#the background is just blobs because I did not have it in me to do an *actual* background

[slumbergoblin]

Stratos! Teach that kid how to !!!PUNCH!!!

[seafoamsol]

The best years of my life...

... what I wouldn't give to have them back.

I had the great pleasure of working with @spiderscribe on a DeadCeptor work for the @tf-bigbang, which you can (and should!) read [ HERE ]!

Details and artist commentary under the cut!

Okay, first off, I just wanna say, thank you so much to @spiderscribe for picking up my very loose scribble and taking the jump. She's an absolute champ, and I IMPLORE you to read her writing. She did a knockout job on the fic, and guaranteed, these two pieces wouldn't have been so elaborate without her. If you're a fan of deadceptor, parallels, lovers to enemies to apocalyptic teammates to ???s, I'm sure you'll find that and more in there.

[ HERE ] is the link to that, if you missed it the first time around.

The background for the supermarket was a MASSIVE undertaking. I ended up blurring it in the final to keep the dream-like quality, but there is a lot happening there! Most of the time I spent on the background was (jokingly) complaining though.

Anyone who works retail will know the agony of customer-misplaced stock. The little canisters of energon additives seem like prime candidates to be placed willy-nilly.

The little warning sign... My favorite soda, apple sidra, has a carcinogen warning, so I'm familiar with it. It was slightly surprising to me that those warnings are not countrywide, despite the fact that they very clearly say "California Proposition 65", and well. Not something else, like "Federal" or whatever.

The bags of nuts and bolts below, I asked several people what flavor they would be, and I suppose I failed in my job, because I wanted the purple to be the "regular" flavor, and the green to be the "sour". But grape and lemon-lime work as well!

The tub is full of rust-sticks. I have no idea if that came across. My friends kept calling the individually wrapped ones slim jims, which I mean, I guess!

The car batteries... My idea was that they were similar to shots, in a way? So that's how I ended up with a battery with enough terminals to rival an international airport. It's also sunset-coloured, because, I don't know, that's what Party Flavor is to me.

Okay. The second illustration. This one was a headache, mostly due to my own lack of planning, and the fact that I lost the file for... basically everything I did, including the above illustration. So it was a bit of a rush job.

The background bots started off as these very vague silhouettes, which I'm a little proud of. Look at how nice and somewhat readable they are! Okay, now what if I ruined it? What? You don't like that? That's rather unfortunate, because that's what I proceeded to do. In fact, if I take off all.. 10 or something adjustment layers, they look like this:

My process went: Shadow block> Fill rest of form> Color randomiser> Copy and skew (to populate background)> Hue adjustment> Gradient map> Fill Light> Chromatic aberration> Vignette> Levels> Curves.

The.... Magenta cube is there because due to the nature of the color randomiser, the foot had a high value, and stuck out like nobody's business in the end.

Here's what it would look like without the cube. Begone, distracting white blob! (I didn't have to worry about the lava arm because Percy happened to cover it up. What a save! But if he didn't then... there would have been a second cube.)

Basically, it was a mess. But... at least it came out fine in the end! I hope!

I'd love to have speedpaints on hand, but I was switching between CSP and PS for a good majority of the work.

I'd say that's it for these two pieces! I actually have more, but those demand more time. I'm much slower at doing inks than I am at painting, but I hope you'll get to see them soon.

[lustlovehart]

For your followers requests, maybe a sketch of slime monster Azul with little details about him? He sounds so fascinating in your teaser list!

Congrats on the 700+ followers!

A/n: Azul’s a fav but my goodness I cannot draw him, in fact, I kind of hate the drawing (╥_╥). I’ve never done slime before so I blame it on that, and backgrounds, all my homies hate backgrounds. This was a lot quicker to do though, as I did have an Azul sketch made before this request so I just got back to doing that one. Drawing under the cut! Also in head canon format.

Pairing: Monster!Twst [ Slime Kraken! Azul x Reader ]

Warnings: Slight possessiveness towards the end, Azul struggles with insecurity, Three hearts are seen in the drawing

- Due to his insecurity about being a slime and all that, he formed some barrier made of shell to keep a stable form instead of melting into some disfigured blob.

- Before meeting you, Azul, Jade, and Floyd had no preference for their smaller, more humanoid forms, as they didn’t have any particular liking towards humans. To them, what was the point? They were essentially the top predators in the sea with the massive body they already inhabited. That changes when you come in, as now they have a real reason, if they’re in their real forms, how could they ever hold you, have fun in the water?

- It’s slightly different for Azul though, as not only can he become humanoid, but can become human as well (In appearance, each monstrous tendency he holds is still deep within him. He also can’t keep it up for very long, only 4 hours at max) He does this because well… you’re human. All the details he reads from human remnants, like books, or photos, shows romantic relationships can only be achieved within their species. So, he’ll become a mortal, for you.

- In the moments where you do catch him in his smaller form, he’ll attempt to hide from you, or come up with a swift suave excuse as to leave. There was one moment where he couldn’t avoid it… In a state of exhaustion he passed out, having not found any nutritional intake in the sea lately.

When he woke up, he’s ready to spring back into hunting mode, but the feeling of solid skin rather than hard rock makes him slowly turn his head up, your form looking down at him, his soft head laid in your lap. He’s practically stunned, you’re not ridiculing him for being made up of something so gross… Your fingers brush a strand of his hair back, watching as he slowly lifts himself up, a slimy residue left on your thighs.

There’s no way, you must be disgusted by now—

“You were on the floor. That’s not very common is it? That’s why you’re here, sleeping somewhere… better?”

It’s official, Azul will either follow you on land, or you’ll stay with him in the sea forever.

“Hm, perhaps it is better, maybe we should form an agreement that lets me sleep here, rather than the hard sea bottom?”

Thank you for the congratulations! I really was not expecting to have 700 so soon ( ˘ ³˘)♥︎

[kozachenko]

[Click image for better quality]

I FIGURED OUT A WAY TO FUCKING MAKE THE IMAGE SMALLER FOR POSTING ON TUMBLR WITHOUT SACRIFICING THE ACTUAL QUALITY OF THE IMAGE OH MY GOD

Ok so, what I did is go into the clip studio paint file, make a new file, copy and paste the group in the original file, merge everything, get rid of the extra stuff outside of the canvas, and then make the flattened image smaller and crop the canvas. Once you have that, export it and you're done. This helps maintain the actual quality of the image and also helps shrink the file size down to something actually postable (if anyone has a better way of doing this please tell me)

[Edit]: Ok I guess posting something to Tumblr just naturally compresses the image a bit more somehow because I'm looking at it now and zooming in too much makes it a bit blurry so I'm still gonna have to futz around with image quality for future pieces oof

Artist's Note:

I'm so glad I figured out a way to do this because I like working on a big canvas so I can get as much detail in as I possibly can. Only problems are how laggy it gets while drawing lol.

I had an idea for a drawing with Reimu and Zanmu because I really like thinking about their potential dynamic a lot. I also wanted an excuse to draw Zanmu again but in my normal rendering style because last time I drew her she was in my more sketchy style with generally flat colours so I wanted to draw her again. Speaking of, looking at the sketch for this is a jumpscare that I never enjoy seeing, like, man am I glad I didn't use those for my final piece.

Also about her spear. I was originally gonna make it like the ones she had in game, but it kinda threw off the whole piece. It was too big, too blue, and too flat, so I just went "fuck it" and gave her a different one instead. My headcanon justifying this is that the ones she uses in game are for danmaku battles whereas in any other fight she just uses a proper yari, or she still uses the yari and just makes it all glowy to power it up, maybe both lol. I pulled as much inspiration as I could from Sengoku era spears, and even put in some blue into the decorative part of the spear and also added a little skull to pay tribute to the original spear. Also, in my research I saw some art of izanami and izanagi making japan and saw that the yari izanagi has had a little decorative tassley thingy on it so I took some inspo from that and just made it one of Zanmu's tassles (Idk when that art was from or if the spear was still accurate to Sengoku period Japan but hey, probably the same reasons Eirin puts little bow ties on her arrows, it's just for personalization purposes).

I love rendering hair and clothes so much omg, while I like the super curly hair Zanmu, the longer, wavier hair suits her better for this drawing (I imagine it only does that like how Ghibli characters hair moves when they feel angry lol). I love making Zanmu's hair all messy and crazy, as well as giving her grey hairs, this woman has aged like a fine wine. Also, if the hem on the ends of her sleeves, top of her shirt, and her pants look like gold to you, that's because it is! It's fairly light so she's not collapsing under the weight, but it's gold! (I don't care how impractical it is, it's just cool). Not the undershirt though, it's made of a gold fabric. I had a cute idea with Reimu's hair to make it have a red shine to it. I also changed up Reimu's outfit so it isn't just a blob of red. I like it a lot when Reimu's skirt and outfit is segmented into different layers, so I wanted to incorporate that.

I tried to draw their hands differently as well, but IDK how noticeable that is. Also, I am super happy with how the side profiles for the two of them turned out, I used to struggle a lot with how to make the side profile of a character actually look like the character, so I'm really happy that they actually look like themselves.

Also added in the tree and rocks in the background as an homage to Zanmu's character art in Touhou 19, just because I was getting kinda stumped on what to do with the background lol.

In terms of a story idea with Reimu and Zanmu, idk why but the potential plotline of Zanmu wanting to ascend to godhood is so fascinating to me. Like, it is very possible that if she just convinced everyone she was a god (which would be very easy for her to do), she would become one in a heartbeat. Also, if she were to become a god, with her ability to return stuff to nothing, could she hypothetically get similar abilities to (Jojo Part 5 spoiler btw) GER? Like, idk about the death timeloop stuff, but the concept has been haunting me every night as I have been trying to find loopholes in GER's ability for a while now ( for no reason in particular). Back to the main topic, I imagine that she would probably tell Reimu that if she were to become a god she would take over the Hakurei shrine since the god there might as well be dead, and Reimu just says to her, "Over my dead body bitch." Like, I have no idea how to summarize their dynamic but like, it's the type of hero-villain dynamic where the phrase "We're not so different, you and I" would definitely be a phrase said during a fight. I think that if another IN style game were to release, Reimu and Zanmu would be in a team together. They could also have an interesting mentor and pupil kind of dynamic. Can you tell that Zanmu has been charging my mind rent these part few months? Like, instead of living in my head rent free, she kinda just uno reversed the whole situation and now she's the one charging me rent. What happens if I get evicted from my own brain? Actually, scratch that, I don't think I wanna know.

