#Actually wanted to go for a completely different color scheme at first but then I was too scared to commit to it

[itsabouttimex2]

Amazing job at writing the new part as always! It flows nicely and you can easily tell how familiar Macaque & MC without making him OOC. Honestly i admire your grasp at these characters and ability of doing something as complex as interactive series. I'm kinda curious how do you plan things and how far ahead but only if you want to share it ofc.

Going back to the actually piece- it actually made me look up the meanings of flowers despite the original thought of it only being because of the color association. Two first flowers have pretty easy and basic meaning. I can see why the edgy (/affectionate) mentor wouldn't want them near his home.

Freesia - friendship trust innocence

yellow roses - friendship, joy and similar stuff

The one choosen by Macaque are a little more interesting.

Tansies - immortality, resistance, "I declare against you", sometimes used in medicine

black dahlias - (warning of) betrayal, sadness, (not specified black ones: dignity, good luck, elegance)

I'm guessing the tansies are about him being bitter about the Wukong and their more practical use. Black dahlias could be about Monkey King but also some kind of foreshadowing depending on our choice. Or I'm reading into it too much.

Hopefully I'm not overthinking it or completely missing the point (and if i am, I'm really,really sorry). Just wanted to share it in case other readers didn't look it up + i know some people like to see their work analysed but if i'm going to far please let me know! Have a good day/night! :]

(Sorry for any mistakes and feel free to delete the ask)

Oh my god, thank you so much! That’s such a sweet thing to say! (Please never stop analyzing my work I put a lot of effort into it💜💜)

🌻🌻I’ll start with flowers: you are right on the money here. Freesia especially are bright and colorful blooms, coming in many different gorgeous colors. Yellow roses are just the same, bright and cheery and so similar to the sun.

And, given that freesia come in orange and yellow… it’s possible the potted plants were a living reminder of Sun Wukong that Macaque finally got sick of and ripped apart. Or he just took advantage of someone else shredding the innocent flowers and took something that Y/N worked hard on and changed it to his liking instead. (Written to be ambiguous as to which scenario occurred.)

Notably, the new flowers not only match his own personal feelings, but even his color scheme! Yellow, then red and black. Twice over do these flowers symbolize him, something he took and changed to make more suitable to his tastes and feelings.

But he’s not the one who takes care of them- no, it’s Y/N who is dedicated to seeing them grow.

His student tending and nurturing the flowers that represent Macaque, while Macaque destroys/allows the destruction of the flowers that represent his student. Huh. Funny.

Okay flower rant done.🌻🌻

Macaque is such an interesting character to write, given that there’s a spike of cruelty barbing out from almost every action he takes. I think a lot of people have forgotten that the man hasn’t had a redemption arc in canon- he displays zero regret for, say… manipulating and trying to kill MK. Or leveling the Dragon Palace of the East Sea. Or assaulting Tang, a strict non-combatant. Or holding Mei’s life hostage.

He doesn’t feel bad for doing any of these. If he does, he’s keeping tight-lipped about it. No apologies. No direct atonement.

And even on the extremely rare circumstance that he’s being “kind”, like deciding to stop torturing MK in Shadowplay, it comes across as almost “I’m bored with you, you aren’t fun anymore.”

He’s not a good guy. So even with Y/N, who he genuinely does care for, there’s this level of manipulation.

Like, he calls Y/N adorable, which sounds nice… but there’s almost a level of victim-blaming to it. No matter how roundabout his words, Macaque basically says to his own student: “If you looked different, people wouldn’t bother you, so let me change the way you look.”

And they trust him enough to agree.

Or letting them cook in fear outside his door when he’s clearly near enough to open it, but dropping the act when they start to break down.

He’s such an interesting character to write ugh I love it.

I had a lot of the routes planned pretty far out, actually, and I’ll give a few examples of what was planned:

Spider Demon Y/N was sort of naive and excitable, but was going to mature/sour after realizing that their beloved queen was, in fact, the bad guy. They were going to have to come to terms with her necessary defeat and their own part in betraying her, as well as living on after you’ve cut ties to your family. Then, readers were going to be able to pick one other henchman to convince to join the heroes.

Dragon Y/N was going to have to both gain Ao Guang’s (their father) approval to live on the surface, and decide how they felt about MK possessing the Ruyi Jingu Bang. They fought using two strings of beaded pearls, utilizing them as whips and grappling hooks to maneuver around the battle field. Also, they hated Macaque. Genuinely throwing hands on sight if they saw that edgy rat.

Heir/Proxy Y/N was going to be a pretty miserable and clingy person, having spent most of their life alone on account of both the LBD and Mayor’s influence. Overcoming their fears and anxieties of being unlovable was going to be a massive part of the journey, learning to love themself and be loved in turn. They were going to have to learn to master the powers forcibly implanted into their body, trying to prevent themself from being sacrificed for power to aid LBD’s onwards path to ‘destiny’.

Ne Zha’s Y/N was going to be cute and polite, very excited to explore the mortal realm outside the grasp of their overprotective mentor/brother. They were also going to have to deal with the first two lotus princes (also overprotective) and Ao Bing, who served as a dear friend.

Sun Wukong’s Y/N was going to be his estranged child who was bitter over ML inheriting the staff instead of them. They were going to despise him for never training them, having to find masters and teachers elsewhere all across the world. In turn, he was desperately trying to make amends and reestablish a strong bond with his cherished progeny, hoping to reconnect eventually.

Also Mei was going to call Y/N “Broth-Face”.

#Time Talks #Choose Your Own Adventure #A Brand New Journey

[tropicalcryptid]

Ok so She-Ra pulled such a great hat trick with Hordak's characterization, and I LOVE it

One of my favorite things about 2018 She-Ra is Hordak's story and development (and Entrapdak cough but that's not the point of this particular post), and the cleverest thing is that so much of it is actually being set up and told to us in seasons 1 and 2 before we even realize that that's what's happening.

When we first see Hordak in the show, he's giving "generic evil overlord" vibes. Garden-variety baddie. Maybe a little more reasonable than some and clearly capable of long-term thinking, but that just serves to make him intimidating. Everything about him--the way he runs his empire, his armor, his color scheme, his minion, his Villainous Eye Makeup(TM), even his name--are all projecting to the audience "yup, Acme Bad Guy here. Move right along."

But then, backstory. And everything snaps into focus. Not only is it one of the first big oh SHIT moments of the show, where we suddenly zoom out and realize that there is SO much more going on than we realized--it's also the start of the audience seeing Hordak as a character rather than an archetype. Suddenly we realize that he's not conquering Etheria because he wants power, or hates happiness and sparkles, or whatever--he's doing it out of a desperate attempt to prove his worth to his brother/creator/god. This moment where Hordak lets Entrapta in is also the moment the show lets us in on what makes our favorite spacebat tick.

On top of that, we've also seen him bonding with Entrapta and opening up to this person that he respects and trusts...probably the only person he's ever respected or trusted apart from Prime. And she's Etherian--someone of a lower species, someone he's supposed to subjugate, someone who he has been raised and trained and programmed and mind-controlled into believing is below him in every way.

But instead she's brilliant and creative and mesmerizing. She's not afraid of him, and she's fascinated with his work. For the first time since being abandoned by Prime, Hordak finally has someone that he can talk to, who is on his level and both understands and cares about the science! (because he is a giant nerd). She's kind to him, a mere defect. And it just sends his whole worldview into a spin, and that's all before--

Bam, mans is a goner. Entrapta's "Imperfections are beautiful" comment punches right through all the toxic bs that Hordak has been steeped in his entire life. You can see on his face here--I think it's the moment Hordak fell in love with Entrapta, but this is also the face of a spacebat reevaluating his entire worldview. If Entrapta, who is amazing, believes something different from Prime...what does that mean? If Entrapta, who is brilliant, believes that he is worth something, and that she herself is a failure...

Well. We know what happens after that, and how Hordak begins to doubt, and eventually fights back against Prime (and remembers his love for Entrapta after TWO mind wipes help my heart ack). But we also get to see what life in the Galactic Horde looks like: the only life Hordak ever knew before coming to Etheria.

It's not nice.

It's really not nice.

Prime operates in a very specific way, and we learn a lot about it in season 5. Prime expects complete obedience, devotion and worship from his clones. He allows no individuality from his subjects, not even a name. Failure or deviations are punished, mind-wiped, or destroyed. We even learn from Wrong Hordak that facial expressions are considered a privilege reserved for Prime (apart from, presumably, expressions of rapture caused by being around Prime).

And once we learn all of this, suddenly thinking about season 1 Hordak becomes very interesting indeed. The time we spend with the Galactic Horde and Prime throws absolutely everything that we know about Hordak into a whole new context. Now all those traits that made him a generic villain are actually hugely effective characterization! And what that characterization is telling us is that Hordak had already moved much farther away from Prime than we (or, probably, he) had realized, even long before he met Entrapta.

Horde Prime does not allow his underlings to have names, personalities, or any differences of appearance. Not only does Hordak allow this among his own troops, he chose a name for himself as well! Season 5 tells us that his very name is an act of blasphemy against his god. And yet Hordak took one for himself, and that name is part of the core identity he is able to hold on to when rebelling against Prime.

Horde Prime cast Hordak out when he showed signs of physical imperfections. Hordak not only keeps Imp (who is by all appearances a failed clone or similar experiment) around, he treats Imp more gently than we see him treat anybody or anything before Entrapta. Imp is not simply "generic evil guy's minion," he is proof of Hordak's capacity for compassion, and evidence that Hordak cannot bring himself to cast aside "defects" as easily as Prime. Considering where Hordak came from, Imp's existence is a huge, flashing neon sign telling the audience this guy here is better than the hell that molded him, and we don't even realize it until 4 seasons after it's been shown to us!

Very cool, ND.

There's more, though. Hordak's red and black color scheme? His dark eye makeup and lipstick? Very Evil Overlord chic. But nope! Actually these are actually expressions of individuality on a level that Hordak knows would be abhorrent to Prime!

Reading between the lines, I see this as Hordak desperately trying to reconcile two diametrically opposed beliefs in his head: (1) devotion to Prime, whose approval he desperately craves, and (2) maintaining some degree of unique personhood, of Hordak, from which to draw strength. Because a failed, defective clone cannot survive on a hostile world, cut off from the hivemind and from Prime's light. A failed clone cannot create an empire to offer Prime as tribute, nor build a spacetime portal from scraps and memory to call Prime back. A failed clone cannot create cybernetic armor to keep his hurting, weakened body alive; to force himself to keep going no matter what, to fight through the pain and the doubt by sheer force of will.

But maybe Hordak can.

And so there it is. Hordak had plenty of time to gain and explore his individuality while separated from Prime, but I think the reason he did it so effectively (while still deluding himself that Prime would forgive him for these little sins, if only Hordak could prove his value) is because he had to.

Wrong Hordak gained his individuality surrounded by kind, quirky people who took care of him; Hordak was ripped from the hivemind by Prime himself and had to fight for his survival against all odds. And that produced a dangerous and damaging foe for Etheria. But it also produced the one clone with the strength of will to defy Prime himself.

This is long and rambling, but ultimately my point is that 1) I love Hordak, and 2) I love love love love that the show was so clever about his characterization. We learn so much about him and how much progress he's already made in breaking from his psycho abusive cult upbringing, and we don't even recognize it until the show wants us to. Hordak had come so far, all on his own, before he met Entrapta. She just helped push him over the edge and finally realize (at least consciously) that Prime's worldview might not be the correct one.

Idk, I just don't know if I've ever seen all the trappings of Basic 80's Villain(TM) so successfully subverted, where looking back 4 seasons later is actually a smack in the face with the "effective character building" stick. Amazing.

#spop #she ra #she ra and the princesses of power #hordak #entrapdak #entrapta #horde prime #Spacebat #Deep character analysis #Gotta love clever writing #Seriously I could go on about this show for ages #I just love the characterization for everyone but especially Hordak #Best spacebat #I mean I love Wrong Hordak too but you know

[choochooboss]

Submas sketchdump! Vol. 1

April-June 2022

Literally dumping all the presentable works as promised, whether I'm proud of them or not! This is where I started, even before the first thing I posted online (That subway station one). Many of these are not on Twitter yet so there's lots to see!

The top piece above the header is my very first digital Submas artwork!! I never finished it bc I didn't know how to pull my vision of as I wanted & started modeling the train and didn't finish that either, whoops! I really want to remake this later and make it super cool!

