a consensus. In the creator’s perspective, even if something doesn’t sound good to others but it does to the creator, I consider that to be a good melody. I used to stress over how to write a good melody, how to sing it, and if the company would like it. As I move on step by step, I found a standard where at least the melody should sound good enough to me to not abandon the song since everyone has different preferences.

Personal preferences are important but it must be an important job to cater to the general public too. No, I mean, a difficult job.

That’s right. I think I still lack the ability to create melodies that the general public would like. I will have to learn step by step. One thing I feel is that there must be a part that sticks. I can’t exactly describe what type of melody it would be, but to set a minimum standard, it would be ‘a melody that I’m satisfied with. If it’s one that I’m not satisfied with but the public likes, I should follow that.

Do you tend to use many tracks when making music? There’s lot of songs these days that use dozens of layers of tracks.

We used a lot of harmonies with GOT7. Because there were so many harmonies, there was a crazy number of tracks too. These days, I try to be minimal and reduce harmonies. I don’t layer many tracks. I usually have the main track with a few harmonies and some adlibs.

K-Pop in particular mixes many genres and harmonies to create complex music. They are very flashy. What do you think of this phenomenon as someone who prefers to be minimal?

I see it as a good thing, because it means that the general public’s preference is expanding to a variety. It’s rather better. Of course, the basics are also important and I do feel the necessity to study them but we also need to agree with change. We should accept change. Who knows, I might grow old to be someone that can’t accept change and wonder, ‘what kind of music is this?’ But I feel that now is a time to open our eyes to change. When I find that a song is difficult to listen to, I will purposely listen to it repeatedly.

It’s been 10 years since you’ve debuted. How much have you changed over these 10 years?

In the past I was ambitious and had high expectations, but now I am more relaxed. With age, I think my sensitive side is becoming more and more dull. When I let go of some desires, I get to be accepting of more things. The scope of my activities also seems to have widened. I used to have a stubborn side to me in the past. Now I’m like ‘don’t expect too much, don’t anticipate too much,’ just do my job diligently!

There are many artists that use other creative hobbies to ease the burdens of their main job. What do you do to cope with your fuel for creativity?

My hobby is photography so I take many photos. I also learned how to draw at one point but nowadays, I don’t have time to draw since I’m busy. I also make records of things often. I write down my thoughts, even useless things. I also use an audio recorder to record my mood, thoughts, and things I’m currently doing. I also write letters to my future self. Things like ‘this is why I’m struggling, this is what would be good for me now but how it would be for my future self?’ Wondering what I will be thinking about and what I would look like. I write letters to myself about stuff like that. I put them in envelopes according to the year and on the envelope I write down the year the letter was written.

So It’s like an archive of your time. Writing, journaling, letters, photos, music, it’s interesting. A very organised way of saving your thoughts to not lose them. Having said that, is there anyone else you would like to show your records to besides your future self?

Ah! I can’t show this to people. They’ll cringe. (Laughs) It’s sort of embarrassing. I can show the photos to everyone but I want to keep voice messages to myself. I hope that when I am older, I can look at them as I laugh and reminisce about my life. They’re records for myself.

Do you also record everyday life in any way?

I record when I find it interesting the way I thought about something. Even looking at my journal from last year or the year before, my thoughts were different from now. I find it intriguing to see the way people can change like this. I think I tend to have many thoughts, so I record them every day.

From the position of a creator, I guess journaling can be seen as an activity to collect one’s senses and emotions to use them as material for inspiration.

That’s right. My brain isn’t good enough for me to remember everything. There are situations when I recall a memory and decide I could write this down.

What was the most fun thing you did lately?

It’s a bit dangerous, but it was when I rode around on my motorcycle with my friend. There was suddenly a heavy downpour. Since I needed to go home, I rode the motorcycle in the rain. I was completely soaked when I got home. The journey home was super difficult, but I was fortunate enough to not have suffered any injuries. It was a completely new experience so it was very fun. I don’t want to experience it again but it felt like an adventure.

Wearing the Burberry 2021 F/W collection in the pictorial today must also be a new experience. Slightly different from the refined and classic Burberry, the collection shows a lot of change. What were your usual thoughts on Burberry?

I thought of it as a clean and straightforward style. Ever since some time, I noticed their young and bold changes. Although today’s outfits contained many new attempts and changes, I felt that their style was still well refined. I felt that Burberry used their own unique perspective to cleanly interpret nature’s elements. Wearing the outfits, I felt like they had a lot of fun ideas.

Which outfit left the biggest impression on you?

Choosing just one is very difficult. There was one that gave off the feel of a medieval knight, and made me feel like a monarch. I’ve heard that in medieval times, people would also wear bearskin from hunting. I think that has some influence on the Burberry outfits that I wore today. Every time I put on an outfit, I always felt like a medieval knight or king. The fur on the clothes had a strong animalistic feel to it. The scenery, weather, and concept were all very harmonious with each other.

Going back to the topic of music, you said that you like to tell stories. Do you also create a universe with music?

Yes, I create a universe for each album. This album creates this universe, while that album creates another. The albums won’t connect to create one universe, though. Each album is its own world, nothing more. I can’t make them magnificently connect into a grand universe. I like to put my story into each album.

Can you use a keyword to describe the universe of the album you are about to release?

It would be “SOMO:FUME.” This is the first album that I made after joining H1GHR MUSIC. This album consists of my energy, feelings, and thoughts, so it contains the meaning of my hopes for people to consume (somo in Korean) this product and and my wishes for my emotions to smear on to you like perfume, which is why I combined [somo] with the [English word] perfume, and named [the album] SOMO:FUME.

In which direction will JAY B’s music flow from now onwards?

I’ve pondered about directionality for a long time, but I couldn’t come up with an answer. The important part is to participate enough for me to not have regrets and be careful. I may disappoint myself if I have too many expectations for the future. I need to work diligently to not be disappointed when I look back; so that in the future, I can see that I worked hard.

Translated by defdaily.

Please support JAY B’s 1st EP album [SOMO:FUME] coming out on August 26 at 6PM KST. jayb1stsoloep.carrd.co

[littlefreya]

Freya, I'm thinking of challenging myself, because I don't often write in first person and I don't feel it's my strong suit. I want to try it again and see if I can come out with something I like. Do you have any tips on nailing first person? x

Hello darling!!!

First of all, it's a good thing to challenge yourself as a writer. Going to places that scare you and getting out of your comfort zone is one way to grow as an artist.

Here are a few tips I find helpful when writing first person pov:

Remember that you are telling the story through the character's eyes, so unlike 3rd or 2nd person, the story is painted from this person's perspective and what they are experiencing. They can't tell what the other characters feel and everything they say about them is based on their assumptions and former background.

This also gives you a chance to determine how reliable this narrator is. In 1st person, you have a person telling you a story, who knows? They could be lying or exaggerating. Examples of unreliable narrators: Fight Club, Gone Girl, Lolita.

Try steering away from passive voice as much as possible and use active voice instead: "I went to the park" "I drank a glass of wine" etc.

First-person can be a bit repetitive with the "I" so it's always good to reconstruct the sentences to make them easier to read.

I hope this helps. 💖

[unit-ssn0va]

Y’know as an artist and as someone who has been in an huge art block for months now, I sometimes catch myself after finishing a drawing/painting just absolutely hating it, expecially because it looks like the stuff I would do years ago when I had less experience, and I aways end up looking for inspiration and questioning what I’m doing wrong, and I think I know why-

So what I usually find in common with my favorite artists is the fluidity they have in their style, not only on the poses but also in the backgrounds and lineart and in the way they paint. I’m curently studying and trying to have a more versatile art style, and I’m gonna list the things I gotta remember that help me get through this that might also help you if you’re in an art block!

-don’t be scared to try new poses/styles/perspectives/ etc

-of course learning how to do landscapes and backgrounds is important but you can have anything as a background, like literally anything! Try different aesthetics, use Pinterest wallpapers, make a collage or smt! Anything works!

-draw or animate on top of photos or pictures! (Ofc if you’re gonna post, don’t forget to credit the source!)

-experiment with new softwares and techniques! try stuff out till you find what works best for you and what you can implement in your style!

-use new mediums! if you’re stuck like me, trying on new mediums could help to make your creativity flow again, for example I started using oil pastels recently and they’re awesome, it helped me a lot!

-try to get into new fandoms or AU’s! That seems obvious but usually I only get inspo or ideas when the fandoms i’m in has new content (which is a problem cuz most of the fandoms I’m in are dead but that’s okay)

-try on popular art trends or chalanges! it doesn’t personally work a LOt for me but it might help you!

- go to different places to draw or paint! Maybe go to a quiet place or a place that inspires you, maybe even draw from life while ur there

- just have fun! I know that’s a obvious one, and sometimes it’s very hard to have fun or concentrate on art when there’s a lot going on, but (in my opinion) that’s the most important step for you to get out of an art block. I also know it’s sometimes hard to draw what we actually would like to, but know that if it makes you happy or helps you, you should definitely try to!

[blissfulalchemist]

9, 12, 14, 21, 22 and 24 for John and Cat ☺️

Thank you Lydia! Sorry this took a hot minute, but a few of these were better and easier written on a keyboard and the laptop we have is still MIA. But thank you for letting me talk about them!

