#they can get themselves a different one. with paint or foil or something. kinda like you can do that with cars

[deltastorm101]

“do the face, do the face! :D”

@subjectsix ‘s K.Y.E. and Raster from her original story Botan City!

[mogwaei]

Wolf Statues and the Tower of Bone tinfoil!

A theory about wolf statues crossed my dash again which...got me thinking along a somewhat separate train of thought of all the different places we find them. I’ve seen the posts about the Dales/Exalted Plains, but not much about somewhere like Emprise du Lion. I’m not sure if this has already been talked about, but I’ve been searching and can’t find any posts elsewhere.

This is going to be a long and rambling post about Wolf statues and Emprise du Lion, so a two in one theory 😂. I’ve never actually written a meta and I generally hoard my theories and write them in fic...because I’m not good at writing anything that isn’t in story format. You’ve been warned lol

First, some really long and tangential exposition about statues.

There are a ton of Wolf statues across the game. We’ve got a whole pack of them across the Exalted Plains watching over various locations. But they’re also located in a lot of the elven temples we run across as well. @serial-chillr​ and I were talking about the possibility that, assuming the Wolves are all Fen’Harel statues (unless the ones in the Dales are Emerald Knight wolves, but I kinda doubt that), then what is the likelihood of Solas himself having built these statues?

We know from Solas himself that elvhen nobility used to mark their slaves to honour the ‘god’ that they subscribed to. Sooo, why wouldn’t the more zealous ones build great big monuments in addition to marking their slaves?

What I fail to see mentioned in a lot of fics and theories is much mention of these nobles or the politics of Elvhenan. I’m sure that higher ranking elves probably owned land within Evanuris territory, and they probably needed permission before doing so, but I’ll bet that if a kiss-ass noble came up to one of the gods asking to build a pretty statue (hoping for bonus points) the narcissistic bastard god was probably like “You want to build a statue of moi? BUT OF COURSE!!!” and maybe gave the noble a pat on the head and a cookie for kissing butt.

For posterity:

That being said, because I can’t help but mention my own worldbuilding fic, The Guardian, I’m assuming the statues were built of Fen’Harel, and while Solas might not have really approved (or maybe wasn’t even able to stop them from being constructed ‘nu stop I’m not a godddd‘) he would instead have found a way to use them to his advantage. I write that he begins placing statues where allies (both agents and freed slaves) can find them and follow them back to safe places marked for the Rebellion. I go into slightly more detail regarding these special wolves (how he would get statues into the temples/palaces of the Evanuris and how to distinguish them from regular ones) in a plot involving infiltration of a compound in Chapters 111-120. I can’t give away all my secrets!

Anyway, moving onto statues in specific locations:

The one in Emprise du Lion

hewwoh big boi

What I find fascinating about this one specifically is that it’s also located in the same region as Suledin Keep (which also has wolfies inside of it ofc). Because of the landmarks codex in Emprise I’m hedging that this land used to belong to Elgar’nan. Look at Pools of the Sun for reference - THAT’S ALL I GOT FOR NOW

Anyhow, floundering, but my attention was next drawn to the Tower of Bone

In this story, a blood mage summoned a greater pride demon,  who then possessed the entire tower. When the mage died, his sons were  unable to control the demon, so they commissioned eight monstrous iron  chains intended to hold it. The touch of the cold iron chain is the only  thing holding the stone abomination in place. Should they break, the  tower will pull itself off its foundations and walk, destroying  everything in its path.

I know that they found human bones in the tower, but bear with me. I’m tinfoiling hard and trying to read deeper and tie it all together but I’m just a humble apostate hobo.

Anyway, some blood mage summoned a greater pride demon who in turn possesses the tower - of the companions, Solas has the Tower tarot card. The next sequence in the story, the sons bind the tower with 8 chains. The only mention I could find of the number 8 is in the Draconis codex where it mentions there being a possible 8th Old God being stricken from records.

Should all the chains break, the Tower will destroy everything in its path.

The Tower tarot, as we’ve seen in a hundred other tin foils, is commonly interpreted as meaning danger, crisis, destruction, and liberation. It is also associated with sudden unforseen change.  WHICH ISN’T NECESSARILY A BAD THING! (Look, despite everything, I’m hanging to that thread of hope that Solas will have a good ending).

So, again, I’m probably totally wrong but the symbolism here has some pretty interesting potential if it is referring at all to Solas and the Evanuris.

Recap:

>random thought (because I’m totally writing this on the fly) but IF the 8 chains  symbolise something more, then maybe it’s possible that the 8th ‘God’ could be the Sun that is briefly mentioned in elven legend (referring to the codex I mentioned above). And the Sun could be symbolism for yet another thing we aren’t aware of. Whether that’s some sort of dragon or spirit or entity we haven’t been introduced to in game (yet).

>The chains themselves could also be representative of holding back...again, something we don’t know. Blight? Something worse? (thinking about the Dread Wolf Rises mural and the seals, but there are only 7 there. Maybe the 8th is the thing they’re holding prisoner if it isn’t free?) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

>While I’m down this rabbit hole, maybe the 8th is part of this: “A final eluvian is situated in a peaceful bolt-hole where Solas has painted murals. Fen’Harel was here and wanted to make sure nobody ever found what the other gods were doing.” - this can be found in the game files under bolt_hole (in other words, maybe it has to do with whatever they found?)

>A big ass, greater Pride demon (more Sooooolllasss symbolism? looking at Tevinter Nights and some other cool theories on Dread Wolf - Pride demon connections)

>Reoccuring tower symbolism (does the little wolf Rook that Mark Darrah tweeted a while back count?)

>Breaking chains (liberation?)

>ALSO THE TOWER IS COVERED IN RED LYRIUM (AAAAAAAH)

>Someone’s gonna go wreak havoc when a Specific Thing Happens (*cough* Solas? *cough*)

I realise I flew off the handles here and I’m not sure if anyone is going to even be able to follow this tangent 😂

Anyway, that’s it for now until I think of something else. If you’re into a long winded fic of worldbuilding and lore weaving, check out The Guardian where I do a lot better job of putting my thoughts into words. I swear I’m not usually this scatterbrained and I spend a LOT of time weaving theories...that I then hoard like Smeagol. :3

As a closing message, I’d like to include this shot of my dear friend @schoute​ ‘s Piper Lavellan who doesn't know where the fuck she is.

Thanks for reading and I apologise if you’ve lost any braincells in this thought spaghetti orz

[singingcookie]

Idk if it's okay to ask multiple things in one ask? If not, you can just pick one/some of these (I'll leave the choice up to you~): 001 - bnha | 002 - momojirou, izuocha | 003 - kaminari, hawks, tsuyu, jirou, uraraka, shigaraki, midoriya

Yeah that’s totally fine!! Though someone else did send me Izuocha (link) and bnha (link) in other asks, but I shall answer the rest here!! I’m gonna put it under a cut so it doesn’t take a million years to scroll past lol

I think I’m gonna do the characters you sent besides Uraraka and Deku, mostly because I talk about them all the time anyways. And the odds of someone else sending me those two are fairly high so on we go!! 

To kick things off, Momojirou!

002 | send me a ship and I will tell you:

when or if I started shipping it.

Y’know, I’m not really sure? It wasn’t anything in canon. I think it was just a piece of fanart that got me to consider it and I was like “hmmmm you have my attention…” about it afterwards lol

my thoughts:

I think they’re a really cute prospect! We already know that Momo’s helped Kyouka with studying for the final exams, and then Hori said in the Ultra Archive book that just came out that they’re sharing music with one another and they’re really close friends so!! I’d be more than down with this ship lol

What makes me happy about them:

They’re so different, but they’re eager to learn more about each other! That’s always something really cute…!

What makes me sad about them:

They’re not a very popular ship :/ I see a lot of fanart, but not much in the way of fics unless they’re just there like in the background primarily.

Things done in fanfic that annoys me:

They’re usually a background ship lmao

Things I look for in fanfic:

Give me them as the main focus and show me two girls who care about each other and I’m very sold lol

My kinks:

Errrr I really don’t have any lol

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other:

For Momo I think AwaseMomo is cute, so’s the concept of IidaMomo and maybe TodoMomo if you give me good build up. For Jirou I’d say I’d be down with Kamijirou and also no one talks about it but like…guys we’re all sleeping on Minajirou…

My happily ever after for them:

They get to be cute girlfriends during off time from Hero work. Jirou also writes rock music in her free time, and Momo loves get togethers to invite all of their friends over and listen to Jirou play.

Okay on to the people questions!!

003 | Give me a character & I will tell you

First and foremost, Kaminari!

How I feel about this character:

I really like Kaminari! He’s a huge goofball but he also really cares about his friends. And while he may not have the highest grades in the class, he seems to be really good at reading people! 

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

Kamijirou, ShinKami, KamiMina, KamiKiri… I’d be down with any of those tbh.

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

KamiSero. Bros man. Bros for life 

My unpopular opinion about this character:

I don’t think he’s quite as dumb as some parts of the fandom can portray him as though I think his classmates do over exaggerate it themselves similar to how fandom does

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

Mostly I just hope we get him in more serious situations as the story continues? The only time we’ve seen him really get serious was during the license exam. And I just think it’d be nice to see him under a more serious kind of pressure now that he has better means of controlling his quirk.

My OTP:

Kaminari/Wheeeey

My OT3:

I can’t even think of a solid OT3 here that I could really get behind so idk.

Next up we got Hawks!

