#so i’ll try and post redraws to pass some time!

[bonerzformaniacs]

Yo YO ! what’s up everyone ?? I’m actually new here on tumblr, so I am completely clueless but hopefully can work it out :3

>> WIP << this is actually a redraw from the last time I drew these characters but I present Love (purple), Echo (blue), star (red) and Whole or Xanthos ! (Yellowish) they’re characters from an AU of mine ! Which is ahem,,, Cj HMS,, I’ve been hyperfixated on them for a while so why not ?? As obvious as it is Love works as the heart, Echo as the mind, Star as the soul and their one whole, i do have all their backstories kind of worked out !! To start with Echo and loves “incident” basically a terrible argument turning into physical fighting and love getting carried away strangling echo due to letting his emotions get the best of him and almost killing echo, for echo to stop love from killing him he grabs loves knife hanging from his belt and slashed his right eye blinding him . That gets love off guard and in pain, while screaming and crying he does get off backing up holding his eye trying to stop the blood and stinging since it was tears and blood mixing in that eye, making his vision blurry . Echo then catches his breath and holds onto loves knife causing it to the change the color >> I’ll explain that in another post ! << despite love now being blind in one eye, he does notice the knife changing color and immediately reacts not wanting echo to claim his weapons . He grabs the other knife from his belt, charging at echo and stabbing him right in the middle of his hand making him drop the knife and scream in AGONY ! love does twist the knife causing the wound to become bigger and damaging the nerves and veins for echos hand, >> which he can now barely use that hand, his right one too sadly his good one as well << and pulls out the knife quickly backing up before echo could do anything, but he didn’t since the adrenaline was causing echo to react very slowly but yet the pain was too much to bare . Both Love and Echo were in immense pain and had too much adrenaline to make any other moves, and eventually passing out from all the blood loss and such . Star does find them and help them out though, there are other incidents that happen throughout their life which is,,, interesting ! But I cant wait to explain it more deeply throughout my posts here, or even explain their characters more and how differently they work, I hope this explaining made sense if not ask me questions ! I’ll be sure to answer my best if anyone’s curious or just have silly questions <:] . But yeah that’s it for now, Also a bit excited go post my silly work here ! Hope this was something for you all especially with some little back information now ! Sooo RAGH !!

[yuraslefttoe]

hey, it's me again! I came to pester you with questions!! *there should be a scary laugh, but it sounds more like mean giggles*

(by the way, I’m thinking about sending you such long texts with questions (because I have a lot of them!!) once one or two weeks, if you don’t mind. . . . . . .you don't mind..??? (god, I hope you don’t get tired of me..!) I'm so sorry, please, I'm just very interested!! *qwq*)

ok, let's start with the sweetest part, prelude. ACTUALLY, I DIDN'T EXPECT THAT YOU REPLY SO QUICKLY, GOD, NOT PASSED A FEW HOURS!!!!!! I THOUGHT YOU HAD TOO MANY QUESTIONS SO I DID NOT EXPECT A SO SOON REPLY!!

I’ll remind you once again how much I adore your work (after all, you deserve it!!), and I’ll also say that I specifically shouldn’t talk about posts tagged with the  adm, because I’ve read your tumblr and twitter in its entirety several times, I even have a separate album in my gallery with answers that particularly interested me, there are several hundred screenshots there and I don’t regret anything! (sorry if my hyperfixation may be intimidating!!)

*=^._.^= ∫*

and now the questions!!!! 

1. my wife doesn’t have a tumblr, but her suggestion interested me and can be seen in the first two screenshots(the translation sounds like: “after the release of “red hour” I have an assumption that andrey is more... athletic than misha. either this is because of ferry’s drawing style, or he really has such wide shoulders")so now we are interested to know about the physique of your characters!! maybe some of them are thin, or vice versa, a little overweight. and what about physical training? did you have any headcanons for this??? ( by the way, when I ask about “characters” I mean not only misha and andrey, but also europe and maya, because they are also worthy of attention <зз) 

2. what about the abbreviation "dyusha" for andrey? in russian it is... not used very often, but still, it sounds very cute. so it would be interesting to know how you would feel about this? 3. I also want to hear about the names of the characters!! how did you choose them? I mean........ how did it happen that from ☺europa☺ you switched to 👹MiKhAiL👹?? (I'M SO SORRY, BUT MISHA'S FULL NAME SOUNDS SOMETHING THREATENING. MY UNCLE'S DOG HAS THE SAME NAME EHE- *ᕕ(ಥ▽ಥ)ᕗ*) 

4. and lastly, let's return to my wife for another moment. she suggested that andrey was now also in a time loop. what do you say about that? and also in enigma, she noticed that misha seemed to be addressing the second person in the lines: "and if you wanted to be anything more than just free" and "you’ve seen a hundred lies I see that all the time". is this second person a viewer? or maybe one of the previously mentioned characters??

the last photo, by the way, is one of the sketches that I found so far in my gallery! ^^ 

initially it was planned to attach two sketches, but andrey turned out TOO bad, I’m ashamed to show him. someday I'll redraw it into something normal.... maybe. but! I really like the pic with misha and the wolf(I hope this is the wolf you were talking about lol. google didn’t show me anything else, and I’ve never been to ikea myself, ehe...) 

(and I don’t want to post all this yet, because running a tumblr was certainly not part of my plans, haha)) I registered here solely to read your blog, and not to maintain my own) 

sorry again for possible illiteracy, and also for the chaotic nature of my thoughts, haha, I don’t know how to adequately express them in english.. and also, I’m really REALLY apologize that the text was too long, next time I’ll try to be shorter...

okay im gonna try and answer everything here in a coherent way so sorry if nothing makes sense

im just fine with lotes of questions :) answering asks and responding to comments is one of my favorite things ever and i brings a verry big smile to my face

on andrei: i consider him to be a skinny little gut but not exactly unathletic, and in addition i think he would have basic combat training and probably be good with firearms. misha is probably a very average bodytype, nothing special, not particularly athletic.

i do not speak russian (though ferry has recently encouraged me to learn so maybe in like four years ill be able to form a sentence) so i dont know anything about the short forms so you can do whatever you want. if you coin it and peoples tart calling him that i will not stop it from happening

i do not name my characters, i usually let me friends name them (i think that the only one i named was europa and his partner). going forward maybe ill try to make it more cohesive

the time loop idea im seeing thrown around alot is really cool and while i havent particularly wrote any of my songs about that in general i see it fitting into the loose narrative i have going on. also in enigma misha is definitely talking to andrei whenever he says the word "you" but it could also be to the listener because the entire theme of enigma is 4th wall breaking and meta shenanigans like that

that sketch is SO CUTE oh my god

[crimsoncrim]

If you had to assign a theme song to each of your characters, what songs would they be and why? We think about this a lot with our OCs, and we believe personally that Ace's theme might be Crazy = Genius by P!ATD. But that might just be bcuz we fangoy over that band!

On a side note, we'd like to know what bands you enjoy listening to? And which genres?

hihi! oc questions make me very happy and are always welcome <3 just for fair warning, I’m a little bad at assigning songs to characters but. I’ll try! I don’t really have a definitive single theme song(tm) for some characters so these are tentatively unofficial haha, but just for fun!

sol- mulled over different ones but the one that kept sticking out is ‘Hope for the Future’ by Bastille. very in line with their character themes and the kind of person they are.

lyra- this one was the hardest surprisingly. but ‘Passing Through’ by Kaden MacKay feels right. both the calm vibe of the song feels fitting as well as themes of making the most of their time and being with the people they love. kinda taking time to slow down in the moment of life being fast.

niko- think I’ve mentioned this one before, but I like ‘Get Used To It’ by Ricky Montgomery a lot for him. a lot of her backstory’s about trying to make things better than they were, both for themself and for others. so this one feels right.

june- the only one that wasn’t hard at all. ‘The Villain I Appear To Be’ by Connor Spiotto/Molly Pease. the most junecore song to ever song

hazel- ‘Synesthesia’ by Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness for them. song gives me autumnal vibes for a reason I can’t describe, and the calm feel and the lyrics fit them and how much they love their partner Robyn and would do anything for them. <3

regan- haven’t shown them off here yet (soon), but to those who do know them :> ‘The Ruse & The Caper’ by Coyote Theory. they’re very close with their partner Ozu- they have a really strong connection with each other, and love each other for who they are. this song is very rezu to me

(rest under readmore because i worry this is getting too long otherwise)

———

as for ace- it is hard for me to assign One song to them bc they are such a complex chara along with the fact that I struggle at assigning songs anyways so I’ll try for a few (mostly based on lyrics). I would do multiple for all my charas if it didn’t mean that this post would be years long, so if you want more than one for my other charas feel free to msg me or ask :>

- ‘Kaibutsu’ (eng version) from Beastars! (linking this one bc there’s a few diff versions! I did a redraw of this album art with them actually :>)

- ‘Warmth’ by Bastille. this song is very ‘finding comfort in the people you love when the world around you is so overwhelming’ and that strikes me as the kind of person that ace would want to be for others.

- ‘Humpty Dumpty’ by AJR. fits with their struggling with hiding their problems from others because they don’t really have a good support system, and don’t want to burden or worry that others already have enough going on. they do end up confiding in the player- I think the player’s one of the people who they trust and care about the most.

- if I had to pick a P!ATD song for ace, I’d probably pick ‘Dying in LA’ myself. it feels very ‘ace while they’re in team meteor’ to me, where their desperation and loneliness gets taken advantage of and they’re recruited into this Unhealthy Bad situation that they clearly don’t agree with- but hey, it’s better than being alone like they were before, right?

———

as for me, my favorite band is bastille! as you might’ve been able to tell already, haha. although I’m also fond of AJR, fitz & the tantrums, coyote theory, ricky montgomery, imagine dragons, and p!atd :> in no order! as for genre, it’s hard to describe what single genre(s) I love since it tends to depend but I like stuff that Feels right to me. a lot of once off songs from someone I’ve never heard of just catch my attention immediately- sometimes that’s something meaningful and chill, other times higher energy, fun to sing along to. that kinda stuff!

thanks for the ask <3 I love talking about my beloveds. this was fun! please always feel free to send asks or say hi if you want! I’m (reasonably) active both here, twitter, and on discord :>

[miru667]

hi there, miru ! it’s surely been awhile since i’ve visited your blog , and i was always shy to directly interact with you, but this time, i want to say a lot of things, and i hope you’ll find some time to read.

i remember how i stumbled across your account when i was 8 or so, around the time when you just started posting about the lorax and the fandom was growing up. at first, i simply checked your blog out of boredom as a kid since you were the only person i followed here, but later on, i really got interested and often would go back home from school and run to read your new posts, no matter what was it, just because i liked them, and i guess my little mind wanted to explore more about the fandom in general. (: i grew up wishing i was as “cool” as you, and really wanted to talk to you, but guess the unknownness made me nervous enough so i always brushed it off. and no matter how cheesy it sounds ,just going through your blog at least once a day helped me with most of my sad days. you were a huge affect to my childhood, and going through your page again after so long made me feel such a bittersweet nostalgia , i nearly cried catching up with things haha. you were the reason i found out about the lorax in general and joined the fandom , as well as inspired me to try drawing ( i remember using your art as a base when i was 12 ,,, but shhh, let’s keep it a secret (; )

it’s been so long since then, and sometimes it’s hard to believe how much i’ve grown up, as well as you did too. i’ll never forget these days when being a young kid i would try to redraw your onceler fan art , or make a small silly slideshows with your drawings to some goofy songs, LMAO. (i still have them, by the way… eugh. cringeee) and getting to spend my growing up surrounded by such an amazing fandom and amazing people like you has truly built me up as a person, and i couldn’t be more grateful i’ve found out about you back then, because i don’t know who i would be right now if i never did. thank you so much miru, keep going, be happy, and no matter how time passes by , you’ll always be one of my biggest inspirations, and i’ll continue looking up to you. <3

•

now , ending the cheesy paragraph above, i’m a little curious about some things, feel free not to answer them if you’re uncomfortable! i’m not pressuring you.

