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o-foramuse-of-fire · 3 years

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Happy New Year! Here is my Secret Santa gift for @ubilupus! I hope you enjoy!

Summary: Alice Brandon has a massive crush on law student Jasper Whitlock. The only problem? She’s never actually spoken to him out loud. AH/AU

Title: Apricity

Words: 3,450

Rating: G/K+

Read on: AO3 or FFN

The snow fell in feather-light flakes in the crisp winter air. Alice chewed her lip as she gazed at the historic building across the street, almost mystical in the snowfall. She walked back and forth by the bus stop, hesitating to cross the street. A dark blue bus pulled up to the stop, its sign flashing yellow. Several students descended and the driver waited to see if Alice would board. She shook her head, shaking flakes out of her pixie-cut. The driver shrugged, closed the door, and drove off.

“What are you doing?”

Alice jumped at the voice. Sharp yet sweet, like a slice of key lime pie, with just a hint of caramel smoothness. She turned and plastered a huge smile on her face.

“Oh, hey, Rosalie!”

Rosalie Hale was one of Alice’s closest friends. The two had met freshman year signing up to assist with one of the many student theatre groups on campus. Rosalie, a Business major, wanted to get involved in marketing and Alice, who was studying Art and Design, was interested in assisting with designing posters or helping to paint sets.

“Don’t ‘hey, Rosalie,” me,” Rosalie retorted. “This is the third time this week I’ve caught you loitering out by the Law Quad.”

“Is it?”

“C’mon, Alice, something’s going on with you. And don’t just say you’re trying to plan out where to take grad photos because I know it’s something more than that.”

Alice quickly shut her mouth. That had been the excuse she was about to give. Everyone knew the Law Quad was in high demand for graduating seniors. In a few months, once the majority of winter was behind them and the temperature rose above freezing, Alice knew there’d be people crowding for the perfect cap and gown shot.

But that wasn’t the reason she’d spent more hours than she could count recently, wrapped up in her warmest--yet still fashionable--winter clothes and staring longingly at the gray stone arches. Alice heaved a sigh, her breath forming a tiny cloud in the wintry air.

“Okay. Fine. C’mon.”

Alice adjusted the strap of her cross-body bag and swung her scarf over her shoulder before leading Rosalie across the street. The two of them wandered into the Law Quad, looking more like Hogwarts at Christmas than it had any right to. Snow dusted the tops of the stone towers and turrets and coated the rooftops. Icicles hung from the mature trees like crystals. Students meandered through the Quad, ducking in and out of the grand arches, crossing pathways lined by Victorian-style street lamps. When they reached the door to the Law Library, Alice hesitated.

“Just don’t get me kicked out, okay?” The Law Library was notorious for having a strict no-talking policy.

“I won’t make a peep,” Rosalie said, her ruby lips curling into an intrigued grin.

They walked into the Reading Room, and no matter how many times Alice stepped foot inside there, she was always struck by its grandiose beauty and ambiance. The room was large and open, with a 10 story ceiling surrounded by beautiful stained glass windows bearing the seals of great universities around the world. The ceiling itself was intricately designed with squares of floral-like designs sculpted in gold. The Reading Room was illuminated with soft light from elegant two-tiered chandeliers, stylized to look like candles. Wooden shelves filled with legal books lined the long hall, interspersed with elaborate doorways and stonework. With finals fast approaching, students from all across campus crowded the oversized tables with curved reading lights, their books and notes stacked high. Anxious, academic energy crackled in the air. Alice walked down the aisle, Rosalie trailing at her side, until she came upon the third table from the back on the left. There, like he had been every day this week, sat a god.

A golden-haired young man with storm cloud eyes. Sculpted cheekbones and lips that Alice just knew were soft and kissable. A few strands of curly blond hair fell in front of his face as he pored over a thick tome, and the man pushed them out of his way with a flick of his long fingers. He was dressed in a knitted black sweater that complemented his tanned skin and accentuated his lean figure. His long legs were stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles.

Alice delicately pulled out the chair across from him, and slid into it as silently as she could manage. As she sat down, the man looked up from his book. His face lit up, eyes sparkling and lips stretching into a heart-stopping smile. Alice’s heart fluttered, and she returned his smile with an uncharacteristically shy grin. She opened up her bag and pulled out the textbook she kept in there for this exact purpose. She flipped through the pages until she came across the midnight blue bookmark denoting the last chapter she’d attempted to slog through. But before she could even attempt to read the first sentence, a crumpled piece of paper landed in front of her. Alice opened the note with excited fingers, her eyes eager for the words scrawled inside.

Art history again?

Alice’s mouth twitched. She scribbled a response on the paper, folded it up neatly, and passed it back across the table.

Yeah. My last final. I’ve been really slacking on the reading.

Maybe you know more than you think. You’ve been reading that book every time you’ve been in here.

Alice bit her lip. Had she done that? She’d meant to rotate her books, her excuses to be in his presence.

I keep getting distracted by the architecture. It’s just so beautiful in here.

It is. But if it keeps pulling your focus away from your studying, maybe you should try one of the less decorated spots on campus. Like Starbucks.

He shot her a smirk as he watched her read his words.

Never. I like the view here too much.

Me too.

Rosalie surreptitiously watched the exchange from a table across the aisle, quirking an eyebrow when Alice flushed scarlet and covered her mouth to hold in a giggle. She narrowed her eyes further as the note passing spanned a whole page. Then a second. Then a third. She didn’t think either of the two had touched their books in a while. Pursing her lips, Rosalie rose to her feet and sauntered back over to Alice’s table. Alice didn’t even notice her approach, she was too engrossed in whatever she was writing. Rosalie tapped her on the shoulder and crossed her arms. Alice gave her a sheepish grin, hurriedly wrote one final message, and passed the note to the blond-haired guy. He glanced it over, and the good-natured smile seemingly glued to his face fell ever so slightly. He gave Alice a wave as she stood, returned her book to her bag, and hoisted it over her shoulder. Alice returned his wave with her own, then tripped over her feet as Rosalie grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her to the exit.

As soon as they were back outside, Rosalie spun on Alice.

“Okay, spill. Who was that guy?”

Alice’s voice took on a dreamy tone. “Jasper Whitlock, first year law student. He’s originally from Texas and he went to Rice, majored in Political Science and History. He’s got a younger brother who’s studying Engineering at Rice now, and a little sister who’s in her senior year of high school. He likes horseback riding, Mexican food, and horror movies.”

“Wow, Alice, did you stalk the guy?”

A rosy blush colored Alice’s cheeks. “No. We passed notes. And then I Facebook stalked him.”

Rosalie snorted. “You’re crushing on him hard.”

“Except I haven’t said a word to him!” Alice cried, dragging her hands over her face. “I came to the Law Library to sketch last week--you know how I feel about Gothic architecture--and he was just there! Sitting at that table all gorgeous and studious. I don’t know how I worked up the nerve to pass him that first note, I swear my hands were shaking the whole time. But I’ve never actually spoken with him, like, words out loud, you know?”

“And he’s never tried to follow you out of the library to actually speak with you?”

“Nope.”

“Hm. He loses a few points for that. But maybe he’s just shy.”

“How could anyone that looks like that be shy? He probably just doesn’t like me.”

“Oh, he likes you, Alice. Trust me.”

“You don’t know that.” Alice whined.

“Did you not see the look he gave you? Like you were the sun and he was a mere flower. He bloomed in your presence. And practically wilted when you left.”

“I don’t know, Rose...”

Rosalie spun on her heels to stop and face Alice. She reached down to place her perfectly manicured hands atop Alice’s shoulders.

“Alright. Here’s what we’re gonna do. Tomorrow, we’re gonna dress you up and make you look so goddamn gorgeous, that he’ll follow you outta there like a little lovesick puppy.”

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Early the next morning--earlier than Alice would’ve liked--Rosalie was in her apartment, clucking her tongue as she parsed through Alice’s wardrobe. Alice sat on the edge of her bed, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. Rosalie had roped their friend Bella into the scheme, and the brunette was sitting next to Alice, almost as tired as she was, her head falling onto Alice’s shoulder every now and then.

“You owe me Starbucks for this,” Bella mumbled.

“Yeah, Rose,” Alice agreed. “Jasper doesn’t usually make it into the Law Library until after 11.”

“Which means we only have four hours to get you looking jaw-droppingly sexy,” answered Rosalie. She picked out a black dress that was way too short given the current temperatures, shook her head, and returned it to the closet.

“At least she’s keeping in mind the weather,” Bella muttered under her breath.

Bella was the most practical out of the three girls. She and Alice had met in their first year English class and had become fast friends. It had taken some time for Bella and Rosalie to warm up to each other--Bella had a knee-jerk response to anyone involved in a sorority. But after Rosalie had chewed out a sleaze-ball who’d attempted to run his hand up Bella’s skirt while the three were out dancing one night, the two had forged a tight bond.

“Okay, how about this,” said Rosalie as she held up two hangers. In one hand was a black pencil skirt. In the other was a silk purple blouse with a deep V-neck. It was long-sleeved with bunching at the wrist. “Some tights, your black pumps and--”

“I’ll look like a librarian,”

“A sexy librarian,” Rosalie corrected, but she returned the items to the closet.

“We’re trying to get this Jasper’s attention, right?” asked Bella.

Alice nodded.

“Well then, what do we know about him? What does he like?”

“Ooh, good idea Bella. Alice, has Jasper ever looked at you more than usual or in a different way? And what were you wearing when he did?”

“Um, not that I can remember...”

“Does he have a favorite color?” Bella offered.

Alice straightened, like a jolt of electricity had run through her body. Her eyes sparkled and she grinned with exuberance. She hopped off the bed and rushed over to her closet, pushing aside dresses and sweaters with ferocity until she found what she was looking for. She pulled the emerald green sweater dress out of the closet and held it out in front of her proudly. Though unassuming on the hanger, it clung to her body like a second skin. It had a scooped neckline, which artfully showed off her delicate collarbones, and an intricate knitted design.

“Green,” she said with a joyful smile.

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“Girls, I don’t know if I can do this,” said Alice, clutching the front of her black peacoat with white knuckles.

“Alice, you look beautiful,” Rosalie assured her.

“Yeah, it’s going to be fine! You’ve got this!” Bella encouraged.

Once the emerald dress had been decided upon, Alice had spent the next few hours under Rosalie’s direct care. She’d picked out a pair of black leggings, as well as a pair of black booties, plus the black peacoat with silver buttons to complete the look. Bella had chosen the knitted white beret style hat that hung loosely off the back of Alice’s head, displaying her dark hair with contrast. Alice’s hair normally stuck out in all directions, but Rosalie had coaxed the energetic strands into becoming tendrils. Rosalie was an artist with makeup, and had accentuated Alice’s features without overpowering her. Black eyeliner and mascara heightened Alice’s doe-like eyes, and the silver eyeshadow shimmered with every blink. Alice’s cheekbones were highlighted and dusted with a soft pink blush. Alice had always thought her lips were small--just like the rest of her--but Rosalie had worked her magic and now the lips, painted cherry-red, appeared pouty and full. Bella had talked Alice through exactly what she was going to say to Jasper, filling her up with self-confidence. She gave advice to Alice on how to win over Jasper with her words, not just her looks.

