It's here! It's the big one-oh! Get ready for the 10th! (1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9)
Starting off with some Just Desserts stuff; it's not exactly against the rules to modify Pets with features they wouldn't naturally have - like a cat with wings - but it is side-eyed by other players
He might be projecting just a little bit lol
Obviously he'd support Joel wiping the floor with other Pets in the arena haha
Next one's a continuation, comic-style!
Since they've only got the one pet between them, they have to take turns directing Joel so he doesn't get confused on who to listen to haha, I'm sure it doesn't help that they have similar voices and Scriabin is constantly butting in. I think in this setting Edgar might be able to get away with pushing him around a little more haha ♪ He'll still pay for that later :)
FNF x Vargas! Quick, who wants to collab as I know Nothing about music composition lol - what might their voices/instrumentation sound like! I’ve always been a fan of strings for Edgar, piano for Scriabin personally :)
These were the two poses I had the absolute strongest mental images for, so they get the big pretties! Scriabin having a secondary feature to his Up animation (not just pointing a finger gun but also “shooting” it), only being visible when the note is held ah, I just love the animation in my mind’s eye lol
Two poses inspired by their bouncies! Edgar’s Down and Scriabin’s Right - I didn’t have them onhand for reference, but I’d definitely push them closer to the originals :D
I really like the idea of most of Edgar’s poses being smaller, more closed-in, and Scriabin’s being big and bombastic, but their Lefts are the opposite! Haha ♪
I've seen a good several songs that have a mid-level transformation which I find Very cool :D I suppose these could also be for different stages, but going from a whole Edgar to him missing an eye and actively bleeding and screaming and stumbling around to the music - I just think it's a neat concept lol
Scriabin's transformation would be with his wings of course!
More of the WOY idea! Scriabin's being so nice 😈♥
You know I had to draw Jake in this style, he's too cute not to, I had to! Fun proportions hehe
Two little balls of sunshine <3 This was the one where I really couldn't decide what art style I was most reminded of between Steven Universe and the rest haha
A rubber hose smooch! Cartoony mwah!
Don't be fooled Wander, kisses are temporary, bullying Edgar is forever
The topic drifted at one point to the idea of Scriabin and Edgar being able to turn their brain-sharing on and off which gave me a Two Yeses/One No idea
Started with them on equal footing - both of them can say no to oppose the other, and in order to link back up they have to both agree! And how that might look depending on who initiates hehe <3
I think it'd be good for them to have hard boundaries in place, not able to be coerced into giving up their privacy :)
As well as them being able to just tap in and Know again, Scriabin using it to be lazy and not try to communicate with his mouth haha
But even with those hard stops in place, how would sleep affect things! If he tried, could Scriabin break into Edgar's dreams? Even if he gave permission, would his subconscious allow that? :0 It's interesting!
Quick break for a scribbly concept of how I wanted my first Vargas Drabbles soft cover to look haha - I didn't end up using the red inlay but it's definitely an idea for next time 👀
Back to brain-sharing, but this time featuring a return to body-sharing! :00 I hadn't considered it until Zarla mentioned them physically phasing together and then became Very interested in exploring it, when isn’t Scriabin annoying tho lol. It’s because you love him, Edgar!
Falling back into old habits of emotionally degrading Edgar, but he has the power to kick you out now! Just try your smart mouth on him from out here, where it hurts less!
Get back in on good behaviour, or because he misses him too much ♥ I love his sweet face here I 💕💗💖❤️💞💝
How dare he be so inviting, Scriabin has to deal with a physical heart and you are trying to kill him, cruel mean Edgar (lol)
Inspired by the hug test haha ♪ Hug him!
