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malumsmermaid · 4 years

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omg, can you do 3 and 16 from the prompt list with Malum please?!?!🥺💐

Setting 3: at the dining table

Dialogue 16: “I feel like I might be making this worse.”

Build Your Own Prompt

Warning: Smut under the cut

During quarantine, Calum had decided that the dining room needed to be overhauled. The walls were painted a new color, art was hung, and a new rug had arrived, all that was left to do was to refinish the dining table and chairs. Michael happily helped his boyfriend move all the zines and lyric booklets they were supposed to be signing, carefully organizing the piles on the kitchen island before helping Calum to carry the table onto the patio. Once they were outside of the sliding door Michael began the slow 90 degree turn so that the table would be perfectly in the center of the tarp Calum was using to protect the stone.

One by one the chairs joined the table and then Calum picked up the paint thinner and offered Michael a raggedy towel that was too far gone for even wiping the dogs’ paws. Calum poured the substance into one of his black undershirts, Michael smirking at the memory of him literally tearing that very piece of fabric off of his boyfriend in desperation the other night, voicing the memory as Calum handed him the bottle. “Glad to see I did in fact help in procuring rags for your project.”

Calum snorted, beginning to rub the paint thinner into the wood, slowly wiping the rag of what once was a shirt back and forth with the grain. Michael began doing the same with his piece of towel while he waited to hear the response he could see Calum constructing. “I guess having a needy, impatient, kitten for a boyfriend gets me things sometimes.” He finally retorted gruffly.

“Too bad that’s not the sort of mood I’m in today.” Michael said, green eyes sharp as he eyed Calum, hungrily drinking in the image of his boyfriend’s biceps flexing as he continued working paint thinner into the table.

He pushed thoughts of making more rags out of Calum’s shirt and getting a last good use out of this table before they wouldn’t be able to for at least a week and tried to focus on what he was doing, pressing down on the wood harder with each wipe.

After an hour, Calum went inside to get them each a glass of water, returning without his shirt. He meandered over, setting the glass down before wrapping his arms around Michael, head nestling against his boyfriend’s shoulder as he looked at the progress he had made. Michael continued his work, ignoring Calum’s hands working their way up his sweat damp shirt, warm fingertips pressing against his back. “Think you deserve a break,” Calum hummed softly.

Michael snorted, “Thought you wanted to at least get the table stripped today.”

Calum chewed his lip, holding back the retort on the tip of his tongue, instead continuing to push Michael’s shirt higher up his back. “You’ve made a good amount of progress on that.” He commented instead.

Michael sighed, straightening up and pulling his shirt back down, much to Calum’s dismay. “You just like seeing me get sweaty.”

“And you me.” Calum said with a grin as Michael turned in his arms. Michael hummed, trying not to melt under Calum’s touch. “I just think we’d both be a bit more productive if we took a few minutes for a break.”

“You know damn well it wouldn’t just be a few minutes.” Michael growled, looking down at his boyfriend, warning flashing in his eyes.

“Then I feel like I might be making this worse.”

Michael bit back the grunt as Calum palmed his semi through his clothes before dancing back to his end of the table, taking a long drink of water before pouring more thinner on his rag and getting back to work, making a point of looking up at Michael from time to time as he did. Michael just focused in on what he was doing, moving along the length of the table, heading for the middle. Even as his shirt began to stick to his skin he refused to take it off, reasoning that that was exactly what Calum wanted, and he didn’t want to give it to him, not yet. His plan was to turn the tables from the other night.

Several more hours of hard work later and they were across the table from each other, giving the table top the last few swipes they needed before that was done. There was desperation in Calum’s eyes when he looked up at Michael. “We’re gonna have to let this dry for at least a few hours before we can flip the table over.” He said, voice strained.

“Just let me go inside and wash my hands and gather a few things. I’ll be back out here in a few.”

Calum dizzily followed Michael inside to wash his hands as well, but went back outside once he was done. He took a seat at the edge of the pool, feet kicking in the water while he waited. His head snapped up from looking at the water when he heard the sliding door slam closed, mouth watering at the sight of Michael, now completely bare, setting down the bottle of lube on the patio table.

Calum pulled his legs out of the water and stood, making his way to Michael. He gripped one of the dining chairs, leaning heavily on it as he whimpered, “How do you want me?”

Michael grinned, stealing the chair out from under Calum’s grip and carrying it over to be against the wall of the house. Calum nodded, walking over and standing against the wall, bracing himself on the chair. Michael rubbed himself against Calum’s ass, groaning at the cool, silky feeling of Calum’s workout shorts against his length. He slipped Calum’s shorts down his legs, picking up the small vibrator, setting it to the same frequency and pattern the plug he had in himself was at.

He teased it over Calum’s stomach tattoo before dragging it up his chest, circling his nipples. Calum whimpered and Michael smirked, dragging his lips over his boyfriend’s shoulders, nipping and sucking at the skin. He lifted the vibrator, running it over Calum’s neck before tapping it against his lips. Calum took the small toy into his mouth, Michael stepping back to pick up the lube, coating his fingers before slipping them into Calum, working him open.

Calum whimpered around the toy as Michael’s fingers moved in and out and from side to side. Once he got Calum right where he wanted him he pulled his fingers out, reaching up with his clean hand to remove the vibe from between Calum’s lips. “Y’know you could’ve taken that out any time you wanted, right babe?”

“Can’t leggo of the chair.” Calum whimpered, head dropping as he waited for Michael to fill him.

Michael grinned, slicking his cock with lube and teasing the head against Calum’s hole. “Now who’s desperate and needy.” He breathed into Calum’s ear, thrusting forward, Calum crying out his name.

Michael kept switching between long, slow, deep strokes and rapidly thrusting in and out of his boyfriend, swapping just as Calum got used to one. He found the remote for his plug, upping the vibrations, knowing that now that the long build up was over, neither of them would last. He let out a long groan at the feeling of the toy inside of him, it was nothing compared to Calum, but it was at least something.

He reached around to give Calum’s length some attention, surprised when he felt Calum’s hand already doing just that. “And here I thought you couldn’t let go of the chair,” Michael panted, thrusting harder.

Calum let out a loud moan, tightening his grip on himself, “Changed m’mind.” He grunted as a response.

Michael just nodded into the crook of his boyfriend’s neck letting out a long groan as he felt his stomach tighten. Soon they both came apart, Michael filling Calum, muttering praises in his ear to send him over the edge, spilling over the back of the chair.

They both stood, Calum leaning on the chair and Michael leaning on Calum, as they came down. “What now?” Calum breathed after a few minutes.

“Don’t know about you,” Michael said, slowly easing out of his boyfriend, “but I think I’ve had enough with standing for a few hours.”

Calum nodded, “Shower and nap time then?”

“That sounds amazing.” Michael breathed, extending his hand to his boyfriend, leading the way inside.

#malum #malum smut #michael clifford #calum hood #michael clifford smut #calum hood smut #i got carried away #as would happen when theres calum content in the middle of writing a blurb #requests #iknowyouthinkimbulletproof

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muffinrecord · 4 years

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Archive Progress Report: 9/8/2020

I ended up taking the night off socially, but not for recording.

I’m having a lot of technical difficulties with the main story and now with the remaining magical girl side stories. I record via iphone and need to use an app called Handbrake afterwards to sync up the audio, but recently the audio simply isn’t syncing correctly at all, which is real obnoxious. TBH, if you can’t tell, I’m not very good at any of this and am sort of learning on the fly. Luckily, my remaining videos to work on are:

Madoka Kimono

Kyoko Swimsuit (Leaf is helping me with this)

Hanna Sarasa (Weather-cluddy will be helping me with this one)

Ayame Mikuri

Ryo Midori

Sayuki Fumino (a real life friend will be recording this for me)

So I’m pretty close to done! Phew!

Next I’m working on finalizing all the quote videos. I actually don’t have much left to do here! Like I’ve mentioned before, Kizmin has recorded a ton of videos for me (in super high quality too)-- and with the characters I have, and @leafbladie‘s help, I actually have mostly everyone covered.

Here is some stuff waiting to go up on youtube...

And here are the quotes that need to be edited + exported.

A few of these (from friends) are in a different format from what I can use, so I have to work on them in VLC Media Player first. I’ve been procrastinating on this part for a bit but I’m going to woman up soon and get it done.

After I finish with the MSS and the quotes, I’m going to work on the main story. Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, I’m having technical difficulties and all the footage I recorded a week ago was corrupted somehow, so I need to redo it. This has kind of... made me not want to work on it, which is why I’ve been focusing on MSS and easy event stuff. But!!! It’s time to stop avoiding it and get to work.

I’m going to continue to sprinkle in events here and there, but I’m going to let you all know RIGHT NOW that the last things I’ll be working on are the branching style events, so the Azaleas, See You Tomorrow, ect. These are really frustrating to record because of all the different paths and the different choices you can make in-story-- I’m going by the archive, but it still wants you to make choices and sometimes my dumbass brain is too tired to figure things out, if that makes sense. x_x

I feel like the event stories are well documented online though, and I do still have lots of time... So it’ll all go up there, eventually.

Events being worked on:

Azaleas Bloom

Christmas at Mikazuki Villa

New Years at Mizuna Shrine

Mirrors Ranking (easy peasy)

The Maiden of Hope

See You Tomorrow

FM Kamihama

MIT Mitama

Cross Connection

Voices From Beyond

Breakpoint

Summer with Mikazuki Villa

Nagisa’s Wish

Wings in the Wind

Alina is Coming to Town

Mitama’s Festive Feast

Endless Beginnings

Cherry Blossom Dreams

A Fledgeling First Flight

Magia Clash

One Fleeting Summer Night

Rebel of a Dawnless Land

Summer Treasures

A New Beginning

The Flowers’ Lament

400 Day Release Celebration

Kamihama Joy Service

I might do Breakpoint next because it was one of my favorite events and it might be a nice break. haahahaha. get it. break. break? I’m breaking apart myself, how are you guys?

I’d also like to give a MASSIVE shoutout to @leafbladie for having helped me so long with all the quote videos and with everything else. He has been so helpful and amazing this whole time. ;_; I want to plug the Ashley Taylor Memoria Collage/Zine Project (@ashleytaylormemoria) real quick-- check it out and maybe try submitting stuff too :) I’ll be making an art piece for it as well! Winx (@thefairywithdrawings) is also involved and overseeing all the design work.

I think that’s one of the nicest things going on right now... a lot of folks have different fan projects going on and are working together to make the best of a bad situation.

Future Plans

When the archive recording project is done, I want to write up a few posts on starting over on JP and how to use SE effectively. I know that there is a lot of really helpful (and frankly better) content out there already, but I still would like to add to it.

I mentioned before, but I do intend to start up the memoria review project up again, but that’ll be after everything else as well.

Tentatively... I might also make a unit review blog as well, which will go over characters and their various niches, along with a look into their SE, connects, ect. But that will be a whiles off from now and will require a ton of research.

Uhh I think that’s it! Thanks again for all of you guys’ support. I get overwhelmed easily and am not taking the whole situation well, but I’m trying to focus on my goals. It helps that the fandom is collectively working together right now.

See you until next time!

#Muffin Record #Magia Record #Long Post #Archive Progress Report

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runrundoyourstuff · 4 years

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Writer Tag Game

Tagged by: @fanfoolishness (thanks!!!)

Author Name: thesomtimeswarrior (on ao3, where most of my fics live!)

Fandom(s) you write for: Steven Universe, Avatar: the Last Airbender (+Korra sometimes), Harry Potter, Jewish scripture/text (which isn’t really a fandom--and I keep all that stuff on a separate pseud to make a differentiation--but the dynamics of writing are honestly similar), and then a smattering of random other stuff as it strikes my fancy, such as MCU, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Hunger Games, Moana, Coco...it goes on.

Where you post: AO3. Sometimes I post links here on tumblr.

Most popular one-shot: Undoubtedly, and by far, that would be an short little ATLA ficlet I wrote back in 2017 called But It Is the Youth that Must Fight and Die. This fic is about Iroh (as most of my ATLA fics are!), contemplating the fact that all of the GAang--the primary combatants in the War are children.

The reason this piece has so many hits and kudos is because I linked to it in a ATLA meta post that I wrote on tumblr, also in 2017, and that post blew up--for me anyway. It has over 50k notes.

Most popular multi-chapter: Tbh, I don’t write a lot of multi-chapter fics. I mainly write one-shots. There was a brief time that I wrote a little for the Danny Phantom fandom--I don’t talk about it, because honestly I don’t like most of the stuff I wrote there--but one of those is a pretty short multi-chapter work. It got a decent amount of positive attention. I’m not gonna link to it, because I feel kinda meh about it, but it’s still on my ao3, and people can look it up if they want.

Favorite story you wrote: Ah, this is a hard thing to answer! And it really changes! I’d say I have favorites fandom-to-fandom, as well. But right now, at this moment, I’m gonna say that the favorite fic that I’ve written is Essences, which I actually wrote for @pearldefiance, as a part of the @fandomtrumpshate charity auction. It’s about “our” Pearl helping Yellow Pearl conceptualize and come to terms with freedom and selfhood shortly after CYM. I worked really hard on this piece--and on editing it--and I’m really gratified with how it came out.

Story you were nervous to post: Frankly, any time I post something I’ve written for another person I get nervous. The aforementioned Essences made me very nervous to post, even if I am very proud of it. Also I get butterflies any time I write something for a new fandom.

Also, I didn’t post it, but I was very nervous (but excited!) to hand in the piece I wrote for the upcoming @hundredsofpearls-zine (pre-orders now open!)

How do you choose your titles? Honestly, this is the greatest mystery. I legit do not even know most of the time.

