#this made me go look the other persons art page up on instagram + then i recognised some of their friends/flatmates art pages and i found

[toastsnaffler]

dating an art student was so crazy I'm just thinking abt that one birthday I had where my ex got me stickers from the etsy of the person they were cheating on me with....

[trungles]

Hello, long time follower just on other platforms and I love your work. I am currently getting my Masters in Comics and Graphic Novels, and do tell me if this an inappropriate question but how much do you make? Like a month doing comics and art? Also what do you do on a day to day basis? I'm worried about my future after I graduate.

Thank you so much! This is a great question, and I wish more people would be candid about answering it because I'd like creators to demand more money. This will be a very long post! Keep reading if you're interested. MASSIVE info dump below.

I think earnings in comics and books can look wildly different for almost every creator, and it depends on a lot of things. With that in mind, I make a slightly different amount every year. I view my finances mostly through page rates, contracted projects, and passive-ish income. Because I'm terrible at math, I'm just going to tell you how much I make per contracted projects, plus some relevant information in terms of Life Stuff. This will be very long, and I will highlight some important details that people maybe don't like to talk about very much.

Please also bear in mind that I live in Minnesota, away from all my major publishers and editors who are situated on the coasts, so my cost of living is much more manageable.

Background: Building a Foundation (2012-2018)

I graduated from college in 2012 and lived with my parents until 2018. I did not have to pay rent or worry about food, so I got to save up a lot of money to invest in developing as an artist–paying for printing zines, making merch, travel to conventions, table costs, and secure hotel accommodations. This helped enormously, and I would not have been able to spend six years developing my portfolio and connecting with comics peers and professionals without my parents. They were very supportive, even if they had no idea that I was developing professionally as an artist (LOL, they're very proud of me now, but they truly just thought I was being a weird internet gremlin the whole time). They're also not wealthy people by any means. My parents immigrated to the US in their 20s as refugees with absolutely no money and one baby (it me, I am the baby), but they each became pretty successful small-business owners in their own right and were able to help put me through school with minimal debt, even through the financial crisis in the late aughts.

I started making art in 2012-ish as well, but only semi-professionally, and barely on purpose. I was employed full-time in a non-art job between 2013 and 2018 at a local non-profit that specialized in pediatric therapy. I occupied a role as their front office person/corporate assistant. I made about 40k a year at that job, with benefits, and I made a negligible amount of money doing art and making comics. I should also note that throughout this time, I was working 40 hours a week at my day job, commuting between 2-4 hours a day depending on the weather (my commute was an hour for each direction in good weather and up to three hours if it snowed), and then working on comics for 3-4 hours in the evening, every evening. This meant that I would frequently be working anywhere between 65-85 hours a week for five years, and I do not recommend this! I burned out pretty bad! I didn't go to art school or learn about comics, either, so I felt like I had to spend time building my portfolio to make up for lost time. I didn't even know I wanted to make comics until maybe two years after I graduated from undergrad.

I did manage to build a nice portfolio and connect with people who were making the sort of work I liked to make, so the portfolio-building did help. I posted regularly online in different platforms and steadily grew an audience over the years via Tumblr (heyyy!) Instagram (which I personally loathe), Patreon (stressful, but necessary and also getting more comfortable to use!), and Twitter (which I have very mixed feelings about, but I'll miss it if it dies). I did a few short comics with writers whose work I admired. The Fresh Romance Anthology in 2015 was my first major published work, and it was with writer Marguerite Bennett, who remains one of my absolute favorite people. I was so inexperienced at the time, and she would check in with me to make sure I got paid for my work, and then she would follow up with everyone responsible if I was not properly compensated. Not everybody is this on-the-ball about making sure their colleagues are treated well, and she absolutely set the bar for me going forward.

Doing It For Real + Some Numbers (2018-2021)

In 2018, I put together a pitch document for The Magic Fish (if you'd like to see my pitch document, here is a Dropbox link to it! It's just a book report for a book that doesn't exist yet, and I hope you find it helpful if you need it), shopped around for an agent, and found one I'm very happy with (Kate McKean at Morhaim! She's amazing! She runs a newsletter where she gives you the lowdown on how the publishing industry works, so if you're interested in Books, you can check out her writing over at Agents and Books). Then my agent shopped the pitch around to editors and publishers, and Random House Graphic won out. Also, every time she negotiates a contract for me in my home market (the US), she gets 15% cut, which is entirely worth it to me. She does so much. It's incredible.

Random House Graphic's offer wound up being for two books at $45k each, with pretty standard royalty rates, I think around 10% in general, though there are stipulations around royalties that I can't remember off the top of my head (and also bear in mind that you do not earn royalties until your book sales have earned out your advance, and not all published books earn out). To me, this is a lot of money! BUT the graphic novel took two full years to make, so that $45k needed to last me until 2020, which is not livable if you're on you're own. Also, the advance is paid out in chunks at certain milestones of project completion. I'd get a few thousand at a time for the script, another few for the thumbnails, more for the inks, and on and on until the book is done. I would not start to get paid for the second book until I started working on it.

Earlier in 2018, I'd moved in with my partner, so we managed paying the bills and groceries together. Luckily for me, I had also completed a full tarot deck as a separate personal art project to help build my confidence as an illustrator, and my agent sold the tarot deck project (The Star Spinner Tarot) to a different publisher for a $15k advance, so I had some extra wiggle room in 2018. I quit my day job because this was a rare instance in which a book deal provided me with enough money to live on making art, with the caveat that I shared financial responsibilities with my partner. By this time, my Patreon, which I started back in 2015 I think, was also earning anywhere between $800-$1000 a month, which was really great semi-passive income. I'd post process shots and WIPs a couple times a week, and that really helped from month to month.

In 2020, The Magic Fish was published and got a lot of really lovely press. It debuted on the Indie Best-Seller list, and it got pretty popular in schools and libraries. Suddenly, my responsibilities expanded to also being a public speaker (side note: if you make a book about topics of some academic interest, make a generic powerpoint presentation about it now! I'm so serious!). I stopped tabling at conventions (the pandemic), but I would also be paid for speaking gigs in between. I'm not an enormously in-demand public speaker, so I usually asked for an honorarium of about $500 from schools and institutions for online appearances, though I'm about to ask for a lot more because it's cutting into a lot of the time I need to make comics and hit my deadlines. As people are more comfortable meeting in person, I usually ask for a speaking fee of at least $1500, and it must be after they've already taken care of my travel and accommodations. I'm not very well versed in the standards for speaking fees for debut authors, so this might not be standard! It's just my best estimation of the value of my time and effort for that instance.

Speaking of comics and deadlines, I sometimes take on smaller projects for DC (you might have seen these) and Marvel (shhh it's not been announced yet), and the page rates for those, as they've paid me, are usually as follows: $90 per page for writing ($45 for plotting and $45 for scripting), $160 for pencils per page, and $90 for inking per page. I've never colored or lettered, so I don't know those rates. I do regularly talk to other writers and artists, and the rates for writers are all over the place and seem to depend on whether you've signed an exclusive contract with either of those companies. I don't know what a contracted penciller or inker is paid by them, or if that's even a thing that happens? I also sometimes do comics cover work, and I usually charge between $1200 and $1500. I tend to charge a bit more for covers these days because I personally don't like doing covers all that much.

Starting to Reap the Benefits Maybe? (2021-2022)

In 2021, I started getting royalty checks for both Star Spinner Tarot and The Magic Fish. These payments will vary wildly, and I think they will naturally peter off as time goes on, and I'll need to make more books and projects. In both cases, I was surprised. I think at one point a random check hit my bank account for like $20k and I nearly fainted, but some of the other royalty checks will be much more modest. This process of getting paid is also immensely eased by having a good agent! I cannot stress this enough!

Then both the Star Spinner Tarot and The Magic Fish got foreign language licenses, and those come with small advances of their own, each between $2k and $3k, from what I can recall, with varying royalty rates depending on the publisher who acquired those rights. Those royalty rates are, in my limited experience, more modest than my American publisher's, come to around 7% or 8%. The Star Spinner Tarot got an official French edition, and The Magic Fish has been licensed for publication in Italian, French, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish so far.

Since 2021, I've also signed on to draw two more graphic novels for other people, and my agent is able to demand higher advances for me, even when I'm only doing the drawing part.

My Day-to-Day

I think that's about as comprehensive as I can be about numbers. On a daily basis, my schedule depends on whether I'm writing or drawing. Graphic novels are long projects. I'll be writing for months at a time and then drawing for even more months or even years after. I spend a lot of time answering emails for speaking requests, and my agent will sometimes pass along emails about legitimate project requests (another advantage of having an agent is I don't have to sift through scam emails or shady collaborators). I spend way more time answering emails and trying to iron out my calendar than I'd like.

I'm currently working on my second graphic novel for Random House Graphic, and I'm extremely excited about it.

Another thing I've learned is that I like to bounce between projects, but they have to be between a paid project and a personal project. If I'm juggling paid projects, I get overwhelmed and stressed. If I can work on a paid project and then also make personal art, I can feel some relief and maintain a positive relationship with my work. If you can ever get to a point where you can manage to do this, I highly recommend it. I never want to hate making comics, and this balance of personal-to-paid projects helps me keep loving the work.

Closing Thoughts

My only hesitation in talking candidly about all this is that I'm not sure my professional trajectory is applicable for most people. I think I've had a uniquely positive experience once I got off the ground, and I know most people's journeys are very much not this smooth. In a lot of ways, I got very lucky. And along the way I had help, especially before I got my foot firmly in the door. I don't think I make stratospherically high amounts of money, but I know this is still an atypically stable amount for a lot of artists and authors. And even so, I anticipate that some years will be better or worse than others.

Obviously, I couldn’t cover absolutely everything, but my hope is that this will be a good starting point for you to figure out what you need to plan for the future. Best of luck! Thank you for your question! I’m sorry it’s so long.

[harry-hollands]

my boyfriend’s boyfriends

(a potential au stemming from ‘who does it better?’)

a part two to ‘who does it better’ but can be read as a stand alone.

part 1

alex turcotte x fem!hockey player reader

*PICTURES ARE FROM TWITTER, INSTAGRAM, AND MY OWN PERSONAL ONES I TOOK (10-28-2023)*

(inspired by faithlynn’s @babydollmarauders series media management and kaylin’s @starsandhughes series penalty box. if you haven’t checked them out, PLEASE DO THEYRE AMAZING)

yourusername

liked by quintonbyfield, _alexturcotte, and 42,752 others

yourusername: on today’s episode of “i had a day off at work and my boyfriend and best friend and son had team bonding today so i was left alone because my other roommates had a game tonight”, i decided that i, was going to support my boyfriend’s boyfriends—i mean roommates!

how generous of me right? i was in the upper bowl to watch the game so no one saw me but as is my job to be a professional nuisance to centers and defenders to keep the lethal flying piece of rubber out of my pretty net, i had to humble them somehow during warm ups.

for those wondering why i’m wearing my boyfriend’s boyfriend #2’s jersey, i lost a bet with him. for those also wondering what the bet was, it was on my boyfriend. i THOUGHT my boyfriend was a sweet person but apparently he took a page out of the enemy of silence’s book (@/trevorzegras) and got TWO penalties last game.

turcs was not impressed as you can imagine, and neither was homewrecker (@/jordanjs224) because apparently “homewreckers need to stick together and that comes with wearing my jersey” idk man im just their roommate that willingly has pieces of rubber shot at me at lethal speeds

despite my works of art, i also included other works of art from the professionals. (im legally obligated to make them look good like 3.8% of the time)

as much as i’d love to say that the boyfriends came out victorious, they did not 🥲

my boys played v*gas and lost in shootout but at least we got a point!

