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astrobei · 1 year

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hey :) so i was wondering if you could incorporate 3, 12 and 50 into a single one shot ? bc that would be Amazing but if you don't want you you can just pick whichever haha

challenge accepted !! this was super fun to write thank you !! :^)

3, 12, and 50 for touch prompts: hiding face in neck + pushing a strand of hair behind their ear + putting a hand over the other’s mouth to shut them up

If you’d asked Mike, a few years ago, how he thought he’d end up dying, he’d have a few different guesses. Clawed to death by monsters, maybe, was up at the top of his list for a while there. Shot to death by government agents also made the top five more than once, which was kind of worrying. And it was probably very concerning that getting stomped on, impaled, or eaten by an alien supermonster hivemind was on there at all.

Suffice it to say that he didn’t die in any of those ways, since Mike is currently, in the present moment, alive. But probably not for long. He’s seen some shit, and he hasn’t even graduated college, and maybe it’s a little bit pathetic that after all of that– the monsters and the Russians and the end of the world– that this is how he really dies: backed up against the wall at some completely questionable house party, being flirted with by Will Byers.

At least, that’s what Mike thinks is going on here. If he’s being totally honest, he doesn’t have all that much experience in the flirting department, considering that the one person he’d ever dated hadn’t done much flirting and the one person he had maybe wanted to flirt with hadn’t–

Well, it doesn’t matter. Said person is doing it now, and for all of Mike’s past reminiscence and speculation on the topic, he didn’t think it would be happening like this.

“You look nice tonight,” Will is saying, barely audible over the low thrum of music in the background. They’re not even somewhere particularly loud– the hallway is a blessed reprieve from the chaos of whatever is happening in the living room, but Will’s voice has dropped into something low and intentional. He smiles. “You should wear more green.”

Oh, god. Mike is going to die.

“Uh. Really?” he says, in what’s definitely not a squeak. It comes out assured and confident and–

Oh, who is he kidding? Will’s smile grows, surely delighted at the unfortunate crack in Mike’s voice. He leans in a bit closer, and it’s barely a few inches, but he might as well have just pushed Mike up against the wall and–

“Yeah,” Will whispers, so soft that Mike has to lean in another inch to hear him. He reaches a hand out and runs a thumb along the hem of Mike’s sweater, the side of his wrist brushing softly against Mike’s collarbone. Mike’s heart stops dead, still and unmoving and seized up, right there in his chest cavity. “It’s definitely your color.”

“Oh,” Mike breathes, and yeah.

So Will might be flirting with him, is the bottom line here, and the issue isn’t so much that it’s unwelcome– the opposite, in fact. Mike feels a little bit like if he weren’t caged in by Will’s arm on one side of his chest and the adjacent wall on the other, then his soul might be just flying right out of his body altogether. It feels like maybe it’s already halfway there, because Will’s gaze is steady, eyes sparkling with amusement even in the dim light of the hallway, and wow, are his hands shaking?

For his own sake, he hopes not.

And the issue isn’t that it’s unwelcome, but more so that in all his years of existence and all the crazy shit he’s seen, somehow, being flirted with by Will Byers was lower on the list of things Mike thought might happen to him someday than interdimensional portals or his telekinetically gifted ex-girlfriend.

“You look nice too,” Mike gets out, in a surprisingly even voice. Will does look nice, so this isn’t a difficult sentiment to portray by any means. He’s swapped out one of his usual sweaters, big and worn comfortably around the edges and all down the seams, for something a little more fitted. It’s a soft cream color, and Mike doesn’t know where Will got this, because he’s been shopping at the same stores the entire time since they moved here for school and none of them carry clothes like this. Mature, a little grown up, and really, really attractive.

Will lets out a small, pleased noise. “Yeah?”

“How many drinks have you had?” Mike peers suspiciously down at him, because it’s not like Will is an idiot, per se, or super uptight about these sorts of things, but he’s not usually this– this bold. If Mike is going to be blunt about it, Will has never been this bold before and maybe it’s about time, but that doesn’t mean Mike is any more ready for it.

Not that he’s complaining. Oh, god.

“One,” Will grins. “Why? How many have you had?”

Christ. Mike swallows, and says, “Like, half. It was nasty so I just– um. Left it there. Heads up, by the way, don’t drink the jungle juice.”

“Noted,” Will laughs. It does something to Mike’s stomach, watching the way his shoulders relax, like he’s comfortable and at ease here, standing in front of Mike all up close and personal in a dark corner of a dark hallway with– oh, god– no one around.

“Yeah,” Mike says, kind of lamely, and notices belatedly that his gaze has settled somewhere around the general vicinity of Will’s mouth sometime in the last forty seconds or so. Maybe longer, if he’s being totally honest, but who’s counting, right?

(Mike. Mike is counting.)

“So anyway,” Will continues, without missing a beat. “You look really good in green. I don’t know why you never wear colors.”

“It’s not on purpose,” Mike insists, even though it kind of is, because it’s a lot harder to accidentally look like an idiot if all of your clothes match by default. “I don’t know, I just– I don’t have a reason to?”

“Okay, well,” Will starts, and then he moves forward until their chests are almost flush against each other, and Mike is seriously, seriously backed into a corner, even more than he was before. Both metaphorically and extremely literally. “It looks nice with your hair,” Will murmurs, and reaches a hand up to tug lightly at a strand falling loose around Mike’s face.

Will smells really nice, actually, like the good cologne he wears on special occasions, and Mike doesn’t know why he dressed up so nice to go to a party where you have to scoop your drinks out of a bowl with a red plastic cup, but hey. Again, he’s not complaining.

“My– my hair?” Mike asks faintly, because it’s just his hair, and he hasn’t ever given it much thought before now, because it’s only hair. Black and just long enough to land on this side of inconvenient, but suddenly Will has one hand in it and it’s not just hair anymore, but maybe the best thing to ever happen to him.

Will nods. He looks a little pink, which is quite possibly the most endearing thing Mike has ever seen, and it’s also more of a confidence booster than it probably should be, that Will hasn’t turned into a total smooth-talking Casanova out of literally nowhere. That maybe he’s losing his shit just as much as Mike is right now.

“Yeah,” Will says, and yeah, his voice catches just a little bit on the single syllable, and Mike bites back a pleased smile. “It looks really good with your hair,” he says again, then tucks the loose strand carefully behind Mike’s ear. “So that’s one reason.”

“I hardly think that’s good enough reason to redo my entire wardrobe,” Mike says, egged on just a little bit by the way Will is definitely turning more pink by the second.

“It brings out your eyes too,” Will murmurs, looking steadily up at him. It’s hard to tell exactly what he’s thinking– half his face is drowned out in shadow and the proximity is rendering Mike kind of useless altogether– but Mike thinks maybe he has a guess.

He blinks. “My eyes?”

“Mhm.” Will strokes the pad of one thumb over the skin there, just over his cheekbone. Mike instantly forgets how to breathe. Christ. “They’re pretty.”

“I– are you sure you’re not drunk?”

“Stone-cold sober,” Will assures him. “Why? Who’s asking?”

Me, Mike thinks, me, me, me. What he says is, “Um. Someone.”

Will raises an eyebrow, but he keeps his hand right where it is– resting on Mike’s cheek, thumb under his eye, and oh, god. Mike is going to die.

“Someone?”

“You don’t know him?” Mike tries.

“Shame,” Will says noncommittally, and it sounds like he might be on the verge of laughing again. He steps back, the vacuum-seal proximity between their bodies vanishing in an instant as the air of the room rushes in all at once– stifling, stuffy, a little warm and sweaty and immediately, it’s like the noise in the place has been cranked up to ten.

Was it this loud in here all along?

Mike is going to scream. He’s going to die, right here in the hallway, and then he’s going to scream some more. “Where are you going?” he asks, and it comes out a bit petulant and a bit needy and way, way too thrown off-guard for his liking, but he can’t find it in himself to care. The lingering warmth of Will’s palm against his cheek is something he’s already missing like it’s a physical thing.

“Who’s asking?” Will says again, and dear god, if Mike had known before what it would have been like to be flirted with Will Byers, he would have, like, grabbed a couple witnesses and signed off an early copy of his last will and testament, bequeathed his meager belongings to whomever they may concern, then laid himself down to die in peace.

“Me,” Mike blurts out this time, taking a step forward from the wall and grabbing Will’s wrist. “I’m asking because I think you shouldn’t go and you should just stay here with me and– and flirt with me some more, because, um. That was nice, and I liked that, even if I thought I was going to die for a minute there, and if you go then– um. You can’t flirt with me anymore?”

Will smiles for real this time, wide and shocked and pleased. “Yeah?” And it’s a little shy when he says it, like maybe he didn’t actually expect this to go anywhere, like he didn’t expect Mike to grow a fucking pair and stop melting into the floor long enough to reciprocate.

“Yeah,” Mike whispers, and he’s just started to pull Will back towards him, Will already stumbling a little with the motion, when he hears a voice from around the doorframe they’re currently maybe ten feet away from.

“Mike? Will?”

“Shit,” Will mutters, eyes wide. “What the hell is Max doing here? I thought she was upstairs.”

Mike opens his mouth to answer when a second voice responds, “I swear I saw them go through here,” and it might be Dustin and it might be Lucas but all that’s really important is that whoever it is is close, and Mike doesn’t know if he has the cardiac strength in him to go through all of this again later, and all of his brainpower is currently being used to not pass out on the spot, and–

Lucky for him, Will has his shit marginally more together. “Here,” he’s saying, then there are fingers wrapping around Mike’s forearm and before he can fully process what’s happening, he’s being dragged in the opposite direction. Will throws open a door, then shoves Mike inside.

Mike wrinkles his nose. “It smells like feet in here,” he says, and he can’t see Will’s face because it’s pitch black in– wherever they are– but he’s willing to bet real money that he’s rolling his eyes.

“Coat closet,” Will says simply, “now shut up.”

Okay, yeah, makes sense. There’s something heavy and soft brushing up against Mike’s side, and he takes a couple steps backwards until he can feel the wall behind him. God, okay. This is fine. This is fine. This is–

“You know,” Mike says, as if this will distract him from his unnecessarily sweaty palms, “you didn’t have to ambush–”

Quick as lightning, Will claps a hand over Mike’s mouth. “If you want to kiss me,” Will hisses, and, okay, he’s pressed up against Mike again, which is fine, it’s great, actually– “I’m going to need you to shut up.”

The footsteps come closer. Mike holds his breath. He thinks maybe Will is too because he can’t hear him breathe, and he’s gone tense and still where he’s pressed up against Mike. A voice that’s definitely Dustin’s is grumbling, “Man, if I find them and the taco place down the street is already closed, I’m going to kill him.”

Mike bites back a laugh. The taco place closed twenty minutes ago, which he knows, because he’d been on his way to find Dustin when he’d– when he’d run into Will in the hallway.

Oh, god.

“Are they gone?” Will whispers, as if his hand is not currently over Mike’s mouth. He clears his throat like hello, and Will drops his hand. “Oh. Right. Sorry.”

“Who said I wanted to kiss you,” Mike says hoarsely, and Will’s hand pauses somewhere between his collarbone and sternum.

“Well,” he hears Will say, still entirely invisible in the dark save for a few dots of faint light coming in through the slats in the door. “You don’t have to kiss me. If you don’t want to.”

