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loriache · 18 days

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Butch up that Elf: my Marcille manifesto

TBQH, this came into being because the Falin "dragoness" fanart rewired my brain completely. It's sillytimes, but we're going to make a serious argument: trying out being a little butch would Fix Her.

1. Marcille Gender Discomfort

Now, Marcille LOVES feminity. She loves playing dressup, she loves elaborate gowns, she spends her free time going to the spa - the absolute last thing I want is to deny that. However, there's also a definite vibe that this isn't just a preference. Specifically, the way that she pushes Falin towards femininity suggests that she isn't comfortable with gender nonconformity in the people around her.

If this was something she was 100% confident about ("I'm doing this for myself and nobody else!") surely what other people do wouldn't be a big deal? Of course, you can read this as a little bit of solipsism; "what works for me must work for you too! I think this is so cute and would suit you - wouldn't you agree?"

But for the sake of this argument, all I'm trying to suggest is that gender nonconformity (and probably sexual nonconformity... well, frankly, any kind of sexuality at all) is unlikely to be something that's on Marcille's "radar". She hasn't tried out other ways of presenting and decided she doesn't like them. I do think she'd be a very flamboyant butch - "ouji lolita" vibes, you know? It's a whole new set of wardrobe options she could play dress-up in, even.

After the story ends, she starts dressing like her mother in all black, which makes sense - her mother was also a court magician, so she's probably emulating her in order to project confidence and authority. But I can't say I think she should stick with this. Break away and be your own person, Marcille! Try a fancy waistcoat and frilled jacket!

2. Haircut

This is another potential hard sell, I'm sure. The people she loves doing her hair is a cute symbol of their care for her, and her hair is key to her magic - so there's plenty of reason for her to keep it long. But like... think practically. Having someone do your hair every morning, for the whole of her long life, while it gets messier over the day (because she can't remember to keep it neat)... That's got to be such a pain. My hair gets messy when I put a hoodie on. And I have short hair.

It would require her to go through a change of mind, and probably a little more growth in how secure she feels in her relationships, but - the hairdo's a symbol. The more important thing is the relationships themselves. Eventually I think there might be something liberating about cutting it off, even if she might eventually decide to grow it out again.

The lion, her trauma, took something away from her which was really important to her. The people around her are able to make that easier, and make up for it, and soften that loss, but... Mithrun isn't the person he was before, you know? He's a new person. The relationship he has with his brother is new, and I don't know if it's one that the person he was before could have had. If Falin hadn't died, they wouldn't have gone on that wonderful adventure! They wouldn't have met Senshi or saved Izutsumi and Laios and Marcille wouldn't have gotten so close. So I think it's totally congruent with the themes of the story that the burning away of this part of Marcille's self might eventually create the potential for new growth in a new direction, not clinging onto the parts that are gone.

This also isn't totally out of the norm for elven mages - both Otta and Flamela have short hair. Otta is canonically butch, and potentially Flamela reads that way to elves too, but the point is it clearly is possible to be an accomplished mage without long hair.

3. Desiring (to be) a chivalrous prince

Marcille's succubus is clearly General Halleus from her favourite book series, the Daltian Clan. The fact that this is her ideal man.... it certainly plays into readings of her as Not Straight. But at least, this conveys the way her conception of sex and romance is strongly idealised, dissociated from the bodily and from physical desire.

There are many ways to interpret that, including thinking about what types of desire this fixation is obstructing because she is not comfortable with it, but I am going to focus here on what this desire does signify. She likes the trappings of courtly romance, and is clearly comfortable putting herself in the role of the princess, being taken away on a white horse by a noble (but tormented; eyepatch has "death" on it lmao) prince. (Though I think he's actually the token male lead who isn't royalty; he's a General. There's always one in Romfan, lmao. IYKYK)

A kiss on the hand - this is so chaste, I think it's clear it's more about desire to play a role in a dynamic than it is about desire in a physical sense. There is undoubtedly a big part of Marcille that wants to be a beloved and chased-after princess, but I think it isn't at all impossible that she'd also enjoy being the powerful, cool, and chivalrous "prince" to someone (a pretty girl, perhaps) who needs her protection.

This is a little silly, because it's clearly just aping the shoujo artstyle that articulates basically the same idea as her succubus, that Marcille is attached to highly abstracted and idealised romantic (and Romantic) tropes and ideas. But the imaginary "successful" Marcille from chapter 4 looks quite similar to her succubus. (Another thing I noticed is that in the fantasy she has sharp ears... like full elves have. Despite what she says, I think the cultural messaging that this trait is "attractive" and hers are inferior got to her at least a bit. 😥)

Also, the way that she treats Falin, scolding her indulgently, trying to look after her and wanting to be looked up to and respected by her... that aligns more with the "masculine" role in the trope that her succubus is referencing. "What are we going to do with you...?" I can imagine her saying this to Falin, word for word. Whereas, if anyone real started talking down to her, even affectionately, I don't think she'd like it, given the negative way she reacts when people don't respect her or her skills. Especially after canon, given the way the Winged Lion was treating her.

Her attitude to Falin is partially down to her reluctance to acknowledge Falin as an adult, who is independent and can grow beyond her and leave her behind. But I think even as they move on from that unhealthy dynamic, Marcille is still going to get pleasure from feeling capable, reliable, able to look after and protect Falin. She'd like to pull the chair out for her in a restaurant on a date, you know?

4. Conclusion

Even after the growth she goes through during the story, there are parts of Marcille's character that are very much obstructed. Romance, sexuality, and gender, feel like one of those to me. The way that her discomfort with the messy origins of food betrayed a deeper, more significant discomfort with the cycles of life and death.

Much in the same way, I'd argue that the simplified, idealistic, and safely fantastical way that she views romance, as well as her very "safe" gender presentation and tendency to push it onto others as well, suggest an underlying discomfort in her own gender and sexuality. The character growth she goes through leaves her in a place where it may be possible to safely re-evaluate her relationship with Falin, as well as her choice of clothing and hairstyle, both things that go through a change at the end of the manga. Neither, I think, reach a sustainable stopping point that we see - there will be a point when it's more servants doing her hair than friends, just out of practicality, because they're all going to be so, so busy. The black clothing to copy her mum is cute, but once she gets some more self-confidence in her own skills as a court magician, I think she'll move on from it. And... who knows what direction her relationship with Falin will develop, over the years? I'm rooting for them, anyway.

In all those cases, I think moving outside of the things she's done before, into something really different from the things that are "safe" and expected, will be the most rewarding path for her. Like in the dungeon, things that she would initially reject were actually able to sustain her and broaden her tastes. She loves dressing up, looking after people, and "princely romance". So I say: Butch Marcille! It'll be good for her!!