^^^ My reaction to breaking 500 likes & 100 followers in a single day with my first tweet (the battle subway one) all the way back in May!! I was completely floored by all the attention, oh how it skyrocketed my excitement and anxiety! Crazy times, I was so super nervous to be there with so many amazing artists and doubted if I could ever survive there ahahah!! Many had joined the community much much earlier than me, so I had arrived with a late train to PLA/neo Submas hype!

Next up is a bunch of stuff I haven't posted before:

One of my fav sketches! Been saving this for so long bc I really really want to finish this one day!

One of the first submas sketches with an actual story behind it! The subway bosses are running late for their flight because they didn't pass the safety check! The irony!! This would never happen as bosses are always on schedule. But Emmet hadn't noticed a wild Joltik hiding under his coat, so he set up the alarm and they got examined and interrogated of smuggling! How embarrassing for them! The bosses resolved the situation by catching the Joltik, but will they be able to catch their flight anymore?? Maybe if Elesa can distract the stuerts performing the safety protocol for a minute!

More sketchbook stuff...

In case you can't make any sense of it, Emmet's dreaming of different combinations of pokémon. Meanwhile Ingo snores louder than the train! HONK SHOO!

Top 7 every submas fan draws at some point!

Submas trademark posing

submas sleeping in a train

sad Emmet

Emmet with Joltik

Ingo with a cool solo pose

Emmet being chaotic & Ingo reacting to it

a bunch of mirrored submas poses

I sure have a full bingo card lmao, most of them you can see here XD

Next up is a sad man...

Stay strong our friends!

My typical sketchbook pages, crammed and messy as usual. x)

Post-PLA exploration:

A few examples of how my pencil sketches evolve.

I've done so much art experimenting with submas. I really like this black & white painting but I don't think I'll finish it anytime soon.

Where did you go?

The way I draw the twins' faces has changed a lot. They started with softer features and somewhat neutral emotions, because I wasn't as familiar with them or comfortable drawing them yet. Now there's hundreds of submas sketches, and they still keep evolving! My style is also kinda hard to pull off well, so their features differ from picture to picture.

This one was inspired by some submas music videos, can't recall their names anymore. The glowing eerie eyes and yellow&orange + black&white color schemes were neat!

I keep telling myself I need to draw more butlers, these twinks look so lean and neat and have more color and are posh with their monocles and have fun tailcoats!

(...why eyeglasses are not called binocles??)

I was there for the vinegar chaos. Good times!

That's all for now, I hope you got something fun out of this! Still got loads more art to share but I'll save them for another time. Next round I'll bring in my first submas comic!

#submas #sbms #submas ingo #submas emmet #pokemon ingo #pokemon emmet #subway boss ingo #subway boss emmet #ingo and emmet #sketch dump #chandelure #archeops #sinistea #submas butlers #butler ingo #butler emmet #too many ideas #butlermas

[anadiasmount]

Could you do one about how Christian would be as a dad to be? Like during pregnancy and when the baby is born please?

i’m guessing you wanted this as a head cannon? if not i hope you don’t mind if i do it like this ❣️

masterlist

when you reveal to him ur pregnant, he’s in utter shock. which makes you feel uneasy, until you feel him bend down to his knees and hug your stomach. his head laying on your abdomen where he talks with the baby. he cries and pours his heart out of him being so happy and grateful for you. “is this actually real? i’m going to be a dad?”

despite his heavy and hectic schedule he still attends the doctors appointment every time. he drives you there, opens the door for you, holds your hand, and even checks in with the receptionist for you. while waiting for the midwife, he talks to you about the nursery, and the different color schemes he likes.

you have to reassure him every time you wince at the cold sensation of the gel, bc he gets so concerned, only wanting for you to be comfortable and safe. he holds your left hand constantly kissing it, as you watch your baby through the ultrasound. “look at the baby! i want to meet them already…”

his brown eyes widen when you get to hear your babies heartbeat for the first time. he shakes his head with excitement, and tells you he wants to hear it all the time. he even goes out to buy a baby heart beat monitor. “christian, seriously?” “can you blame me? i love the sound. it’s our baby’s heartbeat.”

throughout the pregnancy he makes it the priority for you to be relaxing and resting at all times, making you feel completely helpless. you’re so used to moving around and getting different tasks done, so when this happens you just have to bite your tongue. knowing christian is so protective of you and his baby. “don’t you dare move. i’ll be right back.”

you sometimes take trips to different to baby stores to check out the cribs, clothes, beds, carriers, strollers, some bottles, breastfeeding pumps, etc. he’s such a dad already, and researches the best products so the two of you can buy. “i saw this stroller online, it’s a 2-in-1. let’s go check it out.”

when the day of gender reveal comes around, the two of you decided to head north to Hershey, where all his family and yours reunite to celebrate. you asked his sister to surprise you, and she couldn’t back down on the idea, more than ready and excited to do so. especially since you helped her with hers. “OMG I WOULD BE SO HONORED!”

he’s dressed in a white button up, and you with a tight white dress with brown sandals. you kiss his cheek and jaw when you feel his hand nervously draw shapes on your bump. “you okay chris?” “yeah. just nervous that’s all. we finally get put out our misery,” he’d joke.

the long debate of whether it was a boy or girl ends, when you the color blue pops out. you immediately let out a small laughter and began to let out a couple tears of joy, which causes christian to softly kiss you and wipe them away. “we’re having a baby boy! a mini me running around!”

the next few months fly by. the now impatient waiting for your due date to appear. the constant cycles of going to pee, take frequent naps, weird craving, insomnia kicking ur ass. but despite it all, christian is there to guide and help you. “how can you eat that?” he’d say, “oh shut up. it’s this or me being cranky. so you decide…”

one thing you especially love is where he pulls out his guitar and sings to the baby, where they respond by kicking your belly when they hear the small noises. christian also reads to the baby, his head on your bump while reading nursery books. “you see here? this story is about how the piggy went to market.”

the day before labor, you feel the contractions and cramps. taking small step around the house, your hair in a messy clip, sighing and breathing in and out. christian is there to help you practice breathing methods, and timing the contractions before it’s go time. “ready? 1,2,3,4… let it out… there we go… again….”

after ur water breaks, you began to get nervous and filled with anxiety, but he reassures you everything will be okay. “i’m here baby. i’m here for you and our baby boy okay? scream, cry, laugh all you want.”

christian ties you hair up, holds your strong grip hand around his and you walk around the hospital room, he wipes off the sweat and applied cold wraps around your head to ease the heat. he whispers words of encouragement to you, rubbing your back and abdomen when the pain gets bad. “i’m going to change this okay? this will help your back better. just breath baby, im here for you.”

christian gets a bit light headed during labor, especially at the sight of his baby coming out of you. he just nervously laughs it off, holding your hand and encouraging you to push. the relief on your face once you let out that final push and hear your baby cry, ends his misery and wait. “you did it baby! i’m so proud of you…”

when he finally holds his baby, he cries. especially when the baby wraps his hand around christians pinky. feeling the bundle of joy in his arms is the most happiest day of his life, right after meeting you of course. all you can do is tiredly watch as your boys hold each other. “he’s so tiny” he coos, “he has your brows and lips…”

when coming home he helps you inside the house, going back and forth to gets the bags, and baby carrier. he heats up some pads and some water for you to make some coffee or tea. he puts your feet up to reduce the swelling and kisses your head while holding you. the baby sound asleep in your arms after feeding him.

with one hand he opens the nursery door, the baby occupying the other one as christian hold him secured. you follow behind him, wrapping a hand around his tattoed bicep. he looks around proudly at the monsters inc decorated themed room, before whispering, “welcome home theo… daddy and mommy love you so much…”

#i had to add the small reference to monsters inc 🥹🥹 #christian pulisic blurb #christian pulisic imagine #christian pulisic #christian pulisic one shot #christian pulisic x reader #christian pulisic x you

[your-local-uwu-artist]

they play viddy games~

anyway SUPER PROUD OF THIS ONE: progress/alt versions and rambles under cut

THE FIRST SKETCH: mostly just me getting my ideas down: working out the poses and placement, however you can notice in this initial sketch that the room originally didn't show the door and was just in a corner, and that I originally was gonna sneak in some coffee cups for tweek via a trash can.

the second sketch: fleshing out the details, a lot of stuff was added and changed, the room layout, the lamp, and a bunch of smaller things too

The 'base' colors: so I was having a really hard time with this color scheme actually, at first I wanted to go for something really warm and different from my usual brighter color schemes (lol as if i could ever go without my beloved saturation) but I was sorta struggling with my inital approach of starting with an orange base: so I decieded to use a magenta and just get down the values, the bases would be easy to edit later, and I was able to get an idea of the general flow of colors

colors completed: lines colored and an ity bit of shading added. I ended up shifting around some of the structure from the magenta version, but i think it's an improvement. I ended up leaning into my usual color palettes, I mean, I'm already experimenting and practicing with backgrounds and style here, so I'll keep procrastinating on my plans to use a warm de-saturated palette.

anyway! some details and references!!! if you look closely there's some little color blobs on Jimmy's crutches to resemble stickers. the poster of Craig's door is of a minior (drawn without reference pic thof dasjk) The picture with the guinea pig on the door also features dandelions which people have pointed out tweek resembles. Jimmy's backpack has an amongus keychain as well as a pansexual and disabled pride flags. Craig's 'super craig' s paper is on his backpack. one of tweeks shirts can be spotted in the laundry basket as well as the hat Craig wore while in a peruvian flute band. clyde is transgender because i felt like it. I was originally going to include an autism creature somewhere but it ended up getting cut.

#kyukyudraws #south park #craig and those guys #craig tucker #jimmy valmer #tweek tweak #tolkien black #clyde donovan #the kinda art i am so proud of I have to fight the urge to tag the homies to let them know

[forthegothicheroine]

Let's make a Villain!

Last time we made a henchwoman player character for Henchwoman RPG, a hack of Maid RPG. This time we will make a villain the players can work for! You don't actually have to fully roll up a villain for this game- as an NPC, they can be limited to a general concept and a few stats- but it's always fun to see what the dice give you.

By popular demand (my husband's) we will be making Mr. Sparkplug! But how seriously should we take this often-rebooted criminal? There are two things to determine this, their Level and Tier. First, the level- how long have they been at this?

To determine this, roll 1D6. We rolled a 3, meaning he's an Apprentice! If he keeps this up, maybe he'll get all the other villains not to laugh at him!

Now for the tier...

On 1D6, we rolled another 3, making him a C-Lister- which is frankly better than he should have hoped for. He's not a complete joke, but a lot of his villainous schemes will probably be about improving his name recognition.

Next up, let's give him two Special Qualities!

Roll 2D66 to determine special qualities! We rolled 2 and 4 for Musical, and 3 and 2 for Ridiculous Prop! Wow, what a guy! Let's say he carries around a big, silly steampunk lightning rod, and oh how he likes to make it sing!

But what, exactly can he do? Let's give him a Power or two! A villain starts with two powers by default, though I may change this to add or subtract powers based on level and tier. For now, Sparkplug gets two of these.

Roll 2D6 twice for this table. In our case, we got 2+1 for 3, Brilliance, and 6+4 for Wackiness! (I promise I didn't fudge that roll!) He has a very stupid gimmick of making electrical outlets turn off and on, but damn it, he's going to find the cleverest uses of that power he can!

Now we go over to the Henchwoman tables to finish him up. First, his Stress Explosion.

Rolling 1D66 for this, we got 2 and 2, meaning he burns off stress by Gambling! Let's hope he gets away with rigging the slot machines' power outlets before the mob catches him.

Now, the Color table.

Rolling 3D66, we got 1 and 6 for vermillion eyes, 6 and 3 for gold hair, and 6 and 2 for an indigo outfit. Looks like he's aiming to be the next tumblr sexyman!

Finally, his actual Attributes. This is important to understand- a villain's stats will almost always suck compared to a henchwoman's. Villains are meant to be cool but useless, reliant on their henchwomen to pull off pretty much anything. Athletics, Charm, Skill, Cunning and Luck are each 2D6/4, and Will is automatically 2 (Spirit is 20, based on this.)

Rolling down the line, Mr. Sparkplug has Athletics 2, Charm 1, Skill 2, Cunning 1, Luck 2, and Will 2. He's going to need those henchwomen if he wants to get ahead in villainy!

A few notes at the end:

We rolled a Theme for our henchwoman, and it makes sense if all the henchwomen and the villain share that theme. However, that is not necessarily true. Sometimes villains put together teams of minions with different wacky gimmicks. Sort of like some kind of "high risk of death gang" or something...