For the first time all evening, Will sounds a little hesitant. No, Mike thinks. He can’t have that. He shakes his head, even though Will can’t see him. “Let’s not be too hasty here, okay, I didn’t say that.”

A pause. “Yeah?” Will says, a little shy, almost. “You want to kiss me?”

Screw it.

“I do,” Mike says, as earnestly as he can find in himself to muster up, and he hears Will breathe in sharply somewhere in front of him. “I really, really want to–”

To Will’s credit, kissing in the dark probably wouldn’t work out for anybody. Mike is a few inches taller and the angle is a bit off, and it’s pretty impressive, if he’s being honest, that Will’s mouth lands mostly on his. Which should also not be rendering Mike as totally speechless as it is– being kissed on the corner of his lips in an awkward, clumsily endearing sort of way– but Will has always surprised him. “Shit,” Will says, pulling back slightly, “sorry, I was trying to guess where you were, and I–”

“It’s cool,” Mike hears himself say, and he didn’t mean to say it, but it seems that his brain has sort of kicked itself into autopilot mode, because he’s reaching out before he can really think about what he’s doing. His hand brushes Will’s shoulder, and he moves it up against the side of his neck, and says, hesitating, “Here– let’s try this.”

“Okay,” Will says softly, not even a whisper with how quiet it comes out. Mike drags a hand into Will’s hair, brings the other one to cup his cheek, and slowly, slowly moves forward.

“I’m going to kiss you,” Mike murmurs, tracing a thumb over the curve of Will’s lower lip, grounding himself. “Um. Just so you know that I’m, like, coming in.”

“Okay,” Will says again, and then Mike kisses him.

It’s instantly better this time– so much better, Mike thinks, immediately going lightheaded with the sensation of it. It’s like every other sense is dialed up to eleven in the dark– Will’s hair soft against his hand, the scent of his cologne, the faint taste of orange soda on his lips. The soft, startled noise Will makes in the back of his throat, cut off like it escaped him before he could stop himself, and that thought is enough to make Mike’s stomach swoop in a dizzying sort of way, that Will really wanted to kiss him so badly that he just couldn’t help himself, that maybe he thought about it in all the same ways Mike had. That maybe he came up with a hundred and one ways it might happen and maybe this was a possibility, in Will’s mind– a coat closet in the dark, barely one drink in.

“I can’t see you,” Will says, pulling back so that their lips are just barely brushing against each other. He’s got his hands on either side of Mike’s neck, like he’s anchoring himself lest he drift away entirely in the dark.

Mike lowers his hands, pulls Will in by the waist– the solid planes of his back, the soft fabric of this sweater, this goddamn sweater– and says, “You’re the one that kissed me in the dark, you idiot.”

Will makes a small noise of affront. “You’re the one that asked me to,” he says, a little smugly, which technically isn’t the most true statement, but Mike supposes that he had kind of set himself up to be kissed, so maybe he should let this one slide. And then Will runs a thumb along to his chin, tilts his face down, slowly, slowly, and kisses him again– and Mike can’t remember what exactly it was he was protesting.

Maybe Will had been onto something, because Mike is pretty chuffed about not being able to actually see the person he’s kissing, especially when that person is Will, who Mike spent a disproportionate amount of time wanting to look at even before this whole thing went down, but this is pretty nice for now, he thinks, as Will presses him a little more firmly into the wall. And that’s also nice, because Mike thinks he might be dying, and the solid parallel weights of the wall behind him and Will in front of him might be the only thing keeping him from keeling over entirely.

“Okay,” Mike says, pulling back, which is nowhere close to his top ten most intelligent moments of all time. Or even twenty, maybe. “You–”

The rest of the sentence gets lost to the sands of time, because the door is flying open so fast that Will flinches, and Mike tightens his grip around his waist on instinct. “What–”

“Oh,” Max Mayfield is saying, arms crossed. “This is where you two disappeared to.”

Mike closes his eyes, and prays to whichever higher power might be listening for a rapid, painless death.

Nothing happens. Figures.

“Come on, man,” he hears Dustin say, “we were looking for you guys!”

“We know,” Mike says, and then immediately wants to sink through the floor and disappear at the way his voice cracks, just a little. It’s barely noticeable, really, but his friends are like sharks in blood-infested waters. Lucas’ smug grin grows so wide that Mike considers just leaning over and smacking it off his face.

“Oh,” he says, far too gleefully for Mike’s liking, “so is this what you meant by I’m going to go look for Dustin, Mike?”

“Didn’t realize I took up residence near Will’s tonsils,” Dustin grumbles.

Will groans, dropping his head to Mike’s shoulder. “Never talk about my tonsils again,” he mumbles against Mike’s collarbone, but he’s smiling. Mike can tell, even if he can’t see him.

“Not even if they’re inflamed?”

Will doesn’t pull away, just shakes his head and tightens his arms where they’re wrapped around Mike’s neck. Despite himself, despite the way his face feels about a million degrees warm right now, Mike smiles. “No,” Will says simply. “All of you go away.”

“Yeah, I bet you want us to,” Max says, “but I’m serious. We gotta go. Someone just threw up on the couch and it’s nasty in there.”

Mike wrinkles his nose. “Way to kill the mood.”

“Mission accomplished,” Max says, and wiggles her car keys in the air. “I’m leaving in five, with or without you.”

“I don’t want to stay here with the puke sofa,” Mike admits, pulling away with no small amount of reluctance. “So we should probably–”

“Yeah,” Will agrees, pressing a kiss to Mike’s cheek. “Now come on. I want to be able to see you when I kiss you this time.”

It’s a good thing the hallway is still dark, because Mike goes very, very red.

#oh this was so fun #tension my beloved #thank u for this prompt i did giggle like a maniac the entire time i wrote it #the world needs more flirty confident will byers i think #who cares if this is ooc it's MY canon !!!#let mike wheeler be charmed and flustered!!!!#let him be wooed and reduced to a blushing mess!!!!#it's what he deserves!!#byler #mike wheeler #will byers #fic #fun sized fics

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wen-kexing-apologist · 5 months

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Thoughts on Last Twilight Ep. 5

Okay so a tell tale sign of a really good show for me is when I am rendered incapable of talking about it, which is why you’ve never seen a single analysis of I Told Sunset About You or I Promised You the Moon out of me, because if I think about that show too hard the bees return to my brain. And I’m having that problem with Last Twilight too where my chest feels absolutely bursting with feelings but I do not know that I am capable of writing anything about this show that is structured or coherent without prompting. So, here’s some incoherent ramblings I guess.

First off, Aof is fucking brilliant and I am really desperately in love with the way that Mhok and Day just so beautifully complement each other/round each other out. I love that they have two completely disparate backgrounds and yet they can relate to one another so well.

Mhok was literally imprisoned, and with the ankle monitor and very likely under some form of house arrest or curfew. Mhok walked through the world after his release from prison completely branded as a criminal, and unable to maintain his career because people always took him at face value. Day lost his career because of his blindness, and then willfully imprisoned himself in his own room because of how heavily he was grieving.

Mhok knows what it is like to be looked at and judged, and I really loved earlier on in the show how confused he was at why Day would be bothered by that, presumably because he got used to being stared at himself. And I love that Mhok learned his lesson about that by trying to understand Day in a way no one has really taken the time to do for Mhok himself. I love that Mhok is able to take his own experiences of being stared at as a comparison for what it is like to not know if you are being looked at and judged.

Rung lost her life, and that has fundamentally impacted Mhok and Mhok’s relationship to his sister. Similarly, Day lost (or at least thought he lost) the life he had which has fundamentally impacted himself and his relationship to Night. I don’t know that I have enough information yet to definitively declare how Rung’s death has impacted Mhok’s behavior and approach to life, but I do like to think that Mhok’s experience around Rung’s death, the fact he wasn’t there for her, the fact that he had to go through his first year of life without her imprisoned, may have been a contributing factor to how and why Mhok is so determined to get Day to live his life again.

I don’t know, I was just thinking about Mhok’s suggestion that Day does his normal thing and goes to Gee’s game immediately following a conversation about Rung’s death and how he thought he would be able to make her False Rice again some day, just felt so clarifying to me as to how and why Mhok approaches Day the way he does. Because Day and Mhok both understand the meaning of “I thought I had more time” so well, for such fundamentally different reasons.

gif by @casualavocados

I love that Mhok is starting to open up more to Day. Which, when you think about it, Mhok has been pretty private about his life despite knowing so much about Day’s life right out of the gate. I personally read this as a strong indicator for Mhok’s feelings for Day and how he is making a concerted effort to move from caretaker to lover. And there are so many fun layers to that relationship because their current relationship is not balanced. There is a bidirectional imbalance in the caretaker and client relationship. Mhok has power over Day’s daily life and if he wanted to he could have radically more control over Day’s autonomy. As Day’s caregiver, Mhok inherently has access to much more personal information about Day than Day would have for Mhok. Yet Day is still his employer, still his boss, working for Day is still what pays Mhok’s bills. So in order to sort of bridge that divide, Mhok needs to start working to shift their balance. Mhok already balances the physical caretaking elements of his relationship to Day rather well, and has let Day determine what he can do on his own and what he needs help with, so he isn’t stripping Day of his autonomy.

If Mhok really wants a chance with Day, then the needs to reciprocate the personal information, and I love how smoothly everyone handled the scene. I think Sea did a phenomenal job with how he had Day react to Mhok’s story, as if some things started clicking in to place for him. Day and Mhok have never talked about Mhok’s background, at most Day has brushed aside the information about Mhok having assault charges. I don’t know yet that Day understands just how much Mhok is capable of relating to Day’s feelings and experiences, because he’s been so busy in the past few episodes focusing on how much Mhok is incapable of relating to Day’s feelings and experiences.

I am not the first, nor will I be the last person to say that I loved the allusions to Day and Mhok’s relationships to their siblings. Once again there is some commonality between them there, in that their relationships are complex. We currently have a very limited view of Rung. As far as we know she was ambitious and hopeful, and then she hit a really bad low after her nail salon failed and ultimately completed suicide. We haven’t seen any indication from flashbacks or the like of Rung’s flaws, we haven’t actually seen her fail Mhok, or be heartless to Mhok. Yet Mhok agrees with Day’s initial comment that the hydrangeas means heartless. Because Mhok is still mad at Rung for leaving him, he is still stuck in his grief. We haven’t seen him put in any time or effort to process his own pain, instead Mhok is doing what grieving people do, and helping someone else instead.

I am sure Rung was not a perfect person, I am hoping we get more flashbacks of her and get to see more of her flaws, more of the relationship she and Mhok actually had. I am hoping we get a change for Day to help Mhok navigate his own pain, just like Mhok has been helping Day. But it was certainly interesting to see the parallels between Day saying that Mhok has fallen for Night’s act, thinking him nice while Mhok has associated his sister with heartlessness.

gif by @casualavocados

And I don’t know that I have the energy to get in to it right now in any further detail (hey look at me, trying to keep things short), but I do just want to acknowledge the fact that Mhok has really committed to giving Day as much of a sensory experience as he can. When Mhok took Day out on the practice date, he wore perfume so Day could smell him (and as an aside I love that Mhok puts effort in to making himself look good even though Day can’t see him). When Mhok took Day out on the walk to cheer him up, he brought him to a bridge on a public road, where there are sounds, and there is a fence that Day can feel; he brought him to a flower shop where Day can smell and feel the flowers and where there are bright colors that might register within Day’s limited vision.

