#which I would share in the future

[bluvianna]

I love how much character your brushstrokes add to your art. Do you mind sharing what brush you use or how you switch from library to a more colorful look like your end pieces? They’re like lifeless but not at the same time. Pretty awesome. Also your colors, just absolutely pristine

Thank you!! There are procreate default brushes I use (Chalk and Gloaming). There’s also brushes I’ve downloaded on gumroad, I couldn’t keep track of them all cuz I’m dumb and switched them between sets but searching up keywords like “oils”, “chalk”, “canvas” should lead to them.

I’m not sure if I understand the “library to a more colorful look” part of your question, did you mean like how I pick colors? I heavily use layer modes like Add, Multiply, Overlay, Color Burn, Saturation, etc to help with colors. Example: I’ll fill a layer with a bright orange or pink, set it to Overlay and put its opacity down to 12%. There are also some speedpaints on my Instagram that show my progress too.

Edit: You might have meant lineart to color, in which case I do a rough sketch, put in flat colors, use Multiply for shadows and paint over the sketch!

[pianokantzart]

Do you think Lu has any deeper fears like you headcanon that Mario does? More emotional ones; whereas lava and dogs and whatnot are more lighthearted?

This is me taking a little bit from the Mario & Luigi RPGs, but being deemed not worth the trouble and left behind, particularly by his brother.

While Luigi doesn't care that much about what people generally think of him, a lot of his sense of self-worth hinges on how he can help his brother.

Luckily, Mario thinks the world of Luigi and always will, but even so Luigi finds the idea of failing the one person who somewhat understands him to be more terrifying than any ghost.

[tj-crochets]

I've got another thing to add to my list of top five funniest things doctors have said to me: My latest test results came back, and I now have a document saying I have, and I quote, "unremarkable hands"

[a-stars-art-blog]

I think about them too much. Exhibit Z

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

Broke (2016): BBC Sherlock is a phenomenal piece of media and anything that seems like a flaw just hasn't been fully explored yet

Woke (2020): BBC Sherlock is an incredibly flawed series run by an egotistical writer, it never deserved the hype and is actively bad on so many fronts (especially representation)

Bespoke (2024): BBC Sherlock is flawed and bogged down by increasingly poor writing, which many fans refused to see while it was airing, leading to hugely misplaced expectations (particularly for the final series), AND it has the seeds of some compelling characterizations and portrayals, some genuinely solid performances, and touches--albeit imperfectly--on complexities that are still being discussed today (particularly as it relates to the relationship between Sherlock and John). The huge cultural impact of the show has created a massive pendulum effect in its public perception, leading to most people today remembering a caricature of the show (whether positive or negative) rather than appreciating its nuanced merits and failings...that being said Season 4 sucked

[joshuamj]

been scribbling out some little comics for my EoW!Zelda Impersonates Link AU!

[ruvviks]

PLEASE DO NOT TAG AS YOUR OWN OC OR PAIRING.

Nathan and Ruben share a bond more powerful than most; mutual understanding through past experiences no one should ever have to go through, and through past actions so horrible they cannot be spoken of. Their grief and the blood on their hands binds them to the STEM technology they created, which has alienated them from the rest of the world— but they give each other the comfort they have both longed for so desperately for years, and that is all they need. They are each other's counterpart; you cannot imagine one without the other, like two sides of the same coin. Through their pain, their grief, their desire, and their regret, they have become one.

anna akhmatova, the guest // bones; equinox // 'i won't become' by kim jakobsson // agustín gómez-arcos, the carnivorous lamb // by oxy // achilles come down; gang of youths // czeslaw milosz, from 'new and collected poems: 1931-2001' // 'extended ambience portrait from a resonant biostructure' and 'migraine tenfold times ten' by daniel vega // a little death; the neighbourhood // marina tsvetaeva, from 'poem of the end' // by drummnist // katie maria, winter // 'nocturne in black and gold the falling rocket' by james abbott mcneill whistler // micah nemerever, these violent delights // body language; we are fury // 'the penitent' by emil melmoth // chelsea dingman, from 'of those who can't afford to be gentle'

taglist (opt in/out)

@shellibisshe, @florbelles, @ncytiri, @hibernationsuit, @stars-of-the-heart;

@lestatlioncunt, @katsigian, @radioactiveshitstorm, @estevnys, @adelaidedrubman;

@celticwoman, @rindemption, @carlosoliveiraa, @noirapocalypto, @dickytwister;

@killerspinal, @euryalex, @ri-a-rose, @velocitic, @thedeadthree

[storm-and-starlight]

so a while ago I saw this post going around that talked about, like, when you're picking names for genderbent characters, sometimes just going with the masculine/feminine version of their original name isn't going to work because the context and connotation is completely wrong, and I was like yes! good! excellent! but it used some batfam characters as examples and the name it picked for a genderbent Damian went so completely against the tone of the name "Damian" that I immediately went "nope I'm doing this myself" so uh. here's the Storm version of a genderbent Batfam + reason why I chose those names.

