#still working this out but i wanted it out of my drafts

[lovergirlsyndrome]

MAKE ME PROUD

word count — 1351

summary — you decide to surprise your girlfriend on her birthday by flying to see her play in the wnba for the first time

pairing — kate martin x fem!reader

warnings — nothing really besides fluff!

bri yaps — in honor of my best girls birthday is a present to all my kate martin lovers out there. also this is probably ass… i made it at 1 am with no motivation

Your palms were sweaty and your nerves were shot through the roof. You’d have had this trip planned since the beginning of the season due to your busy schedule back at home and the inability to take off from work, which Kate understood and was never upset by but you knew deep down she wanted her number one supporter to be in the stands cheering her on. So you decided as a partial birthday gift that you’d show up to a game without her knowing—a complete surprise to her.

You remembered that the last time you got to spend true time with her was before and after the WNBA draft. You two plus Gabbie, Jada, and Caitlin had all gone exploring around NYC and seen a bunch of landmarks before appearing on SNL with Caitlin, which had been a cool experience for all of you. Then getting to see her be drafted to the back-to-back champs and hard-launching your relationship on national television in the truest and purest way. After that, you two had to spend a day together as a final ‘goodbye’ that included dinner and lounging the day away while also getting her packed up for the trip to Vegas.

Another bonus for you in this situation was that her teammates had taken a liking to her and protected her as their own—their rookie. So when you shared the idea with her fellow teammates Alysha Clark and A’ja Wilson, they were quick to jump on board and help you. You’d been pacing back and forth in your hotel room for some time and texted Kate as you normally would but it startled her when you turned off your location the day prior, she never asked why but questioned to herself what you were up to.

You decided to get dressed. The outfit spread out on the chair was a black and silver Kate Martin jersey, a black short sleeve underneath, and a pair of black shorts. Your phone started to ring, and Kate’s contact popped up along with your personal favorite photo of her with her nephew Carson.

“Hi baby!” She greeted you cheerfully over the phone when you answered. Your giggle sounded through the speakers and you knew she had a bright smile on her face.

“Hey K, I thought you’d be practicing by now.” You questioned it as you heard balls being thrown in the background when they’d slam against the court.

“Snuck away to call you. I was wondering what you were up to.” Her tone was suspicious, but you decided to wave it off and answer in the best way you could.

“Nothing really. Work was pretty tiring, so I might eat and head to bed earlier than usual.” You sighed out, and she paused for a moment on the other end before you heard her shuffling.

“Well, I wish you were here! I miss you too much.” She admits with a chuckle at the end which makes your heart swell a bit. All you wanted was to say that you were here and jump into her arms, then never let go but unfortunately you wanted this to be a surprise. “The best birthday gift would be you.”

“I know, honey, I know. I love you.” You say and decide to finish up the call so you can head out. You grabbed your keys and left the dingy hotel room to drive to the arena where the game was being held, it was Aces vs. Wings and had been sold out for a while. It wasn’t a long drive and only lasted about ten minutes, but parking took longer than that. As you entered the arena and found your seat right behind the Aces bench, Alysha found you and waved lowly so you wouldn’t be found out so soon.

The game would start soon enough, and Kate still hadn’t spotted you in the many faces, but it didn’t bother you much because you were able to watch her come off the bench and earn meaningful minutes with an already well established group. She found her place and showed what she was good at, whether it was on defense or offense. Since it was an away game, she was in the white jersey that you preferred over the black. She had retired her signature braid and opted for a ponytail. Once in a while, you would get up out of your seat to cheer her on and yell out her name.

The fourth quarter was rowdy, and it had become a close game between the two teams. It was in the Aces possession, and Jackie was trying to run the time out while they still had the ball. She passed it to Kelsey, who then passed it to A’ja. Your leg bounced up and down as Kate was open in the corner, and A’ja shot the ball down to Kate. In the last seconds, as the buzzer sounded, she shot it and made the three which helped her team secure the lead even further and you guys won the game. You jumped up out of your seat and celebrated amongst the people in your row, shouting, “That’s my girl!”

Many people started making their way out of the arena, and some stopped on the court to talk to the players including Kate, who had a line. A sense of pride overwhelmed you while you watched her interact with everyone. It was clear how much she was loved and respected by the Aces fans. You walked behind a crowd of people to where Kate was and watched Syd, KB, and Alysha pull their phones out to record the moment. You slowly tapped on her shoulder, causing her to quickly turn around. She tried to register for a moment and process before her jaw slacked open.

“Happy birthday, baby!” You greet her and wrap your arms around her neck. Her arms immediately fall to your waist, and she lifts you up and spins you around the court. Laughs and giggles were heard from her teammates, and the fans were still watching the two of you with the biggest smile on their faces. “Alright, I’m getting a little dizzy here.” You say jokingly, but she does listen and puts you down, still burying her face into your next and tightly hugging you. Being in her arms just felt like you were right at home, and you never wanted to let go in fear of losing this moment forever.

