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piichivii · 2 years

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[Image ID: A sketch on a white background with a warm reddish overlay, depicting a feminine and muscular Wizard101 OC with green hair in a low ponytail, tan skin, and pointed ears. She stands haughtily with a white cane in her right hand and her left hand on her hip. A recolored Enchanted Armament pet in red, white, and gold, floats by her shoulders. Her outfit is a red, white and gold techwear inspired outfit containing red and gold strips patterned with symbols for the School of Balance. She wears red and gold sunglasses and gold earrings. The sketch is signed "PIICHỊVY 2022". /.End ID]

hello wizzy friends, and thank u all for the warm welcome 🥺 u guys r so sweet n i hope the year has been treating yall well

i’ll b answering some comments on my last piece w/ some compositional notes + wip shot below the cut!

im obsessed with the title for this piece like. i dont know ur oc or whatever personal story/AU they've got but even so this is. powerful they're a balance wizard. they're the blind angel of Judgement. they've got Power Nova behind em: the birth of a new star they've got a smile on their face and their stance isn't rigid straight. they're swayed the dark soul is heavier than the light feather of truth are the 5 blades a reference to tarot? or like. blades in wizzy that buff your spells?

also a balance wizard w a god comex is so antithetical i love it

so gonna b real here “god_complex” came from me saving the initial sketch and thinking “man homegirl’s got some bde here” LOL. i’m not entirely sure if she does have a god complex or not, but i love your interpretation of the piece! frankly, i try not to get attached to the little details of my characters since i tend to be more concerned about crafting a larger and thematically cohesive narrative, so their characterization is really flexible. i actually find this concept of an antithetical sorcerer w/ a god complex REALLY saucy, so this has all been a happy coincidence of me just wanted to draw a fun cool scene. when i first imagined this piece, i’m fairly certain it was while my homies n i were pressing the delete button on a random boss LOL so really, it was a bit of my own hubris as a “god complex” than my oc’s! i haven’t gone past polaris yet so who knows! maybe she WILL go down her corruption arc :O

the only concrete thing here is that she’s meant to be a successor to ma’at (judgement), hence the whole judgement imagery. it makes me giddy inside as an illustrator to see that these compositional elements communicated that sufficiently 😊

(like a fool i deleted my sketches so this is the oldest remaining screenshot of my sketch orz)

here r some compositional notes about the piece:

mistress of judgement—blindfold, wings, scales of time (include heart+maat feather) ((i also wanted to make the staff ridiculously huge to be cool; i included a counterweight at the other end but it got covered up by the sandstorm)), halo for the Cool Factor, khopesh ((this was later changed to the sword of kings, then later to dragonblade))

bladestorm encircling enveloped by wings ((or more accurately mechanics-wise, balanceblade+enchant balanceblade+bladestorm+enchant bladestorm+dragonblade; i like to imagine that in a solo context the 4 bladestorms would just stack up to b used later LOL initially i wanted to do the crossed blades, but it ended up being compositionally messy so i scrapped that. while sketching i DID consider tarot imagery though 5 and 4 didn't really fit akdhkfkf anymore than 4 blades encircling and it would've been messy, and less and it would've been lacking. also, initially the blades were pointed down, but i decided against it to better represent them as charms bc i couldn't stop thinking of the sword of damocles which would be more of a threat LOL))

power nova, framed by raised wings ((it's been my aoe of choice + i like the implication that balance as an "element" is part sand part (sun)light; i also wanted to somewhat evoke ra imagery too by having power nova as the sun w/ its rays of light))

swirling sandstorm below ((i was just really taken by the sandstorm animation update bc it's so sparkly and pretty—girl got such a glow up. a bit of a happy accident but my friend interpreted it as chastisement n i was like yea that works too LOL. another happy accident was the red cast ending up evoking balance of power c: although power play was such a fun meme play))

modified alhazzy fit w/ balance pattern trim + cowl + no shoes + inspo from kim kassas’s walk like an egyptian ((hoo boy that collection has so many hot fits. not historically accurate but idgf it fucks. i was having trouble thinking of a suitable design since none of the in-game robes really suited the image i had in mind but this collection was The One. anyways i absolutely Love the balance pattern trim and i'm Very Offended girls don't get to use maroon to match w/ it. i made a csp brush for this bc no way in hell was i gonna handdraw all those LOL. if u want the brush n some other assets i made or ripped from kingsisle u should check the source link ;))) also you can't see the toes in the final render but in my sketches i ditched the ugly boots it's just a lil soleless footwrap now. ALSO i’m distraught that it slipped my mind to give her these earrings that mimicked the pans of a balance scale 😭))

(from the cities in dust fw 13 lookbook)

buff lady of the blades ((another happy accident was the final product exuding "muscular women think they're gods/know your place" energy. i'll draw that later after i finish some of the stuff i've been planning, if i remember about it LOL))

the "u know im cool" grin bc we abt to delete some mobs 😎 ((fun fact: my friend wants her to aoe him))

nyways thank u again wizzy friends n i wish u all the loveliest day and if someone is ruining it for u, we accept offerings to feed ammit she’s gettin hungy

#wizard101 #w101 #wizzy101 #oc #doodlie doop #vy's art #long post #image desc

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tillzzy · 6 months

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ISTD

Instagram Posts

I drew inspiration from the content shown by Beryl bikes and also from my research into student led branding to target my target audience (students aged 18-25). I also used my app design as inspiration to keep my branding consistent.

I want to focus on community, motivation and the concept of my brand being a bike hiring brand for the whole academic year. I also want to showcase the bikes that I designed, Bliss Bike parking (bike racks) and also the app design. I will be designing 6 posts to share.

general ideas for posts:

Initial Draft - community cycle post

use of branding logo as the circle is effective, eye catching and vibrant

use of logo in the corner reiterates the branding

colour scheme is bright but not overwhelming

legibility is clear

clear visual hierarchy using text size - I wanted to use bold type for all type so it can be clearly read

more details about the cycle would be shown in the caption of the post if it was to be an actual event - maybe direct people to caption in the post?

added check the caption for more details - directs viewers to find out more

perhaps too much text - will ask critical friend for feedback

Did you Know? - Initial Draft

source of motivation for viewers - encouraging them to go for a bike ride and help their mental health through exercise

gentle encouragement - not too aggressive and more of a friendly tone of voice which is what I want to convey

creating a safe place and community

layout of the circles makes the text not look centred - needs adjusting.

adjusted the layout of the circles slightly - looks a lot better, text looks more centred and it looks less complicated.

type is easy to read and stands out clearly

I added a cream background to the circles to tie the colour scheme in with the other posts when they are seen on a grid. I'm not sure if I like it or not. I will ask my critical friend for feedback.

Challenges Post

app interface preview for new followers

don't think the background goes (used a free mockup from FreePik)

margin on the left side isn't wide enough - too close to the edges

type itself is good, communicates efficiently and effectively - easy to understand, clear

visual hierarchy is clear

coloured background works better - actual hand im not sure is sucessful I think I'm going to try illustrate this element instead and see how it works.

I adjusted the margin and added some visual elements to tie it in with the other posts. I am going to draw a hand and a phone and see how it compares to the mock up version.

How to sign up Post

easy to read and understand

showcases product

instagram grid perspective - wha the first page would be (would be 3 more pages that a user can swipe through to view how to sign up)

perhaps a bit too crowded with the circles - downsize a bit

smaller circles are more effective in this case - doesn't complicate the composition as much

i tried to add the orange in the background and I think this looks better - tie in the design on the bike and shows cohesive branding throughout

increased the size of the bike and the text - more clear and prevents the circles from over powering the focal point of the post

showcasing concept

illustrations show people using the bikes

text explains the concept - perhaps a bit too long?

slightly shortened. It is a bit tricky to shorten as all content included is necessary.

testing another coloured background - undecided what works best I will chat with my critical friend for feedback

tips and tricks

advice for people who aren't as familiar with bikes

offering support and connoting to a community behind the brand

friendly language and the use of punctuation helps create a more approachable tone of voice

#vc0665 #cb #istd

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re-ikrmso · 2 years

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IT’s THEM. THE BETCH. Ikari of the rp dm’s story! or the rpd!universe i guess cause thats what ive been tagging that stuff as lmao. On the left is thier “god” form and on the right is thier usual appearance. I do think that they would normally have black hair, but i wanted to make a large distinction for how i was drawing them so :D

this is mainly me trying to draw out an actual design for them so if it doesnt stick dont be surprosed but i am kinda satisfied with the results XD it was a bitch trying to look for actual quotes from the actual rp though, a lot of the situations they’re in dont exactly warrant some of these expressions.

//spoilers for some rp lore events below! idk why this matters i dont think im ever making like an offical comic for what happens but eh

Comments on lore references of drawings:

1; upper left: mentioned //and spoiled in another post that they would eventually be given the role of god.// the problem is when you’re forced into the role, in a world you consider not yours, unable to change it...and you now have to protect it. Because you live there now, and the people you care about live there now.

2; uppser right: they’re actually decently stacked in money. where’d they get it from? ask them yourself. (they steal shit. a lot of shit.)

3; lower left: Appearance of a god form can be anything they want, but often representative or defaults to personal preference. But to be honest while doodling there was this design i thought was HELLA cool but i deleted it //sob// so i incorparated part of it here,which is thier “wings” (better demonstarted in the upper left). they’re wearing a shimmering cape that “bends” to form wings. I wanted to make it more indicative that they’re...”holier” ? whatever, that they’re now god or something, so i decided to add the things around thier wrist but it also doubles as them seeing thier role partly as imprisionment.

also, why the red eyes? i wanted something to make it pop out, and i wanted to make thier eyes a dark brown so it matched out. though, there is that whole background element of not exactly human so :D also, why are one of thier ears white in the god form? they’re not, actually. but i thought it would be too awkawrd to fill it all in as black, so i left it unfilled

4: lower right: i came up with the idea of a revival book wayyy before that plot came out on the dsmp, so don’t string me up for that. But yea, i figured i’d try and put SOME kind of design on it. I’m thinking that within lore of the rp, it could probably be used more than just revivals, but the characters pretty much only ever use it to revive people :p To describe what’s on the cover, it’s a snake eating itself with a chaos mark in the background. oh yea. also YAYY I FINALLY MADE CHARCTER THAT HAS LIKE. EARS THAT ARE KINDA BLENDED IN WITH THIER HAIR OMG FINALLYYY. im so happy. also they are like. built like a twig they have no muscle whatsoever somebody feed them :(

other things on my mind abt them because i feel like it:

-Admittedly for how appalled they are at other people’s actions, a lot of what they do can be calling the kettle black, but oftentimes they are right that many people tend to get off scot free while they alone are punished (often unfairly in thier eyes)

-they dont take many things seriously and tend to miss out on....the tone of the sitaution, but this is often caused by them losing intrest in a situation, wanting to stay away from a situation, or being caught up in thier own turmoil/thoughts to display empathy or sympathy for others (...often due to thier friends or them being indirect or VERY direct victims of whatever is going on. often, but not always.)

-they enjoy making bar drinks and thinks being a bartender is cool. they have great difficulty memorizing recipies but they are trying thier best

#c!ikari #RPD!universe #ocs #art #A post that isn't a reblog.#my art

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penzyroamin · 3 years

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Food and sharing food continues to be a recurring motif in “tied together”. What was your thought process around that? How do you see that connecting to some of the central themes and concepts in the story as a whole? (And, if you would like to go into this, how do you see food and sharing food playing out in the messy au where David will also be cooking but in a completely different context/power dynamic?)

HAHAHAHA! I CAN FINALLY TALK ABT THIS WITHOUT SEEMING LIKE F SCOTT FITZGERALD BEGGING PEOPLE TO KNOW WHAT THE GREAT GATSBY WAS!!!!!

okay. im calm now.

so for a couple years now i have deeply and secretly loved the concept of food as a symbol for community. i didnt use it in fic for a long time for a variety of reasons. one, it just never really felt right. two, my love of this symbol is very much connected to my southern-ness, and while im sure many people have just as strong, if not stronger connections between food and community, i didnt really know if people reading my stuff would Get It or connect w it.

i finally decided to use it for tied together for two reasons. first, this is my most definitively southern fic. ive written other fics with Humid Small Town Energy but this is my first that i really let myself go “fuck it. crawfish boils. hurricanes. middle aged women with crushes on jim cantore.” as such, it felt like if i was going to go for this symbol at any point, it needed to be with this fic. the second is that due to Pandemic and also living across the country from the majority of the family i grew up with, i have been kind of starved of community experiences as of late. i wrote tied together entirely during a period when i havent spent time with anyone besides my immediate family, so i was really thinking about community and the nature of it and how fucking badly i wanna have a massive meal with people and hence... this symbol

with the background of my decision to include it covered, let’s get into how it appears in tied together!!

in chapter one, the majority of food’s appearances are... impersonal, if that makes sense? its all premade, whether its drive-through stuff, tv dinners, etc etc, and he doesnt know the person who made it. its also worth pointing out that around the time jack and his mom stop sharing meals is the point they become disconnected from each other. essentially, that’s the disconnect from community throughout jack’s early life

davey comes around and it. is pretty obvious from the start that, through this symbol, he is the Literal Embodiment Of Connection To The People Around Him. food was a really key way for me to show just how connected he is to his community-- he’s constantly cooking for other people, working for battalion, helping people get good food, contributing recipes to little cookbooks. the end chapter also nods to this in the scene w his family where esther mentions he made her teach him to cook for a group, and the conversation afterwards where he mentions that he wouldn’t be comfortable with people paying him to make them food or making food for strangers. cooking for other people is essentially davey’s way of nurturing the community around him and becoming closer with people, so to make food in an impersonal way goes against everything he knows about food and sharing it. the interactions he has through food represent the larger relationships and interactions he has within his community. juxtaposed to jack, he’s built this little world around him filled with people that he loves and cares for, even if that does lay a heavy burden on him at points. if i ever write something delving deeper into davey in this au, i’ll elaborate further-- but, essentially, davey’s role as The Provider of food for the people around him was a real stand-in for the way that he feels both within his family and his larger community.

think of it this way-- in all the scenes we see with davey cooking at a large event-- i.e., the crawfish boil-- he’s always pushed off to the side by that. there’s usually someone talking to him or checking in on the food, but he’s not able to be engaged in the larger hubbub and discussion of the party because he’s busy. it’s in providing food for people and sharing that with him that he gets fulfillment out of the experience. in his family, we see that davey is a little bit isolated. he was growing up at the exact time when mayer’s alcoholism was getting worse and hitting its peak, and he left before mayer ever really managed to get very far into recovery. his time in their house, essentially, was a lot of heavy lifting and few moments of solidarity and joy. he loves his family, of course, it’s just a very labor-intensive process. and then, of course, he has a similar experience to what a lot of southern marginalized people feel-- this intense need to care for and better your community when your community very frequently doesn’t care for you. davey has absolutely zero capacity for apathy in this au, and it definitely shines through with this whole dynamic. he works SO HARD to care for people, even if he isnt always able to fully enjoy being around them and being loved by them

and then, of course, you have the way davey and jack interact through this motif-- davey teaches jack how to cook, gives him a cookbook, invites him over for meals, etc etc. sharing that with him essentially represents welcoming jack into his community as a whole, and giving him a place there. jack mentions davey “clearing a spot at the table” for him, and that’s both literal and figurative.

additionally, while davey uses food as a way to bring jack into his community, jack also makes davey a little less isolated. in a lot of the scenes in chapter 5, theyre cooking together, in a very domestic, symbiotic sort of way. i wanted this to demonstrate how jack relieves some of the burden davey puts on himself and exists sort of Within davey’s bubble rather than just reaping the benefits

i also wanted to illustrate with this how jack repairing his relationship w food keys into this. obviously we have the disconnect that he has early on where his unfamiliarity w what he eats and who makes it represents a larger disconnect between him and the people around him, but jack does also absolutely use food as a coping mechanism and a crutch. not to get, again, TOTALLY gatsby here, but he’s chasing that sense of community and belonging and understanding in the wrong places. it’s once he begins to actually make food for himself and understand the process of it and be able to carry something through to completion that he’s able to actually Enjoy food, yknow? i wanted that to mirror the way throughout the earlier parts of his life that he tried to kind of slap up temporary relationships and make do with that.