Now, the three of them were standing in front of the entrance to the Law Library. Alice’s knees knocked together. Rosalie and Bella were on either side of her, practically pushing her in.

“You know, I think I might be coming down with something, I’ve been standing in the cold too long, maybe I should go home and we could try this another day--”

“Uh-uh, no way!” Rosalie stopped Alice from running away and turned her right back towards the Law Library. “We did not give up valuable finals studying time for you to back out now. You are going to go in there, and you are not coming back out until you have a date!”

Rosalie shoved Alice forward, causing the shorter girl to almost trip. Alice recovered and gathered herself with a determined puff of air. She brushed a stray curl out of her eyes, rolled her shoulders back, and strode into the Law Library with as much confidence as she could muster.

As expected, Jasper was there, seated at his usual spot. He was surrounded by piles of books, and hunched over a thick notebook. He looked very focused and very hot. Alice closed her eyes, thought back on everything Rosalie and Bella had said to her that morning, and began to walk towards Jasper’s table.

He heard her approach--the clicks of her black boots echoed in the silent hall--and glanced up from his notebook. At first, he gave her his usual genteel grin, but then Alice watched his eyes widen and his lips part as he took in her appearance. Alice slowly undid the buttons of her coat, feigning nonchalance as best she could. She shrugged the coat off her shoulders, and Jasper gasped. The big reveal, Rosalie had called it.

Alice slowly sunk into the chair, smoothing her dress as she sat down. Gracefully, she extracted the small notebook and ballpoint pen she’d hidden in her coat pocket. Her heart was beating a mile a minute but she forced herself to appear calm as she placed the notebook on the table, flipped open the metallic golden cover, and began to write out the words she, Rosalie, and Bella had planned.

I’ve really enjoyed our chats over the last week, but I’d much prefer to actually speak in person. I like you a lot, Jasper, and I want to get to know you better. Grab a coffee with me?

With a final flourish of her pen, Alice tore out the sheet of paper, folded it, and tossed it over to Jasper, who hadn’t taken his eyes off of her since she sat down. The note landed in the center of his notebook.

Jasper blinked dumbly at the sound of the paper hitting his book. He glanced away from Alice and nimbly unfolded the note. He smiled as he began to read it, and Alice’s heart skipped a beat. But then an odd expression came over his face. His smile fell. His jaw dropped. His eyes became pitying, disbelieving.

Alice felt her heart sink into her stomach.

He didn’t like her.

Feeling tears well up in her eyes, Alice haphazardly threw on her coat and hastily stuffed her notebook and pen back into her pockets. Biting her lip, she ran out of the Law Library as fast as she could.

She burst out into the Quad, her face stinging in the cold. Rosalie and Bella were waiting by the door for her, but she ran past them, ignoring their perplexed faces and questioning calls. She couldn’t talk to them right now. She wanted to run back home and hide under her comforter, forgetting every foolish action she’d taken today.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she muttered under her breath.

“Hey, Alice, wait!”

Alice turned as a charmingly accented voice with just a hint a twang called her name. Jasper was running after her, his unbuttoned coat flying open in the wind. Alice tried to hide her gape as she took in Jasper. She knew he was tall, but she hadn’t realized he was quite this tall. He towered over her by over a foot at least. Alice sniffed and wiped away the few tears that had fallen.

“It’s okay, Jasper, you don’t have to humor me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I saw how you looked at me in there. It’s clear you don’t like me the way that I like you. And that’s fine! I’m fine! I--”

“Alice, what?”

“--really, you don’t need to let me down easy or anything, I got it, and--”

“Alice.” Jasper’s tone became more pleading. “I was just a little taken aback, is all. You surprised me.”

Alice’s breath caught. “I...surprised you?”

The edges of Jasper’s lips turned up. “Yeah. I’ve been working up the nerve to ask you out all week and you beat me to it.”

Alice’s mouth fell open. Her brain was a mess of white noise as she attempted to process his words

“You...you like me?”

It was Jasper’s turn to blush.

“But you never...I mean...all this time...and the way you are I...” Alice stammered.

“My apologies for not speaking up sooner. But I’ve never,” Jasper hesitated, “I’ve never felt like this before. The words we shared on those scraps of paper weren’t much, but they meant everything to me. I’ve actually been coming to the Law Library every day, hoping you’d return,” he added with a bashful grin.

Alice gave a little start. He’d been doing that, too?

“I’m not good at expressing my feelings,” Jasper continued, running his fingers through his long blond locks, “but I felt a connection with you right away. I just didn’t know how to deal with it, cause it’s been so long since I’ve felt anything close to that. I’ve had some pretty messed up relationships in the past,” he said with a sheepish shrug of his shoulders.

“I don’t understand,” said Alice. “If you felt like this, why didn’t you say anything? Why did I have to do all this,” she motioned to her outfit, “to get you to come outside with me?”

“I came outside cause I could tell I’d upset you. And that ain’t right. I only ever want to see you smile.”

Alice flushed. Jasper took a slow step closer to her. Alice was struck again by his imposing stature. He had to duck and push snowy branches out of his way to get to where Alice was standing. And yet, with the way he was gazing at her, Alice didn’t feel small at all. In fact, she felt terribly emboldened by his adoring look.

“So it’s not cause I look amazingly sexy?” Alice teased.

Jasper chuckled. “You look beautiful today, really you do. But I think you look beautiful every day.”

Alice giggled, and her cheeks turned pink with new warmth. “So about that coffee,” she said, a hint of coyness slipping into her tone.

Jasper smiled sweetly. “I’d like that, ma’am.”

He took her hand, and Alice was surprised to find how well hers fit in his. Like they were made for each other, despite the height difference. Warmth raced through her body as he interlaced their fingers and gently ran his thumb over her skin. Alice hummed contentedly, and nestled into Jasper’s side. Another perfect fit.

#jalicesecretsanta20 #jalice fanfiction #jalice #my fic #twilight fanfiction #ubilupus #twilight renaissance #the twilight saga

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astraaeterna · 4 years

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your colours are so pretty! 💖 im trying to self learn art do u have any tips?

thank you! i learned a lot by doing photo studies to learn basic face proportions / anatomy as well as the typical coloring of different skin types. at least in my opinion, it is VERY important to first learn the foundations of realism before delving into stylized art. call me a stickler for traditionalism, but i think stylized art really gets its OOMPH factor from its groundings in reality. as for learning realistic color patterns, color pick from the reference if you need to for the first few paintings, but after that you may be able to kinda get a gut feeling for what colors go where! but be patient with yourself—art is tricky af and sometimes it will take a long time for the techniques to really sink in.

in my experience, after a couple of months of doing purely photostudy paintings, i began to branch out to exploring my style and adopting both the features I enjoyed from realism and the features I enjoyed from stylistic artwork.

also, sometimes it helps if i begin drawing without a preliminary sketch! so, just put down some blobs of color and begin laying out facial features / erasing away the extra stuff when you need to. in my experience, it feels so much more freeing and relaxing to do because it negates a lot of the left-brain feedback that hinders creativity. i hope this helps! i can also post some of my tutorial stuff that i have from instagram if you are interested!

this account mostly features my more fun cartoon style, but here’s a peek at my usual semirealistic stuff that i like to post to instagram! it’s an unfinished flower witch piece that didn’t mesh well with my other works so i gave up on it!

#asks #art tips #inbox is still open!

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agarthanguide · 4 years

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i'm obsessed with klimt!jester and byzantine!molly, my gosh. what wonderful ideas you had for all of them! how long did it take you to settle on each inspiration, and what other ideas did you almost go with?

This is a fun question. Here’s how it went (behind the cut because this got so very long)-

Caleb happened first, and without any intention of doing a whole set. I wanted to try to do Van Gogh’s coloring thing, and Caleb seemed like a really good target. It was deeply fun.

Beau- Hey, I like this Caleb piece! What if I do art stuff for all of the M9? I wanna try those long inky LIchtenstein lines! And what could go wrong? Surely this won’t extend to two months of extensive research and work!

Molly- As soon as I decided to draw Beau, I knew I wanted Molly to be some highly iconographic thing with glorioles and gold leaf and things. I have a longstanding fascination with Catholic and Orthodox iconography and gosh do I love messing with gold leaf. Early concepts included some Fra Angelico action (he does this thing where you texture the gold leaf to create patterns in the frame, which i find absolutely stunning. This is also a Big Look in 17th Century Spanish polychrome sculpture, which I obviously couldn’t pastiche directly, but wanted to reference, if the opportunity came up)-

I also considered going a bit Russian. Russian iconography has probably the most opportunities for adding layers of symbolism (it just occurred to me that I probably would have needed to find someone who understood cyrillic to make it work)-

In the end, I was paging through a book of decorative motifs and was reminded of the Byzantine mosaics in Ravenna, which are probably the most iconic of the form outside of the Hagia Sophia. I decided that I’d probably have lots of other opportunities to paint, and I wanted to try my hand at a realistic tile look.

Caduceus- I thought of Mucha straight away, but I really didn’t want to do it, because I had already seen it done several times, and I thought those other artists had done really well, and that the concept was a closed book. The other big concept was Picasso’s Old Guitarist-

It’s got the lankiness and the stylization and I love the pose, but in the end I just really thought that Caduceus was more Art Nouveau than expressionist. Also my brother was really voting against any pose that included a profile, because I had never drawn Cad in anything other than profile. So that cinched it.

Jester- I never considered anything else but Klimt. I tried hard to think of something else, because my last two brain cells have just enough self awareness to know that Klimt is way, way above me in terms of pattern and texture and motif, and I was pretty sure it was gonna be too difficult for me. It was, by the way. I stopped long before I wanted to and didn’t include a lot of what I had dreamed of adding.

Matt- Following my fascination with iconography, I still wanted to do the heavily painted, loaded with symbolism and rich color portrait that Molly wasn’t. I looked at artists like Ghirlandaio, Castagno, and Jan van Eyck (I never considered Da Vinci, his sensitivity is way outside my orbit), but in the end I kept coming back to Holbein, who really raises the bar on color choice and symbolism. I love that all his portraits seem to be set in plain or dark spaces, but are somehow glowing and mysterious. I didn’t have the guts to put in a deep, perspective-y background, but omg I wish-

I mean I’m not a fucking wizard. But holy shit look at that. The notes and crap hanging off the wall all look like clues. Like Sherlock Holmes would be able to write the whole life story of this guy. It’s almost trompe l’oeil.

Yasha- First concept for Yasha was a Minoan fresco from Knossos-

If I was designing Yasha’s tribe, I think I’d go for a melange of Mongolian and Minoan, throwing in some Tibetan textile patterns. I just think this looks so much like her, and also some other Minoan frescoes include insane levels of ritualized badassery, like Bull Leaping and young girls offering saffron to incarnate goddesses. I just love it. In the end, I was worried that the relative clean-ness and simplicity of the lines in the Minoan style would make it look like I was giving Yasha short shrift. This feels a little ridiculous to me now, but I had just come off three in a row that took more than ten hours. My next thought was the Book of Hours of Joanna of Castile. The thought here was that some of the pages actually look like Yasha’s book of pressed flowers-

This felt like a totally winning direction to me. As I researched illuminated books more, though, my concept started to broaden and get more stylized, and I just went with it. I think it turned out okay.

