#this took a lot out of me tbh

[hinamie]

congrats on your recovery n all yuuji but unfortunately for you I thought the scars were cool >:/

[amphibianaday]

day 1765

[vladimpale]

vacation on kyoshi island

[myokk]

I wanted to share the tattoo I did yesterday!!

I really enjoyed the process🥹🫶 My “normal” art is generally a lot more detailed and time-consuming than these fanarts…something I genuinely LOVE is just spending lots of time focusing on the small details & forgetting everything else.

I’m overall really happy with how this turned out, I’ve been practicing A LOT😳 but even so, pork skin isn’t the same as a living, breathing human. I think this design might have been a BIT too complicated to be my first one but oh well…I learned a lot and pushing myself off the deep end is always how I learn best😆😆😤🙏

[soaked-ghost]

best part of having a blorbo is playing dress up with them :}

[nico-di-genova]

In My Mind, You are Safe

Chapter 4

Read on AO3

“Be safe,” Lance says, leaning down into the car enough that Fernando will hear him through his helmet. It is a bit like Deja vu, pulls at the dregs of a memory, Lance’s last moments in his own car that are still muddled.

Fernando glances up at him through his visor, nods, “Be back soon.”

It is a promise, soothes at the anxiety that prickles along Lance’s spine. Fernando is exceedingly careful in the car these days, in all the ways he can be when he’s doing 300 kph, because he knows Lance is sitting in the garage waiting for him.

Lance cannot race anymore, he’s prone to migraines, his right leg can’t withstand the force required to push down the pedal, the g-forces are a threat to his body that he’s so carefully spent a year putting back together. The FIA will not clear him, no matter how much money his father had tried to throw at them. Instead, Felipe has taken up permanent residence on what used to be his side of the garage - permanent until Yuki replaces him next year. The number 18 exists now only on the small decal Fernando has added to his own helmet, beside the victory cross. The gesture had only fueled the rumors about them, Lance being the first person Fernando greets when he gets out of the car now hadn’t helped.

They’re not subtle, but Lance has earned the luxury of not needing to be. Silverstone especially owes him this, considering it has tasted his blood, nearly claimed him like Lance was the sacrificial lamb brought to the alter. This was the race they had been preparing for, mentally, since Fernando first sat Lance down and explained he wasn’t ready to give up driving.

——————————————

There is an itch under his skin, one he can’t quite reach, when he sits behind a wheel - even if it is the leather wrapped wheel of his Aston Martin as he drives Lance to his physio appointment. His grip tightens around the brown leather, his foot presses harder on the pedal, Lance shoots him a look like he understands. Fernando thinks it looks a lot like jealousy.

They don’t talk about it, the F1 sized car that follows them like a backseat companion, the silent elephant in the room. But Fernando knows the further he pushes the gas, the more Lance looks like it physically pains him. He eases off, lets the speedometer drop back down to a safe range, grabs Lance’s hand that had been tensing around the fabric of his sweat pants and squeezes reassuringly.

Lance doesn’t say anything, doesn’t need to, Fernando can see the tick of his jaw out of the corner of his eye and knows they are close to the breaking point anyway.

———————————

“I want to go back,” Fernando says over dinner, when Lance is chewing a mouthful of roasted veggies and cannot immediately bite back. He tries to be gentle about it, even as he sees Lance’s shoulders tense.

They have been toeing this for months, Fernando snapping because they’ve been stationary in his London home for too long and Lance snapping back because it’s his body that is broken, not Fernando’s, as he likes to point out with spitting frustration. There have been fights, small at first, growing in the past few weeks. Fernando tries not to be mean, but Lance is good at cutting to the bone. They’ve been sleeping in separate rooms.

Lance swallows, stays quiet, his grip on the fork in his hand goes white knuckled. He does not meet Fernando’s eyes, but instead stares down at his plate with resolute defiance.

“I have talked with Lawrence-.”

Lance scoffs, drops the fork so it clatters against the glass top of the dining table. It skitters across the surface before reaching the edge and falling to the ground. Last week it had been Lance’s plate, glass shards exploding across the wood flooring. They’d been fighting about something stupid, the dishes Fernando had left in the sink, a distraction from the conversation Fernando is starting now.

“Lance-.”

“Fuck you,” Lance spits, shoves back from the table with enough force it shifts along the floor, scrapes the hardwood. Lance has been leaving his mark on Fernando’s home like he is trying to prove that he is still there.

“Lance, please-.”

He’s speaking to the retreating back of the man, standing himself because Lance is heading for his room and he wants to stop him before he’s speaking to a locked door.

“Lance-.”