side note about jack and food: jack has undiagnosed adhd (and some vague comorbidities rip) in this au, and his experiences with it i preeeetttty heavily lifted from my life and my special brand of fucked in the head. (for those of you who don’t know, carb and sugar cravings are a symptom of adhd, hence why food is often a coping mechanism for us fhskdhs). cooking and baking are processes that have REALLY helped me get a handle on myself-- it gives me an outlet for movement and stimulation, and its something that i can carry through till the end and get an actual end product that i can recognize and benefit from. plus, real time consequences if i let something do whatever for ten more minutes! so thats another element i added to the way that jack builds healthier coping mechanisms over time-- he moves away from food as a crutch and instead develops a new form of CREATING that gives him an outlet and a feeling of productivity

those are some Vague thoughts. i will probably elaborate in the future!

now, for the messy au, rather than food symbolizing community, i chose to have it represent vulnerability.

a quick review: jack married rich, and davey is jack’s new wife’s cook. on his wife, dorothy’s part, i wanted this to shine through in this squeaky clean, pristine image that a lot of rich people try to craft. she never cooks for herself, never pays much attention to davey, never draws attention to him. in essence, she is creating as few weak spots as possible-- she refuses to be vulnerable to the people and the society around her.

with davey, however, his and his family’s livelihood depends on him cooking for this woman, and later for her and her husband. he’s forced into this position of extreme vulnerability and weakness by his financial situation, and cant really regain his sense of privacy or self because of that. its also a point in this story that he has very little time or wherewithal to cook for his FAMILY. so, his job forces him into a vulnerable situation with complete strangers who hold an upper hand over him but denies him the opportunity to be vulnerable with his own family, only reinforcing this idea that he is the protector and the provider and as such cannot have weak spots and cannot, under any circumstances, break

it also really highlights the difference between jack’s relationship with his wife vs with davey and smalls-- all the scenes of he and dorothy eating together are in grand, fancy rooms, with a certain amount of pomp and circumstance and dignity attached. with davey and smalls, though, he’s usually in the kitchen, having conversation, enjoying their company, helping them with menial things. that’s an environment that he’s used to and comfortable with, the kind of relationships and interactions he grew up with, while the stuffiness of his life and interactions with dorothy are entirely less vulnerable and close

that’s just a brief overview, but its something to look for when i finally finish the fic! it definitely started as a very soapy sort of thing, but my damn instincts pushed me to delve deeper into the characters and their relationships and the fucked-up-ness of it all. so, here we are

i really hope this helped!!!! this is not organized AT ALL so please tell me if there’s anything else you wanted to know or any details you noticed

#holy FUCK is this long..#about writing #tied together #asks #thank u so much for giving me an excuse to positively SCREAM abt this

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clearskiesjournal · 3 years

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🌤Maddie’s Journal 2/14/21🌤 Art wip breakdown, and a reference image tip!

hmmmm. what am I up to today!!!

I’m still working on that WIP of combining mediums! It’s really fun!! So for now, i want to break down what i’m hoping to achieve with this. I want to make a combination of pixel art, painting, and collages! oh, also, there’s glitch effects in this!

first, i made the background! It looks like this:

it’s a combinatiom of several photos of grass and flowers, a rainbow, and a picture of clouds which i overlayed this picture:

it’s a glitched photo of sunflowers in a window! but behind some clouds, it looks like electronic rain! Then, I drew the Maddie over the background, and out a layer of white behind her!

heres a peak at some coloring!! there’s some oixel art technique in the eyes with the dithering! i’m trying to reflect the sky in them. I like using rich colors, and im trying to color match with whats already going on in the background. scribbles will come together for color harmony in this eye as i work on it! for all the poxel elements, im using the dot brush in Ibispaint X. I might add detail in an actual pixel art app later though, or use the square tool! that way, the dithering looks a whole lot better.

my next hope is to paint more detail into the background with both pixel and painterly styles. You can see the start of that her with this daisy, which is half image half painted!

i’m also adding a lot of pixel clouds. its fun to color mix just what i need to transition between the edited background and the added painting details.

I love this style, because it’s very me! Nature, weird ideas, and video games. yeah, that’s me alright!!! This is the style i’m trying to develop for my webcomic, Maddie goes outside! it’ll basically be a web comic where i learn topics amd teach tou about what i learned!! i’m going for a kid’s educational host vibe, unintentionally, haha! It would be really fun to eventually animate an episode of it. would that art take forrreeeeever to animate? yeah!! but thats part of the fun. I could make music for the background too!!! ah, i would feel like louie zong. the dream!! i would love to introduce orher characters that help introduce you to subjects!!! like, a science turtle. Oh my goodness, and imagine shadow rotoscoping these into sprites! ah, the animation technique nerd in me is flying out ✨⭐️⭐️⭐️

An Aditional Note about Reference Images!

alright, last thing i had to mention!!

If you’re like me, you have a very difficult time focusing enough to make out details on references! my dysautonomia messes with my vision and makes it kinda blurry. it gets confusing.

so, while drawing this hand holding an umbrella, I discovered something...

Tada!!! If you invert the image and crop to just what youre trying to look at...it can be really helpful!

going back and forth between inversions can really help you pick up on details and contours!!! Thank you picsart art hack. you are my valentine.

okay, i need to nap to refresh my fundraiser brain!! Have a nice valentine’s day everyone!!

🌍💫

#maddie speaks #2/14/21 #art

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a-dauntless-daffodil · 5 years

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Spop magic and classifications and stuff but honestly the main point of this is the thing with Glimmer at the end

also this is mainly based on season 1 since i can’t really watch s2

Etheria’s got, as far as I can tell, two basic kinds of people who can do magic in some form or another

There’s the Sorceresses like Glimmer’s dad and aunt who’s magic we haven’t really seen much in action yet, but who I’ll have some BIG guesses for anyways, and then there’s the Princesses like Queen Angella and Mermista/Perfuma/Frosta

And there’s also Razz, but I lowkey get the feeling Razz is a category unto herself

- Let’s start with Sorceresses

Shadow Weaver counts as a Still A Sorceress since she’s using a Rune Stone but doesn’t seem to have a normal connection to it, has trouble forcing the connection sometimes, needs her nifty red mask control gem thingy to access it, and could probably pick someone else to draw power from if she had to. She’s just draining it like a giant magical mosquito, fitting since she too is annoying as hell

Castaspella is a Sorceress who currently leads Mystacor, like both Light Spinner and Micah also used to do, but the way the hall of former leaders is set up-

(non-linear I presume and more of a memorial to the fallen/dead Greats)

[I like to headcanon Micah installed Light Spinner’s statue after he became a leader, in monument to the good that she used to be, and Castaspella later wrecked it sometime after he was killed]

-and the little I’ve heard of Light Spinner’s fall flashback in s2 makes me think Mystacor is ruled more by a council than by one single person, even though the council might have an unofficial leader who most of them trust and defer to. And this council is probably made up of masters of magic or the equivalent of teachers- People so good at magic and guiding others in learning how to use it and be responsible with it that they are given a say in how Mystacor as a whole is run

This would mean there’s another class of magic user, Sorceresses lite, that aren’t at that level yet and haven’t been accredited as experienced enough to lead/teacher others. They’re main job is to keep studying magic until they are, OR leave Mystacor and start their own lives once they’ve learned enough to not cause mayhem with their powers

THIS would ALSO mean there are people who have magic or the potential to use magic but who haven’t yet or choose not to be trained as a sorceress. Once again going off my very limited s2 info, I’d guess Adora fitted into this slot before becoming She-Ra, and it was her potential for magic that Shadow Weaver was drawn to. Maybe she was hoping to steal it or could tell it was linked to a Rune Stone or some other power she’d never felt before. Maybe she just likes collecting powerful people and brainwashing them. Whatever

And then there’s Razz. Razz might be magic. Razz might be friends with a magical broomstick that comes to her hand when she beckons. Razz has lived longer than the immortal queen of Bright Moon, long enough to know the previous She-Ra was disappeared/died over a thousand years ago. Razz is a beautiful mystery and I hope she’s stays that way

- So that’s the sorceresses, but what about Princesses?

The classic Etherian Princess has a natural connection to one Rune Stone that seems to be passed down genetically from parent to child. The Rune Stone on a global scale is important to keep Ehteira the planet alive and habitable, and the Princess’s main job is to correctly maintain, use, and protect it, which on a local scale means the area near the Rune Stone would ALSO be protected. This makes for pockets of safety and stability that people would over time flock to and populate, and the Princess’s power to protect that land would then make them the protector of the people now living there to, and thus Princesses as rulers comes to be

She-Ra is a Princess but can’t be a ruler since her whole point seems to be acting as Etheria’s referee/IT troubleshooter for all things Rune Stone related. She needs to stay impartial and has to be able to move around freely, so her Rune Stone is small and portable and has some powers but gets its real importance from how it can boost and heal the other bigger Rune Stones

On the other hand, Entrapta is a princess, a sovereign ruler, without a Rune Stone and frankly I can’t imagine what kind of Rune Stone her family would have anyway. Maybe one linked to earth and metal or magnetic force? Their land is in the mountains and does operate mines- Point is though, she has no such Rune Stone and doesn’t mention having lost one, so I’m going to assume that Entrapta at least has never heard of Dryl having a Rune Stone at all. She ‘rules’ because her family ruled, though there doesn’t seem to be much left to rule and she mainly just does her own tech related stuff anyway. But she IS considered a ruler by Bright Moon and her family has a big throne thingy at the rebel council table

Considering the crowd at the Princess Prom and the ridiculous number of Rune Stone that’s translate into, I’d bet most of Etheria’s princesses are like Entrapta, princesses without and uppercase ‘P’ or a Rune Stone. They’d be more like normal royalty or officials who use the term ‘princess’ thanks to cultural tradition made by the actual Princesses

Oh and Spinerella and Netossa don’t have thrones in at the rebel council table and don’t seem to represent any sovereign lands like Entrapta would have, so I’m assuming they either aren’t the direct heirs to their Rune Stones OR they’ve lost both Rune Stones and homelands to the war (explaining why they never left the Alliance, since they have nowhere else to go and nothing else to do but fight the Horde) OR they fall into another category of princesses, in their case meaning “someone with no Rune Stone who isn’t currently a ruler but who might come from a royal line and does have powerful magic and may have trained at Mystacor so back off”. They might be princesses in title, but i think that magic wise they sorceresses- Sorceresses who chose to focus all their skill on one thing, or have some weak blood tie to a line of Princesses which makes them more attuned to one kind of magic over all others. Could also explain how they met, with both of them going to Mystacor for training and getting put in the same ‘class’, maybe under Casta, seeing as how she likes knitting so much and their powers have to do with nets and spinning.... or maybe that hobby came after she had to figure out how to teach them.. i dunno. To paraphrase Bow, I still have no Idea what they do

Lastly we’ve got Scorpia who has the potential to link to her family Rune Stone but that link was severed/never activated, she doesn’t seem to have any other magic, and she comes from a royal family but neither she nor her family are in rulership positions anymore. She’s a princess in title only at the moment

- To sum up, Etheria may have:

Princesses (rulers with Rune Stone) Angella, Perfuma, Mermista, Frosta, various unknown others

/Princess/ aka the current She-Ra (not a ruler but has a smol and very important Rune Stone) Adora, formerly Mara

princesses (rulers with no Rune Stone) Entrapta, most of the people at the Princess Prom

?princesses? (not a ruler and no Rune Stone but still titled and has magic) Spinnerella?, Netossa?

‘Princesses’ (not a ruler and not currently connected to family Rune Stone but has Princess lineage) Scorpia

High Sorceresses (a ‘ruler’/teacher who co-leads Mystacor and has magic) Castaspella, Micah formerly, Light Spinner formerly

sorceresses (someone who has magic and is trained in its use) ^ plus Shadow Weaver, most of the background characters at Mystacor, and (spoiler character)

mage (untrained person with magic potential) Adora formerly

Razz (has magic? Probably?? Maybe the magic’s different or she just as her own style of using it???)

everyone else (people with none of those things) Bow, Seahawk, Catra (unless she turns out to be a Princess), most of the Horde and Etherians

Okay so that’s a lot but pretty simple! Sure would be a shame if something flipped it on its head :D :D

Hmm

- Princesses ARE sorceresses. Kinda. It’s complicated

What is a sorceress? Someone who has magic and has been trained to use it. But what does it mean to ‘have’ magic?

Well considering how the Rune Stone system is set up-

Rune Stone: (im guessing) Crystalline structure apparently anchored to a fixed point that contains vast amounts of ‘elemental’ magic capable of manipulating/generating a narrow range of Etheria’s natural features, such as it’s water, it’s moons, ice caps, forests etc. Rune Stones seem to located at, and draw from, nexus points in Etheria’s magical ley lines, which means they are also linked to and capable of drawing on each other if a certain genius should happen to get her hands on First Ones’ tech and decide to try hacking the entire damn planet for fun (thanks Entrapta)

-and if we don’t want to make a magic system that is silly, overpowered, and broken, then I’d say having magic means being able to sense the power innate to a world and potentially being able to harness it to create all sorts of neat effects, depending how you train and how much you can stand to pull into yourself at a time without exploding or fainting from pain

The main difference between a sorceress and Princess in that scenario?

Specialization

- So in the beginning there were NO Princesses or Rune Stones on Etheria

Either A: Etheria was a barren rock floating in the middle of nowhere that the First Ones decided to terraform and inhabit- Or B: Etheria was a normal planet before some First Ones’ related event caused it to start dying and the First Ones felt bad about that and made the Rune Stones as a sort of planetary life support system, which was super convenient when Mara ended up banishing the place to the empty pocket dimension of Despondos for whatever reason

In any case, if there was once no Rune Stones or Princesses naturally aligned to them, then how were the Rune Stones used? How were they maintained?

By sorceresses of course. And with the help of the only Princess of any kind at that time- She-Ra, Princess of Power and Castle Greyskull, who made/helped to make the Rune Stone system based on her own portable Rune Stone, and who the other later Rune Stone users titled themselves after, because mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery

When Glimmer’s link to the Moonstone is disrupted and when the link between the Sea Gate and the Sea Pearl is on the point of breaking, She-Ra’s powers are able to fix it. Makes sense that she was also the one to originally forge the links between certain sorceresses and Rune Stones- Sorceresses who gained control over incredibly powerful magical storage tanks and refineries, but at the cost of being able to use their magic for anything BUT accessing their one Rune Stone

Basically I imagine a Princess’s magic being shaped like scaffolding or pipe system, compared to sorceresses having hammers and pillars

- Princesses can hold and channel a lot of magic, but not change what kind of magic it is or it’s general effects (Water, moonlight, plants, ice, ?storms?) and effectively have NO magic without their Rune Stone

- Meanwhile sorceresses have less power to work with because no Rune Stone but can change it into this or that as needed and draw it from potentially any source EXCEPT Rune Stones (usually, see Shadow Weaver’s painful shenanigans for how trying to force a connection to one works out) though they normally just get it from the smaller branches of Etheria’s ley lines

To use another analogy- They drink magic out of a straw, can change what flavor they’re drinking when they like, and would passed out if they tried chugging a whole keg like how Princesses can do

The Princesses can only chug one brand though and no one else can afford to buy it

But wait!

If She-Ra can make sorceresses into Princesses, then why isn’t THAT how new Princesses are picked?

Why not choose from a pool of trained and vetted adults, rather than pass the power down through a family via blood and end up with kids and teens in control of the whole world??