9. How open are they with their feelings?

Once together they are very open with all their feelings. Before that though they were and they weren’t. See here’s the thing Cat is very much someone that has their heart on their sleeve and while she can hold back, it’s only so far. She by default is open with her emotions and feelings, however she didn’t always speak on everything that she was feeling which allowed her to sort of just keep them away or found ways to write off certain reactions to things. Her distrust for the Seeds wasn’t held back so much but she never tried to let on just how much she was scared of them. John as we all know is a master manipulator and doesn’t show emotions when he feels in control of situations. With Cat it became a balancing act of how much he should fake and how much should be left genuine in order to gain some form of trust with her and have her open up to him, as the more she opened up the more likely he was going to find out just how to get her to assimilate to Eden’s Gate. It was through this constant game of hide and seek with emotions that the two eventually caught real feelings and became more open after that.

12. Do they have similar goals? If they clash, how do they deal?

Truly when you get down to the heart of their goals they are very similar. For all of John’s more aggressive methods there’s the motive to help people and create a safer and better world for everyone. He wants better than what he had. Cat chose her career path because of the same reasons. She tries to promote that while in Eden’s Gate, doing a little more than what John was able to accomplish among the locals (though we can blame this on Cat’s unthreatening demeanor and height). When it came to fights about the methods that were being used to fulfill the confession aspect of joining Eden’s Gate neither really wanted to budge on their opinion, eventually though they came to the compromise that it should be a choice to have the more physical route or a less physical route where people were able to just talk it out and have the sin placed where it wouldn’t hurt that badly to the person or not at all if they fulfilled other duties that would count towards the same atonement. Now once Cat was gone the old methods resumed and those that didn’t have a sin got one.

14. Is their anything they associate with each other?

For John it was the wedding ring that he got for Cat once they started to have a true relationship along with a few of the small dried out wildflower bouquets that got left around the house and office. John kept the ring closest to him and upon finding out Chance stole it he did double down his efforts to finding him as he desperately wanted the ring back, Faith does eventually convince Chance to give it back. 

For Cat it’s the birthday gift that John gave her outside the Spread Eagle. She wasn’t allowed to have it while hospitalized and once she got out she wore it almost everyday until she felt and knew that there was no way that she could get back together with John. It does stay where she can see it on her nightstand. If Liz ever asked about it she would tell her that it was from her father but wouldn’t elaborate on the details. 

21. Personally, do you think they are a good couple? 

I had….so many intentions to make them a better couple when I first joined the fandom and developed their story. However as time went on and Cat became more developed they aren’t a good couple in the sense of it being healthy as there are many unhealthy things about it, however! as a dynamic though! Yes they are a good couple.

These two are very much living and presenting lies when they first interact and meet. The two, though mostly John, egg the other on to bring about parts of themselves neither want to see to the forefront. When they come to a middle ground it starts to look a little more obsessive especially when John gives her up to let her attempt to go back to a normal life with Theo. John doesn’t really leave her be, leaving gifts for her, speaking to her, seeking her out, and still telling her that he loves her. Vice versa Cat has a more subtle obsession with him for a long time with her seeking him out, asking him for advice, and making decisions that keep her and those she cares about in Hope County in the hopes of John joining them (really it’s because she can’t come to being okay with being away from John).

Once embracing the Mary Seed persona her clingy-ness to John is much more apparent. She takes on this role with the sole purpose of making a better life for her and John that will guarantee she never lose John prematurely like she lost Theo. She adores being at his side and just being with him, so much so that when he sends her away once again for good Cat does everything she can to contact him, escape to him, and just be with him. It’s these behaviors that have many professionals telling her that John’s affection for her was fake and induced by Bliss (which granted played a very small role with it just being around and having a background effect that just kept her a little more open really). With John it does turn into trying to get her back while also keeping away from his mistake and in a way finishing what she started. Once in the real world again John never fails to try and re-establish their relationship. 

He keeps his distance for a long time but knowing that eventually Liz will have questions and will try to seek out the answers, which is where he will slither his way back into Cat’s life. He does go to lengths to try and ask her to be with him again and Cat wants to, truly she wants too but she knows how bad it got and doesn’t want to risk losing Liz as it would feel as bad, if not worse, than when she lost her first child. There was no untangling them from the other once they came together, but thankfully Cat’s stubborn in keeping her distance from John romantically. 

22. From the outside looking in, what is their dynamic like? 

Very back and forth with how they play off of their good and bad qualities. Cat may not have had the same experience as John but she has the empathy and patience to help him and work through it. Once there is some trust between them, John no longer really holds back his displeasure and anger outbursts and image is everything so he needs Cat to not look like the meek little wife that Joseph more hoped for with her. She loses her spine a bit and John pushes her to stand up for herself with everyone and not just him. Vice versa John can become too much as she offers the different perspective and calms him down so he can get a better grip on his emotions and work through them, even if he’s only a calmer and nicer version of himself around her only.

24. Is their any moment that happens between them that you know happens and just makes you melt? 

God okay so I headcanoned John to be a Leo in my story because the real change for John is when Cat makes a little private birthday celebration for him, despite how much of a jerk he had been to her prior. Cat knowing that there hadn’t really been much in the way of birthday parties for the Seeds takes to making a nice dinner of what she can manage of John’s favorite meal and makes a nice cake for him with the best she can manage decoration wise as she’s no artist. She makes this little empty cabin the destination of it and decorates it to feel fancier than it is. There’s music in the background on a radio and eventually they just kind of dance under the stars and moonlight and its just so! God its just so soft and probably one of the most self indulgent parts of their story.

[ashes-in-a-jar]

Tma relisten Episodes 6-10

(Still really long)

Alot of really important details that are going to be very relevant later on. Very facinating how early on you find these out. Relistens are good.

Episode 6 squirm

It's a good thing tma doesn't do much of sexual encounters and their connection to entities. While I'm sure that's a thing that in any realistic universe would exist avoiding it was a good choice. This statement was *shudder*

Interesting that she had no visible mark on her. Also being repulsed by police stations because the sectioned officers could have helped.

Naked in the streets after lighting his apartment on fire. What an image.

So technically the worms were in the archives 3 times: when Jane made her first statement, when Timothy hodge made his and when Jane attacked. The worms are very familiar with the magnus institute.

"This story is concerning. Not because of Mr. Hodge’s experience, although I’m sure it was very upsetting." ace Jon talking very technical about "experiences"

" though obviously it’s a tragic loss of life, etcetera, etcetera." Jon being Jon.

Ecdc are aware of Jane and corruption typical attacks which is off the bat interesting world building.

He's skeptic here because of lack of evidence but does admit the existence of a threat in Jane Prentiss

Also! He knows of her from before probably when he was a researcher. This confused me on first listen because I was trying to remember if she was ever mentioned before this. But she wasn't.

Episode 7 the piper

Wilfred kind of sounds like martin in some way but maybe it's just me assigning poetry to anyone like him.

But he hated apathy which might be very Martin like

Gentle sadness and creeping fear from the music. For violence of war... Is that what it means to immortalize it?

It's really cool that the concept of music in this podcast is associated specifically with war and unwarranted violence. There's a very strong statement in there somewhere that needs to be explored.

God this statement was intense. Lying for such a long time in that trench surrounded by violent death. But what's most interesting is that this statement doesn't feel like a supernatural one and yet... The piper was with Wilfred throughout the various battles and bouts of violence until the moment it was officially over. But in a very subtle way.

The description of the piper is really intense with the 3 faces. I think I missed it the first time but hearing that representation of war and fear is something I'm going to look for in artistic depictions now.

Wait. Who is Joseph Rayner? I know of Maxwell but never heard of Joseph.a victim instead of Wilfred? Collaborator with the Slaughter? Hmmm

I wonder how Accidental it was that the statement from 1922 was filed in the 2000s. Maybe to show that the piper never really leaves and the war never really ends. Ever.

Episode 8 burned out

Wow Hilltop Road already! I forgot how many of the first episodes were so important to the plot later on.

"That side of the road backed onto South Park with fences marking the bottom of each garden." this is wrong btw. Hilltop Road in Oxford does not run along Sount Park but is perpendicular to it, meeting it in the corner with Divinity Road which meets with Morrell Avenue which is the road running along South Park. Just FYI because I had to look this up to get a good picture. But I guess Morrell doesn't sound as exciting as Hilltop (which isn't even at the top of the hill smh)

Ivo lensik describes Raymond fielding as white which makes me automatically think he is not. Just a thought that popped in my mind.

Huh. His family had a history of schizophrenia. And his dad was obsessed with fractals. Being followed by The spiral (all the bones are in his hands) was also part of this story really interesting.

Agnes had mousy brown hair and looked like Raymond! Not red hair ( at least at first) like I pictured. Also she was a hell of a creepy child...

So did he time travel? Seeing the moments of Raymond's end? Seems like time doesn't work right in that place anyway.

Web person being devout church goer is also an interesting touch

Father Edwin Burroughs! I forgot he was here too! The knock reminded me of Mr Spider *shiver*

The priest explaining that the church exorcized demons but what not decisive if ghosts exist was hilarious. Jon dismisses paranormal but asks Martin if he's a ghost is opposite of the church.