This was supposed to be a sweet moment :( Scriabin can't help it, being vulnerable is icky haha
But when offered the opportunity, you take what you can get <3 They are so damn cute, gah
Hehe ♪ There needs to be Some level of awkwardness to it, it's still Vargas after all. Would it hurt? No, maybe more like an organ shifting back into its correct position :)
How's he supposed to help it when you make it so easy
They'd have to negotiate safe and opportune times to share minds if it required them to share a body! Scheduling when to be apart would probably be stressful, but so would being together haha
Edgar doesn't want to deal with this until he's more awake, and maybe not at all if he gets jealous hehe
And finally again, we've returned to the Two Yeses/One No idea - who gets to decide who's "No" counts once they're already enmeshed? :) Introducing the Lobster Trap ✨
“slrch” is such a gross sound effect haha
Really struggling with the concept of Scriabin’s autonomy! He quite literally exists outside of you now Edgar, you have to let him grow on his own!
Scriabin probably just wants out to do something Edgar morally objects to, enough to suffer his company while pissed. The idea of Scriabin having his own body and still having to take Edgar over to exert his own personhood again, ugh, it’s so fraught <3
The Lobster Trap has so many potential outcomes, even discounting one side over the other! Obviously I had to make as many as I could come up with lol; starting with Scriabin getting to decide when he hops in, and Edgar getting to decide if he lets him out - two yeses all around to show it As Intended, all going well :)
And here are Edgar's No options: his no overrides letting Scriabin out, but does nothing to deter Scriabin from coming in without his permission. I think this is one of the worst configurations for them haha ♪ It’s so easy for them to be cruel to each other!
Now the other way around! Scriabin has to get Edgar's permission to come in, so here's their Two Yeses :D Obviously he did it to annoy Edgar, he'll never get to read in peace haha. Not that he would even without this hehe
Edgar's No would shut Scriabin out, which I think would be good for them honestly; Edgar gets time to process things on his own without Scriabin manipulating him from the inside, and Scriabin gets to eat humble pie
Two Yeses again, though it was hard to imagine a situation where Scriabin would willingly hop out at Edgar's request - to make fun of him though? Yes ✨
And again, Edgar's No not overriding Scriabin's Yes - I think this would be really good for them! Edgar doesn't get to hold him against his will, and Scriabin doesn't get to burst in without his permission!
But really, it'll always be messy with them <3 Even in the best scenario, if Edgar's Yes overrides Scriabin's No of being forced inside - even if he couldn't hold him there, just the action of making him see from his point of view and all that entails... ♪
Little jailbird, just wants to fly away on clipped wings 💔
Now for something completely different lol. Scriabin wrote a resumé! I’m sure it’s full of accurate information to help him land a proper interview :)
Good, good, dates, prior experience, employers, skills, conquests-
Scriabin insists he's a sexpert but if there's a degree on his wall I haven't seen it
There is such a Massive difference between writing resumés and actually doing the work the resumé is required for, come on. I do love just how miffed Edgar looks tho haha
S: >:3c | E: Yeah alright point taken
Tiny spacefiller - he's so mad! He's gonna tell you all about it!
Oh hey wow Nny's still here, that's neat. Originally there was an Edgar next to him but only the main character turned out cute, rude
Quietly cutting potatoes <3 Domestic
I love Scriabin getting scared inside Edgar but him having to put on an outwardly placid face so he doesn't freak Nny out in turn haha. Nny's love language is knives
But that's where the nutrients are! Speaking of Ghost-
Teaching him how to flay skin, not necessarily strictly on potatoes hehe. I like the idea of Nny kinda spacing out when it comes to his favourite activities - yeah he hates touching people, but that takes a backseat to talking about murder and playing with knives
Obviously Edgar's a bit distracted himself lol. Nny just casually talking about what happens when you separate the flesh from the body and Edgar and Scriabin are over here discussing Just how gay this is haha
I went and reread one of my old drafts of One Way Mirror recently and ahh I’d forgotten how sassy they are with each other lol
I'm still crazy about them <3 They drive me absolutely mad 💕 I think it's funny too, since I started writing OWM while deeply fixated but didn't think much of the Flavour of my writing I didn't expect anything from rereading, but it does taste a bit like mainfic hehe ♪
I love when Scriabin argues how much he wants to "help" Edgar while controlling him up and down, Edgar's not about to take this sitting down if he can help it! Also emasculating insults my beloved ♥
Thinking again about Hunchback; not quite any of the already-established stuff (they're not playing the roles, nor are they separate and seen the movie! What!), about why Scriabin would side-eye Edgar so much during Out There. It's a good song for him :) And I love drawing him like this haha, proud and haughty angle <3
Edgar with slightly less floofy hair and the closed-line nose style from a few years ago lol ♪ I do like bridge/bottom of the nose style I've grown into, but it's still a fun style to return to every once in a while :)
And one last sneaky cheeky kiss for smooch practice before the very end! Just try and stop me! Why did Scriabin turn out so pretty tho ♥
So that's June through September, again-again! Well, almost - turns out I actually made too many sketches for my Blank Slate AU/fic - literally as many as are featured here! - so it needed its own post. So please look forward to that!