How I feel about this character:

Lemme tell you, I was not expecting to love Hawks as much as I do? He’s not really one of my top 5 or anything but any time he shows up I’m like “Hey!!! It’s mah boy!!!” He’s great, love him. Terrified for him also considering how many Icarus parallels we’ve gotten hahahahaha

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

I think the concept of Huyumi is neat?

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

EndHawks are a solid brotp from how the manga’s going rn. Also Tokoyami and Hawks. And my OC Hikaru and Hawks I mean what.

My unpopular opinion about this character:

I’m not really sure tbh. Maybe just that I don’t think he’s gonna turn on the heroes for real? I know that’s been a thing like “how do we know what side he’s really on?” But I think the latest chapter kinda helps kick that away idk

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

*banging pots and pans together* DEEPEN THAT BACK STORY GIVE ME MORE INFO DAMMIT

My OTP:

Hawks/Living

My OT3:

Again I…have no idea lmao

Alright now we go on to Tsuyu!!

How I feel about this character:

Tsuyu is a good frog. I really enjoy her character and her overall just chill kind of nature I guess? But I also love that she’s still willing to stand up for her convictions! Like, saying what she did in the hospital took a lot guts! And then telling the rescue group how much knowing they went through with it hurt her… She’s a brave girl who stands up for what she believes in. She’s got a good head on her shoulders for sure!

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

Habuko/Tsuyu, Tsuchako… It occcurs to me that I must headcanon her as wlw because I can’t really imagine her with any of the dudes.

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

TokoTsuyu and MidoTsu! I love the way she interacts with both boys and how easily they work together and she gets along with them!

My unpopular opinion about this character:

Idk I think it reads really weird when people write her as saying “kero” or “ribbit” every single sentence. Like, she does say it often enough but not like every sentence. I’m not sure outside of that what an unpopular opinion would even be for her.

Actually also consider…transgirl Tsuyu. Thank you for your consideration.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

I’d like to see her struggles a little more? She’s been a part of a couple of arcs but it’s mostly just with her just kinda being there. We don’t see her struggling like Ochako does following Overhaul. The most struggle we got was the hospital and follow up scene. It would be nice to expand on that for her character I think. Give us a better grasp on her by knowing how she goes through something hard.

Maybe also show us something with her family too!

My OTP:

Habuko/Tsuyu by a mile!

My OT3:

I can’t really think of one, but I think that’s just cause I only have the two ships and I feel weird pushing that into an OT3 when Habuko and Ochako don’t know each other lol

Then we have Jirou!!

How I feel about this character:

Jirou’s kind of a nice change from a lot of the other girls in Class A. The rest are pretty bubbly or upbeat while Jirou’s kind of lowkey and sarcastic? She’s a good change of pace while also being really nice to bounce said characters off of. I also like seeing her love of music. And the fact that while it’s something she really does love she’s not really looking to make a career out of it? Because sometimes you want your hobbies and job separate so that’s cool to see too.

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

Oh gosh okay um Momojirou, Kamijirou, KoudaJirou and Minajirou. These are all good and I will stand by it lol

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

Bakujirou. Listen…the cultural festival and then the joint training put this friendship in my heart and I’m so about it! But also I love her friendships with all the people in the ships I mentioned…

My unpopular opinion about this character:

Idk if this is unpopular but I don’t think she’s very uppity about music taste? I think Jirou’s really open to a wide variety of music but she tends to enjoy rock the most. It’s part of why she’s learned to play so many instruments, I think!

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

Give me a moment where she gets to be at the core of something heroic. We almost got a glimpse of that in the USJ attack. But then she was unconscious for the training camp, she wasn’t part of Overhaul… She did get focus in the cultural festival but that was about the music, more than any like hero mission or anything…

My OTP:

Jirou/Music

I’m sorry I know a lot of these OTPs sound like jokes but it’s mostly because there isn’t like one of the romantic ships that super outweighs the others for me.

My OT3:

*shrugs*

And last but certainly not least: Shigaraki!! BE FOREWARNED LOTS AND LOTS OF SPOILERS AHEAD!!

How I feel about this character:

Shigaraki is a poor bastard that I love to hate. He’s a really complex character as we’ve been shown since the villain arc. His backstory is absolutely tragic. And Hori keeps painting for us these parallels to Deku but ultimately they function more as foils. Putting them in similar situations only to highlight the difference the two characters have with one another.

I can’t wait to see what else Hori has in story regarding him!

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

Hmmm, I’m not really sure I have a ship for him really? I think it’s mostly just that I haven’t considered it, so I don’t really have any thoughts regarding that.

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

His whole relationship to the League is...actually really sweet? It’s nice that they’ve all found this little home and camaraderie with one another.

My unpopular opinion about this character:

I don’t really think he’s all that bad? Like I know there’s a lot that don’t think he’s very interesting or what have you, but I really find his character fascinating and I can’t wait to see how much more he grows outside of AfO’s influence.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

I really like the idea of some of his memories being faked by AfO or else that AfO is the one that gave him his quirk in the first place. It just makes the most sense to me considering how his quirk started out so strong right at the beginning when all the other quirks we’ve seen don’t start off immediately strong unless they’re a quirk with a stockpile effect (e.g. OfA and Eri’s Rewind).

My OTP:

Shigaraki/Medication for his skin condition :

My OT3:

I don’t even have any ships how would I do an OT3 lmao

[vitalpen]

A criticism of Persona 5

So I’m gonna preface this diatribe with three disclaimers:

First off is going to be the SPOILER WARNING.  This post spoils the game all over the place as it needs to given the nature of the discussion.  That’s why the read more is there.

Second, this post is long.  Coming in at a lover 2000 words.  So if you ready this, get ready for an essay.

Third: I love Persona 5.  I played through it twice, did every social link, filled out the compendium, and beat the secret boss.  It is a fantastic game with a fantastic story, loveable characters, beautiful art, and menus stylish enough to have their own fashion show.  

That being said, there are things that it does with each character that I can’t help but sigh at in frustration.  There are a few running themes for all of these that I’ll expand on at the end.

A lot of the issues come down to how a character is treated after their “important thing” is resolved. I’m gonna run down them in order of people entering your party.

Starting off, there’s Mona.  Leaving behind how happy I am that he was not just another Teddy, there are points with Mona that make him out to be such a whiny little brat.  Mainly, the section where he leaves the party because he thinks they’re getting too greedy.  Rather than try to get them back on track, he drops them after one bad conversation with mostly just Ryuji (the rest of the party is pretty unclear on where they stand), thus leaving them with no supervision when they seem to need it the most.  There’s also the whole constant insulting of Ryuji to the point where it’s eyeroll-inducing and the fact that backstory wise, he does end up being part way to a rehash of Teddy.  

Actually, speaking of Mona insulting Ryuji, man that guy never gets a break.  Despite the fact that he has a compelling backstory and motivation, after the first palace, he starts to lean pretty heavily toward the “punching bag” type of joke character.  He’s the one that everyone (especially Mona) calls an idiot, he’s the butt of nearly all the slapstick, and he’s the one that gets harassed by the gay stereotypes with some really uncomfortable cutting to black (and that one’s an large issue all on its own).  At the point Mona leaves (with poor justification) Ryuji, understandably, doesn’t want him back and is treated like the bad guy for it.  Even when you aretrying to get him back, suddenly Ryuji is uncharacterisitically cold toward him.  Even near the end of the game, when Ryuji does something incredibly brave and selfless, seeming to sacrifice his life, the game completely undermines it by having the girls beat the ever loving shit out of him when he makes the mistake of... surviving, I guess.

Now, Ann, aside from the way they pronounce her name.  She is a straight up different character in her Social Link than she is in the main story (which is actually connected to another problem that we’ll get into later).  In the story she is typically caring, usually level-headed, if easily annoyed, and loves sweets, whereas her Social Link turns her into little more than a ditzy blond with a penchant for competition that we don’t see anywhere in the main story.  It creates this disconnectio between the two stories that’s really hard to reconcile.

Yusuke is window dressing.  He does nothing substantial for the main plot after the second palace is done.  The majority of his unique contributions could be summed up with deadpan, straight-faced joke moments (that are legitimately amazing every time they show up), dialogue that any of the characters could have said, and saying “yeah, that’s right” in the “every party member gets to say something” moments.

Makoto’s issue involves another theme that we’ll expand on later.  Her relationship with her sister is incredibly unhealthy and never realistically addressed.  It gets to point where she’s actually afraid of her.  It isn’t helped when the rest of the party guilt trips her into installing a virus on her sister’s computer (one of the few moments that I think is legitimately bad in this game). How is this resolved?  Once you do the palace it’s all just gone, despite you not stealing Sae’s treasure.  No counseling, no baggage, no promises to do better, not believable progression, nothing.  That’s not how that works.

Futaba has a similar issue.  After her palace, she is just magically cured of her crippling social anxiety, as far as the main plot is concerned at least.  She hangs out in front of LeBlanc, plain as day, totally fine, never having any issue in the main plot with other people ever again.  No therapy, not even the slightest relapse or difficulty, no believable progression, nothing.  I repeat: that’s not how that works.

Haru... poor, poor, Haru.  She gets nothing when she should have had so much.  She’s introduced at about 3/4 of the way through the story, doesn’t get a proper awakening to her persona and reveal of her thief outfit, never gets a moment of catharsis for her father and arranged fiance treating her like an object in the real world, nor any catharsis about dealing with the emotional trauma of her losing her father in a way that is as crushing as it could ever be, and eventually just ends up kinda telling the one who killed him that it’s no big deal.  Everything about her just gets buried until you’re left with a Persona Q character, which is a game that has a serious problem with reducing complex, multifaceted characters to one-note personalities.