Once upon a time, villainy was a boys club, and being a henchwoman was the next best thing for a villainous woman. Times have changed, and the field of big time villainy is much more egalitarian now. Henching remains a pink-collar profession, however. Obviously your characters may be any gender, and can care about default expectations as much or as little as you want.

Next up, I'm working on the lair creation and random event tables. Updates to come!

#henchwoman rpg

[fictionadventurer]

I happened to see a good chunk of the Netflix Persuasion. I can't give a complete review or analysis or whatever, but I have thoughts.

This movie has some very pretty colors. I like cool color palettes, what can I say?

There was one shot of a purple sunset where I was like, "Oh, I could live in this picture."

The aesthetic was so trendy I couldn't take it seriously. The clothes were that 2019 Little Women cottagecore vibe with lots of poorly-fitted textures and layers and colors. I laughed out loud at the Big White Text announcing LYME or BATH, because it's such a specific vibe.

I tried to detach from any notion of it as an Austen adaptation, and just enjoy it as its own movie that just happens to take place in a history-flavored fantasy world where everyone uses modern speech. Because sometimes those stories can be fun. It still didn't work.

Because it mostly just confused me. It was this weird mish-mash of genres and tones that didn't really blend together. Oil and water. It was Pinterest and Hallmark and Austen and College Humor and Instagram and Feminism and it's all felt like it came from completely different movies.

It was trying to be a sincere period drama love story and a goofy parody at the same time and it just didn't work.

Like, there were some sweet moments in it. Anne talking about poetry to Captain Benwick was rather nice.

But then you've got things like the weird octopus-sucking-my-face story Anne tells at Lady Dalrymple's. Even that could have worked okay in context, because Mr. Eliot jumps in and turns it into a metaphor about identity, which helps to cover for Anne's awkwardness and shows that he's willing to help her out. But then they keep bringing up the octopus as a sort of pet name and it's just so weird and doesn't fit with the rest of the story.

I've gotten ahead of myself so I'm going to backtrack to some specifics.

Mary Musgrove was excellent. Spot-on. I love how she's visibly younger than Anne. First adaptation I've seen that emphasizes that.

It was interesting how they emphasized the Mrs. Clay storyline. It actually sparked some interesting thoughts about the differences between the male social climbing of the sailors (shown in a positive light in Austen) and the female social climbing of the marriage-seeking ladies (shown in a more negative light).

I've never had a clearer picture of why Mrs. Clay matters so much to Mr. Elliot. Even in the book, it's a bit muddy, but it's crystal clear here. Mr. Elliot telling us his schemes straight-out did have the benefit of making the story very easy to follow.

I've got to back up again.

They completely altered the Anne/Wentworth storyline by mixing around all the plot points.

After they go to Bath, Wentworth seeks out Anne, says that they haven't had a chance to talk, and tells her how he always admired how good she was in an emergency. And this was before the staircase scene. I was extremely confused, until it hit me--this is a dream sequence! This is how Anne wants it to play out, but then she'll wake up!

But no! This actually happened! Wentworth says all this very sincerely and passionately, leading up to him declaring...that he wants to be friends. (At least there's context for "We're worse than exes--we're friends.")

It completely alters the trajectory of their relationship. Instead of jumping from the passion of hatred to the passion of love, Wentworth has gone to the other end of the pole--friendly indifference. He likes Anne and is totally okay with her marrying someone else.

I think they changed it so Mr. Elliot could be a serious contender in the love triangle. Wentworth has let her go--can she find happiness with someone else? I'll admit it's an interesting change, even if it's not Persuasion.

But it also seems like they're trying to make Wentworth a Suitable Love Interest for the Twitter Generation. Wentworth gets weirdly bristly with Mr. Elliot. Then Wentworth apologizes because Anne is a strong woman who doesn't need his protection. He tells her she should have been able to be an admiral. He's being mature and letting go of his resentment and wishing her well and showing that he doesn't like Regency Gender Roles. It's like they're shaving away his character growth in favor of a bland Nontoxic Relationship (TM).

But then Anne likes Mr. Elliot because he's bad? He openly talks about how he's trying to wreck her father's relationship to get the title. He insults her family. And she likes it.

This version of Anne holds her family in contempt. She doesn't like them or how they treat her and she openly disdains it. So she connects with Mr. Elliot. But the book Anne seems sad for her family--she doesn't like their behavior because she wishes they could be better people. She has compassion while movie Anne is resentful.

Persuasion is all about restraint. This movie is all about lack of restraint. People speak bluntly and say what they think and openly insult people. It's a completely different culture from the usual Austen movie, because it's modern culture. Which emphasizes how little we value good manners and restraint.

It's also weird how in changing the story, they also turn it into a generic rom-com. There's a more blatant love triangle between the good boy and the bad boy. Wentworth is starting to fall in love with Anne, but he's got an opportunity to advance his career, and he has to decide within a few days, oh no! It's textbook romcom plot points.

There was another point that I'll probably think of later.

EDIT: Oh, I just remembered! I think it was that the movie was so interested in the vibes and emotions of each individual scene that it didn't bother to try to stitch them together in a coherent whole.

The ending kiss looked 1000% like the cover of a cheap romance novel.

And the final moral of "don't let anyone tell you how to live your life" feels so simplistic and selfish and weird.

Overall, I'm not angry. I'm just confused. It's not the type of movie to arouse any kind of emotion other than "Huh???" And maybe a bit of regret that they couldn't have done better things with the interesting bits.

#persuasion #netflix persuasion #jane austen #this is really bad and rambly but i can't put it into any better order #probably because of how disjointed the movie (and my watching experience) was #i wouldn't have sought out this movie in a million years but since it happened to be on in the background i took the opportunity #it was the best way to do it because i didn't feel like i was losing any of my life to actively choosing to watch this #i was just casually analyzing

[annie-creates]

New Year's Eve

Pairing: Andromache of Scythia x reader

Genre: fluff

Words: 800

Note: Happy (late) New Year to you too! I wanted to celebrate with something special, so I chose the character there's allarmingly too little of fics for. Hope you'll like it!

Andromache has seen many New Year’s Eves. Thousands of years worth of colorful lights and celebrations. Dozens of decades of resolutions and traditions, some of which disappeared already. The celebrations have evolved during her time on this earth exponentially. Nowadays it was a big deal. People bought bundles of fireworks, recorded commemorative videos and kissed loved ones right on the midnight.

To her it was just another commercial bullshit. A scheme designed to rip you of your money and generate profit. She couldn’t care less about sparklers, candles and cute sparkly outfits for a party. It was just another day for her, not different from the millions she already lived.

Yet lately things started taking a new turn in her life. It all started with you. A girl barely on the doorstep of adulthood whose life was taken too soon. Or so they thought. You were given another chance, a chance to take immortality and do the best you can with it. Looking for you took them months. Months of torturous dreams of a beautiful young woman dying. But they found you. In the end they always find each other, whatever it takes.

Andromache didn’t see you as anything more than a baby. A toddler compared to the length of their lives. What was over twenty years for you they could pass in a blink of an eye. That’s what happens when you live for hundreds of years. Your youth and naivety annoyed her. Your bright sight of the future and hopeful dreams angered the old Scythian. She couldn’t wait for the reality of the world to crash your hopes and dreams. For you to realize it was actually a helpless cruel place. One you could describe as hell even.

She hated the way you made everyone happier. As if you brought in the breath of fresh air, the youthful life they all forgot how to live. It showed her there are things she can’t provide for her team. She kept everyone safe, warm and sane for the most part. But even as the mighty leader there were things she couldn’t give. And to have someone, just a nobody and newbie like you, walk in and give it without expecting anything in return was a punch in her pace. A bitter pill to swallow.

Everyone knew you were a pain in their ass. You talked too much. You sang in the shower. You danced while making breakfast. You were addicted to your late night tv series. And yet they couldn’t imagine giving you back up. They’d fight for your life with their own. They never let any harm go your way. Maybe they also saw you as just a naïve child, needed to be protected from the real world outside. Her team warmed up to you and she could do no other, for the team is one and one is part of the team.

So Andromache studied you. She observed your interests, habits and hobbies. The books you liked to read, the kind of music you put on when you were left alone or the side of bed you like to sleep on. She analyzed and examined you. And with every new discovery she had to admit she too liked you the tiniest bit more. Your personality was really hard to stay angry with. Even when you messed up, she couldn’t be mad at you for more than a day. Especially when you made pancakes for breakfast to make up for your mistake.

That’s how she found herself agreeing to the crazy idea of buying fireworks for your first New Year’s Eve with them. Even when she wasn’t completely comfortable with the idea, it wasn’t the most stupid one you’ve had, so it seemed relatively safe. She of course didn’t let you anywhere near the pyrotechnics, leaving it up to Nicky and Joe to set them up. They didn’t need you to accidentally blow yourself up or something.

As the midnight neared and darkness fell over the sky, you all went outside to see the showcase of lights. With a loud countdown getting down to zero, the fireworks went off creating magnificent scenes in the sky. You hugged her without warning murmuring thank you’s into her chest, and she squeezed you to her, setting her head up on your own as her eyes roamed the colorful sky. Even if she wasn’t a fan of New Year’s Eves, she’d set the lights up for you every night just to see your joyful smile.

As everyone settled down around the living room back inside, she made sure to keep you close, as if to draw in a bit of your energy and cheerfulness. She couldn’t imagine her team, her family, without you anymore. You were the perfect piece into their complicated puzzle.

#andromache #andromache x reader #andy andromache of scythia #andromache x you #andromache of scythia x reader #andromache the scythian #andromache the scythian x reader #charlize theron #andy x reader #andromache of scythia #the old guard #fanfiction #fanfic

[thedujifuji]

I did a Color Analysis on the Outfits of the Doctor for a class

Okay first I want to preface this with a: I haven’t finished Classic Who, nor watched a whole lot of it, but wanted to include it in this analysis, neither have I fully completed 13′s run, but also wanted to include her. I adore her final outfit, but it feels much more like a compilation of references to other Doctors at the last minute than a deliberate choice made with Color Theory in mind. She really got cheated out of a lot on her run, and it makes me upset, because she deserved better. I hope this is taken with heaps of salt, I just wanted to write about Who for class.

Okay here we go:

For live Action TV Shows, I struggled, as I don't really watch that much live-action TV, as I find them boring. The exception to this rule is of course: Doctor Who.

Doctor Who is an interesting case, as Classic Who (60's-late 80's, includes TV movie from mid-90's) and New Who (2005-present) use color, and more specifically, the Doctor's color scheme in very specific and different ways, that are still relatively controversial in discussion online. Doctor Who actually began in black and white, airing on the same day JFK was assassinated. Eventually, the actor who portrayed the Doctor, William Hartnell, had to retire due to health complications, so they brought in a new actor to portray the Doctor, starting a new pattern of "regenerating" the Doctor when an actor wanted to quit the role.

While the first two Doctors were entirely in Black and White, Jon Pertwee, the Third Doctor, saw the series shift into color. His outfits reflected this, shifting from a black and white normal suit into velvety maroon suits, or even a normal suit, with a bright red cape to accentuate him. As Doctor Who had originated in Black and White, the designs for enemy aliens had a tendency to be achromatic, grey and dull- Classic Doctors incorporated warm muddy hues to contrast this wildly. This is also explained in-universe, as the 3rd Doctor is the incarnation that is forced to live exclusively on Earth, and is influenced by Earth's vibrancy for his outfits. Every subsequent classic Doctor has some sort of warmth in their outfits, as pictured in the previous poster, which contrast wildly with the lifeless grays of Daleks and Cybermen. The Sixth Doctor and his companion are pictured below alongside a Dalek and a Dalek control console, showing how alien those from our world appear.

We can additionally see how alien the Doctor looks in the TARDIS after having been influenced by Earth.

There is a clear shift however, by the time of New Who.

New Who's Doctors have a tendency to stick to cooler color palettes, making THEM seem alien. There are exceptions to this, namely the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors, but they will be talked about later. The colors I would associate most with New Who would be Brown and Green. Christopher Eccleston's 9th Doctor is very rude, and a bit eccentric, battered from a war in space, he has long lost the whimsical earthy tones that were so present in Classic Who, instead sporting a black leather jacket and a purple shirt, very often seen in green or cool lighting.

