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starr-fall-knight-rise · 3 years

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HASO, “Perfect Timing.”

Alright everyone. I am beginning to realize that maybe expecting myself to write a story every week day with a job and trying to get into grad school and writing a second novel might be a bit..... excessive?

So I am going to try for three times a week. I hope you all stick around :)

And I hope you enjoy today’s story as well.

Adam stood with his hands behind his back, feet spread to shoulder width. He would never have noticed by himself, but the men and women around him stood a little straighter and stepped a little faster under his watchful eye. Once upon a time they might have only hastened their work if he directly asked them too, but just his mere presence these days could send his crew scurrying to do their work. He hadn’t really changed anything about the way he commanded his men. He was firm when he needed to be but allowed for brevity when it would suit the situation.

However, a few years and some tough lessons was slowly shaping him into the kind of man who could command thousands, sharp posture, calm confidence, and a keen eye.

But then again anyone who could appear professional while wearing high top heelies was a man to be reckoned with.

Sunny walked up next to him her pearlescent white armor glowing under the light as she leaned on the shade of her matching spear. Her head was held high like his. Where once she had been locked up, and defensive, she now stood with the calm confidence of someone who understood what control meant.

Together they had come a long way.

She tilted her head, “You really think he’s going to let you race this…. It’s a million dollar piece of military hardware, they don’t stand a chance.”

Adam didn’t move, hands still clasped behind his back as he stared up at the F-90 Darkfire he was preparing for the race, “I wouldn’t be so sure…. I’ll be lucky to come in last place.”

Sunny frowned confused, “I saw those shuttles, they were junk shows.”

He lifted his head as the F-90 was rolled across the deck.

“This is a race, it isn’t combat. She was built for dogfights which means she is going to be heavier than the others. Wing tip to wing tip she is also going to be a little longer than the other shuttles and jets making maneuvering around obstacles more difficult. Sure she likely has a more powerful engine, but that can be as much of a detriment as it is a leg up.” He gestured in the vague direction of the race course, “We are going to be racing through the planet’s smaller rocky ring. It has an unusual amount of larger, thick chunks which we are going to have to manuver around: the kind of conditions you might see in science fiction movies when they talk about an asteroid field. Asteroid fields are generally too far apart to cause any real issue, but here the rocks are dense, and my flying is going to have to be on pont, having a more powerful engine is going to make her more touchy, and my fitness on the controls is going to have to be absolute.”

Sunny tilted her head listening as he continued. She liked it when this side of him came out. There was something about the analytical, logical side of Adam she found….. Very appealing.

He walked forward to examine the jet himself, “Furthermore, I don’t know if you noticed, but there were a few jets there that weren’t exactly junk shows. A few of them were pretty top of the line, and most of them were built for racing. Lighter, sleeker, faster, and with more engine control than mine.

A lot of my maneuverability is lost out of the atmosphere. This isn’t about how well you can manipulate wind currents, this is going to be all about the very minute rotation of the rear and and wing engines. Their wings are smaller and closer in meaning they are going to rotate more easily than me.

She walked up with him and put a hand on his shoulder, “You forgot to fact in one thing.”

He frowned and looked up, “Oh, what did I miss.”

She smiled slightly, “The skill of the pilot, and I know for a fact that we have the best pilot this side of Andromeda. You can have the best plane in the world, but if you have a shit pilot, then a good pilot in a flying trash can has a chance of winning.”

He Smiled, “Thanks, I needed that.”

He stepped back, “Still it doesn't pay to be too cocky. I have a feeling these people have raced this before, they are going to know what they are dealing with, and I am going tinto this completely blind. This is a test to see if my instincts are better than their practice…. Who knows it could be a very close run thing.”

He moved forward to do an extra check on the outside of the ship despite having a whole team of people to do it for him. Adam had learned to delegate a lot of his responsibilities onto others to avoid burnout, but this was one thing he never left to other people. He came back after a thorough check of the ship and stopped next to her.

His head was tilted to one side as he looked at the machine sitting before him.

“It is missing something.”

Sunny turned her head to look at him, “What?”

He smiled, “Do we have anyone here who has experience with graffiti?”

***

Donavan Red met him when he entered the hanger, wearing his flight suit and holding his helmet under one arm. He had gone for some of his more simple equipment. Didn’t want to give the guy an excuse to blame his skill on technology.

Red looked him over.

“Nice suit, princess.”

Adam just smiled thinly looking around at the other pilots, “I see I might be under-dressed.”

To be far though, he wasn’t exactly sure what he would have described the dress code, if he had to put it on an invitation.

The most apt description seemed to have been.

Dress for Pissing contest.

The men and women wore their uniforms in the same way NASCAR drivers might, covered in logos and patterns. Some of them were clearly custom ordered with personal designs on the backs or the helmets, some sporting flames, others cartoon animals, one guy was just covered in black and white skulls.

The affect up close was ok, but from a distance he just looked like an over excited dalmatian, or maybe some kind of flamboyant cow.

A few of them went for color themes, neon red on black. Neon green on blue.

Most of them tried to coordinate with the matching colors on their ship, each trying to outdo the next.

Red smirked.

The docking bay light began to blink red as the airlock was engaged, and the all turned to watch as the doors opened, and Adam’s jet rolled into the docking bay. She was simultaneously both very impressive and very not impressive. She was an instrument of war, and he rockets lined up on either side of her wings said as much. Adam had once considered her rather sleek in comparison to other jets of the day, but looking at her now in comparison with the racing planes and he couldn’t help but compare her to a pitbull or a bulldog next to greyhounds or whippets.

She rolled up slowly and Red raised an eyebrow.

“A whose guy huh?”

Adam smirked, “I don’t know, I kind of like it.”

They both looked up as the F-90 stopped in place, and along her side in delicate blue cursive script was the name Cinderella. The man who had done the graffiti had even taken the time to add some stylized pink roses to the front and end of the word giving it a finished look.

Donavan seemed both amused and annoyed at the same time.

The men and women around him turned to look over ridicule dying on their lips as they saw the smirk on his face.

It was made pretty clear.

He was going to beat them, and when he beat them, he was going to have a princess logo on the side of his jet, never mind all of their cool paint jobs.

Donavan frowned but then turned to everyone, “Alright load up!.” Adam did as ordered, switching seats with the young pilot in the cockpit and strapping himself in. he adjusted his controls, did a quick once over, and then pulled some power from his engine. There was going to be an overwhelming desire to go fast, but he knew that speed wasn’t going to win him this race.

The jets began lining up next to each other, and to his surprise, one of the sleek racing models sidled up next to him, and when he looked over, he saw Donovan Red cambering into the cockpit.

That didn’t exactly bode well, but what was there to do about it.

He felt cool oxygen spilling onto his mouth and nose as the orange tinted visor dropped down over his eyes. He opted not to use the heads up display preferring to see everything around him as he was flying.

They were all in a line now, and up ahead a large projection appeared on the docking bay doors.

Red lights began to blink as the docking bay was cleared of everyone except for the jets.

The image of a woman appeared on the screen before them.

It was one of the women he had seen before in her cut off jean shorts and tight tank top.

“Ladies and gentlemen start - your - ENGINES!”

All around him the room was filled with a roar as the group of people pushed their engines to an idle.

He could feel the jet underneath him as it thrummed and whined vibrating into his gloves and down into his skin.

His very bones could feel the trembling.

“The course is simple, one lap around the rocky interior ring of the planet. Rules are only this, no leaving the ring, no weapons, and no teams, every man for himself. If the race moderators see any of this, you will be thrown from the race.”

She smiled and leaned back to reveal two green flags in either hand.

She began to wave them.

“On your mark!”

He took a deep calming breath forcing his hand to relax.

“Get set.”

He felt his heart beating hard against his ribcage, his stomach crawled up into his throat, and he felt the sudden and overwhelming need to pee.

“GO!”

THe airlock doors shot open faster than they should have been able, a clear sign someone had bypassed safety protocols. Caught off guard by this, Adam shot out of the gate slower than he would have liked. Already the racing jets streaked ahead, their quicker sleeker designs looking right at home against the blackness of space.

He had to remind himself that in space, without wind resistance, sleek didn’t mean shit.

If he was good enough he could have piloted a brick to win.

He gave more joice to the engine and shot forward. He cut under one of his other opponents and then cythed up next to a second.

He was there for only a moment when he saw something coming in from his right.

Instincts had him move fast, and he turned horizontal shooting upwards just as another jet tried to push him out. He was flying over the two of them now, and gave another burst shooting forward and past them.

This open stretch was the only time he was going to be able to use the power of his engine to his advantage, so he gave her a little more juice and shot forward catching up quickly with the racing models at the front. Two of them cut sideways attempting to block his path. He cursed, forced to fire his engines backwards so as not to go crashing into them.

The ring was approaching quickly now, and he could see very clearly that they had not been kidding. The belt was dense, less mate out of fine sand, and instead made up of billions of rocks some the size of him, others the size of cars, and even some the size of large houses. It was the strangest sort of formation he had ever seen around a planet, and he wondered idly how they stayed in orbit.

The two jets ahead of him cut right and then left as a rock came barreling towards him.

He shouted and rolled to the side barely avoiding a head on collision, his instincts saving him where his active brain could not.

He snarled.

“Pull it together.”

There was no time to be thinking, there was only time for flying.

WIth a practiced hand he toggled a switch on the side of his thumb, and his helmet was suddenly filled with the sound of music and drums. His brain focused inward and stopped thinking. He shot over and then under rolling between rocks just inches away on either side. Off to his right the planet below was glowing with the light of it’s star, a lightning blue halo around it where the atmosphere glowed.

He cut the left dove down and then rolled up.

He could see the other jets ahead of him cutting in and out through the rocks. His breathing grew even, his body relaxed, his brain heard nothing but the beat of the music and saw nothing but the obstacles ahead of him.

One of the jets pulled up next to him from behind recklessly rolling around one of the rocks. They were racing wing tip to wing tip now.

They cut right and left under and over he rolled left they rolled right. They were shaky just hanging on, but his flying was smooth.

Up ahead one of the other jets lit up with glowing orange as a set of flares broke from it’s back end shatting against the debris behind it. Rocks were thrown off their normal course and went smashing into each other turning the rock field ahead of them into a meat grinder. Adam shot forward and dived downward while rolling tight, behind him the racer was unable to replicate the move and a piece of rock caught their wing sending them spinning off to the side and out of the ring.

Adam dodged a piece of debris coming in from his left, flipped upside down and shot diving upward and then righting himself just under the jet up front.

He could see the leader now, and recognized it as Red himself .

The jet above him attempted to drop down and knock him out of position, but he gave a burst to the engine and shot forward.

The jet behind him punched downward and nearly collided into a rock before pulling back into the palace.

Adam took their place in second.

Red could see him coming.

Another set of flares was released.

He checked his forward momentum and rolled three or four times to his right. G forces tugged at his consciousness forcing blackness to the edge of his vision. He tightened the muscles of his chest and stomach forcing blood back up into his head as he breathed out in short controlled bursts.

A rock flew overhead, he cut low, bumped up and then executed a rolling turn over a massive rock pulling in behind red and just up to the right to avoid another burst of flares.

The two of them were fighting for the front now.

And red was good, he knew how to handle a jet, but so did Adam.

They roared past a field of rocks splitting apart as a massive chunk came between them. Adam roared forward, and panicked for a single moment as he saw an impenetrable wall of rock appear just before him. Then a crack appeared. He fired the forward engine and cut horizontal passing through an opening that left him only feet to spare. Rock rose up to meet him, and he rotated his engine up dropping vertically before cutting sideways and passing under a rock. Teeth gritted, he punched upward passing through a gap just as it closed behind him.

A yell of exertain escaped his lips as he pulled straight up cutting up the side of a massive mansion-sized rock before diving right back down into the thick of it.

Red was gone, he didn’t see him anymore.

Was he up front?

And then the sleek black jet dropped down from above cutting him off.

He cursed and swerved low past another rock forced to cut diagonal back into line.

He pulled up wing to wing with the men again.

They dove, they pulled up and they took a wide turn ac coordinated together as a military formation never more than four feet apart.

They were going faster than they probably should have reacted. second by second he rolled left Red went right. They both met in a dive rolling past each other, wings almost touching before cutting upwards mirroring each other in opposite directions. The sound of the music melded with the path of his flight.

They were racing side by side just as one of the other jets roared over them careening out of control in a desperate attempt t o reach front. They watched him dive pull up cut left, and then a rock rolled right into their path. The two of them barely had time to react as the rock hit their right wing and then sent them slamming into the next boulder. There was an eruption and a brief ball of fire as oxygen was consumed from inside the cockpit. Debris blossomed up around them in a miniature explosion.

Adam greeted his teeth, eyes wide .

What was once a race suddenly turned into a battlezone. He and Red dove together rolling around the debris desperately trying to avoid getting cut in two. At these speeds, one hit would be the death of them. His heart raced in his chest as he pulled forward cutting in the triangle made by three boulders side by side. Red mirrored him below.

A chunk of metal shot towards him, and he toggled his right wing burst just in time, lowering his left side just in time for the chunk to go flying past him. He pulled up with a gasp as a massive chunk of rock cut up before him. Red shot below and he rolled over the top coming into second place.

Up ahead a mining barge ascended through the line of rocks.

Adam roared with exertion as he pulled up and leveled out shooting right under the attached arm of the barge. Red lights erupted over it’s hull in a proximity warning as he went just inches overhead.

The barge driver, clearly spooked twisted to the side and the arm of the barge rolled with it, catching a boulder and sending it flying towards the grouping next to it, there was a sudden explosion of rock and again he was forced to roll to the side. Up down, over and under, cything between lines of rock.

He was almost hit once, then twice.

He toggled the forward engines, slowing himself down and then shooting straight up before continuing forward.

The rocks around him were rolling unpredictably colliding and then exploding into smaller pieces. There was no way he was making it through that alive.

He was rolling diving spinning twisting, and then, he felt it…. Something he had only felt on occasion. The world around him went silent, everything seemed to slow, and he was filled with…. With a feeling. It was like light, bursting out from his chest, rolling up through his skin and into his head.

He entered a moment of perfect execution. He cut into a tight roll his wings cything through the minute gaps between debris with timing so perfect it shouldn't have been humanly possible. Rocks passed by him at hundreds of miles an hour inches away from the glass of his canopy, one wrong move and he’d be dead. He cut through a gap that gave him inches on either side rolld right dove down, turned left, spun once and then twice, and made a completely vertical ascent. Rocks flew past him on his right and on his left.

Up ahead he could see a gap slowly closing before him. He opened up his engine and shot forward so fast everything was a blur.

The rocks collided behind him as they snapped shut, and he flew into the clear firing forward to slow himself, and then red was there too descending from above spinning and wobbling, almost out of control and careening directly towards a house sized boulder.

He panicked firing up and down at the same time and sending him into a spin.

He was heading directly towards the rock .

WIthout thinking Adam locked onto the rock, and fired. A rocket under his wing detached and shot forward exploding violently just in time for Red to pass through unharmed. Red jolted awkwardly and rolled to one side. Adam cut past under from right to left and rolled straight over red to avoid a rock.

There was a moment where the two of them were staring at each other through the clear canopy.

Eyes met for an instant, and Adam could see the wide eyed fear on the man’s face., Then Adam rolled ahead ducking under the last rock and then bursting out into space.

He let the F-90 have her moment, and completely opened the engine shooting forward and cutting through the finish line which flashed bright green. In that moment He was hit with such a sense of exhilaration and joy that he couldn't imagine anything better. Who needed drugs, who needed love, who needed any of that when you could fly.

Hed did a triumphant loop whooping the whole way.

Of course, a feeling like that can never last long and slowly began to fade away. THe reality of what he had just done was both terrifying and amazing to the point he felt his body begging to shake. The tension and fear he had been holding back exploded inside him just like that joy and he found his hands trembling on the joystick.

He let it overtake him. He had been like this since he was young and fighting it would only make things worse. Despite his shaking hands he flew back to the docking bay and landed his jet with the precision of a surgeon. Finally when the engine was off and the flood stable underneath him he slumped back in his seat shaking and racked with rolling tremors. He closed his eyes and breathed long and slow.

Behind him the others came limping in.

None of them were completely unscathed, at least one person was dead. His hands continued to shake as the airlock doors shut, and as soon as the room was pressurized, he opened the cockpit. As soon as it did, Sunny came running into the room and up the ladder. SHeleft her spear on the floor and helped him to climb out. His legs were shaking and he almost fell if it weren’t for her support.

She knew him too well, sitting him down on the lowest step and kneeling next to him.

“Are you ok?”

He grinned at her, “That was…. Holy shit.”

He held up his hand to watch the shaking, “I’m having an earthquake.”

It was just then that Red jumped out of his jet onto the floor. He staggered when he did but pushed away the men who tried to help, “What the ever loving FUCK just happened. The field had NEVER been like that. Jaz DIED out there, what the FUCK.”

The people milled around in confusion.

Red turned to him, eyes narrowing as he stalked over. Adam sighed and looked up as the man stopped to stand over him

“I’m sorry, I’ll get out of your hair.”

The man paused confused, “What?”

“I broke the rules. Means I forfeit.”

Red looked almost nonplussed, “What are you on about?”

Adam slowly took to his feet taking a few more deep wreaths to steady himself before drawing to his full height. He was stead now and looked down at Red with an unwavering gaze. He held out a hand, “I used weapons during the race, that was against the rules. These weren’t flares to move the rocks. I used a targeted missile during the race and that means I broke the rules.”

Red stared at him.

Then he snorted, “Damn the rules. You saved my ass.” he turned to look at his people, “I am more than man enough to acknowledge that.” HE turned back to Adam, “You saved my life you crazy bastard. I am not even sure how you are still alive ….. Because that flying…. That was….. Holy fuck.” He grinned and took Adam by the shoulder, “you shaking, man.” He held up his hand to show a tremor, “Me too, now let's go get some drinks and talk this out. I owe you after all.”

The two of them walked off through the forest of shaken pilots, “You are the kind of man I can see myself doing business with.”

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sp00kworm · 4 years

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Trouble (Eric Northman x Reader)

Pairing: Eric Northman x Female Reader

ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN LINK

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Trouble tended to follow people that entered Fangtasia. The name alone was enough to make your skin crawl. Old fashioned puns. Before the vampires had crawled from their seclusion and secrecy, it would have been a wise-crack of a name, given to some cheesy goth bar on the strip, trying to make a profit off of young adults who were into the scene. That or it would be some silly feature in a movie. You thought it was too tacky for an A-list as you peered up at the sign over the top of the entrance. Red flashing neon, blood drops dripping from the ‘F’ in the name. Someone had said it was popular for the irony. You knew it was because of the rumours of what happened in the back and toilets. Most of the men and women here were looking for the thrill of being with a vampire. Getting bit. Getting high off their blood. Vampiric blood as a drug was illegal, but you were more than certain that it didn’t stop the backhanded deals going on in the back. Despite that, despite being annoyed with all the garish shit plastered over the front and the gothic tacky theme, you were for this ability to mingle. Seeing genuine vampires and their human counterparts move into the bar, and for once in their lives, be able to be together without fear.