Hmmm the web pushing him to cut the tree to uncover box from antique table...

Apple full of spiders ugh. Maybe something web was trapped in there by Desolation and ivo managed free it as Agnes was dying.

"We cannot prove any connection, but Martin unearthed a report on an Agnes Montague, who was found dead in her Sheffield flat on the evening of November 23rd 2006, the same day Mr. Lensik claims to have uprooted the tree." wow that's an obscure thing to find well done Martin!

Jon still looks for credence for this story despite the schizophrenia that could leave him skeptical.

"while I trust Mr. Lensik’s testimony of his own experiences about as far as I can throw a bleeding tree," again Jon with his special brand of jokes.

Episode 9 a Father's love

The Montauk's story! I always thought their family had one of the most tragic ones. The hunt is a really cruel patron with its forced hunger and having other entities use them as tools.

Julia telling the truth of the story to the Magnus Institute instead of the police is also heartbreaking. How desperate and alone she must have felt drowned in that awful literally unbelievable story. The magnus institute feeds off of those people too.

So many of the hunt end up in police it's just... Such a strong statement against that establishment. What do we do to make that less of a horrible, unjust, all consuming system? That feeds on the hunger of some and the abject fear of others? And it doesn't have to be supernatural. It's interesting how season five, of all seasons, is the one that gave us that perspective. The non supernatural one on the subject while the world itself is so far away from the natural. God everything about this idea is so heavy and painful.

I kind of hate Julia's fate because of her background and how much alot of its beginning was out of her control. It's like Daisy. The hunt can never be forgiven no matter how compulsive it is.

The dark that took her mother turned her into part of it? Like the dark liquid?

A dark room to develop his photos of his victims huh? A play on words here.

Oooh they put a heartbeats in the soundscape really cool actually.

So Montauk killed other dark members that tried to leave? For the ritual? Like Julia's mother?

The hunt compelled him to keep the hearts as trophies? which is very self destructive of the hunt to do. Or is it part of the dark ritual with the sacrifices that the heart had to be kept?

I think Montauk was trying to slow down the ritual as revenge that night, rendering the sacrifices he helped create useless. Which is why pitch came after them that night and dissappeared once Montauk finished his ritual.

Sourcing the Serial killer enthusiast community. Love that the archives use whatever source of info they can access.

So Maxwell dissappeared in 1994 from public eye land yet the cult kept working towards a ritual. But now in secret? Their timeline always confused me.

Episode 10 vampire killer

I never noticed Trevor came right after Julia! Oooh this is so much connecting the dots so early on!

Vampires are so disturbing here makes you ever wonder how the hell media like twilight were ever created. But hehe the monster ****er community has always been a vibrant one. Not these vampires tho.

Trevor is so sassy I love his statements. Like Julia it really makes me sad how consumed he became at the end and how awful his death was. Once again the tragedy of the Hunt.

"I taught myself to read, I read as much on the subject as I could, and it isn’t covered often or clearly in those books I have found." can you imagine what kinds of books he might have found during the sexy vampire Era? This is a hilarious picture to paint.

So vampires feed off of blood and not fear which is an interesting creature to have in this kind of universe. Although hunters are also like that but there is still alot of fear and awareness involved with that while the vampires try to conceal themselves until the last moment.

There's alot of mosquito imagery in these vampires which is... Ugh

Also interesting how many time Trevor just uses the vampire's full name. Never shortened and never talked about in another title. Sylvia McDonald this Sylvia McDonald that. Also the other vampire. They always had a name that was psychicly imposed on the victims to be remembered fully. Very Stranger behavior.

Ahhhh the one vampire weakness... Drrrugs.

It's also very flammable which sets interesting precedence to setting unnatural things on fire to make them disappear.

Alard dupont comes in a later statement right? Yeah in 56

Martin was there when the statement was given which was 2010 and in 2016 he's 29 so he worked there for a while! At least since age 23 perhaps we'll find out even earlier. And he was still scared to be found under qualified after all this time! Oof...

I wonder how draining it is to give a statement that it kills someone who is sick.

The government is in on this! Looking for the teeth Trevor gave the institute... Somehow that strikes me as hilarious in the world building of this podcast. And it really leaves Jon no choice but to concede that there is something to the statement even if he refuses to use the term vampire like Trevor did so freely.

[hopefulbagelboi]

Reflection

On the Tv series project and what I have so far with my animation for games project.

Oracle Cat: I started off determined, full of ideas and had a game plan, and I believe things would have gone much better if not for mental health issues. However, once I picked myself back up again I was able to continue where I had left off despite not having looked at the material for months.

My animation for this project is not my best and I know it can be better, however I am beyond shelling out passion for this project and I had no intention of improving the animation further. I do think that for this animation I had some of the best linework and backgrounds I had ever done due to the research, tutorials watched and books studied ('Figure Drawing For All It's Worth' has incredibly detailed sections on framing, vanishing points, perspective and much more. 'Setting Up Your Shots' was also a nice visual guide about perspective, framing and camera movements). This time I used much more reference images during my sketching stage, as usually I either forget or am too stubborn to. I think this aided with improving the believability of my backgrounds.

My revised character sheets show great improvement in my skill and understanding of basic artistic concepts such as lighting, shading and line weight. Previously I would never have attempted such 'complex' techniques as I had very low confidence in my drawings.

What could be improved?

Time management for sure, as always it has been my greatest weakness. I did have a work plan, calendar, and all the likes but I have a bad habit of never sticking to, well, habits.

Since I am still puzzling together which work and study methods work best for me I can't make promises about having no time management issues at all next time, though I do believe that by being given second chances (multiple) to complete this project I have inched closer to the answer as to how I can tame my wayward focus (I can now sit and work for 3 hours at a time rather than my previous 20 minutes! Yes it was a struggle!).

Communication with my tutors. Put simply I am terrible at it due to my own stubbornness and reluctance to ask for help. I would disappear for weeks at a time, only skulking back online to submit the current deadline before becoming a whisper on the wind once more. This past week I have gotten my rear back into gear and have been communicating with my tutors almost daily, attending classes and 1-1's and working on feedback. This has helped me overcome roadblocks with me work and has been a considerable benefit to me, all thanks to the patience and kindness of my tutors, I am back on track and will continue to communicate in the future.

Animal Boy:

Another project that I was raring to sink my teeth into but that turned into a dumpster fire due to mental health reasons.

The sharp learning curve for 3D animation didn't scare me off, in fact I was glad I now had no way to avoid learning it, and the first few days of it went well as I gained quite a knack for it.

My tutor, an expert on 3D animation, was very helpful when it came to teaching me shortcuts, skills, tips and tricks for navigating the 3D world and for making my 3D experience as painless as possible. He showed me how to apply textures and gave me a general rundown of what stages I should go through as I work on my animation.

All I can really say is that I believe I would've done much better on this project if it hadn't been for personal mental health issues standing in my way. At the very least I do think I am doing a little better on that front. If I can't take a degree away with me from university I can at the very least take improved mental health back home with me!

What could be improved?

Character sheets are one of my most hated parts of a project (action poses are fun, turnarounds are NOT) and I would draw several versions of a character over and over only to use none of them, all of them ending up in the bin. I was stuck on how to remedy this issue until I was able to use my traditionally drawn sketches as a base for my digitally drawn character sheets. This improved my enjoyment of the dreaded turnaround greatly as it was easier to remove mistakes and sort of 'posh' up a drawing by simply giving it steady looking lines thanks to the magic of many brush strokes and a very fine eraser.

I still take far too long to create any kind of drawing but that is only something that will improve over time the more I draw and the more the movements are committed to muscle memory.

[merflk]

if your cascade, ocean wave blues come.

main pairing: ginny weasley x blaise zabini background pairings: neville longbottom x astoria greengrass, percy weasley x pansy parkinson, oliver wood x marcus flint words: 6021 link: ao3 soundtrack: peace - taylor swift

Every wedding she’s attended since the war reminds her of Bill and Fleur’s.

She can’t help it. No matter the venue, or the people getting married, or the guests attending, every single time she’s pulled back into that tent in her parents’ backyard.

It was bad the first few times. The war sparked a lot of tragedy, but the war ending made people feel like taking the leap together. In the past seven years, she’s been to thirteen weddings total. The first time, it was like she was transported back into the war in the middle of the ceremony. She had a quiet panic attack that no one noticed and, eventually, got home absolutely plastered. After that happened a second time, she realised that it was a wedding thing. So for a little bit she attended none.

That didn’t last very long. Hard to get to wedding number fourteen otherwise.

The thing that saved her was her camera. As it turned out, taking pictures was a ton of fun, and she was kind of good at it. At first, it was because she ignored every single ‘rule’ photography had. She paid next to no attention to classic perspective and lighting. She just went ahead and snapped. People said it was artistic. That made her feel a little proud, so she kept taking them.

At some point, the camera became an extension of herself. And she became a photographer.

Now, wedding photography is like a little treat. She only does it for friends and family, not as an actual career choice, choosing to stick to other subjects for that. When Neville asked if she would take the pictures for his wedding to Astoria, she agreed to it immediately. They’re having a spring wedding, full of flowers and sunshine, and now that she’s standing here, looking around, she feels free from Bill and Fleur’s wedding for the first time.