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so I've been working on my latest conlang, irkan osla (or just osla for short), for a bit now and would like to showcase its writing system in this post! osla has a syllabic alphabet, not too dissimilar to korean hangul, where letters are stacked according to certain rules to make syllable blocks.
osla's syllable structure is (C)(C)V(V)(C), here's how the stacks work for each type of syllable:
all letters have small, wide, and tall forms depending on their position in the syllable. here are all the letters with their IPA value and romanization:
and here's an example text! i translated parts of the minecraft end poem into osla. maybe i'll make another post just focusing on the grammar when it's more developed. the poem says in english:
What did this player dream?
This player dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created. And it dreamed it destroyed. It dreamed it hunted, and was hunted. It dreamed of shelter.
Does it know that we love it? That the universe is kind?
Sometimes, through the noise of its thoughts, it hears the universe, yes.
this post is getting long, so under the cut you'll find a "sans-serif" version as well as the poem in osla and its gloss if you're also a linguistics nerd and wanna know what's going on under the hood (the roman numerals stand for the 3 noun classes)! thanks for reading!
The way regular people would write something quickly on a piece of paper with a regular pen is an aspect of creating neographies that I feel is often overlooked, so I developed this sans-serif version that people would probably be more likely to use when writing their shopping lists or diary entries:
And, finally, here's the poem translation:
pak oṇḍul phan wimbakis?
DET.I.SG.PROX play-AGN what dream-PST.3SG.I?
pak oṇḍul lümaṇiuṣerothi han buloni an wimbakis. kaṣkhaothi han nilothi an. wimbakis, run sëmamkis. wimbakis, run xokthakis, han bumxokthakis. zöga an wimbakis.
DET.I.SG.PROX play-AGN sunlight-II.SG.DAT and tree-II.PL.DAT of dream-PST.3SG.I. Fire-II.SG.DAT and water-II.SG.DAT of. dream-PST.3SG.I, that create-PST.3SG.I. dream-PST.3SG.I, that hunt-PST.3SG.I, and PASS-hunt-PST.3SG.I. shelter of dream-PST.3SG.I.
ṭauraka, run kaak samare? run glutsüna flia?
know-NP.3SG.I, that 3SG.I.ABS love-NP.1PL? that universe kind?
imba ethamo, khaṣiŋli an ka’am hu’aŋni pitë, glutsüna ṣaraka, ti.
some time-NOM.III.PL, noise-ACC.II.SG of 3SG.I.GEN thought-NOM.III.PL through, universe hear-NP.3SG.I, yes.
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Louis Tomlinson is sequestered in the executive boardroom of a swanky hotel in suburban London, and is treating it the way a pupil might a classroom when the teacher’s popped out. He’s leaning back on his chair, feet up on a radiator, hands clasped behind his head and a cigarette on the go. “All right?” he says, grinning impishly.
