#just because i know how to use illustrator doesn't mean i enjoy it
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(sorry if you've gotten this before or if this is not the right kind of question for the blog)
Do you have any advice on HOW to make a comic series? From what I've seen your work is fantastic, well made and written! (Cool concepts, story, and character dynamics etc)
How did you start? How DO you start?? How do you comic lol
I'm glad you enjoy my work! I'll do my best to answer this question!
I could give the ol' "Just jump in! Get started!" But I don't think that's the answer you're looking for, here. Even if it's technically the correct one.
"How do you make a comic series" Is one of those questions where the answer is kinda difficult to summarize in a single ask, because there's a whole lot that goes into it, y'know? I'll give you a brief run-down of my process.
I figure an idea for a story. In the case of Infested, the whole story was written before I even got started on the script. This is an outlier in my usual process and I don't normally do this and definitely don't recommend it.
Figure the plot like how you would figure a regular story's plot; The beats you wanna hit, the way the characters develop, the beginning, the middle, the end. What's the point of the story? What, exactly, are you trying to convey here? Who's the target audience? All that stuff ought to be figured out before even picking up a [MEDIUM OF ARTIST'S CHOICE].
Script the story. If you've seen a movie script, these things look a bit like that. You wanna not skip this step because this is where you determine the visual language of each page. Comic script writing is a whole thing and a half but I do have some random tips regarding it.
-> When writing the beginning of a new scene, write down the time of day, the weather, and any important details about your setting (this is most important if you're working in a team).
-> Using storyboard/film language when trying to figure out a scene is very helpful. You're not gonna remember exactly how that scene looked in your head when you finally get around to penciling it. Trust me. Write it down. Or thumbnail it! Thumbnails are also very helpful!
-> Remember that you have very limited space for dialogue. Write with that in mind.
Figure the paneling on a page. I work at 11x17 and do my panel layouts based on those dimensions. I tend to make more important panels, or panels with PUNCH or SHOCK bigger than the others. Each panel is an individual illustration, but together they make a whole piece. You gotta treat it like that, y'know? Find the focal point on a page, find the most important element of it, and make that your focal point. Don't be afraid to get a lil wacky with panel shapes, either. They don't HAVE to be squares and rectangles. Check out what other cartoonists do! Get inspired! Paneling is an art-form within itself!
Page from "Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name" By Tess Stone
5. Penciling time! Get the perspective figured out, then draw the background, then draw the characters. Do it in that order. Trust me. With a background already set up, characters can be drawn more like they exist within that space, instead of floating in front of it. Also? Be aware that comic artists need to be ready to draw ANYTHING. You may have a great idea that you GOTTA put out into the world, but you have no idea how to draw, say, a car. Or debris. Or jungle foliage. There's no shame in using references, tutorials, or even doing a bit of tracing if something's outside your wheelhouse. Here's a bazillion tutorials from two guys who REALLY know their stuff.
6. Speech Balloons! Yes, really. In fact, you may want to do this and penciling at the same time. I certainly do. It's better to figure this out immediately so it doesn't hurt you later when it comes to getting your balloons to share a space with your art. Here's some great advice on the whole subject from a master of the craft
7. Inks! Line weight variation is key. Closer to the "camera" means thicker lines. If a part of a character is in shadow, that part is gonna get thicker lines, too. Personally, I make my background line art thinner than character line art. It helps the characters pop out!
8. Flats! Or flat colors if you wanna get specific about terminology. It's exactly what it sounds like -- Coloring the characters and backgrounds with the bare bones basic colors. I highly recommend keeping the character flats and bg flats on separate layers if you're working digitally.
9. Rendering! There's no hard and fast rule as to how a cartoonist ought to render their comic -- If they want to do that at all, even. Go with what you believe looks good AND is something you can do quickly. The "quickly" part is important. Heed my warning. Don't be like me.
And then I'd schedule the comic to be uploaded on whatever day suits me -- Thursday (usually) in Infested's case.
Of course, I kinda suck at relaying my process, so the final thing I can do for you is direct you to an extremely helpful book that really breaks it down in a way that may click with you as it did with me.
I hope this was in any way helpful to you!
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why Aurora's art is genius
It's break for me, and I've been meaning to sit down and read the Aurora webcomic (https://comicaurora.com/, @comicaurora on Tumblr) for quite a bit. So I did that over the last few days.
And… y'know. I can't actually say "I should've read this earlier," because otherwise I would've been up at 2:30-3am when I had responsibilities in the morning and I couldn't have properly enjoyed it, but. Holy shit guys THIS COMIC.
I intended to just do a generalized "hello this is all the things I love about this story," and I wrote a paragraph or two about art style. …and then another. And another. And I realized I needed to actually reference things so I would stop being too vague. I was reading the comic on my tablet or phone, because I wanted to stay curled up in my chair, but I type at a big monitor and so I saw more details… aaaaaand it turned into its own giant-ass post.
SO. Enjoy a few thousand words of me nerding out about this insanely cool art style and how fucking gorgeous this comic is? (There are screenshots, I promise it isn't just a wall of text.) In my defense, I just spent two semesters in graphic design classes focusing on the Adobe Suite, so… I get to be a nerd about pretty things…???
All positive feedback btw! No downers here. <3
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I cannot emphasize enough how much I love the beautiful, simple stylistic method of drawing characters and figures. It is absolutely stunning and effortless and utterly graceful—it is so hard to capture the sheer beauty and fluidity of the human form in such a fashion. Even a simple outline of a character feels dynamic! It's gorgeous!
Though I do have a love-hate relationship with this, because my artistic side looks at that lovely simplicity, goes "I CAN DO THAT!" and then I sit down and go to the paper and realize that no, in fact, I cannot do that yet, because that simplicity is born of a hell of a lot of practice and understanding of bodies and actually is really hard to do. It's a very developed style that only looks simple because the artist knows what they're doing. The human body is hard to pull off, and this comic does so beautifully and makes it look effortless.
Also: line weight line weight line weight. It's especially important in simplified shapes and figures like this, and hoo boy is it used excellently. It's especially apparent the newer the pages get—I love watching that improvement over time—but with simpler figures and lines, you get nice light lines to emphasize both smaller details, like in the draping of clothing and the curls of hair—which, hello, yes—and thicker lines to emphasize bigger and more important details and silhouettes. It's the sort of thing that's essential to most illustrations, but I wanted to make a note of it because it's so vital to this art style.
THE USE OF LAYER BLENDING MODES OH MY GODS. (...uhhh, apologies to the people who don't know what that means, it's a digital art program thing? This article explains it for beginners.)
Bear with me, I just finished my second Photoshop course, I spent months and months working on projects with this shit so I see the genius use of Screen and/or its siblings (of which there are many—if I say "Screen" here, assume I mean the entire umbrella of Screen blending modes and possibly Overlay) and go nuts, but seriously it's so clever and also fucking gorgeous:
Firstly: the use of screened-on sound effect words over an action? A "CRACK" written over a branch and then put on Screen in glowy green so that it's subtle enough that it doesn't disrupt the visual flow, but still sticks out enough to make itself heard? Little "scritches" that are transparent where they're laid on without outlines to emphasize the sound without disrupting the underlying image? FUCK YES. I haven't seen this done literally anywhere else—granted, I haven't read a massive amount of comics, but I've read enough—and it is so clever and I adore it. Examples:
Secondly: The beautiful lighting effects. The curling leaves, all the magic, the various glowing eyes, the fog, the way it's all so vividly colored but doesn't burn your eyeballs out—a balance that's way harder to achieve than you'd think—and the soft glows around them, eeeee it's so pretty so pretty SO PRETTY. Not sure if some of these are Outer/Inner Glow/Shadow layer effects or if it's entirely hand-drawn, but major kudos either way; I can see the beautiful use of blending modes and I SALUTE YOUR GENIUS.
I keep looking at some of this stuff and go "is that a layer effect or is it done by hand?" Because you can make some similar things with the Satin layer effect in Photoshop (I don't know if other programs have this? I'm gonna have to find out since I won't have access to PS for much longer ;-;) that resembles some of the swirly inner bits on some of the lit effects, but I'm not sure if it is that or not. Or you could mask over textures? There's... many ways to do it.
If done by hand: oh my gods the patience, how. If done with layer effects: really clever work that knows how to stop said effects from looking wonky, because ugh those things get temperamental. If done with a layer of texture that's been masked over: very, very good masking work. No matter the method, pretty shimmers and swirly bits inside the bigger pretty swirls!
Next: The way color contrast is used! I will never be over the glowy green-on-black Primordial Life vibes when Alinua gets dropped into that… unconscious space?? with Life, for example, and the sharp contrast of vines and crack and branches and leaves against pitch black is just visually stunning. The way the roots sink into the ground and the three-dimensional sensation of it is particularly badass here:
Friggin. How does this imply depth like that. HOW. IT'S SO FREAKING COOL.
A huge point here is also color language and use! Everybody has their own particular shade, generally matching their eyes, magic, and personality, and I adore how this is used to make it clear who's talking or who's doing an action. That was especially apparent to me with Dainix and Falst in the caves—their colors are both fairly warm, but quite distinct, and I love how this clarifies who's doing what in panels with a lot of action from both of them. There is a particular bit that stuck out to me, so I dug up the panels (see this page and the following one https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-20-30/):
(Gods it looks even prettier now that I put it against a plain background. Also, appreciation to Falst for managing a bridal-carry midair, damn.)
The way that their colors MERGE here! And the immense attention to detail in doing so—Dainix is higher up than Falst is in the first panel, so Dainix's orange fades into Falst's orange at the base. The next panel has gold up top and orange on bottom; we can't really tell in that panel where each of them are, but that's carried over to the next panel—
—where we now see that Falst's position is raised above Dainix's due to the way he's carrying him. (Points for continuity!) And, of course, we see the little "huffs" flowing from orange to yellow over their heads (where Dainix's head is higher than Falst's) to merge the sound of their breathing, which is absurdly clever because it emphasizes to the viewer how we hear two sets of huffing overlaying each other, not one. Absolutely brilliant.