#og post #marcille donato #falin x marcille #farcille #dungeon meshi #dungeon meshi meta #dungeon meshi manga spoilers #dunmeshi

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makapatag · 1 month

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realities, maximalism,and the need for big book™️

some gubat banwa design thoughts vomit: since the beginning of its development i've kind of been enraptured with trying to really go for "fiction-first" storytelling because PbtA games really are peak roleplaying for me, but as i wrote and realized that a lot of "fiction first" doesn't work without a proper sort of fictional foundation that everyone agrees on. this is good: this is why there are grounding principles, genre pillars, and other such things in many PbtA games--to guide that.

broken worlds is one of my favs bc of sheer vibes

Gubat Banwa didn't have much in that sense: sure, I use wuxia and xianxia as kind of guideposts, but they're not foundational, they're not pillars of the kind of fiction Gubat Banwa wants to raise up. there wasn't a lot in the sense of genre emulation or in the sense of grounding principles because so much of Gubat Banwa is built on stuff most TTRPG players haven't heard about. hell, it's stuff squirreled away in still being researched academic and anthropological circles, and thanks to the violence of colonialism, even fellow filipinos and seasians don't know about them

this is what brought me back to my ancient hyperfixations, the worlds of Exalted, Glorantha, Artesia, Fading Suns... all of them have these huge tomes of books that existed to put down this vast sprawling fantasy world, right? on top of that are the D&D campaign settings, the Dark Suns and the Eberrons. they were preoccupied in putting down setting, giving ways for people to interact with the world, and making the world alive as much as possible.

one of my main problems with gubat banwa was trying to convey this world that i've seen, glimpsed, dreamed of. this martial fantasy world of rajas and lakans, sailendras and tuns, satariyas and senapatis and panglimas and laksamanas and pandai... its a world that didn't really exist yet, and most references are steeped in either nationalism or lack of resources (slowly changing, now)

i didn't want to fall back into the whole gazeteer tourist kind of shit when it came to writing GB, but it necessitated that the primary guidelines of Gubat Banwa were set down. my approach to it was trying to instill every aspect of the text, from the systems to the fluff text to the way i wrote to the way things were phrased, with the essence of this world i'm trying to put forward. while i wrote GB mainly for me and fellow SEAsian people, economically my main market were those in the first world countries that could afford to buy the book. grokking the book was always going to be severely difficult for someone that didn't have similar cultures, or are uninterested in the complexities of human culture. thus why GB had to be a big book.

in contemporary indie ttrpg spaces (where I mostly float in, though i must admit i pay more attention to SEAsia spaces than the usual US spaces) the common opinion is that big books like Exalted 3e are old hat, or are somewhat inferior to games that can cram their text into short books. i used to be part of that camp--in capitalism, i never have enough time, after all. however, the books that do go big, that have no choice to go big, like Lancer RPG, Runequest, Mage, Exalted are usually the ones that have something really big it needs to tell you, and they might be able to perform the same amount of text-efficient bursting at the seams flavor writing but its still not enough.

thats what happened to GB, which I wanted to be, essentially, a PbtA+4e kind of experience, mechanically speaking. i very soon abandoned those titles when i delved deeper into research, incorporated actual 15th century divination tools in the mechanics, injected everything with Martial Arts flavor as we found our niche

all of this preamble to say that no matter how light i wanted to go with the game, i couldnt go too light or else people won't get it, or i might end up writing 1000 page long tome books explaining every detail of the setting so people get it right. this is why i went heavy on the vibes: its a ttrpg after all. its never gonna be finished.

i couldnt go too light because Gubat Banwa inherently exists on a different reality. think: to many 3 meals a day is the norm and the reality. you have to eat 3 meals a day to function properly. but this might just be a cultural norm of the majority culture, eventually co opted by capitalism to make it so that it can keep selling you things that are "breakfast food" or "dinner food" and whatnot. so its reality to some, while its not reality to others. of course, a lot of this reality-talk pertains mostly to social--there is often a singular shared physical reality we can usually experience*

Gubat Banwa has a different fabric of reality. it inherently has a different flow of things. water doesn't go down because of gravity, but because of the gods that make it move, for example. bad things happen to you because you weren't pious or you didn't do your rituals enough and now your whole community has to suffer. atoms aren't a thing in gb, thermodynamics isn't a real thing. the Laws of Gubat Banwa aren't these physical empirical things but these karmic consequent things

much of the fiction-first movement has a sort of "follow your common sense" mood to it. common sense (something also debatable among philosophers but i dont want to get into that) is mostly however tied to our physical and social realities. but GB is a fantasy world that inherently doesn't center those realities, it centers realities found in myth epics and folk tales and the margins of colonized "civilization", where lightnings can be summoned by oils and you will always get lost in the woods because you don't belong there.

so Gubat Banwa does almost triple duty: it must establish the world, it must establish the intended fiction that arises from that world, and then it must grant ways to enforce that fiction to retain immersion--these three are important to GB's game design because I believe that that game--if it is to not be a settler tourist bonanza--must force the player to contend with it and play with it within its own terms and its own rules. for SEAsians, there's not a lot of friction: we lived these terms and rules forever. don't whistle at night on a thursday, don't eat meat on Good Friday, clap your hands thrice after lighting an incense stick, don't make loud noise in the forests. we're born into that [social] reality

this is why fantasy is so important to me, it allows us to imagine a different reality. the reality (most of us) know right now (i say most of us because the reality in the provinces, the mountains, they're kinda different) is inherently informed by capitalist structures. many people that are angry at capitalist structures cannot fathom a world outside capitalist structures, there are even some leftists and communists that approach leftism and revolution through capitalism, which is inherently destructive (its what leads to reactionaries and liberalism after all). fantasy requires that you imagine something outside of right now. in essence read Ursula K Le Guin

i tweeted out recently that you could pretty easily play 15-16th century Luzon or Visayas with an OSR mechanic setting and William Henry Scott's BARANGAY: SIXTEENTH CENTURY PHILIPPINE CULTURE AND SOCIETY, and I think that's purely because barebones OSR mechanics stuff fits well with the raiding and adventuring that many did in 15-16th century Luzon/Visayas, but a lot of the mechanics wont be comign from OSR, but from Barangay, where you learn about the complicated marriage customs, the debt mechanics, the social classes and stratum...

so thats why GB needs to be a (relatively) big book, and why I can contend that some books need to be big as well--even if their mechanics are relatively easy and dont need more than that, the book, the game, might be trying to relay something even more, might be trying to convey something even more than that. artesia, for example, has its advancements inherently tied to its Tarot Cards, enforcing that the Arcana guides your destiny. runquest has its runes magic, mythras (which is kinda generic) has pretty specific kinds of magic systems that immediately inform the setting. this is why everything is informed by something (this is a common Buddhist principle, dependent arising). even the most generic D&D OSR game will have the trappings of the culture and norms of the one that wrote and worked on it. its written from their reality which might not necessarily be the one others experience. that's what lived experience is, after all

*live in the provinces for a while and you'll doubt this too!

#gubat banwa #ttrpg #filipino #fantasy #writing #rpg #gamedev #dnd

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chessasubbiondo · 6 months

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Chessa Subbiondo for Office Magazine NYC

Words by Sahir Ahmed

Photos by Lulu Syracuse

Interview Questions Below

What is it like being in front of another photographer’s lens?

I really do not enjoy having my photo taken, which I find is kind of an obviously common theme with photographers. I feel a lot more comfortable having someone I know take my photo. It is a very weird thing being a girl in 2023 while also trying to "put out" art. I really battle with cohesion between the two and I think that’s why my instinct is to refrain from showcasing myself. I’m still very unsure of myself, I am much more sure of my work.

Do you emulate the kind of vibe you aim to capture in your own photographs or meet in the middle? Where’d you shoot this?

I think I definitely try and bring as much of me into a photo taken of me as possible, but it is also different because you have to respect the person who’s taking it as well. I’m not good at letting go of control and that’s what it feels like to have my photo taken. No photo taken of me will ever have the same “vibe” as my own work, but that’s cool, it shouldn’t. We shot this around Los Angeles, basically all the area’s we grew up in.

How do you aim to dress when having your photo taken? Do you style your subjects the same?

The way I dress historically changes all the time but I think I’m getting the hang of narrowing it down. I always look back at things I wore a few months ago and question why I thought that was a good choice. I think the best way to beat this is to try and emulate as much simplicity as possible in a general sense, nothing too trendy etc. This of course depends on the occasion, depends on the photo, etc. I don’t know, I dress myself a lot differently than the people I take photos of. I want my subjects to appear family brand ecom esc. “Boring” clothes, minimal patterns, sportswear, etc. When I am given the freedom to dress the people I shoot I don’t want the clothes to be the focus ever.

What subjects are you drawn to shooting? Do they mirror similarities with yourself?

Not at all, I don’t think I’m moldable enough and typically the people I am drawn to shoot are. If I could go back in time I would have no tattoos and would grow my hair long with no stylized cut what so ever, stuff like that. I like when someone looks like they could be from anywhere, there’s no time or location stamp on them.