Fjord- Fjord is handsome and iconic, so the ideas flowed easily for him. The first and most obvious was a Fabio-era (read- 80s to early 90s) romance novel cover-

I didn’t go with it because the Tusk Love thing meant that a lot of other artists had tried it already, and many of them had done a damn fine job, and I didn’t think that I had anything to add. The next concept was David’s Napoleon-

Very solid concept, but two issues- 1. Most portraits of Napoleon are pretty standard, in the mold of, say, Holbein, which I had already done. 2. The horse portrait is awesome, but I think Fjord had only been on horses circumstantially. I couldn’t picture him on a horse. He’s not iconically horsey, he’s iconically sailor-y. I can’t confirm whether or not he had a moorbounde when I painted this, but I know I hadn’t seen any of those episodes, yet. So. All of this dithering kept going until the DAY I STARTED PAINTING. And suddenly pulp cover fell out. I love pulp art. This is the second fandom I’ve done pulp art covers for.

Nott- Full credit to @essayofthoughts, who came up with the playing card thing right at the get go. I wasn’t sold, though, and floated two other concepts. First was a Mughal Miniature-

The thing about these is that they are very often like little comics. On one side of the painting, you can have the main character at a lake, picking daisies or being drowned or whatever, and then on the other side that same character can be picking pockets in a crowded bar. There’s loads of opportunity for detail and symbols and fun stuff like that. On the other hand- I’m not a goddam genius. I could not have taken in the style and substance of Mughal storytelling and then just spit it out in a few short weeks and done it any justice. Nope, that concept was just too difficult and too far above me.My other concept was Millais’ Ophelia-

This one might have been amazing, but the second half of the 19th century was getting very crowded indeed, with Caleb, Caduceus, and Jester all having concepts from that era. That and I wanted something more graphic artsy than painty to round out the series. Beau was starting to feel like an outlier and I wanted to loop her in closer to the bunch, if you know what I mean.

Okay that was a lot, but I apparently had a lot to share. I hope you found the unused concepts interesting, at least. What would you have done, were you me? I would love to hear outtakes from alternative universes.

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rutilation · 5 years

Photo

I’d comment that Phos’s complaint about the final level of their game being ridiculously hard is a metaphor for how their entire quest gets exponentially more difficult as it approaches its conclusion, but the blurb in the margins already points out that parallel, so I guess my observation is redundant. The accursed little thing is stealing my thunder.

Click the read more if you want to see me read way too much into the art.

Before I get into gushing over the artwork, I want to go over some of my thoughts on the narrative side of things, so let’s get the most annoying part out of the way first and talk about Aechmea.

I’ve heard that in the original Japanese, it’s clear that he’s referring to Cairngorm. What’s interesting here is that he said this line when it seemed for a moment that Kongou was about to release the Lunarians. But now that it’s clear it won’t happen, I wonder whether or not he’ll actually say what was on his mind. In any case, I can’t wait to see more of his ugly mug next chapter. Yay.

This chapter has sparked a bit of discourse regarding the earth gems, so I might as well chime in. While I agree that the earth gems’ reaction isn’t unreasonable given the circumstances and the limited information at their disposal, it’s still not really the best reaction they could have had. Regardless of their interpretation of Phos, the truth of the matter is that the version of Phos that the other gems feel the need to shatter, tie down, cage, and then shatter again is less of a threat to Kongou than the one they let walk around freely in chapter 58. Just because what they’re doing is understandable, doesn’t mean that what they’re doing is right, and I don’t think that this pattern of shooting first and asking questions later is a good road for them to collectively go down.

And on the subject of Euclase, to reiterate what I’ve said before: they give me the willies not because I think their actions are totally unreasonable, (though said actions do tend to be on the more militant side of what could be considered reasonable, don’t they?) Rather, a lot of the bad vibes I get from them are because of the menacing manner with which Ichikawa sometimes frames them, in addition to Padparadscha’s seemingly less-than-charitable opinion of them.

I’ve been curious for a while now about how Rutile would react after Padparadscha outright rejected them. Looks like they’ve just doubled down on their obsessiveness, to the point of doing a stellar Onryō impression. Really, the quickest way to ruin a relationship in this story is to either take someone for granted, or to be possessive/controlling. Phos has some issues with the former, but a number of the other characters have a strong case of the latter, case in point being Rutile here.

I’m guessing that this implicitly confirms that the human particle is indeed in Phos’s eye? I doubt that Kongou’s human sensors would go off due to Phos being merely metaphorically human. I’ve also seen people posit that the reason Kongou can’t release the Lunarians is because his one-way ticket to nirvana only works on less sentient life forms. (@rinboz has a good analysis that touches on this topic, btw.) I think the chapter confirms this interpretation based on Phos’s mysteriously disappearing cage. And that dovetails nicely into my thoughts on the art of this chapter…

Because the imagery of the cage coming to life, flowering, and vanishing in a breeze of petals is *chef’s kiss* gorgeous.

The scene starts off in gray and black, and the panels have a cluttered, claustrophobic feeling to them from the grain of the wood and the shadowy, looming architecture. But once Kongou begins his prayer attempt, the panels start to become more spacious, those grays and blacks giving way to sleek monochrome. Finally, this changes to stark white with minimal linework and virtually no shading. The only other time I can recall Ichikawa using this blank, simplified style in hnk was when we saw a brief flashback of Phos as a child. (For a given value of “child,” we are on arrested development island after all.)

The way the cage seemingly transformed back into an earlier phase of its existence before vanishing reminds me of how Shiro went back to being a dog for a few moments before he left. So, it seems that Kongou’s attempt worked just fine on a wooden cage—i.e, a plant—but none of the sentient beings present could actually be affected.

Once he fails, the shroud of grey once again falls over the scene, black arches closing in. And yet when the “camera” turns to Phos, their greyscale body is surrounded by white, as if the pure vision they had just seen is still haunting them.

I’m just in awe of how perfectly the environment here mirrors Phos’s emotional state. Their heavy bondage flies away in a flurry of petals just as they’re getting their hopes up, and in the moment that those hopes are dashed, the rain of blades that shatter them are represented as black bars caging their mangled body. Have I said before that Ichikawa is an absolute master of visual metaphor? Because she is.

I was so fond of the art, as a matter of fact, that I reread the chapter several times and kind of. Stared at it for a couple hours. Here’s some interesting things I noticed.

In chapter 71, Cinnabar’s mercury globules were gone, but now they’re back. Were they gone before because Cinnabar had just unloaded a bunch of mercury the previous chapter, or could there be some other reason? Also in regards to Cinnabar, they’re present while Phos confronts Kongou, just barely visible on the far left—note the floating mercury.

But at no point does Ichikawa let us see their face or what they think of all this—more on this in a moment.

Bort doesn’t seem to be wearing powder on their left leg. It’s the same leg that Phos shattered, and as far as we know, that’s the only time they’ve ever been broken, so maybe they’re leaving that leg bare as a reminder? That seems like the sort of samurai-esque thing Bort would do.

Everyone’s started wearing gloves. Before, the gems with a <9 hardness would only wear gloves if they anticipated having to touch someone or something with a different hardness level, (or in Cinnabar’s case, if they didn’t want to contaminate the things they touch.) But in this chapter, everyone’s wearing gloves the whole time. There are two possibilities that come to mind for me. One is that since the earth gems have to anticipate fighting other gems instead of cloud-people, they have to worry about abrasions to their hands while fighting, and are thus patrolling with gloves. The other possibility is that since Cinnabar has been fully (?) integrated into the group again, everyone has to be careful of what they touch, and they’ve taken to wearing gloves to lessen the risk of being contaminated by mercury.

Peridot and Sphene aren’t wearing gloves while patrolling in chapter 69, even though the earth gems were definitely counting on fighting the gems on the moon sooner or later, which makes me think it’s more likely that Cinnabar is the reason everyone’s wearing gloves. Maybe it went something like this: up until the night raid, Cinnabar hadn’t been living with the other gems despite the fact that they must have been engaging with them. But after the night raid, they start living with the others in the school, thus necessitating the gloves.

Once the sleep deprivation started kicking in I found myself engaging in the potentially meaningless venture of counting swords, gems, and who had swords and who didn’t in the second half of the chapter. I may have found a couple of interesting things, so get your tinfoil hats ready.

On this page, we see all the earth gems sans Jade and Euclase, and of those gems, Sphene, Cinnabar, Obsidian, and Red Beryl are unarmed. My first observation is that one of the gems who was unarmed grabbed a sword from somewhere and threw it at Phos. There are only seven swords on this page, but—not counting Rutile’s scalpels—there are eight swords on the ground on the final page.

Which begs the question: who threw the mystery sword? We can rule out Jade or Euclase; they were standing in front of Phos and it’s clear from the positions of the blades on the ground that they were all thrown from behind. Best-case scenario is that Sphene simply set their sword aside while checking the cage and grabbed it again off-panel. Worst-case scenario would be if Cinnabar was the one who chucked the eighth sword at Phos. I’m just gonna hope that they’re too frail to pick up a sword in the first place; please don’t dash my hopes Ichikawa.

Speaking of which, on the penultimate page, there are eight lines piercing Phos—one for each sword on the last page. This makes me wonder: did Bort not attack Phos here? Their whip is seemingly unrepresented in the stylized depiction of the weapons that shattered Phos, and it’s not entirely clear from the last page whether they used it or not. Then again, Rutile’s scalpels are on the ground on the last page but absent from the previous page, so maybe I’m reading too deeply into it. But the fact that Ichikawa was careful enough to have the number of swords match the number of black lines makes it a possibility worth keeping in mind.

This is what happens when I’m assigned to read The Tedious Misadventures of Tristan and Isolde. I start procrastinating by going all True Crime over who exactly murdered Phos. Anyway, see you guys next month when we find out whether the earth gems were nice enough to put Phos back together or if they just chucked the pieces out to sea.

#houseki no kuni #land of the lustrous

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elizadushkudaily · 5 years

Link

“The year has been in some ways just extraordinary in a beautiful way and it’s been in some ways extraordinary in a really challenging way,” proclaims Mapplethorpe producer Eliza Dushku.

From almost any perspective, that seems like an understatement from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum

Married last summer and expecting her first child this summer, Dushku has seen her more than a decade-long endeavor on the Ondi Timoner-directed film about the controversial and hyper-stylized photographer successfully make it to the big screen. After a premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival last year, the Samuel Goldwyn Film distributed-picture, with former Dr. Who and The Crown star Matt Smith in the title role, made a leap today with openings in NYC, LA, Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia, the nation’s capital and more.

At the same time, Dollhouse star Dushku was thrust into a controversial spotlight of her own as it was revealed that the actor was paid $9.5 million to settle sexual harassment claims on the set of CBS’ Bull concerning star Michael Weatherly. Coming less than a year after Dushku herself spoke out about being sexually assaulted by a stuntman on True Lies when she was 12, the Bull situation originated from The New York Times publishing information from a leaked probe of ex-CBS boss Les Moonves’ behavior and the overall culture at the company.