And then there’s Goro “I have daddy issues disguised as an interesting take on personal justice” Akechi.  A character that was waaaaaaaaaaay better before the heelturn.  The switch from morally aligned but methodologically opposed antagonist to mustache-twiddling, muhahahing, train-track-damsel-tying villain sucked all the depth out of him.  They had a three-dimensional character that portrayed an interesting foil in both personal beliefs and public opinion of the party.  And by the end, all of that was stripped away because you have to have a bretrayal in a Persona game, and he gets with nothing resembling a satisfying sendoff.  The fact that he has essentially disappeared from the real world is never even addressed (this is yet a third thing that we’ll get into shortly).

All of these issues culminate in three specific themes.

The first is that the Social Links feel very disconnected from the plot.  P3 escaped this because the party member Social Links were specifically tied to events in the main story and sometimes couldn’t be progressed through until certain events occurred.  P4 didn’t have this problem because the Social Links all resulted from the personal issues that came up in their dungeons with their shadows, so there is connective tissue to the events.  

But the Social Links in P5 feel so distant.  Ann’s modeling stuff, Ryuji’s track team, Yusuke’s painting, Makoto’s friend, and Haru’s arranged marriage and coffee stuff, all have nothing or very little to do with the story.  The only one who didn’t quite have this issue, is Futaba, who got the P4 treatment, complete with confronting and accepting her shadow to gain her persona.  But even that deals more with her social anxiety than her acceptance that her mother’s death wasn’t her fault but actually an assassination.  Because the Social Links, which are literally “character development as a game mechanic”, are separated from the story, it gives the feeling that they’re inconsequential.  We never see the fruits of the character’s labor as they try to better themselves.  As far the main story is concerned, they may as well have not happened.  This is especially salient if you do the Moon social link, wherein you have to teach Mishima not to let the power go to his head, only to later have your party let the power go to their heads (or Ryuji at least, like I said earlier, it’s not super clear where everyone stands during that part of the game).

The second issue is that, for a series whose core themes are based off Jungian psychology (personas and shadows), it’s really bad at handling psychological stuff.  They want to have the drama of things like:

“a character who has social anxiety and intrusive thoughts of guilt about her mother’s death that have haunted her for years” 

“one of your party members has an older sister who’s her legal guardian, but is neglectful of her duties in that role and verbally abusive of that party member, thus creating a dependent relationship that revolves around trying (and failing) to gain her sister’s approval”

“After thinking that she may have helped turn her father into a better person who might love her as a daughter rather than an asset, in mid-celebration, a girl sees her father die on live TV and she may have been the cause of it”

But they aren’t prepared for the fallout that comes with those kind of elements.  Social anxiety severe enough to keep you in your room is typically going to take more than just support from friends to rehabilitate from.  Sae’s abusive tendencies toward her sister are explained by her palace, but they are not excused by it.  The palace’s are physical manifestations of the point where someone can justify anything to themselves, not a mind control device.  Nothing about Sae’s resentment toward her sister (that is doing everything she can not to be a burden) is given any kind of proper follow up.  It needed more addressing than the NOTHING it was given.  And don’t get me started on the rush job that was Haru.  

Her father is killed in gruesome fashion, eyes literally rolling back into his head and leaking blood, after she thought she had saved him from his own cruelty, and for a period of weeks, it seems a lot like it’s her fault.  She is left orphaned, and being pulled every which way by members of her father’s company in the void of power that’s left behind, once again turned back into an asset just after she thought she had escaped that.  This should have been the mother of all gut punches.  This should have been something that took her out of the game reminiscent of Shinji from P3.  This should have given her a hate boner for Akechi twice the size of Aegis’s for Ryoji.  This ruined her life just at the precipice of it getting better.  In one fell swoop, victory was ripped from her and replaced with bitter defeat and loss.  There was so much set up for her to have a character arc.  But we never see her react to it.  No crying, no depression, just back to her sweet, gardening self.  To top it all off, like a month later, she forgives the person who killed him and betrayed your party in a passing comment during one of those “every party member gets to say something” moments.  This is the pinnacle of emotional blue balls.

(Edit: @lightybulb brought it to my attention that Haru doesn’t actually forgive Akechi.  She, in fact, specifically says that she can never forgive him.  While it’s swept under the rug, I totally misremembered on that one.  My bad.)

Pretty much all of this fits into the third main issue that Persona 5′s narrative has.  It has a bad habit of not sticking the landing or following up afterward.  Which sucks for stuff like Akechi, where he was built up the entire game, and personal traumas like Haru, Futaba, or Makoto.  It sucks when it takes away a lot of the character’s depth like it did with Yusuke.  It sucks when the villain backstory and plan is literally just told to you in an exposition the likes of which I haven’t seen in years.  

This is not to say it never sticks the landing, as it very often does (more so in the first half of the game in my opinion), but there are a lot of key points where plot threads just kinda peter off into nothing or are wrapped up way too conveniently with a little bow on top.  

There are ways to fix these issues.

You wanna connect the Social Links to the main plot?  Lock ranks of party member Social Links behind story events.  This intrinsically ties the personal growth to the main plot and lets them talk about story events.  Events from the story can be used to kick of a conversation that moves it to the next level or draws a parallel to the personal situation they’re dealing with.

You wanna have satisfying and believable treatment of psychological issues?  Understand that they are not just something you deal with in a few days or weeks.  Understand that “the power of friendship” (Copyright Anime 1962, please support the official release) is not a substitute for counseling or medication.  Understand that the road to recovery is long, arduous, and sometimes loops back on itself.  It’s anything but a straight line.

There is no set remedy for sticking the landing and following up other than a pretty general good writing tip: don’t leave plot threads hanging and don’t introduce plot threads you don’t have adequate room to include.

Now as previously stated, I love Persona 5 and nothing I’ve said here takes away from that fact.  But I also want to see the things I love do even better for themselves.  That’s kinda the point of this post.

That’s pretty much all I got for this.  If you agree or disagree, feel free to add your own arguments to this, I’m always down for a conversation.  Cheers.

[ironbloodaika]

If there was a show you really wanted to reboot so you could go back and fix all the problems you had with it, which show would it be and what changes would you make?

Sorry for the delay in answering this Charlie. My memory’s been wonky lately. XD First off thanks for asking this, I love these sorta asks. I used to get these all the time from Jenn, but the less said about that the better.

I’ve thought about this and the one I REALLY think could use a reboot/fresh coat of paint is definitely Danny Phantom. It had a lot of strong points, but was also lacking quite a bit. Some I saw when it first aired and others only after re-watching and the gift of hindsight. So here’s a list of things I’d change/improve to the series if I could in no particular order.

*Have some solid continuity/character growth for the characters. A sad trend I’ve noticed with a lot of Butch shows is that they don’t tend to really have the characters under go arcs that span longer than an episode or even make reference or learn from past events. Occasionally they DO pop up, but they’re very rare and fleeting. It helps when you’re airing episodes without any regard to order, but it really hamstrings your ability to tell engaging stories or have the characters grow when there’s no guarantee that anything that happened is gonna carry over into future episodes.

*Give Danny a spine. Danny’s kinda stuck with one of the most annoying problems I see in a lot of cartoons, especially Butch shows I’ve noticed. The hero, despite having all these amazing gifts and powers, still doesn’t stick up for himself in even the most basic of circumstances. Look, I understand Danny can’t just go using his powers to push back against bullies or anyone who makes him mad. It’d be taking advantage of his powers and run the risk of abuse. But for the love of God, Danny, grow an f’ing spine! Despite facing Eldrich Abominations on a semi-daily basis, this guy still has to kowtow to the likes of Dash and the jocks for no real reason. For fuck’s sake kid, Peter Parker got bit by a radioactive spider and gained enough strength to bench-press a Buick. Yeah, he didn’t advertise he had powers and still acted meek around others, but he actually started standing up for himself. He didn’t fucking sitdown and take it. Instead the show seems to pain ANY attempts of him using his abilities for any sort of personal gain is wrong. And if we wanna play by that logic, fine, but have Danny at LEAST stand up to Dash. I’ve learned through my own experience that ignoring or running from a bully solves NOTHING. If Danny isn’t gonna tell a teacher or something of the blonde sociopath making his life hell, then fucking stand up for yourself. Teach kids to not take that shit.

*Okay that last one went on a bit. Sorry, that just really bothered me. Second thing I’d do is give Tucker some development. Of the main 3, he’s one who really never went through and arc and often times felt like a 3rd Wheel at best and an annoyance at worse. They keep playing up how his love of tech makes him unpopular, but it really comes off more he’s unpopular for just how grating he is. I’m not sure what school Butch went to, but in my days EVERYONE knew SOMETHING about technology. They weren’t fucking Luddites. Give Tucker SOMETHING to add to the story besides just being there and cracking wise.

*SAM. Sam needs a real overhaul. At first I didn’t mind her, but she’s really grated on me with the passage of time. I’ve shared my thoughts and feelings on her a LOT on this account, so I invite anyone who wants to check those pieces out to checked the Sam Manson tags for more on that. But to keep it short, give her SOME kind of depth. Sam really comes off as more shallow than the people she derides, constantly complaining about stuff by the mere fact it’s popular, propping herself and her interests up on a pedestal because they’re not “mainstream”, forces her friends and others to alter their life-styles to fit HER choices, and comes off as more of a contrarian lashing out at Mommy and Daddy than someone who legit BELIEVES any of the crap she’s spouting.