1 ; i’ll start off with a simple one. how are you doing, how’s life in general? (:

2 ; did you know that your small onceler height headcannon you’ve made back in 2013 is showing up on google as an actual height of his , making a lot of people (especially on tik tok. boy, they’re going feral over that fact…) believe it’s his canon height ? they’re actually saying it’s his actual confirmed height and etc. , so i was always wondering how does it feel to have your headcannon being considered by the whole onceler fandom as canon, haha. :D

3 ; speaking about tik tok, you mentioned you don’t have it at all. why don’t you try to get it, and post your art in there? trust me, a lot of people absolutely adore your work in here and considering the fact onceler fandom is apparently biggering again , that could be a nice idea , since personally i think you’re really underrated and deserve some more recognition (:

4 ; what’s your actual opinion on oncest? because honestly , i remember how people drooled over this ship to death back in 10s, however i was never really fond of it and,, you know what i meaannn, it simply didn’t feel right for me at all. (,: did you immediately start liking it since you have some art about it , and what are your thoughts about it now ?

5 ; how old were you when you joined the whole lorax fandom?

6; you obviously have a lot of good memories with the Onceler fandom , as i do too, but there is also some bad memories for me, and some that i wish i could completely erase from my mind haha. how is it for you? like, were there perhaps some situations that happened to you in the fandom that make you shiver in a pleasedon’tremindme way? i’d love to listen if there is some!

7 ; and , the last one. i literally have been a huge fan of your for awhile now , and i was wondering if you’d ever want to maybe ,, talk, y’know? and become friends , perhaps? ;;;;; i feel like i’m being too pushy atp ,but i’m still a little nervous so i’m sorry if i act weird,, (,: but either way, remember you’re amazing, and i hope you have a good day/night !!

thank you for reading my non-sense to the end, lol. i hope i didn’t take off much time <33

Omg,,,Q_Q?? Thank you for sending this message, I wouldn't have known otherwise that I've made such an impact on someone's life, like...it's truly humbling. You were 8?? 😭 And I was really the only blog you followed?? 😭 Back then I did not think about how others might've been using my blog; I myself had always been the one looking up to others, and here you were all that time looking up to me...I guess it's really magical, the way we don't know who in the world might be thinking about us. I hope you're doing well. Your slideshows are not cringe. Or rather, you were cringe and free, and I think that's wonderful.

For your questions then:

I guess I'm doing okay. I have friends who care about me, and I'm able to support myself with my job, so with those two things alone, I'm already very lucky.

If you mean this post: [link] I didn't make this headcanon! As you can see on the post, tumblr user torikabori made it, and I simply reblogged it. I think there's been a few fandom headcanons that have mistakenly been posted on wikis and tvtropes as canon, and I really wish it didn't happen that way, because I don't like misinformation being spread. I've said this before but if it's not in the Lorax DVD, or in any official interviews, or in any concept art, then it's NOT canon. Do not trust google, wiki, tvtropes, or word of mouth.

I,,, reallllllyyyy don't see myself getting into tiktok ;w; Having to be a slave to algorithms and numbers really turns me off, and I can barely keep up with posting on social media anymore. I've almost completely abandoned my instagram, and I'm half a year behind in posting my art to tumblr haha. So I wouldn't be able to keep up with tiktok anyway. Thank you for thinking I deserve more recognition though! 🥺

I think in the early years of the fandom I drew it because it was popular, but since then I've been more true to myself and I only draw what my heart desires now. So now I can say that I've never shipped oncest, though I've shipped onceler askblogs together before. And I'll always be a fan of 7212, though that's not the classic oncest we're referring to here. But I still support whoever does ship it, I think that's totally cool!

I was a young adult!

You are not alone, so many of us from 2012 have gone through bad times in the fandom at least once. For me specifically, it's been 11 years that I've been here, so do you think I could have avoided every single possible bad situation? ;) I won't be sharing any stories, but the onceler fandom would not be what it is today without both the good AND bad, I guarantee you that.

You can feel free to message me anytime you like! I'm not much of a talker since I'm often busy, and I rarely ever message first, but I'll always be courteous to anyone who messages me. As for friendship, I think it should just happen naturally, if it happens!

[vampstel]

Obligatory life update: I’ve been working on a lot of things but also I’ve been doing nothing lol. I’m just vibing :]

I have some interesting things to say, though. I’ve recently been experimenting with my art style!! I’ve done a few coloring experiments since I want my art to look more colourful and so far it’s helped a ton. I figured out a better way to blend colours and I’m also trying out different shading techniques. Still have no clue how lighting works though but shhh

I’ve also been working on V’s redesign and I’ve got his face and hair done. He officially has black hair now and his hairstyle’s a really messy undercut that he can tie up in a ponytail or bun. His face is still the same, but his eyes look more tired and he’s got softer features. Also, he’s got more piercings. I really liked the first draft of him with shark bite piercings so I kept that in

…I’ve always wanted shark bite piercings but I know damn well my mom (and grandma) would say no if I asked :’)

His outfits are still works in progress. I got the general idea down for his main outfit, I just need to figure out which elements I want to keep and what colour palette I want. I’ll mostly keep his colour palette monotone probably. So far the only thing I’ve decided is that I want him to have a fur collar jacket and a pair of headphones around his neck…

It’s very difficult for me to make a new persona design. I enjoy so many things and I want to convey that but it’s almost impossible. My tastes in fashion can be contradictory, my fixations/interests change frequently, and I still have a bad case of depersonalization due to gender dysphoria. Like, it’s so hard to try to imagine what I look like in my head. Sometimes it’s a complete blur but ever since I drew drafts of the new V, I feel more connected(?) with who I am.

I honestly just want a sona that looks good in emo clothes but also rocks pink, girly clothes lol. I wanna present more femininely someday like my beloved Rei without feeling bad ;w;

And, this is a lot more niche, I’ve been reworking some of my Roblox assets (specifically face/makeup decals for RK2) and wow it’s a pain in the ass. Like what the hell. I got banned for a day because Roblox thought Rei’s smiling face was sexual. Am I allowed to say this is homophobic and transphobic of them to do?—

Oh… and I’ve been playing a lot of Bee Swarm Simulator. I dunno, man, it passes the time and it’s the only grindy game I enjoy.

Other than that, I have nothing else to talk about. I mean, I DO have videos in the works. Like that Gacha video, oh and a new art video, as well as a video about Roblox’s shitty moderation system, and— You get what I mean. I also have a ton of art ideas I wanna do and the list so far is:

Redrawing that one scene of Howl and Sophie as Lawrence and Rei

A lot of miscellaneous art ideas of Rei. Like a lot. I have two dress designs for him in mind and the drafts are adorable 🥺

Possibly a mini-comic of Rei and Lawrence... I won’t spoil it though

New social media layout as soon as I figure out V’s outfits

And there’s more but this post is so long already so I’ll talk about more things in the next life update. Good night

[prosecutors-gambit]

14 on the ask thing!

idk if thisis a motif necessary but i love drawing plants even if i dont do it very often. i dont even think about meanings TBH but i should actually i just think theyre really fun to draw yeasss greenery. and florals too and stuff. big. huge. i guess then in the sense of motif as just like a pattern LOL.

but ermmmm. like actual motifs i come back to a lot at least like in ideas that i have is two pieces similar composition but some kind of change has taken place where something about it then becomes very different like innnn this vk siblings piece i did ages ago. which i would like to redraw at some point i think i could do it better now. but in any case time has passed there and for me whats important about the second one is that franziska will only truly be vulnerable the way she was when she was younger if she can no longer resist bc of well being shot. and such. and while im talking about it i kind of like the emanating rays there but i think if i did it again i would try and focus more on the composition leading the eye to those places rather than relying on that as a help. and i would change edgeworth’s in the first one to being by his heart and not his head bc thats a little nonsense anyway. with those two i’ve always been enamored with thinking about the bullet wounds and the locations and what it means for both of them but this is already just straight up becoming a meta post and not an answer so i’ll stop.

[germanyballartsandanimations]

💜likes, shares, shares to stories, saves and comments are highly appreciated!!!💜 GOOD MORNING SOUTH EAST ASIANS Okay let's start off.... im sorry for using up my three hours in an airplane drawing this very cursed being of a ch canada we have here ⚰ This trend is so stupid i love it so much (the urge to redraw this is screaming ahahahhaha) To whoever close to me i hope i havent annoyed yall with this sh I wanted to post tmr but nvm ankalwjhisjhd 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 PLS LOOK THROUGH MY STORY RESHARES OF THIS CURSED MEME PLS THEY'RE LIKE A HUNDRED TIMES BETTER IM SOBBING So yeah! Did this omw back to singapore AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA tysm @princedoesstuff for sending me the unholy 🤩🤩🤩 Big mistake for me to actually try to make it similar to the original one (cant share it here bcs... slide limit 🗿🗿🗿) Im afraid of saying much abt this bcs i think i'll ruin the meme with this drawing itself 💃🕺💃🕺💃🕺 The peru drawing was completed two days ago btw 😳 and here i am still reluctant to post some artworks from 1 month 4 days ago 💀 Peru history brainrot /hj I RLY LIKE THE WAY I DID THE TREES HERE THO OMGGGGGGGGG AAJAOSKDJJD (and useless fact but i couldnt originallh decide the colour of the lighting so i almost.....shat the drawing) Peru scrunklh 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰 Im gonna start having school on mondaynUGHHHHFHIEFHRKFRNFJRJNFRJJFJNR this is so sad Days have been... not so poggers and chad for me nowadays i guess 🗿✌ i rly wish this holiday was longer omg imagine speedrunning 2022 Idk what to type here anymore im so sad hhhhhhhhh Hope yall enjoy today's horrifying post tho!!!!! *distant screaming* Have a great day/morning/afternoon/evening/night ahead yall!!! Tysm for passing by! Tags: #countryhumans #countryhuman #countryhumanscanada #countryhumancanada #canadacountryhumans #canadacountryhuman #canada #countryhumansredraw #countryhumansperu #countryhumansperú #countryhumanperu #perucountryhumans #perucountryhuman #perúcountryhumans #perúcountryhuman #peru #perú #countryhumansart #countryhumansdrawing #countryhumansfanart #countryhumansartwork #art #digitalart (hey comments /j) #artwork #fanart #drawing #medibang #medibangpaint #fingeruser #artistsoninstagram (at Felling Happy and Wonderful) https://www.instagram.com/p/CfK4QZxJSOg/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[rohad93]

Moonlit Masquerade: Replacement

Pt 2 of Post- Moonlit Masquerade 

It was Friday morning as Luz rolled over in bed, stretching the kinks out of her muscles. She blinked blearily into the sunlight that was streaming into her room; blinding her.