my cutie patootie laffy @/alaf14 (kings’s version, not to be confused with the rags’) SCORED HIS SECOND GOAL OF THE SEASON ON HIS TAYLOR SWIFT BIRTHDAY! you made me so proud 🫶🏼

next up, the infuriating maple leafs; auston matthews, I HAVE BEEF WITH YOU (i will be watching from home because it’s where my job is)

buckle up babes, turcs baby (@/_alexturcotte), my son (@/brandtclarke55), and my best friend (@/francesco.pinelli71) play tomorrow against the baby canucks and i don’t know if i’ll have the right mental state to watch them (i have to im their emergency goalie 🤠)

(ps m*rk st*ne, nicolas hague, brayden mcnabb, and ivan barbashev i hope you all suffer a 10 game losing streak you fucking bitch babies. DONT GO AFTER MY CUTIE PATOOTIE!!!)

tagged quintonbyfield, jordanjs224, lakings, anzekopitar, kevinfiala22, duber18, alaf14

view comments

quintonbyfield: WHY DO YOU HAVE THAT PICTURE OF ME?? HOW—?!

yourusername: @/quintonbyfield oh q baby, it’s all over twitter

quintonbyfield: @/yourusername oh, so you got it from twitter, got it

yourusername: @/quintonbyfield how do you think twitter got it? 🤭🫡

quintonbyfield: @/yourusername YOU LITTLE BI—

jordanjs224: oh my god. i look ATROCIOUS

quintonbyfield: @/jordanjs224 good. suffer.

jordanjs224: @/quintonbyfield alright listen here you little asshole—

_alexturcotte: @/jordanjs224 @/quintonbyfield babes, there’s no need to fight! cant we all just get along?

jordanjs224: @/_alexturcotte shut up, this ain’t about you

_alexturcotte: @/jordanjs224 🥲

quintonbyfield: @/_alexturcotte i would never treat you this way

yourusername: @/_quintonbyfield @/jordanjs224 if y’all are gonna fight, at least do it when y’all get home please? i need some entertainment in my life

francesco.pinelli71: @/yourusername am i not enough for you? 🤨

yourusername: @/francesco.pinelli71 YOU’RE LITERALLY LEAVING FOR COLORADO MONDAY 🤠

fan23: she’s feeding the jordan girlies 🤭

fan55: oh my god?? q?? holy fuck y/n KNOWS what she’s doing taking these photos

alaf14: y/n you didn’t need to threaten them, im okay 😭

yourusername: @/alaf14 you were practically thrown to the ice like a ragdoll and then you got HIGH STICKED and were BLEEDING and you’re telling me you’re “okay”??? dude…

alaf14: @/yourusername it’s hockey it happens. besides, YOU WILLINGLY HAVE PUCKS FLYING AT LETHAL SPEEDS AT YOUR FACE AND YOU STOP THEM WITH YOUR BODY

yourusername: @/alaf14 why are you YELLING?? im making sure everyone knows that if they hurt you that they are on my hit list. i will do what flower did to bedsy and trip them up

alaf14: @/yourusername that’s a sure way you don’t make it in the nhl

yourusername: @/alaf14 i will trip you up if you don’t shut the fuck up

alaf14: @/yourusername YOU’RE DOING GREAT SWEETIE KEEP DOING YOU 🫡

yourusername: @/alaf14 that’s what i thought <33

fan15: wait y/n is their emergency goalie?? how did i not know this information?

yourusername: @/fan15 it’s not widely advertised but im tryna be a big girl in the big leagues 🫶🏼

fan15: @/yourusername OMG THANK YOU

francesco.pinelli71: thank you for humbling them. clarkey and i have been dying of laughter for five minutes and turcs is looking at us like a disappointed father

yourusername: @/francesco.pinelli71 i live to serve, but i think it’s been established that turcs is disappointed father and im eccentric mother

francesco.pinelli71: @/yourusername YOU’RE SO RIGHT

_alexturcotte: @/yourusername @/francesco.pinelli71 i regret introducing the two of you

francesco.pinelli71: @/_alexturcotte i dont !

yourusername: @/_alexturcotte @/francesco.pinelli71 i don’t either!

fan12: y/n’s friendships with alex’s best friends >>>

brandtclarke55: MOM I WANNA BE LIKE YOU WHEN I GROW UP

liked by yourusername, francesco.pinelli71 and _alexturcotte

_alexturcotte: thank you for humbling my boyfriends. they’re not allowed to have their egos inflated.

yourusername: @/_alexturcotte of course, my love! expect nothing less!

quintonbyfield: @/_alexturcotte @/yourusername FUCKING OFFENDED???

jordanjs224: @/quintonbyfield @/_alexturcotte is this what betrayal feels like?

quintonbyfield: @/jordanjs224 fuck you.

jordanjs224: @/quintonbyfield time and place

_alexturcotte: @/quintonbyfield @/jordanjs224 without me?

quintonbyfield: @/_alexturcotte @/jordanjs224 never babygorl

yourusername: @/quintonbyfield @/jordanjs224 @/_alexturcotte 💀

_alexturcotte: i love you, my darling <33

yourusername: @/_alexturcotte i love you more, my love <33

~

a/n: i hope you enjoyed this little installment! i have a halloween one planned and am working on a blurb about worlds!! there will also be hopefully a blurb on turcs introducing her to the boys. I LOVE YOU ALL AND THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING

as always, reblogs, likes, and comments are always appreciated 🫶🏼

~soph <33

[memyselfandmya]

JWCT PROMPT COUNTDOWN

Jwct countdown May 10-11 -- Favorite character:

An (unedited) excerpt of the fanfic I'm writing that'll include pre/post-Nublar.

“I still don’t understand why I have to go to this stupid camp,” Yasmina grumbled as she and her mom walked down the aisles of the supermarket, on the hunt for any last minute items she may need before embarking on her two week “vacation” to Camp Cretaceous. The fluorescent lights and incessant pop music playing throughout the store made her bones itch.   

“It’s part of the sponsorship, Mina,” her mom said. “If Jurassic World is going to be your sponsor you have to participate in the camp’s trial run.”

Yasmina scoffed. “Oh great, so I’m a guinea pig. If they’re my sponsors shouldn’t they want me to practice? The Junior Olympics are next year, I should be training.”  

“I think it’s a great opportunity. You’ve been training so hard, Yasmina, and you should take a break, make some new friends. My parents never let me go to summer camp and-”

“Can I get some new headphones?” she asked, putting an abrupt stop to her mom’s long tangent about how her mom never let her do anything. Besides, Yaz didn’t need friends anyway, they only served a distraction. 

“What happened to the pair you had?” 

“Lailah stole them,” she huffed. “Please, Ma, can I get some?”

“Fine, you won’t be able to use them much anyways, though. It’s a phone free camp. Where is your sister anyways?”

Yasmina shrugged and tossed the headphones in the cart. She could already tell this camp would be a living hell. 

 ...

“Lailah, there you are,” her mom said once they finally found her sister flipping through books in the graphic novel aisle. “Why didn’t you stay with me and your sister?”

Lailah didn’t even bother looking up from the book as she shrugged, the sleeves of her sweater sliding down her shoulder. “I don’t know, I just assumed it was a you and Yasmina thing.”

Her mom sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “No, of course not, baby. Next time please stay with us so we don’t have to scour the whole store looking for you.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

… 

Later that night, after a dinner of her mom’s amazing food, Yasmina lay in her bed scrolling through her instagram page. Her actual account was barren but so many of the people at her school had been posting left and right about all the fun they were having during break. There was one particular post she scrolled past of a girl on her track team with her friends at some party. She had a big grin on her face with her arms wrapped around two other girls. For someone who didn’t train nearly as much as Yasmina (which was a near impossible feat), she had a strong record. 

Yasmina sighed, clicked off her phone, and stared at her wall. Trophies and medals adorned every inch of it. Her mom had insisted she put them on display as a way to look back on all of her accomplishments. For Yasmina, they served as a push to maintain her good work. 

 She had a reputation to uphold. She was supposed to be strong, for her coach, her team, and her mom. That’s what she was, always was, her mom’s “strong girl.”

...

From the moment I began watching this show, I knew Yaz was going to be my favorite. I always have a preference for the shy/standoff-ish characters (who are also gay) because I see myself in them, and also just seeing more of her personality like her determination and desire to make her proud (totally relatable) just does something to me. Especially Art of Chill or Welcome to Jurassic World, I saw the way she acted with Sammy's betrayal and was like, "who hurt you?" so I'm glad I finally get to explore her character and orchestrate her background. And seeing her now, in Chaos Theory is just so amazing to me because I was so worried I wouldn't see her again and that S5 would be the last of her character.

[humanbug]

Inky Hearts pt. 1

Modern!Ellie is a tattoo artist and you just became her lovely little muse.

a/n: hellooo! okay i am actually kind of obsessed with this. I'm not sure how many parts of this i am planning on making but definitely more than one. as always feedback and comments are more than welcome!! all of the pictures i included do not belong to me and the tattoo was found on Pinterest. the two songs mentioned are C.R.E.A.M by Wu-Tang and Come A Little Closer by Cage the Elephant. enjoy lovelys!!

warning(s): mentions of cigarettes/smoking/weed, i think that's it but please let me know if i should add anything

You drum your fingers on the steering wheel anxiously waiting for the light to turn green. You had no reason at all to be anxious! This was not your first tattoo. You had too many to count off the top of your head. However it was your first time at this shop and new places have always made you anxious, always preferring routine over spontaneity. 

You had seen one of the artists at the shop on instagram and instantly became obsessed with their work. Their page is full of stunning tattoos. Her name was Ellie. Cute. She seemed to mostly do plants and flowers, sticking to a traditional style. Seeing a few videos of her tattooing herself, you couldn’t help but notice just how attractive she was. Doing some light-hearted stalking you managed to find her personal page and she had a disappointing lack of posts. Her profile picture was her standing holding a skateboard behind her head…original. She only had a few pictures, mostly with other people. Deciding against following her, figuring that might be creepy.

‘Fuck it! Her style is perfect for the exact tattoo that I’ve been wanting on my hips. It's just a major plus that she’s super hot.’ You think as you send a message to the tattoo parlors page saying you’re interested in booking an appointment. 

So just like that, a month later you’re sitting at a red light, anxiety pulsing through you. Parking your car in the lot across from the shop you gather your things, giving yourself a once over in your car window, you walk across to the shop. The bell above the door jingles as you open it. The classic smell of green soap wafting through the parlor. C.R.E.A.M is playing low in the background as you make your way to the front desk. A young girl with thick black hair is sitting on a stool at the counter typing away at a laptop. You realize you recognize her from Ellie’s instagram page.

You take a few anxious steps toward her, “Hi! I’m here for a four o’clock appointment with Ellie? Sorry I’m a little early!” 

“Hey! No worries! She’s just finishing up with someone and then she’ll come out and get you. Feel free to have a seat.” She gives you a warm smile, going back to typing away.

Placing your purse and water bottle on the coffee table in the middle of a few sofas and loveseats you flop into one, fiddling with your fingers. You take a look around the shop, admiring the welcoming vibe. Flash art is hung all over the walls, along with pictures of tattoos and piercings that customers have gotten. Art and posters are also placed around sporadically. The artist stations have curtains on either side of them with a walkway in the middle. 

A voice coming from around one of the curtains snags your attention. ‘Oh my god. She’s even hotter in person. This is gonna be a long day.’ Your face flushes as your mind shuffles around. 