Mhok was constantly touching Day in so many different ways. Casual/platonic touch when he’s performing his duties as caregiver; quickly and playfully when he’s trying to get Day to chase him; heavily and intentionally when he’s both comforting Day and when he’s turning up the charm. One of my favorites is honestly the moment that Day lets his fingers curl around Mhok’s hand when Day switches to using August as a guide.

Anyway, I love this show so much, it is quickly climbing the ranks to become one of my favorites of 2023.

#last twilight #last twilight meta #last twilight analysis #last twilight the series #mhok x day #jimmysea

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nuzzle · 6 months

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Hi~

I saw your post about how lolita fashion (and ads for it) have changed in the last few years, especially for Angelic Pretty, and I agree completely!

I think the lack of creative ads these days might be b/c Gothic & Lolita Bible isn't around anymore? (cries) and Kera went purely digital ages ago, I don't know if it's even still around (I should have kept my old Kera magazines). But I remember how I always used to look forward to seeing the clothes and layouts that were featured in the new issues of each magazine.

My favorite when I first got into lolita was from the Wedding issue of the English edition of GLB; a model for Baby was wearing a lovely, tulip print skirt (or was it the jsk?) in blue, holding a parasol and sitting at a cafe table. Something about her looked so sweet and simple; I wanted to be a lolita just like that!

The models in the magazines always looked like they were happy or having fun, which I think is part of what made me want certain dresses or blouses. In AP's current ads, the model just looks... kinda sad and pouty and bored. I've noticed that for a lot of their dresses, they've been skimping on the lace, frills, and ribbons, and there's no more cute hair styles either! Meanwhile, wasn't it AP that brought lolita from old school to New School / OTT sweet when they had models wearing pastel pink / blue wigs for their Mermaid Symphony (iirc) photoshoot back in 2007?

On a different, but kinda related note, I've noticed that in the past 5 years or so AP has been making a lot of dresses with ridiculously high waists.... also so many sack dresses (I know they started doing this back in like 2012 or so with that polka-dot M&M print dress)

Sorry for the long rant, I just really miss the old days of lolita fashion

hello there!

i'm always glad to have some feedback when i post rambles and thoughts on things. i never expect it, so thank you for your input! it's also comforting to know others feel the same way.

i agree that without as many publications in general (especially physical) there's less of a reason to put as much effort into details, like the magazine spreads that were commonly done for example. most people get information on releases online these days, making physical catalogs a bit obsolete.. aside from collectors. i greatly miss all of the graphics and how inspirational everything felt back then, especially the little PNG pictures of items in catalogs.

you're completely right about pictures from GLB's and other magazines looking generally "happier" and more like daily life sort of pictures, like the one in the cafe you mention. that aspect of it appealed greatly to lifestyle lolitas! seeing a dress pictured in a "real life" situation rather than just a plain white background photoshoot picture makes a huge difference. it brings it to life, and makes it a lot easier to see yourself wearing it.

i think a big change in marketing is that AP doesn't cater as much to lifestylers.. and lolitas who are very much interested in the fashion beyond a surface level and see them as more than just clothes. all of the photos now actually feel like advertisements, when they used to also be appealing from a photography perspective. like they're only trying to sell you a product and not an experience, even if only visual. for me, that takes away from it a lot.. it almost feels as though that sense of community, and the acknowledgement that lolita is a subculture, is dwindling.

plus, it's definitely more than just presentation that's changed as you said. i feel as though the designs AP offers have been super uninspired compared to old releases. not as many details, not as much custom lace, and the general silhouettes becoming a bit lazy.. tons more, but i could go on for days. even the revamp and progression of the lyrical bunny mascot has felt a bit soulless. very sad to see, because i do agree that they were the brand to introduce OTT sweet in a revolutionary way.

as much as i gripe about old vs new AP changes, the positive side is that we can still look back fondly on the old era!

and no problem at all! it was nice to hear another perspective on this. ^^

#asks

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batfam-rewrites · 1 year

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Damian: Cassandra!!! *runs around the mansion and into the second floor living room* Has anyone seen Cassandra?

Jason: Cass left a while ago to train.

Stephanie: You know, I think I saw Dick leave with her. You don’t think...?

Duke: Oh no, you don’t think they are training together, do you?

Stephanie: I think they might be!

Jason: Oh my god, poor Cass!

Damian: That is truly unfortunate!

Harper: Why is training with Dick so horrible?

Jason: Because Dick doesn’t train, normal.

Harper: How so?

Damian: Grayson trains exactly like a circus freak. So when he goes to train, it’s not just sparing and working out but he also fits in a number of his gymnastics events into his training.

Harper: Oh! Well...that can’t be too bad. I mean a lot of us do acrobatic stuff anyway so how much worse can it get.

Jason: That’s exactly what I said. I went in thinking, “Oh, gee wiz. I can’t wait to train with golden boy Dick!”

Stephanie: *laughs* You said gee wiz?

Jason: Shut up, this was before I died! Anyway, I go in and he had very simple skills set out for me. Should’ve been easy, right? I fell doing just about every skill that he had me do! And if doing all six events wasn’t already bad enough, he decided to through me on the trapeze as well! And after that we did an hour of conditioning and flexibility! I came back to the Batcave more sore and with more bruises than I had ever received out in the field at that point!

Damian: *snickers* Wow, how pathetic that must have been!

Jason: Oh, yeah, and how did your training session with Dick go?

Damian: Pfft.... I excelled at everything he had set out for me! I was a natural!

Everyone: *stares at Damian*

Damian: *crosses his arms* Fine! I fell a lot and I had to tap out after vault because Dick was scared I was going to “make my injury worse.” It was only a bit of leg pain!

Stephanie: Your couldn’t move your leg!!!

Damian: It was just a bone fracture, I could have kept going though!

Harper: Holy shit!

Duke: Personally I wouldn’t mind just training floor or high bar with him again, I would just try and skip the rest though.

Stephanie: Yeah, but you got off much easier than the rest of us! I remember Dick finding out I did gymnastics until I was 15 and he dragged me with him.

Tim: *walks in*

Stephanie: The training part wasn’t too bad but I’d much rather do Bruce’s conditioning than Dick’s!

Tim: Are we talking about training with Dick?

Stephanie: Yeah.

Tim: It’s not too bad!

Jason: Shut up, you don’t count because you’re a junior elite gymnast!

Duke: I don’t think either you or Steph count as both of you actually had a gymnastics background!

Stephanie: Hey, Dick’s training is on a whole different level!

Jason: Gymnastics in itself is a whole different level of training! I’d rather hear another lecture from Bruce than ever do that shit again!

Damian: Don’t lie to yourself, Todd! We all know that you secretly use the rings and tumble track when you think no one is watching!

Jason: Oh, like you don’t go in there training as well every once in a while!

Damian: I don’t!

Duke: You most definitely do!

Damian: Why would I want to, I’m the one who was injured!

Stephanie: Please, you said it was nothing!

Duke: I couldn’t walk for a whole day after mine!

Stephanie: You think that’s bad, I couldn’t walk for three days!

Jason: You still had previous experience!

Stephanie: I hadn’t done shit for a year though!

Harper: I haven’t trained with Dick yet, and I don’t want to!

Jason: I don’t want to do that shit again!

Cassandra: *walks in*

Everyone: *stops fighting*

Harper: Hey Cassie, how are you feeling?

Cassandra: I’m feeling pretty good, core is killing me though!

Stephanie: You poor thing! How did training with Dick go?

Cassandra: It was really fun! Dick was talking about how we finally have enough people to do a competition again!

Jason: You’re not bruised, super sore, anything?

Damian: No broken or fractured bones?

Cassandra: *examines and lifts her arms and legs* Nope!

Dick: *walks in super sore and grunting* Hey Tim, do you mind subbing in for me during patrol tonight?

Everyone: *looks at Dick in surprise*

Tim: Suuure!

Duke: Did Cass train you!

Dick: *moves to a chair* She said my conditioning was too light so we did hers. *sits down* Oh fuck! I’m not moving.

Cassandra: Damian, are you ready to play?

Damian: You’ve kept me waiting.

Damian and Cassandra: *walk out*

Jason: Hey, Dick! Out of curiosity, who had the worst training session with you?

Dick: Ummm...... Definitely Bruce!

Everyone: What?!

Dick: Yeah, he fell on top of the pommel, had a hard time moving on floor, kept running into the vault table. By the end of it Bruce took a shower and passed out for 15 hours. Pretty sure it’s the most he’s ever slept in his life.

Harper: Don’t ever invite me to train with you! I am terrified!

Dick: Cool! *gives a thumbs up and starts to zone out*

Duke: Wait, if you’re as acrobatic as Dick, then why don’t you do many flips and stuff out in the field then?

Tim: Are you kidding? I don’t want anyone to know my identity, especially when I was able to find out Dick’s identity by only watching his high bar routine back when I was in level 6!

Dick: *zones back in* I remember that! You called me stupid for that!

Tim: It is so obvious, just stop showing off!

#batfam #batman #bruce wayne #nightwing #dick grayson #red hood #Jason Todd #Red Robin #Tim Drake #spoiler #Stephanie Brown #blue bird #harper row #orphan dc #cassandra cain #signal dc #duke thomas #robin #Damian Wayne

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ambrosiagourmet · 3 months

Note

i'd love your analysis and opinions of the lovely izutsumi (izutsumi) for the character meme :3c

Izutsumiiii~

First impression

Once again tbh my impression of her was formed from Fandom Osmosis before I actually encountered her. In this case: The Best Take on a Catgirl Ever

Impression now

Yeah hi this ask is what prompted me to write this post about my thoughts on Izutsumi's role in the story

Anyway in addition to that... I love her. I really appreciate how her trauma and coping mechanisms are handled, and I adore the Cat of it all. Some of my favorite panels are just the ones where Izutsumi is in the background doing cat things. She's got so much spirit and she grows so much and she's got so much future ahead of her... ahh... Izutsumi...

Favorite moment

I was going to say the entirety of the succubus fight, especially the two hearts bit. And that probably IS my favorite moment, but I'm going to highlight this detail instead bc it's easy to miss and so beloved:

She wipes their faces clean and gets her kitty hairs all over them....

Idea for a story

Hmmm... I mean really any kind of post-canon exploration of her would be so good. There are already at least a couple of good oneshots I've seen doing that, but honestly I'd love something LONG and just... about her figuring herself out. How she decides where to fit in, what she does with her relationships, what she does with her freedom.

I guess really what I'm thinking of is something that captures the "healing isn't linear" experience of trying to move on from as much trauma grief and isolation as Izutsumi has experienced. I think a story where she has room to backslide and move forward and fail and apologize and forgive herself and forgive the people around her... those ups and downs would be cool to see played out in full.

Unpopular opinion

??? She's kitty. We all are in agreement on this one, I think

Favorite relationship

Okay this is actually hard because on the surface level it's definitely of course her and Marcille. BUT... I have also been really enjoying revisiting tidbits of her and Senshi (especially the way he makes her food the chapter when she joins...), and I want to explore more of her and Laios too...

I'll still just stick with her and Marcille though, because they are very sweet and fun and good.