She smacked her mouth a few times, trying to rid it of that horrible morning taste as she slowly sat herself up and scratched her head. She could feel her hair sticking up in every direction as she did and half-heartedly tried to comb her fingers through it. It was starting to get longer than she usually let it grow, which made sense. She'd had her last haircut about a month before she'd come to the Boiling Isles and it had been about two and a half months since she'd chased Owlbert through the portal.

Maybe she could get it cut in town this weekend. If she was lucky she could take Amity along and they could make a date out of it afterward.

Or she could invite Gus and Willow too and they could all hang out in town afterward, she definitely needed to spend more time with her other friends, she had been spending a lot of her free time with Amity, which her friends assured her they understood, but she was determined to make time for everyone.

Amity may not even be able to hang out this weekend, or Gus and Willow, which was a disappointing thought but she'd just talk to them at lunch.

With that thought, she quickly set about getting dressed for school.

She could smell food being cooked even before she started thundering down the stairs toward the kitchen.

"Morning!" She smiled, walking over to her seat and leaning down to kiss the top of King's head as she passed, making him giggle in his seat.

"Good morning, Luz." Lilith nodded to her as she sipped on her customary morning cup of tea.

"Hey, kid. I made pancakes!" Eda said, setting a plate in front of her.

"Oh, my favorite!" Luz wasted no time digging into her meal.

Eda wasn't the best cook, actually for the most part she was pretty bad, but she tried. She'd gotten pretty good at pancakes though; which Luz was grateful for.

They were good, and when she made them Luz always stuffed herself to bursting, no matter how miserable she would be on her way to school and through her first couple hours of class.

Today was no exception.

When her plate was all but licked clean she stood and shouldered her bag.

"You got plans for the weekend, kid?" her mentor asked her from her place at the sink, washing the pancake pan.

"I need to get a haircut, I figured I'd see if Amity or Willow and Gus wanted to come with me and hang out in town after," she said shrugging.

"Well if ya want, I can cut your hair and you can still hang out with your girlfriend and the rest of the nerd brigade after." The witch offered.

"You? Cut hair?" Lilith snorted from her place at the table and her sister shot her a glare.

"Yea, that'd be great!" She beamed at Eda and the glare faded into a soft smile as she looked down at Luz.

"Great, I'll get my shears!" She grinned and Luz wasn't sure if she was kidding or not. It was hard to tell sometimes, she laughed anyway as she started for the door.

"I gotta get to school, bye!" She turned to go but was yanked back by her bag.

"Don't forget your lunch." Eda held up a paper sack with a knowing grin.

"Oh, right." She smiled taking the bag. "Thanks, mom."

She froze, bag In hand.

Luz blinked and looked up at the older witch who was staring back at her wide-eyed and mouth ajar.

The rest of the kitchen had also gone silent. Lilith was looking at them equally shocked and King blinked, looking around at all the suddenly quiet woman. He wasn't entirely sure what was going on but the sudden oppressive silence kept him quiet.

"I mean… I gotta go!" Luz turned and ran out of the house, clutching her lunch to her chest, the door slamming shut behind her.

Eda watched her go, still not saying anything.

Lilith watched her sister quietly as she stood there, frozen, watching Luz leave the house.

"Edalyn?" she called and that seemed to jog Eda out of it.

"Huh? Oh, yeah." She turned back to the sink and started washing the pans again but there was a distinct jerkiness to her movements.

"That was… unexpected," she said testingly. Eda made an agreeing noise but nothing more as she continued to scrub at the pans.

She shared a brief look with the demon sitting at the table, who seemed to get the hint and grabbed his plate before hopping down out of his chair and trotting into the living room.

Lilith rose and walked over to the sink, stopping a few feet from her sister.

"Edalyn?"

"What?" It lacked any of its usual bite or snark.

"Are you alright?" she asked, still looking at the back of Eda's head.

"Why wouldn't I be?" she grunted.

Lilith pursed her lips, no point beating around the bramble-thorns.

"Because Luz just called you 'mom'," she said and again Eda froze at the word, not turning away from the sink.

"So?" Eda's voice was tight and Lilith blinked before stepping closer to peer around her sister's mane of hair.

"Oh"

Eda jerked, finally turning to look at her elder sister and Lilith could clearly see the water welling up in her sister's dual-colored eyes.

"What?" she snapped, glaring, but the tremble in her voice made it lose any of its bite.

"You know…," she started slowly. "It's alright to be happy she called you that," she finished and Eda turned away sharply.

"Luz doesn't need someone like me."

"Would you leave the child to fend for herself?"

"I never said I wouldn't take care of her!" Eda growled, turning a glare on her sister, but it quickly died. "Luz has a mom."

"That she may never be able to return to. We have heard not even a whisper of another portal to the human world. As far as we know yours was the only one, you may need to consider that Luz may never leave the Isles, what then?"

"I'll take care of her." Was the simple answer. "But she's not my kid," Eda managed to mumble. Lilith cocked a brow at that.

"But It's alright to think of her as yours." She pushed. "She clearly, for reasons I do not understand, thinks very highly of you." When the light jab didn't elicit the usual response she frowned. Lilith felt she had a pretty good idea of why her sister seemed so conflicted.

"What happened with the portal was… unfortunate… but Luz made that choice, to save you. You shouldn't feel so guilty about being happy that she views you that way."

Eda's grip on the panhandle tightened.

Her sister was hitting the nail on the head and she didn't like it.

She did feel guilty.

Luz was stuck here because of her, she didn't have any right to be happy about it, but she was.

She loved that kid, fiercely; like she'd never loved anyone.

Of course, Lilly could tell too.

She sighed, looking at her sister tiredly out of the corner of her gray eye.

"If Luz needs me, she's got me, she knows that, but I'm not gonna go and try to replace her mom."

"Nor should you, but there's no reason to beat yourself up over it if she views you that way, nor being happy about it," Lilith said.

Eda grunted in response, conversation over and Lilith walked away. Once she was gone Eda allowed herself to smile.

~ ~

Luz ran till she was almost to school, mind racing with complicated thoughts and feelings.

She had called Eda 'mom', and it had slipped out so naturally; too naturally.

She was frowning, still lost in thought when she arrived at school. Her friends and Amity were standing near the front steps, waiting for her.

"Hey, Luz!" Gus called and Willow waved at her as she walked up to them, stopping next to Amity

"Hey guys." she smiled but it was lackluster at best. The three of them frowned.

"Uh, you okay?" Willow asked.

"Huh, yeah, I'm fine…" she gripped the strap of her bag tightly. The three witches shared a glance.

"Are you sure?"

She looked up to see her girlfriends concerned, gold eyes trained on her. She could feel Gus and Willow's looks as well.

She nodded, not trusting her voice right now.

The bell's scream echoed through the courtyard, making her jump.

"We better get going," Gus said and Willow nodded and turned to follow him into the school, but not before she shot Amity a look over her shoulder.

The youngest Blight nodded.

The courtyard was practically empty now as students began to make their way to their classes.

"I better head to the construction track hall…," Luz mumbled, taking a step, but was stopped as Amity grabbed her hand. Luz blinked at her, waiting, both eyebrows raised questioningly. Amity took a step closer

"Hey, you know you can talk to me if somethings wrong, right?" she asked quietly.

"I know… I just…" Luz trailed off, looking at the ground.

Amity's hand wrapped around hers squeezed reassuringly and Luz couldn't help but squeeze back.

"It's just a lot right now… later?" Luz looked back up at her and Amity nodded giving another light squeeze before sliding her hand out of Luz's.

"Later" she repeated before she hurried up the steps into the building.

The day dragged for Luz.

Lunch was a little tense, her friends could tell that something was bothering her, but she was sure Amity had talked to Willow at some point because none of them tried to ask her what was wrong, though they clearly wanted to. For that she was glad. She was touched by their concern, but she still wasn't ready to talk yet. She was still trying to organize all her mixed up feelings.

Time ticked by, heedless of her inner turmoil, and before she knew it the final bell screamed and she was walking down the steps of the school, and around the building where her teleportation glyph was waiting, hidden by the foliage.

Like her illusion glyphs, it seemed to stay in place even after use, which was convenient since it was the most complicated one in her arsenal. It would have been a pain to redraw after every use.

She tapped her hands to it and thought of Amity's secret room.

Once the portal blazed to life she stepped through and appeared inside the room and the portal blinked out of existence.

The room was empty, she'd beaten Amity here, which she usually did on Fridays, abominations were farther away from the front of the school than the construction track.

She dropped her bag on the floor and flopped face-first into the cushions on the floor with a tired sigh.

It was about 5 minutes later that she heard the portal once again appear in the room, but she didn't move.

She listened to Amity's quiet shuffling as she put her school things on her desk.

A moment later the cushions shifted, but she still didn't move and neither did Amity for a few minutes.

Then there were fingers running through her hair comfortingly, but still, no words were spoken.

She hummed and turned her head, peeking out from the fabric to find Amity sitting on the floor next to her, looking concerned.

Luz hated it when anyone worried about her, but she especially hated it when she caused Amity to worry.

The witch, for her part, said nothing, just waited patiently for Luz to be ready to talk.

Luz sighed and pushed herself up, flipping around to sit on the cushions.

"I called Eda 'mom' this morning," she finally mumbled, but she knew Amity had heard her.

"Okay?" Amity said, waiting, sure that could be embarrassing, she’s called some of her teacher’s ‘mom’ before, but clearly Luz was bothered by this for some reason.

The Latina pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them.

"I feel… guilty," she finally mumbled,

"Why?"

"Because she's not… because… my mom is out there, in the human world, not knowing that I'm here, that when summer is over I'm not… coming back; that I've replaced her," she choked out the last words, eyes filling with tears.

Amity wrapped an arm around Luz's back and the human leaned into the touch, seeking comfort. Amity wrapped her other arm around her trembling form.

"It's okay, Luz." Amity tried to soothe.

"I miss her a lot… and I want to see her again, but… I also don't want to leave…" she looked up at Amity, tears dripping down her cheeks. "That's awful isn't it?" she sniffled.

"I don't think it's awful." Amity wiped at the tears.

"But I've replaced her! I don't want to go back, even if I could, and I feel terrible about it, that I'd just leave her alone!" Her voice cracked with a sob, she buried her face in Amity's neck.

She ran her fingers through her hair, her heart ached for Luz.

"It's okay to want something even if it makes you feel guilty, and you're not doing it on purpose… even if you wanted to go back you can't, that's not your fault."

"I destroyed the portal…," she choked.

"To save Eda."

"It was my fault she was captured in the first place…," she hiccuped, through another choked cry.

"You were trying to help her… and maybe you were going about it the wrong way, but you were doing it for the right reasons…," Amity mumbled. "I don't know your mom, but if the way you talk about her means anything, I think she'd just be happy that you're okay, even if it's in a whole different world."

Luz didn't say anything, just cried.

They sat there quietly for a while until Luz's tears started to dry.

"I guess… I just didn't realize how much she acts like my mom… kinda." Luz couldn't help the small wet chuckle at the comparison.

Amity smiled but didn't say anything.