“You don’t know how happy I am to see you.” She whispers softly into your ear and it sends butterflies to your stomach.

“Better than glitchy facetime calls.” You joke, and she lets out a snort which causes you to giggle. She finally lifts her head to get a good look at you, her eyes were the deepest blue you’d ever seen them be, and her lips were curled into a bright smile that you could never get tired of. Finally, you decide to close the gap between the two of you and press your lips against hers, the kiss being delicate and sweet as your fingertips rest against her cheek before you pull back and she gently rubs your hips for a second.

“God, you’re so perfect.” She pinches your side before interlocking her hand with yours and leading you into the team’s tunnel. You relished in the moment with her and completely forgot about everything else as you two talked about the excitement of the game, what she did to celebrate with the team for her birthday, and what the two of you would do before you had to go back home.

You watched her silently as she shared her experiences and stories so far from her month in Vegas. Memories flooded through you, and this reminded you why it was all worth it—you got to watch your girlfriend live out her dreams. With a contended sigh, you stood on your tiptoes to give her a kiss on the cheek before she had to go into the locker room to change.

“Kate Martin, you’ll be the death of me.”

[chuuyasheaven]

♥ “ Just melt into my touch. ” ♥

♥ ♥ SCENARIO. Tired and exhausted from the day you just had, Dazai offers to try and help you relax!

PAIRING. D. OSAMU / AFAB! READER. (TW: suggestive)

NOTES. Small drabble to celebrate the fact that I’m finally done with my finals :3

Today wasn’t it, at all. You didn’t know why, but all you needed was your boyfriend’s comfort. As soon as you stepped into your shared apartment, Dazai could already tell how you were feeling. All you had to do was to plop down onto your bed, and have him near you. Your body melted into his touch, but not really in the way he wanted it to.

“But I barely have any strength left to hold on, Dazai.”, you protested as you were sitting next to him, completely naked. “What if you can’t breathe?”, slight concern laced your tone as Dazai laid his back on the bed, not wanting to hear your excuses. “That doesn’t matter, I want you on it now.”, he wasn’t going to back down from this, he needed you to sit on his face. “I don’t give a damn if I can’t breathe, all I need you to do is to sit down and relax, ‘donna.”, you hesitated before asking again to clarify, because your exhaustion has left you weak, too tired to even hold your body over his face for even a mere five minutes. “Are. . are you sure? I don’t wanna hurt you in any way—”, Dazai shot you a glare of hunger and lust to your way, his patience running thin. “You’re not gonna hurt me, sweetheart. I may not look like it, but I’m stronger than I look.”, his assuring words calmed you down a little and you slowly got on his face.

“Stop moving around so much,”, he said in a commanding tone, holding your thighs to stop them of shaking too much. “I told you you’re not gonna hurt me if you sit down completely.”, it hasn’t even been ten minutes and you were struggling to keep your body in place, and it was disturbing Dazai’s meal. “But—”, you couldn’t even finish you protest when you interrupted yourself with a yelp, Dazai locked his arms around your thighs to pull you down on his face. Since this was very sudden, you just let it happen. Now fully sitting on his face, he continued where he left off, his face more importantly his tongue was closer to your cunt. Meaning, he was reaching the deepest spots you didn’t even know you had. Due to your body being extremely exhausted and rather weak, your stamina was rather low, also meaning you were more sensitive than usual. You were arching your back while Dazai was eating you out like a starved man.

“Feels better already, doesn’t it, sweetheart?”

cliffhanger because I’m still burnt out 😞 leave requests if you like so I could be more inspired to write or I’ll just work on old drafts >_<

[rowretro]

𝕭𝖚𝖙𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖋𝖑𝖞 𝕶𝖎𝖘𝖘𝖊𝖘

✧warnings: Yandere/toxic themes, kidnapping, explicit stuff mentioned (this isnt my best writting im so sorry its been saur long, im working thru the reqs too<3 my drafts are filled w sm so stay tuned!!!)

❁synopsis: Sunghoon is feared by all, his name was enough to reinforce that fear, for he had grown to be a much more fearful mafia than his father, though one with morals, he never let women in his life, and he barely trusted anyone... until he saw a butterfly.

✧❁✧❁✧❁✧❁✧❁✧❁✧❁✧❁✧❁✧❁✧❁✧❁✧

Sunghoon stepped out of his limo, suitcase loaded with cash. He was filthy rich, and he couldn't deny it, so seeing him give a suitcase of month everytime the orphanage needed money, he was happy to help. His face always had a cold look, but the children all loved him, they were only safe, and loved in a caring foster home just because of him.