He gets one hand around Lance’s bicep, the fabric of his hoodie, before Lance is jerking away and turning to face him.

“Don’t,” he warns, eyes already dark with the promise of a fight, lips already twisted into a pained scowl. Fernando can see the hurt in his expression, hates that he’s the one to keep putting it there.

“Please, let me explain,” he pleads, reaching for Lance again, needing to soothe the pain from him.

Lance steps back, shakes his head, “Fuck you, Fernando.” His voice is thick, clogged, promises tears even if they haven’t appeared yet.

Fernando swallows back the rising tide of his own.

“You said you wouldn’t go back until I did. You said that.”

“I know-“

“So you’re a fucking liar.”

“No-“

“You talked to my dad. Behind my back. To what? Set up another contract? Was it easier to negotiate now that you could hold caring for me over his head?” Lance wants to hurt him, is trying, stabbing with brutal efficiency because he is tired of being the only one hurting. Fernando gets another hand on him, Lance jerks back away from it like he’s been burned. They’re standing in the living room with their dinner forgotten behind them and Fernando can see the tears forming in Lance’s eyes but he doesn’t know how to stop them anymore.

“I would never Lance, you know this.”

“Do I?”

“Lance-“

“Just stop! Stop. I don’t want to have this conversation with you. Go back to racing, I don’t fucking care. Crash your own car into the wall and then maybe you can join me here again.”

Fernando swallows, blinks, sees Lance’s blood seeping between his fingers in the millisecond of darkness. Lance is still bleeding, and Fernando cannot stop it.

When Lance walks away again Fernando lets him go, jumps at the sound of the door slamming and tries not to think of the way it sounds like an Aston Martin crunching into the concrete.

——————————————

Lance does not go with Fernando to his first race back. Instead, he flies to Montreal and cries in his mother’s arms when she opens the door to him.

He couldn’t drive himself here from the airport, the sun had been too bright and his head had hurt too much and so he’d been forced into the backseat of a tinted SUV and dropped off on his mother’s doorstep. He’s wearing Fernando’s jacket, stolen from his closest as a final fuck you, or maybe a promise that he would be back to return it. It smells like the man, makes the sharp stab in his gut hurt even more. When his mother answers the door he crumples.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she soothes, as Lance sobs in her arms and tries to ignore the throbbing pain in his leg.

Right now Fernando is probably sliding into his race suit. Right now he is thinking of plan A, thinking of winning. Right now he is speaking with Felipe who is driving Lance’s car, with Lance’s team. Lance wonders if Fernando will fuck Felipe too, tell him he’s doing a good job, crash into him and send his whole world spiraling out of control along with his car.

“It hurts,” he cries, unable to tell if he means his body, or his head, or the gaping hole Fernando has left in his chest. It’s all the same at this point, indistinguishable.

———————————

“My son is with his mother,” Lawrence accuses.

Fernando, hair still damp from his shower, skin still flushed from the podium, has the decency to look ashamed. It only makes Lawrence angrier.

“He flew to Canada. Alone.”

“He is cleared to fly, Lawrence-”

“I told you. If you stayed you better mean it. So why is my ex-wife telling me Lance was crying on her doorstep?”

Lawrence can be an intimidating man when he means to be, when Lance isn’t around to make him appear only as a doting father. He makes sure to stand to his full height, tower over Fernando in his temporary office in the Aston Martin motorhome. Claire had told him Lance had only just fallen asleep, after the migraine pills had soaked in enough to make the rest come easier. She’d FaceTimed him while she was lying with Lance in his bed, the brown tufts of Lance’s hair just barely visible from where he was passed out in Claire’s lap. When she spoke, it had been in a berating hush.

Fernando must know about the flight, he doesn’t look shocked to hear Lance is not where he left him.

“I don’t know how to fix this,” he admits, hangs his head. “Racing, I am good at. It is what I know.”

“Yeah. It’s what Lance knew too.”

Fernando jerks like he’s been punched, looks up at Lawrence with shame and hurt.

“I wanted him to come back. I want him in the car beside me. I thought- I wanted to think he could.”

Both he and Lawrence know it’s a lie, both knew there was no chance of Lance racing again. Delusion could only go so far, and the scar on Lance’s abdomen was too large to ignore. When Fernando had asked for his seat back, Lawrence had given it to him on the condition that Lance agree. Instead, Lance is in Canada and Fernando is alone.

He’s wearing a hoodie that’s too big for him, is clearly one of Lance’s, Lawrence almost demands it back. But he is not cruel, and Fernando is hurting in much the same way his son is.