How many of your stories are complete? All of them. (Currently, that’s 244). I don’t write many multi-chapter pieces, and I post one-shots only once they’re done.

In progress: For once, and in a frankly unusual turn of events, I don’t have anything I am literally currently working on at this moment, but I do have several ideas in my head, which leads me to this next question...

Coming soon:

An SU piece about Garnet using Mindfulness to deal with the anxiety that Future vision must inevitably cause

A Buffy piece about Giles, during the S1 episode Nightmares

A Buffy piece about Spike and Buffy’s relationship (I don’t ship it, but I do find it really interesting to think through)

A few Hunger Games pieces about Jewish characters in the Panem (inspired by this piece, that someone else wrote, called Nistar)

Probably a few more Pearl pieces.

I also just watched Gravity Falls for the first time, so while I don’t have any immediate ideas, I’m sure I’ll come up with some Gruncle Stan Angst at some point soon.

PLUS more pieces as a part of my Double Drabble Challenge, which are months overdue--sorry guys:

(One about Toph and her parents for @elf-kid2.)

(Another one about Zuko and Iroh for an anon!)

Upcoming story you’re most excited to write: All of them! I’m very excited to write more in the Buffy fandom! And it’s been a while since I wrote Hunger Games, so that promises to be fun also.

Do you accept prompts?: Not generally. I do for specific reasons. Charity auctions occasionally, and I am currently for my Double Drabble Challenge!

Top five favorite authors: I also don’t read nearly as much as I write, but some of my favorites, in no particular order:

@attackfish

@mimik-u

@fanfoolishness (I know you tagged me, but you’re one of my favorites too!)

@ink-splotch

@intelligencehavingfun

Tagging: anyone tagged above who wants to participate, plus anyone else who might want to as well! ( @findswoman, you might like this!)

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halberdierminister · 4 years

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July Monthly Goals Check-In

1. Write 250 Words Each Day Well, I started out very faithful to this. But sometime around the middle of the month, I got pretty choppy. I honestly don't know exactly how many days I skipped. I'm gonna try to write a fair amount today when I can and hope that it is enough to make up for it. Which is fine. It has been an otherwise very productive month in many other ways, so I cannot be too upset about it. I may start running a wordpress blog with a friend of mine, and if I do that may keep me more on track with these.. We shall see. We shall see.

2. Read 55 Books This Year I finished reading 55 books in May! Last month I read 10 more books. THIS month, however… I read 31 books. That brings me to a total of 97 books read for the year!!! A lot of them have been VERY short books. Lots of poetry collections, manga volumes, graphic novels, etc etc etc. But not exclusively!! I was hoping to get to 100 books by the time I wrote this but the last couple days, I have not been able to make the magic happen. But that's fine! That's TOTALLY FINE. This will be a very significant get, but I have months to get over that hump. By the time you hear from me on this goals check-in next month, I will undoubtedly be decently well over 100 books, and I can talk about why that personally feels so good then!

3. Get A Full Time Job I did not get a full time job this month. BUT. I applied to 38 full time jobs. Got a bunch of rejections. HOWEVER, I have scheduled EXACTLY ONE JOB INTERVIEW so far so that is good news! And that would be a VERY good job if I were to get it! Some of these jobs are actually pretty exciting things and I feel confident for the first time in a while that I might actually find a good job IN MY CAREER PLAN!!!! Also I almost lost my part time job but the library director was able to convince the village to let me stay on as a substitute, and it has paid off surprisingly well. I've been working two to three shifts a week on that, which is more than any of us expected. So I guess what I'm saying is I am making good progress again and I hope I can have something positive to report by the time I'm thirty. Eugh.

4. Move Out Speaking of being almost thirty. I really do not want to be here. If I get the job I interview for, I would be able to move in with my friends in Milwaukee just about as soon as possible. So that is good news. Every day it gets more tempting to just say "screw it" and live down there. But that won't help me find a job. And the job really is the important thing.

5. Drink Less Soda I mean yeah. Occasionally, I drink-a the soda. But not too much. I am good at drinking less soda than I did last year or the years before that. That's because I would have several sodas each day, to the point where it worried some of the people I know.

6. Get Something Published Just found out that I'm getting something else published today! So that is one new poem published this month! I also had my fic in the Lalonde Zine come out, but it turns out that the Lalonde Zine was more of a shared Google Drive folder than an actual zine. Maybe I should offer to compile the zine into one document? I should do that. That would be a good thing to do and it would give me a lot of experience with doing that, something I haven't really done in a while. So the practice would do me good! And then I would feel better saying that I got published there too. But yes so besides the Lalonde fic, I have had two poems published in zines, one poem published in an online literary journal, and one fic published in an online fanzine this year! If you include the articles I wrote for school newspapers, I have gotten at least one thing published every year for the past fifteen years. If you don't count the articles (or the Lalonde fic yet), I have had 30 pieces of fiction and poetry published since 2005! That's pretty neat! I want even more though!!!!!! I found a publisher's website that accepts unsolicited manuscripts. I'm going to try to put together an honest to god actual collection of my poetry, one bigger than either of the two digital chapbooks I have made. I have a friend who is a professional editor -- not of poetry, mind you, but I might be able to convince her to give it a shot -- and I would honestly hire her at full price to take a look at it. I actually will need to seek a lot of feedback from a lot of people, so if you want to read a document full of a bunch of my poetry, lemme know and I will show you what I've got when I've got something.

7. Finish Writing A Legitimate Businessman Finished in April! No new news. But just because I completed this goal doesn't mean that is the end of it! I do still have the sequel to work on, even though I haven't done any of that this month. And one of these days I am going to get around to sitting down with the printed copy and a pen and editing the shit out of it so that I can write draft #2! I think I'll probably throw draft #2 up on wattpad (why not?? I've been curious about that website and know absolutely nothing about it) and maybe I'll make a nice looking e-book out of it that I can distribute on noisetrade or itchio or something! I wonder if I could get it printed on demand or something. Obviously not for profit. But like, maybe I have friends I want to send a nice printed copy to.

8. Write More The Revelation of Takaya According to Jin Finished in Februrary! No new news. A friend of mine has offered to bind a copy of it when he has access to the materials, and I think that'd be dope as hell. I ought to work on compiling it into a nice document. I don't know if that's what he would need. He would probably want to do that work himself. Sometimes I think about the concept of making an illustration for it? I don't know. I can't draw. But I might not need to draw for the thing I have in mind. Really I should be consulting with him on that. Ah well. Either way, I hope that ends up happening. That would be so friggin cool.

MINOR GOALS

9. Finish Playthroughs Of 1. The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild: Finished in January! 2. Persona 1 Main Quest Good Ending: I didn't do anything on this whooooops. Getting into the second half of the year without once having touched it. I ought to get back to this. 3. Pokemon Sword: Finished in March! 4. Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: Finished in February and March! 5. Persona Q2: I have finished the fourth dungeon and gotten to The Twist!!! It's weak. This really is the kids' version of a Persona game. Minus like… the fact that it's still rated M for partial nudity. There was exactly one moment of horror and even that was like… just a bit scarier than The Nightmare Before Christmas. But I did some of the side quests and those are actually decently fun. So I have the final dungeon left. I just wanna sort of power through this. I'll worry about completion when I do new game plus, whenever that might be.

10. Record More Ukulele Videos I did not do this. I want a new microphone. These are not inherently related things, as I do have a microphone already. I have everything I need to do this. I just haven't done this. And I would like a new microphone. Also, an amp for the uke would be nice. I should text my old coworker, see if he still has one to sell.

11. Record Let's Plays Neither did I do this. How could I? My parents think video gaming is the Devil's Lettuce. And they are always home. They would notice if they heard me talking to my computer. And that is assuming that I had something I could play on my computer that anyone would want to watch. I need a better computer. A gaming computer. An editing computer. I'm lucky that these are the same thing.

12. Duolingo? I was SUPER gung ho in the end of June and the beginning of July, but before too long I petered out. I've used a couple streak freezes and have really been doing mostly the bare minimum to not drop out of the emerald league. But I've got a streak of about 208 days, and that is nothing to sneeze at! Do I feel like I'm learning? I dunno. But I am at least interacting with Spanish just about every day so that… that's got to be helpful, right? right?

This was over one thousand five hundred words. Wait! Sixteen hundred exactly.

#goals #new years goals #monthly goals #monthly goals check in #check in #goals check in

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houseofvans · 5 years

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ART SCHOOL | INTERVIEW WITH BRIAN SMITH

Filled up sketchbooks of distorted portraits of passer-bys, mundane objects, personal notes, weird thoughts and meanderings are just a couple things in artist Brian Smith’s sketchbook and works. Textured with black and gray tones, Brian’s drawings are often personal, humorous, and observational. We’re excited to chat with Brian to find out more about his background, drawings, and what he has coming up for the rest of the year. Take the Leap!

Photographs courtesy of the artist.

Introduce yourself? My name is Brian Smith, I’m from a town called Hicksville, New York. Now, recently living in Los Angeles, California. I’m currently the sole employee of a warehouse and I like to draw.

What was your introduction to drawing and/or art in general? What were your early influences? I’d had a babysitter who showed me how to draw actual hands and not just the turkey ones you make when you’re little. That was pretty big for me. It got me interested in figuring out how to draw other things just by looking at them for a bit. I always had sketchbooks as a kid, and in turn would forget them somewhere. My Nana who was kind of a closet artist would find them and leave little watercolor drawings of shore birds, ladybugs on tall grass, pond habitats etc. That seeded some notion I wouldn’t come to until much later about the intimacy of sketchbooks and how good it feels to give and receive drawings. Early influences would definitely be those two women. There was also a lot of adolescent suburban troublemaking, the inevitable introduction to skateboarding and cartoons like Rocko’s Modern Life and Ren and Stimpy.

How would you describe your work now to someone who is just coming across it? I generally stumble through an explanation if I’m ever asked. I recently looked back at like two years of drawings for a show. Seeing a good chunk of what you’ve drawn over a period of time all at once is wild. I still don’t think I’ve got my answer. It’s all kind of vague, sad, funny and personal. I like it to be just so, where people can attach their own meaning to it or ask questions about it.

How did you find yourself going from maybe keeping a journal to actually getting work creating art or selling artwork? I’m still getting there. I think so far those things for me have a mutually beneficial relationship. Drawing in sketchbooks is where I’m most productive. Everything after that is selected and isolated into its own drawing. That isolated sketchbook drawing might become a print or an image someone wants to buy or use for something which is always great.

How do your ideas take shape? How do you get from start to finish? What’s your process? It’s a total crap shoot haha. Sometimes I’ll blast through something in a night and others, a half inked drawing will sit in a drawer for months before I’m ready to get back into it. I get my ideas from a lot of things and in a lot of different ways though. I have a very distracting internal dialogue from time to time, I don’t know what it is. Sometimes I’ll just hang on a phrase, words that sound funny strung together in a sentence and put it down on paper and save it, maybe draw what it makes me think of later on. This croucher character I started drawing came from a thought I had of how dumb I must’ve looked a few days earlier, scrunched down taking a photo in the city while a wall of people moved around me.

When are you most inspired? And what is your favorite subjects or things to draw and why? Inspiration strikes at random. I mostly like to draw at night or very early in the morning. I like drawing dogs and people, they’re emotional critters.

What artists inspire you these days? The artists in my immediate circle at Bill’s Bar (@billsbarla). Those people are constantly creating and progressing. It’s insane.

You moved to LA not too long ago, how has living here influenced your artwork if at all? What do you think about the art community in LA? I got out here in November. Lots of sketching and a few finished drawings in the bag since then. I’ve got a few ideas that’ll have to cook a bit longer before I figure out what to do with them. It’s definitely been a receptive town for me, showed a bunch of drawings I’d been sitting on and got a nice response. I’ve been to a few art shows and they got me pretty excited on what’s going on and what can be achieved with some elbow grease.

Tell us about a favorite project or collaboration you’ve done. What kind of challenges do collaborations pose and what do you love about them? My favorite collaboration has been with Austin England (@mochelife). We started sharing drawings through the mail over a decade ago. We did that for years before we actually met in person 6 or 7 years ago. Now we share a studio space with some other great artists and I’m currently babysitting his dog Lola. Collaborations for me can tend to lead to overthinking. Not always, but sometimes.. and when it gets to that point it’s tricky to dig yourself out and just relax and work with what the other person is doing. I love the whole process of it though, it’s fun and you never know where it’s going to go. You usually learn something new and wind up with something cool. That’s the best.

What was your last adventure that showed up in one of your illustrations, thematically or just visually? Driving through the midwest. Indescribable. I drew a bunch of roadkill from memory that was pretty fun and weird.

Every artist has a different way of making his or her artist career work. How do you make it work for you? Do you spend time maintaining an online store or just draw when you want when you have free time? I pretty much draw when I can. Sometimes I just don’t feel like it, which is always tough. I just draw in my sketchbooks, turn those pages into zines or actual finished pieces and let people know they’re for sale on instagram. I haven’t quite dialed in the online store thing just yet, but I’ll get there. Every now and again a drawing job or commission will pop up.

What advice would you give someone who wants to follow in your footsteps and pursue art? Don’t follow in my footsteps. Go to lots of museums and art shows. Keep a pen in your pocket. Take the extra time to get an image to look the way you want it to.

What’s your best Art School tip that you want to share with folks? Don’t write your artist statement in the 3rd person.

When you aren’t drawing or hustling, what do you do to relax or just stay fresh in life? Beers, talks, books and walks to relax. Going to a museum, taking a trip and or getting out of the old comfort zone to stay fresh.

What are your favorite style of VANS? I like the white Vans Authentic, especially all worn in and pretty raggedy looking.

