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mochibrokenheart · 3 years

Text

SVSSS: Guardian of the Museum

Mobei Jun x Shang Qinghua

Word Count: 2,756

Summary: Of course there's ominous growling and destruction to the building on Shang Qinghua's first night as a museum curator. Of course there is! Besides being desperate to keep the job, he's not sure what possesses him to actually walk toward the dangerous situation. His survival instincts were better trained that! Except...wait a minute...the terrifying creature causing all the ruckus is actually the hottest thing he's ever seen???

My first contribution for Moshang Monsterfucking Month (and my first fic for the fandom in general!) Heavy on the monster part as the nsfw is not explicit. Who knew that it would be hard to write something short. Inspired by the Day 2 prompt: horny.

Also posted on my Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34305571

A nearby bell tolled at midnight just as Shang Qinghua locked up the museum for the night, which meant that he was officially off for the weekend. Being a party of one, he celebrated with a groovy victory dance while turning the key over in the lock.

There was a little click and he rattled the knob, checking that the door was properly locked—if anything was stolen or vandalized during the night, he would most definitely be blamed as the recent hire!

The job was an important stepping stone in his career path plan to being a rare artifacts curator. He really needed the experience. It was hard enough to land the job, so he wasn’t above looking neurotic by double, and triple, and quadruple checking everything before he left.

A chilly breeze tussled his hair and raised goosebumps down his neck. It was October, he supposed while drawing up his hood to block the chill, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to complain.

He was much to delicate for cold temperatures and would exercise his right to curse out the changing seasons. Of course, he could move somewhere further south, so that he wouldn’t have to put up with it anymore, but still!

The only good thing about the loss of summer was the bugs, he decided.

Clearly, Shang Qinghua was irresistible because bugs treated his blood like an all-you-can buffet. If only hot men thought the same. But alas.

Sighing, he turned up to admire the full moon, who seemed to sympathize with the sad state of his romantic affairs, being the moon and all. Something about it’s pale gray-white color naturally emoted a sad, longing reflection.

It was as he was looking up that he heard a growl, loud not because of its pitch—it was actually quite low and gravelly—but because it vibrated the very air around him.

Shit. Shit. He wasn’t equipped to deal with some beast! He had no weapons and there was no way his body was going to get the job done either. He was a delicate flower, just ask the bugs who always feasted on him!

He rummaged through his bag frantically for his phone. That was what the authorities were for.

Opening his phone, his mind was racing. Who did you call when there was a potentially wild animal on the loose? The police? Animal control?

Gasp! What if it turned out to be a demon?

…!!!

He didn’t have any shamans or priests on speed dial. There had never been a reason to until then but if it would save him, he’d buy up every type of religious necklace he could and wear them around his neck daily. It was like insurance—it never hurt to cover all of his bases.

While he was wasting time on the sidewalk, what appeared to be small bits of gravel drifted down from what seemed like the roof. Scurrying to get closer to the streetlight, which casted a circular light on the steps of the museum, Shang Qinghua bent down to get a closer look.

It felt dusty when he rubbed his pointer finger against his thumb and did match the shade of stone the building was…The new evidence presented a bit of dilemma. Yes, he was still itching to call somebody have them do the dangerous work, but at the same time, his boss might fire him if something happened to the museum under his watch.

“Well, if there’s more damage, I guess I’ll take a look,” he muttered. He clasped his hands together. “But please, take mercy on me, moon! I promise that if you get me out of this that my next erotica will be dedicated solely to you, and in very large print, so that my readers know the reach of your mystical power!”

His hands remained clasped high above his head as he waited. So far so good.

There was still the scary growls, of course, but those didn’t count because he wasn’t going to investigate that. It was absolutely common knowledge that people who investigated weird sounds always ended up dead, at least in horror movies, and that was all the proof he needed to wash his hands of it.

No, the only thing that could sway him from his crouch on the front steps was…was…

Tears shimmered in his eyes as more rubble was knocked off from the roof, the fine particles irritating his nose and causing him to sneeze.

Thoroughly betrayed, he used his sleeve to wipe at his nose. Forget the moon. Clearly the bond he felt had only been one-sided, and now he was obligated to actually suck it up and put himself in harms way.

The Shang Qinghua of five minutes ago would’ve screamed and called himself a fool. Why ignore those highly honed flight instincts?! Even the Shang Qinghua of the present was screaming and calling himself a fool when he took the first hesitant step inside.

It was deceptively quiet in the stairwell but that wasn’t enough to calm him. As the saying went, it was the calm before the shit storm and he was about to be right in the middle of it. How careless of him.

Just in case this was the end, he started to draft an epitaph—it’s not like anyone else would put in the same amount of effort.

His minor following would be too busy wailing about the permanent book hiatus; his boss would have their hands full dealing with insurance over the architectural damage; and that hot-and-cold cucumber bro of his would still be nagging him in the afterlife, criticizing him for his stupid plan when it ‘clearly would’ve been better to do such and such’. But back to him.

We are gathered here to mourn the passing of one Shang Qinghua, a bright hamster that was taken from Earth far too soon. His exhibit work was flawless, his knack for collections cataloging unrivaled. There was never a day without bountiful office supplies with him around. We thank him for his singular brave—foolish?—sacrifice in the name of historical value. Shang Qinghua is survived by several dying houseplants and the stray dog he usually fed on his way home from work.

There. That sounded as good as he was likely to get. Wait. No. He almost left out the most important part: the secret letter of last words meant only for cucumber bro’s eyes. Bro, if you’re reading this it’s because I died a terrible and scary death. Please take pity and wipe all of my search history. It was all for research, honest! It’s bad taste to judge a dead man.

The access door to the roof was large and imposing in front of him, even though there was still no noise coming from the other side. He was going to be mad and then relieved, in that exact order, if this turned out to be nothing.

He inhaled. Exhaled. Jumped around and shook his hands where they hung down beside the length of his body. He’d watched enough athletes—for research!—throughout his short life and getting loose always seemed to pump them up for competition. The same principle should apply here.

The door gave with a loud screech and he suspected that it wasn’t in regular use. Not that there was probably much to see up there anyway. Just roosting pigeons, stone slabs, and—

His mind went blank.

Crouching in the corner, so close to the edge that all it would take was a gust of wind to send him tumbling down, was some sort of winged creature. And the wings were massive things that arched up before curving downward completely over it’s back, the tips draped on the ground. Judging by how large they were, they had to be functional, which nearly caused him to wet himself.

He didn’t want to imagine that thing taking flight after him. Not that he would be exciting prey. Gods, this probably how a mouse felt when a hawk was flying overhead.

But it was the horns that really caught his attention. They were hulking black spirals and the sharp points were pointed right at him. Even in the poor light, it was obvious that they were pure black. Any other time, he might comment on how cool they actually were, how they were a cosplayer’s dream, but it wasn’t cool when it was a matter of life and death.

And he would most certainly die if those menacing horns and wings were any indication.

Trying to keep the element of surprise, he slowly let the door swing shut. Until a little bat started flew over squeaking, which caused him to squeak as well. The door hit the frame with a loud rattle. His body went heavy with fear and his eyes snapped shut, a natural prey response. He had never, ever been this scared.

Not patient enough for Shang Qinghua to turn around on his own, the creature flung him around to face it with an aggressive growl. And he had thought it was loud when he was on the sidewalk. Which wasn’t true at all. It was much louder and more intimidating when it was right in his face.

“Trespasser!” it growled, teeth clicking.

…Okay, so it could talk. Maybe this was a good thing. Now could grovel with it to spare him!

Blinking rapidly, he opened his eyes and looked up, up, up. It didn’t look as horrific from the front as it did the back. In fact, it had a humanoid appearance and was distinctly male. He was the hottest thing he’d ever seen, a total fantasy come to life. How the hell was he real?

His was incredibly tall, his huge wings proportional to his size now that he was standing up. Now that he saw them up close, Shang Qinghua noticed that they were a beautiful shade of blue that started out dark but lightened to pale blue once it reached the tips, which also had sharp spikes—Nails? Claws? He wasn’t well versed in anatomy—attached.

The top of his ears were pointy, too, just like the tops of the wings. Oh, and the horns! There were two of them, both pure, glossy obsidian, that sprouted out on either side of his temple, the bases thick and ridged as they spiraled like a ram’s. The only difference was that his horns were much larger. He could maul someone with those along if he wasn’t careful.

But now that he considered it more—even in times of crisis, he could multi-task when it really counted—the horns only added more to his attractiveness. They were intimating, sure, but also sexy, in a monsterfucking type of way. He gasped as a clawed hand wrapped around his throat. Yep, he could definitely get into the horns and claws. Mark him down as scared and horny.

The growling died down but sharp teeth were still on display, and there was a stylized tattoo-looking mark on his forehead. Despite the snarl, Shang Qinghua instinctively knew that his face was insanely attractive; it had to be to match the rest of him. Speaking of the rest of him…

He dropped down in front of him, making sure to drag his hands down that ripped physique and gave his massive pectorals a quick squeeze before he landed on his knees in a kneeling position.

His face was right in front of the creature’s impressive package, covered only by a flimsy loin cloth. It fluttered in the night breeze and he had to bite down on his finger to stop his depraved moaning. “Ff-forgive me, my good-demon-sir, but I swear I’m not trespassing. I’m a humble worker here at this museum.”

He quickly took out his employee badge to offer it up to the demon who barely gave it a glance. “Gargoyle,” it said in reply.

“Oh. I’m sorry but I don’t really know what you mean by that.” Wait, why did he say that? He didn’t want to get further in the demon’s bad side than he already was! “I mean no offense, of course. I’m sure gargoyles are absolutely lovely—”

“No,” he interrupted, his face smoothed out into blank slate. It made it harder to read him but Shang Qinghua quickly decided that it was alright. “I am a gargoyle, human. You may address me as Mobei Jun.”

Ohhh. Now that he mentioned it, his wings and horns could belong to a gargoyle. He knew that they were popular parts historical buildings that had a strong Western influence, which the museum did.

“And I am a king. Not a sir.”

Curse his authority kink. He was sure that any new fantasies he conjured up would be staring this particular king and Shang Qinghua as his servant.