The 9th Doctor falls in love with his earth companion Rose Tyler, and in regenerating, is born of that love for humanity. The Tenth Doctor, played by the beloved David Tennant, is a stark contrast from the 9th Doctor, dressing in vibrant pinstripe brown suits. This continues to be the case until he is separated from Rose, after which he dons a blue suit, cool colors returning to signify that he is once again alienating himself from humanity. As he begins to heal, he dons his old brown overcoat over his blue suit, showing he is again allowing his humanity to resurface.

The Eleventh Doctor, played by Matt Smith, dresses in brown, earthy tones, as he's very connected and loving towards Earth and his companions, but after facing dramatic loss, shifts towards wearing cooler tones, namely a purple suit. His outfits are seen in the opposite order of appearance. (Right to Left)

Now for my favorite: Peter Capaldi's 12th Doctor! Capaldi's Doctor is much more like the initial Doctors, feeling very, VERY alien, compared to the almost human 11th Doctor. This is demonstrated in his first outfit, a cool dark blue suit. This suit comes with a catch however, flaunting bright red interiors, signifying a truth about the 12th Doctor, he has soul and empathy within, he's still learning how to show it. The series makes special attempts to have the red inlet be visible in scenes where Capaldi gets to show his emotions.

As 12 grows into learning better empathy through his companion Clara, and following a reunion with his wife River Song, Capaldi's Doctor starts to wear a vibrant Magenta/Red suit, signifying a massive change in his character- upfront, honest kindness.

After facing more massive loss, and being on the brink of regeneration, Capaldi's Doctor's new black suit is revealed once again to have a bright red interior in his final scenes, and he is deliberately lit up in oranges and yellows, not from his regeneration energy, but from lighting inside the TARDIS.

Unfortunately, the following Doctor, Jodie Whittakher's 13, does not shift outfits throughout her seasons, instead opting for cooler tones despite being much like 11 or 10. This may be to emphasize her alien-ness despite her warm-hued TARDIS, but to me, it doesn't feel as intentional as before, instead feeling like another way Jodie was given the short end of the stick in regards to Who. Jodie's 13th Doctor deserved outfit theming!!

#doctor who #classic who #new who #dw #first doctor #third doctor #sixth doctor #ninth doctor #tenth doctor #eleventh doctor #twelfth doctor #thirteenth doctor #1 #3 #6 #9 #10 #11 #12 #13 #color theory #outfit discourse #doctor who discourse #dw discourse #capaldi #william hartnell #jon pertwee #colin baker #christopher eccleston #david tennant

[theheromira]

Nimona appreciation post (Part 4 of idk how many there will be)

Sorry that took so long, I was a bit preoccupied with farming for Rizzley (Wriothesley in Genshin Impact) I'm just drinking some Tea and watching Nimona for probably the 50th time lol Sooo… here you go: Part 4 (again: GIF for attention)

Bal waking up, noticing the blanket, looking around, seeing the tea and candles (completely ignoring the hilt of the morning star behind te cup) and just sighing kind of content as if he wakes up like this often is just precious and supptly highlights his relationship with Amb and I just kind of love it, I guess

also Bal being awake and alert right away even tho he was just about to relax cause he prob thought he's with Amb and all is good and stuff is also kind of competent again

Nimona just vibing

"Go" by Santigold is just so good, how did I never heard of that one before?

also how Bal looks at Nim (prob) destroying his kitchen is funny as hell, idk

her eyes reflecting the lightning is a neat lil detail

Nim never bats an eye while she lies like this

also Bals reaction is soooo good, Riz Ahmed nailed this roll (all of the VAs did, but honestly: without him the movie wouldn't be the same)

first time Nim tells him directly not to be so gullible, but he remains so gullible

Breakfast Tacos

She dragged him in what form tho? If his head bounced on the sidewalk it probably couldn't have been her Gorilla or Horse form, I guess. What do y'all think?

"Totally happened."

"Evil Larry" is a much better name than the german version ("Böser Tiger" = "evil tiger" because one wird for evil in german is "bösartiger" and well, they took the pun but it sounds so stupid, idk… it isn't even a name)

Nimonas lil handgesture when she says: "That's a great villain name." also her face when she gets the idea for Evil Larry

"Never gonna happen.", he says with a very much Nope-Face "Whatever, Larry", she says without a fruk to give

Sick murderwall

I will not go into much detail about the contents of the muderwall here, but damn, the really didn't need to go that hard on those details

One thing I'm gonna cram in here tho cause I just saw the portrait of the queen: I recently read somewhere that they wanted to get Dr. Blitzmeyer (I hope I remember her name correctly lol) in the movie but ultimately scrapped her buuut they kept the design/color scheme for the queen and I just… Blitzmeyer helped and supported Comic!Bal, the queen helped and supported Movie!Bal (even if it's a bit of a different relationship, I guess) and that's kinda cute ngl. I kinda missed Dr. Blitzmeyer, she was my fav character in the comic and I was a bit sad that she didn't make it into the movie

Bals face (and probably the camera movement) when he remembers what happened when they broke out of the institute reminds me of some anime protag who goes a bit insane, but I can't remember a particular anime I feel remembered of

Bal always the knight, trying to get his sword when he feels threatened, even tho he doesn't even have it on him

the hand gesture to "Meatball" lol and also: very nice line delivery by Chloe Grace Moretz, she's also a big part of why I liked the character of Nimona (even tho I also like her design and personality, without a good VA a character can be not that likeable, if you know what I mean)

again with the eyes reflecting lightning, I love the lighting in this movie so much

she is in fact a massive, fire-breathing something

Bals brain just overheated and he decided to just roll with it and ask

She's Nimona. (one of my fav lines ever and I love that she get's to say that in at least one other scene)

I have a feeling that Bals answer to "I'm Nimona." ("That is not an answer.") is maybe something trans/genderfluid people get more than me (and def shouldn't cause why do they need to even get that? Why can't everyone just accept stuff like that?)

Bal getting at least one question is actually very nice of Nim ngl

also him not asking something about her but why she's helping him is kinda neat, I think he felt that that maybe would be a bit to much in Nimonas personal space atm

Bals eyes widen for just a second when Nim answers him and he remembers what situation he is in is kinda sad (btw. much of this movie wouldn't worked for me if they weren't so damn much animated/if they wouldn't be so much little details in the gestures, mannerisms and whatnot of the people)

him straight going to thinking-mode when looking at the murder.. I mean innocence wall

Bal looking sad at Ambs portrait is kind of a mood ngl

also him kind of forcing himself to look away (down), breathing in and then looking at the complete wall again is so very human, those charcters just feel to real

best photo of Diego (the squire)

Love how Nim wants to say kill him and stops herself when Bal turns towards her, without a doubt with a look on his face that says: Noooooo, bad shapeshifter

His reaction to "Let's got get him. You and me." is priceless lol

Bals hesitation (and probably inner monolouge) is kinda fun to see but also very undertandable, I mean: he knows her how long now? And even tho he redeems himself fast enough, here he is very much and very heavy still under the brain washing of the Institute and knows now that Nim is not human, so I kinda understand why he's so hesitant but he's desperate and she can (and will) voluntarily help him

Nim just rubbing salt in the wound, cause she knows exactly that he doesn't have much of a choice

He clearly wondered how she got there so fast and I love these kind of little reactions throughout the movie, they show how vigilant the character are and it feels even more real, cause let's be honest: if you're talking to someone who is like 10 steps away, you blink and then they are right before you, you'd also not gloss over that without so much as a second glance, would you?

love that Nim already moved from Sidekick-for-a-evil-villain to clear-his-name-and-be-a-hero-sidekick

Bal still not really trusting her but debating it

the shark transformation is just nice: the fluidity, the sound effect, Nims look, the lighting, the fact that you probably didn't really expect it, just *chefs kiss*

her "I'm not a girl, I'm a shark." is also very iconic, even tho it's used just one time in the movie; still one of the best lines ngl also her face when she says "But I'm not a girl." and the lil bite animation and sound is very nice

"Hey. You ever put your head in the mouth of one of these?", that line delivery and the animation for that and Bal already being done with the convo lol

"Should've just stayed in jail." lol

That's it for this part, I hope y'all are ok with the length, it really feels a bit smoother to write ^^ Have a good one and until next time :)

#netflix nimona #nimona #appreciation #gay knights #nimona film #nimona spoilers #goldenheart #nimona ballister

[foreverrandomwritings]

Hangman Dating Plus Sized S/O Part 14/14- Headcanon

Summary: This is a part of my Hangman dating plus sized reader series. This can be read as a stand alone but some parts will make more sense reading the other parts of this series. I added links through out the story to take you to the other parts that connect. This is also based on this request. Thank you very much @sylviebell​🖤

Pairing: Jake Seresin x afab!Reader

Warnings: 18+ but nothing graphic and fluff. I think that's it. 

Word count: 1066(Not that long sorry)

Masterlist   Series Masterlist

~The both of you had finally moved in together. Choosing your apartment as Jake’s lease was up and he had less stuff to move. 

~It was a couple of months later that Jake asked you to marry him.

~The both of you got dressed up and went to your go to pizza place that you had your first date at. 

~He asked Jimmy if they could hide your ring in a cannoli he knew you would order. 

~You instantly had tears in your eyes when you found it. 

~Jake also had tears in his eyes. 

~Javy had been in a different booth in a disguise and had gotten pictures of the whole thing. 

~The wedding planning went smoothly. 

~Your wedding was in California.

~You had found an old rustic barn and the both of you fell in love instantly. 

~The ceremony would be outside.

~Then the reception was a combination of inside and outside.  

~Unlike some grooms, Jake was completely immersed in the wedding planning. 

~The night before the two of you had stayed apart per his nanna’s request.

~You guys did a first look.

~You and Javy however conspired together and pulled the groomsmen in a gown prank on Jake.

~He lost it at that. Was basically on his knees crying in laughter.

~When he actually saw you for the first time though you’d have sworn he was up in his plane.

~The air was torn from his lungs and he got weak in the knees.

~His brain was fuzz and he got dizzy.

~You putting your hand on his face is what tore him back down to earth.

~He fell in love with you all over again in that moment.

~Maybe you guys also had a deep and passionate kiss. (Please don’t tell nanna)

~He cried when you walked down the aisle. 

~Had the biggest grin on his face when you finally stood in front of him.

~His brother, Javy and Bob were his groomsmen.

~Phoenix and his 2 sisters were your bridesmaids.

~Jake had decided to wear his dress whites for the ceremony and then a suit for the reception. 

~You had found an absolutely gorgeous gown that you had fallen in love with the second you had put it on. 

~Your family was invited but not involved in any way other than attending. 

~Jake’s grandfather gave you away and Jake was threatened by said (his own) grandfather not to hurt you. 

~You both wrote your own vows. 

~Jake’s went a little something like this “The fact that I am standing in front of you today about to call you my wife makes me the happiest man in the universe. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life telling you all the ways I love you. I will spend everyday making sure you know you are the best thing that has ever happened to me. I will love you forever darlin’.”

~That had tears rolling down both of your faces. 

~He was also holding your hand while saying his vows, occasionally squeezing or rubbing his thumb across your hand. 

~You guys decided on pasta, steak, mashed potatoes and salad for your food options. 

~With a cannoli bar as dessert of course.

~You had gotten a simple wedding cake for the guests that didn’t prefer cannolis.(also for Jake)

~The color scheme was a mix of yours and Jake's favorite colors. 

~You had a beautiful bouquet that had some of the same flowers as the ones Jake got you on your first date. 

~Lights were hung from the ceiling and wrapped around beams.

~You also had a wall of Polaroids that Jake was reluctant to use because he didn’t want them damaged or stolen.

~Then you had a simpler dress to change into after yours and Jake's first dance. He was also changing into his suit after the first dance. 

~You guys had gone back and forth on whether you wanted a live band or a DJ before finally settling on a live band. 

~It was easy to find them because it was one that Penny would use at the Hard Deck on special occasion nights. 

~You guys decided on an open bar and were thankful that Penny also knew some trusted bartenders and where to get alcohol.

~Your signature cocktail was “Sex on the ranch”(wink wink)(see part 12 to see why that’s so funny to me lol.)

~Javy did a speech that mostly complimented you and threatened Jake. 

~Natasha did a speech that basically only threatened Jake.

~Though everyone knows that he would never hurt you. 

~You danced with Javy, Natasha and Bob.

~You did a slow song with Natasha and everyone for a second wondered if this was your guys’ wedding rather than yours and Jakes. 

~Jake had also danced with his mom and nanna. 

~You ended up surprising Jake with a line dance.

~You had on your boots he had bought for you while you were in Texas, the jeans that he loved on you and a white t-shirt that said Mrs.Seresin on it in longhorn orange on the back.