Ginny smiles and snaps a picture of Harry, Ron and Hermione, who are laughing loudly near the buffet. The wedding is outside, in the large garden of the Greengrass estate. As far as Ginny knows, it took a lot of convincing to get Astoria’s parents on board with her marrying Neville, but with the help of her sister Daphne (who was a grade A politician) they had managed to figure something out.

The gardens are huge, and the wedding is smack in the middle of them, so the house seems pretty far away from here. Even so, she can still make out its luxurious white exterior. Neville is marrying into big money. But…

Ginny glances over at Neville and Astoria, who are quietly dancing in the middle of the dance floor, their foreheads pressed together. The hem of Astoria’s dress is slightly smudged with mud, and she has three flowers in her hair. It’s like they’re their own little sun with the amount of love and happiness radiating from them. The other dancing couples orbit them, basking in their light.

She takes a picture.

Even if Astoria’s parents never accepted Neville, even if they had disowned their daughter like they’d originally threatened to do, neither of them would have wavered. They would have had a tiny wedding somewhere in a forest, and Ginny would have taken the exact same picture there.

Damn, love is kind of beautiful.

Thinking of Neville and Astoria as the sun puts the wedding in a different light, though. Ginny looks around carefully, looking at the way that groups of people move together through the space. Although this wedding is one between a Gryffindor and a Slytherin, that mixing of houses doesn’t extend to the party guests. Now that she’s looking for it, Ginny notices the way that there are clusters of isolated guests spread out. A couple of former Slytherins here, a few former Gryffindors there. There are two or three places where the houses meet, and of course there are people of all houses here. Hannah Abbott is chatting with Romilda Vane. Padma Patil is having a very playful conversation with George. Pansy Parkinson says something to Percy as she steals his glass of champagne right from his hands. But, afterwards, they move towards their own group of people – Percy to Fred and Angelina, Pansy to Daphne and Blaise Zabini.

When Ginny follows her with her gaze, her eyes land on Zabini for a moment, and she catches him looking back at her. Perhaps it would be more fair to say that he catches her looking at him. As a reflex, finding the perfect excuse, Ginny lifts up her camera and takes a picture of the three of them from a distance.

When she looks at the screen briefly to check the photo, she notices that Blaise is smiling in it, looking straight into the camera. He looks so good that she wonders if that was his reflex – put on the model face. He probably has modelled for something or other, right? She thinks she heard that rumour somewhere at some point. That his parents live in Italy and he’s done some modelling there after the war. No, wait – just his mom. She’s notoriously remarried a bunch of times. Lady Zabini is a bad bitch.

“Did it come out well?”

Ginny jumps and almost drops her camera, like she’s been caught red-handed doing something embarrassing.

When she looks up, Blaise Zabini is right in front of her, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his perfectly-tailored suit and a smile on his face that tells her he knows exactly why she just almost jumped out of her skin.

Get it together, Ginny, she scolds herself. You’re the wedding photographer, for Merlin’s sake. You’re just doing your job. He can’t prove anything.

“Yeah, I got a good one,” she says with a polite smile, “Astoria expressly asked me to take some extra pictures of the friends and family today. I think she’s making an album.”

Blaise snorts, and his smile softens for a moment. “Sounds like her.”

His response piques her curiosity a little bit. “Are you close with the family?”

“I suppose.” He smiles at her, something sly that makes her feel like they’re sharing a secret. “We’re all pretty tight-knit.”

Ah. So he’s aware of it too, hm?

“I can tell.” Ginny looks around again. “People stick together.”

Blaise sighs. “People are obsessed with the comfort zone.” He scrutinises her face for a moment, and Ginny has to think of ice water to keep from getting flustered. This man has a very intense gaze.

Shark eyes, she thinks to herself.

“Not you, though, aren’t you?”

It’s supposed to be a compliment, she thinks, but it feels undeserved. “I’m not so sure,” she tells him honestly, “If that was really the case, maybe I wouldn’t be standing behind a screen the entire time.” She holds up her camera.

Blaise hums softly, a deep, warm sound. Unexpectedly, Ginny feels something inside of her light up.  

“But you’re brave,” he presses, “With that, uh… Gryffindor spunk?”

She laughs, and he smiles like that was what he was angling for in the first place.

“I guess. At least I can be honest about it. Not sure if that’s the Gryffindor spunk, but well.”

“So maybe it’s the Weasley?”

She arches an eyebrow at him. “I’d like to think it’s the Ginny.”

He tilts his head. “Fair enough. It’s admirable, in any case.” He grins. “And kind of sexy.”

She laughs again, the flame inside of her glowing brighter. She wonders if that’s how love works – if a sun like Neville and Astoria makes all the other stars brighter too. Maybe she’s getting swept up in the atmosphere. But…

She looks over Blaise curiously. “Smooth,” she teases.

He’s still smiling at her, shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly. “I tend to speak my mind.”

“I like that.”

“Good. Can I get you something to drink?”

She can’t help but laugh again. She likes how obvious he’s being about it. It’s bold.

“Sure,” she says, “But no alcohol. I’m on the job.”

“Ah, yes,” he grins, “We can’t have you distracted now, can we, miss Weasley?”

“Thank Merlin I have an iron will.”

He chuckles. “We’ll see about that.”

She stares straight back at him, issuing a challenge. “Don’t tempt me.”

***

The next wedding sucks.

And, no, it’s not because things didn’t work out between Blaise and her. That has nothing to do with it. It’s fine. She’s fine.

It’s not even like it lasted very long. They dated for three months, then were together for eight. That’s less than a year. Nothing to write home about.

Of course, that had been one of the biggest issues: home. She hadn’t expected her parents to be so against her dating Blaise. He continuously made a bad impression on them. It was in the way he talked, the way he walked, the things he did, the things he said… Blaise and her family just didn’t match.

She didn’t do much better with his family. Lady Zabini is an incredible woman in her own right, but she definitely can’t stand Ginny’s attitude.

But that should have been fine. If it were real, they could have worked around it. Instead, they just fell apart.

Maybe we don’t want the same things in life, was their conclusion, maybe we’re too different.

Now, almost a full year later, she can admit that maybe they are too similar. Both too stubborn for their own good. Both too fucking scared of all of it. The real commitment, the intimacy, the vulnerability. Maybe it wasn’t that it didn’t work, it was just that they weren’t…

They weren’t ready.

But how the fuck were they supposed to know that?

It doesn’t matter. It didn’t work out. It happens. It’s fine.

Ginny lifts up her camera and takes a picture of her parents, the biggest traitors in history, who are laughing and chatting with Pansy in her gorgeous white dress. Pansy managed to do what Blaise couldn’t: she completely won over the Weasleys, despite her Slytherin heritage.

It probably had something to do with Percy’s attitude as well. Percy saw the way her parents treated Blaise, and when he started dating Pansy he wouldn’t stand for that kind of behaviour. He refused to talk to them until they gave her a fair chance. Ginny remembers a family dinner which ended in a very uncomfortable screaming match. When it came down to it, Percy had screamed that it didn’t fucking matter whether Pansy was a bitch or not. She was his. And if they could accept him for who he was, they very well could except the girl he loved as well. And that was that.

That night, Ginny kept her mouth shut. She regrets that more than anything. But maybe the fact that her parents didn’t like Blaise was just the perfect excuse not to bring him home to them. Not to let him get that close.

Frustrated, Ginny grabs one of the nearby waiters and downs a flute of champagne. These days, she kinds of hates herself.

She can forgive herself for the shitshow that was her relationship with Blaise Zabini. She can forgive herself for her mistakes. She can even be proud of what she’s learned from the whole experience. She knows more about who she is and what she wants now than ever before.

She just can’t stand that she’s still so fucking sad about it.

She locks eyes with Blaise over the rim of her empty champagne flute and for a moment the world stops turning. They look at each other. He arches one of his perfect eyebrows, and she remembers the moment she told him that she doesn’t drink on the job like it happened three minutes ago. She flushes in shame.

But fuck him, honestly.

She represses the urge to flip him off, hopes she conveys the emotion with her gaze, and walks the fuck away.

She absolutely hates that they now move in the same circles more than they did before. Since Pansy and Percy got engaged, every party she’s been to has seen a number of Slytherins that she would have never been able to predict hanging out with. Moreover, they’re great. They’re fun. People are falling in love all over the place. It’s kind of beautiful. But it would be so nice to just not see Blaise for a little while.

He knows her better than she would like, so she knows he’s aware that she hasn’t been doing great since their break-up. Sure, she’s been going to therapy, which was about fucking time, and that’s been very helpful, and she’s been learning a lot about herself, but it’s all been so exhausting and it shows. It shows on her face, it shows in her art, it shows in the state of her relationships. She’s lost a bunch of friends rather suddenly, but she’s kept the important ones close-by (Luna has been an actual saint) and she thinks that’s fine for now. Weirdly, she’s grown pretty close to Percy through it all.

He’s a little bitch, of course, and doesn’t let her get away with anything, but he sticks around anyway. And that’s just how her brother is, she supposes. She’s pretty sure he’s really annoyed with her most of the time, but he’s there anyway. He picks her up for brunch. He responds to the memes she sends him. He lets her make one harsh comment about Blaise every few weeks, and if she tries to do more he tells her to stop deflecting and take some responsibility for her life. It stings, but it’s a sting she welcomes. She needs a Percy in her life.