Fear was maybe the only thing in your mind as your friend dragged you to the door. A blond vampire was stood in stiletto heels, her sharp brow raised as a smirk crawled over her pretty face. She was sharp at every angle, even down to the points of her teeth as her red lips curled back.

“I’m gonna have to ask for some ID.” She drawled, perfectly painted nails uncurling to present her palm, “It’s been a long time. I can’t tell age very well anymore.” The vampire sneered teasingly as you pulled your ID free from your purse. She took both yours and your friend’s in hand, peering at the pictures and yourselves before she returned them politely and took one step to the left, “Please. Enjoy yourselves.” She drawled with a lick to her fang, “Any trouble, just ask for Pam.” Blond hair whipped as she shot you both a wink over her shoulder. The men in line behind you didn’t receive such a nice treatment. Pam’s sweet drawl turned sharp when she turfed them out and away.

“Don’t you come back here with those vials, sweethearts! I’ll make sure to stick ‘em so far you’ll never find them again!” She snapped her teeth and laughed as they ran. You tried to take a deep breath as you headed inside the cool club and towards the bar tucked away to the side.

“You never said this place was full of strippers too.” You complained as you ordered drinks for the two of you. The vampire bartender was polite, smiling with white teeth as he mixed your drinks and slid them over the wood, snatching the ten-dollar bill before sliding you back your change on top of two stamped coasters.

“Come on. I know it looks seedy, but people really are nice.” She complained before hiding your eyes from two people exchanging spit in the back, “He…He’s been so kind to me. I needed you here. This is the only place we can be seen together. In this bar.” The drink in her hand shook as she raised it to her lips, taking a long drink of the bourbon mixer.

With a sigh you smiled over your straw and took her other hand, squeezing it tightly in your grasp, “And I’ll stay. I don’t want you getting screwed over by a human or a vampire.” You promised as she pulled her phone out and smiled, perking up and looking around as a young-looking man skulked into the door. Her smile only got brighter, and his own with it, and you nodded before bowing out, moving away enough to give them privacy, smiling over your drink as the two of them laughed in the corner, unseen and ignored where finally, they could be normal.

A human on their own, however, was more than fair game within a bar full of vampires. You watched the male dancer move his way over a table, his ass pressed to the pole as his hyper fast movements paused for a long grind. His fangs glinted as you watched, dark hair stylized. With a huff you turned back to your drink and swirled the ice as the vampire laughed and turned his scary, graceful movements back towards the crowd that would pay, leather trousers rippling but never making a sound.

“You know its best not to be alone in here.” The bartender offered with a curious turn of his head, dark hair falling over his shoulder, “I just make the drinks. But it never ends well if you stay too long.” He offered darkly before nodding at your drink, “Better if you don’t have many more of those either.” Still, he mixed you another before moving down the bar, towel over his shoulder.

Another voice followed behind you, purring with delight, “Humans that are alone don’t last long here.” It was Pam, her red nails curling over your shoulder as she shuffled into the seat next to you, “But I know you’re here for…” She waved boredly, “Moral support for your little love bird friends. I’ve been keeping the vultures away, at least for now, but you’ll have to leave soon pretty thing. They get hungry quickly.” With a sharp smile she was gone again, blond updo flitting through grinding bodies. The bartender laughed a dark chuckle at your full glass and once more you were left alone with your thoughts, hoping that your friend would let you go home soon.

It wasn’t going to happen. You gathered your purse and paid the bartender for the drinks before shooting a message to your friend. She peered up worriedly as you waved to the bartender and walked through the crowd, towards the door. The bodies seemed to glide effortlessly, much like the dancers, yet many humans danced between the gyrating vampires, drunk and indulging in the vampire’s hypnotising eyes. You kept your head down as you moved past the edge of the bar and towards the vampire bouncers guarding the peace at the door. They didn’t stop you however, a hand on your elbow did.

Pam’s red nails swirled around the crux of your elbow, pressing deep into the skin as she smiled at your side, “Now, now, no need to fright sweet thing.” She drawled, stroking a lock of blond hair behind her ear as she leaned over in her heels, the black leather of her dress brushing against you, “A different kind of vulture wants your attention.” Pam’s red lips popped against your ear, “But he’s a much nicer sort, that I can promise you…Well…” Her eyes looked you up and down as she steered you back around by the shoulders, “If you play nice that is.” Her lips spread in another smirk at the rumbling of your phone in your hand. You caught sight of your friend getting up from her seat worriedly, her vampire companion snapping her back down with a hushed word against her ear as you were steered through the crowd.

How you hadn’t noticed the throne on a stage was a mystery. Bodies parted as you were coaxed to stand at the side of the platform, worriedly clutching your bag strap. Pam’s heels clicked as she ascended the stairs. Even more amazing was how you hadn’t noticed the oldest creature in the room looming on top of the throne, his legs thrown up on a velvet foot stool, eyes focused on a small phone in his hand as he ignored the crowds like they were worth nothing to him. Peasants to a Lord. Maybe that was the best analogy. He didn’t pay attention to you as Pam leaned over by his ear, fangs hidden as she whispered quiet enough to not be heard over the music by other vampires. Cold, old, blue eyes looked up from the flip phone in his hand, gaze fixed on your form as Pam leaned back away from his ear. She smirked to herself, like a cat proud of her little catch, and sauntered back down the stairs, heels snapping against the cold floor as she turned to find herself something entertaining for the evening. The blond vampire turned his eyes from her to you again, snapping the phone shut before he curled a single finger in your direction. Pam’s eyes were heavy on you from her corner as she watched you swallow, the nervousness of a human boiling violently under the surface as you looked at the stairs, clutched your bag tighter, and dared to take them.

Your legs felt heavier and heavier as you took the stairs up to the platform stage, the old vampire’s eyes following your movements like a hawk. With another flick of his wrist, he dropped his phone onto the table next to him and crossed his ankles on top of his stool. Somehow, he looked a lot less threatening with his squeaky polished shoes. The shirt was open far too low to be considered proper, yet he wore the tight jeans and a dress jacket over the top, a chain dipping low into the cleavage of his sculpted chest. You stood by the stairs as he took you in, tight outfit, choker and all. Dressed to enter his bar, but something about you not quite fitting in with the rest of the vampire lackeys crowding the large room. A sharp smile cut his face before he curled a finger again, egging you to come closer, “I can’t speak to you all the way over there.” He didn’t drawl like other members of the bar, his accent foreign and unplaced among the Louisiana drawls. You swallowed, and he smirked wider, but you took the final steps towards his lounging place, “There. That’s better isn’t it?”

Finding your voice was difficult in the face of the smirking vampire but eventually you managed to get your vocal chords to work, “I’m sorry to ask, but why do you want to speak to me?”

The blond smirked wider, running his fingers over the arms of his chair, “I don’t think I gave you permission to speak but I appreciate an air breather with manners. So few of you know where you stand.” He linked his fingers over his lap and smiled a smile of ill intention, “Pam thought you might be of interest, since you enjoy agitating the vultures around here so much.” He pointed at the choker around your neck, “Hiding silver underneath there. Very creative of you.” His teeth turned sharp with a movement of his jaw, fangs snapping, “But incredibly rude. None of my clientele are inclined to touch those who don’t want it.”

You swallowed your fear again, “I’m sorry. I’ve heard things about this place…” The fear settled in your gut and squirmed violently, prompting you to say stupid things, “What’s your name if you…”

The vampire laughed, give chest bobbing with the unnatural expulsion of air he didn’t need, “I’ve never been asked that like this. You really are odd.” His smile grew wider, “Eric. I own this bar.”

“Eric… Well its nice to meet you?” You felt sweat drip down your back.

Eric smiled with sharp fangs, “Nice?” He hummed, getting more comfortable in his chair, “I would not call this meeting ‘nice’.”

A finger raised to point at the silver laced choker around your neck, “Take that off. Its insulting.” He commanded with a head rested on his fist, watching you fumble with the buckle, revealing the tight, thing silver chain wrapped underneath it, “Very creative. Take that off too.” Eric droned, snapping open his phone again to look at a message before he tossed it back to the side and admired the unmarked column of your throat. He tilted his head curiously, “So if you’re not here to get your rocks off, so to speak, why are you here at all?”

The burning question. That was why the leather clad creatures were all staring, and you knew it. Your eyes dared not to look at your friends huddled in the corner as you replied, “I came to support a friend. She met the vampire she’d been talking to for a while tonight.” The words felt a bit pathetic as you choked them out, “She didn’t want him to…be a fraud. She loves him I think. I didn’t want her to get…”

“Eaten for it?” Eric offered with a smirk, tapping his fingers together over his hips, “That is maybe what most of your kind comes here for, is it not? She was…brave for doing this. But that maybe makes you stupid for coming into the wolf den with her.”

“Is this an interrogation or are you just bored, Eric…Sir.” You could have shot yourself and been less scared in that moment.

Wild eyes looked at you then, ready to snap you in half if you gave him much more of a reason, “What was that?” He asked before laughing quietly, teeth clenched in the most unfriendly smile you had ever laid eyes on, “Do I need a reason to ask why you’re in my bar?” He leaned forwards, taking his feet from the stool, the soles snapping against the stage before he pushed his hands against the arms, leaning forwards to get close enough to snap his teeth at your trousers, “I’m Sheriff of this area, little girl. My word is law. So, I’ll ask you again.” Eric drew back into his seat and watched you squirm with a little more delight than he would ever admit, “What are you doing in my bar?”

He could glamour you. You understood that. He could do it with a snap of his fingers and have you begging for anything he wished upon your magic infused brain.

“Its like I said, Sheriff,” He hummed happily at the proper use of his title, “I came here to support my friend. Nothing else. I don’t have any ill intentions towards anyone. I came here to make sure she didn’t get fucked over.” You spread your arms out and sighed, “And if you glamour me, you’re going to get the same response, Sir.”

The vampire looked up at you, watching you squirm under his gaze with curiosity equivalent to a cat snatching a mouse back repeatedly with claws hooked into its tail, “If I do glamour you, you won’t remember standing in front of me, never mind the reason why you are here snarking in front of me.” Eric’s smile turned dangerous as he trailed his gaze up over your legs, admiring them before he turned his fingers in a dismissive gesture, “If that’s all you’re here for then you can scuttle away. I have no need of a plaything tonight.” He crossed his ankles on his footstool once more and picked up his phone from the table, flicking it open to set back to whatever it was he was doing before entertaining himself with you.

“Well, it was a pleasure, Sheriff.” You tried to sound sincere as he watched you over the top of his ancient phone, tapping away at the keys at lightning speed as he replied to whatever was urgently awaiting his attention. His icy eyes watched you, hiding his smirk behind his phone as you awkwardly made your way back down the stairs and towards the door. Your friend and her lover followed you quickly.

Eric grinned at the young vampire, knowing there was very little he would be able to do if Eric decided to have his own way. He wasn’t up for that tonight. He had a lot more pressing matters to attend to over playing with a human.

Pam was quick to make her way over once more, “Oh, you are feeling generous tonight, Eric.” She purred as she sat on the arm of his chair, “I’m pretty sure you have a free night? Why lie to such a nice piece of ass?” She drawled, admiring her freshly painted nails as Eric snapped his phone shut and watched the edge of the stage with boredom.

“I don’t always want to eat whatever walks into my lap, Pamela.” He teased as he listened to the annoying ancient ring tone of his phone but ignoring it, “She’ll be back.” He promised with a smirk, “You don’t wear push-up bras if you don’t want some kind of attention.”

Pam scoffed over on his right, a sharp eyebrow quirked in irritation, “A girl don’t gotta wear anything to impress a man. She was here for herself, Eric, not everything is a vie for your attention.” She tucked a stray curl over her ear and moved to stand, “You might as well chase her. She won’t be back without that little friend of hers.” Pam took the stairs and slinked into the crowd leaving Eric to smirk at his phone.

Avoiding Fangtasia was easy. Your friend and her newly turned lover were comfortable being seen after that. After the upheaval of the royalty and the turbulence that followed, vampires were much more well known. Out of the coffin for numerous years. They were more accepted than ever, despite their eating habits. The tacky lighting was no different, even a year on. Your friend and her lover cooed from beside you as you all entered, the bouncers waving you in instantly. Arm through Derrick’s you shuddered at the coldness of his skin until he released you with an awkward smile by the bar, looking to your friend with a look you could only describe as love.

“I’m sorry she dragged you here, sweet thang.” He drawled, tipping the hat he had on with He drawled, tipping the hat he had on with He drawled, tipping the hat he had on with his eyes hidden awkwardly, “I don’t think she’s used to this sort of stuff still.”

With a snort you laughed at the young vampire

With a snort, you laughed at the young vampire, “Don’t worry about it. Sometimes I just think she misses seeing people.” You patted the vampire’s arm before moving away to order a drink. It was a new bartender, yet he accepted your order and whipped it up in record time, sliding it along the bar before winking and turning to his other customers.

You ignored the cold stare on your back as you sipped your drink quietly by the bar. It was quiet in the bar for a while and you listened to Derrick drawl in the corner before a cold hand slipped over your shoulder. Black nails curled into your blouse.

“Well hello again.” Pam purred behind you, leaning into the seat next to you with a smile, not entirely dangerous, “I didn’t think we would ever see you again.” She hummed as she leaned on the bar top, “I thought Eric had scared you off for good after his interrogation.”

You took a rather large gulp of your drink, “Well, I just can’t say no to my friend it seems.” You joked half-heartedly as Pam licked her top lip.

“Well, if you’re looking for something else…” She trailed her nails over the bar, “I’m sure I can help you out. Not all of us want brutish men. I understand that.” Sharp black nails tapped in front of your drink before she smiled and waved them by her side, “But, Eric wants to see you, despite leaving him high and dry for…hmmm…A year? He might have quite a few words for you.” The vampire leaned over and flashed fang at a collared girl, “He’s waiting, girlie. Don’t make him any more upset.”

You turned to avoid having to look at Pam lick her lips anymore and stood with a scowl at the Sheriff leaned over in his chair. Bright, icy eyes looked at you intensely as you took your drink and walked through the crowd, the choker around your neck not laced with silver this time. As you approached the edge of the stage you watched Eric stand and fasten the button on his silver jacket before he descended the stairs and was instantly by your side, a rush of air following him before a cool hand pressed to the small of your back.

“Hello there, darling.” Eric whispered as he dragged you through the crowd, a firm hand pressed to your back after the rushing spin of him turning you around in the opposite direction. Eric made his presence at your side well known; head held high as he directed you towards a door labelled as ‘staff only'.

“Hello, Sheriff...What seems to be the occasion?” You asked as you stepped through the door. Eric held it open for you. It was his small office. The decor was old fashioned, minimal in a way that told you he didn’t care for it, “This better not be a booty call because I’m going to have to disappoint you.”

Fangs flashed near your ear as he shut the door, whisking past you towards his chair, “No. This isn’t a booty call.” He leaned back and perched back on his bottom to prop his feet up on the desk, “This is actually more of an interview.” A pleasant white smile met your eyes as he linked his fingers on his lap and watched you grow suspicious.

“A job?” You gave him a scowl, “Why the fuck would I need a job from you? And for a matter of fact, why the fuck would I want a job as a hooker in your sleezy bar?” You spat the words at him, the smirk on his face making you even angrier.

“Now now, pumpkin. There’s no need for the language.” In a blur Eric had you by the arm, grappled in his grasp, mouth close to your neck as he threatened your pulse with a tight grip, “And that is no way to speak to me.” He hissed behind the words before letting you go with another snap of his pale hands, “It’s a bartending job.”

You felt relief flood through you before you looked at his desk, “You have a contract already drawn up? What is wrong with you, Sheriff Northman?” You snarked as you plonked yourself across from him.

The vampire rolled his shoulders as he paced back to his seat, “I’m getting what I want.” He mused before sighing, “No perfume, lack of cosmetics. Its all telling. I know you lost your job. This is a good way out, plus,” He leaned back in his seat, “Its better than minimum wage, sweetheart.”

You looked at the paper and felt your stomach flipflop, looking at the devil with fangs sat in a designer suit before you glanced back at the paper, “Holy shit! That’s a lot more than minimum wage.” You peered at the figure before looking at the smug vampire perched behind his desk, “You promise this isn’t going to fuck me over?”

Eric tilted his head, “I wouldn’t mind fucking you over…”

“Don’t.” You held up your hand, “Don’t finish that sentence, Mister Northman.” You reached for the pen between his fingers and snatched at it.

Eric held it back, “Are you sure you’ve read the small print?”

With a grumble you held the paper up and read over the fine print, “Really? Only two weeks holiday? That’s gotta be against all kinds of regulations!” You hissed.

“It includes public holidays, those are just the days on top of that.” He smiled pleasantly as you snatched the pen and signed your name at the bottom.

“When do I start?” You asked as he took the paper between two fingers.

With a grumble he looked you over and smiled, “Right now. We’re short staffed.” In a blur of movement Eric moved. You squawked as a stinging slap landed over your ass cheeks, “Now get out there and show me I’m not wasting my money.”

#eric northman x reader #eric northman x female reader #eric northman #true blood #true blood series #true blood tv #eric #vampire x human #vampire x reader #female reader #reader insert #vampire #vampire human relationship

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artificialqueens · 4 years

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Praise Me Up (Gigi x Nicky) - moonshot

A/N: moonshot here! thank you for the anon who suggested the gigi/nicky rivarly prompt! I had so much fun writing this, basically 4.1k words of Nicky driving Gigi insane while some of the season 12 (and some special guests) are in for the ride! Please feel free to let me know what you think of it! - moonshot

Gigi knew she was the perfect candidate for the promotion. That was until she found out Nicky Doll, the infuriatingly stunning model-tier beauty from the French branch of the company and recently had moved to NYC, was also being considered for said promotion.

At first, she wasn’t bothered at all when Nicky came to the office permanently. One could say she was almost excited to have someone else so verse in high fashion, as the older blonde had worked for the lengths of Vogue Paris. Gigi had always thought that the foreign woman would bring an added layer to their already impressive fashion editorial.

That was until Gigi realized how much alike they really were, flaws and all.

And the realization came pretty much during the first time she was officially introduced to Nicolette Doll .

The American blonde was well known around her office for being an avid make-up enthusiast thanks to her former job as a make-up artist prior to joining Needles & Co., arguably the most notable fashion editorial in the nation, the year before, so it was almost a given that her colleagues would ask her for advice, especially Heidi from the Closet.

Cue to her blonde wannabe-Broadway star Jan calling Gigi over to her desk to ask for advice for a special night out with her girlfriend.

“Gigiiii, you have to help me! I don’t know which lipstick to match with my eye look for tonight! It’s Jackie and mine’s anniversary, I can’t do my usual nude lip, I want something more… fancy?” The New Jersey woman pouted, half whispering not to have said girlfriend hear the conversation from the desk booth down the row.

“What’s the eye makeup you’re going with? The usual purple, lilac moment?”

Jan nodded, “Yeah, you know me. Do you have something in mind that could work with that?”

Gigi stood quiet for a moment, her mind running through all the various possible combinations, “Well, I would go with a-”

She was interrupted by a sultry accented voice, “I’d suggest a dark nude color with some coral undertones, I got one from MAC, it’s called Stone, I can let you borrow it if you want”.