The man got into his vehcile, sitting in the driver's seat as Jungwon stared at him. "I still dont understand why you don't hire a driver for yourself bro-" Jungwon simply asked as Sunghoon raised an eyebrow "The rest of you boys cant be trusted driving under stressful situations so you have one, I just dont need one." he simply said as he started his car. The man started driving, when his car came to a sudden halt.

There before him, a pretty girl "Bro- u almost hit that hottie-" Jungwon pointed out as Sunhgoon didnt even bother turning his way, his eyes glued on the girl who apologized, before gettign distracted again, chasing after the blue morpho butterfly. "Crazy bitch- fuck she scared me-" Jungwon mumbled as Sunghoon continued staring at the girl, lovestruck, the way she raised her hand, and let the butterfly sit on her finger, as she kissed near it.

"Jungwon. I want to know every little detail about that girl. where she studies, where she lives, what she likes, what she hates, everything." He stated as Jungwon frowned, yet complied. She was very pretty, her layered dark hair, her perfectly winged eyeliner, the way she walked freely like she didn't give a care in the world. Not to mention, she definitely had style. For the first time he fell in love. So he will have her fall for him.

It didn't take Jungwon too long, as soon as he got home, he printed out the necessary files "Her name is y/n, she lives with the Lee's, yes She's Lee Heeseung's sister. Her father owns many schools, and she studies in the one Heeseung teaches in, to be fair, you're going to have to get on Heeseung's good side if you want her, because they're looking to arrange a marriage for her." Jungwon concluded as Sunghoon smiled.

It was all so easy for him. She was just within reach. "What brings you here Sunghoon?" Heeseung asked as the male looked around the School grounds. "Oh? well uhm.... uhh... just looking for a potential threat in this college- He's hiding from me..." he lied as Heeseung nodded. "In that case keep an eye on my sister-" Heeseung replied as he pat his shoulder, and walked off to a group of loud students.

His eyes finally found her, a butterfly sitting on her cheek, and she didn't even flinch, still writting notes in her book. He took a seat in front of her, causing the butterfly to fly away. The girl looked up, tilting her head at him. "Mr Park! what brings you here.... you aren't going to kill me are you?..." She asked as Sunghoon snickerred "Of course not.... what could possibly lead me to hurting a sweetheart like you?" He asked, his hand softly holding her jaw, as he ran his thumb across her lips and cheek.

It's no surprise she knew who he was, he was the Park Sunghoon, everyone knows him. God her lips are so perfect, he was so soft, making sure not to smudge her makeup or hurt her. However y/n felt a little uncomfortable... She softly pulled away. She can't deny it, he's fucking gorgeous, fighting her intrusive thoughts of rubbing her thumb across his brows.

"I wanted to see how my pretty girl is doing. My pretty girl..." he smiled, as he placed a strand of her hair behind her ear. "Im installing a butterfly greenhouse in my garden just for you, Heeseung said you love flowers, I have a whole garden filled with jasmines, roses, lotuses and many other flowers you name it..." Sunghoon continued. It was all moving so fast, was this her fiancee her parents picked for her? why's he moving so fast? why him? is this a trap to kill her?

It was none of which... The Lee father fears Sunghoon, and Heeseung is like a brother to Sunghoon, after all the man did abuse Heeseung and y/n growing up, so when Sunghoon asked to marry her, Of course her parents wer happy with it, Mrs Lee believed he was a sweetheart. Heeseung wasn't too happy at first, but he wasn't a typical mafia boss, playboy with prostitutes every night, how bad could it possibly be.

"Uhm..... huh?" Y/n asked, not knowing what to say or ask. "You're parents are ok with me marrying you so, instead of circling around, im giving it to you straight." Sunghoon simply said "All you need to do is pack your belongings when you get home, you're moving in with me, your room will be right opposite mine, and we can talk about what you want in this marriage ok?" He asked as Y/n stared, stunned.

She was never told anything.... Why is everything going so fast? She was being married off to a blood thirsty beastly man who kills for a living?! As Sunghoon left, she sat there lost in thought. So she really was his?.......

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[deadbeat-motel]

ᑕᕼEᖇᖇIᗷOᗰᗷ ᗩᑎᗪ ᔕIᖇᑭEᑎTIOᑌᔕ ᖇEᗪEᔕIGᑎ

The last two designs for the main cast. With these two done, I can finally work on miscellaneous characters that I've been eyeing the most.

Again, thoughts below the cut:

My issues with their Original designs:

Sir Pentious:

I thought I would only have one thing to say about him (the unnecessary eyes) since he was my favorite in the entire original cast but having taken a closer look at him for this, I saw a lot of things that bothers me.

Too many eyes. specifically the lower half of his body has too many eyes and it seems detrimental to him. It's kind of painful to think about it since I do not think we ever see those eyes close. Is he just slithering on the ground with those exposed eyes? That's got to be irritating at best and damaged at worst as he continuously slithers on them.