“Of course, my king! You’re reeking of kingly handsomeness. As a lowly human, my apologies for the obvious mistake.” The gargoyle king didn’t make any move to acknowledge his words other than a slow blink, so he figured that it was all good. “Excuse me if this sounds rude, but what are you doing up here? And what was all the noise about?”

“Guardian. I was charged with the safety of this place by a war lord.” Jeez. So he’d been with the building for centuries at least, maybe even millennia.

There was a pause and he realized that he wasn’t going to answer the second question. It also seemed like the gargoyle king was waiting on him and a light bulb went off. “S-sorry again my king. I am Shang Qinghua. I am in charge of the rare artifacts inside of the building, so you may see me closing up most nights.”

The gargoyle king nodded sagely and he figured that the role must be acceptable to him. A loud sigh left him and his muscles relaxed just in the slightest way. He might survive this encounter yet. Ever better, survive and be able to go home and break out that new bottle of lube that he bought last week. There was plenty of new material to work with, that was for sure.

Then the gargoyle stepped back, giving him more space, which was actually the opposite of what he wanted. Feel free to punish him for earlier transgressions, king, especially if they were rough in a sexy way!

Unaware of his inner pleadings, he continued walking away to crouch back near the edge of the roof.

“Umm, be careful, king. It’s dangerous to be that close—”

“I am a king. Concerns such as that are not applicable,” he said, puffing up his chest. Those pecs! He might have to put in a request tomorrow to do more work on the roof. It was a crime that no one was admiring that body on a regular basis. “Leave. Return home. The circles under your eyes are hideous.”

He gasped, touching his bags. Rude! He had just finished a long shift and definitely wasn’t at his best. He was going to have to step up his game if he was going to tempt this gargoyle in the future. Trying his best not to show embarrassment, or disappointment, he agreed to leave.

“Whatever you want, my king. I’ll leave for now but if you need anything, I’ll be back tomorrow and the day after as well. In fact, every night, in case you need me.” Screw his weekend off. Who needed one of those when there was a hot gargoyle of legend serving as the guardian of the museum. Not him, that’s who.

He scrambled to his feet and bowed again for good measure. The door was open and he was across the threshold when his dream gargoyle muttered something. “Did you say something, my king?”

He cleared his throat and spoke gruffly. “The pigeons pooped in my hair.”

Suddenly, the growling from earlier made sense. No matter if you were human or gargoyle, having birds shit in your hair, especially hair as luscious as Mobei Jun’s, was bound to make anyone furious.

Determined to keep his laughs to himself if it was the last thing he did, he merely replied, “Yes, my king. I will make sure to chase them away from you next time.”

“See that you do.”

On cloud nine, Shang Qinghua grinned as he bounded down the stairwell. The gargoyle’s comment implied that there would be a next time. And he intended to romance the loincloth off (literally) of the serious gargoyle king.

Hope you all enjoyed! So happy to share this with everyone. Thanks for reading :)

#svsss #svsss fanfic #mobei jun #shang qinghua #moshang

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maraudererasmut · 4 years

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what kinds of things did you do when you were first practicing digital drawing? did you use reference images? where did you find them? anything you would recommend to a baby drawer with a short attention span for instructions?

Well, first and foremost, I’m gonna take a moment to do a little fangirl wiggle, because I’m a huge fan of your work! Thank you for messaging me!

I’m gonna include a lot of info here, so bear with me! I’ll try to break it down so that it’s easy to understand, but if anyone ha any questions, feel free to ask!

The absolute most important thing for starting out drawing is practice.

You’re going to hear it from everyone, everywhere, but it’s so very true. When I first started digital drawing, I made sure to use my tablet every single day. Now, that doesn’t mean I spend three hours each day trying to do something amazing; some days I only had a few minutes here and there, but I’d try to sketch something rough, something loose, maybe just a doodle. Maybe it’s a face one day, maybe it’s just a bunch of swirls and stars the next. It doesn’t matter what you draw, as long as you are developing the habit of drawing! No matter what it is you are doing, you’re learning! Playing with brushes to see how they feel on your new drawing program? Learning! Trying to see if one way of colouring is better than another? Learning! Drawing the same nose over and over and over again until you like what you see? Also learning!

Another key step to learning to draw is to identify what you like!

What does that mean? Well, look at other artists who inspire you! Why does their work appeal to you? What is it about their drawings that you LOVE? Once you realize what it is that makes something beautiful to you, you know what to practice and how to learn to adopt that into your own style!

@burdge is an excellent example for illustrating this. They are a fandom artist that has been around for so long, nearly every fandom artist I know has been inspired by them in one way or another!

So what is it about Burdge’s art that I love? I love the closeness that’s portrayed, and the softness. But those are very arbitrary things that are difficult to identify and even more challenging to implement. I love the noses. I love the proportions. I love the hairlines! I love the body movement! Those are things that are a bit easier to pick out and start practicing!

This leads so well into my next point:

It is okay to copy someone else’s work if it’s for practice!

Let’s break this one down, just to ensure that nobody accidentally misinterprets what I’m saying: It is okay to copy someone else’s work if it’s for practice. It is NOT okay to copy someone else’s work and post it, claiming it as your own! If you use a reference picture, generally speaking, most artists will post which reference they use, but I know that I often forget to do that as well! But using a reference picture is different than copying.

When you copy someone’s work, what you’re really doing is working on identifying what you love about it. You’re practicing drawing in their style! And that’s totally fine! When you’re first starting out, it’s actually really helpful to be able to use someone else’ expertise and practice to guide you to draw something you love! A lot of people have it in their heads that copying = bad. And sometimes it does. But I think it’s important for new artists to get rid of that notion in their heads. Practice is practice. When you practice cooking, you copy other people’s recipes! You’re not going to post those recipes online and say you created them, but you CAN feed them to your friends and you CAN eat them yourself! And if you do post pictures of your food? You can say whose recipe you used and thank them for a great meal!

We were all starting at one point, and every artist I know started by copying something.

Use reference pictures! Use them liberally! References are helpful!

Yes, some artists are so good that they do not need reference pictures. That’s fine. Good for them! I’m very proud of them!

When you’re first starting out, you don’t have to worry about that! Don’t get into your own head and tell yourself “Real artists do XYZ, blah blah blah, etc.” None of that is helpful. Use whatever is available to help you improve!

Now the question is what actually makes good reference pictures? Well, everyone uses something a little different. Some people use faces of famous actors, some people use stock photos, some people use other people’s drawings that are specifically made for references!

What do I do? I save every single photo I come across that inspires me into a folder. I have tons of folders labeled “Reference: Pose” or “Reference: Remus” or “Reference: Gay”. (That one is smut references. :3 )

I use blogs like @posereference and @fantasyartistreference, which I follow on here! I’ve gone through their content and saved photos that I think will inspire me in the future. Sometimes I don’t do anything with them. Sometimes I use them!

I also take advantage of stock photos. That includes ones that adobe puts onto the internet as well as ones that other artists put! Senshi Stock on Deviant art is an excellent resource that has made a TON of photos available to artists to use for FREE!

Google is also my friend! I like to google terms like “Couple Pose Reference” or “Couple Kissing”. If you include search terms like “pose reference” you often find that you get things specifically created for artists to use to help with poses!

Look at all the helpful poses!

Now, this leads us to my next point:

How to use reference images

Everyone does this part differently, too! I’m going to show a few different examples. Let’s use this amazing reference sheet by @kibbi as our example!

Some people like to have their reference photo beside their drawing space, to use for them to look at, simply as a guide:

Some people like to have their pose reference in a layer beneath their actual drawing on a lower opacity so that they can trace right over it:

Often times, what you end up doing is using your traced sketch as your base for your drawing, with your actual drawing over top of it. Essentially, you’re using this time to identify what you DO like about the reference pose and what you DON’T like about it, and changing it!

See how different it’s looking already? I put my own style over top of it, but I used the pose as a reference because I really liked it!

((EDIT: I JUST REALIZED THAT I GAVE SIRIUS THREE ARMS. I AM SO SORRY, GUYS!!!!))

Side by side comparison for the curious:

Eventually, a time will come where you can do simple poses like this without the use of a reference. That’s amazing! You will be so proud of yourself! But if you still need to use references for complicated poses or foreshortening, remember not to beat yourself up about it. It is OKAY to use reference poses, and it is OKAY to take advantage of resources that are available to you! Just try to remember to cite your sources, just like we all did in school! :P

Practice Anatomy

Try doing things like figure drawing! Use sites like Quick Poses to give yourself a timed figure drawing session, if you’re up for it! The more you practice bodies and anatomy, the better you will get at drawing them! Don’t focus too much on anything being perfect; remember to say loose and just aim for general shapes and general proportions.

This isn’t the greatest example, because I didn’t do any dynamic poses, but here are some rough figure sketches:

See how loose I was? See how little I cared about it looking nice? That’s the best way to start a sketch! Just with loose scribbles!

The same thing can apply to faces:

Learn the rules, and then learn when to break them!

Just like writing, where you have “rules” for writing an essay, in drawing, you have rules for anatomy! But… I don’t always love to follow those rules. It’s important to understand human anatomy (if you plan to draw humans), and then figure out where you want things to be exaggerated in order to create your own style! Here’s an example:

The same rules apply to musculature! It’s important to understand what muscles go where and how they move in order to properly draw them consistently! However! That is something a bit more complicated that we can go into another time! I don’t think that would be included in my simple break-down of drawing!

And… last but not least…

Have fun!

You’d think this one would go without saying, but I’m going to specify it anyway. If you are NO LONGER enjoying drawing what you’re drawing, STOP. Don’t just draw humans because I told you to practice anatomy! If you’re not having fun, you’re going to grow to resent it, and we don’t want that! Draw whatever it is that you want! If you want to draw the same two men hugging over and over and over and over and over (Case in point: my entire blog), you do that! Ignore everything I said about knowing anatomy and about reference pictures and about anything! Just do exactly what makes you happy, nothing more and nothing less. Practicing should be fun, and the moment it’s no longer fun, you’ll begin to lose your passion. So… move on to something else that’s fun! Tired of drawing Wolfstar? (Pfff, that’s impossible, but okay). Move on to Drarry! Or to Linny! Or to a different fandom! Or to flowers! Or to still life! Or to whatever you think will bring back that spark!