The long-haired blonde squealed in joy, “Oh my god, that would be great, Nicky. You’re a lifesaver!”

The fashionista turned around to see who was the supposed ‘live saver’. She was met with the brightest icy blue eyes she had ever seen, framed by an impeccable soft smokey eye. A pair of pouty lips accentuated by a fiery red lipstick smiled at her in an almost mischievous way. Short blonde hair, perfectly styled, completed the editorial worthy look.

“I don’t believe we have met before,” she extended her hand, covered by a sheer black glove, “Nicolette Doll,” the French woman squared off Gigi’s slender figure from head to toe, “you can call me Nicky. I got transferred here last week. Genevive Goode, I suppose? I heard a lot about you from the others”.

Gigi shook her hand firmly, a fake smile on her face, how much she hated when people used her first full name, “Yeah, that would be me. Gigi is fine. If I’m not mistaken you have worked for Vogue Paris, right?”

“You’d be correct, it’s thanks to Miss Chachki’s kind words on my behalf that I was able to get a position in this editorial. I’m sure you’ve heard of her”.

Of course , Gigi had heard of the legendary Violet Chachki, her idol ever since she had found her passion for fashion.

“I sure have,” the younger woman didn’t let any of her inner discontent come through on her face as she continued to speak, “well, I hope you are finding our office to your liking”.

Nicky smiled back, a glimpse of something Gigi couldn’t quite understand in her gaze, “So far I’m liking what I’m seeing, chérie,” she commented, quickly turning to Jan to let her know to remember to give her the lipstick before her attention went back to the blonde in front of her, “I can’t wait to work with you, miss Goode”.

“Likewise,” Gigi simply replied as she watched the French woman walk down the room to what she assumed was her new desk.

She was definitely not looking forward to working with Nicky.

As the months went by, what was driving Gigi insane was the fact that, besides herself, everyone seemingly beamed after the French beauty.

Jan - and Jackie by proxy - had already gone out multiple times to the karaoke bar down the street from their office with the blonde woman, only to have them talk about it the following day while they sipped on their steaming cups of coffee. Gigi had learned that Nicky was not only gorgeous but also a phenomenal singer because of course, she was.

The older blonde had become Jaida’s, her desk neighbor, go-to party girl for the free drinks Friday nights at the local queer club. A position that use to be Gigi ’s. Granted that the dark-skinned beauty still asked her to come out with them but never in a million years the young fashionista was going to get caught going to the club when Nicky was also involved.

Hell, even her own best friend, Crystal, had grown fond of the foreign woman, much to Gigi’s displeasure.

“Oh, c’mon! She isn’t that bad at all! She actually complimented my makeup!” She proclaimed excitedly, twirling a long strand of her brown mullet around her index finger.

Gigi looked up from the stylized drawing of her latest dress idea with furrowed brows, “Crystal, she said you look pretty for someone who paints like a clown ”.

The brown-haired woman’s expression didn’t change, if anything, her smile had just gotten bigger, “Still, she said I’m pretty!”

“Ugh!” the blonde went back to her drawing, mindlessly filling in the drawing.

“Honestly, Gi… you should give her a chance. You two have a lot in common!”

“That’s the problem! It’s basically like looking at a copy of me! I bet you that if I shaved my head, she would come in the next day sporting a bald head and call it being avant-garde!”

Jaida butted into the conversation, having just come back from the bathroom, “Girl, don’t you dare go bald. That Halloween look as that damn robot still haunts my nightmares,” she added from behind the sitting blonde before taking a closer look at Gigi’s drawing, and chuckled, “Nice drawing of Frenchie”.

“What?” The young blonde looked down at her drawing, this time paying attention to what she had drawn. It did look an awful lot like a stylized version of Nicky.

“Fuck!” She whined out, quickly crumpling the drawing and tossing it to the other side of the office.

It was as if the universe was against her when the piece of paper landed just in front of Nicky as she walked into the room. She bent over and picked it up, quietly examining the drawing. She swayed her hips as she walked towards the trio, a smirk on her face.

“Chérie, if you wanted me to model for you, you could have just asked,” she said with a wink before walking to her desk, prompting a laugh from Gigi’s two close friends.

The fashionista groaned loudly, a blushing creeping on her, “I hate everyone!”

Thinking back to the day when Miss Needles called into her private office on the 12th floor, Gigi knew something was up when she was forced to share the elevator with Nicky on the way up. She was tempted to close the door on the older woman but she had been too slow. What a pity.

“Which floor?”

“12th”.

Gigi tensed her jaw for a moment as she pushed the button before resting her back on the wall. The ride was awkwardly silent, neither of them thrilled to strike up a conversation as they went up.

“ Toi t'es bon qu'à planer, ouais je sens t'as l'seum, j'ai l'avocat ”.

The older blonde has seemingly had enough of the silence as she quietly sang in what Gigi assumed was French. She would never admit Nicky’s singing was actually as good as Jan had boasted her to be.

“ Entre nous y'a un fossé, toi t'es bon qu'à faire la mala ,” the French ran a hand in her short blonde hair, eyes closed as she waited, that smirk Gigi detested flashing on her lips.

Before Gigi could say anything, the familiar sound of the elevator doors opening filled the small space. Nicky gestured to her to go out first, “After you, chéri”.

The younger blonde scoffed, quickly exiting the elevator and making her way to the door of her boss’ office, not waiting for the older woman.

She gently knocked three times and waited for a reply.

“Come in”

How she was tempted to close the door on Nicky’s face, again.

Gigi entered the office to find Miss Needles standing up, looking out the window to the New York skyline. The statuesque woman turned around with a bright smile on her face that surely contrasted with the intense sharp makeup she was wearing.

Working for Aquaria Needles had been a pleasant surprise for the young fashionista. She was a little over a year older than Gigi and yet, at 24, after working in her teen years as a runway model, she had already taken over her mother’s role as editor in chief while the matriarch of the Needles family had decided to step down from the spotlight for a while.

Gigi had gathered quite the respect for Aquaria, who was truly a 180° from her stoic, almost spook-inducing mother, Sharon. However, she knew not to get on her bad side as she was still a Needles, after all.

“Oh! You’re both here already, that makes my job much easier as I can explain myself just once,” she started as she sat down in the expensive-looking faux leather chair, “please take a seat, we have a lot to discuss here!”

The two fashion queens of the office sat down, keeping their bodies as far from each other as possible, neither really trying to hide their discontent for each other.

“So, as both of you know, May is coming up and so is our annual special issue for the Met Gala. Now, I’ve been keeping an eye on both of you as you two are our best designers,” Aquaria continued, her bright blue eyes staring intently to the two women sitting in front of her, “Miss Hytes-Mateo has recently announced that she is transferring to our branch in LA in a couple of months time, which means the position of creative director will need to be filled up”.

Gigi’s eyes widened, which had been the promotion she had been looking up to ever since joining the team as a mere intern two years prior. She had to have that.

“And this is where you two come into play, for the next month leading up to our May issue, I’ll be regularly checking with both you two and Brooke Lynn to determine who is the best candidate for the position once she’s gone. Have I made myself clear?” Aquaria finished up, waiting for a reaction from either of them.

Nicky was the first one to speak up, “It’s an honor to be even considered for such position, Miss Needles”

The editor in chief smiled, her hand waving in front of her, “oh please, you can call me Aquaria, Miss Needles reminds me too much of my mom. Anything you’d like to add, Gigi?”

“I’ll make sure to show you that I’m the perfect candidate for this promotion,” the younger woman replied, she wasn’t going to let that French blonde take her spot.

“If you don’t have any question, I think we can call it a-”

Aquaria was interrupted by the door opening. The two designers turned around to see a short petite woman peeking in the room, her long blonde hair perfectly framing her face.

“Sorry to interrupt, Miss Needles but your mother just called and wanted to remind you that she is expecting you to have lunch with her tomorrow at noon,” the woman said with a soft voice.

Gigi turned back to the editor in chief, not failing to notice the blushing cheeks on the young woman’s face. Everyone around the office knew about Aquaria’s crush for her assistant, Miss Heller (she could still hear Widow’s voice, “It must run in the family! Didn’t her mother meet her current fiancé because the woman worked for her? Miss Thunder, was it?”).

“O-Oh okay, thank you for reminding me… but I told you to call me Aquaria, Brianna”.

“And I told you, as much as I want to, your mother won’t let me, Miss Needles,” she replied playfully before turning her attention to Gigi and Nicky, finally noticing the duo, “oh, sorry for the interruption. Goodbye!”

She closed the door behind her, leaving a quiet Aquaria, staring at the door.

After a minute of silence, Nicky cleared her throat, waking Aquaria up from her own thoughts.

“Yeah, yeah okay work, we are done here! Both of you, enjoy your day. I’ll be sure to let Brooke Lynn know you are ready to start,” the editor excused them, turning her chair around to, once again, stare at the beautiful skyline.

The two designers exited the editor’s office in silence, walking up to the elevator. Gigi nervously tapped her foot as they were descending back to their floor.

As they reached their floor, she felt a hand grab her wrist, “may the best woman win, chérie”

That was the only thing Nicky said before leaving Gigi alone.

She sure planned on winning.

For the following month, if Gigi had thought Nicky was insufferable before, now that they were officially competing against each other, the French woman was downright perfect in everything she did. Nicky with her stupidly gorgeous frame, impeccable style, and sultry voice. And those sheer gloves, those goddamn gloves.

If Gigi did something that earned her praises from Brooke Lynn, there would come Nicky Doll with something that was just that much more innovative, bringing the spotlight on herself. It was driving Gigi insane. The younger blonde was desperate to find something, anything , that she could use against the older woman.

The young blonde sat quietly as she elaborated her next move to bring Nicky down, her close friends chit-chatting next to her.

“Girl, I think y’all two should just fuck it out!”

Gigi rolled her eyes at Jaida’s suggestion for the nth time. Everyone in her friend group had caught onto the fact that she despised the French designer and mercilessly teased her about it.

“Not this again! I don’t like her, Jaida,” she replied with a dead-pan voice.

“Who said anything about liking her? You can cut the sexual tension between the two of you with a goddamn butter knife!” Widow commented with a knowing look, the blonde promptly ignored it.

“Bet 20$ y’all fuck by the end of the month,” Jaida announced, getting a laugh out of the Missouri women.

“I bet 30$ they fuck by the end of the week ,” Widow added, always in to poke fun at the young tall fashionista.

“Oh God! Fuck you both!”

“Chile, girl, save that for Frenchie over there,” the dark-skinned beauty chuckled out.

Gigi simply rolled her eyes again, her attention shifting its focus from the conversation to a particular blonde that was standing across the room from her.

She furrowed her brows. She hadn’t realized that Brooke Lynn had come down to their floor. Nicky was talking to her with a smirk on her face. Something she had told must have been so funny as the Canadian laughed out loud. The French woman touched the taller woman’s arm and it looked like she was… flirting ?

The younger designer inhaled sharply. How dare she?

Gigi quickly got up from her seat, ignoring the confused looks on her colleagues’ faces. She walked over where the two women had been talking, clearing her throat before speaking up.

“ So sorry to interrupt but may I have a word with Miss Doll right now? It’s urgent,” she faked a smile but it didn’t reach her eyes.

“Oh, sure. We’re done here anyway. Thank you so much, Nicky. I’ll reserve a table at that restaurant then. Have a good rest of the day you two” The tall Canadian replied before making her way to the elevator.

Gigi didn’t lose any time as she grabbed the older woman’s wrist and walked both of them to the nearest free storage room, closing and locking the door behind her. If they were going to talk, she didn’t want anyone interrupting them.

“What the fuck do you think you are doing? You flirt too now? Is that what they teach you in France?” the young fashionista’s voice fully expressing her anger.

For the first time since they had met, Nicky was speechless and confused, “ Pardon ?”

Gigi scoffed, “Oh, now you play dumb? Do you think I didn’t see you flirting with Brooke Lynn just a minute ago, getting all touchy? Talking about going out to restaurants? Are you that desperate that you’re going to sleep with her for this promotion?” She let out all at once while the short-haired blonde stood in silence.

She had an unreadable expression on her face. She opted not to reply, instead, she slowly took off her gloves, placing them on one of the shelves.

“You are absolutely un-fucking-believable. I wasn’t flirting with her. If you had even just once got out of your head, you would have realized how desperate you sound right now,” she answered calmly, slowly walking up to Gigi, who was in return backing up, “She came up to me to ask for my opinion on which one was the best French restaurant in Manhattan, as she wanted to surprise her wife for their anniversary”.

The younger blonde gulped, suddenly feeling the tie around her neck suffocating. She found herself trapped between the wall next to the door and Nicky’s body, the distinct smell of her Chanel n°5 perfume going straight to Gigi’s head.

The French woman took her tie in her hand, toying with it as she further pressed their bodies together. She slid one of her thighs in between Gigi’s slender legs. The latter can’t help the soft moan that escapes her lips.

“You know what I really think of you, uh?” Nicky put her hand underneath Gigi’s chin, forcing her to look her in the eyes as she spoke, “You’re just a mommy’s girl, wanting to please everybody, having them say how much of a good girl you’ve been, isn’t it right?” The French woman let her hand down the younger girl’s body, reaching the single button on her blazer and unbuttoning it.

Gigi shivered as she felt the cold air hit her bare chest, Nicky’s warm hands making her feel even more the temperature difference.

“That’s why you think you hate me, but, chérie, you’re just scared of me,” she continued, her slender fingers grazing on the erect nubs on her chest while her naked thigh pressed harder against the clothed core, “Scared that someone might be better than you and get that praise you desperately need. You want everyone to think you are this perfect little bitch who is better than everyone else. That facade doesn’t fool me, I see right through it. You still have so much more to learn, you have no idea, chérie”.

The younger woman whimpered as she felt Nicky’s lips press down hard and bite the pulse point on her neck, her knees almost giving out on her if it wasn’t for the older woman’s thigh keeping her in place. The short-haired blonde smirked as she traced the very evident mark she had just left with her tongue, her mouth slowly making her way up to Gigi’s ear.

“That’s for thinking I would sleep with Brooke Lynn for the promotion, salope ” she growled out before biting down on the earlobe. The American gasped loudly, inadvertently jerking her hips forward, causing even more friction between her center, covered by her favorite tailored pants, and Nicky’s thigh. She froze at how good it felt, something she hadn’t felt in months.

The French woman didn’t lose any time in pressing herself harder against Gigi’s body, her mouth ghosting over the younger woman, “Oh, won’t you look at that, uh? Fucking yourself on my thigh? That eager to prove you don’t need my hands,” she pinched one nipple and palmed roughly the other exposed mound, “or my mouth to come?” She taunted her, biting the other woman’s lower lip, “well, then, be my guest, chérie ”.

Gigi moaned as Nicky kissed her roughly, the short-haired woman’s hands never leaving her chest. The younger girl brought her arms around the other designer’s neck as her body started to rock her hips against Nicky, melting under her touch.

“If I knew it only took putting my thigh between your legs to shut your pretty mouth up, I would have done it the first day I came here,” the French woman mocked her as she focused on leaving more marks on Gigi’s pale skin, flushed by the pleasure she was receiving. She felt Nicky’s skirt ride up as she fastened her thrusts against the naked tanned skin.

“F-Fuck you ,” Gigi managed to let out only to be met by a laugh from Nicky.

“Already am, chérie,” she commented, as she left another hickey on Gigi’s sensitive spot on her neck.

As the friction got greater and as she grew hotter, Gigi could start to feel her heat and wetness seep through her pants, wetting Nicky’s skin in return.

“You’re so close, aren’t you? So desperate to come all over my thigh?”

The younger designer was at a loss of words, her heart pounding so loudly as she could feel herself being moments away from her release, she could only nod.

“Well, then, be the good girl you are and come for me. Let them hear how much of a salope you are for me, uh?” Nicky finally whispered in her ear, as she met Gigi’s thrusts.

The American woman gripped tight onto the other woman’s blouse, not caring if she was crumpling the fabric. The intense orgasm washed over her, her legs trembling, her breath hitching as she tried to recover.

Nicky backed off, looking down to the thigh that was now glistening with a light coat of sweat and Gigi’s wetness. She ran two fingers over it before bringing them up to her own mouth, keeping eye contact with a flustered Gigi as she licked them clean.

The younger designer was trying to catch her breath when she saw that same stare she had when they first met in Nicky’s eyes. The older blonde took a longing gaze all over Gigi’s still exposed skin.

She smirked, “À bientôt, chérie”

She took her sheer gloves off the shelf where she had placed them, quickly putting them back on before turning to unlock the door and left.

Gigi blinked a couple of times, trying to register what had just happened. She looked down on her own body, realizing she would have to change after the mess she did.

“ Fuck! ” she muttered before buttoning back up her blazer and making her way to convince Heidi from the Closet to let her change into one of the outfits they kept around for the magazine photoshoots.

She came back to her desk 20 minutes later, trying her best to look as if nothing had happened, which turned out downright impossible as soon as Jaida saw her.

“Hey, what’s with the midday outfit change… wait, is that what I think it is? Oh my god! Y’all did it!” she exclaimed in shock before turning to Crystal, who had walked over, “Damn it! Girl, you were right, they couldn’t last the day”.

The mullet-haired woman rejoiced, “Yay! 50 bucks for me!”

Gigi shot her a look, “Crystal?!? You betted against me too?!”

Her best friend shrugged her shoulders, “What? I need money to save up for the eventual future One Direction reunion because I KNOW it’s real!”

The young designer shook her head, she was never going to see the end of the teasing. She opened one of the desk’s drawers, grabbing her color correction palette and her favorite full coverage concealer.

As she worked her way around her now colorful neck, she looked up to meet Nicky’s icy blue eyes. She scoffed when the French blonde winked at her, however, the smirk on her own face betrayed her.

The American woman crossed her legs. It was just the beginning and Gigi knew it, but now she didn’t mind the competition. If anything, it added some French flavor to the plate.

But first, she had to google what the fuck did ‘salope’ meant.