She rounds the front desk, chatting with her client while accepting her payment. Her client leaves and she turns to the dark haired girl who welcomed you, she nods her head in your direction and you quickly look down realizing you’ve been staring at them. You fiddle with your fingers as a pair of beat up converse come into your view. Looking up as she asks your name.

“Yeah! That’s me!” You look up giving your best casual smile.

“Sweet. Give me one sec to clean up my station and print out your stencil and I’ll come get you.” She says as she steps back.

“Okie dokie!” 

She chuckles at your response, walking towards her station.

“Okie dokie!? Jesus fucking christ I’m such a dork. Just be cool! You know how to be cool!’ You scold yourself and take some deep breaths.

About twenty minutes pass before she’s walking back with your stencil in hand, nodding her head at you to follow her. Gathering your stuff as quickly as possible you shuffle after her. She walks to her station, pulling the curtain closed behind you guys and sits in the rolling chair, cutting the excess edge off of your stencil. You stand there, shifting on your feet, awaiting direction.

Your eyes wander and you realize her station is a great insight to her personality. She’s got a tool cart covered in stickers and a low table shelf where her rolling chair sits. She’s got several shelves with collectable action figures and pictures. You notice more of her flash art taped to the wall, a Savage Starlight poster catches your eye. 

“Alright so you want these on the front of your thighs and hips right?” She looks up at you and you nod giving a small hum.

“Perfect, so if you just wanna pull your shorts off – or you can just lower them. Whatever you’re comfortable with.” 

You blush even though you knew you’d have to take your shorts off. Purposefully wearing your cutest high cut underwear, however now you feel embarrassed at doing that. You shuffle out of your shorts and fold them over your bag. Hopping onto the chair with a small huff you lean back into the backrest. 

She stands, slipping on her black gloves. Glancing down at you and asking if you're ready, you nod your head with another hum. 

As she makes work of sanitizing your skin and running the disposable razor over your thighs and hips, you subtly admire her own ink. She has a beautiful fern with a moth overlaying it on her left arm. On her right arm she has a collection of flowers and plants from her wrist disappearing into the sleeve of her white t-shirt. She also has several patchwork pieces filling in the blank skin on her arms, neck, and some tattoos disappearing to her covered hands. Your face flushes and the thought of seeing the pieces that are not currently exposed. 

As Ellie is prepping her canvas she is trying to be as subtle as possible as she looks you over. Feeling embarrassed at her lack of professionalism she scolds herself as she ogles you. Admiring your tattoos, she feels giddy at the thought of adding to all the beautiful pieces covering you. She glances up at you as you seem to be dazed while staring at her arms. Giving a small smirk at your face flushing, she wipes your skin with the wet paper towel once more before grabbing your stencil from her table. She presses them both down with gentle hands, making sure they’re even and not smudged. 

“Okay, hop up and take a look at it in the mirror. If there’s anything, anything at all that you don’t like about the placement or size let me know.” She steps back, rolling her gloves off and reaching for clean ones.

Scooting off the chair you move over to the mirror and admire the beautiful stencil, already obsessing over the temporary blue ink. Shifting your hips and rotating your body to make sure you like it from all angles, you swivel around with a grin.

“I love it! It’s literally perfect. Oh my god it’s so perfect.” You gush.

Her face flushes at your praise and she nods before turning to her workstation to fill the ink caps and get her tattoo gun ready.

You hop back into the chair, giddy with excitement. Fingers fiddling, this time with excited energy. The buzz of the gun causes adrenaline to fizzle through you and you take deep breaths, preparing for the sweet pain. She rolls her chair to you and presses the pedal underneath the chair causing it to lower to her sitting level. 

“Alright, you ready to start?” She dips the needle of the gun into the ink, bringing her attention back to you. 

Taking a deep breath, you look into her green eyes and give your best confident nod, “Ready as I’ll ever be!”

She smiles at you, finding you absolutely adorable and places her left hand firmly on your thigh, gun in her right hand. 

Always being surprised by the pain, for some odd reason. You take a deep breath at the hot sting and try to focus on the music playing in the parlor. Come A Little Closer plays and you drum your fingers to the melody. 

– 

“Alright, outlines are done. You wanna take a break before we start color?” She asks as she sets the gun down, stretching out her arms and neck. Looking incredibly hot doing something so simple.

“Yeah! A break would be good.” You stretch out your legs before moving off the chair with great caution trying to avoid the painful feeling of creasing your skin. 

“Sweet. Lemme just cover you with saran wrap and some medical tape” She rolls over to you covering your outline gently. You slip on your shorts, zipping them up and leaving the button undone. You shuffle in your bag for your smokes, turning around with the pack in hand. 

“You- Uh- You wanna join me for a smoke?” You offer sheepishly. 

She says sure and grabs her water bottle, walking out behind you. You lean against the brick wall, pulling your lighter out of the pack and two smokes. You place one in your mouth, lighting it and lighting the other with the tip. You blush feeling Ellie’s eyes on you the whole time.

Passing it to her you try to make small talk, “It’s a horrible habit…I’m aware. I usually prefer a joint over a cig but ya know.” You say with a small laugh. 

She chuckles with you, “I’m not one to judge. Besides, you can get away with smoking.”

“What do you mean by that?” You exhale and glance up at her in confusion.

“Pretty girls can always get away with smoking. Trust me.” She says with a dramatic exhale of smoke, looking borderline edible at this point. 

‘Fuck how can someone look that hot smoking a cigarette!?’ 

You turn a bright shade of red, “I- I’ve never been told that before…” You say quietly, stubbing your cigarette out on the ashtray placed outside. 

Smirking at your shyness she stubs her and pushes herself off the wall, stubbing her cigarette on the ashtray, “C’mon pretty, let’s get back to work.” She says, holding the door open for you. Your body brushes against hers as you walk through the door. Face aflame.  

You both settle back in her workspace and she starts coloring your piece.

–

Pulling off her gloves and leaning back to stretch, “And you’re done. Let me know what you think.”

You scoot off the chair, skin much more tender, you wince when you crease it, dreading the drive home. You step over to the mirror ogling at the artwork that decorates your skin.

“It’s-” You spin around bouncing on your toes, “It’s amazing! You’re fucking amazing! Oh my fucking god!” You practically scream, feeling pure elation. 

Her freckles become prominent as her face flushes a concerning shade of red. Your praise clearly has an effect on her. She rubs the back of her neck sheepishly, feeling her blush all over her body. 

Clearing her throat, “I- I’m glad you like it. You took it like a champ. That’s a big ass piece, I don’t know if I could've done only one session.” She rambles, wanting to get the attention off of her. 

She stands, hands stuffing into her pockets, “Anyway! Let’s get that covered.” 

She covers both your hips in saniderm and you pull your shorts on, wincing as the fabric rubs against your skin. 

“Hey! Uh- Do you have a personal instagram? I found the shop but um- was hoping to follow your personal one!” You ramble nervously, shuffling with your phone.

Letting out a small laugh she takes your phone from you, opening instagram and typing her handle. She takes her phone out of her back pocket, following you back. You try to hide your smile and grab the rest of your things.

‘Just be cool. Play it cool and casual.’

Making your way to the front desk she leans on it, “So for today it’ll be an even $200.”

“What? What- No, that’s- that’s way too cheap. Here.” You hand her four hundred, knowing that she’s undercharging you. This tattoo is incredible and huge. You also hand her a single hundred for the tip. Having had enough tattoos that you know you always pay in cash and always be prepared to tip generously. 

She shuffles through the cash, shaking her head and trying to hand you back two of the five hundred that you handed her. You raise your hands and shake your head, “No! Ellie! C’mon, don’t undercharge me!” Looking her in the eyes to insist. 

“C’mon pretty girl. Reason with me. Take two back. I won’t accept five.” She says as she stands taller, hands leaning on the counter, tilting her head as she speaks to you.

‘Let me just…casually get on my knees for you. You look so fucking hot right now. Oh my fucking god.’

You let out a dramatic sigh and say quietly, “Fine! Fine…but you’re keeping three!” You concede, not happy at all with her undercharging you.

She smirks, pushing herself off the counter folding the cash and pocketing it, “Good girl. Was that so hard?” She mocks you.

Your body is burning with embarrassment and lust at this point and you are grateful the dark haired girl from before is gone. Feeling mortified at the thought of anyone witnessing her flirtatious teasing. 

Tucking your hair behind your ear, you take a step back gripping your bag.

Clearing your throat you manage to get out, “Well- I Will be seeing you. Thank you, Ellie. This piece is- it’s incredible. I’m obsessed with it!” You gush out like a fangirl.

“Thank you…that means a lot.” She says and stuffs her hands in her pockets, an obvious tell of when she’s nervous. 

–

Parking your car in the parking lot behind your apartment building you pull your phone out from your back pocket, feeling it buzz with a notification. 

ellie_wills03 : hey pretty girl

ellie_wills03 : you get home safe?

You bite your bottom lip as you smile. Thumbs hovering over your keyboard.

love.bug.222 : Hi! Yes, I just got home 🩷

ellie_wills03 : good, have a good night gorgeous 

love.bug.222 : Okie dokie! You too! I’ll talk to you tomorrow :) 

Ellie smiles at her phone, chuckling at how sweet you sound even over text.

You are a blushing mess, admiring your tattoo for the rest of the night.

[tetrakys]

Very old tea - Beemoov's writers

Every day I wake up and find new drama in the fandom. I have to admit it is entertaining but fake news and misinformation really annoy me so here we go. What's the new tea? It's actually very old tea, but it needs to be put into context.

A few hours ago, someone rummaging through the New Gen website, ended up on the credit page, where they found this

This page isn't reachable from the website, there are no links, you need to type the full url to get there because it's only a placeholder. You can clearly see that those are Eldarya TO credits, and an old Priya illustration is used as background. Literally yesterday Chino mentioned in her Instagram stories that there are lots of placeholders on the website.

Despite this, news is now circulating that the same team that worked on Eldarya is now working on New Gen. I don't think people have been saying this maliciously, it's possible that they got confused with the placeholder, which didn't have the big red disclaimer I added in the screenshot above. However now they are freaking out for no reason and bringing back so much old drama, which is also partially wrong. So here I am trying to clarify, hoping that people will see this (but alas, tumblr isn't as popular as facebook and twitter so maybe I'm just shouting into the wind).

MCL and Eldarya writing team

Part 1. High School Life and the Sally Anne drama

Firstly, at the very very beginning of MCL, Chino was on her own, she was working on both the art and the writing. However, soon later the company looked for a writer, Chino pushed for her friend Sally Anne to be hired even if she had no prior professional experience, and the company agreed. Eventually they also became roommates and even closer friends.

Now, the people who have been around for ages like me know that there was huge drama at some point. Sally Anne had some health issues and pretty much disappeared for months in the middle of Nath's arc. Lots of things were said at the time, some true some very untrue. Sally Anne made a facebook post mentioning how Chino and the company were bullying her. One of the accusations that people like to bring back all the time is that the character of Aleja, who was based on Sally Anne, was used to bully her because she was written as a bit silly. Maybe people forget that all Eldarya self-inserts are very flawed. Jamon can barely use grammar when he speaks, Kero is a coward, Ykhar an anxious nervous train wreak. I don't see anyone say that Chinomiko bullied herself by making Miiko such a raging bitch.

Anyway I believe that Sally Anne herself realised that this and other bullying accusations were unfair since she later retracted it. Some people say that she was forced by Beemoov to do so (I don't know where they would get this information, it's a pretty strong accusation). Others say that all this is common behaviour for people who suffer from addiction. I'm just going to add some additional context that most people may not be aware of since I hardly see it mentioned.