Just one, though. That’s enough. And sometimes, she really needs a break.

She takes a picture of him now, standing with some of his friends near the back of the room. He has a good, solid smile on his face, one that makes him look like their dad, and he’s clearly enjoying himself. She’s happy for him. The ceremony went well. Pansy looks like a fucking dream. Everyone’s behaving themselves. She might actually be the biggest problem factor at the entire event, nursing her little grudges, and she feels like she’s done a decent job of keeping that under wraps.

She glances at Blaise again. He’s talking to a woman at the bar, and she hates him. She hates it. She hates this. She hates that she cares. The woman is gorgeous. Maybe she should walk over there and hit on her. That would be a double win – hot lady and sticking one to her ex.

She doesn’t like the bitterness of her own thoughts, and represses the itch to get more alcohol in her system. It’s her brother’s wedding. She’s not going to get smashed. He deserves better, and she’s definitely not going to give Blaise the satisfaction.

She points her camera at Percy again, but he’s already looking at her with a frown on his face, annoyance flashing across his features.

Ginny looks down in surprise, wondering if she spilled something on her dress or something, but she looks fine. Still, when she looks back up, Percy is stalking towards her.

He didn’t read her mind, did he? No. No, he can’t do that. He doesn’t have the… Can he do that?

“You’re doing that thing,” he accuses her when he reaches her.

“What thing? I have several things.”

They’ve done in depth analyses of all of them. Him, accusing her of being a brat. Her, impatiently explaining to him that some coping mechanisms and behavioural patterns aren’t pretty. All over a bottle of whiskey in the middle of the night.

She’d never imagined she would one day be the closest to Percy out of all of her brothers. But here they are.

Percy shoves his hands into his pockets. “The thing where you look like you’re trying to set someone on fire by sheer force of will.”

She is trying to set someone on fire by sheer force of will.

But she’s not going to admit that to him.

“Come on, you couldn’t pick out a look like that from all the way over there, that’s ridiculous. At most you saw me glaring a little bit.”

Percy doesn’t let up on his accusatory stare, so Ginny shows him the palms of her hands in defeat.

“Look, I’m trying, okay? I’m doing alright, aren’t I? I’m not bothering anyone. You’re the only one who picks up on these things. And you can’t tell me that you’re not having the time of your life. You’re practically glowing.”

He is. He looks healthier than he has in years. Pansy makes him wear fashionable glasses, and he has leaned into all the better aspects of himself since they got together. Now, having just married her, he looks proud and satisfied, like a cat in the sun.

“As you should, by the way.” Ginny nods her head in Pansy’s direction. “She looks like a dream.”

He follows her gaze. “She does, doesn’t she?”

Percy smiles like he has a secret. Ginny wants to shake him until he shares it. Instead, she focuses on how seeing him happy kind of makes her happy too.

She nudges him with her elbow. “I’m fine. I’m not setting anyone on fire. Go dance with Mrs Parkinson-Weasley over there.”

He looks back at her, but she can tell he’s already halfway to Pansy’s side. “Don’t set anyone on fire,” he warns her.

“Promise,” Ginny grins.

She doesn’t set anyone on fire after that. If she’s still thinking about it, no one else calls her out for it. She gets through the night, her brief chat with Percy fuelling her determination to be okay for him. This is not the time and place to wallow. Maybe the time for wallowing is pretty much over in general. Maybe it’s time for her to finally take the next step towards growth by letting go of some of this bitterness over that one failed relationship.

Perhaps she could meet someone new.

***

She probably would have been alright after that if it weren’t for Blaise motherfucking Zabini.

Initially, she’s off to a great start. By the end of Percy and Pansy’s wedding, she had taken one picture of Blaise, where he was smiling into the camera with his arm around Theo, and she’d given him a brief nod to let him know it turned out the way she knew he liked. He was nearly floored by the gesture, she’s pretty sure, but he nodded back. That was progress.

After that, it was almost like they could become friends. At the very least acquaintances. She had lost contact with most of their mutual friends at that point, but she ran into him when she wanted to show up for Percy. Percy had practically disappeared into Pansy’s friend group at that point. The only person he really stayed close with outside of them and his direct family was Oliver. Of course, it helped that Oliver and Marcus finally stopped bullshitting each other and admitted that their rivalry was perhaps more of a romantic-tension thing than anything else by that point.

But for Ginny it mostly meant that she spent a night every few weeks in the presence of Blaise and maybe six to ten other people. Pansy and Percy had moved after their wedding, but their new place was only slightly bigger than their former one, so there really was no avoiding each other on nights they hung out.

It helped with some of the lingering bitterness. But it also kept him in her orbit. And that just made it very clear that Blaise Zabini? He’s impossible to forget.

Every time she wasn’t annoyed with him, she liked everything that came out of his mouth. When they bantered, she felt alive. When he looked her up and down as she entered the room, she couldn’t keep herself from grinning.

She missed him.

That wasn’t new. She knew that she missed him. It didn’t mean anything. At least, it didn’t change anything. They didn’t work. She realised why. She missed him. She wasn’t falling for anyone new. The facts weren’t great, but not a threat in any way.

Except that some nights, when she was more sober than she would have liked to admit afterwards, that feeling of missing him crossed the line into exceptionally dangerous territory.

I want him, she’d admit to herself, I want him for myself again.

During nights like that, it was especially nice to have Oliver there. She could distract herself by bringing up Quidditch with Oliver and Marcus and then the night would fly by. In the end, they grew rather close.

So, yes, of course, when Oliver asked her to do the photography for their wedding, she happily agreed.

So here she is at another wedding.  

Admittedly, she’s having a pretty great time. Oliver and Marcus decided to have their wedding on a small island off the coast of Scotland, underneath the wide open sky. There isn’t a theme, but, just like with Neville and Astoria’s wedding, Ginny manages to find something like a theme – freedom. Both men flew into the ceremony on their brooms. There are aerial artists at the reception. The air smells of salt and seaweed and a hearty wind has been blowing through the clusters of guests since the moment they stepped onto the island.

Some of the guests are complaining, running after hats or constantly brushing their hair out of their faces. But most of them are enjoying breathing a little deeper than normally, feeling the fresh ocean air fill up their lungs and making their minds expand beyond the walls they usually find themselves enclosed in.

The wind makes Ginny’s job a little harder, since it’s hard to catch people being photogenetic with hair in their faces, but she likes a challenge. Moreover, with conditions like these, the good shots she does take aren’t just good – they’re brilliant.

She’s caught Oliver and Marcus a couple of times, grinning brightly and holding hands. They fit each other so well that it perplexes her sometimes. Every time that happens, she feels her gaze wander, looking for the shark-eyed man who recalibrates her sense of gravity.

She tries not to. It’s just so hard not to indulge – Blaise looks like a Greek hero, briefly sequestered on some island or other while he is on his way back home to Athens. The ceremony was in the morning, at eleven, so the party is in the middle of the day. Although the sky isn’t as blue as it was this morning, instead turning a cloudy light-grey, the day is still warm and as wonderful as they could have hoped for. The island is rocks and weeds, mostly, so sand isn’t much of an issue, and since the island isn’t lived on, it’s like they’re out in a piece of wildness.

Blaise has taken off his jacket, like most of the men who are bothered by the heat and inspired by the free feeling on the island. Most of the women have taken their heels off and are walking around bare-foot. It’s like they’re all letting their hair down and taking a break from social conventions, even while politely asking after each other’s families and addressing people by their formal titles.

She catches someone teasingly calling Neville ‘professor’ and looks over to see him grinning at Hannah, who is holding Millicent’s hand. With a smile, Ginny brings up her camera and snaps a picture of them.

Then she returns her attention to Blaise.

He’s grinning with Draco and Adrian. Adrian and he are bare-footed already, and Draco is toeing of his shoes, leaning against Adrian to keep his balance. Marcus calls out a jab to them and Draco flips him off good-heartedly.

Blaise looks up and catches her gaze like he was expecting her to be looking at him.

“Gin!” he calls out, making her chest ache, “Please, this has to be memorialised!”

Ginny pushes through the pain and laughs, taking a photo of Draco stumbling around with one shoe and a stark white sock in his hand. Blaise lets out a cackle just as she takes it, and when she checks the picture her eyes are immediately drawn to the perfect, joyful expression on his face. No matter what he’s doing, she has never managed to take a bad picture of this stupidly photogenetic asshole.

The second she sees the picture, she knows she’s going to cherish it. Something about this feels right. She’s here with her friends and family, and everyone is happy, and the air is as fresh as the first day of the world.

She loves him, she realises. It’s all very simple suddenly. She loves him.

And, with that, everything doesn’t feel so right anymore. Because even though they’re all here, together, and Blaise is right there for her to smile at and touch, and she loves everyone, and she loves him, she isn’t with him. They’re just existing in the same space.

Tears blur her vision and she flinches. Panic shoots through her at the thought of everyone being able to see, so she whips her hair in front of her face with a nod and backs away from the scene, her fingers shaking. She needs more air.