*Give the secondary characters some love. With how much we have episodes that focus on characters like Jazz, Valerie, Paulina, or Dash, they don’t really change all that much or have much going for them to begin with. Valerie has the strongest arc of the bunch, but it’s sadly dropped near the end of the series and doesn’t really get the resolution it deserved. Jazz played a roll as a secret keeper to Danny, but didn’t really do much before or after those episodes. It would have been cool to see the sort of relationship she had with her brother before knowing he had super powers and how their dynamic worked before then. Even get a glimpse to how she is at school. Maybe like how despite all the things Danny thinks about her being smart and perfect, it’s because of those things that’s she’s really not all that popular at school. We never DO see her really hang with anyone outside of Danny and his friends. And Dash and Paulina just serve to as foil to Danny or Sam respectively. Dash only serves to remind me how much the Casper High is dropping the ball on preventing very clear and public bullying and Paulina and Sam get into arguments that, let’s face it, are instigated 9/10 times by Sam for no other reason than she can. Have these characters GROW. There are a lot of parallels made between the cast of Danny Phantom and Spider-Man and here’s a bit some people tend to forget, the kids who bullied Peter Parker before he got his powers? They grew up. They stopped being bullies, made up for their short comings, and became actual adults. But everyone seems to wanna keep them as these static bullies who only serve to cause tension and nothing else. I’m not saying upgrade them to Sixth Ranger status, but if you’re gonna have them be in so many episodes and in such a chaotic series, have them add SOMETHING.

*Dig deeper into the Ghost Mythos. One thing they REALLY need to take advantage of is the fact that ghosts EXIST in this universe. There IS an afterlife or at the very least an alternate dimension we SUDDENLY have access too. I feel that this should be a much bigger deal to their world than it is, but everyone seems to just accept it and move on. Unless Danny really DOES live in the Marvel universe, I don’t think the fact his parents literally created a portal to the afterlife should be treated as an after thought. You have so many chances to explore with this concept, especially with the ghosts Danny fights themselves. So many different types of spirits and apparitions in folklore to take inspiration from. Hell, the series flat out tells us that a lot of these ghosts WERE people at some point. They had lives. Families. But they never really touch upon this fact and just treat them like a Monster of the Week. You’d think Danny would get tired of fighting and try to do something a bit more long-term with some of the ghosts who’d like to just be left alone. Instead we get a really weak ‘retcon’ that ghosts are just extra-dimensional creatures who THINK they’re the spirits of the dead. That seems like stupidly complicating the matter. Why even call them ghosts if they’re not? 

*Speaking of ghosts, how about they finally explain why the fuck they can’t shut that damn portal down. Seriously. It’s the SOLE means the ghosts have of getting out as often as they do. Danny KNOWS this. But the fact he never ones tries to shut-down or disable the thing is astounding. If they just gave us a reason like it was too big to shut and the machine was there to keep it from getting BIGGER, that I’d buy. It’d at LEAST be an explanation. To me this is one of those elements that if you just removed, the series would literally end at that point.

*This is sorta looping back, but Danny seems to be very split in personality depending on the episode. He’s either cocky and brimming with confidence to the point of arrogance or a moppy sad-sack who is all to willing to quit and ditch his powers despite the levels of stupid such an act would bring. Look, I’m not saying a hero shouldn’t be confident or have low-points, but they feel very random and often time serve no other purpose than to force a scenario where he’s either humbled or turned into such a Butt Monkey by the narrative it starts getting sad. Even Spider-Man in the 90′s cartoon didn’t have it that bad. And he felt about quitting every other story arc.

*Give Sam and Danny better chemistry. IF you’re gonna have these two together, give us SOMETHING to work with. These two don’t have a lot of chemistry, all they do is blush and avert eyes. It’s really not that impressive. It’d be cute if they’re grade-schoolers and this was a story of young love, but they don’t really click in any kind of romantic sense with what we’re given. I know Valerie was given as a Romantic False Lead, but you wanna know something? They actually WORKED. There was some goddamed communication there. Some really adorable flirting, compliments, and sweet moments. They didn’t bicker every five minutes and made each other happy. Hell, if they had pulled an American Dragon and had Valerie find out about Danny and ultimately be okay with it after finding out she’d been played, I’d have completely been okay with it. Instead we have to accept him getting with a girl who can’t even bare the sight of him showing interest in another girl while STILL denying she has feelings for him. Look, I grew tired of that bullshit in Total Drama, Sam, don’t push me.

Well that’s all I’ve got to say on this end. Most of it springs down to character and story elements since I feel that’s where the show really frays out. Hopefully this answers your question, Charlie, and it was a good read. Thanks again for the question! :D

[forkanna]

[AO3 LINK] [EF LINK]

NOTES: Literally sitting in what used to be the Second Cup location from the movie right now! It's since become an espresso bar, so at least I could get some kind of coffee-related drink (really wanted to tell them my name was "Fucking Pilgrim" when they asked). I've been enjoying this trip, and all the fun stuff I got to see; drove past the Pizza Pizza where they got a slice after Scott beat up Todd, and Sneaky Dee's (comic-only reference). I'm really hoping I can see Casa Loma and a few other Pilgrim-landmarks before I head home.

This chapter has another cliffhanger, but we're getting into the meat of the story now. Plus, there's a little extra something for Flyafar in here somewhere, hehehehe.

"...So then I said, 'that's the only kind of cheese you know, isn't it?'" Knives giggled as she finished putting the clear coat on top of my fingernails. The whole time, I looked very distinctly disgruntled at the whole situation, though I couldn't scowl nearly as much as usual with the face mask on. "But the guy had no idea what I was talking about. Some people are just really super dumb, huh?"

"Some people, present company included." She stuck out her tongue, showing just how well she was adapting to my general demeanor. "Can we take these off yet?"

"Almost. And I'll get yours so your nails can dry."

"Thanks." She leaned in to peck my lips, and I just barely managed to suppress the instinct to flinch. "U-uh…"

Her little sigh of contentment was so cute. Which made it even funnier that what she said next was, "So cute." Then she blew on my nails for a second before reaching up to her own face, and slowly peeling the mask down and off. "Eeewww… okay, ready?"

"As I'll ever be." She grabbed a corner and began to peel it off, and I shivered; it was so cold and gross-feeling! Why did people do this to themselves?

Once she jumped up and threw both of ours away, little aluminum foil pieces bobbing in front of her forehead, I tried not to watch her ass as she went. Why did I care about that all of a sudden? Never once could I remember looking at a girl's ass and thinking "Oh yeah, I'd do something to that." Especially since I had no idea what the "something" was! Spank it? Bite it? Use it as a coffee table? No idea. I never checked out guys' butts, either. Maybe I was seriously repressed and Knives was uncorking a whole bottle of desire I didn't even know I owned. And when I say "maybe", I mean "probably".

When Knives got back into my living room, she came to a stop and towered above me as she asked, "So, I do have to shower soon and get this dye out of my hair. But I can keep you company while your nails dry."

"They're almost done," I told her dismissively, determined not to think too hard about Knives being naked in my apartment. No, to not think about it. NOT to THINK ABOUT IT, stupid pervy brain! "You can go on if you want; nobody likes an itchy, burning scalp."

"Cool. And then we can finish everything up! I want to do your toes before we go to bed, at least, and put on that movie you brought."

"I bet you want to do my toes," I tried to tease her. "Already said you think they're cute."

Her grin was very playful. Sometimes she was super easy to tease, and sometimes she just danced right past my traps. How annoying. "The freckled one is. And I guess her little friends are, too." Her foot nudged mine, and I shivered, not even sure why I was shivering. "But I think all of you is cute, so…"

"Well, I think none of you is cute. All of you is dumb. Dumb face, dumb head…" This time, she was the one to roll her eyes and walk away, though she was giggling as she went.

While my new girlfriend showered, I mostly just tried not to ruin my fresh coat of paint and sat there, listening to the music still playing from her iPod. This was nice. Goddamn everything, I wanted to hate getting all girly with her, but she was making it fun. And to be honest, even though she was way girlier than me, it wasn't to the disgusting heights of a typical "sorority bimbo". This was about the maximum level of femininity I could handle invading my androgynous zone.

Get it? Androgynous zone. That's a pun.

When she came out of the bathroom roughly an hour after going in, freshly showered and in fuzzy PJs with cartoony cats patterned all over them, she caught me trying to eat the last slice of Pizza Pizza without touching anything with my fingernails. Her laugh was beautiful and earnest, and it kept me from snapping at her as harshly as I wanted to.

"Shut up, I got hungry!" More giggles. "Okay, okay, how was your shower? The hair looks pretty good."

Her fingers traced through the damp red forelock. "Thanks! I dunno, I tried going back to being totally natural but I missed the dyed part. And I guess I got over the whole thing about resenting Ramona, since… I got somebody better than Scott in the end."

"Y- I…" My words crashed into each other and wound up a tangled mess, and my freckles turned darker as she leaned in to kiss my blushing cheek. Then she licked it. "WHAT?! Why would you do that?!"

"Pizza sauce."

"O-oh… thanks, I think." Another giggle, and this time I laughed, as well. "Guess I made a mess trying not to make a mess of my nails."

"They look great! Just have to finish the rest."

"Yeah, okay, as long as we can put on some bad TV in the background."

So that's exactly what we did next. I rested my feet in her cross-legged lap, and she painted while Friends blared in the background. God, I hate that show, but she loves it. At least it was something for her to be entertained by, and I could entertain myself by ripping it to shreds whenever possible.