Do you feel like your photos emulate the same energy that you do?

I don’t think so but it depends on the day. The photos I take look intentionally set up and often the subjects are posed pretty purposefully. It depends on the person I’m shooting, everyone kind of has their go to face or pose, it’s interesting to watch. I always love when I do catch something natural though, everyone looks they’re best when they’re not aware of being perceived. I feel very awkward in front of the camera and I tend to instinctively hide my face or tilt myself in the directions I’ve practiced in the mirror since I was younger that I think “look best”. Whenever someone shows me a photo myself I didn’t know was being taken I always like it a little more.

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littledigits · 13 days

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Hello..

Not sure if this is going to makes sense..... but

How does one approach studying Timing and Spacing in animation ?

Like, how would you go about taking notes/

Or observing and studying Spacing and Timing of an animated scene mindfully, so you could apply it to your own work.

Do people just watch an scene they like on something like youtube, and go frame by frame, noting down how many frames have past between each keyframe as well as the spacing by thumbnailing them down ?

I'm honestly kinda overwhelmed, and frustrated cause I have a hard time nailing down the kind of timing I want (specificlly getting that 'snap' kinda feel)...

I don't like how 'floaty' or 'smooth(?)' things tend to turn out when i try to animate ;-;

IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE. My friend I give you big support vibes cuz I had such a hard time understanding timing and spacing. It comes easier for some but not others and thats ok. I had to learn how to be boring with it before I got comfortable enough to experiment and I can still easily get stuck in my box. I would say that reference is a HUGE PART of making animation work. Over time you can build up your mental library and you may not need as much and just go off of your own thought process but thats something you build up to. And most people when they start will find things either can be jittery or too even, and thats just part of training your eye! Snappy animation can be tough too ! but thats why learning from it is GREAT. Gosh theres so much you can learn from frame by framing things - especially classic hand drawn stuff. So i 100% would recommend finding some ref of the style you want to emulate and just try it out and 100% -figure out how many frames in between , seeing just how much they manipulate the pose, anything really! Its not about getting it all right, its just about breaking it down and learning a few things at a time and going 'OH maybe ill try that out next time' I think you going ' hey this feels too floaty and isint the vibe' is you exactly describing what the problem is. Your in-betweens are probably very evenly spaced out- but thats a really common problem when people first start. But the solution is just as you said - REF. And in animation that is more of a part of the job then anything honestly, same with storyboard. and learning a lot from eachother. I FEEL YOU THOUGH. I was there too, and it took me longer then others to be able to get what I want. But you're on the right track , just dive in to doing that good good frame by frame and then trying it out yourself ! here are some links that you may find useful as well ! https://gingercatsneeze.tumblr.com/post/145037677357/1-ah-fai-was-a-chief-animator-for

HOPE THAT HELPS ! <3

#IT TOOK ME AWHILE TO EVEN -LIKE- ANIMATION BUT NOW I LOVE TALKING ABOUT IT

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blaithnne · 7 months

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Early concept sketches of Midnight Giant Lauren! You can see me figuring out the style, colours, as well as Lauren’s outfits, plus a little Hilda that I wanted to include but gave up on cause I couldn’t get her to look right.

Johanna switches outfits about 3 times in this comic, so I wanted Lauren to do the same. Also, since Johanna’s deerfox outfit in the flashback is based off one of her looks in mountain king, I wanted Lauren’s to as well! So one of these outfits will be repurposed for teenaged Show!Lauren in the deerfox later down the line, which I think is fitting because she’d be around the same age in the flashback as Comic!Lauren is here

I didn’t talk much about my design process in the original post, so I’ll make a couple notes on that under the cut!

Here’s the final product for reference-

Though Johanna changes outfits about 3 times in this comic, one of these outfit changes is just the same outfit but with trousers instead of a skirt. So I wanted one of Lauren’s outfit changes to be more subtle, keeping most of the same items of clothing but only changing the jumper!

In terms of her outfits, I tried to add a little bit of a late 2000s - early 2010s vibe, which I think makes her fit in a lot more

Whilst this style still features quite noodley characters, it allowed me to bulk up Lauren much more than the troll did, so I took advantage of that and started adding in juuuust a little muscle! But she’s still kind of twig looking, so I brought back the same trick I used in the troll and gave her a big ol’ pile of logs and a heavy axe to weild in one of the sketches just to show that she’s a strong girl. I swear I tried to think of something other than an axe but it’s surprisingly hard to think of heavy objects that a character would just be. Carrying around lol

Looking back at this design a few months later, the biggest thing I’d change is I’d make her look a bit younger. It’s a little hard to design a unique character when you only have two points of reference lol, one of which is an adult and the other of which is a child, so I think I made her look a bit too much like an adult, oh well!

One thing I kept though to help her look younger is her freckles, same as Hilda! I love freckles but I swear I never use them in character designs. This design feature disappears from Hilda in the later comics, but I wanna keep them for Lauren for as long as I can tbh…

I mentioned before that I thought it would make sense for Lauren to go through a couple different hairstyles before reaching her final one in these early comics - the designs in the show are based off the ones in stone forest, which was the most recent comic to be released at the time the show came out. The style and characters designs had changed a lot from the early comics, and one of my favourite things about reading through the series is seeing how the designs changed and progressed before reaching those “final” versions, so I’m kinda reverse engineering Lauren’s design process to get that effect here, and I think one way that’d be shown is through her hair. Here her style is getting closer to the final version, her fringe has been lifted so it no longer covers her eye, and she’s got more of a curl! But her strands fall a little differently, so we’re not quite there yet…

I struggled a LOT with colouring this one, and that’s because I got the colour count wrong! One of the most overlooked ways to emulate a style is to count how many different colours appear per character - Hilda The Series generally has 6, 2 for hair and skin, and 4 for outfits, though the number can change. I miscounted here and thought the comics had 4 outfit colours like the show, but they actually only have 3. Once I realised that it made things much easier, though I still sent a little over it with some varying shades of green in her shoes. These kinds of rules generally aren’t firm, and might not even be one’s the original artist is even aware of, but when you’re trying to emulate someone’s work these little things can make all the difference

Show!Lauren probably doesn’t play guitar, I’ve mentioned before that I think she’s decent at piano and I stand by that, but I thought it was fitting for Comic!Lauren lol

That’s everything I can think of right now!

#hilda #hilda the series #art #my art #netflix hilda #hilda netflix #digital art #fanart #doodle #drawing #Hilda lauren #Lauren hilda #hildafolke #Hilda comics #character design #hilda oc #oc #my oc #sketch

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baskeigh-ball · 1 year

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Hey!! I just wanna say I love ur Raph au so much!! What was ur design process for his outfit? Like with inspo or references, it's so beautifully drawn!!

oof ok i am gonna do my best not to start ranting here lol

I knew from the beginning what kinda vibe i wanted for his outfit, and knew I'd need to include some kind of red in the color scheme. A huge inspiration came from another AU, actually! Mutant Ninja Midlife Crisis gave their Future!Leo a really cool Battle Nexus outfit that I wanted to kinda emulate but not straight up copy (I'm still worried it's too similar ngl). The main element I liked was the way they described the flowiness and design details, and if you look it up on tumblr there's a bunch of interpretations that people have drawn him in

these were my first two designs where I was just playing with colors and specific elements. I basically took the color scheme/inner shirt of the first, the arm wrappings/vibe of the second's red highlights, and mashed the two together until I got the final product!

And of course the cloud details came later, which were inspired by the Chinese/Japanese (is it both? i'm not sure) style of drawing clouds but simplified a bit.