Favorite headcanon

I can't track it down right now, but there is a bonus comic doodle that's like "what was everyone doing at 13?" and Izutsumi's response is like. Pshh?? 13? That was four years ago how am I supposed to remember" and like. My girl has SO many trauma repressed memory issues. [Izutsumi voice] what to do mean you guys have clear memories before 15.

#ask #ask meme #<3 <3 <3

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docholligay · 4 months

Text

Dr. Holligay Tries Things That Aren't Running: Oula One

So, continuing with my very sexy and respectable journey to win a high-priced and totally unnecessary kitchen item, I come hot off the heels of my hilariously and gloriously slow three mile run to the noble choice of: Whatever class is available to me at 9 am and in a decent spot on my bingo card.

That's Oula One, babes! Do I know what Oula One is? Not even fucking REMOTELY. Do i know that it is a stepping stone to winning really stupid kitchen appliances? Oh fuck yes. Let's go.

An incredibly kind woman greets me by introducing herself, shaking my hand, and explaining that it's a yoga dance fusion class.

Excellent! I hate yoga! I scream with my entire mind.

She must have heard me with her third ear or somethinking, because she's smiling and telling me not to worry, because it's all about doing what feels good in my body. Great! I hate doing what feels good in my body! Part of the reason I hate yoga is it is neither fun nor punishing. I LOVE to be taken to the end of my tether. One of my favorite activities of last year was our 24 hour run, where I ended up with cactus spines through my toe. Running lets me take myself to the redline and see if I can cross the finish line before the engine explodes. Boot camp tells me that I'm fucking weak, and I can drag myself in a full plank across a gym floor, can't I? Work harder, it screams. This is great for me! I love feeling like I could not possibly have given one more inch.

Yoga, on the other hand, is both very difficult, and not punishing. I can't touch my hand flat palmed to the floor, but neither do I feel broken by pushing to it. I am just bored! I am an extremely hyperactive human being and sitting cross legged grounding myself is probably against the Geneva Convention. I want to crawl out of the classroom like an inchworm.

But here I am! In a dynamic yoga class, sitting on the floor in my damn booty booty ass ass running shorts, which are very practical on a track but less so here. I was wearing sloth underwear today and everyone knew it. You're welcome. Since I'm here, I am going to give it my best try, and I am going to go in with an open mind.

Twist ending for me most of all: I actually sort of enjoyed it! It moves much faster than a normal yoga class, but you repeat the moves a lot and can get deeper and deeper into them. It's extremely hippy-dippy, which I absolutely am not, and I had to muffle my laughter when she was like, 'This song is about keeping our shadow self near us" but...I am somewhat older than y'all so i don't know if you have this experience.

So picture a party, and there's a lot of weed at this party. Now, you don't smoke weed because it makes you strange in ways you don't like, but you do like partying, and there's some extremely suspect but deeply alcoholic Homebrew "mead" and you're making the best of it, and besides you need a favor from the guy you came with because you want to buy shrooms for the meteor shower backpacking trip a few weekends from now (I realize I have touched the absolute heart of tumblr right now, and you all are nodding in agreement at this very relatable scenario) This person is like a lot of the people who always had weed before everyone did, and so there are dyed silks hanging from her walls, and Loreena McKennitt is playing in the background, and you're definitely a little buzzed, and getting kind of a contact high, and then people start to dance. They dance with these big, open swirls of their body, and almost certainly someone is wearing moss green.

That is how I would describe the yoga-dance fusion at this class. Easy to follow, very vibes-based, and heavily based in big, open moves that give good stretch. Seeing as it takes an act of God and Congress for me to stretch, forcing myself to go do it every week or ever every other would not be the worst thing.

I cannot BELIEVE I am saying this, but I would go again.

Definitely without the ass shorts though.

#things that aren't running

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mostlymaudlin · 1 year

Text

An Attempted Explanation of Andrew’s “Manic Pills”

One of the things that bothers me about AFTG is Andrew’s medicine. The way most of the characters talk about court-mandated psychiatry and sobriety and mania is a questionable and often harmful representation of what it’s like to experience mania/hypomania — which like, it’s fiction, that’s fine, but it’s also something that I take a lil personally. So I’ve decided to try to legitimize the whole thing for myself, just because I can!

Necessary to note: I’m not a medical professional, a lawyer, etc. I’m usually a pretty good fact-checker, but I could definitely be wrong abt stuff, and I’d love for you to tell me if I am. I ran a lot of this by the lovely @the-greater-grief, who does have a medical background and also inspired me with this analysis they did on Andrew’s mental health. They were really helpful in explaining a lot of the more technical drug information, so they’re largely responsible for most of the theory that makes sense lol. But, they are also not responsible for me saying things that are wrong, lol! Alsooooo, I’ve been in the fandom for less than a year so it’s possible I’m saying stuff people have said before. Idc. I’m having fun reinventing the wheel lmfao. Okay, onwards!

The post has two parts:

Lovingly dismantling a lot of the bullshit Neil tells us in the books

Setting up a more realistic version of Andrew’s mental health situation

Apologies in advance, this got long-winded. Let’s do this!

Dismissing Neil’s framing

AFTG is told from Neil’s perspective, so we as readers are limited to the things he knows and understands. We know that Neil is often unreliable, and as perceptive as he can be, he makes a lot of questionable assumptions that he internalizes as fact.

This is what he tells us, rather crudely:

Andrew tried to kill some guys, because he might be a psychopath/sociopath.

Rather than being sent to prison, he was court-mandated to take drugs that make him “manic”/less likely to kill other people.

The manic pills make him crazy and also make him sick, to the point where the characters refer to him as “sober” when he is unmedicated.

The withdrawal is severe enough that his psych wants him to be hospitalized to come off them.

We learn all this about Andrew’s treatment from three sources: Information Neil read before he even joined the Foxes, Nicky’s exposition dumps, and Andrew’s actual behavior. The bullshit mostly comes from the first two items on this list, because Andrew never cares to explain much of his situation to Neil. And we can actually brush all of it off pretty easily.

Neil builds most of his perception of Andrew’s treatment on top of information from articles he read about Kevin’s transfer to Palmetto State. These articles were unkind — the Exy world was upset that Kevin was leaving the Ravens, and Andrew was painted in a cruel and probably inaccurate way. Neil mentions an article headlined “The Prince & the Pauper”... I personally would not take anything from that article seriously.

Some of this bullshit is corroborated by Nicky, a 20-something year old jock majoring in marketing. When Andrew was sentenced, we can guess that Nicky (still basically a teenager himself) was very scared that his cousin, who he is responsible for, was going to get sent to prison. Based on the way he talks about mental health in general, I wouldn’t consider him to be an expert on the nitty-gritty of psychiatry. He just saw the outcome of the trial, which was not prison, yay! and instead involved some kind of pills that made Andrew way more social. Also, as much as I think Nicky tries, he doesn’t really get Andrew — he thought Andrew was straight, and then he thought he was hate-fucking Neil. He’s not a reliable source when it comes to judging how Andrew’s brain works/how he is affected by his treatment.

This leaves Andrew’s behavior, because he never talks about his mental health except to say that he’s “crazy” and that he is not a sociopath. When he’s on the medicine, his behavior includes an elevated mood, a short attention span, and trouble curbing his impulses. When he doesn’t take his medicine on time, he experiences withdrawal (nausea, fatigue, etc), and feeling ill seems to curb some of his mood elevation enough to let him think with more clarity. When he’s off it, he is able to shut down his emotional reactions to things, though he still exhibits flashes of the rage, depression, and zingy one-liners from his behavior in the first two books.

Also, the only people who actually seem to understand Andrew’s mental health treatment are Andrew himself, Bee, and probably Wymack. Aaron might also have a better handle on it all because he’s pre-med, and also he understands Andrew enough to clock that he is gaga for Neil lol.

Okay. Bullshit? Gone.

A proposed alternate story

Once upon a time, some homophobes started beating up Andrew’s cousin and the only legal guardian that didn’t treat him like utter shit, so he went feral on them.

He gets arrested, and somewhere along the line the courts determine that his violence stems from mental illness. Rather than being sentenced to prison, he gets some kind of probation that mandates he engage in mental health treatment. The psychiatrist he sees at the time determines that he has depression — which, like, they’ve definitely seen his self-harm scars, so this is a fair assumption — and he is prescribed an antidepressant.

Now’s a good time to mention that no one would ever intentionally prescribe something to induce mania in a patient. Mania is a supremely dangerous state. People get hospitalized to get out of a manic episode. Whenever I even inch toward it, my therapist and psych are like, “CALL ME!!!!” It also would do nothing to curb violence — the opposite, actually, if the manic person often has a hard time holding themselves back from hurting themselves and others. If you look at Andrew’s behavior in the first two books, I don’t think it would even qualify as full-blown mania. He sleeps, he fulfills his responsibilities, he doesn’t seem to have any delusions of grandeur. His symptoms align better with hypomania, which is less severe and accounts for the things we noted before (mood elevation, short attention span, irritability, impulsiveness). I also think a lot of the stuff Andrew does that is attributed to his medicine is probably just Andrew being Andrew — because as Aaron once said, “it wasn’t the drugs that made him crazy.” (I wrote more about this once in an Andrew character study I did.)

So, the antidepressants would’ve been prescribed to treat the depression, which hypothetically could’ve made Andrew so hopeless and full of rage that he was constantly on the verge of flipping his shit on people. There are plenty of antidepressants that will make you sick/be less effective if you fuck with your dosing schedule, and all the alcohol he drinks probably doesn’t help either. Still, the medicine would just treat depression. HOWEVER! If Andrew actually has bipolar disorder (:D!!!), then some antidepressants do have a risk of inducing mania/hypomania!

It should’ve been obvious that Andrew’s antidepressant was not working as intended. But I doubt Nicky, Andrew, and Aaron had great health insurance before they enrolled at Palmetto, so Andrew’s court-mandated mental health provider was probably like, “cool, not trying to kill people anymore, we’re good.” A good provider like Bee would clock that Andrew had been misdiagnosed, and she’d want to adjust his medicine. But this leads to the final part of the theory — actually suggested by the brilliant Grimm — which also could explain how Andrew came to trust Bee.

If Bee diagnosed Andrew with bipolar, she would want to switch him over to lithium, which is the most common bipolar medicine. I’ve never actually been on lithium, and while I’ve heard it can be really effective, it definitely has a bad reputation — some people say it makes them feel like a “zombie.” Fatigue/dizziness/drowsiness are known potential side effects, especially when you’re adjusting to changed doses — and anyone who’s ever been on a psych med knows that it takes a while to get the dose right. I’m guessing (justified) control freak Andrew Minyard would not be down to risk feeling like a zombie.

(Sidenote: people with bipolar II also get put on lamotrigine, which specifically manages low moods, but from what I can tell it wouldn’t have been common in the mid-2000s. it was only approved for bipolar treatment in 2003.)

Maybe Bee made him a deal: He can stay on the antidepressant, which is not working but is also not the most dangerous thing, as long as he fully commits to their talk therapy sessions so that he can learn how to cope with his symptoms. This is similar to the deal Wymack struck with Andrew. He tends to trust the small handful of people who have given him agency.

Alright, that’s the theory! Andrew has bipolar disorder. He’s not on the right meds. The courts are not doing silly illegal things (well, not in this case anyway), and the jocks of PSU are the real stereotypes here.

Because at the end of the day, this is a tale as old as time: People with mental illness are easily made out to be the villain.