There are eyes on the bowtie and the hat? There are already 4 extra eyes on his hood, so why have even more? I get that the original Pentious design was basically a monsterous amalgamation of eyes but the eye thing could have been scrapped altogether.

While his palette was the least red out of the cast (More so composed of yellows), it still blends in with the rest of the reds.

The claws are an unnecessary repeating design trait (Alastor and Vox notably have them too). I don't think it would've been too big of a difference to just keep his fingers fully black.

The stripes on his suit are too thick. It's called pinstripes for a reason.

I don't like how the hat is shaped to fit the head, It's awkward.

not a point, but I just wanted to say how the blue color palette works really well with him in that last episode.

CherriBomb:

She's not that bad of a design (She's sort of bland in my opinion) but it's the little small details about her that makes her so simple and also so complicated at the same time. There are so many batches of freckles scattered everywhere, little explosion lines on her skirt as well as the X on her chest, the tattoos are a jamble of random loops and bombs, and her tattering doesn't have an easy shape to consistently draw.

The thought process for these two:

Mx. Pentious:

Pentious goes by both Sir/Miss/Mx. but uses she/they pronouns.

Minimized the actual amount of eyes on her, I kept it only to her actual eyes and those on her hood.

Gave her a butterfly-shaped hood. It's nothing deep since it stems from the fact the notches in Sir Pentious' hood almost looked like one to my bad eyesight. I decided to play more into that idea.

I read some posts where people talk about how Sir Pentious should have a snout and while I understand why and fully support people giving him one, I really didn't want to add the snout to this design. It drove me crazy since I'm not a big fan of it. I tried a compromise where her head was shaped more like Phineas.

Kept the tophat but removed its eye and mouth. If I remember correctly, Viv took that from one of her co-workers from the pilot. I decided to just have it as a regular tophat.

It doesn't have all the colors, but her design does have the Neptunic flag.

I'm not sure if this even is a real snake but I based Mx. Pentious' design on this:

CherriBomb:

Scraped most of her features in exchange for a sukeban theme. I personally have zero knowledge about the punk scene in Australia.

A majority of the suggestions I received for her rough draft had something to do with the skirt. I elongated it and gave it a slit in which the magenta from the inside is able to pop out.

Thought it would be a cute detail to have her hair explode if she's angry.

----

Apologies this took too long to be posted, Life got in the way as well as the fact I was feeling shitty about Pentious' first draft. Her skin was an awkward and ugly shade of green and seeing some posts critical of Pentious' design got me to think a little bit more about what direction I'd like to move her redesign.

You could see this in the earlier rough sketches but this was how Pentious' first redesign looked like

[writingquestionsanswered]

I'm tired of my ideas always being big. It's overwhelming. I like seeing others' WIPs and ideas because they're just so simple... Like, that comic about a mermaid living in the ocean in our modern time and dealing with plastic trash. So simple and my own brain is bursting with ideas. But my own WIPs... they just start huge. I'd like something smaller... but I don't know how.

Stories Always Get Too Big

Stories can get out of hand quickly when they sprout too many independent threads. There are three primary culprits that serve as sparks that create these threads:

1 - Setting 2 - Non-Protagonist Characters/Relationships 3 - Back Story

The thing to remember, though, is that no matter how interesting your setting is, no matter how compelling your other characters are, and how fascinating the back story is, those things are not your plot.

Plot is the sequence of events through which the protagonist (and potentially other main characters) attempt to resolve the story's conflict by overcoming obstacles and setbacks in pursuit of a goal.

In other words, focus on this:

the protagonist > their normal world > the event that introduces a problem they must resolve > the goal they formulate in order to resolve that problem > the events that occur as a result of their pursuit of this goal > their attempts to overcome obstacles and setbacks encountered along the way > their attempt to solve the problem once and for all > failure or success > life in a changed situation/world

Anything else doesn't need to be there unless it is critical in order for one of the above steps to make sense.

So, let's take your mermaid example... though I haven't read that comic so I'm winging it here:

the protagonist = mermaid normal world = doing mermaid stuff inciting incident = finding plastic trash in the water goal = clean up/find the culprit and teach them to do better events = cleaning up, learning about humans, tracking down culprit climax = mermaid appeals to humans to do better finale = mermaid is living in a cleaner ocean

Now, let's say your brain starts to go off on a tangent about a deep oceanic rift and an evil merman wizard who lives there... stop right there. It's a fun idea, but what does it have to do with this story? How does it relate to the trash, clean-up, finding the culprit, or appeal to humans to do better? It doesn't. Theoretically, you could make it make sense... like, maybe the merman wizard likes the trash and wants the ocean to be dirty and gross, so maybe he is opposing the mermaid's attempts to clean up and to appeal to the humans. Okay, that works, so you can keep it. But, let's say you also have this idea about these creatures that live around the hydrothermal vents, and the mermaid meets and falls in love with a scientist who's studying them. Okay, again, interesting idea, but this one is much harder to fit in with the rest of the story. Sure, you could say the scientist is studying marine pollution instead... that brings it back around to the main conflict, but still, what does this relationship add to the story? How does it help or harm the mermaid's mission? How does it help to explore the story's themes or help deliver the message? It doesn't really sound like it does, so this would be an example of a thread you can probably snip.