Especially Ross. Fucking Ross, man…

Around the time she was finishing up mine and we were getting ready to switch, she asked, "What would it have been like if we met in school?"

"You mean, like, if I was nineteen, or you were twenty-four? We did both go to a Catholic school…"

"We DID?!" she piped up, flicking a tiny drip of the dark green paint onto my ankle. But my glare was unnecessary, because she wiped it up with a facial tissue right away. "Oh yeah, I think you mentioned it… I just wasn't thinking about it that way. Wow, so cool!"

"Yeah, it's fabulous," I sighed in a deadpan.

"But sure, that." She blew on the nails for a second, then kissed my toe-freckle. I don't know why, but even though I really wanted to kick at her and tell her to cut that out, instead I just felt faintly embarrassed and kept my mouth shut. "What if you were a girl in my class? Then like, we could have hung out all the time, and talked about boys…"

My smirk was quite dark as I let my legs down over the side, and she offered me the jars of the polish we had used on her fingernails earlier in the evening. Bright red, to match her hair. "We don't seem to care much about boys, dude."

"Not now," she clarified with a huge grin as her feet landed in my lap. "But both of us were extra straight then. Or like, I was, and you probably were, too. Since I'm the first girl for you."

"Who says? Maybe I really did have a threesome with Scott and Ramona." But her stunned look didn't last long, because I set to painting as I grumbled, "Fine, fine. I didn't. But yeah… I dunno. Probably wouldn't have hung out with you back then since you weren't very 'cool'. And I was still angsty, and just wanted to play the drums. Funny how you can think you're so awesome and when you look back a few years later, realise you were just a whiny little bitch."

Frowning, she told me, "Don't say that. You were a kid. So was I in high school, doing theater and band and stuff. Before you guys helped me grow up some. I mean, my school days were more recent for me but I think it's pretty much the same thing."

"It is," I admitted, even though the High School Kim part of my brain was screaming that it was totally different and that I was a sellout and all this other crap. She needed to chill. "But for what it's worth… you weren't that bad. I just didn't want a groupie hanging around while we practiced."

"You mean that?"

"Yeah. Nothing personal. I didn't like Ramona much at first, either."

"Well… we were dating Scott. I mean, I've been dumped by him, I get it."

"No, you don't. He wasn't the first one you ever…" I bit my lip. "Look. It is the same, and it's not. Sorry if I act kind of salty about this sometimes."

The foot that hadn't been painted yet nudged my tummy to get my attention, and I looked up to see real sympathy in her eyes. Even though I was kind of being a dick. "It's okay."

"Sorry… I'm really sorry, Knives." Clearing my throat, I redipped the brush and went back to work. "You're right, we're both members of the Scott Pilgrim Lonely Hearts Club. I shouldn't split hairs."

"What was it like? Being with a guy. I mean, I never got that far."

"Like being fucked," I said bluntly, and she snorted. My serious expression finally softened as I spared her a glance. "I mean, you've gone a solo round before, right? Not that different from fingering yourself."

"Well… not really." She seemed extra awkward about this question. Not that I got why; maybe she was just shy about admitting this. But it's no big deal, only masturbation talk. Whole world does it, right? 'She bop, he bop, and we bop', to quote Lauper. "Tried some stuff. And it wouldn't be the same thing you experienced, that's for sure."

Nodding, I finished the first set of five toes off and moved to the second. "Guess everybody's different."

"And now, I might never know, since I kinda hope…"

I waited for a few seconds. When she didn't finish, I froze for a second as what she had been leading to caught up to me, and I sat up straighter, looking her in the eyes. Yeah, that was definitely what I thought it was, because she looked a little mortified, and highly self-conscious.

"You were gonna say something sappy about me, weren't you?"

"Noooo…"

"Are you lying?"

"Maaaaaybe," she admitted, wilting. "Sorry, Kim. I know, I know! It's new, and we're just, like, giving it a trial run or whatever, but I can't help it."

Swallowing down the weird, giddy noise that tried to erupt from my throat, I coughed, then said, "W-well… I guess it feels pretty good when you say stuff like that. Just a little frightening, too. And nauseating. It's a lot to process."

"What's to process? I like you."

"That! THAT is a lot to process for me! Why? And how can you when I'm not gay?"

"Okay, pretty sure you're a little gay," she giggled, and I sighed in defeat as I facepalmed yet again. "Sorry to break it to you, friend."

A little disgruntled at how she kept laughing at me, I went back to finishing the paint job. "Very little. Like, point-one per cent. And you're a little bit of a cunt for rubbing it in."

"What's to rub in? Being gay isn't an insult."

"Yeah, but it still feels like one since until you started trying to make out with me all the time, I figured I was straight. And I'm used to fucktards calling me 'dyke' just because I don't giggle and flirt back when guys tell me 'duuude, redheads are hoooot, broooo'. So yeah, for me, being called a lesbian mostly used to be a way for them to insult me and make themselves feel better that I shot them the fuck down."

"Redheads are pretty hot, though," she said with a nod, completely serious. I nearly messed up her pinky toe because of that, but I kept my cool and finished it, then began blowing on them to get them to dry as fast as possible so I could be done.

"We burn in the sun, and we have no souls. Plus some people call freckles 'cute' but they don't really get how annoying they are. And then there's the part where bleaching my hair to turn it any colour other than red just looks horrible, so I'm kinda stuck with it."

Frowning very slightly, she said, "Aww, but I like your freckles. You might not but I really do think they're cute."

"You think one freckle is cute, and it's a weird one. Feet aren't cute, end of story." I was still trying to blow on them again when Knives pushed her big toe into my lips, cutting off the airflow.

"Don't you think mine are cute?" I pulled away, sputtering and spitting. "Guess not."

"UGH! Why would you do that?! They're dirty!"

"I just had a shower! Literally just now!" she protested as I wiped my arm across my lips. "Careful, your fingernails-!"

"God, sometimes I really don't know what you're thinking…" But it really hadn't been that big of a deal, so I went back to checking her nails again. "And you're dry. I'm ready for my clear coat."

Again, we switched laps, and she started in with my top coat. After she got the first few done, she said in a quiet voice, "Sorry, I guess that was dumb."

"It was dumb. But yeah, I didn't mean to flip out that much." We were both quiet for a moment. Maybe I really had hurt her by overreacting. "Okay, so your feet are cute, as far as any feet can be in the first place. Happy?"

"Mmmm…" Now she was thinking it over, and I had a feeling I wasn't going to get off that light. "Tell me something else about me that's cute."

"Your ass. There."

"Kiiiiiiim," she whined.

"Your face! That little button nose, your soft, dark eyes, your giant smile that belongs on a much bigger face than yours! Jesus H. Benjamin Christ!"

That got her smiling again, and I rolled my eyes. But I wasn't lying. For a second, I thought she was going to gloat, but instead she simply raised my foot and pressed her lips into my big toe, kissing it for a lot longer than I had accidentally kissed hers. She even closed her eyes while doing it, as if she were enjoying herself. Crazy, right?

"Same. Like, you're the hottest girl I know! I thought you were way out of my league. And I mean like, after we made out; before that, I just kinda looked up to you in a weird, awkward way. But after…"

Just barely starting to get over her kissing me there of all places, I stammered, "Wait… h-have you had a crush on me since that night? Seriously?"

"No! I mean, a little? But not like, in the way that I was hanging around you and hoping this would happen. Because I never believed it could. But yeah, I, um… you were so sweet and understanding, it was a whole other side of you. Always kinda hoped I'd get to know you better, just as a friend. Ever since that night."

'Yeah, one I can't remember,' I scoffed to myself. But she didn't need to hear that. Glancing away at the TV, I tried to process that for a minute. At least this hadn't been some long, elaborate ruse just to get into my pants; I could appreciate that a lot more than if it were. On the other hand, it was kinda sad. Knives saw potential in us as a couple long before I did, and it felt off-balance. Wrong.

Maybe I needed to step up my girlfriend-game to make up for that. Not that I had any idea how.

"You deserve better."

"Don't do that thing," she warned me with a little purse of her lips.

"Fine, I won't. But you do." And I let it go at that.

All nails were painted and clear-coated, and I got off without having to match Knives in her toe-kissing intensity. Which was great, because… no thanks. Trying to do better in the dating department than just playing Super Smash Bros. and being an asshole, I let her be the little spoon and recline against me as we lounged and watched an old DuckTales VHS, barely talking and mostly just enjoying that closeness. The feeling of legs against my own, warm bodies close together, was… weird. Like a preview of what it would be like sleeping next to her someday? I don't know.

Finally, she yawned and I agreed that it was getting late. "I'll make up the couch while you brush your teeth or whatever."

"Okay. Yeah, I have a whole ritual; it takes a little longer than yours, of course."

"Of course," I scoffed with sarcasm. Not that I was sure what she meant. "Go for it."

Once I had a sheet down on the cushions, I nodded to myself and sighed, then looked around and started clearing away some of the food-related trash. Then I moved her suitcase — what was in that thing?! — and got my living room as ready to be a bedroom as it was ever gonna be. Was I really going to dote so much now that we were sorta-kinda together? It boggled the mind.

Decked out in my own PJs, which were more like just a ratty tee and sporty shorts, I heard the toilet flush. After a second, I went to knock on the bathroom door. "Knives?"

"Yeah?"