#rpdr fanfiction #gigi goode #nicky doll #jaida essence hall #crystal methyd #widow von du #jan sport #aquaria #brooke lynn hytes #miz cracker #gigi x nicky #cisgirl au #office au #smut #moonshot #submission #s12

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terminally-karkalicious · 3 years

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allow me to rant about the only thing that has been in my brain for the past two months and that is doll customizing babeyyyyy

i know there’s a 90% chance that you wont give a Shit about any of this but here we go anyways

SO first you gotta choose a doll. preferably one with a high range of motion to avoid creating new joints or having annoying limitations like not having elbow joints for some fucking reason. what the fuck mattel. give monster high dolls back their ball jointed shoulders and elbow joints. smh

the most common dolls ive seen used as bases are monster high and ever after high. most customs ive seen are highly stylized so the stylized face molds work well for those types of dolls but dolls like barbies are good for when you want a more realistic face-ups.

once you’ve got your base picked out you gotta wipe that bitch’s face off with like. acetone or nail polish remover or something strong like that. you can also use acetone to shrink doll heads which is cool as hell imo. n e way once the face is wiped you gotta chop off the hair and remove the hair plugs from the inside. ive seen this done several ways but the easiest and most common way ive seen is to dunk the head into boiling water for ~30 seconds until it gets squishy and malleable. once you’ve got the head back, you can use pliers (i think tweezers would work in a pinch) to pull out the hair plugs which are kinda icky because theyre covered in glue and other gross shit. ew

now you must decapitate the doll. dunk em back in the boiling water to soften them back up then just tug the head off. the neck pegs look funky and are usually a different color than the body so thats cool ig

once the head’s off, you can start the face-up which is basically just giving the doll a new face using stuff like watercolor pencils, acrylic paint, gouache, and a whole lot of other stuff. hell ive seen people use person makeup on these dolls.

next,,,,, hair. there’s about twenty million ways to do hair from gluing yarn wefts to sewing to rerooting with purchased nylon doll hair or yarn wefts but i’m gonna talk about the most common one ive seen which is rerooting and gluing.

before you can reroot, you need doll hair. which, as i mentioned, can be bought at stores like the doll planet or made at home with yarn in literally any color. have fun with it! make rainbow hair or something idk

to make homemade wefts, you take some acrylic yarn, cut it twice as long as you want the hair to be (keep in mind you can cut and style the hair once it’s been rerooted), fold them in half, and tie it to something sturdy like a wire coat hanger for the next step.

once you’ve got your yarn tied to your hanger, use a pet brush and brush the yarn until it’s wispy and looks like hair. then take a straightening iron and iron the weft flat. then remove from the hanger and boom. hair wefts. ta-da

to reroot the wefts onto the head, use a rerooting tool (which can be as simple as a needle with the eye cut at angle) (just google it please i’m shit at descriptions)) to poke small sections of the hair into the head. you can use the pre-existing rooting holes for your own reroot as they’re usually pretty reliable. to reroot, take a small length of you doll hair (about 10-15 strands), loop it in half, and put the middle of the loop into the reroot tool. poke the end of the tool with the hair on it into the pre-existing hole and remove the tool. the hair *should* stay in and fill up that plug!! also remember to plug thickly at the hairline and part of the hair where it's most noticeable. it doesnt matter as much in the center of the head as that’s not usually visible on the doll. once you’ve rerooted, squeeze in strong glue through the neck hole and squish around the head to make sure it covers all the plugs and secures them in place. then pour hot water onto the head to make the hair lay flat for styling later.

also, you can reroot yarn directly into the head to make thicker, more textured hairstyles. and since the yarn is thicker, you dont need to glue the inside of the head for the hair to stay in place!!

if youre not doing body modifications (which are also cool as hell) then it’s time for clothes but clothes are boring and i like body mods more so i’m gonna rant about them instead

the material ive seen most doll artists use is apoxie sculpt, which is like play doh on steroids. it comes in two parts which you gotta mix together for some reason. why dont they sell it pre-mixed. what was the reason. also once it’s dry it’s super super strong and you can sand it, drill into it, paint it, and all kinds of stuff. very nice and i want some for myself.

you can use hand saws and drills and shit to whack off doll limbs to make stuff like digitigrade legs or new joints. also dont be afraid to use other mismatching doll parts when customizing like heads and bodies and forearms and hands and shit. it literally does not matter if youre gonna recolor the doll anyways so have fun with it. make frankenstein’s doll if youre feeling spicy

accessories my beloved. stuff like tiny beads and clay baubles and shit will literally transform the entire doll plus they’re adorable and multi-purpose

i suppose i must talk about clothes now. ah well. you can find great clothing patterns if youre new to customizing on other customizer’s etsy shops and probably google although those will probably be lower quality than paid pattern pieces. and keep in mind that if it exists as clothing irl, you can likely make it doll-sized. there are literally no limits to your clothing options as long as you can execute your idea.

the once all your components have been made, you can assemble the doll again!! and finally see what all the parts look like together!! very cool 10/10 stars.

ight that wraps up my doll rant. i could really go into more detail on certain parts but thats a whole other rant for a whole other day smh. sorry for fucking flooding your inbox ender ahaha……………. you asked for this

little did you know that dolls have been one of my favorite things since like ever. if i can read a 25 chapter long fanfic i can read this B)

mattel definitely fucked up by completely ruining MH doll designs and just stopping EAH, alot of their profits most likely came from people who collect and customize dolls and by changing MH doll designs/Stopping EAH dolls they 1. most likely lost a small (or big if we're not jus talking people who customize dolls) part of their profit and 2. made it harder for doll customizers to make dolls/get commissions out rather quickly because they probably have to waste more time making joints or learning how to make joints.

EAH/MH dolls (specifically MH dolls) had AMAZING MODELS because there was so much variety with height, face shapes, etc (my favorite molds had to be the short/tall dolls and the cat molds because of the tails) and doll customizers really went all out with enhancing a molds unique features. The only "downside" abt MH dolls is that they (or atleast most)(from what i remember)) had slimmer faces but wider eyes while EAH dolls have wider faces with slimmer smaller which left a canvas for the face and not the eyes (and vice versa for MH dolls)

I've never seen any videos where a barbie is customized (maybe because i absolutely despised barbies at the time) so I'll definitely have to check those out but they seem to be good for realistic makeovers. I've seen like like semi realistic makeovers for EAH/MH dolls that were pretty good too tho (pretty sure mostly EAH dolls since yk MH dolls were used for creature makeovers while most EAH dolls weren't)

yeah i was always amazed by the head shrinking with acetone. honestly i still am?? idunno i have no idea how that chemical bullshit works. Ive seen a few of uh makeovers that just pain over the face (in multiple layers ofcourse) but that's usually when they're painting the entire body a different colour (again usually when they're turning a doll into a funky little baby man). I've also seen a few that just chop the hair off and take out the hair plugs yk without uuh like softening the head or just go straight for the hair plugs after taking off the head (i used to do that it was funny to me??). i always really liked when they used watercolour pencils or just colour pencils in general to draw/sketch on the face cause like wow ur drawing on ur doll without ruining it?? kinda epic maybe even poggers and pogchamp?? oh god my brain is failing wjshsmsj.

Watching them putting the hair back on the doll was, other than the face stuff, was the BEST part for me. Favorite type of hair was iuuuuuh was either thick yarn or brushed out yarn. Literally worship the people that would reroot the hair, theyre the most patience people on this earth!! it's literally insane but i guess that's what happens when you've been doing that for years? you guess kinda get used to it. when they put glue into the head does it just become stiff?? like it's just a clump of dried glue or does it like..hollow out again??

dude you literally cannot convince me most of the supplies used for doll makeovers. APOXIE CLAY LOOKS SO FECKING GOOD. its edible and i will die on that hill. The body mods are literally so amazing!!!!! it's so impressive how theyre able to imagine certain features THEN LIKE ACTUALLY MAKE IT LOOK ACCURATE TO WHAT THEY WANTED TO LOOK LIKE AFTER LIKE ON TRY (or many yk trial and error is very necessary for..everything). Absolutely loved when doll customizers would saw off a dolls legs and use different ones or just completely get rid of the torso to use a different one. it's like uuh that one big guy that's mismatched and sewn together. very cool. The accessories are so fun!! just small little details you seen really need but can add because it's your feckin doll!! I used to be absolutely obsessed over the doll clothes i would find on etsy, so much so that i started sewing shitty shirts and dresses for my uh "customized" dolls (they were absolute HORRORS idk WHY my mom let me feck up my dolls like that).

Thank you for this!! i haven't been able to talk about any of my interests for a while and this just really made me happy!!

Question fer u my fellow MH/EAH enthusiast: what was your favorite MH/EAH movie/episode and doll series. Mine was The fusion dolls (MH obvi) and that MH movie "Haunted" cause we got to know more about Spectra :D

#YOOOO LONG POST?!#long post #:) hehehe #this was very fun to read cant wait for ur next fanfic length ask #asks :D #theoreticallyjasper

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gffa · 5 years

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WHY I WILL ALWAYS DEFEND THE CGI IN THE PREQUELS--They were doing some pretty mind-bogglingly new stuff that had never been done before and creating all these tools and techniques that are still being used today and, honestly, while not everything holds up, a shocking amount of it does. The work that went into The Phantom Menace really was amazing: ‘ALL FILMS ARE PERSONAL’: AN ORAL HISTORY OF STAR WARS: EPISODE I THE PHANTOM MENACE [x] ‘Well, This is the Future’ Once in production, The Phantom Menace would lean heavily on digital effects and technology, with more visual effects shots than any film in ILM’s history. John Knoll: I think the first time I really got exposed to what was ahead of us — I suppose the first thing was we read the script. There were, I think, three or four of us: myself, [visual effects supervisor] Dennis Muren, I forget who else was there. I think there were three or four of us, went out to the Ranch. There was one copy of the script [Laughs] and so basically what it is, we sat together in a room, and somebody started and would hand off the page that they had just read to the next person in the line. I don’t know, I was third in line or something, and I would get the pages and read them and hand them on. It was pretty overwhelming. I had a million questions because you’re reading it written on a page, you can imagine a lot of different ways that that could be executed. That could be a full set, the alien character that’s being discussed, I haven’t seen a design yet so I don’t know whether that’s just a guy in a suit or what. Initially reading through the script it seemed like it was a pretty big and ambitious thing. Sometime later we had — and there’s video of this, I think it’s on the making-of video — we saw the storyboards. George had the art department draw up storyboards for the whole movie. It was 3,600 storyboards, something like that. George walked us through all the storyboards. It wasn’t just telling us what was going on and this is this and that, he was also kind of mixing in what he was thinking about [for] shooting methodology. He had a number of colored highlighters, he had a magenta, a blue, and yellow highlighters, and as he was going down, things that he was going to shoot in front of a blue screen he’d scribble blue where he’d imagine the blue screen would be, and I think yellow was for live-action, and magenta was for CG characters like Jar Jar or battle droids or whatever. He sort of went through that, he went, “Yeah, it’s going to be this,” sort of telling us what was happening in all the frames. I was used to a situation where almost every show we did there was something that we were doing that was new, that we’d have to develop new tools or new techniques to do, but it’s like almost every storyboard was something that we hadn’t done before or didn’t have tools that could do. I was taking notes the whole time, making note of all the things we were going to have to do in R&D, or new things that would have to be developed to handle doing dense scenes with thousands of characters in them, or robust cloth simulations, or rigid body dynamics. There was a pretty long list of things. I walked out of that meeting with my head spinning, because it was not only massive in terms of sheer shot number, but in terms of all the new tech that has to be developed to get it done.

Rob Coleman: I remember going back to California and building the team up, and doing the early animations, and as time went on, I started really suffering in terms of insomnia and stress and freaking out, and I knew the world was waiting for this film. After a couple of months, three months, I actually drove up to Skywalker Ranch to resign the job to George. So I booked the time in to see him, and I went in there and I started fumbling and saying all this stuff through three hours of sleep, or whatever I had. He’s like, “What are you talking about?” I said, “Well, just, the world is waiting for this, and the pressure of this, and I’m not sure if I can perform, and…” He goes, “Hey, hey, hey, wait. You’re working for one person. You gotta make one person happy. That’s me, and I’m happy. I think the animation you guys are doing is great.” I said, “Y-you do?” He said, “Yeah. It’s great. It’s my problem to worry about the world, and I’m not even worried about them. We’re making these films for me. You’re making me happy, so you can relax, and you can go back down to ILM and everything will be fine.” I was the happiest guy driving back down Lucas Valley Road. I was like, “Oh, my God!” From that point on, I was fine. I slept like a baby, I was able to do it, I was able to focus on it. George Lucas: You don’t really start something unless you think you’re right, and think that you’re on the right track and what you’re doing is going to be great. It never occurs to you that it’s not going to work. Otherwise you wouldn’t do it. That’s what keeps people from doing things. So I didn’t worry about that part. I knew that the process of making a film was very difficult, and most of it was grounded in nineteenth century technology — or older than that, actually. And it had just reached its limits and there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it. That was especially true in visual effects. And it was through visual effects that I began to realize we had the power and the knowledge to develop something that really would make a big difference. I started that whole process. I wanted to raise my kids, so I retired, but I spent my time building up the company and at the same time developing this digital technology. Rob Coleman: As reference, I think there were around 200 [effects] shots in Men in Black, and there were 2,000 shots in Phantom Menace. John Knoll: I’ll give you an example of some of the things we had to develop. I think prior to Episode I, the most complicated CG animation we had ever done was on Mars Attacks!, years before. We had one or two shots that had like 16 or 18 Martians in it, and they all had the little spacesuits and the helmets and their props and all of that. But that nearly brought the whole system down to its knees because having that many rigged characters in a scene at once just was more than the systems could handle at the time. I was regularly seeing shots where there were 50 battle droids, or a big battle scene where there are two characters fighting in the foreground, but the background had hundreds or thousands of characters back there. This is a whole order of magnitude of higher complexity than we dealt with, so we’re going to need to have systems for managing that level of complexity. And then a few years before, I think it was maybe ’95, we had done Spawn. There was a number of shots where Spawn’s cape does something magical, and we’d done cloth simulations for that that didn’t look super realistic, and it was fine for the movie because it was kind of stylized. The cape was almost a character in itself. We didn’t have a particularly good or usable cloth simulation system. But looking at the designs of the characters, they’re all wearing clothing. Jar Jar has clothing, and Boss Nass has clothing, and Watto has clothing, and we’re going to have to do digital doubles of the Jedi to do some of stunty things that we can’t shoot for real, and they need to have their cloaks and all of that. We’re going to need to have a good cloth simulation package in there. And we said, all right, we’re going to have to develop that. And then we had — there were lots of shots of Jedi cutting through battle droids, so the pieces of the battle droid clatter down onto the ground and that’s hard to animate completely from scratch, and there were so many shots, that, all right, we can’t fake it through that. We need to have a rigid body dynamic system. These were the things I’d been seeing at SIGGRAPH and technical papers about how to do those believable physical collisions, and we’re going to need a robust rigid body simulation system that’s integrated into our pipeline. It was just a lot of that kind of stuff. All these things that I knew were technically possible; we didn’t have any tools that did that. Rob Coleman: Part of my problem was, for months, there was no crowd system, which meant there was no Gungan battle. No ability for my team to animate hundreds of characters back then. It just didn’t exist. I remember there was one line in the script that said something along the lines of “The Gungan army walks out to battle.” That was six months of work — that one sentence. You were like, “Holy [expletive], how do we do that?” And that was one sentence out of a 100-page script. Ultimately, it was a matter of acquiring the right tools to accomplish what George Lucas was asking, using the latest versions of software already available, or developing new techniques. Rob Coleman: We had a database with all the different Gungan walks, runs, throws, falls, fights. We had little vignettes. We’d have Gungans and battle droids, upwards of five of them together in a little cluster, and we’d animate that. And then we could put that cluster into any shot, and we could rotate it, and it wouldn’t look the same to the camera. So we could create a finite number of those and then we could place them, and we’d actually get a fair amount of movement into the shot. We’d just be able to use it over and over again, and we’d put some hero work in the foreground, and the audience would never know. Jean Bolte: Back then they called it Viewpaint, it was the first software that was developed to paint onto computer graphic models. I was the Viewpaint supervisor. Most people know this, but Viewpaint was a huge leap forward in Jurassic Park. Dennis [Muren] has always acknowledged that. As I have stated publicly, I don’t want to make it sound like I think my job was the most important contribution to computer graphics, but it was a very important one. The work that we were able to do, because we could paint onto the models, transformed the look of everything. Up until then we’d had The Abyss water tentacle, we had the mercury man in T2, very simple, very rudimentary, you know, the shading on things didn’t allow for very much believability, really. What we were able to do with the paint software, even in the very early, early stages there on Jurassic — I didn’t work on Jurassic, but I was having a good look at it. They were able to contribute a bump surface and a paint surface to give things the scale pattern, the aging, obviously the color, the different qualities of specularity. And in addition to that, for anything that was hard surface, there’s the aging that comes into making something rusty or dented or scratched. And when you have that, suddenly a thing has a story. It has a history. In addition to it having the believability, you can introduce the backstory as to, why did it get dented here? Why are the scales roughed up in this area? What kind of creature is this thing? Is it dry? Does it hunt? Is it an apex predator? Is it moist? All of that stuff is the story. So even if you’re making a creature that has never been seen before, you can kind of establish what its niche is in nature, and then contribute all of that to the look of it. The dinosaurs in Jurassic, that was a huge breakthrough to be able to see that. So the software being very rudimentary still functioned and continued to update. Every project there were things that were written into the software and in our technique and approach that allowed us to get more and more realism. The Phantom Menace featured several completely digital characters. Jar Jar Binks, played through motion-capture by Ahmed Best, would be the most high-profile, a supporting character that shared screen time with our heroes. Initially, the idea was for Best to perform in a suit and have Jar Jar’s neck and head created digitally, but this proved more costly and labor-intensive than just using a full CG model. Watto, the junk dealer, and Sebulba, Anakin’s rival podracer, were two other completely CG characters that played prominent roles. Ahmed Best: George wanted a character that was part-Goofy, but very physically aware. He really moved me toward what eventually became the walk. He wanted me to move slower, longer. Jar Jar was taller than I am, so he really wanted Jar Jar’s head to move in a specific way, so that forced me to try to come up with a physicality so that Jar Jar could move in a way that would work once animated. But a lot of it was just a collaboration of movement, me giving George options, and him saying, “Yeah, more like that.” The voice was the same thing. It was just me giving George options, and he was like, “Yeah, do that one. Do that voice.” George Lucas: I was tired of putting masks on people. I was much more interested in having them be all-digital so you could do more things with them. More freedom.