And the thing is, it would be okay to follow a thread like that while you're plotting or writing your first draft, just to see where it goes and see if you can make it work. Part of why we edit and revise is to snip out the threads and elements that aren't pulling their weight. But learning how to curb them as they occur to you will help save you work later on down the line. Try writing those ideas down in an ideas document, and maybe those can be worked into different stories, a sequel, or a companion story.

One final note: I am very much aware that there are some epic writers out there who let wild tangles of threads sprout as they write, and they follow them all without abandon, relevant or not. That's okay, too. These are writers for whom that works, who don't feel overwhelmed by all of those threads, who want to write something bigger and more unwieldy. Maybe in time as you get accustomed to writing smaller, tidier stories, you embrace the bigger stories your brain wants to tell. Or maybe you don't. Whatever works best for you is all that matters. :)

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

♦ Questions that violate my ask policies will be deleted! ♦ Please see my master list of top posts before asking ♦ Learn more about WQA here

[allsebaciel]

Hi, just want to say, glad to have found your blog. I'm newbie sebaciel fan. Can I ask, have you ever thought of Ciel and Sebastian's relationahip as platonic (like father and son)? So, I got blocked by my anime group when I told them I ship SebaCiel. They told me that is so weird and pedo. And SebaCiel fans are long gone....

"Can't you just love Black Butler without shipping them. Their relationship is just master-servant and develop become kinda like father and son. So just wholesome relationship". That is why they say...

So when I read your pinned post, I was like "yes that is all true"....

Actually I love age gap ship like Sebaciel, Goyuu, and Ereri, and finally I can be proud of that...

Thanks for your blog.

Hello darling! 🖤

Oh, S/C fans are all over the fandom! We're still the majority of the shipping scene here.

We're never going to be gone, I think, since S/C pedalled this entire community since the very beginning when it was weird to NOT ship these two together.

I'm sorry it happened to you though.

To answer you... I've never thought about them as a father and son, but I thought about the weird pattern of inheritance in Yana's work. In her relatively old post, Yana states that Ciel has inherited the "evil mind" of his from Vincent and then was further corrupted by being "raised" by a demon. She clearly uses a different wording but that's the point. Because of this, I think that paternal inheritance in BB is viewed as a corrupting, negative trait. To be like one's father for Ciel is to be like Vincent: a notably "evil" person he was not close to.

Do you ever hear Ciel talk about his father with anything but distant reverence? We know from the extended Twin Twist (which I am still adamant was not in the original draft) that Ciel was sickly and barely spent time with his family on vacations and such. He was sick when his twin and his father cooked. He was not meant to be an earl. Ciel Phantomhive does not have a wholesome relationship with his father.

I don't think anything in BB points out a father-son dynamic between Ciel and his demon-dog-thing and if it did, it would be one based on corruption. They're not "wholesome", Sebastian is quite literally going to consume Ciel meanwhile Ciel has an "unhealthy" contractual bond with him and bends him to his will. If you put "fatherly" into this, it becomes more fucked up?

A father who is doomed to destroy you and mold you into his perfect object of possession? A child who has full control over their presumed parental figure and is taunted by him to the point of breaking when he, finally, decides to have mercy? If THAT isn't more fucked up than our usual S/C, then I don't know what is.

I have thought about them as platonic in the sense of having a close connection of a primal kind without necessarily fucking or kissing? If that even counts as platonic if you're the prey and he's your personal predator? I'm not sure it counts as fully platonic because the desire of primal nature is still there.

Thank you though! And have a fun time around here!

[writingwithfolklore]

Answering your Questions/Concerns about Free Editing

Thanks for sending in your questions about my free editing service! Here are some of the ones I've gotten so far:

I feel like I’d be taking advantage of you because it’s free:

              I don’t like the assumption that I’m a pushover. Okay just kidding, I appreciate this instinct, but you’re not really taking advantage of me given I’m offering the work! I also ask you to trust me that I can set my own boundaries and let you know if the scope of the project is too much for me to take on.

              Of course, if you’d really like to give back to me in some way I always accept tips, Instagram follows, or reblogs of my editing post/recommendations to your writing friends, but none are necessary!

Okay but what do you get out of it?

              Experience—I can put ‘freelance editor’ on my resume and back it up with examples. I can also log my hours as volunteer hours which will help me get scholarships to pay for my schooling. Lastly, I hope to build strong community bonds with you all and genuinely just want to help out—I’ve been very lucky to have formal training and mentors throughout my writing career, and I hope to provide that to those of you who haven’t had the same opportunities!