Another inspiration came from looking up traditional samurai uniforms (ones without their armor), but that had minimal influence (I used that inspiration way more for the rest of the Hamatos when I designed their own Raph-inspired fits)

k i could go on but ive got a presentation project to work on so uhhh. bye *hops into the void*

#hope this was enough of an explanation!#i could've gone on much longer but this is the gist of it #besides it would probably become a confusing tangent if i kept going lol #rottmnt #mutant manhunt au #asks open

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machine-saint · 9 days

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Hmm, okay, I'm really hoping this isn't too personal, but my sincere apologies if it is -- feel free to not answer.

So I've seen a couple of people with a Gender Thing™ covering both robots/androids and dolls, you included. Sometimes, even when the focus seems more (or solely) on dolls, the aspects of the doll still trend more… Robot maid? With the robot bit blurred a bit. You could maybe swap in a magically animated situation? Obviously not all the situations, but it's something I noticed.

So I wanted to ask a source, so to speak. How does the doll vibe contrast with the robot? Is it a simple thing of dolls having a "daintier" connotation? A more domestic on nonthreatening one? Maybe the way that dolls are sort of viewed as "less animate" then a robot ("Are robots people" basically being a whole genre in sci-fi).

I was just curious, and, knowing very little about the topic, thought I would ask. I know you can't speak for everyone, but any perspective would be interesting. Thanks!

nah this kind of ask is perfectly fine!

anyway, yeah, it's definitely at least partly the domestic/femme connotations of the doll. closer tied in with the maid angle than robots are.

there's also the fact that dolls are Weird Little Creatures and you can play off that with, e.g., "nobody knows where the tea a doll drinks ends up". same with the fact that doll magic can work however The Bit needs it to work, whereas with robots i have to think about industrial design, neural network storage, etc etc etc. so i can get away from the overthinking about that.

and it's interesting to imagine, like, the history of dolls. in a world where you can construct a magical sentience and it doesn't require modern processors to emulate, what would that be like? not to mention that the recent uptake of "robot ~= oppressed minority" stuff it feels less fraught to write "society where many dolls are independent but many are also bound to serve and they're both happy" that way

#dollcore #robotcore

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dirtyoldmanhole · 5 months

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YRMR cover progress for the curious!

before drawing, there were a few things i knew that the cover had to have/show:

critically, had to have vibes of an enemies-to-lovers dynamic in the sense of ... the power tilt? even though that's not "technically" the true nature of their dynamic. gunter's not a nice guy in this fic, even aside from the possession, and i also didn't want anybody to run into this unsuspecting the darker parts to the fic. him more looming/threatening than you'd expect in base game, etc.

wanted to emulate kozaki's style through the whole cover in line qualitty, coloring, and composition. thankfully he gives a few tips over on his twitter. it's both a neat little nod at the source material, and also as a style experiment.

a big theme in this fic is gunter being made of so many masks/shells (there's a perfect blue cover, see below, that specifically made me think this composition could work.)

learning that kozaki hews pretty close to grids + the golden ratio was another big lightbulb moment, here's a drawing yoinked from his twitter where he shows it himself.

after scraping/studying from kozaki's twitter, i made one or two thumbnail doodles below. you can see the solid one had a golden ratio + general line dynamic check squiggled to the side. there's room for the title, the focus is on corrin, it'll work both in a horizontal and vertical crop, looking good so far.

you can see how pretty tightly to the thumbnail i kept, other than moving the vertical text to the top since i didn't have as much room there. i'm a little worried about the different line quality between how big the face is vs corrin but we'll see.

something i also realized i like about the composition is corrin "could" look like she's attacking the viewer, but she also looks like she could be guarding him with her back to him, which.... heh. comes up in some interesting ways in the last third of the fic (possession wise).

bunch of cleaning up.

as I suspected since this is 11x17in (much bigger than what i normally draw) i had to grab a different brush for gunter since thin lines were not going to work as they did for corrin. i think kozaki's real genius is how he treats texture with his linework; where he does thin lines, where he puts the thick ones, etc.

corrin's coming along great but there's a spirit to the first face on the left i think i'm missing now, so i'll probably re-insert that. (also decided to at least draw in his face there even though the masks/slices will distort that). i think what also helps is gunter's face is very low contrast and needs to remain low contrast, to help corrin pop out in front.

then i started thinking about typography. a lot of the fonts i had were either way too masculine/bland/modern, or way too feminine/curvy. this title needs a hint of masculinity to nod at FE's general action-adventure RPG roots, but it's also very distinctly the kind of erotica that doesn't easily lend itself to a genre. it's tender horror, it's daddy kink, it's vicious romance, it's ... a lot of things.

here's another thing: when thinking about title typography, another consideration is genre. briefly i considered something like lovecraftian covers; my doujin circle and i had been sharing pictures of old pulp covers. i also noticed a lot of my favorite JP erotic horror doujin have very spiky titles. this title also needs to be scrunched up in a tight space so it's not like we got a sprawl of acreage here either.

what doesn't help is enemies to lovers doesn't really have a visual language in mainstream media.

it's a staple of Ao3 (written) genres, but the closest you'd get otherwise would be romantic horror (kind of says a lot about who makes what huh?). for example, the shape of water (movie) isn't a 1:1, but it's pretty damn close -- unfortunately that poster dodged the question by using an art deco-inspired font typeface that was more about the setting than the genre.

and then i had an epiphany. maybe i was approaching this from the wrong direction: it's the knight/liege romance that's the heartbeat to YRMR.

think more old dragonlance novels. old medieval/fantasy pulp novels; plenty of kinky sex and ass in there, and still close enough to FE. remember everyone and their mamma having a bi ass crush for bad boy raistlin? that's the vibe i want.

this kind of glorious deranged shit. you're not gonna be surprised at possessed grandpa whip kink if you read these on the regular.

after ~*arcane designer magic*~ (I do this for a living) bolton and magiona display were the two fonts that were gonna work just fine together.

god that looks so much better. this looks believable now.

the thin/thick line weight contrast in magiona display is going to accentuate the lineart in a way that might be tricky with other fonts that work better on painted covers. bolton's "squished" vertically enough it doesn't compete with the other one, and makes for a good secondary/tertiary font.

few other things happened.

i shrunk gunter's face because not being able to see his jawline (sex appeal u see) was bothering me from a composition standpoint. it's the same reason frank frazetta didn't censor his glorious asses.

(said seriously, by the way. so many people don't give their lust in art enough credit.)

i also needed more room for the title to show, and the line quality/scale difference between his face was also bugging me. does this mess up the golden ratio composition? sure, temporarily, but his armor's weirdly flexible that we can adapt it pretty easily.

it's about this time i'm also looking through my hydrus network stash of favorite covers for what color palette and contrast to use. kozaki tends to skew purple/cooler hues for nohr characters, and that'd go well with these two.

purple/green hues that play well with light purple and the yellow from those old covers i love so much, low contrast midground, and something that'd contrast well with text above. dark/black background for the gothic vibes, and the text will probably need to be white or some sort of light-warm hue for that "pop".

doing color tests is more of a leap of faith and intuition than an exact science, but damn it is it satisfying when you nail it in one go and go 'holy shit i want to read this. :D

(green/gold for the hint of anankos' mask, also matching the yato and her warmer skin tone. purple flames for him, but the high contrast armor to separate her from his larger shapes. we've got the dragonstone and the yato as flexibility for lighting and emphasizing contrast with her. )

i kind of like how i accidentally made the mask shards reflect(?) a bit of his own face. hell yeah throw it in. this is something that's more likely to work than not. this is something that has that mix of id and horror i've been going after.

here's another version with references to the side and the golden ratio laid on again.

honestly a lot of it at this step is going 'dude you know what would be SO DOPE.... PURPLE FIRE...' 'dude..... fuck yes....' 'what about some sick ass sword effects?' 'YEAH....' and saving a bunch of backups in case of the idea didn't work out.