Bruce "Brucie" Wayne -> Elizabeth "Beth" or "Lizzie/Bessie/Buffy" Wayne OR Berenice "Bunny" Wayne Elizabeth, at least in my head, feels like the same kind of "classical english name" as Bruce -- it's well-known, not particularly tied to any one era, relatively formal, and makes sense for an old-money family that doesn't really have East Coast WealthyTM names (think Throckmorton). "Beth" feels like a good parallel to "Bruce" in that it's a short, workaday name, and there are plenty of silly nicknames for the ditzy socialite side - I am enormously amused by the idea of Beth Wayne, Batwoman, going by Buffy in public, but if that's too much of a reference "Lizzie" or "Bessie" also exist. Berenice, meanwhile, is on here largely because of the nickname "Bunny", which is even better, imo, than Buffy. Bunny Wayne. It delights me. (Berenice is. fine. It's a bit fancier than Bruce, imo, which may or may not jive with the tone of any given fic, but it probably wouldn't be my go-to.)

Richard "Dick" Grayson -> Dorothy "Dotty" or "Dolly" Grayson I pulled this one directly from the original post bc I really do like it and think it works well - it's all about the nickname. It needs to be something that was once a legitimate, unremarkable name that is now a deeply ridiculous thing for someone to unironically call themselves and Dotty and/or Dolly are about as close as you can get to that without it being. actual slang for penis. "Dorothy" also works well as a counterpart for "Richard": a well-known, somewhat old-fashioned name but one that's still in use in modern times.

Cassandra "Cass" Cain/Wayne -> Cassander "Cas/Cass" Cain/Wayne This is one where I actually do think just using the masculine version of the original name works quite well. Cassandra is a name from Greek myth, and given Cass's history and parentage, I think that that context is one of the most important things about how that name works with her character: it's a non-English name, pulled from a culture commonly treated as a "lost golden age of civilization", it's long, it's complicated, it's elegant and a little bit strange. "Cassander" was the name of a king of Macedonia, according to behindthename.com it's the masculine version of the name Cassandra, and to me it has that same sense of slightly eerie elegance.

Jason "Jay" Todd -> Jessie "Jess" Todd This one is more about sound and and vibes than anything else - Jason is a well-known, plain, fairly workaday name that gives me the impression of someone who is strong and no-nonsense, and Jessie (not short for Jessica) gives me the same impression, especially if she habitually goes by Jess in public. Also, they're very sonically similar, and I liked that.

Stephanie "Steph" Brown -> Sidney "Sid" Brown OR  Zachary "Zach" Brown I'll be honest, I don't know nearly as much about Steph Brown as I would like to, so this one is based mostly off of sound, nickname quality, and some context - Stephanie sounds relatively modern, to me, it's a name that wouldn't fit a pre-1980's character (at the earliest). I went with "Sidney" and "Zachary" because they both also have that relatively modern feel with a well-known short form. "Sidney" is here because it starts with S and I think "Sid" fits okay? with the character despite being pretty sonically different from "Steph", "Zachary" because it has a closer sonic feel to "Stephanie" despite the name "Zach" being a little further, vibes-wise, from "Steph".

Timothy "Tim" Drake -> Cordelia "Cora" Drake OR Theresa "Tess" Drake Okay, okay, listen. I know "Cora" sounds nothing at all like "Tim" BUT. in my heart. the name fits the character better than any others I could find. "Timothy" feels very Victorian Boy's Name (or like. animated movie about talking animals set in the 1920's/30's) to me, and in modern days it's a longer, very formal name that's basically never used full-length, but the shorter form is plain, well-known, and still very common. "Cordelia" was also popular in the Victorian Era, would be a familiar-but-uncommon name to most people, and having "Cora" be the everyday name I feel just. fits the character well. Theresa is on here as a closer-sounding alternative because "Tess" is the closest I could get to "Tim" without just stealing Tamara's name (although come to think of it, in an "everyone is genderbent" world just swapping Tim and Tam's names would be very funny), and it has that same "common short form of an uncommon, slightly old-fashioned full name" element, and because "Tess" is a better fit for the character than the other two candidates ("Tori", short for Victoria, or "Tilly", short for Matilda - I liked those two because they give me the same vibes as Timothy, but the short form is the more important part).