Because that’s what drawing is all about. It’s just another form of expression and another way to have fun!

ANYWAY! I know this was SUPER long! I hope it was at least somewhat helpful! I’m not an expert, not by any means, but I enjoy doing this, and I am still working on improving! If anyone has any more questions, shoot me a message!

#ask me things #ask me stuff #ask maraudererasmut #drawing guide #drawing tutorial #basic drawing tutorial #not even really a tutorial #Just... drawing stuff #my art #art how-to

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defeatedbyamerechild · 4 years

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Here is my evil team organization. Remember the droog and child evil team, I asked that. So here is my grunts for Team Myriad. These children are obsessed with fighting trainers and never talk at all. Speak in rhynmes or numbers. Well sometimes but not often. Are they friend or foe?

“These child like grunts have mysteriously appeared in the Galar region. Their motivations and faces are unknown. The thing they love the most is pokemon battling.” Utilize in normal, fairy, psychic, and steel. But will use other types if they have to.

So do you like this concept? Also any criticisms for my drawing or improvements. Like their appearance, looks, or design? Would this be an interesting team?

PS I wonder how the pokevillains would react to this team. Intrigued or confused? Love your blog.

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I forgot about this sorry!!! I saw it the other day and forgot to reply.

Anyways, I really like the designs you have there and I can definitely see the inspiration from the Clockwork Orange aesthetics there. I like that they don’t talk and use rhymes, this is cool dialogue. It is, to me, relatively hard to picture it in an official Pokémon game because I don’t think Nintendo would want it to look too creepy and I can definitely picture this content in a creepy pasta aesthetic that I... don’t think Nintendo would wanna approach. It would be doable, though. And of course, as fan-content, even the creepy pasta style or other horror-related styles are valid. Anyway, it’s a versatile concept that could be used in many ways from just mysterious to actually scary.

I really like the masks, at first I was a bit confused because I thought these were their faces, before reading what you wrote there, but as masks these are neat. Also they are something I can see Nintendo going for, I mean, they literally gave Allister a creepy mask so why not?

Overall, yes, I like it! The concept is neat! As a basic premise for a team that works well for me, even if their goals are unclear. You are basically making the “unclearness” part of the concept. Also really like how you wrote their description in a Pokédex-style, like... the text really reminds me of Pokémon stuff. :3

The only thing I’m still kinda curious about is how this could be developped in order to remain interesting throughout the whole game/story (if a game/story were to be made with it of course), because in terms of narrative, just “it’s a mystery” with no further development can become rather boring or repetitive, or seem kinda disconnected from the rest of the narrated events (depending on how it’s done). Also it could be a problem if the mysterious events are not explained *at all* in the end (half-explained and up to interpretation endinds are good alternatives in my view, but, at least for me, “we’ll never know who they were after all” tends to be a disappointing ending).

Basically, I like the overall idea you gave me, there’s nothing here that I think is a bad idea, but I would find it hard to use if I were to make my own story with them because of the problems above. Maybe you have all that in mind and you already have a superb story with them that works perfectly well, in that case, great, I just wanted to mention what I thought of the concept in practical terms as a (bad) fanfiction writter. XD

BUUUUUUT of course I’m not the executive producer of Game Freak receiving the concept for the next game that I should review or anything, so all this is irrelevant. Even if you didn’t develop their story any further, that’s totally fine. You don’t even have the obligation of thinking this through and answering these questions, you can definitely just make your concept and visuals and not actually use it in a game/fanfiction/comic etc, that is perfectly ok. I’m just a boring person graduated in Language Arts that will go and make boring analysis of stuff. XD

About the art... I think it looks really cute! I don’t wanna go and criticize stuff based on style, like “the heads are too big, limbs are too thin” or something like this, because this is just your style. It’s an aesthetic choice. I could say that the heads are larger than what they usually are in Pokémon games, but honestly, so what? You don’t have to emulate the Pokémon style in order to create Pokémon content. So yeah, you can play with proportions as much as you want and since the drawings seem consistent in terms of symetry and style, that’s just ok.

That said, my only criticism might be...

1. The female grunt’s legs seem a bit too long (even considering the stylistic choices, I’m comparing her body proportions to that of the male grunt). Basically, if you put that same lenght of skirt on the male grunt’s body, it would go down to his socks, but on her she still has the same amount of skin + socks + boots under all that, you see? So maybe make her skirt shorter or make her boots and socks shorter... Or give up on showing parts of skin. It’s easy to lose the sense of proportions under loose clothes like skirts, but if you trace the body silhouette under her skirt, that will probably become clearer. It’s always nice to try and make a full silhouette or skeleton before drawing clothes, in my opinion. (Also this could have resulted from the angle you took the picture! could be just a distortion on the photo that made it look different, so if that’s the case, ignore this XD)

2. This could be a stylistic choice too, but I’m gonna mention it just in case, the limbs look kinda “noodle-ish”. This can also influence your measurement of body proportions like “where exactly does the arm bend”, “where exactly is the knee”, this sort of thing... Of course, as I said, it could just be style, like Adventure Time, for example. They just have those noodle arms. But since I don’t know if that was a conscious choice or not, I decided to mention. Lots of people (including younger me) start by drawing arms (and hands!) as a “continuum”, so if the arms are streched, they are just one straight line from shoulder to hand (some people will even make it shoulder to fingers and put the hand in the noodle pack). And if the limbs are bent, the elbows and knees, fingers and wrists, fold in not very precise places. However, I found it easier to draw arms, legs and hands by subdivinding these limbs into smaller sections. It’s easier to keep them proportional and understand how they bend. You made their arms fully stretched in a way where elbows are not visible and, in the girl specifically, seem a little bit short? Again that can defintely be used as stylistic resource, so only consider this tip if you’re aiming for a more realistically-proportional style.

3. You may wanna make the male grunt’s feet a bit larger? Also they are inclined and I don’t know if that was done intentionally or not. (or if it was just the paper bending a bit when you took the pic).

I’m like... not a professional artist or a teacher or anything. I’ve literally never studied art, so when I give out these feedbacks, they are usually based on my own life-experience and what I’ve learned drawing. But it’s always hard to set the line between style and mistakes. I was once told that you must first learn the basics of actually proportional anatomy before you can start playing with it, so when people ask me for tips, I try to stick to the things I’ve learned myself while developing my knowledge in anatomy and proportions. Not that I am like.. an expert, of course. So yeah, basically, don’t take my criticism as the ultimate truth, I’m still just learning just like you. ^^

About suggestions and improvements: Maybe add something to their canes, on the handle part? And maybe adding detail to their boots... But only if you want to of course. Also, have you thought of eyelashes for the masks, like... eyelashes on only one eye or something? This wouldn’t be for the grunts because I think they look great just like that and are already complex enough, but you might wanna use that for admins or something? Specially if it’s eyelashes on the lower half of the eye.

I also would like to say that I couldn’t read everything you wrote, sorry.... I’m bad with handwriting! So forgive me if I said anything redundant that you had already put in the info. ^^

And finally... I don’t usually make reaction things in submissions, only during ask events, so forgive me for not giving you the villains reactions here. I hope you understand. ^^

SORRY FOR THE SUPER LONG REPLY AND FOR THE DELAY, I HOPE YOU FIND WHAT I SAID INTERESTING AND USEFUL MAYBE?

#submission #collab #thanks

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xmxisxforxmaybe · 5 years

Text

Thank You

I don’t typically write for Rami bc I prefer to write for his characters; however, I’ve reached 200 followers, and I think that’s really cool. I’d like to show my appreciation by sharing a Rami story because he is just SUCH a teeny powerhouse of a muse.

I want to first say a great big thank you to the folks in the Rami fandom who have made me feel so welcome. I write for myself because it “sparks joy,” but I post for YOU because you’ve been so kind and encouraging.

So, thanks to all of you for following my blog. I love you all. Here’s a fic about those goddamn Bafta pants. Author’s Note: There is no rhyme or reason for this other than smut, so don’t overthink the context or surrounding details. I am not making any statement other than I found those pants . . . inspirational 😉

Warning: PWP, no under 18s

At some point during the BAFTAs After-Party, Rami ditched his perfectly white jacket, dropping it onto the chair behind him at the bar, leaving your main focal point for the entire night unblocked. You listened as he laughed, his glass of champagne sloshing a little as he moved his hands, telling the group of people around him something that made them all laugh, a tiny roar that drew the momentary attention of other partygoers.

You had damn near had enough of his teasing. He knew how good he looked in that suit and he was riding a high wave of confidence after his win. Every now and then, he’d shoot you a glance, an arrogant smirk planted on his face because he knew exactly what he was doing to you. He was an actor, a multiple-award-winning actor, and he knew how to use his face, and in the case of this evening, also his trousers, as a weapon.

You set your own drink down, gathering the long, slinky fabric of your dress in your hand and crossing the room. Rami was listening to another person in his circle, so you were able to step slightly in front of him and place your hand on his shoulder. You leaned into his body and with your lips right next to his ear, you whispered, “You’ve teased me long enough. I want your cock in my mouth. Have your driver drop you at my place, Mr. Malek.”

And you left as Rami shifted uncomfortably; you could just make out the blur of him yanking his white jacket off the bar chair, probably using it to cover the twitching hardness those fucking pants were not going to be able to hide on their own.

You left with a smile of satisfaction on your face, nodding to some people you knew as you ducked into your waiting car.

* * * * *

You stood at one of the full-length windows that lined your corner apartment, displaying spectacular views of the city which was lit up as far as the eye could see. Stripped down to your sexiest black underwear and bra set, your ass cheeks perfectly framed with lace and on display for when he walked through the door, you drank your champagne as you continued to wait. Your hair was still piled onto the top of your head in a pretty updo, but you’d taken most of the thick Red Carpet makeup off, leaving only your eye makeup because you knew it’d add to the effect of what you were about to do to your little tease.