(am i going so much harder on a literal gilf porn fanfic cover than i need to? hell yeah. gunterfuckers deserve better. :D )

anyway here is when i start questioning everything, so i'll take a break from the colors to tighten up the lineart. now that the composition's settling in much tighter, i'm also thinking about how the two shapes interact with each other and if there's any potential issues with tangent points (where two lines intersect each other in a way that makes an optical illusion.)

that said i love how his jawline "points" at her face, that kind of line you want.

grinding away on corrin's lineart. also double checking that the shapes/colors/forms for her "make sense" both standalone and with the composition too. what's nice is she's at the point where i can just turn off my brain and polish up.

naturally couldn't resist poking at it more and this is when the rest of it clicked after figuring out which bit was anankos' mask, which bit was possessed!gunter vs himself (polished up the armor a bit too. at this point i'm pretty confident that it'll stay "set"; the biggest thing i'm likely to change is the blue silohuette to the dragonstone side for corrin.

here's the last true screenshot before cleaning up the last 2% of the lines. added the pulp cover texture around the border, switched the colors of the text so the cream would stand out more, cleaned up gunter's face and also increased the darkness of corrin's body so it'd contrast more with him behind.

thanks for reading. :D

#own art

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ctl-yuejie · 4 months

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Ship game: Shiro and Kenji!

hello <3 this is an easy but delightful one!

with both men being well in their 40s when we first meet them they are a rarity in bl. and i cannot put in words (sorry, this is kind of the purpose of the ask game that i am failing here) how well they make use of that.

there is so much to admire and love about them, but probably the biggest thing I am taking away from watching them is how to build a relationship and work for it but don't have it feel like work. an intentional but natural process of trying to not only make someone else's life brighter, but also to consider what you want your life with another person to look like. they hurt each other many times, they both have their flaws. but watching them you never get the feeling that any of it could end their relationship. because both of them are willing and determined to build a life together. and over the span of two season we really see the astounding changes they both go through while also feeling true to themselves.

I like this visualization of what queer love and community can look like. how to consider someone else's needs but not lose yourself in the process. how to build a home when there is less of a societal template of what that should look like.

probably the other thing i like is the defying of gender roles? kenji being flamboyant and shiro earning more money and being straight-passing as a premise could've run the risk of them emulating traditional gender roles but instead we see an effort on both their ends to use their strongpoints to make their daily life work and enjoy their own tasks. especially how this dynamic gets juxtaposed with shiro's ex in season 2 really made me appreciate the candid writing of their dynamic.

last but not least, since they're not just in their late 40s but also have been together for quite some time (at least longer then most bl couples) the levity of their comedy when they just vibe in the same space, communicate silently and how they can just anticipate what the other is going to do never fails to crack me up. they just make each other happy ;A;

thank you so much for the ask

send me a ship and i'll share my thoughts about it

#ask game #thank you!#i love talking about them!

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fly-sky-high-arts · 2 months

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Any tips on how to emulate isat's art style?

Hi!

I am but a humble mimic, I sense there are folks who can tell you more accurate details BUT I also love explaining steps I make while making my own art so I'll tell you how I improvised~!

Firstly, I found the wiki (no, not the Fandom one) for all the references. I tried to study how the characters work and I used a lot of just color picking to get the grayscale hues accurate

The lineart is obviously much thinner than what I went for and it seems to use a crispier brush for it to resemble pixel-esque kind of vibe but I wouldn't know which brush it is, I assume it's a custom/adjusted brush!

What I used was "Real G-Pen™" in Clip Studio Paint!

What's fun about this brush (and superior to G-pen brush) is the fun little texture it has that also resembles some of the crispiness but I think the ISAT one has a much finer texture, to give it the aforementioned pixel like vibe.

The thick line I used was just my preference but if you use Real G-Pen with smaller scale and basically only mild pen pressure, you get similar results to the OG style:

(some of the Sif's images has their lineart thicker in some places to give just a smidge of lineweight feel, enough to work with the depth but I demonstrated here how it looks with basically no pressure applied, it has a bit of that crisp and you can probably get a better one if your canvas was bigger than mine here (just under 1200px lol))

I then color picked from the original images to get the flat colors in!

What I did for shadows is just use the layer set on multiply above all the flat color layers, color pick from the white base gray (that Sif mostly has haha!) and use the that shadow for just about anything. I think I also played around with Overlay in the bigfrin image? you can play with layer settings too and see how it works! You will notice that depending on the mood of the scene in the game and the emotions of the characters take priority over how all of this works.

This isn't 100% as it is in the official artwork but I rolled with it most of the time!

You can throw some adjustments and extras here and there if you want it to resemble the dynamic party portraits even more (the extra line strokes, adding a bit of weight to the line, the white line strokes on clothes and hair...)

You essentially end up with something like this!

For the white outline, you can either copy the base color layer (if it covers the whole form) or the lineart layer but move it under the base color and use the border option:

Regular portraits don't seem to have that outline but I like it a lot personally, it makes the image pop XD

That's basically it! I love how simple and effective it is!

How you stylize the character and how you draw them is all up to you!

Many credits to insertdisc5 since I basically just tried to mimic their style with some liberty sdhjdfg

#my art #isat #siffrin #ask #art process #kinda

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hypersonic04 · 1 year

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Part Three:

Part three, enjoy! Also, two things - I listened to False God by Taylor Swift on repeat as I wrote this, and I feel like things are moving fast between the two of them but I really struggle to write stuff where they aren't flirty so I'm sorry for the sudden progression.

Word count: 2,547

"We're having a get-together kind of thing tonight, by the way. Feel free to come," Adam mentions as we head out of the studio. Yet again, we've stayed far too late, editing and cutting bits of recordings together and changing lyrics. This has become a routine, of sorts, over the past three weeks.

"I might take you up on that offer, if you don't mind." I smile.

"It's just a thing for the label, drinks and stuff. I'll send you the details and everything."

We say our goodbyes, heading home in my now-fixed car, thank God. I don't think I could have coped with any more awkward car journeys with Ross.

Unsurprisingly, he's remained very involved over the past few weeks. It's taken every ounce of willpower in me to not walk out most days. If it's not a riff I've suggested, it's the way I've crossed out a line on a piece of paper.

Once I get home and Adam has sent me the address to the bar we're meeting at, I begin to get ready in a rush. Clouds of perfume and hairspray fill the room. I hurry my make up and haphazardly curl my hair, deciding that the messy look I've unintentionally managed to create is part of the cool-girl vibe I'm attempting to emulate. The black v-neck and leather mini-skirt seem appropriate for the event, yet I find myself overthinking everything when I remember that he's going to be there. Shoving my feet into some platform Doc's, I call a cab and wait.

The bar is so cool. Neon lights, moody chandeliers, a great playlist - the exact type of spot you would expect Matty to pick. I can already tell it's busy in there as the car pulls up, groups of people dangerously close to spilling drinks as they laugh and talk between themselves. The boom of the speakers buzzes under my feet as I make my way in, slipping past people and heading straight for the bar, feeling like the only sober person in there.

"What can I get you?"

I feel my mouth fall open as I recognise the bartender.

"Tom, oh my god!" I smile, half unsure how to navigate this situation. It's not every day that your ex-boyfriend serves you in a bar.

"Nice to see you too." He grins and I struggle to find words. "How have you been?"

"I've been good, yeah, really good." I smile, nodding. "How about you?"

"Yeah, same." He purses his lips in a soft, almost relieved smile. Our split was amicable - it hadn't been working for a while, and it made no sense for us to carry on trying to make it work.

"Are you here alone?" He frowns with a strange sort of chuckle escaping his lips.

"No," I laugh breathlessly, "It's a work thing."

"A work thing, huh?" He grins as he starts making a drink. I nod awkwardly, not really wanting to elaborate, for some reason. I'm not sure why, it's not like he can't know, right? Why wouldn't I want to tell him about the boys?

He hands me a cocktail glass filled to the brim with something that looks like it's going to give me a headache. I wince at it without even trying it.

"It's good, I promise," He gives me a toothy smile. "It's on the house."