Maybe making Princesses comes at a high energy cost/and or needs both She-Ra and He-Man working together to actually do, meaning it was more of a one time deal thingy when the whole Rune Stone network was being set up

Maybe selecting each new Princess WAS the old system, and imprinting it genetically was just a safety measure in case anything happened to prevent new Princesses from being picked….Something like…. She-Ra vanishing for a thousand years… or Etheria getting cut off from the rest of the universe and Eternia… for example

So yeah, one way or another, some people who could use magic had their magic permanently keyed into just the Rune Stones and managed to pass that trait down through the generations, and the other magic people stayed normal sorceresses

Now to the whole point of this long meandering mush of headcanons and speculation

- Magic and Glimmer -

I must talk about Glimmer

(i love you Glimmer)

Glimmer doesn’t seem to be a normal or ‘proper’ Princess

Her powers are two things and those are fairly small in scope, self-teleportation with a buddy and sparkles. Not exactly on the same level as generating whole forests or summoning giant tidal waves or holding up a castle of ice while it tries collapsing on your heard

Princesses, when their Rune Stone isn’t sick of busy trying to prop up a dying defense system, tend to have pretty large scope powers

Glimmer? Not so much

She’s more like Spinnerella and Netossa than Mermista or Perfuma. Powers more narrow, with both her and the Spinnet couple having to get creative with how to use what is basically the same one or two spells. Meanwhile the other Princesses have very fluid control over their one element, basically moving it as an extension of themselves in whatever way they like and on a big scale

So why’s Glimmer’s magic Like That?

Could be that only one person can have main access to a Rune Stone at a time, meaning Glimmer won’t become the real Princesses of the Moonstone until/unless her mom gives up HER link to it and passes one the admin password, meaning Glimmer is stuck with just some really limited powers for the foreseeable future

Could be, but while that makes sense in some ways, like why none of the other Princesses have anyone in their family help them use their Rune Stone-

(though that could also be explained by stuff like, Mermista’s dad being tried of fighting or incapable of using the Rune Stone because he married into the family, or not wanting to risk ending the line by having everyone in it out fighting, or former Rune Stone users being able to sever their connections when they step down and doing that as part of the official transfer of power..)

-but the idea also really doesn’t mesh with a lot else about Glimmer and her relationship to Angella

There’s no resentment between them, not in the ‘Mom why won’t you give me moar powar’ way, and not in the ‘im not sure this person can be trusted with a magical nuke’. There’s no talk of Glimmer training her magic to prepare for someday maybe having to take full control of the Moonstone. Glimmer is scared of not living up to the same level as her mom, yeah, but she’s talking about things like being a good leader, not leveling up magically

So I don’t think her mom being Princess is keeping Glimmer’s magic stunted

Instead, thanks to her dad’s genes, I think Glimmer isn’t actually a Princess. Not in the total sense. Not in the traditional or official sense

Because a traditional Princess, going by the rules I’ve laid out above, WOULDN’T have been able to ‘switch’ from Moonstone to Black Garnet, even partially, the way Glimmer’s escape in ep 9 and resulting glitches make it look she did

(more on that in a second)

So. What if Glimmer is a sorceress?

A sorceress who, through sheer will and stubbornness and her desire to help people and make her mom proud and not be a failure daughter, managed ON HER OWN what Shadow Weaver needed a forbidden spell to get

What I’m saying is, Glimmer unknowingly figured out how to feed off the magic of the Moonstone

Just like with Shadow Weaver, staggering to the Black Garnet to recharge, this has made Glimmer dependent on its power in a dangerous that way other Princesses haven’t shown to share yet. Angella’s fear when Glimmer comes back nearly drained of magic in ep 3 is very real, very much a parent scared their child might be about to drop dead if they don’t get them treatment in time, mirroring Bow’s fear when Glimmer runs low on magic in Thaymor

They were both scared she could die if she got too low on magic. Maybe she would, maybe she wouldn’t, but running low on it definitely does seem to be painful for her, just like it is for Shadow Weaver

Glimmer can drain magic and specifically knows how to do it from a freaking RUNE STONE

A skill she used to pull the Black Garnet’s power INTO herself and her teleportation in ep 9, creating a paradox that made impossible for it to imprison her, and accidentally overwriting her link to the Moonstone with a new one with the Black Garnet

And her Glitches? If she linked with the Garnet, then why the Glitches?

Her glitches were caused by two different Rune Stone links bleeding into each other, something that isn’t supposed to be possible and they aren’t set up for and turns out doesn’t work so well when the person dealing with this has never even TRAINED to be a sorceress

Speaking of the Glitches, that’s the main reason why I think Glimmer could have figured out the whole Drain Magic spell on her own without realizing it

During the battle for Bright Moon in ep 12, Glimmer fights with Scorpia on her way to protect her mom. In that fight with Scorpia, Glimmer has a lightbulb moment

She has a moment when Scorpia has her pinned, keeping her from her mom who is need help right now, which makes Glimmer pissed enough she starts Glitching and somehow SHOVES Scorpia back with brute force (pls rekt me Glimmer)

Then Glimmer, who’s still Glitching, looks down and sees how her Glitches and red lighting are now running up her dad’s old staff

and she goes ‘OH’

and smiles

And she deliberately uses her Glitches, the Black Garnet’s red lightning, to blast Scorpia away

also look. The last frame after she zapped Scorpia. Glimmer isn’t Glitching anymore, but the red lightning? The Black Garnet’s magic??

it’s still there

and that could be animation wonkyness but hey this is speculation, and also also- Compare the first time she stabbed a Horde bot at the start of the battle, before she learned her new trick, to the one she stabbed right AFTER

The electricity on the first bot is blue. Maybe it’s normal and just a sign Glimmer managed to hit the right spot to make it explode. Maybe it’s the last drops of magic her dad stored in the staff when he was a alive

but when she stabs the bot attack her mom? the electricity's a different color

this time it’s red/orange

So maybe she didn’t just stab it that time. Maybe Glimmer had figured out how to zap things even when she wasn’t Glitching, and hit the bot with everything she had

Glimmer took new magic, magic she has no experience with and no training in, magic that has been HURTING HER, and in the course of one battle, she found out how to use it to her own ends anyway

She harnessed the damn Glitches and weaponized them

Now imagine her as a kid going to the Moonstone day after day, lying under and glaring up at the Rune Stone who’s magic she can’t use yet. Imagine her promising herself she’d prove herself worthy of it, as any daughter of Angella the immortal queen, in Glimmer’s mind, should and NEEDS to be worthy

Especially during a war. Especially with the Alliance broken and the Rebellion left on the defensive against the Horde. Especially when Glimmer is already unsure if she can be a good enough leader or Princess in any other way, and needs every tool she can get if she’s going to help save more innocent people from dying like her father did

I can totally imagine that princess-slash-untrained sorceress breaking a few magical traditions without even noticing it

plus think of the drama if she ever found out that, not only is she not a ‘proper’ princess, but she’s actually been using the same spell that let Shadow Weaver rise to power

mmm.... delicious angst....

or Adora figures out how to She-Ra correctly someday and now Glimmer has to choose if she wants to lock her power to the Moonstone permanently or keep the magic she’s scraped together herself

and maybe that’s also a choice of gaining ‘immortality’ & wings like her mom, or staying mortal like all her friends and probably someday leaving her mom behind just like her dad did when he died

anyway yeah, both canon and headcanon Glimmer own my heart and soul and i cannot stop thinking about her

#spop #glimmer #queen angella #adora #shadow weaver #magic headcanons theories #probably working with a lot of outdated info but eh just say it's an AU

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thefeckisthis · 4 years

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manifestation and religion

disclaimer: im going to write my opinions on religion and if you consider yourself a believer - dont get offended as we all have different experiences and beliefs. also, i will be mentioning some stuff that most people find weird and unusual so please keep your mind open and leave your judgment somewhere else.

i wrote quite a bit and then my clumsy ass accidentally closed all tabs and everything was gone so this time ill write my intro in short version. so we all heard the saying ‘’be careful what you wish for it may come true’’. well it does come true and it has proved to me so many times, and before i get to the basics of law of attraction and manifestation I am going to say a bit of background how i got to it all.

as most of my country i was raised christian and had to practice the religion until i was 14/15 and got my holy confirmation so after that i was finally happy that i did not have to go to church if i did not want to. my family is not super religious, we do follow the holiday traditions and such as its normal in our country, but personally i dont give them much meaning. two of my family members are religious and i am grateful because in a place as my hometown our parents gave us free will when i came to religion (after our confirmation only :P) .

with all my experience and research i came to realise that christianity is most rotten, corrupted, vile and disgusting religion there is. there are exceptions that were better than rest, that is a small number unfortunately. i always considered myself agnostic, there is no defined god but there is something bigger than humankind and its still unknown. and you look at all the religions you will find that mostly all of them have same stories, people and facts, just bit amended to their culture. so to explain a bit, here is internet definition of agnosticism # Agnosticism is the view that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable. Another definition provided is the view that "human reason is incapable of providing sufficient rational grounds to justify either the belief that God exists or the belief that God does not exist." and no, atheist is not the same. heres couple of pictures giving some insights

so now that we have that sorted out i would like to stress out that i never had anything against people who believe in god or dont believe in god, i have friends who are strong believers and friends who are atheist, its just called being adult and accepting people as they are. not enough people can do that.

so i did lots of research on religions and i do like polytheism ( Polytheism is the worship of or belief in multiple deities, which are usually assembled into a pantheon of gods and goddesses, along with their own religions and rituals) so i always had huge interest in roman and Greek deities, Egyptian as well and for a while was reading about Hinduism. of course i read a lot about all other older civilizations and most of them are based on polytheism.

during my exploring i came across a doctrine about paganism (havent fully finished all the books and here is a link if anyone would be interested in buying https://despot-infinitus.com/proizvod/paganizam-u-teoriji-i-praksi-doktrina-paganizma/) and i really liked the whole idea of it and i am still actively considering of becoming a white witch/wicca and reading those books inspired adding bit more on my pentagram tattoo, which is actually representing five elements so with added moons it represents triple goddess symbol.

many people ask me is that devils sign and am i a satanist, and that is ridiculous assumption based on only one symbol. and as a matter of fact i have been reading about satanism itself as well (of course i have) and its quite surprisingly peaceful religion and makes more sense than christianity does. to read more about their rules (which are way better than 10 commandments) click here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaVeyan_Satanism#Basic_tenets

those who know me a bit better know that i love paranormal stuff and that i have strong connection with it and that caused a lot of paranormal experiences in my life (i bring all the ghosts to your yard aaayyy) so i recently also discovered demonology ( Demonology is the study of demons or beliefs about demons. They may be human, or nonhuman, separable souls, or discarnate spirits which have never inhabited a body.) and that you can actually learn how to practice it and cant lie that also interests me as well as you contact demons and entities and you work together to learn about world and history and you give them chance to peacefully experience the world (they literally posses you and that way they get to taste food and emotions etc)

yes this is quite informative post as well. and yes, you will all probably deem me insane after reading all this. and what i noticed is that all of them mentioned above work on the principle of cooperation, you have to give to receive. and i dont mean like you have to make blood sacrifices to get your wishes, i mean you have to put in some effort in it and show good intentions and most important of all - you have to show some respect.

so to finally get to the reason why you are all here. manifestation and law of attraction.

there were loads of instances in my life where i noticed small details that most of people wouldnt notice and after googling them one word kept coming up - universe. so automatically when you start look into that law of attraction and manifestation come up as well, they all g hand in hand like little happy family.

So law of attraction is something you all definitely had experience with. Basically its what you put out to the world is what you get. Simple change of mindset can change everything in your life. Have you noticed when you are happy and spreading happiness everything around you seems nicer, people are nicer to you, nice things happen and then when you are in bad mood everything is going bad.

Sounds familiar? That is law of attraction for you people. you’re releasing/giving good vibes to the atmosphere and people around you so universe makes sure to give good things back. notice that give and take relationship here? Dont be fooled tho, its not always as simple as it sounds. it is especially hard when you get into that deep hole of feeling bad a and depressed. it is really hard to change your train of thoughts and get yourself to think positive. universe wont award you for one good thought, it has to be series of it and you really need to feel them. you truly need to be in a good moment to get something back from universe.

say thank you to people serving you, ask people how are they, show that you care, pick up a paper from street and throw it in a bin, smile to everyone, pet a random animal on a street, anything counts. and dont do it just because you expect something huge from universe as most of the time universe will give back with good things as well, someone will help you, smeone will compliment you, you’ll get free cup of coffee, just random things like that. you will be surprised that good things will come to you in a moment you need. it also makes you more grateful for everything in your life and makes your everyday nicer and more positive.

then we come to manifestation.

thiiiiiis my people is bit more complicated than just law of attraction, but one without other does not go. there is no definition of the manifestation, but it is a fact that if you want something really bad universe will give it to you. i had universe manifest so many of my things that i wanted, just took a bit of time. maybe it has happened for you too. sit and think how many things did you wish for and you have them now? there are certainly more than few things that come to your mind. i can easily name at least 10 things that universe manifested for me without even realizing that was it.

there are many ways to manifest something and it is impossible for me to write everything about it in this post as it is bit more complicated than law of attraction, but i will try to outline some things and believe me when you google manifestation you will find loads of examples and you can read for days about it.

every single wish you want to manifest you can, it just requires some work and that is the hardest part. there are many ways of manifesting something, scribbling, drawing, visualizing, meditating and many more - you need to find something that works the best for you. you need to have clear vision of what you want (general idea wont work), you have to want it really strongly and you need to start working towards it, even little steps - remember when i said you have to give to receive, same with universe. it wont just drop it in your lap because you decided it would be beneficial for you.

and have in mind very important thing universe will always provide and it will give you what you deserve when you are ready for it.

so yes, it means it can take waaaay longer than you expect it, it may not be hours, days it may be years, it just means that you are not ready for it yet but that doesnt mean universe is not working on bringing it to you. all the work you put into it will definitely be worth it.

for example i fell in love in marketing in university and always wanted a job in that field. it did not get easy to me at all. i spent long five years applying for the jobs and either getting rejections or no answer. and believe me that could put me in such bad mood sometimes that i just wanted to give up on everything. add to that anxiety struggles and that makes it even harder. and as mentioned in the last year i worked on myself mentally, my anxiety has been on lower levels for a while and it does spike up now and then and it messes things up, but i’ve been happier mentally then i ever was in last 5 years and towards end of the last year more and more good things started to come my way and then i finally got that long awaited job.

i am still looking a proper way to thank universe for making it happen for me as that is also important thing for manifestation.

going to use myself as example - being a cheerleader, moving to another country, going to enrique iglesias concerts, visiting loch ness and Neuschwanstein Castle and many more were just big wishes at one point and so far they all came true and i couldnt be happier. it can be small things as well, once i tried to test it and i wanted to manifest a drink date. so i kept thinking how i will go for a drink with someone next week. and it happened, next week i went for a drink with a guy i just met, completely unexpectedly. i didnt specify anything else other than gooing for a drink at that was the only thing that happened.

once wished for more money (also nothing specific stupid me haha) and after two days i found €5 on the floor. not much but universe did provide what i wanted :D

as i’ve said, manifestation is more complicated than law attraction and requires strong mind and strong will, so not only that you get what you wish and work for - it makes you a better person as well! To end this i am going to leave couple of links you can visit and see more about them, or if you’re more adventurous just google manifestation and enjoy your journey :) https://medium.com/thrive-global/9-principles-of-conscious-manifestation-3d2df7a4a87

https://elysesantilli.com/what-is-manifestation/

https://blog.mindvalley.com/manifestation/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZNFXNnKOLdA5ZD7Sn2p5aQ/videos

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvptCAXYmDZMOffniGRfomQ/videos

#new post #manifestation #law of attraction #universe #believe #follow #Followme #follow for follow #fun #religion #thoughts

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fantroll-purgatory · 5 years

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Heya, this is my first time submitting IIRC!! so like. please be gentle

I don’t actually have a finished drawing of this character yet, I’ll have to work on them later. Is that ok? If I show you their design in a separate post after I’ve finished the art of them? Sorry its just. i really want to hear your thoughts on her personality and such

Of course it’s alright! We take trolls without drawn design concepts all the time. You can definitely send them in later! I’m always happy to review a good character!