(A few other notes of appreciation to that panel: beautiful glows around them, the sparks, the jagged silhouette of the spider legs, the lovely colors that have no right to make the area around a spider corpse that pretty, the excellent texturing on the cave walls plus perspective, the way Falst's movements imply Dainix's hefty weight, the natural posing of the characters, their on-point expressions that convey exactly how fuckin terrifying everything is right now, the slight glows to their eyes, and also they're just handsome boys <3)
Next up: Rain!!!! So well done! It's subtle enough that it never ever disrupts the impact of the focal point, but evident enough you can tell! And more importantly: THE MIST OFF THE CHARACTERS. Rain does this irl, it has that little vapor that comes off you and makes that little misty effect that plays with lighting, it's so cool-looking and here it's used to such pretty effect!
One of the panel captions says something about it blurring out all the injuries on the characters but like THAT AIN'T TOO BIG OF A PROBLEM when it gets across the environmental vibes, and also that'd be how it would look in real life too so like… outside viewer's angle is the same as the characters', mostly? my point is: that's the environment!!! that's the vibes, that's the feel! It gets it across and it does so in the most pretty way possible!
And another thing re: rain, the use of it to establish perspective, particularly in panels like this—
—where we can tell we're looking down at Tynan due to the perspective on the rain and where it's pointing. Excellent. (Also, kudos for looking down and emphasizing how Tynan's losing his advantage—lovely use of visual storytelling.)
Additionally, the misting here:
We see it most heavily in the leftmost panel, where it's quite foggy as you would expect in a rainstorm, especially in an environment with a lot of heat, but it's also lightly powdered on in the following two panels and tends to follow light sources, which makes complete sense given how light bounces off particles in the air.
A major point of strength in these too is a thorough understanding of lighting, like rim lighting, the various hues and shades, and an intricate understanding of how light bounces off surfaces even when they're in shadow (we'll see a faint glow in spots where characters are half in shadow, but that's how it would work in real life, because of how light bounces around).
Bringing some of these points together: the fluidity of the lines in magic, and the way simple glowing lines are used to emphasize motion and the magic itself, is deeply clever. I'm basically pulling at random from panels and there's definitely even better examples, but here's one (see this page https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-16-33/):
First panel, listed in numbers because these build on each other:
The tension of the lines in Tess's magic here. This works on a couple levels: first, the way she's holding her fists, as if she's pulling a rope taut.
The way there's one primary line, emphasizing the rope feeling, accompanied by smaller ones.
The additional lines starbursting around her hands, to indicate the energy crackling in her hands and how she's doing a good bit more than just holding it. (That combined with the fists suggests some tension to the magic, too.) Also the variations in brightness, a feature you'll find in actual lightning. :D Additional kudos for how the lightning sparks and breaks off the metal of the sword.
A handful of miscellaneous notes on the second panel:
The reflection of the flames in Erin's typically dark blue eyes (which bears a remarkable resemblance to Dainix, incidentally—almost a thematic sort of parallel given Erin's using the same magic Dainix specializes in?)
The flowing of fabric in the wind and associated variation in the lineart
The way Erin's tattoos interact with the fire he's pulling to his hand
The way the rain overlays some of the fainter areas of fire (attention! to! detail! hell yeah!)
I could go on. I won't because this is a lot of writing already.
Third panel gets paragraphs, not bullets:
Erin's giant-ass "FWOOM" of fire there, and the way the outline of the word is puffy-edged and gradated to feel almost three-dimensional, plus once again using Screen or a variation on it so that the stars show up in the background. All this against that stunning plume of fire, which ripples and sparks so gorgeously, and the ending "om" of the onomatopoeia is emphasized incredibly brightly against that, adding to the punch of it and making the plume feel even brighter.
Also, once again, rain helping establish perspective, especially in how it's very angular in the left side of the panel and then slowly becomes more like a point to the right to indicate it's falling directly down on the viewer. Add in the bright, beautiful glow effects, fainter but no less important black lines beneath them to emphasize the sky and smoke and the like, and the stunningly beautiful lighting and gradated glows surrounding Erin plus the lightning jagging up at him from below, and you get one hell of an impactful panel right there. (And there is definitely more in there I could break down, this is just a lot already.)
And in general: The colors in this? Incredible. The blues and purples and oranges and golds compliment so well, and it's all so rich.
Like, seriously, just throughout the whole comic, the use of gradients, blending modes, color balance and hues, all the things, all the things, it makes for the most beautiful effects and glows and such a rich environment. There's a very distinct style to this comic in its simplified backgrounds (which I recognize are done partly because it's way easier and also backgrounds are so time-consuming dear gods but lemme say this) and vivid, smoothly drawn characters; the simplicity lets them come to the front and gives room for those beautiful, richly saturated focal points, letting the stylized designs of the magic and characters shine. The use of distinct silhouettes is insanely good. Honestly, complex backgrounds might run the risk of making everything too visually busy in this case. It's just, augh, so GORGEOUS.
Another bit, take a look at this page (https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-15-28/):
It's not quite as evident here as it is in the next page, but this one does some other fun things so I'm grabbing it. Points:
Once again, using different colors to represent different character actions. The "WHAM" of Kendal hitting the ground is caused by Dainix's force, so it's orange (and kudos for doubling the word over to add a shake effect). But we see blue layered underneath, which could be an environmental choice, but might also be because it's Kendal, whose color is blue.
And speaking off, take a look at the right-most panel on top, where Kendal grabs the spear: his motion is, again, illustrated in bright blue, versus the atmospheric screened-on orange lines that point toward him around the whole panel (I'm sure these have a name, I think they might be more of a manga thing though and the only experience I have in manga is reading a bit of Fullmetal Alchemist). Those lines emphasize the weight of the spear being shoved at him, and their color tells us Dainix is responsible for it.
One of my all-time favorite effects in this comic is the way cracks manifest across Dainix's body to represent when he starts to lose control; it is utterly gorgeous and wonderfully thematic. These are more evident in the page before and after this one, but you get a decent idea here. I love the way they glow softly, the way the fire juuuust flickers through at the start and then becomes more evident over time, and the cracks feel so realistic, like his skin is made of pottery. Additional points for how fire begins to creep into his hair.
A small detail that's generally consistent across the comic, but which I want to make note of here because you can see it pretty well: Kendal's eyes glow about the same as the jewel in his sword, mirroring his connection to said sword and calling back to how the jewel became Vash's eye temporarily and thus was once Kendal's eye. You can always see this connection (though there might be some spots where this also changes in a symbolic manner; I went through it quickly on the first time around, so I'll pay more attention when I inevitably reread this), where Kendal's always got that little shine of blue in his eyes the same as the jewel. It's a beautiful visual parallel that encourages the reader to subconsciously link them together, especially since the lines used to illustrate character movements typically mirror their eye color. It's an extension of Kendal.
Did I mention how ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL the colors in this are?
Also, the mythological/legend-type scenes are illustrated in familiar style often used for that type of story, a simple and heavily symbolic two-dimensional cave-painting-like look. They are absolutely beautiful on many levels, employing simple, lovely gradients, slightly rougher and thicker lineart that is nonetheless smoothly beautiful, and working with clear silhouettes (a major strength of this art style, but also a strength in the comic overall). But in particular, I wanted to call attention to a particular thing (see this page https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-12-4/):
The flowing symbolic lineart surrounding each character. This is actually quite consistent across characters—see also Life's typical lines and how they curl:
What's particularly interesting here is how these symbols are often similar, but not the same. Vash's lines are always smooth, clean curls, often playing off each other and echoing one another like ripples in a pond. You'd think they'd look too similar to Life's—but they don't. Life's curl like vines, and they remain connected; where one curve might echo another but exist entirely detached from each other in Vash's, Life's lines still remain wound together, because vines are continuous and don't float around. :P
Tahraim's are less continuous, often breaking up with significantly smaller bits and pieces floating around like—of course—sparks, and come to sharper points. These are also constants: we see the vines repeated over and over in Alinua's dreams of Life, and the echoing ripples of Vash are consistent wherever we encounter him. Kendal's dream of the ghost citizens of the city of Vash in the last few chapters is filled with these rippling, echoing patterns, to beautiful effect (https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-20-14/):
They ripple and spiral, often in long, sinuous curves, with smooth elegance. It reminds me a great deal of images of space and sine waves and the like. This establishes a definite feel to these different characters and their magic. And the thing is, that's not something that had to be done—the colors are good at emphasizing who's who. But it was done, and it adds a whole other dimension to the story. Whenever you're in a deity's domain, you know whose it is no matter the color.
Regarding that shape language, I wanted to make another note, too—Vash is sometimes described as chaotic and doing what he likes, which is interesting to me, because smooth, elegant curves and the color blue aren't generally associated with chaos. So while Vash might behave like that on the surface, I'm guessing he's got a lot more going on underneath; he's probably much more intentional in his actions than you'd think at a glance, and he is certainly quite caring with his city. The other thing is that this suits Kendal perfectly. He's a paragon character; he is kind, virtuous, and self-sacrificing, and often we see him aiming to calm others and keep them safe. Blue is such a good color for him. There is… probably more to this, but I'm not deep enough in yet to say.
And here's the thing: I'm only scratching the surface. There is so much more here I'm not covering (color palettes! outfits! character design! environment! the deities! so much more!) and a lot more I can't cover, because I don't have the experience; this is me as a hobbyist artist who happened to take a couple design classes because I wanted to. The art style to this comic is so clever and creative and beautiful, though, I just had to go off about it. <3
...brownie points for getting all the way down here? Have a cookie.