Ahmed Best: Jar Jar’s character, the movement and the motivation, was really based off of Buster Keaton. George really honed into that aesthetic when it came to me. Jean Bolte: Casper had a speaking character, Dragonheart, that was a speaking character, but there was something about Jar Jar being a character in this film that was a huge step further. I mean, he had to work in so much of the film in so many different environments. He had to sit there and interact as if he was somebody George had cast and put into a suit. Ahmed Best: It was great. I loved it. It never really felt like I was this other thing. It felt like we were all actors in the movie working together. This whole idea of me being in the movie or not being in the movie never occurred to all of us while we were shooting. It was never a separate thing and, subsequently, that’s what mo-cap has become now. It’s become actors in the movie, doing the motion, and then animation later building the realized, fantastical look of the character. But the actors are an integral part of the filmmaking and an integral part of the collaboration. And that kind of started with Phantom Menace. Rob Coleman: I believed in my crew, and I believed that I’d understood what George was looking for from a performance point of view. Ahmed Best: After principal [photography], I spent probably another year and a half, maybe two years, going back and forth between ILM and New York working out some of the kinks. That final battle scene with all the Gungans and the droids and the battle tanks, that was me, George, Rob [Coleman], John [Knoll], everybody at ILM, up in San Francisco figuring it out. It was just us in a room, there was nobody else there. I was doing all the motion that Jar Jar did in the final battle scene. George really wanted that to feel like not only just a live-action battle, but he wanted it to have the same physical comedy as a Buster Keaton movie. We worked really hard on that final battle scene. Jean Bolte: One of the things about this film is that this is what George wanted. He wanted them to have a similar kind of quality to the animatronic characters who also were not necessarily always 100 percent believable. But they had a charm to them, they had a life in them. That was more important than anything. I think Jar Jar has this quality. Ahmed Best: For me, it was just such a joy to be as creative as I wanted to be because I knew I had so much room. And George was really generous with the amount of room he gave me to bring Jar Jar to life. Doug Chiang: Watto was completely out of nowhere, and that scared me, because the genesis of Watto was that I did an early trader baron portrait that George really liked. The story of that character changed eventually, but he liked that. One day he came in and said, “Remember that portrait of the trader baron? Take that portrait, let’s put on a body, and add the feet, and add bat wings.” And that was the brief! It scared me because it didn’t make any sense, and I thought it was going to be a complete cartoony character that people are going to laugh at. I remember we spent weeks and weeks designing it, trying to make it very real, and George kept saying the same thing. And then literally one day I said, “Okay, I’m going to take George exactly at his word, and draw exactly that.” And it worked. One of my big appreciations for George is that he can push us quite a bit. I learned to trust him that he knows what he wants, and he will then stop us if we’ve gone too far. And right now Watto is one of my favorite characters. Rob Coleman: The amazing thing about The Phantom Menace, I think, certainly for the ILM animators, is we were moving from putting creatures in scenes to actually being actors in the movie. This is what I was trying to get across to them. The notion of getting up and acting things out. Talking about what’s happening internally inside a character’s head. Do they believe in what they’re saying? What do they want from the scene? Everything you would talk to an actor about I was trying to teach these animators. Jean Bolte: The main characters, Sebulba, Watto, and Jar Jar, were things that I had painted. Those were great. I mean, Jar Jar, obviously, was an important character. I remember that Doug Chiang [paid] very, very close attention to him. After there was artwork from Doug, and the model, then I would do the texture paint on it, and then Doug Chiang would take a frame render and paint on it. The next morning I’d come in, I’d see what he had done, have a meeting with him, I would incorporate those changes into Jar Jar. That process went on every day for weeks and weeks and weeks. Rob Coleman: I remember showing [a test of Watto] to George, and he was so excited that he showed him to Frank [Oz], who was doing the actual rubber puppet of Yoda on that first one. And then Frank said to George, “Well, this is the future.” And George was just beaming. The centerpiece action sequence of the film is the podrace, a fast, furious race between Anakin Skywalker and a smattering of strange aliens, through a course that includes a stadium, caves, rocky terrain, and the occasional Tusken Raider sniper. John Knoll: I had been playing around with a desktop tool that did two-dimensional physics simulations. It was called Interactive Physics. You could draw 2D shapes and you could have gravity and drag, and you could attach springs or chains to them and let them collide, and kind of do what they do. Seeing the designs for the podracers, they’re supposed to be suspended on repulsors, like Luke’s speeder, where they just sort of hover, and if you disturb them they have a kind of springy action to them. So they’re supposed to be just kind of hovering there, and then the cables go back to the cockpit. I just kept thinking that they should be, as they’re driving along, bouncing and springing and kind of look like they’re being held up by springs.

I used this Interactive Physics program to build a top down version of a podracer in 2D, where I had two engines and chains that went back to a cockpit. Then I attached thrusts to the engines, and I hooked them together by a spring network. I would jostle them a little bit and they would have this nice secondary springy motion that you would never have the time and patience to animate believably. I just really liked the look of it. I talked to Habib Zargarpour, my friend that was doing all that [computer animation software] Maya beta testing, and I said I want to try setting something up like this in 3D where we make up a frame and we suspend the pods from springs that attach to the frame. Basically, what we’re going to animate is, we’re going to animate the frame, we’re going to jostle it around, and when we animate the pods we’re basically just animating this frame. The pods are just going to hang from that, and when we move the frame, they’ll kind of bounce around and we’ll get all this really nice secondary motion. So that’s how the animation system worked, we weren’t actually animating the pods directly. We’re animating this frame that was holding them up. That was, I think, the first time that we’d done vehicle animation that was all being driven by rigid bodies and dynamic simulation system. Jean Bolte: I remember the first time I saw the podrace come together on the screen, and I was like, “This is it. This is amazing and it’s a beautiful collaboration.” The model makers and the computer graphics department come before me in the [process]. It’s first artwork, then the model makers get busy, the CG model department gets busy modeling, then it’s passed off to paint. Often it goes back to model and back to paint and back to model. John Knoll: Yeah, it’s a mixture. Doug and the group had designed this racecourse that had all these very distinctly different-looking regions. It was all pretty deliberate because George wanted you — if you saw two racers in one particular terrain — to immediately understand where you were in the racetrack. “Oh, that’s the area right past the stadium,” or “There’s the arches,” or “That’s the area where they get into this narrow canyon.” So if you kind of understood what that racetrack is like, then you cut to this character and you kind of know, “Oh, he’s like 10 seconds behind Anakin because he’s still in the crater field,” and that kind of thing. We had all these different terrains we had to create, and some of them were more closed in than others. A couple of them, like Beggar’s Canyon, and there was another sort of cave, this stalactite cave, I figured were closed in enough that we could do in miniature.

(The stunning podrace arena miniature.)

(Thousands of painted Q-tips stood in for audience members in the podrace arena miniature.) The podrace stadium was another one where I really felt like we’d get a lot of benefit out of building a miniature of that. Partly I was kinda looking back at how people had done things in the past, and the Ben-Hur stadium from the chariot race, that always really impressed me. Those were done in miniature and they just looked amazing. We’ll build a miniature of that arena, and we’ll shoot all the elements outdoors, and we’ll get that really nice, realistic daytime look. And then there were other terrains where it was just wide open and we were going at 600 miles an hour, and it seemed like the only way to do it was this CG projection technique. It was a whole mixture of whatever technique would work. Ben Burtt: I followed through with the podrace from day one to however we ended it. [Laughs] Even in the earliest stages of temporary assemblies of the race I showed George, I always was starting to put sound in. I, of course, had a library to start with of aircraft, and some automobile, cars, and things that had high-speed racing-type sounds that I could manipulate. I would sketch those in a temporary way. As we went along and the podrace developed, I would go out and record new vehicles, as would [sound designer] Matt Wood and a few others. We’d send them out to races to get drag strips, cars, we did some — everything from antique biplanes with wires humming on them to running an electric toothbrush up and down a harp string. It wasn’t just restricted to aircraft or anything. We did a lot of cars, a lot of aircraft of different types, and then manipulated other sound effects. George Lucas: The podrace was the direct result of my lifelong fascination with racing. I thought it would be fun to build really intense race vehicles that were as much sort of chariots as they were anything else, like two horses and a chariot. I took that idea, and plot-wise, it was necessary to get them off the planet. Obviously, you could come up with a million different ways, but I have a tendency to always go toward the racetrack. It was very dynamic. And it’s fun. I love it. The digital revolution of which The Phantom Menace was part did not stop with effects; it played a big part in the editing of the film and the entire delivery method. Still, the movie was ultimately made utilizing techniques both new and traditional. George Lucas: I’m not sure where my embrace of technology comes from. All art is technology. Film, or the movies, were the highest point of technology in the art world. You just had to learn a lot, and there’s a lot of technical things to deal with. So that wasn’t the issue as much as it was the fact that I didn’t mind change. And I didn’t mind change because I actually physically worked in it. I worked as an editor, I worked as a cameraman, and I know how difficult it was just working in the medium where you have little splices of film, you can’t find them, when you go to look for something you have to go through reels and reels of film. It takes a long time and it’s very frustrating on lots of levels. Just the whole idea that back in the Kodak days, you’d shoot the film, and then you have to send it in to the drugstore to get it processed, and then bring it back to see what you have, is slow and frustrating. And the whole thing was built on that, whereas if you do it electronically, digitally, you can see what you’re doing as you’re doing it. So you know exactly what you’re doing. Ben Burtt: Phantom Menace was shot on film. It was the last of the ones shot on film, but it gets transferred to a digital form, then we’re cutting on Avid editing machines. Once you’ve got the image in the digital realm, rather than a physical piece of film, of course then it opens up the door to the amenities of working digitally. You can cut and paste images, and you can duplicate them, and you can flip flop and enlarge them and shrink them, doing all kinds of stuff with a lot of fluidity that you would never have if you were working on a physical film. George loved that world of manipulation after the fact. You learned working for George that no shot as the camera saw it was final. [Laughs] It could be thought of as just an element for further development.

(Jean Bolte paints a Sebulba maquette.) Jean Bolte: When Jurassic came out, the company offered to train those of us who were interested in making the switch — they referred to it as “making a switch to computer graphics.” I had no intention whatsoever of making a switch [from the model shop]. What I always wanted to do was to train on this, in the new technology, learn as much as I could about it, but also keep the door open in the model shop. I had to fight kind of hard to make that work. But I think I was fairly successful because during Episode I, I was still able to go back to the model shop and paint maquettes, sort of keep both doors open. I loved that. John Knoll: To be perfectly frank, I was getting a lot of pressure from George and Rick to do less with miniatures and more with digital techniques. And what George told me, this was, I think, during Episode II or III, he was pushing back on me wanting to do so much with miniatures. He said, “Listen, the future is in computer graphics with these digital techniques, and you’re using miniatures as a crutch. You’re going to have to get better at doing this computer graphics work and expand the palette of things you’re going to be able to do that way. And the way you’re going to get good at it is doing it, so I’m going to kick the crutch out from under you and it’s for your own good. Don’t build so many miniatures. Do this stuff more with digital techniques because you need to be doing that.” Even though my preference would have been to keep doing what I was doing on Episode I. I look back on a lot of the miniature work we did on Episode I and I think it still looks amazing. Like Theed city, I think a lot of those shots are completely convincing. You’d never know. And I think the podrace stadium looks pretty good, and the podrace hangar looks really good. And there’s a lot of extensions that I don’t think people even know are extensions that are in the Nemoidian ship, of the corridors and the bridge and all of that. You’d never know.

#behind the scenes #george lucas #ben burtt #doug chiang #rob coleman #john knoll #jean bolte #ahmed best #long post under read more

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elstreem · 4 years

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I thought it would be fun to do a comparison art of how I’ve been drawing my OC Raine - so here is my first ever drawing of her, all the way back in 2012, versus my most recent drawing of her in 2020!

Back during 2012, I was obsessed with Adventure Time and giving bird companions to my characters. Also, 2012 me felt like a genius drawing this in MS paint. Simple times.

Everything that happened in between (with significant art every two years) is below if you want to check it out! This post is a little long, so I’ll put the rest under the cut.

This one is 2014 - I used the default drawing app on the iPhone I think. She was still an Adventure Time OC at the time so I pretty much stole the Ice Queen’s gown and gave it to her. Also I see you, younger me, hiding hands in long sleeves AND behind the back.

2016! This was drawn on my phone using Sketchbook (the old version with a blue icon). Not entirely sure where this gown design came from, but at this point I was starting to think about drawing less stylized bodies. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I just wanted to move away from purely copying something else’s art style, which is what I was doing at the time.

Things were getting somewhere in 2018 - Raine was no longer an Adventure Time OC, she was my own character, a spirit of the rain with a dress and hair of storm clouds. Also lol, tried to draw her original look but the outfit and colors are all wrong. This was also drawn on my phone using Sketchbook.

Also 2018, but on a brand new phone and a new app! Trying out Medibang Paint is one of the best decisions I ever made, and it’s still what I use on my mobile devices. This mer-Raine design isn’t entirely original since I was drawing from Legend of Mana (Specifically I used Flameshe’s design), but this is still a huge step up from what I was able to do with Sketchbook. Also yay, drawing more hands!

2019!!! By this time I know for sure what I want Raine to look like, and it was also in 2019 that I stepped up my backgrounds. Which lead to...

This monster artwork in December of 2019! I was on a kick to draw characters as detailed as possible with fantasy inspirations, so Raine became a merperson with an Aquarius look going on. The water took so long to paint but I’m glad for it! Also I got a Samsung Galaxy tablet in 2019, and having a stylus makes for cleaner, quicker lineart. I still prefer to draw on that instead of my Wacom tbh, but I just gotta adapt to it!

And here are my other 2020 drawings for Raine (with a bonus Alexandra and Destiny)!

It’s been a long journey since I started out with MS Paint, and it’s good to remember how far I’ve come and what else I’m looking forward to achieving. I’m still working on drawing Raine consistently (kinda still have the tendency to draw characters with long, model-like legs and I want to move away from that). I’ve been trying to draw Raine to look more Filipino over time, and maybe sometime I can make a story for her set in or using mythologies of the Philippines, so I have that to work towards to.

Also, some other lessons I’ve learned:

A good art app can make a difference! Medibang is my current go-to and I’m adapting to Clip Studio Paint as well. Experiment, try to find out which is comfortable to use. I’m only using Medibang’s default settings but it’s taken me quite far because I’ve been using it for quite some time now.

When you want to develop drawing something - in my case it was hands, draw it over and over and over again! It’ll look bad and awkward but you should rinse and repeat until you get the look you want.

Don’t be scared to go back to basics. I started drawing Raine exclusively in an art style mimicking Adventure Time, and over time my inspiration shifted to anime, so I drew Raine with that kind of visuals in mind. But when I wanted to draw her in a style I really wanted, I looked up drawing in a more realistic style. I still don’t draw realistically, but that helped me find the look I want for my art.

Addition and subtraction - when it comes to character details, some stuff gets left behind, and new stuff gets added in. Like with anything, just go on and try out what works! Raine lost her earrings (though I might return that now lol) and she used to have a feather in her ponytail, but she got this look with the cloud hair and clothing, and I think that will be staying. It’s a design I love - I love how it looks and it’s fun to draw!

Well, that should be enough rambling. I hope this is fun to read for other people as fun as it was for me to gather everything up!

#my oc #my character #art #my art #art progress

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haledamage · 5 years

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Kira Grace Kingston

female, she/her

5'6”, slender build

shoulder-length, straight dark-brown hair

pale, lightly freckled skin

light brown eyes

bisexual (though I play her in-game as straight because I just really connected with the all-male Unit Bravo for some reason)

Taurus, born 28 April 1992; 25 at the beginning of Book 1, turns 26 between Book 1 and 2

left-handed

Romance: all of them, I’m using the same Detective for all routes

(infodump about her under the cut, for my own purposes mostly but also for anyone interested)

--Was inspired to become a cop to help people after having one help her when she really, really needed it. Wanted to pay it forward, so to speak.

--Kira is a natural leader and very good at deduction and problem solving (it’s her second highest stat, after people/psychology). She would have likely gone out for detective soon anyway, but didn’t think she was ready or old enough to be in charge of the whole station yet and was surprised when the promotion came. The rest of the station had been secretly considering her their boss for years before Detective Reele retired, but Kira somehow has no idea.

--Totally shot Adam. Feels really bad about it but would never tell him that.

--Will drink tea or coffee, but prefers tea. Her favorites are cinnamon tea and masala chai. If she’s drinking coffee, she prefers the sugary, flavored, Starbucks-like variety, but will sometimes drink it black just to unnerve people (people mostly being Tina).

--Doesn’t wear much make-up, but likes to paint her nails. Usually black or some other dark color, a “layover from her misspent youth.”

--Wears contacts. Has gold-framed glasses that she wears when she has to, but hates them. She’s farsighted, so if for some reason she can’t wear her contacts, she only puts on the glasses for reading.

--Plays guitar and lap steel guitar. Prefers to play blues music, but can play just about any genre. A pretty good singer, but very shy about it. Probably only Rebecca and Tina have ever heard her sing as far as she knows. (she sings to herself at her desk sometimes, but doesn’t realize it. All of UB have probably noticed; Felix definitely has, and is likely waiting for a good opportunity to tease her about it)

--She’s always been very close with Rebecca. They’re both rather independent-minded, so she didn’t mind her mother’s absences so much. Mum was always there when she needed her, and always willing to listen, and that’s what mattered. Now that she knows what she does, Kira is sure that she’s called her mother while she was on a mission before, but Rebecca still always answered, and that fact makes her respect and admire her mum even more.

--Lost a bet to Verda in regards to The Reveal. Verda had said the Murphy case and its oddities were supernatural in nature, Kira said it was science experiments gone awry. Technically, they were both right, but Verda was more right. Kira looks forward to one day being able to tell him, even if she’ll be out £50 for it.

--The only reason Kira isn’t some reclusive hermit is because of Tina Poname. Tina and Kira met when they were both in a very low place, and have lifted each other up and helped put each other back on their feet. Their friendship is very important to Kira, and the fact that she can’t tell Tina that the Hot Secret Agents they’re working with are Hot Secret Agent Vampires is the hardest part of The Reveal. She’s not used to keeping secrets from Tina.

--Tina and Kira have a monthly movie night. One of them picks the movie and the other picks the food, then they swap the next month. It’s more like an adult slumber party than anything else, really, lots of wine and gossip and venting if need be. It’s a tradition going back years now and neither would miss it for the world.

--Is very good with people, it’s her highest stat, but doesn’t actually enjoy being around them much. Very much an introvert, prefers silence and solitude or the company of close friends only. She works very hard to be as approachable as she is.

--Curses like a sailor. Poor Nate.

--Loves to read. Anything and everything. You put a book in front of her and she’ll read it. Mysteries are a favorite.

--Her favorite color is wintergreen like Adam’s eyes.

--Apartment style would be somewhere between cosy and dark. Kind of a Spooky Grandma’s House vibe. Lush fabrics and textures, soft sofas and chairs, but subdued colors. Black, gray, navy blue, with pale blue and wintergreen accents. Artwork is mostly made by locals or by friends from university. Bookshelves nearly overflowing. Apartment is kept clean, but always looks a bit cluttered.

--Preferred clothing style is casual but professional. Jeans, most often paired with a t-shirt or button-up shirt. Mostly long sleeves, but with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Usually black, sometimes white or gray, very, very rarely dark green or dark blue. Black leather jacket when it’s cold. Almost always wears black boots; she paid more for those boots than she did for her car (but that says more for how little she paid for the car than how expensive her boots actually are).

--Speaks seven languages. English, Sign Language, Spanish, French, German, Welsh, and, because someone dared her to at university, Sindarin Elvish. With the exception of the elvish, she learned most of them out of necessity or exposure.

--English literature major. Doesn’t serve much in her job, but she’s still proud of it.

--Very shy when it comes to flirting. She hates it about herself. She’s very confident and self-assured in almost every other situation, but if someone starts showing the slightest bit of genuine interest in her she flusters very easily.

--Dated Bobby in year one at university for a couple months. With him in journalism and her in English lit, they had a lot of class overlap early on, and he was familiar and clearly interested and that was enough, for a while. She regrets that she fell so easily for his flirting and has resolved since to not be such an “easy mark” in the future. Hasn’t dated anyone since and hasn’t wanted to (until UB barge into her office, obviously). Kind of hates him, but would never let him know that; she is, instead, very meticulously polite to him, never any more or less.

