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itadore-you · 10 months

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just for me

pairing: katsuki bakugo x gn!reader w/c: ~ 1k c/w + context: comfort fic. big ass panic attack. if this may trigger you, pls steer clear of this one!

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The violet void of the night has claimed you as a victim once again. It has invisible toothpicks for nails that pry open your eyelids for inspection, declaring you blind.

"Are you scared yet?" It rasps.

You tremble, because you already know what it'll say next.

Nothing. It won't say a word.

Its silence prompts your subconscious to speak for itself, letting the undead scream. Once they're woken, there's no shutting them up. The voices don't come alone. Like a pretty Russian doll, there's always more. Hordes of images; so much that you have seen. They blot across your vision, so viscerally colourful against the dark of night. You're certain that you will die.

All of a sudden, the dark grows hands that hold onto yours - they're smooth, they're warm, and they … aren't to be trusted when you get like this.

Your first instinct is to slap them away. Nothing is safe in the minefield of your mind.

"It's me," murmurs a low voice from beside you. "I'm right here."

"Kats- Katsuki?"

You sound broken. It makes him grit his teeth, knowing what's happening to you. It doesn't happen often, but it happens often enough that he knows the signs. He knows how to help, but not how to fix, and it pains him. Quickly he illuminates the room with a light spark from one of his palms, the crackle emphasizing his presence.

"Yes," he continues to slowly reassure you. "Me. Katsuki. I'm right here."

He wishes he could promise it. He wishes that he could fight alongside you. Blow it all up, leaving those nocturnal demons charred and in pieces. He knows, that even by being here right now, it's not going to stop it on its own. He's reached a limit that he can't force himself through.

He takes in a deep breath as he holds your hands a little tighter, and he continues.

"Squeeze my hands back."

It takes several moments for you to manage the movement. These "attacks" often leave you fucking paralysed after all. But once you grip Katsuki's hands, you keep squeezing, tighter and tighter.

He smiles a little at that, knowing that it's somewhat broken the trance.

"Good. You can keep going."

He doesn't mind it, no matter how hard it hurts, because he won't let you keep feeling so hurt, all alone. He still remembers seeing your first episode, the uselessness that weighed down his heart as he watched the person he loved whilst he did nothing, he couldn’t do anything. Never again.

Never.

You hold onto him tighter over the next couple of minutes. Slowly he offers his arms, and eventually, you accept his embrace - he knows to not constrict you fully in his arms, but instead help you feel grounded.

It takes time before the tempo of your breathing matches his, no longer shallow and rapid. Even in the dark, you can now find the fierce red of his eyes meeting yours. He knows to hold your gaze like this, to silently reassure you that you’re going to be OK.

He whispers a couple of words, asking if you feel like you can stand. He doesn't let go of your hand as he gets you on your feet, motivating you to move with him as he ambles over to the side of your shared bedroom.

It's nice, not to remain curled up beneath a duvet until you sweat buckets, and you can’t tell the difference between perspiration and tears.

Katsuki notices the vacant look in your expression as you motionlessly stand next to him. He's got to be careful now, because that break of clarity is not always the ‘calm after the storm’. Sometimes it comes right back, striking fast like a viper.

The click of your kettle sounds and an impending crescendo ensues as the water boils. The sound is like a pleasant white noise that fills the empty air, static that your brain can't be louder than. You could swear that you kept the kettle in the kitchen, not in here. Katsuki must have brought it, as well as the cup he grabs from seemingly nowhere, and the faint aroma of chamomile starts to arise in the room.

Another click from the kettle, alerting you both that the water has finished boiling. As Katsuki pours the stream of water into the cup, the smell of chamomile grows stronger. You notice that your lungs seem to expand double the size from before, breathing in the calming scent.

Bakugo lifts the steaming cup to you, watching as you take deep breaths. He knows you like the smell and taste of the tea. It's something so basic, so seemingly trivial, but it works.

Out of all your five senses, he's the one that makes the most sense. Bakugo stands before you, untainted and real - more real than what was happening inside of your mind.

He stays with you like that for a while, waiting for the tea to cool down so you can drink it. In the meantime, he talks about a couple of things. He brings up some stupid banter from the conference room yesterday; still finding it stupid, but knowing that you'd find it funny. He mentions, on the side, that he wants to buy some poppy seeds for your garden. It sounds random, but each one of Katsuki's words is chosen with care to distract you from your thoughts.

All the while, he can see a spark start to come back in your eyes. They’re no longer as dull and dead as they were before.

He's glad.

He’s not going to ask if you feel better.

He already knows.

#bakugou x reader #bakugo x reader #katsuki bakugou x reader #mha #bakugo katsuki x reader #bakugo katsuki #katsuki bakugo #katsuki x reader #bakugo x you #bakugo x y/n #mha fanfic #high five if you read this you get me #tw panic attack #cw panic attack #tw anxiety

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art-that-fucks-you-up-tournament · 8 months

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SET ONE FINAL - ROUND FOUR

"Hubble Deep Field" (1996 - Hubble Space Telescope) / "Can’t Help Myself" (2016 - Sun Yuan & Peng Yu)

HUBBLE DEEP FIELD: This photo is kind of only incidentally art, but it is one of my favorite photographs ever. It is the visual byproduct of scientific and technological advancement. Honestly, its not even the most visually impressive Hubble (or other deep space telescope) photo. But I don't think there is anything else in the entire world which can so clearly and deeply impart the existential, incomprehensible vastness of the universe. * This photo represents a section of the night sky with "nothing" in it. There are no stars and it is outside of the plane of the Milky Way. From our view on Earth, it is less than a square inch across. Before this image, we knew of other galaxies, and their abundance was absolutely hypothesized, but no one really knew what to expect when examining such a small, seemingly empty part of the night sky. This is what they found. A tiny fraction of the night sky revealed to be teeming with thousands of galaxies, light reaching us from billions of lightyears away. To extrapolate and imagine that the entirety of the night sky is full of this, a vast blanket hidden behind our local stars. At the time, hundreds of billions of galaxies were estimated to exist. Today that estimation has risen to 2 trillion. 2 trillion potential Milky Ways. 2 trillion of the 100 billion stars that exist in our galaxy, there ever growing and evolving and expanding. I look at this image and just feel so utterly and completely small. How can you look at this and not feel atomic. There is so much of everything, and even still there is darkness, space, filled with so much light and possibilities. It represents both our loneliness as a planet, our isolation, and our connection to the universe, that there is no way we are alone, that we keep reaching out and trying to learn and understand our existence. (if you are interested in some more of the science of this, I'd recommend this Forbes article. I think its a good summary of the history and science, and provides a lot of jumping off points for further research) *disclaimer - there are and continue to be images taken with the same and improved techniques to explore space outside of the galaxy. This was, to the best of my knowledge, the first long exposure of dark space. (travelingsmithy)

CAN'T HELP MYSELF: easily one of the installment pieces of all fucking time. the way that the robot originally began as a smooth, precise sort of machine, efficient and quick, but slowly decomposed into jerkier and messier movements because of its own inability to "help itself" since it needs to clean all of its spill or it can't stop is so so visceral and kind of makes me want to tear my hair out. the way the artists capture human movement and desperation in the robot is incredible. to me it kind of appeals to a sick human desire to watch something outside of ourselves suffer, but also the human ability to connect with anything, even a machine. it's so easy to see ourselves in something mechanical!! we are looking for ourselves in everything!!! that's so fucked up and cool!!! (fromjannah)

(The Hubble Space Telescope took this photo in 1996, and it was the first picture ever taken of deep space. "Hubble Deep Field" was originally imaged by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, a camera initially installed upon the Hubble Telescope

"Can't Help Myself" is a Kuka industrial robot made of stainless steel and rubber mopping up cellulose ether in coloured water made by two Chinese artists, Sun Yuan & Peng Yu. This installation was displayed in Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York but was removed from display.)

#art that fucks you up tournament #polls #atfyu polls #id in alt text

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yokohamapound · 6 months

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Could you write Atsushi with a fem!reader who sees him as a weretiger, and has to try to convince him that he's not a monster? Please?? Extra fluff, if possible.

I hope this is okay. I'm not very good at extreme fluff without a little bit of humour.

Characters: Nakajima Atsushi

Contents: gender neutral reader, angst, fluff, mention of aftermath of violence,

Nakajima Atsushi

Atsushi's bones creaked. Blue light limned his shrinking form as the giant white tiger disappeared, leaving a bedraggled boy in its place. He pressed his palms against the wet concrete, uneven bangs hanging in his eyes as he tried to catch his breath. There was a sour copper tang in his mouth, things he didn't want to think about caught between his teeth.