Restrained by a non-disclosure agreement as a part of her settlement, Dushku nonetheless penned an op-ed in her hometown paper the Boston Globe in December 2018 delivering her side of the story. “I didn’t leak the story, but I was not comfortable with the false narrative that had been propagated, as I wrote about in theGlobe piece,” Dushku told me this week.

Walking a legal line, the op-ed laid out as much as Dushku could what really happened with Weatherly. The actor also detailed why as a once expected series regular, she suddenly was written out of the Amblin Television-produced series after just a few episodes in its first season after presenting her concerns to the network.

I sat down with the frank Dushku recently to talk about the making of Mapplethorpe, where she’s at now and how the current Boston-based Lesley University student got there this year.

DEADLINE: So, as Mapplethorpe is about to open in L.A. and expand across the country, and after a year of, well, a hell of a lot, how are you?

DUSHKU: I am well, thank you. I’ve become good at sort of compartmentalizing even if some people see that as a good thing, some people see that as a bad thing. The year has been in some ways just extraordinary in a beautiful way and it’s been in some ways extraordinary in a really challenging way. However, I feel like this field that I’m studying now, holistic psychology, is about combining all of these — you know, your mind body and spirit — and it’s exactly what I’ve needed and where I’ve needed to be.

So I feel like the universe was looking out for me in that. And in another sense, everything was supposed to happen for us to get to Matt Smith playing Robert Mapplethorpe. He is so good in the movie. Even people that don’t love the movie, they love Matt Smith in the movie.

DEADLINE: In that vein, I know Mapplethorpe was not a film that came together quickly, but how did you get involved in your first run as a feature producer?

DUSHKU: Well, the first time my brother brought me the script from the original writer was 14 years ago. We partnered with Ondi Timoner, the director and co-writer, and optioned the material from Mapplethorpe’s foundation, and it was a long, rough ride.

DEADLINE: How so? I mean, I’d assume one of the hardest parts would be getting the foundation on board.

DUSHKU: For us, there were a number of challenging factors. We had different other cast involved at different times. We worked on the script with the help of the Sundance Institute. We had taken the script to the producer/writer/director labs and wanted to do it right.

DEADLINE: Was Sundance helpful?

DUSHKU: Yeah, it’s a tremendous resource. They do exactly what I was talking about. They bring incredible mentors, and [Robert] Redford himself is up there. They’re giving filmmakers the tools to shoot scenes and then they critique them, and we were really lucky to have some Sundance love.

DEADLINE: So, talking about that rough ride, where was the love harder to find, so to speak?

DUSHKU: (Laughs) Look, this is a business, and as we all know these art movies — whether it’s Frida or Basquiat — they’re not typically a Marvel movie in terms of the return. So you have to sort of find the right financiers for a movie that want to tell a story that’s important.

DEADLINE: Did you think of packing it in by, say Year 10?

DUSHKU: Honestly, sometimes, sometimes. I remember reading about Frida and Salma Hayek, talking about how she’d worked for 12 or 14 years on that movie. This was like just a few years into Mapplethorpe and I thought, “What, that’s insane, how could anyone spend that much time?” But every time it felt like the movie had fallen apart, and there’s no way to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, the sky would open up and a glimmer of light would come through and we would sort of like chase that light. We found ourselves like hopping on a flight or going and meeting this person or chasing every leaf, turning over every stone.

We came so close to missing the window and I think you do, you get a real sense as a producer that’s invested in it that long that you’re leaving something behind, and it really has your sort of print on it and this one makes me really proud.

DEADLINE: Besides actually getting it made, which is a massive accomplishment, what makes you so proud of Mapplethorpe?

DUSHKU: When my brother Nate first brought me that script, I wasn’t familiar really with much of Mapplethorpe’s work. I mean, I knew he took some dirty pictures and I knew that he also took some flower pictures and I knew a little bit about his relationship with Patti [Smith] probably, but nothing substantial.

It wasn’t until we really did a deep dive into his work and met with his foundation and we ended up traveling to Florence for a day to see an exhibit where they had surrounded the David statue with his photographs and I started to realize what an international impact this artist had. What a great American artist he was. The guy was a trailblazer, he was a cultural lightning rod. He was so really brave and imperfect, but we also explored his complicated relationship with his family, his relationship with his religion, and with his peers.

We tried to get to the why and the what drove him. You see his journey and where he began to sort of reconcile in himself that “I am an artist and I have something to say that’s very different than what anyone has ever said.” I thought that was extraordinary, and that was where I saw so much courage in him. I mean, you think about being homosexual and doing what he did in today’s day and age would be challenging. Think about it 30 years ago.

DEADLINE: I do, and I think about it in the context of today’s day and age, as you said, and, to be honest, some of what you gone through …

DUSHKU: Yes, I mean, it’s terrifying. In many ways, we’ve regressed so much when we had made so many strides.

When you talk about Mapplethorpe and back in the ’80s and you’re talking about censorship and First Amendment rights. Yes, of course, there’s the irony of the year that I’ve experienced in terms of silencing people and big corporations. The silencing people in this day and age.

DEADLINE: You mean like NDAs and legal threats?

DUSHKU: To some degree. It’s scary, and I think, frankly, people need to be outspoken and say “We’re not accepting that.” That’s not who we are, that’s not what our democracy is based on. We have our First Amendment rights, and we intend to use them and not have people strip them from us.

So, to go back to Mapplethorpe, it’s extremely relevant right now. Also, in some ways, it’s wild because of the amount of time that it took to make this movie and yet the way that everything has lined up and the timing feeling so important and relevant. The anniversary of Mapplethorpe’s death was 30 years ago last week. The movie is now out across the country and expanding, and he has this beautiful exhibit in the Guggenheim in New York right now. It’s sort of this time of all things Mapplethorpe, so we have to believe that there’s something kismet in that.

DEADLINE: To shift gears, obviously the sexual harassment that happened to you on Bull and the millions CBS paid out in the hopes it and you would go away put a different spotlight on you last year when a copy of the internal investigations over Les Moonves and the overall culture there was leaked to The New York Times. Even with the NDA you signed, you not long after penned an op-ed in the Boston Globe on some of your side of the story, and people should read that, can read that if they want to get your POV. But in terms of NDAs, you recently said you believe that they re-victimize, what did you mean by that?

DUSHKU: As we just talked about in terms or our rights as Americans, and to be able to be complete people, we need the right to stand in our power and in our truth. When you rob somebody of that or when you threaten somebody, it’s really damaging. It’s damaging beyond my business or it’s damaging to a person’s personhood and that is what I’ve really struggled with and realized over the last year.

DEADLINE: How?

DUSHKU: As I’m studying trauma and addiction and holistic psychology and the way we store things in our bodies, I’ve also watched this year and I’ve talked to other women who have been part of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movement, and it’s been a year of reckoning.

It’s time for us to be open about that and say, “No, we’re going to stand in our truth, we’re going to stand in our power.”

DEADLINE: Do you think that #MeToo and Time’s Up can really work, or do you think that Hollywood eventually will revert to its tried and true and bad ways when it comes to sexual harassment, sexual assault and the culture of complacency?

DUSHKU: I’ll say this: In my case, what made me feel a responsibility was the fact that I had been around for so many years. I have been around for almost 30 years. I had worked and built myself up to a place where you know I wasn’t off the bus and yet on a set, I didn’t have a voice. After all those years, to find myself feeling powerless and feeling victimized was not — it was more important to me to tell the truth and face the consequences.

I didn’t leak the story, but I was not comfortable with the false narrative that had been propagated, as I wrote about in the Globe piece. That’s what I’ve been trying to do. But, as you said, I took the opportunity to fully respond to the leak in the CBS case. I responded very deliberately and very intentionally with my Globe piece in many ways in hopes that then I would be able to go on and celebrate the things that I have worked so hard for and on, and not have the bad behavior of men and others define my life going forward.

DEADLINE: Clearly, that’s not where your head is at…

DUSHKU: This year did shake me, you know — didn’t break me, that’s for sure. Like, this is one of my first trips back to LA in a little while, and I actually spent the morning with the three heads of the Time’s Up organization and Mr. Steven Spielberg.

DEADLINE: What was that discussion like with them and the man who, among other things, is the boss of Bull producers Amblin TV?

DUSHKU: Good. We sat and brainstormed and discussed possible solutions for this systemic imbalance of power, the abuse and harassment that we’ve been seeing and hearing and experiencing and both in our industry and beyond. That’s something that you know that I can and will continue to contribute to and I want to look at it from my own experience.

DEADLINE: Do you think others, at that meeting today and otherwise, get that?

DUSHKU: Yes, I think this is a movement. This is not a fad and that’s one thing that was really clear in talking with these women this morning. We need strength in numbers. We need allies like Steven Spielberg, and of course, we do need the media to tell the stories and to help lay responsibility and accountability where it needs to be.

DEADLINE: And for you?

DUSHKU: I want to look at it from a holistic healing perspective and the work I hope to do there. You know, I wouldn’t sit here and say it’s all very exciting, but I think we all at a certain point realize in our lives that as everything starts to intersect you do start to figure out sort of who you are and what you’re here for. I think one of the hardest parts when we’re all facing the different forms of adversity in our lives, is that we do end up carrying a lot of shame. We do end up covering things up and hiding things and then if you come out with things then you have to face the sort of backlash or the opinions of everybody sort of looking at you and judging you. It can all be really overwhelming and you can feel like you just want to numb out and escape. Now, I’m learning to transform that into something that might help someone else.

Of course, I understand that journalists have their job and that they have to ask, but I also would hope that that’s something that people pay attention to. That part of my being able to heal and to move on is to be able to stand in the power that I produced this movie for 14 years and it’s doing incredibly well and we’re expanding this week. It’s an accomplishment having been an actor for so long, as my first feature as a producer and yeah, I’m really, I’m really psyched about that.

DEADLINE: No argument there…

DUSHKU: Yeah. I’m not only in service of Mapplethorpe, I’m in service of everyone that came together to make this movie. While my story is important, I’ve talked about it, I’ve written about it. Now I want to be in service of this movie and this story and everyone that worked on it.

DEADLINE: So what’s next?

DUSHKU: (Laughs and points at her pregnant belly) Well, my next major production will be this summer in July and that’s right here. Other than that, I mean, god, to look back at almost 30 years in this business I feel like I’m just so grateful, I’m proud of so many of the things that I’ve done as a producer. You know, I was a producer on Dollhouse and that was an incredible experience. My brother and I also had produced a documentary about Albania with PBS, and it’s on Amazon now called Dear Albania.

So what’s next is just having that freedom to tell any kinds of stories that I want to tell that are important to me.