~Placed atop your head was his favorite cowboy hat that you had borrowed the night you guys went to the Line Dance in Texas. 

~You both 100% went and had a quickie in your dressing room after that. 

~Then he surprised you with a dance in his hat that you had danced in, jeans, your favorite flannel of his and cowboy boots as well. 

~You then went and had a quickie in his dressing room.

~Javy and Nat were in charge of making excuses so nanna wouldn’t hunt them down.

~The photographer was given his polaroid camera to get as many polaroids of the two of you as she could. 

~He did borrow it for the quickies though.

~He could barely keep his hands off you all night.

~Whether it was holding your hand, hugging you, having one of his hands on your thigh(He was happy you had picked a dress for the reception that made that easy to do) or he was dancing with you. 

~You did not do a garter toss or a bouquet toss either.

~You both agreed a garter toss was uncomfortable and outdated. 

~You didn’t want any damage to your bouquet. 

~The night of your wedding was pure bliss. 

~You guys had slow and passionate sex. 

~He had you seeing stars at one point.

Tags(open): @wkndwlff @sylviebell​ @angelbabyange​ @theeleggymeggy​

A/N: If anyone would like it I may or may not be presudated to write those quickies and night of bits.... but that's just if anyone wants them of course. 

#hangman x reader #hangman headcanon #jake hangman seresin imagine #jake hangman seresin headcanon #jake seresin x reader #jake seresin headcanon #headcanon #fluff #jake seresin fluff #hangman fluff

[runwayrunway]

No. 28 - A Further Explanation of the Star Alliance Test

This is a main-series post, despite not being a review of a specific airline. I just think it's something that belongs in the series, that should be read. Don't worry. Today's airline is going to come later. This is a necessary preamble to get out of the way first, and it's also me making things right with an airline I've covered already.

Stick around and I promise it'll make sense. I had to rewrite this entire post from scratch, so if I could have changed this fact I would have, but fundamentally before I talk about today's true subject I need to talk about the Star Alliance Test (SAT for the remainder of this post). 

So let's begin with a question. You don't have to get this right. Just take a brief look at these pictures, don't try to examine them closely or anything, just a look-over, and tell me which one of these planes - we'll call them 1, 2, and 3, left from right - flies for an airline we’ve touched on briefly before, Avianca.

Got your answer locked in? Hit the readmore and let me tell you why I asked you this!

That's right! The answer was No. 1. You can tell because it says Avianca on it, if you look closer. But...why? Why would we want to be put in a situation where 'which of these three airlines with completely different liveries, identities, and brands does this plane fly for' is a question that could feasibly come up? 

I don't know. I didn't make that choice and I was probably on some other wall during that meeting. Oh, and to the best of my knowledge I also hadn't been born yet. But it's a thing airline alliances do. And Star Alliance is the subject of the Star Alliance Test - one of my metrics for determining if an airline deserves a grade of F. 

The Star Alliance test has been used precisely once - in my SAS post, regarding the 1998-2019 livery (henceforth referred to as red engine SAS or RESAS).

This monstrosity, for those blessed enough to not remember.

Here are the rules of the test. 

The Star Alliance Test has exactly one question. Would I prefer that all this airline’s planes were forcibly repainted into Star Alliance liveries instead of allowed to remain in their current state?

If the answer is 'yes', the airline automatically gets a grade of F. 

Why Star Alliance? After all, it could be better but I don't think it's that bad. Well, I choose it because the Star Alliance test isn't really about being aesthetically pleasing - at least, not exclusively. Let me explain. 

Star Alliance is the largest airline alliance in the world. Flightradar24 estimates there are 106 planes flying in a Star Alliance livery. It has 26 member airlines, shown above. Note the variance in color scheme, in logo, in origin. 26 is so many airlines. These carriers span every continent except Antarctica and basically only share three features: being international, being full-service, and being members of Star Alliance. I think it's safe to say that in any other context, nobody would ever associate THAI and Avianca, or Shenzhen Airlines and TAP Air Portugal, or Aegean Airlines and EVA Air. 

Each of these airlines has a livery of their own, except for Copa. I've covered Lufthansa and SAS already. Croatia Airlines and Air New Zealand are on my request list. Another several are on my own private 'short' list. (It is 50 airlines long. You don't want to know how long my longlist is.) 26 airlines comes out to at minimum 26 reviews, but actually more because you saw me squeeze four out of SAS. I will say up front, Star Alliance runs the gamut of liveries. There are a couple I like, a couple I think are very bad, and most I think are middling. But each of them, except Copa, is its own. Some of their designs are minimal, disappointing, ugly, but they are all designs made in an attempt to reflect the airline's identity and distinguish it from the rest of the tarmac, even if they create something ugly or boring or cowardly or all three.

A livery can be very, very bad indeed. But in my own mind an F, an outright failure, is the inverse of an A+ in a sort of cosmically symmetric ontology, and these are not the inverse of an A+ livery. They do not embody a transcendent bad to balance the scales against transcendent good. To reach this point you must be not only ugly but a gnawing void eating away at your own self. A livery worthy of the grade F do not fail to execute a good concept, or even fail to execute a bad concept. They have no concept and they fail to justify their existence.

One of the worst liveries I've covered vs one of the best.

The SAT is a litmus test for this astronomical, pernicious state of utter failure. It takes more to fail the SAT than to just be uglier than the default Star Alliance livery. Plenty of liveries are uglier than Star Alliance's and they pass by light-years. To fail the SAT requires more than bad design, blandness, or anything else of that nature. It is monumentally difficult to fail the SAT. It’s like stalling an Airbus. You can do it. We know this. People have managed to do it, when the perfect storm arises and the world enters that uncanny state where luck and circumstance conspire to make the absurd a reality. But it’s really not something you can do, broadly speaking. Just pulling the nose up too far or forgetting to keep track of your airspeed isn’t going to do the trick. Icing on the wings won’t either. Even forgetting to extend your flaps on takeoff probably won’t be enough. It’s rare enough that it straddles the border of being an urban legend. It seems so easy to do thoughtlessly but it’s only happened a couple of times. Even doing it intentionally is harder than just designing a good livery. I'm not even sure it's possible to do it intentionally.  

To fail the SAT, you must fail so comprehensively that you should no longer be allowed to design your own livery. You should, in a paternalistic manner, have your entire fleet forcibly repainted into the Star Alliance colors. 

A livery is meant to distinguish and represent an airline. Even a bad design is still a design. The reason that RESAS fails the SAT, in my mind, is that it doesn't feel like a design. It's not coherent. It's not intentional. It doesn't feel like improperly integrated parts, or even multiple liveries stapled together. It feels like it was designed by random number generator. It utterly fails to represent the airline, utterly fails to look good, and utterly fails to even seem like thought was put into it.

To fail the SAT is to get to the point where I genuinely think it is so shameful to paint this on your planes, so inept on every level, that it would be better to just not have a livery. It would be an act of mercy to become indistinguishable from other airlines instead of staying as it is, a thing you could only ever pity and never truly love. Never respect. The most wretched sort of creature. If your shirt is stained too badly, you just can't keep going on like that. People will point and laugh at you, and that's never fun. They'll say 'that guy's shirt is covered in mysterious substances', and you have to just put on a jacket and cover it up until you get home and fumigate it with kerosene. From 1998 to 2019, SAS would have been better off just not having a livery than they were flying that...thing.

It doesn't have to be Star Alliance in particular. Just something which renders the airplane mostly generic. They can keep a little logo on there but they don't get their own design. It could just as easily be, say, forcible repainting into the default manufacturer liveries Airbus and Boeing use for prototype aircraft.

Not the end of the world, right? These are surely not unbearable liveries. I don't think it's any worse giving up your identity to say you're part of Star Alliance than it is to subdue it in favor of the model of plane. If you're SAS pre-2019, this may be a decent option for you. If you're literally anyone else, the mere concept should be philosophically repugnant.

I am actually being kind, though. If I were to be even harsher, I could have easily made this the SmartLynx Test.

I asked you all about SmartLynx. To begin with, not a single person believed they could recall seeing one of their planes, or that they had flown with them. I didn't think they'd be able to. That's not a question I can really answer about myself either, at least not with any confidence. But what is SmartLynx?

The vast majority of responses just expressed bewilderment. I got 50 total replies to the questionnaire itself. Keep in mind that some people declined to answer, and I didn't include them, and even still the number of people who actively expressed that they did not know is nearly half of all responses. Few of the answers were especially confident, either. I'm fairly sure the ones about transporting animals were all jokes, and nearly everyone expressed that their answer was a guess. Someone just said 'bad', which I thought was pretty funny. I liked that answer.

I got two people who said that SmartLynx are airplane lessors. Actually, one said 'private airplane sharing company', but I've interpreted that as meaning lessor. Anyway, they're right. The people who said charter also aren't wrong.

SmartLynx are a Latvian airline which specializes in wet leases. For those unaware, a wet lease (very bad term) in aviation is a lease of an airplane that comes with a crew to operate it. Generally everything else, like fuel and various operating fees, is on the airline leasing the plane, and they're also the ones who market and sell the tickets. Basically, you could get on a flight, your ticket says, for example, Oceanic Airlines Flight 1, you bought it from the Oceanic Airlines website using your Oceanic Airlines miles, and be none the wiser that SmartLynx owns the airplane and pays the pilots flying it. These vary a little, but generally a wet lease provides ACMI (aircraft, crew, maintenance, and insurance), and if you ever see the term 'damp' or 'moist' lease that means the cabin crew is provided by the lessee rather than the lessor, but apparently neither sees much use. Which is a shame, because I think this is one of the few situations where more categories actually might make this easier to parse.

If all of that is sort of confusing and a lot of information upfront, you are not alone in feeling like this! I'm still pretty shaky in my own understanding of it. I'm a history person, not a business person. You can think of it as codesharing but never mentioning that's what you're doing, if that's any easier. It's also similar to regional brands of larger carriers, like Delta Connection flights being flown by Endeavor Air or SkyWest, though these carriers aren't going as far as to lease and are still on the hook for their own operating costs.

Every time I explain this to someone for the first time they think it's pretty deranged, and I don't completely disagree, but it's very normal. There are plenty of reasons airlines might wet lease, generally involving them not having the capacity to fulfill demand. All sorts of airlines provide wet leases, and all sorts of airlines hire them. It can create weird legal loopholes regarding who is allowed to fly in whose airspace, but typically it's just one airline not having enough planes for the holiday peak. They usually last for a few weeks or months, rather than the many years of a 'dry' lease which includes a plane only.

SmartLynx fly basically everything you can think of - passenger, cargo, holiday charter. Some airlines they've leased for are EasyJet, DHL, Finnair, and victim of the blog condor. Because they never operate flights under their own name, there is absolutely no reason for them to have their own livery. Indeed, it makes more sense not to, since it would be easier to leave their planes blank in case they want to repaint them into another airline's livery for a longer-term lease.

If you fail the Star Alliance Test, I think you would be better off painting your entire plane white.

SmartLynx has no identity because their entire point is to assume that of others. They basically do the airline equivalent of paying somebody to take an exam for you. This is a SmartLynx plane with Saudia logos on airasia color-blocking. It's a bit weird-looking, sure, but it betrays nothing about SmartLynx because their entire job is to not have a brand. Nobody has ever seen a SmartLynx plane because they exist literally but not philosophically - the job of a SmartLynx plane is to fly for a different airline. They are the stagehands of aviation, scurrying around in all black to stand out as little as possible.

But SAS isn't SmartLynx. SAS is a big airline, a flag carrier, and to say that they fail the SAT means that I would prefer their planes all be wiped from existence in an apocalyptic flood of liquid paper. I do not think the 1998-2019 SAS livery deserves to exist. I keep repeating myself because I need to stress how profoundly difficult it is to get me to this point. I would rather a livery be clumsy, bare-bones, poorly executed, cowardly, genuinely ugly, absolutely dismal, than it be non-existent. It takes something absolutely tremendous to bring me to the point RESAS has, where there is nothing, no vision, no meaning, no direction, no design, that justifies its existence.

...so what about condor?

condor was the first airline to get a grade of F. The second was the aforementioned red engined SAS livery, now mercifully retired and thus reduced to a footnote in a post about how far SAS has come. The reason I brought up the SAT in SAS's post and didn't in condor's is that condor emphatically passes the SAT. 