“I told you it wouldn’t be easy,” Lawrence sighs, “he’s stubborn, you’re hardheaded.”

“He is upset I came back,” Fernando mumbles, “I do not blame him.”

“He’s hurt that you could,” Lawrence corrects, places a hand on Fernando’s shoulder. It might be a comfort, or a threat, he isn’t sure which yet.

On the FaceTime Claire had demanded he fix this, while her hand was soothingly working its way through the tangled strands of Lance’s hair. He’s still trying to decide just how he’s going to do that. Fernando has been his friend, someone who he once would have trusted his son’s life with, and now he is the man who has nearly ripped Lance away from him, who Lance loves.

“You have time before the next race?” He asks, less of a question, more of a demand that he make the time.

Fernando thinks it over, nods.

“Book a flight to Montreal.”

——————————————

Lance sleeps a lot now, has little else to do to pass the time. He sleeps because the sheets he’s wrapped up in smell like home, because when his mom sits beside him he feels small and safe, because when he dreams it is the one place he can still be behind the wheel.

He dreams of winning, and wakes to the soured taste of failure. In the end, everyone was right, Lance is not a victor and he will never prove them wrong.

At some point he falls asleep and wakes to Fernando pressing a kiss to his temple, isn’t sure if he’s still dreaming. The scratch of his stubble, the scent of him, like rubber and pine, is strong enough that Lance chases it. His head lifts, his eyes flutter open, and Fernando is staring back at him.

“Nando?” He asks, groggy, reaching a hand blindly for Fernando and finding himself slightly startled when it meets his chin and doesn’t phase through. Sometimes he dreams of chasing Fernando, in the car, or on legs that sometimes don’t support his weight, watching the man slip out of his grasp when he does manage to catch him.

Fernando grabs his hand with his own, leans into Lance’s touch where he’s cradling his cheek. He’s kneeling beside Lance’s bed, in a position that would have Lance aching in two seconds if he tried it. Sometimes it’s funny to remember that Fernando is the older of the two of them. Ironic that Lance is the one who complains of sore joints now.

“Hey, churri,” Fernando greets, smiles softly. In the morning light filtering through Lance’s closed blinds his smile is muted, doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

The nickname is sweet, soothes over the cracked edges of Lance’s ripped open chest.

“How was the race?” He asks, as the last bits of sleep keep his mind foggy, makes him forget to be angry. Instead he is focused on how warm Fernando feels, on the fact that he is wearing one of Lance’s favorite hoodies - the one with the string pulled out because Lance had messed with it so much it had become frayed, made more sense just to remove it entirely.

Fernando grimaces, shakes his head, “I will tell you later.”

“Okay.”

“Can I lay here?” He nods at the sliver of empty space on the twin mattress behind Lance.

Lance nods, closes his eyes because his head is starting to ache again and sleep is the only way to stop it. Water too maybe, if he bothered to stay hydrated enough.

Fernando climbs onto the mattress beside him, nuzzles his nose against the nape of Lance’s neck and presses another stubble rough kiss there. His arm wrapped around Lance’s waist is gentle, hand splaying across his scarred abdomen like he’s trying to protect him from further harm.

Lance feels him breathe, the warm press of him along his back. It lulls him quickly back into unconsciousness.

———————————

Lance’s shirt rides up enough in his sleep that when Fernando wakes it’s to the rough edges of his scar against Fernando’s calloused fingers. Gross fascination has him tracing it, all the way up until he meets the end of it just below Lance’s ribs. He can feel the ghost of Lance’s heartbeat here, hear him snoring softly in his sleep. It’s healed now, the wound, which means that Fernando has not seen it since he stopped having to change the bandages. Lance doesn’t like him looking at it, avoids seeing it himself.

They stopped showering together, and they haven’t slept together since Lance’s accident. Fernando blames himself partly for the latter. Despite how much he wants to, he is afraid to hurt Lance further. Instead, he jerks off in the solitude of his room now and bites his hand to stop Lance’s name from spilling out of him.

“You don’t fuck me anymore,” Lance had complained one night, before the fighting had them sleeping separately, and Fernando hadn’t disagreed.

He is scared, afraid of the damage he has already caused, terrified of wreaking more. The scar under his fingers is proof, unfading, permanent, makes him feel sick with guilt.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers and presses another kiss to Lance’s neck. Lance has told him to stop apologizing, but he doesn’t think he could ever say it enough to absolve himself.

Lance will never race again, and Fernando is already back in the car. Because he is selfish, because he does not know how to sit still, because racing is all he knows and in caring for Lance he is scared he has only hurt him further.