Pushing it open, I started asking, "Do you sleep with the light on or…"

We both froze. It wasn't that she was naked or anything; she wasn't. Her underwear was on, and so was her top, but her PJ pants were down to her knees and she was seated on the toilet, lid closed. That wasn't the problem. It was the hypodermic needle she had stabbed into her thigh.

"Off, usually; though I have a Keroppi night light from when I was little that I leave on in case I have to get up to pee. Forgot to bring it, though."

What the fuck?!

                                                           To Be Continued…

[cheznieba2a2]

Spending far too long making maquettes for characters I could’ve just drawn

It’s true, I could have just drawn out my cast and been done with it in 2 days max, but, that’s boring. I’ve done enough character drawing in this project already and my hands were getting withdrawal symptoms from clay. These dudes took me way longer than I anticipated, used up far more clay than I prepared for and on one occasion, made me cry, yet I had so much pure, child-like joy making them that I really don’t care.

Here we go lads

Base Structure

cuttin wood, twistin wire, glueing wire in wood, making a skeleton

I cut up some little almost squares of wood (don’t judge me, I’m terrible with a hand saw and I really couldn’t see a big enough pay out from whipping out an electric one) and sanded the edges down so my hands wouldn’t die. I then proceeded to do one of my least favourite model making activities and twisted together a bunch of wire so I could start making some little skeletons.

I didn’t have any sketches for the crew members that weren’t Steve, only a vague idea of what style I was going for so this was terribly planned. HOWEVER, I just went for the classic one little one and one big one which spoiler worked out super well.

I drilled holes in my poorly cut bases and used some Araldite to secure those bad boys in there. I didn’t attach the arms to the rest of my skeleton yet because I had no idea where I wanted them yet and thought that waiting until the tinfoil body shape was sorted would help me out a wee bit.

I was correct! putting the tinfoil on first made figuring out the arms way easier, however, they aren’t exactly securely in there so let’s pray to the maquette gods that that won’t be an issue later on.

Super Sculpey time

Because of my loose-ish arms and incredible ability to mess something up if it’s not rock solid, I decided to shove down a relatively thin layer of clay over my tinfoil and wire friends and bake it so I could just build over solid foundations. They currently look absolutely horrifying but I’m really happy with their proportions both in themselves and to each other which I didn’t expect to happen. I’m also digging that I decided to go with interesting stances and not just a stood up and rigid kinda thing.

If whoever is marking this somehow remembers my blog posts about making the maquette for Greg during that stop mo project, you will recognise my skills for using various glassware from my poor Mother’s cupboard to help to support my chaps and hopefully save them from imminent death in the oven.

I then realised I completely forgot about all the extra bits on Steve and set to work fixing that with a power drill up the bum, through the head, even more twisted wire (still hate it) and some extra tin foil padding. Also, once I added the tail thing, I realised that his bottom half was no where near as fat as I wanted it to be, and it would have been way to much mass to do in just clay so I went ham with that foil.

This is when I cried. 

I just dropped him while working on the face and it was a moment. I refused to pick him up to assess the damage for 5 solid minutes, so all I was going on was an awful smack sound, a pile of crumbled clay and a concerned look from my Dad who happened to be in the room at the time. Thankfully, I was being dramatic and the damage wasn’t even too bad, I had him right as rain in 15 minutes and a little extra oven time.

Here he is! all fixed and honestly better than he was pre death drop.

I’m aware that the lush yellow blanket draped over a piano stool is a wee dramatic from a WIP shot, but this is when I read the email about the stop motion work experience and I needed a good shot of these fellas to send in. 

Anyway,

I’m actually so proud of this trio. Yeah non of them can stand up on their own and they are currently secretly propped up in some way, BUT, for something I did literally no planning apart from random brain waves here and there, they’re turning out wicked.

Painting

I wasn’t going to paint them, because they’re just maquettes and I had told myself that I was already spending way too much time on these chaps but I just hated the full skin tone look. It just gave me the absolute chills. Also, I’m currently thinking that I want to use actual fluffy fabric where I want these just to be fluffy and it would just look so wrong if I had a different coloured fabric over a block tone body soooooo here we are.

I kept them all on the same colour scheme and I’m actually really happy with how it turned out. I stuck some glitter onto Steves weird ball thing just because I found it in my draw like 2 days and I wanted an excuse to use it and I fully love the result. I did have concerns about their mouths looking rate weird, but with a lick of paint i’m living for it.

Getting around trying to texture clothes with clay

I did indeed end up going with my fabric idea.

I popped to my nearest wilko, found a cheap pillow that I kinda liked the texture off (it had two fabrics so I had to go for it, I love options), and cut it up like a mad man. I used good ol’ hot glue to attach it and during the process got so much white fluff everywhere that I don’t think my parents want me coming home from Norwich anymore.

Steve looks fab, but, I’m an idiot and did the fluffy fabric before some the smoother, less gets-in-your-way stuff, so I’m going to have some real fun trying to hot glue that down around this fur.

For example, this is the order I should’ve done the fabric in, but hey, I learnt and I’m now a better person.

I decided to leave sleeves and trouser legs off my little guy because not only did I like the diversity, but he was too little anyway and he would’ve become just a bundle of dead pillow.

I love how they look now, and The fur is just beautiful.

Giving them a base for no particular reason

Since they can’t really stand on their own and looks good together anyway, I decided to make just one big base that they could stand upon.

I made the smart person decision to paint around their crystal white feet with the soul sucking black before I glued them down so that I could really get those angles going for a pretty finish.

I glued them down with hot glue which worked way better than I thought it would. Originally I was just using the hot glue to temporarily hold those suckers down while I drilled and screwed nails into the underside but after realising how difficult that would be with their very very delicate limbs, I risked leaving it with just hot glue and it’s proper secure.

Shockingly, the two puppets that had both legs on the ground were the worst balance wise, and I could see their ankles cracking and bodies tilting the longer I left them to stand on their own. My mum had the fab idea of shoving some dowel under them, so I painted it black and used far too much hot glue to make sure my lads didn’t die. It actually worked really well and is way more subtle than I thought it would be.

The finished gang

Cast sheet

It’s basically the non-animated version of my turnaround. I took a bunch of screen shots, shoved them into the photoshop document lovingly provided by Jon, and made it all fit while putting my tetris skills to good use. 

Conclusion

It’s been 7 days of solid hard work, including through Christmas eve and day (can I get some points for dedication here), and they’re finally finished! Yes, I did exactly what I said I shouldn’t do and got so caught up in a minor aspect of the bigger project that I spent too much time on it, but I absolutely loved doing this. Maquette making is one of my favourite parts of this course and I do not regret a second of this. Sure they have their flaws, like two of them can’t stand without a pole on their bum and most fingers have fallen off and been glued back on, but I love them. This has to be one of my proudest achievements since Greg, so I’m so ready to take this project further.

Also, i’m rate proud of my cast sheet for the character bible.

[additionallysad]

How To Make Long Reclaimed Wood Shelves http://ift.tt/2iL4wj6

Long ago we promised more details about how we made the reclaimed wood shelves that we hung as part of our big kitchen remodel, so we’re finally back with every last measurement, stain method, and hanging tip.

We hadn’t originally planned to put shelves there, but after our initial idea to display a large piece of art fell flat (literally – it felt like that wall needed more dimension) we turned our attention to shelves. Besides adding some storage for things in heavy rotation like drinking glasses (if you cycle through things fast enough they don’t have time to get dusty), Sherry has never met a shelf didn’t have fun accessorizing. Also, plants. Gotta love plants.

These shiny polished nickel brackets were our first decision. They’re from Rejuvenation and it gave us the chance to tie in the polished nickel finishes elsewhere in the room (they come in 3 other finishes too, FYI). And if you listened to Episode #24 of our podcast, you heard all about how we found ourselves in possession of two dozen of them instead of just the four we needed (and what the heck that has to do with Chipotle).

The actual shelving material/color was less clear to us. At first we considered doing some simple white shelves for a low contrast look, and even picked up some stock shelving boards to test out the idea. You may remember the picture below from our kitchen mistakes post, so ignore all of the other not-right things going on (we later tweaked the wall color, the pendants, and the door color, etc). For now let’s focus on the not-rightness of the white shelves. They just felt kind of thin and boring to us. And when we stepped back and stared at the kitchen from the living room, we pretty quickly realized that some wood tones on the left wall would add balance and warmth like the blinds on the right wall.

So we pivoted (picture Ross from friends screaming “PIVOT!”) to the idea of wood shelves. But the problem was that the basic wood available in the lumber aisle at the store was mostly sold in the same 3/4″ thickness that the too-thin white boards came in. And if it was thick enough, it didn’t have the depth or length we wanted (our ideal shelves would be 65″ long, 9″ deep, and a little over 1″ thick). At one point we almost purchased these salvaged boards from Rejuvenation that we spotted during our bracket purchase, which were noticeably thicker (1″) but even their most expensive option ($119 per board) was more than a foot too short of our desired length.

We really liked the old look of those Rejuvenation boards, so we called around to a few lumber and reclaimed wood places to see if we could find a longer solution locally. After a few strikeouts (some wouldn’t entertain such a small order) a place called E.T. Moore Manufacturing near downtown Richmond seemed promising. We were still a pretty small order for them (they do lots of full house floor installs and stuff) but we were able to pick from a ton of old salvaged boards they had collected from various tear downs & renovations in the state (and beyond!).

Ours ended up coming from an old barn in rural Virginia, and – the best part – they would cut and plane them to our preferred length and thickness. So we were able to get exactly what we wanted: two 65″ long pine boards, 9″ deep, and 1 1/4″ thick. Here they are coming home in the back of our car.