When the key turned in the lock and the door opened and closed, you couldn’t help but smile. It had been less than an hour, so he must have given himself just enough time to say his goodbyes before he left to follow you.

You continued to sip your champagne and watched his reflection as it approached you, the beautiful white suit standing out in the window as the rest of him appeared to blend in with the city. His hands slid around your waist and his thick fingers crawled across your abdomen.

He pressed his body close to yours and leaned in to rest his chin on your shoulder, his face just starting to grow some stubble in the late hours of the night. His scent was a glorious mixture of his expensive cologne and the sweetness of the champagne on his breath as he contentedly sighed, turning his head to nuzzle his nose into your neck.

He almost got you with that move, too, your eyes slipping shut before they blinked back open; now that you were alone in your apartment and not surrounded by hundreds of other people, you were in control. And Rami had been a bad, bad boy.

“You smell so good,” he whispered, his tongue tracing the shell of your ear.

You ignored him and continued to sip your champagne.

Rami kissed down your exposed neck and chuckled into your skin.

“You mad at me?” he whispered as his lips ghosted across the base of your neck.

“I’m so happy you won, darling,” you said, your tone cheerful as you continued to ignore his kisses.

“But I’d like to spend some time with the real star of the evening,” you said, your tone turning seductive.

Rami stopped, his lips on your shoulder, and you were sure he was holding his breath.

You turned around and he stepped back, releasing you from his lips and his hands. Rami’s eyes flicked over your face and his lips were drawn into a tight line.

“Let’s see,” you purred, your hands coming up to touch his face.

“Such expressive eyes. Think maybe that’s what the magazines will talk about tomorrow?”

Your fingers traced over his brows and across the soft skin underneath his eyes. You lightly trailed a finger over each set of eyelashes, before whispering, “No. Not the eyes.”

“How about this mouth?” you said as you traced his lips with your fingers, and he opened them, responding to your touch. “Such a pretty little pout.”

You moved forward to grab his bottom lip between your teeth, pulling it out and swiping your tongue over it before releasing it.

Rami grabbed your hips, his fingers digging into the upper sides of your ass as he steadied himself. You could see his chest rising and falling, his breaths becoming more shallow as you played your game.

“Hmm. Still a no, though. I guess there’s always this jawline,” you said turning his face a bit roughly with one hand then reaching up to trace the angles with your other.

“So defined. So handsome,” you said before trailing your tongue along the bone from ear to chin.

“Y/N,” Rami breathed, his fingers flexing and his hips pushing toward you to try to get some friction. “Please.”

You chuckled into his ear and released his jaw. His eyes snapped to yours and he tried to close the distance and kiss you, but you pushed into his shoulders, holding him at bay.

“So well-proportioned,” you said in the same tone, refusing to acknowledge his need for you. “Maybe that’s what they’ll talk about tomorrow? The perfect cut of this jacket?”

You pushed his jacket off his shoulders, the white material separating from his black shirt easily, landing in a ripple on the floor.

You slid your hands up and down his arms, grasping at his biceps before moving across his chest and squeezing his pecks, his nipples already hard and visible through the thin, silky material of the shirt.

You shook your head no as you lightly scratched at his nipples, and tsked your tongue. “Nope. Not the jacket.”

You slid your hands down, stopping at the top of his trousers. Rami was watching your every movement, his eyes begging you to fulfill the tease you whispered as you left the party.

You gave him a seductive smirk as you dropped to your knees.

“Oh!” you gasped, feigning shock. “What a pleasure to meet you!”

You spoke to Rami’s growing cock as it strained against his white pants.

“I’ve known about your talents for a long time, but how nice to see you finally getting the recognition you deserve,” you said, looking up to meet Rami’s eyes, his face split into a wide grin, his perfectly white teeth a match to his perfectly white suit.

Rami slid his hand under your chin, grasping it, locking your head in place to force your eyes to remain on his face.

“You are such an asshole,” he said through his wide smile.

“Your world-famous friend doesn’t seem to think so,” you shot back.

Rami released your chin and moved both of his hands to your shoulders.

You turned your attention back to the evening’s real star and ran your fingers down over the front of the soft fabric that covered his thighs, knowing he was still watching you with those big, gorgeous eyes. You looked at his clearly defined bulge again and thought about how worthless a pair of pants like this really were; they served one purpose and one purpose only—to highlight Rami’s perfect anatomy.

What a little slut, you thought as you leaned in and ran your tongue over his cock, stopping to play with the tip by tracing the ridge of his head.

Rami groaned, an obnoxious, half-growl, half-moan as his hands gripped your shoulders.

You continued to mouth over his hard cock, lightly biting down on the thickest part of his bulge as you reached around to grasp his ass.

“Ohmyfuckinggod,” Rami mumbled through another obnoxious moan. “Please, Y/N. You’re killing me.”

“You’ve been sucha bad, bad boy Rami,” you said as you nuzzled his dick through the fabric. “Now you have to be patient.”

He whimpered and you almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.

After all, he was the one who chose those goddamn pants.

You continued lightly nuzzling and licking at his cock through the pants as you ran your hands over his ass, his thighs, and his calves, touching everywhere you could reach.

“I—” he began, his breath hitching. “I’m so-sorry. For being a tease.”

You paused and looked up, arching a brow, a smirk of victory on your lips.

His mouth was open and his tongue was darting out to wet his lips before he sucked in the bottom one; your eyes never wavered from his as you brought your hands to the clasp on his trousers.

His eyes flicked to your fingers to watch as you slowly undid the clasp and lowered the zipper even more slowly. You had to tug a little to get them to fall, but they slid down his legs and pooled at his feet.

His cock bobbed as it sprang from the confines of those tight pants and you moaned as you licked a long stripe from base to tip. Rami’s fingers dug into your shoulders, probably hard enough to leave bruises, and he pulled you forward, silently begging for you to take him in your mouth.

Instead, you continued to lick and tease him, tonguing his balls, kissing his thighs, and when you paused as you slid a hand into your panties, groaning low in your throat as you slid through your slick heat, parting your lips and pushing inside of yourself before sliding up to your clit, you saw Rami’s eyes glisten with the threat of tears.

Rami attempted to speak, his voice coming out in nothing more than a rasp until he cleared his throat.

“How wet are you?”

You shook your head no, refusing to show him as you continued to work your clit.

Rami had to shift his stance as he nearly buckled when you then took him in your mouth, your other hand grasping his base as you sucked in as much of him as you could. You held him tight, not wanting him to come too soon as your fingers worked on your own orgasm.

Rami was a panting, moaning mess; his hands were now tangled in your updo as his he fucked your mouth. From his vantage, he couldn’t see what you were doing between your thighs. He could only see the movement of your arm, the dip of your shoulder and the flexing of your bicep and your forearm as you worked to an orgasm, and it drove Rami crazy.

Despite your attempts to hold him back, your teasing had been too much. Rami was so close and you had no intention of stopping, so you moved your hand to his hip. Squeezing and holding him in place to let him know he could come in your mouth.

Your orgasm crashed through you as you thought of him spilling into your mouth and you moaned around Rami’s cock as your thighs tightened and your eyes closed in pleasure.

Rami came immediately, filling your mouth with cum, some of it leaking from the corner of as you continued to bob your head lightly sucking him through his orgasm. You pulled back to look up at him as you swallowed, his eyes heavy lidded, his mouth still parted, and he watched as you cleaned his cum off with your thumb, sliding that digit in your mouth to show him that you swallowed every bit.

Rami had moved his hands back to your shoulders to steady himself and they slid down your arms as he helped pull you to your feet, your hand sliding out of your panties.

He smiled when you were facing him, his expression one of satiation. You smiled back, but it was a wicked little grin as you slid your glistening fingers over his lips, coating the upper and lower in your juices. Rami’s grip on your upper arms tightened as his tongue followed your fingers and you slid them into his mouth, your own breathing picking up as he sucked them, humming around them as his tongue slid between the two digits. As you pulled your fingers out, he bit down and your fingers scraped deliciously between his teeth.

You leaned in to lightly kiss his lips before starting to undo his bowtie, loosening the fabric so it hung around his collar. Slowly, you unbuttoned his shirt, kissing each newly exposed expanse of skin, until you were once again on your knees. You took his softened cock into your mouth and Rami grunted. You released him and chuckled as you reached down to help him out of his shoes and socks, finally able to completely free him from his trousers.

You stood back up and picked your almost forgotten champagne glass off the floor. You walked over to the coffee table to refill it and offered your glass to Rami, picking up another and filling it, too.

“A toast,” you said, turning to face him in all his naked splendor. He grinned and held up his glass, and you smiled as you could see the city lights reflected on his back, his ass perfectly defined in the reflection of the window.

“To your first BAFTA and more importantly, to those fucking white pants.”

You laughed together as you clinked your glasses, both of you eyeing each other while taking long drinks.

Rami reached out and took your glass, setting both of them on the end table. He moved to the sofa and sat on the edge so he could pull you to stand in front of him between his legs.

He reached up, his middle fingers slowly sliding up the outside of your thighs until they met your panties. He slid them under the fabric and then hooked his fingers to finally pull the soaking wet garment off. He kissed across your hips before pulling you to settle on his lap.

He reached up to pull your face to meet his so he could kiss you, really kiss you. You shivered as his tongue twined with yours and as he nipped at your lips, opening and closing the kiss with a frenzy.

When both of you were panting, your lips glistening and swollen, he moved to kiss your neck, sucking lightly on the spots that made you moan. His hands reached behind you to unhook your bra, and he slid the straps from your arms, tossing the garment somewhere behind him.

“I want you so much,” he whispered, kissing across your breasts as your hands ran through his hair, ruining the perfect style.

“Will you let me have you?” he said, pulling your chin down to force your eyes to meet his. They were so bright and intense that it took your breath away. You loved him like this—quiet and soft, focused only on you as if all the noise of his very, very busy life had finally faded to nothing more than a quiet din, miles away.

“Always,” you whispered, moving from his lap and standing, pulling him up so he could follow you down the hall to the bedroom, those fucking white pants crumpled and forgotten on the floor.