#aurora comic#aurora webcomic#comicaurora#art analysis#...I hope those are the right tags???#new fandom new tagging practices to learn ig#much thanks for something to read while I try to rest my wrists. carpal tunnel BAD. (ignore that I wrote this I've got braces ok it's fine)#anyway! I HAVE. MANY MORE THOUGHTS. ON THE STORY ITSELF. THIS LOVELY STORY#also a collection of reactions to a chunk of the comic before I hit the point where I was too busy reading to write anything down#idk how to format those tho#...yeet them into one post...???#eh I usually don't go off this much these days but this seems like a smaller tight-knit fandom so... might as well help build it?#and I have a little more time thanks to break so#oh yes also shoutout to my insanely awesome professor for teaching me all the technical stuff from this he is LOVELY#made an incredibly complex program into something comprehensible <3#synapse talks
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AHHH YOU'RE THE BEST THANK YOU FOR DOING MY REQUESTS 💖💖 YOUR WRITING IS TOP NOTCH
can i come at you with another request, if i could? can i request a human!tav/reader that has never seen a tiefling before the grove, and they get curious about rolan?
- 💛
Aww thank you for the compliment! I'm glad you like my silly little writings! This request was a lot of fun!
Rolan With a Tav Who's Never Seen a Tiefling
When Tav first arrived at the Grove and stared at him in a strange way, he immediately thought the worst. Great, another human who will look at them all in such disdain.
Worst of all, they convinced his siblings it would better for the trio to stay and help the other refugees. Now not only are they irritating, they butted into his family affairs.
He's snippy, when they go to speak with him. Of course he is, he's bitter. How dare they insert themselves in a private argument? How dare they look at him with that weird face? They don't deserve his time.
He doesn't realize that look is wonder until they manage to speak civilly.
They explain, while a bit embarrassed, that they've never actually seen a Tiefling before. Whether it's living a sheltered life, never coming across them, or only seeing them in illustrations, they've just never come across them.
Their weird looks finally make sense to him: they were just curious about him.
When they become a little more comfortable with each other, they'll ask simple questions if he'll allow it. Are his horns heavy? Does his mouth feel crowded with his sharp teeth? How about his ears, are they sensitive? His tail?
He'll answer in vague terms, sometimes because he's annoyed with the questions, other times he's just embarrassed about explaining Tiefling biology.
No, they're not allowed to touch any of his traits.
Sometimes he wonders why him? Why not Zevlor? He's probably more than comfortable explaining their unique traits. But no, they want to talk to him.
Lia and Cal know exactly why, giving each other amused looks anytime those two talk. They love their brother, but sometimes he's an idiot; they hope he figures it out, for all of their sakes.
Writing Blurb
"So the base of the horns would be more sensitive than the tips? Would that apply to the tail as well?"
Someone please kill him.
He feels as though they're driving him into insanity. Why are they even interrogating him with these questions? He was sitting peacefully with shitty wine before they decided to saunter over. Why him? Zevlor would be more receptive. What is their game?
They don't seem discouraged by his lack of response, chatting away as he stares longingly at his now empty wine bottle. "How about the ears? I actually heard Elf ears are sensitive at the tips and use that advantage during foreplay."
He wants nothing more than to sink into the ground. Or get drunk, whichever comes first.
"What about-"
"Can you not ask your Tiefling friend these questions?!" He shouts, dropping the empty wine bottle.
"Oh, I could."
"Then why don't you? Surely she would be happy to explain things to you."
"I want to hear it from you!"
"I'm not answering these idiotic questions of yours, you absolute degenerate!" He hisses, not noticing how flushed his face is, "Gods, it is not helping that you're asking these so damn loudly."
"Would you answer them if I get you another wine bottle?"
"No."
That makes them burst into a laughing fit, and Rolan's blush gets even worse. He's embarrassed, ashamed, pissed, and flustered all at once. They're clearly making fun of him, and he doesn't appreciate it one bit. He's tempted to bare his teeth at them but they manage to calm down their laughter.
"Sorry, sorry! I didn't mean to embarrass you."
"Clearly." He states sarcastically, tail thrashing in his irritation.
"I mean it, I swear. I enjoy talking to you. A lot."
He looks at them in confusion, almost exasperated. "What?"
"I like hearing you talk."
Before he could respond, they gave him a sweet kiss on the cheek, which silenced him on the spot. He had no idea what to say, and they didn't even give him a chance to speak before they got up. "Let's talk later, yeah? I have plenty of questions for you."
As they walk away from him, he idly touching the place they kissed. Hells, he's done for. He internally prays any god willing to listen for their strongest alcohol as he goes to search for another wine bottle.
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heya! I'm wondering, from where do you reference clothing for your art pieces? (Specifically for Inver!) I enjoy the outfits you draw your characters in
hii so for the fancier victorian-era outfits i used a whole bunch of sources but among them the metropolitan museum costume collection, this is a great online gallery of historical costume that you can search by era. you can also find illustrated fashion plates from the era to get a sense of how people styled the outfits, facial hair, accessories etc. here's one for hats i used. i also followed the twitter account WikiVictorian which.. due to new twitter policies you can't view accounts while not logged in, but it looks like they have a pinterest and also instagram?? anyway great resource, posted a lot of dresses, furniture, and historical recipes with sources & context.
(cut for length)
but those dresses and stuff are for the upper classes. For ordinary people i just googled what I knew every old lady wears: shawls
this is a galway shawl which is like. THE thing every single person wore back in the day and if you check out the wiki page it's a great reference for what patterns & dyes would have been used. from there you can find historical photos. i love photos like this which show a whole scene in context with people from multiple generations hanging out (yooo check out the Sparch in the background!!). now I know this isn't 1860s stuff, but the fact is that fashion doesn't move so fast for people like Clarion who live on a farm and have to make their simple clothing items last for a lifetime or more.
for the military outfits I mainly just googled 'military outfit 1860s' and iterated (groundbreaking). for things to be accurate i tried to pick reference illustrations drawn during the era.
i figure you might mean specifically the ancient Inver stuff so for them I used a lot of old illustrations and stuff from art history class in school. this era is more in the region of the 1500s. here is a kind of kitchy site which nonetheless has real-life examples of some of the clothing i drew. this painting is in my list of references (sorry for the stock image link but it's one of the nicest online reproductions of it) and you can see the guys on the right wearing the same léine that i've drawn Finbarr in. once you know the time period & what the various outfit components are called you can search them more easily. now the headdress i've drawn Finbarr wearing (Olivier wears it as well!) is in fact a real thing, it's the Petrie crown broken in half.
the crown is not of the same era as the other outfits because i'm not so interested in historical accuracy as much for these guys (booo).
for Olivier I searched for old French armour from the same historic era as Finbarr, I know less about the history of Brittany so kind of just copied what I saw with some small alterations (because he wears werewolf armour, which is not a thing irl).
#setting: inver#i know there's a website for renting costumes that goes around every so often on tumblr but i find them really lacking in menswear usually
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Hello! I got a new sketchbook and I decided to try it by drawing a Danny with my markers. I might try doing something with gouache too, because I honestly really enjoy the process and the look of painting with it.
I also have some things to ramble about under the line, which isn't strictly dp related, more so me comparing how I work with different mediums and being a little analytical about it, you know, as a treat to my brain because it needs it. •^•
So, to start with the Danny above, it's nothing overly ambitious, I was just vibing, but I think it looks nice. Here's the thing though, it looks weird to me, and the reason, probably, is that the process I use with the previously mentioned gouache doesn't translate well to markers.
Here's the process in question btw, a smol sketch to illustrate the way I work with paint but with markers:
See, that's a process that's clearly a bit more suited to painting imo. So it looks good but a little off with markers. And it's not just to markers. Here's what I mean:
This is digital. With the same process.
It's even weirder than the markers imo, but you can still tell that there's a process going on that's shared.
And the gouache version of this process looks like this: this is my most recent painting ( literally yesterday )
This was done in flat brush, and I think you can clearly see that the process I used across all these paintings started with my gouache work. Which also might be why Danny looks a bit different than them because I had to adjust my process. Rather than starting with colouring my canvas and starting the face with a contrasting colour, both Danny, and as far as I can remember the digital dude, started blank and I had to do the glow effect thing a lot less naturally - especially with the lack of brush strokes. The scratchiness of them is aesthetic. Like, brush stroke and direction is important guys, it adds a lot.
I think if I try to draw this Danny in gouache and explain my process better this would all make sense, but I haven't had the time to get back into art because of uni, and I rather like to. I especially want to try doing digital art again, but I've been doing it so rarely that I haven't really got a process anymore, so I'm a bit intimidated to do anything but portraits.
In any case, if anybody has good Sai brushes that could help me get that painterly vibe there, I'd be very grateful •^•
I want to start drawing and creating things for the Phandom again, but all I have currently are sketches, which I know aren't traditionally the easiest things to interact with visually, especially without colour. Still, I'm just going to share things I make and vibe, I suppose.
I have some interesting designs I'd like to try to make digitally, like that mermaid lady ghost from a while back, and her sister who I decided was Pariah Dark's fabulous ex. Still not sure on Queen's design, but I just want to draw a regal lady.
Yes, I am dumping previous designs here so I can share them again, partly to remind myself of them without scrolling back my Tumblr for a thousand years.
Also my Bois, the clones, who I still want to write into a story and don't know how, but like - I love them and want to show them to more people.