#aftg #my writing

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deluweil · 2 months

Note

Based on the last speculations (bi-Buck and probably him having something with a man), how optimistic are you for Buddie going canon? Do you think we’ll get some Eddie reaction/jealousy? I want to be optimistic but I’m scared they’ll do the same shit from last season…

Look, I said it before, Bi-Buck will probably be only with Eddie,

Buck is not who he was, Buck 1.0 AND 2.0 would have experimented his way through the greater male population of LA .

But this one? He will want the man who makes him feel like everything, who sees him, we know that's what his looking for, he said it in 6x15.

No one has ever seen him better than Eddie - Buck, imo, assuming he actually was just straight up until now, is probably more Eddie-sexual than anything else.

Now if you have asked me about Eddie, I could definitely see him, going through several failed male encounters, where the sex is great but it's not quite it, with Buck jealous as hell in the background not really understanding why - until he does.

You see, if the whole saying yes year (which was the dumbest idea ever and got executed so badly we hardly knew it existed) was this year where he says yes, and not to reproducing for others, I'd say maybe, but now, I don't think so.

My money is more on Eddie figuring it out first and him dating other men will kick Buck into motion.

Especially with Ryan taking a bigger role this season, this is right in his wheelhouse, and out of the two of them Ryan actually portrayed a gay character before.

I gotta say though, that while ABC have already done the Bi (both male and female) character arcs - it is still dependent on 911 creators to make that decision and I stopped trusting the showrunners a long time ago.

There's a part of me that is sure that the only reason buddie was not made canon yet is because KR was stuck along with FOX in the heteronormative narrative they kept shoving down our throats.

I want to believe that the move to ABC will allow buddie to become canon, but I am not getting my hopes up, and by the things I'm seeing so far, I don't feel very optimistic about it.

I do believe we'll get gay Eddie though, because that suit was screaming out and proud, the last groom I saw in this kind of suit, was divorced and out of the closet 6 months later, just saying. (by the way me and my gay best friend won that wager, but the original wedding was fun lol).

So, you know, glass half full and all that.

We'll keep our fingers crossed and hope for a fun ride.

#911 spoilers #911 speculation #buddie #evan buckley #eddie diaz #ryan guzman #911 abc #i always believed buck is bi #i can see both bi and gay eddie #and i want buddie to be canon because those two are meant to be #but showrunners are a disappointing bunch so I'm being carefully optimistic #you know trust but verify #911 ask #deluweil replies

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comicaurora · 1 year

Note

Heyo, it's the fool who wants to make a comic with zero experience in drawing or finishing stories again. A lot of people, including you, I think, mentioned that "Your first work will be bad". Any tips how…not to do that? I don't expect it to be a magnum opus or smth, but I at least want to make something people would genuinely unironically enjoy, and "first story is always not good" notion everywhere is very discouraging

It's not like I never tried anything creative ever, but this is my first attempt of putting it down on paper with intention of completing it, instead of having vague ideas of "I know what would be so cool when I make it a thing" in my head for months without acting upon any of these ideas

It's definitely a disheartening adage, even if it's supposed to take the pressure off young creators.

Unfortunately, no matter how good your starting point gets - and you can get it very good, don't get me wrong - you are still going to find it unbearably bad when you look back on it with experienced eyes. You might eventually circle back around to finding it impressive, considering it was your absolute first starting point and you had no experience, but you still won't be able to see its merit the way your audience will.

The thing is, your first project is going to teach you a lot of things you couldn't have known you needed to learn beforehand. This means everything you make after learning those things is going to be smoother in process and better in result. There's also just the fact that the more you do this sort of thing the more practiced you'll get at the mechanical side of it, making it faster and easier for you and leaving you with more energy to punch things up. Compare the Big Fight Scene from chapter 3 with the one from chapter 17 in terms of visual complexity:

Particle effects, ambient glow, soft lighting, atmospheric depth, metallic effects, light and shadow. The seeds of these ideas are present in the earlier shot, but executed in a much clumsier way. Fourteen chapters of gradually increasing complexity and just raw practice got me to the point where drawing that second panel was fun rather than exhausting. If I'd tried that in the first chapter I would've probably been so worn out just trying to finish the lineart that the quality of the rest of the image would've suffered from sheer exhaustion.

And even before that, those first chapters only flowed as well as they did because I'd been drawing hundreds and hundreds of video frames for years at this point, which had gotten my lineart muscle memory polished enough that I wasn't agonizing over every single stroke.

I was absolutely determined to start this comic off at the best level of quality I could, and that determination kept me kicking the can down the road for a decade. I think this was a good thing; if I'd started it any earlier I think I would've been a slow enough learner that the quality increase over those first few chapters wouldn't have been as steep as it was. And that first chapter was as good as I could've made it at the time; I didn't take any shortcuts or laze around, and I used every skill I'd learned over the previous decade of physical and digital art. Of course, if I knew then what I knew now there's loads of stuff I'd have changed about the way I handled the intro. In fact, I'm going to break my One Rule about "never going back or redoing things" and I'm going to walk you all through chapter 1 and what I would change/fix if I was drawing it now.

Remove the outline on the background mountains, add color variance to the further mountains so they appear farther in the background, un-muddy the color of the sky and make those clouds a little more impressive; this could've looked like a full glorious noonday sun. The forest was drawn with an experimental brush I'd created for foliage that I ended up deciding didn't produce the effect I wanted; I'd probably go through and use the technique I developed for Gleicann's forest to cel shade blocks of foliage.

Add at least the bare hint of buildings behind the sword pedestal - just gradient outlines would be fine, similar to the extended backgrounds in Zuurith. Also slap some blue cinder-y particle effects coming up off the sword. Clean up the shading layer so there aren't as many holes. Add metallic shine to the blade and marbling/stone texture to the pedestal.

Un-muddy the colors on this background; they match The Collector's color palette but that matters less than looking nice. The background needs something - speed lines, the implication of foliage - etc. The poses could also be more dynamic and drawn with more confidence. To show the power behind the blows, re-choreographs the fight to show more of the damage it does to the environment - the sword carving through rocks, ploughing furrows into the ground, starting to spark with starfire, etc.

Same problem with the foliage; the special brush adds too much detail, drawing the eye away from the important parts of the scene, and the colors are muddy to cover that up. Brighter greens and cel-shaded layers would produce the effect I actually wanted and be faster than hand-drawing every treetrunk and then shading them so they're indistinguishable anyway. Also, more intense shading on the foreground figure - a neutral tan shadow layer is functional, but it could look a lot more dramatic, and he's shaded much more lightly than the extremely muddied background is.

Of course, "if I knew then what I know now" is a meaningless turn of phrase. I needed to draw these pages this way in order to learn what I know now. If I had jumped straight into the shortcuts I've painstakingly developed without having had that intervening practice, the end result would've been just as bad - if not worse, because it would've been executed shakily, without the confidence that accompanies muscle memory. The techniques I used in this first chapter had served me well up til that point. The techniques I use now were built on these foundations. Lamenting that I could've done it better if I'd started now is like saying the pyramids would be so much taller if they'd laid the foundations at the top part instead.

There's a degree to which this work is sisyphusian. You do your best, you push yourself, and then your "best" gets better. At some point you have to accept that what was your best is still okay, even if you can't see it that way.

When I was working on this comic in the pre-actually-drawing-it years, I came to a realization that helped me get unstuck: "good enough" is a mask that "perfect" wears. Striving for perfection is a pointless task, and this is pretty well known, but it seems a lot more reasonable to just try to get "good enough" at art to guarantee that your work will be good enough. But if you unpack that concept, you likely find that your definition of "good enough" is basically "without flaws." Which is "perfect." Which is, as mentioned, unattainable. Those pages are as good as I could've possibly made them at the time, and they aren't perfect, and I never thought they were perfect, because I knew if I waited for them to be perfect in my eyes I'd never make them. I just had to grit my teeth, make them public and hope that people got something out of them that I couldn't.

There is a baseline level of artistic skill and preparation that I do recommend cultivating - figure and life drawing, anatomy studies, landscapes, reading Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" cover to cover - but there is no hardline starting point at which you are guaranteed to be good enough to make the story and art good. This is because "good" is subjective, and as long as you are improving as an artist, your own perspective on your old work will never be that it is "good." You have to trust that the audience that likes your story likes it for their own valid reasons.

The thing is, I know this is a bummer. This whole thing is a bummer perspective. Artists want to make good art and the nature of artistic creation is being unable to see your own art as good for long. If you believe that your art must be a certain baseline level of Good to be worthy of existing, this truth seems to be a condemnation to an eternal and pointless purgatorial struggle.

The most valuable skill an artist can develop at this stage is strangling that insecurity with their bare hands.

Trust your audience! Trust that they enjoy what they enjoy, and trust that they see something in your art, even if all you can see are the critiques you'd use to polish it! "Perfect" and "good enough" will tell you that your creation will always be hideously unlovable and must be hidden from scrutiny until it's "ready", but like all insecurities, underpinning this is the axiom that anyone who likes you or your work is lying. Strangle this falsehood, trust freely and openly that your audience is being honest with you, and while you work to improve on the creation side of things, trust that in the eyes of the people who like your work, it is Good Enough.

#asks #art stuff #writing stuff

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batcrooks · 4 months

Text

THE BATCROOKS AWARDS 2023

This year, I kept track of every piece of media I consumed for the whole year. I didn't keep track of individual Youtube videos (which I watched hundreds of, they're my main background noise), but I did track every Book, Video Game, TV Show/Web Series, and Movie. Here are my BEST OF 2023 (year of release may vary).

Best Movie: Spider-man: Across the Spider-verse I only actually saw 3 new release movies this year: Spider-verse, Barbie, and The Boy and the Heron. So the competition wasn't very fierce, but I was glad to sneak Heron in there at the end just to make sure (I found it very pretty, but too nonsensical and weirdly paced.) Spider-verse was a little disappointing (toooo long) but it was definitely the funnest new movie I saw this year.

Best TV Show: Silo I saw a couple actual TV shows this year, but for pure fun had watching and theorizing, Silo wins. Is it the actual best TV of the year? Almost definitely not. But these are my awards so it wins. You can't leave the silo!!!!

Best Web Series: Game Changer Season 5 I'm not sure if I can properly justify the category difference between Silo (on Apple+) and Game Changer; both are technically web series. But I watched Silo on a TV, and it just seems more like a TV show. So I have awarded Best Web Series to Game Changer, because I like it just a little more than Make Some Noise. I also watched a lot of Dimension 20 this year for the first time, but they're not 2023. I'm being wishy washy on the category requirements lol.

Best Video Game: Baldur's Gate 3 This game was so good at one point I was playing two saves simultaneously, just for fun. I don't think I can say anything that hasn't been said about it before lol. And it was MULTIPLAYER. Sourdeer and I played this game all the way through TWICE. We finished it the first time and then spent like 4 days trying to find something else to play before deciding we just wanted to play it again, evil-style.

Best Video Game I Didn't Directly Play: The Curse of the Golden Idol A lot of (usually bad) video games I experience through "Cat Plays a Game" and its twin show "Sourdeer Plays a Game"; the hit show streaming exclusively on discord between my friends lol. Sour played this one, technically, although as an asymmetric multiplayer experience it's hard to beat. I want there to be five million games just like this one. I wish I could wipe my memory and do it again. We already devoured the DLC. There's a sequel coming out thank god.