I began with the assumption that the SAT was a good measure of if a livery deserves an F, and maybe it still is, but it's definitely not all there is to it. condor is different from Copa and RESAS, it just is. And I think the best evidence of this is that, of all the reviews I've posted, condor is the only one where a significant portion of people who reblogged it disagreed with me. I do understand that at the end of the day everything I say is subjective, and I don't mind when people have opposing views on something, but combined with my own thoughts on the livery, and the process of researching and writing my BWIA post, it pushed me to an epiphany about what makes a truly great and truly terrible livery. And, partly out of curiosity and partly to follow this new path of personal evolution, I asked survey-takers what they think of the condor livery. Maybe I should have left it as a free-response question, but I wanted figures, numbers. So here's what I got. (Free responses have been merged into whichever category they match closest for the sake of simplicity.)

These results are fascinating. First, you may notice that this is missing two options. Not a single person said that this livery was boring, or that they felt neutrally towards it. Even people who are still making up their minds are a dramatic minority.

Second, people who had a clear-cut opinion of the livery, positive or negative, made up just over a fifth of respondents. Most people were at least to some extent conflicted, although which specific variant of conflict varied. There are people who appreciate the idea but do not like the appearance of the livery, and then there are people who find some charm in it. Around 2/3 of these people cannot force themselves to fully insult what they see as a sort of goofy creature, while the other third cannot allow their emotions to sway their rating. If my post on the matter didn't fully convey it, this is probably the closest to my own opinion.

If I was condor, and I saw these results from a focus group (replicated on a scale far larger than my survey, of course) I would probably say to go ahead with this livery. All press is good press, as they say. You're going to end up with a livery that sticks with people, and they're going to respect that even if they think it's hideous. At the very least, they're going to notice you.

Condor's livery is ugly. I will not change my stance; it does not look good. It is unpleasing to my eyes. But it is not the opposite of an A+ livery. In fact, it has a lot in common with them. The reason I love PSA, BWIA, and Amakusa Airlines so much isn't just that they make good use of the plane's shape, have pleasing colors, and generally look nice, but because they are built on the bedrock of a concept which goes beyond designing an airplane. In BWIA's review in particular I discussed the fact that it takes the approach of building a livery around an idea rather than an idea around the concept of what a livery should be; this is what distinguishes an A+ from an A, and the gulf is far larger than the gulf between any two other grades. The difference between 'it's on the better side of okay' and 'I somewhat tepidly like it' can be rather small compared to the difference between 'it's very good' and 'it's genius'. 

In the 2022 film "Nope", protagonist OJ asks if there is such a thing as a 'bad miracle'. To me, condor is something similar: bad genius. condor takes a once-in-a-decade great concept and executes it incomprehensibly poorly, and now they're the infamous ugly stripe planes. It has failed spectacularly but it has failed in perfect harmony with itself. It is unlikely that someone attempting to make an ugly livery as a joke or a parody could come up with something quite this sad. I've struggled for a little bit to think of a way to convey what it means to me, and I think I might have finally found it.

The town of Borja, Spain has a population of under 5,000. Although it was largely unremarkable as far as this sort of work goes, they were quite fond of a fresco painted on their church wall around 1930 by the artist Elías García Martínez. All art begins to deteriorate over time, and frescoes are notoriously difficult to conserve. In 2012, an octogenarian with no relevant training had a vision of a gorgeous restored painting. She definitely should have thought before acting. Just because you see something in your mind's eye doesn't mean you can make it real. And if you rush into it you might make...well, you see the picture on the right.

This picture is hideous. And it has brought in crowds of tourists hundreds of times the size of the town's actual population. Their money has funded pensions and built infrastructure. It has become a cultural icon. Nearly everyone with an internet connection has seen it. It's by far the most memorable thing about this tiny town. It is a work of bad genius.

Say what you will about condor's planes - and I myself have said many mean things about them. They are ugly and they are iconic. They are condor's grand statement, and no matter how ugly I think they are the world would be losing something if they were assimilated into identical Star Alliance liveries.

This striped livery is terrible, and it is great. It is worse than many liveries are good. And it does not fail as a livery. It is fundamentally condor's, and there is nothing like it. Distinctive, coherent, unique...and also ugly.

I've realized that condor belongs as a fundamental landmark in my understanding of liveries, just like Lufthansa or BWIA or PSA. Now that I've said all of what I've said in this post, I think giving condor an F just doesn't work. It doesn't belong in the same category as liveries which fail the Star Alliance Test. It doesn't deserve a better grade though. Something so bombastically, almost elegantly hideous requires a rethinking of the scale I've been using.

condor gets Runway Runway's first ever Z rating.

It does a tremendously poor job at being good, but a fantastic job of being a livery. In order for the Star Alliance Test to retain its meaning and the F tier to retain its coherence, condor needs to be reclassified. It is awful, hideous, sloppy, a waste of potential, but it is potential, and 'awful' originally referred to something which inspired awe.

#tarmac fashion week #grade: z #condor #scandinavian airlines system #long haul #questionnaire 1

[oracleofdiscord]

Ninjago OC: Estrella, Master of Starlight (part 3/3)

More about Estrella, my Ninjago OC! In her introductory post, I showed off a few different outfits, but the truth is, I have more. A lot more. So I thought I’d complete her introduction with a post that was just going through the different outfits I’ve designed and talking about what’s going on in her life during each look.

Part 1: Pre-Wildbrain

Stiix look: This is her outfit before she becomes the Master of Starlight, so it’s meant to be a pretty basic civilian outfit. I looked at some of the background characters in scenes set in Stiix to get an idea for what the fashion was like there. The colors here are what I refer to as her “civilian palette.”

Ninjago City look: A bit of a change in aesthetics now that she’s moved to Ninjago City and (unbeknownst to her) become the Master of Starlight. The change from the jeans to the flowy skirt and the inclusion of more accessories are her expressing more of her personal style, and the addition of stars as a motif and some of the colors from her “starlight palette” are a nod to her new powers. 

Avery’s Teammate look: While she’s not much of a fighter herself, helping Avery on her adventures is still a more active/athletic lifestyle than she had before, so she had her hair tied up now (albeit loosely). The pants she’s wearing are styled after hakama, and will become a staple of her wardrobe during the more active periods of her life.

Fan-season look: @destinysbounty and I came up with an idea for an as-of-yet-unnamed fanseason set between Hands of Time and Sons of Garmadon that would focus on Avery and Estrella. Avery’s backstory would be revealed at the start, and Estrella’s true potential would be unlocked at the end. Similar to how the ninja get new gi variants at least once a season, this is a variant on her “Avery’s teammate” outfit specifically for this “season”.

True Potential look: This becomes her default look once she’s unlocked her true potential and become aware that she’s an Elemental Master. Her hair has gone from just being tied up in a ponytail to being tucked away in a braid, which will continue to be her hairstyle when she gets more serious about fighting later on. For the first time, her color scheme is fully her “starlight palette”.

Part 2: Wildbrain Era

Retired look: This one technically straddles the line between Pre-Wildbrain and Wildbrain, because it would actually first show up in season 10. But since season 10 is 4 episodes and it continues to be her default look through every Wildbrain season except Prime Empire and Crystalized, I feel comfortable including it here. I’ll probably elaborate in the future, but Estrella goes through some stuff in Hunted that makes her feel uncomfortable about her powers. At the same time, Avery officially joins the ninja after Hunted. So with her own stuff to deal with and her teammate having new people to rely on, Estrella “retires” from the adventures she’d been doing with Avery and goes back to civilian life. She then pretty much stays a civilian until Nya merges with the sea, not being part of the ninja’s adventures…with one exception.

Prime Empire avatar: A good chunk of Ninjago City’s populace got sucked inside Prime Empire, and there’s no reason she couldn’t be one of them! Plus, since fighting with cool video game abilities doesn’t bring up the baggage she now has around her powers, she’s willing to help the ninja out when she runs into them. (Look, I’ve been wanting to design a Prime Empire avatar for her since before I had anything more fleshed out than “Master of Starlight”; her being “retired” is not gonna stop me from including her in this season.)

Kai’s Student look: Losing Nya causes Estrella to have a worldview shift. She’s no longer content to just sit out of fighting in case she messes up, or even come in and heal people after the fact. Instead, she decides she wants to be more proactive about protecting the people she loves, so when she finds out that Kai is teaching students, she approaches him about getting some private training in actual fighting. Her outfit during this time period is very simple and meant to be more functional than fashionable. After this training period, once the ninja regroup, she officially joins the team. 

Crystalized looks: And since, starting with Crystalized, she’s now a ninja, that means I finally get to design gi for her! During the early episodes of Crystalized, the ninja have their standard Wilbrain gi on, so I designed a version for her in addition to the Crystalized-specific looks.

#ninjago #ninjago oc #oc: estrella #my art

[mirageofficial]

      ─      WELCOME  TO  MIRAGE.MP3   ! !

                (  EP. 01     UNRELEASED  MUSIC  )

     ─      MY  WORLD!!       ( 2019 )

" welcome to my world, a place far away from your fears "

" when our different colors paint the same dream, we're free "

" this is the moment when two different worlds are one "

MY WORLD is the song that was originally meant to be MIRAGE's debut title track, written in early 2019 and scrapped from the tracklist of LUCID DREAMING : LEVEL1. most of MIRAGE regrets removing it for the sake of it’s sound, but they chose to not release it at debut because it would fit their lore later on in their discography. teased and leaked by fans, many theorize it will be on the tracklist for their first comeback after the 2024 hiatus.

     ─      DEJA  VU!!       ( 2021  )

" it feels as if i had a dream in a dream, my body knows you "

" all my senses are dulled by your magnetic attraction "

" i'm confused about whether it's an illusion or an illness "

originally written by the producer unit & their studio team, DEJA VU was abandoned by MIRAGE because they felt it would potentially only be seen as a seductive track—not for its actual meaning. instead of scrapping the song (which was written by the producers until the first half of verse two), MIRAGE passed it to ATEEZ. it became the title track of ZERO : FEVER, PART 3 and the lyrics were completed by HONGJOONG and MINGI.

     ─       WHO  I  AM!!       ( 2021  )

" i'm the writer of this story, the genre is fantasy "

" look at me now, all the trivial things have become distant "

" you are someone's dream come true, a deja vu of some perfect day "

written and briefly recorded in 2021, WHO I AM was projected be one of the title tracks for the 2022 THIS IS A MIRAGE project. the message was perfect for their second studio album, it’s packed with self-confidence while encouraging listeners to stay true to themselves and write their own destiny… just like MIRAGE. sadly, as the album was being developed, the girls and their team felt it couldn’t fit anywhere in the tracklist—that it's sound was far more fitting for FESTIVAL—hence, why it has never been released.

     ─      CYPHER!!       ( 2022  )

" i made a wish, amen, but also… mayday "

" there's no referee, there's no one on my side "

" save me from this empty world "

CLICK FOR LYRICS!!

CYPHER is the unreleased track from the rap unit of the group, these three are also its producers. originally meant to be a b-side for the REBIRTH project in 2023, CYPHER was rejected for this comeback from the company due to its explicitness & concerning lyrics. their management felt that where it’s crucial to be honest, the song would cause mass backlash from the general public for calling out the music industry/big three companies’ privileges/schemes unfairly impacting them.

today, CYPHER still remains a song that the unit wishes to share with their fans, it shares their vivid struggles with mental health and their desire to keep going as MIRAGE. it’s a taste of what the group’s music would be like if they kept their rap concept.

TAGLIST / @neocityocs @alixnsuperstxr @darkestlovers @kadieswrld @ino3zi

JOIN THE TAGLIST HERE

#mirage / discography #mirage.mp3 #fictional idol group #idol au #idol oc #kpop addition #kpop gg #oc girl group #fictional idol community #kpop oc #oc gg

[envyq00]

I can tell how much effort you put into your Narrator design he looks so cool (completely positive) (like goddamn how do you NOT mess up that goodly) (the man ever)

WAHH thank you so much!!!

A lot did go into him. Allow me to ramble for a moment about my inspirations for him:

1) Peter Jones

According to an interview with Kevan Brighting by Cressup on YouTube, he said he got inspiration for the Narrator's voice from Peter Jones in the original radio play of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. So I already had a good idea of where to go with my Narrator, specifically the vibe of a late 60s -70s radio host. Mixed with 80s work clothes as well.

2) Various 60s-80s work clothes.

I just looked stuff up on Pinterest but these first two pics of Gregory Peck and Clint Eastwood REALLY gave me a lot of the vibes I wanted to go for. (Also Harrison Ford in the 2010s but Tumblr has a 10 image limit 😭😭). I also thought Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill fit the vibe as well. Moreso in looks than personality but Idk. Maybe that as well.