Well, that's all for now. Hope you all have a good day. •^•>💚💜💚
#danny phantom#dp fanart#dp art#phanart#danny phantom art#ft.my art rambles#and also my other art because i went crazy thinking about#the difference medium can have on an artist's process#like legit#my guys#try it#if you're an artist try this experiment#use the process you have on digital with trad and vice versa
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Question abt drawing: been trying to attempt learning how to draw forever but I always have trouble getting over the obstacle of having to learn/study things like anatomy and shading, which then causes me to stop drawing and have a harder time picking it back up. I know it's important for improving your art and yourself as an artist but I can't help but see it as tedious and overwhelming, especially the anatomy since it's more on the science side of things and science is not my thing lol. Do you have any advice on how to get over it or work thru it?
i think there's a couple facets to this question. firstly i'd recommend you consider what exactly your end goal is in learning how to draw: do you specifically want to be able to produce anatomically accurate figures and true-to-life shading, or do you just want to be able to make something for fun that looks good to you? one of the most helpful things I ever learned at art school was that accuracy doesn't matter if it looks good. 99% of my art isn't strictly anatomically accurate, and part of that is stylization, but even when i'm doing realistic figure drawings i like to lengthen limbs and exaggerate curves in order to make my drawings look better. So if your only real goal with art is to make something that looks good and enjoy the process, my first piece of advice would be to stop worrying so much about stuff like perfect accuracy! if you use references and keep pushing yourself, the skill and understanding you're looking for will come naturally with time. before I was ever classically trained, I got pretty far just by drawing my favorite characters in different poses and situations over and over again, and that experience laid the groundwork for when classical training did become available to me. Just because you're not necessarily doing serious figure studies doesn't mean you're not getting valuable practice--what it means is that you're having FUN while you're practicing, and having fun with your art is the most important thing!!!
Secondly, you mentioned anatomy being on the science side of things, which suggests to me that you may be looking in the wrong places when trying to do more serious anatomical study. if you look up 'anatomy' or anything similar on a web search engine, you're likely going to get a lot of very complex scientific illustrations. and while those aren't necessarily devoid of artistic value (I took a class all about scientific anatomy for artists last semester and it was GREAT) for a beginner who's just trying to learn how to make a body look like a body, they're not what you're looking for. what is going to be much more helpful for you are sites like line of action or quickposes. these sites are basically repositories of figure drawing images, and you can set them to automatically switch to a new image after a certain interval of time. if you really, desperately want to improve your anatomy specifically, what I recommend is going to one of these sites, setting it to the shortest interval possible, and trying to copy the pose as closely as you can before time is up. this might sound crazy, since the shortest interval is usually somewhere between 30-60 seconds, which obviously isn't enough to get much down. but what this will do is force you to look at how these models' bodies are constructed and translate it onto the page quickly and without overthinking it. be warned, your first maybe hundred of these are going to look like shit. but if you do this enough, you're eventually going to gain an intrinsic sense for 1. how a body works and 2. the easiest way for you personally to construct a body when drawing it. even without knowing the scientific names and anatomical rules, you're going to get a FEEL for how things work, which is much more important and useful to you as a character artist.
Finally, i think the most important thing to remember is that no art is bad art, even if you're not satisfied with the end product. when you're first starting out as an artist, you're going to make things that don't look right and you're going to be frustrated with yourself because of it. i vividly remember crying over a sketchbook at maybe age 11 or 12 because I was so upset i couldn't put exactly what was in my head on the page. Skill comes with time and practice and that is a frustrating fact of life, but no time spent doing something you enjoy and are passionate about is wasted. It might look bad now but you are laying the groundwork for your future success, and someday you're probably going to look back on your past work and say "I can't believe I thought this looked bad back then. for my age and my skill level i was doing AMAZING." And as previously mentioned, it's a lot less discouraging when something looks bad if you had fun making it, so try to have FUN with your art. draw things you enjoy and are passionate about and don't worry if it looks bad. focus on the experience, the skill will come in time. you've got this!!
#i've had this account since i was 15 years old. you can literally go back and see my ass did NOT know what i was doing#but i was having fun and the weird stuff that i was trying that maybe didn't always look right was what laid the groundwork#for my current skills!#i know this advice is basically just 'practice' which is what everyone says but it's important to me that you know#that practice should be FUN too. practice isn't drawing boring shit over and over again before you get to draw the fun stuff#practice is drawing the fun stuff that is maybe a little out of your comfort zone and maybe it looks a little wonky but you did it#and you had fun doing it! and now you'll be a little more prepared to do it again in the future!#asks
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Human Illustrator Wally x Reader (Part 9) (End)
Sleepover time!!!
TW: Hallucinations, Depression/Anxiety
🐻 The weekend comes quicker than you expected. Wally brought Barnaby and Julie brought Sally Starlet. THE Sally Starlet. You quickly introduce yourself to them, showing them around the house. You mainly just show them simple things, like where the restrooms are, the kitchen, what's available in the fridge and such.
🐻 Sitting in the living room, you all talk about what to do. Julie excitedly says "WW SHOULD DO MAKEOVERS! That is like... NUMBER ONE on ANY sleepover list!" That doesn't really surprise you. What DOES surprise you, however, is Barnaby agreeing. "Yeah! That does sound pretty fun! I've never had a makeover. Most I've gotten was my nails done."
🐻 Next thing you know, you are having your makeup done by Sally Starlet. She excitedly talks to you, saying "It is so lovely to meet you! Oh! Just call me Sally or Sal, by the way. I am not one for formalities. You are going to look even more gorgeous than you already do, by the end of this!"
🐻 You have a lot of fun getting your makeup done. You do notice, however, that Wally looks rather... upset? Anxious? You don't know what he is feeling exactly, but it is clearly not happy... Then, noticing his quick and slightly frantic way of looking around, you grow even more concerned. Barnaby must've noticed it, too, as he gently pulls Wally aside and into another room.
🐻 For the rest of the night, you don't see the two of them, much. It's mostly just you, Julie, and Sally talking about whatever and doing whatever. Not that "whatever" isn't fun. It really is! From pillow fights, singing contests, to board games... You enjoy your first "real" sleepover a lot, actually! It is just that you are a bit worried about Wally.
🐻 "Sal, did you see Eddie and Frank the other day? They were so cute! They were in Howdy's little cafe area on a date. I saw them chattering away through the window in the most cute display of... CUTENESS!" You look over, a bit shocked. "You know Eddie Dear?" Sal gasps, nodding "Of course! He is actually pretty big in our little circle. Julie met him during... what was it? Middle school or high school?" "High school. He was a fish out of water! I helped him out when it came to socialization. He is so nice! Just a bit awkward."
🐻 Somehow, the conversation quickly moves through each member of the friend group. Of course, nobody is spoken badly of. The most is a polite little tease, followed by a barrage of compliments. When it comes to Wally, though, the whole mood shifts.
🐻 "(Y/N)... You know about Wally's... his hallucinations, right?" Sally asks, clearly treading carefully in case you didn't know about them. Julie tenses, as well, most likely having not thought about the possibility of you not knowing about them. "Yeah, he told me about them. I've been supporting him when it comes to that. I work with some kids who hallucinate, too. It isn't a problem." "Oh, thank goodness! He finally got the courage to let someone know early on... None of us see them as a problem... It's just frustrating to see him set himself up for failure in certain ways, especially regarding that."
🐻 Julie laughs "Exactly. In a more perfect world, he probably wouldn't need to tell somebody about them... but with how widely it can change his mood and such, it is good to know early on. Plus, if somebody doesn't like him because of it, like... SOME people... then they don't deserve him. Isn't that right, (Y/N)?" You nod, shrugging your shoulders "Yeah. Plus, people just gotta be prepared. I'm lucky to be rather educated on such topics. Others may not be, so they need that time to get caught up and figure out how best to help when needed..." You then look around "Have any of you seen Wa- I mean... Mr. Darling?"
🐻 They both shake their heads. You decide to go and search for him. Stepping through each room, you look around for either him or Barnaby. It is a lot quicker than you thought, because you find Barnaby sitting outside your room. You smile, asking "Hey, Mr. Beagle, have you seen Mr. Darling?" He looks up to you, nodding. "Yeah. I hope you don't mind, but he felt a bit overwhelmed. So, we found a random room and chatted for a bit. He went to bed early, putting a sleeping bag on the floor. I only really realized that it was your room after he already fell asleep. You can go check on him, if you want."
🐻 You smile "Oh, it's no problem. I was mostly worried that he might be upset or something. I'll go check on him. Sally and Ms. Joyful are in the living room if you want to go join them." After that, you enter your room to check on Wally.
🐻 He's lying in a sleeping bag on the floor, in front of your bed. The room is dark, except for your little night lamp, which projects small stars on the ceiling. Unlike what Barnaby said, though, he clearly isn't asleep. Instead, he is lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. His eyes are wide, full of fright, which clues you in that he might be seeing something that isn't there. You don't want to assume, however, so you sit next to him and begin talking.
🐻 "Hey, are you okay? Barnaby told me you were asleep, but I just wanted to check to be sure." He keeps his eyes trained upwards, but speaks slowly in response. "Home followed me here... Up there." He points to the ceiling directly above his face, continuing "Home is watching me. It's so rare that I see it... but it decided to show itself tonight, of all nights... I'm sorry to be a party pooper... Hahaha."
🐻 You look up to where he is pointing, seeing nothing but the pretty blue, yellow, and red stars above. You ask "You have no reason to be sorry. Can you tell me what Home looks like? I want to understand a bit better, so I can help better. You deserve help." "It's a large window, with a large eye behind it. It is just watching, tonight, not saying a word. The space around is is dark." "Okay."
🐻 You thing for a moment, before lying down on the floor next to him. "You deserve to be happy, you know that... right?" you ask, waiting for him to respond. He doesn't, causing a small pit to grow in your stomach. You continue talking, hoping to distract him and bring up his morale.