Ginny walks briskly towards the edge of the party, where the people are more spread out and engaged in deep conversations. She finds a nice rock and sits down on it, pretending to look through the images on her camera while she tries to find her bearings.

Well fuck. This is just excessive, isn’t it? Love him? When the fuck did that happen?

Somewhere between spending a year in his arms and another year wanting him back, she guesses. Still, aren’t you supposed to notice when you start loving someone? She definitely didn’t start just now. So why hasn’t she noticed before?

Fuck. It doesn’t matter. It’s going to take a while for her to process this. The best thing she can do right now is gather herself up and get back to the party. She’s going to have to put this off.

Ah, crap, Percy is going to have a field day with this.

“Are you alright?”

Blaise is frowning down at her, his hands shoved into his pockets, looking wind-swept and perfect.

Of all the goddamn times for him to be considerate…

“Hm?” she says, frantically trying to get her erratic heartbeat under control.

He purses his lips. “You alright?” he repeats.

She forces a smile. “Yup. Lovely ceremony, didn’t you think?”

She couldn’t make it more obvious that she’s trying to change the subject, but if he’s in a considerate mood, then maybe-

“Cut the crap, Ginny.” He sits down beside her, cocking his head in her direction. “What’s wrong?”

Ah, hell.

“I don’t want to get into it.” She returns her attention to her camera.

He nudges her. “You can talk to me.”

There’s something weird about his voice, so she looks back up at him. The wind blows her hair into her face, obscuring him. But she can make out the expression on his face – it matches his tone.

Nervous. A little hopeful.

Her lips part in surprise, and suddenly she is all ears for whatever he has to say. The monster of hope roars up in her chest, threatening to swallow her whole.

“Why?” she asks, “Do you have something you wanted to talk about?”

Blaise freezes for a moment and then glances to the side, in the direction of their friends and family. He’s getting somewhere, though. She can tell.

“I’ve been thinking,” he finally says, looking back at her. Now that he’s made up his mind, he completely zones in on her. From one moment to the next, it’s like the rest of the world around them doesn’t exist anymore.

He has a look on his face that she remembers very clearly. He’s hovering right on the edge of vulnerability – of letting her in. Most of their relationship had been spent dancing on that knife’s edge.

But this time, he does something that he has never done before: he takes a shaky breath and plunges right off that edge.

“Can we try this again?” he asks, his expression open and pleading, “Us?”

Something inside of her is pulled taut. “You’ve been thinking about that?”

“Yes.”

There’s no hesitation or reluctance in his expression. She traces the lines of his face with her eyes, looking for anything even remotely unsure. Despite how he may present himself, Blaise is an overthinker. He overcompensates for his insecurities by pretending to be sure about things.

But right now…

She’s learned to read him, over the years. She’s seeing nothing of that now.

He’s serious.

The corners of her mouth turn up into a smile as hope turns into elation. “Yes,” she tells him.

His gaze flits across her face, and she knows he’s looking for the same things she was looking for just now. He won’t find any. She’s never been more sure about anything in her life.

“Yes,” she repeats, reaching out to take his hand. And because he has shown her how to do it, she lets her walls down for a second and squeezes his hand. “Please.”

A smile similar to her own unfurls on his face and he grips her hand more tightly. “Yeah?”

“Absolutely,” she states with a nod. She starts laughing.

He reaches for her like he can’t stop himself, pressing his hand into her cheek and scooting closer towards her so he can press their foreheads together, his fingers tangling in her hair.

Ginny laughs again, so overwhelmingly happy in that moment. She turns her head to press her lips to the palm of his hand, then moves back to press her forehead square against his.

She’s still holding his other hand. She never wants to let it go.

She’s not going to.

***

“Smile,” he whispers into her cheek, his hand pressing against her lower back.

“My jaws hurt,” she complains, but her lips curve up into a smile anyway.

She listens to Blaise chuckle while she poses for the camera, trying not to flinch when the flash goes off. The photographer looks at the image for a moment and then sticks up his thumb with a grin. Ginny gives him a polite nod and turns to Blaise as he walks away.

“That shot did not need a flash.”

Blaise smiles at her and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “You can lecture him tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, I’m going to be lounging in a pool in Italy,” she corrects him, brightening up at the thought.

“Tomorrow, you’ll be passed out until three,” he correct her in turn, grinning at her.

She elbows him for the innuendo she knows is in there, but he’s right. Even if they do nothing but sleep tonight, she’s going to be absolutely floored tomorrow. All of the preparations have taken a bigger toll on her than she expected, and this day is very wonderful, but also very long.

Worth it, though.

She places a hand on Blaise’s cheek, looking at him while his gaze glides over their surroundings. People seem to be having fun, at least. The twins are drunk, which is rude, she supposes, but she just thinks it’s great. Plus, it’s hilarious to see their genuine interactions with all of Blaise’s stuck-up cousins. She’s pretty sure they’ve pranked at least three of them already.

She joins Blaise in his surveillance of the scene. They’re standing in the middle of their own backyard, where a dance floor has been put out, surrounded by fairy lights that her father insisted on buying for them. She kicked off her shoes before their first dance and Blaise keeps playing with her hair, which probably looks nothing like the elegant up-do that Fleur helped her with earlier that day.

She has never been happier in her life.

Everyone is there. Every single couple she’s ever photographed for, all of their family, their friends… Even Lady Zabini has a small smile on her face now, despite her company. She insisted on paying for the entire wedding, so Blaise and Ginny decided to have it in their backyard to spite her. Although Lady Zabini has come around to Ginny since she and Blaise got back together, she’s still stupidly hoity-toity about power and status when it comes down to it, and isn’t too happy about her son marrying into the Weasley family.

Well, she’ll have to get used to it. Against all odds, Blaise is a Weasley now.

And she’s a Zabini.

 She looks back at her husband – her husband – and lets that sink in for another moment. Before she’s through, one of Blaise’s cousins has come up to congratulate them personally, and she’s swept back into polite conversation. As soon as the guy leaves, she groans and scrunches up her nose.

“We should have eloped.”

Blaise fondly rolls his eyes at her. “You’re the one who didn’t want to.”

“I’m an idiot.”

I told you that you’d hate a big wedding.”

“I don’t hate it. I love it. I would just also love to sit down.”

He shakes his head at her and her gaze drifts down to the new ring on his finger. After months and months of planning, today finally came. The ceremony is over. She’s all set. For life. It’s incredible.

Blaise pulls her against himself and presses a kiss to her crown. “I told you,” he says again.

She sighs. “Fine. You were right.”

“I usually am.”

               She sticks out her tongue at him. Behind her, she hears the click of a camera. She turns her head to spot the photographer, not able to resists checking whether he’s doing an okay job. But Blaise catches her and sweeps down to kiss her. He doesn’t hold back either – he kisses her thoroughly, until some of the guests start cheering and whistling at them. Then he pulls back and kisses the tip of her nose before standing up straight again with a satisfied grin.

She can’t help but laugh at him. Ridiculous, perfect man.

“Let the man do his job,” he teases her.

“I am!”

“You’re hovering.”

She gasps. “You take that back.”

“It’s true.”

“Goddammit.”

He’s right. She needs to let this go. The next wedding she attends, she’ll be able to take her own pictures again. She’ll use all of the tools she likes best and play with the light and look for the best angles. She’ll have her settings just right and will get down into the dirt to get that perfect shot. For now, she just has to enjoy her own wedding for a change. It’s going to be the last one she’ll ever have, if it’s up to her.

She smiles at her husband. “Well, then, Zabini. How about you distract me?”

“Am I a joke to you? What have I been doing for the past hour?”

“Your best, I’m sure.”

“Ohohohoho… You did not.”

He pulls her against him, making her laugh, and drags her back onto the dance floor for another lazy waltz. She presses her cheek against his chest and closes her eyes, feeling the heat of his body against hers, the thump of his heart; her favourite sound. Around them, the party goes on, filling the evening air with drunken laughter and laid-back conversations. Blaise is humming along with the song, his chin on top of her head. Everything settles into place for a brief moment.

According to some people, time isn’t real, so this moment will last forever. Even when the night passes and she gets on a plane to Italy, holding her husband’s hand. When she spends the next few weeks lounging in his arms and making him feed her grapes and bruschetta. When they wake up on a Sunday morning twenty years from now. When she’s old and brittle and every memory she’s ever had begins to fade.

She will still be right here. With him.

[achairwithapandaonit]

early magic kaito hakuba is a joy. Like yeah, he looks evil as fuck, but look at this:

just look at it. Son boy right there! he’s precious even though he’s being evil every panel. And you know what? I think we should all love and appreciate evil Saguru. This here is a man that would break into dance without a thought just to confuse the enemy so he can attack. Looking at this panel makes me think that Saguru would start doing the macarena as a coping mechanism and Kaito would be like ‘uhh hey dude are you okay’ and Saguru would fucking snap and throw him out of a window. This is the kind of guy that would get asked ‘would you kill Kaitou KID if given the chance?’ and he would reply with ‘does that even need thinking about?’. 