World: Ouranos, a troll planet that orbits a red dwarf, and is tidally locked-one side always faces towards the sun, and the other side faces away. Unlike Alternia, Ouranos has never had any seadwelling trolls, and all the castes simply run from red to purple. All trolls are de jure equal, after a long and bloody history of subjugation under many tyrannical rulers, but this de jure equality hardly matters due to wealth and resource disparities that prevent historical lowbloods from holding any sort of power. Trolls on Ouranos don’t inherently live longer if they have bluer blood, but wealth disparities means that higher bloods can essentially live as long as they want while lowbloods suffer and die within just a few dozen sweeps. I like this world setup a lot! It expands upon some extant questions about Alternian society, too, like if part of the lifespan disparity is simply caused by lack of access and difference in labor expectations. You should think about details of this planet like: Is this just the planet they’ve always lived on in your AU? Or is it a colony planet established by the Condesce? Or is it a forgotten planet that the trolls we are familiar with lived on Before moving to Alternia and there’s been a convergent evolution despite the planetary separation? Name: Elapea Serpen (Serpen comes from the suborder Serpentes, which defines all snakes, while Elapea comes form Elapidae, a family in Serpentes that contains sea snakes and coral snakes, the two kinds of snakes she is based off of. she isn’t exclusively based off of elapids though, she has some elements of boas as well: see her strife specibus)

I love this a Lot for a character themed around being a landdwelling creature diving into the water. Age: 5 Sweeps

Theme/Story: So Elapea is kind of a Meenah/Feferi figure on Ouranos- she is the descendant of the Imperial Devourer, the last empress of Ouranos before she was overthrown by a gang of lowbloods. She actually knows this, as her caretaker (who is another troll instead of a lusus) is a very old highblood who was alive during the reign of the Imperial Devourer.

Backstory out of the way, Elapea is basically a weird conspiracy theorist. You remember how I said Ouranos has no seadwellers? Elapea believes they actually do exist, and they’re controlling the entire planet from the shadows, or something. (This was inspired by the story of cults like the Illuminati, or the lizard people conspiracy theory, but I only realized how antisemitic those stories were, so like. I’m trying to think of a way to have it so that she can still believe seadwellers exist and control the planet without it resembling any of those antisemitic conspiracy theories). As such, Elapea dives deep into the ocean to try and hunt down and kill seadwellers, enamored with the idea that by killing them all she could become worshipped by trollkind, or something. She never finds any seadwellers of course (not for a while at least), just a bunch of monsters.

Due to pressures from her now old (898 sweeps exactly) caretaker, who is kind of not great at doing his job and tries to grow her into an extremely strong troll who can rule the planet like her ancestor, she has taken to pitch romanticizing the idea of a seadweller, simply because she thinks she has to. (This part needs working out as well, i want it to be like. uncomfortable. but i also want it to be clear that i dont condone that kind of thing in kids like her? bc once again she’s only five sweeps old and i just realized that this doesnt actually go well with what her caretaker tries to shape her into what do i dO (actually what if i made it so that her caretaker wanted to enforce a traditional notion of femininity that’s akin to our sense of toxic masculinity, simply under a matriarchy as opposed to a patriarchy? that might work)).

Ok I realize I got back into backstory, so one more thing. Elapea is extremely dramatic, akin to a theater kid. Once again, she wants to be a superhero, so she sort of plays out everything she does like she’s in a play and the whole world is watching. She wants to be the protagonist of a story.

I love that you’re actually thinking about the sensitivity implications of these kinds of things, it’s always encouraging to see writers thinking about and researching the backgrounds of this. Wrt the illuminati and snake people thing, the simplest solution is to just try to avoid drawing any kind of aesthetic or cultural similarities to it. You can’t let Ouranos have the same kind of Hype around Illuminati conspiracies or the same degree of online jokes about the ‘lizard people living among us’ premise. I think your safest bet overall is to avoid Any kind of “shadowy cabal of noble people destroying the world,” because that almost always has antisemitic roots unless you’re very careful about it and most non-Jewish people just aren’t going to be able to achieve that kind of nuance without a Jewish sensitivity reader.

Maybe if you wanted to play on her Hero Bent, you could dive more into an Atlantian/Cosmic Horror (Lovecraft Don’t Interact)/Greek Hero sort of angle? I know that’s an odd sort of mishmash, but instead of her believing seadwellers are some kind of String-Pulling Clique, she could believe more in Furthest Ring style interpretation of seadwellers who aren’t so much controlling the world as they are driving the world mad. You could give her a very classic-style Dive Into The Underworld To Fight A God style vibe. Read about Katabasis.

As for the Bad Guardian thing, I can say that you could probably push the relationship angle effectively without straying into ‘too weird’ territory by having the Guardian try to remind her that a strong leader “HAS” to have strong quadrants backing her and trying to like set her up on dates with other highbloods. You can make it obvious that this has a significant impact on her view of relationships, like having her waffle between believing in true love(s) and thinking of romance as a purely political tool, of her straining between wanting to make her guardian proud/wanting to date nobly and wanting to pursue her own happiness.

So make that a clear reflection of the pressures her Guardian puts on her in general. Everything is performative, everything is in pursuit of her political aims, everything is so that she can take her proper throne, the Lonesome treats her not as a person but as a tool, as a potentiality, and she is not allowed to be herself in any ways. If you want to keep the Seadweller Fantasy, maybe you could do something that a lot of Abused Kids experience- maybe she experiences the Shape Of Water effect. Daydreams about finding a monster partner who will take her away from the pressures of modern society.

Goals: Basically, to make sure i can solidly lock her backstory into one that isn’t like. really antisemitic and also somewhat pedophilic? because frankly i dont want people to think im saying its ok to ship literal children or something and like. how do i get that across, that this kid is really not treated very well by her caretaker (ill just say his title, it’s Assassin Lonesome. he’s a pretty edgy dude but i wont get too much in detail with him). Also, I need a fair bit of help with a quest? and also to try and develop who she *really* wants to be and the dichotomy with how her caretaker *wants* her to be.

I think you don’t have to worry about two characters who are the same age dating or having feelings- that’s normal for 15 year olds to do. You should definitely just make it obvious that you don’t think adults should have a hand in children’s relationships the way the Lonesome tries to. As I said above, press on the fact that the Lonesome really puts the weight of her ancestor over her and tries to force her to fit a mold and a role, maybe indicate that he objectifies her/treats her more as a weapon or tool than as a person with her own goals. We’ll get into what SHE wants to be when we get down to personality/interests, etc. Strife Specibus: Elapea uses a Kusarigama, a kind of scythe-on-a-chain weapon, apparently said to have the highest mortality of any weapon of its time. i actually just found that out as i wrote this, i just thought they fit the theme bc she’s a snake. anyways if you dont know they basically have a scythe on one end and a heavy weight on the other end of the chain, and the idea is that you swing the weight end to bind someone in place and then use the scythe to go in for the kill, which is both somewhat representative of how snakes in general bite their prey to kill them, and also how boas in particular will wrap their bodies around their prey to strangle them.

That’s definitely a COOL weapon to use and is fitting themeatically for the snake concept. I do worry about its utility in water, though. She wants to die into the sea and hunt seadwellers, right? A spear or harpoon might end up being the more functional weapon for her in the end… But there’s nothing that says she couldn’t have two strife specibi, one for on land and one for at sea. Fetch Modus: Elapea uses the Locket Modus; whenever an item is captchalogued, the two halves of its essence are split up between two halves of a heart, diamond, spade, or club locket, and she keeps one half while the other half goes to someone close to her. (they dont have to necessarily be in quadrants, like often times they go to Mullen, who is essentially just her little brother, or to Assassin Lonesome) She can only get the item out by meeting with the person who has the other half of the locket, and combining the lockets. Shenanigans then ensue from this, esp since she has one locket which she has no idea how she got and no idea who holds the other half and it contains a legendary super powerful juju that i can’t get into right now.

Okay, that’s a super cute modus idea that I love the idea and implications of. Always make all your choices together! It also does have the stressful implications, of course, of the idea that the Lonesome in some ways controls her behavior/what she is allowed to do. Dual Purposes! Blood Color: Purple Symbol and Meaning:

https://imgur.com/LnlLu0g

(i cant figure out how to embed images mshjbvbxchj) basically it’s a uhh. its a snake. this was my first fanmade sign like, ever, and i love it

It looks great! And fits the purple sign language very well.

Handle:

serpentineBloodthirst (SB) (All of my fantrolls and fankids have element symbols for their chat handles, so Elapea’s respective element is antimony, an element traditionally associated with things like femininity and makeup, referencing how elapea is basically supposed to be a queen, but it also- wait no it was tellurium that smells really terrible. i cant remember a lot of its properties tbh)

Well, antimony comes from a root that basically means “Monk-Killer,” so that’d be fun to play with. Out here killing/almost killing a seadweller monk.

serpentineBloodthirst feels a little too obvious, though. It’s a direct statement of some of her themes and her goals, but it doesn’t tell you much about her character, what she values, or what she’s interested in. Imagine if Kanaya’s handle were something like vampiricFashionista, for example. Remember- the characters pick their handles for themselves. Is this how she would describe herself? You could go with something funner, like slitheringBrutaliberation, with brutaliberation being a portmanteau of Brutality and Liberation, since she thinks she’s being a hero.

Quirk:

Elapea opens every line with “~~~< ” and every one of her s’s is replaced with “SSS”. i made this before i learned how common the double s quirk is, so i’m glad it goes the extra mile of not just turning “as” into “ass”, but going so far as to turn it into “aSSS”

Hey, snakes hiss, it’s a good quirk to use. Maybe you could also have her end threats with “vv” (they’re her fangs). ex: ~~~< dont try me unlesss you want to get bit vv

Special Abilities:

None (or at least she can’t use psychic powers. Trolls on Ouranos have long ago lost their psychic powers, so all she can really do is punch people and stuff. She’s also a really good swimmer, so you could count that i guess)

Lusus/Guardian:

once again, trolls on Ouranos don’t have lusii! instead, Elapea has a “caretaker”, who is an older troll who adopts them like a parent. Once again, her caretaker is Assassin Lonesome, who tries to raise her to be like her ancestor, lethal and cold, so that she can continue the tyrant tradition of the bygone days of Ouranos.

Interests:

Unsure how much of this i accidentally explained in the theme section, once again Elapea loves drama and stories of great heroes, and as such everything she does takes on an incredibly dramatic flair to please whatever Providence watches over her. She is highly interested in romanticism, though really not at all ready for its highs and lows yet.

Elapea also really likes to swim! She goes out into the ocean hunting for seadwellers, and likes to take thrill in slaying the monsters that lurk in the waters, risking life and limb in a dark space where even the luxury of breathing is taken from you, simply for the thrill. This does not concern Assassin Lonesome at all as he is, as has been established multiple times now, an idiot who cannot raise children.

Now I’m going to go ahead and spoil my classpect discussion here when I say I almost think making Elapea a heart player is going to be too obvious. I Mean I think it’s definitely still something you could go with and justify solidly, because she does have a core conflict about her identity and who she is as well as relationship problems, but I feel like that’s such a problem that isn’t only internal to her but is also external- it’s not her being wrapped up in her own head about it, it’s her environment pushing an uncertainty on her. And I think she needs a little more of a classpect push than from the internalized forces of heart and mind.

All of that is to say I think she reads more like she might need some Void influence to me. She believes in mysterious things out there beyond her view, she wants to hunt them down, find the answers. Delving into dark places to try to find something new is what light’s all about. The blank canvas, the something where there was nothing, that’s void, and that’s interesting. She needs to learn to cast doubt on what she’s known, to bring the lessons she’s been taught under scrutiny, to determine where the truth really lies, if there is a truth at all.

…Which is all to say I think you could expand her interests to reflect all of this. Does she like stories about the murky dark and the dangers within? Does she like Unsolved Mysteries and conspiracy theories that have lead her to this? Does she like political espionage and intrigue? Does she want to smooch a fish?

Appearance: I won’t get too into detail since I’ll be posting a drawing later, but basically, she wears a black one piece swimsuit with a long swim skirt over it with black, red, and yellow stripes in the pattern of a coral snake. Besides her sign, she only really wears purple on her slippers, and i’m currently debating whether or not she should also wear purple makeup because of the antimony association that forces her to be stereotypically feminine? still unsure there. She also wears a long ponytail with red and yellow streaks down it (because it would be silly to have a horizontally striped ponytail).

Troll femininity is different from human femininity anyways. Alternian femininity mostly seems to mean Long Hair and that’s about it, considering Feferi/Fuchsias are the standard of beauty and not all of them wear makeup. Even a fashion-focused character like Kanaya only rarely wore lipstick and didn’t have lash color. Makeup is more of an accent piece for trolls than a Femininity Standard. Personality: Elapea is, once again, highly dramatic, but also bold and somewhat harsh, with a very strong “holier than thou” attitude. Elapea is older than this meme, but thinking about it now, it’s sort of the same idea as the “NPC wojak” meme, where other people are viewed as more like NPCs in a video game, and the “player characters” view them as lesser, even though they’re not? is that making sense? (and yes, i know npc wojak is a fascist meme, the idea is that she’s sort of been indoctrinated by her fascist dad) she’s also rather violent, tending to take out her anger on innocent people or things. We love a flawed character who gets to learn. Like I described above I think giving her a bit more curiosity and maybe low-level, boiling rebelliousness might be a good idea. As the EZ says about Void, “In order for something new to be built, the old, rotting foundation must often be razed.” Lunar Sway: Derse- she’s fighting back against a perceived complacency or numbness in society, the one the same “NPC wojak” meme expresses, that other people don’t have an internal dialogue and are less than human. It’s hard to explain? Later she realizes that this is wrong, and starts to fight back against people who push that kind of worldview. Title: Page of Heart. I must admit that I gave her that title based on the idea that the Page is the active counterpart to the Knight who is passive. So that might explain some things; it denotes her struggle to become ok with who she is and not who she’s being pushed to be- she wants to be a dramatic fun loving kid who gets to save people’s lives, and to be a hero, but not the ruthless dictator her caretaker wants her to be.

It’s hard to discuss classes since there’s no canon information on them unfortunately, but I do think there’s something to be said for the history of pages serving knights and how that makes it seem more likely a page would be passive over active, but I do think Page could probably serve her well either way. But I’m honestly leaning more Maid, because I do think she needs an active class in her pocket and she might just need the billowing Force of maidhood behind her, that Snap, That Push To Change. Become One With The Void, Dive Into The Ocean, Become The Mystery, Be The Cryptid. Land: Land of Mirage and Lockets; it’s a surreal land with lavender soil and clouds, and strange trees with blood red leaves and heart lockets hanging from them. Each of the lockets contain the essence of a desire- in addition, the mirages off in the distance beckon with things that are desirable to the viewer- for example, heroism. The consorts are doves, who flit about speaking… I’m not sure yet. but they speak something to eachother, some sort of secret? I think? I need help with this bit.

Void players are secret-keepers, so I think even with my void recommendation this could continue well. Maybe the doves just whisper rumors/instructions and her quest is to not obsess over which is true while also learning how not to fall for every single bit of “advice” that is given to her.

Well, I’m finally done, I’m sorry this is so long!! please feel free to take your time ^u^

Hey, sometimes you’ve got a lot to say about a character! I hope I was able to help with the problems you were having. Thank you for the submission!

-CD

#purpleblood #fan planet #submission #review #cd review #clownpieceoffreedom #elapea serpen #elapea #serpen

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moonwaif · 5 years

Text

Snow Over Insomnia: ch. 1

Pairings: Gladnis, promptis

Theme: snowed in

Summary:

Once a year, Shiva blesses Insomnia with snowfall. This year's snow day finds four friends in transition. There's Noctis, who's trying his best to enjoy freshman year. With his best friend Prompto enrolled at a different college, it hasn't been easy. When a particularly controversial lecture puts Noctis on the spot, he says some things he regrets. Can he make amends before their friendship freezes over?