3) Stylization from other cartoons

And then to kind of stylize the look I wanted to go for, I looked at different characters and cartoons. Specifically, Ford Pines from Gravity Falls (especially him bc I thought it was funny that he had a brother named Stanley so I mean duh. Plus Alex Hirsch IS in Ultra Deluxe which is hilarious), a lot of concept art from Batman the animated series, and especially the Iron Giant. I'm actually planning to make a short animation with the Narrator and a scene from the Iron Giant for a class project! (Actually tbh, I definitely wanted to capture babygirl vibes that everyone's been talking about on Twitter and I know Saul Goodman and Kent Mansley definitely had those vibes XDD.)

4) Other internet artists

I don't want to repost their art without permission so I'll just mention names:

Forte-Girl7's/Forte7's Wheatley gijinka was actually the first gijinka I've ever seen for like anything and considering that the Narrator (especially in Ultra Deluxe) gave me more Wheatley vibes, I wanted to kind of pay tribute to her.

Also you've ever seen Bechnokid's Yokai Watch/Whisper art, that was also a big inspiration dhsjjsjs.

And of course there are the GOATs like MissAzura and CYM-K whose takes on the Narrator I've adored and actually got me into this fandom in the first place. Sooooo yeah!

There's also my own OC whom the Narrator reminded me incessantly of and he also played a part of my own Narrator design. And of course a biiiit of Kevan Brighting himself mixed with my pure imagination coming up with a simultaneously vague and particular image of what the narrator looked like in my head.

And of course, there were other things in game that informed the Narrator's character that I wanted to translated into his character design (i.e squarish shape language bc of his perfectionism and obsession with structure but also cuz of the exposed developer textures and of course the color scheme being close to the office colors in the game).

But yeah! There's more I could talk about in terms of the Narrator as a character but I'm saving that for later hehehheheh

#envy answers #envy blurbs #the stanley parable #tsp narrator #beyond the yellow brick road au #FUCK I forgot a bit of Miles Edgeworth #maybe even Gregory Edgeworth?

[whiskeynwriting]

How We Used to Be

Agent Daddy Whiskey x Female Reader

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Word Count: 4.8k

Warnings: 18+ (minors DNI)

Mentions of… insecurity, birth control, having kids, age gap, I think that's it.

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A/N: just you and daddy sight-seeing and reminiscing on the past 

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Daddycember Masterlist

Join My Taglist!

◆

This is everything you’ve been waiting for, everything you didn’t get to do the first time you were here. Granted, your first trip wasn’t nearly as long as the one you’re currently on. You wished you could have done more then, but you’re more than thankful to do so now. 

It wasn’t a secret that Jack liked to spoil you. Earlier in your relationship, it was something you had to get used to. You’d never been treated the way Jack treats you. No one has ever been so attentive or caring or generous with you, and it’s made you eternally grateful for him. What did come as a surprise, though, was your husband’s ability to step up his game. Not only did he spoil you on every trip, but he managed to make each one better than the last. 

“So, how much do tickets cost again?” Calling out to him, you do your best to keep your lips still while applying the bright tint. 

“I already told you,” His deep, lucious voice responds, his feet thumping on the wood as he strides over to you. “Don’t worry about it.” Jack finishes, walking up beside your prettily-decorated frame. 

Grinning, he lowers his hand to give your backside a little tap. Leaning over, he murmurs against your cheek, “You look nice.”

Smirking, you look over at him. “Thank you, baby.” 

It’s really not much, what you’re wearing. But to Jack, every outfit you put on is practically brand new. You’re really what makes the pieces shine. Today, you chose a pair of black, ripped jeans, with a beige sweater tucked into the front of them. For shoes, you chose a pair of midnight-tined boots, and a brown shoulder purse to carry your essentials in. Your hair is down, just how Jack likes it, and you’re wearing a necklace. It’s the first gift he ever got you. 

The two of you are going to be traveling all day, so Jack decided on something semi-cozy, too. Matching your color scheme, he’s wearing that signature white tee beneath a black long sleeve. Dark wash jeans hang on his hips, with coffee-colored boots covering his feet. A similarly colored belt is looped into his pants, with that southern hat sitting on his head. 

“You don’t look too bad yourself, sweetheart.” You add on, turning back to the mirror, the application of your nude lip nearly complete. “Anything you want me to carry for you?” 

“Actually, yeah.” He says, hands tapping on his pants pockets. “My reading and sunglasses, if you could.” 

“‘Course, baby.”

Jack feels like his old age is really getting to him, having to wear reading glasses. When you were first together, he never wore them. But honestly, he had them when you first met, he just didn’t use them as often. Truth be told, you find his glasses incredibly cute. He’ll wear them when the two of you are laying in bed, glancing at his phone before he goes to sleep. There have been times that they sit on the bridge of his nose as he eats his breakfast, reading the paper like the old-fashioned man he is. From the start, Jack knew you liked his age, but he still never wanted to show it. But now, he knows he doesn’t have to hide anything from you. 

Slipping the two pairs into your purse, you press the button to shut it, fixing your hair as you look up at him. There’s a small smile on his lips, one he can’t seem to get rid of since the day he, before God and your family, made you his. 

“Ready, baby?”

He doesn’t say anything, just turns, offering you his arm. Jack is nothing if not the perfect gentleman. 

Your first stop is at the Colosseum. Jack bought tickets for the two of you to go on a tour, and it just so happens to be within walking distance! And striding down the streets of Italy has its own perks, too. The architecture is beautiful here, entirely different than that in the states. The simple act of listening to passersby speaking a language you don’t understand makes you feel like you’re on a different planet. But at the same time, you love it. This is all so fascinating to you. 

Meeting the group at the entrance, your tour guide greets the two of you with pamphlets. She welcomes you to the ancient monument, starting your small exploration shortly after you arrive. Jack has to tug on your arm to get you to follow along, chuckling when you stumble. Since stepping before it, you’re astounded by its size. It’s magnificent; you can’t stop staring at it. 

“Originally, this monument was built with the intention of holding up to eighty-thousand spectators, all visiting to witness play dramas and sporting events.”

Walking through the ancient amphitheater is chilling, especially when hearing about the monument’s history. But truly, you’re in awe. You’ve always loved history. And amidst your excitement and wonder, you notice Jack isn’t by your side. Looking back, you see him only a few steps away. He’s smiling, admiring you in your childlike state. 

Grinning happily, you reach out to him, extending the fingers on your hand. “Come on.” You whisper, nodding your head in the group’s direction. 

You remember your first time doing this, confidently reaching out for his hand. It took months for you to do it - you were constantly shy around him. You’d never dated anyone even close to his age before, and it intimidated you greatly. You didn’t want to seem like a little girl without experience, you wanted to be the attractive adult you knew you were. So, for the first little while, you didn’t show him your needs. 

If Jack had to leave, you let him. You wouldn’t ask him to stay for another hour or to spend the night and go to work from your place. You’d give him a kiss, letting it linger for as long as you could before letting him go with the promise of speaking soon. And at night, you’d sigh, wrapping your arms around a pillow you’d convinced yourself was him. 

If you were feeling sad, or even when you were happy, you wouldn’t ask Jack for hugs or for him to hold you. You didn’t want to come off clingy, or too touchy-feely. So, you kept your emotions to yourself, allowing them to be expressed only on your face. It made you feel reserved, like you couldn’t be who you truly were around him. 

Both verbally and physically, you wouldn’t let yourself beg for his attention. When in reality, it’s normal to ask for things like that. And after so long, Jack noticed this, and being the confident man that he is, he confronted you about it. Sitting you down on his living room couch one night, he took your hand, expressing wholeheartedly to you, “Sugar, I want you to be yourself around me. I know we have our differences, but… I think we’re more alike than you think.” With a soft smile, and a reassuring swipe of his thumb over your hand, he continued. “Have I… have I done something? To make you uncomfortable?” He looked so concerned, and it broke your heart. “Are you no longer interested in this? In me?”

You admired Jack’s openness, and seeing him so emotionally vulnerable gave you the push you needed to let your emotions run free. Instantly, you’d reassured him, telling him why you haven’t been acting as affectionately lately, ‘lately’ being the past three months. 

“I don’t want to come off clingy or… needy.” Slowly, you’d explained to him that you just weren’t sure how to express all of your feelings. “Don’t want to scare you away.”

Smiling, he dropped your hand, reaching forward to tilt your chin up, eyeline meeting his. “I like clingy.” He told you gently. “I like knowing you’re interested, sweet pea. So, give me clingy, give me needy, give me everything.” 

And from that point on, you did. You did ask him to stay for another hour, you did ask him to spend the night. You did request that he hold you tight, no matter how you were feeling. That conversation gave you the confidence to truly dive into your relationship, so that reaching out for his hand now, feels nothing like it used to be. 

Taking your smaller hand in his, he grins, stepping forward to match your stride. Together, you glance at your surroundings, eyeing some of the crumbling areas off to the side. 

“Once glorified for its beauty and ability to maintain its free-standing form, it was ruined by earthquakes and stone robbers. However, many modifications have since been made, allowing this site to be one of Italy’s most popular tourist attractions.” 

“Can you believe this?” You whisper in wonder, glancing at the limestone form surrounding you. 

“You really love this, don’t you?” 

When you turn your head, you realize he’s not even looking at what the guide is pointing to, he’s just looking at you. 

“Have you seen any of the things she’s been showing us?” You joke, laughing quietly beside him. 

“‘Course I have.” He shrugs, feigning offense. “You’re just distractin’ me, is all.” After that, he gently shoves your shoulder, walking ahead of you. “Outta my way, I’m here to see the mausoleum.” 

Rolling your eyes and shaking your head, you jog after him, reaching out to grab his hand again.

“It’s the Colosseum, dummy.” 

“Whatever.” He shrugs, lifting his nose at you. 

“You’re annoying.” You chuckle, shaking your head again. 

“I think you mean funny.” Jack says, giving your cheek a wet kiss. 

“You’re not tired yet?”

Jack has made a habit lately out of kissing the back of your hand. And when you cup his face, he’ll turn his head, kissing your palm, too. It’s nice to see that after being together for so long, he hasn’t grown stagnant in your relationship. His love is always growing for you. 

Shaking your head, you grin, watching his lips press to your skin. “No, I’m too excited.” 

After visiting the Colosseum, Jack wanted to check in to make sure your feet weren’t getting sore. The tour was longer than expected. But for your next stop, you won’t be doing much walking. And you’ve changed your mode of transportation this time from foot to cab. 

“Well if you do get tired, tell me.” He requests, lips leaving your hand but still holding it in his, resting your intertwined digits on his lap. “Maybe I can give you a foot rub when we get back.”

“Truly Jack,” Leaning in, you cup his handsome face, fingers sliding along his jawline and chin. “You’re the perfect man.” At least, he is in your eyes. He’s everything you’ve ever wanted in life. 

Finally at your second destination, Jack steps out of the cab, keeping the door open for you with his hand held in your direction. Taking it, your fingers grab hold of him, allowing your husband to gently pull you onto your feet. He’d already paid the driver, closing the door once you’re out and sighing. He’s happy you let him do these things now. 

When Jack took you on your first few dates, he saw how nervous you were. Opening doors for you, taking off your jacket, pulling out your chair, it was all very new to you. Honestly, you weren’t sure how to act. You’d duck your head, avoiding his gaze while a tingling warmth blossomed on your face. After so long, though, you got used to it, and Jack genuinely loved to see it. He likes doing these things for you, his small, gentlemanly habits. 

Now when you go places, you’ll let him get the door for you, stopping to wait if you’d walked ahead of him, too. In restaurants, if you’re wearing a jacket, you’ll turn your back to him before sitting, expecting and accepting the soft brush of his hands along your coat. And before you even turn, he’s already pulling your chair out for you. And when he does it, you smile at him, eyes meeting his and sometimes even winking at him. Jack brings out something wild inside you, something fun and full of life. It’s this very sense of confidence that now allows you to so easily take his hand. 

For this particular site, you don’t need a tour guide. Everything you need to see is right before your very eyes. And it’s gorgeous, engaging almost every one of your senses. 

“This is… this is beautiful, baby.”

The ancient Roman aqueduct, the Trevi Fountain, sitting only a few feet away from the two of you. Taking your hand once again, Jack steps forward, leading your pace. 