#rami malek #Rami Malek smut #rami malek x reader #female reader #rami malek fanfiction #Rami Malek BAFTAs #rami malek imagine #rami x reader

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shadows-and-science-gone-mad · 4 years

Text

An Analysis of the Creature Designs in Jurassic Fight Club

The 2008 History Channel miniseries Jurassic Fight Club was not a good show. Almost objectively, it was a badly-done series. The effects were of generally high quality, but those decent effects were in service of a poorly-scripted, gratuitously-violent, scientifically-inaccurate gorefest masquerading as a documentary.

It’s not worth your time.

That said, one bit of unambiguous praise I can give it lies in the designs for the dinosaurs. While they are frequently very inaccurate, they are completely unlike any dinosaur designs in any other media. The showrunners very easily could have just appropriated stock footage from older programs to pad their runtime, but they created unique clips featuring their own designs, which is commendable.

In this post, I’m going to be going through all of the creature designs that appear in Jurassic Fight Club and give my honest thoughts on them. I will factor in both accuracy to the real animal and my own personal tastes, and ultimately assign each one a score out of 10.

So, without further ado, let’s begin:

Majungasaurus crenatissimus (male)

Let’s cover these in order of appearance, which means that the male Majungasaurus is first on the plate. (I am choosing to ignore that they call it Majungatholus in the narration; that is not what this creature’s name is.)

This is a pretty interesting portrayal of this animal. They very easily could have just thrown some skin over the bones and called it a day. But, they stretched their creativity a bit and gave it some speculative soft tissue, and I like that.

That said, the anatomy is completely wrong for a Majungasaurus. The skull is correct, but the arms are too well-developed, and the legs are way too long and lean. Those proportions would work pretty well if this were a Carnotaurus, but it’s a bit too athletic for a majungasaur.

7/10.

Majungasaurus crenatissimus (female)

This is much more in line with what I was expecting from their Majungasaurus. It has the exact same problems as the male, and is missing the speculative soft tissue that I liked so much. Still okay, but not as interesting as the male.

6/10.

Tyrannosaurus rex

No, I don’t know why it’s squatting like that in this promotional image.

Ignoring the weird pose, this isn’t too bad, actually. Sure, it still has broken wrists, and the skull is a bit off, but it otherwise looks about right. For a depiction of T. rex from 2008, this is pretty decent stuff. I like the muted purple color, and I am immensely appreciative of the fact that they didn’t just copy-paste a Jurassic Park rex into their show. They could have very easily done that, but they chose to make something more representative of the actual animal.

8/10.

Nanotyrannus lancensis

This one’s a bit tough to judge. You see, Nanotyrannus doesn’t actually exist. In 2008, it was considered its own genus. But, in the decade since this series aired, it has been all but confirmed that Nanotyrannus is just a juvenile Tyrannosaurus.

That said, as a juvenile Tyrannosaurus, this is pretty good. It’s slim and fierce, with a good color scheme and decent accuracy to the fossils. Aside from the fact that this animal never existed, this is decent. Not bad at all.

7/10.

Deinonychus antirrhopus

I am of completely mixed opinions about this one. On the one hand, aside from the broken wrists, the anatomy is pretty much spot-on. You can tell that the designers actually looked at real Deinonychus skeletons to model this. Also, the blue body with the striping on the tail is a very striking color pallete. As a design, this is actually pretty good.

But, then we get to the elephant in the room. Not a single feather to be found anywhere on its body. Even in 2008, no feathers at all was barely acceptable, and it is completely unforgiveable today.

I have heard that they didn’t do feathers because of budgetary restrictions, which is understandable, but it does drag this design down quite a bit.

I’m going to have to give it a neutral score. It’s a great monster design, but it’s a terrible raptor.

5/10.

Tenontosaurus tilletti

Poor Tenontosaurus. It pretty much only ever gets media representation so that it can be killed by either Deinonychus or Acrocanthosaurus, and nobody ever seems to give it the time of day.

Fortunate, then, that this is a fantastic design.

Anatomically, it’s spot-on. The colors are dull, but not boring. It has a good amount of soft tissue, and carries a real sense of weight. Out of all the dinosaurs in the show, this one looks the most like a real animal. I have absolutely no complaints.

10/10.

Stegosaurus ungulatus

This is top-quality stuff right here. The proportions are good, even if the tail is a bit on the short side. The hands have the correct number of digits, and all of the plates and spikes seem to be in order. Again, the colors are a bit drab, but it feels appropriate for an animal of this size.

Also, how strange is it that, of all shows, Jurassic Fight Club is the only one I’ve seen that gets Stegosaurus’s weirdly long neck right?

Another triumph.

10/10.

Ceratosaurus nasicornis

Wow.

This is almost entirely perfect.

It has the right skull, it has the long teeth, it has the osteoderms on the back, the proportions are correct. Literally the only inaccuracy I can find is the pronated wrists, but that’s hardly enough to tarnish this thing’s otherwise perfect score.

This may be the best depiction of Ceratosaurus I’ve ever seen, and it is unquestionably the best design in the show.

10/10.

Camarasaurus supremus

Eh.

It looks about right, but it just feels...plain. This is the first one where the dull color scheme is a downside. It’s just flat grey with a yellow head. I do like that detail, but that’s pretty much all it has going for it.

Also, it has elephant feet, which is just wrong.

4/10.

Allosaurus fragilis

Alright, buckle down, because this one’s really bad.

Whereas everything up to this point at least feels like they looked at the actual animal as they were rendering, I’m not certain anyone involved in this thing’s design process had ever seen an Allosaurus skeleton. Let me count the issues:

The skull is so utterly wrong I’m unconvinced they didn’t just completely make it up.

The horns are the wrong size, the wrong shape, and in the wrong spot.

The wrists are broken and stuck on the end of way-too-long human arms.

The torso is too shallow, and has this weird hunchback thing going on.

The legs are too short, and those dainty little feet are bordering on comical. It doesn’t look like it should be able to stand up.

Literally no component of this thing’s anatomy resembles the animal it is supposed to be. It’s a trainwreck.

1/10.

Carcharocles megalodon

To begin with, yes, I am all aboard Team Carcharocles.

With that out of the way, this is a very “meh” design. It’s literally just a big great white shark. No real creativity or imagination at play here. Normally, that would be fine, but C. megalodon isn’t particularly closely related to the great white, so I can’t rate this too highly.

4/10.

Brygmophyseter shigensis

Conversely, I think that making Brygmophyseter a modified sperm whale is completely appropriate. This animal was a close cousin of the modern sperm whale, and thus would probably look fairly similar.

Decent colors, realistic anatomy, appropriate role within the episode’s story. Pretty decent stuff.

7/10.

Gastonia burgei

The show’s designers keep doing a really good job with their armored dinosaurs. The Stegosaurus above was one of their best, and Gastonia here is no different.

It certainly helps that Gastonia is known from pretty solid remains, so they had a lot of material to work with. It looks pretty much as it should, and the color scheme is vibrant, but not overdone. Pretty stellar work overall.

9/10.

Utahraptor ostrommaysi

Okay, I was willing to be forgiving of the Deinonychus because of the colors, plus the fact that they nailed its skeletal anatomy. This thing doesn’t have either of those advantages.

I can forgive the incorrect skull, Utahraptor‘s skull wasn’t known until nearly a decade after the show came out. What I cannot forgive is the drab, boring color scheme and those AWFUL feathers. If this is all they were going to do to add feathers to their raptors, I’m almost glad they left Deinonychus scaly.

Just awful.

2/10.

Arctodus simus

Wait. They didn’t have the budget to render raptors with proper feathers, but they did have the budget to do an episode all about furry Pleistocene mammals?

Anyways, this is alright. The skull looks a bit off to me, and the legs are too short, but it’s not awful. Y’know, aside from the fact that they gave this bear human eyes for some reason.

6/10.

Panthera leo atrox

That sure is a lion.

5/10.

Pachyrhinosaurus canadensis

That is not Pachyrhinosaurus. Even ignoring the erroneous horn, -- which is addressed as speculative within the show -- that is straight-up not the skull of a Pachyrhinosaurus. They just modelled an (admittedly okay-looking) Achelousaurus, and then had the narrator call it Pachyrhinosaurus.

3/10.

Albertosaurus sarcophagus

I don’t even know what to say here. All of the show’s other theropods had something interesting or noteworthy about them, either good or bad. But, this is just every pop-culture Albertosaurus I’ve ever seen.

It certainly is there.

4/10.

Edmontosaurus annectens

This is one of the most completely unremarkable creature designs I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s a single dull color, it has no speculative soft tissue, and its only role in the episode is to be killed and eaten by predators.

This is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a representation of a Perfectly Normal Beast. There is not a single remarkable thing here.

And it’s a shame, because Edmontosaurus is a very interesting and underrated animal, but here it gets saddled with this halfhearted shrug of a design.

4/10.

Dromaeosaurus albertensis

Yeesh.

This has the advantage of being more anatomically accurate than the Utahraptor and the colors are okay, but those feathers are, again, absolutely appalling.

Topping that off, the narration talks about them communicating with each other via sign language, which is just...dumb. Even as a kid, I thought that was dumb.

2/10.

#my writing #essay #review #creature design #dinosaurs #jurassic fight club

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purkinje-effect · 5 years

Text

The Anatomy of Melancholy, 39

Table of Contents. Second Instar, Chapter 6. Go to previous. Go to next. Through the needle’s eye and right onto the hook.

____________________

As they took a steady clip Northbound on Route 3, the trees to either side of them shifted from predominantly pine to a mixture of rusty oak and maple. Very few vehicles scattered the street, allowing for a smooth, steady speed. ‘Choly smiled to himself at the thought of his Pip-Boy’s radio; at first, the signal was spotty at best, but he refined it to pull in a brassy, energetic instrumental broadcast. Once he got it steady, Angel seemed to sway along the lanes to the tune, and he nearly stopped worrying.

“Really, this is quite nice, isn’t it, Angel? The weather’s brisk, but the sun’s out. I’ve missed trips like this with you. I know it used to be by bus, but the wind feels therapeutic in a way. Just the two of us.”

“The scenery in the Commonwealth these days isn’t all bad.”