When Sally Anne left the company she started her own personal project with some friends. They put together a kickstarted campaign for a BL game and earned around 58,000€. After that however, the project never came to light because of, again, Sally Anne's personal issues. Here you can see a post from the team describing the situation, which is proof that her health condition was not connected to Beemoov work environment at all, since the same thing happened again while working on her own personal project with other friends of hers. Additionally here is the final post written soon afterward, where the team explained that they would not be able to make the game. They also said that they had used up most of the kickstarter money already even though the game had not been produced. They gave people only one month to claim their kickstarter pledge back. Considering to this day there's still people who wonder what happened to their Eldarya account, I strongly believe not many people managed to see that post and claim their money with only a one month timeframe.

Anyway, this serves as a context to show that in a very small company, when the writer disappears for whatever reason, either the project is cancelled or they have to hire someone else. Lots of people believe that Beemoov is a huge company when it's not. At the time of these events there were around 50 employees, and those people had to earn a living. Sally Anne was the only writer, this whole situation led to MCL not being released for at least half a year, which compromised everyone's salaries. Players were complaining like crazy but, despite hearing only one side of the story, they were very happy to jump on the "Sally Anne was being bullied" train once new writers were hired and they could play the game again.

So, let's talk about the "new" writers.

Part 2. Second half of High School Life and Eldarya TO

Once it was clear that Sally Anne would not be able to come back to work, Beemoov hired two new writers. Hikaru who would end up being Eldarya TO's writer, and Cassandre who took over MCL and finished High School season. (These info you can find in the games credits).

Hikaru was the CM at the time, because the company was looking for a writer for this new game Eldarya they gave her a chance. Chino and Hikaru got along well and I think it's visible in TO's writing. Remember Chino is the creator, she decides the story and the events, the writer writes them, and Chino reads and corrects the script. I think it's clear from TO's writing that they had a good synergy. Hikaru left around the end of TO for personal reasons, she moved to another city and changed career, it was her choice to kill off her self-insert (Ykhar) before leaving, so no there was no big conspiracy around the self-inserts. To this day she and Chino are still friends. But no, she's not coming back to write New Gen as people who saw the placeholder seem to believe.

Cassandre, as I said, took over MCL HSL in the middle of Nath's arc. I think it's visible that the season feels a bit different with a different writer, but I still like it, I think she did a good job as a writer. However, once high school was over, in a move that I will never understand, Beemoov's management decided to assign Eldarya to her, not as a writer but as a project manager, effectively taking over Chino's role. So Chino had to leave from around episodes 20-22 and never went back. She only provided the main storyline of the worlds merging, but at some point she resumed working on the events only.

So from around episode 20-22 to episode 29 Hikaru and Cassandre worked together, with Hikaru as the writer and Cassandre as the one deciding the plot/scenes and supervising the writing.

Part 3. Eldarya ANE + MCL University, Love and Alternate Life

Once Hikaru left, Alexis took over. So from episode 30 of TO and throughout ANE he and Cassandre have worked on Eldarya alone. This is the dream team we owe the state of Eldarya to. None of them knew the first 22 episodes of the games in depth and hence why we have all the plot holes and different characters' personalities. Additionally, at that point Cassandre started working on Uncoven so it is my personal opinion that Alexis was mostly on his own during ANE because clearly you can see that the person who wrote that had no idea what Eldarya was really about.

What happened in MCL at the same time? Once Cassandre moved to Eldarya, Beemoov found another writer for MCL, Cara, who wrote University Life. My personal opinion is that she was a good writer, I like University Life, but there's very little romance. Less than HSL for sure. But there are many funny scenes and a young adults feel that I really liked. She and Chino worked on UL together as writer/creator and it's still one of my favourite seasons, however the lack of flirting scenes is visible.

Then, when Love Life started, another writer joined the team, Antoine, Chino was still the creator and Cara remained as proofreader and also worked on Uncoven with Cassandre. My personal opinion is that there are lots of issues in Love Life because of how some themes of feminism, sexual harassment etc. are treated. Additionally the romance was even less than in UL, and some characters' personalities took a slightly strange turn. However I did like the main storyline and the ending that went full circle.

By the time Alternate Life started, both Cassandre and Cara had left the company, Antoine was still around to write additional LL episodes such as wedding and honeymoon, and the events. Eldarya's writing was over and so Alternate's writing has been the product of Alexis and Chino alone.

Part 4. What about today? MCL New Gen

New Gen is being written by Alexis and Chino, same team and dynamic as Alternate, the two of them alone. So if you see people around saying that Hikaru is back or whatever else, it's not true.

You may not like Alexis' writing after what was done to Eldarya, which I totally understand. If I hadn't played all Alternate Life I would feel the same and think that the guy isn't able to think deeper than a teaspoon. But luckily I really like what he and Chino can do together so I have a good feeling for New Gen.

[abstractnaturaldisaster]

Steddie Flower Shop / Tattoo Parlor AU

I’m so sorry this is an angsty one again but it ends hopefully (and the whole fic ends happy I promise, no bummers 2k23). 

Part One I Part Two I Part Three I Part Four I Part Five I Part Six I Also on AO3!

Robin was running late. It wasn’t unusual but she did try to make an effort for Steve who was way too understanding about it. She had overslept and by the time she was up, Steve had already made a pot of coffee and left for the studio. Robin poured the rest into a travel mug and sped out the door texting Steve she was on her way. 

“Steve! I’m so sorry I totally missed my alarm.” She said as she ran back into the small back office. 

“It’s all good,” Steve answered. He seemed off to Robin. She started getting set up at the front to go through and organize Steve’s books and work on the shop’s instagram when she noticed that Steve hadn’t picked up Eddie’s flowers yet. 

“Are you going to grab lunch with Eddie today?” Robin asked. 

“Oh, no. Probably not. I mean he’s probably busy with Valentine’s orders or whatever.”

Robin knew something was wrong then. Steve and Eddie had been hanging out pretty regularly since their happy hour and Robin couldn’t remember the last time they didn’t at least drop off lunch for each other on busy days. “Do you need to run over to pick up your bouquet? The front desk is looking a little bare.”

“Not today, Robs.” Steve answered. 

“Okay, Steve, now I know something is wrong. What’s up? Did Eddie do something?”

“No, I mean. It’s nothing. It doesn’t matter.” Steve said. 

“Steve, I’m here if you need me.” Robin patted his shoulder. 

“I just thought he was different. Like he got what I was doing here, Robin,” Steve sighed. “I mean we were hanging out and I showed him some of my sketches of his flowers and told him how much I think they’d be a great tattoo for him and I dunno he got super standoffish about it. He just kind of left and honestly I can’t deal with trying to validate myself and my art to someone else. I’m just so tired of it.” 

Robin took Steve in a tight hug. “I’m so sorry, babe. He seemed like he wouldn’t be the type. I had no idea.”

“It’s fine, Robin. I mean I guess I should have expected it with his whole metal vibe or whatever.” Steve said. “I’ll be okay. I’m mostly used to it. I gotta go get ready for my client.” Steve stood and walked out of the back room to start preparing the space for his appointment. 

Robin was at a loss. Eddie had honestly seemed so different from the last few people Steve had been interested in. She felt like she was missing pieces. Robin didn’t want to betray Steve’s trust but also she didn’t want Steve to lose Eddie. She decided to text Chrissy a code red to meet at a coffee shop nearby asap. 

Chrissy showed up shortly after Robin had ordered and sat down. “Hey Robin. I’m going to hear you out because you’re my friend out but I’m pretty pissed at Steve.”

“We’re on the same page, Chris. I had half a mind to go yell at Eddie first but I’m worried about Steve and I think maybe there’s something he’s missing.” Robin said. “Can we just talk through what happened? I have a feeling our boys are being purposefully dense about something.”

“I didn’t get much out of Eddie. He was in quite the mood this morning. But I can maybe help decipher some of the Eddieisms,” Chrissy answered. 

“Perfect. Okay so here’s what I know. Steve and Eddie were hanging out last night. Steve’s been working on these sketches of Eddie’s flowers because he’s terrible at expressing his feelings like a normal person. I guess he showed them to Eddie and Eddie gave him shit about it when Steve said he’d like to tattoo Eddie.”

“All I got out of Eddie was that he thought Steve was a pretentious shit about tattoos. He was grumbling all morning about rich kids and not understanding growing up without access to everything.”

Robin was starting to put the pieces together. Steve had grown up in a pretty wealthy suburb of Chicago and his parents had supported him for most of his life. It was only when he’d decided to become a tattoo artist that he lost that support and he was still a little bit of an idiot about money. 

“Chrissy, I’m going to share something pretty personal about Steve and I’m only doing this because I think this was all a giant misunderstanding and if you or Eddie use this information to hurt Steve they will never find your bodies.”

“Understood.” Chrissy answered. 

“So, Steve doesn’t ever tattoo friends or family. It’s something he has held absolutely firm on since he apprenticed. He tells people it’s because he doesn’t want to have to look at his work all the time or jokes that he’d just find flaws in it and want to fix it. Knowing Steve, I think that’s just part of the issue. I think he’s scared to give something so permanent to someone. He’s had a lot of people just leave him and I don’t think he could stand it if he tattooed a friend and they left. He takes his work super seriously. I know he can come off as an asshole but he’s had to build up a pretty thick skin doing the type of tattoos he does. He’s gotten a lot of shit for being too feminine. It sounds like he took whatever reaction Eddie had to their talk yesterday as a rejection of him. Steve’s worked so hard to be comfortable with himself and he definitely already thought Eddie was way too cool for him so I think his ego is probably a little bit bruised.” Robin knew she had been monologuing so she took a breath she hadn’t noticed she’d been holding and drank some of her coffee. 

“Robin, I can’t promise anything, but I will talk to Eddie.”

“That’s all I want. I’m sorry I know this is a super weird place for us to be but I think maybe the guys just need a little help getting over themselves.” Robin said. 

Chrissy was glad Robin had told her about what Steve said. Eddie was kind of closed book but before he’d gotten to know Steve, Eddie would be a little judgy about the fancy studio and the cost. Eddie had tattoos but they were mostly things friends gave him in exchange for his help moving or to commemorate a big show or something. He’d never really had money to invest in any bigger tattoos. Chrissy knew Eddie hadn’t grown up rich but other than that her knowledge of his childhood was pretty limited. Even over the years Chrissy had known Eddie she’d only picked up small pieces of Eddie’s upbringing. He didn’t share a lot but he grew up with pretty shitty parents. His mom had died when Eddie was pretty young so when his dad went to prison at some point Eddie went to live with his uncle in a trailer park in the Chicago suburbs. His uncle didn’t have much but he made a home for Eddie. Chrissy thought something Steve had said to Eddie hit a little too close to his past and Eddie’s defenses had shot back up. She didn’t know if she could get him to come back around but Eddie had been noticeably happier with Steve and she figured it was at least worth a try.

“Eddie! I need to talk to you!” Chrissy yelled as she walked back into the flower shop. 

“No time. Heading back out on delivery.” Eddie grumbled as he walked past her out to the van

“Then I’m going with you.” Chrissy jumped into the passenger seat before Eddie could peel out into the street. 

“Fine.”

Chrissy let Eddie stew in silence as the van started up. She was surprised not to hear Eddie’s usual metal soundtrack. Eddie quickly went to pull the cassette out of the tape player but Chrissy had caught enough of the opening to recognize it. 

“Jesus, Eddie. I didn’t know it was You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling, bad.” Chrissy had discovered the Hall & Oates tape shortly after it had been added to the van’s usual rotation of cassettes. When she asked about it, Eddie had blamed Steve with a goofy smile on his face. 

“Chris, not today.” 

“Can I say one thing and then we can go back to not talking about it?” Chrissy asked. 

“Fine.”