Bodies lay beaten and broken around him. Not dead, but half-mauled and groaning in pain, or unconscious.

It had been a long time since he was forced to use a full transformation—it took it out of him. He was still—partly—lucid when transformed, unlike in the past when he'd been nothing more than a ravening beast.

He coughed, spitting out the taste of blood and flesh. An unfortunate side effect of using the tiger's teeth to bite and maul, but it was worth it. He'd defeated his enemies. He'd kept Yokohama safe for another day, at least.

Atsushi sat up on his knees, wiping his mouth on the back of his wrist. He reached for the phone in his pocket. He should call Dazai and check in. The man already knew Atsushi would be fine, but Kunikida had drummed proper mission protocol into his head. He stabbed the speed-dial, holding the ringing phone to his ear.

"Aaaatsushi!" Dazai chirped in his ear. "How'd it go?"

"It's done," was all he could say. "I—"

Atsushi's words dried up in his throat. There was a figure standing in the mouth of the narrow alleyway, blocking off the only exit from this deserted stretch of docklands. It wasn't another enemy he'd somehow missed. The figure wasn't threatening in the least, weighed down with grocery store bags.

"Atsushi?" Dazai's voice filtered through the phone, tinny.

Atsushi hung up. What little colour he had in his face had already drained. His golden eyes were huge, distraught as he stared at the interloper. The field of broken bodies and blood splatters between him and them seemed infinite, a tableau of bestial violence..

"How much did you see?" he asked, his voice thin.

Your arms ached from clutching the bags of groceries against your chest, and your tongue was stuck to the roof of your mouth. Frozen to the spot where you'd been for the past few minutes, watching the fight unfold with wide, shellshocked eyes. You couldn’t speak.

"How much did you see!?" Atsushi demanded.

"Every…everything," you managed, mouth suddenly flooding with spit, like you were going to be sick. "Atsushi—"

It had been a foolish impulse, a spur of the moment decision you were quickly coming to regret. Coming home from the grocery store, laden down with bags, you'd spotted a familiar lean, silver-haired figure jogging off down an alleyway. Curious, you'd followed, keeping your distance. Is he working? If he had time for a break, you could stop for lunch! There was nothing frozen in the grocery bags, so you could stop for an hour or so—

Carnage.

Your boyfriend was no longer there. Instead, there was a full grown silver tiger, laying waste to a dozen armed attackers. The violence was shocking, so much more visceral and awful than what you'd seen on TV or in movies. This wasn't an eroticised, sanitised fight scene—it was real. The sights, sounds, and stench of blood inescapable.

"No," Atsushi moaned now, low and in pain, like a wounded animal. "No, no, no… You can't—I didn't want you to see this!"

"Atsushi?" Your voice had a high, rising note of anxiety.

“I didn’t want you to see me like this! Why are you here!?”

Atsushi covered his face with his hands, fingers gripping his hair. He couldn’t bear to look at you, to see shock and disgust written across your face. Not your face. Not you, of all people. The young detective rocked back and forth, bent, his head almost touching his knees.

“Don’t look at me.” His voice was choked.

“Atsushi—”

“Go!”

The groceries hit the concrete, eggs cracking and tomatoes rolling out of the bag to scatter across the scene of the fight. You staggered toward him, magnetically drawn to him by his panic and pain. A few of the mercenaries were beginning to stir, but you didn’t have eyes for them, only for Atsushi. He flinched when you touched him, posture stiffening as though he was turning to stone beneath your hands. You crouched beside him.

“Don’t, Atsushi,” you said, rubbing at his arms, his back. “Don’t…”

An invisible fist gripped your throat and your eyes stung as you watched your boyfriend, your ray of sunlight, cower away from you as though expecting a blow. You took his wrists, trying to pull them away from his head, struggling against his strength and his distress.

“Atsushi, please, it’s okay—”

“No, it’s not!” he burst out, flinging your hands off him. His expression was as ragged as his voice as he stared at you, eyes wide and haunted. “You were never supposed to see me like this. Like a…”

He swallowed the last word, but you were driven by morbid curiosity to ask:

“Like a what?”

“Like a monster.”

That last word hit you like a slap; you jerked back. Atsushi pressed his hands over his ears and hunkered down, like a child trying to hide from thunder, or protect himself from a beating—an ingrained reflex. It was an incongruous image, considering you were in the epicentre of a brutal beatdown he’d just delivered to some criminals. Despite the grim scene around you, you couldn’t reconcile the boy in front of you with any kind of monster.

You chewed your lip, sick to the pit of your stomach, then leaned down to try and catch Atsushi’s eyes. The side of your face almost touched the pavement, the smell of blood heavy in the air. Reaching out a hand, you tried to sweep his bangs away from his eyes. He turned his head away.

“Atsushi, look at me.” You made your voice firm. “Look at me. Now.”

A pause.

His eyes flickered toward you, his pupils shrunken. You held his gaze, ignoring the groaning mercenaries around you, the scattered groceries, the bite of the concrete into your knees. You cupped his chin in one hand, holding fast, and forced him to lift his head.

“Good. Keep looking at me,” you said.

Sitting up on your knees, Atsushi was forced to follow. Clasping his head between your hands, you leaned in, pressing your forehead against his. Atsushi’s harsh breathing stuttered against your face, but you held him still. His hands curled loosely around your wrists, but he didn’t try to push you away this time.

“You,” you said, your voice low and emphatic, “are not a monster.”

“...but—”

“No.”

Atsushi’s phone pinged from where he'd dropped it. He looked at it by reflex, breaking eye contact with you. The mercenaries were beginning to stir or bleed out. Neither of you could stay here for long. You stuffed some of the groceries back into the bag, grabbed them in one hand, and Atsushi's hand in the other.

“Let's get out of here,” you said. At some point, you had become the decision maker, and right now you decided both of you needed to get away from the scene so Dazai and the Armed Detective agency could initiate the clean-up. “Tell your boss you're off the scene, or whatever it is you need to do.”

You led Atsushi back through the alleyway and into the street. He shied a little at the sudden swell of pedestrians and traffic roaring up and down the street, but you tugged him after you.

Sirens wailed in the distance; he flinched. You kept walking, leading him away from the scene of the fight. He kept his head down, following you in a heavy silence, but his fingers remained wrapped through yours. What was going through his head? Had any of your words sunk in?

Was this going to push him away from you for good?

Without a way to answer these questions, you took Atsushi home. Putting down the groceries on the doorstep, you fumbled in your pocket for the keys. Before you could fit the key into the lock, arms wrapped around you from behind. Tight.

“A-Atsushi?”

He said nothing, only burying his face further into the curve between your shoulder and neck. His were like steel bands around your ribs as he clung to you, but you didn't mind being a little short of breath. You covered his hands with your own and squeezed.

“Thank you.”

Atsushi's words came out muffled, and thick, like he was on the verge of crying. You didn't comment on it, rubbing his arms where they wrapped around you.

“You've got nothing to thank me for,” you said gently, before fitting the key in the lock and opening the front door.

“I do,” Atsushi insisted, following you into the apartment. “Even after…what you saw…”

“Was it for work?”

“...yes.”

“Then it doesn’t matter what I saw. Those men were obviously up to something they shouldn’t be. I’m guessing you left them alive?”

Atsushi gave a stiff nod. He stood rooted to the spot as you moved through the kitchen, putting the groceries away. You weren’t sure what to do with yourself, or with him, so you focused on the act of putting away ingredients. Dried food in the cupboard, fresh in the fridge, rice in the rice dispenser. You opened the egg carton, and stopped. Clear yolk oozed out of the cracked shells, soaking the cardboard carton.

“Ah, shit. I dropped the eggs…”

A soft, muffled snort came from behind you. You glanced over your shoulder. Atsushi still stood awkwardly in the middle of the kitchen, but he had his face half-turned away, one hand over his mouth. Huh? Your eyebrows crept up.

“Are you laughing at the state of my eggs, Nakajima?” you asked, a tentative tease.

Atsushi gave another muffled snicker. He cleared his throat, then gave a slight, apologetic bow. “Sorry.”

“What’s so amusing, anyway?” you asked, tipping the broken eggs into the trash and tossing the soaked cardboard after it.

“Just…if you’re more worried about broken eggs than me being a…”

“Don’t use the M-word.”

“Okay. If broken eggs are more important than seeing me the way you did, then I guess it can’t be that bad.” He gave you an uncertain smile.

Relief made a matching smile bloom across your face. You tossed your wallet to Atsushi, who caught it out of mid-air, looking surprised.

“Exactly. Go grab me a dozen of them if you want omelette for dinner.”