But he couldn’t wholly get his mind off their destination. He couldn’t even begin to speculate what to anticipate. After two centuries left to run without maintenance, there was no telling if the base’s robotics and defenses would even operate correctly, if even run at all. He didn’t like the odds that the Rust Devils had already taken the base and now occupied it. The whole trip to Lowell would be for nothing, if he couldn’t get on base, and they might as well double back to Billerica and take Bogey home to Sanctuary Hills right then.

They zipped under an overpass, and ‘Choly prayed they’d be able to speed right over the I-495 cloverleaf without having to take any of the access roads. Relief washed over him, that he didn’t have to deal with the Lowell Connector. The interstate signs had all either fallen or faded beyond legibility. He checked his map on his Pip-Boy, and looked back at the miles of crumbling asphalt still ahead of them. They’d just passed Route 129: just over halfway there from the golf course. He nodded thoughtfully, and slacked a bit in his scrutiny of the thoroughfare for a ways.

“Shall we take the Chelmsford South exit, or press on to the Chelmsford-Lowell intersection?”

“Taking I-495 would nearly triple our travel distance. We might have to, but let’s try sticking to Route 3 for now.”

“Noted.”

Ignoring the off ramp, they crossed over the 3-495 interchange. The well-rehearsed, unmarked exit for Chelmsford Road came up, and at a distance they could tell that the Route 3 overpass ahead had been extensively blockaded. Angel need not mention its concern as they got off the highway, as they both readily noted the high wood and steel wall which barricaded the Northeast half of the intersection. Several people stood watch atop the Red Rocket on the Southeast corner, and began to fire on the two of them as they slowed just enough to take the left turn under Route 3. ‘Choly looked back and his stomach lurched. Three bipedal robots sped toward them.

“All arms and legs in!” Angel yelled.

They barreled beneath the overpass, under which the raiders had constructed barricades and corrugated metal shanties. They didn’t slow enough to do more than draw fire. One of the mishmash robots slammed into the wall of one of the dwellings with a loud crash, only to keep running nearly unhindered. It wasn’t until ‘Choly looked back a second time to attempt aiming at their pursuants, that he recognized the very unmistakably human skulls mounted as face plates on these things. He fired at them, but his hands shook too badly, and he clutched tighter to Angel rather than try again.

“You can’t go any faster, can you!” ‘Choly pleaded.

“I’m going as fast as I can, Sir!”

Angel fired all three lasers at once at one of the robots, and it crumpled in a half-molten mess. The other two closed in on them.

The nearly humanoid proportions of the things, combined with the skull plates... These things had been Assaultrons. One of them steadied a limb toward them, for it to erupt flames. ‘Choly screamed when he could feel the heat nearly reach him. He looked behind him only long enough to confirm he wasn’t on fire, and resumed doing his best not to hyperventilate. Angel continued firing, but the remaining once-Assaultrons managed to dodge its aim. The other once-Assaultron fired with its ocular laser and connected with one of Angel’s ocular lenses.

They got about five hundred feet down the street before veering off it in favor of the bald expanse of field, and they followed the high barbwire hurricane fence at full speed. In no time, they approached the guard house at the front of the Deenwood Compound. Though unoccupied, the biometric scanner still swept over ‘Choly and Angel, and the boom barrier permitted them through. They looked back to find the two robots that had chased them had doubled back to return to their base.

‘Choly hoped that meant Deenwood wasn’t under Rust Devil occupation.

“Are you all right, Mister Carey?”

“I’ll be better once we’re inside...”

They slowed a bit, but remained vigilant, as they came up to the second checkpoint. To either side of the inner fence stood a pair of high turret towers. ‘Choly saw a Mister Gutsy coming to them. He holstered his pistol and dismounted with his cane in hand.

“This is a secure government facility!” the Gutsy announced in a strident scorn. “State your identity and intent, or we WILL fire on you!”

“Captain-- Captain Alan Carey.” ‘Choly gulped for air and did his best to stand up straight and salute the Gutsy. “Deenwood Pharm Corps. This is Angel, issued to me by the DIA.” Angel, too, stated its designation, which came in a string of numbers ‘Choly had never memorized in the first place.

The army green Handy eyed the two of them in silence for entirely too long.

“Intent!”

“I, ah! Yes. I was-- Reporting to active duty.”

“You are two hundred years LATE, Captain Carey. And not even close to wearing regulation uniform. Not to mention what you’ve allowed become of your Mister Handy compatriot.” The gate’s magnetic mechanisms deployed with a low hum, and the boom barriers lifted as before. ‘Choly sighed and re-mounted Angel, and the Gutsy led them inside the vast concrete facility proper. “Forgive my gruffness, Captain. It’s wonderful to have you back. General Francis will be elated to speak with you.”

“General--” ‘Choly’s face couldn’t help but screw up as they entered the Robotics wing. “General Francis?” He hadn’t expected nuclear survivors, and for Captain Francis to have lived long enough to start a line of descendants to inherit the base just about beat any unlikelihood he could have imagined possible.

Still, he’d been on premises a good fifteen minutes by that point, and within base walls five of it--and he hadn’t seen a single living thing, person or otherwise. A mixture of Mister Gutsies, Eyebots, and Protectrons moved about in his peripheral fringes, but none of them engaged the three of them as the Gutsy led the way. Maybe this General Francis was her Handy... or a Sentry she’d programmed... or...

They arrived at the Control Room of the Robotics wing, where a uniformed ghoul worked on a powered-down Eyebot on a workbench. The Gutsy approached.

“Captain Carey has arrived, ma’am. I’ve brought him to you for debriefing.”

Her half-shaven blonde head picked up to glare at ‘Choly as he dismounted again. He glared back, in shock. Keloid scars wired all over her body, and almost none of her nose or earlobes remained. Her voice was viscous and rasping, but still rang with command.

“Thank you, Green Seven. You may return to your normal duties.”

“Yes, ma’am!” It exited, leaving the three of them alone.

The two continued to stare at one another for some time before ‘Choly slowly walked up to her. He stuttered out broken, stupid laughter and collapsed to hugging her tight. He couldn’t help the tears when she hugged him back. After a solid minute, she shoved him back to get a good look at him up close.

“Forgive the exclamation, but how the FUCK are you standing here in front of me, Carey?”

“I could ask you the same question, General.” He removed his glasses and gave her a tired smile, and wiped his cheeks with his sleeve.

“Is that... a Vault Suit? Fuck.” She began to circle him. “What in God’s name happened to your Handy?”

“I happened to it. Repairs and upgrades were necessary to make the trip up from Concord. Is... is it all right for me to sit, ma’am?” She waved at the workbench stool, and he thanked her. He didn’t want to have to talk about Vault 111, but a brief explanation seemed like the only option. “It’s a Vault Suit, yes. They built a vault near where I moved after Anchorage. I’m the only one that survived what the vault did to its residents. Cryogenics. I think the equipment started failing after two hundred years, and the system tried to wake everyone up... but it was... just me--”

She leaned on the workbench beside him with a knowing frown.

“My heart goes out to you, having to live through that. I’ve heard some terrible things about the different experiments Vault-Tec ran on its residents. You don’t have to tell me anything further.”

“Thank you for not pressing me for details, ma’am. It’s only been a few months. It hasn’t been easy to adjust to... everything, honestly.”

“...What are you doing here?” She half-expected him to reciprocate her curiosity, but appreciated that he hadn’t.

“I had a feeling there was something unresolved here. Like there was a project we were supposed to start, except the bombs happened first.” He sniffed and put his glasses back on, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. I just can’t believe anyone survived...”

Francis squinted at him, and leaned nearer.

“Forgive me for asking, but I’m worried. The cane, and... you were riding your Handy on the way in.”

“The circumstances that have made it possible for me to stand before you alive today also damaged me severely. Angel’s operating not just as my Handy, but as my wheelchair, ma’am.”

“--Oh, cut the appellations,” she dismissed, blowing the stress of the conversation away like smoke. “You’re acting like you’ve never met me before.”

“Sorry. Barring Angel, you’re the... second familiar face I’ve found since I woke up? I honestly was starting to get used to the idea that I outlived everyone.”

She softened.

“...I can relate to that. I was the only Pharm Corps staff on base to survive the radiation. The base was designed to withstand a nuclear blast. But we’re close enough to where the bomb hit New Hampshire that it might as well have been a direct hit. The base itself was unscathed, but the residential block got hammered. I... I don’t know if you’d call being ghoulified surviving.” She snorted a wheeze through her open nasal cavity and gave him a shit-eating grin. “Repairing that Eyebot can wait. You still lush as ever? ‘Cause damn if I couldn’t use a drink about now.”

He checked the time on his Pip-Boy, and mirrored her grin.

“Supposing it’s nine forty-seven somewhere.”

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#fallout 4 #fo4 #fallout 4 fanfic #fo4 fanfic #sole survivor #rust devils #chelmsford #lowell #mister handy #melancholy #olivia francis #the anatomy of melancholy #we're heeeeeere

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infjarts · 6 years

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Get Out of Your Box: The Piece of Art Advice Everyone Is Afraid to Tell You

This has been on my mind for a VERY good while.

By that I mean at least a YEAR.

DISCLAIMER: This is coming from someone whose art improved at an alarming rate (according to my art major friend who gave me this advice). I also doesn’t know when to stop sometimes, so I apologize if this sounds a little insensitive or condescending. But the ONLY reason I am doing this is because it is the single most influential piece of advice I ever received and I would not be where I am today had it not been given to me.

I’m just kind of frustrated here because I have seen the exact same thing happen to so many people, and it’s always due to the same epidemic that so often plagues beginners. And I almost got caught in it, if it weren’t for aforementioned art major friend.

See, the problem starts with beginner artists looking at fun, cartoony styles and falling in love with them. This is not a bad thing! It’s great to find stuff you like and want to emulate!

The problem starts when they immediately dive into these cartoony styles, thrilled by the notion that they can skip doing hard realistic stuff and just stick with a minimalistic art style without having to learn the basics or how things look like in real life. Because either they shy away from hard stuff, or they have already decided that’s not how they want their art to look.

This is a mistake. They are unknowingly locking themselves inside a box. That is not how style development works.