Will you look at fanfiction/non-original work?

              Of course! As long as it was written by you (and not AI-generated).

How do I know you and I will click style-wise?

              I work with writers of all different styles in my regular job, so editing styles that aren’t my own is something I have a lot of experience in. If you’re really worried about it, I will let you know right off the bat if I think I would be a good editor for you or if you should try someone else.

What if you hate my work?

              I won’t tell you, and I can still do my job as an editor to improve it without tearing it apart. I believe good editors can take any piece of writing and see its values and what it’s doing well in addition to its flaws. My job is to bring out what’s already working in your piece. Essentially, I promise I won’t be mean to you or your work no matter what I think about it.

Can you help me get published?

              I can certainly help guide you through starting the process, but I’m not an agent and can’t reach out to anyone for you. However, if you’d like to send me proposals or queries to look at, I’m happy to edit those as well!

Can you help promote my work/blog?

              I’m happy to reblog or share any of your projects or writing that I’ve helped you out with, for sure!

What if my work isn’t good enough?

              No judgement here! I’m happy to look at your first draft, your final draft, and every draft in between. The whole point of editing and getting another set of eyes on your work is to improve it, so send me anything, no matter what state it’s in!

Check out the guidelines here:

[imagine-darksiders]

Hello! Hopefully caught you in a restful time. I just wanted to let you know that your writing is amazing! I neither knew what darksiders was nor cared until I stumbled onto your blog. I never played the games but the way you write the personalities of each person makes them feel alive! Like I'm talking to the people myself!

The way you write trauma is realistic and it pops up at random but amazingly along the flow that it feels both out of place and not! Reminding the reader that yes, this person is brave but they're still hurt and in no way in the optimum of sanity. Even though they're holding themselves together the way a realistic person does!

I got hooked! I never knew these characters and yet you made it so that I'll feel like I knew them all my life! I'm honestly itching to buy the game yet I'm scared that the creator of the game won't be able to reach your amazing characterizations.

Is the game truly that good? I'm a little scared to buy it then find that the game devolopers rushed it. If so, which game should I start with? Does it require a strong pc? X-box? I'm still unsure of using technology.

In all honesty, I'm trying to stop myself from writing a fanfic based on your fanfic. Though, it wouldn't be the same. I still have assignments to finish and I haven't been writing stories that much. Do you have any advice for new writer? Even ones about writing-work-life balance? Or, how to bring a character to life?

I'm mostly fantasising about the storyline in my head, and drawing doodles of it on whichever paper is closest to me.

Which brings me to your fantastic art! Your anatomy is amazing! The way your draw facial expressions makes it feel like they're talking around me in real life! The body types have a wide range that I don't see often and oh so thankfull to see!

From darksiders Death looking like death ran over him to darksiders Fury and the female maker twin looking like what one would expect a fighter and weapon maker would look like! Even the reader character looks amazing!

Would it be okay if I ended up following your timeline? I still don't know much about the game and most of the information I'm diffusing into my brain is from your writing.

I hope you well. With care, Illya💜.

Ah jeez, ‘are the games truly that good?’

I’m biased, so I’m going to say hell yes they’re good. They’re all so different too. I got the first game when it came out in 2010 and fell in love with the style and characters, so going into 2 I already had that love for the franchise. My advice is always to start with the first game. You get an introduction to the world, the story and the characters and it just feels more meaningful when you play the sequels. I had it on the Xbox 360, but it runs perfectly okay on any system. I don’t know if it runs on Macs though.

Alternatively, you could watch the cutscenes, but I personally never get as attached to the story if I’m not playing the game myself.

I’d be so unequivocally excited if people wrote fics based on my stuff. So long as it wasn’t like word for word, you know.

Advice for new writers? Obviously focus on your studies, they’re far more important. Which is rich coming from me, I’d write during lectures all the time. But I still managed a 1st so lol. Otherwise: Get a notebook and a pen, I write so much faster when I’m not doing it at a computer. Also, don’t get hung up about making the characters too oc, you’ll forever be fretting over that, just write them as naturally as you can and love doing it. Most of my writing I do in the evening when nothing is expected of me and I can get stuck in without getting distracted.

Use simple language in your first draft. Repeat words, don’t worry about saying the same thing for the first draft, so long as you get the chapter written out, you can fuss out the finer details later. I’m guilty of getting hung up on vocabulary.

Dude. I need to see those doodles.

You can follow my timeline, no worries. Darksiders isn’t mine, all I’ll say is I’d prefer if people didn’t try to write ahead of where CHWH is currently and claim that’s how the story should/does continue.