#Yokohama Pound #Nakajima Atsushi #Atsushi x Reader #bungou stray dogs #bsd x reader #bsd imagines #bsd headcanons #Nakajima Atsushi x Reader

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dottedsilktie · 2 months

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Grown-up

You spent a lifetime trying to make sense of the feeling Choso has struck in you. You finally grasp what it is one summer day when you're back in your small town.

CW : suggestive, mention of choking and implied masturbation

You like Choso a lot. It wasn't always the case, though.

For as long as you remember, Choso lurked around your neighbourhood and trailed by the white picket fence bordering your yard. The first emotion he struck in you was unease. His being the older brother of your lifelong best friend couldn't soothe the visceral restlessness you felt around him.

You'd try to steal glances at him whenever he dropped little Yuuji to your place for a playdate, hoping you were stealthy in your quiet inspection of him. Naturally, you were anything but, because Choso always knew when you were looking at him quizzically and, when your wide eyes lingered on him for a tad too long, he'd mirror your stare with a lackadaisical gaze of his own. It was enough to keep you at bay, your eyes immediately dropping to your lap or fleeting to Yuuji in search of a reprieve. It was enough until it wasn't.

It was enough when you were a small child and when you mistakenly believed that what you felt whenever Choso was around was mere nervousness.

You thought the older boy's tall frame, always draped in back, painfully contrasted with the blinding white of your fence and the bright colours of your small town. Life was full of shades of green and blue in the artificial turf on everyone's laws and their chlorine-saturated pools, specks of blue and red on the porch of every colonial-style house, blinding streaks of neon pinks and limes at the mall - the only attraction in your otherwise quiet town, where Choso had driven you and Yuuji countless times. That's also where you had an epiphany.

Choso doesn't make you uneasy because he scares you, you think to yourself as you watch him pull into the parking lot of the busy mall. He doesn't scare you but he makes something unpleasant flare in the small space between your ribs until it becomes too big and has to flood your mind and slowly creep into your gut. That feeling has no name for now, because it's fleeting.

But in the backseat of Choso's car, on an unbearably hot summer day, the feeling comes at you like never before when your eyes settle on his bare arms.

One of Choso's arms is resting on the back of Yuuji's headrest, while his other hand has a firm grip on the steering wheel. He's trying to park his car, you think, but you're not sure anymore because Yuuji's chattering, the clamour of the shoppers coming and going outside, even the low hum of the radio fall to the background. The only thing you hear is Choso's exasperated huff when he tries to squeeze his old Wrangler in the last available spot. The only thing you see is his hands - long, deft fingers gripping the wheel so tight his knuckles turn white. The sole thing on your mind is the shameful extrapolation of that sound, of that sight : a vision of his lithe fingers flexing around your throat while Choso lets out a deep grunt above you. You came to find that no matter how reprehensible you think that fantasy is, it still haunted your lonely nights and made you whimper Choso’s name, shame only whetting your arousal.

You spend the rest of that day following the brothers around on shaky legs. You do a fine job of pretending that your flushed cheeks and the light sheen of sweat covering your face are from the heat whenever Yuuji asks if you're okay. You're good at pretending until you're in Choso's car again, driving back home.

Everyone's a little tired, and Yuuji is quickly lulled to sleep by the soft hum of the radio. Your conversation with Choso dwindles down like it always does when Yuuji isn't involved. Not because he's expected to contribute - Choso and you always fall into a rhythm, an incessant back-and-forth that requires no outside input. Yuuji only has to bear witness to it, it's a tacit agreement between you and Choso. You don't think you can speak or be left with him unsupervised, lest something happens. That's why you opt to pretend to be sleeping too, craning your neck to the side and resting your cheek against the cool leather of your seat, eyes closed.

Choso looks at you through his rear view mirror and scoffs at the unconvincing show you're putting on - he sees the way your eyelids flutter against your rosy cheeks, the subtle quiver of your spit-licked lips and the nervous twitch of your brows. He takes pity on you after a while, taking you out of your misery with an amused voice "I know you're not sleeping so why are you even pretending ?". You mouth out a 'fuck' that earns you a tut from him, but you still open your eyes and turn to face his blasé expression in the rear view mirror. You feel it again, then - it's in your ribcage and the cold sweat running down your spine, it steadily boils in your lower stomach. "I wasn't pretending, I was trying to sleep" You mumble unconvincingly, eyes falling to Choso's hand on the gearstick - so, so big and unbelievably pretty.

"You can never sleep in the car, squirt" He reminds you, voice impassive but the nickname betrays everything his tone conceals. It makes you cringe and wrinkle your nose, "Stop calling me names, Cho', I'm not a kid anymore". He only smiles a little at you and hums, "Old habits die hard, sorry".

You want to bicker with him a little more but your retort dies on your tongue when your eyes meet his again in the mirror. This time his gaze is anything but tame and his face twists in an unreadable expression, brows furrowed and lips pursed. "You're far from being a kid now, aren't you ?", he repeats with a solemnity that makes you clench your thighs together and bite your lip. You're staring again, and he's staring right back in a way that seems to say ‘will you back down like you always have, will you avert your gaze ?’ . You don't, mostly because he’s just so handsome you don’t want to pass on the chance to stare at his sun saturated profile after months of not seeing him, but also because it feels like a test of some sort. Choso smiles at you languidly and it feels like you’ve passed his test when he lets out a deep laugh and confirms ,“You’re all grown up now”.

That feeling is back again - it's in the warmth of your face, the heat in your ribcage but it burns the hottest between your thighs. You can finally pinpoint what it is : it's a feverish and visceral want that only Choso can sate.

Repost

#jjk drabbles #jjk choso #choso x reader #choso x you #kamo choso #choso x y/n #jujutsu choso #jujutsu kaisen choso #choso

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runwayrunway · 1 year

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No. 1 - Lufthansa

We begin with a large fish even by the standards of the large pond in which we operate. A very intentionally chosen large fish. Deutsche Lufthansa is Germany’s flag carrier and the second largest carrier in all of Europe by passenger volume. In 2018, they unveiled a new standard livery for their fleet of airplanes, and it...well. It’s this.

Even the presentation - good lord, is this an auto show?

My feelings on Lufthansa’s 2018 livery are visceral. There’s no mental evaluation required, no taking it in, thinking about the choices made - I look at the modern Lufthansa livery and immediately, profoundly know that I hate it. And that’s not just because of the specific choices made - which are bad - but because of the space they occupy amidst a creatively barren wasteland within livery design. This is going to be a very long post, which isn’t standard for this blog, but my goal for an introduction is to break down exactly the sort of design that made me feel the need to start doing this to begin with.

But in reality that’s only the beginning. Yes, Lufthansa’s livery is specifically disappointing, but it is so much more than that. It is the purest distillation of the greatest challenge aviation faces today, far weightier than scheduling issues, outdated IT, and runway incursions. It is not the worst example of it, not in the slightest, but it is a large airline which has a very textbook presentation of symptoms and thus feels like a great example to describe exactly what I hate about this sort of design. Let me explain.

Essentially, airlines have found a formula. It goes as such:

Almost entirely white body. (There is a name for this trend: Eurowhite.) In some cases, there may be a colour on the underside, generally either a light grey or whichever secondary shade the airline has committed to. In the case of this Lufthansa livery, it is just white.

Aside from the white body there will be either a single colour (generally some dark blue, or less often some sort of red) or a few colours, usually but not exclusively on flag carriers to match their national branding. (The proliferation of red, white, and blue flags out there means that a disproportionate number of airline liveries are these colours.) Unless it is literally just a white plane meant to be as generic as possible for short turn-overs when leasing, it will at least attempt to have some sort of design, but it will be minimal, and:

All of the detail will be on the tail. There may be coloured winglets or engine nacelles, but other than that it is only at the rear of the plane that you begin to see any interest. Usually this is just a logo, though it may be an abstract design which looks like a default tumblr header. It will often only be on the tail, with nothing at all on the body proper.

The name of the airline written in a sans-serif typeface which is set as default on at least one word processor. Rarely will anything creative be done with this. It will (usually, except in egregious cases) match the impotent attempt at graphic design which has been confined to the empennage and it will have all the charm of a large retail chain’s flyer describing the benefits you’ll definitely totally get if you work for them - sickeningly corporate. Low-cost airlines may slightly vary the theme by putting their website onto the livery, either towards the back or just instead of the airline’s name. The brave will also write it on the ventral fairing, but most don’t even bother with that simple act. Some airlines have their name written in the language spoken in the country they’re based in, usually beside the English text, but most are only in English despite operating in countries where this is not the most widely spoken language.