--At the beginning of Book 1, she has 4 tattoos. Gets a 5th one during the 2 months between Book 1 and Book 2. -a small, stylized crown on her right wrist (Rebecca has a matching one that she hides under her watch band at work) because Kingston -bars of music wrapped around her right bicep (watercolour-style effect behind it - the music is Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down”) -a quote on the inside of her left bicep (“I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein) -a large full-color floral piece from her left hip almost to her knee (forget-me-nots for her father, lupines for her mother, lavender roses and verbena for herself) -new tattoo is a simple, black crescent moon on the back of her neck to symbolize a new beginning (keeps it hidden under her hair most of the time, especially at work).

--Preferred method of working out is rock climbing/wall climbing. Has some combat training, mostly just from the police academy, but she tries to attend aikido lessons when she has time. She likes that it lets her defend herself without being stronger than her opponent, especially now that she deals with the supernatural so much.

--Kira didn’t realize how attached she’d grown to Unit Bravo until the attack on her apartment. She wanted to stay to help her team; on every route, she has to be dragged away in order to get her to leave. Completely, 100% ride or die for all of them.

Kira is my only Detective and I’m using her in all four routes (sorry, folks, I can’t do the Love Triangle. I tried, but I can’t, it already hurts and I’m not strong enough). It’s been very interesting, since she has the same personality no matter what, to see in what ways she connects with each member of Unit Bravo, and the slight changes in her personality stats based on how she responds to romance-specific scenes.

Adam: arguably my “canon” romance for her, though I legitimately and completely love all of them. On his route, her stats skew a little more toward Stubborn and Impulsive because she’s spiteful and he’s kind of an ass, especially to start with.

They’re both headstrong and natural leaders, so they butt heads a lot in terms of authority. She doesn’t like that Adam tries to order her around, he doesn’t like that she refuses to listen to orders sometimes out of spite. But when they actually try to get along, they agree more often than not and could probably make an amazing team given time.

She’s completely, head-over-heels in love with him, but she hasn’t figured it out yet, though she knows she feels something for him. He makes her feel safe, which is how she knows that she’s in deep.

On Adam’s route, Nate is Kira’s best friend. Poor guy’s gonna be stuck between the immovable object and the unstoppable force for 7 fucking books.

Nate: On Nate’s route, Kira’s stats tend more toward Cautious, and also a bit more Heart on the Heart/Mind scale.

Of all of them, Nate would be the one Kira would be most surprised to find herself falling for. She’s not much of a romantic, generally, but she’s also never had anyone look at her like Nate does, or treat her like she’s something precious and important. She feels completely off balance with him and has no idea how to react. She has never been so overwhelmed with a desire to kiss someone before.

Personality-wise, they have a lot in common, both are good with people, compassionate, linguistically talented, and avid readers; to anyone except Kira, them getting together makes perfect sense. He probably doesn’t like how stubborn and foul-mouthed she is, but between Adam and Mason, he’s used to dealing with it.

On Nate’s route, Mason is Kira’s best friend. No one is more surprised about that than they are, and they aren’t really sure how that happened.

Felix: On Felix’s route, Kira skews more toward Easygoing and Impulsive.

In a word, Felix helps Kira relax. She’s a bit of a workaholic and he brings her out of her shell and reminds her that she’s more than just Detective Kingston. It’s refreshing and overwhelming. Romance with Felix is easy.

He’s the only one where she doesn’t end up 100% shy because, even though she still gets horribly flustered by him, he doesn’t make her as tongue-tied as the others do. Maybe it’s because he’s so much less intense than the others, but also she kind of feels like she’s always known him.

She wants to show him the world, all the little things about being human that she’s always taken for granted but he never had in Echo World. Paper airplanes and creepy travelling carnivals and movie theater popcorn and photo booths and everything. They’ll be good for each other, but them joining forces is probably very bad for everyone else.

On Felix’s route, Nate is Kira’s best friend. Unlike with Adam, he isn’t so much trapped between two opposing forces as he is an exhausted parent trying to corral overly-curious children.

Mason: On Mason’s route, Kira’s stats tend even more toward Genuine than they do on other routes, as well as Stubborn.

On the surface Mason and Kira probably don’t look like they’d work, but really I think they’re the pairing that makes the most sense. Mason doesn’t drain her social batteries as much as the others, even at the beginning when he’s as hostile toward her as possible. They both enjoy the quiet, and that’s where the first romantic feelings from her would form, in the calm and silent comfort she feels with him.

But obviously, it doesn’t start romantic even a little bit. At the beginning, she’s neither intimidated nor put off by his sharp, brusque personality, and she’s very flustered and intimidated by his intense manner of flirting, though she’s not really put off by it either. She doesn’t know how to respond to it (though he clearly enjoys how she reacts), but he makes her feel desired in a way she never has before. There’s a certain comfort to knowing that he only wants her physically, that he’s straightforward in his interests.

I imagine that she figures out she’s falling for him after he does something small that should be innocuous, some little off-hand affection that he didn’t even think about and she just goes “oh shit, I’m in love with Mason.”

On Mason’s route, Felix is Kira’s best friend. He definitely sees them falling for each other long before they see it and does everything he can to get them to stop being idiots and realize that they’re in love.

#the wayhaven chronicles #kira kingston #I'm also tagging this as #rhitober #day 12 #day 13 #because I've had a brutal migraine all weekend and can't concentrate to write creatively #but infodumping like this is easier #and since it's over 2k words I think it still counts as writing #I'm glad to finally get this all written down even if I'm probably the only one that'll read it #I've gotten really attached to kira #and I love the little details that change about her between romances even though her base personality stays the same #twc

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toonstarterz · 5 years

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BECAUSE I’M NOT POPULAR, I’LL READ WATAMOTE: CHAPTER #164

Hey, not dropping the ball actually worked!

We’re just a hair’s length away from summer vacation, but unlike last year when Tomoko approached summer with not much consideration, she’s now taking a proactive role in deciding how to spend her last summer in high school. At first glance, Tomoko appears to have become a responsible, young lady. But as we soon will see, that can-do attitude may not be as refined as it looks on the surface.

Chapter 164: Because I’m Not Popular, I’ll Do My Best Starting From Summer Break

There’s that time period during the day when most students have already left but school hasn't quite closed up. It’s pretty creepy, even more so before summer break when you’re expected not to stick around.

Have I mentioned Itou is a cute? ‘Cause she is.

It’s usually her looking after Komiyama, so it’s really sweet to see the dynamic flipped around like this. Despite, well, everything, Komiyama is a good friend.

Assuming that cheering for the baseball teams is optional, it’s endearing to see Itou go through with it. Even though baseball isn’t her thing, she’s likely doing it to support her bestie, which I can 110% get behind.

Ah, right. Dude’s in the manga club. That said, I wonder if their plans are for just being attendees, or if they’ll actually be manning a booth and selling their work. With his skills and, er, preferences, I think Hatsushiba could do the latter.

Don’t be so modest, Tomoko. There’s no slouching either when you’re a three-year veteran of the Going-Home Club.

Studying during summer break? Outrageous!!

It’s intriguing to see just how Tomoko’s study habits have evolved throughout the series. The early days would see her spend summer goofing off on her hobbies, with bare minimum concern for academics. But now, Tomoko is actually considering studying on her own accord. Sure, it’s more-or-less a fallback when she has nothing else planned, but the thought itself is still worth mentioning.

Is that one of those mini-fans that you can carry around in your bag? I love those things.

Study camp, huh? Any other day, Tomoko would be apathetic to the idea, leaning more on the side of brushing it off. But having Katou bring it up makes all the difference, ‘cause let’s be real. Katou could ask her to sign up for a hostess bar at the Red Light District and Tomoko would still seriously consider it.

Miss you, Yuu-chan.

I second that, Komi. Fourteen hours of studying a day is brutal, even if that’s to be expected in what is essentially a boot camp. I’ve always questioned the efficiency of cram schools and the like, mostly because they seem to prepare more for short-term memorization than long-term understanding. But even it actually works in principle...

...I’m not sure Tomoko will be able to handle it.

Perhaps it’s just me, but it feels like Tomoko is overestimating her discipline for studying. She already struggled with Katou’s flashcards and study sessions that a whole training camp feels like it would have a more detrimental effect on Tomoko than a positive one. “Work hard, play hard” was never meant to be that extreme, Tomoko.

That’s...genuinely uplighting. Tomoko has missed out on several of the key “memorable” high school moments, and she usually lets it go with only mild regrets. But here, Tomoko’s actively trying to gain what she once lost. Sure, she’s trying to “game the social system” a little, but what did you expect? She’s a person, not a saint.

This was Yuu’s only line in this entire chapter. My girl deserves more than this.

Will the 2% of Tomoko’s personality that is tsundere ever realize that if you really “didn’t care either way”, then you wouldn’t have asked the question to begin with? Doubt it.

That romaji tho.

It comes to the surprise of absolutely no one that Komiyama has some pretty...vivid fantasies about Tomoki. But what stands out to me is how deep into the relationship her thoughts go. Most people fantasize about their crush first in their sexual attractiveness, but only a few ever dream beyond that. Ironically, you know your crushing has gone off the deep end if you start thinking about them in domestic, SFW ways. Least Komi’s committed, yeah?

Gee, I wonder what’s that “and stuff” Tomoko’s talking about?masturbating

Nothing like a fresh bowl of Grossi-Os and Gross Juice to start the day!

If what Yuri says is true, then that would mean that she and Ucchi have probably walked to school together several times before–more than the couple of times we’ve seen, at least. And even so, it doesn’t look like they haven’t gotten much closer as friends, if at all. Some people just don’t click, I suppose.

Not sure how blind Ucchi is because anybody with a pair of eyes (beady or not) would see that Yuri has friends, even if you only count Mako. Poor girl just can’t accept the truth even when it's right in front of her face.

Ah, Yuri. Why can’t you just drop the “savior” act and just admit you want to spend time with her?

I’m inclined to agree about Yoshida, but who knows? She’s surprised us before. Mako's a safe bet, though. Especially if the former’s going. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Boy, does that take me back. It still blows my mind that all of Ucchi’s problems originated from one night of misunderstandings. The art nerd in me really appreciates the subtle improvement in Niko’s art style. The character models feel “weightier” and more consistent without compromising the stylization.

You don’t see it in the previous panel, but Ucchi was totally blushing at the prospect of reliving her trauma/dream. Perhaps she was also looking to live out that ping pong match she never got.

I’m not sure if there was some kind of wordplay in the original text. Either way, it kind of sucks for Yuu-chan that she got such a “flattering” nickname when she wasn’t involved in that scenario whatsoever. Though it sure is a tad classier than Miss Akari “Dick Sister Jr.’ Iguchi.

It’s kind of (read: absolutely) frightening how Katou’s envy towards Yuu feels a lot more intense than Yuri’s. Perhaps it’s because Yuri’s so transparent that you know how to deal with her. But with Katou, that air of secrecy feels like a nuclear bomb about to go off.

I always wondered where girls picked up that thing where they intertwine their fingers as a sign of affection. It’s precious.

Praise modern technology for convenient storytelling.

Wow, Fuuka’s already made her mark on Tomoko’s “bitch” list. Though exactly why she’s on that list now is kind of odd. I mean, yeah, she asked Tomoko about the whole fondling thing, and she unintentionally presented herself as a pervert for the whole “hair” thing, but Fuuka hasn’t really done anything all that terrible. If anything, Tomoko is probably expressing a rare bit of jealousy towards someone else supposedly perving on Katou besides her.

The most striking part about Fuuka’s inevitably failed plan is that she describes Tomoko’s appearance as “sudden”. It was touched on before, but it further emphasizes that Tomoko’s friendship with Katou was just as unexpectedly quick in-universe as it was for the readers. And in doing so, it brings us one step closer to the real mystery over why Katou is so enamored with Tomoko in the first place.

Ya’ll know Sayaka’s got her homegirl’s back on this one. Let’s see (hopefully) how Akari screws it up.

Chapter 58, mothereffers!

I don’t know whether I’d say Nico Tanigawa has been playing the long game, or if they just found a convenient throwaway to capitalize on. But the acknowledgment itself is very much appreciated. Tomoko may have forgotten, naturally, but us overzealous fans certainly never did!

The chills, man. Chill’s right up the spine.

It’s certainly true that Tomoko’s words can be interpreted in a good or bad way, so it’s pretty telling that Katou’s gut reaction went for the latter. It suggests that Katou may actually have some insecurities that can easily set her off. Then again, a defining part of Katou’s personality is that she takes everything Tomoko says at completely face value, so maybe she’s starting to see Tomoko’s negativity even if it’s not there. Just more of the enigma that is Asuka Katou.

Not a bad save, Tomoko. Countless battles with shame have made her quick on the fly. Unfortunately, while she’s improved at starting a save...

...she still doesn’t know how to end it.

It would’ve been a clean getaway if Tomoko had just ended about half-way in the above panel. But because Tomoko’s anxiety causes her to try and cover all the bases, she ends up rambling suspiciously. The part about Nemo isn’t even that relevant, but in her burst of defensiveness, Tomoko ends up saying things that could just exacerbate the problem even further.

Fucking shit, Katou is damn scary.

The one fortunate thing about Tomoko’s defensive rambles is that once she starts to cool down, her honesty starts coming out more organically. Self-deprecation becomes self-reflection, and brings to the forefront Tomoko’s endearing side.

Only Tomoko could spout such a cliché moe line and sound so pure of heart. Must be the irony.

Aha. Ahaha. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

–that totally didn’t happen.

Tomoko, girl, you’re in the CLEAR! Stop trying to fan flames that have already been put out.

But on that note, it does affirm that while Tomoko is honest with Katou about certain things (perversion, laziness), she isn’t quite ready to be honest on anything that would paint Katou in a bad light. I’d say tha’st about 85% due to fear.

Death Flags raised all around.

I had a feeling that Nemo would take the plunge this time and invite Tomoko out somewhere during the summer. It seems like such an insignificant gesture, but considering that this is the very first time a classmate has asked to hang out with her during the summer, it warms my heart.

Hey now, Tomoko. Don’t get cocky when you’re maximizing your own goof-off time by taking a study camp.

The easy guess is that Nemo wants to go to Comiket. But really, it could be anything that Tomoko would have an interest in. And because it’s implied that Nemo is going for research purposes, it could be anything from a seiyuu panel (the last one went so well) to a hot spring to a hentai game company. Hope they bring Okada along...

Mama senses her daughter’s giving in to peer pressure.

Not gonna lie. This hand gesturing from Rena made me think that she was thinking about doing...something else.

Damn mind-in-the-gutter.

Even though Anna doesn’t appear to be the studious type, it’s pretty cool to see that she can respect people who are. Also, I dig the way she wears her tie (or is that a ribbon?).

Emoji II really has become an honorary delinquent and it fits her perfectly.

I guess no matter how much more grounded Tomoko becomes, she still thinks reading manga is legitimate practice for playing in real-life (though tabletop games may actually allow for some truth).

Sub!Tomoko confirmed.

What a way to end a chapter. For the longest, Katou had always viewed Tomoko through a pair of rose-tinted glasses, always seeing the girl’s faults as endearing “quirks”. But as her soul-piercing gaze seems to indicate, Katou has reached a revelation about Tomoko that she can actually disapprove of. Whether or not it’ll shatter her illusion of Tomoko is still unclear, but how she treats Tomoko from here on out may finally give us a deeper look into Katou’s psyche.

160+ chapters we’ve followed Tomoko, and we’re still learning new things about her. The very extent of Tomoko’s agency has always been a tad murky. She’s good at (poorly) executing short-term ideas, but hardly does she plan out and follow up on her long-term goals. Even her greatest milestone of making friends involved a lot of pushing from outsiders (Ogino, the most obvious case). That said, having to take charge of herself for once is inescapable with college on the horizon. How she goes about it amongst her various mom-friends may end up being Tomoko’s biggest personal challenge yet.

#watamote #watamote review #chapter 164 #no matter how i look at it it's you guys' fault i'm not popular!#tomoko kuroki #kotomi komiyama #hikari itou #hatsushiba #asuka katou #yuu naruse #yuri tamura #emiri uchi #sasaki fuuka #hina nemoto #rena #anna haruna #review

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daily-rayless · 4 years

Text

20 Years of Art

2000

(OC / Celes from Final Fantasy 6 / OC / OC)

The influence of Final Fantasy 6, off of the Anthology collection, and Yoshitaka Amano caused a significant shift in my art, leading my human figures to be very slender, graceful, and frequently pale. Most of it was of women, some of it was of horses, and by then I was very self-consciously starting to draw men. I mostly worked in pencils and colored pencils. Faces were oval with high hairlines and long, sharp, narrow noses. Also note my evident fear of mouth-seams and lower eyelids. I was pretty terrible at coloring, often feeling that coloring one of my sketches ruined all the nice linework.

2001

(Quistis from Final Fantasy 8 / Rosa from Final Fantasy 4? / Schala from Chrono Trigger / Dark Knight OC from Final Fantasy 4)

This is where more anime influences came in, and I consciously took on a semi-anime, semi-realistic (in my own mind) style. My ideal of beauty was overbig eyes, overlong nose, and oversmall mouth, and I stuck to it pretty relentlessly. Trying to figure out shadows and face structure. Still bad at coloring. I was incredibly proud of that charcoal picture. Was also going through my mandatory Dark 'n Edgy phase, with a big helping of Phantom of the Opera, Sarah Brightman, and my attempts at designing supercool clothes, many of which I wouldn't have actually worn, even given the opportunity.

2002

(Me trying to recreate “Flaming June” / OC, who incidentally looks almost exactly like Sarah Brightman and whose diadem was bodily lifted from a Jodi Lee painting / angsty symbolic wet chain lady / OC)

Deep in the Dark 'n Edgy. Faces are still very heavily made-up, with big lashes, defined upper eyelids, and dark lips. Trying very hard to be a good artist though, have high expectations for the future. I was so proud of that final pose and worked so hard on it. Lined paper? So not a problem. Besides, how else am I supposed to draw during class? A sketchbook would've been even more obvious than the incredibly obvious I already was. I'm able to listen while drawing pretty reliably, and I did manage to take detailed notes while doodling, so at least I had that going for me.

2003

(Celes / OC / OC / Hermes-inspired wing lady)

I was focusing (at least some of the time) on backgrounds and trying to make my work detailed and polished. Coloring is still hopeless. Often when I colored, I would go super light, even when I was using dark or intense colors. It would give my pictures a sort of faint, half-assed hazy look. I remember an art teacher urging me to use more color, but I probably resisted because I knew that way lay total destruction. I'm sorry, well-meaning art teacher. You are unversed in the ways of my pencils. I have killed too many sketches to take those kinds of risks.

2004

(Rosa? / Meliara from Crown Duel / willow-dress lady / Geddoe and Queen from Suikoden 3)

See the Meliara picture? That's supposed to be a night scene in a forest. Front-lit by blazing firelight. I was too afraid to make the colors darker. This is dark enough, okay? Anyway, this year, along with being utterly obsessed with Suikoden 3 and Crown Duel, I was letting my art head in a more realistic direction...

2005

(OC / Queen / Queen / part of Zetta and Salome from Makai Kingdom; I remember deliberately copying those swoopy Ss from one of my friends’ handwriting. Wishes ended up being the first longform fanfic I posted online.)