🐻 "You deserve to be happy. Actually, you deserve so much more than that. You deserve happiness, peace of mind, to be loved, and to live. Everybody deserves that, which means that you deserve it, too. No matter what Home or anyone or anything else says, you deserve that. No matter what you believe, you deserve that. I don't know if you believe that at the moment, but if you don't, I hope there is a time in your life when you realize that it is true. It took me a while, but I eventually did, and now my life is a little bit better."
🐻 You look back over to him, seeing that he has closed his eyes. You hear him take a deep breath, in and out, before he opens them, again. He turns his head towards you, a small, weak smile on his face.
🐻 "You'll stay by my side through this, right, (Y/N)?" You won't leave, right?" "I would never dream of it, Mr. Darling." "Call me Wally." "Okay. I would never dream of it, Wally." ... "Thank you."
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Ask Game Speed Round!!
[For the Unpopular Opinion Ask Game!!]
These are all a bunch of smaller ones I thought would be too cumbersome and spammy to post on their own... Enjoy!!
Content Warning: Long.
While I do really like Dave's character as it exists in the comic- no clue what version of Dave most of the fandom is talking about, but I don't know him- I kind of like the themes in Davesprite's character more than I do Dave's. It's another Hal situation.
Dave's character tackled a lot of things very personally relatable to me in ways I'd never seen illustrated before, but Davesprite is more interesting to think about, and seems a little more fun to write. Dave was great representation for me, as someone who grew up in a very bad home, but Davesprite just has that extra oomph with his talk of humanity and individuality. Really like that guy.
---
@lupinecalibrator
This may come across as crass, or stepping out of my own lane, but I don't think giving them either multiple sets of pronouns, neopronouns, or both actually rids them of the bigotry in their characters. Lipstick on a pig situation. It just seems like a lazy, incurious fix. Yes, trans headcanons are great, but more and more often I see people use it as a cure-all to the issues a character has, either in a Doylist or Watsonian way. Queer friendliness does not eliminate racism. If a character is a bigoted caricature of a specific group of people, then slapping on a leftist layer of paint by saying "actually they're a minority icon in this other way" doesn't actually... Get rid of the problem. It's just kind of... Tone deaf.
We see this often with Transmisogynistic Caricatures getting claimed as Gay Icons, and people just saying that because they've just claimed them as a campy gay queen, the transmisogyny has been nullified- you can't talk about it anymore, they're the real good leftist in the room, you're a killjoy, and they've defeated bigotry. Not how it works.
---
Kind of tired of how some act like her only character traits are Silly Ditzy Furry Girl. Jade is an incredibly, incredibly intelligent young girl, an excellent marksman, and so, so deeply lonely. We need to talk about Jade's chronic loneliness more.
Also, I think she's some kind of Psychotic. One of the flavors. It just feels right to me. It feels canon-adjacent. Or, at least, a textually valid way to read her character. I have a whole post about it somewhere. Mituna and Jade shaking hands on the Psychosis.
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Taking this opportunity to defend Aranea. Some people really need to stop acting like she's worse than Vriska. We all know what Aranea did was justified. Maybe not correct, but justified. And fucking awesome to watch.
Like, look. She spent an unfathomable amount of years being shot down and ignored and belittled by people who were supposed to be her friends... Aranea had to literally pay Meenah, her own best friend, to listen to her infodump, and even then Meenah couldn't afford to give her own best friend enough respect to just listen to her talk about something she's passionate about for 5 minutes.
I need you to think to yourself, genuinely. If you spent thousands- and I mean thousands upon thousands- of years getting ignored and walked on by everyone around you, even your own friends... If you spent thousands upon thousands of years getting called boring and a doormat to your face by even your own friends... Wouldn't you go crazy, too? Wouldn't you snap? Wouldn't you want to do something drastic just to get people to look at you? Just to be seen as something other than weak and boring? Just to be seen as worth even an iota of interest, a shred of someone's time? Wouldn't you?
Because I think any normal person wouldn't take thousands upon thousands of years. I don't think you would last a decade. I wouldn't either, and I'm a pretty patient person.
Y'all are just jealous you can't play billiards with planets using your mind when you're mad. That shit was so awesome.
---
@searedtroutpeacharugula
This is not an Unpopular Opinion, or even an Opinion, I'm just pointing this out. Do you ever think about the fact that we hardly got any conversations between Rose and Jade? I do. This haunts me. This fucks me up so bad. We get plenty between John and Dave, and Dave and Jade, and Dave and Rose, and Rose and John, and Jade and John... But hardly anything between Rose and Jade!! This is so fucked up. We were robbed. I need to watch them hang out.
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Okay, this is less of an Unpopular Opinion, and more of an Unpopular Fact, but... Mituna doesn't just throw slurs at people. That's one of the things people jump to when they're talking about Defanging Mituna- they always say something about how he "calls people slurs every two seconds". He literally doesn't. That is legitimately not a thing he does. If you heard that before and believed it, you were literally lied to. That is straight up demonstrably not true.
Like, if you're trying to think of something Mituna does every two seconds unprompted, it's either sex jokes or apologizing. Slurs aren't a thing he just slings around casually. He said a grand total of one slur... To Meenah... And it's a fake troll slur. And then we get it defined to us... Aaaand it's the troll equivalent to "Cracker". That's it. That's the crime he's committed- calling someone a word that is immediately after defined to us as "Someone who is at the top of and benefits from the furthering of the oppressive Fuchsia-Down power structure, and the Lowbloods that help enforce it." That's the slur he used. That's what made people start declaring that "he would totally say the N Word" with full and complete confidence. Absolutely ridiculous.
He's called no one else any kind of genuine slur. He just called Meenah a Wader once, and then she and Kankri got upset about it, because they are both, by definition, Waders.
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Leijon Hot Take Party Pack: If you think Nepeta shipping her friends together is fine, or even adorable, but then sneer at or get grossed out by Meulin doing the same thing, you're a hypocrite. I don't care if you say "Meulin's writing Friend Fic, though, that's weird!!" the problem with Shipping Your Friends and Writing Romantic Fanfiction Of Your Friends is at the same root.
The problem with these things isn't the presence of writing, it's the presence of, you know, shipping your friends? If you're fine with Nepeta doing it, you've gotta be fine with Meulin doing it. Be fine with both or neither. It's the same damn thing. I'm pretty sure both friend groups are fine with it, too, so it's not like this is a boundaries issue or anything. Both or neither. Pick one.
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Observation: I do think it's cool how Jane and Jake are related and have similarly opposing relationships with their gender. Jake's oft presented with Feminine themes and imagery, and Jane with Masculine themes and imagery. Very cool. Wish more people made that correlation.
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Okay, that's all for now!! Thank you for reading, if you did. Have a nice rest of your day. :)
#homestuck#homestuck meta#homestuck analysis#alpha trolls#beforan trolls#dancestors#beta kids#beta trolls#alpha kids#dave strider#davesprite#gamzee makara#kurloz makara#jade harley#aranea serket#rose lalonde#mituna captor#nepeta leijon#meulin leijon#jane crocker#im not pdf tagging all that.#nekro.pdf#nekro.sms
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The story of a little boy named Twenty-fifth Night.
Inspired by The Little Prince / Le Petit Prince
Written by @deiaiko
Illustrated by @cheer-soli-art
Betaed by @jusalilweird
There was a little boy who lived all his life in a dark and cold cave. He built a tower made of rocks, so tall in hopes of reaching the ceiling where light trickled down from between the cracks. It wasn't an easy task, for the sharp edges of the rocks easily made their marks on his unprotected skin. But for him, who had no one but himself and accepted pain as part of his life, it was nothing but a little itch.
A girl showed up from the other side, bathed in blinding light that the boy had never hoped to ever see in his life. Her hair was a lovely shade of gold and her face was littered with stars.
"I shall call you The Twenty-fifth Bam," The girl said, "for I have found you on this night."
"Night of the twenty-fifth," the little boy repeated. At that moment, he finally understood what it meant to be lonely, for he was no longer alone.
-----
The little boy came to enjoy her company, and for once, he felt content.
His day started when the girl came, and ended when the girl left, for he had nothing else to distinguish between day and night.
He learned what longing meant. He would be bursting with excitement the longer he waited, and he would feel sadder the longer he spent time with her.
-----
"I shall go and climb the tower myself," said the girl, countless nights later. "This place is not big enough for me. It doesn't have what I want."
It bewildered the little boy, for he was already content with only her presence. "What is it that you want?"
"At the top of the tower, just me and a massive sky with stars that twinkles as far as the eye can see." The girl said dreamily, and the little boy knew she had gone to a place where he couldn't reach.
"What's so good about it?"
"Because stars are supposed to be beautiful, no? That's reason enough."
"How can you say they're beautiful if you have never seen one?"
"Because I believe so."
The little boy didn't understand.
"Can't I come with you?" Because what would his cave become without the sun coming to chase away the darkness?
"No, Bam. The tower is too dangerous for you."
If it's dangerous for me, then wouldn't it be the same for you? The little boy wanted to say. But instead he asked, "Will you be happier then?" With a silent plea that she would say no.
"I will."
-----
The tower was a place the little boy could never have imagined. It was colorful yet blinding, vast yet crowded, and the fresh air smelled like doom.
The little boy had never felt so small. It was so overwhelming that he couldn't really register what he had done, until a firm hand took his and they ran.
The owner of that firm hand was just a boy like himself. Unlike the little boy however, he had hair the color of the vast sky, his steps were surer, and his eyes were sharper.
The blue haired boy extended his hand and smiled with all teeth, "Shake my hand, and we shall climb the tower together."
"Why me? I am weak. I will be of no use." The little boy shrunk away.
"It's no matter." The blue haired boy's eyes softened. "Your company is enough."
The little boy smiled and shakily took his hand.