Meanwhile, there's Gladiolus, who's finding it increasingly difficult to deny his feelings for coworker and friend Ignis Scientia. The appearance of a mysterious figure from Ignis's past might just be the sign that it's time to come clean. Will Gladio make a move, or will he let the opportunity melt away?

PT. I: 10:12 hours

It was a good thing Noctis had remembered to mute his laptop before class started, because he received his first message from Prompto just twelve minutes into the lecture.

Prompto: brrrr! Freezing my a$$ off this morning

A selfie instantly followed: Prompto in a warm jacket and white beanie, grimacing up at the camera with a steaming coffee cup clutched in his gloved hand.

Noctis: heh. nice pic. whatcha drinking?

Prompto: mocha moogle latte. Yummm ;P

Noctis: all that sugar is gonna give you a headache

Prompto: hahaha yeah, probably. but i need some caffeine. i couldnt sleep all night thinking about that presentation!!!! ｡゜(｀Д´)゜｡

Prompto: so we still getting snowed in tonight?

Noct's smile widened. It wasn’t often that Shiva graced the arid landscape of Lucis with her affections, but at least once a year, snow fell on the city of Insomnia. Sometimes it was a few flakes, sometime just sleet. On rare occasions, such as the one predicted by Insomnian weather channels on this particular day, it was a blizzard.

Noctis: heck yeah! hope you're ready to binge some King’s Knight.

Prompto: ugh am i ever. so ready to chill after getting this presentation out of the way…

Noctis leaned back in his chair, brow furrowing. He cast a quick glance at projector screen down at the front of the hall: a slide about the Lucian civil war.

Noctis: y? U nervous?’

Prompto: yeah

Prompto: stomach hurts

Prompto: p sure im gonna throw up

Noctis: relax, prom

Noctis: you've been practicing a lot, right?

Noctis: you're gonna be great

Prompto: dude you have no idea what id give to hear you say that rn

Prompto: i wish we still went to the same school

Prompto: ｡゜(｀Д´)゜｡

A dull, tight ache formed in the center of Noct's chest. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, the reply coming slower this time.

Noctis: me too.

Prompto: yeah...

Prompto: too bad my best friend has to go to a fancy schmancy ivy league school for geniuses (¬‿¬)

Noctis rolled his eyes.

Noctis: im not here cuz im a genius, prom

Prompto: his majesty is sooooo modest ;)

Noctis: srlsy

Noctis: im like most of the ppl here. average.

Noctis: the only genius ive met so far is specs

Prompto: lol youre just saying that to make me feel better

Noctis: nah. youre way cooler than like half of the people here

Prompto: ♥‿♥

Prompto: too bad i cant afford the tuition lol. id kill to have iggy as my teacher

Noctis glanced up from his computer. From his own seat in the center of the hall, Ignis was just a small figure behind an even smaller podium. Still, Noctis had to admit that Specs was definitely in his element at the front of a classroom. His fitted grey sweater, crisp collar and perfectly coiffed hair were every bit the image of the up-and-coming academian. The freshmen in the front row hung dreamily on every elegant gesture of his gloved hands as his voice rang out through the hall, crisp and clear as water. He said something that sent a murmur of laughter through the rows of desks. Noctis smiled.

Noctis: yeah its not bad

Prompto: duh!! hes probably way cooler than all of my professors combined

Prompto: anyway, g2g. Gonna try to run through my presentation one more time before class starts

Prompto: (;´༎ຶД༎ຶ`)

Noctis: dont worry prom. Youre gonna kick this presentation in the ass.

Prompto: thanks dude

Prompto: catch ya later

Noctis let his gaze linger on the final message, Iggy’s melodic tones lilting in the background. He tuned in long enough just to get the gist of the topic (ugh - still on the Lucian civil war). He turned his attention back to his laptop and clicked on an open tab, which took him directly to Prompto’s ChocoGram feed. There weren’t any new updates, but that didn’t stop him from smiling as he reviewed some of the earlier posts: Prompto getting ready to dig into a steaming, greasy pizza; a #tbt selfie featuring the baby chocobo they’d helped rescue during their summer road trip to Lestallum; a prank-selfie with a drooling, sleeping Gladio. Noctis chuckled. He’d been there when Prompto had taken that one. Even Gladio had agreed that the shot was just too good not to share.

He continued scrolling. A bunch of people Noctis didn't know, probably at a party; a filtered, black-and-white shot of a glistening, neon lit alley; a selfie with some guy Noctis had never seen before; a picture of the school’s mascot, tagged #gocactuars; Prompto wearing glasses…

Wait a second.

Noctis scrolled back to the photo of Prompto and the stranger. “Hanging with the coolest TA around,” read the caption. Tagged: #whenyourfriendhasthesamemajor, #collegelife #insomniaboys.

Friend, huh?

Noct’s eyes narrowed. He silently listed off any names he’d heard Prompto mention over the past semester as he analyzed the man’s features: platinum hair; a strong chin; sharp, intelligent eyes whose color he couldn’t quite discern through the ChocoGram filter. He let the cursor hover over the smug, obnoxious grin. A tagged username appeared: “Ghiranzenator.”

Before Noctis could really stop to self-reflect, he was scrolling through Ghiranzenator’s feed. It was the kind of content you’d expect from a twenty-something with a pompadour and generic good looks. Gym selfies tagged #fitnesslifestyle; poses in scenic, well-known locations captioned with thought-provoking yet totally irrelevant quotes (ugh, so pretentious). He wondered how Prompto even knew this guy. Was he the TA for one of Prompto’s classes? Did they have mutual friends? If so, why hadn’t Prompto mentioned him before? But now that Noctis thought about it, like really thought about it, he hadn’t really heard Prompto say a whole lot about any of the new friends he was making at school.

Wasn't that kind of weird?

A crumpled wad of paper plummeted through his thoughts, ricocheting off his forehead. Noct's head snapped in the direction it had come from. His eyes were met by a vision of Gladio, squeezed into a desk barely large enough to accommodate his lanky frame.

“Pay. Attention,” he mouthed, cocking his head in Iggy’s direction.

Noctis scowled. That was the one downside of having his bodyguard disguised as a classmate. Gladio was just all too ready to make sure Noct behaved like a good little student. The plus side was that Noct had at least one friend who could commiserate with his suffering.

Like now, for instance. A fan club member from the front row was monologuing, earning exasperated looks from his classmates. Noctis and Gladio exchanged a few muffled snickers.

“Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us, Cleetus,” Ignis cut in, his voice laced with a strain so barely audible that Noct and Gladio were probably the only ones who even picked up on it. “As you have noted for us, it is quite interesting that most rebel demands would be considered centrist by modern standards. However, we should recognize one deconstructionist philosopher whose theories remain polarizing even to this day.”

Ignis went to the next slide. A portrait of a wide-jawed man with a face only a mother garula could love brooded down from the display screen.

“Oh great,” Noctis muttered, drawing a confused look from Gladio. “Not this guy…”

"Regulus Invicta," Ignis continued, "is remembered as one of the strongest advocates for freedom of speech throughout the history of Lucis. However, what is less commonly remembered are his persistent demands for the de-establishment of the monarchy in favor of what we would now refer to as a democratic socialist republic. Even during the Lucian civil war, Invicta was a controversial figure. At first his philosophies were embraced by the deconstructionists, who sought to overthrow the Lucis Caelums in favor of a fragmented nation-states ruled by regional noblemen. They were less in favor of his leanings toward a democratic socialist republic. Despite this difference of opinion, Invicta was one of the few intellectuals of his time that insisted on the right of deconstructionists to espouse their ideals without punishment or censorship. Unfortunately, this insistence, combined with his involvement with radical circles, led to his eventual imprisonment. He would die of consumption shortly thereafter.”

A hand shot up - the same wind-bag from before.

“Yes, Cleetus?” Ignis’s smile was tight.

“Professor Scientia, as you were speaking I couldn’t help but remember an essay I came across in the Lucian History Journal the other day. The article was about the evolution of Lucian collective memory of the civil war.”

Gladio chuckled. “Oh boy. Here he goes again. This guy really can’t stop himself, can he?”

Noctis wasn’t laughing. He wanted Ignis to get back on topic and finish explaining why Invicta and the deconstructionists were wrong.

“According to the arguments propounded throughout the essay” - Gladio actually snorted at this point - “collective opinion regarding Invicta and the deconstructionists split after Lucis became a constitutional monarchy. Invicta was distanced from the deconstructionists and by means of propaganda -”

Bells went off in Noct’s head. Propaganda? What was this guy trying to get at?

“ - and state sanctioned school curriculum -”

Noctis gripped the arms of his desk, knuckles whitening.

“ - Invicta gradually became celebrated as one of the fathers of free speech. Meanwhile, his links to deconstructionists were covered up, preventing further instability to Lucian society while conveniently appropriating the parts that aligned with contemporary values.”

He paused for a breath. Ignis stepped out from behind the podium, quick to seize back control of the conversation.

“Your statements indicate a very post-modern interpretation of the historical records, Cleetus,” he remarked politely. “It’s interesting that you bring up social instability. Although not as commonly espoused today, there are ideologues who from time to time self-identify as deconstructionists. However, they are often ridiculed by both leftists and conservatives, rarely gaining any political legitimacy. In this way, the general public remains largely unexposed to contemporary deconstructionism outside of the occasional satirical representation on late night TV shows or the funnies.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

There was a rustle as heads turned in Noct's direction. Ignis adjusted his glasses.

“Is there something you would like to share, Prince Noctis?”

Shit. Gladio slid down low in his seat, muttering something that sounded a lot like, “Smooth move, Noct.”

Noctis cleared his throat. His cheeks felt like two flames. “N- not particularly.”

“Very well.” Ignis returned his attention to the slides. Noctis averted his eyes, only to be met by the expectant gazes coming his way from the next row down. His gaze happened to fall on Cleetus, he shot him a particularly snide smirk from over his shoulder.

Something in Noctis snapped.

“It’s just that, you said ‘satirical.’”

Ignis stopped mid-sentence. Scandalized whispers rippled throughout the hall. Gladio was actually facepalming. Meanwhile, Noctis’s cheeks somehow managed to get even hotter. He felt the need to continue.

“I just thought - well, it sounds like you think those depictions are kind of inaccurate, or something.”

Gods, he was sounding extremely upset and defensive right now, wasn’t he? What had happened to all that training in diplomacy and public speaking? Embarrassing.

“Satire is merely a genre, your highness," Ignis demured. "One that hyperbolizes a real-life topic or theme with intent to criticize, ridicule or expose. We may identify this genre from a neutral standpoint without either validating or condemning the arguments contained within the work itself.”

Noctis schooled his expression so it’d look like he’d understood this last bit.

“But you said the satirical representation is the only representation people see. Doesn’t that imply that there’s another representation that most people don’t get to see?”

“There normally is more than one side to every story,” Ignis said lightly, and his lips curved in such a smug, handsome grin that Noctis could have chucked his laptop at him.

“Yeah, but sometimes one side has better evidence than the other one. Shouldn’t that also be part of the discussion?”

He was pressuring Ignis to agree with him, to say that the deconstructionists were “wrong” and the monarchy was “right” and therefore Noctis was right, too. That the deconstructionists were just radical, terrorist nutjobs whose hogwash theories did more harm than good, so why even bother discussing them at all? Noctis knew it. Gladio knew it. Most of all, Ignis probably knew it.

So why were they still disagreeing?

“Indeed. However, the objective of today’s lecture is merely to review the deconstructionism as an historical movement. I will leave the evaluation of the ideas espoused by said movement to all of you in your term papers.”

A smattering of chuckles. Oh yes, how adorable, how clever. Noctis opened his mouth to let loose another retort when Gladio nudged his foot.

"Let it go," he mouthed with a slight shake of his head. Noctis grit his teeth with an audible “tch,” nails biting into the surface of his palms. He deliberately avoided Gladio’s gaze, instead fixing his attention on his laptop. The Ghiranzenator taunted him from the other side of the screen, all chiseled jawline and knowing smile.

Noctis closed the laptop with a ‘snap.’

PT. II: 13:00 hours

“I was too hard on him, wasn’t I?”

The words were out of Ignis’s mouth before Gladio had even stepped through the door. The office was tiny - more like a closet, really. Gladio tossed a small paper bag onto the desk and pulled up a seat, careful not to spill the coffee in his other hand.

“What’s this?” Ignis asked, peering owlishly from behind his computer. Gladio handed over the coffee.

“Thought you could use a pick-me up," he replied. "And nah; Noct is tough. He gets worse from me during an average training session.”

“You’re just saying that,” Ignis mumbled, raising the cup to his lips and taking a sip. “Mmm, Gladio, this is delicious. Thank you.”

Gladio crossed his legs, leaning back with a pleased smile. “Heh. Thought you’d like that. And no, I’m not just saying that. Noct is pissed off, but he’ll live. Try some of the scone.”

Ignis reached into the paper bag obediently. “I should have waited until after class,” he muttered. “Or warned him about the topic before hand.”

“Yeah, that probably would’ve helped.”

“I just don’t want to allow him more special privileges than I already have! How am I supposed to prepare him for his future responsibilities if I keep treating him differently from the other students? Can you imagine, just last night he actually asked me to check his homework!”

“Did you?”

“What do you think?” Ignis snapped. “We live together for Eos’s sake, of course I did!"

“Yikes. How’s the scone?”

Ignis scowled. “You really must stop bringing me sugar. This is why my skin is breaking out.”

“One bite won’t hurt, prince charming.”

Ignis broke a off a tiny piece and popped it into his mouth, but not before shooting Gladio a glare.

“Relax, Iggy. Just give Noct a little time to cool down, think things through. He’ll come around.”

Ignis gave him a doubtful look. He took another bite.

“At least this scone is palatable.”

Gladio flashed him a cheeky smile. “Does that mean you’ll raise my grade professor?”

“I’ll consider it. After all, for an auditing student you do have unusually consistent attendance.”

“Someone’s gotta show up and keep the crown prince in line. Who better than his protector and professional babysitter, the royal shield?”

“Pity you have to sit through my lectures. I imagine it’s dull.”

“Nah. You’re way more interesting than the profs I had during my undergrad.”

‘A lot easier on the eyes, too,’ he thought. His gaze lingered on Ignis’s full, rosy lips before silently flickering away.

“There’s no need for flattery, Gladio. It’s not like I can actually give you credit for the course.”

“Sorry. Guess your little front row fan club is wearing off on me.”

Ignis reddened. He took a hurried sip of coffee, obviously stalling. Gladio grinned, letting himself indulge in the rare sight of a flustered Ignis.

“If the students show enthusiasm,” Ignis began, once he’d finished composing himself, “it is merely due to the engaging nature of the subject.”

“Oh, right. Lucian history makes me blush and squeal, too.”

“Did you come here for the sole purpose of force feeding me scones and distracting me from my work?”

“Why, is it working? Just kidding,” he added quickly at the stern look he received. “Actually, I thought we should touch base on our lovely royal charge’s training schedule over the Solstice. Iris has been bugging me about plans. She wants to invite the entire Amicitia clan over for a get-together.”

“Let me pull up my calendar.” Ignis swiveled in his chair, facing the computer monitor. Gladio contemplated his profile, thrown into sharp relief by the glow of the LED back-light. A million potential lines ran through his head. ‘It should be illegal to be so gorgeous.’ ‘You ever seen an angel up close? Because those cheekbones are high enough to graze the heavens.’

“Got any plans for the Solstice, Iggy?”

“I’m hoping to finish drafting my thesis proposal,” Ignis answered, with a light click of the mouse. “I’d also like to try my hand at a leiden sweet potato casserole. See if I can get Prince Noctis to eat something other than meat for a change.”

Gladio snickered. “Good luck with that last one. By the way, what’s your thesis about again? Food politics - “

“ - with Duscae as a case study for increased multifunctionality in agricultural policy making, yes.” Ignis spared him a brief glance, eyes crinkled with amusement. “I’m impressed you remember.”

‘Course I do,’ Gladio thought dismally. ‘I’ve Moogle searched every article you’ve ever published.’