Duke Thomas -> Blue Thomas Okay. I know, this sounds nothing at all like "Duke", but again. in my heart. same vibes. It's a name that's very modern-sounding without being Trendy, it's a single syllable, it's a name that is also a common word, and just. idk, they feel similar to me. A little bit cool (in multiple definitions of the word), a little bit laid-back, like they'd both work as nicknames for a 1920's jazz singer. You get it.

Damian Wayne -> Alecto Wayne Yes. I know. Hear me out on this. The original name proposed for a genderbent Damian is what prompted me to make this post in the first place (and no I'm not saying it because I don't want to rag on OP too much) because Damian, as a name, has. just. so much meaning and so much context that is so important to my perception of Damian as a character. It's a Greek name, meaning "the tamer" - it's clearly non-English - it's strange and unusual and stands out among a modern American crowd - it's older, darker, dangerous - it's pulled from a long-gone civilization that for a long, long time was treated as one of the pinnacles of human achievement and yet was just as fucked up as any other society and often was significantly more so - and, most importantly, it is such an Edgelord of a name. It's the name of the overdramatic bad guy in a vampire play (not movie. play.) who stands in a tower drinking blood out of a jeweled goblet. It's a name given to a baby who was raised by assassins and the grandchild of an immortal assassin bent on destroying civilization in an attempt to make the world better. Damian is a sharp prickly pompous brat of a ten-year-old and part of that is looking down at a little kid with a sword with a name like Damian. It's just. how do I even explain this. it makes perfect sense for the League to have named him like that and it makes perfect sense that part of his personality is trying to live up to that and yet he can't because he's like ten. I picked Alecto because of all the names I found, it was the only one that gave me that same, immediate sense of "this is the name of a villain in an overdone fantasy novel, with over-the-top Meaning and Symbolism". It sounds Sharp and Strong and while recognizable, it's clearly not something people are typically actually called. It's Greek, meaning "unceasing" - it's the name of one of the Furies. I just. It works. (I know it's gonna get read as a TLT reference. I don't care. It's use in TLT is exactly what I mean by "it's the name of the villain in an overdramatic fantasy novel" tbh).

[the-elisakou]

Well well well, this is only bound to end well, hm?

[g4y-th0ughts]

surely it’s because i have a personal fondness for sibling relationships but the more i think about it the more i genuinely hate what they made of carla and rob’s bond. i hate the fact that they made him to be pretty much unredeemable and not only because he went too far but especially because he showed absolutely no concern for carla. and i feel that’s such a blow to their relationship because even though it was always rocky and rob was always problematic, the love was !!!! always !!! there !!!! how could it not be when they grew up together in the same filthy, lonely household and they only had each other? when carla was the one who made sure he had food in his mouth and clothes on his back? and i’m supposed to believe that that 40+ years love is just…. gone? that he would repeatedly endanger his sister without not even an ounce of thought, of remorse? i hate it, really

[sharkneto]

It's happened. I'm finally, actually having to plan out a fic structure and plot in writing. Goddamn timelines and Five being an asshole who doesn't share shit so I have to actually keep track of who knows what and where everyone is

[cacw]

do you know the movie manchester by the sea? im watching it right now and it reminded me of someone i know. here is a drawing i made for you 💖💞💖💕

1) i dont even have words for the things im feeling right now. youre so good to me. youre too good to me sam i will be going to staples soon to get this printed so i can tape it to my wall. ive spent so much time looking at it already... its the only thing i could think about last night. i fell asleep thinking about it. a few sparse tears may have been shed because 2) i stopped everything i was doing to watch this movie and it bummed me out so bad. all the more because i was thinking about this frostpod picture the entire time... very on point. thank you so much for thinking of my horrible little family IM RUNNING AWAY.... IM RUNNING AWAY TO STAPLES!!!!!!!!!

[srabaskerville]

I couldn't even finished the first episode of The heart killers, and I haven't watched any of the new episodes of orb and dandadan, because I have been to busy, specially with work, because I have been trying to make the best, to give only the good there, just to receive a two line message saying I will be staying in a place I don't want, from a person I have never met before.

I am so tired of care, I should mind anymore

[o-uncle-newt]

I read Possession by AS Byatt after people told me "if you liked Gaudy Night you'll like this" and WELL.

Warning- spoilers for both books abound below!

So it sounded great- as a lapsed academic (though not in the field of literature by any means) there's a part of me that loves reading about academia because it's full of such obsessive people, and this book seemed to be exactly that and so I was excited.