-----
The little boy stood by the balcony, looking at the twinkling night sky above. Soon the last test would be held.
"Those lights up there, do you see them?" The little boy pointed at the light above to his blue haired companion.
"I do."
"I think they're lonely. So far above, out of reach and apart from each other." The little boy sighed wistfully. "Will you leave me too?"
"Why should I?" His companion tilted his head, finding the question very absurd.
"Because of the beautiful stars."
"Stars are nothing to me but a myth."
This time it was the little boy who tilted his head. "But aren't they beautiful?"
"I wouldn't know until I saw one."
That was something that the little boy could finally agree with.
"Then what does beautiful mean?" The little boy asked, curious.
"You." His companion said easily. "I have seen a lot of pretty jewels, but none of them shine as pretty as your eyes. I have heard plenty of songs and played different instruments, but none of them brought as much joy as your laugh."
The little boy blushed at the compliment. "Then I shall laugh more often, so that the stars will envy me."
-----
The little boy ended up being the one to leave, not by his own volition. He lost his companions, so what reason was there to laugh? What reason for him to be beautiful if there was no one to acknowledge it?
-----
After years of anguish and loneliness, the little boy finally got his companions back. But something was still lost. Something had changed. Yet the boy didn't know what that was. So as per usual, when his feelings were tangled and nothing seemed to make sense, he went to the balcony to seek the answers in the vast sky.
His blue haired companion noticed and decided to join him in silence. It was exactly like what they did all those years ago, yet it didn't feel the same.
"I love looking at the sky. Bright blue at day and deep blue at night, it's beautiful." The little boy said, when he noticed his companion's not so subtle glances. "It is beautiful because it always reminds me of you."
His companion blushed. "Is that so?"
The little boy smiled wistfully. "When I missed you, I would look at the sky."
"How often?"
"Every chance I got."
There was an unreadable expression on his companion's face. "All this time, I thought you were gone for good."
The little boy bowed his head, not knowing what to say.
"So even if you're standing next to me right now, it somehow feels as if you're still out of my reach." His companion confessed, and it broke the little boy's heart.
"Then, hold me! See that I'm right here, still within reach." The little boy looked at his companion, pleading and desperate. "And when you do, make me stay."
His companion cupped the little boy's cheeks that were streaked with tears. "I see. You're no longer the light that was hung up above."
"I am not." The little boy smiled. "I am The Twenty-fifth Night, and the lights are my friends."
#I was reading the book and felt compelled to write kb in its style#this piece has been in my draft since last year and I finally put a finishing touch to it 🥺💖#thank you soli and ath for the enables and support#tower of god#tog#my fic#bam#baam#25th baam#25th bam#the 25th baam#the 25th bam#jue viole grace#khun#koon#khun a.a#khun aguero agnis#khunbam#koonbaam#bamxkhun#rachel
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I really hope this doesn't come off as hate, I just wanted someone else's input - I feel like the eden kids have become more of the main characters than the forgers have. I know we just finished an important arc with them but it feels as though every other chapter is centered around them. We haven't had a chapter with the forgers together since Anya got rescued and that wasn't even a whole chapter. it feels as though the manga's shifted from its core (a spy dad, assassin mom, esper child and a dog that can see the future). I guess this could just be because of the update schedule though making everything feel slow paced and some plotlines random at times. Again, I hope this doesn't come off as hate. I still love and enjoy the story, and was curious to hear the opinion of another.
Hi! Thank you for reaching out. Your question doesn't come as hate at all and it'll be my pleasure to answer it :)
Your feelings and frustration are totally valid. A lot of us got into Spy x family because of the Forgers (and some of us Twiyor specifically) and miss seeing them. So, let me tell you how I see things both as a writer and as a reader.
As a writer: I'm not worried about where sxf is going because I've written plenty of stories and I can see the seams (meaning the construction of the story). However, I know not everyone is a writer, so this illustration may be useful for everyone:
The beginning of sxf had a great exposition of the characters and the story. This is the part where the readers fall in love and get attached to the characters.
I know it's been going for 79 chapters, but in my opinion, we're barely leaving #2 (conflict) and entering #3 (rising action). Endo set the conflict and not quite started the action yet. So we're just entering the middle of the story.
In my experience (both as a reader and writer), when the middle of the story begins is not the most exciting part and, depending on the story and author, the middle can feel long.
In Spanish, the middle a story is called "nudo", which means "knot". This is where the story gets tangled and very complicated. In fact, the more complicated, the better, because it means that it'll be hard to resolve and the stakes will be high during the climax.
The purpose of the middle of a story is to point towards the climax. This is where the author has to build the tension to get there, where the conflict gets thicker and thicker.
Now, has Endo been doing this?
YES.
Evidence of this are the whole bus kidnapping arc: where he told us how the SSS and government behave towards its citizens (even when they're children). THIS will be key in the story. And the latest 78 doggie competition chapter: where Handler and Twilight literally talk about the main plot of the story.
This reminds us the main plot is still about Donovan Desmond and Project Apple. This doesn't seem random to me. And the fact that we've gotten so much Eden makes me think that Eden is key in the main plot too.
As a writer, his job is to point out to the main plot and head to the climax. If he's been doing that with Eden chapters, that means that's where we're going.
The way I see it, Twilight, Yor, and Anya (Spy, Assassin and Esper) are the main characters, but not the only characters. Because of its cuteness and wholesomeness, it's easy to think of Spy x Family is a simple story about a Spy who adopts a little girl and falls in love with an assassin.
It is not.
This is a monster of a story.
Think of it as a big tree. Stories like this have many branches (secondary characters and side stories) that are connected to the main plot and serve to lead the plot towards the climax. Examples: Lord of the Rings, Fruits Basket, Attack on Titan.
My point is that in these Monster Stories, the plot may not always focus on the main characters, but in the end, everything, every little branch and side story came together to let the main characters rule the story and get to that explosive climax.
And I believe that's what Endo is doing here.
Is it the most exciting thing in the world right now? No.
Sometimes development can feel like a total drag; especially if chapters come out every two weeks and we're all eager for more.
As a writer, I recommend patience. We'll get there, it's just going to take some time.
Now...
As a reader (and a fan): *Big sigh* Yes, I miss the Forgers (and Twiyor) so much and every time there's a new chapter I feel sad we didn't get any interaction.
Yes, I want to see the romance, the pinning, the angst, the first kiss. ALL of it!! At least give me the Forgers shenanigans...
But there is no point in getting upset about it.
Yes, we're kind of in a dry spot in the story, but personally I'm still enjoying it. I'm so grateful for all the good friends I've made thanks to Spy x family. On top of it, I've been having tons of fun writing fics analyzing, and discussing things with other fans.
There's so much talent in our fandom and during this dry season, it's the fans with their gorgeous fanarts and awesome stories what is keeping the fandom engaged and happy. There's no need to feel bored while we wait for the Forgers to come back (and Twiyor to kiss!), let's wait together. Let's have fun together!
One last thing worth mentioning...
I've said it before. It's okay to take a break. There is absolutely no hate in this advice: If the story is becoming too frustrating, if it's detrimental for mental health, if it's becoming more of a bother than a source of happiness, it's okay to take some time off. It's okay to get into other things, other stories and other fandoms. And it's okay to come back after a while to check up on any progress and it's okay to move on too.
Thank you so much for the ask. I wrote a long answer because, as you can see, I'm a big fan of stories and writing.
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Do you think Toph was jealous (that might be a strong word) of Katara natural femininity And how easy being girly was for katara? It’s just that when they argue they do project some of their own insecurities onto each so it got me wondering. Maybe katara was jealous of toph toughness idk?? Thought?
Oh, absolutely. I don't think that's interpretation so much as textual fact.
I see a lot of discussions of this that take one side or the other, but I think Toph and Katara's relationship is a great portrayal of how gender expectations harm girls in multiple ways, and also can turn them against each other, and people who only take Katara's side or Toph's are missing the point.
Toph is jealous of Katara's natural femininity, and that has to do with why she disdains it, but not because she's a misogynist or she hates girls or whatever, but because those are expectations her parents tried to force on her. A lot of what it is popular on the internet to label as "not like other girls" behavior, in a way that implies that being NLOG is a bad thing, are girls who are rebelling against forced gender expectations. Toph is both an abuse victim and a disabled girl whose disability was used in conjunction both to force her to fit a certain gender standard and keep her dependant on parents who were emotionally abusive, and to reinforce how the nature of her disability meant that she would never fit certain gendered standards. I've written about this before, how Toph can't be totally comfortable with makeup because even when she enjoys getting made up and looking pretty, other people can look at her and know that she didn't do it herself, like the girls in the episode who make fun of her for it. Toph enjoys looking pretty but she also has no control over what she looks like and can't even see it for herself, so that also clashes with her trauma over needing to be independent and distance herself from what her parents wanted her to be, a girl who sits still and looks pretty and is there for other people to look at. Makeup as empowerment is all well and good, but it doesn't work that way for people who have certain disabilities, and there is a lot of ableism in makeup culture. Eyeliner that's perfectly on point isn't always possible for women who have vision problems or neurodivergence, and women who wear makeup are supposed to look perfect but make it look effortless at the same time, and that is naturally going to exclude a lot of people, especially disabled people. The show illustrates that beautifully without condemning one way to be a girl or the other.