Not every livery which has these features is badly designed, as seemingly small changes can make all the difference. There is the occasional livery that fits most, if not all of these features that has some clever tweaks or design choices which makes me actually think it’s fine, acceptable, maybe even decent. (I have taken the initiative of making sure a few of these are among my early posts, just to demonstrate that it can be done). And some airlines depart from this entirely and come up with something even more hideous. Yet I somehow find myself respecting even these more than I do Lufthansa.

The Corporate Standard Livery Design (Lufthansesque design, if you will) is - and I do not think I am being dramatic at all here - an epidemic. Taxiing through most airports, you sometimes have to actually try to tell the planes parked around you apart in the sea of red, blue, and mostly white. And I spend a lot of time looking at planes.

These liveries do not only fail to inspire me. They instill in me a profound disgust. They are not trying to be good. They are trying to be what I described earlier - decent, not worth complaining about, because that’s cheaper and easier than designing something good. Graphic design is not anyone’s passion here. They’re just trying to toe the line. They’re so poisoned by the modern minimalist-design brain virus that they don’t realise that to be acceptable a livery this simple needs to do something interesting. There must be a creative decision made somewhere, a compelling feature, or you may as well be flying an MLA-formatted plane. In their striving for adequacy they become not just ambient, but lukewarm. They are a bottle of water which has sat in the sun for so long that when you drink it, even though you’re overheating and parched, it feels only negligibly better than the air you’ve been breathing in.

To be fair, I do not only hate the Lufthansa paintjob because it exemplifies whatever-ness. Even in an industry saturated with gross in-flight nothingburgers served with some stale biscuits and a paper cup of Lipton tea, Lufthansa manages to offend in specific and unique ways.

Throughout its long history Lufthansa has had a handful of different liveries, but from 2018 onwards this has been the situation. They’ve never been brilliant, but it’s only gotten worse over time. I normally would commit to a separate post for historical liveries, but in a move that I don’t foresee becoming particularly common I’d like to talk about the history and evolution of Lufthansa’s liveries from the golden age to now - the fall, if you will.

(image: lufthansa bildarchiv)

Their early liveries were already pretty much plain white or metal, but they still had a few features that made them seem a bit less like photocopy paper which was meant to be printed plain blue but only got through a tenth of the sheet before ink ran out. To begin with, they used a lighter blue and combined it with a vivid yellow to add some actual visual interest. The layering of the yellow over the blue where it curves around and below the nose and on the ends of the tailplane actually draws the eye. The font choice is nice and legible, spaced apart in the center of the fuselage. I imagine it was easy to read even from far away. (Shame it’s a bit blocked by the wings from some angles, though.)

(image: lufthansa bildarchiv)

This early 707 design keeps the cheatlines extending past the nose but makes them sharper than the ones on the Connie to match the sleek profile of the jet. Back when this plane was painted adding white to your plane was a choice rather than the thing everybody was doing, which allows me to respect it for the choice it was instead of considering it the factory default. The bottom half, denoted by the cheatline, is left unpainted, which only adds to the sleekness of the overall profile, and the text is clear and plain but still aesthetically pleasing. The 707 is by modern standards pretty antique-looking; you can take one look at one and tell it isn’t particularly streamlined. This paint scheme, though, makes the plane look sharp and aerodynamic, despite not being revolutionary. I would go so far as to say I like this particular livery. This is, unfortunately, as good as it gets.

Oh. Oh no...

Let’s assess the damage here. The cheatlines now simply meet at the front without wrapping down to the belly of the plane and the nose is a simple black tip. I like it when airlines paint their planes’ radomes, and I wouldn’t mind it here if not for what it was replacing. The font has been replaced with a generic sans serif font which is closely spaced and put up into a corner, like the name on a homework assignment - it’s not really part of the total package, just there for administrative purposes. Most upsetting to me is the tail. While I wouldn’t say I love the little section on the old plane, it at least felt like it belonged there, creating a second blue-and-yellow layer above the white. Its placement on the fin above where it begins to taper gives the plane a bit of an aerodynamic feel. It’s certainly not changing the world, but it feels at home in the livery.

The new fin is a sharp downgrade. With nothing to mark the transition the fin abruptly goes from the white of the upper fuselage to a shiny blue which contains an enclave of the only yellow to be found on the entire aircraft. This makes the yellow stand out, as it has nothing to tie it in with the rest of the plane, and the fin itself feels almost like it’s been Frankensteined onto the fuselage from a different plane by a different airline. There’s nothing to mediate the transition from a block of white to a block of blue, like how the cheatline separates white and grey. It just is blue now, stop asking questions. This also means that the only part of the plane that the eye is really drawn to is...the tiny portion of the whole that is the fin, which may as well be floating detached in midair.

This is foreboding. Knowing what I know now, it feels like looking back at when a romantic partner began to act strange years later, after the divorce, as you walk by the house he bought with his mistress.

(image: g najberg)

The most recent, and only, time I flew on Lufthansa was in 2014 and was aboard one of their 747-400s. (Actually, if you’d still like to fly on a passenger 747, Lufthansa is basically your only option.) At the time, they looked like this. This is...just sad. They got rid of the cheatlines, because that’s trendy now, and they painted the whole plane white and made an attempt at lip service to the old metal lower half by painting just a bit of the plane grey, like if a human stepped into a puddle of paint that only covered the very sole of their foot. And I’m being generous by showing a 747, a plane which inherently makes any livery look less boring by being interestingly shaped itself, instead of the classic slightly pointy single-decker tube. Not to mention the double-decker design makes the text vertically centered instead of the default Lufthansa look of awkwardly shoved nearly all the way up the fuselage.

In defense of the modern livery, it’s possible to argue it’s an improvement on this. Honestly, looking at them next to each other, it’s difficult to pick out which one I find less defensible.

But then you see D-AIDV, an A321 painted in a heritage livery, and you feel the immediate, visceral “no!!! no go back!!!” as you remember that this is a false dichotomy and we could have something so much better if they weren’t peer-pressured into generic modern design.

And for what? For this?

(image: hvdfonts)

For the third time, I remind you of what we have been reduced to. We have achieved a state of reductio ad absurdum where this barely qualifies as a design. This plane is more or less a white blot. You can put as many insets as you want and it is still a white blot.

I am relatively sure that the font used is literally Helvetica. EDIT: I have been informed that it is not, in fact, Helvetica, but a custom typeface that happens to look almost exactly like Helvetica. This is, in my own opinion, worse! They did apparently use Helvetica in the past, though. Here is a very detailed description of the design process of the font, which manages to contain a grand total of zero ideas.

I would hate this on its own already, but it’s also so closely spaced and located so far up that it makes me feel like I’m suffocating. In my own experience as a dyslexic person, kerning is the single weightiest feature when it comes to if I can easily read something or not. While Helvetica, ugly though it may be, is generally considered a very legible font, any benefits from that are more than cancelled out by committing to making sure the entire name of the airline fits between the frontmost two doors with room to spare. It feels almost hostile.

Now, all given, I at least somewhat enjoy the shade of blue used for this livery, which is darker than the normal fare. I do miss the way the grey broke up the endless white space, though, and I mourn the yellow even more - in addition to being something to look at, losing it has also lost any visible reference to the flag of Germany, the country for which Lufthansa is the flag carrier. They don’t even have the black part of the German flag despite that being basically free. If they went for black instead of dark blue I would honestly respect this a hell of a lot more. One of the most recognizable flags in the world and instead your airline looks like a discount SAS.

Yeah, I said it. If we want to go even further with comparisons by including airlines that aren’t Lufthansa, this is basically the SAS livery. Except not, because the SAS livery does a lot that this doesn’t.

This is about Lufthansa, not SAS. I’ll look at SAS soon enough, because comparing their look to Lufthansa’s has made me appreciate it in a way I never used to. But I don’t think I need to elaborate too much for it to be clear why SAS’s livery works and Lufthansa’s doesn’t, despite the superficial similarities. SAS took their absolutely horrid previous livery and turned it into something which might not wow anyone but at least feels uniquely theirs, while Lufthansa had something which accomplished much the same and then diluted it into nothingness, Eurowhite writ large. Two washes and you’d wonder if your Lufthansa flight is actually a Smartlynx lease.