Lance moans in his sleep, shifts back further against Fernando. Fernando holds him, fully, wholly, and hopes it will be enough.

—————————

“If you want me to stop, I will,” he says to Lance later, when they are sitting in the sunroom of Lance’s mother’s house. It’s warm only because of the heater set to high, the snow piling against the windows doing little to help.

Lance, bundled in a blanket and a beanie on the couch beside Fernando, stares at him. Looks hurt for only a second before his brows furrow and it becomes anger.

“What?”

“I’ll retire, if you want me to, I will do it,” he means it as a gesture of trust, as proof that he does not want to lose what they have. Even if not being in the car would make him a little crazy, even if he would always yearn for it.

Lance stares at him. He pulls the blanket tighter around himself, ducks down further into the fabric. It’s the comforter pulled from his bed, dark blue with grey stitching. Fernando wonders if it’s the same bedding he slept under as a teenager. Wonders if this is what Lance might have looked like when he occupied this space as a child.

“You mean more, Lance. More than racing, you know this.”

He isn’t sure what to expect but Lance’s response of, “Go fuck yourself, Nando,” certainly wasn’t at the top of his list.

“You don’t get to put this on me. Retire if you want, but don’t blame me for it.”

“That is not what I meant-“

“Yes it is, of course it is, because you don’t want to stop. You know you don’t. You just want me to tell you to and I’m not going to trap you here. I won’t be responsible for that.”

Fernando watches him, watches as the dim sunlight through the clouds catches the shine of tears in his eyes. Watches as Lance pulls the blanket impossibly tighter, like he’s trying to vanish inside of It. He wants to reach out, pull Lance to him, but is scared to shatter the feeble ground they’re resting on. Too many conversations between them have turned to arguments these past few weeks.

“Because it fucking sucks, man,” Lance sniffles, wipes at his eyes with the fabric of the comforter, “being on the other end, knowing you’re done. I won’t do that to you.”

But I did it to you, Fernando thinks. I did this.

Lance’s blood will not wash off his hands, will not stop dripping through his fingers. He is pressing as hard as he can and Lance is still looking up at him with fear blown eyes and a silent plea. He is mouthing Fernando’s name and all that is coming up is crimson that stains his lips.

“I don’t want to lose you,” he whispers into the quiet space of the sunroom. More of you because so much has already been taken by Fernando’s own hands.

“I won’t tell you to retire. Please don’t make me.”

“What do we do then?”

Lance shrugs, muffles his response against the comforter he folds further into, “I don’t know.”

———————————

Fernando races in Jeddah and Lance stays in Canada. His mind is scattered, unfocused, thinking of a kiss in the fresh snowfall that had felt like goodbye. Which is maybe why he taps the wall on lap 6 and ends his race in the barriers of turn 23.

Lance is the first missed call on his phone when he gets back to the garage. He calls him back immediately.

“Are you okay?” Lance asks, answering after two rings, sounding panicked in a way that is new. Fernando hates it, hates how he can hear the hitch in Lance’s voice.

“I’m fine, cariño, don’t worry. It was small.”

Lance sighs, shaky across the line, “you’re sure?”

“Already cleared by medical. About to go to the media pen now.”

Lance should know this, if he’d been watching as he so clearly had he would have seen how insignificant of a crash it was. Barely anything.

“But the wheel snapped hard, your hands-“

“Lance, I am okay. Promise.”

A bit sore maybe, from the straps digging into his chest, but no more than he’s already used to. Lance still sounds worried, his breath still hitching.

“Lance?”

“Sorry- fuck. Sorry,” he sniffles and it’s a wet sound, thick with snot.

“Baby,” Fernando soothes, feels the familiar guilt at the back of his mouth.

“I’m sorry. I don’t- I don’t know what’s happening,” Lance continues, breathing worsening. “I thought- it was- I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Lancito. You’re okay. Breathe baby, is okay.”

He’s standing with his race suit around his hips in the garage, hadn’t even made it to the privacy of his drivers room because he didn’t think this would be much of a phone call at all. His handler is standing in the back trying to flag him down for the media duties he’s probably currently missing. Lingering engineers keep shooting him confused looks. Lance is panicking on the other end of the line though, safe in Canada wrapped in the security of his childhood blanket and it still isn’t enough to quell his choked breathing.

“Lance. Listen to me. Please. I am okay.”

“O-okay.”

“Completely fine. Some bruising maybe, but is all.”

“Okay.”

“Do you want me to come home, you can see yourself?”

Home meaning to Lance, he doesn’t care whose house it is, as long as it’s Lance who’s opening the door for him.

There’s static on the other end of the line, Lance’s muffled hyperventilating and then, “Y-yeah. Yes, please.”