...that really flourished this year. It's not actually realism, but I made a point to give my characters, especially the women, more realistic bodies. Faces are very round in this period, often with soft features. Noses are prominent. I'm also, finally, using more vibrant colors. I probably got my first Prismacolor pencils around this time. I also got some really cheap markers, but had no idea how to use them so mostly stuck to pencils.

2006

(All OCs)

I look back on this as a good year. I was learning better coloring techniques. (Bold colors! Press that pencil down! Okay, I still had much to learn.) I got an Elfwood gallery while the site was doing its slow mosey into oblivion. But that was an important step, not just looking at other people's art online, but putting my own up as well. There were downsides though. I began to feel more insecure – or maybe more realistic? – about my art, on this site with so many highly talented artists. Still, 2006 is a good year. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot.

2007

(vampire and hunter / Fleur from Harry Potter / OC / Avril from Wild Arms 5)

The year of Fleur Delacour. This is when I was writing Kindred. I think it was because I was trying to depict Fleur as distinctly non-human that my art shifted away from that more realistic style. Fleur, and my other figures, became very tall and slender. The anime DNA is still there though. For a long time, I felt the lying-down picture of Fleur was my best work.

2008

(Revya and Gig from Soul Nomad / my attempts at being “abstract” / OC / OC)

This was the year of Soul Nomad and, towards the end, Tales of the Abyss. Unsurprisingly, the anime influences start moving back to the fore. The eyes are becoming larger again, the features a bit more angular and stylized, mouths are shrinking. I'm still desperately trying to figure out markers and wondering why it's so darn hard (I don't try to educate myself, I just flail), but I was proud of that blue OC picture. It made me feel like I was getting somewhere. 2008 is when I started my deviantART gallery, right when everyone else was moving on to Tumblr.

2009

(teacup lady / Persona 4 noir-style comic / Revya / OC)

Then Persona 4 hit. Shigenori Soejima was a huge influence in this period, especially in eyes and faces. Pupils, chins, and jawlines shrink, eyelashes are sparse and stylized, noses are simplified. 2008 and 2009 are about as pure anime as I've ever gotten. Meanwhile, I'm really exited about my dA gallery and trying lots of different combinations of media. I'm super active on dA and FFN at this point, writing Elysion and then a slew of shorter Persona fics.

2010

(Minako from Persona 3: Portable / concept-art-version Minako / lady with dragon ferret thing / other lady with dragon ferret thing)

I'm still drawing with a lot of Soejima influences. Additionally, bodies are becoming even longer, taller, thinner, and bendier. Some of them look absurd to me now. On the other hand, a lot of pictures from this period have a nice elegance to them. I was still using colored pencils a fair bit, but more clumsy markers are showing up. Persona 3: Portable came out, and this is when I was writing Death and Ker.

2011

(mask lady / hat lady / Archaya, Duphaston, and Iryth from Eternal Poison / symbolic autumn lady and her winter baby)

Midway through this year, I hit a breakthrough when I got my first set of Copics – and skin tones, no less. Even though I was still flailing, I was so thrilled with my results. That Eternal Poison picture left me enormously proud, as did the mother and child one. My style hasn't changed all that much, but it's starting to feel less extreme. The focus on big eyes and tiny little mouths remains.

2012

(Elza from Suikoden 2 / Daryl and Setzer from Final Fantasy 6 / Killey and Lorelai from Suikoden 2 / Lyssa, Greek goddess of madness)

This is the year of Elza. Lots of delicate sketches of this lovely scarred lady, and lots of colored pictures too. I've definitely shifted away from pencils towards markers. The Daryl and Setzer one was an attempt to use both, and I was very happy with it. These pictures show their age, but there's still a lot here I like. Mouths are larger too. However, my online activity was starting to lag.

2013

(Rydia from Final Fantasy 4 / Nia from Infinite Space / the prophet and Schala / Argos and Io from Greek mythology)

The mid-2010s weren't entirely great for me, marked with a lot of frustration and discontent. And that definitely carried over to my art, making me feel very disappointed with myself. There was lots of marker work this year. Probably the standout picture is Argos and Io. This is also when I played through all three routes of Fate/Extra, and my art was suddenly full of Hakuno and Emiya.

2014

(Minako / butterfly lady / Marta and Tenebrae from Tales of Symphonia 2 / Elza)

Looking at it now, this was a good year. Lots of nice marker art. The butterfly one was a big step up for me in terms of coloring. The Marta and Tenebrae has a really cool stylized look to it. But I was becoming less enthusiastic about sharing my art with others. I started to post less and less.

2015

(evil Hakuno and Emiya from the Fate series / Mitsuru from Persona 3 / half moon cookie lady / Hakuno)

I barely posted anything this year, though I was still drawing a ton. As far as making strides, this is one of my better years. Coloring will never be my strong suit, but it's a lot more fun, and it looks a lot better. It's almost entirely marker-work at this point. Despite my, er, angst, a lot of people are smiling this year.

2016

(OC / doodle lady / Luna from Roman mythology / hair bow lady)

At this point, it's feeling too recent for me to really see what's changed. I did a fair bit of eraserless work. One problem I still have – and, yes, it involves coloring my pictures – is losing some of the image's personality after I've inked it and erased the initial pencil work. The picture's still there, but not as nuanced as it originally was. The results often feel stiff to me. Doing the first linework in ink, or not inking at all, allows me to keep that sensitive, spontaneous quality. Luna and the bow and doodle ladies were done without erasers. Another thing I did a lot this year was fill backgrounds with busy shapes and colors, which is a trend I’m still following today.

2017

(flapper and dog / Alcyone and Ceyx from Greek mythology / flower hair lady / Kida from Atlantis)

Not a good year. Not that the art is bad, there just isn't a lot of it, and what there is often isn't very finished. I was still mostly dark online, wondering if I should take down my dA gallery. Drawing and knowing I wasn't going to post something took off some of the pressure of my own expectations, but I was still unhappy.

2018

(Altera from the Fate series / Elizabeth Bathory from the Fate series / OC / Aranea from Final Fantasy 15)

This was a really important year for me. I wrote a novel I'm really proud of, and it's done a lot to give me confidence and a sense of creative direction. I also decided that after New Years, I was going to start a Tumblr gallery...just as everyone who was still on the site was jumping off of it. Much of my 2018 work is still sketchy and unfinished, but I also think it's loosening up some. It feels less stiff than the stuff from the middle of the decade.

2019

(Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn / medievaly lady / Red from Transistor / Red)

The year of Supergiant Games, which led me to focus more on bright saturated colors. It's really hard for me to analyze these objectively. Coloring is better? I worked more on details? I used my metallic gel pens a ton and did shape-cluttered backgrounds? These aren't new things, but I think they paid off okay. I'm more at peace with my level of ability, I've finished more complicated works, and I crawled out of my den and started posting regularly online again. So that's all good. Curious to see what the art looks like in twenty more years.

#art progression #20 years of art #2000-2019 #i'm not tagging all the characters #this is a terribly long post #and shouldn't clutter up too many search results #thank you if you read the whole thing #i apologize for typos #art meme #art summary

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ask-art-student-prussia · 5 years

Note

You’re one of the only Hetalia art blogs still active that I absolutely love! Do you know any more of them?

Actually!!! I spent the past week sitting on this question, but im finally able to compile (most of) i have a bad memory and theres just so many, you see) the hetalia artists ive admired. ill write up a little blurb on each so you can know what to expect

warning, this is super long

I’m going to list my fav Prussia focused artists first:

@theknoflook is SO SO SO good at capturing the worn/rough-round-the-edges Prussia and they’re 100% the BEST at drawing the aged feel of him. They draw a lot of characters with human imperfections, it’s just such a RAW emotion I feel from each drawing.

@maplevogel I’ve admired since I was like,,, 13. You have no idea how much I want to be able to draw like them. Their watercolour illustrations are KICKASS!! They have such a sense of mystical-ness to each piece, everything is so unreal in what they draw it gives me such a sense of calm-ness. Constantly they’re using watercolour to it’s full extent, im EXTREMELY floored and always have been.

@mieudiary is another person ive admired since i was a absolute baby. Their art teeters on anime-realism and their use of lighting, shading and blending is SOOOO GOOD. They’re able to make their characters so real yet overly gorgeous lol. They’ve got the best damn detail in form/muscles (flesh) ive ever seen.

@kisamesfacioplegia is LITERALLY DRAWING RENAISSANCE PAINTINGS OKAY. Their art is always refined and carries the same aura as those huge paintings you find in museums, with extremely good storytelling and illustrations. Best historical prussia and germany on this site imo.

@carnagekiid (i dont know if they do aph anymore but their recent work is JUST AS GOOD) has the cutest modern interpretation of gil and is my fav. i personally am not a fan of like,,, the “ideal” canon prussia, and the way they draw emotion/use of colours (for all their work) with prussia has that like,,, UMMF of character, yknow what i mean??? they focus on ruspru i think but idk lol

Okay those are just the best prussia’s ive seen, heres some more general hetalia artists that focus on other characters

@payadraws is quite possibly my FAVOURITE HETALIA ARTIST???? IF NOT AT LEAST IN THE TOP 3 BC THEIR STUFF IS SO GOOD AND STYLIZED PERFECTLY. their linework is stunning, and colouring has that tone over all of it that harmonizes the whole piece. The way their utilize their style in everything is PERFECt, idk how to use words for it, just take a look. Their austria/switzerland is deadass on-the-money.

@tomato-bird Literally how does one even manage to do this. theyre professional and it fucking SHOWS. Each composition, each stroke of their pen, it shows dude. Their art has like,,, the emotions, the feeling, is really well executed and they have so much attention to detail it blows my fucking mind. like ,,, this gives of hard renaissance level mastery vibes

@paperdrawsshit is SO GOOD at using that like,,,, the form/silhouette of characters. like,, the shapes they use, the flow of each pose, the hands, ALL OF IT SCREAMS PERFECTION. Each drawing has such flow and structure at the same time, and each character has such a pretty fashion sense. Excellent use of lighting and i strive to be as good as them in drawing people

@jackce THIS ARTIST HAS LIKE.,, SUCH A CLEAN CUT ART STYLE ITS GORGEOUS. Each drawing has the smoothest lines and the characters have distinct features. Their prussia, italy and germany styles stand out so much because of the way they draw the noses, jaw, features etc. Like they look like screenshots out of a professional 2d animated feature. Seriously.

@starstray (not sure if they draw hetalia anymore but i need to tell yall about them anyway) has such gorgeous like,,, composition. like if you dug through a collection of paintings from the renaissance you’ll find a few of theirs scattered in their. The use of like,,, linework paired with the way they colour is so perfectly executed. its so balanced im shaking

@amazing-prussia has the cutest, quirkiest style with what they draw. the hair/clothes are so stylized and fluid and i love them so much!! Each drawing looks so quick and perfected, every time I see one of their pruaus doodles i fucking DIE.

@glass-soda has such gorgeous illustrative style. It’s so unique and the way they colour and draw people have this wonderful POP to it. The colours are so balanced and bright, its so SO!!!!!! LOVELY. LIKE,, IDK HOW TO KEEP FROM RAMBLING ABOUT HOW MUCH I LOVE THEM JUST LOOK.

@ask-risorgimento-italy (ack, dont know their main sorry) Their illustrations are so well done, you can see the thought and practice in each character!! and i love the “realistic” feel to it. I say that about characters who dont have like,,, idk “anime hair”?? but not only the hair, the clothes, the form, the ENVIRONMENT. THIS ARTIST KICKS ASS WITH THEIR ENVIRONMENT BUILDING. LOTS OF DEPTH. ABSOLUTE LEGEND.

@hetapolis !!!!! THEIR ART IS SO CLEAN AND SKETCHY AND BEAUTIFUL. OKAY. Shading/colouring is GORGEOUS. and the way they draw each character to be distinct and have unique features ITS SUPER PROFESH AND LOOKS AMAZIGN!! I admire their style so much yall got no idea

@thedisappointedidealist12 has REALLY GOOD LINEWORK/STORYTELLING. LIKE WOW. Every time i see something theyve drawn im shaking bc the pacing and execution is AMAZING. Everything about the way their art looks is super balanced and you can see the exact emotion each character is expressing.

@captainjellyroll OKAY. THIS PERSON. LEMME TELL U BOUT THIS. FIRST OF ALL. THIS IS ONE OF MY FAV ANIMATORS. THEYVE BEEN MY IDOL SINCE I WAS 11. Their work has so much energy, colour, and you can see the thought in each composition. I love them so much,,, each drawing has its own burst of energy!!! i want to be able to be like them when im older and live with like 5 cats.

@tea-artblog (they dont draw hetalia much anymore but their recent art is 100% worth looking at) OKAY. YALL. This is one of the people who’s art i looked at constantly when i first joined!! Their art is so like,,,, balanced and has just enough contrast and the colours???? EVERYTHING WORKS SO WELL. The eyes/expressions are SUPER CUTE.

@sully-s ANOTHER ARTIST WHOS STYLE IS ONE OF MY FAVS. It’s super fluid and the colours are perfect!! Each character has their own uniqueness I cant express my love of how perfect their lighting/colouring is. Their illustrations are straight out of a movie art book, its so GORGEOUS. and the environment REALLY has depth!!

@ask-victorian-austrian (dont know their main ack sorry!!), THE LINEWORK IS SO DETAILED AND CLEAN. I love the way they draw clothes/fashion, its all so detailed and gorgeous and you can feel the weight of the cloth and the lace and everything okay???? Seriously I love all their blogs, they have a bunch, and you should check out all of them!

@amoxesyoew HAS SUCH CUTE DRAWINGS!! The style in their characters’ hair is so flowy and the way they draw faces and eyes have this adorable quality to it!! the pureness of the emotions they draw are really prominent and i constantly just DIE because of it! I love love LOVE the gercan they draw too

@arschbiene THE WAY THEY DRAW FACES??? SPOT ON. The colours are SO spot on and i love the POP they give. The shading?/? SPECTACULAR. And each doodle is super cute and like,,,, when people say each drawing has a story behind it?? I FEEL THAT WITH THEIR ART OKAY. HIGHKEY.

@ekinoksin ???? HELLO??? THIS RENAISSANCE VAN GOGH MICHAELANGELO MASTERMIND OF AN ARTIST IS LIKE THE SAME AGE AS ME>????? I just foudn that out. BUT the way their art has so much depth!!!! THE BACKGROUNDS??? THE ENVIRONMENT?? ITs ALL EXTREMELY WELL DONE. And they have this texture to their art that makes it look just like historical paintings its so good!!! Im SHOOK.

@alfredtalia WORM. THeir characters all have structure and expression and everything about it has such like!!! UMFF. The way they draw certain things,, theres minor details!! and you may not notice them!! but they ADD SO MUCH!! Everything feels like it has attention to it, and it is so well balanced!!

@avlerie (again, not sure if they still draw hetalia but their art is really pretty) the way they add texture/detail to their art is SPECTACULAR. The hair???? the bodies??? It seems so structured and well drawn!! THE EYES THO. THE WAY THEY DRAW EYES ARE SO BEAUTIFUL I CANT GET ENOUGH

@elhuesoardiente DUDE IDK HOW THEY COLOUR/DO THEIR SHADING. BUT ITS SO UNIQUE AND GIVES THEIR ART THIS EXTRA LAYER OF DEPTH. The art is so gorgeous with the way they do their lighting, and everything about it has balance and harmony im just shook

@ask-2p-uk no idea how someone can even pull off art like they do. the lines/colours ARE REALLY WELL INCORPORATED to EACH DRAWING. The way they draw expressions?? is so unique??? like i love the hair too, it has this flowy-ness to it!! EVERYTHING about their style is so colourful and pretty and unique i just ghhghghg dont know how to explain it, just LOOK AT IT.

@lucerna-lunam the way their shading is,,, the “mystical”-ness of their art??? ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE. IDK How they manage to draw stuff with such like,,,, sparkle to it. But their lighting is really well done, the EYES are so gorgeous! even the way each drawing is textured!! It comes together so perfectly!!

@suckmyicelandick THE WAY THEIR HAIR IS DRAWN??? SUPER SHINY AND GORGEOUS. I love the way their draw their characters, the hands/face/hair is so stylized the second you see their art you just KNOW its drawn by them. The eyes are super detailed and its so pretty im just sobbing i love their style

@aph-lithuania OKAY one of the first hetalia artists ive ever seen when i was new. THEIR ART IS SUPER PRETTY. The colours are really smooth and THE WAY???THEY DRAW BODIES?? THE FIGURES ARE SO WELL PROPORTIONED????!!! Everything about it is so cute!!!

@ask-mr-luxembourg BRUH??? HELLO?? COLOURING, LINEWORK, PROPORTIONS, EVERYTHING IS 10/10. Seriously they way they draw hair has such texture, and the way the bodies are drawn are so good. everything about them!! and the eyes?? DEADASS KILLED ME. Their art has seriously so much detail and i just DIE every time

@ellmovy HOW DOES ONE EVEN MANAGE TO DRAW CHARACTERS AS WELL AS THEM?? Each character has distinct features and like,,, the hair is always stylized and it looks SO GOOD????!!! The amount of detail they put into drawing small things like eyebrows and freckles add so much to the overall piece like WOW

@haeko9page THIS ARTIST. HAS THE CUTEST ART EVER. Their comic strips are seriously so adorable and has really good pacing! Each time they draw comic strips, the frames are so varied and it comes together SUPER WELL. Idk how to explain this, but like,,, the “camera angles” and the way they draw expressions/character interactions go together like peanut butter and jelly!

@kyotemeru-arts (they dont draw hetalia much but i love their art so much) dude the flow?? of the poses their characters have?? the flow of the characters themselves?? SUPER WELL DONE LIKE WOW. Also the way they shade and highlight things ?? like using more than one colour?? THAT REALLY MAKES THEIR ART POP. I LOVE THE WAY THEY CAN PERFECTLY DRAW FLUIDITY IN THEIR ART.

@frukmerunning GOLLY GEE DO I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY BOUT THEM. Just the way they draw faces, eyes and like,,,, bodies in general,, ITS ALL SO PERFECTLY BALANCED. The way they manage to make sketches look incredibly refined and capture the movement in each drawing???? LIKE IVE ADMIRED THEIR ART FOR SUCH A LONG TIME ITS BEEN 300 YEARS

@miss-ostrich-art BRUH how does one manage to draw ???? like them??? the way their characters’ forms and muscles can be seen but like not overly detailed??? they have the PERFECT amount of detail in each drawing, and the expressions!! the way they draw noses and facial structure and *italian hand gesture* PERFECT.

@maryluis THEIR EXPRESSIONS ARE SUPER DYNAMIC!!! AND THE POSES HAVE SUCH FLOW. Also did i mention the amount of detail they put into minor things?? like WOW. Seriously i think out of this list i like the way they draw expressions the best. Also this might be a weird thing to focus on, but the way theyre able to draw the interior/background/angles of things are INCREDIBLE.