[dean-a-mean-tae]

I Have A Tail | Stray Kids Additional Member AU

Nicholas as a hybrid and the bond they have with Nicholas, the black fox hybrid.

WARNINGS: Mention of chronic pain and anorexia. Nicholas is a "defect" hybrid. Cussing as usual. I don't think there are any other warnings. Unedited? I researched this. If I got something wrong, please respectfully correct me.

Nicholas Ross Master List | This is obviously not within the "canon" Nicholas universe. | GO LOOK AT this and then come back

Nicholas

Is a "silver" fox, but his fur is black. He looks blue in some lighting

Sometimes his face looks more silver than anything.

A black fox is just a melanistic red fox.

He was in the printer for too long, that's all.

With a background based on research surrounding silver foxes.

He used to be the hybrid of a married couple (Tamaya and Nolan) and their daughter (Lillian) but he escaped or ran away or something

Nicholas is traumatized enough. I'm not sure if I wanna traumatize him in this universe ;-;

While in the streets, he had to explain to parents that just because he is a domesticated hybrid doesn't mean he's a tame one

Domesticated and tame aren't synonyms.

PET and tame are synonyms though.

Do with that as you will.

BACK TO RANDOM THINGS

His fur is soft and silky

The "defect" is that his fur experiences shrinkage

So sometimes Nicholas looks more like a huge mole rat with fur than an actual fox

Just how Jeongin's ears grow to accommodate his head, Nicholas's ears and tail grow to accommodate his body

He's 6'3 and would look stupid if he had a tail the length and width of a Clorox wipe container.

Unlike Jeongin! Nicholas is an airhead as a human but super smart in his animal form

He also doesn't have chronic pains in his animal form so that's nice

You know those videos of dogs or cats using those buttons that say things?

Like the human asks what they want and the dog pushes the button and it's like "steak" or "sleep" or something

I like the idea that the boys got one of those things for Nicholas lol

Unfortunately, Nicholas still as anorexia as a hybrid

Foxes eat 1 to 2 lbs of food a day, but he's a hybrid so...

"healthy" Humans need 23 to 33 ounces, which is within the range of 1 to 2 pounds, of food per week...

You will have to subtly watch him to make sure he actually eats

Staring straight at him scares him out of eating and just stresses him out

Nicholas can be found in his shared room with Jeongin

Under the bed in his animal form with a blanket and a plushie

Or you can find him in the closet (hehe) as an animal or a human.

If Nicholas is in animal form, it's going to take you a long time to find him cause he is buried in the plushies.

What does the fox say~

He barks like a puppy and it sets off alarm bells in Chan's head

Nicholas's favorite treat is peanut butter on toast

Just peanut butter and a little bit of cinnamon.

You can't give him too much cinnamon or it'll throw off his blood sugar

That's that inner dog in him coming out. Which is sad because he loves cinnamon

Did you know foxes can climb tree?

Don't be surprised if you get home and you see this black blob chilling in your tree or outside your window

It's just your friendly goofy fox coming to say hello

Nicholas & Stray Kids

There's no order to this by the way. I'm spitting out random thoughts like a llama. It's just jumps from member to member like a hoe

I like to think that Hyunjin in his animal form just kinda chills on Nicholas's tail

Nicholas walking around and then you have a ferret sitting on the fox's tail like it's a sled

Like Felix in his animal form sitting on your blanket as you walk around

If Nicholas lets out a screeching "bark" Chan ignores it

But if Nicholas is dead ass barking?! Chan is rushing to see what's wrong

On the blue moon that Nicholas is causing chaos, Chan will grab him by the scruff and trap him against the living room couch

Just see this giant wolf walking by with a whining and squirming fox caught by the neck

Changbin has and will kick Nicholas away from him

They're soft kicks, don't worry

It's only because Nicholas likes to try and bite his ears

Sometimes Nicholas passes his food to Changbin or Jisung

Cause they will eat it and only feel guilty after they've eaten it

Jisung used to be terrified of Nicholas... cause he's a fox and he's a squirrel

Until he saw Ferret!Hyunjin run at Fox!Nicholas full speed and hop on to his face. And the fox did nothing, but bat at him with his paw

Jisung earned a new playmate

Minho just follows Nicholas around

He'll just randomly grabs Nick by his back. Not by the scruff or his neck.

I'm talking Zira carrying Kovu in that scene from Lion King 2 (iykyk)

If you don't, then go watch that movie. Watch the 1st and then the 2nd

Speaking of Lion King. Felix and Minho roar at the screen sometimes when they see a big cat roaring

Meanwhile, Chan, Seungmin, and sometimes Jeongin and Nicholas will freaking howl whenever they hear them

That scene from Zootopia? "You're gonna start a howl!"

That's them

Sometimes, Nicholas and Felix can be found hidden under Minho's head and between the tiger's paws

Sometimes Seungmin barges into the fox duo's room and just lay on one of the beds

Usually it's Nicholas's bed since he's rarely there.

Again, he's either under the bed or in the closet

Hybrid!Felix and Hybrid!Nicholas are just like normal Felix and Nicholas

They kind of gravitate towards each other

A ginger cat curled around a black fox

While Felix plays video games, Nicholas lays in his lap and either sleeps or watches

Nicholas and Jeongin are a bit of a strange duo

1 second they are playing around and cuddling, the next second they're growing and batting at each other's snouts

I headcanon that animals and hybrids can understand each other Sometimes there's a miscommunication if a canine tries to understand a feline, but it is possible to do it

I'll have to do a post about canons in this universe :P

Nicholas Ross Master List | ©️DEANAMEANTAE2024

Tags: @bada-lee-ily @jinnie-ret @hwxnghyynjin @foxilsdenn @rensahazard @mynameisnotlaura @lucianidealz @ziipzeepzop-eez @ilovejeongin007

You can be added by asking in the replies, sending me a message, or doing an ask thingy.

[rad-roche]

talking about rebelle

TLDR: it's really good

Too Long DID read: in the niche it occupies, it's the best program I've used. This isn't a sponsored post, nothing like that, no affiliate links. Just pure sweet fat of the hog.

Rebelle Paint is a painting software designed around imitating physical mediums. Watercolour, gouache, acrylic, oils, pastels, and so on. It might be better to think of it as a physics software that happens to have a bunch of art tools inside, for better or for worse. Let me give you an example.

These two blobs represent an area of the canvas I've made wet through the watercolour tools. This is where the physics sim comes into it. The backgrounds aren't just static paper textures, the paint disperses and interacts with the grain of the 'paper', or the canvas, or whatever you have selected.

If you're already good with watercolours, you're set. If not, like me, you're in for a steep, steep learning curve, because they're hard to control. I can't call that a fault, real watercolours aren't exactly famed for being easy to use. But if you do this across a few layers, that means Rebelle is simulating a bunch of things at once, which means that your computer is gonna CHUG. Seriously, if you have a laptop, get the demo before you even think about buying it. I'm using a solid desktop and can't go beyond five layers without my processor screaming for mercy. This is only with the watercolours, however, for things like ink/markers, I got up to about 30 layers with that comic. Deploy the pomegranate.

Circling back to that canvas being a physics object thing...

Here's what comes with the software, enough to cover any of the mediums you'll use in it. If you want more, however, you have to buy them in the store, and if you wanted all of them, for whatever reason, that represents about 150 dollarydoos, and individual sets (cold pressed watercolour etc) coming out to about 10 each. I might pick one up in the future if I really want one, but so far I haven't felt the need. You aren't being deprived of options, is what I'm saying.

The biggest compliment I can give the software is that it feels like they either take direct feedback from its user base, or are so good at pre-empting what you might need that it makes other software like this (Corel, CSP) seem clunky. Let me give you an example. Like most art software, there's a reference panel.

Unlike most art software, that panel comes with tools already in it that are very useful. Say I just wanted to practice painting in colour, and the likeness of this model isn't what I'm focusing on. You have two options: half-assing it, or tracing and then painting yourself. Rebelle lets you place guidelines on the reference, which are then projected onto the canvas. If you toggle greyscale mode on to check your values, then colour-pick, you don't pick up the desaturated tone, you'll always pick the true colour underneath. That might sound like a small thing, but when you get used to working around that in other software, it adds up.

Pros:

One-time Purchase

Very very strong tools. They're a joy to use.

Almost no learning curve regarding the software itself, even if you're moving over from another programs

All tools are able to interact with one another. Want to drench your acrylic paint in water? Go for it! A lot of traditional imitation software locks the tools you can use to certain layer types (Corel, Realistic Paint Studio), but not here.

Liquify, transform tools, adjustment layers, all the normal stuff you'd want in digital is all here.

Brush customisation engine is excellent

Cons:

Two tiers of purchase (standard and pro). I bought standard, and honestly I'm thinking about upgrading because the image scaling is locked behind pro. Standard shakes out to about ninety bucks, pro one-fifty, and in this economy that's a big ask. Saying that, there is a sale on right now. If you just want digital tools that mimic traditional, and don't need any of the extras, consider Artrage Lite at one third the price.

Resource HUNGRY. Way, way more than any other art program I've used.

Anything involving water requires juggling in a way real watercolour doesn't. It's very very easy to keep painting, look back, and realise something 5 layers ago is still soaked and leaked into everything else.

Prone to crashing.

Overall, I'm really happy with it. I don't think it's great for anything very detailed, like that comic I did the other day, and for general use Clip Studio Paint is a better purchase, but this is a great supplement.

[explodingchantry]

I have a video essay planned for my opinions on the confused (not confusing, but confused) politics of dragon age and it will be like 7 hours long with only 3 views but it will be the best essay I'll ever write. As part of it I want to include sth interesting I've realized in my da2 replay: that of the different ways the qunari conflict and the mage conflict are written.

See, both conflicts are meant to be nuanced but actually have a pretty clear answer based on our own real life liberal ideals. For the qunari conflict, the ideal is "don't be fucking racist": characters who are openly bigoted against the qunari such as sister petrice are ridiculed by the narrative, which is obvious in the framing of all quests in which she takes part and in the dialogue and within the game itself; the enemies you fight which aid her are called "fanatics" and "mob" within the game. It is nuanced in that the qunari aren't exactly... Friendly, and they have a history of colonialism of their own, but the narrative is actually still pretty black and white. They remained peaceful for 4 years in spite of numerous provocation, until their literal most important cultural and religious artifact was refused to them which led them to violence to retrieve it. It's nuanced because it isn't "the qunari are fully innocent" but also isn't "the qunaris are cunts and the racism was warranted". The qunaris are people with flaws that deserve criticism outside of the fact that they're qunaris. The narrative is very clear that those who hate qunaris on principle are bigoted idiots.