“Okay, let me finish up here and I’ll get on the next flight. It’s alright. All okay.”

“Okay,” Lance repeats.

Fernando thinks of blood, Lance who’d been choking on it, how Lance wouldn’t have been there to pull him from the wreckage if that’s what it had come to. He wonders if Lance is thinking the same thing.

“Breathe,” he commands one last time, waits until he can hear Lance drawing air into his lungs, and then promises to be home soon. In the media pen he is short, curt, excuses himself with a speed that is unlike him off the track and then rushes back to his drivers room to change. His assistant has already booked him a flight and sent the details to Lance, all handled while Fernando was explaining to SkySports how he had ended his race in the wall.

He thinks about retiring on the plane, has a text to Lawrence drafted, but can’t bring himself to hit send. After all, the crash hasn’t scared him, just made him hungry for the chance to do better in the next race.

————————

Lance doesn’t remember his crash, not outside of the YouTube footage and Fernando’s own account. He doesn’t remember being scared, feeling his body failing him as he bled out steadily on the gravel. But he maybe feels the ghost of it when Fernando crashes.

He tastes copper at the back of his throat, far enough back that it can’t be blamed on split skin when he bites at his bottom lip too hard. They replay the crash, slow it down to discuss the details and Lance feels sick.

He calls Fernando, even though he knows the man is still in the car, only just climbing out of it, and swallows down vomit when it goes to voicemail.

It’s only the front wing that’s damaged, buried in the tire wall. And Lance can see that, but he can’t stop shaking anyway.

His mother sits with him, holds his hand while Lance tries to breathe around his tears. It is perhaps the most vulnerable he’s been with her since he was a child, with anyone, usually trying to hide away on his own before he breaks down. But the panic coursing its way through him glues him to the couch and then keeps him there long after he’s off the phone with Fernando.

He drifts in and out of sleep, takes pills that are offered to him and sips water from a glass with shaky hands when it’s pressed to his lips. At some point someone brings him food, crackers and fruit that he picks at numbly before growing disinterested and falling back asleep.

When he wakes up next it’s with a pounding headache and to the darkness of night. His phone is the only light, bright and harsh, making him squint as he paws for it on the coffee table.

There are two missed calls and six texts from Fernando, the last of which reads ‘here’ and sent two minutes ago.

Lance, barefoot and in a thin sleep shirt, stumbles to the front door with blind relief. Throws it open, despite the snow and the harsh wind, and then flings himself into Fernando’s arms.

“See,” Fernando soothes, cradles the back of Lances head, “All okay.”

————————

“I will retire at the end of the year,” Fernando promises, once they’re back indoors and warming themselves by the fire started by the staff and left running for Lance’s benefit.

They’re curled up on the couch, Lance having stripped Fernando of his shirt so he can inspect the bruises left behind by the straps of the car. Fernando sits with his back sinking into the plush pillows beneath him and Lance sits straddling his lap. He’d buried his face in the crook of Fernando’s neck after inspecting him, ensuring the bruises were just that, and then cried silently while Fernando traced patterns along the ridges of his spine. And then they’d stayed like that because Lance had gone slack against him and his breathing had evened out.

“Give me the year, yes? And then I am done.”

He’d thought about it on the ride from the airport to here, fingers picking at the edge of his phone and biting the inside of his cheek. He’d weighed the cost of his career against the cost of losing Lance and found that F1 would never win in the end. Besides, there was always endurance racing, other series he could entertain himself with. Other things Lance could maybe even take part in. He’s thinking about taking Lance karting, loops around a track, just the two of them, where Lance can maybe start to build back toward something. Because he knows Lance is the same as him, deep down, misses the feel of a wheel in his hand in the same way Fernando had during his brief breaks. When you are raised on it, when it is the only thing you know, you grow to miss the taste of it.

Even if the taste has gone sour with fear.

“One more year?” Lance asks, chapped lips moving against the soft part of Fernando’s neck, “That’s what you want?”

“I want you, Lance. That’s it. It is not the same if you’re not there.” Which is true, Felipe does not race the same, is not as sensitive to the finer bits of the car, does not have the same easy presence that Lance had. It all feels wrong, not at all like the team Fernando had signed on to, even most of Felipe’s engineers are new. And sure, their results are better, but only barely. Lance could drive the car to its limit, Felipe is still too reserved.

The grid is changing as a whole too, enough that Fernando finds himself searching for familiar faces in a sea of strangers. But being here with Lance is easy, feels right, even if the man is heavy against him and the weight of him is making the bruises on his chest ache.