#eliza dushku #sorry i'm late with the updating!#interview

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nibscribs · 5 years

Photo

So uhhhh I drew a lot of RWBY this year... only two of these are non RWBY and tbh I could have just as easily put something RWBY for June Template

Retrospective under the cut bc it’s LONG

RETROSPECTIVE January: First piece of the year! I still like this piece and I think it shows how much I improved from the original version of it. Also I just like looking at it bc it's soft content of my rare pair. I do think I made the rose look photorealistic which looks... bad esp with all the other more stylized flowers, and I got lazy with the bleeding hearts by just drawing one set and flipping them. Emerald's hair also could look better. February: I made this around GNG week, which was a fun, good time, long before the server imploded on itself. I got really lazy with the backgrounds, obviously, but I do like the poses in this one, tho it helped that I based it off of screenshots from Young Justice. I also just really like how Merc looks in this one. March: March wasn't a very prolific month for art, I don't think I produced much besides this and one comic piece for GNG week. I'm not sure why exactly, I can't find any specific reason why I would be unproductive that month. I'm gonna just assume I was drained from work all the time and didn't have the energy to put out good art, and also I was getting into a slump bc all my art was starting to look same-y. This piece isn't very good, but I chose it because I did it without a reference, and at this point that was going out of my comfort zone. It's obviously not super dynamic, but at the very least you can tell I intended there to be motion to it. April: This also wasn't a very prolific month for art, not as bad as March, but for the same reasons. I was also really starting to feel burnout from the RWBY fandom, specifically wasps and conflict within the GNG server. This was also when the Art vs the Artist meme was popular, and I realized I didn't want to do that meme because my art was too similar and boring, which also brought me down a peg. Though I put out a few good chibis in April, I chose my Mercury redesign bc I was really proud of it. I could never get the Emerald redesign to mesh quite right, but I can say I'm really proud of how Mercury's came out. May: May had me bounce out of my art slump and in full force trying to expand my skills! Specifically exploring painting. Although May was about as prolific as April, what I did create I put a lot into. It was difficult to pick between this and my app of Edison, because I'm really proud of both, but in the end I went with this commission of Mercury because I pushed myself to try and use an interesting perspective for the piece instead of my usual stand still and face the camera pose. Because I pushed myself out of my comfort zone, this was one of the best things I made all year, and may be my favorite piece of the year. June: TIME TO STRESS OUT ABOUT CONNECTICON! So if you follow me on twitter, you might have noticed I made a lot of posts at the beginning of the year low key throwing shade at myself for drawing my oc's instead of more "important" art. Well, that important art that I was procrastinating was con merch, and con was the second week of July, so I really had to get my ass in gear to finish merch on time (spoiler, I didn't finish a lot of it on time). This piece and July's piece are both posters I made for Connecticon, and while I like July's much better, that doesn't mean I find this piece bad. I really should have known that no one at con would realize it was a goonies reference tho -_-; I also lost a lot of love for this piece after season 6 of Voltron, which I watched while I was about 60% of the way through this piece, so I had to force myself to finish it. July: I love this piece!!!! Don't get me wrong, I know it has flaws, but look at it! The lines are so crisp, the colors look good, Roman and Merc's expressions are mwuah chefs kiss, and I just love all of them!!! ... except for Neo. I really didn't do her justice in this piece, her hair is too fluffy, her head is way to oversized to the point that she looks like a bobblehead, and her eyes are too close together. Really if you take out Neo's head that whole problem goes away. I also love all the tiny details I put in this one, from emerald's chaps to roman's rose to Neo's lace parasol. You can tell I was way more passionate about this piece than I was about the Voltron piece. August: pretty sure this is when I quit my job cashiering, and thank god bc customers suck. If I was going off of sheer popularity, Chibi Pyrrha would have taken this slot no contest, and while I love chibi Pyrrha, I don't think it was the best of the month. I chose this little princess and the pauper au doodle because I tried a year ago to draw these two dancing, and it looked like dog shit. It was flat and ugly. But this has motion to it, and even looking at it now makes me feel warm and happy inside. It's just a good cute drawing of my otp. September: My piece for the RWBY tarot project! I have a lot of mixed emotions about this one. on the one hand, I love how mercury looks, his expression, the lighting, the visceral gore from his legs (ESPECIALLY THE VISCERAL GORE ON HIS LEGS) and the hands of the undead, all look stunning and I don't think I could be more happy with how they turned out. And then we get to the background. The caduceus isn't the worst thing ever, but it's severely lacking in quality compared to the rendering on mercury in front of it, and a lot of it is clearly pixellated from me trying to stretch and squash it just right. And the fire is a hot (no pun intended) mess. It's flat, incoherent, and doesn't lead the eye anywhere. It's a shame too because I wanted to do more with it, but I a) didn't have enough time or patience to figure out what I needed to do to fix it and b) didn't want to go outside of my comfort level, so I gave up and decided to be satisfied with what I had. October: October was another good month for art, I made a turnaround sheet for Moss, painted a full body (and slightly lewd) Rudy, and made a decent attempt at inktober. Ok, so I got like 2 days in, but I improved a lot on inking from last year! Fun fact! this piece was originally going to be fan art of Lindsay Jones, but after I did some thumbnails to figure out a pose, I thought it would suit White Diamond better, and I could also sell it as merch. I love this piece. I think I captured the sinister mood well, and conveyed the story I wanted to without any dialogue (at least the notes on Tumblr make me assume I did a decent job, lotta people really wigged out lol) I really worked hard to get the lighting right on this one, and I think it shows. My absolutely favorite thing about this piece funnily enough, is Amethyst. I think I just did a great job drawing her and I'm proud of myself ok. Stevens bubble and my trouble figuring out how to get WD's leg just right are the only things that I dislike about this piece, but I might go back and fix those. November: IM SO PROUD OF THIS COMMISSION!!!!!! I worked so god damn hard on this chef's kiss poifect, and it really shows. I started using a new brush at this point, the Ojing series on Clip Studio Paint, which I recommend and have been using a lot since. I've also been using this shading technique since drawing this. I love how it sort of fades out but it's still really crisp. I also love all the little details that give this piece character, like her shoes and the stripes on her jacket. This piece really takes a lot of the stuff I learned over the year and combines it into one piece, and I could not be prouder of it. I have absolutely no problems with this one, though I do find the weapon a bit plain, but it's what the client described. December: AND NOW IT'S CHRISTMAS!!!!! I had been working on this piece since August, going back to it every now and then and getting frustrated. I'm really glad I came back to it and finally finished it, since I love this pair and I put a lot of effort into it back in August. However, I'm also really glad I completely overhauled a lot of it, specifically the flowers. Though I'm not 100% happy with the mums in this one, they look a thousand times better than the mums I had originally sketched back in August, and were part of the reason I had such a hard time finishing this for months. I also thought it would be nice to end the year on the same note it started; with a flower couple. I've definitely learned a lot since January, and I hope to continue growing in 2019! 2019 GOALS!

Work on backgrounds for the love of god

Draw more stuff that isn't RWBY

Perspective

Make more speed paints and post more to youtube in general

#2018 summary of art #2018 retrospective #art progress #year in review #not art

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maplecatra · 6 years

Text

Blue Eyes

Hey! Kit Kat here! I just wanted to say thank you all! I’m so happy I made it to 100! I’m hoping I’ll keep producing content that everyone enjoys!

I first started writing this fic for @paladinofredlion and ended up finishing it for @bluebeargurl

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Keith looked out his window, bored. It was another Saturday afternoon and, with nothing to do and his brother out on a job, he was actually considering making new friends. Then, thankfully before he could entertain the thought for long, he heard a familiar humming. Keith perked up as the fluffy haired boy came into view of the window. Now, Keith would attest that he did NOT look forward to this boy’s occasion visits, and would also (lie) say that he was most definitely NOT checking the other man out. I mean, with those looks? He had to be straight and Keith refuses to play with a straight boy after Jonny broke his heart. Sure they were in third grade at the time, but man could Keith hold a grudge.

Keith, like usually, looked out his window and stared at the other boy’s *ahem* assets as they bent down and picked another flower from his garden. And just like that, an idea popped into Keith’s head. It may have not been the best one, but hey, it was an idea and those were rare enough. So he strolled out side and tapped the boy on his shoulder, the one he had been pining after for weeks without even knowing is name, the one his brother had teased him about for ages.

And the boy, in response, turned slowly. Keith had a smug grin on his face as the look of guilt at being caught grew on the others face. A single blue forget-me-not was held gently in the flower thefts hands.

“Now tell me, why have you been taking my flowers?,” Keith said teasingly. The boy’s eyes just widened and he sputtered in response.

“Well then, if you won’t tell me who she is I’m coming with you to see if the girls actually pretty enough to warrant flower theft once a week,” Keith said with a grin on his face, even though he was inwardly wilting at the idea that this boy already had a girlfriend. The blue eyed boys -god those blue eyes were hypnotic- face turned from guilt to confusion as he stared into the much darker eyes of the other.

“What?,” said the skinny jean clad boy with the best ass Keith had ever seen. There was no way this pretty boy wasn’t taken, or else everyone in this word was blind.

“I’m coming with you. I need to see who’s getting my forget-me-nots every morning.”

But the look of confusion on the boy’s face only grew more. “A girl?,” he asked stupidly. Lance did not know who this boy was or why they were talking to him.

“Anyways, what’s your name? We have quite a walk ahead,” Keith said and then mentally smacked himself. He sounded like a fucking stalker. He wouldn’t be surprised if his crush bolted right there and then. And right there and then Keith would swear the gods descended onto heaven for the smile the other boy shot him.

“Lance, pleased to meet you! Sorry but I’m not actually-,” but before Lance could finish his sentence a car pulled into the driveway. A pure white with black highlights car to be exact, one that had Shirogane in bold stylized lettering. His brother was always one for dramatics.

“Hey bro! Oh, who’s this? Has my little antisocial Keith finally met a friend?,” Shiro said, fully aware that he was embarrassing his brother half to death. Keith blushed and whipped his head around to the boy in front of him, Lance.

“Let’s go!,” he said a little to enthusiastically as he dragged Lance by the wrist. He could hear Shiro calling after him but he refused to listen. You’ve stopped me from getting a hot date for the last time he thought to himself.

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5 minutes later and he was sorely regretting his decision, Lance was nervous and fidgety beside him.

“So hehe,” he blurted out nervously “what’s she like?”

“What?”

“The girl! C’mon she must at least be interesting to catch the attention of a young stud like yourself,” and he winked. He winked at the boy next to him. Why did he do that? He might as well commit suicide.

But the blue eyed Lance smiled and laughed in response, his eyes filling out with a warm kind of love. “Yeah, she’s pretty special. She was strong too. A gymnast actually, she taught me some moves,” he said, fondness and emotions Keith couldn’t quite place growing in his eyes.

O O F, he was falling hard and fast. Fuck! He already had a girl! Hey brain, could you, I don’t know, may sTOP?! He thought to himself. And then he realized the boy next to him was using past tense. Maybe he thought hopefully maybe they fell out and I still have a chance? All he said aloud though was “Tell me more about her!,” he asked, hoping to bring forward all the bad things.

“She was graceful and yet gentle. She was the one who first got me started in astronomy actually. Everyone back in Cuba used to say that I would be a swimmer, but ever since she took me out to the Sea at night I’ve fallen in love. What about you? Do you love the stars?,” Lance asked innocently. Keith was caught off guard because he had been staring at those deep blue eyes, totally enraptured.

“Who, me?,” he said a little too loudly as he chuckled nervously. Thankfully Lance must not have noticed the little slip up since all the brown haired boy did was giggle. “Yes you silly! Who else is here?,” Lance said in a cute voice that Keith cOULD NOT HANDLE BECAUSE FUCK HE WAS SO GAY.

But all he ended up saying was “Yup, I love the stars! I’m actually studying them for school soon after summer ends!,” he said, fidgeting with the small handheld knife in his pocket.