Anything you can share that is coming up? I don’t have anything coming up which is nice. Everything’s pretty wide open creatively, so I’m just gonna keep my antennas tuned and try and get productive.

FOLLOW BRIAN | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM

#Art #Vans #Vans Art #Art School #Brian Smith #Interview #drawing #sketchbook #artist interview

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vrepit-sals · 6 years

Text

Title: When I’m not the only one Characters: Pidge, team Voltron, the Holt family Pairings: None Tags: space family, found family, trans girl pidge Word Count: 4055 This was my piece for @pidgevoltronzine, you can get a copy of the free zine here. This fic is available on a03 here

They're still standing in the middle of the hallway, when an indignant shout comes from far away, reverberating down the castle corridors at a much higher decibel than the late hour would warrant.

"Keith is your favourite brother? I bought you a video game!" ______

Pidge learns that blood is not a prerequisite for family.

She's sitting on the kitchen counter, sprinkling chocolate chips into a bowl while Matt stirs the mixture with a wooden spoon. They're almost done, and in half an hour she knows they'll have freshly baked peanut-butter-chocolate-chip cookies.

She feels grown up, being allowed to help in the kitchen with only her brother's supervision. She's wearing her brand new green dress, the one she'd spent half-an-hour spinning in that morning, trying to memorise the unfamiliar way the fabric swept across her legs.

Her mother had pulled her hair up into pigtails and smiled at her from behind a camera as she twirled, then bundled her up in her arms. She'd received a kiss on the cheek and revelled in hearing her name from her mother’s lips. She'd never felt safer.

Her favourite cookies are like the cherry on top of the cake, the celebration of something she's wanted for years and only just attained.

Her brother makes a dramatic reprimand when she eats a chocolate chip and opens his mouth wide, swooping for and missing the chip she throws.

She giggles as he bends down and pops it in his mouth anyway, citing the five second rule. She continues to watch, eagerly accepting when Matt offers her the chance to stir the bowl.

He smiles down at her as she works, and declares the cookies complete with a flourish.

It's as he's pulling out the baking paper that she realises their vital mistake.

"We forgot to add the pidge of love!" She says, ready to clamber off the counter in order to grab the mysterious ingredient that their mother adds to everything she cooks.

Matt stops and stares at her for a second before he starts to laugh.

"Yes, we definitely can't forget that!" he says, wiping away a tear before showing her how to do a sprinkling motion, adding their blessing to the mixture.

He hands her back the wooden spoon.

"Better make sure it's stirred in properly."

He grins at her and she smiles back, sweeping the spoon through the dough in the figure 8 motions their mother had taught her.

They scoop out the dough with their hands and roll it into balls between their palms. Matt hands her the spoon to lick as he leaves to ask their father to put the tray in the oven for them. He lifts her off the counter and lets her pick the TV show they watch while they wait for the cookies to be done.

It's the best birthday she's ever had.

"They look great, Pidge," Matt says when their father places the cookies on a heatproof mat, batting his children's hands away from the hot tray.

She looks at her brother and tries to raise one eyebrow the same way their mother does.

"Pidge?"

"Yeah," Matt says, ruffling her hair and laughing as she squeals, "because you're our own little 'pidge of love'. Our most important ingredient."

She smiles at him, and he grins back, a certain mischief in the quirk of his lips that she can't seem to place.

In eight years she'll be telling him she hates the nickname, a slightly embarrassing story of childhood ignorance and Matt's warped sense of humour. In ten years it'll be one of the few connections to her family and planet that she still has, and she'll hold it tight with no plan to ever let it go.

But for now her chest feels lighter than ever. A new nickname, her first dress and her favourite cookies.

Life couldn't possibly get better.

Coran looks tired.

He always does, at least to some degree. Pidge doesn’t think she's ever seen him without loss and exhaustion lingering behind his eyes.

All of them need a spa day. Sometimes it feels like the entire team is running on empty. But Coran and Allura have been fighting far longer than the paladins have. They don't have a home waiting for them when this is all over.

Sometimes Pidge can see Coran's uncertainty in the crack between his smile.

But he hides it well. He wanders over to her research as if he's been resting all day, without a care in the world. In actuality, Pidge knows he's been cleaning the castle, preparing training sessions, assisting Allura with recon and checking up on all of them and helping when he can.

She wants to tell him to go have a nap. She wants to give him something to ease the burden, even just a little.

"I found the next link in the chain," she says instead.

It's taken three days and feels like nothing. Coran still smiles like it's progress.

"Oh?" he asks. He leans forward to look at the screen over her shoulder.

"The ship Matt was on docked near the Vaekla system, and unloaded cargo before jumping into hyperspace," she says, "it's been stationed for combat ever since. The logs don't mention the prisoners, but they must have been moved around the same time as the cargo."

The one thing that seems crystal clear in all this is that the Galra value prisoners as less than worthless. They are shepherded from ship to ship in a seemingly endless chain until a more permanent prison happens to be on the ship's route.

They’re rarely listed in logs at all, and where they are there’s merely the number of prisoners and a date. She’s struggled to keep track of which group Matt is in, and the disquiet of her mind whispers that she might not even be on the right track.

"The Vaekla system, that sounds familiar," Coran says.

"It one of the biggest Galran cargo hubs on this side of the galaxy."

Coran nods and taps his finger against his chin.

"Do you know the ship they were transferred to?"

"The base has enough resources to hold prisoners for about a week at a time. I've just finished compiling a list of all the ships that went through there within a week of the prisoners arriving. I'm just about to start cross-referencing their cargo, logs and destination routes to come up with some likely candidates."

Just saying the sentence drops a weight on whatever small piece of optimism she still had going. She thinks of how little of the cross referencing can be done automatically, and the seemingly endless list of ships.

Coran just nods and pats her on the shoulder. His presence does make her feel a little better, for all that she knows he'll give her some words of encouragement before going back to his own duties.

"Well then, we'd better get started."

Coran plops down into the seat next to her and pulls up a monitor. Pidge looks at him in shock for a moment before distributing the list between them.

The time passes eons faster than it did that morning. Coran tells her a story about King Alfor and a rather forward Torian diplomat as they work, and Pidge's stomach hurts from all the laughing by the time they take a break for dinner.

The mind is such an inefficient memory storage system.

Pidge knows that she had an album of family pictures back at home. She had backups on external hard drives and CDs and physical copies stashed in just about every room.

When Matt and her Dad disappeared, she swore she would never forget them. She would never lose the family photos of them, no matter what natural disaster or piece of bad luck might strike. She knew one day she would use the photographs to find them.

She'd brought the picture of Matt with her to the Garrison and to space beyond. But she'd left the pictures of her father at home. She'd thought one photo she could pass off as coincidence, but any more would make her real identity obvious.

She'd been just paranoid enough, but in a completely unhelpful direction.

Some days she tries to picture her father's face, and she can feel her memory falter. It takes her brain minutes to construct something that resembles him, but when she tries to zoom in, to see the quirk of his cheesy grin, it blurs away to nothing.

She sees the uncanny valley whenever she tries to think hard about home.

She doesn't mean to bother Shiro on the bad days. It's not like it's a conscious thing, she'll just be getting some food goo and he'll be sitting at the table with a cup of what Coran swears sounds just like green tea. Or else she'll be training with the rest of the team, and he'll notice that the bags under her eyes have multiplied overnight.

She knows he sees what's happening, because always, without fail, he'll start talking about her family.

He never asks her about it directly, but the tales from the Kerberos mission remind her of things that have slipped her mind.

How Matt sang Lady Gaga at the top of his lungs when the world felt too heavy. Her father's habit of accidentally stealing other people's combs. The stories flesh out her family in her mind's eye, transforming them back from vague recollections into actual people.

People she can see again.

People she is going to.

Some days space seems intent to rip the past from her. To fog her memories and cloud her perspective, to block her from anything but the battles and missions and death.

But she knows that whenever she starts to forget what's important, Shiro will make sure she remembers.

Allura pulls her aside after a debriefing for another diplomatic mission. Pidge expects something to be wrong or there to be extra work to do.

Sometimes Pidge feels like she manages to accidently insult the princess every time they talk. Allura always accepts her apologies with grace, and although they've become closer over the past few months, Pidge still feels the need to hold herself back somewhat, before her tongue manages to undo all their progress.

Perhaps that's why missions and training still seem to dominate their conversations.

"What's up Allura?" she asks, already half calculating what she could accomplish for Allura before they land planetside.

"This new mission doesn't require us to wear our armour, but we will need something more formal than our regular attire. I was wondering if you'd like to borrow a dress for the occasion?"

Pidge stares at her for a moment. She's suddenly transported back to that day all those years ago. The hallway mirror, fabric whooshing around her legs and a feeling of peace she never expected to find.

Allura's face shifts with her silence.

"Of course, if you'd prefer I'm sure Coran can find you a suit-"

"No," Pidge cuts her off in her haste, "I'd love to borrow something. Thank you."

She can't keep a grin off her face. Allura returns it before leading her to her bedroom, where they spend the afternoon going through her princess-sized closet.

Allura seems to have stories about every item of clothing: tales of tall trees and impromptu play-fights that ripped holes in ball gowns; diplomatic missions to planets that may no longer exist; soft fabric for dresses worn around the castle, on days she could forgo her royal duties and just be a child.

Pidge feels a little foolish trying on dresses Allura wore when she was 10, but as soon as the fabric goes over her head she feels a sigh of relief spread through her.

The clothes she normally wears are one of the only connections to Earth she still has. But these dresses, alien as they are, remind her of another kind of home.

Allura retires to the edge of her bed and comments on each dress Pidge tries. For some she is loud and exuberant, quoting lines she's heard from the team like "walk walk fashion baby" or Altean slang that she assures is positive.

For others she can't help but laugh at the outdated buttons that apparently clash terribly by current standards and silhouettes that are unflattering in every way.

Together they create a shortlist. Then, one by one they eliminate options until a winner is found.

The dress is a deep emerald with a high neckline, finishing just below her knees. On Altea it would have been used for lunch events or as less formal day wear, but Pidge has never felt more like royalty.

The weight of the dress is comforting and familiar, and she could easily fit her bayard, along with any other useful gadgets in one of its almost-impossible-for-their-sheer-size pockets.

Allura looks at her in confusion when she discovers the pockets and promptly sticks her hands in them, twirling around with gleeful shouts of their existence.

"Of course it has pockets. What kind of dress doesn't?"

Pidge turns and stares at her with the kind of reverence that thus far has been reserved only for technology.

"Altea must have been a wonderful place."

She sees Allura smile with a far-away look in her eyes.

"Yes, it really was," she smiles at Pidge like that dress is helping keep the past alive.

Even when they're done choosing an outfit for the meeting, they continue going through the wardrobe. This time Allura joins her, pulling on gifts from diplomats of other planets and piling scarves around her neck.

Pidge laughs at the look it creates and Allura strikes a pose, prompting Pidge to do the same.

When they've finally expended every item in the closet, Allura picks up a large pile of dresses Pidge hadn't even noticed her making, and tells Pidge to lead the way back to her room.

Pidge looks at her in disbelief for a moment, but can't help the smile pulling at her lips.

"Are you sure you don't mind me wearing them?" she asks as she pushes aside the various electronics she'd stacked in the clothing-devoid closet.

"Of course, hand-me-downs are an important part of Earthen bonding," Allura grins at her, before looking slightly sheepish, "or is this like the time Lance told me that the middle finger was a sign of great admiration and respect?"

Pidge laughs at the memory, and all the healing pods Lance had to clean in punishment.

"No, that's right. Just, thank you."

Pidge isn't sure if she'll ever be able to express how much she means it. Allura just smiles at her and hefts all the dresses into her closet in one graceful motion Pidge could never hope to replicate.

Pidge is wearing one of her new dresses when she enters the lounge and gets comfy on one of the big couches. She has her laptop with her, but there's no pressing intel to translate or interpret. She fiddles with a few of her passion projects, but can't seem to focus.

Lance had greeted her when she walked in, and he's sitting on the next couch over, working on a jumper using sharpened sticks that were once part of some Altean extreme sport.

Pidge finds herself continually distracted by the soft clack of the needles.

It takes her back to when her mother would sit next to her father on the couch, knitting squares for their local charity group during family movie night. She'd always promised Pidge that she'd teach her one day.

But life was always too busy, and then Kerberos happened and family movie nights stopped. The clack of needles and any sense of life drained from their house.

She stares blankly at her laptop screen and imagines bringing her mother back a blanket, one knitted in space. She imagines knitting with her during future family movie nights. She imagines the warmth of yarn slipping through her fingers feeling like her mother's hugs.

She turns her head towards Lance and he looks up from his knitting. He grins easily at her, one eyebrow raised in an unasked question.

"Can you teach me how to knit?" she asks.

Lance lets out a happy of bark of laughter, and all but throws his needles to the side as he exclaims.

"Of course I can! You know, I am an excellent teacher."

Pidge rolls her eyes at him, but the smile that overtakes Lance's face is contagious. He ruffles her hair as he leaves to grab another pair of needles and some yarn.

Pidge's first square looks more like a dilapidated rhombus. Her second isn't much better.

But Lance just has this proud look on his face as he examines them. He weaves her tales of all the holey scarves he gave his mother for Christmas when he was small.

Pidge smiles as she casts on her third attempt.

"Hey Pidge, can I get a hand with something?"

She looks up at where Hunk is smiling at her from the entrance of the room. She'd originally come in to the lounge room to knit. The blanket she's making is almost halfway done, and she preemptively misses it whenever she works late into the night without its warmth around her shoulders.

But her laptop had sat and stared at her. Taunting her with puzzles and uncracked codes that she's never been able to resist.

Hunk's voice snaps her out of what the other's affectionately call her 'technology haze', and the laptop all but whines at her as she puts it down to follow Hunk into the hallway.