“Okay great. Robin told me about something that happened between you and Steve last night. I know it’s your business and I promised to leave it alone but I am just here to give information. It’s up to you if you do anything with it. First, I know we made fun of all the pretentious hipster vibes of Steve’s shop when he first moved in but I really thought you of all people would know not to judge a book by its cover. Second, you have to know Steve is super into you by now. I mean y’all are basically always together if you’re not working.”

“That’s not true. I do other stuff.” Eddie interrupted. 

“Sure, whatever you say. Stop interrupting me. I know you’re sensitive about your past and I also know you haven’t said anything to Steve about your parents so do you think you might have been a little harsh last night?”

Eddie has pulled into their first stop and jumped out of the van to make the drop off. Chrissy waited for him to get back. 

“One more thing, and then I promise you can blare whatever shitty break up song you need to for the rest of the day. I think maybe you’re pushing Steve away because he scares you. It’s been forever since you’ve been with anyone seriously. Steve seems so good for you. I don’t know what he said that made your walls slam back up but maybe he didn’t mean it the way you thought he did? You’re kind of an intimidating person to be vulnerable with.”

Chrissy let Eddie process what she said for the rest of the delivery route. They got back to the shop late and started closing up. When Chrissy had packed up for the day she went to give Eddie a hug and held him close for a little longer than usual. 

“I’m here if you need me but please just sleep on it before you make any rash decisions?” Chrissy said as she let go of Eddie.

Eddie nodded and went back to cleaning up his work bench to get ready for another day of Valentine’s induced hell. It was absolutely the worst time for Eddie to have any sort of relationship drama because he’d be surrounded by love hearts for a least two more days. Eddie laughed at himself for that. He’d have to actually have been in a relationship to have relationship drama. He was an idiot. Steve reminded Eddie of his worst high school bullies. The guys who called him trailer trash and pushed him into lockers after Eddie had been caught kissing a guy under the bleachers. Logically, Eddie knew Steve wasn’t that way. He had obviously had to deal with his own shit coming up in the tattoo industry. Eddie still hadn’t been able to shake his old feelings of inadequacy when Steve asked if he wanted an “actual” tattoo. He’d felt people’s gaze lingering on his shitty stick and pokes he’d done with friends or let people use him for practice. He’d overheard the comments people made when he went to deliver flowers at fancy office buildings. Eddie hadn’t felt that same level of judgment from Steve but he figured it was just a matter of time. Steve obviously put a lot of time and effort into his tattoos and he must think badly about Eddie’s more cavalier attitude to the markings. 

As Eddie cleaned, he kept working through last night at Steve’s. Chrissy was probably right and that Steve hadn’t meant anything negative and just used the exact wrong phrasing. In fact, looking back, Steve seemed super nervous and worried about Eddie’s reaction. Why Steve was anxious Eddie had no idea. Steve’s sketch was probably the most beautiful tattoo idea he’d ever seen. He’d be honored to get something like from Steve. But of course Eddie hadn’t actually said any of that to Steve after he started freaking out. Stupid.

As Eddie made his way upstairs to get to bed, he was truly exhausted but he couldn’t stop thinking about what Chrissy had said on their afternoon delivery route. Fuck. He owed Steve a pretty big apology. That had to be tomorrow Eddie’s problem; he was too tired to handle it now. Eddie drifted off to sleep thinking about Steve’s feet in his lap and maybe future nerdy movie nights while crossing his fingers he hadn’t fucked up too badly yesterday. 

***

Part Eight! 

I am at such a loss for word that y’all are still hanging with me! I think there’s going to be three more parts of the main story and then maybe some side plots in the same universe. After I wrap up on tumblr I’ll post it to AO3 so it’s all in one place for future reading! c:

I am also obsessed with the big green couch and I am very happy to you all appreciate it to. 

My taglist got super messed up last update so please let me know if I’ve missed anyone or added anyone by accident! Y’all are the best!!

Taglist: @a-little-unsteddie @maya-custodios-dionach @eboyawstenn @swimmingbirdrunningrock @sadcanadianwinter @thehumblefigtree @throwbackthrowaway @micheledawn1975 @blisschaoss @vecnuthy @grimmfitzz @spectrum-spectre @croatoan-like-its-hot @momotonescreaming @beckkthewreck @korixae @citrus-owl @baron-zemo-trash @sleepdeprivedflower @nuagedemots @lololol-1234 @books-and-current-obsessions @acrolius @mightbeasleep @vi-an-te @gregre369 @i-must-potato @vampireinthesun  @steveisabicon @child-of-cthulhu @whimsicalwitchm @aceflavouredyougurt @that-bi-gremlin99 @oxidantdreamboat @goodolefashionedloverboi @notaqueenakhaleesi @briceslayed @raisedbylibrarians @bejeweledbaby @avacrebs @magpiemuseum @majesticenbypancake 

[ficforyourart]

superman x batman // gala nights

Based on this art by Umikochanart on Instagram.

I'm back again! Please click the link above as Umikochanart does not allow reposting of her art.

SUMMARY: Clark is more than happy to help Bruce out at the fundraiser and woo donors. One problem, though. Clark doesn't know how to ballroom dance.

READ ON AO3.

Chapter 1 - One, two, three

There's nothing like the Daily Planet. The soft clacking of keys as brilliant minds put words to page, the gentle ringing of one of the world's last remaining landlines and of course, Lois' soft sighs of frustration make him feel right at home. He purposely straightens, stretching his arms over his head—a secret signal for his mentor and friend.

“Smallville,” Lois clips from the other side of the cubicle.

“No c's, just k's. It was a branding choice, remember?”

“Gotcha,” she hums, and her agreement is followed by the tapping of keys. “What would I do without you, Clark?”

A single-wrapped cookie makes it over the paneled wall that separates them and hits him on the head.

“Ow?”

Lois pokes her head up, frowning at him. “Really? Every time? How do you not expect that?”

There was a time where Clark was sure she was training him Pavlovian-style to be her personal spell-checker. He'd been inspired by her work ethic, intimidated by her determination and when he found out that the great Lois Lane still needed help spelling tomorrow, well, he was in love. She doesn't need to reward him. It's an honour to help. Plus, he pays attention.

Clark looks up at her from beneath his unstylish glasses and pushes them higher onto the bridge of his nose. A gentle flush colours his cheeks. “Well, I… was focused, you see.”

“Sure,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Thank you.” Lois adds with the deepest sincerity before disappearing back into her vortex of productivity. Clark is one of the few friends she's made at the Planet; it's almost like ‘How to Lose Friends and Alienate People' was made for her. Might as well keep the one that sticks around.

At times, when Clark lets his mind drift, he can even catch the faint flickering sound of a phone screen lighting up—one that's been silenced—and calling out for his owner. He'd turned his downwards, if only to stay focused. He's got a pile of condominium by-laws to sort through to find inconsistencies.

One of the icons lights up at the bottom of his screen, and a notification box slides up the corner. Bruce Wayne says ‘Kent'.

Hm.

The last time Bruce messaged him at work, they'd wasted time which was Bruce's intention—he wanted a distraction from the meeting he was in. The deadline for this article is fast approaching and he figures if it was urgent, Bruce would call. Clark looks back down at his papers.

‘Wow, really? You're going to leave me on read?' reads the next pop-up box, and he can't help the way his eyes flicker to it anyway.

Clark hadn't even opened the chat. He looks around, confused. There's no way Bruce is here. The chatter would have reached him easily. He squints at the cameras in the office, then directly at the one on his monitor.

That's ridiculous, he tells himself. Bruce wouldn't… would he?

Clark rolls his eyes. Yeah, he absolutely would.

The papers are pushed aside as Clark pulls his keyboard closer. He clicks open the chat.

CLARK KENT - Daily Planet - Metropolis, NY

How can I help you, Mr. Wayne?

BRUCE WAYNE - Wayne Enterprises - Gotham City, NJ

Are you coming to the fundraiser?

CLARK KENT - Daily Planet - Metropolis, NY

I wasn't invited. Perry's going on behalf of the Planet. Lois too.

BRUCE WAYNE - Wayne Enterprises - Gotham City, NJ

You weren't invited on behalf of the planet. You should've gotten a personal invite like all the V.I.P.s.

CLARK KENT - Daily Planet - Metropolis, NY

Ha! Me? V.I.P.? I don't have that kind of money.

BRUCE WAYNE - Wayne Enterprises - Gotham City, NJ

Exactly. Very Important Peasant.

CLARK KENT - Daily Planet - Metropolis, NY

… hey, why can't I block you?

BRUCE WAYNE - Wayne Enterprises - Gotham City, NJ

Huh, strange 🙂

CLARK KENT - Daily Planet - Metropolis, NY

I've been staying with Ma the past two weeks. Barn needs to be repaired. I'm helping with chores until it's done. I'll pass by my apartment tonight for the mail.

… was there a reason you wanted me to come?

BRUCE WAYNE - Wayne Enterprises - Gotham City, NJ

Do I need a reason to invite my friend to my party?

CLARK KENT - Daily Planet - Metropolis, NY

Fundraisers are not parties. They're work. I distinctly remember you saying that.

BRUCE WAYNE - Wayne Enterprises - Gotham City, NJ

Fine, then I was hoping to have my partner in crime to help little old me win over some donations. I'll play bad cop and you can play good cop.

CLARK KENT - Daily Planet - Metropolis, NY

Uh, okay, sure. What do I need to do?

BRUCE WAYNE - Wayne Enterprises - Gotham City, NJ

Chat people up.

Invite sweet old ladies to dance and win them over with that classic Midwestern charm of yours.

Throw in a couple ‘ope's and you're golden.

CLARK KENT - Daily Planet - Metropolis, NY

I don't say ‘ope' that much. Small problem, though.

BRUCE WAYNE - Wayne Enterprises - Gotham City, NJ

I already bought you a tux. It'll be sent to you in time for the event.

CLARK KENT - Daily Planet - Metropolis, NY

No! I have a suit!!!!!!

BRUCE WAYNE - Wayne Enterprises - Gotham City, NJ

I said tuxedo, not suit.

They're different.

What's the problem?

CLARK KENT - Daily Planet - Metropolis, NY

It's about the dancing.

BRUCE WAYNE - Wayne Enterprises - Gotham City, NJ

What? You can't dance?

CLARK KENT - Daily Planet - Metropolis, NY

Not unless you want me to start a line dance.

‘Achy breaky heart' is an underrated ‘banger'.

BRUCE WAYNE - Wayne Enterprises - Gotham City, NJ

You can't dance.

CLARK KENT - Daily Planet - Metropolis, NY

I will not tolerate line dancing slander. I'm telling Ma.

BRUCE WAYNE - Wayne Enterprises - Gotham City, NJ

Unbelievable. I can't take you anywhere.

***

“One, two—ouch.”

“Ope,” Clark flushes, and tucks his chin into his chest, sheepish.

Bruce gives him a look, and it only worsens the blush on Clark's face.

“Don't say it.”

“I don't have to, you already proved my point. Now, pay attention. All you have to do is count to three to the rhythm of the music and make a square pattern with your steps. Easy.”

Bruce rambles on about the different shapes on the floor, and its a wonder he doesn't break down the exact angle at which Clark needs to tilt his body while leading to guide his partner into the most perfect Fibonacci sequence.

When Bruce said he'd help Clark, he didn't think it would be this… hands on.

Clark looks down at Bruce, tipping his head to watch the way Bruce's brow furrows slightly and the gentle dip at the corner of his lips when he's unsatisfied with his explanation. He barely hides his smile.

He's so focused.