Best Video Game I Played All By My Lonesome: Pentiment I don't tend to play a lot of single-player video games due to lack of time mostly, but this year I managed to play Pentiment, an incredible game that really played well with the weird amount of knowledge I have about the time period and setting of the game from reading The Pillars of the Earth and its sequels. It was completely engrossing and I will probably play it again some day despite its pretty slow pace. I know I can't save everyone. But maybe I can try.

Youtuber of the Year: Jenny Nicholson I rewatched a ton of her videos this year and joined her Patreon so that I could watch the huge backlog of "ramble" videos she has. There are TWO sequels to the Evermore video in there! Hours and hours of entertainment that makes me wish I could experience more weird theme parks.

Best Book(s): The Scholomance series by Naomi Novik The last one came out in September 2022 but this is a "non-reread, new to me" category, not a new release category. Novik's Temeraire series is one of my favorites of all time, and Spinning Silver is also really good, but even still I was wary to start what initially seemed like just a snarkier, edgy magical boarding school series. But the mechanics of the world-building and the characters really won me over quick, and this has ended up being another of my favorite series.

This spreadsheet has the full 2023 list if anyone wants to see/judge me/discuss video games or books: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X7u2F_9FSvvyys5v006eQg1hIvx0bT3QuLDgy_TJasw/edit?usp=sharing

#the batcrooks awards #2023 #best of 2023

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verkomy · 1 year

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i love your art style! any tips for beginner artists?

thank you so much!! here're a few that popped into my head:

always use references! if you don't know how to draw something - look it up on the internet or (even better!) take a picture of yourself and draw it. drawing things from photos and nature will help you improve much faster than trying to draw everything from imagination and memory. ps. try not to use references drawn by someone else in the beginning because then you'll most definitely duplicate someone else's possible mistakes and we don't want that.

don't focus too much on finding your own art style. learn the rules first so you can break them later and apply them to your drawings. I can't count how many times I was angry that each of my drawings looked different until I realized that this is also a part of the whole "finding my own art style" process, so look for interesting styles and be inspired by artists you like.

and I don't know if this is a tip but I feel like I need to say this - it's okay to be inspired by someone else's art style. my art for a very long time was inspired by burdgebug (raise your hand if she was your art style goddess too) and many times I even copied her drawings too, and that is fine HOWEVER I never posted them anywhere and signed them as my own. and my point is - study art styles that you want your own style to be based on but never copy or trace someone else's drawings and post them as your own. AND if you draw something inspired by your favorite artist - tag them! I'm sure they'll be thrilled to see that their work has inspired someone. :)

digital art and tablets are great but don't forget about sketchbooks! using different types of media, from pencils to paints, give you freedom that no screen can. and if you're posting your art on social media - don't feel pressure to post every sketch online, not everything you draw has to be content.

also not everything you draw has to be perfect, let yourself experiment and learn from it!

if you're drawing digitally remember to flip your canvas! and if you're drawing traditionally you can look at your drawing in the mirror or take photo of it and flip it in the photo editing app.

don't shade with black! it will make your drawing look mudy.

I really like to draw studies from my favorite movies or tv shows because they allow me to learn how the light and shadow work in different setups so I recommend you doing that too!

I know it sounds scary but try to draw full bodies and backgrounds too and not only portraits (but they're so fun to draw right?!) so you'll improve all of these three things at the same rate. I was teriffied of drawing feet for a very long time and look where I am now - still can't draw them, why do people even need feet...

and what is most important - have fun! draw what you want, experiment, use defferent medias and art styles and find what suits you best. it's a very long road, a lifelong even, so don't be upset at first if something doesn't look the way you wanted it to (it hardly ever does even if you're on the higher level in being an artist). someday you'll be able to draw something that you've imagined for years and it's the greatest feeling in the whole world! just be patient and try to enjoy the road you're on instead of looking at the final destination.

bonus tip or more of a uplift for begginer artist that post their drawings on social media: YOU ARE AWESOME AND YOU DESERVE EVERY RECOGNISION, try not to pay attention to engagement and numbers on your posts because they can ruin your motivation like nobody's business, and remember that you are what you create and not how your art performs on the internet. <3

that's a long ass post, but I hope it's somehow helpful! I could make a post with useful resources (mostly for digital art) so let me know if you'd be interesed in that~!

#asks #art tips #text

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natlacentral · 1 month

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‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ Crown Prince Dallas Liu Had Elliott Smith on his Zuko Playlist

With the Netflix show officially renewed for two more seasons, the actor talks to GQ about his personal style, his cult series PEN15, and bending lightning.

Before he found his calling, Avatar: The Last Airbender star Dallas Liu considered becoming a stuntman. But when Liu was only 12 years old, his soon-to-be manager discovered his competition videos on YouTube and asked him if he'd ever thought about acting. The answer was yes: “Martial arts had definitely inspired me to become an actor, because of the performance aspect of it,” Liu tells GQ from his home in California.

Now, at 22, Liu’s credits include a Gen-Z cult comedy (PEN15) and a high-profile Marvel film (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.) He’s been able to channel his eclectic background to play the complicated villain at the center of the Avatar: The Last Airbender franchise, Fire Nation royal Prince Zuko.

A few weeks before Netflix announced that Avatar had been renewed for a second and third season, Liu talked to GQ about how playing Prince Zuko changed him, his love of A24 films, and the Pen15 renaissance.

Were there any Avatar scenes that you were really excited to film?

All of the flashbacks. All of episode six was super fun, but specifically the scene between Aang and Zuko in that shed after an escape. And then, when Zuko sort of blows up at Zhao, at the fight at the Northern Water tribe.

The writers had given me a lot of good stuff to work with, and so I was just happy that in our show Zuko gets a character arc. In the first season of the animated series, he’s sort of one-note and quite melodramatic in each scene—he's sort of being repetitive about his motives. [But] he was always my favorite character as a kid. I just loved Zuko. Being able to play him was a dream come true.

I saw in another interview that you said that it was great to humanize him. Was there anything that you kind of discovered about yourself through playing Zuko, because he's such a complicated character?

Yeah, since he’s so complex, playing him opened up my heart while I was off-set. When I had originally arrived in Vancouver to work on the show, I was similar to Zuko in that I was very narrow-minded in what I wanted to do, in terms of how I wanted to be an actor on set. I thought this was my one opportunity in life to prove to the people that I have a spot in this industry.

I was like, I'm focused on my work, do my job, go home, rest, and just take care of myself. And throughout that process, that's what it feels like with Zuko and Iroh. Zuko is like, "I'm just going to capture the Avatar, and then return them to my father and then I get to go home." And we see that that's not the case.

There are so many things that are involved in this journey that Zuko and Iroh go on, and something that I felt was my relationship with the other cast members and with the crew members started to grow. I found myself wanting to open up my heart and share this experience with them, and share all the love that I had inside of me that I had been trying to hold back on.

If you were not playing a character from the Fire Nation, what powers would you want to have personally?

Oh, it still definitely would be fire. It’s the most aesthetically-pleasing one in my opinion. In the world of Avatar, you can start to manipulate other elements once you become a master of that base one, and I think lightning is something that I've always thought would be super cool to bend. I think fire represents me, my heart.

What's your Zodiac sign?

I'm a Leo.

That adds up.

Wait, why?

Leo is a fire sign!

Oh, yeah, that's true!

Have you seen the TikToks about the Pen15 renaissance?

During my time shooting it, Pen15 was still blowing up. It's been on this continuous rise, which I'm so happy because that show—now it's really, really popular. But at the time, it was so underrated. I was still tapping into a younger version of myself on that series. But [for Avatar] I took inspiration from watching Maya and Anna act out as kids, for Zuko being an innocent child himself in the war meetings, in that first scene with Uncle Iroh in episode six.

I mean, you were still a kid. You were 16. That's a child.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess it's a lot closer to Zuko, and that he doesn't think he is.

Did you really shave your head for this, or did you do a bald cap?

Given that we were trying to stay faithful to the original and what it represented in the show, I thought it was extremely important for me to shave my head. I had a choice. I won't get into what it represents so much, but you get to see a little bit in some of the Avatar lore that exists outside of our series. But it gets you into character so much because it pisses you off so badly every morning. Waking up on the weekends when I'm not working and I just want to go out, I have to throw on a beanie. But waking up and staring at myself—This is my life now, this is who I am—I think it certainly got me into character very easily.

I really liked your red velvet suit at the premiere. How has your style evolved from your younger years to now?

My mom has always been my biggest fashion influence. She's the one who sort of turned me into this picky critic when it comes to outfits and clothes. Even when I was younger, I wouldn't ever let her pick out my outfits. And because I didn't let that happen, I ended up looking really stupid and goofy a lot of the time.

But I think everyone starts in sneakers—very common, especially for guys. You start with basketball shoes, and then you transition into Jordans, and then you transition into some form of streetwear after that. And at that point, you could go, I think, either into this world of vintage or archive clothing, or obviously, people love designer clothing and mixing up that world of streetwear with that.

But for me, I think I just really elevated basics. My style has just become less about brands, obviously, and more about quality. I'm 22 now, so I'm paying for all of this stuff myself. So I'm like, is this worth it? Am I going to be fine without this? On carpets for the Avatar premiere, I wanted to go all out. When I'm in real life, I just stick to all black and different shades of gray.

Did you make a playlist for Zuko, his character to get into character?

I did, but at some point, I stopped using it just because I sort of found my groove from the character. But some artists that were in there were Elliot Smith and Duster.

Which Elliot Smith songs did you put on there?

“Between the Bars.” And just all of his most popular stuff for sure, because especially “Between the Bars” relates to some part of Zuko's life, whether it was his actual scar banishment or catching the Avatar.

Are there any genres you want to dabble in next?

I honestly love drama so much. Obviously, the new Dune film just came out and I just love Denis [Villeneuve]. Every actor, I feel like can agree with me on [that]—and that we want to do an A24 film. But honestly, I'm still just trying to take any work that I can get, because I do want to show my range as an actor. I'd love to work with Willem Defoe on something, that'd be cool. So, just projects that are grounded, but have a stylistic element that separates it from Hollywood blockbusters.

#natla #atla #avatar the last airbender #avatar netflix #netflix avatar #netflix atla #atla netflix #dallas liu #interview #photoshoot #gq

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seandwalsh · 11 months

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Yes, Paper Mario is canon

This has been something the Mario lore community has largely accepted since 2015, but it seems a lot of newer folk aren’t quite so filled in! I’m writing this post to be a quick way to catch people up on the subject. This post is also adapted from a Reddit post, which can be read here. Same experience either way, more or less!

Part 1: For Context

The Paper Mario games tell stories of Mario’s adventures through an arts and crafts or pop-up book aesthetic. This is because from the very beginning, the Paper Mario games were meant to be set in a book that retold Mario’s adventures, but were accurate depictions of the mainline Mario universe.

Since our first priority was to protect the atmosphere and setting of the Mario universe, we decided to only use characters from the mainline Mario games. The side characters from Super Mario RPG therefore do not appear. I think that with Mario, sticking to the “main road” is the best. Plus, it would feel weird to have heavy themes like “betrayal” in the overall cozy, heartwarming atmosphere of the Mario world. (laughs)

- Ryota Kawade, Chief Director of Paper Mario (Nintendo 64)

We spent close to a year and a half trying out different character ideas. We also tried using pre-renders like SMRPG, but we figured it would be more fun for us to attempt something completely different this time, and that paper-y Mario was the result.