"Tom, I can't let you give me this for free."

"Yes, you can. Consider it a 'congratulations on the work thing'." He runs a hand through his black hair and nods at me, and I realise that he won't take no for an answer as he shoos me away.

"Well, thank you." I tilt my head to the side and smile, leaving to find the table.

I spot them across the other side of the room, immediately noticing the huge smile on Ross' as he talks to Matty about something. They're sat at a table full of empty beer bottles already, and an ice bucket filled with Prosecco in the middle.

"You made it!" Matty immediately breaks off his conversation with Ross when he spots me making my way over.

"I made it." I laugh, accepting his hug and making a conscious effort not to spill my drink down the back of his very-expensive-looking suit jacket.

"Who were you talking to at the bar, eh?" He teases as he pulls away.

"None of your business." I joke. He raises his eyebrows with a smirk and I shake my head, swatting his assumptions away immediately. "It was my ex-boyfriend, it was nothing."

"Guys, Iris' ex-boyfriend works here." he decides to announce to the table. Adam lets out an airy chuckle in reply, shaking his head.

I notice Ross take a swig from the bottle of Desperado in his hand, avoiding eye contact as I glance at him. His broad shoulders are tense as he darts his eyes around the room, or rather it feels like anywhere else except me.

"Maybe he'll give us free drinks for the rest of the night." Jamie suggests, joining in on the conversation.

"Do not use my ex-boyfriend as a means of saving money, you cheapskates." I laugh, taking a seat on the plush, green sofa pushed up against the wall. Ross is sat across the table from me, and I realise that not only has the wide smile he'd had on his face disappeared, but that he was also yet to say anything upon my arrival.

The drinks flow easily, and I find myself downing cocktail after cocktail, swaying along to the music and having a good time. A recipe for disaster, really.

Looking down at my glass, I realise it's empty. The drinks had, in fact, been free all night, courtesy of Tom, and mojitos on the house is not a good thing for me to have knowledge of.

"Back again already?" He smirks from the other side of the bar, that familiar shiny, white grin making me giggle.

"Mhm, you know it," I joke. "Same again, please."

"Do you remember that time we got drunk on mojitos?" He smiles as he shakes the mixer back and forth.

"Yeah, I do." Blush rises in my cheeks as I recall the evening. The smirk on his face suggests that he does as well.

"Maybe we could go out again some time? Get drunk on cocktails again, like the good old days?"

Before I can stumble around his offer, I feel a hand on the small of my back.

"You alright?" His voice vibrates through my body as he looms beside me, looking down at me with a strange look in his eye.

"Uh, yeah," I manage to get out, my throat feeling as though it's closing up. "This is Tom. Tom, this is Ross." I say for some reason.

They exchange an awkward smile, and I recognise the look on Tom's face, the same one he used to get when random men would try chatting me up at the bars in university. I want to protest that he doesn't have to be jealous, that Ross and I aren't together, but it's like my brain can't form a sentence, as if it almost likes the idea of it.

"Are you sure you want any more to drink?" Ross says lowly, his hand still on my back firmly. It's like somehow, despite the fabric covering my body, his rough fingertips are burning into my skin.

"Yes, Ross. Actually, I do want more to drink." I turn away from him, that familiar feeling of aggravation from his comment rising again. I turn back to Tom with what I think is a flirty grin, however it could just be the alcohol surging me with a foreign confidence. "Is there a way you can make a double mojito?" I giggle, resting my palms flat on the bar top and tilting my head.

"Anything for you." He replies, subtly winking at me.

I glance at Ross, meeting his stare. My eyes dart between his and I swallow heavily, the dim light of the bar casting shadows over his features. He's wearing a white button up, contrasting with the blackness his eyes seem to be pouring into me, his rolled up sleeve and tattooed forearm on the same bar top I feel myself leaning into. He doesn't look away from me, and I watch as his pale lips part slightly.

"Double mojito." Tom's cheery voice tears me out of the black hole I felt like I was slipping into. I see Tom looking between the two of us, his lips pursed in a way that makes it seem like he's interrupting something.

"I'll pay." Ross moves his arm in front of me, holding his card to the reader.

Before I can object, Tom has the card reader held out to him, avoiding my eye line. It's like he's making some kind of point, whether that be to himself or me, and it infuriates me. He can't stand the thought of not being in control, whether that be of the band, my ideas, God knows what.

"Thank you." I smile apologetically and take the glass, spilling a little over the edge.

Ross reaches his hand out to steady mine, his fingers warm on my skin as he softly supports the glass. His eyes are trained on the drink between our hands, and I watch his Adam's apple bob up and down as he swallows stiffly.

"I can hold my own glass, Ross." I try to speak with conviction, mirroring the same sarky tone he always takes with me, but I can't. My voice comes out quiet, low.

"I know you can."

It's like we're magnets - he does everything in his power to repel me, to be my opposite in every sense, but somehow, it attracts me further, and I don't know why. He's so tall as he stands in front of me, so broad like some kind of shield from the rest of the slowly-emptying bar.

I look up at him through my lashes and the proximity that we're in makes me so much more aware of the amount I've had to drink. My head is swimming, yet somehow, he's steady in front of me.

"I can't talk to you when I'm like this." I say, slipping past him and making my way back. He stays there for a few moments and I watch his shoulders rise then fall, a sigh leaving his lips. I wonder whether he felt like he couldn't breathe then, too.

I sit cross-legged on the sofa, next to George, and despite being able to take my mind off of him earlier, it's like he's the only other person in the room now. Watching him over the rim of the glass as I take a rather large sip, we make eye contact, and I feel like the air is being sucked out of my lungs. I firmly place the glass back on the marble table before me, the sound louder than I had intended with my drunken clumsiness, and leave to get some fresh air.

I gasp for air when I get outside. The air bites at my bare legs, a cool breeze brushing my hair back. I curse myself for allowing these feelings to consume me in the way they are. In the studio, I can focus, I can distract myself from his clear disapproval of me, his need to control the decisions the band makes and push me out, but when it's just the two of us? A whole different story.

I hear the door swing open, the music flowing from the bar to the smoking area I'm currently stood in, and I know that there's only one person who could push a door open with such certainty. I think back to the first time Ross and I met.

"Can you just, I don't know, not follow me out?" I say slightly louder than I expected my voice to come out, turning around on my heel and lightly throwing my arms in the air.

"Sorry, I just-" He cuts himself off.

We stand in silence, his hands shoved in his pockets and mine crossed in front of me.

"Why did you buy my drink?" The question leaves my mouth before I can contemplate it's consequences.

He doesn't answer. Instead, he wipes a hand across his beard and looks at the ground.

"Answer me, Ross."

"I didn't think it was right that he was giving us all of the drinks for free."

"Bullshit." I laugh sarcastically. "You wouldn't even pay extra for Matty's oat milk last week."

I shake my head and kick the toe of my boot into the ground, wondering whether it would be best for me to just leave. He looks as uncomfortable as I feel.

"Why are you out here, Ross?" I sigh.

"I don't know. I just followed you out, I couldn't help it."

My stomach knots as I watch him. His face is serious when he looks up at me.

"You had no right to question how much I've had to drink."

"You've had a lot."

"No, I haven't, and even if I had, it's none of your business."

"You had a full bottle of white wine to yourself."

"Why are you keeping track?"

"Iris."

The way he says my name catches me off guard. I like it. It's the fact that he rarely says it at all, choosing to ignore my mere existence 90% of the time.

"Ross." I repeat his name back to him in an attempt to bring my consciousness back, the feeling in my legs, even.

"You need to go home."

"I don't need to go anywhere."

I storm towards the door, but the thick sole of my shoe catches on the slightly risen slab beneath me.

The first thing I notice is how firm his grip is on my arm when he catches me, the size of his hands. I realise I'm gripping equally as firmly onto his biceps when I look at the proximity of our bodies. My chest is virtually pressed to his, the tips of our noses only inches apart, and I hold my breath.