Despite huge global success with One Direction (70 million albums sold), which prompted a fanaticism that made Beatlemania look tame, he seems remarkably unaffected and far more normal than one might expect from someone with 35.8 million Twitter followers. He’s a 31-year-old so unassumingly bloke-next-door that the bloke next door wouldn’t look twice.
“I’ve always had a problem with ‘ego’,” he says, “and I’ve always been worried about being one of those people in the public eye who just loses all sense of reality, and becomes an arsehole.” As if by way of explanation, he adds: “I’m from Doncaster.”
And so while his former 1D bandmate Harry Styles, a superstar, floats through life like the fashion world’s favourite clothes horse, Tomlinson kits himself out in JD Sports: Kappa T-shirt, black sweatpants, Adidas socks, scuffed trainers. When he tells you he often frequents his local pub unmolested, you believe him.
“If someone does come up after an hour to ask for a selfie, I won’t say no and I won’t run away,” he says, “’specially if I’m three pints deep!”
Of the five members of 1D, Tomlinson has had the slowest start to a solo career. There are compelling reasons for this — family tragedy for one — but he’s also had to figure out who he is without the band around him. “With this job,” he says, “there’s so much room for overthinking, you know? Someone from the record label will tell you they like your stuff, but you find yourself thinking: yeah, but do they? It’s the fans that help you really believe in yourself.”
In the band, Zayn Malik had the best voice and Styles had the best everything else. While the other three — Tomlinson, Liam Payne and Niall Horan — were hardly driftwood, each has nevertheless had to dig deep to carve out a solo persona that would compel beyond the bubble.
“I do miss the boys,” he says, “and I do definitely miss being one of the five, but I like doing my own thing too. It was time.”
It’s a bright winter’s day, and the man in sports casual is enjoying special dispensation here in the hotel: permission to light up. Had this been denied, there might well have been a problem, for Tomlinson chain-smokes with the wild abandon of Mad Men’s Don Draper.
After the release of his second solo album, Faith in the Future, in November, he adds another necessary notch in the belt of any self-respecting pop star next month: the documentary. All of Those Voices is a routine behind-the-scenes look at 21st-century celebrity but stands out for the multiple crises of confidence Tomlinson feels any time he’s not on stage.
“This is a confidence game for anyone,” he says earnestly, “and there’s been plenty of moments of vulnerability throughout the entire process.” An overriding concern of the documentary is not just whether people would be interested in him, but whether they’d take him, someone discovered on a TV talent show, seriously.
When Styles won his Grammy awards this month — he collected two and won four Brits — he used his acceptance speech to say that “this doesn’t happen to people like me very often”. This was swiftly ridiculed across social media because of course white men tend to win quite a lot. But what he likely meant was that it doesn’t happen to the product of manufactured boy bands, many of whom have the use-by date of a pint of milk.
“Only Harry knows what he means there, it’s hard to speculate,” Tomlinson says, “but we all came from relatively humble beginnings, and now we are where we are.”
But while Styles is a once-in-a-generation talent and knows it, his erstwhile bandmates — and this one in particular — need convincing.
Louis Tomlinson comes from a big family — his mother, Johannah Deakin, married twice and had seven children — and was a hopeful child actor before in 2010 auditioning for The X Factor. This is where 1D were created, “masterminded” by Louis Walsh. Deakin, who had Tomlinson when she was 19, was his biggest fan and they’d always been close. When, for example, Tomlinson lost his virginity, it was she he told first, not his friends.
In 2016, a year after One Direction split, she died from leukaemia, aged 42. Two years later, his 18-year-old sister, Félicité, who’d been struggling to get over her mother’s death, accidentally overdosed on cocaine, painkillers and an anxiety drug. The combined loss hit him hard. Aside from the single he wrote about his mother’s passing, 2020’s Two of Us, his mourning has been largely private.