Do you want to know the secret to how I improved more in the past two and a half years than I did from second grade up to freshman year of college?

My friend told me I could not have my own style without learning and mastering the basics FIRST. And I ACCEPTED AND HEEDED her advice.

I was not advanced enough to have my own style. Not even close. So I sought advice from every source possible. I looked up references. I ditched my cartoony style and focused on how things look in real life. I sent pictures of all my work to my friend and listened to her critiques. I rigorously studied the human anatomy and proportions. I changed and evolved. I tried new things, but never planted myself in a particular style.

This is my first digital piece of art. I am ashamed of it but I will not use other people’s art as examples because it’s beyond cruel.

This was before I accepted I did not have the tools to have my own style.

More early art:

Yes right when I finished Undertale I had a weird obsession with drawing Sans. How is that any different from the next guy?

Now here are some of my more recent pieces, long after I accepted I did not have a style yet:

As you can see, I now have an obsession with lighting I have improved immensely.

The reason no one tells you this (or seems not to, I’m not sure, I just see a lot of people with this problem), is because they don’t want to hurt your feelings. They are afraid that they will sound mean and you will be discouraged and stop drawing. Which is a valid point, but at the same time, the problem remains unsolved. The artist remains in their box.

Now, I have tried to tell people this information in the nicest way possible. I notice, however, that so far it has only been in vain. No one has gotten mad at me yet, but whenever I say, “Well maybe you should try this,” the response is almost always “I’m happy with the style that I have, but thanks!”

Okay, that would be all well and good, but as a person who has been at that stage and surpassed it by heeding the advice of others, it’s kinda hard hearing the same response again and again, watching beginning artists trap themselves in this box that they have no idea even exists. They have so much potential, but ironically they deny themselves fast, substantial improvement because they think they don’t need it. This isn’t to say that improvement doesn’t exist, it’s just that the things that need to be fixed either aren’t getting addressed or are being ignored.

I know change is a scary thing. I know the thought of trying new things is unappealing. I know switching from sticking to cartooning to learning realism is a long and tedious process. And it sucks. It really does. But it’s worth it, I promise.

If anyone has made it this far into this accidental essay, I ask you to take a look at your art and ask yourself, “Have I locked myself in a box?” If the answer is yes, I highly recommend you to go back to the basics. Practice drawing how things look in real life, even if you don’t want your style to look like that. Accept critiques, even harsh ones. Step out of your comfort zone and try new things. Look at other people’s art; try to incorporate something you think they did well into your work. Punch a hole in your box, let the light of possibilities shine in. You might be surprised at where it takes you. I was.

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wagyubeefy · 5 years

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Hey I sent that anon and surprise, im a female with actual pcos, body& facial hair, and a bigger clit than average. My fucking bones still look like females because its not a condition that affects your bone growth! So nice try but maybe pull that on someone who doesnt have the condition you're trying to co-opt. Its common for men who cant cope with transness to pretend they're intersex. And highly regarded physical anthropology is nazi shit now? Contact Tulane University to shut down asap then!

wh… yes it is? androgens in early puberty will absolutely affect your bone structure. Hormones are a massive determiner on how your bones develop during puberty. And PCOS gave me higher levels of androgens?? and even if i didnt have PCOS, you know like. afab people have different proportions naturally? People have distinctive bones. Furthermore I have a trans masc friend who went on T (like I am now) and had their rib cage and shoulders literally expand. Not the bones getting longer, but the cartilage and tendons between shifting and stretching to take on a build more typical of that hormone pattern.

The study of bones to identify body type isn’t nazi shit. You cherry picking that science to try to claim a living person you havent seen irl, covered in skin muscle and fat is “100% not afab” is so stupid and superstitious, it might as well be someone trying to feel the bumps in my skull to determine if im a criminal.

And also, that whole identifying genitalia via bones thing isn’t as clear cut as you want to make it sound. Have you not seen reports about recent historical updates based on genetic tests replacing incorrect determinations of sex/race based on biased or incorrect bone analysis?? Studying skull structure to determine gender ISN’T an exact science.

You can read a study about it here in fact! (URL: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/janthro/2015/908535/ ) It’s a study exclusively looking at the reliability of sexing a skeleton. And it says up front that skeletons vary wildly between populations and are very difficult to analyse reliably without thorough analysis that doesn’t rely simply on size and proportion; in fact, that method specifically (the metric method) is massively unreliable in sexing skeletons.

If you wanted to truly guess my junk based on my skeleton, what you’d need to do is rip my pelvic bones out of me and run them through a morphometric analysis. Because that’s pretty much the best teller in terms of someone’s junk; those bones were grown to fit to a certain gonadal configuration, and they are the biggest difference between amab and afab skeletons, and even those aren’t always easy to tell apart. (I know this because i studied anatomy extensively as part of my artistic practice and during my course.) But you haven’t seen my pelvis. You havent even seen a clear picture of my hips. So you trying to assert you’re sure im amab based on my skulls bone structure makes you look like a fucking idiot.

Listen mate. I dont want to prove my birth sex to you because it’s important to me - im dysphoric in that i WANT a dick and to get top surgery. I’m intensely dysphoric about that, I just dont talk about it on this blog because I have a nsfw blog and thats where I talk about shit like that. I don’t want the afab body i have.

But i do want to prove my birth sex to you so hopefully you realise how sexist, transphobic and backward it is for you to look at the selfies of an afab person, determine they’re too masculine in their bone structure to be afab (or in your mind, a “real woman”), and send them messages like these.

If you think this is you being “real” about biology, or being a feminist, or being rational - wherever this is coming from - i want you to realise you’re not. And you’re just making yourself look ignorant. Massively, willingly ignorant. It’s not a good look.

#transphobia #Anonymous

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sjasser666 · 7 years

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The Spy: A Subjective Book Review

Just to be clear, I suggest you have a good cup of coffee -or favorite soothing beverage- to go with this piece because it will be a long one. Alright, so one of my favorite authors, Paulo Coelho released a book this year titled The Spy. This book was particularly different than his usual norm since it grasped the biography of a figure rather than the usual fantasy-based wisdom stories of his.

The book revolves around the real-life eventful story of Mata Hari an exotic dancer/courtesan who happened to witness and be part of the verge of WWI, her past, her lies, and the truth behind her execution. The entire story in short was that Mata Hari, wasn’t always really Mata Hari. She was once a Dutch young school girl who went by the name Margareta and lived peacefully in the wealth of her family in Holland. Her whole life started to escalate however, when she lost her mother at a young age and attended a private school -the only place where she had a chance to learn- and was constantly sexually abused by the school principle. She was the most beautiful girl in class, and so being threatened that if she ever says a word she will be permanently expelled and grow to be an ignorant and an illiterate. She tolerated it all, until around the age of 19 when she met a Dutch officer, Rudolf Macleod, who was stationed in Indonesia and was searching for a bride to live with him abroad. Margareta took this chance as a way to salvation and I quote “There was my salvation! Officer, Indonesia, strange seas, and exotic worlds. What more could a young woman want from life?” Little did she knew that she was step closer to a miserable life-changing phase of her life. She lived in Indonesia for quite some time and got to know the local customs and culture. It was obviously a tradition for all the wives of the officers to know each other, be jealous of each other, and meet in special ceremonies. Margareta was miserable in her life in Indonesia, and was constantly abused by her husband. She lived in some kind of luxury but was in her own living hell. She gave birth to a daughter and a son, her son was killed, no friends, no companions, and a constant drunk, abusive, and cheating husband to deal with every night. Until one day, there was a local ceremony where all the officers accompanied by their wives had to attend. Margareta attended with her drunk husband searching for some kind of alternative company for the evening. She met another officer who was also accompanied by his obvious miserable wife. She conversed with him through the night but couldn’t help notice the look of despair on his wife’s face. Suddenly his wife stopped the entire dance event and declared loudly and I quote “I fought for our love with all my might, but today it’s run out. The stone that weighed on my heart is now a rock that will no longer let it beat. And my heart, with its last breath, told me there are other worlds beyond this one, worlds where I don’t have to always beg for the company of a man to fill these empty days and nights.” and by that the officer’s wife shot herself to death and bled at Margareta’s feet. There it was really, the turning point, the life-changing epiphany that hit Margareta so hard she packed all her belongings and her daughter to get on the first ship back to Holland with or without her husband where she said and I quote “I had been baptized with the blood of Andreas’s wife and through that rite, I was freed forever, though neither of us knew how far this freedom would reach.” After not so long, Margareta, haunted by the thought that her misery could take her where Andreas’s wife went, she abandoned her family in Holland and moved with nothing but one suitcase to Paris, the city where dreams came true, and decided to try all her efforts to build a life of immortal fame and reputation or so she thought. With a few lies, a few made up stories about her exotic life in Indonesian’s culture and a new fake identity, Mata Hari was an established renowned exotic dancer from “the far east indies” that brought a contemporary -completely made up - culture of dance and seduction that drew a thin line between the usual cheap cabaret style and authentic erotism. She was so desperate for freedom that she created a whole other fake life for herself driven by despair. A few steps up the ladder of fame, she was a star at the peak who didn’t go far enough in her age until she experienced the usual “fall from grace” every famous figure faces eventually. Again she was possessed by the fear of desperation and failure to be who she created her self to be, she was willing to use all the powerful and resourceful “man-friends” she gained so far in her career to help her escalate back to the top. Little did she knew that greediness was like fire, a little is good to keep you warm and well-driven but too much of it will burn you to ashes. With lots of events taking place at the beginning of WWI, In my opinion, Mata Hari’s greediness, lies, and ultimately vanity along with other contributing external factors led her to fall a trap of a conspiracy planned by notorious, dominant and avaricious authorities seeking vengeance from all foreigners. She was convicted for espionage for the german intelligence as well as for being a double spy against the french. Soon after the conviction, her lawyer Mr.Clunet; failed to win her case and to gain pardon from the president and therefore was executed by a firing squad somewhere close from Saint-Lazare’s prison, Paris. The government never revealed were her body was buried. According to habits from that time her head was cut off and handed to government representatives. It was kept in the Anatomy Museum on Rue des Saints-Pères, Paris, but after an unknown period of time her head disappeared probably stolen from the institution. It’s important to note that Mata Hari’s life events were extracted from the series of letters exchanged between her and her lawyer Mr.Clunet during her period of imprisonment. The following are a few quotes from the book of which I found to be self-reflective and debatetul at times.