"She makes me breakfast and packs my lunch… always asks me how school was when I get home… it makes me feel guilty..." she trailed off still sniffling.

"Just because you love Eda doesn't mean she's going to replace your mom and she'd probably be glad to know someone is taking care of you," Amity hummed.

"Yeah…," she mumbled.

After a while, Luz finally pulled away and wiped at her eyes with the heels of her palms before finally looking at her.

"Thanks, Amity," she said quietly, a small smile pulling at the corners of her lips.

Amity smiled back, glad that she was no longer crying.

"I should probably head home…" she sighed and stood, Amity following.

"Right…"

"Meet me in town tomorrow, same place and time?" she asked.

"I'll be there." Amity smiled.

Luz quickly kissed her cheek, saying a quick bye before activating her glyph and teleporting home.

~ ~ ~

It was later that evening when Luz finally came out of her room and walked down the hall to Eda's door.

She hesitated a second before knocking on the closed door.

"What?" Came from the annoyed call from the other side.

"It's me, can I come in?"

There was a brief pause.

"Sure, Kid."

Luz peeked inside to see her mentor laying haphazardly in her nest, she sat up as Luz slipped inside, shutting the door behind her.

"Hey… can I talk to you?" She asked.

Eda patted the spot next to her.

Luz climbed in and settled herself down next to her mentor.

"What's up, Kiddo?" she asked, seeing the pensive look on her face.

"It's… about this morning…" she started.

"Ah, it's okay, Luz, I know ya didn't mean it." She waved a hand, even though it hurt a little to say that, which immediately made her feel guilty.

Luz bit her lip, shuffling around in the branches and grass.

"But… I did, I guess." She looked up at Eda, who was starting back, surprised and Luz felt her face heat up.

"I… miss my mom… but I feel like I should miss her a lot more, but I don't… because I have you," she mumbled, looking down at her hands. "I feel guilty… like I've replaced her…" she frowned.

Eda watched her quietly for a moment before wrapping an arm around her and tugging in close.

"Listen, Luz," she started, drawing the girl's eyes back up to her. "I'm not gonna replace your mom, and I wouldn't want too and trust me, I doubt I'd be a very good replacement even if I was… but, I think it's time we took a hard look at the facts here. You might be here for… a while." she said after a long pause, carefully omitting the word 'forever'.

To her surprise, Luz just nodded.

"But I'll tell you this: I love you, kid, and so long as you're here, I'm gonna take care of you, okay?" She squeezed the girl's shoulders and Luz leaned into her hold, smiling. " If the ‘M’ words slips out sometimes… we’ll just roll with it… you shouldn't feel guilty about anything."

"Amity said something similar."

"Well, you should listen to her, your girlfriend's smart," she chuckled. "All that being said, I think it's time we got you some permanent stuff."

"Like what?"

"Well, you need a scroll so your friends and I can actually get a hold of you when you're off causing trouble… heck you need a bed!" She flung out an arm.

"I would like a bed…" she admitted sheepishly.

"Then it's settled, tomorrow’s Saturday, we'll go out and get some stuff."

"Thanks, Eda." She smiled up at her.

"Sure thing, Kid." She squeezed your shoulders.

[natakuchan]

I was actually wanting to give some news of the cherry bitty that Avery brought to Angel's store but-

My drawing was really ugly so I didn't post it 😅 I'll try to redraw it more in my style. Maybe have it in some of the background's explanation as well.

So- yeah, it's been time and sorry about the spoilers.

Why Angel thought a cherry was an actual good mascott is that she works with some horrid training methods from Slavetale. One of her selling argument is that she can get a bitty to behave, be it by the shock collar or by Soul training / branding. If it's possible to have a Boss be submissive, it's more than possible to have a cherry to be cheerful, smiling and to entierly prevent it to cry, ever. One tear and it'll feel it pass. Having it greet the customers and help them waiting when all the staff is busy helping other customers will demonstrate them how useful and well trained bittys can be.

The whole stuff would be possible once its baby is sold (else we'd have a failed pregnancy on our hands), so I will put it for adoption (if ya are okay with it, Box' buddy) as a shiny bitty. And then I will train the cherry.

.

So. Yes. I will use it. As soon as I manage to draw it right! lol

[bittybattybunny]

Did Kai have any sort of family after losing her foster family and becoming the Demon King? Or did she only have her husband?

Yes actually!!! A lot of Kai’s own story involves her own found family collection (i say collection just. cuz she tends to outlive them)

I’ve briefly mentioned she has a few kids and you see them in one of my sketchbook tours

but she also has a group of friends who she was close to

and the opening chapter of one of her ‘stories’ involves her dealing with the loss of a close friend she considered family (she even tried to go through legal means to see him but when humans turned around and said fuck you she snuck in. I can actually post this writing if people wanna read it?)

She also has some of her adoptive family still alive tho the bloodline is thinner. The Hellsing family she was raised in still exists to a point in her story (before the great catastrophe at least) Her whole ‘became the demon king’ thing happened when her uncle attacked her but she was able to get her sister in law and unborn nephew to escape while she distracted the rest (i have a whole ass animatic planned for this to the song “monster” from frozen’s musical. someday. someday I’ll be able to sit down on it weep)

This nephew was the one who hired Ren to help find “the king of fear” as she was known at that point. Alex is a good boy. His son was the one who went to find his great aunt after Ren’s death and she fully became a fallen god and offered her a place to stay and just. try to relax. She ended up falling into a deep sleep for a while and his family was the ones to build the ‘tomb’ she normally rests in when ever she has these extreme ‘low energy’ periods which can last between 5 years to her longest one was 5000. Typically she’ll rest for between 20-50 years at a time. and there’s a legit reason she does this too. But that’s not about family---

Point is that family is still very fond of their matriarchal demoness and she helped them found “Prometheus” a group to help humans deal with monsters and monsters live in peace. (cuz boy howdy do people have trigger fingers) there are other groups in their world with either similar goals or ones to ‘suppress’ monsters (example: The Order is a group who sees monsters as tools and lesser beings. sometimes Prometheus is forced to work with them and normally they send strong demons or dragons and such so that The Order can’t do anything to their operative. it was on one of these collaborations that Kai kidnapped Booberry from them. she regrets nothing.)

Kai often just refers to the current descendant as just “her nephew” as she’s too lazy to shove the amount of “great” in front of it because she’s old. there’s only one case of a niece and that’s where the bloodline ended (again that’s another story all together)

When Kai woke up after the Great Catastrophe alone she ended up meeting a young man named Leo (who if you look in Kai’s tag on my blog you can see him!) Who she bonded with and she likes hanging out with (and there’s other things but I’m not gonna talk about it)

There’s also her ‘generals’ and a few of them are gonna show in TLC soon (just a brief cameo) A group of 4 who’ve met Kai in a few incarnations and they always tend to get along. Original names were Matt, Trisha, Faith, and Maki is Maki (she’s an elf so she lives longer) Current names are Byron, Tiffny, Jacob and Maki. These four actually form Ren’s party when he’s trying to find his wife at the actual start of “Nightmare’s Dream” and you learn they each have a connection to Kai through the story.

Matt/Branden/Byron; he’s featured in the writing I mentioned up top, he’s kinda similar to Leo in the way he interacts with Kai as an almost human morality pet for Kai. He used to be Kai’s student when she was teaching, and his father was the warden at the jail her friend Sammy was in (this is the friend she lost) Matt can see through her disguise when she’s showcasing nightmares. Kai can cause hallucinations on targets using her ‘fear’ hence her title “king of fear” and normally they are only visible to her and her target. But Matt can see them.

He ends up getting in trouble a few times; once with a tribe of demons who want to turn children into imps, once with the literal Anti christ, once with a haunted house. And each time Kai was there and ends up saving him.

Matt later is in an accident and ends up reincarnating as a winged human named Branden and has all his past memories. So when he starts working at Prometheus as one of their ‘informants’ (aka he goes to gather information in both human and supernatural affairs. he’s referred to often as the angel of trust because of his silver tongue) and he meets her again he shouts something from one of his classes with her causing her to snap back on reflex until she realizes (running joke is Kai loathes Julius Ceaser and if you say his name she always whips around shouting “WAS A SLUT AND A HARLOT” in a very aggressive tone. It makes people laugh when she does and she always gets embarrassed afterwards)

The two of them end up working together for a while and become good friends (and maybe a bit more but they never state really) but then when with his new work partner Trisha (nicknamed angel of death, she works in the sector that deals with cleanup) he ends up betraying Prometheus and Trisha rips his wings off and kills him (this is the context between the ‘redraw’ meme I do every few years of a man with a bleeding back drowning)

Trisha is also someone who grew close to Kai (hence she killed Branden because his folly led to Kai nearly going berserk) but she was killed by a sleeper agent from the order. And this is how Kai lost two of her close friends.

Now backing up to Sammy the inmate one; he was with her when Kai met her first child, the young moon goddess Artemis. Arty is a constant for the demoness ever since she picked her up in the woods (her arc also has one of my favorite kai lines: (which i can’t find the direct line but)

Sam shuddered as he looked around the woods, “Do you ever feel like there’s 100 eyes watching you?”

“Yes but it didn’t work out so we broke up.” The demon responded flatly as she looked around with a deep set scowl.

While she was out with Sammy when he was hunting they ended up finding a little girl who turned out to be a new goddess and her elder sister was kidnapped by the embodiment of Greed in his attempt to become a god. Kai ends up stopping this but also kinda ends up becoming Arty’s mom. While she doesn’t raised Arty fully she does do a lot of teaching and such for her and does refer to her as “her daughter” and Arty calls her mom. when the great catastrophe occurs, Arty is one of the few gods who remained when the rest went to new ‘realms’ or simply vanished and is considered one of the main gods of their world because of this.

And then there’s her son Ganon, an Orc Lord she adopted when his village was ruined. he currently poses as her ‘demon king’ while she pretends to be the chancellor (this is the ruse she uses. normally heroes will fight the ‘king’ and lose but if they actually are a threat or have poor reasoning she kills them from behind. this is also how the story starts as someone found a spell to try and incapacitate her buttt)

There’s also morte and her daughter demeter (I’ve shown them before, a set of necromancers) who she’s very friendly with. Demeter even calls her aunty Kaya and loves to sit on her lap and such during meetings. (i have one snippet when Kai was recruiting someone to their side but hadn’t told her yet she was the REAL demon king and Demeter was sitting on her lap laughing) Morte is thankful to Kai for saving her circus (Morte runs a circus that helps those stuck in limbo pass on but at one point demons of sin over took it in a way to gather souls)

There’s also her friend Ciera, the daughter of the girm reaper. she’s Kai’s best friend for the most part of her life, and is the one who helps Ren when the gods of life and death try to prevent him from reincarnating again (which is like other things a whole other story) (she also briefly shows in Bone Stealer at one point. While visiting bunny’s sick grandmother, Bunny and Steve run into Ciera as she’s leaving. Steve stops Bunny from attacking her) She’s over all chill.

