#im not super satisfied with this

[the-cookie-of-doom]

“Rise and shine, P’Kim!” 

Kim reluctantly opened his eyes to a kind face smiling down at him, looking much too bright and chipper for the early hour. 

“It is six o’clock in the morning. I’ve just finished breakfast—fried eggs and rice, with coffee. Cream, no sugar, and cinnamon syrup. You have a radio appearance in two hours, at eight o’clock, which leaves approximately forty-five minutes for you to get ready.”

“Thank you, Chay,” Kim groaned, rolling over and tugging the blanket over his head. The android had pulled open the curtains, and it was late enough into spring that the sunlight streamed in unmercifully. “Now go away.” 

“Yes, P’Kim,” came the responding chirp, followed by Chay’s gentle footsteps as he vacated the room. 

After another ten minutes the android returned, brandishing a cup of coffee, refusing to leave until Kim sat up in bed and accepted it. He sullenly sipped it, sighing at the taste. If there was one benefit to having Chay around—there were many, but Kim wasn’t feeling very charitable just yet—it was his consistency. He made Kim’s coffee perfect every single time. 

Chay stood beside the bed, his hands clasped in front of himself, watching Kim in that eerie way of his. Kim still wasn’t used to it yet. It unnerved him, Chay’s constant attention, although it shouldn’t; Kim was used to far worse in his line of work. At least Chay never leered. His expression was always soft and friendly, warm no matter what, regardless of Kim’s own attitude. 

Maybe that was it. Chay never reacted to him. Not even when Kim tried to shake that unflappable kindness with pointless commands or snappy comments. 

“You have thirty minutes before you have to leave, P’Kim.” 

He sighed. 

“You know, before you, I could sleep in a lot more.” Especially when it came to radio shows, where Kim didn’t have to worry about a stylist or makeup. He could stay in bed until the very last minute, throw on a simple outfit, and arrive with minutes to spare. He rarely took the time for breakfast, helping himself to whatever snacks were provided by whatever event he was attending if he got hungry. 

Chay only smiled. 

“You would sleep more if you went to bed earlier, P’Kim,” Chay sweetly responded. Kim glared up at the android from behind his hair, falling soft and unstyled across his eyes. “Breakfast is getting cold.”

“I’m coming.” 

Forced out of the comfort of his bed, Kim followed Chay into the kitchen, where the android finished cleaning up the mess from breakfast while Kim ate said breakfast. He laughed a little bit at the smiley face drizzled onto his egg. 

“Is it to your satisfaction?” 

“Yes,” Kim said, making Chay beam at him. Another odd little quirk of his; Chay was always so expressive. Every little thing seemed to fill him with pleasure. He would smile and laugh and wiggle, would bounce in place when he was excited, or flutter his hands through the air while he talked. More animated than Kim in many ways. Kim wondered if it was normal. More than once, he’d been tempted to find someone to ask, but one thing always stopped him: he didn’t want anyone else to know. 

Androids were not… uncommon. They were exclusive, though. Personal ownership was difficult to obtain; Kim had gone through great lengths to acquire Chay from a private collector, even more so to conceal his identity while he did. 

Companion androids like Chay were by far the most commonly available to the average consumer. While they were expensive to purchase, they were much cheaper to rent from any number of… establishments throughout the city. 

Androids were hardy, relatively cheap to maintain—regular living expenses could be avoided—and easy to repair, making them an excellent investment for prostitution. They didn’t have to be paid, either, meaning the entirety of the profits went to the brothel owners. Of course, licensing fees were a consideration. Brothels could be fined if the conditions weren’t proven safe for clients. There have been plenty of news stories about gruesome injuries from malfunctioning androids. 

The movement towards android sex work was a complex one. Some people advocated it; who cared if a client wanted to rough up one of them? They weren’t real people, they couldn’t be hurt. They couldn’t carry disease, either, and with HIV rates on the rise, that had been one of the driving arguments behind legalizing android-based brothels. No listened to the few sex workers brave enough to speak out about losing their livelihoods to the machines, and the authorities rarely looked too closely during their inspections. Certainly not close enough to determine machine from human in every single case. 