The way that the blue slices into the bottom of the fuselage and doesn’t fully cover the tailfin is...something? It’s a design element. It’s not nearly enough to save it, but it’s a design element. However, this presents another issue specific to Lufthansa’s paint job, best demonstrated with a specific plane:

(image: lufthansa)

Lufthansa is the world’s largest operator of the Airbus A340, a somewhat eccentric airplane which is perhaps best thought of as a four-engined A330. I love this airplane, and am delighted seeing it overhead on my walk home from work, because Lufthansa is kind enough to operate a daily service with it to my home airport, but that’s beside the point. The point is this: what I have pictured is specifically the A340-600, which is the world’s second longest in-service airliner. Yes, longer than the A380 and the 747-400, and, in fact, only shorter than the 747-800. With a plane this long, the Lufthansa livery creates an incredible look of rear-heaviness. This plane looks like it should uncontrollably pitch up until it’s perpendicular to the ground every time it takes off. Of course this effect is less pronounced on shorter aircraft, but it’s still there, and I dislike it.

You can barely even tell there’s paint at all on a much smaller plane! And the white bit on the front of the rudder which looks okay on a conventional empennage looks downright horrible when it’s only on the very tip of the t-tail’s forward point.

Oh, and when you take the windows out for a freighter conversion it gets even worse.

This is a generic-brand airplane. It genuinely reminds me of generic branding. There is a specific brand that has this exact appearance and I can’t remember what it is but it’s right there and I’m fairly sure I’ve seen it at CVS. I don’t think that’s what you want to go for when designing an airline livery, especially for an airline representing a country, but if Lufthansa wasn’t going for that they’ve failed.

__________________________________________

Overall, Lufthansa’s livery is superbly boring and not terribly well thought out. It’s not worth this absolute dissertation on its own, but I’ve singled it out to complain about general trends, and for that I probably owe it an apology. Said apology is predicated on the fact that it is still a very underwhelming and bad design which could have used a lot more thought. There are a million ways this could have been made decent, and none of them were implemented because that would have taken effort and time and creative vision. I think this post actually required more time and effort than Lufthansa put into designing their planes.

That said, Lufthansa gets a final grade of D. It’s...bad, it definitely is. There’s the vague flavour of the start of something, like the very distant smell from a barbecue happening three blocks away, but is that really even a redeeming factor?

No. The second-largest airline in Europe should be able to do better. If I have to stare at rows upon rows of their planes any time I’m at a German airport, they should have the decency to make them interesting to look at.

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f1ot3fest · 6 months

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OT3+ FEST PREVIEW!

Read these submissions on the AO3 collection after reveals tomorrow!

sidelines by @hurricane-heatt | Lewis/Seb/Hanna

“Surely you’ve given her a good enough review?” Sebastian smiles, sticking his tongue out a touch and wetting his lips. Hook, line, and sinker. This used to be a lot easier. It didn’t need expensive drinks in bars twice a year, ones that fade in and out of bright colours. It only needed hands on the smalls of backs and whispers and champagne soaked skin. The lights change to green again. “I couldn’t do you justice.”

expect a visceral reaction by @officialmood | Max/Daniel/Scotty

After the worst doctor’s appointment of his life—bar none, no competition, so bad he googles Canadian medical system scam right after—Daniel has to go back to the paddock. He has to do his fucking ESPN telecast like he didn’t just have a supposedly-licensed medical professional look him in the eye and tell him—what he had to do if he wanted to stabilize his heat schedule into something at all tolerable.

betwixt by @eyes-likepilotlights | Lewis/Seb/Hanna

Seb is Hanna's at home and Lewis's on the road - until Seb notices that there might be something more between Hanna and Lewis and decides the best course of action is to be very, very annoying about it.

a fantastic way to kill some time by @eyes-likepilotlights | Lewis & Nico & Vivian

Nico & Vivian get trapped in a lift with Lewis in Monaco. Only Vivian has a nice time. This could easily have the alternative title: I support Vivian Rosberg's rights and also her wrongs.

teach me just what fast is by @sionisjaune | Mick/Lewis/Nico

When Mick ducks inside the Mercedes hospitality, Nico Rosberg gives a lazy wave from his spot perched on a tall stool in front of the espresso bar. The thick bezel of his watch flashes gold when he raises his tiny cup of coffee. Everyone knows that he and Lewis are sleeping together, again. Lewis doesn't really talk about it. At least not with Mick.

system's breaking down (there's been a glitch) by @alpinelogy | Alex/Lando/George

The soulmate AU in which Lando doesn't think, George overthinks, and Alex is just glad to be there.

#thank you to everyone who sent in a blurb! i am personally SO excited to read all of these #ot3+ fest

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darksaiyangoku · 4 months

Text

RWBY Winter Tales

May the Power Protect You

Ozma struggled to his feet as he crawled through the mud.

Salem: It's over, Ozma. You and your precious warriors have failed. Why don't you just accept your defeat and stop prolonging your suffering?

Ozma continued crawling, desperate to get away from Salem. She looked over him and shook her head. His self-righteous streak was admirable, yet infuriating. She took a few steps and grabbed her spear, stamping onto him. Raising it high, she plunged it sharply into his back. A visceral scream escaped his mouth. Blood seeped out from his back and deep into the mud, his breathing became weaker and his vision was fading. With the little strength he had, he clasped his hands together and uttered a spell.

Ozma: I call upon you... *coughs violently* the power of the Ancients... *coughs violently* guide my hand so that I may find someone worthy to carry on the legacy of the Rangers... go with my blessing and may the Power protect you....

Faint lights of the colours red, white, black and yellow appeared from his hands and scattered up into the sky. With one last smile, Ozma succumbed to his wounds and died.

[Remnant 207 M.A.]

Ruby walked beside Blake as they were returning home from shopping. Throughout the journey, Ruby was holding onto Blake's arm to stabilise herself on the slippery, icy pavement.

Blake: Ruby, you should've put on your new boots.

Ruby: I didn't want the ice to wreck them.

Blake: You sure you didn't want an excuse to grab onto my arm.

Ruby: Wha-? No! I- *mad blushing*

Blake: *small chuckle* Relax, I'm just teasing you.

Ruby: Hmmmmph! J-Just keep walking!

Blake and Ruby made it to the Rose-Xiao Long house and gave each other short hugs before they were about to go their separate ways.

Ruby: B-Blake, wait! Um... do you- uh. *shuffles foot*

Blake: Yes, Ruby?

Ruby: D-Do you, uh... *sighs* never mind, I'll see you tomorrow.

Ruby opened the door and was greeted by the grinning faces of her parents, Taiyang and Summer, and half-sister, Yang.

Yang: So??? Give me the good news!

Ruby: ...I didn't ask her out.

Tai: Aww, sweetie. Come here. *hugs Ruby*

Ruby: I just froze up again... Blake will never go for me.

Yang: Hey don't say that. Listen, Ruby, you're a great girl. You're cute, smart, funny and no one has as much enthusiasm for ancient Remnant weapons as much as you do. Blake's bound to get a kick out of that as a history geek herself.

Ruby: *giggles*

Yang: Don't be too hard on yourself. Everyone gets nervous.

Tai: Yang's right, sweetheart. Lord knows how much of a wreck I was before I asked out your mom.

Summer: Oh he's not kidding, it's quite the tale. Come on over, the Shepherd's pie is getting cold.

Ruby: Thanks everyone. You really know how to help out.

They sat together for a warm, delicious meal. With one bite, Ruby hummed as she felt the troubles of her day melt away. After they had finished, they all gathered around the TV to watch the latest news. Several UFOs had been sighted all across Remnant.

Ruby: You really think aliens are out there?

Yang: *shrugs* Who knows? Though if they did exist, I'll challenge them to race with my trusty Flamethrower. Spaceship vs motorcycle!

Ruby: *rolls eyes* Of course you would.

Ruby decided to leave the living room for a while in order to put away the shopping she had bought. As she walked upstairs, she saw a faint, glowing red light from the corner of her bedroom door. She felt a lump in her throat and her heartbeat started racing. Slowly, Ruby crept forward and reached out her hand against the door. A gentle push followed and she dropped the bags. Sitting on her bed was a bright red, watch-like device, with a rose emblem at the center.

Ruby: ...What the hell? *slowly takes the device*

Device: *humming sound* Now accessing Morphing Grid. Match in progress. *whirring* Match complete. Subject is matched with The Power of Roses. Red Ranger confirmed.

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somnambulic-thing · 10 months

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This has been sitting in my drafts unfinished for MONTHS.

I don't have a large audience here but every single reblog can go a long way! So, if you, dearest reader, decide to indulge in one of those treasures I encourage you to give something back by spreading the goodness and/or giving some love and feedback to the authors!