There’s also Nicki. Kai’s ‘twin’ brother. He’s the ‘bad guy’ through the arc that contains Leo and sets up ‘the great Split’ that Kai will cause (this is lore/plot stuff) He originally was raised to hate her by their maternal Uncle who’s a arch mage like Ren however he’s fallen due to his hatred of Kai’s birth. Nicki is not really her brother (in the first life) but a failed clone of the demoness. When Kai is reborn Nicki gets to actually be her brother and the two get along really well and he’s very protective of his sister now that he understands what her actual deal is and not the bs his uncle fed him. Before the rebirth too Nicki helped kai solve some stuff and worked with her until his death (unlike her, he was not immortal)

And then Kai actually has two bio children with Ren! Akito her son takes after her and he’s the one who takes over her role as the true demon king of Tir-Na-Nocht so she’s able to die and try life again, and a daughter, Rei who takes after Ren in looks but... she’s a himbo. pure moron. she got her grandpa’s himbo gene strong. She’s a cat girl who works with her brother and she is the head of the guard.

Aki actually has his own story where he grew up in a ‘mundane’ world but then his entire class got ‘isekaid’ to another. it gets shown that this isn’t truly the case. the great ‘split’ mentioned above was Kai literally broke the world in two realms. She made one primarily humans and high tech and then the other was magic and mostly monsters. there are a mix of both but it cut down heavily on the murder. She raised Aki in the human side for his and Rei’s safety due to them being the children of a fallen god (mama worries) and Aki inherited his mother’s odd ‘status’ “Hero/Demon King”  so he has to not expose his demon nature and also stay below the radar (it turns out the person who summoned them was attempting to break a centuries old treaty) until his mother and father can figure out what happened to him (thankfully he can go to a church and his older sister Arty can act as a messenger but there’s a bit of a time split in the worlds) That world is actually the one “Fae Rules” takes place in o7o.

She also is friends with a dead prince named “Shade” (yes this is who you think it is) as well as her ‘cousin’ Sena (who she loves to give shit to)

And in her second life she obvs has her brother, cousins, her father (her father’s boyfriend/her manny), aunt’s etc!!!

So yes; she had family other than her husband!!!! And she cherishes them all.

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Quick outline of the changes in Golden Kamuy Vol 20

Here is a general outline of the more relevant changes that take place in Vol 20 compared to the magazine. Note that as usual I won’t dig into minor changes unless they seem to be relevant for the plot or characterization (or I really like them).

We spend a moment on the cover, which sees the return of Sugimoto on it.

Sugimoto has appeared already on two covers in the past. I tend to think the next one will be Asirpa, Tsurumi will appear on the one of Vol 23 and Ogata on the one of Vol 27 as in the past they rotated in a regular manner.

Said this I also expect Golden Kamuy to end with Vol 28, in short to have as many volumes as the chapter of Matthew’s gospel... though this might be just me. Honestly, if this were to be wrong, I don’t expect it to go past 29/30 volumes. Considering the magazine version is already at vol 23 we’re getting close to the end... ;_;

It’s also worth to mention that the backcover this time doesn’t have JUST Asirpa like the previous Sugimoto cover but Asirpa AND Ogata, Ogata taking Asirpa away from Sugimoto, in a clear reference to what happened in Vol 19... although during it Ogata was a lot less calm and confident than he looks in this cover, as if this scenewas seen in Sugimoto’s vision... and it’s worth to mention in the cover Sugimoto is trying to pull out his bayonet to likely kill Ogata with it, as he had attempted to do in their first meeting and as he likely considered to do in the hospital when he learnt Ogata would die.

We then move to the colour page.

It’s no new illustration, it was the cover for chap 205, ‘Cinematograph’ which will be in the next volume. Not one of my fave covers but it can be fitting considering the plot of the last chapters of this volume.

The downside of it is that we lose the colour cover of chap 193. I wonder if Noda will use it later.

It’s worth to note though how Noda drew for chap 193 a new black and white cover.

Always in regard to covers, the cover of chap 191 now is used as background for the summary.

As usual the volume presents a cute summary.

And now let’s talk of extra pages and panels which are added to the story.

Same as in past volumes the new pages seems to have the purpose to expand scenes that already were in  the magazine version so we can better understand what’s going on.

Note I’m not going to add them all but only those which are plot relevant (or that I particularly like).

Let’s start with chap 191.

Maybe nobody noticed it but volume pages are longer. This allows us to better see Shiraishi’s expression as he buries Kiro.

Asirpa’s expression as Shiraishi says Kiro was too serious for his own good is also redrawn (and they added some background behind Tanigaki, Koito and Tsukishima).

Tanigaki’s dialogue line about Inkarmat reporting how Kiro told her Wilk had changed is cut as Noda had added some panels in the past volume with Sugimoto telling this to Asirpa.

This allows Noda to expand the scene in which Sugimoto tells Asirpa Nopperabou told him he didn’t kill the Ainu, to which she replies ‘really?’ when in the magazine version she just looked down sadly.

Noda shortened the scene in which Sofia unbury Kiro to say her goodbye to him to add one in which she joins her men, even though it was too late to save Kiro.

It should hurt her horribly.

We go on. At Noboribetsu Noda added a Kikuta panel with the man saying something. No idea what but I love Kikuta so enjoy him.

We go to Chap 192.

The inside of the ryv is now more detailed and Ogata looks a little better... as in his bandages seem cleaner than in the volume version. Also Noda gave him a fur cover which matches with the one has in the othe scenes.

Sure the cloth placed against his eye is still not perfectly clean but the one in the magazine seemed much dirtier.

On the opposite side Tsukishima looks worse, his lips chapped now.

Noda expanded Sugimoto’s reply to Asirpa’s question ‘what are you going to do, Sugimoto? Will you cooperate with Tsurumi?’

We jump to chap 193.

As said before the color cover is removed and Noda drew a black and white new cover for the chapter.

When Kikuta notices the man with the eyepatch, the guy looks much worse than in the magazine and Ariko doesn’t turn toward him as well but looks at Kikuta. Noda also changed a little Kikuta’s expression in the following panel.

Ah, it’s not really relevant but Noda changed a little how one of Toni Anji’s men look so as to help differentiate him from Toni Anji’s other man. I’m not going to post all the scenes in which he looks different but here you can get a glimpse of him and compare him with how he previously looked in the magazine.

Noda took better care of Ariko’s mother, drawing her in action instead than still as a statue.

(and yeah you also get a glimpse of Kikuta as he says ‘the sound of geta’ as Noda redraw him)

Noda also made more clear how Kikuta removed the eyepatch (you can now see him moving something above his left eye and said eye widening and also being visible although Kikuta’s face is darkened when Toni shoots him) and Noda also drew better Toni shooting at Kikuta.

Let’s go to chap 194.

A lot more fog is added in almost all the scenes better showing how it was hard to see something in it for Kikuta and Co. No idea why but the Nikaido panels have now him looking in the opposite direction and there are minor redrawing here and there.

Overall though there is no terribly relevant change.

Chap 195 presents only one small yet relevant change.

In it it’s Ariko who volunteers to go after Toni while Kikuta remains with Usami, when in the magazine version it was Kikuta who told Ariko to go after him.

To chap 196 we go.

Ogata is confirmed to look as bad as in the magazine version in this chapter, as to imply his conditions has worsened quite a bit.

There are some minor redrawings here and there but nothing terribly relevant (still enjoy Kikuta looking more awesome... yes, if you hadn’t figured it out yet I’m partial to him).

And now we reach Chap 197 and things turn interesting.

While Asirpa remains very distressed at the idea Ogata might die...

... and we have no explanation whatsoever regarding to the Russian doctor’s odd behaviour, we get a lot of changes in regard to how  Koito and Tsurumi’s first meeting went because the volume version changed it A LOT. Not only Tsurumi’s face isn’t kept in the dark for as long as it was in the magazine but Koito definitely isn’t the well mannered kid we met in the volume version but a real bonbon, spoiled, bossy and angry, much more fitting of the personality he’ll have as an adult. Tsurumi also will show here he’s not going to let a young boy bully him.

Again Noda have someone slap some sense into someone else.

While the scene can look violent it’s clearly for Koito it was catartic. He knew he was acting like an asshole and he likely did so because he wanted to draw attention on himself but, as he says also in the magazine version, his father won’t scold him. So fundamentally Tsurumi hitting him for his bad behaviour gave him the attention he wanted and makes tematically sense with how he pointed out his father didn’t scold him.

After that fight Tsurumi’s kindness also likely made more of an impression on Koito.

It’s also worth to mention Tsurumi is freakingly strong. Remember how Ogata warned Sugimoto he shouldn’t try to block Koito’s first strike, the info box informing us it should be dodged at any cost? Well, Tsurumi blocks it with his arm and breaks Koito’s ‘sword’ (actually the cane of a poor man Koito took using his status).

So we move to chap 198.

The panels post Koito’s kidnapping are expanded. Now it’s more obvious Koito’s tricycle is in front of the consulate. Many panels are also expanded but, overall, I couldn’t detect relevant changes.

So we reach Chap 199.

The whole run in the tricycle is expanded, the chase between the Kidnapper (Kikuta) and the duo Tsurumi/Koito senior is now longer and Tsurumi gets to show off more and even express his Tsurumisexuality on two women passing by.

The destruction of the tricycle is now in a spread page, Koito senior calling for his son in another, below him the background of the Goryokaku.

And so we reach the last chapter of the volume, chap 200.

Interesting enough Noda removed Tsukishima leaving the room when they hear Koito senior calling for Koito making the scene entirely a Koito-Ogata one.

Tsukishima will remain present, we can see his hat when Ogata ties Koito, meaning he heard Ogata saying Барчонок ‘Barchonok’ (ボンボンが ‘Bonbon ga’ "pampered little rich boy’“).

This means it was clearly Tsurumi the one who knocked out Koito senior, showing us again how Tsurumi is actually quite strong but this also tells us that when Koito will mention the word Барчонок ‘Barchonok’ Tsukishima probably felt very, very uncomfortable about it as he might have understood from whom Koito might have heard it... while in the magazine version Tsukishima knew nothing about it and Koito could hope Tsukishima was actually the kidnapped who used it (unlikely, not only it’s Ogata the one with a bruised nose but ‘black hat’ was shorter than ‘white fedora’ and a much better fighter, all things that match with Tsukishima).

By the way, not only Ogata’s nose is confirmed to remain bruised (so yes, it was him the one who rubbed Koito’s back) but now we can see the number on their shoulders, which in the volume version wasn’t clearly visible although the bands showing their ranks still aren’t present.

It’s also worth to mention Noda expanded the meeting between Tsurumi, Koito and Koito senior when Koito has enrolled in the army.

No idea why they say but they discuss again how Koito was saved. I’ll say Tsurumi succesfully has managed to make Koito senior feel in debt.

Ogata’s escape is also expanded, with Sugimoto trying to shoot at him more than once. None of the shoots is remotely close to the horse as Sugimoto was clearly aiming above it, to Ogata. Not that he gets him.

Koito is shown coming out of the hospital on unsteady legs as Sugimoto wishes for Ogata to come back so he can fucking kill him though his gaze here is a little more normal.

In short Ogata didn’t put Koito completely out of service but, between the blow at his head and Ogata’s kick Koito was definitely not in his best shape.

As far as I’m involved the worst part is that nothing is explained about the Russian doctor who first didn’t want to have anything to do with them as his hospital was full, then realized they were Japanese and was threatened by Sugimoto into going with them EVEN THOUGH HIS HOSPITAL WAS FULL AND HE CLEARLY WAS BUSY, and once he sees the poor shape Ogata is in, decides to bring him to his hospital going so far as arguing with them, even though before being threatened he didn’t want to help them.