It's not unlike the way they train together. Bruce instructs, then they practice. He's gotten Clark to the approximate level of a brown belt in jiujitsu because, and Clark, quotes, ‘you can't always punch your way through everything'. (Spoiler alert: he can.) Clark accepted to roll with him anyway because it was fun and there's nothing like the little expressions Bruce makes when he's teaching.

He's cute.

“Again,” Bruce grunts, keeping his eyes downcast for his own safety. It's bad manners, as he instructed, but all his other dance partners couldn't shatter his toes on accident for being distracted.

Clark straightens. All of Bruce's advice is locked into his mind, yes siree. Just a square, anyone can do a square.

“One, two, three. One, two, three.”

The dance starts slow and when Bruce deems Clark's technique suitable, he picks up the pace ever so slightly.

Aside from training, they've never been this close before. In training, Clark can't admire Bruce's pretty lashes, especially when he's looking down at their feet, or the pout of his lip when he's unsatisfied with a move Clark's making. He doesn't get to drink in the little imperfections like that one strand off hair that escapes the rest of his perfectly styled hair, errant over his forehead making him seem younger than his years.

(He won't say how many years, Bruce will know. He always knows.)

Bruce has honed himself to be the perfect human weapon—a ninja, an olympian, a dashing rogue and an acrobat—and yet Clark still catches the way his breathing ticks up when they've been practicing long enough.

It's so soft.

Both Bruce's lips and his breath distract him. Clark's mind begins to wander. The only other time Bruce looks so delicate is when he sleeps, but even then, the only times Bruce has ever allowed Clark to see was against his will or out of necessity when he's battered, bruised and exhausted.

“One, two, three. One, two, three.”

One of Clark's hand's rests at the small of Bruce's back, his arm providing a rest for Bruce's, and the other clasps his hand with all the care in the world. He's long stopped worrying about hurting Bruce—or anyone—with his strength. It's the moment that's fragile, easily shattered with one wrong step. (Okay, okay, several but he has to be close to the limit, right?) He likes supporting Bruce. He likes touching him in such an innocent way. They're just dancing and Clark feels like he's flying.

Does Bruce feel it too?

“You're too fast.”

He probably doesn't. Bruce is a man who leaps off the highest building in Gotham without thinking twice. He is a man who catches himself. What's a little dancing to him?

“Clark—”

Clark wonders how Bruce feels when he takes him up into the skies and blankets him in clouds. Does his heart feel light like this?

“Don't step there. Hey—”

Goosebumps skitter from the tips of Clark's toes up to toy with the fine hairs on the back of his neck. Bruce has been by his side for years, and he swears—he swears he has never seen him like this. The suit, though still needing to be tailored for the gala, fits perfectly on Bruce's smaller, more lithe frame.

The dance stops, abrubtly.

“Is there something on my face?” Bruce looks up at Clark, his mouth pressed into a thin line.

“Huh?” No? He would've noticed if there was anything wrong with Bruce's face. The more important issue is how everything is right with his face. Wait, that doesn't make sense.

There's an unshakeable silliness hanging of Clark's heart, nagging at him like popcorn in his teeth. He wants to pick at it until it goes away because he's so distracted and Bruce is being very kind in helping him learn how to dance on time for the Gala. He wants to bury his face into his hands and groan until he's expelled all the silliness out of him—until he can focus on what's being asked of him.

“You've been staring at my face,” Bruce pauses, deadpan. “For fifteen minutes straight.”

“Have I?” Clark asks, very intelligently. “Haha,” he adds, as if that helps his situation any. He didn't even notice how long he'd been staring. “Time sure flies when you're having fun!”

The look Bruce gives him is not a good one. He finds no fun in puns or familiar adages. It's a Batman look. The look of a hater who cannot truly appreciate Clark's craft.

“Again.”

“Mhm,” Clark hums and straightens his back. The dancing resumes.

He could fit in my pocket.

It's a thought that occupies Clark's mind more often than not. On some days, he'd like to tuck Bruce against his breast for his own safety and on others, he wishes he could tote Bruce around and show him all the things that make him happy. Bruce would love the Kansas State Fair. There's a tour of the Strataca Salt Mines. It seems right up Bruce's alley—wait, no, right up his cave.

Clark grins to himself, proud of his own word games.

“Clark,” Bruce reprimands.

“Hm?”

“What?”

Clark knows what's being asked of him, and he's really not in the mood to be interrogated. It's not nearly as fun as it sounds and many would argue it doesn't sound fun at all.

He bites his lip, worrying at it while staring at Bruce, which only makes it worse.

“I'm not going to ask you ag—”

“Has anyone told you how pretty you are?”

“Huh?”

“Like really pretty? Like, the kind of pretty that's distracting and it stays on your mind a couple days after you've noticed.” The words spill from Clark's mouth, honest and earnest all at once. Tons of people have told Bruce he's handsome, Clark knows that. He doesn't mean it in the same way the others do. At least, he hopes it doesn't come off as… that.

“I—What?”

Clark tips Bruce's chin up delicately, still holding hands with his other, and cups the sharp line of his jaw. He says, very softly and directly: “I think you're really pretty, Bruce.”

The battle that takes place in Bruce's mind translates onto his expression through a ticked jaw and a furrowed bow. He glares at Clark like he's committed the greatest faux pas on the dancefloor and maybe their friendship—

Clark releases him and backs off. “I mean! Your parents did a great job!” He holds his hands out.

“My parents did a great job?” Bruce recites back at him.

“Ope, you've got a phone call coming in!”

Before Bruce can reprimand Clark for the (weird) compliment or for trying to dodge the subject, his Bat-phone vibrates. After a couple of grunts, he excuses himself to go on patrol.

Clark doesn't know why he does that; they always end up together anyway.

***

The Batman glowers.

Gotham's lights reflect on his face, illuminating the sudden emergence of stubble and the frown lines around his uncovered mouth. Whoa, how many times is that now? How many times has Clark's gaze sneakily drifted down to those cute frowny—

Focus, Superman.

A cursory glance around the city shows that their perps haven't moved from their meeting spot inside the warehouse, and he listens into see if they're ever coming to the tail end of their negotations. (They are not.)

He tips his head into Batman's line of sight, trying to follow his gaze. Clark tries to track it and by his guesstimation, the Batman is glaring at the… ground? The arms folded across means that whatever he's thinking about is Very Serious™ too. He doesn't dare look beneath the cowl—that's rude—but he thinks he catches the sight of a faint, faint blush on his cheeks.

Clark hums softly to himself, steps back and beams brightly into the night.

Thinking Bats are best not disturbed.

[just-plenty-of-prompts]

Hello, dear! I am a writer and new on Tumbrl! I also maintain an Instagram account and just created a Twitter and also a Wattpad to post my original short stories! I was wondering where and how I could find a nice writing community! I would like to share poems, live the writing process with people that are on the same path and, why not, even pen pal! Could you give me any tips? Much thanks! ♡

hey! welcome to Tumblr.

I know you only asked for a few communities but I decided to expand a bit more, I hope you don't mind. Please note these are only things I have at least some experience with, there is a lot more on the internet.

so for writing let's goooo!

Social and Chat Platforms:

Tumblr is def a good place to be if you're looking for a nice place to spread your work, I find it the easiest of all the social media channels to use. for poems and single-page short stories it is a good place to post. you can also find a lot of amazing pages dedicated to writing tips and challenges.

Twitter, I have it too but I don't use it at all, I'm more of the opinion that Twitter is something for people to follow others that they like but you won't build a following unless you are already well known. for writing, I think building up a community on Twitter won't be easy until you're pretty well known on other social platforms and bring people over from there.

Instagram I find harder than Tumblr but easier than Twitter, it takes a lot more effort than Tumblr due to its layout. I think Instagram is better for art-based stuff than writing but it can still be a relatively good platform.

Reddit, this is a good place to go, they have writing communities that you can use to post your work in if you're active enough people will start recognizing you in the posts and you can build a nice following and make some good writing friends.

Discord, there are several writing servers in discord. it's a good place to share work and make friends that are writers. It's a live at the moment type of thing so you can chat in real-time to people instead of waiting hours for a reply. I have my own discord as well for readers and writers and it's pretty fun. you can do writing sprints with other writers where you all write together and compete to see who writes the most words in a selected time frame. I personally love doing sprints while chatting on the voice channels with the other writers who are doing the sprints with me.

NaNoWriMo, though the NaNo challenge is in November it's a year-round platform where you can share how much you've written and what you're working on, there are forums to chat with other writers and you get awesome benefits when you complete writing challenges. you also have camp NaNo to do. I've made a few writer friends through this, and have gotten a lot of advice from published authors that also take part in the Nano challenge.

Pinterest, this may be a place to search for images but you can still use it, I've found a ton of prompts and writing tips, poems, and blogs from Pinterest. post an image and link it to one of your other social platforms. admittedly, you need to be active if you want your interest to grow.

Facebook, I do not use Facebook for writing, in fact, I'm rarely on there but I've seen the groups and pages dedicated to writing. It is def a good place to go.

TikTok, sharing tips and tricks, acting out the dialogue or playing out scenes from your own written work, reading your poems, and posting it on TikTok. This is a good platform for those types of things, if my house wasn't so noisy I'd be using TikTok to act out dialogue prompts.

Posting your writing:

Wattpad, for both original fiction and fan-fiction, I personally don't post on this site, it has a good setup for writers but not as good of one for readers, I find the search system annoying and it's super hard to find good stories, as a writer having your story discovered is not easy.

Commaful, similar to Wattpad but smaller, the community is a bit more engaging. this is better for short stories and poems, if you have a full-blown novel to post, I think this place is not for you.

fanfiction.net, for fanfiction, is a pretty good community as long as you're good enough at writing, if you post regularly your story can grow pretty easily.

Archiveofourown.org, my fav when it comes to posting fanfiction, is easy to use and easy for your story to be found. you can also post originals on this site but it's more geared to fanfics.

Royal road, my personal choice when posting original fiction, the community is tough to crack and can be harsh when criticizing. Fanfiction is also posted here. if you're not the best at writing don't try. you can link Paypal and Patreon for donations.

Quotev, this site is a bit teenier, I guess, it's fun, you can post short stories and fanfiction, make quizzes and engage with people quite a lot. the audience is young usually, so if your aim is young adults and teens it's a good place to build up a fanbase but don't expect critical feedback. the younger kids aren't the best at giving good feedback but their kind and supportive words are super nice.

Bookrix, I haven't used this one in a few years, but it was a nice place and a good way to monetize writing. they help with publishing, and they also have forums and groups that you can join. it's best if you're looking into self-publishing

Helpful writing software and websites:

Scrivner, this is a writing application, paid though, I use it myself. extremely useful and a great way to keep everything for your novel in one document without it being a complete mess.

Scapple, paid, mind mapping software, super useful for planning out chapters and connecting events.

WorldAnvil is good for worldbuilding, I used it for a while but I do my world-building on Scrivner now.

Azgaar's fantasy map generator, is my go-to for creating fantasy maps, it's free, you can customize and it has a fantasy city map generator connected to it so you don't have to stress about the city layouts either.

Grammarly or Hemingway editor, grammar checkers. Hemingway works with Scrivner if you have the paid version which is super useful but both have free versions. if you use Grammarly on the website it also saves your documents. it can't be organized but it's useful if you want a site to keep your written works.

One drive, free limited space, before moving to Scrivner I used One drive to manage my writing and keep everything organized.

and that's all I can think of at the moment.

if you want you can join us on discord with fellow writers

like my work? show some support by checking out my web novel - Throwaway Villain

[tayfabe75]

Hi! I love your blog! I've never been so entertained in a celebrity couple before. Whatever they are doing is working! How do you feel about the recents events? Rings and IG stories from G, just right after Taylor Surprise songs. That weird US article going around about Matty saying he thought ttpd is hilarious . Do you still believe they are in a kayfabe? Matty finally posted on his Ig stories. And Taylor seemed Sad in the past couple concerts.