When Margareta was still young and innocent and before her mother died she asked for her to come for a little chat, her mother handed her a packet of seeds that rendered Margareta confused and said “They’re tulip seeds, the symbol of our country. But more than that, they represent a truth you must learn. These seeds will always be tulips, even if at the moment you cannot tell them apart from other flowers. They will never turn into roses or sunflowers, no matter how much they might desire to. And if they try to deny their own existence, they will live life bitter and die. Flowers teach us that nothing is permanent: not their beauty, not even the fact that they will inevitably wilt, because they will still give new seeds. Remember this when you feel joy, pain, or sadness. Everything passes, grows old, dies, and is reborn.”

I loved the way Mata had her own way in observing the behavior of humans whether it was based on their nationalities or gender, these are a couple of funny quotes “Men, however, always feel the need to explain something”, and another one when she first arrived to Paris “Apparently foreigners were not welcome, and Parisians thought they were superior to all other people of the earth.”

No matter how far she went, that never changed the fact that she was a mother that has abandoned her only daughter back in Holland and was haunted by the guilt of that occasionally in different phases of her life of fame, she wrote in melancholy between the walls of her cell “The lines of these newspaper clippings seem like pieces of a broken teacup, telling the story of a life I no longer remember. As soon as I get out of here, I will have the clippings bound in leather, each page with a gold frame. They shall be my bequest to my daughter, as all my money was confiscated. When we are reunited, I will tell her about my life and when she asks me about Margareta MacLeod I will reply that I do not know who that woman is. All my life I’ve thought and acted like Mata Hari, the woman who has been and always will be the fascination of men and the envy of women. Ever since I’ve left Holland, I’ve lost all sense of distance and danger. I arrived in Paris with no money and no proper wardrobe, and just look at how I’ve moved up. I hope the same happens to you.”

One of my favorite parts of the book was when Madame Guimet gave two pieces of advice to the rising star Mata Hari when she first arrived to Paris. Mata was still young and was still building her career by performances here and there. The first wealthy man to have sponsored and represented her first performance in Paris was Madame Guimet’s husband. Madame Guimet, being one of the wealthiest women in France back at the time, invited Mata to a stroll along the banks of Seine. Madame Guimet started “My first piece of advice is the hardest, and it has nothing to do with your performance. Never fall in love. Love is poison. Once you fall in love, you lose control over your life. Your heart and mind belongs to someone else. Your existence is threatened. You start to do everything to hold on to your loved one and lose all sense of danger. Love, that inexplicable and dangerous thing, sweeps everything you are from the face of the earth and, in its place leaves only what your beloved wants you to be.” I know what you might be thinking, exaggerated much? Well, I’m going to have to debate Madame Guiment on this one. You see, I agree with her that Love is poison. If you swallow it all in whole it will probably kill you mentally but balanced proportions of it can actually strengthen your emotional wellbeing. Frankly speaking, this doesn’t only apply to Love, this actually applies to all forms of human emotions including (care, kindness, generosity, sadness, grieve, power,..etc). I think the key were most people go wrong with is failure to balance which renders a person engulfed in their own feelings and miseries. This brings us to the second piece of advice Madame Guimet gave Mata “When a woman or a man is abandoned by the person they love, they are focused on their own pain. No one stops and wonder what is happening to the other person. Might they also be suffering, having left behind their own heart to stay with their families because of society? Every night they must lie in their beds, unable to sleep, confused and lost, wondering if they made the wrong decision. Other times, they feel certain it was their duty to protect their families and children. But time is not on their side, the more the moment of separation grows distant, the more their memories are purified of the difficult moments and turn into a longing for that paradise lost.”

Mata Hari had a fair share of coming across some of the most influential figures of history. She made me laugh when she dared call the father of psychiatry Sigmund Freud “The man that made it acceptable for people to accept their wrong doings because it was really not their fault, it was rather the fault of their childhood gone wrong.” or perhaps when she met Pablo Picasso after she accepted an invitation to his gallery opening by Madame Guimet and described him as “I was extremely embarrased by that ugly, wide-eyed, impolite man who fancied himself as the greatest of the greatest.” and actually spent that evening instead conversing with his “italian more interesting friend” the artist Amedeo Modigliani who also offered her a great piece of advice “Know what you want and try to go beyond your own expectations. Improve your work, practice a lot, and set a very high goal one that will be difficult to achieve. Because that is an artist’s mission: to go beyond one’s limits. An artist who desires very little and achieves it has failed in life.”

Another interesting encounter was when Mata Hari first confronted her feelings out loud in front of her manager Astruc who was probably her only “truthful” friend. They escaped Paris’s rushed and busy life to spend one afternoon at the coast-side of Normandy. They stood by the beach surrounded by children playing mindlessly with sand and seagulls hovering over them in cults. That was when Astruc asked her why she looked miserable he thought she was happy with all this fame and she replied in rage “It’s because I dream of being accepted and respected, though I don’t owe anything to anyone. Why do I need that? I waste my time on worries, regrets, and darkness. A darkness that only enslaves me, chaining me to a rock where I’m served up as food for birds of prey, a rock that I can no longer leave. Back when I was in Holland they taught us they cycle of life and that is: you are born, go to school, and attend university in search of a husband. You get married -even if he is the worst man in the world- just so that others can’t say no one wants you. You have children, grow old, and spend the end of your days watching passersby from a chair on the sidewalk, pretending to know everything about your life yet unable to silence the voice in your heart that says “You could’ve tried something else,”” Mata Hari’s words ringed bells in my mind. Her thoughts seemed very similar to mine. She continued “As I faced my wounds and scars I began to feel stronger, My tears did not come from my eyes but from a deeper, darker place in my heart, telling me a story that I didn’t even fully understand in a voice of its own. I was on a raft sailing through total darkness, but there, far off the horizon, was the glow of a lighthouse that would eventually lead me to dry land if the rough seas allowed, and if it was not already too late.” and then finally I found someone that agrees with me when she said “I had never done that before. I thought that speaking about my wounds would only make them more real. And yet the exact opposite was taking place: My tears were healing me. It did not matter who was listening; what mattered was leaving the wound open for the sun to purify and for the rainwater to wash.”

Another beautiful moment was when Mata acknowledged herself uniquely different saying “In any event, I felt completely different from all the other women. I was an exotic bird traversing an earth ravaged by humanity’s poverty of spirit. I was a swan among ducks who refused to grow up, fearing the unknown. I was alone.” Additional bells rang in my mind whilst reading these words.

And I hate how some people today depict life as a portrait of perfection on their social media and their fake smiles with their false pretenses and false causes. I detest the way some people think this life is a miniature form of a designed portrait where everything either goes as planned or else the sky will fall and the world will fall apart with it. My point was undoubtedly supported by Mata Hari’s quote “I was not looking for happiness, but rather what the french called la vraie vie, a true life, with its moments of inexpressible beauty and deep depression, with its loyalties and betrayals, with its fears and moments of peace.”

I loved how Mata Hari relied so much in her writings on authentic pieces of renowned literature, like when she fell in love with that Russian Soldier in Vittel and she used to recite him a passage from Song of Solomon “The one my soul loves” and perhaps the even stronger metaphor was when she described herself as the nightingale from Oscar Wild’s The Nightingale and the Rose as she concluded her letters to her lawyer by saying “That was my life; I am the nightingale who gave everything and died while doing so.”

The final chapters of the book reveals the letters that were from Mr.Clunet to Mata Hari. He finally confessed the reason why he took her case even though everyone knew it was a definite one when he said “I do not intent to prove my incompetence with this defense, because I was not in fact the terrible lawyer that you often accused me of being in your many letters. I just want to relive my ordeal of the past few months. I was in every way trying to save a woman I once loved, though I never admitted it.” He was clearly in a great deal of emotional pain while she was locked up with little hope of her freedom when he said “We go from euphoria to despair several times a day” Although he loved her deeply he was completely honest with her when he explained why despite of the conspiracy that was taking place behind her back it was her vanity’s fault for dragging the final verdict of execution. He said “Reading your testimonies before my arrival, I saw you were much more interested in showing your importance than in defending your innocence. You spoke of powerful friends, international success, and crowded theaters, when you should have been doing just the opposite. showing you were a victim to the general management of the counterespoinage service.” I must agree with Mr.Clunet on this one, after all vanity is the devil’s worst sin.

Finally, I loved how Mr.Clunet had shed light on a very essential root of which the tree of love grew from which is trust. He beautifully summarized the greek myth of Psych and Eros and then said a few words that touched my heart deeply “Each time I recall this myth, I wonder: Are we never able to see the true face of love? And I understand what the Greeks meant by this: Love is an act of faith and its face should always be covered in mystery. Every moment should be lived with feeling emotion because if we try to decipher it and understand it, the magic disappears. We follow its winding and luminous paths, we let ourselves go to the highest peak or the deepest seas, but we trust in the hand that leads us. If we do not allow ourselves to be frightened, we will always awaken in a palace; if we fear the steps that will be required by love and want it to reveal everything to us, the result is that we will be left with nothing. Love does not obey anyone and will betray those who try to decipher its mystery.” and in his final words of defense of her innocence in his letter he said “Because when we truly love, we know others and ourselves better. We do not need words, documents, minutes, statements, accusations, or defenses.”

In conclusion, that is if of course someone bared to read this never ending book review to reach to this part, I honestly think the book opens your mind to different aspects of the story itself. It definitely revealed to us parts of Mata Hari’s life in a more poetic way rather than how it’s usually put in historical books of biography. She definitely died of a sin, but her sin was not espionage or treason like they claimed, her deadly sin was vanity and vanity, like I said before; is the devil’s worst sin.

Waiting for a lovely feedback of what you think whether you read this Mata Hari book, another Mata Hari book, or simply just read through this review.

Regards to all of you dear readers.

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