I’m so pleased you’re enjoying my writing and art, I’ve noticed your username popping up in my notifications a lot, and it gets me all excited like ❤️ 🌟🌈🥰✨💫🫠

[mantisgodsart]

First batch of @bug-oc bugs. This would've gotten finished sooner, but we've been sick as a dog for most of the tournament's runtime, so we're calling it a victory that we managed to get anything done - there are a lot fewer contestants this year, which means both less art to do and more ability to commit to trying to make some particularly unique creature designs - there are some in this batch that we REALLY want to do justice, and that is... unfortunately hard to do when we're barely functioning for two hours a day. This is our unofficial call to STAY HOME when you're sick! Even if you're feeling sturdy enough to go out and about, your actions can impact those around you very easily.

Design notes and owners below the cut with individual pictures - the middle one here is a beta design that we're still in the process of ironing out, so that one just has

[This is the first time I've met someone who "worked in Snakemouth" since that one... weird encounter, with those roaches giving me a job offer. I didn't know that they had a security guard position. I... didn't know that they knew what a security guard even is, honestly. To have two bugs involved with the lab turn up is an incredible coincidence. I wonder if the time portal is actually open again, or if different universes just work on different timeframes?

Regardless, it's a good opportunity to advance my knowledge of partial transmutation and multi-organism transmutation. Whatever happened to that moth in the last tournament... my understanding of how to handle both symbiotes and parasitism is clearly incomplete, if running into multiple organisms can cause problems like that. I'll have to put some extra work into monitoring...]

Omelette from @tangleslime2 was one that felt... obvious, we suppose?Your work will one day consume you, and such - one way or another! More literal in this case. A lot of the work here, honestly, is toying with shapes and body language. Omelette has a LOVELY sillhouette with some extremely identifiable clothes, and translating it to a zombee design was Very fun. Maybe a bit plain on the design side, but the linework was incredibly fun to do - we got to do a whole lot of fur, which is always a fun time. This design was very quick and easy, as designs go, and we had a lot of fun doing the hat. Wildly askew, and held on by but a single antennae!

Sundew and Nerine from @mizzle-moths are untransmuted, as requested - Sundew's pose was very fun to do - nice and fluid, though the wing markings were admittedly a bit funky to parse. We hope we got all the details correct here! Both of your bugs have gorgeous color palettes. Our usual marker set's dark gray marker's dried out by now, so we had to use an alternative, which... unfortunately bled clean through our sketchbook page. Lesson learned, we suppose. The scribble over the eyes used the same pen that we did our linework with - the "scribbling over the eyes of a dead character" trope is very well-worn, but cliche only becomes cliche because it inspires enough people to follow in the footsteps of a story, and we're very fond of the way it adds to the... hmm, visual language? We just think it's neat. Hope you enjoy!

[...working with spirits and more immaterial forms isn't my area of expertise, but it's something i dearly need experience in. My hope is that by advancing my knowledge in this field, I might be able to apply the knowledge to other fields that evade me - anything inanimate has proven to be my bane, and I'm fairly certain that a few of my attempts into this area have produced "hauntings", when they're not producing incredibly specialized organisms. Maybe if I know how to cause a haunting, I can figure out how to not cause one...?]

Moving on to our beta design - that is a VERY rough draft of Beera from @longeth-dayv. Given by the obvious Luigi's Mansion inspiration, we wanted to run with it by pulling our inspiration more directly from a Luigi's Mansion enemy - mostly, this meant tinkering with sillhouettes while trying to figure out what sort of design would match best to the character, and how to translate a design to something recognizable.

The pack, despite its significance character-wise, doesn't have quite as much weight in the balance of the design, which meant more tweaking for the transformation - though we briefly tried toying with the pack itself for this design, that particular page we felt would skew a bit too close to body horror for your personal comfort, so we scrapped the idea. Better safe than sorry, as they say. As such, we're aiming more towards using wire and body language to drive recognition.

The image here is a loose draft based on the bats enemy, used to test the fade and layering of the highlighter we were using - as it turns out, it doesn't layer very well! We started out looking for electric enemies, but we only really turned up the Electric Oozer, and that... was a bit too close to "normal boo" for our personal tastes, so we swapped to just primarily yellow enemies. Though we were previously considering taking the bat design to final draft, actually putting it out on paper convinced us to the contrary, so we went back to the... sketchboard. We'd bet there's a good chance you can already figure out where we're going with this one. A fun design challenge, for sure!

Finally (at least for this particular evening), we offer you this: a look behind the scenes, (or at least, the scenes that don't involve "us being sick and struggling to communicate whether or not something is sorted with the other mod"). What we've been using to keep track of matches, as well as to draw lots. Not precisely a high-tech solution, but damn if it doesn't work - the ends here are split into two for the sake of a loser's bracket, which we... thought we had figured out, but then it turned out we've been having miscommunications on what the bracket setups even are, and, well...

...we're working on it, we'll say. It might still be integrated, but that'll have to wait 'til trying to do things doesn't require fighting for our life. We will probably rerandomize the brackets for it, we might use it for illustration practice if the contestants are cool with it, so on and so forth. As always, thank you for your patience - we hope that Round 2 encounters slightly less hitchups compared to Round 1.