Fortunately, he was spared the need to reply. One more click of the mouse, and Ignis was tilting the monitor in his direction.

“There we are. So, which dates does Iris have in mind?”

“She’s really got her eyes set on the day of the Solstice, as well the day right before and after. She needs me to help cook, put out decorations…”

‘Basically all the stuff we used to do when mom was around,’ he thought.

“I see. Why don’t I just make a note on my calendar for now? We can continue meeting as planned for the next two weeks. When it comes time, we'll evaluate how Noct is doing. Perhaps it won’t even be necessary for us to meet over the week of the Solstice.”

“Thanks Iggy. I appreciate it.”

“Certainly. It’s imperative that you spend quality time with your family over the holidays, uninterrupted.”

His smile was sad. Of course; Ignis didn't really have any family around to celebrate with. Gladio jiggled his knee, hesitating.

“H-hey, Iggy,” he began cautiously. “Y’know, if you don’t have any plans for the Solstice, you’re always welcome to - “

“Ah, Ignis! Just the man I was looking for.”

Ignis stood as two people Gladiolus had never seen before entered the office. The first was an attractive, bespectacled woman with golden hair swept back in an elegantly casual updo. Gladio, always the gentleman, rose instantly to his feet, pushing in his chair and squeezing back against the bookshelf in an effort to free up some space for her in the tiny room. She was followed by a pale young man who stood shoulder to shoulder with Gladiolus, which was a rare enough occurrence. What was really odd was Ignis's reaction. He blanched as the man entered. Then he was turning away to face the woman, almost as if he'd never even noticed the other visitor at all.

“Dr. Trepe! To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Her lips curved in a perfect cupid’s bow. “Ignis, dear, how many times must I remind you? Call me Quistis. Anyway, I was just giving Prince Ravus a tour of the department.” She gestured toward the man beside her.

Oh - so that’s why he looked familiar. Gladio had often seen the royal Nox Fleuret duo on magazine covers or on TV. Ravus cut a striking figure in person, with his wintry complexion and dual colored eyes. He seemed to resent being watched, interrupting Gladio’s examination with a peculiarly frigid glare.

“Prince Ravus will be joining our department as a research scholar next semester,” Quistis explained. “Your majesty, Ignis is a grad student and TA in our department. As you may be aware, he also serves as the royal advisor to Crown Prince Noctis. He’s quite the feather in the department’s cap.”

Gladio beamed, eyeing Ignis with pride. What he saw surprised him. Iggy’s shoulders were tense, his face frozen in a mask of false politeness.

Something was wrong.

“Thank you, Dr. Trepe. As it stands, I’ve already had the good fortune of making Mr. Scientia’s acquaintance.”

Gladio’s eyes snapped in Ravus’s direction. His expression was unreadable, but his tone of voice suggested that whatever fortune had been at play was anything but “good.”

“Indeed.” Ignis mustered a weak smile. “I’m honored his highness remembers me.”

Ravus flinched, the movement so quick it was barely perceptible. Gladio glanced between them. Whatever vibe was going on here, he didn't like it one bit. He asked the question before he could stop himself.

“How do you two know each other?”

Ignis gasped. “Oh, by the six - where are my manners? Dr. Trepe - “

“Quistis.”

“Quistis” - Ignis blushed - “and Prince Ravus, please allow me to introduce Gladiolus Amicitia, Prince Noctis’s sworn shield, as well as one of my dearest friends.”

Gladio’s chest swelled until it threatened to burst. He crossed his arms, lip quirking up into a satisfied smirk.

'Dearest friend, huh?'

“I see,” Quistis murmured, tapping her chin. Her eyes ran up and down Gladio’s frame with an openly appraising look. “I apologize for interrupting your discussion, Gladiolus. I doubt we made a very good impression.”

“Meeting a colleague of Iggy’s is never an imposition,” Gladio assured her. “Especially not when that colleague is as elegant and beautiful as yourself.”

Quistis blushed, blue eyes sparkling behind her spectacles. “I never imagined the royal shield was such a charmer. You’ll have to bring him around more often, Ignis.”

There was a momentary, infinitesimal fracture in Ignis’s facade. “Yes, well, I daren’t keep his majesty any longer," he said quickly. "I’m sure you’re both quite eager to continue the tour. Prince Ravus, it truly was a pleasure seeing you again. I look forward to our collaboration in the coming semester.”

“As do I,” Ravus snapped, his words laced with such venom that even Quistis sent him a mildly startled look. “Dr. Trepe, shall we?”

“C-certainly. Gladiolus, it was a pleasure. And Ignis, we’ll be seeing you tonight at the reception, won’t we?”

“Of course. The Grand Hotel Insomnia at six o’ clock, correct?”

“Not exactly ideal weather for an event, is it?” Gladio interjected, frowning. “The roads are supposed to freeze after seven.”

Ignis dismissed him with a breezy laugh. “Yes, well, you know what they say Gladio - the show must go on! Until tonight then, Dr. Trepe...Prince Ravus.”

He bowed at the waist. Gladio rushed to follow suit, but not before glimpsing the pain that flashed across the prince’s strange, distant eyes. Then he was gone, sweeping off down the hall without a word of acknowledgement. Quistis rushed after him. Gladio waited until he no longer heard the clicking of her high heels before he spoke.

“What was that all about?”

Ignis began fussing with the papers on his desk. “Dr. Trepe was introducing the newest addition to our department.”

“Who you just happen to already know.”

“Is that so odd? You and I often cross paths with royalty in our line of work.”

“Uh-huh.” Gladio approached the desk, leaning over and splaying both hands across the surface. “So, you gonna tell me how you two actually know each other?”

“I don’t see that it’s any concern of yours,” Ignis replied, voice unusually clipped. Gladio ignored the sting.

“I’m just curious - y’know, as a dear friend and colleague. Why so defensive?”

Ignis slammed down a folder, nostrils flaring. “Fine. Spring 752. I did a semester in Tenebrae. Prince Ravus was a student at the university. We made acquaintance.”

“And?”

“And what?”

Gladio shrugged. “Dunno. Just thought I sensed some hostility between you two.”

“Enough, Gladio!”

The outburst stunned them both. Gladio took a step back. He ran a hand through his hair, trying fiercely not to look as hurt as he felt. After a long moment of silence, Ignis heaved a sigh.

“Forgive me, Gladio. It’s just a rather...unpleasant story, if I’m being honest. I wasn’t expecting to meet him like this, and...I’d rather not talk about it all just yet.”

Gladio chuckled harshly. “Why are you apologizing? I’m the one being the asshole here. Sticking my nose in your business. But if you ever do feel like talking about it, or there’s any way I can help...just let me know.”

“Thank you, Gladio,” he said softly, and the smile he turned on him was so full of warmth and relief that it hurt to look at.

Gladio hurried to change the subject.

“You sure you’re good to go to this reception thing? Ravus will probably be there, too.”

“I’ll be fine. I merely need a moment to compose myself. I do apologize I won’t be able to join you at the gym today. I was quite looking forward to showing off my new gains.”

He wiggled his eyebrows. Gladio snorted.

“Save it for next time, hot shot. But seriously, Iggy - the roads are supposed to get pretty bad tonight. Call me if you need a ride.”

“Certainly; I’m sure Dr. Trepe would just love it if you popped by.”

“Iggy.”

“Don’t worry; I promise I’ll behave myself.”

“You better. Don’t wanna go setting a bed example for Noct.”

Ignis’s smile fell. Gladio rolled his eyes, reaching for the half-eaten pastry on the desk.

“Talk to ‘im,” he said through a mouthful of scone. “Better yet, feed him and then talk. He’s always in a better mood when his stomach’s full.”

“Oh Gladio.” Ignis shook his head. “If only I could be as certain as you are.”

‘But I’m not certain,’ Gladio thought to himself. The uncertainty followed him as he took his leave, wandering through the empty halls of the department alone. Noct could be stubborn, and Ignis had a tendency to cave in. Hopefully they'd be able to come to terms without too much of a fuss.

He was so lost in his thoughts that he didnt see the figure rounding the corner, hurtling straight at him. He barely managed to come to a stop before they collided.

“Whoa there!” he exclaimed, stumbling backward. “My bad, are you - ?”

The charity in his voice withered and died as he looked up into the face of the passerby.

Ravus Nox Fleuret.

“Ahem. Pardon me, your majesty.” He stepped aside, the polite gesture a reflex after so many years as a retainer. Ravus, however, stood quite still, eyes fixed on Gladio intently - almost as if he were measuring him up.

Gladio’s jaw clenched.

“There a problem, highness?”

Ravus looked away, making a soft, dismissive noise in the back of his throat. He strode past Gladio with his nose held high, sharp footsteps echoing off the walls like a hailstorm. Gladio’s eyes narrowed, gaze following him over his shoulder. The uneasy feeling was back, creeping up from the pit of his stomach like clutching vines.

Whatever history Ravus and Iggy had together, Gladio had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t the good kind.

He tore himself away with a sigh.

“Forget about it,” he muttered firmly. “Iggy can handle himself. It’s not like you have any say in the matter, anyway.”

Still, it was a good thing he kept a spare set of clothes locked up at the campus rec facility. He was gonna need an extra challenging workout today.

TBC...

#gladnis #promptis #prompto argentum #noctis lucis caelum #ffx #gladiolus amicitia #ignis stupeo scientia #fanfic

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resbang-bookclub · 6 years

Text

AMA Transcript: Simple Melody

For our final AMA of Resbang 2017, @alliope, @bbbutterfingers & @daciafu stopped in to answer questions about their Resbang, Simple Melody! Here’s some of what went down:

Q: My first question for Allie is what inspired you to do this AU?

Allie: Well I've generally had the idea for an Over the Garden Wall AU for a while, not necessarily for SE, but as the first check-ins deadline was approaching I ended up rewatching bits of Over the Garden Wall and it just kinda clicked? Mainly I think it came from Crona's betrayal and Beatrice's betrayal and everything fell into place from there. I thought the eerie atmospheres would work well together! So I ended up scrapping my previous idea and wrote 3k plus a summary like three days before the first check-ins, rip.

Q: For butter/dacia, what went into how you decided which scene(s) to art?

butterfingers: HM well there was some chitchat when we started about what kind of work we wanted to do and I said that I loved the Boom comics covers, and then I shouted WHAT IF I MADE COMIC BOOK COVERS! and I think Dacia went WHAT IF I DID BACKGROUNDS and I guess we just approached it as if we were doing something comic-y haha!

Allie: You two were the power duo.

daciafu: I've always been in love with the style of the backgrounds of OTGW since that's where all those cozy and spooky feelings of fall and the Unknown really shine and I'm honestly HORRIBLE at designing backgrounds so I wanted to take the challenge and push myself to get better! Mimicking other people's styles really helps me break down how they make their choices and teaches me how to make things look Decent so I was super hyped to pick up the OTGW style! And then when Butters and I were trying to figure out What Do and she said she wanted to tackle covers, I decided to do background-heavy scenes. 😊

Q: What is generally your guys’ process (writing for Allie and arting for butters and dacia)?

Allie: Well, I wrote in little scenes, like I would get an idea for a scene and just go for it, the fic wasn't at all coherent until maybe a few days before posting. This actually posed a problem since linking scenes took longer than I thought it would. Because I had most of my scenes written, I thought I had more finished than I really did. By the end of Resbang, I had 56k written but only 20k remotely post-able. I'm a super obsessive planner though, so my whole fic was outlined in detail early on, which was nice cause I knew what I was doing lol

butterfingers: I loved going through Allie's notes, I was always excited to see how they'd connect the dots! My art process is as follows: scribble something, put it aside, look at it a lot throughout the day with the thought that maybe I can surprise myself into seeing something new, find something I hate, fix it, rinse and repeat. For this project I actually... have a friend who works with Boom Comics and she was able to hook me up with a nice little gallery of illustrations for the OTGW comic so I got to go through and put together my mood board for it 😊

daciafu: I read over the gloriousness that was Allie's draft and immediately picked out some neat scenes or wanted to reimagine the classic OTWG ones. I spent a lot of time studying first! Looking at the art books, and poring over the show’s scenes and kind of getting a feel for the color palettes, textures and compositions. Then I watched a tutorial on Youtube where someone just deadass uploaded their painting process on a piece of official art that made it into the show. So that was EXTREMELY helpful to watch the way they painted back-to-front and kind of blended the planes without like, losing depth?? The internet is so, so wonderful. And then I got to work! Started with a soft brush for lineart so it wouldn't be too prevalent, moved onto base colors, then shading, and then really trying to establish textures and make the atmosphere Just Right(tm).

butterfingers: Genius!! Oh damn that sounds like such great advice vis à vis backgrounds. /takes notes

Q: You sound like the dream art partner Allie, I weep for my artists and my last minute HERE IS 10K I JUST TYPED UP BC IM A MESS.

Allie: Ahh geez, these two were the dream partners honestly, like I'm so glad they could gather stuff from my notes, cause I've always got everything together in my head, but then it gets out there and it's a mess, these two deserve all the love.

butterfingers: There was one thing I regret that I didn't have the chance to draw and it was like a throwaway line somewhere in your notes about Maka presenting Soul with a praying mantis and him freaking out. I resonated with that so hard hahaha.

Q: What was the hardest scene for you to write?

Allie: The hardest scene to write that's actually posted was anything with Justin really, I don't get his character and it was tough to write him. There were a few scenes that were hard to write because I rushed them, but I wouldn't say they were genuinely difficult scenes, I just gotta rewrite 'em! But overall the ending scene I'm still struggling to write and there's a dream scene that occurs which has been difficult to write just for making it dream-like enough?

Q: And what was the hardest to art? :o

butterfingers: I had a hard time with Maka's expressions. I had many scribbles designing a Ragnarok lantern, too, but it was very fun!!

Allie: Your design for the Ragnarok lantern was so good, I still cry over it.

butterfingers: Ahaha thank you! He was very Calcifer inspired ;)

daciafu: I struggled quite a bit with the first one I painted, just because it was all so new to me. I had to base color 3 different times because the soft lineart bothered me if something extended too far, or there was white background peeking through. And then reimagining the texture in the leaves and the ground to try to separate the planes there but also wanting them to be cohesive was a bit of a headache. If I had to go back and do that one over again I think I'd be more prepared to deal with the foliage lmao.

butterfingers: Your textures were very excellent, that was a quality I struggled with as well!

daciafu: The first one I painted was the Golden Light scene where Maka and Soul are leaving the woods and entering the fields.

butterfingers: Trees r hard.

Allie: They all came out so incredible though, I'm in awe of how you were able to create those leaves.

daciafu: Omg ;;;;; At the same time trees are so organic and flowy and the chances of getting them wrong are pretty slim considering they can get janked as hell lol they're super fun to just zone out to. "I’ll just put a happy little leaf here, ooh and how’s about another one right next to it. They can be happy friends. Oh look, the squad showed up!!" Channeling my inner Bob Ross... but yeah you can just do whatever with them and they somehow come together.

Q: Daciafu how do u.....background, like you did so well and all I hear from art friends is various levels of pterodactyl screeching when the word background is mentioned.

daciafu: I heavily based the Leafing the Forest scene and the church scene after stills from the show so I don't get composition points there, but I built the pumpkin fields just based off of the environment’s design elements. I really wanted to push the depth of that scene but also give it that same never-ending quality to it, and I'm super happy with the results. Another note is that I omitted the characters entirely while building the backgrounds. Since I'm usually a pretty character-heavy artist, I wanted to tackle it like I was preparing the scene for an animator later. And then once they were done, I added in our sweet kids. Doing it that way first really helped to cement the characters in the space rather than my usual "character is done, how can I put them in an interesting physical space?" struggle lmao.

Q: Did you guys feel like your writing/arting changed at all or that you learned anything/picked up new skills/honed old ones etc. etc. during Resbang?