For mages, and furthermore anders, suddenly the narrative is more muddled. You could argue it's because the situation is more complex, and in some ways you'd be right. But I was shocked upon my replay of how often anders' sanity is put in question. How even a hawke who ROMANCED HIM will call him deeply troubled to defend him, or downright call him crazy... Once again whilst defending him. The latter is admittedly partly due to purple hawke options sometimes just being.... Downright disrespectful and mean, but it remains striking. Even more so when you note how often anders' rejection of templars and the chantry are rejected by other characters, including mages themselves, whilst fenris' vitriolic hatred of ALL MAGES REGARDLESS OF BACKGROUND is only challenged by anders - who, again, gets his sanity questioned several times throughout the game, minimizing the perceived value of his opinions - and potentially hawke, sometimes, in a few dialogue options.

And don't even get me started on the whole blood magic portrayal lol.

You could attempt to say that, well, while the writers wanted the qunari conflict to have a clear answer, they didn't want it to be the case for mages. But.... Did they really? At the end of the game Orsino's stupid blood magic blob monster transformation is very obviously framed as tragic, meanwhile again Meredith's sanity is shown to have been compromised the whole time which puts every one of her previous actions into question. I'm pretty confident in my opinion that the writers likely meant the message to be "the mage/templar conflict in general isn't black and white but in this instance siding with Meredith is obviously wrong" (as a note: it is far more black and white than the narrative pretends it is and mages should be free, obviously.) this is backed up by the fact that, you know, SHE WAS THE FINAL BOSS AND WAS CORRUPTED BY RED LYRIUM.

There's a better, deeper discussion to be had regarding dissecting those two narrative threads and observing how the writers' bias affect both, I think. Because as soon as you try to say the writers write certain characters OOC or show negative bias towards a certain group, like mages, people will try to spin it as it being because the writers want to present a nuanced issue. The thing is that, yes, they are trying to do that - but they are doing it in an imbalanced, biased, and sometimes downright mean spirited way. Because I haven't even touched on how everyone refers to anders, even when they refer to him positively. There's always a but. Even deeply sympathetic characters disapprove of his activism. That sways the balance the writers apparently attempted to have. It sways it pretty fucking badly.

[dozyrogue]

I say this every once in awhile but like I feel like I have to mention it just because it was that good to me.

But qsmp should have kept the horror elements that it had. Like sure the campy fun we eventually got is fun and all but outside of you know the obvious things like it being a multilingual server and bringing people from different cultures and languages together. It was one of the things that helped it stand out even more. At least in my opinion.

Like why did a Minecraft server and it's horror Lore make me want to roll up into a ball. Why did it make the content creators want to crawl up into a ball whenever they see a white blob in the distance.

I think when we got to see more of like the Federation do their own Lore I think that's what all the the horror elements kind of disappeared.

Like even though we would see certain Federation workers like learn to be human or learn emotions. it could've still been really cool horror to see, oh these workers can be such nice people but how nice can they really be when they work for something so horrifying. you know??

I don't know maybe there's a way to like give more background but in a way that doesn't take away all the mysterious nature of your enemy. How would you do that??? I don't know but I feel like there's a way.

[dp-marvel94]

Face to Face - Epilogue

Summary: When Danny went through the ghost catcher, he expected to be cured of the ghostliness that had haunted him since the accident, not to wake up on the lab floor with his parents saying he’d been overshadowed but everything’s back to normal now. But why does Danny Fenton cry himself to sleep to then dream of flying? Why does Phantom, the ghost who was supposedly possessing Danny remember a life that wasn’t his? Most of all, why do both the human and the ghost feel that something vital is missing, in their very soul? Or: Trying to cure himself of his powers one month after the accident, Danny accidentally splits himself but neither his ghost nor his human half know that that is what they did

First -> Last

Word Count: 5,791

Also on AO3 and Fanfiction.net

Note: Hi friends! It's been a while. Honestly, I was putting off posting this, the last chapter of Face to Face, because it intimidated me. 😅 But I really wanted to wrap this up by the end of the year. So we're finally here! I'm so excited to share the ending with you guys.

Also in honor of finishing this fic, I wanted to share this loving art made by @lilianade-comics on Tumblr. Check out this lovely scene from chapter 51 here!

Happy Reading!

Six months later.

“I must have been here a dozen times at least. And your lair still surprises me every time.” Sidney said, eyes surveying the room.

Danny leaned back on his couch, giving a chuckle. “Hey, I’m just working with what I have. I think the Hobbit vibes are pretty cool.”

“I figured you would want something more modern and sci fi.” His friend shrugged.

The halfa raised a brow. “Like an underground bunker? Nah.” He shook his head. “As cool as quarters on the Enterprise would be, or the inside of the TARDIS…. It just didn’t feel right. Plus,” He shrugged. “I like to be comfy.”

“It is definitely that.”

True to what Danny had imagined all those months ago, the underground house was cozy, warm, and homey. Wooden floors and paneling. Circular rooms and round doorways. The furniture was simple, warm, reddish maple-wood beds, chairs, and sofas accenting each room. Multiple rugs covered the floors and carefully selected books filled one book shelf. Other decorative objects and nick-nacks covered the walls, end tables, and other surfaces. 

Some were brought from the material realm. One of his model rockets. A blob ghost plush that had been made by his dad. A Black orchid, a gift from Sam, sat in one corner, a Femalien Poster from Tucker on the wall above it. A shadow box with tickets and a glossy photo of the siblings, smiling in their bowties and fezzes with a certain actor; for Christmas his sister had bought him tickets to Comic Con and a Meet and Greet with Doctor Who actor Matt Smith.

Some objects were picked up from various trips through the Realms. There was a black and white lamp from Sidney’s lair that gave off gray light. A drum head on the wall sported an animated image of blue fire; he’d gotten that when Johnny and Kitty had taken him to see their friend Ember perform.

And some were manifested by the lair itself. A painting of a The Library with swirling spectral clouds in the background. Snow globes from different places he’d visited: Sid’s lair, The Library, Dora’s kingdom, Ember’s concert hall venue. And…. the halfa smiled softly at this last object… photo of his family and two best friends, Danny grinning in the middle in ghost form.

“Jeepers! What is this?!” Sidney’s voice interrupted the half ghost’s musing. 

Danny’s gaze flickered to the object of his friend’s attention. “Oh. That? It was a Christmas present from Mom.” He jabbed a thumb at the kitchen counter where a ceramic cookie jar sported half a dozen eyes and pointy teeth around the lid, threatening approaching hands. He grinned. “It’s a Mimic.”

“A Mimic…” For just a moment, Sidney’s black and white brow wrinkled. Then… “Like from that Dungeon and Dragons game Tucker told me about?!” 

“Yep.” Danny nodded.

“Fighting a monster like that… that must be the bee’s knees!” The half ghost could practically see the stars in his friend’s eyes.

“You’re still invited to our games any time you want to join.” Danny raised a brow.

“This section of the Realms needs its own group.” Sidney crossed his arms, pouting slightly.

“Dora might like it… and Ember.” The half ghost grinned toothily. “She’s already literally a bard.” He tapped his chin. “Maybe we can get Ghost Writer to let us use a room in his lair.”

“The Library is not the most convenient location though; it’s far away from everyone but me.” 

“Hum.” Danny’s brow furrowed, considering. “That’s fair.” Sidney’s lair was the closest to the Library by far. But the other’s…. Ember’s lair was about the same distance from the portal as Sidney’s, except in the exact opposite direction. And Dora’s lair was vaguely below his, a leisurely forty-five minute flight down. If anything…. Danny blinked. “I’m in the middle.”

“You sure are, buster.” Sidney raised a brow, looking at him as if it was obvious.

The half ghost took a second to process and then laughed. “It’s always like that, huh?” 

Getting in between the Lunch Lady and his friends. Helping Dora and other ghosts get back to the portal. Making friends with people in this part of the Zone. He rolled his eyes at the irony. The literal half ghost always stuck in the middle. Or rather… maybe he’d chosen to place himself there.

“So I guess we’d meet here. Or…” An idea had been swimming around in his head. A place for the ghosts on this side of the portal to gather, to bond, to help each other and…. “So I’d been thinking-”

Just then, the black rectangular device clipped to the belt of Danny’s suit chimed. “Oh. That’s probably my parents.” He detached the communicator– made by his parents, with Tucker’s help, to work across dimensions and designed to look like the ones from Star Trek–  and flipped it open.

His brow furrowed. “I’m not late for dinner, am I? Didn’t think I’d been gone that long.”

“No sweetie.” His mom’s voice sounded from the other end. “I’m sorry to interrupt your hang-out with Sidney. But Mr. Jenkins called from the Salvage Yard about a ghost problem.”

The boy sighed, head rolling back on the couch to look up at the ceiling. “Is it Technus again?”

“It sounded like it.” The wince was almost audible in her voice. “Your father and I would go but Mr. Jenkins asked for Phantom… very insistently.” 

Another sigh. “I’ll be right there.” Danny hung up, putting the communicator back on his belt before burying his head in his hand.

“Technus again?” Sidney rose a brow.

The halfa looked up, fixing an eye on his friend. “ I mean, I’m fine with him hanging out in the material world and tinkering with stuff. But…” The halfa groaned. “He keeps trying to blow things up the salvage yard.”

The ghostly nerd chuckled. “All that new fangled modern technology…. That beatnik must think he died and gone to heaven.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “He will if I have to tell him to stop stealing other people’s stuff one more time.”

Sidney shook his head. “You know it’s hard to keep a ghost from his obsession.” Then tapping his chin, he mused. “But maybe if he had his own place to experiment…”

“Hum…” Danny furrowed his brow, considering. He floated up. “Gotta go.” He pointed at the black and white ghost. “I’m serious, you should come to our D&D games next Saturday. Think about it?”

“I will.” The other ghost nodded, also rising. “See you later.”

The two exited through the lair’s door, Sidney flying into the green atmosphere of the Zone. Danny flew up, towards the portal. The clear dome around the structure parted with his presence and he entered. 

The boy drifted over the carefully cultivated plants, a particularly energetic snap-dragon snapping at his heel. “Hey! I don’t have time to play right now.” He bent down, patting the petly approximation of a draconic head. 