Then I read it, and on the one hand, my first thought was "all these people are dull as heck, the only sane modern-day one is Val, and at the end of the day the historical stuff is just two people having an affair, who cares." My second thought was "there's just enough stuff here that makes me think that maybe the author knows that all of this is stupid, like the fact that Val is obviously one of the few sane ones here." But the ending made me doubt even that. Essentially, and I say this even as that lapsed academic, the author could not convince me to care about the important things at stake here, and as a result couldn't get me to care about the people who only seemed to care about those things.

I didn't care about Ash and LaMotte- they came across as two people high on their own supply who had a tawdry affair. (And each of them is the less interesting person, as a person, than their official partner!) As a result of not caring about them, I couldn't POSSIBLY care about Roland, Maud, and the rest of their crew, because their only functions were to be possessed by, and weirdly possessive of, these two entirely unworthy individuals, whose in-universe historical and literary significance Byatt couldn't convince me of, and to use that possession as a mirror for their own very lame romance. Beyond that they're utterly uninteresting, and there isn't even meant to BE much beyond that so it's not that surprising.

Anyway, I didn't like this book much, but it still made me think a lot. And there's a way in which a certain kind of person might say "well if it made you think then that's surely a sign of some positive quality" and... maybe? I don't know. I didn't hate all of it, and some parts were interesting, and I do have a whole separate list of things about the book that bug me including a breakdown of some of the book's (perceived by me) themes that I particularly disliked lol. Perhaps I'll post it another time. So I guess you can say it spurred me to thought, but loads of things that I don't like do that, and the only positive thing that that draws from me is that they're not downright dull.

The thing is, after finishing the book I was immediately struck by that "if you like Gaudy Night..." element, because it has a situation that felt weirdly similar (if for totally different reasons)- a young scholar stealing a letter from a library/archive. The circumstances are different- in Gaudy Night, the scholar does it to hide its existence so as not to contradict his thesis, and in Possession, the scholar does it so as to explore the document further, though still secretly- but there are still some interesting parallels vis a vis class. Possession goes into the class thing more than Gaudy Night does, but neither book goes much into it- the scholar is lower-class and someone who has scraped their way to their position, and is encumbered by a female partner of lower social and academic standing, and in the end they are juxtaposed against scholars who come from an elevated class and who have more money and opportunity. In Gaudy Night, Arthur Robinson is judged by the likes of Lord Peter Wimsey and a college full of women who don't have to do anything but think, teach, write, and grade papers; in Possession, Roland has to convince a bunch of academics of standing and resources to take a chance on him (and while this is more about money than class, he's the main one who's like "maybe it's good if Lady Bailey gets her wheelchair"). Byatt elides over this at the end by having him magically become in demand and on his way to achieving his academic goals, but I think in both books, the class element really could have taken on more significance in the text.

(I'd add as well that Byatt pits the upper-class and moneyed Maud, who of course is doing things for "the right reasons," vs the evil American businessman who clearly... doesn't care about Ash enough? Despite how much he clearly and obviously cares about Ash? The book was way more interesting when he seemed like a valid rival to the British team, who only thought that they deserved the letters more because of their obsession, rather than how it turned out at the end where the American dude is an actual cartoon villain. What made him genuinely less worthy besides having money without class, and of course having the bad taste to be American? What makes one scholar's possession more justified? Sayers was never this unsubtle.)

So that made me think more about Possession vs Gaudy Night, and the thing is, there are actual living people in Gaudy Night! Say what you will about the unworldliness of the academics at Shrewsbury, but you get a very keen view of their personalities by the end, even as they are (by necessity given the rules of their world) subsumed by academia, or subsume themselves in it. And the people who do fall in love are REALLY in love, and you understand why...

And somehow a book from 1935 feels far more interrogative of the possession (or lack thereof) found in love and romance, and just about the place of women in academia and relationships overall, than one from the late 80s. In Gaudy Night, Harriet accepts Peter once she has determined that despite their power differential (brought on by class, money, history, and to a degree gender) he will not threaten her personhood, because he has proven himself to her. In Possession, Maud accepts Roland because she has the power (money, class, position, even height) and so Roland actually cannot threaten her- and yet still that final scene is about her being taken by him, basically to prove some kind of a point. In contrast, in Busman's Honeymoon, the euphemistic sex scenes are about Peter trying to please Harriet.

When I say it's to prove a point, I'm paraphrasing Byatt, incidentally- who said: "And in the case of Maud I had made it very inhibiting. She was a woman inhibited both by beauty (which actually isn't very good for very beautiful women because they feel it isn't really them people love) and she was also inhibited by Feminism, because she had all sorts of theories that perhaps she would be a more noble kind of woman if she was a lesbian. And so she was a bit stuck. And Roland was timid because I am naturally good at timid men. It's the kind of men I happen to like. He's a timid thinking man, so of course it took him the whole book." I mean... yikes, but also that explains a lot. Maud can only bring herself to be with a man who is weak/effeminate (?) enough to justify whatever weird psyche Byatt has imagined up for her, but still she needs to get over her inhibitions and under him because... reasons. I don't know.