At the same time, Katara is jealous of Toph for the way she gets to be "one of the boys," and gets respect from Sokka and Aang in ways that she doesn't. See her anxiety over everyone thinking she is no fun and acts like a mom. Katara is a nurturing person and that's one of her stengths, but she also is a kid who wants to have fun, too. And just because being the "mom friend" is natural for her doesn't mean it isn't hard on her. Just because Katara seems to fit gender expectations a little easier than Toph doesn't mean she doesn't feel the weight of those expectations, and even women who fit gender expectations also get derided for them, because patriarchy both tells women they need to be a certain way and then hates them for it. See Sokka making fun of Katara for sewing but absolutely expecting her to mend his pants. I think Katara also thinks that Toph should be on her side, as a fellow girl. Katara is so starved for female companionship and resents it when it appears that Toph is siding against her, because she's feeling the weight of those expectations. And Toph doesn't always understand that, and thinks Katara's attempts to bond with her are trying to force gender expectations on her in the way her parents did.
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A summary/review of parts 1-100 of Homestuck
~by a gecko who knows what a Megalovania is
Let's start things quick and simple.
It is the distant year of 2009, where the date is the 13th of April. It is the protagonist John Egbert (aka Zoosmell Pooplord)'s birthday. How fun!
John's actions are very much based around RPG mechanics (the Sylladex, Captchaloging, etc.), which as indicated by the chatlogs seems to be the norm in this world.
Once he opens the magic chest in his room, he gets access to a variety of artifacts, some of which he'll use later. He only takes the smoke pellets at first because he's stupid.
We get some glimpses of the author Andrew Hussie's dated yet charming late-2000's humour through asking John to shit on his desk.
After nailing a Little Monsters poster to his wall (a gift from his Dad), he gets a message from one of his friends on Pesterchum, TG, who says that he got the beta for SBURB for John's birthday.
However, his dad has just come home and John doesn't want to go through the trouble of holding a conversation with him.
In the meantime, he figures out how to use his Strife Specibus by allocating the Hammerkind Abstratus, and reads the GameBro magazine, which John seems to have a loathing for.
However, with the freed up room in his Sylladex, he creates a convincing disguise to fool his dad and grab the SBURB beta (it won't).
He goes downstairs into the living room, examines his father's shitty harlequins, knocks over and picks up his Nanna's ashes and opens a large gift for himself, which is also a large harlequin.
Before deciding to sticking fake arms on the harlequin, John gets a message from another Pesterchum mutual, TT.
TT oddly knows everything that John has done up to this point, including being in possession of the SBURB beta and wearing a funny disguise. They tell him to go get the game from his father from downstairs.
After snooping around his father's study and playing a little tune (which is a great way that Homestuck utilizes its medium), John heads outside to the mailbox, to find that dad has already scooped the mail.
But there's a sense that something isn't quite right. With "Windchime Foley" by Clark Powell playing over empty streets and a main title appearing, it implies this scene is the true beginning of the story. The text mentions a "Desolation" that's playing the tune diegetically throughout the streets/town.
Maybe it will be a long day.
John heads back inside to finally confront his father and sneakily get the beta, but oops! The disguise didn't work (who would've thunk it?), and there's only to get pass him, which is with a Strife!
(This fight scene's really cool, I quite enjoy this)
After the Colonel's book activates the smoke pellets, John quickly snatches his father's PDA as a joke, and finally gets his hands on the SBURB beta, which is where I ended off.
So is it good? I mean, yeah.
Even if I only read what is a tiny, tiny fraction of Homestuck's story, I can still see how so many people became obsessed over it. The cutesy, almost surreal art style (complete with low quality JPEGS in the vein of Newgrounds), Hussie combining the mystical with the silly in his writing, and the brief bits of music in it illustrate a very "calm before the storm" feeling. I can definitely see how people like Toby Fox were inspired by it.
Despite what some think, the first little bits of Homestuck are an enjoyable experience which foreshadows something bigger yet to come. Solid 8.
#homestuck#andrew hussie#john egbert#review#summary#i probably won't do this again#i'll read some it later#PUT THE BUNNY BACK IN THE BOX#gecko
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I think that last anon was incredibly rude and very, very suspicious. I'm also a fat person, and I think your art is just fine the way it is.
This anon accuses you of having a fat fetish for using peach to shade, doesn't give you the name of the artist they think you're emulating, and then tell you (not asking politely, on your own blog where they are a guest, TELL) you to put body hair on Miku.
Not to mention, why are they recognizing a style from a fat fetish artist if they aren't on the fat fetish side of twitter themselves, enough to have picked up on this supposed artist's style, down to the shading?
Sure, Twitter is wild, you'll see plenty of things you aren't necessarily looking for, but this reads as someone who is trying very hard not to let you see them sweating. What are they doing at the devil's sacrament, pointing out all of the sinners there, tactfully not pointing at themselves as one of the people included amongst the crowd.
If they didn't say "teehee I'm a fat girl btw <33 nasty nasty fetishists <33" at the end, wouldn't you think this message is situationally inappropriate? This is the internet, this person is anonymous, and that means they can lie if they feel like it.
You shouldn't even believe me or care when I say I'm fat, because I too am anonymous, and you simply can't fact check me. Even off anon, I don't share pictures of myself online, because I know better than to trust the internet at large.
If they are not outright malicious
(people will do this when they themselves fetishize fat women for the sake of getting art they think is hot; kind of like people saying "fat women can't be sexy" so fat women will post suggestive pictures of themselves to prove the statement incorrect, especially so they can pick and choose through which images they like. This is Creep Behavior, to use negging to manipulate people into sharing racey pictures)
then they are outright very, very rude, despite their friendly tone. This is YOUR blog, your art is fantastic, and nobody should be coming into your house, telling you how to run things.
Personally, I think the shapes and textures you draw are aesthetically pleasing, and your color choices always go together very nicely, especially when pink and green can clash really bad if you're not careful. Please don't let some misguided person (or worse, a creep) tell you what to do. You've gotten as far as you have on your own just fine, because you're doing your own thing.
In your response to anon, you said
"I find it weird that when a “normal” character is posed something suggestive its just a drawing but when added a bit weight it becomes a “fetish” ????"
(https://www.tumblr.com/ebi-noodle-doodles/739308628074496000/im-really-not-trying-to-be-rude-but-your-pure)
and I could not agree with you more.
Why is it a fetish that Miku is fat? I look an awful lot like her, and it's nice to be represented in art, suggestive or otherwise. Why is this person coming at you like you're a freak pervert that needs to be corrected, when you're just drawing a character?
Why is fat considered inherently unattractive, the only people allowed to enjoy it being (implied) nasty, disgusting, morally deficit fetishists, when "normal" or "skinny" body types are left alone? Why are we treating body fat as morally reprehensible, and not just a thing people sometimes have?
If this person really is fat, they have a lot of internalized fatphobia to let go of, and if they're a fetishist they need to learn better manners.
And thank you, for being generous enough to share your art with the world. Sorry for the lengthy message as well. Your Miku is very cute, and I look forwards to seeing more of your art in the future :]
- 🐺🕷️ (Wolf Spider Anon)
Ive been self debating and doubting if what I’m doing is bad or that Ive done something wrong especially on illustrating her in a suggestive manner
Thank you for understanding my view. The reply timing is off as I’m still trying to understand myself if my coloring it self was wrong… are my poses off? Is it rude to draw her like this? I didnt take the anon’s comment as rude but i did feel some guilt that i feel i shouldnt have? Man i dont understand I’m dumb when it comes to these sort of stuff. I just answered truthfully on thoughts about that. All I know is I enjoy painting her, suggestively, happy, innocently or cute! I just like drawing her. Youll see more of her in blog hopefully :D
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Theory of Love Rewatch Ep 8 Stray Thoughts
Last time, Khai began his bisexual awakening, and I gave the show points for handling the interior experience of that with a lot of honesty. I appreciate that no one is on Khai's side about going after Third, let alone Third. I like that Two especially doesn't want Khai messing with Third. I am glad that Third has been moving on with his life, and I like how now that we're outside of his head Third seems kind of aloof. I like that Khai's reputation is working against him as he tries to be serious about Third. Meanwhile, Bone is working on a big project with Paan and making eyes at her. We left at Khai being cast in Third's play as the jerk lead.
Ep.08 The Proposal
Third is actually so mean and I love it.
I also like that Third is annoyed by Khai hovering over him lately.
Khai tried to fuck with Un and Un said, "Pot-kettle-black, bitch."
LOL, even Shane is on team Let Third Be Into Someone Else.
It's kinda funny how most of this gang has no skill when it comes to people they actually like.
Okay, this car scene with every radio station playing some kind of sad song about heartbreak was funny.
They're getting some good resonance with Lynn. Her boyfriend got tired of her and she's wondering if she should change. Khai is also struggling with who he should be for Third.
I think White may have actually been in a fight before. His reactions to ministrations feel correct.
LOL. Bone said Un is way better than you, Khai. Get wrecked.
Un said, "What do you know of Third? Aren't you his best friend? Answer, quickly!!"
I feel no sympathy for Khai at all. He always tossed Third at girls he was done with and used him as a shield. He deserves no regard from Third after all the shit he pulled. He can't even handle girls he flirted with being annoyed with him.
Taking a nap while waiting for the file to export is so real.
Yes, Two, get that shot in at Khai for always dumping Third for girls.
I really like Gun's gait. He doesn't often adjust it for his characters.
I struggle to feel for Khai's heartache here, because he's hurt more people than just Third.
I'm so sick of this orange balcony as the transition shot.
Who are you jealous of here, Two?
Wow, is Khai going to actually tell Third he's quitting? That's better than his usual avoidance tactics.
So, Khai, you're saying you want to...Make It Right? You don't do that by kissing a sleeping person, especially one you've wronged.
Finally, Third gets mad. I've needed him to get mad. I needed him to go to the window, stick his head out, and yell, "I'm as mad as hell! And I'm not going to take this anymore!"
Good thing he wore that helmet!
Yes, montage of all the things Khai did to Third. I'm glad you're finally recognizing your shit even if you think this is the end.