@cioccolatodorima YOOOOOOO THIS IS LIKE THE FIRST ARTIST I SAW WHEN GETTING INTO THE FANDOM. ONE OF THEM AT LEAST. Their non-hetalia work is actually my fav and i want to do just what they do when im older! I love their illustrations, and their way of drawing characters/character design (ginjinka of mr.kitkat are my favs). The way their lighting looks, is SO pretty and the linework is ABSOLUTELY STUNNING. their art blog (not just hetalia) is @rainbow-taishi

@ask-badlydrawnseborga lemme tell yall about a thing. i love how funny their art is, and like,,,,, i know its “badly drawn seborga” but the way the hair flows and the proportions,, everything about it is SO nffhhklahjdj polished. LIKE IDK HOW TO EXPLAIN IT BC THEYRE SUCH A MEMELORD BUT I GENUINELY HAVE SO MUCH LOVE FOR THEIR SKILLL

@sabrow3 NOT ONLY IS THEIR ILLUSTRATIONS SUPER CUTE, IT HAS GREAT PROPORTIONS AND DEPTH. I love their attention to detail in clothing and historical things, and like,, the line work is AMAZING. Seriously, I want to be able to draw as well as them, its incredible how the amount of work and effort is shown in each drawing.

@buruzaitama !! The way they draw characters has like,,, this level of realism and the way they do their lighting just pushes that to the next level. I don’t know how people can pull off drawing realism yet still make it so unique that i can instantly tell that a piece is drawn by them, but this artist IS SO GOOD AT THAT. LIKE WOW

@inkodoodles Okay their “1 hour drawing challenges”? IM FLOORED ANYONE CAN DRAW THAT IN ONE HOUR. The have such detail and flow and movement in each drawing! And the lighting they have is so soft and calming, it lends itself to each piece REALLY WELL. Whatever emotion each drawing is supposed to give is conveyed to a tee

@heyheyartman BRO the style??? is so fucking UNIQUE AND ICONIC?? And the way they manage to pace comics and storytell is sO GOOD. Like,,, the way they can use shapes for each of their characters is so refined and stylized i love it. Their use of colour seriously KICKS ASS and im floored every time i see their work.

@merasgar their art is so detailed!! and the backgrounds/environments are so soft and gorgeous to look at! I have like,,,, no idea how you can pull off such beautiful hair and eyes in each drawing!! They draw a lot of rochu and like,, the features look so PERFECT for the characters ghhghghg

@yosb ALRIGHT LISTEN UP THIS ARTIST SERIOUSLY HAS ONE OF MY FAV STYLES. It’s so refined and you can see the distinct features of each character. The style isnt realism but the characters FEEL REAL. They have such a perfect way of paying attention to details and putting in proportions/facial features to each character im so amazed and love their work so much

and of course i want to include @paachubelle though theyre working on their own project ( @the-otwya-project ) now, they’re one of my like,,,, friends that i made on this blog through hetalia ask blogs and i figured id like to include them on this list. Idk how people can draw in pencil with such detail and everything but they do it EXPERTLY. The line work is always so clean and the shading is always so well done!!

of course, im very clumsy and forgetful so i know i forgot some names but i cant remember things!! Either way, these are some of my all time favourite iconic hetalia (and non-hetalia) artists!! I want to be able to draw as well as them one day!

#diamondsketcher #admin post #zonkeywave

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yourfaveisyanderematic · 5 years

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I hope you are ok with all of us obsessing over PIB. It's a really amazing stand you are super talented. I'd love to see any others you might have made!

Paint It Black is babey as fuck and I’m so happy it’s been so well received! I’m actually really attached to it; I discarded this concept bc it wasn’t in theme for the blog content, but there was going to be a period where it bullied the shit out of its user because it was being subconsciously rejected and hated that. I had this whole emotional scene thought out where the user finally apologized to it and accepted what it represented, letting them use the full extent of PIB’s abilities.

Here are some Stands I haven’t used in oneshots yet, but will eventually:

[TAME IMPALA]: A Stand based around the power of teleportation. I don’t have a real appearance for it, but one of the inspirations for it was one of those corkboards conspiracy theorists use; I like to imagine it’s got stylized thumbtacks and thread that are a visual indicator of what its power is currently being used on. I imagine this Stand user on the run from Passione for Bastard Crimes, and giving whoever’s chasing them a hard time >:)

TAME IMPALA’S Let It Happen: One of TI’s ten pins (one for each of the user’s fingers) attaches to the object the user is currently touching. Once the connection has been successfully made, Let It Happen has no maximum range, and the user can recall the touched object to themselves regardless of distance. Objects recalled in this way will usually have their contents intact, and things that are only touching them will not be carried along; you can use this to steal wallets without worrying about dragging their owners a mile away from where they started, for instance. Once Let It Happen is recalled, the pin is undone, and the user must reapply it. In addition to bringing pins to themselves, or themselves to pins, the user may connect a pinned object to another; this can be used to teleport a prisoner to a holding area, or a weapon to an ally.

TAME IMPALA’S The Less I Know: Two of Tame Impala’s ten pins, already applied to objects, become locked together. If this is applied to a hand and a wall, that hand physically cannot leave the wall; this can be used pretty effectively in a fight! The user must be careful about where on the object they apply the pin, however, because the pins will be in physical contact until dispelled.

While Tame Impala has next to no offensive capabilities on its own, a sufficiently imaginative user can do some real damage, especially to someone unfamiliar with it…

[MAN AFTER MIDNIGHT]: Requires an electronic capable of transmitting sound to inhabit; its user may prefer a cell phone for portability, though it has uses in something like a jukebox or car radio. Man After Midnight’s primary ability is to ‘tune in’ to conversations happening elsewhere, but they must be happening over or near an electronic device. Its user cannot consciously target a particular conversation or person to listen to, but Man After Midnight always provides information that is either desirable or immediately useful, even if its significance isn’t immediately obvious. Once captured in this way, Man After Midnight can replay a conversation on command, though only other Stand Users will be able to hear it.

Though the Man After Midnight almost never speaks except in the replayed voices of others, it does have a voice of its own: a 50s-style radio host on a channel that doesn’t exist, coming on only to give extremely vague ‘horoscope readings for the discerning and adventurous’. “Check your corners twice today, Scorpio! You’ll only see it the second time.”

[APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION]: This one I picture more as a villain’s stand than the reader’s, but who knows? AfoD appears once a connection of ‘Karmic Debt’ has been made; once the victim has successfully ‘accepted something’ from the user, its effect comes into play. Like Tame Impala, it has a couple of interesting functions.

AFOD’s Mr Brownstone: Physical damage or other health conditions (drunkenness, illness, drug highs) are transferred from one to the other. If Mr. Brownstone heals its victim by transferring damage to the user, the ‘Karmic Debt’ increases, and decreases if vice versa occurs. Because AFOD can affect multiple people simultaneously, its user can keep all of them ‘in debt’ by strategically giving and taking this damage.

AFOD’s Rocket Queen: Those ‘in debt’ to Appetite For Destruction’s user can be compelled to do things within their ability; you can’t force a regular person to scale a skyscraper, but the request is valid if they have a Stand ability that would allow them to. Refusing or resisting Rocket Queen can cause ‘interest’ to be added to their Karmic Debt, though Rocket Queen cannot physically force them to obey. (Given what Mr Brownstone can do, though, reducing your Karmic Debt as much as possible is advisable!) Successfully completing the order will reduce your debt to AFOD by a certain amount, though it’s very possible to accrue even more debt by needing healing or something over the course of the mission.

Appetite For Destruction’s power ends when the victim has successfully ‘repaid their debt’ to the user, though given that this is intended for a shady mob boss or loan shark, that can be very difficult to do.

#writing haze feedback #Paint It Black Adoration Hour

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thesinglesjukebox · 5 years

Video

youtube

KELSEA BALLERINI - HOMECOMING QUEEN?

[4.60]

The Homecoming Incident?

Katherine St Asaph: She's so lucky, she's a star, but she cry-cry-cries in her lonely heart. But the difference between "Lucky" and "Homecoming Queen?" is that while "Lucky" is presented as true -- not first-person but might as well be -- "Homecoming Queen?" is all projection and questions directed at someone who, in the lyric, may or may not be secretly troubled. The song is meant as an inspirational salve, to gently smooth away a lie, but it too conceals a lie. Even if we accept that the titular homecoming queen is as saintly as portrayed, doesn't have a perfectly blessed inner life, and isn't herself "mean" -- a stretch, already -- plenty of people feel sorry for the homecoming queens of the world. There is no lack of empathy for the powerful and popular. The sky won't fall if they lose their composure (unless it will; ask Britney), because the homecoming queen is protected by her status (ask the people for whom "losing their composure" takes place, say, in school detention, or near a shitty partner or boss, or in the eyesight of a cop.) The lyric is carefully written but yet another hug up, not down; the songwriters may claim that "we're all this person," but I wonder who "we" and "all" doesn't cover. As usual, glurge in words receives banality in accompaniment: in this case basically Colbie Caillat's "Bubbly." [3]

Alfred Soto: A pretty way of saying "I hope the Russians love their children too." [6]

Joshua Lu: The central themes are hardly revelatory, and Brandy Clark did much more with a similar title some years ago. But Kelsea Ballerini delivers these platitudes genuinely enough to stir sentiments of nostalgia and regret, and the song thus feels essential despite probably not being so. [6]

Michael Hong: Kelsea Ballerini's music tends to touch on nostalgia, often painting her country-pop in sepia tones and "Homecoming Queen?" is no different. Here, she returns with the same mindset, but instead of dwelling on her high school crush, Ballerini struggles with the concept of the closed-off popular girl, playing out like a sketch of the latest Netflix teen rom-com. There's vulnerability in Ballerini's lower registered backed only by the acoustic guitar, but as the instrumentation gets more complex, the track feels intensely crowded. Ballerini gives a fine performance, but that overproduction makes "Homecoming Queen?" feel completely performative, and it loses its personal touch. [5]

Jonathan Bradley: Probably I'm conflating the titular title with prom queens and pageant winners and such other stock personages of small town Americana, but I thought crying was something the homecoming queen was supposed to do: her emotional extravagance in symmetry with the spectacle for which she forms the focal point. "Even the homecoming queen cries," as a hook feels less a revelation, then, than a misreading of milieu: a muffed dramatic sting. That's unusual from Kelsea Ballerini, who, now 26 years old, draws adeptly from American high school as a site of myth and tradition, finding unexpectedly compelling drama in its familiar lines. (Think of "High School," which is Springsteen's "Glory Days" without the bonhomie, or "Underage," which shivers with the excitement of youth yet aches like it's over already.) However, even with an unfocused lyric -- is this homecoming queen's tough daddy and reticent mother more stereotype, or has she by the second verse become a half-finished sketch of a particular person? -- Ballerini is able to rely on one of her great strengths as a performer: she sounds like she cares about the people she sings about. For her, they're not characters, but intimately real and worthy of empathy. With a picked acoustic guitar line that circles like a slow dance and a soft shimmering arrangement that sparkles like stars over a bonfire, you could get swept up in the beauty of it all. [7]

Kylo Nocom: Last week I actually missed out on homecoming to go to a very good friend of mine's debut! Looks like I'll sit this one out, too; "Homecoming Queen?" (stylized in lowercase for God knows why) has such little dynamic that it'd be too turgid to even soundtrack a little slideshow. [3]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The problem with "Homecoming Queen?" is that it isn't maudlin enough. A song with this conceit and sonic palette needs some sort of climax, a place for the character study to come into focus and really hit you. I was ready for it-- the details about mom and dad, the entreaties to the titular homecoming queen -- but then the song just ends! There's not even a bridge, just an overly long second pre-chorus! There's no resolution at all, and in the end it leaves "Homecoming Queen?" feeling all too timid in its high school melodrama. [3]

Vikram Joseph: This is basically an extremely sentimental rendering of the "popular girl who's actually - no, honestly! -- got a troubled home life and deep-seated insecurities" subplot of every teen-oriented noughties TV show, but it's so wholesome and twinkly that it's hard to dislike. [5]

Edward Okulicz: The opening guitar doesn't bode well, reminding me of Jewel's grievous "You Were Meant for Me." And it doesn't really get a lot better from there, Ballerini giving a reading of the song like she's boredly talking to a former self more than giving a hug to someone who needs it. Her second album was smart and wise and gorgeously crafted, so this sounds like a real step backward to me. [4]

Thomas Inskeep: I like and respect the intent of this -- "you don't have to be perfect" basically sums it up -- but wish it weren't swathed in production that's simultaneously thin and overblown. Ballerini sounds fine; with a voice as strong as hers, that's never gonna be the problem. But with this, no one in her camp is doing her any favors. [4]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

#Kelsea Ballerini #pop #country #music #music review #writing

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srhunt · 6 years

Text

Extraordinary Tales

I was browsing Netflix for some horror or halloweenish things to watch this season, when I stumbled across Extraordinary Tales, an anthology film with segments based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe. I don’t consider myself a fan of Poe’s work, but it was always a pleasure when I had to read his stories for class. So I turned it on and...oh my god.

Animation people, why aren’t we talking about this?!

This was fuckin’ gorgeous! Incredibly haunting and disturbing, yes, but gorgeous!

Each segment has its own unique style, and each one is narrated by a different person.

I’ll just go through one by one.

0) Poe and Death

To start, the thing that connects these shorts together. We see a raven flying around a cemetery, whom we learn is Edgar Allen Poe. He has a converstaion with the personification of death, who says he’s obsessed with her. Each story is being retold as Poe tries to show his writings were more than just love letters to death.

1) Fall of the House of Usher

This story is narrated by the late great Sir Christopher Lee. I will admit, I’m not super familiar with this story (I read it for class, but I’ve slept since then), but nevertheless the presentation in this story is amazing. It has an almost Burtonesque look to it, and you can see the cracks in the building grow larger as the story progresses. Also, the narrator reminds me of human Blinky from Trollhunters. I don’t know why.

2) The Tell-Tale Heart

Now this story I do remember. I read it in 9th grade, and it’s a chilling story I never forgot. It’s probably my favorite story from Poe. And this short has reignited the fear the original story stoked into me. Using archival audio, the segment is narrated by Bela Lugosi (If you don’t recognize his name, he’s best known for his role as Dracula in the 1931 film of the same name). This audio is not digitally restored in any way, so it sounds crackily and warped with age. And his narration paired with the visuals is incredibly unnerving. The short is mainly in black and white with no blending. The only other color used is red, and even then it’s used very little, it never fills the screen. This makes the short even more creepy looking. The Old Man, even though he’s the innocent victim in all this, is terrifying to look at! He’s really creepy! It’s just all around creepy, and it’ll probably keep me up tonight.

Speaking of keeping me up tonight...

3) Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

...This will also haunt my nightmares! I had never heard of this Poe story before, it feels more like something Mary Shelley might’ve wrote! This segment is narrated by Jullian Sands (whose most notable movie from what I can see is Arachnophobia). The style takes after comic books, almost reminiscent of the animation used in Telltale’s games (ah hah, Edgar Allen Poe, Telltale, hardee har). The narrator of the story is very obviously modeled after the late Vincent Price, which made me wish he was the narrator. I mean, there’s so many recordings of Vincent Price reading Poe’s stories that they could’ve had him narrate one of these segments (I distinctly remember hearing him read Pit and the Pendulum while on a road trip, but I’ll get into that later...) But, for what we got, Sands is a pretty good narrator. This was my first time hearing this story, so I was not prepared for what was in store. Monsieur Valdemar’s lifeless body acts like it’s in the Exorcist (minus the crucifix masturbation, spider walk, 180 degree head turn, and the pea soup). And did you think the way Magica possed Lena in DuckTales ‘17 was disturbing? Oh ho! take that, ramp the graphicness of it up to 11 and you get what happens after Valdemar is snapped out of his “trance”. It is horrifying!

4) The Pit and the Pendulum

This is the only segment that tries to look realistic. The other segments go for more stylized looks, which are incredibly affective. This one looks like a video game. I’m not saying it’s bad, that’s just what it reminds me of. Anyway, this story is narrated by Guillermo “Where’s-My-Haunted-Mansion-Remake” Del Toro, which is good casting. The story takes place during the Spanish Inquisition, so his accent helps illustrate that. I didn’t even know this story took place during the inquisition, I only heard Vincent Price narrate part of it during a family road trip. I don’t remember if I plugged in my headphones and zoned out or if I asked my dad to change the station (random fun fact: I’m really unnerved by audiobooks and radio dramas. It doesn’t matter if the story is funny or not, they creep me out. Probably stems from a creepy audiobook we listened to in elementary school or my dad listening to disturbing radio dramas late at night during long road trips) Only thing that doesn’t work is that Del Toro’s words don’t match the visuals. He says that following the wall didn’t help him figure out his surroundings, but the visuals show him looking out a barred window. How did that not help you figure out your surroundings? I think this short might’ve benifited from cooler colors. The story is meant to take place in a dark cell, the narrator can barely see anything. The animation is very red in this segment, not conveying this sense of darkness we should be feeling. It only goes to blues and cooler colors when night falls, but I think it would’ve been better if the rest of the short was like that.

5) Masque of the Red Death

The final segment of the film. This one is unique from the other ones because it has no narrator. There are only two lines said in this short (one spoken by Roger Corman), the majority is told visually. And...I don’t think it works very well...? I have never read this story, the most I know is that it’s about the Plague and that the Phantom of the Opera has a killer Red Death cosplay. You kinda get what’s going on...? The poor are dying from the plague, the rich are hiding behind a wall to keep them from getting infected, but the Red Death gets in and kills everyone. Most of the short is just watching these people party. It’s like you’re the only sober person at this shindig and you’re antisocial as fuck (so... in my case, real life). It doesn’t get interesting until the Red Death shows up, then it’s like Oprah. “You get the plague! And you get the plague! EVERYBODY GETS THE PLAAAAAAGUE!!!” And then, it ends. Uhh, okay?...what was I suppose to gain from that? I mean, the animation is pretty, made to look like a painting. But outside of eye candy, what else is there...? Maybe if I read the story, this would make more sense to me and I wouldn’t be so harsh towards it, but a film should be able to stand on its own. I shouldn’t have to read the story to understand what’s going on, that’s your job! You’re suppose to tell the audience the story! Not rely on them to have done their homework that they didn’t even know was assigned! That’s basically how this last segment felt; it felt like when I forgot to do the reading assignment for class and the teacher starts discussing it like everyone has read it, while I’m sitting there going “...whut...?”

Conclusion

This was a mixed bag for me. The segments were either hit or miss, but the ones that hit, hit really damn hard. And even the ones that miss still had some redeeming qualities, whether it was the animation or the narrator.

If I had to rank the segments from my favorite to least favorite, it’d be like this;

😄Tell-Tale Heart

🙂Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

😐Fall of the House of Usher

😕Pit and the Pendulum

☹️Masque of the Red Death

Maybe my opinions would be different if I had read all these stories prior to seeing this film, but as someone who’s only dabbled in Poe’s work for school, I still really enjoyed this. I mostly appreciate it as a fan of animation. Each segment does something different, giving each story a unique style.

If you’re looking for a macabre film to watch this Halloween, give Extraordinary Tales a watch...

...just make sure you do so with the lights on...

...Goodnight, and pleasant dreams...

#film review #opinion warning #extraordinary tales #edgar allan poe #fall of the house of usher #tell tale heart #facts in the case of m valemar #pit and the pendulum #masque of the red death #halloween

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