They don't seem to be following the familiar path to their joint workshop, and Pidge frowns.

"What do you need help with?"

Hunk just turns to her with a secretive grin.

"Just a little something I've been working on," he says, pausing at the end of corridor for a moment before his eyes light up in recognition and he leads them left.

Secrecy isn't like Hunk. They share information on their projects as easily as breathing, exchanging ideas with barely a need to speak. She and Hunk are the only ones on the ship to truly appreciate the intricacies of what they do, and she holds her comrade in arms in high regard.

She manages to hold her tongue for almost a minute before the curiosity gets the better of her.

"Is it problems with the real-time Galra tracker?" she asks. Hunk lets out a laugh.

"No."

"Is it time to re-scramble the communication frequencies?"

"Not for another few days."

She hums and taps a finger against her chin.

"It's not modifications to Yellow?"

"Yes."

Pidge's eyes light up and Hunk looks at her with a grin.

"It's not," he says, and picks up the pace, laughing at her grumbling.

They continue winding down the castle corridors, watching them get smaller and darker. Hunk leads her to a part of the ship she's never been before, stretching hallways of doors leading to what she assumes are guest rooms their team of seven have no use for.

Hunk seems to stop at one of them at random, but when he flicks his wrist to open the door, it asks for a passcode. As if it were the armoury, or the keeper of a great secret.

When the door opens Pidge can see a faint glow emitting from the room. She takes in the mass of contraptions taking over half the floorspace, all leading up to a projection of a familiar start-up screen.

Killbot Phantasm 1 gazes back at her.

Her eyes are fixed on the game she's spent months trying and failing to play. A grin takes over her face and she swears she starts to tear up a little.

"I was thinking maybe later I could get some help carrying it up to one of the larger common rooms," Hunk says, as she stares at the screen in a daze, "but for now do you want to try multiplayer?"

Pidge takes the offered controller and asks herself how she ever got so lucky.

"Oh it's on," she says. Hunk cheers and presses start.

Pidge is seriously considering just snuggling down and sleeping in the cold, hard metal of her chair.

Her bed feels light-years away, an insurmountable distance. Her limbs ache at the thought and her mind lies, tells her that surely if she just lets her eyes drift shut, she'll be able to muster up the energy to make the journey. Just five minutes is all she'll need.

The part of her brain that's holding the fort together, that's somehow still functioning after 12 hours piloting her lion and running through Galra battlecruisers and three days before that working around the clock to decode the intel for this stealth mission, feels like this information is somehow sketchy. But she can't gather enough evidence to refute it.

She's just starting to sink into sweet, sweet rest when someone grabs her wrists and hoists them over their shoulders. After a jostle, she can feel hands under her legs securing her in place, pressed up against someone's back.

Then, despite any effort on her part, she's moving.

Pidge musters the last of her energy to pry open her eyes. Apparently the thing scratching her nose is actually long, black hair.

"Thanks Keith," she says, some part of her feeling their slow, lumbered movements and reminding her that Keith must be almost as tired as she is.

Or maybe not, the way he pulls his arms to boost her further up his back, and the smile she can hear when he says "No problem Pidge."

Her mind marks her current situation as ‘safe’ and resumes its descent into slumber. Just as she's about to slip away, Pavlovian conditioning pulls a final phrase from her lips.

"You're my favourite brother."

Keith pauses, and Pidge sluggishly realises that there was something unusual about that statement.

She's said it a thousand times, whenever Matt would give her the remote without a fight, or team up with her in Trivial Pursuit, or when the night got late and he'd piggyback her to her room, a million worlds away but exactly like this.

Every time Matt's response was exactly the same:

"I'll call it an achievement when I'm not the only one you've got."

It looks like he may have to start doing just that.

Or not, because apparently Keith has swept the title out from under him.

And part of Pidge wants to cry, because it feels like every day her Earth family drifts further and further away. And part of her wants to laugh as she tries to imagine the look on her mother's face when she introduces her to her new uncle and sister and four new brothers. Because she has to believe that one day she'll bring her families together.

Even if her team never consider her family back.

They're still standing in the middle of the hallway, when an indignant shout comes from far away, reverberating down the castle corridors at a much higher decibel than the late hour would warrant.

"Keith is your favourite brother? I bought you a video game!"

The voice is easily identifiable as Lance's, and Pidge can imagine him in his pyjamas, half a face mask applied, his features pulled into put-on disgust.

"Yeah, well I set it up!" comes a deep voice from even further in the ship. Hunk's deep tones betray far more humour than Lance's, and Lance squawks.

"I taught you how to knit!"

"I helped you decode 20 million lines of cargo logs!"

Pidge can almost see Hunk's teasing smile and Lance's over-exaggerated hand movements.

"The point is: your favourite brother is Keith?!" Lance yells in indignation.

A laugh is ripped from of Pidge's throat, and it mingles with laughter coming from Keith before drifting back down the hallway. It's answered by two over the top declarations of future retribution sent Keith's way.

When Keith drops her off at her door, she hugs him tight as she wishes him goodnight. His cheeks are red and wet, but a smile threatens to overtake his face as he returns the hug, his arms gentle but firm around her shoulders.

Then she's in her room, kicking off her shoes but otherwise letting nothing distract her from the sweet comfort of her bed. She pulls the blankets up to her neck and lets herself snuggle into the warmth which seems to be emanating from her heart.

And perhaps it's been building up over months, but it still hits her with surprising clarity.

For the first time, the Castleship truly feels like home.

#voltron #vld #pidge #safepidge #space family #found family #team voltron #sustenance provided by vrepit sals

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orbyssarchives · 6 years

Text

A Brief tl;dr

This is probably a lot to say for 20 unfinished webcomic pages and I know I can be fairly long-winded so if you just wanna skip ahead and click through the pictures I’ve put up, I understand.

The TL;DR is

Hello and welcome to Mage Punk Archives! My name is Tables and this is some of the work that I’ve done over the last few years and what I’ve been up to in my little corner of the world. This is the third and last of a series of posts, outlining a number of updates that I completed on the site.

Included are some of my inspirations and a little of what I’ve learned so far about myself as an ever growing artist up to this point.

After this, I want to keep the content more focused on the actual art and story.

I’ll post to this site as often as I am able.

Thanks for reading!

***

Long Ago, Before the miracle of handheld internet searches and Instagram

When I was but a young, internet webling, I was heavily into shitty online flash games and looking for anything even remotely related to my interests at the time. From Mario and Sonic to various comics, videos games, anime and things never to be said aloud (pornpornporn). My love of the likes of Super Mario Bros and Sonic the Hedgehog (big fandoms for me at the time) would later lead me to sprite comics. Today, my feelings for the little hodge podge collage strips of old video game sprite sheets and backgrounds are a little mixed.

(They were beautiful and I’m gonna make one someday)

Then, in Highschool, I took a basic Web Design class. It was a VVoid World Web of Notepad and Internet Explorer where a kindly old crone passed on to those of us there, some knowledge of the ancient runic language which forms the foundations of the World Wide Web: HTML. Tables, frames, css, oh my! This knowledge would eventually prove invaluable.

Throughout our studies we were occasionally allowed to venture out into the Wider World Web. It was during these little adventures and travels across the Web that I happened upon the magical land of Webcomics. It was also during this time that I began break free of the enchantment of sprites. Even though I would probably never return to them, they would always hold a special place in my heart.

The Internet is for [Comics]

Webcomics – Synonymous with “Masochism”

At first, I had no idea just how grueling webcomics could be. Most webcomic artists pump out pages one to three times a week. At the time I got into them, MegaTokyo, then still partially a video game webcomic, was just releasing its third printed book; 2-3 updates a week with a loosely set schedule. Evan Dahm was wrapping up his surreal fantasy epic, Rice Boy; with updates consistently going up Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The various sprite and drawn webcomics that I was following at the time were updating all the time. Seeing all the great work going up, I felt encouraged to try it myself.

I drew these closer to the end of my junior year of high school.

Desu

Taking major inspiration from a lot of the manga and anime that I was enjoying then, I used pen and ink to make my comic pages. I liked working in black and white because it felt direct and skipping on color made it easier to finish faster. I figured I could work faster if I didn’t have to worry about the extra step. When I did want to use color, as is typical for the early pages of a new manga, I used markers.

At the time, I had no idea that mangakas used assistants. That’s messed up.

Not to say that it was completely unrealistic, but back in the real world I could only average one black and white page a week. If even. The spider webs I was drawing all over were so that I wouldn’t have to use a ruler to draw my panel proper borders. I thought it gave the comic an “old archive”. In the end, I concluded that the spider webs should have their place and not be all over.

This time, I decided to work a little more carefully and deliberately.

Moving Forward

It was going pretty well but by the time page 7 rolled around, it was time for midterms and I had become too self-conscious and uncomfortable with the way I was drawing my comic pages then. Then, it was time to take finishing high school seriously and before I knew it, I was a freshman at The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. I did a lot of growing in the next four years that I attended there. Unfortunately, I never revisited those pages. Instead, near the end of my sophomore year, I took a Sequential Art class where the Final was a full-color, 5-page comic.

These are the ink-wash versions of the 7-page Final that I submitted. I’d originally colored them digitally to meet project requirements but I don’t want to post those just yet..

In the End

I wasn’t satisfied. The truth was that I waited until the last minute, rushed it, and over-reached on a re-draw that wasn’t much fun for me to work on. During the course of that Sequential Art class my professor turned my attention to artists like Moebius and Mike Mignola. I also came across Katsuya Terada’s stuff around this time.

And school went on…

I worked on Mage Punk when I could between assignments.

Between thinking I could possibly work on a for-print comic…

…and a webcomic at the same time.

The End was Near

Most of these were actually made towards the end of my four years at Ai. Those of us graduating were tasked with compiling our work from the years past in accordance with the requirements for obtaining our degrees. I believe that we were given two semesters to gather our pieces and do any revisions to previous works to get them up to date with the rest of the portfolio piece. Illustration Graduates at AiFL were typically required to gather a required selection of their work into an on-demand printed book. The year that I graduated, my department decided to change things around a little. Specifically, we were given the option to collect the requirement work into a plain black binder portfolio and make the printed book more geared towards our pursuits. I opted to make a Mage Punk/Orbyss Archives “Zine” as my main portfolio piece.

And Then College was Over

I drew a few more pages of the comic until I became employed full-time. These days, there aren’t enough free hours in my days for me to keep up with any typical webcomic’s update schedule so for a long while I stopped working on the comic altogether. I’m squeezing as much work out of every second that I’m not there; with whatever energy I can muster. This includes planning, writing, sketching and drawing. Before I got back to work on the site, I was posting fairly regularly to my Twitter and Instagram; those posts took time to do as well.

Most of this post was written in separate sessions on my commutes to work.

“Shortcuts”

Even though I always wanted to present Mage Punk as a webcomic, I always worked on it like it would go to print eventually. This created a confusing mindset for me when working on the comic, where I had to work on a whole book, but I have to rush to finish every page. If I wanted to put out pages more frequently I took shortcuts at any point I could to be done with them. Even if I created a good buffer of finished pages, I’d still run into that same pitfall eventually. I wasn’t enjoying my project because of a pressure I applied on myself to finish it in a way I wasn’t necessarily comfortable with. I didn’t even get that much done in the end.

It’s important that I work on it at a pace that lets me show the best of my ability. I would love it if I could be properly finished with the pages before I post them but if I wait before it’s all good and done I’ll just never get around to posting anything, forever floating, aimlessly, throughout creative internet limbo.

Instead, if I have to work on my comic in piecemeal, I’ll just post it up in piecemeal. Mage Punk will still be presented as a webcomic but, until the end of the book is done, certain changes are still a possibility. Editing is an important part of producing any book and I’m going to make its presentation reflect that.

Cue Rhidiculous shouting “I told you so!” from some nearby bushes.

A Webcomic in Presentation Only?

Those Two Images are the Same Page

Instead of trying to finish things at breakneck speeds, I’m going to work on the comics at a more reasonable pace. I’ll try to work on it mainly Chapter to chapter instead of page to page like how a webcomic normally is done (buffers aside) This gives me the opportunity to take a step back and get a broader look at the story while still putting out content in enjoyable chunks.

It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around drawing a comic on a start-to-finish, page-by-page basis. While I was working on the later pages in the chapter I kept finding myself jumping around and making changes to previous pages to make some things more consistent with later parts of the story. Instead of working page-by-page, I was editing the chapter as a whole to try to strengthen the narrative I’m trying to tell.

To that end, I still want to present it on this site as a webcomic; if only in name and archive.

The Process

At the VERY longtime behest of my editor, I’ll be presenting the comic as a work in progress at various points in the following production stages.

Writing

I’ll post dialog excerpts here and there. Nothing that can spoil the story too much.

This step will be kept largely behind the scenes.

Thumbnails

I do these on index cards in ballpoint pen to figure out the sequence of events that I most prefer.

This is the step where I’m prone to overloading a page with information.

First Drafts

Full size roughs of the earlier thumbnails. This step helps me get a better sense of how crowded or unbalanced a page might be early on.

This step also helps to prune out any strenuous scenes or dialog that could otherwise have their own pages.

If it isn’t working visually at this point, it’s not going to work in the next step.

Pencils

This is where the real drawing happens. Drawings in this step are made by either digital or traditional means depending on when or where I’m working.

Inking

This step is exactly like the drawing step but in pen and ink. Despite my affinity for real pen and ink, I’ll mainly be working this step digitally.

Color

This step is wrought with indecision but it also one of the faster, more fun steps to do.

Lettering

I’ve removed the dialog from all the pages currently up, opting to keep that out until a chapter is completed; it’s the thing I’m likeliest to change the most frequently until the end.