He would hurt for Lance, do anything for Lance, knows that it isn’t the car he wants to be with in ten years time, but the man in his lap. Lance has been here just as long as racing has almost, once as a child who had clung to his father and looked at Fernando with adoration, now as someone who Fernando would consider an equal. He means just as much as a championship might, more maybe.

“It’s you. Always you, okay?”

The car can crash, Fernando will always pull Lance out.

————————

Lawerence has been working his whole life to make Lance smile, and yet it is still Fernando that manages it so easily. Fernando who wins in Silverstone, who stands on the top step of the podium and showers first Max and Charles in champagne, and then turns to douse the crowd below him. It is Lance he aims for, stood beside Lawerence and beaming up at Fernando as the champagne spray showers them in sticky drops.

Lawrence watches his son, the way he cheers Fernando’s name with the crowd, the way he’s sporting Fernando’s team cap backwards on his head, the new one, with the 18 embroidered along Alonso’s number. Because it is not just himself the man is racing for this year, but Lance as well.

The FIA hadn’t wanted to allow the duel numbers at first, but while Lawerence could not buy Lance his health back, he could do this. So 18 finishes next to 14 on the podium, because both numbers are present on Fernando’s suit as well. It is Fernando who will earn the points, but it is Lance who Fernando celebrates.

Lance laughs beside him, and Lawrence cherishes the sound, lets it replace the fading memory of a heart monitor and silence. He lets the champagne soak into his suit, watches it coat Lance’s hoodie and Fernando, and he envisions it soaking away the blood that was spilled here a year ago. Envisions crimson giving way to sweet champagne and the audible sound of Lance calling Fernando’s name.

Fernando is no longer hooking a finger around Lance’s pinkie, praying he wakes up, afraid to touch any other part of him, instead he has slid a metal band onto his ring finger and it glints in the sunlight.

It is nearly as bright as Lance’s smile.

[akaisenhatake]

we used to be a happy family

[spoiler below]

why did you ruin it for us

[amelikos]

Thinking about how in the midst of the hostility currently directed at Amethio in-universe, Friede still remains the only one so far who expressed joy at his presence..

[maraschinotopped]

undertale yellow. clutches head in anguish.

[fictionadventurer]

August: Day 8

Adventures

Went to a thrift store and the library's used bookshop.

Bought a copy of Around the World in 80 Days that looks more readable than my current copy (so long as it's not an abridged children's edition). May make a new cover for it.

Bought a book about the basics of astronomy. If I'm going to write about an astronomer, I need to know a tiny bit, and this looks like it's written for idiots with short attention spans, so it'll be great for me.

Bought the coolest pop-up book I've ever seen. For a quarter. I'll have to show you guys pictures.

Treated myself to Youtube videos about Victorian literature. Indulged in a few Gutenberg downloads. Read the first chapter of Lady Audley's Secret and this may derail all my reading plans until I finish.

Accomplishments

Read a few chapters of Heretics. Am now halfway done.

Tire. Twice.

Signed up for a CPR refresher course

[telekitnetic-art]

Have you seen the formline art in splatoon? It's present in a variety of salmon run decals and on some of the locker graffiti. Idk if the Devs just googled "salmon art" and got indigenous art and decided to copy it or what. Not sure how I feel about it personally.

Long post incoming, gonna put a break here. Also sorry for the late response, I wanted to take a couple days to formalize my thoughts together before responding fully.

I have, I remember noticing in 2018-2019 (when i first started playing splatoon 2) how much one of the decals/graffiti located on the ruins of ark polaris back in 2 sort of resembled a formline bear and salmon. (near the logo in this screenshot, I couldn't find a clear picture online)

Back in 2019, it was pretty easy to think of it as coincidence or a stretch for a comparison. But with splatoon 3's salmon run decals, the resemblance is far easier to see, specifically with the TS-ORBRS graffiti and the TS-SCHL graffiti.

(also this was the best image size I could find for the graffiti images, sorry)

A couple of the banners have the designs on them as well:

The website Sealaska Heritage has info such as textbooks and an online doc about formline art (specifically geared towards Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian nations' style) with lots of info about formline art, and the Seattle Art Museum website has an info sheet (with credits listed as being from the Sealaska Heritage site as well) breaking down some of the basic shapes of formline art.

with this chart, you can definitely begin to notice the similarities between the Salmon Run graffiti and formline art. the ovoids, crescents, and u-shapes appear noticeably in some of the graffiti such as ORBRS and SCHL.

For perspective, here are some formline pieces featuring salmon or fish from various Indigenous artists from various nations.