Then he perfectly smoothly acts as if Ogata is about to die, not even a drop of sweat on his face, before we discover that it’s highly possible he was being threatened by Ogata? That or there’s more and we hadn’t been told yet?

Hard to say, it’s possible Noda just wants to handwave this but really, it’s weird and it’s not addressed at all.

Anyway the volume ends here.

Ariko and Kikuta do the thanks.

...and the spoiler for the next volume is the cover of chap 210. I’ll be evil and let you check which one it is if you don’t remember it. :P

Anyway that’s all. I recommend everyone to get the volume as, as usual, it’s much better than the magazine version.

[the-space-above-the-stars]

my name on your...

lee taeyong x reader

Summary: As a tattoo artist, you’ve seen a lot of weird requests in your shop. But something new is when the florist across the street stumbles into your shop drunk as all hell and in the market for his first tattoo. 

Warnings: none, i mean drunk taeyong?

Genre: fluff, like entirely

Word Count: 1.7K

A/N: Requests are open!! This is based on an AU prompt I saw, but for the life of me, I cannot remember the URL of the person who put that post out, so if you see this, I’m sorry! Just a short fluffy thing. 

Rubbing sleep out of your eyes, you put down your tattoo gun, wiping the last bit of excess ink off of your client’s arm before passing them a mirror. “There you go, Yeri, how do you like it?” You ask, crossing the room for the coffee pot you’ve set to brew. It was near midnight and Yeri, an old friend and new client came through your doors a few hours back asking for a tattoo. 

“Wow, Y/N,” she gaped at the art on her arm, two intertwined snakes, one in black ink and one in white. “This looks awesome!” 

“Here,” you wrapped a bandage over the slightly inflamed red skin around the tattoo. “Give that a few weeks before you go swimming, take a bath, or go into a hot tub, okay? If you think something’s wrong, just come back, I’m usually here.” 

“Okay!” She grabbed her bag and with a wave, was out the door. Silence falls over the shop as you finish your coffee, heading back to the small workspace in the backroom where you threw up some ideas for designs. The walls were covered with tacked up drawings of tattoo designs you had done in your sketchbook. If you really liked them, you would redraw them more neatly and hang them up outside. 

Recently most of the drawings are flowers, a byproduct of your time spent drawing inside the florist’s just across the street. The shop was owned by Lee Taeyong, a boy around your age who was kind enough to let you come in and hang around the shop to sketch the flowers he arranged. He was shy, kind, and made incredible displays. Another fact was that he was drop dead, absolutely, positively, gorgeous and you had more than a few drawings of his stunning profie in your sketchbook. 

You pull another page from your sketchpad, several different sprigs of lightly etched wildflowers. Taeyong had a special bouquet set up for a customer, a personal friend and had gladly allowed you a few pictures to sketch it. It was nice, and you picked up your pen and a piece of paper. 

You had barely laid down the first line of the drawing when the sound of a bell ringing alerted you to the door opening. Just afterwards, a small crash and what sounded like some cuss words. Rushing outside, your eyes darted around to assess the damage to your shop, but there seemed to be nothing there. 

Except for a blue haired mess sprawled out on your floor clutching their side. “Hey man, are you okay?” Rushing forward to help them, you noticed that they were very obviously drunk, stumbling as you helped them into a chair. “Do you need- Taeyong?” 

“Yes?” The boy hiccuped and laughed, kicking his feet like a toddler. “Hey, you’re the girl that comes in to draw my flowers, right?” 

“Yeah, bud-” you didn’t finish as his attention shifted from you to your tattoo gear in the tray next to him, picking up the gun. “Uh, Taeyong, did you get drunk alone?” 

“No, uh, Mark was there, I think, I remember someone saying “let’s get it” but that could be Haechan imitating Mark or it could be Jaehyun, oh wait, maybe it was Lucas! But the voice was kinda quiet, so maybe Jungwoo? Wait, no, Doyoung was there! I remember cuz he drove us there. Did you know Doyoung doesn’t drink beer-” 

“No, I did not know that,” you tried to stifle your laughter at this drunk man-child, putting your tattoo gear a safe distance away. “Okay, so you didn’t drink alone, did you walk here? Just nod or shake your head.” He gave you an overly exaggerated nod of his head, eyes drifting to the designs on the wall. 

“Did you draw all these?” His eyes were wide with curiosity as he stood up, stumbling over his own feet as he reached the wall. “Wow, you’re talented and pretty-oh shit,” he giggled, not aware of the way your face was flushed bright red. “You’re not supposed to tell a girl you think she’s cute, right? I don’t know, Johnny told me that. Should I trust him, he’s pretty tall, so- hey! Can you give me a tattoo?” 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, buddy,” you try to evade, the kill bill sirens of unethical business going through your head. “I don’t think you signing the forms while you’re drunk is very legal.” 

“I’m not drunk!” He pouted, sitting back down in the chair and tucking his feet up under him. 

“Okay, how many fingers am I holding up?” You held up three fingers, and unexpectedly, he reached forward and grabbed your hand, counting each finger off. 

“Three! Can I get a tattoo now? Renjun went out with Jeno and Jaemin to get a tattoo on his ass, he almost actually went through with it- wait, was that your shop?” 

“No, Taeyong, I’m pretty sure I would have remembered that. And I wouldn’t recommend an ass tattoo-” 

“But I want an ass tattoooo,” he whines, head falling back on the chair. 

“What do you even want tattooed on your ass?” You grabbed another cup of coffee, and an extra for him. 

“What’s your name again?” He slurred, suddenly entranced with the pop-socket on the back of his phone. 

“Y/N.” 

“Okay, I’ll get that. Cuz you did the tattoo, might as well be your own name.” 

“Okay, Taeyong, first of all, chug this.” He took the coffee and took a sip, pouting at the bitterness. “Please? For me?” Still pouting, he finished the coffee. “Okay, now can you give me your phone, please? unlocked, I need to call your friends.” He fumbled through his pockets and found the slightly cracked iPhone, passing it to you. “Okay, I’m going to call your friends to pick you up, just wait here.” 

“What about the tattoo?” He grabs your hand as you turn, stopping you swiftly. Why were his reflexes still good when he was fucking drunk off his ass? 

“Okay, I don’t know how to explain this simply, but basically if I give you the tattoo now, you’re going to not like it when you wake up in the morning. So go home with your friends, go to sleep, and if you still want my name on your...on your ass, you can come over and I’ll tattoo you.” 

“kay,” he lets go and you go through his contacts until you find Doyoung. It fings twice before someone picks up. 

“Hello?” 

“Hello? Taeyong?” 

“Um, hi, this is Y/N, I own the tattoo parlor opposite Taeyong’s shop, is this Doyoung?” 

“This is he. What did he do, I’m so sorry, we just turned around for one second and he was gone-” 

“Doyoungggg!” Taeyong calls from the front of the shop, catching on to who you’re on the phone with. “Hiiiiii, I’m getting a tattoo!” 

“You’re not really giving him a tattoo, are you?” 

“No, god, I’m not crazy. Can you come pick him up?” 

“Yeah, we’re almost there, we just left the bar.” He hangs up and you pass Taeyong his phone. 

“Y/N, can I tell you another secret?” He whispers, even though there’s no one around. “I really like it when you come to draw my flowers. You look really pretty.” 

“Really, Taeyong?” 

“Yeah,” he nods expressively. “When you’re drawing, your eyebrows do this thing where they just-” he squishes his own eyebrows together. “And your hair keeps falling in your eyes, it’s really cute.” 

“Thanks, Taeyong. You’re kinda cute yourself.” A black car pulls out, three guys coming out. “Are those your friends?”

“Oh, yeah! HI DOYOUNG, HI JAEHYUN, HI MARK- OH, it was Mark who was saying let’s get it!” Jaehyun and Mark help Taeyong up, the tpsy boy immediately pulling them both into a hug. “I love you guys sometimes,” he mumbles, and- wait, is he crying?” 

Doyoung, flustered and obviously worried, shakes your hand. “Thanks for looking out for him, he didn’t do anything too weird, did he?” 

“Uh, well except for asking for a tattoo of my name on his ass, no, perfectly normal drunk person.” Doyoung thanks you once more and gets into the car. 

“BYE, Y/N!” Taeyong waves through the window and you wave back as the car drives around the corner and out of sight, finally exhaling. 

*** The next morning, you’re almost done with a girl getting her boyfriend’s name on her neck- a choice you’re sure she’s going to regret- when Taeyong walks in, wearing heavy sunglasses and holding a bouquet of flowers. “Hey Taeyong, give me a minute here.” He nods, somewhat meekly and takes a seat as you wipe away the excess ink and give the girl the normal post-tattoo warnings before she heads out. “How’s the head?” You ask, taking a seat at the reception desk.

“Hurts every time I look at anything that isn’t black. Uh, these are for you,” He sets the pretty arrangement of yellow tulips on the desk. “For an apology for bursting in on you drunk and asking for an ass tattoo of your name- I was way too drunk-” 

“Taeyong,” you laugh, taking the flowers. “It’s okay. Honestly, I’ve had sober clients come in asking for weirder things. The flowers are beautiful, thank you.” 

“I didn’t do anything else last night, did I?” 

“Uh well, you called me pretty, like twice, but I think that’s about it.” His face flushes a deep red, and you can’t help but smile. “And I don’t know if that’s just the alcohol talking-”  “It’s not!” He stutters as a clarification, getting even redder. “I mean- okay, I’m not trying to make this even worse for myself, but I think you’re really pretty, Y/N, and I’ll let myself out now.” He turns to leave, but stumbles when you lean over and grab his sleeve. 

“That’s good,” you grin at the bewildered look on his face, your laugh breathy. “Because I, for one, think you’re really pretty as well, Taeyong.”

A/N: this is short, but i kinda like it. it’s chill. Requests are open!

[guylty]

It’s time to get back into the groove. The round-ups have suffered greatly this year. Too many holidays! And there will be more weekend trips coming up, with some four dear fandom friends visiting me over the next couple of months, starting with Linda60 next week. Really, I have had my share of holidays this year. But Ireland is just too beautiful, no wonder I get so many visitors… quod erat demonstrandum

Roundwood, Co. Wicklow

Clifden, Co. Galway

Ballyconneely, Co. Galway

Lough Derryclare, Co. Galway

Grange, Co. Sligo

Kilcar, Co. Donegal

Slieve League, Co. Donegal

Sorry, now for the round-up. Get yourself a cup of your favourite tipple; this is gonna take a while.

Pinglyponglypeep reminisces about The Crucible. Do you agree?

Grimweaver has a theory why Esther voluntarily takes on the steering wheel in BS

I take it a “phone dump” is a show and tell of all the pictures you have on your phone. This is armitageadoration’s collection. What’s on yours?