[yugocar]

tag directory 

decided to do a little tag directory, for anyone whose ever been curious what my silly little long tags are for! i treat these like personal little archives, so i’m constantly cleaning them up 

art

‘on the question of art’ - art history, fine arts

‘on the topic of art’  - contemporary illustration / animation / digital art

‘till the devil whispered behind the leaves’ - texts about art, art theory, discussions about art (primarily visual art)

‘a story is true a story is untrue’ - discussions about narrative particularly in the context of various media

‘personal art vault’ - my favourite artist and works of art, usually means i’ve reflected on these works/artist in a more serious capacity

“we do not judge the object but what it tells us” - eastern european art. made by, made in or made about.

‘lgbtq art / balkan art / comics zines and artbooks / history of propaganda // gen art tag

specific / themed

‘who suffered death because she chose to turn’ - on nostalgia and memory. this is a topic i work with and research a lot

‘the stories we want to believe are the ones that survive’ - things that resonate with me personally, usually in the context of my artistic practice

‘parallel lines meet at infinity’ - web-weavings and things adjacent to web weavings

‘gastarbajter tag’ - a tag for my experiences with moving/living abroad. a mix of personal posts, transitioning from eastern european culture to western european culture and bits about nostalgia/immigration/exile/etc

‘yugocars impromptu art club’ - my ongoing attempts at having conversations about art (film/music/literature/etc) with followers/mutuals, cause its neat!

‘the robot cycle’ - robot things which are also a personal metaphor for me trying to live with autism which is also just some overall collection on what being human means ? hope that helps

“you will tell me stories of the sea and the ones you left behind” - everything about leaving

healing tag - a collection of art and words that focus on gentle thing and the fact that life goes on

personal nostalgia collection - what it says on the tin. this contains primarily things from ‘90/early 2000′s.

on the problem of flesh - reflection on the difficulty of having a body and what to do with it

the infant’s wail - the base desire and desperation to be seen and loved

the poison seeps through - all things regarding the strange reality of family

with these clumsy hands - collection of how humanity stumbles through life

how the world ends - what it says on the tin

metamorphosis of monstrosity -

on betrayal / on love / on friendship / on violence / on homecoming / on sisterhood / on grief /  on longing / on being understood / on the visual / roads left behind / swan song / on solitude / on gentleness / on salvation / on divinity / on haunting / past the final hour (on resiliance) / on tragedy /

general

‘soon nostalgia will be another name for europe’ - pretty much everything connected to europe, i dont tag most purely balkan things with it because i have a separate tag for that

‘balkan youth have always outlived evil times’ - tag for all things balkan. primarily ex-yu countries, but sometimes also other places

‘you must have soul crushing hope to be this afraid of missing it’ - a very long title for what is essentially a ‘me’ tag

‘the world’ - as it says on the tin, pictures from all over the world, from different cultures. it isnt a tag with critical texts, just a tag to appreciate the diversity of this world

samenleving en politiek - a broad tag that contains politics, social commentary, etc

‘reading logs’ - whatever i read and feel like sharing, usually small bits from the texts.

logs - me talking. blacklist if you wanna ignore the silly stuff i say

love visualized - all kind of moments of love and intimacy

‘ee tag’ - eastern europe tag. if it doesnt have an elaborate name yet, i’m still workshopping it!

lgbtq history / lgbtq tag / ee lgbtq tag (eastern europe)

on living / a bit of humanity / a bit of laughter / media corner / general gaming tag / arthuriana / superhero stories and such / future past of the internet / music corner

autism tag / mental health tag / dutch tag / mental health refs /

my own stuff

endless list of world war one artist / endless list of female artists

my edits / my art

[egoarc4de]

homecoming

[eyes-of-nine]

truly what a guy

[blueoctopussss]

Been thinking about what Ashton's FCG-inspired vest might look like, so here is a sketch based on that! I'm not 100% happy with it and I feel like it should maybe have a quote from FCG on it or something, but I'm posting it anyway because not everything has to be perfect.

I did make a long sleeve variant because they need warm clothes for the journey to Aeor, but I don't think it looks as nice.

[thelassoway]

Jason Sudeikis as Ted Lasso Season 3 » Casual Sweaters/Jumpers

[crystalpallette]

get you a girl who can give you everything

this started a long long time ago when I made a joke about how sega should put ringo in more dresses, and then my friend reminded me that oh yeah!! I can do that instead!!! and then one thing led to another and we joked about punk ringo and I drew that too. using ringo like a dressup doll is so cathartic it's kinda crazy

some bonuses (original designs, timelapse) under the cut bc I like these designs!! I might do some more with them!! please disregard the band poster in the first second of the timelapse that's something else!!!

[icewindandboringhorror]

boy in silly sitting positions compilation