And now I am going to start breaking down this panel with art bullshit because I have been awake for a very long time now and I think it’s beginning to get to me. Firstly, we must observe that Saguru is hunched over -we can see that his legs are bent slightly as well- and he’s ready to attack. He looks like a cat right before it pounces. His Holmes cosplay is especially amazing from an artistic perspective. It makes him look like a Chlamydosaurus (or, for someone who didn’t just spend 10 minutes trying to find this, a frilled-necked lizard). A Chlamydosaurus has a frill around it’s neck that usually lies folded back against it’s head and neck. When it is frightened, the frill flares out as a domination tactic, to scare away predators. We can only assume here, that Saguru sees Kaito as a predator and is pretending to be confident because of this. He thinks that if he displays an arrogant persona and walks around in Holmes cosplay, no one will see him for who he is and he won’t get hurt because of this. While he is ready to throw down and tackle KID, he doesn’t have to and he doesn’t entirely want to. But attacking Kaito is necessary for getting him arrested, so this is the path Saguru must lead if he wants to uphold the law and also save himself a great annoyance by locking said annoyance in a jail cell. Coming back to Saguru’s need to hide his true self, his deerstalker casts his face into shadow and the smoke clouds around him, obscuring him against the background. These symbolisms really tie into this theme.

In the end, aren’t we just the evil saguru’s we find along the way.

[indigocloudofnarcolepsy]

I got tagged by @tough-girl9 to list my top 7 comfort films which turned into a top 8

I'm more of a comfort song type, so that was a tough (girl) one

1.: Treasure Planet

I adore this movie! I loved it when I was smaller and I love it now. The only reason I didn't watch it to death was the fact that I lost the DVD. It's gorgeous and although the main premise is space pirates thanks to the focus on the characters it feels grounded and easier to relate to or to feel simpathy towards them. Besides Jim Hawkins being a childhood crush I could always relate to him. The feeling of being lost, aimless and the words

"- I can't watch you throw away your future like that!

- What future?"

always spoke to me. It's not an edge and teen angst fest tho, John Silver and his speech is both in character and always chokes me up and gives me hope that there are pathes that could lead to the future I want and that I wasn't abled to see.

It's the perfect movie for those who feel lost or confused and want to sail to far away planets from their current situation, those who want to be understood and given hope to.

(I could gush about the art and animation and characters for hours, but this is not the time)

Amazing background music and the songs fit well with the steampunk-ish style of the movie

2.: Ratatouille

A family classic. We even have the ps2 game and it's one of those rarities which my family could watch anytime. Besides being beautiful and having a 10/10 aesthetic (and a huge dose of food p0®π) it's a grounded movie.

The premise is as feaver dream-y and goofy as it gets. A rat learns english (or french? The movie takes place in Paris but it's either confusing or I'm just a dum dum) and thanks to an imaginary friend version of his chef idol ends up in his restaurant and makes a deal with the garbage boy of whom the chef thinks can cook and reluctantly agrees give him another chance to make the soup that was actually made by (fixed by) the rat aka Remy. So the boy Linguini and Remy has to team up where it seems like Linguini is making the soup but he is actually in Remy's control.

But the movie is actually about being an artist and coming from an unexpected place and being surrounded by people who don't support you or believe in you even if they were just trying to protect you or think that it's the best for you.

Fellow artists could definetly appreciate the movie. Whether you croche, draw, animate, sculpt, dance, act or do any kind of art I would absolutely recommend.

Le Festin is great and is on loop during dinner

Warning: get food ready because you WILL get hungry. Even if it's just bread this movie will make it taste like garlic bread just you wait

3.: Strange Magic

It's one of the controversial ones. Not everyone likes it and a lot hate it but that's okay.

It's one of those films where either you praise it to death or wonder which deeper layer of hell did it crawled out of. There is no in between. I'm one from the first category. Even my IT teacher called it a classic and I roped most of my friend group into the SM cult.

It has a certain tumblr aesthetic and feels like a fanficrion the best way possible. One of those where altho something unsuspected happens it's written well, the characters are in character it's finished and the grammar is proper as well.

It's a jukebox musical which is one of my fauvorite kind of musical, the covers are amazing and damn they can change up the originals songs aesthetic to it's opposite so damn well (Trouble - Elvis Presley)

It centers around love and I ain't no shipper nor romantic but even I was gushing over the main couple which is spoiler alert so that's all you get

I absolutely adore how the characters express themselves with their wings and body! I'm all about feelings and expressions!

So try it out and even if you don't like it you're allowed to stop. And if you like it: welcome to the fandom in this house we respect Marianne, the Bog King is a snack and must protect Dawn at all cost!

(this is a pick me up movie for me the other two more of a shoulder to cry on)

Speaking of crying

4.: The Little Prince

Not gonna lie I was extremely suspicious of this movie. I immediately categorised it as a cheap cash grab which only use sonething known and beloved because it's known and beloved so people will buy.

I expected the Emoji Movie, I got the LEGO Movie.

This movie. Hoo boy, this movie. You know, it's nothing, I only cried 4 times after all!

It's so respectful towards the material it's given. So heartfelt and creative and artistic! It's the Little Prince sequel that fits well in modern times.

In this film the Little Prince is a story that an old man tells his new young girl of a neighbour. Both of them needed a friend and it's one of those unexpected duos where the girl is forced to be mature way too early and the man is way too childish so they balance each other out and the man gives the girl (I can't remember their names god damn it) the breath of fresh air she needed.

This movie is so damn cute! I mentioned a shoulder to cry on movies and pick me up movies, this one is both! It's a bittersweet dream!

You are going to cry. So get ready.

5.: Hunchback of Notre Dame

Oh man oh God oh man oh God oh man

I'm obsessed with this movie (and musical)

It's dark and mature and definetly a-shoulder-to-cry-on movie. I love and relate to Quasimodo. Altho I'm not deformed I was always the weird girl everyone picked on and hated and I still can't understand why. I think I'm a perfectly normal person but when my mom calls me a freak/eccentric behind my back and my aunt gives me a gift with the words "since you looked nothing like the other girls on your prom..." I... I'm just more confused honestly. I'm always so damn tired and basically a hermit so thanks to that Out There hit way too close to home.

Esmeralda is a 10/10 role modell. She is a beautiful soul inside and outside. And she's romani. Which is the most hated minority in my country.

The movie deals with lust, abusive and manipulative parents, racism, religion, "ugly"ness, lonelyness. These might sound repelling but to see something similar happen to you/a character looking/being/sounding like you is worth more than life, honestly. Unless you can live through this kinship with a character, you have no idea how needed this is.

(I cried so hard watching The Grinch (2018) since I used to have Panic disorder and I'm an anxious person to see him being scared the way I do and to fiddle with his fingers and think like I do was the most comforting thing I felt in my life)

This movie is so damn gorgeous. I know I said that to almost every movie in this list but this is a biblical epic gorgeous. And of course, Hellfire is THE best Diney villain song FIGHT ME I'M RIGHT

The musical is even darker and more serious but damn it's worth a watch. It's on youtube.

6. Brother Bear

This movie is *drumroll* gorgeous. Each movie on this list is gorgeous in different ways. This is nature-gorgeous.

Pick me up movie, definetly. It's mostly adorable but they tap into some meaningful things and there are tragedies happening, my dude!

Like Hunchback of Notre Dame the main subject is "who is the monster and who is the man?". This movie shows some perspective, I tell you!

7.: Coco

I know the hungarian translation by heart

It's very family oriented, so if you don't have any or have a bad realtionship with it, this movie will give you a heartache

This movie takes place in Mexico and explores parts of mexican culture.

I adore and am interested in different cultures, folklore, tradition and religion so I was head over heels really quick with this movie!

Gorgeous imagery and music. Heartfelt, that last Remember Me WILL get you

8.: The Croods

Y'ALL

I know, it looks like a movie that made only for kids. But dude! It's about family, change and how people deal with it. It takes place in an alternative world, where animals we know are mixed together (MOUSELEFANT!! CROCO DOGGO!!) the most adorable way possible and it takes place in prehistoric times.

Oh god, this movie is full of feelings and gorgeous imagery! Pick me up, definetly! Of course, it's full of jokes but they are so witty to me!

Sorry, I got impatient by the end of it

I would tag people if I would know anyone well in this site. The 2 people I want to tag: is already tagged me and the other one is probably too busy

[limentum]

It’s that time again! I’ve recently gotten really into making these ten-track playlists that have an overall theme/emotion, and this is no exception! As I did on Christmas day last year with a similar playlist entitled “C1″ this is my first playlist of this format for the 2021 year! Noticing a pattern with the playlist titles? Yeah, me too! Keep in mind, this isn’t a tier list, I essentially tried to just make an album out of ten random songs, so their placement is entirely based on how they flow into each other both musically and thematically!

This time, I tried to provide an actual explanation for each track and why I put it on the playlist. Forgive me if I ramble or say stupid stuff sometimes, that’s just how I am!!

1. Song of Trouble - CARM (feat. Sufjan Stevens)

If you scroll through my page for more than five seconds, you’ll find that I’m a pretty huge fan of Sufjan. This track came out yesterday, as a matter of fact, and is the song that inspired me to make this playlist! I love CARM’s soothing horns for the first forty-ish seconds, which leads right into the muted piano and Sufjan’s beautiful voice! I also found out that the lead singer in the band Hippo Campus does some of the background vocals in this track, which is an interesting fact!