Danny stood again and continued, passing the beds of black lettuce. A ghostly blue lizard darted between the squash vines. In the flowering tiger shrub, a tiny green bird cooed. Other plants were scattered over the area, glowing insects, some as large as his fist, buzzing over them. The boy couldn’t help but smile. Only six months and there was already so much after-life here on his little island. 

The half ghost arrived in the middle, the frame of the portal surprisingly at home among the vegetation. Though… green no longer swirled in the frame; instead, black and yellow painted doors blocked the entrance. His parents had installed a set on either side to keep out unwanted visitors. 

But Danny, of course, wasn’t an unwanted visitor. With a quick scan of his palm on the panel beside the door, they parted. He flew through, just as the doors on the human-world side opened too.

At the sound, both parents looked up from their work. “Danny-boy!” His dad smiled with a wave. “You want one of us to come with you?”

“Nah. I’m just gonna try and talk to Technus again.” The halfa waved off the concern. He floated up, towards the ceiling. 

His dad looked almost disappointed at the decline; trust Jack Fenton to always be ready and eager to soak an annoyance in ectoplasmic goo, whether they were ghost or human. Still both adults accepted the statement.

“Knock his socks off, son! And be careful!” “We’ll do great, sweetie! Call us if you need anything!” 

With his parents’ words of encouragement rising in his ears, Danny phased through the ceiling and zoomed off.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Banging, clanging, and shouting rang through Mr. Jenkins’ Salvage Yard. 

“It’s finished!” Maniacal laughing sounded “Finally finished! I-”

“Finished?! What in tarnation even is-.” A sudden crash. “Woah!’” 

“Ah. A few more finishing touches and…” A sparking, sizzling hiss…

“Where did you get a welding gun? Wait! Is that my coffee maker?!”

The ghost scoffed. “It’s not like you were using it.”

“I used it this mornin’, you-” 

Danny arrived just as Technus flipped up his face shield. “Tada! My greatest creation!” The ghost spread his arms, grinning proudly.

“You stole my French Press!” Mr. Jenkins yelled.

“Ghost Child!” The adult ghost ignored him, eyes lighting up at Phantom’s arrival. “You arrived just in time to watch!”

Danny fixed Technus with a skeptical look. “What’s going on here?”

“As I was saying, I Technus! Master of all things electronic and beeping have finished my greatest creation yet!” The ghost motioned again, to a tracker-trailer sized collection of mismatched metal parts. 

Well, that wasn’t here the last time. “Technus… where did you get all this stuff?”

Just then, a frantic woman came running out of the square building sitting among all the old cars. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Jenkins. I don’t understand how, but the office phone is gone. So are the fax machine and the microwave. And all the computers and-” Her eyes widened, voice squeaking as she spotted Technus. “Not you again!”

“That’s my computer?!” Jenkin’s eyes bulged, his face turning red. “I already told you, this ain’t a junkyard. You can’t take whatever you want!”

“These machines are just sitting here, wasting away! I had to do something with all this beautiful technology.” 

“What’s it even supposed to be!?” 

“An ingenious invention! And greatly needed!” The green skinned ghost held a finger up. “What kind of junk yard doesn’t have a car-crusher?”

“You’re nuttier than a fruitcake.” Jenkins pointed accusingly at Technus. “This ain’t no junk yard! We’re a salvage yard. We sell used parts!”

“Salvage yard.” Technus rolled his eyes. “That’s ridiculous. You’re just jealous of my brilliance, old man!”

“At least I made it past half a century!” The older man spat.

“I, Technus! Made it to 52, thank you very much! 52 years and then felled by my own unstable experiment! Oh, to die in the pursuit of science! What a glorious send-off! And don’t you know about that, Halfa child! Still wearing that hip and sweet hazmat suit-”

“We are not talking about my death.” Danny interrupted pointedly. “Now-”

“Of course! Enough of this. You came to see my genius!” The mad scientist darted around the metal monstrosity, lab coat flapping behind him.

“Phantom! Stop him!” Mr. Jenkins cried.

“You heard him, Technus.” The ghost boy crossed his arms. “Don’t make me get out the thermos.”

The older ghost ignored the reprimanded, eagerly grabbing at the machine’s controls. “First! The claw will shoot out and snag the car we want. Now which one…” His brow furrowed, then turning and pointing at a red, old-looking convertible. “Ah! That sad sorry hunk of junk will do.”

“Technus! We talked about this!” Danny drove forward, arms out to pull the other ghost away from the controls.

At the same time… “ No! That’s-” Mr. Jenkins sounded panicked. 

Danny surged forward but faster than he could process, the mad scientist blinked out of the way. He missed, tumbling in the air and barely missing the side of the car-crushed machine. 

The clawed arm lashed out, clamping around the truck. The metal fingers snapped closed with an agonizing crunch of metal and glass. 

“Must be out of practice.” Danny mumbled. Then, he lit his hands with ecto-energy, “Technus, I’m warning you!” 

“And now! My hyper-efficient car-crusher will reduce this rust bucket to scrap in seconds!” The other ghost laughed maniacally, jamming one of the lever’s down.

“No! No! No!” Mr. Jenkins sounded near… tears?

The arm pulled the car forward, the headlights meeting the jaws of the crusher with a stomach-turning crunch.

“Look! My funky fresh creation is working perfectly!” 

The ghost boy let his shot lose, the ecto-energy knocking the other ghost away.

“No! That’s my car!!” Mr. Jenkins fell to his knees.

Danny darted in front of the control panel. His eyes widened. So many buttons, nobs, and levers…. Lights blinked in front of him. Frantic, the boy jabbed at different controls. 

“My Oldsmobile!” Beside him, Mr. Jenkins was definitely crying. “That was Pa’s. Me and Pa fixed it up before he passed. No!”

The halfa’s eyes flashed. “How do you turn this thing off?” He turned to the other ghost, demanding.

Technus floated there for a moment, eyes wide and startled. He stared, the previous mad joy completely evaporated, even as he took in his invention. After a blink, his gaze moved from the machine to the devastated human man. The ghost’s face scrunched up, brow wrinkling. Then…

He flew back to the controls. Wordlessly, the mad scientist pushed a series of buttons, metal crunching uglily all the while. He pulled a final lever and the sound of gears and breaking glass stopped.

Quiet fell and Danny sighed, shoulders untensing. Still, he nervously fingered at the thermo’s lid. “Technus, you know I don’t have any problem with you hanging around Amity Park. Tinkering by itself is fine. But when you start taking other people’s things and destroying property…. I can’t let that stand.”

“But it’s just an old car…” The older ghost fixed his head down, voice oddly subdued.

“It’s Mr. Jenkins’ car.” Danny pointed. “It belongs to him.” His tone sharpened. “I wouldn’t come in your lair and mess with your laboratory. Take your inventions without asking. You can’t do that to Mr. Jenkins.”

A long, tense pause fell over the yard. The sound of gravel shifting at the human man stood, as his assistant nervously shuffled. Danny could feel both adult’s eyes on him but his own gaze was fixed on the ghost and his tight, unreadable expression. Technus had stopped the crusher but… why? Did he understand? The boy’s stomach turned, anxiously hoping. That the ghost had listened, that he could find a peaceful resolution. 

Technus’s grip on the control panel’s levers tightened. “It seems, I, Technus, made an error. The first tenant of the scientific method…. I failed to gather all the important background information.”

Mr. Jenkins looked up, angrily whipping his face. “You don’t say.”

“I got so excited, I forgot to ask for permission to use the junk…”

“Hey! It’s not-” The human started objecting.

“Or to think about whether the invention would be useful here. I mean, who ever heard of a junkyard without a car-crusher? But apparently, you don’t need one. Which does not make any sense to me. Still, I should not have taken your things and-”

“That’s all fine and good. But my car’s still trashed.” Jenkins interrupted, scowling at the crushed vehicle.

“An honest mistake.” Technus winced. “And…” He held up a finger. “Give me a second.” He darted over to the wreckage. “Here, let me…” 

The mad scientist ghost waved his hands over the debris. His aura sparked, spreading out and enveloping the twisted metal and shards of glass. The pieces trembled slightly, rising with a jerk. Technus’ fingers moved as if he was counting, typing, or playing an instrument. The wreckage floated and flowed, swirling in the air and coming together. It coalesced into…

“Well I’ll be damned.” Mr. Jenkins said breathily.

Danny’s eyes widened, just as amazed. “How? You… you-”

“Fixed it!” Technus swung around, arms spread. “I fixed it!”

Sure enough, the car sat in front of them, whole and intact.

The on-lookers just blinked for a long moment. Then…

“My car!” Mr. Jenkins practically ran forward. “Bessie! You’re alright!” He flopped onto the hood, arms spreading wide as if hugging the vehicle. “Better than alright!” Eyes wide and gleeful, he wiped at a spot over the headlights. “That blasted scratch is gone!” 

The human man kept cooing over his car and Danny laughed. “He’s worse than my dad with the GEV.” The boy rolled his eyes. Then… “Seriously though. Putting it back together like that…. that was incredible, Technus. Thank you for fixing this.” 

“Pst.” The ghost shrugged off the thanks. “It was child’s play!” He laughed almost maniacally.

“Can you uh… put back the rest of the office?” The assistant asked meekly.

Technus’ eyes flickered to her, briefly looking disappointed, before he scoffed. “Can I put the rest of the office back?” He waved his arms, green light again spreading and enveloping the metal pieces. “Easier than differential calculus. Can I, Technus, master of all things mechanical, put it back? Please.”

The different pieces separated, flying off in seemingly random directions, while the mad scientist mumbled to himself.

Meanwhile, Mr. Jenkins looked up from his car. “I didn’t know you could fix things like this, Technus. Incredible!” He popped open the trunk, gaze flickering over the various parts. “She’s as good as new.” He reached inside, tapping something. “Say. One of the new tow-trucks is acting squirrely. Some kind of malfunction with that fancy new, space-age onboard computers. Can’t make head ‘r tails of it. Take a look and maybe I can find some spare parts for you to tinker with.”

Parts continued to swirl away, the car-crusher growing smaller and smaller. Technus tapped his chin. “Is this a problem worthy of I! Technus’ vast expertise!?”

For a moment, both Mr. Jenkins and his assistant looked worried, concerned eyes searching Danny. 

The ghost boy nodded sagely. “Of course! Computer technology is so advanced now. Especially in cars! They definitely need someone as genius as you to fix it. Plus free parts!” The half ghost spread his arms. “You can’t pass up a deal like that!”