- Hiroyasu Sasano, Support on Paper Mario (Nintendo 64)

Herringway said he definitely wants to write your story. He even came up with a title... What was it again? Let's see... Well... "Paper Mario"!! What do you think!!??

- A Penguin, Non-player character in Paper Mario (Nintendo 64)

A real Mario Story told through the perspective of a storybook. Not at all dissimilar from what Dr. Mario 64, Mario Party 6, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker all do.

This carries through to later games such as Paper Mario: Color Splash as well:

…I think one thing is that because this is taking place within the greater Mario world, we wanted to focus as much as possible on the familiar Mario characters.

- Risa Tabata, Assistant Producer of Paper Mario: Color Splash

This establishes the Paper Mario games as canonical events which also happen in the world of mainline Mario games, but despite this the developers were not afraid to have some fun with the aesthetic they were working with.

Although not the main focus, many paper-based gags were present in the world from the start.

Actually, the very first challenge Mr. Kawade and others had to face was how to cowince Mr. Miyamoto. For example, we had to explain how we'd utilise the idea of things being flimsy like paper to a large degree in the final game. The utilisation of paper-like elements was more of an 'improvemert' for him than an 'innovation' since the original idea was there with the N64 version.

- Kenshiro Ueda, Coordinator on Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

Paper Mario:

- Characters are flat like paper and when they turn around their body turns like a sheet.

- In the intro sequence of the game, Kammy Koopa is taped into the story being told about the Star Spirits.

- The Star Spirits get turned into cards by Bowser and Kammy Koopa.

- When the veranda in Goomba Village falls and Mario fallls after it, he floats down safely like a piece of paper.

- When Mario rests in a bed, he similarly floats into it like a piece of paper.

- A Goomba masquerades as a picture on a signpost on Goomba Road.

- The clouds in the background of Goomba Road battles are held up with sticks.

- Mario enters and exits a pipe by folding like paper and spinning around its edges], which a Toad in Toad Town even calls attention to.

- Some Goombas lie down flat on top of blocks to hide from passers-by.

- Merlee folds Mario into cards when she casts her spell.

- Stilt Guys fall down as pieces of paper when entering General Guy’s Battle.

- A Star Kid in Starborn Valley “hides” by turning sideways.

- The stairs in the Crystal Palace unfold from the wall.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door:

- Characters are flat like paper and when they turn around their body turns like a sheet.

- The fallen heroes of 1000 years ago place Curses on Mario, allowing him to turn flat, fold himself and transform into origami, such as a Paper Plane or Paper Boat.

- Boats turn around by rising out of the water before flipping around like a piece of paper.

- Mario enters and exits a pipe by folding like paper and spinning around its edges.

- The transition screen for entering an exiting a pipe crumples the screen like a page.

- When people in Rogueport are knocked down, they fall completely flat, parallel to the floor.

- When Mario enters a building, its walls and door unfold to reveal the interior.

Super Paper Mario:

- Characters are flat like paper and when they turn around their body turns like a sheet.

- The magical ability to “flip between dimensions”, going between 2-D and 3-D.

- Areas are “drawn” into existence when the characters first enter them.

- The Pixl Slim has the ability to turn the heroes “invisible”, represented by turning them sideways.

- Spiny Tromps are made out of cardboard.

- Sometimes a piece of paper will peel away to reveal a secret, such as a hidden chest.

- When turning into her spider-like form, Mini’s head unfolds like a piece of paper.

- At one point, Mimi says “I guess I'll congratulate you... by tearing you to little bits like stupid confetti!”

- Mario enters and exits a pipe by separating into and reforming from smaller pieces of paper, respectively.

- The transition screen for entering an exiting a pipe crumples the screen like a page.

- When Brobot enters battle, the screen is torn like a sheet of paper to transition from one scene to the next.

- One if the Sammer Guys, “Rolling Thwomp”, says “I ROLL OVER YOU AND MAKE YOU FLAT LIKE SHEET OF PAPER!”

- When Luigi performs his Super jump move, he folds himself like a piece of paper to charge before springing into the air.

- The audience that appears for Stylish Moves have jagged paper outlines surrounding their bodies.

Paper Mario: Sticker Star

- Characters are flat like paper and when they turn around their body turns like a sheet.

- Kersti’s magical “Paperize” ability makes the world “become as flat as a piece of paper”.

- Certain enemies such as Goombas use magic, likely provided by Bowser, to fold themselves into dangerous shapes.

- A stack of Toads act like a flight of stairs for Mario Warm Fuzzy Plains.

- Decalburg gets partially folded by Bowser’s magic.

- The Soggy status effect appears to temporarily affect Mario as water would a piece of paper.

Paper Mario: Color Splash

- Characters are flat like paper and when they turn around their body turns like a sheet.

- Huey’s magical Cutout ability “transcends dimensions” and cuts parts of the world like paper.

- Huey’s squeeze ability turns objects into paper.

- Magic Paint plays a major role, with it being sucked out of the denizens of Prism Island and used by Mario to restore the island to its former state.

- A Toad is turned into a letter by Bowser’s forces and mailed to the Mushroom Kingdom.

Paper Mario: the Origami King

- Characters are flat like paper and when they turn around their body turns like a sheet.

- The Origami Craftsman uses the magical Fold of Life technique to bring his Origami Creations to life.

- King Olly uses the magical Fold of Life technique to transform Bowser’s Army, Princess Peach and the Vellumentals into Folded Soldiers while turning the Toads into various Origami creatures.

- King Olly uses magic to bring the Origami Craftsman’s tools to life and make them giant, creating the Legion of Stationary.

- Mario and Olivia use Magic Circles to transform themselves using Origami Techniques, such as the 1,000-Fold Arms.

- The Toads and Mario in the Temple of Shrooms have holes punched in them by the Hole Punch and Bowser’s Minions are cut up by the Scissors guarding the castle. All of these magical effects are undone upon the bosses’ defeats.

With all that taken into account, it’s clear that this is genuinely a Paper World. However, since we also know that these events are supposed to take place in the real world, the only possibility is that the Paper Mario games depict events, locations and characters that exist in both the real world and the Paper World. We see these events from the perspective of the Paper World, but everything still happens in the real world without the paper aesthetics.

The opposite also applies, with all of the adventures the real Mario has been on occurring in the Paper World, with the paper aesthetics.

Part 2: How it Developed

In Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, the lore of the Paper Mario world is greatly expanded upon. We learn that it’s a “parallel world” located within a legendary magical book. For the first (and as of writing this, only) time, we see the Mario cast interact with their Paper counterparts. This has lead some people to believe that the Paper Mario games didn’t occur in the real world, with Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam retconning what had already been established, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

In fact, in Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam the opposite is implied. The game constantly calls attention to how the two worlds are exactly parallel through character dialogue. Some examples of this are Kamek and Paper Kamek coming up with the same plan to betray each other at the exact same moment and have the same proceeding conversation with their respective Bowsers, or when Peach and Paper Peach talk about themselves on Mount Brrr, realising how their lives and personalities are the same and even coming to the conclusion that they are the same person.

This was wholly intentional on the developers’ parts, with the core of the game being focused on showing inner depth to these personalities through interactions with their doubles:

Mario and Paper Mario, Princess Peach and Paper Princess Peach…It was fun to create interactions between different versions of the same character who come from different worlds like these examples. For this game, we created themes for each of the interactions between the main characters. We emphasized the characters’ personalities for each of the character interactions, such as Mario being curious about Paper Mario’s special abilities and trying to see if he can use them himself (even though both Mario and Paper Mario are the heroes of their respective worlds), the two Princess Peaches talking about girl stuff, the Bowser Jrs. getting along immediately like old friends, etc.

- Shunsuke Kobayashi, Director of Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam

Plenty of other games set in the real world have also referenced the events of Paper Mario games, further proving they occurred in the real world:

- Goomboss, who was created by Bowser using the Star Rod in Paper Mario, goes on to appear in Super Mario 64 DS and Mario Kart DS.

- Dry Dry Desert from Paper Mario appears in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, with Dry Dry Ruins, which were discovered during Paper Mario, appearing in Mario Kart Wii.

- Bowser’s Castle from Paper Mario, which was created by Bowser using the Star Rod, reappears in Mario Kart: Super Circuit’s Rainbow Road.

- Goombette from Super Mario Odyssey is pink, just like the other female Goombas previously seen in Paper Mario and Paper Mario: the Thousand-Year Door.

- Snowmen from Paper Mario reappear in various games in the Mario Kart series with the same appearance.

- The Mystery Egg item, featured in Mario Kart Arcade GP 2, is a reference to Mini-Yoshi’s Egg from Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door.

- Sky Guys from Paper Mario reappear in Mario Tennis Aces and Mario Strikers: Battle League.

- Red Chomps from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Super Paper Mario reappear in a movie projected by the WarioWare: Touched! souvenir “Reel-to-Reel”, as well as on the Pyramid Park board in Mario Party 7.

- Suits of Koopatrol armor from Paper Mario, Paper Mario: the Thousand-Year Door and Super Paper Mario appear in Bowser’s Villa on Vibe Island in Super Princess Peach.

- Koopatrols themselves appear in Mario Pinball Land.

- Whackas from Paper Mario, Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door and Super Paper Mario appear in Mario Party 6 on the Snowflake Lake board.

- The Snow Bunny item from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door appears in Mario Party 6 on the Snowflake Lake board.

- The Headbonk move that Goombas perform in the Paper Mario series returns as an attack in Minion Quest: the Search for Bowser and Bowser Jr.’s Journey.

- The Star Spirits from Paper Mario reappear as hosts in Mario Party 5.

- Bowser Sphinx appears with Tutankoopa’s Headdress from Paper Mario on the Pyramid Park board in Mario Party 7.

- The names of Goombario, Kooper, Bombette, Moustafa and Tubba Blubba from Paper Mario appear on the scoreboards in Mario Golf: Advance Tour and Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour.

- Hammer Bros. appear with their uniforms from Paper Mario in Mario Kart: Super Circuit.

- In Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga there’s a room in the Woohoo Hooniversity that contains blocks Mario has encountered in his past adventures. Amongst these are blocks from Super Mario Bros., Super Mario World and Super Mario 64, with a block from Paper Mario also appearing.

- Green Magikoopas, Red Magikoopas, Yellow Magikoopas and White Magikoopas from Paper Mario and Paper Mario: the Thousand-Year Door reappear in Minion Quest: the Search for Bowser, Bowser Jr.’s Journey, Mario Superstar Baseball and Mario Sports Superstars.

- Dark Boos from Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door reappear in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time.

- Recovery Blocks from Paper Mario, Paper Mario: the Thousand-Year Door and Paper Mario: Sticker Star reappear in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time and Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam.

- Star Haven from Paper Mario, is mentioned in the intro of the Japanese version of Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time.

The lore of the Paper Mario games in general is also clearly of great importance to the series as a whole, with Super Mario Galaxy’s Power Star lore being directly pulled from the original Paper Mario in large part.

With that, it’s clear that all of these stories, locations and characters indeed exist in Mario’s real world as well as the Paper World.

Part 3: Wrapping it Up

Finally, I’d like to address some common questions that people are left with.

Is it possible that only some Paper Mario games happened in the real world, while others happened in the Paper World?