"sk’ug sdang" (Two Dog Salmon) by Robert Davidson (Haida)

"metal medallion", by Crystal Kaakeeyáa Rose Demientieff Worl (Tlingit Athabascan)

"Salmon People" by Alano Edzerza (Tahltan)

"Jumping Chum" by Stephanie Anderson (Wet'suwet'en)

"Salmon" by Art Thompson (Nuu-chah-nulth)

And that's literally just the surface of dozens of Indigenous artists from the PNW.

With these pieces, you can begin to see the resemblance that the graffiti designs have. A lot of the heads follow the pattern of utilizing ovoids for both the head and eyes, and u-shapes for the bodies and crescents to fill in specific areas are also common. For example, TS-SCHL has a small school of fish where the bodies are entire ovoids.

However, there are a couple flaws in the graffiti designs too. With a few of the designs, you can see they utilize the u-shape (see the formline shape breakdown from Sealaska again) in designs like TS-WHP and TS-SMFR. I can't speak for every Indigenous formline artist ever, but from how I've been taught to design formline art from my family, the u-shape should connect to the rest of the form instead of free-floating. I drew a quick example here:

you can see similar mistakes with a different kind of u-shape with TS-RLPL and TS-C0HK.

Another very specific mistake that takes a bit of squinting to make out is that ovoids are sort of top-heavy, for lack of a term I can't think of right now. The line or the area should be thicker on the top then the bottom. This mistake is frequent in the graffiti designs utilizing ovoid or ovoid adjacent face or body shapes, like TS-ORBRS, TS-C0HK or TS-SCHL.

Full disclaimer, I am not an expert at formline art. I've been practicing it under the tutelage of my aunt and father for about 3 or so years now, and there are definitely cultural variations that come into play as well. My culture's formline art style can look completely different from someone who is Haida or otherwise. This critique of the graffiti designs is based off my knowledge and skill at formline art, as well as critique and feedback that I've gotten from family. Formline art isn't just something you look at and replicate, there is a specific process of utilizing the shapes and negative space that you need to account for too. Some shapes have their own rules for how they're used as well.

Despite the beginner mistakes, the clear resemblances are pretty definitive proof that a good section of the sticker/graffiti designs for the salmonids are meant to be, or at the very least based off of or inspired by, formline art.

Splatoon's lore has a lot of elements of taking inspiration from real life culture (which is sort of one of the main elements of the story, the squids and octos are basing their society off long dead humans). Hell, Shiver and Frye are two prime examples of Splatoon working in real world culture into their setting and characters.

With that in mind, using an art style that's exclusive to an ethnicity of people as inspiration or baseline reference for the game mode that's all about taking natural resources from a species that in-game dialogue tends to treat as dangerous and lesser-minded is... not a good choice. Especially an ethnicity that has historically been ravaged and attacked by settlers for natural resources.

Now, technically if you do digging into lore for salmon run, you can find out that the salmonid are not as simple-minded as the dialogue in-game (I am staring directly at the deep cut big run announcement dialogue we've gotten so far -_-) makes them out to be. The salmonids do trades and commerce with the octarians for equipment and gear. That's why they have such technically high tech gear, like the scrappers with their shields that actually resemble octarian shields and the flyfish with their missiles and flying aircraft. That's also why power eggs show up in the story mode; they're from the salmonids' trades with the octarians.

So the salmonid could technically be as just as smart as the inklings, which is why the dialogue and some of the portrayals of the salmonid are confusing and contradictory (shiver's dialogue from the first big run, that one promo picture of an inkling walking a smallfry on a leash????). I think a good bit of the fanbase sort of thinks of the little buddy we get during the game as a pet, and I'm sure that much more of the fanbase/playerbase doesn't really care about the lore whatsoever. Salmonids sort of have a similar vibe to me as hilichurls from Genshin Impact, where the lore tells you that they're smarter than people assume while NPCs talk of them as less intelligent monsters. And you're also caught in this paradox where killing/fighting them feels morally wrong but the gameplay loop has you continuously doing that while also telling you on the downlow that you should sort of feel bad about it.

Rassicas did a really good video on translating salmonid lore from various interviews, which is where I learned a lot about the salmonid lore that doesn't really get explained/brought up in the game.