Allie: Gosh yeah, it changed a lot. In hindsight a bad idea, but this was the first fic I'd ever written with intention of posting and the longest piece I'd ever written. Before this I had written very little and my longest piece was maybe 10k. Throughout Resbang I've learned most of everything from the ground up, it's taught me a lot about my limits, how I work and writing in general. I've definitely improved a lot from the experience!

butterfingers: Let me tell you all about the airbrush tool that I discovered during Resbang. Amazing. Incredible.

daciafu: I learned how to paint backgrounds!!! Which is something I've always wanted to get better at. And I got super comfortable in Clip Studio (I'd just gotten it) as well as using texture brushes, so overall it was a very helpful and wonderful experience as a Resbang participant and as an arteest.

Q: Oh that reminds me butters, what program do you use?

butterfingers: Paint Tool SAI for the most part, and then Photoshop for color correction, borders, and, like, finesse things! :)

Q: Did you guys listen to any music that inspired you or helped you create?

Allie: Ah, yeah! I had a playlist actually! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjTCaFkFU6rkD1edJwCZmHvJiUwlSUeGZ

If you want I can explain some bits of it? I use music a lot when writing aha. I like to associate certain songs with characters and character relationships, so most of the songs are connected to a particular part of the story. The Monroe Transfer, Wayfaring Stranger, and Mountains were all more general atmosphere stuff. Blame was very much related to Maka, which may not be apparent now, but yeah. Ragnarok I actually connected a lot with Willow Tree March. Soul was probably closest with A Lady. Crona had a lot of songs, but Neptune was most specific to them, as was probably Ghost Towns. Some character relationships I associated with certain songs, Crona-Ragnarok and Soul-Maka were both pretty connected to Always Gold, especially that dang last line "there were holes in you, the kind that I could not mend" oh man. Crona-Maka was definitely We Could Be Friends, Bloom, and Spell. Meet Me in The Woods I thought was a pretty good group song! Those are just some general bits of my thinking with the music aha.

daciafu: Definitely checked out Allie's dope playlist. For most of my working time, tho, I was either listening to TAZ: Commitment or MBMBaM oddly enough lol. I will forever think of Justin's uproarious laughter whenever I look at them lmao.

Q: Were any of the relationships difficult to characterize?

Allie: Mmm this may sound weird but early Maka-Crona was weird for me, cause they were kinda at that point where they want to (or at least Maka wants to) like each other, but they don’t like or trust each other at all and it's a weird spot for them. I'm used to writing them as at least interested by one another, if not enemies or already fond of one another, so this felt like a very odd place to start with them.

Q: Do you guys have future plans for writing/drawing? Aside from polishing and posting the rest of the fic!

Allie: I have,,, too many plans,, I need less plans,, someone please take them away from me, I can't be trusted with them,,,, I do want to do a sequel for this when I get it finished, playing on the detail about crows memory lasting five years so. Beyond that I have a SoMa fic to finish for the prompt challenge!! I'm working on a gift for Crescentcrona, which is a fantasy Kirona fic called Eat The Rich. I have polyam week fics that I'm cleaning up, I think my favorite so far is a Azusa/Naigus/Sid/Mifune one for Through The Seasons. And God I have so many CroMa fics I want to write, I gotta fill the AO3 tag. I think the biggest one right now is a wings-related soulmates au that I've been working on on the side since October I think?

daciafu: Yo there's one scene that I'm like sUPER hyped to do if Allie does the sequel because I already know exactly how I wanna draw it but I wasn't able to fit that in near the end, and it didn't end up in the first part. But there are a couple of other scenes Allie and I workshopped that would be super fun to do and I would love to draw them. Other than that, my drawing plans are pretty much working on commissions as they come in. Surprisingly my queue has been maxed out and I just got a full time job so of course now I'm like.... hm.... I'll get 'em done eventually!!

----

That’s the end of the AMAs for the 2017 season! Thanks again for reading along with us, and see you next year! :)

#AMA transcripts #resbang book club #rbbc #simple melody

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cafezimmermann · 5 years

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(in which I become angry...)

On Thursday evening, I attended a vernissage at the Grassi Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig for The German Dream, an "ethnographic study of the dreams, rituals, and visions of a society in which many of its members are looking for an alternative for Germany." The exhibition, as seen through the eyes of its two curators – a cultural anthropologist and an art historian – attempted to identify “typically German” things that seemed doomed to disappear in the future.

"At the beginning of the 20th century, ethnologists were driven into the world by the fear of the loss of "foreign" societies, which is why they set off to collect objects, languages, and stories from all over the world before the respective communities disappeared under the pressure of colonialism. Before this presumably happens to the Germans as well, we have collected important every day and cult objects of this community and offer here a small insight into the current state of what is often speculative research."

On the whole, I found the exhibition interesting (having translated parts of it into English, I was curious what it looked like). There were elements of it that I particularly liked – for example, a 1972 video of Germany in the year 2000 that portrayed the typical working day of a specific "Herr B, 45 years old, politically independent, and single. For the past five years, he has had a steady girlfriend, and for the past two years an artificial heart that works satisfactorily for him." In the adjacent room, there was a mockup of the "Weisses Ross" (White Horse), a Leipzig bar that, after 143 years, was forced to close its doors to make way for a modern microbrewery (at the Stammtisch, the regulars of the bar had been invited to drink beer and play a final round of cards for the visitors). And in yet in another room, there was an installation titled "Digging for Dreams and Nightmares" – a presentation of how a German archeological team has been deliberately planting time capsules at random locations for future generations to discover.

These were the exhibition's highlights. For the most part, however, The German Dream seemed to focus on the dreariness of conservative middle-brow mentality and consumerism – a life of plastic water bottles, barbecue grills, supermarket checkout counter dividers at Aldi, Märklin model train sets, plastic garden dwarfs, Playmobil figures, and Jack Wolfskin rain parkas (strange, the exhibition failed to display those little waste receptacles found at breakfast tables in German hotels). These odds and ends that we take for granted in everyday life, accompanied by pictures of faceless communities (where, when you step off of the bus, you stare heavenwards and wonder to yourself "Just what the hell am I doing here?") attempted to portray modern German society, on the whole, as ‘castrated’:

“While megalopolises such as Shanghai and Dubai are realizing the belief in progress in concrete and steel, the Germans are forced to put up with the question: What happened to the great projects? While around 1900 the overall fascination for visions of the future was still great, it seems, only 19 years after Expo 2000 in Hanover, that the German mentality of the 21st century remains stuck in provincialism, skepticism, and retro kitsch.”

That said, the ‘epicenter’ of The German Dream was a room that had been cordoned off by heavy velvet curtains – the "heart of darkness," a space apart from the drab grey of consumerism where "good citizens" dare not go. It was here where the fascinating and yet controversial aspects of German culture could be found. It was here where Lucas Cranach's Eve was offset by, among other things, Schinkel's stage design for the “Queen of the Night” aria in Mozart’s Magic Flute, stills from Reni Riefenstahl's film Olympia, a portrait of Karl Marx's daughter Laura, and a drawing of a wolf in the woods made by the art historian's five-year-old daughter. It was here where Caspar David Friedrich's Cloister Cemetery in the Snow was juxtaposed with portrayals of Albert Speer's Germania (as an "idealized" future) and black and white photographs of drab concrete prefabricated East German housing blocks (as the reality of Socialist utopia). And it was here where, unfortunately, in the middle of it all, Deutschland, Rammstein's latest video, was being played in an endless loop on a video monitor.

In a time where political views seem to be a polarization of extreme political correctness and blatant right-wing populism, Deutschland is a disturbing attempt by Rammstein to address key points of German history: the Crusades, the Reformation, colonialism, National Socialism, and the Cold War – in effect, all of the things that The German Dream didn’t address. And, although I can understand why some regard Rammstein's "message" in the video as a criticism of German history and thus a dissociation of right-wing ideas ("Deutschland, meine Liebe kann ich dir nicht geben" – "Germany, I cannot give you my love"), Rammstein doesn't hesitate to portray the very violence it seems to criticize.

This, in turn, effectively makes Deutschland nothing more than a rape of German history. In an online article about the video, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (Central German Broadcasting, MDR) didn't hesitate to conceal the outrage of many who see Deutschland as an affront to humanity and German culture. According to Christoph Heubner, Executive Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee, the band’s members "rage with their violent fantasies through German history as if inspired, driven by the greed for the most bloodthirsty images and scenes possible, including those of the German concentration camps […] The value of this video as an artistic examination of German history and Germany as a fatherland is far below zero." MDR adds Josef Schuster's opinion to Heubner's thoughts: "Anyone who misuses the Holocaust for marketing purposes acts reprehensibly and immorally."

(Even the title of the video stoops to the lowest common denominator by using the 1934 “Deutschland” typeface, which typesetters, who were brought up with more elegant, humanistic examples of Fraktur from 16th and 17th centuries, ironically referred to as Schaftstiefelgrotesk ("jackboot grotesques"). Oddly enough, Hitler later banned the blackletter typeface in 1941, decreeing that "the so-called Gothic letters were based on Jewish Schwabacher letterforms.")

The message of the video aside, I felt that the overbearing maelstrom of Rammstein's music – its sheer aggressive, overbearing force – pulled the visitor away from being able to focus on the rest of the images in the dimly lit room. It angered me, in part because the visual associations offered were absolutely brilliant – there was so much to discover in the room, and yet, after unsuccessfully trying to draw my attention away from the video, I simply gave up and left, frustrated by the experience.

On my way back home, I started wondering about what this part of the exhibition might have been like if there had been different music. It then hit upon me that in his essay Concert Design. Form Follows Function, Folkert Uhde, the director of Radialsystem V in Berlin, writes about the importance of context in a concert program, citing an experiment he often holds in workshops about concert design:

"I often conduct a small experiment by showing ten very different photographs and playing the same piece of music for each photograph. The reactions are always surprising: depending on the image, which is seen as 'suitable', the music achieves in part an entirely different effect. Sometimes it is even doubted that it was the same recording of the same piece."

With that in mind, I began to ask myself, “What would it have been like the other way around?” How might have the public reacted had this room been presented with a different pieces of music in the background? How might such parallel worlds, which, musically, equally reflect the complex diversity and beauty of Germany's cultural past, affect and alter the visitor’s perception of the images on the wall? Which music would have been best suited? Would the relationship and meaning of the images change according to the musical context - perhaps intensifying the one over the other?

As Folkert Uhde explains: “If the impression is strong enough, it will make an impact. Contextualization can introduce a particular atmosphere, make associations and, above all, create individual personal points of reference for the listener.”

What if, for example, if classical music ranging from Bach's chorale "Ach wie nichtig, ach wie flüchtig" or Salomone Rossi's Al naharot Bavel to Richard Wagner's “Im Treibhaus” (from his Wesendonk Lieder) or Anton Webern's Passacaglia for Orchestra, op. 1, had been playing? Or, if popular music were desired, something like Wolf Bierman's Ermutigung, Jupp Schmitz's Wer soll das bezahlen?, or a video of MarieMarie's A Beautiful Life? What associations might have been made through these pieces of music?

Or, if they really wanted to be confrontational, why not a video of the Ernst Thälmann Lied, the unofficial hymn of the German Democratic Republic?

youtube

“The most precious thing man possesses is life. It is given only once. And he shall use it so that he may say when he dies, ‘My whole life, my whole power, I have dedicated the most glorious thing in the world, in the struggle for the liberation of mankind.’”

(my translation of the text at the end of the video)

Unfortunately, the opportunity to explore such relationships within the context of The German Dream was simply missed. Actually, that’s putting it lightly – the use of the Rammstein video was, in in my opinion, a display of ignorance.

Admittedly, it showed the point where we have arrived in society (which, from what I understand, was the justification for using the video), but failing to take the rest of Germany’s rich musical culture into consideration is criminal. Indeed we have come a long way from Martin Luther’s proclamation “Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.” But do we really need to reach for the bottom of the barrel and scrape out ‘music’ that is so vile and does nothing more than glorify the history of violence for commercial purposes? And just because we are too blind to look beyond the horizon?

I hope not, and yet, when I see Deutschland being used in a serious discourse about German society, I have my doubts.

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celeryw · 7 years

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Fandom: Naruto, Naruto Online

Words: 1.2k

Pairings: BD/AF/MB/CF/SB the usual lol

Summary: Breeze Dancer goes on a lot of missions with and without the squad. He’s never had fanart before.

ao3 link

it starts out with a simply courier mission some small town wants this small delivery of like industrial material and apparently according to Tsunade he’s the right person for the job don’t mess this up i don’t even know how you would and if you do you better pray to the gods that i dont cut your pay. Breeze doesn’t really understand because B-ranks don’t pay very well and the rent is split five ways so the money he gets is for Pampering his beloveds.

The town is right in the middle of the Land of Rivers, Takumi village is quaint compared to Konoha and the villagers look... not as nice as konohans but also aren’t as mean looking as people from Iwa.

There’s a huge shopping district and he can see the money leaving his pocket. (He very carefully avoids there until he sees the village head about the bridge and the well, because we all know he is the best person to ask about building things also isn’t there a story about how wolves eat pigs and have wind elements? no? just him then)

He does eventually go to the shopping district and there’s a lot of people, he’s in his element really. Breeze goes to almost every store. He also meets a tiny boy who says he’s eight years old and likes drawing and you’re from Konoha? Do you know Sai he’s part of Team Kakashi and uses his drawings for fights! The kid rambles a lot and Breeze just tells him small details he knows about Sai and his fight style and how he has really nice skin and how they have a rivalry.

The kid has stars in his eyes (his name is Taku and he wants to become a strong shinobi) and promises to draw a really epic battle scene you’ll love it Breeze-san i’m a huge fan of you too! You and your partners are S rank in the bingo book and my mom reads that to me before i go to bed, of course i know what it is it’s just the really awesome details about really strong shinobi i want to be in it when i grow up. Breeze grimaces a little but he can understand how the mistake could be made, he does want to talk to this kid’s mother though.

When he returns to Konoha he has full pay for a B-rank and a lot of souvenirs, he even gives Tsunade a print out picture of TonTon the pig (the lone survivor of the brick house he always privately thinks to himself) and she’s delighted and puts it up in her office with a bit of tape, its a little underwhelming but the picture itself is almost microscopic anyways.

He opens the front door to his home, Scarlet is sat at the dinner table with scrolls set in front of him they cover the whole dang thing (which seats 10, half of which are for the people in the relationship the other half is for team kakashi except naruto, he has to bring a folding chair it’s an in joke) a quick mental count and skim over deems the 20 maybe 30 scrolls are all about the physical wellbeing of an uchiha. Breeze is interested but not going to touch that, he knows that uchiha are sturdy but he does not want to know how they get their hair to shine thank you very much. So he very quickly kisses Scarlet on the forehead and heads to the bedroom.

Azure is there, doodling. He thinks about that kid who showed him a huge sketch “it’s actually a folio and im sending it to a publisher” book and it was filled with real masterpieces and annotations. Azure notices him and puts her pen down with a hey lovely how was the mission you were gone for two whole weeks do you want to see what me and Scarlet got up to because we destroyed one of the training grounds and had to get Tenzou to rebuild it again look i have pictures. He settles in next to her and grins at the pictures taking his time to survey the damage, it’s a lot and he knows its because the two have been trying to do some sort of combo move that incorporated Fire and Water dragons.

Midnight walks into the room then and rolls his eyes, he leans down for a kiss from Azure and then a kiss from Breeze. He slumps into the bed and goes right to sleep. They both smile fondly at him and then Azure gets off the bed saying something about wanting to a few muscle loosening exercises and she kisses Breeze softly and murmurs against his lips that she’s glad he’s back and she’s out of the room in a flutter of blue hair. Breeze is sickly in love with all of them.

He should not be surprised when he is awaken by loud laughter. Crimson, Midnight and Azure are laughing, it’s nice when it’s not in the early hours of dawn. He turns over and goes back to sleep.

He really should’ve checked what they were laughing at before he closed his eyes again, but he did not and he regrets it a little bit. It’s the kid, the kid who had sent by a summoned wedged tail eagle a huge portfolio of just artistically drawn pictures of him. they’re really good and he wants to pay the kid now, so he does he gives him thirty thousand ryou delivered by the eagle of course. His partners giggle at him and tease him about his popularity, although they too send him money and ask for requests. They all get a portrait each and they’ve hung them up in the dining room.