“You’re right, Ghost Child!” With a final flourish, the last remnants of the disastrous car crusher vanished, the components returning to their proper places. “Come Jenkins!” The mad scientist quickly floated away. “Show me this tow-truck!”

“Not so fast! We mere humans can’t fly!” The human man jogged after. 

Danny gave another chuckle at the pair. He flew after them. 

“Here it is.” Mr. Jenkins panted, motioning to the car. He unlocked the door and slid into the seat. “The problem is, anytime I start up the car…” He pressed the ignition. “See?”

The ghost nodded from where he leaned over, observing. “Ah! That is confounding! First, let me try…”

The half ghost watched two for several minutes. His eyes slowly widened, anxious core lossening. The two talked and hypothesized, bouncing ideas off of each other.

“Try it again.” Technus instructed.

Mr. Jenkins pressed the start button again. A pause. “Well, I’ll be.”

The mad scientist laughed. “I told you, old geezer. No electronical problem can overcome my genius!”

The human rolled his eyes, good naturedly. “Old geezer? Ya didn’t know what a computer was until last month.”

They were… getting along? “This is great! See.” Danny gave an encouraging smile and spread his arms. “Technus can help you out with stuff like this and you can give him some spare parts to work with. How does that sound, Mr Jenkins? Technus?”

The human tapped his chin. “You know, my brother’s got an auto shop. He’s always needin’ help. Maybe we can work something out.”

“I’m listening…” The green-skinned ghost nodded, face serious. Even as his aura flickered excitedly.

“I’ll give Perry a call and…”

The two talked for a few more minutes. Hope bloomed in Danny’s heart, a smile slowly parting his lips. They had this. Coming up with a compromise together. Without him. In fact…

The ghost boy turned to leave. “I’m going to go check on your assistant and everything in the office. Shout if you need me.”

The two barely acknowledged him, simply waving as they both chuckled over something. 

Danny flew away, shaking his head. Moments later, he knocked at the office door. “It’s Phantom.”

There was a shout to enter and the boy did so. His eyes flickered over the room. Slightly disarrayed but… there was the microwave, the phone, the computer.

The assistant looked up from the desk. “Mr. Jenkins is okay, right? I haven’t heard any screaming recently.”

Danny laughed. “Yeah, he’s fine. Him and Technus are working out tech-help for spare parts.”

The woman blanched. “Is that wise?”

The boy nodded. “Giving the guy something to focus on will be good for him. And I’m sure Mr. Jenkins could use the help.”

The assistant’s brow furrowed thoughtfully. “I guess you have a point.” Her face smoothed out, smiling gratefully at him. “Thank you, by the way, for coming and helping with all this.” 

“It’s just what I do.” Danny shrugged. “No big deal.”

 “Seriously. This all wouldn’t still be standing without you.” She motioned around her vaguely. “We’d be in a mess without you, Phantom.”

“Well then…” The boy blushed at the praise. “You’re welcome… uh, I don’t know your name.”

“It’s Nancy.” She smiled.

“Nancy.” Danny gave a nod. “Everything’s good here so I’m going to head out. Give FentonWorks a call if you need anything.”

“I will.” 

With a wave, the half ghost drifted up and phased through the ceiling. He flew over the salvage yard, catching a glimpse of the two men, one human and one ghost. Mr. Jenkins leaned against the vehicle, arms crossed casually. Technus floated, head lifted to the sky. His unique brand of laughter carried on the wind, the human’s hearty chuckle just as real and vibrant below it.

Danny beamed down at the scene. “Yeah. They’re going to be fine.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny returned home to his ghost researcher parents, both proudly congratulating him on peacefully dealing with Technus. After which of course, both had to blather on about their latest inventions. The boy fondly rolled his eyes.

He tried to invisibly sneak up on his big sister, the super-powered little brother’s prerogative. To his chagrin, he was unsuccessful though; before he could even think of turning her chair intangible, she turned the spray bottle on him like he was a misbehaving cat. 

He logged onto Doom and played with his best friends. The boss of the current level decimated their party three times before they gave up for now and started on a new side quest. All the while, they talked about new movies, rumors and gossip at school, Ember’s upcoming concert, and convincing Sidney to join them for D&D.

Family and friends. Ghosts and humans and the two somehow, miraculously existing together. All this and more, in a day in the life of a half ghost. 

And now, during the darkest part of the night, that eerie time between the late night and early morning, the Haunting Hour. Now, Danny Fenton-Phantom floated on his back, suspended in the air above the Ops Center.

Blobby snuggled against him, tiny paws kneading biscuits into his side. The smaller ghost purred loudly, now firmly settled into something between a very cat-like blob and a blob-like cat. The boy gently stroked his pet, idly scrolling through his phone. 

A text notification pinged and Danny laughed, typing back.

Danny: that’s the most cursed meme i’ve ever seen

Another cursed follow up. And another. Danny snorted, sending his own.

Tucker: 😵 ☠️ Deed. Y u stil up thoigh?

Danny: Dude it’s spooky hour. Getting my haunt on.

Tucker: U lucky basterd. Ony need 4 hrs of skeep

Danny: 😜 Y r u still up?

Tucker: Doom. newd new armor. 

Tucker: 😵 stupd skelton killed me😭

Danny: Go to sleep!

Tucker: Neverrttt5454er66wreeqwsd

Danny: ?

Tucker: dropped phome on my face

Tucker: maybe i shoud slep

Danny: You think? 🤨

Tucker: One more meme!

Tucker: Phantomceiling.mov

Tucker: wrong file. 😴🥱😫 Sry. Gd night Danny

Danny laughed softly, shaking his head at his sleepy friend. He could imagine it, Tucker half-way across town, drifting off at his computer, gaming with one hand and texting with the other. No wonder the skeletons, the freaking easiest monster in the game, managed to kill him. 

And he sent a random video? Danny tilted his head at the file name, pressing play.

“Woah!” Tucker’s excited voice cheered. 

The camera shifted wildly, a blurry tan surface covering the screen. The crispness of the image wavered, in and out until…. tiny, glow-in-the-dark stars shifted into focus. On the… ceiling? Why did Tucker have a video of his bedroom ceiling?

“I can’t even believe this, I’m floating!” This friend’s voice cheered. 

The half ghost’s eyes widened, suddenly remembering. This video, the one Tucker made while swinging from the ceiling. Meaning….

The image titled, pointed directly above and…  Black suit, white hair, sparkling green eyes paned into view. Danny felt his heart squeeze.

“Say hi, Danny.” Tucker laughed. 

“Hi Danny.” The ghost stuck out his tongue, giving a wave.

“Hi Phantom.” The boy smiled softly, waving back.

This video… he’d forgotten about it completely. Hadn’t even realized they had any video from when he was split, all those months ago. And now…

On the screen, Tucker grunted in effort, Phantom’s face deceptively even, eyes twinkling with suppressed mirth.

And now, Danny could remember it like it was yesterday. His feet planted firmly on the ceiling, one hand in Tucker’s, his familiar weightlessness spread through the contact. That was him, trying to hold back his laughter. And yet… 

“Come… on.” His friend shouted in frustration. “Come on!” Two voices burst out in laughter, one higher pitched- obviously Sam. And the other….

The camera panned. Black hair, blue eyes pinched closed, mouth open with his laughter.

“Hi, Fenton.” His eyes crinkled, a fond mirth.

Danny remembered this too. Busting a gut at a constipated-looking Tucker, bent over with his chortles, Sam rolling her eyes at his comment. That was him. And yet…

After re-fusing, it had felt like he’d been asleep for a long time. Like he hadn’t really been present; it was all a dream. And yet, he had been right there. He remembered everything. It was like he told Jazz, all those months ago. He was Phantom and Fenton. Fenton and Phantom had been him. And yet he, the Danny thinking this thought, hadn’t really been there. But now….

The video continued, the camera passed around as Tucker cheered, swinging like a pendulum. As Sam had her turn, laughing hysterically the entire time. As Jazz screamed to be put down, before admitting that it wasn’t so bad. All the while, Danny chuckled at the scene. His smile grew, something soft and precious and fond.

“Wait… how?” Tucker wrinkled his brow. “I don’t get it.”

“He’s tapping into our powers.” Phantom righted himself in the air. “I mean, I’m the ghost so I’m technically the one with the powers right now. But we’re still the same person.”

“So I can kinda use them if we’re touching.” Fenton explained. “I uhh… actually turned myself intangible last night, when Phantom did it and I was touching him.”

The video ended there, Fenton and Phantom side by side. The human’s brow wrinkled in thought. The ghost mid-nod, agreeing. 

And Danny’s heart squeezed, something nostalgic. “Guys. We made it.” A finger brushed the screen. As if he could reach back to then and reassure both halves of himself. “We made it.” 

Danny remembered that day where it started. Sitting with his friends, his burger falling through his hands. That was the final straw, the moment that changed everything. It led to his fateful decision to go through the ghost catcher. A bad decision but it had left him all the better. It had taught him many hard won lessons, changing the way he saw his friends, his parents, and most importantly himself.

And those lessons…. Danny remembered, his dream the night he re-merged.

“I’m going to be okay.” A soft, swirling gratitude. “I won’t forget what I learned when I was you guys. I’ll remember.” 

Danny hadn’t forgotten. He’d come back to himself, like finally coming home. And he’d found that he was more. More than just Phantom plus Fenton. More than just human plus ghost. 

Letting out a sigh, the ghost boy lowered himself in the air, down to the roof of the Ops Center. To the camping chair left out here for his nightly star gazing. Blobby curled into his lap, the halfa giving gentle pets. His head drifted up, towards the sky.

And he let himself remember his last night as two halves of himself. 

Danny closed his eyes and he was back there. Sitting side by side. Pointing out constellations and telling stories, one arm around his other half. And at the same time, drifting off to sleep to the echoing voice, his body comfortably leaned against the familiar chilly presence.

“Hey, I’m very witty. You just happen to share my brain.” The ghost grinned, roughly ruffling his counterpart’s hair. “Can’t get one over on you, can I?”

“I’m the pun master.” Fenton chuckled, leaning into the touch.

“You’re annoying, that’s what you are.” Phantom teased.

A chuckle at the memory. Seeing this from both sides really shouldn’t make sense. Yet it couldn’t be more clear…

“I love you too.” The human muttered, rolling his eyes.