The closer you get, the more amazed you become. You’ve heard of this fountain before, and have seen pictures of it, too. The statues surrounding the back of the large fountain are incredible pieces of art, something you never thought you’d get to see, at least not in person. You know that there are many different parts to the crafted scenery surrounding this enormous art piece, some of the statues resembling depictions of tarot cards, both physically and metaphorically. That specific note fascinates you. 

Of course, Jack has seen this all before, just not with you. Turning to him, you’re smiling ear-to-ear grabbing a coin out of your pocket and holding it out to him. “Tell me what to do.” 

Jack chuckles, taking a coin out of his own pocket, too. “You’re gonna take it in your right hand,” He instructs, moving to stand beside you. Now, both of your backs are facing the fountain. “And toss it over your left shoulder.” He does so, demonstrating for you. “Landing it in the water.” 

“Okay.” Nodding, you get ready to do it, stopping when he decides to add, “And if you choose to, you can make a wish.”

“Did you make a wish? Just now?”

All he does is shrug. And you’re helpless to the muscle movement, more like muscle memory, of your eyes rolling at him. 

Sighing, you close your hands, holding the coin tightly in your hand. 

A wish? What should you wish for? What could you wish for? Should you be realistic, or shoot for the moon?

Opening your eyes, you find he’s still staring at you. So, you smile, tossing the coin over your shoulder just like he told you to do. When the soft sound of its plop hits your ears, you step toward him, framing his face in both your hands. 

“You make a wish?” He asks quietly, looking down at you.

“A-huh,” Comes your nod, lifting your hand and laying your pointer finger over his lips. “I wished for ten more of you.” 

In a moment of weakness, you give into the smell coming from the numerous food trucks lining the street. When you get within view of the menu, you’re shocked to see the options. It’s nothing like what you’ve seen in America.

“Chicken and eggplant parmesan?” You ask, turning to your husband with a raised brow.

“You want that?” He asks casually, staring at the menu as he decides what to get for himself.

He’s so nonchalant about it that it makes you laugh. “Sure, baby.”

In all honesty, there’s not much else to do at the fountain. You’d touched the water, tossed a coin, admired the architecture and its creative features, but that’s about as far as it goes. Still, you’re glad to have the experience, there’s really nothing like traveling the world. Especially when doing so with the love of your life. 

“Isn’t it beautiful here, baby?” You’re digging into your eggplant parm, eyes wide and constantly scanning your surroundings. 

Jack smirks, shaking his head at you while running a fork through his own food - he decided to order the mushroom ravioli. “You’re the best thing about this place, babycakes.” 

Last on your to-do list, the Pantheon. Within walking distance from the Trevi Fountain, as soon as you’re done with your food, your feet are back on the street. Hands clinging to Jack’s bicep, you take in the scenery, all while feeling the sturdiness of your husband beside you. It’s easy to become overwhelmed from it all, but he grounds you. 

It’s an enormous, dome-shaped building, with a concrete porch leading the two of you inside. Again, you have no tour guide, so your exploration is up to the imagination. For the third time today, you’re impressed by the monument’s size. The interior seems even larger than the outside, too. When entering the building, you walk directly into an enormous, circular room. Natural lighting keeps the space bright, allowing you to see its brilliant yet contrasting interior design. 

Jack’s arm slides around your lower back as you walk in, hand resting on your hip. His other sits in his front jeans pocket, head tilted up as he looks around. This is by far the most detailed place the two of you have been to. 

“Have you been here before?” You ask, turning to look at the face you long for most through the sea of crowd. 

He shakes his head, looking up at the patterns and decoration. “No.”

“Really?” You’re shocked, you honestly thought he’d seen everything before you.

“Really, sweetheart.” Turning his head, he smiles at you, pulling you closer to him. “First time for everything.” 

Beaming up at your love, you grin. “I’m glad I can be with you for at least one of your firsts.” 

“Baby, everything with you is a first for me.” Kissing your head, he urges you forward with a nod of his head. “Let’s check out the rest of this place, honey.” 

There are multiple zones all over the circular, decorated walls, the two of you taking your time to stop at every one of them. Each space is decorated individually, its color scheme and geometric design different from all the others. One in particular grabs your attention, prompting you to stay in this section a bit longer than those before it. 

“You like this one, babycakes?” Your husband coos, coming up behind you. 

Jack’s strong arms wrap around your midsection, leaning down slightly to place his chin right beside your neck. Peeking up, he witnesses what’s capturing your attention. The patterns here are different, more circular than the checker-board floor throughout the room. 

“Yeah,” Comes your quiet, gentle response. You are in a temple, after all. The Temple of all the Gods. 

Before he can fully admire this particular section with you, he catches something out of the corner of his eye. Slight movement, a man walking towards you. He stops when Jack looks over at him, lifting his head and making eye contact. Just barely, his arms hold you a little tighter, a little closer. 

“You okay?” Bringing your head to the side, you look up at your love.

“I’m just fine, babycakes.” 

Jack doesn’t always verbalize his possessive nature, he never really has to; but it’s always been there. When he saw you that night in the bar, the very first night you met, he felt something pull at his heart. He wanted to have you and not just as a notch on his belt, he wanted you to be his. He’d watched you from his seat for a while, for a few dances. Genuinely, you looked angelic to him, something about you appearing so nice and sweet. But there was something specific that stood out about you. He couldn't figure out how or why, but… you looked like home.

And when he approached you, he wanted to be proven wrong. He didn’t think there could be a woman like you, a woman to grab hold of him so firmly yet so easily; at least, not after losing his first wife. But you did. Your first conversation only made Jack fall deeper into the beautiful, comforting embrace of you. And how could he ever allow himself to lose that? 

After dancing with you, and then kissing you, he looked into your eyes. It almost scared him, the feeling he got from looking at you. It’s like all at once, every emotion came crashing into him. Adoration and desire, pride and insecurity, curiosity and domesticity. And to top it all off, to seal the deal on his intentions, you wanted him. You wanted him, too. 

While your head is turned his way, he takes the opportunity to plant a little kiss on the apple of your cheek, watching as you grin. 

“I could live like this forever.” It’s said alongside a peaceful sigh, heart beating warmly in your chest. 

“You know, honey, I was thinkin’.”

“About what, baby?”

“There’s a beach closeby, you wanna visit before we take off?” Brushing his nose against your hair, he inhales briefly. It’s always so soft, always smells so flowery. 

“That sounds nice.” It feels like you’re in a dream; your entire body relaxing into his touch, your mind caressed into tranquility by the beautiful scenery.

“And then we can get room service,” He sighs happily, content with this seemingly soft moment. “Maybe have some dessert.” 

“Maybe?”

“And then have some dessert.” Your husband laughs, the vibration of it shivering over your back. 

In all honesty, the Pantheon is… overwhelming. And after traveling so much today, you think you’re finally in need of a break. Maybe the two of you can visit again tomorrow, when it isn’t so crowded. Jack is more than okay with this, taking your hand and leading you away. 

“You okay, sugar?” Wrapping his arm around your shoulders, he brings you in, placing a firm kiss on your temple.

“Yeah,” Yawning, you settle into his hold, letting him direct your walk. “Just kinda tired, I think.”

“You still wanna stop at that beach?” Jack knows that when the sun starts to set, it will be a breath-taking sight.

“Yeah,” Your sleepy eyes look up to his, crinkling slightly from your smile. “Sounds pretty.” 

And it is. You can barely make your way down to the beach without staring at the sun. Both of you take your shoes off, rolling up the cuffs on your pants to avoid the sand. But that proves to be a rather mindless act, because as soon as you’re on the shoreline, you’re sitting, resting in each other’s embrace. 

Jack pulls your back to his chest, surrounding your body with his legs and letting the weight of you rest on him. He holds you with his arms, too, that clean-shaven chin resting on your shoulder again. 

You never thought of your life this way, not before Jack. It’s like a fairytale, the way you met, the way your relationship grew while dating, and now your marriage. It’s a dream come true, just having him. 

The water floods bright with amber before your very eyes, the sun now beginning to say goodnight. Its rays dazzle across the water, shimmering in the splashes that make their way to the shore. The beach is relatively empty, and further in the distance, you can hear the chatter and laughter of passersby. The pleasant thrum of music begins to fill your ears too, the night life approaching alongside the fading light. 

Thinking about the night you met brings him back to your first dance. Inside, his heart pounds, pulse picking up beneath his skin. He doesn’t matter how long the two of you have been together, he always gets nervous asking for your hand. 

“Hey, sugar?”

“Hm?” You’re sliding your fingers over one of his hands, tracing meaningless patterns along his skin. 

Lowering his voice just a bit, he proposes, “How ‘bout a dance?” 

From the side, he can see your smile growing. Retracting his hands just a bit, he moves his palms along your body, holding your sides gently. The two of you stand, leaving your shoes in the sand. Taking Jack’s hand, just like you always do, you let him lead you out to the wetter, flatter parts of the beach. 

“You know how much I love you?” He says, strong hands sliding over your hips. 

Linking your arms around his neck, you grin, swaying gracefully. “Enough to take me to Italy.” 

You make him laugh, that beautiful smile coming in to connect with your lips. Slowly, he moves you, the two of you dancing along the sand with your bare feet. The entire situation puts him at ease. When it comes to his day-to-day, Jack is often anxious. His job is stressful, his only real reprieve being when he comes home to you. You’re always there to pick up the pieces, making him whole once again. And he revels in the delicate moments he gets with you, moments like these. 

“Eventually, don’t you think?”

Nodding, you give him a thoughtful pout. “Of course, baby.” 

Even though there’s nothing there, Jack’s hand slides over your belly. He smiles, huffing out a small, amused breath.

“I can’t wait to see your pregnant belly.” Jack has always wanted kids. 

“I can’t wait to make you a daddy, baby.” Resting your head back on his shoulder, you sigh, the warm water helping your muscles to relax. 

“When do you think?” Your husband asks, eyes draping over your form. 

Shrugging, you offer, “Maybe I can stop my birth control, and just see what happens.”

He nods, both hands now resting on your tummy. “I like the sound of that.” And then he sighs, wrinkling his forehead. “You think I’m too old for kids, honey?”

“What? Of course not.” 

“I just, I don’t know. I wanna be able to play with them, run around and chase them.” 

“You’ll be able to do that, baby.” Bringing your hands over his, you give them a gentle squeeze. “You’ve kept yourself in shape, I know you’ll have so much fun with our babies.” 

“You want more than one?” He sounds giddy. 

“I want as many babies as I’m able to have with you.” At this, he laughs, shaking his head. “Of course, I do. I want a few.”

“That sounds good to me.” Jack's hands then slide up, landing on your shoulders to give you a soft rub. “You know, I must’ve done something pretty good to get you.”

“Yeah, maybe you were the pope in a past life.” 

“You’re so fuckin’ sassy.” Those words make you grin, eyes closing as his fingers press into you. 

With a sigh, you express wholeheartedly, “I have no idea what I could’ve done to deserve you.” 

When you’re done with your bath, Jack wraps you in a towel, kissing your head. He gives you another for your hair, not wanting to pull it so he lets you do that. The two of you step into your room just as room service arrives, and Jack takes it upon himself to close the double-doors to your bedroom before letting them in. He’d ordered dinner for the two of you, and dessert. 

“Food’s here, honey.” Comes that deep, southern voice. 

The two of you decide to eat on the bed, lounging lazily against the other. Instead of getting dressed, you decided on a simple robe, your husband doing the same. 

“Your hair is always so soft after you wash it.” He comments, playing with the ends of it. 

“You’re cute, baby.” Already, you’re diving into your sweet treat. 

Jack lets you eat in peace, munching on his own plate of food. It’s quiet, the air surrounding you. You suppose you could put on a movie or show, but you both like it like this, just the two of you with no distractions. 

It’s the same at night, when Jack lays you down, pulling you into him. There’s no TV, no music, just the sound of cars on the street and each other's relaxed breaths. 

“You're the love of my life, sweet pea.” He tells you quietly, petting your head while you lay on his chest. “I’ll always be here, you know that?” 

You can feel the metal loop of his wedding band every time his hand touches your head, the small sense bringing you happiness. 

“I know, baby. I know you will.” Snuggling into him even further, you sigh. “You’re the best man I will ever know.” 

Jack doesn’t respond because, well… he’s feeling emotional. You’re a gift to him, something that makes life worth living. His precious girl, his beautiful wife, the woman he met at the bar giving him everything he’s ever needed in life. 

“What’re you thinking about, baby?” You ask when he’s quiet for a bit too long. 

Jack shrugs, smiling softly. “Just reminiscing, I guess.” Sighing happily, he then adds, “About how we used to be.”

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