Androids filled other roles, as well. They started with the police force, little more than sentient shields. Then some government officials began buying them up, adding them to their bodyguard roster. Then celebrities joined in as well, when having an android at their heel became the fashionable taboo. Fifty years later, there were over a dozen major manufacturers across Asia alone, and dozens more operating out of shady warehouses, pumping out subpar products—often salvaged and repurposed from the name brands—at a steep markup. 

Kim didn’t know where Chay came from. Honestly, he didn’t really care, not enough to chase down his origins. He certainly hadn’t come with any official registration papers. In fact his legal status was in a gray area at best; one of the many reasons Kim kept Chay safely hidden away in his condo, and didn’t let anyone know of his existence. 

Even still, regardless of his unknown origins, there was no doubt as to his purpose. Kim watched Chay move through the kitchen, cleaning and putting away the dishes, wiping down the counters. A perfect companion, programmed to serve Kim’s every whim. His previous owner, a salacious high-end collector with an entire room full of bodies, displayed in glass cases when they weren’t in use—Chay being one of them—spared no detail in explaining the full range of Chay’s capabilities. 

Kim hadn’t fucked Chay. He had no intention to, either, he wasn’t—he didn’t want Chay for that. He wasn’t one of those kinds of perverts that couldn’t connect with another human, leaving companion androids—sex bots—as their only option. He wasn’t some kind of degenerate with desires that no sane human could safely or willingly fulfill. He just…

He was just lonely. 

Honestly, it would probably be less humiliating if he did want Chay for the sex, and not because he was so dysfunctional, he was incapable of letting another person close to him. But that was the truth. That he was too mistrustful—too broken—for any kind of intimacy, yet he still craved it, desired to be close to someone, anyone, until he was driven to a blackmarket collector offering the finest piece of his collection, in exchange for a truly exorbitant price. 

Kim hadn’t even tried to negotiate. He’d taken one look at Chay’s sweet face, his round cheeks, the soft curls falling over his closed eyes as he lay dormant, and knew he would do anything to have him. Two weeks later Kim hadn’t regretted the decision once.

“P’Kim, it’s almost time for you to leave. You have ten minutes before you’re late.”

Well, most of the time Kim didn’t regret it, anyway. Sometimes Chay could be even more annoying than his manager. 

“I’m going.”

“Don’t forget about your photoshoot after! Or your meeting after that.”

Fuck. He had forgotten. 

“Which meeting?” 

“Contract negotiations with Vogue Thailand,” Chay dutifully responded, his voice following Kim into his bedroom, where he hastily dressed. 

#cookie writes #kimchay #im not super satisfied with this #im brain fried #but here #android au lol #kim is a sadboy #chay is a ball of sunshine #and i promise nothing angsty happens trust me i only write happy things and no angst ever <3

[lallelol]

✦ Cosmic Dread ✦

Requested by @livewire11211 for our campaign @tmnt4p !!! Thank you again 💜

Funky green channel, red-blue channel, and lines

#rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rise of the tmnt #tmnt #rottmnt leo #rise of tmnt #save rottmnt #digital art #unpause rottmnt #tmnt leonardo #tmnt karai #karai hamato #rottmnt karai #krang prime #tmnt shredder #my art #im so tired #but also super satisfied #this took a week #SoundCloud

[amihyperfixatingagain]

I painted this a long while ago when the party first split cause I knew I wouldn’t have to time paint anything when the Hells finally reunited cause of my current job. I obviously thought it’d probably be Imogen in a really dark place and Laudna being full of joy etc, when they reunited, but based on last week's episode, it’s definitely going to be the opposite. Makes me want to redo this now and switch them around. Someday when I have time, maybe.

Here have some close-ups too.

Also it’s based on this still from “Portrait of a Lady on Fire”

#imodna #imogen temult #laudna #critical role fanart #cr fanart #critical role art #critical role #bells hells #critical role campaign 3 #campaign 3 #cr3 #i miss them a lot ok and im very excited and super nervous for when they see each other again #also its got my twitter handle on there though idk if I'll post this one to twitter or not but dont worry about it #I struggled so hard with the background too #like I couldn’t decide what to do at all and eventually settled on this bokeh look but I’m still not satisfied #also i finished this wayyyy before imogen got new clothes soooo #and I tried to leave some of the sketching lines in there too to add more texture and have more fun with it

[priscirat]

it would be helpful to have a sign showing me the right way. would it show me the right way ?