The ghost stilled, his free hand dropping out of the black hair. His core squeezed, jovial teasing giving way to a soft and quiet joy. The tiredness radiated off of his other self, heavy enough that he was starting to get silly. But those words…. Every syllable was real. 

Phantom breathed. Teasing and joking was familiar, comfortable even. He was even used to transparency, tender honesty. But this…. The arm still around his human half tightened, his free arm circling around Fenton’s front. He had said earlier, if they had anything else to say to each other while they were still split, they should say it.

Ghost Danny completed the hug. “I do love you.”

Back on the roof, Danny’s hand tenderly rested over his heart-core. Maybe if anyone else had seen that moment, he’d feel embarrassed, ashamed. But that moment was just for him. That same soft and quiet joy rose, quivering in his chest. Splitting himself had let Danny see himself in new ways. He’d learned so much. He’d grown to know, accept, appreciate, and, yes, love both halves of himself. As strange as it was to say, Fenton and Phantom had loved each other. 

An overbearing gratitude washed over him at that. Gratitude that they (that he) had been brave enough to voice that, to give him this memory. This proof, this reminder of how far he’d come. Of all he’d learned. 

He had suffered and struggled and agonized. He had fought with his own self-hatred and doubt, his shame and fear, with the painful reminders of his death. But with the love and support of his parents, sister, and friends, he had overcome. He had learned and grown and changed. The transformation itself hurt and terrified him. But he had risen above it. And now. Now Danny loved who he had become.

And who had he become? What did loving himself mean now, with his heart and core nestled together, where they belonged? It meant taking care of himself. Letting his friends and family know him and love him. Loving other people. It meant eating enough– both ecto and regular food-, sleeping well, watching the stars during his Haunting Hour. Spending time with his loved ones and letting them share his burdens. Helping others as Danny Phantom.

He saved humans in the town with his powers when ghost animals appeared or over-enthusiastic ghosts wouldn’t listen. He helped lost ghosts find their way back to the portal. He worked to find ways for humans and ghosts to exist together.

The idea from when he’d been talking to Sidney earlier flickered in his mind. A shared place for the ghosts on this side of the portal to gather, to bond, to help each other. A kind of Sanctuary, that was his dream.

That first time he’d almost fused, before telling his parents about Phantom, he’d dreamed of the human in the ghostly, ghostly in the human. He’d imagined truly being both. And now Danny found he was. The life he wanted was here, in the life he was building.

Danny unlocked his phone again, taking the image of Fenton and Phantom side by side. “We’ve come so far.” His eyes softened, full of awe and gratitude. “I said it before, in that dream. I’m happy I was both of you. And thank you for working to grow into who I am now.” 

In his lab, Blobby mewed, head jerking up at something in the sky. The half ghost looked, eyes widening. A shooting star, streaming across the vibrantly deep sky. 

His core fluttered in time with his heart, swelling with hope. Danny smiled. “Here’s to whatever comes next.”

Note: Thank you all for reading! Whether you joined me at the beginning back in 2019, you started following only recently, or you're binging at some point in the future, I appreciate you! I would never have written this story, let alone finished it, without all the kind comments on here and fanfiction.net, Tumblr reblogs and rambles in the tags, and DMs on Tumblr and Discord. If you ever talked to me about this story, offered your support and encouragement, I am so thankful to you. I am so thankful for the friendships I've found through this fic and for how much I've grown as a writer.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on this chapter and the story as a whole. I love and appreciate you all!

[room-surprise]

Dungeon Meshi Season 1, Ep 4 Review

Spoilers below the cut! I have a lot of thoughts on this one so it's a bit long.

This is a slower episode, but I expected it to be. I worry that people will find this episode boring because there's not as much action or comedy as some of the other episodes, and what is here tends to be a lot more subtle, but this is honestly one of THE most important episodes of early Dungeon Meshi.

The pacing of this episode was great, Trigger allowed themselves to slow down and take the material more seriously when it was needed, and I really appreciate that.

Senshi and his connection to the dungeon, as always, makes me want to cry. Kui's focus on respect for the people who do the thankless, denigrated jobs in society like picking vegetables, cooking, and cleaning toilets always gets to me.

Senshi expressing the importance of being part of the ecosystem of the dungeon, and the balance of the world, protecting people not by killing monsters but by keeping the environment in check is so important to the core of Dungeon Meshi.

That, plus the sequence where Senshi refuses using magic to light a fire, instead wanting to do it by hand is also important. Later we'll get to see how magic can excel at some things that can't be done any other way, but for now it's time to focus on Senshi.

The way the party interacts with Senshi in this episode always makes me think of elderly people in Japan who are carrying on doing things the way it's always been done, even if the young people don't appreciate it or even know that they're doing it. The generational gap is a big issue in Japan, since there's so few young people and so many seniors…

It especially makes me think of the senior citizens that volunteered to go clean up the Fukushima nuclear disaster because they didn't want young people with their whole lives ahead of them to have to do it. I remember there was also an old man that took it upon himself to take care of the animals that had been left behind in the exclusion zone, Senshi's story reminds me a lot of him.

THE ANIMATION

The animation wasn't particularly exciting, but for the most part did what it needed to do. The only quibbles I have are minor ones:

There's a black-haired elf in the background of the tavern scene that had darker skin in the manga, and they made her lighter here. She's a recurring background character so I'm not super happy that they changed her skintone, since Dungeon Meshi goes out of it's way to include people of varied skin tones in crowd scenes, but I get that it was probably just to make the composition work. It still sucks though.

Most of the orcs look fine, but there were a pair of lady orcs that had purple-ish and green-ish fur that I thought looked a bit unnatural, compared to the earth tones of all the other orcs. I know Kui leans away from the unnatural skin tones thing (no blue elves, no green orcs) so I wasn't a fan of this, but it was subtle enough that I can forgive it.

I could tell the animators didn't really understand how the nose/snout/jaw situation of the orcs works, and as a result they were animating the orcs like normal human anime faces with a weird blob in the middle for a nose, instead of upturned noses that are part of a snout/mandible that effects the way the face works.

Obviously the animators are more familiar with how to draw standard human faces, and they had to cut costs on this episode by keeping the animation simple, but I didn't like how flat it all looked. Kui's solid construction (from later in the manga) is really missed here.

DUB vs SUB

The subtitles were passable, though at one point they called the dungeon lord the "lunatic magician" which gave me Yen Press war flashbacks. Thankfully the dub didn't do the same thing. Honestly I wouldn't even mind if they switch up what people call the dungeon lord anyway, since it's not like "mad magician" or "mad sorcerer" is a name or title. One of the things I've always hated about "Lunatic Magician" is the way it was used constantly, even in situations where it felt unnaturally stilted, like they had a brand trademark to maintain. The Lunatic Magician™! Now with 50% more lunacy!

As for the dub… The performances were all fine, and there weren't any glaring out of place modernisms, however I'm on the fence about what they decided to do with the orc leader, Zon.

Race and the clash between different groups is a major part of Dungeon Meshi, and this is the chapter that introduces the idea that the orcs are people and not subhuman monsters. It also introduces the idea that the orcs are a displaced ethnic group that lives in the dungeon because other races have chased them from the surface.

Imari Williams does a great job with his performance as Zon, and I appreciate that BangZoom got a person of color to play a character that's meant to be a minority. I hope that they'll continue this trend and that his sister Leed will also be voiced by a person of color, and that she'll speak in a dialect that matches Zon's.

HOWEVER… while Williams' performance is great, I'm not sure how I feel about the script.

Zon and the other orcs' dialog in the dub sounds like it's either borrowing from African American Vernacular English (AAVE), or it is broken English "caveman-speak" that orcs often use in other media.

I'm not familiar enough with AAVE to know if they're using it correctly, only familiar enough to identify that they are using some of the grammatical structures of it. The fact that they hired a black voice actor to deliver those lines makes me think it was an intentional choice.

I'd love to hear opinions from people who are more familiar with the subject. Are the orcs speaking broken English or are they following the grammatical rules of AAVE? How consistent is BangZoom's script in following those grammar rules?

In the original Japanese and in the manga, as far as I can tell the orcs just speak Japanese the same way as all the other characters, so there is no verbal signal of their cultural difference. This is important because this part of the story is all about telling us that the orcs are equal to the other characters.

So choosing to alter the way they speak for the dub is a creative choice that is attempting to communicate something to the English audience, though I am not sure if BangZoom is doing it effectively, or if they are communicating what they intend to communicate.

I do think that it's an interesting choice that they made, I wasn't expecting them to do it, and so I hope they're doing it deliberately, carefully and with sensitivity.

I wonder what kind of accents, if any, the orcs may have been given in other language dubs? If you listened to a different dub let me know! (Also, next week we get to see regular-sized Kabru instead of just Giant Kabru, I'm so excited.)

[starlightshore]

OH GREAT ONE! Please. . . Can you please give us a tutorial on how to make Pixel Character sprites on Asepeite? You do them so beautifully. . . *Sheds a tear*

please don't call me "oh great one" even as a joke; don't put me on a pedestal. I'm just Some Guy.

anyway there are plenty of cool tutorials on youtube, just search stuff like "pixel art tutorial" or "pixel grass" or "pixel trees" for specifics

but what i'd recommend as my top rule: experiment! make more art! Have fun! just make things and you'll naturally improve

but past that, for some more tangible advice:

look into stylization. pixel art NEEDS clarity and simple shapes to work. you can achieve this by thinking of the shapes (thus the importance of stylization) and by doing simple math or consistent "scales" of going down or up in number. see how the second line goes from looong to long to short shorter then a dot vs. how the left one just does things randomly, there's no scale here. it shows purpose and confidence when you use more math-based art. see how the circle uses the scale/ math vs. this blob where i purposefully didn't?

keep the linework clean:

aesprite has a feature called "pixel perfect" which prevents jaggies, which are these clumps of pixels as you can see on the right.

keep the art consitant. don't use blur effects or gradients, i'd say that's more so for VERY rare circumstances and should only be approached from a more experienced hand. (ie, bigger background pieces and used sparingly)

how you draw the shapes/angles matters a lot as well.

left, i kept things more "blocky" and less "sharp" I also simplified the shape (note the fur on the side of the legs) is more clumped together while the other has a larger emphasis on separating them and making them sharper. overall, the right one is a lot more complex which I don't want for a character who is moving a lot, and seen from a smaller size. its a SMALL cartoon! i want it to be clear to the viewer without any details to muddy things.

note how by making the sideburn fluff more jagged removes some of the room for the white fur. you only see ONE shaded white/blue pixel on the left, which adds more contrast and emphasizes that spot. there's less of a clear distinction between he had and the body.