Lance spoke up again enthusiastically “Oh cool! Maybe we’ll be in the same class!”

“Yeah, maybe” Keith forlornly responded. “Anyway, tell me more about yourself.” And now he sounded like a fucking stalker. Great. Thankfully Lance didnt take it that way.

“Well, I lived in Cuba... umm, I met Hunk in high school where we eventually figured out we both got into Galaxy Highs Garrison program,” Keith cut Lance off

“Hey, I was kicked outta that program for taking Iversons eye out!”

“That was you?!? Man you’re a living legend! Iverson was a stiff ass though. Anyway I met Pidge when we were in the same star group test to get our second stripe.”

“The star grouping tests fucking sucked, I was lucky to get partnered will Marry.”

“Who’s - ohh right Marry. She was cute, I guess...”

“But she was such a bitch!”

“I know right?!? She got even bitchier after you left!”

“But really, the star maps were a pain in the ass,”

“I actually thought they were really fun since Pidge couldn’t for the life of them figure out where the Hydrus star was. Enough of me though, what got you interested it astrology?,”

“Ahh, it’s stupider than yours,” Lance giggled. “I won’t judge you, don’t worry”

“Well, my bro always was into the stars and ended up being the golden boy. He was my mentor and ended up bringing me out of the system to put me in the Galaxy program.”

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They ended up talking more and more, becoming more comfortable with each other. Before you knew it Keith had forgotten all about the girl Lance was visiting. But after a lengthy discussion on Pluto, Keiths eyes drifted down to the forget-me-nots in Lances hand. Lance continued to speak avidly about Pluto being a planet when he suddenly stopped walking and, in a gentle voice said “We’re here.”

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh no. That’s all Keith thought as he stared up at the curved letters on the hand painted sign Garrison Cemetery: Your Loved Ones May Rest. Why did I push him? Why did I do this? He thought as he frowned. He screwed up again. All the pieces were starting to come together as he stared at Lance. Lances face held no resentment however.

“They really were an amazing family. My sisters the only one buried close to me, but its nice leaving forget-me-nots by her body. They were her favorite.” Lance said, a forlorn smile covering his face, blue eyes that Keith loved so much cast downward. Keith walked with Lance, not saying a word. He could at least offer some support.

“Thanks, if you want we can grab some coffee and talk more?” Lance said. The blue blossoms on the grave marked Rest In Piece Veronica Mclain, she was a wonderful daughter, sister, and woman were left behind as the couple exited the cemetery.

“I’d love that,” Keith responded, a warm feeling climbing into his gut. He felt at piece, like those blue eyes could fix everything.

#klance #klangst #lance #lance vld #lance mclain #keith #keith vld #keith kogane #langst #100 followers #100 follower special #mine #my fic

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quowreadspact · 6 years

Text

Histories (Arc 3)

Twelve years doing this, and she still felt out of sorts. It was worse, if anything. Which was the point, she supposed.

The landscape had been sculpted. More a painting come to life than a real place. Every tree and stone had been strategically placed, with the whole in mind. The placement of every branch… it was art. Sandra could stand virtually anywhere and see how the elements complemented each other, find hidden images and decorations in the layout of things. She had taken art classes as her electives, she knew what to look for.

But it was hollow. The beauty was forced.

Sandra sat patiently as her goblet was overfilled. Wine spilled out, flowing along the outside of the goblet, down the stem and onto the gold-inlaid table, where it found grooves and drew a brief image before filtering out through holes in the surface. The candlelight, even, seemed to play off the image. A nude woman with her back arched. Suggestive, heavy with implication and accusation. No doubt entirely intentional, directed purely at her.

The Faerie at the table shifted position, their expressions placid and slightly interested. She couldn’t help but feel as though they were silently mocking her for the spill. Which they were.

But it was a fairly important rule, that one didn’t eat or drink here. Even if it meant being mocked, pressured from every direction.

The entire place was a kind of pressure. She knew the techniques at play. Get someone hungry, get them tired, get them stimulated. Create a need and then fulfill it, to build a kind of dependence. Cults did it. The Faerie did it better.

There was no reprieve, in the short term or the long term. Everywhere she looked, everything she smelled or touched was art. Everything she heard was music to distract the attention, or were exceedingly dangerous words that demanded it. The simple scene of a patio with wine, crackers and cheese served in the center, a short ruined wall and numerous statues was a complicated piece of machinery, where every single thing around her was working against her or working for the ambassador.

One mistake was all it took. Being here was a horror and an honor, because of it. She was trusted to handle matters.

She is older, but I do not know how much older. Still probably at least 15 years in the past though. The fact that she comments on how this was an honor probably means she is still pretty young. She is relying on what she has learned and not experience as well.

She pushed the goblet to one side, and Hildr grasped it and tossed it back with one singular motion. The goblet crunched between teeth.

One of the Faerie in attendance managed to look horrified.

Another cleared its throat, saying, “Then, if we shall sum up the first part of our bargain, Aifric, Lachtna, and Gearalt will accompany you and guarantee safe passage to you and your Hildr, guiding you out of the Faerie and into your city and your world. There, you’ll be able to pair them up with the young ladies you described, and they’ll enjoy an adventure in mortal form.”

“So we hope,” she said. The wind was making its way through the grove of trees, and the rustling formed almost-words, as if a slight change in direction might make sense of it all.

Had one of the Faerie given a subtle signal to the trained wind spirits to cue the distraction? Was it meant to distract her from something?

“We’ll need confirmation,” the Faerie ambassador spoke. “Do you agree?”

Did she?

“Let us talk about that in a moment,” she said, deflecting the promise. “There is another subject I must raise, and it’s hard to do so in a polite way.”

“Rest assured,” the Faerie to her left told her, “Mavourneen and I are some of the least polite Faerie you’ll ever meet.”

She was all too aware. Riordan and Mavourneen were mercenaries in the court, known for their uncharacteristically brutal natures. If the Faerie were all playing a complicated, multilayered and interconnected game of chess, then Riordan and Mavourneen made themselves out to be knights that any side could use to make plays. Which wasn’t to say they weren’t making plays of their own, when nobody was looking.

Oh Hildr is a joy. I want a familiar like that honestly. Multipe young ladies to pair with.. Hmmm.

Dangerous Faeries. I do not see how Blake could possibly handle making one his familiar.

They’d befriended her, offering her their services, which she had taken, because the wildernesses that stood between any Faerie-inhabited space tended to be dangerous, and she wanted Hildr in tip-top shape in case something happened. She had already uncovered one planned betrayal, and she was already betting that this wasn’t only a cover-up for a deeper, more subtle betrayal that she wouldn’t uncover, but that the whole interplay with Riordan and Mavourneen and the ambassador was part of a greater scheme. Each of the three could have practiced this play in various forms until it became second nature, and she was the latest fly to step into the web.

“My husband. Four of his satyrs seem to have gone missing.”

“You’d like our help in locating them?”

“I’ve located them already. I’ve been led to believe they’re in your employ, ambassador.”

“Are they? My staff will have to answer for this.”

“I’ve heard tales that you were the one that expressed interest in it. To have a different kind of danger lurking in the labyrinthine corridors around your tower, and a decoration at your evening parties.”

“Mad,” he said.

She sat back. Hildr leaned forward, planting one meaty hand on either side of the surface, leaning over Sandra.

Sandra reached out to toy with one of the dangling braids and metal shackles. “Mad indeed.”

“You asked me if you could come here, expressing good faith. If you do violence-“

“I asked you to visit Toronto in good faith. My husband and I didn’t expect to find ourselves missing four satyrs.”

Damn are satyrs just like slaves now, to be stolen? But yeah this is an insult that Sandra needs to address. She played them there at the end with the wordplay. Are we about to see a fight, or are they still going to talk this out? My instinct says they are still going to talk this out.

She could see the weave of connections at play, she could pluck, pull and break connections if the situation demanded it, but some connections were false ones. Others were bait, strands that were sticky enough she wouldn’t be able to free herself if she tampered with them.

This is really cool, just saying.

“You act above your station,” he said.

She couldn’t help but feel she was following a script. No doubt the Faerie ambassador had stolen people before, had played out dozens of permutations of the same scene, learning to account for all the possible variables.

She gestured, and saw the Faerie’s eyes go wide.

Hildr lifted the metal patio table, tearing it from the ground, where it had been worked into brick and tile, alternating patches of grass and flower, in a very strategic and stylized ‘ruin’ layout.

The female troll pushed the table’s edge against the ambassador’s throat, toppling him backward in his chair. The table was held down, pinning him. It was large enough and heavy enough that if the troll saw fit to let go, it would pass through the Faerie’s neck and likely sink a short distance into the ground.

‘Her’ mercenaries were standing, now, a distance away, hands on their weapons. One with a sword, one with a handgun. They seemed a little out of sorts.

“They were not yours to take,” she said.

“He had no claim to them,” the ambassador said, voice strangled.

“His god did. Dionysus gave a contingent of his servants to my husband for looking after. If those satyr are not returned, the god will be very upset.”

Going physical I see, but not fighting yet. Also I love how it keeps being emphasized that it is a female troll. Hmmmm.

Not really her mercenaries then? Worried about a betrayal here? Also Diosysus is his god Confirmed. A easy prediction I suppose, but it still counts.

“We can bargain. I’ll pay you generously for the creatures. My generosity is worth more than a dead god’s wrath.”

“Not dead. Some still worship him. My husband included. Dionysus remains a god who can make his displeasure known. You crossed us. Me, my husband, my husband’s god.”

And here was the conundrum. The tangled weave. Killing the ambassador was easy, relatively speaking. But even a low-ranked Faerie like this ambassador was embroiled in a thousand different schemes. The Faerie were very invested in their houses of cards, and they felt a genuine kind of upset when they couldn’t see things through to the epic moments that had been decades in the planning.

That upset had a way of finding the individual who upset the house of cards. Worse, it fed into what the Faerie really wanted. A break from the pattern.

When that happened, they tended to get creative.

“Arms and legs only,” she said. “He lives.”

“Wait!” the ambassador cried out. “I can-“

Oh wow. To call him dead too? This faerie is pretty arrogant. I feel like it can’t be this easy. Something has to go wrong.

The Faerie are so interesting also.

#text #histories #histories arc 3

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lingering-fragments · 6 years

Note

Heck yeah 🗡 knifes, gloves, ballet shoes, knifes, frying pan, more knifes... yeah, It's probably knifes. You tell 'em gal!

A run down of of Chara’s weapons:

- 'fake knife' Atk: 5 "A knockoff knife. Can still be quite dangerous with enough desire to fight behind it. It's dangerous to go alone out there."

Chara’s thoughts: It might look kinda like a KA-BAR, but it’s just a cheap knockoff. Still, a knife’s a knife, and this one has been surprisingly reliable for a knockoff. I’m not sure I would actually have made it as far as I have without it. A constant companion for a few years, but in the end it just couldn’t quite hack it when things got tough, becoming a broken knife. I still got the broken hilt and what’s left of the blade though, y’know, as a keepsake.

-'worn sword' Atk: 12 "An old sword weathered by the ages. It's edge is still sharp as ever though despite appearances. It reeks of burnt determination."