#project sekai #hinomori shizuku #hinomori shiho #ngl im not super satisfied with it but its a thought that as been around since shizuku colofes that i needed to put out #shizuku being lost in the garden of her fragment of sekai and wishing to have a sign of where to go #whereas shiho had Too many signs of Where she should go. oh fellas we’re really in it #to me it perfectly shows how that gap of shiho having a dream and passion from earlier on that drove her #whereas shizuku was thrown into hers and had to find her way into it #and how both their drive of what the Right way is…. like its whatever #but yeah maybe !! one day ill come back on it with a compo that im satisfied with

[introspectivememories]

tim and bernard who break up and it's nothing big, no one cheated or anything. it's just their lifestyles didn't work out well together. tim cannot give up vigilantism currently and bear cannot handle the level of danger tim puts himself in. and on the other hand, tim cannot handle the fact that bear chooses to run into danger as an emt bc he already worries about everything but now he has to worry if he'll find his boyfriend convulsing from fear gas in a random alley but also bear who felt the life drain out of darla cannot stand the thought of not helping people and runs headfirst into dangerous situation after dangerous situation hoping that every person he saves can somehow make up for the fact that he could not save darla.

(he very pointedly does not think about the fact that there was nothing he could do because if he thinks about that, he'll spiral until they have to lock him in arkham too)

and so they break up but they were tim & bernard in high school and when they started dating they balanced out the worst of each other and they became tim&bernard. and everyone who knows them, knows that they're better together but they cant be together, they refuse actually because they cannot lose another person to the violence of gotham and by the time they figure out that they cant work together as long as the other is an emt or vigilante, it's too late for both them. they've already left too many pieces of themselves in each other.

tim still knows what bear means when he says "tim" in that exasperated voice. tim still goes boneless when he hears bear say "baby" in that firm tone. bear can still read tim like a book. he still knows the right way to massage tim's neck so that tim can go to sleep. everyone at the first responders gala knows not to bother ceo drake-wayne and senior emt dowd when they're talking.

(and if they're standing a little too close to each other than what is normal, who are they to judge? everyone knows that dowd and drake-wayne have history)

and if everyone on the night shift has caught red robin with his head tucked into the crook of emt dowd's neck as emt dowd runs a soothing hand up and down the vigilante's back, well then, they just quietly back away.

(after all, dowd's one of like, five, emts that can get the bats to receive medical treatment so if turning a blind eye to whatever the fuck they have going on is what allows them to give back to their heroes, then the night shift will do it every time)

and of course, tim and bear are practical people. they loved (love) each other sure, but when your lives are fundamentally incompatible, well, you cant get too stuck on the what-ifs, that's for sure. and so they do find love with other people and yeah, maybe it's not what they expected love to be when they first fell in love with each other. it's not the bubbly, stomach-swoopy, cant stop grinning, feeling that permeated tim&bernard's early days or the i Know you/you Know me that was their middle or the quiet despair that was their end but it is contentment. and in a life with as many losses as theirs, contentment is something they hold dearly

and they're happy! truly! but sometimes, at galas when they're making each other snort champagne out their noses or in darkened alleyways when their clothes are both stained with blood or at rallies for stricter gun regulations in gotham where they both sit too close to each other, fingers enclosed around each other in a death grip, when the presenters inevitably bring up grieves

(worst school shooting in gotham in decades, there's blood on their hands and blood in their mouths and darla is dead in between both of them and there is a chasm so wide that they are screaming to get their voices across and she will always be dead and maybe this had always been the problem that she is dead and there is no coming back from that and that there is blood on their hands and blood in their mouth and blood on their han-)

but sometimes, most especially on opposite sides of the street, as life pulls them in different directions, just sometimes, they see each other and just for a second, nothing too long, the flap of a hummingbird's wings, the time it takes to blink, an electron's orbital, they look at each other and for the briefest moment, blue on brown, a barely noticeable stutter in their steps, the space between heartbeats, because this is all they will give themselves because they do not dwell on what-ifs or what-could-have-beens, or what-should-have-beens, or delusions of a softer world, their eyes meet and they think to themselves, god, in another life, i would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with him.