Collection queen riepu10 brings us a sunglasses appreciation post

Here’s one of a series of textsfromoceans8 – aw, poor Claude…

I loved this “redraw” by blooeyedspazz who uses a RL photo as inspiration for a piece of Hobbit fan art

Fandomgalcentral reposts a rather unfortunate shot of a seated Kenneth in LLL *grins widely*

Remember John #6? A reminder by frida–y

Where’s the petition, g00doldboy, I’ll sign it straight away *whistles ‘I need a hero’ by Bonnie Tyler*

I usually do not post links to YT, and this is an old video to boot, but it is just too good, especially considering that Deborah Harkness’ Discovery of Witches is currently in post-production. Link supplied by deepestfirefun

A lot of time has passed between 1999 and 2012… as discovered by aelinnielelain

Gorgeous Thorin fan art by life-is-righteous

And a colourful manip by enulacampana

Clumsy-grumpy was bored… not bad for a doodle…

Did I already post this Hobbit AU by pherenikeh last time? If so, sorry, but I still think it’s fun

I didn’t actually read this Lucas fan fic, but just to add some fan fiction to the list, here is this offering by deepestfirefun

Pea coat love forevahhhh! Thanks, mezzmerizedbyrichard!!!

Oh, this was actually a bit shorter than I thought. Well, I hope you enjoyed nevertheless – at least you have more time for your weekend 😉. Myself, I’ll be trying to be creative. Because I have done it again. Despite having approximately 3000 mint tins in my stash, I couldn’t resist buying more when I was in Munich. What do you think – which one of these should I work on?

Yeah, I *had* to buy that porcelain rose necklace… you know why…

And now, happy weekend, all!

Guylty ❤️

  2018 Armitage Weekly Round-up #22 It's time to get back into the groove. The round-ups have suffered greatly this year. Too many holidays!

[stripestheboar]

Liiiittle bit of a vent, so excuse me. No important information. Just me exhausting my frustrations, and unfortunately, frustration is my weakness. Too much of it and it destroys me from the inside.

So.

Now I remember why I quit drawing a couple years back. I was never good at it, and yeah I know “practice makes perfect”, and I practice regularly. Despite my frustrations, I’m getting better. I’m improving inch by inch. Following tutorials and finding examples from other amazing artists are very helpful.

But still.

The artist is their own worst critic.

I start off excited and eager, listening to music as I have the image in my head. I feel confident. I’m ready.

I start drawing. I draw. I draw and I draw, and at first, I genuinely feel like I’m creating art that displays weeks of constant practice. I’m eager to finish it and post it and see the reactions of my followers.

I finish it up, look back over it, and… well… I’m sure anyone who’s been an artist knows what this feels like. I barely need to explain. It just… looks wrong. Everything I thought I was doing right has turned out to be a disaster in my own eyes.

And so comes the erasing. The redrawing begins to take forever as each stroke is now ugly and doesn’t fit into place. Before long, a few hours have passed and I barely have anything down because it just doesn’t look right, but I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I have the image in my head, but I can’t seem to get it down.

Frustration sets in slowly, at a rate to where I can’t even recognize I’m getting aggravated over the imperfections of my own hand. All the music I love has become annoying and unlistenable, and I don’t know what else to put on because I’m not in the mood anymore. Drawing in silence, however, sounds like hell, so I bear through it. I get that pit in my stomach as I get more irritated, though I’m not angry at the art, but instead myself for not being able to work out something as simple as the shape of a face.

Eventually, I realize the state I’m putting myself in, and have to force myself away. I feel humiliated I wasted four hours on something so small and yet so ugly. Ugly to me, anyways. Nothing I can think of makes me feel better, so I just sit in silence and start writing. It’s the only thing that can bring me out of my foul mood.

Despite my frustrations, I tell myself I’ll get better. I look back at some of my earliest writings and remind myself I only came this far and with this passion through practice. Lots and lots of practice. I tell myself to get over it and try again tomorrow. Maybe it won’t look so bad when I wake up.

No matter what, I repeat myself that I get better with each day and with more and more practice. I think back to what I had learned through practicing. I learned how to make Papyrus now looks thinner than the other characters and I’m finally gettinng his teeth down. I’m able to finally get Undyne to stand in a confident-looking pose and how to make her look smug. I think I’ve gotten Frisk’ hair to look right. Hands have become easier to work with. I just need a good pose of me doing something with my hands as a reference and it becomes easier to work with.

I think about the things I need to work on. I need to work on drawing Frisk and Chara’s clothes, I still need to be able to get Alphys’ glasses just right. San’ skull needs more work. I’ve gotten Undyne’s body down, but I can’t get her face right; I have the same problem with Firsk, who is either too thin or too thick. I’ve established a shading style, but I need to work on how I shade and lighten hair. The heads are almost always gigantic in size, so I have to work on proportions, especially with arm length as well. I still need to work on hair at different angles.

I need to practice.

Writing all this down makes that pit in my stomach disappear, and I’m thankful for anyone who has taken the time to read this.

Sometimes I think about quitting and just going back to only writing, but then I think of the people who follow me for a reason, and I find the confidence fo pick my tablet up again the next day and get back to drawing.

Thanks for your support. Many of you don’t talk to me or interact with me, but just the fact that you take the time to look through my writing and my random shitposts and occassional pissy attitude is enough to make me feel giddy inside. I really appreciate you all; you’re my motivation.

Who knows, maybe I’ll post some of my imporovements. Depends on how I feel about them, or if anyone even wants to see them.

I feel better. But right now, I need to get back to writing. It makes me feel better.

[maiji]

Process and wip images for A House That Holds Long Limbs

You can read the pages for part 1 here (full complete version will be linked from YYH North Bound master post whenever it’s done.)

Every so often I get questions about how I work, and I also enjoy reading about how other creators make things, so perhaps this might be interesting and useful to somebody out there too. I’ve talked about my process before but never really documented and shared it WHILE working on a project, so here you can see some of my thinking and decision-making (and poor habits lol) a bit more immediately, alongside screenshots, photos and scans.

Very long, everything is below the cut, and apologies to people on mobile and anywhere else this goofs up.

One question I get a lot is “do you start with words or pictures when creating a comic?” I jump between both a lot. That said, I tend to lean more heavily on words when documenting ideas in the early stages of a project. This is because, for me:

Words pack a lot of punch in conveying detail quickly. They work better when I need to quickly communicate something extremely specific to future me. I’m a sloppy drawer, so my sketches tend to make future me squint and go, “What the hell was this supposed to be?!”

A great deal of my thinking and planning is done during crowded commutes. It’s more convenient to jot notes on my phone than to whip out my sketchbook and a pen.

(For a while I thought it’d be awesome to have some sort of app where I can type notes AND have an accompanying thumbnail sketch, and be able to drag them around or break them out into more or fewer pages. At one point years ago I thought about creating a custom app... but ultimately too lazy/busy and my current process works well enough. If anyone wants to take this idea and run with it, please feel free to do so and just let me know about it so I can try it haha.)

I usually start with a few lines summarizing the gist of the idea, enough that’s recognizable and I don’t forget the important things to build off from. From there, I start point-form outlining the stuff that needs to happen, structuring them into key scenes/parts. These scenes are not always fleshed out in order - I just add to them whenever I have ideas for that part. 

Long Limbs, for example, had a progression like this:

Overall story idea: “horror story with rokurokubi, key plot point(s) happens, the end.” (There was a bit more detail than this, obviously, but we’re avoiding spoilers here.)

Initial description for Part 1 of the story: “Hokushin lured to go to somewhere. Separated from Raizen. HOW??????”

After letting it simmer for while, a solution: “Hokushin annoyed at Raizen. Opportunity for him to get away and go do his own thing.”

Gradually more detail: “Stranger invites him to go to this place to look into something/maybe has a paid job that needs to be done and Raizen is busy goofing off or whatever.”

Problem. I couldn’t resolve this chain of thought to my satisfaction. What kind of task/job can someone convince Hokushin to do on his own when he doesn’t know this person/it seems questionable? And how long will the conversation need to run to establish this as believable?

This was starting to get convoluted and I was getting annoyed because it was turning into a burden in being able to continue the story AND IT WASN’T EVEN THAT IMPORTANT. I decided to abandon this path of thinking, and left the entire story for a while.

Much later (like months?), I had an idea: “Mysterious person drops something, piques Hokushin’s curiosity.” Aha! Hokushin’s own initiative. Simple and plausible enough. HOORAY NO MORE THINKING. LET’S DRAW.

Then I realized, oh shoot, I need to figure out who this mysterious person is and what they dropped. More time passes. And so on… in between I’m always working on other things, so there’s no real creator’s block - at some point I start thinking about this comic again, and ideas work themselves out to some decent level of satisfaction and link together. Thanks subconscious!

Eventually, enough key scenes are fleshed out that I feel confident enough to turn this into a real thing. At present, for example, not all scenes in Long Limbs are totally worked out, but I’ve got enough that I ran ahead with Part 1.

Screenshot of the Google Docs notes/script for Part 1: 

This is a close-to-final version. The === on top is just to separate this from notes on other stories or ideas. This is the beginning of the document, but this document actually includes many other notes and stories for North Bound. I delete them as I finish and post the pages. Every so often I wonder if I should bother keeping them, but they’ve been refined throughout the process and usually don’t bear much resemblance to the original jotted notes anymore. Long Limbs was originally planned to be a later story in North Bound, but I got especially excited about it and fleshed it out further than the others. When I reviewed the earlier stories, I didn’t think there’d be a big continuity or reader experience issue if this was finished and posted first. So I moved the messy notes for this story to the top of the document. 

The page breakdown for the script is done by me generally picturing in my head how I might want the scene to go and how much action I might be able to fit on the page for good effect. I’ll sometimes start paginating without thumbnails, and sometimes will do both side by side (thumbnail and update pagination in tandem).

As you might imagine, pagination frequently changes. For example, you’ll see the script above is 9 pages instead of 10.

The original script for this section was broken up into maybe 4-6 pages, with 5-7 being more condensed.

When I started thumbnailing, I found it felt too cluttered and moved too fast.

So I stretched out the part of Hokushin and the mystery girl exchanging glances, and added pages to be able to create a (hopefully) more cinematic feel and really focus on the reason they catch each other’s eye - the bandages on their necks.

I then went back to the Google Doc and updated the script to line it up better.

I was also tweaking the dialogue at the same time and didn’t want to forget any key phrasing I liked. Dialogue is another thing I get really hung up over, often changing words up to the last second. (Sometimes this is because I messed up the size of the speech bubble, if I’m lettering on the computer...)

Thumbnails:

Pretty close to the final in this case - mainly because the sequence is pretty simple and straightforward and not many people are involved. I keep my thumbnails very crappy and rough so that I don’t get upset later when I can’t redraw something as good as the thumbnail. Bottom right was a quick attempt at designing the mystery girl.

Once I think the thumbnails are good enough - translation: I get impatient and just want to start drawing - I proceed to pencils for the actual page.

Throughout all this, I’m repeatedly reviewing script and thumbnail and playing sequences out in my head and then trying to figure out how to better direct the “camera” and the action. I may go back to the script and the thumbnails even as I’m finetuning the actual page if I encounter issues. You can see in both the script and the thumbnails that there are still deviations in the dialogue and the art from the final. Here are a few examples:

Page 3: The panels were originally 1) the setting, 2) Hokushin with his arms folded, 3) Raizen laughing, 4) we see that Hokushin is watching Raizen. After reviewing the thumbnail, I felt it’d be a better setup to flow into the scene if I switched panels 2 and 3. That’s closer to how you’d experience it in real life, or how it might be directed in a shot sequence: you enter an area/place, you hear the sound of some guy’s loud laughter filling the air, then the camera zooms up to the annoyed expression of this one particular dude and you see he’s staring at the laughing guy. Moving from bigger ambience to smaller details around the room.