All lettering is currently done digitally but I’m considering the possibility of hand lettering.

Drawing dialog can be quite fulfilling but it takes a lot of practice.

Editing

This part will be happening all throughout. Page re-orders, panel redraws, changes in dialog.

Until the book is done.

Here We Are

I’ve already made some revisions to a handful of the pages that are already up; if you browse through the comics you can see the revisions noted in the comic descriptions. I’ll make blog posts for any major revisions or series of revisions that I do. I have a few ideas for some smaller projects that I can work on while I work on Mage Punk. Whether they be illustrations, stories, or even mini-comics like this silly thing down here.

Moving on

I might have also mentioned before that I have a few other drawings that I wanted to make for the site. In particular I have a neat idea for some social media icon illustrations. I wanna make something that takes advantage of what I’ve learned with using CSS. It’s nothing too fancy.

All that said, future posts will be a bit more brief than these last three were. I’d much rather write and post about the work itself, but I feel like I’ve hit a personal milestone and felt the need to ramble on about it a little.

Until next time,

Thanks for reading!

The Big Site Update (Part 3) A Brief tl;dr This is probably a lot to say for 20 unfinished webcomic pages and

#Comics #Process #Social Media #Website #WIP

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quiznakchronicle · 7 years

Text

Fandom event etiquette

Suggestions for both organizers and participants for a smooth and fun experience

Events are some of the most fun things in fandom. They bring people together for a common project, foster a great sense of community, and produce lots of amazing content for the fandom. As long as they’re run responsibly. As people who are quite active in the fandom events scene for the Voltron fandom a few things have been brought to our attention recently and we’d like to address them. Sheer event volume, poor management, and disorganized events are starting to turn people off from signing up/participating, and it’s really upsetting to see these things that are supposed to be fun turning into sources of stress and anxiety instead

Please know that this isn’t about pointing fingers at any single event or individual, rather this is advice we’d like to share based on our experience as both event organizers and participants. We welcome comments and further discussion, but if you’d like to add to this post please don’t namedrop any people or events. Don’t turn this post into a call-out, that’s not what it’s about. Finally, this post is written specifically about the Voltron fandom, but I’m sure it could apply to pretty much any fandom, so anyone who finds it useful feel free to reblog!

- @ace-pidge and @bosstoaster

Organizers

Check the state of the fandom before starting a new event. This is absolutely crucial. For the Voltron fandom, I maintain an entire set of calendars with the schedules of all ongoing and upcoming events, please take advantage of it. Your idea is probably super cool! But if there are already a couple dozen other projects going on it may be wise to hold off on it. If you’re worried about someone else coming along and stealing your idea, you can make a blog/post to signal your intent to run your event in the future, and wait a while for things to calm down a bit before actually running it. I’ve been getting many messages from people saying they feel burnt out or overwhelmed with the sheer number of events, and that’s not a situation anyone wants. [Edit (14/09): After hearing the thoughts of a Zine mod on this topic I now find this next statement unfair and in poor taste, as it lowkey implies (falsely) that Zine mods don’t know what they’re doing. I’ll leave my original comments in for posterity, but let it be known that really at this point my issue with Zines is more instances of lackluster management rather than Zine volume in itself. This is especially worrying for Zines, because actual money is involved. The market has been flooded with Zines over the summer, which results in fewer people buying them overall. Fandom people aren’t made of money, and it’s important to consider this when planning a Zine]

Make sure you’re able to commit entirely to the project, both time-wise and mentally/physically. Fandom events are BIG JOBS, especially the ones that span several months like Big Bangs and Zines. But even smaller events like Weeks or Exchanges require a certain amount of work put into them. That’s months of advertising, of making posts, of answering questions, of sorting people out and keeping tabs on them, of troubleshooting. Look at your school/work situation not just in the near future but also several months down the line: will you have the time to dedicate to this. Look at why you’re doing this event: are you just doing it because you want in on the fun. Look at your mental/physical health situation: will you have the capacity to see this through. If you know that given your history there’s a possibility something might happen that will prevent you from keeping on top of the project (like a depressive episode or a hospitalization) make sure to account for that (for example bring on a team of mods who will be able to carry on without you should you need to step back for a while)

Make sure your fellow mods are up to the task. Smaller events can be comfortably run by a single person, but bigger events like Zines and Big Bangs really should be run by at least 2 people, if not a team of 3-5*. This will ensure the workload is shared and there’s less chance of burning out before the project reaches completion. And they must all be people who are equally invested in the project. Having 1 very enthusiastic mod and 2 wishy-washy tag-along mods is a recipe for a project to fall apart

If your friend is asking you to co-mod an event with them and you’re not sure you can/want to commit to it, say no! Don’t feel like you have to accept just because it’s your friend asking. It’s better to be upfront and honest than to start something you won’t be able to finish

The above goes DOUBLE if you plan to run more than 1 event at a time. I’m not here to say you can’t run more than 1 event at the same time, but if you plan to do that you better make EXTRA sure you have the time and resources to commit to all of them

Get advice from someone who has run this kind of event in the past, especially if it’s your first time as an organizer. Talking to someone who has gone through this already will likely prove invaluable for running a smooth event and dealing with problems that may arise. Look through the notes on this post if you need to find someone to contact

Communication is key, be transparent! It is extremely important to stay in contact with your participants. This will both remind them that the event is ongoing (you’d be surprised how often people sign up for something then forget about it entirely) and show that you are responsible and on top of things. Also, don’t forget about your public page. With most events having dedicated Discord servers these days, it’s easy to forget about updating the event blog/Twitter page. Putting up a post every now and then to update the public on the event’s progress lets people know it’s not dead and keeps their interest up while your participants work behind the scenes

Stay on schedule, and if you can’t, let people know. Be clear and upfront about the event’s timeline and the different milestones, and if you can’t keep to the schedule say so. People will generally be very understanding. If you’re dealing with a Real Life situation, or if there are circumstances outside your control like printing/manufacturing delays on a Zine, tell your participants and your audience. This will avoid people getting disgruntled and frustrated and bitter because they feel left in the dark

If for whatever reason you can no longer see the project through, tell people instead of just disappearing off the face of the Earth. It’s really upsetting from a participant’s perspective to be left with no news for weeks or months on end without a clue what happened to the event. Sometimes things come up or stuff happens, it’s understandable, but if that’s the case you need to let people know. It may be very upsetting to make that post, but trust me, people will appreciate the knowing

Be VERY CAREFUL if you’re going to be handling money (as with Zines for example). Handling people’s money is a huge responsibility. If you’re going to be taking money you have to make sure you’re able to deliver on what you promised. The absolute worst time for a project to stall out is after preorders and before products are shipped out. If your project stalls at this stage and you don’t keep your buyers appraised of the situation you may get accused of scamming people or people may start demanding refunds, which is a mess no one wants to deal with

Don’t air your dirty laundry publicly. We get it, sometimes running an event is frustrating. Participants drop out, or disappear and can’t be contacted, or butt heads with you or each other. Don’t complain about it anywhere public; know that stuff you say will reflect on you as an organizer as well as on your event. Vent to friends or on private accounts if you must, but you want to appear professional and in control in public. If you appear messy, your event will also appear messy, and it may make people think twice about staying in it or participating in stuff you do in the future

Related: Try and keep your tone upbeat and positive and professional in your promo posts and answers to questions, even if you’re answering the same question for the umpteenth time. Giving off a frustrated or negative vibe may turn people off your event

If you’re a minor who wants to run an event make sure it’s appropriate for your age. Honestly, kudos to you if you’re 15-17 and running (or helping to run) an event, it’s great that you’re so involved! But for the love of all things good don’t get involved in an event where NSFW content is likely to appear. No amount of “I’m mature enough” or “I act older” constitutes a valid excuse, and you’re putting your (adult) participants in a very dangerous situation if you do that. ESPECIALLY if they don’t know you’re underage

*This isn’t to say you can’t run a bigger event if you’re alone, because people can and have done it and quite successfully at that. But in that case you must be absolutely all in

Participants

When you sign up for something, take the commitment seriously. Only sign up for things you know you’ll have the time/energy to deliver on, and do your best to do it

Stay on task. Keep to the schedule on your own, don’t make the organizers run after you

If you need an extension, ask for it, and don’t wait for the last minute. Sometimes you just need those few extra days or that week to complete your piece. Very often organizers will be understanding if you approach them asking for an extension, but don’t wait till the deadline to do so. Ask for the extension the moment you realize you’ll need extra time. Also ask even if you’re not 100% sure you’ll need it. Better to get the extension but still hand your stuff in on time than to show up the day of the deadline with an incomplete work and asking for more time. In the event that the organizers can’t give you an extension, either sort yourself out to have your stuff done on time or drop out of the event

If you need to drop out, do it sooner rather than later. Sometimes things come up, or your muse goes on vacation, or something else happens that’ll make you unable to participate. That’s ok! It happens to everyone. But in that case, tell the organizers ASAP so they can readjust their plans around you. Don’t just disappear off the face of the Earth without letting them know what your status is

Pace yourself. I know it’s tempting to sign up for everything. But the more you’re in the more strain you put on yourself, and the more likely you are to cause a domino effect if something goes wrong

Don’t air your dirty laundry publicly. If you have an issue with another participant or the organizer(s), or the way the event is being managed, or whatever else, take it up privately first. If it can’t be resolved, maybe just quietly drop out of the event and go on your way

#voltron #voltron legendary defender #voltron fandom #fandom events #voltronevents #long post #mod pidge

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velkynkarma · 6 years

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Get to Know the Author

@bosstoaster has been tagging me all night :P

1. How did you come up with your username and what does it mean?

I’ve had the name ‘Karma’ for about 17 years now? I don’t even remember where it came from. The ‘Velkyn’ got added a little over 10 years ago when I decided I wanted to get back into fic writing. But I was still in that phase where you think you’re supposed to ‘grow out’ of fandoms and writing fanfiction, so I didn’t want any of my friends to know I was doing it. I was embarrassed. It was silly. I picked a different handle, VelkynKarma, which actually means ‘hidden Karma.’ Later I just liked the name and also got over my embarrassment for fic writing and just started using it everywhere.

2. Which fanfic of yours has the most feedback? (bookmarks/subscriptions/hits/kudos).

No matter what statistic you look at, Routine Maintenance wins across the board by a large margin. Parasite Knight only has 1 less subscription, though, so I guess it’s a fair contender on subs.

3. What is your AO3 profile icon, and why did you choose it?

Same as my tumblr icon, it’s one of my OC’s, Morrigu Lovel. He is a little smartass and I love him.

4. Do you have any regular/favourite commenters?

Oh for sure, there’s a few lovely readers that come back every time and always have something to say. I love you guys :) And a few others that don’t comment on every chapter or every work, but the comments they leave are always phenomenal and make my day.

5. Is there a fanfic that you keep going back to read again and again?

Depends on my mood, and I don’t necessarily read the entire fic, just the paragraphs/scenes/chapters that really stick out to me. But yeah, I’ve got some favorites I return to a lot.

6. How many stories are you subscribed to? How many do you have bookmarked?

Oh geez. This one’s hard to say since I watch stuff on AO3 and FF.net. A lot? I think a lot of those fics are dead now though.

7. Which AU do you find yourself writing the most?

Mmmm I don’t really have a tendency to stick to any particular series or AU for very long? I guess in terms of general themes I’ve done zombie AU’s the most, between Age of Heroes for Young Justice and Road Trip to End Times for Voltron...something about zombie apocalypse scenarios just fascinates me, especially since it can be done so many different ways.

8. How many people are subscribed and bookmarked to you in total? (you can view this on the stats page)

252 user subs, 444 work subs, 2039 bookmarks. I didn’t even know that until now, huh

9. Is there something you’d like to write about but are afraid of people judging you for it? (Feeling brave? If so, share it!)

There’s some character interactions that are such hot-button topics in the VLD fandom I’m cautious about approaching them because I don’t want to deal with people complaining or begging for things to get escalated. Like, I love Keith and Lance’s interactions in canon, but don’t have much fic centered around them because ship lashback is real.

10. Is there anything you would like to be better at? Writing certain scenes or genres, replying to comments, updating better, etc.

Short fic. What is brevity even? I can’t do zines or commissions because I can’t figure out how to manage a damn word count.

11. Do you write rarepairs or popular ships more often?

Nope! I don’t write any ships at all. I just write platonic interaction. Though I guess I wouldn’t be adverse to a platonic ‘rarepair’ as long as I liked the characters’ interaction potential.

12. How many stories have you posted on AO3 to this day (finished and unfinished)?

So far, 25. 23 of those are Voltron, 1 is Young Justice, and 1 is Supernatural (experimenting with cross-posting on both of those last two, some fandoms are just hard to break into or not on certain sites).

13. How many stories do you have saved in/with your writing program?

Oh boy. In progress? I wanna say 3. Notes? A lot, lot more.

14. Do you write down story ideas, or just keep them in your head?

I jot down notes! Or email myself ideas if I’m at work/out and about. Or speak them into a little portable digital tape recorder I keep next to my bed, if it’s the middle of the night and I have an idea, but lack dexterity to type.

15. Have you ever co-authored a story?

Not in a long, looong time.

16. How did you discover AO3?

Through TVTropes. Every time I finished a new series I’d swing by to read tropes pages and see if there were any decent fic recs. At first they all went to Fanfiction.net or livejournal but, over time, this ‘Archive’ thing kept showing up. I made an account to lurk or subscribe to things but didn’t actually start posting to it until at least a year later.

17. Do you consider yourself to be a popular or famous author in your fandom(s) on AO3?

Moderately well known in the platonic corner of it probably assuming people know bosstoaster and I are not actually the same person lol but probably not well known outside of that. Once upon a time I was a Big Name in the One Piece fandom, but after the timeskip I fell out of the fandom and lost my pirate king throne. That’s okay, it was fun while it lasted.