#what the fuck is this #the theme was wistfulness. hopefully that came across right. and like i wanted this to be all 1 text block so you feel how it all collapses #into that 1 thought they have at they end but fuckass tumblr has a 4096??? text limit for a single paragraph???? so here's multiple paragra #anyway here is my middle of the road sad timbern hc. do i think this will happen? no? is this still a fun world to play in? yeah absolutely #also super huge fan of darla haunting the narrative. darla as this chasm they cannot cross. darla as smth they shelter each other from #but also smth like a 2 way blade. it cuts them both. it will never stop cutting them. smth smth the wound will always bleed #also i cannot stress how important it is that they are happy with other people!!! they are both satisfied with other people. it's just that #they have a very specific history and they are the only two people who really know and understand that history #and also it's not that theyre unhappy with their partners but just that smtimes they look at each other and... wonder. in a softer world #maybe i could've been a chef and you could've still been a superhero and we could've still worked out. maybe we would've gotten a boat #together and maybe we could've come home to each other. maybe i could've trusted you to come home to me. maybe you could've #understood my need to help people. maybe we could've held our love as something precious. #maybe in a softer world our love wasn't something that hurt us both. #i need to lay down. im going crazy #as always i do love reading yalls thoughts in the reblogs and replies!!! #bernard dowd #dc #tim drake #timbern #timber

[bramblesnbones]

IT’S VI’S BIRTHDAY

#arcane #arcane fanart #violyn #caitvi #piltover's finest #vi arcane #caitlyn kiramman #i didn't even know until literally like 10 minutes ago and i immediately stopped everything i was doing to sketch this out #its super rough and i don't have the time to fix everything but i needed to post SOMETHING #just sketching #im also trying to push myself to post things that i'm not 100% satisfied with so this is the start of that i guess lol

[heliianth]

new super sonic form from the dlc?

yeah i am never drawing this shit again

#this feels so cluttered i minimized it like 15 times to see if its even like legible from far away but yk.. whatever. whatever #i probably would’ve had more satisfying success with something less extra but #im still hyped from the cinematic ok . ? #sonic frontiers #super sonic #sonic frontiers spoilers #sth #sonic the hedgehog #scary maintags :( 1 AM COURAGE PRAYGE #tw eyestrain #heliiart

[theultimateultimateweapon]

Reveal the path and grant me passage

#delphox #pokemon #pokemon art #fire starter pokemon #fennekin #unown #pokemon xy #kalos starters #psychic pokemon #tuuwdles #ive been working on this for soooo long it's been taking me forever #theres a couple parts im still not super satisfied with but i really need to move on #its done enough just in time for halloween!

[ghoulsaint]

#charmes #hades game #professional associates #western au #YES ITS *THAT* SCENE BC I LOVE IT???? anyway. #im gonna get the hang of drawing cowboys or die trying is2fg. #if my ONLY goal accomplished for 2023 is to roll into 2024 being able to draw cowfolk comfortably then i accept this #no fr this took like a week to nail down nd im still not super satisfied but if i keep working on this ima rip my hair out lmao #the inherent eroticism of peccadillo #sketch

[littleeyesofpallas]

Bleach’s Issue with Queer characters (3/3)

So then there’s Giselle (and to a less canon extent Shutara) who I think Kubo erroneously categorizes as similar to both eachother and to the above gay men stereotypes.  And I think understanding Kubo’s approach to Giselle hinges on what he set up (but didn’t follow through on) with Shutara.