2. To You Alone (Acoustic) - Tom Rosenthal

Something about this dude’s voice is just really great to me. I don’t know a whole lot about the track. But have been listening to this song very frequently for the past week or so, and thought this would be a great follow-up to the previous track in terms of sound and such. Also, the last lyric of the song “How do we get to the sky?” absolutely crushes my soul every time I hear it.

3. It’s Working - MGMT

I have always been a fan of MGMT’s first album, but it wasn’t until about November 2020 that I started getting into their other projects (Little Dark Age, Congratulations, Self-Titled). I loved the idea of following up “To You Alone” with this track, cause it starts so suddenly with a faster tempo and stronger energy, I thought it’d act as a great jump-scare type situation. Also, it just sounds really awesome! You can really hear the 60s/70s inspirations in this song, and I’ve been listening to it a lot recently!

4. Rhythm of Devotion - Sisyphus

I don’t blame you if you’ve never heard of Sisyphus before, the one-shot trio released their self-titled in 2014 (Son Lux, Serengeti, and Sufjan Stevens) as a mix of Rap, IDM/Electronic, and Indie Pop. Don’t let the first two minutes keep you away from this song! After the brash beginnings of the track bring excitement and mild confusion, it all comes together around the 2:47 point, and only gets better from there! I love this entire album, but this track seems to be the most significant out of them all.

5. Gilgamesh - Sufjan Stevens

Yes, the first song actually made entirely by Sufjan! I know there’s a fair amount of him in this playlist, but this track really serves to bring back the emotional capacity of the first two tracks while keeping the Electronic/IDM style! A track about the epic of Gilgamesh that loosely connects with the artist’s own life, as he loses the person he cares about the most on a quest for immortality (Metaphors, much?)

6. San Clemente Glass House - Matt Easton

There’s a few versions of this track available on the internet, but the one with the guitar piece is absolutely the most required version out of them. A song about a troubled relationship and, what I can only assume, the “glass house” being a metaphor for himself. I love listening to this song when I’m feeling quietly dramatic, haha.

7. Middle of Nowhere - Vancouver Sleep Clinic

I have been a huge fan of this guy since he released Closure, and I’ve always loved his more chill tracks since then. This song is a relatively new release, from December. I haven’t really done a whole lot of analyzation with the lyrics, but from what I’ve considered so far it seems to be a lot about death and feeling inadequate (”And then I'll write a few songs that just go nowhere, Like this one”), like you haven’t lived up to your expectations and wish you could live “In the middle of nowhere”.

8. Blue - Angelo De Augustine

A song that, once again, I haven’t analyzed too deeply. He sings of how “All my life I’ve been so low, I don’t know why”, and how his father left his mother when he was five. Angelo has been a favourite of mine for quite awhile, and this song cements that even further!

9. Dawn Chorus - Thom Yorke

The frontman for the band Radiohead, Thom Yorke, released this track in the album ANIMA in 2019. The ethereal simplicity in the track along with Yorke’s spoken-work lyrics provide a deeply sad perspective on trying again, (”If you could do it all again, big deal, so what?”). Interestingly, despite the depressing nature of essentially delivering the idea that change is impossible and that second chances are futile, it seems to also come around to the idea that changing oneself is possible and to keep moving forward. Absolute simplistic masterpiece of a track.

10. My Rajneesh - Sufjan Stevens

Oh boy, here we go, another one of this guy!!! If you aren’t familiar with the name Rajneesh, he was essentially a spiritual/religious leader who created a settlement in Oregon back in the 1980s. However, this track seems to be focusing on Rajneesh himself, and his obsession with the Divine and power, to the point of fault (”You stare at the sun to see the sublime, forgetting the light that makes you go blind”). As his followers looked to him for spiritual awakening, they were blinded and could not see his faults (Fun Fact! This cult also committed the largest bioterrorism attack in US history). I could probably go on about this track for at least another few paragraphs, but want to keep this concise, haha. If you want to know more about all that fun stuff, there’s a Netflix original documentary series about it called “Wild Wild Country”.

And that’s about it for this playlist! I’m starting to get more interested in making these playlists, so you might be able to expect more in the coming weeks/months! If you actually read all that nonsense, thank you!

(Playlist Cover Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash)

[askreshanims]

Hmm I feel like the most straightforward easy answer would be 'because I felt like it'.

When I tried to think more about it, I think the answer becomes more nuanced and hard for even me to truly piece together. At the start, I did stickfigure fights because hey, they were entertaining. I was super young at the time and I think that form of entertainment was all that was really impressionable at that age (things like "wow! that's cool" etc). I didn't have the capacity to understand, and therefore appreciate things with more complexity to their themes.

So I did stickfigure animation for several more years after that. As you can imagine, the stickfigure community was 99% combat animations. When you're surrounded by that kind of culture, it became very hard for me to try and imagine doing much outside of action with the skills that I had (drawing stickpeople). And so I just kept doing what I knew how to do, with the main intent of just getting better at it, because I didn't know what else to do, and getting better at fight scenes was what everyone else was trying to do. I had defined my fulfillment as how good I could get within the community.

Around the same time though, I started consuming media like anime outside of stickfigures, and grew a liking to stuff that wasn't just mindless violence. This was also the catalyst for wanting to learn to draw stuff beyond stick people that I've answered in the past. I wasn't very good at it for a long time, and so I stuck to the action genre since if I was shit at drawing, at least I could feel more confidence in the genre of the content. I got roped into the sakuga culture for a bit which made me hyperfocused on spectacle and high-octane scenes. But.. I guess I slowly realized it wasn't really what I wanted. I could get better at fight choreos, I could get better at fluid movements.. but these were goals that I set for myself because they were in my realm of possibility: I felt like they were enough in my comfort zone to attempt striving for them. I know how to do action, so it's just a matter of getting better at it.....right?

I've wanted to create more character/emotion driven stories for a while now. Ever since I've seen movies that have given me lingering feelings, or changed the way I perceived my life, I've wanted to replicate those feelings in my own work. Work that made me care about the characters on a more complex level than just wanting them to win a fight... I guess that's what I also wanted to do. I had experience in making a scene have spectacle, but scenes that've stayed in my memory were only so impactful because there was meaning behind the spectacle. As an example, the lake scene from Evergarden or any of the sky scenes from Tenki no Ko, sure they look pretty enough on their own to make a new viewer say "wow", but the underlying narrative that contextualizes these scene are what gives them power imo.

But if you look at the background I came from, it almost sounds silly. I don't know anything about writing, I don't know anything about character development, I have no experience, where do I even begin-. For the longest time I pushed away my wishes because of how outrageously outside of my comfort zone it was. I was scared of failing, scared of looking like an idiot who doesn't know what he's making, but most importatnly scared that my dream would be unachievable. Perhaps I'm not cutout for stuff outside of people trying to kill eachother. So I stuck around action for much longer than I wanted to. By the time Crimson Alpine came around, I had almost nothing else I wanted out of the action genre. Only the novelties like animating a long take, using a 2D/3D/VR hybrid, and having a non-stickfigure action short film kept me motivated for the project. There were no more burning goals I wanted to achieve, and I even spent a lot of the production of Crimson Alpine not really enjoying the work, and only looking forward to the outcome.

As the years went by, a few things changed. I realized my desire to work on more emotionally driven work grew stronger. From positive reception of nonstickfigure works like CA, I got a little more confidence to try different things. After experimenting with nonaction stuff like Distance and Memories of Gone Summers, I was more interested in exploring these new directions. Most importantly, I think I've gained more life experience and ideas I wanted to express. Another big barrier to making the transition earlier was that I didn't really have much to say back then. I didn't have the beliefs, perspectives, or challenges to really write any story at all (and fighting was so easy to do with no explanation). Slowly I think I've gotten to a place where (while I'm still pretty inexperienced in life) there are a few things that I care about that I want to express through future animations.

Now as a quick aside, I want to say that I don't think the action 'genre' is inherently less important than other genres. Action can obviously still have emotional impact, have good writing and character development etc. It's just that my experience thus far with the genre has been exclusively action scenes. Just fighting with little to no context of the characters, settings, or motivations (things that should work alongside the combat scenes to utilize the genre to its fullest extent). In a way, when I refer to moving away from action, what I'm really saying is that I want to shift my focus from just doing the fighting scenes and work more with the other aspects. And, since I've gotten tired of doing fighting (at least for now), my new stuff wouldn't really fit within the 'action' category.

It's a long ramble, but I think the question deserved a proper explanation. Maybe the answer was as simple as "I liked sad animes so I want to make sad animes". Regardless, I think this might be an experience that I lot of artists go through during any large change in artistic directions. There might even be stickfigure animators out there that feel the same, or are still fearful of stepping outside of that comfort zone. I know for me, I had to get over alot of internal hurdles to get myself to finally acknowledge my own wishes. And, I'm a lot happier now. I'm really enjoying animation, even if I might come across as an embarrassment. Maybe my stories are bad, my writing is bad, my characters are bad...and there's a high chance they are. But at least I'm shit at stuff I want to be making, and I would much rather prefer that over being good at content I have no more passion for. I honestly hope everyone can reach that stage of happiness in their lives, whatever it is they wish to create. This is just my own experience though, not some sort of guideline for how you should feel or what you should do. Just try and find whatever makes you the happiest.