Chara’s thoughts: Can’t say i’m entirely pleased with this weapon. I do prefer a shorter blade to be honest, like a knife or dagger. For a beat up old sword it sure can cut though. The less said about the previous owner, the better. They may or may not have been someone I knew once upon a time.A sword is more suited for a royal guard than a dagger anyways, so I guess i’ll keep it. And anyways, since it was given to me by a certain flower who... well, that’s a story for another time. Let’s just hope the previous owner isn’t looking for it anymore... wherever they are. Probably burning in hell.

-'MF-Blade' Atk: 11, Draws MP from user to deal critical hits. "A highly advanced knife designed to act as a focus for magical power. While it can be used like a normal knife, it's much cooler using it like a magic saber."

Chara’s thoughts: A special piece of work as a gift from Alphys. It’s quite the cool little gizmo. Some of the most advanced in monster science, it supposedly works like a conduit for a person’s magic, allowing you to channel it into a magic based beam blade. It’s not so subtly stylized after a Gundam beam saber, because of course Alphys would do that. From how Alphys explained it, it kinda makes me think of the rune edge from FF6 in retrospect. The drawback with it though is the mechanics are kinda sensitive so it’s not suitable for blocking or parrying, as I learned the hard way when the mechanism got busted. Fortunately it’s still a really good stand alone knife. I really should have Alphys see if she can fix it. The name is short for magic focus blade, not to be confused with the HF-blade.

-’gifted knife’ Atk: 15 “Passed from father to child. Both burden and birth right, it holds the immense weight of responsibility. ”

Chara’s thoughts: “About time I got this, I guess. Better late than never. Unlike the KA-BAR knockoff, this is a proper, honest to god knife. Hand crafted, excellent worksmanship, and well maintained. Like all knives, it can be used as a weapon, or a tool. It all depends on the hands that wield it, and what for. You can feel the very essence of that responsibility when you hold this knife. It’s... kinda wild how heavily that kind of thing can weigh down on you. Out of all of my tools of the trade, I think I would consider this the one most important to me. Might just be because I have a weird sense of sentimentality though.

#weapon meme #illusionoftransience

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geekyreverie · 7 years

Text

My fave episodes of Wander Over Yonder (part 2)

So, it’s the second part of the list!

Both seasons of Wander Over Yonder are great! And they are so different! The second season is more about Lord Hater and his feelings to Lord Dominator. At first I wasn’t excited about this storyline that much (I loved how it was in the first season and I was afraid that now the show might lose it’s special touch), but soon I realised how wrong I was!

This season is totally amazing and deep and touching! And I do adore and very impressed the way Hater’s character and his relations with other characters are developed! So let’s go! My favorite episodes from Season 2! 11. The Greater Hater Hater chases Wander as usual, but suddenly a mysterious stranger (whose ship is way cooler) appears. This episode is a great untroduction of the new character. It has an awesome intrigue and it shows different approaches of Wander and Hater to the new guy as well which is amazing! And the joke in the titles with Hater/Vader is one of my favorite gags from the show!

12. The Breakfast The episode shows the morning of Wander and Hater in a really creative way! The screen is split in two areas, and these two parts make a great contrast! I absolutely enjoy this idea and its realisation on screen! So smart and very precisely, accurately done! Never seen this in cartoon series before! 13. The Fremergency Fronfract Because of the anesthetic’s effect Wander and Hater become friends (for a very short time). First of all, I like the Superman reference here very much! It’s funny and actually the words are clever! I mean who Wander actually is? And yeah - he’s not just a fool, he’s actually cool, I can’t argue with that! :D Also I love episode’s end, it’s touching and sad. And funny too as well, wonderful mix indeed! 14. The Wanders Wander’s personality is split in many pieces and it’s up to Sylvia to get the one and only Wander back! I absolutely love the episode and its message! I love how it focuses on different aspects of Wander’s personality and tells that every part is important, even the one that seems annoying. :) And what makes my heart melt is the most important part, could this show possibly get any better after episodes like this?! It seems so perfect! The helper seeks to help because he knows what it is to be helpless. Aww! I love this guy so much and really wanna know what’s behind this! 15. The Axe Oh no! Commander Peepers is fired! Hater, don’t do it! I feel so sorry for Peepers here! The song in the episode is just heartbreaking! And the kind of questions Hater asks makes me giggle! So here we see how it actually works: Hater knows so little about invasions and Peepers does all the stuff, but still they need each other and make a great team, haha! Peepers is so cool in the episode’s end and the dialog between him and Hater before! Hilarious! And yeah, I like that feeling of competition in conquering planets!

16. The Cool Guy One more episode about Hater, Peepers and that conquering thingy. :) I often wondered what it would be, if Peepers tried to conquer a planet without Hater - and now we can see! I really love Peepers’ lines about Awesome and Hater’s actions in the end of the episode. Makes me love these two even more! And the remark that Commander’s goals are evil is an interesting one! Complicated! I feel for them, but actually they are bad guys or... well, that’s that interesting line that goes through the whole show. 17. The Battle Royale It’s in the middle of the season, it changes the direction of the plot and it’s epic! So very epic! Lord Hater discovers that Lord Dominator is a girl and fells in love with her! It’s really funny and ironic how he shouted that he hated Dominator few seconds before! I like how ironic WOY is! Another great detail here is how mighty Hater becomes when it comes to his hate to Wander. Oh, he really hates this guy!

18. The New Toy To impress Lord Dominator Hater builds his own car! I like the design of it! :D And I find the commercial bizarre, made me laugh out so loud! It’s nice to see very many Hater’s attempts to be cool and his embarassment. I also like their conflict with Peepers. Hater’s love line brings not only drama, but comedy as well! 19. The Eye on the Skullship I like that in this episode we see Hater and his actions from a different point of view - from one of his fans! The episode is again about the watchdogs and their feelings, I like that in WOY no one is left behind, I mean even minor characters. 20. The Bad Hatter Wander’s hat is now in Hater’s hands! I like Wander’s hat and I think it deserves more attention. Now we know more about it, we know its history, it’s not just some cool accessory, it’s alive, alive! :) And once again I like the message. I like how Hater is mad at the Hat, though it seems like the problem is not in it. Oh well, poor hat.

21. The Show Stopper Hater performs a rock concert (to impress Lord Dominator! nice try!). And Wander helps! This episode is one of the best! I do love Hater’s theme song and I absolutely enjoy watching their perfomance with Wander. Wander is so good and Hater is just... HATER!! Oh boy, I can listen to the same song for hours and hours and Hater can sing his song for DAYS! Wow! He’s so active and energetic! Just watching him fills me with energy too! I like how Sylvia works together with Peepers and the last perfomance of the song totally rocks! The lyrics - aww, just daww!! Actually this song gets better and better with every loop! :D

22. The Cartoon Another Hater’s try to impress Dominator - now with the help of the most sophisticated and respected art form in the universe - the cartoon! It’s hard to express how I love this episode, it’s incredible! I love the idea, stylization and references, cast, songs (especially the opening one) and actually everything about this episode! Solid writing too! And I literally can’t stop laughing all the time, one of the WOY’s best! POWER!! And Hater’s remark how hard animation is just... wow! 23. The Bot Wander makes friends with Lord Dominator’s Bot. One of the saddest episodes of the show! I won’t say much about it, except... oh well, that silent scene at the end! It’s perfect in every way, everytime I remember it, I feel I’m still impressed. 24. My Fair Hatey The musical episode and... MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE FROM THE SHOW! And one of my favorite animated musicals ever!! I mean it! I rewatched it many times and I can’t get bored! How can you stop rewatching it, it’s so precious! The quality of animation and music numbers is incredibly high, I absolutely enjoy it and it totally deserves to be in one line with full-length movie musicals. I love how it concentrates all best things about the show in 1/2 hour! The action is so powerful (indeed!). The gags and songs and action continue for the whole half hour non stop, from the very beginning to the end, everything here is awesome! The songs are stunning and inspiring, they reveal all characters motives and feelings so well! And the mood changes so many times here, from excitement to despair and then to new hopes again, it’s amazing how many emotions are covered in one episode! And it brings the main plot to the new point. For me it’s the top episode of the whole show so far! 25. The Robomechabotatron It’s the name of a giant robot that can stop Dominator. I find this episode extremely funny and I stand for Wander’s point here. Though it seems kinda doubtful the way he brought it (the team was counting on him anyway), so that makes the episode especially interesting to think about. 26. The Flower Wander and Sylvia are trying to save the flower from Lord Dominator. This episode literally made me cry. It’s so emotional and touching, it actually hurts to see Wander’s tears! And Wander formulates one of the greatest messages: Just because I'm sad doesn't mean I've given up hope. 27. The End of the Galaxy It’s series finale so far. The contrast between approaches of Wander and others is great! It’s sad to see Wander stands alone. Despite many threatening and menacing moments of the episode (it definitely should be like this), it’s still very positive. It’s a great finale of the season, but... not of the whole show! The story is so rich, and many lines are not finished yet! It shouldn’t end this way, come on! So... if you agree, please sign in the petition! https://www.change.org/p/walt-disney-encourage-disney-to-make-wander-over-yonder-season-3 @disneyxd

#wander over yonder #savewoy #trending 27th #woy #disney

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extraplanetarystory · 7 years

Text

Part 3

"Xue'nun!" Pilot, surprisingly spry for what looked like a man in his early seventies, hopped onto a stage to the right of the hall. Behind him, I could just see the heads of five men and women and four qicuqop. The qicuqop were all short, except the one that towered over the other three by a head and neck. As far as I knew, that meant that one was the female. That was the only way I could figure out the difference besides asking, and I didn't like to ask.

His voice was just loud enough to overpower the academy hopefuls—who I noticed were all human—and they all fell silent. From my wall-flower position by the doors, I could just barely see everyone on the platform, unless I stayed on the absolute tip of my toes. Which was tiring.

"This is going to be short," Pilot continued, another wide grin slowly pulling across his face. "Both my introduction and this program. In exactly seven days' time, you will know your Zega future. That doesn't exist for vast majority of you, as it's most likely that most of you will be gone before then." He paused to let a soft murmur rise from the crowd. It cut itself short as quickly as it started. "I hate to crush your hopes... Actually, no, I don't. I've been doing this for a while."

He stopped, chuckling to himself, and turned to the humans on the platform. They shook their head and rolled their eyes. He looked at the qi'qop. The female mimicked the humans. One of the short ones was nodding.

I knew I was going to be one of those losers for sure. For absolutely sure. One week? There's no way. This realization had me thinking that maybe I would actually participate. If I was sure to fail—which I was—at least I could make Tawyn happy that I gave it the old college try.

"I know what you're thinking!" Pilot went on. "Vad'n-teaj is this old man talking about? This isn't how it's done. This wasn't how it's done, but we decided to change things. Instead of seven tests, you will be given one. One test to decide if you get a chance to see Sa'cra. One test to decide if you get to visit any planet you want. One test to decide if you get to be the ones to discover what's at the edge of the known galaxy."

Wow, Pilot was dramatic. And inspiring.

He went on, less dramatically, to explain how today and then the rest of the week would play out. The first day, we are assigned into teams of three. First day, we meet our team members, get acquainted with each other and the tower. And then the second day and so on begins the real fun. We receive an assignment and have to finish it. And during all that, people were going to be dismissed. I couldn't wait for my turn.