(Height is also interesting here as a point of contrast- Byatt makes Maud taller than Roland to make a point about how on the one hand she retains the power but on the other hand there is now even more of her that has to surrender. Peter and Harriet are the same medium height and wear the same size gown.)

I think the thing that most stuns me is how regressive Possession feels when it comes to gender politics on relationships than Gaudy Night does. I'd need a whole other post to talk about this, but the theme of Possession seems to me to be "relationships that produce things (whether art or children) are worth more than ones that don't." Roland is better with Maud than with Val because Val is a second rate scholar who drags him down (while supporting him financially) and Ash is better with LaMotte than with Ellen because LaMotte didn't only inspire his writing (Ellen's contributions are described only in the negative "didn't impede"), she gave him the child that Ellen refused to. Incidentally, in both cases it's the man pursuing a relationship that will give HIM something... But, to paraphrase Peter in Busman's Honeymoon, one wouldn't want to regard relationships in that agricultural light. Gaudy Night is about how two people can produce great things without each other but choose to be with each other for their own, and each other's, happiness. They aren't each less apart, and as I noted in a prior post, they don't need to solve cases together or conjoin their work in order for their relationship to be worth something. It is worth it for them to be together because it encourages some kind of inner balance within them and between them, as people. They enjoy collaborating but that is by no means the basis of their love (and, incidentally, I think that a lot of, if not most, detective series romances fail this basic test of "would they have fallen in love if they were accountants who met on a dating app." Peter and Harriet definitely would have- would, say, Albert Campion and Amanda Fitton have? I do NOT think so).

And here's the thing- another reason why Byatt's quote above is so off-putting is that it makes it clear that not only in the text but on a meta level, the purpose of the relationships is to prove a Point. I found Roland and Maud to have zero chemistry, and honestly I was expecting them to get together 3/4 of the way through and split up at the end when it turned out they had nothing in common- it seemed like that kind of book. I was kind of stunned when they only got together at the end in an "it's meant to be" way because nothing about it seemed meant to be. They were stuck together by that one thing and they each apparently needed the relationship for some kind of self-actualization or historical rhyming or other. (Whatever I say about Ash and LaMotte... at least they seemed to like each other!)

Peter and Harriet... they get together because they love each other. Do they change over the course of Gaudy Night, and over the course of the other books they share together? Of course they do. But if it makes sense, I'll put it this way- Harriet doesn't accept Peter's proposal as proof that she got over her hangups, Harriet gets over her hangups so that she can accept Peter's proposal. Her hangups only matter because they were keeping her from this particular kind of happiness- she was a fully actualized person even with them. She is a person who does things for human reasons so that she can build a mutually happy life with the person she loves, not a little plot mannequin being moved around in order to tell the author's desired Message. People can say what they want about Gaudy Night and its flaws, but despite the intricacies of its construction, nobody can call the characters' actions and motivations anything but brutally human.

Whether within their universes or on a meta level, the books have SUCH different things to say about the value and nature of love, the place of and purpose of sex, the place of art and intellectual accomplishment in relationships, all of the above in the context of femininity… and I can't help but feel that each time, Gaudy Night wins the contest. It's possible I'm missing something major about Possession, and maybe sometime I'll post the rest of my notes about the things I disliked and people can tell me what I'm wrong about- but if nothing else it made me appreciate Gaudy Night even more, so for that I'm grateful.

[galacticlamps]

I just wanted to apologize to my classic whotuals for all the dead boy detectives spamming, but it's also important to me that you guys know two things:

a) I've become aware that a lot of what appeals to me about dead boy detectives is, on a kind of conceptual/thematic level, the same stuff that I love about my favorite eras of dr who, and 6b in particular

And I tell you this not as an advertising tactic but as a genuine PSA for anyone following me because:

b) Being me & having realized this, I know I'm definitely gonna wind up posting some unnecessarily long-winded analysis/comparison, pop it in the main tags for the sake of organization on my own blog, and subsequently confuse a hell of a lot of people there who either have no idea what I'm talking about or simply don't view either piece of media in the same light as I do to begin with

So I just wanted to reassure everyone that at least you're not suffering alone, as I will soon be inflicting the reverse bait-and-switch upon others!

That's all! continue w ur scrolling <3

[amelikos]

Sango-chan.