Tsunade gets wind of this, he’s not sure how but she’s a huge fan of this kid’s work. She’s gotten him to come down to Konoha with the jounin protection of Sai and the kid is a sobbing mess when he gets to meet his heroes, it’s really cute. Taku becomes famous and Genma decides to take this civilian boy and let him live his dream. It’s the best thing Breeze has ever seen and he’s itching to tell Jiraiya so he can write a book and Breeze can read it and be overcome by emotions and drama.

The pictures get really famous and Taku starts to expand his artistic ability he starts doing backgrounds. They’re really good and Breeze throws more money at him and gets beautiful desert paintings and it’s just like how he remembers it. He gets forest paintings with the sunlight filtering through the leaves and he can almost see the moisture on the leaves slip off and patter on the ground. He loves it, he loves the paintings.

Taku is eleven, he’s been drawing professionally for two years and it’s really all thanks to his most favourite shinobi the Breeze Dancer who was supportive over the years and let him follow his dreams while keeping up with his hobbies. Taku knows that his hero worship won’t go away, because now he really knows Breeze, he knows how much Breeze doesn’t like when people lick their fingers after they finish a meal, and how Breeze misses Sunagakure a lot but loves Konoha so much he wouldn’t leave, and when Breeze smiles at him and his art his heart squeezes and he can’t help beaming back.

#cel writes #naruto #naruto online #hey i have a new tag now #team 20

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Hyperallergic: Beer with a Painter: Jennifer Coates

Jennifer Coates, “Large S’more” (2015), acrylic on canvas, 60 x 72 inches (courtesy Freight & Volume Gallery)

“Here’s some macaroni! And here is rigatoni…” Jennifer Coates says to me as she moves paintings around in her studio. It’s hard not to smile and feel like I’m being offered dinner as well as a studio visit. There’s a generosity and enthusiasm — and total willingness to put herself out there — when Coates is talking about ideas or sharing her work. She loves to joke about all things bodily and will talk about alien life, scatology, politics, and painting in equal measure. She is also a fierce gardener, cook, competitive baker, and musician — a vocalist and violinist in a couple of bands.

Coates’s recent work depicts food: spaghetti and meatballs, sprinkle cookies, and s’mores. Her work is about matter and viscosity, but it is also rooted in grid-like structures, repetitive mark-making, and very sophisticated paint handling. I remember being struck by her painting “BBQ” (2014), which I saw in a pop-up group exhibition — thinking it was intense and elemental, and a great painting joke at the same time. Against the backdrop of a painterly grid (a grill seen from above), was a huge slab of meat — which was also just substance: fire, heat, and red paint.

Jennifer Coates (courtesy the artist)

Coates has developed this interchange in all of her paintings since. Mass-produced and nostalgia-filled foods, like Almond Joy candy bars and thick deli sandwiches, are shown in cross-section. Their overall forms suggest biomorphic shapes in modernist abstract painting. They also look weird and over-the-top, gooey and oozing. Acrylic paint, slathered, smoothed, and textured, is likened to the synthetic colors and substances that are part of processed convenience foods, food dyes, and cake icing. Drips of creamy paint become syrup, pasta sauce, and melting cheese.

Coates received her BFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1995 and her MFA from Hunter College in 2001. She was the subject of a solo exhibition, Carb Load, in 2016 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Collaborative work with her husband David Humphrey was shown in 2015 in a two-person exhibition, Plus Onus, at Arts + Leisure, New York. Prior solo exhibitions were held at Kinz, Tillou + Feigen (2008) and Feigen Contemporary (2006) in New York. Coates’s writing on art has been published in Modern Painters, Time Out New York, and Art in America. She’s also authored a horoscope column for the blog Two Coats of Paint and co-curated the exhibition The Swerve in 2016 at Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, New York. She is known for her artist lectures / visual essays exploring the phenomena and scientific-social history of bubbles. A solo exhibition of Coates’s work, All U Can Eat, is currently on view at Freight + Volume Gallery, New York, through April 16.

* * *

Jennifer Samet: You grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia. I’m guessing, based on what you have told me about your background, that you didn’t actually grow up eating the mass-produced foods that have become a subject of your work.

Jennifer Coates, “Grilled Cheese” (2016), acrylic on canvas, 12 x 12 inches (courtesy Freight & Volume Gallery)

Jennifer Coates: In 2016, I had a show, Carb Load, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. My mother came to the opening. She was saying to everyone, “I just want you to know, I did not feed Jennifer these foods.” And it’s true! My parents prided themselves on their gourmet cooking skills. I learned to cook from my dad. My friends at school would all eat tuna fish sandwiches on white bread with the crusts cut off. They had ravioli from the can. Those foods freaked me out. And I was just not cool and got teased for everything — from playing the violin to having nice, cute lunches, like a roast beef sandwich with mustard on multigrain bread.

So, I am recapitulating my sense of being an alien as a child. “I’m wrong, everything I do is wrong. I’m different from you, and I don’t understand you.” It is a comfortable perspective, in a way.

JS: Was art-making a part of your childhood? Were there artists in your family?

JC: Drawing was my thing. I drew all the time, picture after picture of wide-eyed little girls. They were like children of the corn, recurring and repeating and multiplying. In high school, I remember being miserable and thinking, “The only thing I have control over is what is on this piece of paper.” From time to time, it’s good to tap into that original impulse — when art history and contextualizing your work can start to take over. It’s about trying to make sense of how to be a person.

Recently, I found a drawing I made for my father, when I was eight or nine years old. He had sprained his ankle, and I was trying to make him feel better. So I made this drawing of an enormous hamburger with five different patties and all kinds of condiments, and his tankard of beer. It’s like you have one idea your whole life, and that’s it.

Jennifer Coates, “Cotton Candy” (2016), acrylic on canvas, 14 x 11 inches (courtesy Freight & Volume Gallery)

My maternal grandmother was really amazing. She took art classes starting in her 50s, and then went back to school to get her BFA when she was already a grandmother. She lived in Canada, and when I visited, I slept in her studio, with stacks of paintings. I saw her thesis show when I was in high school. She had learned how to cast in bronze, she made jewelry, and she made these ambitious paintings that were embedded with her experience of being a Jewish immigrant. She was a difficult person, but always very interested in what I was up to. It meant a lot to me.

JS: There’s something you told me a few years ago in your studio that I always think about. You said you grew up with an atheist Jewish mother and that experimenting with spirituality felt like the most forbidden thing. It was very funny. I’ve been thinking about it, since I know you explore relationships between the Occult and modernist art. You also consider your work to have a devotional, iconic quality.

JC: Yes, when I was an undergraduate at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, I met my friend Sarah Peters, the sculptor. She was involved in a born-again Christian community. Sometimes I went to church with her. I didn’t know if I believed all of it, and I wasn’t necessarily attracted to organized religion. But there was something so ecstatic, which was attractive to me. And yes, I would worry that somehow my mother was going to discover me saying, “Praise Jesus!”

I liked how the ecstatic reorients you to the moment you are in, and wakes you up. My mother saying, “God doesn’t exist… and tell your friends,” just didn’t do it for me. I think anything that makes you feel liberated, in terms of how you see reality, is a good thing. A whole world opens up when we really look at all the things that we put on our bodies, and put in ourselves. I’d rather have that be magical than neutral.

Jennifer Coates, “Picnic I” (2013), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches (courtesy of the artist)

JS: At that time, when I visited your studio, you were making abstract paintings with a lot of pattern and tessellation. When and how did you move into the food-based paintings?

JC: Around the time you visited, I was probably working on “Picnic” (2014). It was a skeletal black warping grid with stuff oozing out of it. I was frustrated with it and didn’t want to be in this nebulous architectural abstraction anymore.

For a few months, I was background processing, trying to figure out where I wanted to go with the work. I had a couple of experiences that affected me. I visited Nicole Eisenman’s studio. She has known my work for a long time. I saw the painting “Under the Table 2” (2014) in the studio, which shows a huge cutaway of salami, and people hanging around the table. There are flecks of fat and meat in it. I was amazed by the painting, and Nicole said, “You could have painted those dots in the meat.” I thought, “Wow. What would it be like, to go from what I’ve been doing, to painting salami?”

Then I came across an image of a Claes Oldenburg sculpture, “Cash Register” (1961). I thought about how it was completely of its moment, but it also looks like it was dug out of the earth. It was like an ancient sculpture.

I also saw photographs of a friend’s vacation in Iceland. There were beautiful, primeval landscapes, and images of him and his wife, sitting at picnic tables, eating little snacks. Little by little, something started to cement in my head, where I thought, “I can talk about the sublime – this radiant, transcendent presence that I’m trying to coax out of paint, and also anchor it back to the everyday.”

I decided it would be really exciting to go back into the black grid with a gingham pattern. It didn’t change anything about how I was painting. But I named it, and made it specific, so that anyone looking at the painting would read it as a picnic blanket or tablecloth. On this particular surface, everything that happened on it or erupted from it felt food-oriented. A stain wasn’t just a painterly stain; it was a barf stain or something that spilled over. That was the beginning of the food.

JS: It seems that your concern in these paintings is to establish an equivalence between the paint and the food substance. Is that accurate?

JC: Paint can do what it wants to do, and the references can be multiple and diffuse. If I am doing a spray of paint, it is icing as well as a Jackson Pollock move. The food often just stages an opportunity. Is it going to be a Pointillist business, or a zip down the middle, or Abstract Expressionism? It became a way to have a lot more fun.

You also begin to think about all the weird decisions that go into preparing foods. There are aesthetic decisions that are not just about nourishment. You want things to look a certain way, or have a certain ratio of liquid to solid. That struck me as exciting to explore.

When you are spreading something on a piece of bread with a knife, you put it on in a special way. Some kids like more peanut butter, and some like more jelly. There are always aesthetic decisions. And I thought, “Well, that’s funny. Maybe making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is a painting indoctrination experience.”

Jennifer Coates, “Cherry Danish” (2016), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches (courtesy Freight & Volume Gallery)

JS: I wonder why, if you are in search of the spiritual, your subject was mass-produced food. Aren’t they kind of polar opposites?

JC: Embedded in it is a critique. These processed foods are toxic — for us and for the planet. If you buy a Danish, you get a plastic-encased thing. You open it up, and the thing inside has more in common with the packaging than it does with something from your grandmother’s kitchen. How did this food become what it is? It is now made from synthetic chemicals, but why is it the shape it is? The Danish is a spiral — an ancient shape. So, for me, it’s a way to meditate on both the mysterious and toxic nature of processed food.

JS: What kinds of discoveries have you made as far as relating food shapes to symbols and forms?

JC: They are theories more than discoveries. I am sort of a conspiracy theorist-type person. I love this idea of, “Guess what?! This thing that you are so used to and never consider is actually the bearer of ancient ritual religious behavior.” I love making up stories about where things came from and finding deep-time precursors — shape rhymes throughout history.

It is interesting that as human beings we’ve been attracted to certain kinds of forms and shapes and behaviors. We tend to say, “It’s just decorative,” but what if there is something in our anatomy that draws us to similar patterns?

Lately, in lectures on my work, I am making connections between pasta shapes and entoptic forms. Entopic phenomena are the result of your visual cortex seeing your neuroanatomy. Experiments, like the ones that Heinrich Klüver did in the 1920s, have shown that people under the influence of certain hallucinogens draw specific patterns and shapes. The shapes are categorized and called “Klüver forms.” Similar kinds of forms and shapes can be found in petroglyphs and early Paleolithic art.

Jennifer Coates, “Everything Bagel” (2017), acrylic on canvas, 72 x 72 inches (courtesy Freight & Volume Gallery)

When I was doing excavation into the bagel shape, I saw images of yoni carved stone forms found in Israel eight thousand years ago. They are thought to conform to fertility or female genitalia worship. They were circular shapes with a hole in the center and a slit down the middle. For me, that’s all I need. You get a bagel, but it’s a bearer of this ancient ritual, affiliated with matriarchy and female shamans.

JS: So when you say they are theories, you’re not necessarily tying to prove them? I know you are interested in the work of Terence McKenna, the ethnobotanist and mystic. How did his work influence you?

JC: When I come up with a theory, it’s not verbal — it is visual. I lay out the pictures.

I want to trust the visual part of my brain — the part that is intuitive, and has shape recognition and pattern recognition. I’m trying to prove my theory through images. My hope is that if you are allowing yourself to think purely visually, you can be very thorough and engaged with what’s around you.

I got into Terence McKenna through the painter Steve DiBenedetto. His lectures are archived online, and I have listened to them constantly in my studio for years. McKenna changed my way of thinking. The desire to dig into history, improvise, and make up a story came from him. McKenna read everything, but he plays with all of the information and ideas. He’s not beholden to any of it. He wasn’t a scholar or a scientist. He just says, “Here’s what I think.”

JS: It seems as if you make a lot of painting jokes in your work. The sprinkles or dots can be abstract ellipses. Are you interested in Pattern and Decoration artists, or Op Art? Who are the figures in art history you are talking to the most?

JC: There are a lot of painting jokes. There are all kinds of moments where I think I can pretend to be this or that artist. It is very satisfying. With the bread and the popsicle paintings, I think about Rothko and Color Field painting. How can the popsicle be radiant? I’m thinking about a color relationship where the paint isn’t just naming something, but also transcending itself.

As for Pattern painters, I’ve always liked James Siena’s work a lot. I like Bridget Riley, but I would want to pee on it. I always want to do something to mess with Op Art.

Turner is somebody I come back to over and over and over again. The moments of light in his paintings are the most impressive and the most physical, but they are also the most ethereal — barely there. It is abject light and also transformative. I love that you can have something be really mucky and crusty, and also a ghost.

Jennifer Coates, “PB&J” (2015), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches (courtesy Art Museum at the University of Kentucky)

Hopefully, what comes across in my work is a kind of heightened devotional object that has a radiant presence. I was thinking about sacrificial stone altars. The slab, where an animal is getting killed with a knife, is like the first abstract expressionist painting. So making a sandwich and spreading substances around with a knife is like a weird descendent of the sacrifice. Peanut butter and jelly can look like bodily fluids or innards. It is gooey business.

JS: Do you see your paintings as feminist in the sense that they are acknowledging this kind of messiness? It is what Mira Schor talks about in “Figure/Ground” (1989), which is an essay you have cited as an influence.

JC: When I was an undergraduate, I was obsessed with Kiki Smith and body art. It was the early 1990s — that moment when body art was prominent. I took a feminist art history class at the University of Pennsylvania. I came from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where you draw from life and study anatomy. That art history class showed there was a way to use the body to communicate a political, feminist message. That concern with how the body is fragile, and breaks down, and there is pee and blood — I was really into that. And that interest has never left me.

Jennifer Coates, “Sandwich To Go” (2016), acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 inches (courtesy Freight & Volume Gallery)

So for me, paint is very bodily. As much as it sort of organizes itself to be a depiction of something, it’s also always restating itself as this amorphous pile of goo. What’s a more amorphous pile of goo than the innards or a decaying corpse? I was trying to paint a sandwich, but then I said, “It is a fucking bloody vagina.” That’s what it is. I want it to look like that. If someone sees something that’s embarrassing and kind of weird, a stain that’s wrong, then I feel good.

I’m really excited about those moments where it becomes unruly and messy, anti-logic or anti-gravity. In his book The Swerve, Stephen Greenblatt discusses ancient Greek and Roman atomistic theory. The idea was that tiny particles shower down in the cosmos, moving in parallel lines. Every now and then, one goes out of its path. That is when things interact. It is that interruption of the pattern, and that interaction, which causes things to happen. Evolution happens. Systems self-exceed. Things progress when there is a mistake. So, I prefer the mistake.

The thing that makes many artists interesting is how they re-tool the past. They confuse our relationship to what we thought was familiar. You have to trust that part of your brain — the part that goes, This, on top of that. Something erupts from the matrix and the orderly. Then, all of a sudden, everything is exciting.

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