It was $100 total, so definitely more than grabbing a couple of 1 x 10″ project boards from Home Depot, but less than half the Rejuvenation option – and made to our exact specifications! The nicest part for us was that they have the interesting imperfections of old wood, yet they were the PERFECT size and FLAWLESSLY level and straight (thanks to their planing process, they weren’t warped or bowed like some boards you might grab off the shelf).

When we laid them on the brackets, the only thing left to contend with was the color. We were initially tempted to just to clear seal them and preserve the natural tone.

But after living with them for a couple of weeks we decided we’d prefer something a little less orange… closer to the color of the stools at the island and the floor.

The gentleman at E.T.Moore had been nice enough to toss in a short scrap piece from the same batch of wood so we could test some stain before committing on the big boards (so helpful!). Because I was not about to ruin $100 worth of wood with the wrong stain choice (this is foreshadowing, btw).

After way too many hours spent googling, we decided to try a new-to-us technique involving vinegar and steel wool to help achieve that less orange undertone we were looking for. The process was pretty simple: we soaked a few pieces of steel wool in small bukcets of distilled white vinegar for about a day. We tested just 1 piece of steel wool vs. 2 pieces, along with straight up gray stain (Minwax’s Classic Gray). This is what it looked like when it was freshly applied to our little test piece…

…and here are the results once they dried. You can see how the vinegar + steel wood mixture neutralized the orange undertone really nicely (even more effectively than the gray stain!), while still allowing the grain of the wood, and it’s imperfections, to show through. In fact the “vinegar + 1 steel wool” test spot was almost an exact match to our kitchen stools when everything dried. So we charged ahead confidently with that option.

Now here’s where things got weird. The full board reacted TOTALLY DIFFERENTLY than the scrap board. We still can’t explain exactly what happened, but as we were staining the second board we noticed the first one was drying really, really, really red. Gulp.

I’ll be honest – I was super bummed. I know we were being crazy particular about these, but we were being extra meticulous in the hope of getting the exact result we wanted. And I was actually pretty psyched about the tone the vinegar and steel wool wash had created on the test board.

Ever the optimist, Sherry bravely (or foolishly) tried to make them better by “graywashing” them with some leftover gray paint (Benjamin Moore’s Shaker Gray) mixed with a lot of water – about 5 parts water to 1 part paint. If all went poorly we could theoretically sand them all down and try again, but if it worked, well, that would be nice.

She brushed the watered down paint on and then rubbed it off, just like applying stain. It definitely cut the redness down A LOT, without taking away from the wood grain and those cool old cracks (we thought the roughness of the reclaimed wood was a nice foil to the sleek polished nickel brackets).

Is it an exact match to the stools or the floor? No. Is it the precise color we hoped the vinegar/steel wool would create? Nope to that too. But it’s not like our cutting boards and our blinds and our stools and our floors are all the same color anyway, so we decided to dial back our crazy a bit and just enjoy them. It’s kinda like there’s a family of wood tones that are living together in here – and the shelves are just another relative that’s not identical, but related. So when we let go of this expectation of perfection and stopped obsessing, well, everything looked pretty great together.

And for anyone wondering how we hung them, we used heavy duty anchors on one side, and actually got the other side into a stud, so they’re nice and secure.  There’s 18″ between the counter and the first shelf – since that’s the same gap between the counters and the upper cabinets on the other side of the room – and there’s 13″ between the shelves themselves. Another 18″ gap between the two shelves looked crazy, so we ended up at 13″ – leaving Sherry enough room to go to town without things getting cramped.

If you wanna see them “in action” in this downstairs house tour video – they show up around the 2:00 minute mark. (note: you might have to click through to the original post to see this video if you’re reading in a feed burner):

  In the end, they’re a pretty great addition to the kitchen for the dimension and interest they add (we have a little bit of “old barn” in our house!) and for the sheer joy they give Sherry whenever she gets the urge to rearrange them (which happens pretty often). Also: the fact that three of the plants that were in the kitchen reveal post are still alive today is what Sherry likes to call “a post-Christmas miracle.”

P.S. Here’s where you’ll find all the kitchen sources (where we got things, the paint colors we used), and here’s how we completely reconfigured the layout, and here’s how we gutted and rebuilt it, and here’s how we organized it (complete with a video tour through all of our drawers & doors). We also shared this brain dump of all the mistakes we made (so you can avoid them). And here’s a page full of all of our house’s paint colors & a room by room source list.  

* This post contains affiliate links*

The post How To Make Long Reclaimed Wood Shelves appeared first on Young House Love.

[vincentbnaughton]

How To Make Long Reclaimed Wood Shelves

Long ago we promised more details about how we made the reclaimed wood shelves that we hung as part of our big kitchen remodel, so we’re finally back with every last measurement, stain method, and hanging tip.

We hadn’t originally planned to put shelves there, but after our initial idea to display a large piece of art fell flat (literally – it felt like that wall needed more dimension) we turned our attention to shelves. Besides adding some storage for things in heavy rotation like drinking glasses (if you cycle through things fast enough they don’t have time to get dusty), Sherry has never met a shelf didn’t have fun accessorizing. Also, plants. Gotta love plants.

These shiny polished nickel brackets were our first decision. They’re from Rejuvenation and it gave us the chance to tie in the polished nickel finishes elsewhere in the room (they come in 3 other finishes too, FYI). And if you listened to Episode #24 of our podcast, you heard all about how we found ourselves in possession of two dozen of them instead of just the four we needed (and what the heck that has to do with Chipotle).

The actual shelving material/color was less clear to us. At first we considered doing some simple white shelves for a low contrast look, and even picked up some stock shelving boards to test out the idea. You may remember the picture below from our kitchen mistakes post, so ignore all of the other not-right things going on (we later tweaked the wall color, the pendants, and the door color, etc). For now let’s focus on the not-rightness of the white shelves. They just felt kind of thin and boring to us. And when we stepped back and stared at the kitchen from the living room, we pretty quickly realized that some wood tones on the left wall would add balance and warmth like the blinds on the right wall.

So we pivoted (picture Ross from friends screaming “PIVOT!”) to the idea of wood shelves. But the problem was that the basic wood available in the lumber aisle at the store was mostly sold in the same 3/4″ thickness that the too-thin white boards came in. And if it was thick enough, it didn’t have the depth or length we wanted (our ideal shelves would be 65″ long, 9″ deep, and a little over 1″ thick). At one point we almost purchased these salvaged boards from Rejuvenation that we spotted during our bracket purchase, which were noticeably thicker (1″) but even their most expensive option ($119 per board) was more than a foot too short of our desired length.

We really liked the old look of those Rejuvenation boards, so we called around to a few lumber and reclaimed wood places to see if we could find a longer solution locally. After a few strikeouts (some wouldn’t entertain such a small order) a place called E.T. Moore Manufacturing near downtown Richmond seemed promising. We were still a pretty small order for them (they do lots of full house floor installs and stuff) but we were able to pick from a ton of old salvaged boards they had collected from various tear downs & renovations in the state (and beyond!).

Ours ended up coming from an old barn in rural Virginia, and – the best part – they would cut and plane them to our preferred length and thickness. So we were able to get exactly what we wanted: two 65″ long pine boards, 9″ deep, and 1 1/4″ thick. Here they are coming home in the back of our car.

It was $100 total, so definitely more than grabbing a couple of 1 x 10″ project boards from Home Depot, but less than half the Rejuvenation option – and made to our exact specifications! The nicest part for us was that they have the interesting imperfections of old wood, yet they were the PERFECT size and FLAWLESSLY level and straight (thanks to their planing process, they weren’t warped or bowed like some boards you might grab off the shelf).

When we laid them on the brackets, the only thing left to contend with was the color. We were initially tempted to just to clear seal them and preserve the natural tone.

But after living with them for a couple of weeks we decided we’d prefer something a little less orange… closer to the color of the stools at the island and the floor.

The gentleman at E.T.Moore had been nice enough to toss in a short scrap piece from the same batch of wood so we could test some stain before committing on the big boards (so helpful!). Because I was not about to ruin $100 worth of wood with the wrong stain choice (this is foreshadowing, btw).

After way too many hours spent googling, we decided to try a new-to-us technique involving vinegar and steel wool to help achieve that less orange undertone we were looking for. The process was pretty simple: we soaked a few pieces of steel wool in small bukcets of distilled white vinegar for about a day. We tested just 1 piece of steel wool vs. 2 pieces, along with straight up gray stain (Minwax’s Classic Gray). This is what it looked like when it was freshly applied to our little test piece…

…and here are the results once they dried. You can see how the vinegar + steel wood mixture neutralized the orange undertone really nicely (even more effectively than the gray stain!), while still allowing the grain of the wood, and it’s imperfections, to show through. In fact the “vinegar + 1 steel wool” test spot was almost an exact match to our kitchen stools when everything dried. So we charged ahead confidently with that option.

Now here’s where things got weird. The full board reacted TOTALLY DIFFERENTLY than the scrap board. We still can’t explain exactly what happened, but as we were staining the second board we noticed the first one was drying really, really, really red. Gulp.

I’ll be honest – I was super bummed. I know we were being crazy particular about these, but we were being extra meticulous in the hope of getting the exact result we wanted. And I was actually pretty psyched about the tone the vinegar and steel wool wash had created on the test board.

Ever the optimist, Sherry bravely (or foolishly) tried to make them better by “graywashing” them with some leftover gray paint (Benjamin Moore’s Shaker Gray) mixed with a lot of water – about 5 parts water to 1 part paint. If all went poorly we could theoretically sand them all down and try again, but if it worked, well, that would be nice.