I’ve mentioned before, but I’m pretty certain think Shutara Senjumaru is meant to be a kabuki onnagata*.  Not in-world, mind you; I don’t think she is somehow employed as an actor in a literal kabuki theater. (i would hope that was obvious, but one can never be too sure...)  Just like Tier Harribel isn’t literally a light skinned, dark haired person doing gyaru/ganguro fashion, her presumably naturally tan skin and blonde hair is based on the general aesthetic.  Shutara likewise is channeling distinct look and feel that draws from a mix of oiran, geisha, and kabuki aesthetics. (granted all three are closely related in influencing one another’s aesthetics in the first place)

But while the look and even the demeanor tend to play all three ways, I think the particular fixation on clothes, costuming, and the somewhat adjacent theme of “disguise” that Kubo has shown to put emphasis on in this kinds of situations, as well as the fact that he gave her a distinctly masculine name, Senjuumaru, point to her being some form of queer, albeit something Kubo seems to pretty clearly lack the understanding to better articulate himself.  Is she a trans woman?  Gender fluid?  A male identifying transvestite?  There’s not enough real material for us to draw that particular line, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to conclude that she’s not a cis woman.

*Kabuki is traditionally an all-male theater form, and “onnagata” refers to actors who specialize in playing women roles.  Generally all actors train in the delineated masculine and feminine styles, but an actor’s career sticks to just one or the other...

...There is a whole big thing about how cultural institutions like kabuki and takarazuka theaters’ creation of socially acceptable and even celebrated, public and professional genderqueer spaces creates a myriad of gender dynamics that just don’t exist in the West, and it’s something that has made the attempt to adopt a globalized understanding of queer identity a little trickier in Japan:

In the West the gender binary was rigidly enforced such that to explore alternatives was basically uncharted territory (that’s an oversimplification, but you know what I mean; There’s a lack of contiguity with those who came before) but with japan there were already nonbinary spaces in place, and the lines around those don’t neatly line up with the ethnocentric western ideas some people try to pigeonhole those into.  In general, it gets dangerously close to just flat up colonizer rhetoric.

(forgive the outdated reference image, but honestly I don’t know what even counts as a recognizable example of a “““trap”” character these days.  And I use that term with GREAT reluctance, but I want to differentiate the exploitative cliche usage of a trans caricature from any actual representational trans character.)

Anyway...  That all just leaves Giselle.  And let’s be real, there’s no excuse for this one.  Maybe that seems like a weird anticlimactic place to take this series of posts... like, after all this, maybe it feels like I should’ve had some equally obtuse logic to explain this one away as a matter of escalation or as a Rule of Threes.  But no, not really.  I just think it’s a little unreasonable to treat the massive screwup that was Giselle’s portrayal as part of some sort of bigger ongoing trend, when it’s really more of an unrelated outlier in a bigger umbrella subject.

She is in fact a bad case of the long standing anime/manga fetishization of transwomen as a concept, as a spectacle to be gawked at and made the butt of jokes or to be included specifically as an anomaly.  And in Giselle’s case her specific depiction as a depraved, physically/sexually abusive villain on top of that is an explicitly toxic combination.

In spite of that, I still don’t think Kubo actually meant for it to reflect poorly (not that that matters or diminishes its harmfulness) I think he genuinely just has no real grasp of what that kind of characterization means.  I say that largely because of the way he treats a lot of her role in the plot.  Not that she’s integral to moving it forward, but that she occupies space and survives in the plot as long as she does, even when she could've been conveniently (and frankly more neatly) written out;

He seems to like drawing her and gives her a range of expressions and gestures (something he doesn't afford all his characters, even some of his major ones)

He likes to expand on her powers and gimmicks beyond what was necessary if he'd been aiming for minimum effort

He even paired her off against his personal favorite character, Mayuri.

Point being, Kubo seems to personally like Giselle as a character, but he took a horrible insensitive and ignorant path in writing her character.

But an undeniable fact is, she’s not alone as this kind of villain, she’s just the only one that happens to be trans.*  Mayuri himself, Aaroniero, Szayelaporro, Zomarri (just a little bit), Tousen (at the very end), Tsukishima, As Nodt, Gremmy (a little), and Askin all to some degree dip into this shtick Kubo does where his villains aren’t just sadistic but ecstatically so, to the point of intoxicated, gleeful derangement.  Yet in spite of that, those characters are all usually meant to be “cool,” not detestable.