This is a collection of stories that stuck with me and that I keep coming back to and I'll tell you why as good as I can and without spoilering. (in no particular order.)

death and the maiden by @fairyysoup One of the first Eddie fics I read when I crashed into the fandom here on tumblr. It's immersive, it's creative, the lore is detailed but leaves enough mystery to hold tension. The insights into Eddie's inner world are written with so much care and humor; it's heartbreaking and adorable and there was not one dull minute of reading.

river monster Eddie by @courtingchaos This just grabbed me by the throat and pulled me under. It's so dreamy, so soft and still sharp. Meg's writing makes me smell the dirt, the mossy riverside, the minerals of the rocks we rest on. Our Monster Boi is mysterious, he has character that is shining through even the smallest actions: curious, playful, rough. I want to know everything about his life and what he does to pass the time.

this dreamy blurb by @chestylarouxx Em is the master of illuminating the beauty of the ordinary, of painting big pictures with few words and unleashing avalanches of emotions in subtle ways that will worm under your skin before you realise what's happening. I read this short piece more times than I can count. The intimacy, the softness that is never just sweet but goes even deeper because there is also the sour lurking around the edges. (Or vigorously slapping your face, but I like that, you know?)

the Store Manager Verse by @jo-harrington So this kinda hit me unexpectedly. I am usually not remotely interested in retail settings but I am invested in this! The setting is simple, but never dull! The sting of everyday struggles, everyday drama and the fact that you can't escape yourself, that you take your demons with you wherever you go is met with the beauty of caring for others, of making the best out of subpar situations, of making the most out of a little, of taking a leap of faith despite being scared shitless to fall. Eddie is a well-rounded character, no flawless dream boy but a little mess with a golden heart who's trying so hard. Too hard, sometimes. I love him dearly. Go read this.

last string to sever by @dr-aculaaa There is this quality to Dracs words: like when you enter someone's living space and the light, the shapes and colours, the smell just make sense. They invite you into something unique, something intimate, filled with nuance and dept that I have to take breaks sometimes to untangle everything I just experienced. This story is heavy, is brutal and mean and it stings but it's not just stepping down on you until you can't breathe anymore. Drac leaves cracks in the concrete and through those you can see a way ahead, a reason within. The care between the characters, the hands reaching even after they have been slapped away. The relationships are distinctive. And The Longing! Nothing I could write here would capture it all. This text is insufficient. Have your own taste.

it's been a long year by @myosotisa Again a prime example of painting big pictures with few words. The relationships in this run so deep that the scene unravelling before our eyes hits you like a freight train. It's visceral in exactly the right amount; the physical pain and not overshadowing the weight of lives cut short but accentuating it. It's so tender and soft and full of gutwrenching gratitude laced between the horror... I'm choking up writing this (not kidding).

I'm just a sucker (for you) by @bettyfrommars Betty, Betty, Betty. Highly imaginative, an impressive range and such a sense for detail and the small things that make the difference between a nice story and a story that will stay with you for a while. This short story had all my earthly senses engaged within seconds: Fall was everywhere, the smell of popcorn mingled with the earthy scent of the season. This is one of my favourite Eddie characterisations so far. He's so alive, so sweet and awkward and silly, daring but shy. You made him a complex, believable guy and all contained in so few words. I am kneeling before your greatness.

#somna's recs #rec list #fic rec

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mightymizora · 2 months

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I would love to know more about how Bodies came together. There's so many layers that I'm just wondering how they kind of built up if that makes sense or anything else you want to talk about

YESSS I GET TO TALK ABOUT BODIES. Which I'm linking to because I know it's niche but it came out good I think

So I started with what I felt I "knew"

I wanted it to be a little tryptich about Ketheric having sex

For Ketheric, Melodia was "the woman" and all other women pale in comparison to her

I wanted to think a little about what that might mean for the other women, particularly Thisobald's mother

And finally, whatever happened with Manva had to be... so gross. I had only touched on this in Blood and Bone, Bone and Blood and wanted to dive in a little more.

After this I got to really just play around and discover a bit, which was really freeing for me. I love the idea of what Ketheric can and can't remember, now he is immortal, and what he can and can't feel. I felt that the memory of light was probably quite key, and potentially then the idea of colour and sound. So you end up with quite an abstract set of recollections about Melodia; he knows he sang for her, he knows little things about how she tasted. Then a layer up, you have him remembering the colour of the fingerprints on Feyn and the sound of Thisobald crying. And finally you get the more tangible things that happen with Manva.

But then equally, you have the decay, right? So then the greatest feeling, both emotional and physical, is reserved for his quite abstract memories of Melodia. Then you have the drunk, dissociative Ketheric trying to reach for feeling with Feyn. Finally, you have some really fucking visceral physical things happening with Manva, but because of his undeath, he can barely feel them. She manages to spark something in him with appalling cruelty, and he retaliates in kind.

It was only when I was placing the final pieces that I realised that this sex with Manva echoes the sex with Melodia in form, and of course Ketheric does not really piece them together either, as his idea of love is getting tangled up, but that was a pleasing thing that came together quite organically.

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beckiboos · 11 months

Note

What mods do you use for your player character's appearance in Skyrim? She looks so cute!

Aww Thank you!

Here's a list of mods I use for her facial appearance

High Poly Head (Vector plus)

Racemenu

Koralina brows

Even more eyes by Koralina

Bijin skin

FRECKLES - racemenu overlay collection

Koralina's makeup tweaks

Even more makeup

Shiny ENB eyebrows begone

Dint999 hair (patreon)

ENB Visceral (not technically for appearance but helps a lot)

ECE ear shape sliders for racemenu

I think that's all of them. They are mostly found on nexus unless stated otherwise. Calliope uses the first vanilla breton preset that comes with the game. I just edited it quite a bit in sculpt, but that first preset has a very good nose

tips for racemenu nobody asked for but here it is anyway because I just can't help myself apparently

Don't skip on the chin/eyes/forehead/nose colours - adding these gives life to the skin and stops skin looking flat, just go very LIGHTLY on it

layer very light freckles all over the skin in a shade a tiny bit darker than your skintone then do it again for a different pattern of freckles slightly darker than that. You want to BARELY see them. What this will do will add texture to the skin (like pores if the skin you use doesn't have a lot of texture) so it looks more realistic

Pick a preset you want to base you character on on one characteristic you're not very good at sculpting/changing. For instance I find noses complicated, so I find a preset with a good nose I want that I don't have to change much and just change everything else

Noses are shorter and the bridge is wider than you think on the face, If you struggle with face proportions check to see if you made the nose too long and thin

#skyrim #mod list #oc calliope #sorry for the tips actually #but i wrote them out now #so if it helps it helps #but feel free to ignore

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xiaq · 2 years

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CHAPTER 4 IS UP ON AO3

“Do they all just seem impossibly young to you?” Potter says after several minutes of silence.

He’s looking at the dance floor, eyes dark and fathomless.

Draco follows his gaze to the colour-spangled, undulant crowd: a tide of bodies moving with the pulse of music—heads thrown back, teeth white in the black light, skin slick with sweat. Couples lean against the walls and each other, hands spanning backs, mouths to ears, lips to throats. The dance floor is a study in unrestraint.

Draco can feel the bass in his lungs.

On another night he might actually enjoy it. Tonight, it hurts.

He sips his drink and lets the rim rest against his bottom lip, tongue against teeth and teeth against glass. He exhales.

“Perhaps we’re just old before our time,” Draco says. He feels ancient, most days, like he’s lived a lifetime already. “Children aren’t supposed to go to war, after all.”

“And yet they keep ending up there,” Potter murmurs. He tips his drink, finishing the last of the liquid, and breaks an ice cube between his teeth. “The papers keep talking about healing and returning to normal, but I don’t think—do you ever feel like maybe you’ll never be normal again? That there’s no coming back from the things we’ve seen.The things we’ve done.”

For a moment, Draco is plagued with indecision. Because he doesn’t want to answer honestly, not here, not to Potter. But then he’s been trying to stop taking the coward’s way out in difficult situations, and there’s no time like the present.

“Sometimes it feels wrong,” Draco says slowly. “To enjoy things. Just simple things. Like eating the first biscuit in a new package or sliding under the duvet on a newly made bed—listening to music in the car. Because there are so many people who won’t ever enjoy those simple things again. And I was, at least partially, responsible for some of their deaths. I think I may live the rest of my life trying and failing to repent for my sins.”

Potter doesn’t attempt to gentle Draco’s self-loathing.

He does, perhaps, do something even worse, though.

“Sometimes I dream about the people I indirectly killed,” Potter says. “During the war, but also the trials afterward. So many people went to Azkaban to die.”

Draco sets down his glass.

“It was easier when I could pretend they were bad people,” he continues, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Draco is struggling to breathe.

“Weren’t they?” Draco manages.

“Some, yes. But what about the ones like you? Like your mother. Except they didn’t have the money to buy mercy. ”

Draco closes his eyes but it doesn’t make the words go away.

“Coerced or not,” Draco says, opening them again, “when it was time to choose sides, they chose the wrong one.”