here's the silhouettes, you cans see how the body on the left is more clear in what part is what. Tail, ear, head, body and legs. the other one, sure, i know what those are, but its less distinct.

add "weight" to the shapes. have one side of the shape be bigger in proportion. note how the head has a wider bottom than the top, even from the jaw to the tip of the head. the overall body is bigger than the head as well.

symmetry is important and your life savior in pixel art. but not EVERYTHING should be symmetrical. look at the head stripe, mouth, chest fluff, and handkerchief. have one side favored or the other and not a perfect head-on position creates this asymmetry as well a more "organic" view of the character. (typically you want to avoid direct head-on looks unless it's for 3d modeling or character reference sheets, otherwise your character won't feel as "alive." it's not natural to stand perfectly 1-1 facing the camera perfectly)

note on legs and bodies: you can't always get an accurate symmetry based on the head size. depending on if it's an odd or even number of pixels wide, it'll affect how the body becomes symmetrical to it. in this case, there's a pixel difference that prevents a gap. note how the middle looks like a SUPER thick line because there's no room for a single pixel line. my solution was to have her favor one leg over the other, which works nicely as it adds a more weighted interest to the right leg while her bangs favor the left, creating balance. toby's solution to this problem was to give the humans one wider leg and it haunts me.

another example of this is toriel

toriel's side mouth would be fine if it was a consistent choice and other characters did it (sonic is famous for this stylistic choice) but because she doesn't even match her family regarding this, it stands out and confuses people. i originally, and many people I've met have thought this was her nose. EVEN THO you can see her mouth open when speaking in-game.

btw even tho this also haunts me, i don't mind it as much cause i know this is a result of early game development inconstancies born from inexperience. its a cute quirk honestly, even if it was an easy fix. i actually ADMIRE that toby doesn't go and retroactively fix things, and instead prioritizes making new things with the information of how to do better now. its very easy and exhausting to go back and fix things rather than move on. mad respect for that.

[kogarashi-art]

It's the last previews for Falling Into Darkness!

Important note before I go into some details on the pictures: I will, in general, not be doing this for other fanfics I post. The main reason I did this series of illustrations was as something of a treat for finally crossposting this 10-20-year-old story to my AO3 account. I don't really plan to draw a ton of illustrations for other fics I do.

That being said, I may do occasional images that will be posted with future stories on AO3 (I have a quick one for the first chapter of the next fic I plan on posting, for one), and if I do other fanart, related to a fic or not, I still plan to post art here.

But I'm glad for all the kind comments and everyone enjoying this series of illustrations with me. :D You guys are awesome.

With that, description-stuff (including more behind-the-scenes than usual) below the cut. 'Tis long; be forewarned.

First up, arguably the easiest illustration to do in the whole set. It's a silhouette, so the foreground wasn't really an issue (other than trying to get the edge glow just right, and I still don't think I quite managed but I'm definitely telling myself not to mess with it any further). The background was already painted for the second illustration in the whole set:

I just fixed up the paths and the treetops and added a little lookout stand to the building on the right, now that Sonic and Sally weren't blocking those spots. After all, it's supposed to be the same view anyway, so I figured I'd make it easy on myself and not have to completely repaint the scene.

The second image employs some little cheats here and there. Here's the original sketch from my sketchbook for comparison:

Very loose, lacking detail. Straight lines are more like suggestions. The robots are spiky blobs. I have a literal note next to a stick figure and a hollow shape telling me to get some references. There's the barest hint of the alcoves the robots are standing in.

I didn't show this level of behind-the-scenes off with other illustrations in this series (though I suppose if anyone's ever interested, I could do a process post about how I worked on these), but one of the first things I did with this series of illustrations was sift through the roughly fifty individual sketches I'd drawn to illustrate various parts of the story (not counting redraws of portions), ranging from vague shapes to much more detailed drawings, to narrow it down to the ones I was actually going to finish for this project. I ended up with 27 total images, including the two I'm previewing today, focusing on having at least one but no more than three images per chapter.

Once I'd determined which sketches, like the above, were going to become a finished piece, I then went through each and every one of them in Photoshop with a sketch pencil brush and filled out the sketches to a point where I could reliably ink them. That meant things like swapping out figures that didn't work with redraws of them or making size adjustments, like so:

The first image is the second illustration, and you can see I redid Sonic because his initial pose didn't work. The redraw was actually a pose of him I did to draw his post-Mobianization robotic elements from the end of the story, but the stance was actually good for what I needed, so I Photoshopped it in and then sketched the rest of the replacement drawing digitally. The second image is Sally watching Knuckles walk away, and you can see that I changed her left arm, and also reproportioned her body prior to inking (bigger head, smaller body).

And for pieces like the final one in this illustration series, I sketched in all the details that were missing from the initial sketch (which, as I said, was pretty barebones; in my defense, it was the last one I drew, and by that point I was pretty tired of drawing robot hedgehogs so Sonic was something of a stick figure in most of the last chapters' sketches).

And here's where one of the cheats comes into play. I drew one robot hedgehog. Specifically the one you see the most of, near the tip of Robotnik's cape by the drafting table. I drew it on its own layer in Potoshop, then copied and pasted it into all of the other holding bays, erasing parts that wouldn't be visible as I went along. I also went and found those references I needed for Robotnik and Snively and drew the two of them properly.

And then, because I much prefer physical pen-to-paper inking over digital (my tablet is not one of the fancy screen ones, and I've yet to really get comfortable digitally inking with it, despite owning it for nigh on twenty years), I colored all of the sketches red, assembled them in groups on letter-sized images, and printed them out onto cardstock (my preferred medium when I'm going to be traditionally inking). I inked them with my various inking pens (some Sakura Microns, some Faber-Castell PITT pens), scanned each sheet back into my computer, and cleaned up the lines in Photoshop (the reason for the red printout was to make it a bit smoother removing the sketch from the inked lines, though it wasn't as clean as I would've liked; oh well).

That left us with the above. Because I inked them each by hand individually, the robots don't look copy-pasted, because it was the underlying sketch that had been, not the ink work. The tables and holding bays also have straighter lines thanks to using a proper ruler for those (though I didn't concern myself too much with things like perspective and right angles), and after drawing the straight line, I went back freehand over spots to give them a bit of that hand-inked wobble.

From there it was a matter of laying down the flats in Photoshop, then shading, adding effects, etc. I like the cold yellow light I've got on the robots, and the overall shading on the yellow cape. Also that sense of satisfaction when I called this one done, because it was the last one. Huzzah.

I'll see you on Monday for the last chapter!

[hazbincalifornia]

Hazbin Episode 1 Liveblog

In order to avoid this post getting Way Too Long, I'm going to make one post for episode one, and one for episode two!

I will say, I'm kinda sad we don't have a 'proper' theme song/intro, just the little jingle :( I do get it, but ah well.

Oh my god the commercial is even better in full.

How the fuck did he get Charlie to keep the name if it was still him???

Al's so fucking offended they're making him use a camera he made it one giant middle finger. I love it.

The voices are definitely going to take a bit of adjustment. It's probably because I've rewatched the pilot a zillion times, though.

I like how Alastor didn't even look at Angel. "Never going to happen!"

Awww, Charlie's ringtone for her dad is cute.

I DO really love Keith David as Husk right away, he suits the role perfectly.

"I like being forced!" and I love you, you weird little gremlin. Hoping for some good CNC stuff with her now, tbh. She'd be fun for it.

The flat delivery of 'crack is expensive' made me wheeze out loud.

Aaaa and here we go, full animation for Happy Day!

Why... why is the 'shoving barbed wire in your hole' guy an imp. Is that, like, his job or something. Is he just an asshole?

Ooooo, that was VAGGIE singing the 'bloodthirsty and deranged?' line? More fodder for her being a fallen angel/exterminator.

'Helluva post' for the mail. Ha.

This just made me fully realize how much the cannibal colony probably considers the post-extermination like a feast day.

Awww, the music note background is a fun touch.

Something about the fact that the 'touch my parts!' guy is a completely shapeless slug-creature instead of just keeping the dick offscreen makes it funnier.

Oh, I love Adam. The fun kind of punchable prick.

The animation seems a bit... overacted? I've noticed it all along but with Vaggie in the scene where she talks about making a new commercial especially. It sort of felt like they wanted to match the pilot's very snappy energy but weren't quite sure how, so everybody makes kind of... aimless motioning instead of moving with purpose, if it makes sense? It feels more like 'moving body parts for the sake of moving things' over 'moving with intent'. It's sort of awkward and distracting. The shifting proportions don't really help, but I just know people are going to be Fucking Annoying about that when it's unfortunately part of the package of making a whole season at once by a regular animation studio.

Oh yeah, Blake's perfect for Angel, lmao. It was more of a change than I expected from the few lines we'd gotten since they sounded more like the original, but he's got the energy.

Charlie didn't know Adam ran the angel army? That seems like the kind of thing she should have known. I wonder if she was relatively sheltered growing up.

'Call me dickmaster' why do I get the feeling the Chaz fans will like him, lmfao.

Since I'm on Adam though, another little groan to myself about the lack of fat characters in the hellaverse that aren't either gross stereotypes or background characters. Adam falls into the misogynist type, (like, the 'redditor', you know the one, just sort of mixed with a sleazy rockstar) Mammon's literally Greed and a talentless abuser, the lady at the pound was gross/uncaring and ugly, and I still think the Nurse was the only one that really broke the pattern and I've seen approximately one piece of fanart or mention of her ever (despite her clearly-developed positive relationship with Barbie!) and it was porn. I'm allowed to bitch on this after people were so fucking annoying about how wanting Bee to be fat was wanting her to be a 'gross ugly blob' and then saying other people were being fatphobic for pointing out everybody's skinny. Somehow. Anyway.

Well, at least they got the vagina joke out of the way early.

I love how his deal isn't for anything that would genuinely screw Vaggie over, he's just pissed they want him to deal with TV.

The fact that the pilot's still 'soft canon' makes sense with how Angel just immediately starts admiring his new clothes without any surprise, since it's happened before. Also, Niffty with the Marilyn pose is cute.

Oh, I'm definitely going to like Lute. I still like my idea she used to be close to Vaggie but when Vaggie was cast down, she stuck tighter to the rules.

Adam's song is fun!

So season 1 takes place over the course of six months? Huh. I'm guessing we'll have some time skips if we only have eight episodes.