Symbols appeared on the walls around us, cuing him to dismiss us to the day. We had to line up according to our names.

Oh, really, I was going to fail my first test already?

I wandered through the crowd, trying to pick out people saying their names and coordinating them with the letters on the walls. I know I'd seen my own name written down a couple of times. They wrote it for me. I couldn't remember any part of it. I couldn't remember the first stinking letter of it.

I was going to fail my first test already.

The lines that formed around the hall were starting to combine into a noisy circle of chatter in the center as they waited. People were filtering out the doors with little pieces of paper in their hands.

My two options were to wait for my partners to find me, or to ask someone which line I belong to. One delayed the embarrassment, one got it over with quick.

I took the second option and sped-walk as inconspicuously as I could to someone who'd already gotten their paper, one of the guys with a feathered mohawk that Pilot had talked to earlier. It wasn't just a mohawk; it was also a bunch of intricate braids along the sides of his head. They were hard not to get distracted by.

"Excuse," I said as quiet as I could. "My name is Jiaal. What line do I go to?"

He looked at me like I was pulling his leg, like this was a trick question of some kind. Squinting. Either he thought I was being too stupid to be serious or this was part of the program. He didn't say anything, just looked around, pointed at a letter and line to the left of us, and gave me that initial face again.

I smiled, nodded, and backed away. "Good. I was...testing you. That was a test. You did good." I gave him a salute and slid into the line. He was still looking at me when I pulled into myself and shielded my face so he couldn't see me turning red. I really wished I had learned how to read by now. Even letters! I should have picked up letters by now. Letters are easy, stupid!

Note to self: The symbol that looks like a stylized and italicized little G was a J—or the equivalent of J. It made the J sound.

I waited a moment or two and looked through my fingers. He was gone. There was someone else in his place, though, staring at me with a frown. A man with perfectly coiffed hair, a perfectly groomed face, and a tailored, high-collar suit. And he was a member of Zi'inra's higher higher class, which explained the togetherness. Atlyana dragged me to an event his family hosted when they first got me and I was the major distraction of the night. That probably explained the frown.

He didn't say anything as the line moved along, just watched. I tried to act like I hadn't actually noticed and couldn't feel his eyes. It felt like knives, to be honest. I didn't even want to ask him what was up—well, actually, I did. A daydream version of me would have snapped at him to take a picture and stop making me uncomfortable. But that version was not me, so I just wanted to get out of his sight.

"Name." A woman was standing at the wall with a fan of papers in her hand.

As I told her, I huffed to myself. Why couldn't these teams be given in some electronic form? Or, you know, spoken to us? So I guess I could just go ask frowny starey guy what the names—oh, something went my way! There were pictures!

The woman handed me a paper, which was actually more plastic than tree fiber, and ushered me off with a call to the next person.

My brief moment of joy was ruined when I saw frowny guy's face on the sheet. I sighed and looked up. He was giving me the most perfunctory smile now, and waited until I actually looked at him before he gestured with his head to follow him.

"How did they get our pictures like this?" I asked as we left the hall for the shaded open corridor that ran around the tower, trying to get this off on at least a neutral air. "I certainly did not get—"

"My name is Riche'e," he said, stopping at a thin pillar, pursing his lips. "I wasn't able to find our partner." With the motion and commotion of the people, that wasn't a surprise.

"It is pleasant to meet you, Riche'e," I lied. "I am sure you already know my name."

He raised an eyebrow at me. "Anyone from Zennae knows who you are."

"Oh, so you were not giving me that face because I'm so unique and unknown?" I wondered if he knew what sardony and sarcasm was as his face twisted around.

"No. What is—" He stopped and rubbed the side of his face, then shook his head. "No. I am confused about why you are here. Why you, a—why are you here?"

Because my adoptive father doesn't know how to run ideas by people or warn them ahead of time. "The same as anyone else," I said evenly. "As Pilot said, to see Sa'cra, to visit every planet. To join Zega.To see what is at the edge of our galaxy."

And then my mouth clamped shut and a gasp was caught in my throat. Maybe Tawyn was actually trying to help me instead of just getting me to do something.

"To find Earth!" I was almost grinning with the shock of the lightbulb finally turning on. If I actually made it through this thing, if I actually made it through the academy and into Zega, there had to be a way I could find my way home!

Riche'e drew in a long breath and let it out, slowly nodding all the way. "That is what I was afraid of."

I watched his face. I couldn't understand what was happening to it. It went to that original frown I first saw, then confusion, then...reluctance? Something as he opened his mouth three times but wasn't able to say anything.

"Arlyxe," he finally went. "You need to know—" Ah, I knew what he was trying to say. I was going to have to go through this yet another time. "Has no one told you Earth does not exist?"

I balled my fists and shoved them in my pant pockets. "I have been told," I said through a clenched jaw. "I am done hearing it! Earth does exist, and I know that because I am from there!"

"No, it doesn't," he insisted, his eyes wide.

"Why? If everyone thinks this, why is it true?"

"In the first place, it's supposed location. The Ubjanaxe spent over a hundred loliels searching for it, with the help of rudkjurt, and Zega joined the mission as well. 'Earth' is supposed to be located in a section of the galaxy that has no habitable planets, much less any that can support a civilization of humans. I'm just saying that if you go looking—"

A small ball smacked into his forehead with a quiet (and quietly satisfying) thud, bouncing then into a pillar, and went soaring into an open grassy area where it was avoided by anyone it flew by.

"Shu'raqe lenexe!" He held his head. Someone else cursed as well as a man and a woman skid to a stop beside us.

"Are you alright?" the man asked.

"He threw it," the woman said, deciding to take off running. She ran for the ball and then kept running.

"And you missed," the man shouted after her, "which is why you're here and not in the reaxue!"

"Vad'n-teaj, was that a vissure ball?" Riche'e looked at the man in disbelief, like he'd intentionally attacked and was getting ready to throw another.

"It was a trainer, thankfully. Are you alright?"

"Why are you throwing vissure balls around?" Riche'e rubbed his head.

"Eh... I guess because Jemla and I are kuma? I am... I apologize so much." He half chuckled, visibly nervous, and cleared his throat. "It seems it's also my luck that you're both my partners. I'm Micje Lace." Riche'e just gave a nod.

"Mickey?" I asked.

"No, Micje."

"Mick... Mick-ya..." When I said it correctly, he nodded. The look on his face suggested that shouldn't have been so hard to grasp. Which was par for the course.

So, all things considered, it seemed the day got off to the smoothest start possible.

#science fiction #writing #original writing #extraplanetary

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hoxitdragon · 5 years

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Alright you guys we're gonna take a break from the comic for just a bit because I've come up with a fun art challenge based on one of my favorite manga and anime JoJo's bizarre adventure.

Okay. So this challenge centers around stands. In case you're not as familiar with JJBA as I am I'll give a quick definition of what a stand is. It is essentially a manifestation of it's users soul and fighting spirit. They come in all shapes and sizes and can be damn near anything, from a generic punchy humanoid (like Star Platinum) to an entire ocean liner (Strength). Their powers can also be pretty much anything you can imagine from the standard abilities like controlling fire (Magician's Red) to ridiculously overpowered ones like dimension hopping (Dirty deeds done dirt cheap) to utterly useless ones like strait up killing it's user if someone looks at their back and then transferring to the person who looked to continue the cycle (Cheap trick). The majority of stands are also named after songs, bands and albums that the author likes heanse why some of the stand names I listed off look so familiar.

And that is the basis of this challenge. Here's how to play.

Step 1: Create a music playlist of 25 or more songs. (For my part I did a 50 song playlist. Just so long as you have enough to have a good variety of songs)

Step 2: Hit whatever shuffle feature you have on said playlist to pick a random song

Step 3: You now have to design a stand based on the song (you can also do the band or the album it came off of) you landed on as well as come up with powers and abilities for what you've created.

Step 4: Repeat as many times as you feel necessary. (I myself did three because that felt like a good number to me.)

Now I'll tell you about what I came up with so you get a good feel for what to do. The songs I landed on were Gloomy Sunday: by Billie Holiday, Horse Outside: by The Rubberbandits and Chained to the rhythm: by Katy Perry. Let's get into them shall we.

Gloomy Sunday:

Pretty bad luck that I happened to land on this song first eh? Not because this sad boy was hard to come up with a design for or anything but because as those of you well acquainted with urban legends know this song has a reputation for being cursed. It is said that it's sad lyrics about someone who lost their love and is now contemplating suicide to join them have the power to make people commit suicide themselves. I personally don't believe them. I think it's just coincidence.

Either way I decided to use the urban legends as a basis for Gloomy Sunday's powers. It is a medium range stand that can cause sudden and severe depression in whomever the user targets. The depression will worsen and worsen until the target feels they have no other choice but to take they're own lives to escape it.

Design wise I used all cool colors. Black, grey, white and different shades of blue as I felt it would match best with the sad appearance I gave it. The flower pattern in it's hair and the one in it's mouth come from the "Little white flowers can never awaken you" line in the song itself. It's limbs, head and bottom half have pieces missing as a reference to how depression itself feels.(at least this is how mine feels.) It feels like pieces of you are missing and that you'll never ever find them and you'll never ever be whole.

Horse Outside:

Moving on from that little downer. The next song I landed on was this comedic little diddy by the Rubberbandits. It's about a guy trying to impress a girl by bragging that he doesn't need a luxury car because he get's to and fro on horseback and it gets him laid.

As the song is about how a horse is better than any vehicle I actually made a horse that's better than any vehicle. Horse Outside I s a short range transportation type stand. It has the ability to carry it's user across any terrain and I mean ANY. It can trot across sand, tree lines, water, air and even space. It's biggest downside is that it can't protect it's user from the elements of where it's carrying them. So if you wanted to go into space to flip off Kars's frozen ass then you'd have to bring your own spacesuit.

Design wise I just went for a stylized mechanical horse with spindle legs. Nothing too special with the colors either I was mostly thinking of abilities when I came up with this guy.

Chained to the rhythm:

Alright last one. The last song I landed on was Katy Perry's Chained to the rhythm. Normally I think Katy Perry's song range from meh to ughhhhhh, but I actually enjoyed this one a lot. It's about how the entertainment industry keeps us complacent so that we won't bother changing anything for the better and it may or may not be about the Illuminati.

Chained to the rhythm is a long range stand that plays a droning hypnotic melody on it's pipe. Those that fall in range of the music become lethargic, complacent and more vulnerable to suggestion.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do design wise. The very first thing that popped into my head was Pied Piper. I gave it a sack and shackle mask to cover it's face and to incorporate the chain in the song into the design also put a bunch of Illuminati imagery on the sack mask. For it's body I used a repeating checkers pattern to emphasize the theme of repetition present in the original song.

Alright so you guys know what to do now and if your not quite sure you can always ask me to clarify. Participation is 100% optional but I'd really like to see what you guys come up with. Hope you have as much fun as I did.

As always hope you enjoy and tell me what you think.

Gloomy Sunday owned by Billie Holiday Horse Outside owned by The Rubberbandits Chained to the rhythm owned by Katy Perry JoJo's bizarre adventure owned by Hirohiko Araki

#jjba #fan stand #art challenge

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