"Iris, I-"

"Fucking hell, I thought you'd both gone missing or something, Was about to sort out a search party."

Matty drunkenly laughs at his own joke, stood in the doorway of the bar, hair dishevelled and his tie now hanging loosely from his neck.

Ross immediately lets go of me, taking a step back like we're teenagers that have been walked in on by a parent or something. I blush at both the moment we just had and also how distinctly embarrassed he seemed by it, moving away from me quickly.

"Are you coming back in, or not?" Matty furrows his eyebrows.

"I think I'm going to head home, actually." I say, avoiding the glance Ross gives me.

"Already? It's only... shit, it's 1AM." He giggles again, turning around and reentering the bar before I can even reply.

I don't give Ross the opportunity to make this any more tense or awkward. Crossing my arms across my chest and turning around, I leave him standing in the smoking area, taking back control of the situation with the knowledge that he cannot stand it.

#1975 band #adam hann #fanfic #george daniel #matty healy #ross macdonald #the 1975 #matty the 1975

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rippedstitches · 8 months

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I’m gonna try to explain The Dad Stand-In Matrix and make some sort of sense, here we go. And don't take this seriously if you disagree, I don't know what I'm talking about and it's just based on vibes.

The Roy kids receive both affection and abuse from Logan, wrapped up in a fucked little package they all call love. Power, control, domination, this is how you love, and this is how you are loved. The expectation is that the siblings become Logan, so they learn to emulate his behavior, but they also are locked in to a pattern where they must have a “Logan” in their lives to give them that specific kind of "love,” especially when they aren’t in the good graces of the real Logan. In their sibling relationships, these dynamics show up, each sibling existing in relation to Logan, either as his stand in, or as his child.

More under the cut

Roman/Kendall - This is the only relationship with a straightforward, unchanging hierarchy (unless, of course, Dad relationships overshadow this, like in Too Much Birthday). Kendall as Logan, Roman as the child. The person Kendall is with Roman is everything Logan respects, and person Roman is with Kendall is everything Logan despises. (tw csa & cocsa) Strictly headcanon territory here, I believe that Ken was sexually abused by Logan (more for another post I think because it’s not super relevant) and in turn sexually abused Roman during the dog pound game, which contributes to this and further complicates/solidifies their adult relationship. (end tw)

Roman/Shiv - Two children, most of the time. There is a slight conflict, but it's childish, because neither believes the other is serious. Roman wants (subconsciously, none of the sibs are aware of any of this) to be Shiv's Logan, which is where the petty insults and sexually demeaning comments come from, but he just can't go all the way. Because of this, Shiv doesn't ever feel dominated by him, but she also doesn't feel compelled to wield too much power over him either. She likes the banter and the relative lightness of their relationship. She does look down on him though, and this becomes more apparent when she's working with Ken. Despite all this, they're the youngest children, likely close in age, and they grew up together in Kendall's shadow, both having things about them that made them "unworthy" of the top job. I think this is the reason twin theory is so popular, they are very much two siblings.

Shiv/Kendall - Here's why, in my opinion, Shiv and Kendall have the most complicated & hard to pin down relationship of all of the siblings. They see each other as Logan stand ins, but need to become Logan themselves. This creates a constant push-pull, not only between them, but internally. They both want to be on top, and will say and do the most awful things to each other to get there, but they’ll always make up, they’ll always come back. They both want affection and approval from each other, but giving it is seen as weak, and so is accepting it. It’s a dance: Who’s leading? Who’s winning? How can I get the upper hand? Listen to me. Do you want me on your team? Do you think I’m vicious enough? Do you wanna play bitey?

There’s more to be said about the non-sibling relationships, how the actual Logan affects things and where Connor fits into this but you get the idea I think

#succession #roy siblings #fawn.

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itsclydebitches · 1 year

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If we want to give RWBY the most generous interpretation possible, I'd say the whole thing was meant to say that the mistakes Ruby made in previous volumes were a result of trying to emulate Summer/fairy tale heroes, and the whole arc of the volume is her learning that these heroes are flawed and she shouldn't try to emulate them perfectly. Of course, this really wasn't set up well if that's the case, but hey I'm trying to throw a bone here.

I do think that's the general vibe they were going for. Like the generic "be yourself" message, it's a great takeaway on the surface, just horribly executed to the point of, at times, actively undermining what RT wants to say. Example: accepting yourself is the ultimate end goal so that's why, uh... Ascension turns you into someone entirely new? Unless you're the protagonist, of course, because what story wants to deal with that can of worms.

Beyond the numerous issues I have with Volume 9 itself, I find this "Ruby needed to accept that she was trying to live up to the impossible standard of Summer Rose" to be incredibly unpersuasive given that Summer hasn't been portrayed as a perfect hero for the majority of the series. Maybe at the very start when Ruby was more naively optimistic and less informed, but definitely not past Volume 4. She learned fairly early in the story that Summer didn't just die on a random huntsmen mission doing Good Hero Work, but that this was something connected to Salem - AKA, the super morally ambiguous fight that the group has been criticizing since they learned of its existence. Ruby herself has experienced being a huntress in this world, making gray choices left and right (if I'm being kind), so how in the world would she have maintained this idealized image of Summer's own career? To say nothing of how Ruby never expresses any opinions about Summer, warped or otherwise, because no one ever talks about her. The supposedly ~emotional~ trinket this Volume was a rose emblem Ruby gave up after never ONCE mentioning it before she's given it back from the tree and... proceeds to continue not mentioning it. After 9 Volumes Summer has remained firmly in the personality void of Dead Mothers. All we knew about her going into this Volume was that she was a SEW and liked to bake cookies. We couldn't even emphasize her reading Ruby impressionable, highly inaccurate fairy tales because the early Volumes told us that Yang read her those. Summer doesn't exist as a person, so all we have to work with is Ruby's own experiences which consistently undermine the idea that her mother was a flawless hero. She was part of what Ruby now knows to be a highly, systematically flawed career, working for Ozpin, who then died. Without some inkling as to how Ruby sees her mother - and how she's maintained that narrow perspective in the face of everything in Volumes 3-8 - what about this says Perfect Person, Impossible to Emulate?

Which makes the whole "My mother LIED? Omg she wasn't perfect?? Clearly I don't need to be perfect either! 🤯" revelation... not really a revelation at all. Which isn't even taking into account a) Ruby's own choice to give a doozy of a lie a couple weeks back (if anything, she should consider that a mark in Summer's favor) and b) the fact that this depression, self-doubt, and suicidal ideation stems from the very real problems Ruby has no idea how to fix. It's like watching someone collapse because their house is on fire and they don't have any means of putting it out. "Don't worry," the mystical therapist says, "Your mother loves you and you don't have to be perfect." Fantastic takeaway! The house is still burning.