Page 7: The girl was originally turning in the other direction (hard to tell because I redrew it right on top of the original sketch lol). However, this meant all the directional action would be pointing to the right - Hokushin is facing the right, and when he leaves the bar he’s angling towards the right side of the page. Facing the direction that readers will read in gives a sense of driving the action forward, while facing the opposite direction provides a bit of a mental stop. (This is something from Scott McCloud that always stuck with me.) So, I flipped the girl around.

Page 8: Script has Hokushin going “What’s this?”. When thumbnailing, I thought, “obviously it’s self-evident he’s wondering what this is when he picks it up”. It added nothing to the panel, and the speech or thought bubble would have interrupted the smooth action of him picking up the paper. So, axed.

The damn friggin’ bar and gambling: You’ll see the script mention this, and at one point I actually had the guy standing across from Raizen saying “Is this guy drunk?” I’m actually not sure if they’re in a bar or if Raizen is drinking, but neither were important to the actual story because I just needed Raizen and Hokushin to be in a place where Raizen could hang out with humans and be stupid. So I dropped these details. This is mainly because I ran into historical research problems about bars and alcohol during the Kamakura period (more on that near the end of this post), and this was the only way to stop myself from getting hung up on trying to make it “perfect” and “correct” and just get it done. 

Drawing the actual pages. This part is fun!

Inking the actual pages. THIS PART IS NOT FUN :( 

I don’t have very steady hands and I get very anxious about messing things up, so inking always takes me the longest. (I also get distracted easily, e.g., ink two lines and then surf tumblr for ten minutes lol). I’ve improved a lot since I started drawing comics much more frequently a couple years ago, and my choice of tools and style has helped a lot (I lean to variable lines and sketchy style, which is more forgiving than, say, a very precise art style with fixed-width pens) but I still get nervous at this stage.

I’m very lazy so I usually stick with one tool for inking. For Long Limbs I tried to effort more and actually used three. Right to left: Sailor fude de mannen for panel borders and text, Muji pen for artwork (0.4 because that was the only size available at the store when I went to get my refill), Pentel pocket brush for filling in blacks. I refill the fude de mannen and the pocket brush with fountain pen inks.

I usually ink panel borders first, then speech bubbles, then everything else. I hop all over the place and pages are generally in varying stages of completion. I also sometimes add in some more text lines because it seems like a good idea at the time - Hokushin’s complaint on page 3 about how he should have left Raizen when he got into a fight with a fish-seller in a previous story, for example. Sometimes these work, sometimes I regret it later and edit it on the computer.

Cover thumbnails and pencil sketch:

The one in the page thumbnails was the original idea, but then I thought, “seems kinda cliched. Can I get a more interesting angle where he’s not looking straight at the viewer?” (OK, his eyes are covered, but you know what I mean.) I quickly tried a few other angles and compositions, didn’t like them and ended up going with pretty much the original idea, but more zoomed in.

In the thumbnails, you can see all my little x’s indicating “ehhhh I don’t like this”. I wanted something with a particular mood/atmosphere especially with all the hands and arms, and I was conflicted between zooming out (for more environment and more arms, and the focus on the “long limbs” part of the title) or having a tighter, more close up shot. Ultimately I think the latter works better as it conveys a sense of claustrophobia, and it’s more intimate which supports the idea of psychological horror. ALSO IT’S SEXY (maybe???). The end.

Other random thoughts:

I took a lot of heart/inspiration/motivation from Togashi’s last few volumes of Yu Yu Hakusho to keep the backgrounds as lazy - I mean sparse - as possible and also speech bubbles over plain backgrounds lmao. I think it takes a lot of confidence (or maybe laziness) to be so minimalist and restrained, and it’s an impressive and economical way of working. I was always impressed that when reading those pages of his for the first time, the lack of detail never really bothered me - you had everything you needed for your brain to comfortably fill in the gaps and complete the sense of narrative and story progression, and there are still visual flourishes when the situation calls for it. So I’m trying to bring a bit of that tighter philosophy in.

Research. I struggle a LOT with not getting bogged down by details, especially when it’s something “just” for fun or “just” a fancomic. I have very lovely and helpful friends and family who every so often patiently allow me to whine and bounce things off of them, help me look things up, and/or tell me when I’m getting myopic about stuff. For all the North Bound comics, finding quick and useful historical references for the time period has been a challenge. There’s a ton about aristocracy and warriors but very little about the ordinary/common people, not surprisingly. I frequently question my instincts about what makes sense because I tend to automatically draw on similar/equivalent Chinese culture (there was certainly lots of cross-over, but not always appropriate/relevant) or Edo period references (wrong time frame! Too far in the future). I often end up losing a ton of time trying to find something with roundabout searches, and then give up and look at other comics I have close enough to the time period. And then referencing those and compounding whatever historical errors they have in them. (e.g., “Well if it was good enough for Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix it’s good enough for this rando fancomic!”) I just would like historical/subject matter experts to know I did try...

[stillsolo]

for the first in a while, I'm gonna ... try to take it easy, today.  

I actually have a lot to do but I really need to chill the fuck out for a second and take a breather.  my OCD's made my life remarkably difficult lately and I've begun to disassociate in order to cope.  I know disassociation plays a key role in obsessive-compulsive disorders; I know my OCD's fairly severe and it's been getting worse as I get older, but I'm not...usually this bad.  Even when under stress.

for example, a batch of 200 commissioned banner icons suddenly turns into 400+, and I'm still not done because I can't stop keep remaking them.  

oh, this one's coloring is off. but these frames are split second to each other ... can't have that, gotta redo 'em. 

 wait, the pixels are...'weird' looking in the corner, here.  rejected.

this one could've been cropped way better.  how could I expect them to use this?

why is this one in the 'final version' folder when the border around it overlapped a part of the icon?

I need to redo these 73 because the shadow is too dark and blocky beneath the icon.  it’s supposed to be a fade.  it’s what they ordered and you’re not giving them what they asked for. 

someone's paying you for this shit get it TOGETHER

yesterday, my OCD got triggered about 3 times?  I have a couple of forms.  I had a breakdown in front of my mother after she came home and asked me if I ate and I know I must've made some kinda stupid face that gave it away because seconds after she'd asked, I realized I didn't know what the hell ate other than the toast she'd watched me eat before she left for work at 9am.  It was 11pm when she asked.  

I also had mini-breakdown while talking to my customer and it was terribly embarrassing.  I got a nosebleed to top it all off too lmao  ( i'm so sorry if you're reading this, john omfg you've been the best to me and I'm sorry because I'm sure all you'd wanted was icons to rp sdfkjsd )

but I just. 

All of my friends think OCD is just me having high ass standards or just being 'know-it-all'.  I've been called that all my life.  In fact, I've been called that by friends I thought would never say anything like that about me because I thought we were friends

We live in this new age of 'awkward is cute'.   It's hip to be square, cool to be uncool, and sexy to be nerdy and quirky.  and there isn’t any better way to declare your individuality and weirdness than branding yourself 'so OCD' about something.  

Ahaha.

I fucking loathe people who do this.

OCD isn't a quirk or a set of tendencies.  It's not fucking buzzf.eed list, not a little buzzf.eed quiz you can take and readily relate to the results; it's an incapacitating, isolating disease that makes you afraid of your own mind.

If my friends could see, just once, what it's like for me, when I'm caught in an obsessive-compulsive loop, maybe then they'd finally understand me when I say ''''it's bad''''.

Even Something as simple as drawing a line-art from a sketch turns into a complete and total nightmare.  8/10 times, I'll redraw the line-art like — hm, I don' dunno — about 7 fuckin' times in a row, then, delete all of it because IDK, it wasn't 'right'?  ( Who am i kidding; I do the same with sketches ヽ(・ω・)ﾉ  )

Oh, yeah, for sure.  Me and my ‘high fucking standards' did this.

NO.  No one in their right mind would do this.  They wouldn’t re-draw the same fucking drawing 7 times in a row and the same layer style over and over, not even changing things up to maybe get some progress.      Nobody.  Jfc.

And oh, god, that moment when you realize, it's been more than 8/9 hrs since you began and you haven't eaten or drank anything; you don't remember the last time you looked at your phone or what the hell happened to the time because last time you looked, it was 11am and now it’s 9:48pm.

Moreover, you made exactly zero progress on your project — because IDK — there’s no valid reason?  JUST COULDN'T STOP HA

I never thought I would talk about this, but uh, Y'all know how much I love han.  I want Han to be seen in the best light possible.  while SW has been one of the few things that have held a light in my life, he's helped me become a better person in more ways than I can articulate.  and no, I don't mean I suddenly started picking trash up off the highways.

I mean, by writing him in this amazing place filled with people I don’t have IRL who share my interests, I’ve met so many new people, friends, learned so many lessons, about characters and life and writing.  

When I began writing Han, here, I had just learned what present and past tense was in English.  I was winging my writing, trying really hard to understand.  English isn't my first language.  In Cantonese, my native language, there's no such thing as a past tense.  

By writing Han with you guys, I've taken huge steps in life, without even realizing it. 

So, everything I do for han, I want for it to be good.  

Not outstanding, and definitely not exemplary or nonpareil — just ... good. 

And icons — haha.  I love icons.  I love and hate making them.  similar to my writing, I work very hard on his icons.  ... but I need to learn where to draw the line.  

I once remade an icon 23 times before I was happy with it.  ( i had 23 versions left in my folder lmao ).  like these here?  10 versions of each, in the least. 

( the last one is kinda an exception... I think.  I made that one well over 25 times, for sure.  but I think it's because I'm not accustomed to Blaine's coloring yet. ) 

Wow, this really turned into a long post.  I don't really care, though.  My OCD is something that has always been completely ignored IRL.  Shit, it's ignored by even my online friends.  I can't even game online without one of them thinking I must get off on establishing my superiority and overall knowledge of '???’ game.  Haha.

'Show me your build?' :D 'Er...nah. I think I'll pass.' 'Why?  What's the matter?' 'You'll pick it apart.'

It's never considered 'advice' when it's from me.  It's me as a know-it-all, as someone who looks down on others for not having up-to-par stats. 

I'm sorry I did the math for you so you wouldn't have to.  This is simply advice you're free to toss aside, but it's not like it matters.  Even if I reassured that—you're already too annoyed to listen for any longer.

So, I’ll also apologize for how I can recall faction modifiers, body part modifiers, critical hit and stealth modifiers, as well as debuffs; how a certain amount of damage of one type turns into inflicted damage to a target while considering type modifiers and armor, and knowing the damage formulas needed to calculate the number of hit points required to kill an armored or unarmored target, with or without a finisher multiplier figured in — because I want you to do the very best with your weapon of choice, even though I can name 5 different weapons that utterly outclass it by tenfold. 

In reality, I never had much of choice.  Information like that doesn't stop looping in my mind, even at night, when all I want is to sleep.

Sometimes ... I wish I could be that one character on a comedy show who has a quirky disorder or ''OCD'' and everyone seems to love him for it because he's funny when he does it or he's generally helpful 

More often than not, my OCD just ruins everything.  I don't feel like I belong anywhere.

I need to take a breather.