The usage of formline art in Splatoon has me sort of mixed on my opinion, because besides using an Indigenous art style for an enemy species that are considered lesser in intelligence by the NPCs, Indigenous art and culture as a whole has suffered a lot under colonialism. I don't know how much awareness whoever is reading this has about Indigenous history and colonialism, but Indigenous culture as a whole was banned in North America by the respective governments from being practiced by the respective cultural groups. Things such as ceremonies, regalia, and even practicing formline art were banned from being used by Indigenous people. Non-Indigenous people however were free to use it, which is why a lot of bastardized versions of Indigenous regalia and culture exists. You can see it in non-indigenous spiritual practices utilizing Indigenous practices and terminology like spirit animals and dreamcatchers, and sports teams utilizing Indigenous culture in its labelling and mascots. That is where cultural appropriation comes into play. And before I get anybody commenting about this, the salmonid formlines don't count as "cultural appreciation" because as far as the info available is concerned, there wasn't any Indigenous people that were consulted for the designs. And even if there were, I again have mixed feelings about Splatoon utilizing an Indigenous art style as a design piece for an enemy character in the franchise.

On another note, this isn't the first time Indigenous cultural appropriation has popped up in the Splatoon franchise. There was actually a headgear that was unreleased in the first Splatoon game called "Warrior Headdress", and you can guess what it looked like.

Yeah. That was all levels of yikes and I'm thankful as hell that it didn't make it into the game (technically it's not in the game as a wearable item, but you can spot it at the very back of the headgear shop ingame)

So Splatoon has utilized Indigenous culture as inspiration beforehand with the games, so it's not much of a stretch anymore to think that the salmon run graffiti designs were based off formline art or was an attempt at formline art.

I'm not really sold on the idea that the salmonid are meant to be representative of Indigenous people though, nor do I believe that utilizing formline art for the salmonid was a malicious decision. But it was a slightly ignorant decision at best, because again using Indigenous specific art for a species of enemies that gets fought for their natural resources and is referred to by some of the NPCs as basically being lesser-minded animals is really not a good decision.

This whole thread is not meant as a guilt trip for anyone who likes the salmonid lore, has bought any of the salmonid graffiti stickers, or enjoys salmon run, nor is it an accusation of the devs for maliciously misusing Indigenous culture. I actually really enjoy salmon run for it's PSP and concept, but this design aspect gives me mixed feelings as an Indigenous person. And to be honest it's hard to label intentions or the thought process because there isn't any info available on the development of salmon run and those graffiti designs specifically. So it's hard to know if the devs employed an Indigenous artist for feedback or if they indeed just looked at some formline art of salmon and tried to replicate it or used it as inspiration. I'm inclined to believe the latter judging by the beginner formline mistakes seen in some of the designs. There is an art book coming out soon for Splatoon 3, so maybe that will give more info.

To wrap this all up, I don't think there is really anything to be done about the designs. The game has been out for a while and I don't know if the game would change the designs at this point. I also don't think this should stop people from buying the sticker designs in game or playing salmon run. However, it is important to learn about the context of these designs so that you know why they exist and why they can be harmful, and so devs and creators can avoid making the same mistake in the future, and so Indigenous issues with cultural appropriation can be made more aware in the public space and not be ridiculed by non-Indigenous people. And again, I am just one Indigenous person so there may be other opinions from other Indigenous people on the graffiti designs and how they should be handled or viewed.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading and have a good day!! Be sure to check out some actual Formline art made by Indigenous people, like the ones I listed near the top of the post!

[mokeonn]

I think that the 2010's media landscape of Buzzfeed articles about plotholes in disney movies, Cinemasins critiques, and Watchmojo Top Ten scenes in movies that make no sense has truely ruined a lot of media. People are afraid that their work will be torn down if they dare leave a single thing up in the air, if they dare ask their audience to suspend their disbelief.

All too often nowadays I see stories (especially fantasy), take the time to explain how every small aspect of the world works and how it all logically makes sense. The constant time stopped to explain why an event happened, how this object works, or why this is important to the characters. It's just really not needed and it honestly makes a lot of stories worse.

I am of the opinion that the best stories truly just drop you into their world and explain nothing. They just take you through the story of this world and you just have to accept it and continue on. "When he became king, the land became barren." I don't want the story to stop and explain why this is, or how it happened, I want us to move on so we can just assume that the king has such rancid vibes that everything died.

[skelebab]

*confetti effect* the first part of my shellshocked au!!

Spray paint and stickers

First meeting

(set during bug busters)

Part 1 - Part 2

It's p sort cuz I just wanted to get something out :')

[disposal-blueeee]

from this thing lolz

ty to @cherry-207 for the idea !! XPP

vargas by zarla-s

[tiddiesoutwhenthetisout]

not me curling my laptop charger wire the way you curl band equipment cords HAHAHA god i miss it

[snowysoong]

if you buy this game your internet penis is gonna grow bigger

all the seperate headshots under the cut !!

this took sweat tears blood n piss to make i hope u guys liek it :)