18. Do you have a nickname or fandom name for your readers?

No but you all are too kind

19. Was there an author who inspired or encouraged you to write?

In terms of ‘official’ authors, Brandon Sanderson is everything I ever aspire to be as a writer, and I take a lot of inspiration from that. For fic? My buddy BlackFriar was super helpful during the Young Justice era. More recently in the VLD fandom, @maychorian was big for just...getting me to stay in the fandom at all? One of her fics got me hooked and I stuck around, and then felt compelled to write, instead of just drifting off to the next interesting thing. And the Think Tank ( @bosstoaster @butteredonions @ashinan @mumblefox ) have all been huge for getting me to keep writing, between writing sprints and interesting discussions and a lot of encouragement, so that’s been huge for me this past year.

20. What writing advice would you give to a beginning author?

At the risk of sounding like that one video...just do it. It’s scary to put yourself out there, but just do it. You learn by doing. You also learn by absorbing new things around you, so read a lot and try new stuff; you never know when something completely random or a personal experience might actually add a lot to your story. And finally, write for you, first. Write the stories you want to see. Writing for comments/bookmarks/reblogs only goes so far. It means your motivation is reliant solely on people liking your work, which means you start writing for other people and not for yourself...and if reception is lackluster, it can kill your ability to finish a project, which hurts your practice at follow-through. It’s a slippery slope and starts to make the whole thing a lot less fun and a lot more of a chore. Write things you want to read, and if you feel like sharing them after, other people might like them too, but it’s important that you like it, first.

21. Do you plot out your stories, or do you just figure it out as you go?

Has to be plotted completely. If I try to wing it I meander or get hung up on trying to keep track of details. Turns into total garbage.

22. Have you ever gotten a bad comment on a story? If so, what did you do?

A few times, sure. Happens to everyone. Most often, it’s people begging, demanding, or insinuating that my platonic fics should include a ship, especially if the fic focuses on the interactions of two specific characters. Those are very frustrating because I’m always upfront about the fic being friendship only, and there are usually a million other ship fics already out there. Leave my platonic fic alone! I usually ignore the comments, or just politely remind people it’s friendship only and will remain that way. In one bewildering instance in a different fandom I had somebody who had been thoroughly enjoying the fic up until the climactic battle, whereupon they were furious at how it was resolved, and took great pains to tell me just what they thought. That one stung. I had to sit on it for a few days before I worked up the nerve to respond, and chatted with a few friends over it too. In the end I realized that it was more comparable to a fan really enjoying a canon work but being mad about a sudden twist that just didn’t seem right to them. It happens. I thanked them for reading, explained that I disagreed with their comments but did hear them, and thanked them for their time. Best I could do.

23. Is there a certain type of scene that you have a hard time writing? (action, smut, etc..)

I am straight-up incapable of romance, period. Even so far as to slide into ‘fake’ romance (I once got prompted for fake marriage/dating and literally couldn’t envision how to do it? It’s just so foreign to me). Or flirting. I can’t even identify flirting IRL. Basically anything in that general area of writing is completely out of my league. I can write intense scenes that are intimate in non-romantic, non-sexual ways, but those are really difficult for me to do too and I’m constantly second-guessing myself in case it’s maybe too much.

24. What story(s) are you working on now?

If I told you I’d have to kill you. But no, srsly, I don’t like to share ideas in progress until it’s almost done, just in case. Sometimes I share and then immediately lose interest, but I’ve already raised peoples’ hopes, and that’s just a dick move.

25. Do you plan your next project(s) before you finish your current ongoing story(s)?

I’ll have outlines, or sometimes need to plan around prompts. I don’t usually do series, so I never really need to plan too far ahead though. Sometimes if I’m plotting a crossover/AU I’ll obtain the source material and read/watch/play it to start gathering notes for that fic while working on a different fic, so that by the time I’m done writing the current story, the AU’s skeleton is plotted out and I have a place to slot in all the characters.

26. Do you have a daily writing goal set for yourself?

No. I’ve gotten better habits since working with the Think Tank but I still tend to be more of a ‘burst’ writer (no activity for days or weeks, and then suddenly word vomiting 100K in a month).

27. Do you think you’ve improved as a writer since you first started?

By a HUGE margin

28. What is your favorite story that you’ve written?

Oooh, that’s a toss-up between Phantasmagoria and Prince of Memory. The former because I love writing horror and it’s an idea I’d wanted to tackle for a while. The latter because it was a personal writing challenge to myself that I honestly wasn’t sure was going to go over all that well, but the response was stunning, and I was quietly surprised.

29. What is your least favorite story that you’ve written?

Caged Bird, from a different fandom. I make it a personal rule to never delete stories that I’ve posted, but ooh man, I wanted to get rid of this one really bad. I was happy when LJ gutted it. I actually don’t have any real dislike for any of my Voltron stuff.

30. Where do you see yourself (as a writer) in 5 years?

Still writing because I’d die if I stopped. Like a shark. But with writing.

31. What is the easiest thing about writing?

That flash of inspiration, when you get an idea and suddenly it’s building itself almost too fast for you to keep up. Dialogue. Action sequences.

32. What is the hardest thing about writing?

Getting started. Titles. Editing. Research. Any particularly emotional moment.

33. Why do you write?

Because fandoms are fun but I have so many questions after. “What if X happened? What if Y was a factor? Why not Z?” I try to hunt down answers to these questions in fandoms and if the fic isn’t already written, I write it. Also to challenge myself to do things that haven’t been done in the fandom yet, or to tackle things I haven’t tried yet.

I think everyone’s been tagged already so...feel free to play if you want, I guess!

#memes #fanfiction #fanfic #writing memes

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samantha-girlscout · 6 years

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2017 Fic in Review

total number of stories (completed/WIPs):

total word count: Published: 62,174*

(This is almost double what I had last year!) *This does not include the first three chapters of Fire and Gold since they were written last year and were counted towards last year’s word count. If they are counted my total published is 77,936.

fandoms written in: Ghost Hunt and Miraculous Ladybug

looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected? I wrote a lot more than I thought I had. Even though I had a larger “total” last year I was able to put out more publicly which I think is more important.

what’s your own favorite story of the year? Moving Mishaps... Even though it wasn’t the most successful or well-written, it was one that I had envisioned earlier in the year and it felt so good to finally write it.

did you take any writing risks this year? Yes. I decided to challenge myself by trying to participate in more exchanges and zines and wrote quite a few things that I’m really proud of!

do you have any fanfic or profit goals for the new year? I think I’d like to be at least 2/3rds of the way through Fire and Gold. Currently we’re sitting at near the end of the first third so it’d be great if I could tackle this middle portion this year.

A note about last year’s goal. I wanted to be at over 50k by December. I almost got there with what I have published! It is currently at 45,529! (And if we count what I have so far for the next chapter I’m only off by 1,776 words!!) This makes me happy to know that I was so close!

best story of the year? I Actually have two. For one-shots it is hands down Reunited. I wrote it for an Epiphanies Exchange (where you have like a week to write it) and it was the longest one-shot this year and it came out damn well. It was also well-received and I just... I’m really proud of it.

I think that Fire and Gold should also be a honorable mention for this? It’s not finished so it’s hard to say that it’s “the best” but still... I’m really proud of it and I think that it’s well-polished and well-thought out.

most popular story of the year? One Shot: No Matter How You Spin It at 4,751 On Going: Fire and Gold at 4,010.

story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: What Are We Getting Ourselves Into? I’ve actually put a lot of work into it... And I really want to write more, but looking at the numbers (and knowing that it’s not going to get as much attention that an adrinette piece might...) makes me kind of sad. I think I might work on it again soon, though so maybe it’ll pick up next year.

most fun story to write: Honestly, No Matter How You Spin It. Once I had a clear vision for it I just hit the ground running. Also it was really fun to work at making sure that it was edited down to being 5k and below. It was fun to challenge myself in all aspects of writing it!

story with the single sexiest moment: I guess Strawberry Lemonade. Thought it’s a stretch because I totally didn’t go as far with that sexiness as it was originally supposed to have. >.>

most sweet story: Hot Chocolate. Pun intended. :)

”holy crap, that’s wrong, even for you!” story: Probably Moving Mishaps. It has the raunchiest humor XD

story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters & most unintentionally telling story: Fire and Gold for both. I had a lot of perceptions on Sabrina going into this year and through the writing that I’ve done they have shifted quite a bit. (Also the shiptease in that story changed because of that sweet girl. Poor Chloe is so clueless. T.T )

hardest story to write: Fire and Gold. Keeping the candle going is harder than striking a match.

biggest disappointment: Smile . I think I should have taken more time while writing it. Especially since it was for an exchange. (Also the two mini drabble series that I haven't’ finished yet T.T)

biggest surprise: I was surprised by how many pieces I was able to publish this year! I honestly thought that I would only focus on Fire an Gold this year, but I think that by pushing myself to do all of these side projects really helped me to stretch and grow.

Also I was very surprised that so many people liked No Matter How You Spin It! It made me really happy to receive so much love and support for it!

taggity tags:

So I decided to bring this back this year! I think this is a really fun way to record long term progress and, since I hadn’t seen it going around yet, I thought that I’d bring it back! Also I’m going to tag quite a few people. I know I don’t interact with all of you a lot and it’s a long post, so if you don’t want to do it that’s totally fine!

@beejinki @tiffotcf @frenchcirce @midnightstarlightwrites @geek-fashionista @djkpopgirl @siderealscribblings @csakuras @alya-bug @breeeliss @bullysquadess @thelastpilot @soulsborne123 @roseandradio @sawadoot @ferisae @tastewithouttalent

Also! I if I didn’t tag you go ahead and steal this! If you do go ahead and tag me ‘cause I’m really interested!

Lastly, I hope everyone has a good 2018!

#a fic in review #2017 #year in review #tag game

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styleemag · 7 years

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1000 years by your art

Viola aka @pitypagn aka @faheej is a 16 year old SHINee lover, currently living and studying in Budapest. Being a prolific and extremely talented young artist, she has something yet to draw and say about her ultimate K-pop favourite - 5HINee.

Tell us, please, about SHINee Fanzine project. How did the idea emerge? Who are the participants? How is the process organized? ^▽^

The fanzine started with a tweet by my friend Gib (Twitter @cat__boy ). He wanted to participate in a SHINee themed zine but there wasn’t any around, so he thought of creating one. (By the way, it would be really nice if more zines and artist collabs were organised in the fandom! We haven’t seen many collaboration zines, mostly individual artists’ artbook and older theme collabs by korean shawols that hasnt happened in a while.) I messaged Gib that i would support the idea and so did his friend Flo (Twitter @omjkt_), and we became an admin team of three. For our theme, we went with something I had in my mind since April; a project that celebrates SHINee’s 10th anniversary by making a collection of fanarts themed around their songs. The name ‘10 years by your side’ is also referring to their song '1000年、ずっとそばにいて・・・’ (1000 Years Always By Your Side).

Gib and Flo organised the technical aspects like choosing a printing shop, looking up printing requirements, shipping options, setting up a Tumblr page with all the necessary information, asking a friend to translate to korean and making the actual application form. It’s a big work and involves a lot of discussion, so I’m glad we could work it out; three is a good number for organising a zine, especially for first-timers like us as we can discuss and ask each other things effectively, split up work, point out things that the others forgot and such.

About the participants; we decided to invite some artists and open applications as well. We came up with a list of about 20 people — mostly SHINee fanartists known in the fandom — who we would like to work with and simply invited them through Twitter. It was a really rewarding part of the organisation process as it got me to talk to some of my mutuals i really look up to but we haven’t talked because of language barriers; someone whose art I really adore actually told me I made their day with the invitation and I found out we’re birthday twins with another artist! Also, good language exercise, hehe. While inviting artists, we also promoted our application page, where we received over 120 replies (which is incredible) and ended up choosing 15 artists from them, making our number 36 with admins.

To distribute the songs, we made a document of the list of songs we wanted to include in the zine (so they make a coherent timeline of SHINee’s music and visual concepts through the years) and sent it to artists so they can sign up to the song(s) they would like to draw, or add others that they had in mind. Currently, everyone is working on their pieces and us admins are in the making of the design of the printed zine. We also have a chat with all artists to get to know each other and share work in progress pictures.

For what’s still to be done; after all the designs and artworks are edited into one, we will start printing and selling towards the end of the year. Until then, we will update our social media (@shineefanzine on Twitter and Tumblr) on how things are going and possibly previews of the artworks!

It seems like you are doodling all the time, cause you often publish works done in notebooks, on working sheets of paper. It creates a unique atmosphere of understatement, so what does it say about you, in your opinion? 6v6

Haha that’s actually not correct! It’s true though that my sketchbook is a checked spiral notebook (that’s probably 10+ years old), so I understand why it seems so! I kind of wish I could draw more in school but it’s simply not the best place for me as I’m occupied with other things, and I like to make more focused drawings lately. Which is also why I haven’t really used that sketchbook (and updated my Instagram where I put traditional sketches) in the latest months. I might get back to it again, as I need to make some studies and I can’t continue my summer break drawing work ethic with finished digital pieces almost every day.

Understatement is a really nice way to put it though, I’m glad it seems so! There are multiple reasons for my sketchbook, one is that I feel too pressured having to draw something nice if it’s on some expensive special paper. Also, it’s easier for me to sense depth, proportions and sizes (aka how close i am to the paper) if it has patterns on it, although when the print ink is too strong, it’s not very good for drawing. The notebook I have has a good paper and lightly printed so it’s nice to draw on. This is the technical part, and what I think this says about me…simplicity? Since I started doing digital, traditional art became secondary for me and that’s great in the quality that it provides me more freedom in it, in some way. That it doesn’t matter if I draw something badly in traditional as it’s not as important to me. This is more of an image I would like if people saw when they looked at my Instagram, that it’s carefree, not looking for perfectionism but has its own beauty in sketchiness and stationary tools. Also that the first and most important thing you need for art is, well, doing art, not professional art supplies.