Thank you, anon! I've been absent for a few days, so I'm not sure if this came in before or after the engagement news, but I suppose my thoughts haven't changed much either way. Yes! I definitely still believe this is all kayfabe.

I have long since believed engagements would be on the table as Taylor, in particular, romanticizes broken engagements and interrupted weddings (though I admit, I thought it would be the other couple doing it lol). And though the news was shocking, it still doesn't change the fact that Matty's fiancée's Wikipedia page used to redirect to SATVB in June of last year, months before they started dating. Why? Combine that with all of Matty's weird comments throughout SATVB in general, but particularly: "This is a movie don't let anybody tell you otherwise."

What's more interesting than whatever Taylor or Matty are doing is all the chatter going on online. I've actually been pretty content to be quiet because there's just so much noise! What I will say about the IG stories coming just after surprise songs is that if you happen to notice it and post about it anywhere publicly online, you will get a free mental health diagnosis! And look, I don't know how Instagram works but I heard you have to approve what you're tagged in and I remember this post causing a small fuss.

The social media aspect of this is my least favorite to keep up with or analyze - I just don't personally care for social media in general, or celebrity gossip. I follow the storyline, but I'm not interested in a lot of the conversation that's going on right now, since a lot of it is about his looks, his clothes, or whether Matty made the right match for himself. The first two I find rude, and the latter, well - I may speculate on whether what is presented is reality, but he's a grown man! If I'm wrong about the theories and the engagement is his real, authentic life, then I'm happy for him!

However, it's dozens of things that he, himself, has said leading up to and throughout The 1975's most recent tours that make me doubt it. If he had talked a little less about life being a movie, simulations, fourth and fifth walls, Kaufman, performance art, not trusting earnest moments or everything you see on a screen, etc - then I would have moved on lol

But for now, we've got Jordan recently hearkening back to ATPOIAM, and someone recently pointed out that the "SHOW" Highlights reel is still on Matty's Instagram (though most everything else from the tour has been wiped!)

[ragamuffin-ponies]

I got these commissioned by DreamZ, one of my favorite artists. Please check out her art and engorge her to make more Rarijack content:

Hopefully that link works

This is about to get serious I think. At least as serious as I can get on my fucking Tumblr page called Ragamuffin Ponies 😭

A couple months ago I had an extremely intense anxiety attack because I couldn't find a good profile picture on my fucking discord. I wanted one that was Rainbow Dash but with short hair. I ended up using the following picture

This image was edited and uploaded anonymously to derpibooru. No artist is known. I used ai to upscale the image to HD, it was pretty low quality before.

Even looking at them not to check the sources I can feel my chest tighten. I'm still not sure why I got this way, but it was the catylist to find out why certain things like this have been meeting me feel so terrible for as long as I can remember.

I'm still figuring it out, but I think a lot of it can be chalked up to some sort of gender dysphoria. No I have not talked to my shrink about this yet. Shortly after graduating college I befriended a plethora of trans, nonbinary, or otherwise genderqueer/transexual individuals. It's crazy now quickly people you've never met in person can become such integral parts to your life. One of my favorite aspects of the human existence for sure. Anyway, hearing them talk about their trans experience, especially one of them in particular, I caught myself going "wow I was exactly the same way when I was a kid," or "I've thought the same thing all the time."

I used to be pretty transphobic, and although there is one specific person I've hurt dearly (who I have fully apologized and made up with all these years later) I never went out of my way to harass anyone because I wasn't evil like that, just wrong. I always told myself "yeah I'd rather be a girl but I can't do that because something something biology facts and logic". I have long hair and when I cut it I hated myself. It's not a suprise that when I shave my arms and legs I stop literally making myself sick and my sh desires go away by at least 60%. It's a lot of bullshit that I think most other people would have maybe all picked up on by now, but idk if anyone has.

Now, I'm not trans. There's definitely things I still like about being a guy I think. Genderfluid is a label that I think really fits me, but I'm NOT COMING OUT OKAY? For now I'm still cis. This is all very new we're talking a couple months. It's more like I'm questioning right now.

I really want to reach out to one or more of my trans friends for help, but I'm afraid where to start. Number one I don't want to just vent to them. I definitely don't want to say the wrong thing and trigger or insult them. But most of all I don't want to be a burden.

Also right now my brain wants to just stay in the closet forever. But that's worse than bisexuality, which I only need to hide from my parents and grandparents. With it being my actual gender idk how long I can keep the jig up. Lol I say that like they don't already know I'm bi and it's not just some big dumbass game. Completely by happenstance, I managed to explain what genderfluid was and naturally they were like "wow what kind of world are we living in" and it definitely visibly upset me but I don't think anyone noticed. I just went into my room quickly. And that was months ago, before I was even confident in my self-diagnosis (which again, I'm still not sure about. I might still be cis or I might be something else. No clue bro). So I don't ever tell my parents, okay, then what? I tell my brother? My girlfriend? My irl friends? My internet friends? Random strangers on Tumblr?? I settled on the last one for now. I still need to figure out what the fuck is even happening to me.

I'm glad this is happening when I'm in the safest, just emotionally sound, financially / mentally stable point I've been in in my life though. The timing is great because I can take as long as I want to figure this all out.

PS. I only haven't mentioned it to my gf yet bc idk how the hell she'd react, plus it's all still so new, both my emotions and our relationship. She is VERY gender nonconforming, very butch. Except she is completely cis gendered and straight as an arrow. Plus her being a gender enigma aside (and I am being very presumptuous when I say this) a lot of her friends seem homophobic, although she isn't. Obviously. Don't want to get too far into it bc I don't want to seem judgemental of people I haven't met but I've seen enough to make me already hate two of them maybe three. And that's just through social media and like three conversations. I might try to drop a few hints here and there, because I think if anyone should know it should be her, right?

PPS. I hate the genderfluid pride flag it fucking sucks and genuinely that might be on the cons list. Same reason I'm bisexual instead of pansexual even though I'm actually pansexual, the pansexual flag sucks and the bi flag rocks don't @ me

Anyway DMs are open if you want to help me the fuck out

[thediktatortot]

RE: Your "fandom wasn't always like this" post Fandoms ending when their source did used to be a VERY BAD SIGN that the series had utterly belly flopped. It really didn't start being standard until.... at least after dashcon, but probably closer to the end of the second phase of the MCU. I think Avengers Endgame was the real final death knell of "extended fandom", but even before that, the MCU dragging us along by the hair on the back of our necks seemed to be what killed having a long-term fandom.

You aren't wrong with assuming that specific fandoms were some of the major downfalls of what we had going for us, but the answer is definitely more nuanced than that unfortuntely.

I've had a lot of time to sit and think about the subject of the post I made, and I genuinely think that the true answer to the downfall of Fandom as a whole, is social media.

I hate to sound like That Old Person at a ripe age of 31, but that is my honest answer.

I myself did not get a phone until I was 18 years old and was able to buy one for myself, a little sidekick that let me text my friends when I wanted to hang out, but that wasou f about it. I didn't even get a home computer in my house until I was about 13 years old because we were fairly poor and didn't really need it for anything other than emails and bills.

The first thing I discovered on the computer was Neopets and Gaiaonline, two 'gaming' websites (I'm not assuming your age, but I'm going to talk as if you don't know about anything I'm speaking of just in case other people read this who do not know about it.) that focused heavily on dressing up your avatars, mini flash games and forum role play. The hottest social media at the time was Myspace and it wasn't until I got into Highschool that I even ended up making one.

There were no real algorithms that fed you 'content' on a front page outside of the things the people you followed posted, no way to get fed news ads unless it was in the sidebar where ads were usually placed, and there was no instant updates to every person's lives both small or famous unless you went looking for those updates yourself on google.

Now we have social media that is both forcefully placed in front of you in the form of genuine 'content' in both long and short form on absolutely every platform you can imagine. This isn't even going with the discussion that talks about ads on the TV and how for decades, America has been putting more and more emphases on pharmacy ads on TV and extending commercials to the point where people would rather pay 10-40 a month on streaming services to access movies and TV that might not exist at the whim of the streaming services, than watch cable tv with ads lol

Anyway, when Fandom first began its slow descent into madness, it was about the time that the new style of social media began to get big (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Vine, Tiktok, etc) all places that were designed and created to make you want to See More.

I'm not one of those people who are like "We have no more focus because of social media arg!" but there is a grain of truth to the fact that, if you are fed bite sized pieces of bee information at a faster rate, it's harder to get yourself to slow down and actually delve into a topic further without incentive.

We have catchy news headlines that people read and never take the time to look into the matter further, we have facebook posts where people make crazy claims and no one verifies to check if it's true because that takes time and effort and understanding of how to perform basic search tasks and reading comprehension to ask the right questions, we have instagram breaking the concept of art and life experiences into bite sized, perfect square windows of moments to make your instagram feed look pretty enough to have thousands of followers, we have Twitter that has always been somewhat of a fast websites, but is easy to spread misinformation around on at light speed, Snapchat makes photos disappear, never allowing anything you do to be permanent unless someone manages to save it, Vine and TikTok made attention sinks were it's so easy to just get lost for hours of time into maybe not useless, but an exhaustive stream of information that encourages doing the same finger action for hours on end.

Marvel/MCU/Disney whatever we want to call it, including all the other major production companies, are just one symptom of a bigger problem. They've ridden the waves of instant gratification and people's inability to think outside the boxes for years, but unfortunately our primary source of entertainment in a world that wants to kill us all the time and keeps us inside the house more often, just happens to finally align with the companies and programs that are designed to squeeze more and more out of us until we die.

Unfortunately, Capitalism is killing Fandom as a whole, we are just seeing it more because our primary sources of communication and our major routes of entertainment for ourselves are finally working together to bleed us dry.

[lil-tachyon]

A New Year's Eve Tradition: One drawing from each month of the year

Below the break: the other New Year's Tradition where I go over my art goals from last year and reorient myself for the new one.

Another big year. Mixed results regarding my plans from last year.

Successes/Positives:

-Been doing art full-time for a full year now and haven't even come close to running out of paid work to do. Haven't had a slow week since I started so it's encouraging to know people are still interested in my drawings and willing to pay for them. Hopefully an indication that this is still a viable career path for me.

-Got a website and a newsletter up and running which turned out to be a pretty good investment of time what with the mess that twitter has become and how boring and unreliable instagram is.

Finished two comics this year! One for me, one for Spacewalk Comics, publisher of Holy West. Right now you can see them both on Patreon (and I'll throw in my book Coelum for good measure if you sign up). In total only ten pages, but comics have always daunted me so it feels good to finally have finished some. And I found that I actually really really like doing them, even more than I though that I would, so I want to build off that momentum in 2023.

-Got to meet and interact with so many great artists this year and that's always a pleasure.

Failures/Negatives:

-I was going pretty strong with teaching myself Blender for the first couple months and then completely dropped it some time in spring and have hardly touched it since.

-Likewise with some other experiments in painting and different media- was inconsistent in practicing them and became even less consistent as the year progressed.

-Aside from the two short comics, I barely worked on any big personal projects.

-Although I finished all my commissions on time I fell behind on some unpaid but important collaborative work that I still have yet to catch up on.

-In general, as the year progressed I found myself spending all my time trying to deliver commissions as quickly as possible at the expense of investing in my own artistic development or in completing any major works of my own.

-Although I haven't run out of paid work to do, I'm still struggling to bring in enough money to even make minimum wage and I'm only able to continue drawing thanks to the hard work and patience of my wife and I don't want all that pressure on her.