She brushed the watered down paint on and then rubbed it off, just like applying stain. It definitely cut the redness down A LOT, without taking away from the wood grain and those cool old cracks (we thought the roughness of the reclaimed wood was a nice foil to the sleek polished nickel brackets).

Is it an exact match to the stools or the floor? No. Is it the precise color we hoped the vinegar/steel wool would create? Nope to that too. But it’s not like our cutting boards and our blinds and our stools and our floors are all the same color anyway, so we decided to dial back our crazy a bit and just enjoy them. It’s kinda like there’s a family of wood tones that are living together in here – and the shelves are just another relative that’s not identical, but related. So when we let go of this expectation of perfection and stopped obsessing, well, everything looked pretty great together.

And for anyone wondering how we hung them, we used heavy duty anchors on one side, and actually got the other side into a stud, so they’re nice and secure.  There’s 18″ between the counter and the first shelf – since that’s the same gap between the counters and the upper cabinets on the other side of the room – and there’s 13″ between the shelves themselves. Another 18″ gap between the two shelves looked crazy, so we ended up at 13″ – leaving Sherry enough room to go to town without things getting cramped.

If you wanna see them “in action” in this downstairs house tour video – they show up around the 2:00 minute mark. (note: you might have to click through to the original post to see this video if you’re reading in a feed burner):

In the end, they’re a pretty great addition to the kitchen for the dimension and interest they add (we have a little bit of “old barn” in our house!) and for the sheer joy they give Sherry whenever she gets the urge to rearrange them (which happens pretty often). Also: the fact that three of the plants that were in the kitchen reveal post are still alive today is what Sherry likes to call “a post-Christmas miracle.”

P.S. Here’s where you’ll find all the kitchen sources (where we got things, the paint colors we used), and here’s how we completely reconfigured the layout, and here’s how we gutted and rebuilt it, and here’s how we organized it (complete with a video tour through all of our drawers & doors). We also shared this brain dump of all the mistakes we made (so you can avoid them). And here’s a page full of all of our house’s paint colors & a room by room source list.  

* This post contains affiliate links*

The post How To Make Long Reclaimed Wood Shelves appeared first on Young House Love.

[vincentbnaughton]

How To Make Long Reclaimed Wood Shelves

Long ago we promised more details about how we made the reclaimed wood shelves that we hung as part of our big kitchen remodel, so we’re finally back with every last measurement, stain method, and hanging tip.

We hadn’t originally planned to put shelves there, but after our initial idea to display a large piece of art fell flat (literally – it felt like that wall needed more dimension) we turned our attention to shelves. Besides adding some storage for things in heavy rotation like drinking glasses (if you cycle through things fast enough they don’t have time to get dusty), Sherry has never met a shelf didn’t have fun accessorizing. Also, plants. Gotta love plants.

These shiny polished nickel brackets were our first decision. They’re from Rejuvenation and it gave us the chance to tie in the polished nickel finishes elsewhere in the room (they come in 3 other finishes too, FYI). And if you listened to Episode #24 of our podcast, you heard all about how we found ourselves in possession of two dozen of them instead of just the four we needed (and what the heck that has to do with Chipotle).

The actual shelving material/color was less clear to us. At first we considered doing some simple white shelves for a low contrast look, and even picked up some stock shelving boards to test out the idea. You may remember the picture below from our kitchen mistakes post, so ignore all of the other not-right things going on (we later tweaked the wall color, the pendants, and the door color, etc). For now let’s focus on the not-rightness of the white shelves. They just felt kind of thin and boring to us. And when we stepped back and stared at the kitchen from the living room, we pretty quickly realized that some wood tones on the left wall would add balance and warmth like the blinds on the right wall.

So we pivoted (picture Ross from friends screaming “PIVOT!”) to the idea of wood shelves. But the problem was that the basic wood available in the lumber aisle at the store was mostly sold in the same 3/4″ thickness that the too-thin white boards came in. And if it was thick enough, it didn’t have the depth or length we wanted (our ideal shelves would be 65″ long, 9″ deep, and a little over 1″ thick). At one point we almost purchased these salvaged boards from Rejuvenation that we spotted during our bracket purchase, which were noticeably thicker (1″) but even their most expensive option ($119 per board) was more than a foot too short of our desired length.

We really liked the old look of those Rejuvenation boards, so we called around to a few lumber and reclaimed wood places to see if we could find a longer solution locally. After a few strikeouts (some wouldn’t entertain such a small order) a place called E.T. Moore Manufacturing near downtown Richmond seemed promising. We were still a pretty small order for them (they do lots of full house floor installs and stuff) but we were able to pick from a ton of old salvaged boards they had collected from various tear downs & renovations in the state (and beyond!).

Ours ended up coming from an old barn in rural Virginia, and – the best part – they would cut and plane them to our preferred length and thickness. So we were able to get exactly what we wanted: two 65″ long pine boards, 9″ deep, and 1 1/4″ thick. Here they are coming home in the back of our car.

It was $100 total, so definitely more than grabbing a couple of 1 x 10″ project boards from Home Depot, but less than half the Rejuvenation option – and made to our exact specifications! The nicest part for us was that they have the interesting imperfections of old wood, yet they were the PERFECT size and FLAWLESSLY level and straight (thanks to their planing process, they weren’t warped or bowed like some boards you might grab off the shelf).

When we laid them on the brackets, the only thing left to contend with was the color. We were initially tempted to just to clear seal them and preserve the natural tone.

But after living with them for a couple of weeks we decided we’d prefer something a little less orange… closer to the color of the stools at the island and the floor.

The gentleman at E.T.Moore had been nice enough to toss in a short scrap piece from the same batch of wood so we could test some stain before committing on the big boards (so helpful!). Because I was not about to ruin $100 worth of wood with the wrong stain choice (this is foreshadowing, btw).

After way too many hours spent googling, we decided to try a new-to-us technique involving vinegar and steel wool to help achieve that less orange undertone we were looking for. The process was pretty simple: we soaked a few pieces of steel wool in small bukcets of distilled white vinegar for about a day. We tested just 1 piece of steel wool vs. 2 pieces, along with straight up gray stain (Minwax’s Classic Gray). This is what it looked like when it was freshly applied to our little test piece…

…and here are the results once they dried. You can see how the vinegar + steel wood mixture neutralized the orange undertone really nicely (even more effectively than the gray stain!), while still allowing the grain of the wood, and it’s imperfections, to show through. In fact the “vinegar + 1 steel wool” test spot was almost an exact match to our kitchen stools when everything dried. So we charged ahead confidently with that option.

Now here’s where things got weird. The full board reacted TOTALLY DIFFERENTLY than the scrap board. We still can’t explain exactly what happened, but as we were staining the second board we noticed the first one was drying really, really, really red. Gulp.

I’ll be honest – I was super bummed. I know we were being crazy particular about these, but we were being extra meticulous in the hope of getting the exact result we wanted. And I was actually pretty psyched about the tone the vinegar and steel wool wash had created on the test board.

Ever the optimist, Sherry bravely (or foolishly) tried to make them better by “graywashing” them with some leftover gray paint (Benjamin Moore’s Shaker Gray) mixed with a lot of water – about 5 parts water to 1 part paint. If all went poorly we could theoretically sand them all down and try again, but if it worked, well, that would be nice.

She brushed the watered down paint on and then rubbed it off, just like applying stain. It definitely cut the redness down A LOT, without taking away from the wood grain and those cool old cracks (we thought the roughness of the reclaimed wood was a nice foil to the sleek polished nickel brackets).

Is it an exact match to the stools or the floor? No. Is it the precise color we hoped the vinegar/steel wool would create? Nope to that too. But it’s not like our cutting boards and our blinds and our stools and our floors are all the same color anyway, so we decided to dial back our crazy a bit and just enjoy them. It’s kinda like there’s a family of wood tones that are living together in here – and the shelves are just another relative that’s not identical, but related. So when we let go of this expectation of perfection and stopped obsessing, well, everything looked pretty great together.

And for anyone wondering how we hung them, we used heavy duty anchors on one side, and actually got the other side into a stud, so they’re nice and secure.  There’s 18″ between the counter and the first shelf – since that’s the same gap between the counters and the upper cabinets on the other side of the room – and there’s 13″ between the shelves themselves. Another 18″ gap between the two shelves looked crazy, so we ended up at 13″ – leaving Sherry enough room to go to town without things getting cramped.

If you wanna see them “in action” in this downstairs house tour video – they show up around the 2:00 minute mark. (note: you might have to click through to the original post to see this video if you’re reading in a feed burner):

  In the end, they’re a pretty great addition to the kitchen for the dimension and interest they add (we have a little bit of “old barn” in our house!) and for the sheer joy they give Sherry whenever she gets the urge to rearrange them (which happens pretty often). Also: the fact that three of the plants that were in the kitchen reveal post are still alive today is what Sherry likes to call “a post-Christmas miracle.”

P.S. Here’s where you’ll find all the kitchen sources (where we got things, the paint colors we used), and here’s how we completely reconfigured the layout, and here’s how we gutted and rebuilt it, and here’s how we organized it (complete with a video tour through all of our drawers & doors). We also shared this brain dump of all the mistakes we made (so you can avoid them). And here’s a page full of all of our house’s paint colors & a room by room source list.  

* This post contains affiliate links*

The post How To Make Long Reclaimed Wood Shelves appeared first on Young House Love.