Be it a pencil sketch, or a digital masterpiece, your artworks are professionally done. Do you have plans to follow an artist’s career? ㅍ_ㅍ

Thank you so much!! I do! Since a little less than a year ago, I decided I don’t want to study anything I’m being taught (mistake of going to a school known for its math) and it would be much nicer to occupy and surround myself with art and artsy people. I am planning to start taking art courses later this year or next year, learn to make a portfolio and look up some art colleges. At this point, I would be the happiest to be an illustrator but animating sounds good too, I will have to see yet where I will go!

What role does fashion play in your life? Do you use it as a tool, an artist’s medium? `ㅂ´

I’m probably not fashionable enough to say that, haha. Or rather I’m not satisfied with my own fashion because I don’t have the wardrobe I would like to have, my own personal issues getting in my way. It interests me though, and I do have the nagging feeling to do better, the room to improve, the inspiration. I like simplicity, gray and dull colors, oversized clothes, simple and clean designs that are great in their quietness. I would like to be like that.

Fashion in my drawings is a bit of a different topic I know, but I would like to mention since even though I’m usually preoccupied with people in my drawings, it can be really meditative and nice sometimes to sit down and compose an outfit and fiddle with details. Also high fashion, it can be quite an inspiration for me.

What thing, or maybe person, impressed you most of all recently? ㅎㅅㅎ

Eastern Europe. It has an exciting aesthetic that isn’t celebrated enough, at least from what I could see. I really love the folk wear, and it feels like home. I would like to make illustrations based around it as well as my own country’s historical fashion, it’s beautiful. The other side is the ~dark~ post socialist aesthetic, big blocks of panel houses made of concrete that don’t age well. It has a grim and heavy feeling but it’s also something uniquely here. I don’t know, maybe only the grim feeling might appear in my art style, maybe I will abandon it for lighter aesthetics but it’s interesting nevertheless.

We are thankful to Viola ( @faheej ) for her fabulous creations and the talk. Design by Anna Maria ( @sh5untik ).

#shinee #stylee #shineefanart #interview #shinee world #shawol #5hinee_너를지켜줄게

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liliannorman · 4 years

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Curiosity drives this neuroscientist and artist

When she was young, Christine Liu didn’t plan to become a scientist. But chasing her curiosity led her to love neuroscience, the study of the brain and the nervous system. She’s now a graduate student and researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. There, she studies what nicotine, the addictive chemical in tobacco and e-cigarettes, does to the brain.

Christine Liu sells some of her art at a zine festival.Tera Johnson

Outside the lab, Liu makes art, including some that communicates science. As half of the collective Two Photon Art, with environmental scientist Tera Johnson, Liu makes self-published magazines that illustrate science concepts. And the pair designs and sells science-themed items such as jewelry and clothes. Liu also shares her work on Instagram (such as the posts embedded in this story).

Liu isn’t yet sure if her future is in the lab or making art, but she knows that neuroscience will be a big part of her career. In this interview, Liu shares her experiences and advice with Science News for Students. (This interview has been edited for content and readability.)

What inspired you to pursue your career?

I pursued neuroscience because of a curiosity about how the world works. Even as a little kid, I was interested in how people experience things differently. So I would ask questions like, “Is the red that I see the same as the red that everyone else sees?” When I started learning about psychology and biology and answers to these questions that researchers proposed, I got more interested. In college, I jumped at the opportunity to get in the lab as soon as I could. And I quite like doing lab work. But I’ve been doing research for almost 10 years. So I might take the opportunity when I graduate to do art more seriously.

How did you get where you are today?

I grew up not really being that great at anything. It wasn’t like I knew I had a special talent in science and that I was going to become a scientist. I also grew up low-income. My family didn’t have a lot of money. As a kid, I spent a lot of time helping out around the house. I translated documents for my family and made sure that the rice was cooked before my parents got home. And I started working part-time jobs really early. In high school, I worked at a Jamba Juice and at a science museum. I did a bunch of jobs in college, too.

My college applications weren’t very strong. So I didn’t get into the colleges in California I actually wanted to go to. Instead, I needed to apply last minute to the local state school. I went to University of Oregon in Eugene. It wasn’t on the top of my list, but there were a lot of opportunities in neuroscience there. I was really able to take advantage of them. I overcame a lot of what I thought were shortcomings in my ability and competitiveness to do science.

When I started doing research, I was lucky to be in a lab with other female students. And I had done summer research programs with a diverse community of students and researchers. But when I started grad school, I was a little surprised at how few women and people of color I saw.

View this post on Instagram

everything matters

. Or is it that every thing is matter? Here are some molecule constellations! Molecules and constellations are very different in size but they have a lot in common too! The lines dont depict anything with mass, but rather a connection between two points. In the case of a molecule, it is a bond caused by very strong, but tiny forces. In constellations, the lines mean little more than a game of "connect the dots" with what we can see with our eyes from earth. Another thing that they have in common is that they are both quite pretty and fun to draw

A post shared by christine ramen liu (@christineliuart) on Jan 29, 2020 at 10:01am PST

I also wasn’t sure how to express myself — if I needed to conform more or if I could really be myself. But then on Instagram, I found all these women who were not compromising how they express themselves. They were doing incredible science. And they were wearing lipstick and doing their hair and being feminine. This was something that I hadn’t realized was missing in my life. I immediately tried to connect all of us on Instagram, and I created a group called The STEM Squad. (STEM is short for science, technology, engineering and math.) We now have over 1,000 people who identify with the gender that’s been underrepresented in science. We each share our experiences and support each other.

How do you get your best ideas?

I get my best ideas when I’m taking a break. This happens for a lot of people. It’s like getting your best ideas in the shower or on a walk or right before you fall asleep. I find that when I’m taking care of myself and getting enough rest and social time, I come up with ideas I’m really excited about. Oftentimes, I’ll have a breakthrough in planning experiments when I’m not thinking about them. It’s the same for artistic ideas of what to draw or make. I think when I let my brain rest, it does its own thing in the background and ideas just spark.

What’s one of your biggest successes?

What I’ve been able to do with my art in grad school has been one of my biggest successes. It’s brought me a lot of joy and connected me with people. It’s also given me an idea of how I might actually be able to continue doing art after I finish grad school.

Labs in my research area can be competitive. Oftentimes, we don’t want to share our experimental results until we’re ready. So it wasn’t until this past year, my sixth year of grad school, that I presented my research at the biggest neuroscience conference. I presented it with a poster. But I’ve been going to this conference for the past four years because they have a section for neuroscience art. Presenting my art there was a big success.

What’s one of your biggest failures, and how did you get past that?

What I perceived to be a failure was when I worked hard in high school to try to be competitive for college. And I didn’t get into a school that seemed like a good choice for me. I was really sad. I thought I was a complete failure. A lot of my peers had gotten into great schools. But in the end, I realized that every failure is actually an opportunity to do better. I think if I had let myself get sucked into the narrative that I just wasn’t good enough, I never would have recovered. In the end, the University of Oregon turned out to be really great for me.

What do you do in your spare time?

I make art! Because research is really hard, there can be lots of failures. Experiments might not work. Or they might work and prove your hypothesis wrong. During a stretch of months when research feels like it isn’t working, I find it fulfilling to go home and draw, paint or share a piece of art. I really love painting. It’s one of my favorite activities. I love the colors and mixing them. And I like how it’s a little bit messy. I also do other things that keep me happy and healthy, like cooking and visiting my grandparents.

View this post on Instagram

The sketch I made for the mural I’m working on at @missionscienceworkshop! The Mission Science Workshop is a really cool tinkering and science education space in the Mission and Excelsior neighborhoods in San Francisco. I’m excited to paint two walls adjacent walls to give some context for kids to learn about where different kinds of rocks are formed and whether fossils were found! I made this sketch in @procreate on my iPad and then mapped it onto a photo of the walls. You can check out the progress made during day 1 of painting in my story highlights!

A post shared by christine ramen liu (@christineliuart) on Nov 25, 2019 at 7:16pm PST

I also try to support other scientists who have artistic interests or artists who have scientific interests through The Stem Squad. We raise money through artists in the community who submit their art. We print it on shirts, hats or things like that and sell them. This raises money to give out awards for people who do volunteer work to improve inclusion in STEM.

What piece of advice do you wish you had been given when you were younger?

If there’s something that you really want to do, you have to take baby steps and start to do it as much as you can. If I had waited until someone invited me to join a lab, maybe I never would have started my research career. But because I was so in love with the idea of doing brain research, I emailed a bunch of professors and begged for a chance to work in the lab. Then I proved to myself that I can be a really great scientist despite my mediocre high school grades.

Also, if I had waited until I had more time to make art or until I felt like a perfect artist before selling my art, I don’t think I would be where I am today. It took me a while to become comfortable sharing things that aren’t perfect and trying things even though I probably wasn’t the best person for the job. But taking the risk and putting myself out there and being willing to learn — I think that’s what’s gotten me the furthest.

This Q&A is part of a series exploring the many paths to a career in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). It has been made possible with generous support from Arconic Foundation.

Curiosity drives this neuroscientist and artist published first on https://triviaqaweb.tumblr.com/

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rielity · 6 years

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2017 Writing Round-Up

source

Total year-long word count: 90303

Word count by fandom:

BNHA: 4891, 4 fics DGM: 3414, 2 fics Haikyuu!!: 81998, 36 fics

Fics completed:

39/42

Works-in-progress:

3/42 - Of Demons & How to Chase Them | twenty-four hours | for the voiceless (though this one... is debatable) crossfire is also, technically, a wip. but at the same time... it's not, lol.

This year I wrote and posted:

Timeless: 4 Across the Ages At Sunrise Back Home Beyond Nightfall

soft kitty warm kitty: 2 cat that got the cream catching catnaps

writing with snowdrops & others: 21 the little bits and pieces of this world with nothing in our hands Of Demons & How to Chase Them (DGM, chapter 3) on eggshells crossfire Runaways (chapter 2) Role of a Captain People You May Know forever is a mighty long time one-way ticket destination: forever the longest, darkest night the weight of you (DGM) cold (BNHA) safe (BNHA) twenty-four hours herding cats (BNHA) for the voiceless molten gold spring (BNHA) when I think of winter

SASO: 15 the owl and the duckbutt at the end of the world terms and conditions count on me, count on you best-kept secret light years from home (you) fear and bravery midwinter silence two chairs to a table crying is contagious phantom passing the baton control, and the lack thereof mirror

Total: 40 fics + two updates to old fics

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?

At the start of 2017, I wrote on Lofter and Tumblr that my target would be to hit 60 published works on AO3 by the end of the year. I have 79 now, so I wrote twice as much as what I was aiming to. I definitely didn't expect to write so much, and I have SASO to blame (thank?).

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?

Anything to do with the Miyas (duh!)... and also Seijou. But I guess the one that I would have never expected myself to write would be Matsu//hana: I wrote one-way ticket on a bus ride home after reading chapter 258. I hardly ever read Matsu//hana fic, much less ever feel inspired to write it, so one-way ticket really caught me off-guard.

What's your own favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?

I thought about this question for a long time and skipped ahead to answer a few before I came back to this. At first I thought it was a really hard choice to make - how can you ask me to choose a story out of all 40 that I've written this year? - but then I realised the answer's always been really clear.

It's the weight of you, my Laviyuu fic based off of Vienna Teng's Enough to Go By. I wrote it in one sitting, with hardly any problems in terms of storyline or thematic exploration. it was one of those fics that just. came to me and let me embrace it. half a year later, I'm still incredibly proud of what I achieved in that meagre expanse of 1000 words. once in a while when I need to be reminded of what my writing can achieve, I reread it.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

I signed up for SASO. I was definitely not planning to write as much as I did, LOL. It taught me how to write fast, and to not be as hung up over the editing as I always do. I'm a slow writer because I like to write and edit at the same time, but with SASO it was just writing and minimal editing. I also got a bit more comfortable with working with prompts, though I'm still terrible at it.

I also signed up for two zines this year, one of which was for Kacchako, a pair I'd never written before. And to top it off, I was struck by writer's block when I was working on my submission. I don't know, it taught me to not sign up for zines when I'm drowning in schoolwork and that impulsive decisions are never a great idea (but are they really?).

Your best story of this year:

What's the difference between favourite story, best story and most popular story? I'd say it's either the weight of you or molten gold. the former for reasons stated in the earlier question, but molten gold because it's a fic that clearly shows how far I've come in writing ever since I started writing for HQ last year. when drawn parallel to Storm, my first Noya character study (and my second ever HQ fic), the difference is stark. It's still not perfect, and there are still things I wish I could've included, but I'm proud of what I achieved in it.

Your most popular story of this year:

By 'most popular' I'm assuming most kudos.

herding cats for BNHA and overall, and the little bits and pieces of this world for Haikyuu!! - neither of which are surprising results.

herding cats is a lighthearted and fun fluffy piece written for a ship that is gaining traction in a very thirsty fandom, while bits and pieces has the HQ fandom favourite trope of enemies to friends to lovers, and the benefit (?) of it running parallel to canon story.

Story of yours most under-appreciated by the universe, in your opinion:

At Sunrise. previously I would've said Across the Ages, but as I read and reread my old works, I've come to realise that At Sunrise is a piece that delves very deeply into the emotions of my characters, and really builds up an emotional bond not just between my characters, but also between my story and my readers. The amount of actual emotional pain that I inflicted on myself while writing it really shows in my writing, and my readers can feel it too.