He squints through a veil of cigarette smoke. “Some of the things that have happened recently have been quite drastic, yeah, but then so much in my life seems to have been pretty extreme, one way or the other.” In 2016, at the age of 25, a brief relationship with a Californian stylist, Briana Jungwirth, resulted in a son. “There’ve been challenging times, definitely. It’s funny, but I couldn’t even tell you how many years ago my mum passed, I just blank it out. But for the first 18 months, I’d take any form of bad luck personally. I’d feel every tiny thing. But now I genuinely feel I’ve come out the other side. I feel more empathy for everything and everyone these days.”
After his 2020 debut album, Walls, failed to set the world alight, Tomlinson called time on his relationship with Simon Cowell. “It was mostly amicable,” he says, nodding. “Simon always had my best interests at heart, and I liked him. He had his faults of course, like all of us, but it was always inevitable I’d have to go off and do my own thing.”
His new record, then, was a leap into the unknown and he elected to write not with professional songwriters but rather fellow creative artists: Theo Hutchcraft from the band Hurts, Joe Cross from the Courteeners and the singer-songwriter James Vincent McMorrow. “And that was a big difference, huge. These are people who live and breathe music. It’s the first time I felt really comfortable doing my own stuff, you know?”
Previously he’d been encouraged to sing like a nice young pop star should, without regional inflection. “When I was in the band,” he says, “working with professional songwriters whose entire aim was to write the hit single, they’d tell me that singing in my natural accent wasn’t commercial. Sorry, but what a shit idea! Who wants to sound like everybody else? I dumbed down a little bit in the band, because you do, but I’ve learnt who I am now.”
The album, which has its inspiration firmly in early Noughties indie, sounds more Kaiser Chiefs than One Direction. A risk, then. But when it came out, it debuted at No 1. While this did wonders for his confidence, it’s clear from the documentary that he still needs people — a support group — around him. He actively courts the friendship of his touring band, not necessarily a given among solo pop stars, and he seems almost always sociable. It’s when he’s not up for group activity that people worry. There’s a revealing moment in the documentary of him having just appeared on James Corden’s US talk show. Backstage Corden, an old friend, pleads with him not to go quiet on him afterwards. “You vanish, you change your number, no one knows [where you are],” he says.
Until recently Tomlinson lived in London with his long-term girlfriend, the model Eleanor Calder, but recent reports suggest they’ve split up and he’s dating another model, Sofie Nyvang. Life, clearly, is complicated. Perhaps that’s why he smokes so much. He says, though, that he feels finally relieved of the myriad pressures that once clung to being a pop star whose fanbase was predominantly teenage. Such as?
“Well, being a role model for one. I never wanted that. I always had to worry whether it was OK if, say, I was seen here or if I could get away with smoking a joint there, before concluding: hmm, probably not. But I never wanted to be the perfect pop star, especially in the climate of Instagram. I don’t want to put an artificial world out there. I think it’s important that people see your scars, your flaws.”
It’s never easy growing up in public and Tomlinson had no choice. “When One Direction split up,” he says, “I was mortified, I was absolutely gutted. I was a bit bitter, I suppose because it just felt like another loss to me. But I’ve a better understanding of things now, and there’s not as much anger. It is what it is.
“Getting back together at some point is hard to imagine right now,” he continues, “but I’d be surprised if we lived out our lives and didn’t have a moment where we had a reunion, or whatever you want to call it. I’d be up for that.”
When I ask what it’s like watching Styles’s ascendance into the biggest star of his generation — something that might delay such a reunion — he blows out a long plume of smoke.
“Well, it’s not a surprise is it? We were always aware that Harry fit that mould, and it’s been an amazing thing to watch. Envy? At the start maybe, when I was trying to find my feet, but it’s never healthy to cross-reference your own success with others is it? These days I’m learning to elevate myself in those moments when I have to. I didn’t know how to do that before, but now? Now I know I f***ing can.”
All of Those Voices is in cinemas from March 22, allofthosevoices.com
-Full article. Feb 23 2023. Link here. Free link here.
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