No. The events of all of the Paper Mario games happened in both the real world and Paper World. It’s made clear that all of the Paper Mario games happen in the same universe as each other, and therefore all occur in both worlds:

- Paper Mario: the Thousand-Year Door has many callbacks to Paper Mario, through locations like Mario’s House or Dry Dry Desert and characters like Parakarry, Kammy Koopa, Lady Bow, Jr. Troopa and Moustafa.

- Super Paper Mario features portraits of Mario’s partners from Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door in Mario’s House, as well as Catch Cards depicting them.

- Notes belonging to Goombella from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Parakarry from Paper Mario can be found in the trash scraps of Shy Guy Jungle in Paper Mario Sticker Star.

- In Paper Mario: The Origami King, photos of Princess Peach from all previous Paper Mario games can be seen.

How do certain paper-y mechanics work in the real world, such as the Curses in Paper Mario: the Thousand Year Door or the Folded Soldiers in Paper Mario: the Origami King?

While many of the paper-y elements of the Paper Mario games can merely be acknowledged as gags and nothing more, story relevant ones like these still make sense within the real world.

Real World characters can be turned into paper, cut, folded or molded without major consequences. As seen in Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, magical abilities like the Trio Attacks have the capability to turn real world enemies into paper, before cutting or folding them without any “real world” consequences outside of dealing normal damage. Keeping in mind that the Curses in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Origami Techniques in Paper Mario: The Origami King are too both magical in nature, it makes perfect sense.

Additionally, the real Mario games are no stranger to cartoonish gags as well. Looking to the Mario & Luigi series, for example, in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Luigi is able to be squashed into the shape of a surfboard, while in Mario & Luigi: Dream Team Luigi swims through the air to reach the blimp. Additionally, in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Mario & Luigi: Bowser Inside Story and Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, Mario is able to be blown up like a balloon or filled to the brim with water.

In the Mario Kart series, characters can be flattened like paper by being crushed by a player with a Mega Mushroom or by obstacles such as Thwomps on the track, before the effect wears off soon afterwards.

In Mario Super Sluggers, a Koopa Troopa hides within a poster, identically to how a Goomba hid on a sign in Paper Mario.

Stickers from Paper Mario: Sticker Star are not natural to the Mushroom Kingdom. The Stickers come from the Sticker Star, and rain down over the Decalburg region once a year when the Sticker Comet arrives.

The magical Paint found in Paper Mario: Color Splash is consistently described as a life force throughout Paper Mario: Color Splash:

“You know... paint! That colourful stuff coursing through our bodies?”

“The paint you just absorbed is basically my blood, sweat and tears.”

“Paint adds beauty and life to the world.”

“Where exactly are we supposed to find this magical, life-giving paint you speak of?”

“I did basically sacrifice my lifeblood to get you out of that pickle back there...”

“They’re sucking the very life out of this beautiful island!”

Paint also appears as a sort of “life force” in various games that take place in the real world, such as Super Mario Sunshine, Luigi’s Mansion and Bowser’s Fury. When Things, real world objects, are wrung out in Paper Mario: Color Splash, they too produce paint, proving that paint is not a substance exclusive to the Paper World.

Conclusion

The Paper Mario games occur in both the Paper World and the real world, but we see them from the perspective of the Paper World. All of the events, locations and characters from the Paper Mario series exist in the real world, with the events, locations and characters from the real Mario series existing in the Paper World.

Thank you for reading!

#mario lore #paper mario #super mario #mario & luigi #mario timeline

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bengiyo · 1 year

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A Boss and a Babe Ep 7 Stray Thoughts

Last week, Cher and Gun began formally seeing each other, though Cher wanted to keep things private for now. Their dynamic is adorable, and everyone at work knows; folks are just keeping quiet to protect them. Unfortunately, life prevents them from committing to their eSports team, and they lost a big match. We left off at a very lovely moment of consent, which felt especially nice from New.

I like that Gun explicitly doesn't like skinship, so it at least explains why he doesn't instinctively reach out and touch Cher when he's unwell and instead clasps his arms behind his back.

Ah yes. This is a Thai BL. That hair better be dry or you will die if you go to sleep.

I'm okay with Sugar Daddy Gun. "You and your friends got beef? Let's grill it on the beach."

Oh, Gun, that was smooth. "Think of it as an inspection," as a way to make the guys feel more at ease is very kind. I like everyone here.

I also like the smirk Zo gave Cher.

I'm enjoying the Three apology scene, but I'm so distracted by the guy in red trunks in the background behind Jack who keeps disappearing and reappearing.

I'm definitely in love with Fluke Pusit. I really like the little bit of facial hair they're letting him keep.

See? Everyone sees what's happening with Cher and Gun, and are all like, "I'm not in that conversation."

Gun may be wealthy, but no one is immune to being dragged into the water for play time.

I think Thoop frustrates me because it's an experience I've been in Cher's position a lot lately in the last three years.

I like how genuinely Gun smiles around Cher and his friends.

I don't know about drinking out of actual glass on the beach. That seems hazardous.

Oh, Nivea product placement. How you never let us down. I'm not surprised that Gun is a nice drunk.

Yes! More Zo-Cher interactions! Zo is the emotional backbone holding this team together.

Once again! Everyone knows! Jack and Aoi told Cher not to broadcast that they went on a trip with the boss. The relationship is professionally inappropriate, but folks see how it's helping both of them, so they're keeping quiet! This is a show about how you can't control how others perceive you, and will just have to accept that people are going to misunderstand and dislike you. It's pretty clear!!

I love Aoi so much.

Book Kasidet is so fun to just observe. He's a special actor, and he and Force are to be reckoned with.

Oh, Gun. You really shouldn't appear on his stream and flirt. People are nosy and messy.

Gun is such a boyfriend. I love it.

Part of what I like about New's style sometimes is the lack of surprises. It felt like Thoop was an addict the entire time, and so it was revealed that he has been gambling. The conversation with Cher also goes exactly where you'd expect: Cher stresses that his sense of duty to Thoop is bigger than his feelings for Tian, and of course Thoop is going to force the money on Cher. Thoop is a gambler, and they don't like feeling like they owe people. He's also going to promise not to do it again, but we know he's going to get into huge trouble.

First Thoop says Cher only helps him out of a duty to his sister, and now he's mad that Cher is with someone else? Is he supposed to just mourn her forever even though she rejected him??

And now Thoop is going to do something especially dangerous.

Oh, I love Jack, too.

These two should not be having a cute conversation at work with those catty girls around.

Looks like they might get found out next week.

This has been a really enjoyable show for me, and I'm excited to talk about it alongside Step By Step next week. I've seen some confused gripes about this show, but it's been working well for me.

#a boss and a babe meta #a boss and a babe #thai bl #bl series #Ben watches

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batmanisagatewaydrug · 1 year

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Hello sex witch! Long time listener, first time caller, love how you do the teaching you do 😄

I was having a chat with my (college age) sibling, and I found she might have some... skewed views on the morality of being sexual. Think along the lines of purity culture, with a sprinkling of religious teaching, and a dash of how legality/morality must be intertwined. I know that sort of thing can lead to some unhealthy thinking, and honestly, I'm a little worried!

This is just background for context, I'm not asking you to solve or even unpack all that lol. But I really vibe with your stance on sex-neutrality, and it seems like a good concept to introduce her too. Like, a lil'nudge.

My personal sex-neutality mindset was gained over years of life experience and internet osmosis, which is really difficult to condense into a "quick-start guide," given I've never really had to educate on it before. I mean, I'll start with the definition, but she would probably prefer having sources other than just me talking for hours lol.

So. TL;DR. As an educator, do you happen to have any resources you could point me towards on sex-neuteality? Books, websites, podcasts, previous posts..? Things I could pass along?

Thank you so much sorry for the length

hey anon,

this is a tricky one because, as you said, sex neutrality is something that comes about from a lifetime of nurturing influences. adopting a totally new mindset is rarely something that can be adopted by one book or video essay, no matter how good they are. this is especially true in the face of religious influence, which can be very difficult to tactfully circumvent without making someone feel as if they're being criticized for being religious at all.

just having a figure in their life (that's you!) who's willing to start and engage with non-judgmental discussions about sexuality can be really helpful for people unlearning sexual stigma, so congrats to you for doing the hardest work just by being present!

having said that, you can't do everything and a recommended media list never hurts. there isn't a lot of work (that I'm familiar with, at least) that just sit you right down and say "hey. here's why sex neutrality good," so I'm going to drop work where that's sort of a powerful background radiation.

Emily Nagoski's book Come As Your Are is a pretty great guide for cis women learning to get comfortable with their bodies and sexualities and, more importantly, the possibilities of communication to find a relationship and sexual style that works for them! I really like the way Nagoski normalizes such a wide range of different needs and desires while assuring readers that there's no "wrong" approach; it's very comforting! if your sister is a podcast person, Nagoski also has an eight part podcast series of the same name where she debunks myths and answers more questions about sexuality.

actually hi as long as we're talking about podcasts Kate Lister, a historian who specializes in historical records of sex work, has a terribly fun podcast called Betwixt the Sheets that's nothing but sex friendly fun. it's got enough interesting historical meat to it that it's not even obvious sex neutral propaganda on the surface; some of my favorite episodes have Lister interviewing other academics about Queen Victoria's dietary habits and Hollywood portrayals of vodun.

if we want to talk about the 101 of getting comfortable with one's own genitalia and reproductive health, I must point to Dr. Jennifer Gunter's Vagina Bible. Dr. Gunter has made a whole career out of debunking medical misinformation, wellness scams, and Goop over on twitter. I think she should be allowed to attack Gwyneth Paltrow with a sword but I can't make that happen so I can at least promote her book.

if your sister starts feeling adventurous, Dr. Lindsey Doe's youtube channel Sexplanations has been a formative influence on me and has years worth of videos covering tons of topics in quick, unabashedly enthusiastic bursts of information. this video where Dr. Doe talks about her own instances of internalized sex negativity could be an excellent starting point, especially if you want to discuss it together like a lil youtube bookclub.

for a longer youtube dive, Khadija Mbowe's ruminations on sex positive feminism, its shortcomings, and which parts they see as worth preserving could also be a great point of conversation, especially for someone whose coming into the conversation not identifying with sex positivity. caveat that they do link to Christine Emba's book Rethinking Sex in the video description and I cannot in good conscience recommend or fuck with that at all, sorry.

Angela Chen's book Ace, about asexuality, is genuinely so so wonderful, and I think required reading for anyone trying to make sense of any kind of sexuality.

Meg-John Barker's book Rewriting the Rules is a maybe a more expansive version of Nagoski's book, less focused on sex and much more interested in expanding ideas of what relationships can look like and encouraging personal expression within them. honestly I think that's a really important part of embracing sex negativity - more compassion and less judgment for yourself can lead to more compassion and less judgment for others, right? right, hopefully.

Jaclyn Friedman's book Unscrewed is a delight, and does something similar to Mbowe's video linked above by highlighting ways in which commercialized #girlboss "sex positivty" is useless and then providing instances of real people doing actual, tangibly useful and positive work. Friedman highlights everything from queer youth shelters to orgs run by and for trans sex workers of color to reproductive justice organizations; it's a great dip into a lot of different radical causes without (hopefully) being too overwhelming.

I hope this serves as a good starting place for a lot of positive conversations with your sibling! good luck, friend xoxo

#sex edventures 2023

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