#rwde #rwby #mymetas

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spicybylerpolls · 2 months

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while people are on the topic of finn, a little appreciation for our will byers' actor! noah!

i feel like he could have turned out like a model or something, if you see when he was younger, he was all in proportion and like very pretty boy, a traditional, good looking young man. but now thats he's older and grown into his features a little more - he's not entirely there, that wont happen until they finish growing at like 25 ish, but he is more oddly proportioned now in a nice way. he's EVER so slightly chubbier. he's also mega goofy, but in a different way to finn (although not THAT different actually). he gets away with it more cos he's still handsome in a traditional western way except for the obvious jewish features that im sure lots of bigots hate (see all the toxic milevens on twitter). his teeth are kinda goofy but also cute, but it's his smile that does it. it's kind of contained and shy, down-turned as though he has internalised not wanting to smile too widely, or perhaps just feeling shy and bashful when he's happy. which is VERY will. i think they are more similar than he let's on tbh. i think he's secretly a shy one, just like when he was a kid.

whereas finn seems to burst with light and laughter, then sudddenly realise he's in public and become self conscious again, and his face just turns sour af lmaooooo bless him

mad props to the casting director tbh - these are two performers with faces that are endlessly mesmerising, and acting skills to match. i feel so grateful to be watching their portrayals of this story unfold in real time. the fact that it may break new ground is a bonus, but even if fit doesn't, i've had a ball for the past couple of years! if nothing else, having their first adult scene together could work wonders for their professional confidence. if i was a pro actor, i would love to do an intimate scene with a close friend of mine, we would have a ball and the trust would be unreal.

and lastly, here's a funny little story...

years before i joined the fandom proper in 2022, when s2 was just coming out, my friend (who was very mainstream) showed me some pictures of a photoshoot with noah and finn. we were in our early 20s, fresh from college and no clue what to do with life. and my friend showed me this black and white photoshoot on insta (i think its the one noah recently posted to show his excitement of working with finn again for finn's birthday?), and she was quiet as i looked, waiting to hear what i would say.

and i was like... they look....

*massive pause while I look at her, incredulous and mildly disturbed*

and she said '... hot.'

and I was like YES, WTFFFFFFF

and she was like WTFFFFFF

and we were so uncomfortable and confused! they were young teens! but the fact that it was my mainstream friend who had literally just discovered the 80s through this show, who had a first class English degree from Edinburgh university, who had just started working at a prestigious publishing house in the city, who had a rather gorgeous boyfriend... i mean she was the most down-the-line person you ever met. and i was just so surprised and grateful she had trusted me to say this, and we proceeded to discuss wtf was going on.

basically - photoshoots, esp when the cast were teens, kind of passively sexualised them. im not talking explicit, but rather encouraging pensive brooding stares and poses that are something you would see in a couture magazine. they looked older because they werent smiling, and were emulating these poses that adult men would do.

on top of that, finn esp really reminded me of the first boy i ever had a proper crush on at 13. i remember it so clearly because its not the hair or the skin or whatever superficial stuff, but rather his expressions and attitude (and the freckles). finn, when younger, had this arrogant (and therefore irresistible) teen boy vibe which exactly matched this boy i fell in love with at 13. i realise now that thats all probably from a place of insecurity on finn + the boy's part, but even at 22 sitting in this cafe with my friend, browsing insta innocently, i could remember exactly what it was like to be 13 and my heart was just beating. whenever i think of that crush on that boy, i am 13 again. i am not a grown woman perving on a young boy. i am 13.

so i think, maybe, thats how many of us here connect with spicy byler tumblr.

and now, of course, watching them grow up on my screen (having rejoined the fandom post s4) has been a very... interesting experience for me. i think byler sex discussion on here speaks volumes about how we are all from different walks of life. if i wasn't an art major who has literally been drawing naked bodies from life since I was 16 at school, and a psychology student, i might not understand how to discuss all this stuff. as it is, i've got too much emotional education under my belt, and i know how to embrace my shadow self as long as im not hurting myself or anyone else. (vecna would take one look at me and say NOPE lol.)

sorry for the ramble! thanks for hosting me.

p.s. sadly im not friends with that girl anymore, but this will always be a legacy of our friendship (plus the fact that she was so grateful for my pre-existing knowledge of 80s music lol. & we both bought corduroy sheepskin jackets immediately after watching s1, lucas KILLED it. fashion king)

Thank you for sharing your story and adding to the discussion!

Your cafe story raises so many interesting psychological ideas about the nature of storytelling and connecting to coming-of-age narratives or even writing it/creating it, as the Duffers have done. As you put it, "Even at 22 sitting in this cafe with my friend, browsing insta innocently, I could remember exactly what it was like to be 13 and my heart was just beating. Whenever i think of that crush on that boy, i am 13 again. i am not a grown woman perving on a young boy. i am 13. So i think, maybe, thats how many of us here connect with spicy byler tumblr," and I think there's a lot of intrigue there.

Even though your story is related to Finn IRL, I'd say a part of writing/reading a story is putting yourself in the shoes of the characters and seeing things from their eyes. And that includes temporarily "becoming 13 again" (or becoming the age of the characters you're exploring). And that's not creepy. It's just a part of the process. Art itself is messy and psychologically layered.

A lot of Bylers seem to believe the Duffers would be creepy for including a sex scene in S5, even with the characters aged up, because they watched Finn and Noah (and by extension Mike and Will) grow up. But really, it's all a part of them engaging with the coming-of-age themes they've set up and "becoming 17 again" to properly tell this story how it's meant to be told, wherever that journey takes them. And in the context of a gay coming-of-age tale, it just might include sexual exploration and discovery. *Gasps*

#byler #spicy byler #finn wolfhard #noah schnapp #will byers #mike wheeler #spicy byler meta #no poll

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missanthropicprinciple · 2 months

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scrunchy nylon jacket, marithé + françois girbaud

rayon and mohair tank, poleci

rayon and linen skirt, skies are blue

handcrafted bronze gundestrup cauldron cernunnos pendant by vis a vis jewelry, woven necklace made by me

Specific fashion goal achieved! A few weeks ago I was reminded of one of my favorite old magazines from my teen years; the October 1999 issue of YM (Young and Modern). I was just 13 and was cycling around the block. It had been raining a bit and I remember the street was still wet and gravely. As I rounded the bend I saw a magazine sitting in a slumped, tented position on the road near the curb. Someone had evidently dropped it getting in or out of their car. I picked it up. Realizing it was mostly intact, though wet and stuck with pebbles, I held onto it, finished my turn around the block and snuck it into the house and into the chasm of my tiny bedroom. I eventually cut it up, kept one page folded up in my purse for years, and stuck parts of it into a scrapbook. Many years later I bought an unblemished copy for scanning. Also at random more recently, I decided to go on a hunt for some of the pieces in my fave photo shoot. Surprisingly, I found two of them.

The scrunchy nylon jacket from Marithé + François Girbaud was originally priced at $112 and I paid $182. It was a little steep, but it is a vintage late 90s piece, pre-revival of the brand. The seller listed it as being from the 80s but the exact design is from 1999. As much as I wanted the grey color I really love the black edition as it goes great with pretty much everything I own. Machine wash cold, tumble dry low. Wuuuut? So great. I was very lucky to find the unique rayon and mohair tank from Poleci. Original list price was $76 and I only paid $21. It fits me and has a great cut. Really the center of the outfit! Only downside is that it’s dry-clean only.

I wasn’t able to find the $72 skirt from Cubika (incidentally there’s a toy company by the same name) but I found a lovely rayon and linen skirt from Skies are Blue (new with tags). The original price was about $60 and I paid $29. It’s a different cut but I think it actually looks cuter, especially as the top part of the skirt is very similar to the Cubika one so it has the same look and line as the outfit in the magazine. Machine wash cold and tumble dry low which is very convenient.

I couldn’t find the exact $45 necklace from Dogearred so I added one of my own pieces. I bought a handcrafted bronze pendant featuring a replica of the depiction of Cernunnos on the Gundestrup Cauldron by Vis a Vis Jewelry for $90 and I made the woven necklace myself with cotton cord from Maine Thread. I’m not really into the tall boots so I would pair this look with Docs or leather sandals. In the end I paid more than the original look but two of these were 25 year old designer pieces and the pendant is something that I got long before I put this outfit together. Plus my jewelry wasn’t emulating the one in the mag; if I had gotten an actual piece from Dogearred it would have cost me a lot less. All in all, this is exactly what I wanted it to look like. It wasn’t my goal to look the way the model does - the goal was to look like me in that outfit. It works for me in a different kind of way, with my hair and my vibe. I love it.

#Marithé + François Girbaud #Poleci #fashion #fashion adventures #long post #1999 #young and modern magazine #y2k fashion #y2k #personal #the goofball #ss99 #marithe francois girbaud #YM Magazine #designer wear

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