spike spiegel wants to die soooooooo bad but fate keeps saying NO you are going to LIVE you are going to carry your burdens WITH YOU you are going to learn how to keep walking even when all you want to do is find a ditch to die in. you are going to learn how to care about people again, holding your bloody broken heart inside of your gaping chest with your own two hands. and spike spiegel says nooooooo and once again tries to throw himself at the nearest dangerous person in the hopes that this one will finally kill him
he says i hate everyone except you and that is addictive and that is kind of romantic and beautiful because you're young and you're kind of a sarcastic asshole too and you don't like bad boys, per say, but you don't really like good ones either. and you like that you were the exception, it felt like winning.
except life is not a romance book, and he was kind of being honest. he doesn't learn to be nice to your friends. he only tolerates your family. you have to beg him to come with you to birthday parties, he complains the whole time. you want to go on a date but - people are often there, wherever you're going. he's just so angry. about everything, is the thing. in the romance book, doesn't he eventually soften? can't you teach him, through your own sense of whimsy and comfort?
at first - you know introverts often need smaller friend groups, and honestly, you're fine staying at home too. you like the small, tidy life you occupy. you're not going to punish him for his personality type.
except: he really does hate everyone but you. which means he doesn't get along with his therapist. which means he has no one to talk to except for you. which means you take care of him constantly, since he otherwise has no one. which means you sometimes have to apologize for him. which means he keeps you home from seeing your friends because he hates them. you're the single exception.
about a decade from this experience, you'll type into google: how to know if a relationship is codependent.
he wraps an arm around you. i hate everyone except you. these days, you're learning what he's actually confessing is i have very little practice being kind.
i love love love the way you paint back lighting!! do you have any tips/ a step by step for the way you do it?
ended up making a whole painting just to break it down and explain my general process for subjects lit from behind so heres that + a timelapse!
main thing for drawing anything with a strong light source behind is to make the main subject Darker and more desaturated to convey that the light is behind them rather than to their sides (face cant be properly lit if the light is behind). Also making the Main highlight the brightest hue in the image helps to intensify it. I tend to use teeth/eyes as a good comparison point
some people have a tendency to make the sclera white out of habit but darkening that+ the rest of the whites helps the image read as Darker compared to the brighter highlight
I'm avoiding writing and you probably are too, so let's at least think about our characters while we do it.
You know the drill- send me a number (ONE number, you can come back for more) and I'll answer for an OC of your choice (if you know their name) or my choice (if you don't know their name). Feel free to name some of your OCs in the tags of your reblog, if you want to be asked about them.
How did you choose their name?
Were they created for the story, or was the story created for them?
Do they have a love interest, and was that their choice or yours?
Do they have a best friend? If so, how did they meet? If not, have they ever/why never?
Did they have a pet as a child?
What catalyzed their introduction to the plot?
What attribute of them (some facet of their personality, their history, their look, or whatever etc) would you find most important to somehow preserve if they were transplanted to an AU fanfic?
If your character's financial situation were to suddenly flip (someone poor becoming rich, someone rich becoming poor, etc), how well would they handle it? What would be the first thing they would do?
If your character could have handed their role in the plot to someone else, would they have?
Free Space #1: Which of your OCs would be most likely to survive a zombie apocalypse? Which would die immediately?
Does your character have a pet peeve?
Has your character committed any crimes (per their universe's laws)? If not, which crime would your character most likely commit?
Who is your character's closest (by relation, fondness, or distance) blood relative?
How does your character feel about riding horses (or your world's closest approximation of a horse if it lacks horses)?
Is your character's first instinct fight or flight? Is there something that could force them to do the opposite?
What is your character's favorite leisure activity?
Is your character holding any grudges? Are they likely to stop?
If your character were trapped on a deserted island, what three things would they want to have with them? Which person would they absolutely hate to be trapped there with? Which person would they enjoy being trapped there with?
Does your character having any health issues, whether they're aware of them or not?
Free Space #2: Which of your OCs would you most like to meet in person, if they could become real (or you could visit them) for a day?
Final Question: Ask me your own question about my OC
Remember: play nice! Send an ask to the person you reblogged this from, and try to send a few to folks that reblog from you!
The realest thing Oliver said in that final bit of the monologue was not what he said so much as how he said it: By God, I loved him.
The way he says that gives up the whole: Wasn't in love with him. When you hear him say it like that, coming from his entrails, from his very soul--almost pleading to a higher power because of that love--you know he lies when he says he wasn't in love. He lies when he says he hated Felix.
He doesn't truly hate Felix. He hates what Felix made him feel. How he lost his mind about him. How he felt like he had no other choice but to kill Felix because it was preferable to being banished from his presence. He hates that he has to scramble for any piece of Felix there is left: stones, graves, houses, anything.
But, by God does he love him. By God, is he in love with him. Enough that he blows his picture a kiss. Enough that it's the stone with his name on it that he touches last. Enough that he's a mad king of a castle with no metaphorical queen. Enough that it's been 15 years and he still sees Felix in the prettiest of lights despite everything.
last night i got home kind of tipsy and very much in tears and my mother told me the force you exert to keep someone in your life is proportional to the force with which they will leave your life. if you have to fight tooth and claw to keep them, their leaving will be just as hard, just as harsh, and just as definite.
are ppl ever gonna realize that tagging me in posts purely for the sake of visibility/boosting isn’t gonna work most of the time? i’m a person not a clout machine
ngl, it's about quality over quantity for me. an npc can have a total of three minutes of screen time, but if they have a cool name, they can live rent free in my head and I'll spend several hours trying to decipher drawable features from a blurry screenshot of pixels
there is a vague hint of a story here, and that's because every time I try to play thi4f, I get incredibly frustrated with how Not Fun the game play is. like, is the story good? well. but it has a PLAGUE. that should've given it instant 'I'll replay this once a year' status in my heart, but the game play sucks so bad that I've never finished it. I can't believe Not Fun gameplay beat out my obsession with narrative plagues.
anyway, the idea is basically if the original era had a game with a plague centric narrative and some other stuff I liked out of thi4f thrown into a narrative blender, with a heavy dash of horror thrown in because some parts of the thief games were scarier to me than entire dedicated horror genre games.
Will never stop thinking about how Leo, all alone in an endless void and being beaten again and again and again by the only other living thing around, still finds comfort in that space. The situation he was in was completely hopeless, and in any other circumstances he would not have escaped, at least not fast enough to save him from permanent (or even fatal) damage, be it physical or mental.
And yet, despite the bleakness of his situation, despite the agony and helplessness, all he needs is one glance at a crumbled photograph, one glance to remember his family, and that’s enough of a reason for him to smile.
Maybe that’s why his powers center around manipulating space - because no matter how much space is between them, no matter how dire his own situation may be, just the thought of his family, alive and okay, is enough to give Leo hope.