-In general, feel like I haven't made significant progress towards any long-term goal for the last half-year

-My poor musical instruments have hardly been touched this year :,(

-Lots of non-art things I wanted to do that I didn't even get close to

Goals for 2023:

-Get organized and stay organized. I do better when I divide my day into chunks and I lost track of that recently. Get back into that habit. Try to start each morning by going over goals for the day.

-Found that larger illustration commissions eat up a ton of my time and even with price increases have only recently started to bring in a decent amount of money. Will probably prioritize smaller commissions, be more strict about charging for revisions, and in general try to allocate more time for personal projects rather than spending weeks on other peoples' and not getting paid a lot.

-Spend more time drawing away from a computer. I feel like being in front of a screen with internet access all day for the last couple years has really eviscerated my attention span. I'm constantly pulling up new tabs of stuff to listen to or reference to look at it. I need to be able to focus. Probably draw some stuff that I can see around my room in the morning before even turning computer on.

-Finished up undisclosed, ongoing collaborative projects

-Work on a book. Got two ideas that I think are achievable, should narrow in on one by the end of January.

-Gonna try to make some woodblock prints this year. I got a printmaking kit for Christmas. We'll see how it goes. Whatever happens I expect to have fun with it :)

-Be more consistent about assessing and re-assessing goals. Try at the end of the week and end of the month. I think neglecting to do this is what got me so off-track this year

-Keep desk clean, room organzied

-Do more artist interviews. If you're reading this and have an idea for someone I should interview or we're mutuals and I haven't asked you yet, get at me.

Misc:

-Get sewing machine back in working order, sew some stuff. Need a case for my banjo, could try that...

-Read more books

-Spend more time outside

-Take train into city, draw at museums

-Be realistic about whether art is a viable career. Wouldn't kill me to go back into engineering and I do miss some aspects of it sometimes. The trick would be either to find a STEM job I actually enjoy or a low-stress part-time job...

Conclusions:

Thanks for sticking around, you guys are the best. No matter what happens I'll keep drawing this year and the next and on and on until my hands don't work anymore or I die. Happy New Year. Peace out. Best of luck.

-Logan

[wrotelovelytears]

This just some personal astro observations:

🔩😒Ever since my Moon started transiting Virgo (which in Sidereal is my natal Moon sign), I've been doing more natural looks. Like I wear gloss versus lipsticks, monotone eye shadow vs glittery ones and even more flowy dresses and outfits.

🔩😒When it was in Leo (so the past two years). I was a lot more expressive with my clothing choices. I also was a lot more bolder in general, now I'm more laid back and less concerned about how others perceive me.

🔩😒🔩😒🔩😒🔩😒🔩😒🔩😒🔩😒🔩😒

🔩😒I will say I did a chart for my senior year of high school (which was actually garbage speaking that I missed half due to physical and mental health issues), and I'm not surprised to find my transit Moon was in Scorpio. I was also a Scorpio Rising that year. I went through so much shit that idk if I'm ready for the next Scorpio Moon transit I'll have.

Another set of notes about that particular year's chart:

🔩😒Tw Death- I had a close friend die that year (Pluto was in my 3rd house)

🔩😒I learned what I wanted to do in life (North Node/Sun conjunction in my 11th house) after having one of the best jobs I've ever had (I worked with young kids/babies and the elderly)

🔩😒I fell out with a bunch of other friends (conflicting schedules, being left out of things, miscommunication, and our lives just going different ways) (Mercury Retrograde in 11th)

This a side note and maybe a general observation but: Maybe Mercury Rx in a chart can show the type of people you struggle to communicate with that year.

Another one in terms of the 11th house but Rx planets can hint at endings of friendships due to the planets theme.

🔩😒Since Lilith was in my first house conjunct my Moon (and my ascendant).... I was sexualized so much. I got stalked multiple times that year. Followed by grown ass adults (who knew I was a minor) to my school. Got slut shamed by random folks. Like I don't want to talk about triggering topics but yeah.

Last time I had a Scorpio Rising (with the ruler being in 3rd (again)) I also had one of the worst years of my life. Parents got divorced. I had a horrible summer camp experience. Got kidnapped (0 outta 10 would never want to experience that again). My grandma died. I moved... Yeah wouldn't stan a Scorpio rising for shit.

🔩😒I was extremely social that year (Sun in 11th) and I actually made friends with some famous people and had a large Instagram page (mostly writing about activism and daily life) (Sun also in Virgo)

🔩😒I had hot bitch privilege (even if it didn't always work out in my favor). I literally had a glow up that year, people started approaching me more and I was a lot more in tune with what looks good on me/makes me feel pretty. I also was in and out of a "not the best" relationship. It was giving codependent (Libra Venus in 12th)

🔩😒I had Uranus transiting my 6th house... It was also retrograde so no wonder I felt like actual shit. Also it was in Aries... And yes I did get hospitalized TWICE for mental health related reasons (and had seizures too which was great).

🔩😒The amount of projections I had to deal with was ridiculous. Also the amount of time I disassociated (but was very creative and able to make some really good art) was also ridiculous. (Neptune Rx in 5th house).

🔩😒I actually started inner child work that year with my therapist. It was great (besides the acknowledging shitty things), I learned a lot about how my current actions are explained by my past, and how I have always been a bit too trusting and it sometimes backfired. (Chiron Rx in 5th)

🔩😒In terms of finances I.... Well I made money and spent it to feel better. Meaning I had no money so I had to make more. Just to spend it again. (We love a Saturn 2nd house appearance)

🔩😒As much as I wanna drag that damn Rx Pluto, I learned to stick up for myself. Especially in writing or from friends (or people I just associate with). I learned about various communication methods and when/how/ and why to or not, communicate. (3rd house)

Its kinda funny how most of this ended up being about my senior year in high school. I guess at the end of either this Moon transit or year, I'll have more tales about the Solar Return and overall transits that really impacted me

[rivetgoth]

what do you think of cursedindustrialconfessions on instagram? and other fandom style confession accounts?

personally i don't find much issue with the accounts themselves but some of the comments and confessions are truly cursed 💀

Been sitting on this ask since I woke up trying to figure out why it doesn’t sit right but yk, here— I don’t have any interest in name dropping specific accounts or pages and talking shit on them (OR conversely praising accounts who I think are the "right" kind of fan). I obviously vagued a few specific instances I’ve seen of behavior I found inappropriate from online “industrial fans” in the original post I made but even then kept usernames out of it and even then I was trying to emphasize that all of these are examples of a larger problem, not that One Particular Guy is the harbinger of inappropriate industrial fan behavior lol. I already shared the bulk of my thoughts about “fandomizing” real life musicians and real life music subcultures/communities and my distaste for it, but ultimately every single topic (especially things that are ultimately not life threatening and I’d even go as far as to call a First World Problem) is going to have plenty of nuance and grey area and I think it’s counterproductive and even hypocritical personally for me to start making lists of the Good and Bad industrial fans/pages. That just as much goes against my view of the industrial scene as a community as the stuff I was bitching about to begin with.

I’m honestly a little nervous about the post I made getting a decent amount of notes to begin with because it’s not like I was trying to write the absolute manifesto on Correct or Moral fan behavior, though I think sometimes my posts are mistaken for such because I write a lot and very passionately (sorry), I was just complaining about trends I’ve seen in online industrial music spaces that feel disrespectful or rub me the wrong way, and ultimately was just trying to strongly emphasize that this subculture is an incredibly important real life community for me full of people I absolutely adore and I don’t like seeing the music or the people who make it fandomized or treated like weird quirky characters, with their experiences and traumas not taken seriously. Obviously there is a grey area to any of it, and ultimately I think stuff like memes or jokes about these guys, fan creations ranging from DIY’d clothing to fan art to fan edits to cosplay to whatever else, and even expressing sexual attraction towards them is generally harmless and normal when it’s done respectfully and thoughtfully, keeping in mind these are real people with real traumas, who are not that famous, who can and do look themselves up online and see what’s going on, or have friends who do and then send it to them. Like, I was planning to make that post BEFORE Ogre spoke up about how he was reading comments online about people complaining about the show not being as bloody as prior ones and how it upset him because the older shows were an expression of authentic pain and suffering and even literal self harm and this new show was an intentional movement towards something new and the fact that he’s in a better place in life now… He said that because he saw firsthand what people were saying about him online!

So idk man. But ultimately if you really really want my thoughts? I think any time something is described as “fandom style” in the context of real people or an active real life music subculture all of my hair bristles like a scared animal and my fight or flight response kicks in lol. And I ultimately think that y’all are gonna have to decide for yourselves what you’re okay with rather than ask me, because Lord knows I am not the keeper of all that is objectively right and true. I think some of MY opinions for what is or isn’t okay might actually be more extreme than others (like I said in my previous post—I’m much more neutral on RPF than many I’ve seen, which I think is a controversial take? I just think like anything else there is lots of nuance in that conversation. Idk.), I just encourage anyone calling themselves an industrial fan or viewing it as a fandom to try dipping their toes into an IRL alt music scene and start talking more to old timers and going to shows and clubs and making friends and connections that way with other people who are devoting parts of their life to actively engaging with the community surrounding this music face to face because I think it can very quickly change your perspective for the better and kinda demystify some of the more fandom-y mindsets that these guys are larger than life caricatures to be memed on the same way you would talk about like, Herbert West or Will Graham or whatever.

[okanra]

hey kah, first of it all, i wanted to say that you're an amazing artist and i really love your work !!

ive been following your dbz AU since i can remember, and i saw you're going to reboot the webcomic. you intend to post it elsewhere besides tumblr and twitter? (tho I don't really think you'd post on twitter)

Hey hey hey 👋

Thank you for loving my work and thinking of me as an amazing artist 😊 Are you one of the first people who follow this series? 👀

For the Reboot I actually plan to post it on a few webcomic platforms like Webtoon, Tapas, Mangadraft, etc. Besides my socials. I would love to continue updating this on Twitter as well since my more outgoing personality actually fits there more than here, Tumblr is more like an intimate place y'know? 🤔😊

-----

So to clear things up about my thoughts on twitter.

I like Twitter the most but the Musk's constant stunts as well as too many viral contents with the same vibes somewhat exhausted me. People/artists there begin to create/draw a few specific types of themes to try and attract audiences as well as to appease Musk's idiotic policies and algorithm much more. You would recognize the pattern if you pay a bit of attention to it, most of the viral contents would always be: gag, nsfw, wholesome stuff, fanarts that have these specific themes, meme, shitposting, hot takes, and toxic takes bc people are exhausted, hot and bothered due to summer heat. The posts may look different but the vibes would always be the same, it's the key to success on the internet. Or at least on a specific site like the current Twitter. .

and idk I guess I just feel kinda overwhelmed with all of that, especially when I see professional working creatives don't even get as much exposures as what I listed from above (for example, Quentin Tarantino, and many other storyboard artists, etc). It's discouraging, no wonder they all use LinkedIn or just uploading stuff to Instagram for fun. But don't listen to me too much, I'm just a rando lol

But. There's always a but.

I still want to return and update things there. Although my stuff don't have that many fans, some readers who loved, followed and commented on my work made me really happy. I love reading their thoughts and I remember quote retweeting some of my favorite comments from them from time to time. So yeah, I would still hope to return to it soon even when there's no one left behind to read my stuff lol. I guess in the end I just like to connect and converse with people, I'm actually a social person irl as well. Just want to connect thru art, yo ✌️

So yeah, if you want to read comic only, I suggest webcomic platforms. If you want to read my ramble, my socials are always ✨️open✨️(except Instagram, idk how to update this to that page, seriously).