Potter laughs: a sharp and terrible thing.

“Forgive me if autonomy makes a big fucking difference in my judgement of good and evil.”

Draco looks away, attention caught again by the dancing bodies around them, moving with abandon to the throbbing music. For a moment, he is intensely, viscerally, jealous.

“They’re not like us,” Draco says, more to himself than Potter. And then, realizing he’s said it out loud, scrambles to clarify what he means by “us”—because he and Potter aren’t the same. Their experiences are not equitable and he doesn’t mean to imply they are—he wouldn’t try to place their trauma in the same genre. He can’t seem to formulate the words, though.

“No,” Potter agrees, meeting his eyes. “They’re not like us.”

#drarry #drarry fic #draco/harry #draco malfoy/harry potter #harry potter/draco malfoy #harry/draco #myfic #auror partners #harry potter

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roundboard · 1 year

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Brutal Orchestra Art Hitlist

Just a list talking about each of the characters that I’ll have to go through drawing in Brutal Orchestra. Will detail plans and thoughts on ones I haven’t done, and reflect on the ones I have :)

Nowak/Bosch

I’m coming for you (two)...

Boyle

Done! Clean and simple inclusion of lore elements with a more interesting pose than I normally go for, really happy with how this one came out!

Hans

Done and dusted, I really did try to see if I could include SOME element of her items and such, but no luck... it cluttered the drawing far too much and there were too many conflicting themes. I tried my best to just elevate a lot of the simpler elements of Hans, and used one of her main abilities as a base for the concept.

Also included the fact her arms look kind of like spindly nerves as that’s how they seemed to be imagined by a lot of the community in canon! I think I made her look really nice and I’m still happy with it.

Burnout

Finished :) Probably my rawest piece yet, mega happy with how visceral I depicted him, as he deserves to be!!

Fennec

Fairly happy with how he turned out! I was trying to vary my angles since I have a habit of drawing characters facing right so I wanted to make sure to introduce some variety to the portraits. Plus, it’ll look even nicer by the end when they’re all lined up next to each other.

He definitely seems a lot more jungle-y than he would let on but... A lot of his abilities seemed that way so I couldn’t help it. Not like it’s a bad thing, green + blue is a pretty good colour combo

Anton

I was definitely happy with him for a first attempt at this project, especially with how I shaded the mask, but I’m almost definitely going to go back to redo him. In hindsight there isn’t enough Anton swagger going on (minus the finger guns) and I think some element of his rude/skittish/gamble-orientated nature has to be shown off somehow.

Splig

Possibly my strongest work concept wise so far, or it’s tied with Kleiver. I’m really proud of myself for composing it in a way that shows off the Tao symbol they have in one of their attacks, and also demonstrate their syringe attack. It all looks pretty fluid as well.

Only nitpick I’d have with this one is that it’s much more rough and simple(?) compared to my other works. Though, to be fair, this piece was the shortest to draw out of everything so far (about 2 hours or so)

Pearl

donezo... massive maw angle was definitely a good idea

Thype

My second drawing. Still really happy with the more oil paint-like thing going on for him, but similar to Anton, I feel like I could've shown off more from their lore/attacks.

I’m less likely to try and to a complete redo like I am for Anton on this one, but I may make some adjustments? We can call it a remaster. Remaster sounds good and professional (which I am)

Griffin

I think I stuffed in as much lore as I could in the drawing (minus the fire, but I feel it would’ve oversaturated it.) My progress on lighting and shadows seems to be improving a good amount!! Excited to translate this skill into future drawings

Arnold

went with a more abstract and rough approach to convey arnold having a bit of a breakdown.. I think it worked really well and definitely a style I’d like to experiment with more in the future

Dmitri

Finally done... mega happy with the fire effects and I’m glad I could up the quality of the background more than just a standard black one or textured one!

Mung

LongLiver

Finally managed to unlock him, and despite my initial worry that I wouldn’t be able to do something that creative, I managed it! I’m starting to get more comfortable with simple concepts done with more artistic flair if I can’t figure out a way to include their lore or attacks too much within the drawing itself. I also think this drawing shows off a bit more of my Disco Elysium style roots :) very proud of it!

Clive

Resident badass completed!! There was a point where he looked super bland and his head look way too long (like an egg) so thank god for the glow that was added later on... and the shortening of the skull

Kleiver

Even with the limited colour palette, I’m super super super happy with this one. This piece could’ve been kind of boring with just Kleiver shushing but my inspiration basically screamed out of nowhere that I could have bloodied music trails emanating from the stain on his hammer... Head. It doesn’t really show off his attacks but it shows off his brutality and lore enough that I’m absolutely satisfied with how he turned out. I nailed that hand pretty well too.

Cranes

Incredibly with the more simple and clean approach I took!! my first time trying out rain and such so I was really satisfied with how it turned out

Agon

My spookiest work yet, probably... I still really like this one :) depicted his yelling the best way I knew how! Super abstract but fits him well

Rags

Really really happy with her, I think the shading and colours came out excellent. Managed to fit some good stuff about her concept and item wise as well :) I think my only gripe might be that it’s a little less coherent than it could’ve been, with some of the parts of the drawing being quite dark.

However, I’m still really happy with it!!

SmokeStacks

Did this because some guy on reddit asked for it really nicely, even though SmokeStacks wasn’t even on my radar at the time... But they seemed to like it! I did too. I was initially trying to position SmokeStacks like every other portrait up close, but I realized I really wanted to show off the smoke more than the stacks part so I went ham on making the smoke look spooky and ominous.

He’s meant to be sitting on a pile of trash which is kinda hard to tell but I’m pretty happy with this one too.

Leviat

I like how dynamic and “pop-y” I made this one :) experimented with a style I didn’t do too often and was worried about how I’d handle the mass of flesh/teeth and masks thing but it turned out really nice

Bimini

Put as much for the character as I could into it! I think probably the most “packed” in terms of references so far... I do wish I could’ve done something a bit more with the background though

Gospel

so spacey... so gospel... it’s perfect

Mordrake

Mega happy with this one concept and execution wise :) holds a special place in my heart!

#brutal orchestra #brutalorchestra

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imalloutofgin · 11 months

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Uni went back and my life fell apart again... (more mini reviews because I suck at this).

Lord of War (2005): I liked this a lot. It really had me hooked. The characters were interesting and I liked the surreal elements. Also, guns, haha. 4/5 stars.

One Night In Soho (2021): Fun film, but I felt like it kind of lost it's way at the end. Maybe it tried to go a bit too big with it? Things really escalated. But I loved the story and the way the two worlds wound together. The music and the fashion had me gripped. 3.5/5 stars.

BlacKkKlansman (2018): This movie was very clever, funny, and a really good time to watch. It was also hard hitting when it needed to be and had something to say. It loses one point for potentially being copaganda. 4/5 stars.

Sorry to Bother You (2018): The lighting though! And beyond that, an interesting story told well that really gripped me. Completely off the wall in parts. An enjoyable film to watch. 4.5/5 stars.

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991): How Not to Make a Film - The Movie. I really enjoyed this as someone who is trying to work in the industry. 4/5 stars.

Madoka Magica Movie 1 (2012): I am pretty sure this is the one I watched. I watched the series and then the film back to back and was a big fan. This anime has an art style like no other, and is an interesting critique of the magical girl genre - whether or not it was intended in that way I'll leave up to you to decide. 3.5/5 stars.

Perfect Blue (1997): People absolutely rave about this film and I did like it, but I think maybe it was over hyped. I love the surrealism and the animation style, and I love the visual elements and the darkness to it. A scathing view of idoldom that I feel is still relevant today. However, it ends in a way that kind of undoes some of that work and that was a bit of a let down. 3/5 stars.

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014): Yeah, no, perhaps I've been spoiled for fight choreography recently but this didn't really do it for me. It was also very... conservative? The main guy is deffs a Torrie. Absolutely not for me. I did like the fight scene in a church though. 1.5/5 stars.

Tár (2022): I need to watch this film again to properly develop my thoughts so perhaps I'll write a long review about this later... I liked some of it, and felt like it was at least attempting to be a critique of people in positions of power... bur then it also kind of seemed to not do that. The music was really interesting and the main character unraveling was quite compelling. I'll watch it again and see what I think as we watched this at an outdoor cinema and I feel like we missed most of the movie. 3/5 stars.

You Were Never Really Here (2017): That was a lot. I loved how colourful this film was, I don't feel like you see enough of that in these kidnap/abduction movies. Brutal, visceral, intense. I cried a little bit. It's been a while since I saw it so I can't remember why I only gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars... but I do think it's not quite a 5 star film from memory, but very close. 4.5/5 stars.