In the words of Susan Ivanova, "All love is unrequited." I'm actually enjoying this part of the show a lot. Khai is so bad at this and can't stand that Third is inaccessible to him now. You don't know what you got till it's gone, and I am not feeling sympathy for this man child. I like that his bros give him shit constantly and never let up until he starts to break. Khai created the world around him with his callousness, and I'm enjoying seeing him grate against the other side of it. Ending on him sliding across pavement and getting torn up is an excellent choice, because our bodies are so fragile. It's good to illustrate how he thought he was immune to all of that on his beloved Charlie and all the ways he projected onto that only to see him dashed across the road as he thinks about his friend he never realized how much he loved until that friend cut him off.
As always, this rewatch is sponsored by @lurkingshan, with support from @waitmyturtles and @neuroticbookworm. Also tagging @twig-tea by request.
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to me, a really emotionally effective suselle denial is worth more than 10 suselles, because itd do wonders for noelle's arc, pull the themes of rejecting fate into focus, and illustrate a great point about how we play matchmaker with these characters, and how everyone else does too.
literally everyone seems to be gunning for susie and noelle to end up together, but the one person whose feelings about this pairing we've been ignoring, and the one person whose feelings actually matter, is susie! no one gave her a choice here! noelle didn't give susie a choice, she's incredibly possessive of susie and feels like she is owed information about susie, which she can then use to get susie to like her. noelle won't stop until susie is hers. ralsei never asked susie if she enjoyed her ferris wheel ride, or how she felt about noelle, he just watched from a distance and assumed how she felt, because it suits his deterministic worldview. rudy never asked susie if she wanted to go out with noelle, iirc, he just assumed she would say yes, because he loves noelle, and wants noelle to be happy. everyone else is just imposing roles onto susie, the same as they always have!
and while in the real world, having a gay lover is an act of defiance against oppressive social norms, in the world of deltarune, its the opposite! no one is telling her she can't, and everyone wants her to (with the exception of catti, and the couple asshole classmates). even if susie DOES have feelings for noelle, those feelings are sullied by the fact that everyone is still removing her agency, STILL telling her who she is and isn't allowed to be! would you still like your partner if you learned they had done everything in their power to make sure you would end up with them? obsessively collecting information on you in order to seem more appealing, constructing situations for you to meet up in a way where it seems organic, trying to get closer to you by any means necessary? i don't think susie would.
the thing susie seems to value most out of anything is her own agency in choosing what she gets to do, and how she gets to do it. no societal norm, social convention, narrative trope or gameplay mechanic stands in her way of choosing what she wants to do. she won't let you take her armor off unless you give her something else. when you give her a more powerful weapon, she won't accept a weaker one. she's too good for that. susie can dance on her own if she wants, she isn't stupid. it's not fair that kris gets to make all the choices, so its her turn now. heal prayer is boring, so she makes up her own spell. she challenges the idea that darkners are a slave race because she wouldn't want to be complicit in such a system. she believes they should be free to make their own choices. in what world would a person who values freedom above all be happy knowing that their partner wasn't going to let them make their own choice? this isn't even a question of whether or not susie likes noelle, its a question of if susie would be okay knowing that noelle feels, however unconsciously, as if susie belongs to her in some way. and i believe the answer is no.
and this rejection would hurt regardless of if susie liked noelle back, because we do like noelle, flawed as she is. and that rejection forces noelle to change in some way. either she accepts that susie's freedom to choose means the freedom not to be with her, or she doubles down and tries to win her over. she doesn't get what she wants, so she has to choose to get better and start seeing susie as a person, and not merely an idol, or a fantasy, or she has to choose to get worse, and cling onto susie harder.
my rejection of suselle is only somewhat about susie's feelings towards noelle, and is mostly about susie's freedom to not have those feelings, a freedom which is being violated by the "narrative" she exists in, the "Legend of DELTA RUNE"
she deserves a choice, and when the person in question, noelle, doesn't seem to care about how she feels, and only wants susie to be hers, i think she'll choose no, even if she did really like noelle. maybe even especially if she really liked noelle. people talk about how betrayed susie will feel learning kris is possessed and darkners are objects, but what about when she learns noelle was willing to change herself to be whatever susie wants, was willing to treat friends poorly, to almost stalk her, just to make her hers? would she be able to trust her feelings for noelle learning that it was all out of her control, that she hadn't been given a choice?
this isn't even to say they won't end up together in the end. its just to say it can't be like this. it cant be with a noelle who doesn't really respect susie's personhood and sees her more as an object whose affection must be won, and it can't be by the will of a divine entity that orchestrated everything for susie to end up with her. it has to be susie's choice.
this is kind of why i like ralsusie. what better way to make a display of your agency than to reject literally everything others have coaxed you into? rejecting the prophecy, rejecting noelle's advances, rejecting the player's agency, rejecting the concept of darkners not being real people.
its not like she can only choose to be the bully no one likes or the hero protector who ends up with noelle. its a false dichotomy, where fate locks her up and offers an escape, but the "escape" is only another cell. true escape is carving your own path, playing by your own rules.
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✩ WEEKLY FIC ROUND-UP ✩
All the fics I’ve read and really enjoyed in the past week-ish. Reminder: This list features any and all ratings and themes.
ATLA
illustrate the remnants of the life i used to live by WitchofEndor
Zuko's soul marks have been regularly burned away since before he knew what they meant. He knows that he cannot be loyal to his father and his nation while also being loyal to a soul family, so he doesn't look for them. Unfortunately, that means that he doesn't know when he's found them.
Stranger things
Shovel Talks by unkreativstermensch (+ podfic)
"Oh,” Steve says. Then again, “oh,” a little quieter. His expression changes; from confusion to something pained almost. “Mr Munson, I don’t…” he takes a deep breath, his voice a little shaky as he continues. “I don’t think he…I don’t think he likes me like that.”
He doesn’t say “it’s not like that.” Neither does he say “I’m not like that.”
That’s the first thing Wayne notices.
or: Wayne decides to give Steve the shovel talk, only to realize he might not be the one needing one
Peaceful Bliss by unkreativstermensch
"Henderson,” Eddie groans. “Do you have any idea what time it is?" He rubs his hands over his face. Dustin nods.
"Of course, it’s 6:15, but we need to talk, it's really urgent, I noticed something about the-" he stops in his tracks when he notices the patch of hair next to Eddie, sticking out from under the covers and in between pillows, and the way Eddie winces because Dustin's talking too loud, and oh shit- there's someone else in bed with him.
or: Dustin has the annoying habit of just busting into Eddie's trailer at ungodly hours. One morning Eddie's not alone though.
SVSSS
Protagonist Rehabilitation Programme by cinnamonsnaps
(oh my god they were roommates)
"Thank you, valued user, for accepting the Protagonist Rehabilitation Programme. Your task: Ensure the protagonist's happiness."
Shen Yuan is convinced that his favouri... least favourite novel's main protagonist isn't really happy. He has babes, money and power, but does he have any friends?
Cue the system handily dropping Demon King Luo Binghe into his bedroom. Can Shen Yuan make him happy before the timer runs out?
(90% light-hearted comedy, 10% existential horror and fear because this is the OG PIDW Binghe we're talking about)
Shadowhunters
Families of Choice by MonPetitTresor
Life at the Institute takes a turn for the worse for Alec. When he's alone with no where else to turn, his siblings step up and help him find his feet once more with help from a few new friends along the way. Between them, Alec finally gets a chance to realize that the world doesn't begin and end with being a Shadowhunter, and there's more out there for him, so long as he's got the courage to reach out and grab it.
Salvation lets their wings unfold by HopeSilverheart
Alec is frozen and, when she spots what has him looking so horrified, so is Clary.
Above the fireplace, hanging on the wall like some sort of divine offering, rest a pair of huge, black angel wings, so similar to Alec’s own. The mere sight makes him want to throw up and curl his wings around himself to make sure all his feathers are still in place. He can’t even begin to imagine life without the pair of extra limbs every Nephilim has to deal with. To be faced with the reminder that some people want nothing more than to tear those wings off his back is…
“What the fuck, Alec?” Clary whispers, her voice choked up and angry and alarmed. “Alec, what is this?”
Or: Alec, Clary and Magnus go on a mission to a warlock's home. What they find there leaves its mark on both shadowhunters.
Star Wars
listen, there's a hell of a universe next door by storm_petrel
As it turns out, no one ever taught Luke how to tie a little green baby to his back one-handed, but Luke thinks he's pretty gods-damned good at problem-solving under pressure, thank you, and the baby is at least semi-cooperative. When he's sure the kid is strapped in as tight as he can get, Luke pauses, and reaches back. His fingers graze the wide point of the baby's fuzzy ear. "Well, kid," says Luke, and his voice is a little rough, but not bad, all things considered. "Carrying you on my back while getting the absolute banthashit kicked out of me, at least this feels familiar."
The baby coos in his ear, and then kicks him hard in the kidney. Yoda used to do the exact same thing. Somehow, it's a lot more endearing now.
Or: Luke Skywalker solves a number of life-or-death problems, makes some new friends, falls abruptly in love, and gets shot into space, all in the same day.
Clone Wars
No wealth, no ruin, no silver, no gold by themonopolyhat
"New orders.” Cody hands the data pad over, and Waxer takes a minute to absorb the screen contents.
“Are we—” He stops, his voice hushed with something like awe. “Do we get to hit Dooku's... the kriff do the natties call it...” He snaps his fingers and points at Wooley for some reason. “Vacation home. Are we gonna burn down Dooku's vacation home?"
Or: Six weeks after Obi-Wan's funeral, the 212th reunites with their general.
#happy holidays everyone#this round up is my gift to all of you#weekly fic round up#my posts#fic recs#stranger things#svsss recs#sw recs#atla recs#shadowhunter recs
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DLB: THE BRAND