I wonder what the Heaven Embassy is for? I can't imagine it's only for meetings like that considering there's couches in the lobby and stuff. Can sinners communicate with loved ones in heaven or vice versa, maybe, just using the holograms?

Oh my god the Katie voice IS basically just Brandon's Bryce voice. Amazing.

Ohoooo? VERY curious who managed to pull off killing an exterminator, and 'can't let them catch on'... hmm.

[kozachenko]

Ok the WIP I posted a little while ago is no loner a WIP yipeeeeeee I am so tired of looking at this drawing.

Artist's Notes:

THIS DRAWING IS FINALLY DONE YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

Ok so this drawing was a WIP that I had had sitting around for a while, and so because I wanted to do a test run with the new face style I'm trying out, I decided to pick it back up again. Now you may notice that compared to the other version of the WIP, the shading is different, and that's because I had to change all of it to match the light source of the moon, which was.... not exactly fun (especially cuz I stayed up late at night to finish this which was tiring), but it was worth it because I am a lot happier with the shading now. Also, when I initially redid the shading on the white trim of her outfit, I ended up making them look like indiscreet white blobs that just looked... bad, so I had to fix that and I think it looks a lot better.

My favourite parts of this drawing have to be the face and the hair, though I'm not surprised about how much I like the hair since hair is my favourite thing to draw. Also the wolf, I really like how the wolf turned out, since I also love drawing animals from time to time. I also like how the background turned out.

Also, Enoko's design was a hit hard to get right, and I decided to add the white trim separating her shirt and skirt mainly because I didn't like how abruptly it changed in the original design. Also, for some reason her dress makes me think of 1800s-y southern/western clothes, which has given me the headcanon that Saki gave her these clothes when they first met. Makes me wanna draw the two of them together in very western styled clothes, I think it would be cute. I also changed up some of the colours on her original design to fit in more with the palette that I was going for with this piece. Also, I like how her tails turned out, mainly because when I was working on some of the sketch for this I tried to make them smaller, but they didn't look right so I just went "fuck it" and made them big and poofy. Also drawing her wolf ears was fun, I like drawing simplified wolf ears like that. Overall, I'd say I did a good job incorporating elements (like the bear trap hands, the tails, the gem) in a way that didn't feel like they were out of place in the piece (something I was concerned about with Enoko's design).

All in all, I wouldn't call this my best work, but I do like a lot of aspects of it. I've also noticed that I'm kinda getting a bit frustrated with certain parts of my style like the lighting (mainly the lighting), so I think I wanna try and branch back into that more painterly style that I started out with when I first started posting here while still mixing in some elements of my lineless style. Also, I need to get better with my colour values, mainly just for clarity since I kinda think that's where this drawing falls flat a little.

[specialmouse]

I know you just posted paragraphs but do you have more tidbits about your OCs?

I do ofc ofc.. i'll give you everything i know..

davyne and opal arent all that fleshed out tbh like idk their backstories or anything. The script is about davyne realizing no one is watching her sets anymore so she puts blood capsules in her mouth before performing and pretends to cough up blood during dont let me be misunderstood by nina simone. Davyne pretends shes dying and opal posts the video to tiktok and it goes (relatively) viral (idk if tiktok would actually allow something they thought was real blood up there but idk and idk if this would even go viral LMAO), and the next gig she has the bar is completely packed and people are filming. Then davyne does a dramatic monologue, puts two blood capsules between her teeth and bites them then spits into the crowd, and starts lipsyncing to maybe this time LMAO it’s very heavyhanded. I titled it hard pill

The script with maryam and chunxiu are from is called venture. Chunxiu is 36, mixed as fuck because it’s 200 years later but his mom values her chinese heritage so she named him that. He was born on a wealthy space station and had access to the best education. He’s quite conceited and completely unaware of it; he thinks he earned his degree because he was smart, and he is, but it’s mostly because he was rich and had connections. Maryam is from Lebanon, which technically doesn’t exist anymore but the people there carry the name on (is lebanon an exonym? I couldnt really find an answer in the brief search i just did). They are one of the recipients of the rimco intergalactic scholar awards, which is where they take up 100 kids from earth each year based on their “academic promise”; it’s really a pr thing, because no one goes to school anymore. Maryam has been in space for 9 years when the script starts.

basically they go to a planet that's made just of a gelatinous clear ocean and a beach made of glass shards, with volcanoes on the seabed. it's like, literally nothing. it's supposed to be a one and done mission, in and out. chunxiu at this point has been to 30 planets to scout for a lack of life and he's getting angry at all of this; he's a biologist, he has a phd, he's meant for more than scanning things and finding nothing! he had actually found something a few years prior, several species of cyanobacteria, and it meant he had found alien life in the universe; then rimco had the laws changed as to what constituted life and it meant that he actually hadn't. so he's incredibly salty about that. anyway chunxiu and maryam have a discussion that reveals their disparate backgrounds and it goes into the ravaging of earth that the corporations have left behind, highlighting chunxiu's (and by extension anyone rich enough to life in space's) ignorance to what the corporations are up to, and have done in the past. they go to sleep, wake up, and it cuts to the pilot sent to retrieve them doing "peer review" (lazily doing their job again)-- and out in the ocean they see this blob creature with eyes like the moon that orbits the planet, and they're like HOLY SHIT LOOK LOOK WHAT IS THAT and the pilot kills it immediately. and theyre like WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU and hes like do yall not know protocol..? oh wait i forgot they dont tell the techies shit. and walks away and theyre left there to be like ohhhh fuck. even if we find it they're killing it and we're not even important enough for them to tell us anything. and that's where it ends but i imagine they'd go on to start a revolution or something idk. havent gotten there yet

sooo about the harrisons... i named cash after cash bundren from as i lay dying by faulkner, silas and celeste were from my great-great grandparents and i named andy that because he wants to go by andrew to seem more manly but everyone still calls him andy. i might change his name to laurie/laurence for the same effect. andy is older than cash but cash was always the more masculine one, he was a massive bully but handsome enough and he got more girls and more attention than andy ever did, who was more sensitive and shy.

andy moved out of the town when he was 23 to new york to become a writer (this was in the late seventies, mind) and while he was able to find work as a journalist, he never really became a published author, and wasn't of much acclaim either. celeste was one of the prettiest girls in town growing up but she didn't have much aspiration. everyone in the town was poor but celeste was even poorer. she married cash when she was 18 and cash was 24; andy was 27 at this point. they had a series of miscarriages for five years straight until they had silas. cash had become a cadet in that time and was working his way up the police force. as soon as silas was born, cash's anger turned into abuse; physical abuse as well as alcohol. andy only came home to go to their great-aunt's funeral (used it as an excuse to get out of doing a pop culture piece he found distasteful; i'll figure out what it would be in 1989 with some google searches, idk). in 1997 cash shoots himself in the head in their garage after a drunken bender, but not before penning a three page letter to andy. the content of the letter is nonsense, blaming everyone in his life for his struggles, saying they (celeste, his coworkers, silas, the child celeste is pregnant with (that's not actually his), the dogs) are of the devil, saying he's fighting against children of satan, etc. andy, who is now in his 40s, hasn't had a major relationship in 10 years and is rather worse for wear. he receives the letter, and uses it as an excuse to visit celeste, who is now widowed. he doesn't see this as him taking his husband's widow, but rather him saving her from a life of single motherhood. the script is celeste and andy talking to each other and it becoming increasingly clear what andy's motives are. the conversation gets more and more tense as his not-so-pure intentions are laid bare to the grieving, over-worked celeste, and she throws him out. as andy drives away, he sees a kid beating up another child in the front lawn of the neighbor's. the kid leaves the other on the ground and makes eye contact with andy as he's come to a stop. it is clear (through dialogue from earlier in the script) that this is silas, and that his father's ways have already been instilled in him. end of script!

[chaifootsteps]

I was just watching the Ember McClain character spotlight for Nickelodeon All Star Brawl 2, and I came to a bit of a realization. Danny Phantom and Hazbin Hotel are basically following a similar pattern for me.

Both won me over immediately with their art style and afterlife concepts. Both had potential that was hinted at early on, that I would have loved to see explored, that were squandered later (Danny Phantom going from "ghosts are spirits of the dead" in Season 1 to "ghosts are just monsters" in Season 3, Hazbin seeming more episodic and "wacky hijinks" than the serialized character study the pilot implied).

Both had their pitch bibles revealed later that seemed like exactly the kind of thing that I would have loved to pieces (DP having te original plan of Danny's parents being interested in ghosts to learn from the dead, Hazbin having character growth with an early Extermination as a looming threat), but the full show steered away from utilizing those concepts (yes Hazbin isn't out yet, but the confirmed episode titles we know are completely different from the ones in the pitch bible so we can assume those were all scrapped, and Helluva's writing with Adam being involved worries me for Hazbin since Adam wrote for that too). Both shows are created by people who did some shady things, look down on others who aren't at their level, and can't take criticism.

And that really, really hurts.

I will give Butch Hartman this though— at the very least, his character designs didn't all blend in with the background. True, a lot of ghost battles in the show took place on Earth, but a fair few took place in the Ghost Zone, which is entirely green with a bit of purple here and there. And while quite a few of those Purgatory-bound ghosts have green on them, the only characters that are nearly entirely green are the Ectopuses, who are background threats.

In the main ghosts we see, there's tons of variety. Technus has green skin but his white hair and gray coat balance it out. Lunch Lady and Desiree are similar. Skulker has has green hair but his skin and armor are blue (his tiny blob form is green but that's only seen in his first appearance). Heck, a good number of ghosts (Ember, Sydney, Ghostwriter, Walker, Spectra) don't have any green on them at all except for their eyes (which reminds me of a previous anon saying the "different colors = different rings" would work better in Helluva if eye color alone was an indicator of which ring they were from). The Box Ghost doesn't even have a speck of green on him anywhere.

Whereas with Hazbin, every single main character has red prominently in their design.

At this point when it comes to animated shows involving the afterlife, I'm taking a "fine, I'll do it myself" approach and pitching my own work, because every afterlife cartoon I've encountered (can't say afterlife show because The Good Place exists and is great) seems to be disappointing me in the "squandered potential when it comes to the afterlife, exploring morality, and existential themes" department.

I'll admit that half of this is lost on me because I never watched Danny Phantom, but I definitely get what you're saying. It's hard to watch something you loved fly close to the mark, miss, and crash into flames.

It's true. Sometimes you've just got to do it yourself.