I get why people don't read it. I really do. I've said it before, a few times now. Major character death scares a lot of readers away. Being a fantasy AU, and a Part 2 in a series turns people off. And it's Kage//hina, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it being a major ship means that a huge amount of the people who click in soon find that they're not here for this content.

Even so, I still think it deserves better.

I published it on April 1. It's December 28 now, and these are its stats.

Hits: 614 | Kudos: 37

Go figure. *salt

Most fun story to write:

Honestly, any story with Futakuchi as a narrator is great. It's a toss-up between when I think of winter and People You May Know. with nothing in our hands comes close as a runner-up though.

Story with the single sexiest moment:

You're asking me, a writer who can't even write kissing scenes, about a sexiest moment...??? I guess it'd be Back Home, if only because it's the fic with the most snogging.

Most "Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story:

mirror. It's not wrong per se, just not what I would have usually done for a Haikyuu fic. I think a lot of readers were taken aback by its hidden twist.

Story that shifted your own perceptions of the characters:

I don't really have an answer to this. It might be cold, my first ever Todo//baku. Writing it gave me a lot of insights into the Tod//obaku dynamic and understanding them better, but shifting my perception? I'd be hard-pressed to name it as such.

Hardest story to write:

on eggshells, At Sunrise, midwinter and molten gold. The first two because of how emotionally taxing they were, the latter two because of how difficult they were to actually write. I set out on each of these stories with a clear image of how I wanted to end it, but the process of going from start to finish was a long, long winding road, whether in picking the words that I needed to evoke the exact nuance and atmosphere I wanted to portray, or in letting myself hurt for my characters as I wrote. Sounds dramatic, but unfortunately true.

Biggest disappointment:

I hate to say it, but, Beyond Nightfall. I feel like I could have done a lot a lot a lot more with it, but I also don't know what exactly I could have done. I realised my biggest problem with writing longfic manifested when I was writing Beyond Nightfall - the incessant need to make everything tie up perfectly, which on hindsight was not the best decision because it made everything too neat, and also forced my story in a way that it didn't necessarily want to go.

Moving forward, I hope I can work on this (I've already started to do so starting with when I think of winter) and I eventually plan to come back and rewrite Beyond Nightfall.

Biggest surprise:

forever is a mighty long time. I'd been toying with the idea of a reincarnation AU for Kuroyaku for the longest time, but never really wanted to actually start on it (...as is the case for 80% of all my fic ideas...) because I'm not a fan of writing tropey AUs (oh, look at that holier-than-thou attitude in that sentence LMAO JK). But when inspiration struck for me to put a twist on what would otherwise have been a very standard reincarnation AU piece, I decided to sit down and get to work on it.

Looking back, it's a good fic. not my best, but it's good.

Most unintentionally telling story:

on eggshells. It wasn't unintentionally telling, though. It was intentional, every bit of it. eggshells was the first time I dared to dig deep within myself to write a story based off my own emotional experiences, and while I found it cathartic, it's certainly not something I hope to replicate anytime soon.

Favorite opening line(s):

Futakuchi was not pining. He was absolutely not pining over Karasuno's vice-captain with the shaved head and rumpled training vest - what the hell, they even shared the same number, ew. - People You May Know

Favorite closing line(s):

kuroo stretches a little, his toes touching the calf of yaku’s leg, warm, solid and present, and very much alive. very much here. “yeah, i know.” - forever is a mighty long time

And the worst part of it all is that when he looks into the shards of broken silver lying on his bedroom floor, he still can’t stop seeing ‘Samu looking right back at him. - mirror

But in fact there is nothing much to say at all, when those shoulders that have been tempered with fire are more than capable of holding its weight. - molten gold

Favorite 5 line(s) from anywhere:

Moonlight scatters on the floorboards, a miniature Milky Way filling the space between them, but Yaku takes a step, then another, and then he’s falling into Kuroo’s arms, no longer a cold ephemeral spectre for Kuroo to gaze at from afar, like the twinkling stars through window grilles, but a warm, solid and real body that fits right against Kuroo’s own, a puzzle piece slotting back into place. - midwinter

And he would have liked to think himself invulnerable, with a mask stoic enough that nothing could shatter, a heart cold enough that nothing could touch, disillusioned with the evils of humanity that he had borne witness to. - the weight of you

where issei would usually retort with some comeback about takahiro’s birthday, today there is only silence. the train pulls to a stop, doors beeping an arrhythmic melody as their knees knock together with the movement. issei’s pulled out his phone now, the bend of his arms making his elbow dig into takahiro’s side; takahiro wonders if he, like him, is trying to feign deafness to the echoing chasm that seems to have opened up between them over the course of five sentences. - one-way ticket

His hands clutch at his throat, run ragged and raw by the smoothness of poppy petals. What an apt irony then that poppies should signify peace, because Aone is and has always been the peaceful, stoic rock to the swirling tempest that Kenji is, but their mere existence is doing the exact opposite in calming Kenji’s raging heart, their stem a noose around his neck. - fear and bravery

He takes a deep breath, and steps onto the court, into the fray. He can feel eyes on him - from his teammates, from his opponents, from the stands. The numbers on his jersey feel like they’re branding himselves into his back, and he squares his shoulders, embracing the burn. He’s not Nekoma’s number 3, but he’s Nekoma’s number 12, and he’ll show them what it means to be Nekoma’s libero - what it means to be guarding Nekoma’s backs. - passing the baton

Top 5 scenes from anywhere you would choose to have illustrated:

Lavi in front of Kanda's grave, at the remains of the old Black Order - the weight of you

Kuroo and Yaku doing work at the kitchen table, their legs barely touching - forever is a mighty long time

Oikawa and Futakuchi in front of the irori - when I think of winter

The moment when Shirabu and Kawanishi realise that Futakuchi's read the map upside down and they're now hopelessly lost - with nothing in our hands

Hinata, through Kageyama's eyes, when he tells Kageyama that he won't forget him - At Sunrise

Fic-writing goals for next year:

15 fics in total. It's a downsize from this year because the first half of next year will be occupied by uni and transition into adulting, so I don't want to give myself too much pressure. I'm still on the fence about signing up for SportsFest (SASO's successor) but I'll think about that when I get there.

I'm also going to take a break from fandom events for the time being. I've learnt from this year that I write terribly when given deadlines, and I admit that it was bad planning on my part to sign up for HQSS and a zine on top of my own schoolwork, especially when I was already taking a module on creative writing. Creative drought hit fast and furious and made the last two months terrible for me, writing-wise. Next year, I want to make sure that I can give my writing the due time and effort that it deserves, rather than forcing myself to churn out work.

Most importantly, I want to keep growing as a writer. I'm happy with how my style has developed this year, and I want to continue growing. Besides improving my dialogue writing and visual descriptions, I also want to venture into writing more challenging AUs and also characters that I've never dared to try.

I also want to attempt long fic, in particular the fic that I'd outlined for Nanowrimo this year but never had the chance to start on. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that I'd make that Nano fic my year-long project for next year, except I don't know if I'll actually be able to make it draw out for as long as I want it to, and also because I doubt my discipline in sticking it out with one single work for a whole year.

Besides all that, I'll be slowly chipping away at making the Kuroyaku anthology a reality. That means REWRITE REWRITE REWRITE. With writing style changes come inconsistency in storytelling. I think I need to find some time and give myself the chance to standardise everything, and fix any glaring errors I might find.

We shall see. 2017 has been a fantastic year for me in fandom, both in writing and in finding a community. I hope 2018 is even better.

#writing with snowdrops #writing lookback #long post #in rielity

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bsdtales · 7 years

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Guidelines + FAQ

Writer Requirements:

Word Count: 2000-6000 words. This includes the Author’s Notes, if there should be any.

Language: English

File types accepted: doc, docx

Fics should be SFW. Strong language is permissible but gore, excessive violence and sexually explicit content will not be allowed. When in doubt, contact a mod.

Artist Requirements:

File types accepted: jpg, png, pdf, psd

Dimensions for a one page image: 5.75″ x 8.7" at 300 dpi– this is equivalent to 1725 * 2625 px (vertical).

When submitting traditional art, make sure it is scanned at 300 dpi or higher.

Schedule

Sign-ups: Sept 14-Oct 4 Deliberation and Selection: Oct 5-Oct 7 Participant Announcement: Oct 8 Check in #1: Oct 29-Oct 31 Last Call for Dropouts: Nov 10-12 Check in #2: Dec 1-Dec 3 Deadline: Dec 22 Release: Jan 20 (subject to change)

Sign-ups: Writers and Artists will have to submit an application using these forms: {Writer Sign-ups} & {Artist Sign-ups}.

Selection: The 3 mods will choose 10 submissions each from both Writers and Artists applications. If a candidate is in the shortlist of at least 2 mods, they get a spot. There will be 20-30 participants chosen. 2-3 people might be invited as guest writers or artists. Applying as part of an established pair will give higher chances of being accepted, but it is not a guarantee.

Matching: Writers and Artists will be matched based on their submissions. We’ll be handing both each other’s contact info for easier communication. If you are not comfortable with that, contact a mod and we’ll figure out a solution together.

Check-in #1: Simply messaging the participants, dropping by to make sure both writers and artists are communicating well with each other. Asks for outlines and concept sketches, although it’s not necessary to turn in anything just yet. Last Call for Dropouts: Participants will be given the chance to drop out so mods can find a replacement ASAP. Check-in #2: Tracking everyone’s progress. Ideally, writers report that more than 50% of their work is done while artists send files/screenshots of linearts, WIPs, etc. Extensions: Heavily discouraged. We do not want to offer them, as we feel leaving that window open will create the false sense of there being “enough” time to finish an entry. If there’s an emergency or an unforeseen circumstance that will delay submission, message any of the mods ASAP.

Release: January 20 is the tentative date for the digital release of the zine. Depending on what the mods decide, the zine will be availabe for download at either google drive for free or at gumroad for a price that will start at no lower than $2.50, as the fee is 8.5% + 30 cents per transaction. The money collected from the latter option will be used to donate to a charity.

Ban on Posting Full Version of the Works: Some creators may want to post finished content online. This is understandable, but to bring attention to the finished project, we would like to ask the creators to refrain from posting the finished versions of their work until the mods give the go-signal. We estimate this to be about 2-4 weeks after the zine’s release. (WIPs and previews are acceptable to be posted in blogs, etc)

Q: What is a zine?

A zine is an unofficial magazine/booklet that fans of a shared interest self-publish. They can be made up of almost anything, with pieces usually revolving around a central theme or character. This one in particular will be focused on retellings of fairy tales, myths, and fables.

Q: Who are you people?

Fractured Fairy Tales is the brainchild of Mod Sara, who’s had experience running event weeks in the past. She hasn’t seen any BSD zine with a stronger focus on fics yet, so she decided to start this project! Mod Kit was recruited as a beta-reader, so they’ll mostly be overseeing the progress of writers. Oh, and they’re not a fancy person. Last but not the least is Mod Ki, who would be in charge of checking up on the artists. A kril enthusiast, she’ll be proud to tell you that her best BSD boy is Tachihara.

Q: How many creators will be involved?

We’re planning on 20-30 creators, but this may increase or decrease depending on the amount of applications.

Q: Will the zine be published physically or digitally?

Digital! For various reasons, we are not planning for a physical copy of the zine to be distributed. (Inexperience, possible small turnout, etc)

Q: Profits?

The plan is for the zine to be nonprofit, but we’re keeping our options open. It’s possible we can use the zine as a means to donate a small amount of money for a charity of choice. We will inform everyone of our decision at a later time.

Q: How much will it cost?

As of writing, the plan is for the zine to be available for free. If we all agree on using the profits for charity, we’d put up the zine on sale at gumroad, with a pay what you want option. The price will start at no lower than $2.50, as the fee is 8.5% + 30 cents per transaction.

Q: Cool, so how do I get in?

Read the Guidelines and the the rest of this FAQ. After that, fill up the appropriate forms in the {Writer Sign-ups} & {Artist Sign-ups}.

Q: What is the application evaluation process like?

The 3 mods will choose 10 submissions each from both Writers and Artists applications. If a candidate is in the shortlist of at least 2 mods, they’re in. The remaining candidates would then be subjected to another objective evaluation, this time taking into account quality of past works, subject of their pitches or if they would be flexible when it comes to working on characters not their favorites. There will be 20-30 participants chosen. 2-3 people might be invited as guest writers or artists. Applying as part of an established pair will give higher chances of being accepted, but does not guarantee a spot.

Q: Which characters/ship are you giving priority?

We believe that variety is the spice of life! With that being said, we’ll actively take steps to ensure that no one character or pair dominates the zine. No promises or anything though, as we also can’t force writers/artists to create what they don’t want.

Q: What language will the zine be in?

All fics/text will be in English.

Q: Can you accept traditional art?

We accept traditional art, but it will have to be scanned at 300 dpi or higher.

Q: I don’t like my partner! Can I switch?

We will do our best to make sure we get good matches, but in the unlikely event both parties do not want to work together, we’ll accommodate their request after asking other creators.

Q: How do you feel about extensions?

They are heavily discouraged. We do not want to offer them, as we feel leaving that window open will create the false sense of there being “enough” time to finish an entry. If there’s an emergency or an unforeseen circumstance that will delay submission, message any of the mods ASAP.

Q: Can we print a copy of the zine once we receive it?

Go ahead, but remember that your physical copy should be for personal use only. Under no circumstances are you allowed to distribute and make profit from any copy of Fractured Fairy Tales zine.

Q: How can we contact you?

Send a message over to this blog. For submissions, email us at [email protected].

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