Remember, Mayuri was initially written as, hands down, the most despicable characters in Bleach —he was abusive and sadistic, misogynistic, actually physically grotesque, predatory, dishonorable sneaky & underhanded, complicit in a genocide, just in general a clearly communicated mad scientist villain, and he was all of this in direct and deliberate contrast to Uryuu’s chivalrous personality type(already established in his defending Orihime from Jiroubou) as well as Nemu’s noble stoic subservient victimhood— and yet he’s also Kubo’s favorite character in the series.  Kubo doesn’t actually write Giselle any particularly worse than the others, BUT he also doesn’t disassociate her being trans from her being villainous, and again, even incidentally, that manages to perpetuate a harmful narrative in the overall.

*(Actually, I’ve kinda touched on it before but I sort of suspect Mayuri could be trans, in which case; OOPS, that makes two, and that doesn’t make it better....)

[1][2][3]

#bleach #bleach meta #KUBO TITE #senjumaru shutara #giselle gewelle #geez this thing is so old that bridget wasn't even reintroduced to guilty gear yet #in fact strIVe wasn't even a thing on the horizon this far back #also weird that preupdate drafts still adhere to outdated formatting #because typing these tags now and editing these drafts #is working on weird janky tumblr formats that i kind of forgot existed #anyway like i already said in the tags of part 2 #im kind of super not satisfied with the wording on a lot of this #feels muddled #and i think i sort of lost track of the root of things #where someone was calling kubo ''obviously'' transphobic #and i think that's not entirely accurate #even if the bottom line almost doesnt make any difference #but there's a difference between ignorance and insensitive #and just outright malice #but the former is very much fixable and even reclaimable #the latter is absolutely not #again tho i get why to a lot of people that doesn't really make a difference #even this far out i dunno how i thought i was gonna end this #or how id do it any differently if i tried now

[cdmodule]

Winner letting their boyfriend fulfill his wildest dreams for Halloween (being Hertbert West)

Now Winner got dragged into it. Godspeed

#lan art #syringe #winner tpot #clock tpot #winnerclock #i actually had to rush this for many reasons so im not super satisfied but also #lost a lotta progress so i had to redo a lot of things. GOD

[virsancte]

#simblr #valentine gen 4 #not a super captivating first post for the tag is it #oh well #im not satisfied with their adult makeovers sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo #just like i'm not satisfied with my swap to reshade but i'll get used to it eventually. clinging to a stagnated program feels pointless atp

[antiquetrait]

grandma's house 11:01 am

#ts4 #ts4 screenshots #ts4 build screenshots #ts4 build #sims #sims 4 #sims 4 screenshots #sims 4 build screenshots #more shots of grandmas house!!! #i hope i made it look friendly and cozy #wanted it to scream grandma #not sure how satisfied i am with it yet #super excited to play in it though :) #and start posting the actual sims that live in it #although that will probably be in awhile while because #i still have to furnish the main part of the house #anyway im rambling

[coweyedd]

all my lore olympus redesigns in one place! i tried to keep them mostly within the bounds of their canon appearances with minor edits. sans minthe who i just made green (but i imagine she turns red and muddy when she's mad) and apollo who's turned into a different guy entirely

#lore olympus redesign #my art #im not super satisfied with my redesigns for demeter hera and hestia but i can try again some other time #i have... ideas for a rewrite i might make my own tag for it but idk

[nvskyprospekt]

winslow more like.. loseslow….. his ass is Not winning

#phantom of the paradise #yippeee #meme redraw + doodle #a doodle that im not super proud of/satisfied with BUT its ok im trying to work on draw heads at that angle #practice makes perfect 👍 #[brings mic to face and points out at the crowd] this one’s for you vidia #CEO of introducing me to quirky rock media that makes you go insane

[icys-junkyard]

Ingo was gonna listen to the adults and only get Pokéballs once they were a bit older, but... nah. Cheering Emmet up is far more important,

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6

#subway boss ingo #subway boss emmet #pokemon emmet #pokemon ingo #submas #me?? planning colors beforehand so they dont blend in/clash with each other???? #absolutely not #im winging it and im gonna KEEP winging it #panel 7 emmet is very scrungly and i love him for it #waking up the next day and not super satisfied with this but i gave myself a hand cramp while making it so yknow what. im not changing it. #behold my 2am blood sweat and tears #or really just my 2am dry eye and muscle spasms #partners bond au #partners bond: meeting litwick #icys drawings and doodles