John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023): This is my least favourite John Wick film. I feel like after the last one they were trying to go even bigger, but they couldn't really find a way to do that. Some things just felt a bit silly... there was too many bad guys waiting to take their turn fighting Mr. Wick instead of running in to kill him. The fight choreography of 3 outshone this one, in my opinion, and they re-used some old character types and just changed them slightly. Donnie Yen did a kick ass job though, and I loved some of the gags they used with this character - like the doorbells. Still, a fun film I enjoyed watching. 3/5 stars.

#film #films #movie #movie review #cinema #john wick #lord of war #one night in soho #blackkklansman #sorry to bother you #hearts of darkness #madoka magica #perfect blue #kingsman #tár movie #you were never really here #imalloutofgin

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burstingsunrise · 2 years

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hi molly! i’ve been sitting in front of my computer forever trying to think of all the reasons i love wfttwtaf and nothing is coming up quite right, so i’m just gonna ramble a bit and wing it, if you allow me.

it honestly feels like this album caters to a million different part of myself, and listening to it allows to me sit and bask in those little boxes in my mind and it feels extremely comforting to hear all these thoughts i’ve had before sang back to me in the insanely beautiful way luke does, yknow? like, it’s the way that on paper, these lyrics are both beautiful and devastating, but the way luke brings them to life as a body of work with his voice and the production absolutely blows my mind!!! i don’t think i’ll ever have words for it. i listen a lot to the album from top to finish, and i adore how it closes with comedown, ending on such an hopeful note, bursting sunrise and everything, i’ll probably hold on to how that makes me feel forever.

i also associate a lot of wfttwtaf to the camping trip i was on the week the album was released, so my favourite memory is probably listening to the album at sunset with my friend (which feels crazy that it was exactly a year ago). looking back i realized how much that time in nature with wfttwtaf shaped how i registered and welcomed the album at first, associating it with those big open spaces, warm coloured skies, and the way nature has always made me a lot more in tune with my feelings, so it made the album feel grandiose while also being incredibly intimate, in a way that i hadn’t ever really felt before.

i also loved being a fan during that time, idk exactly what it was about it but it was such an easy and beautiful time for me. listening to the album and chatting with everyone was so much fun. the chaos of never knowing when something was gonna drop and being completely enamoured by his beauty and his mind. it’s something i look back on very fondly and i’m glad we all got to share that together 🥰

emmmm yes you're always allowed to ramble. 💜

i love what you said about the comfort of hearing thoughts you've had sung back at you, and particularly the way luke presents them. he's so so good at conveying authentic emotion through his voice, and especially when he's singing his own thoughts you really feel that coming through in a visceral way.

and comedown! ending on a hopeful note...one of my favorite lyrics on the entire album is light up a darkness i was never meant to climb out of like a bursting sunrise from the deepest sleep (i'm sure you never could've guessed from my blog url and title) because it perfectly acknowledges and validates the dark times without minimizing it or sugarcoating it, acknowledging that it can feel hopeless - but also promising that there is hope for the brightness.

the camping trip vibes sound incredible, i remember you basically being off the grid for release week, and even though being away from all the activity can sometimes make it feel like you're missing things, it sounds like a really special experience being able to just listen to the album in a headspace where you weren't being distracted by the Other Stuff. grandiose while also being incredibly intimate. yeah. that's another really fantastic way of describing the overall vibe of the album.

also: being completely enamoured by his beauty and his mind. god, yeah. we weren't just being bombarded with incredible music, we were also getting interviews and photoshoots and livestreams and it was just like...wow. he is a person that exists! unbelievable and yet somehow true!

#it really was a special time to be a fan #meg has said there will never be anything quite like it #and i think that's true #other special times sure #but nothing will capture quite the same vibe #thank u for sharing em <3 #ask #rr em #wfttwtaf 1 yr

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ellaofoakhill · 24 days

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BIG LIFE UPDATE!!!

Hello all and sundry! I am happy to announce that, in a few short weeks, I will be leaving my job as a massage therapist, and pursuing a career as a full-time writer and digital artist.

If you've seen and liked my work up on here and my instagram, I have good news: you're going to be seeing a lot more of it! Part of that is because, once I'm doing this full-time, I'll have a lot more time for my own work, but also because, at least for the foreseeable future, I will be taking art commissions, starting now!

I'm in the process of starting up a Patreon, as well as my own independent website where you can look over all of my collected work, but for now this is the main way to help me out, so if you like what I do, and want to support me, this is a great way for you to do that.

My Terms of Service regarding said commissions are below the cut, for anyone who's interested. Please read them before commissioning.

But first, in case anyone wanted to see close-ups of these. Here's one of my oc's, Lanthialdn of Leaning Boughs; you won't meet her (and sometimes him) for a while.

Has anyone else ever wondered what would happen if a dragon and a fasolasuchus got into a scrap? Just me?

A wyvern. That isn't fur or feathers, in case anyone was curious; just scales like a pangolin.

And this guy (girl?) is a bit of fanart, a Behemotherium maxwelli from Biblaridion's Alien Biospheres speculative biology series on youtube. I forgot to include the calculation for something similar on the page above, so I'll throw it in here:

Full Body + Flats + Shading + 2h BG fee = $45 + $12 + $12 + $46 = $115

Anyway, here's the ToS!

Service Description.

Will Draw: characters, creatures, and light nsfw (i.e. revealing outfits [no nips, no clits, no butts, no nuts], suggestive poses, PDA)

WON'T Draw: porn, graphic violence/gore, hatemongery (racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic, etc.)

---

Characters: Bust $23USD; Waist $34USD; Full Body $45USD

Creatures: Head & Neck $23USD; 'Waist' $34USD; Full Body $45USD

Flat Colours: +$12USD

Shading: +$12USD

Extra Character/Creature: Double above $$$ amounts (each character/creature beyond 2 will be an additional $30USD)

Background: A blank background/simple pattern is free. Complex backgrounds are $23USD per hour of work I spend on them.

Complexity Fees: If you ask me to draw something extremely complicated/time-consuming (an intricate pattern on an outfit, for instance), I will apply a complexity fee of $23USD per hour spent drawing said thing. Again, I will notify you as soon as I think something you commission me for will entail a complexity fee.

Anatomical Drawings: $91USD. Think like a 19th-century naturalist's journal sketches of creatures new to Western science. I will draw a full-body illustration of your creature, along with any 3 of the following: 1 superficial anatomy highlight (your cave monster has some glow-in-the-dark antennae? I draw them specifically [and, as an option, include a short blurb, which you write, talking about them]), skeletal elements (hollow bones? unusual jaws? I draw [you blurb]), muscular elements (powerful digger? unusual tongue?), visceral elements (gas bladder? metal-digesting GI tract?). Anatomical highlights beyond 3 will entail a complexity fee.

-I reserve the right to refuse commission requests for any reason.

-Reference pictures are extremely helpful. Please include some with your commission request. The more specific your commission, the more helpful the pics are. -Each commission includes two revisionary periods: one after the sketch phase, and one when the commission is complete. -major changes can be made during the first period, only minor changes after the second. -3 edits maximum per period (ex. you can ask for 2 posing changes and 1 perspective change) -I will not make the above changes after these periods have passed. -I will send your commission to you upon completion, assuming said commission has been paid for in full, according to our most recent agreement regarding same, in a file form of your choosing (.png, .jpeg, etc.).

Payment.

-all monetary quantities above are in USD. -Payment is through Paypal only. No chargebacks. -Payment is to be made upfront before I will start working on your commission. -If a commission is anticipated to be greater than 200USD, you can make one payment of 100USD upfront, and pay the rest upon completion. If a commission is anticipated to be greater than 500USD, you can make one payment of 200USD upfront, a second upon the beginning of the first revisionary period, and the remainder upon completion of the piece.

-I reserve the right to apply complexity fees if I deem them appropriate. I will notify you if I make this decision, I will stop work on your commission until you reply to said notification, and I will provide you with an invoice detailing the time spent on your project.

Communication Termination. -If I contact you at any point in this process, and receive no reply within 14 days, your commission spot will be forfeit, i.e. I will move on to other work. -I will contact you when this happens. -If I receive no reply after an additional 14 days, any funds you have paid will be considered forfeit.

Illustration Rights. -I retain the rights to use your commission for personal promotion, and as a commission example. -I retain the original .csp image. -Neither you nor I can use your commission to sell merchandise. -You cannot use your commission for purposes including but not limited to: AI training, reselling, relicensing, or NFT usage.

-You may not alter or repurpose your commission without my consent.

#my art #art commissions #comms open #digital art #I draw characters & creatures

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