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linkspooky · 8 months

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Are You Satisfied?

As you might have heard chapter 236 of Jujutsu Kaisen ends with the death of Gojo Satoru. The fandom is making a pretty big deal about it. As someone who predicted from the beginning that Gojo was going to lose against Sukuna, the reaction is fascinating to me. This is perhaps the most controversial chapter of Jujutsu Kaisen I've ever seen. So I've decided to throw my hat into the ring.

The central theme of Jujutsu Kaisen is death, so the death of one of the main characters isn't too surprising, but what does Gojo's death mean for the story? What does it say about his character?

As I said above I am a little bit shocked by the extreme controversy over Gojo's death. Gojo was never going to win the fight in the first place, because Jujutsu Kaisen is a story and the story would be over if he defeated Sukuna. He'd easily be able to take care of Kenjaku afterwards and the main conflcit would be resolved. Would it really be an interesting story if Gojo one shotted the villains while the kids just wathced on Television?

The story is also not about Gojo, it's about the students. Gojo may think he's the protagonist of reality but he's not the protagonist of the story.

Once again, Jujutsu Kaisen is a story and stories have themes. We may grow personally attached to characters, but characters are just narrative tools to convey the themes of a story, no different from prose, dialogue, and art. Characters are a tool to be used well or used poorly, and sometimes yes that means killing them. Whether Gojo's death was naratively satisfying though isn't the purpose of this post though we're only asking what does it mean?

Finally, Jujutsu Kaisen is not only a fictional story, it's specifically a tragedy. Full disclosure, it's a manga about death.

The Protagonist of a Tragedy

So, number one shout out to me for making this post 4 months ago where I called the way Gojo would end the fight.

Excuse me while I fist pump for calling it!

The question on everyone's minds is why does one of the most powerful characters in the manga die offscreen in a pretty humiliating way, cut in half and helpless on the ground just like Kaneki. The reason Gojo didn't get a more heroic (or cooler) death is because we're not reading My Hero Academia, this is not a story about heroes or even a typical Shonen manga it is a tragedy.

In poetics Aristotle defines tragedy as:

"an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions" (51).

To paraphrase a tragedy is about human action, actions characters make in a tragedy often have dire consequences. One of the most common consequences if the reversal of a hero's fortune, a hero of a tragedy usually starts out on top and ends up on the bottom because of the bad choices they make. If in normal shonen manga characters overcome their flaws through effort and persistence, in Jujutsu Kaisen we see characters more often than not lose to their flaws.

The reason I posted that Kaneki panel specifically is because it was a brilliant moment of narrative punishment for Kaneki's central character flaw. Kaneki the hero's main flaw is that he always fights alone, and he constantly makes that same choice over and over again to fight alone. One of the characters helpfully explains it as well.

Stories are primarily about change. If a character doesn't change they're not serving the plot, unless that specifically is the point. People have pointed out how abrupt it is for Gojo to get sealed in Shibuya, get let out, and then immediately die afterwards but that's kind of the point. Gojo made more or less the exact same choice (he asked for Utahime's help for a buff but otherwise fought the entire battle himself). The definition of insanity and what not, why would doing the same thing over and over again net him a different result?

Not only did Gojo choose to fight alone, but as I've been hammering on and on about in previous meta the entire fight Gojo cared more about fighting a strong opponent then he did saving Megumi, the child he was responsible for.

Jujutsu Kaisen is not a typical shonen manga where everything is resolved by beating a strong villain in a fight. That's specifically why I used the Tokyo Ghoul reference, because the reason Kaneki is defeated offscreen like that is because he thought the world worked like a shonen manga. He has a fantasy sequence where he's fighting Juzo in a shonen battle tournament like this is Yu Yu Hakusho right before it snaps back to reality and he's limbless on the ground.

Gojo is a major character in the manga Jujutsu Kaisen, literally "Sorcery Fight" and he is the best sorcerer in the whole world. His entire identity revolves around being a sorcerer. Since he is so good and beloved at what he does, he thinks that everything is resolved by exorcising a curse or defeating a strong opponent. He has basically no identity outside of that. Which is why when he's fighting the possessed body of his student, a person he's been mentoring since childhood his priority is not to save Megumi but to beat a strong opponent. Gojo is a sorcerer, before a human being. That's who he is, that's who he always has been since day one.

I think part of the negative fan reaction comes from fans being really attached to this scene in the manga and deciding Gojo's entire character revolves around being a good mentor figure to children.

Which is just incorrect, Gojo's entire character revolves around being the strongest. On top of that though, Gojo can care about children and also care about being the strongest he can care about multiple things at once and have those things contradict each other because humans are complicated. I'd point out even in this panel where he's stating motivation he's not trying to raise these kids up into being healthy adults, he wants them to be strong Jujutsu Sorcerers. Even when he's raising kids, his intention is to turn them into Jujutsu Sorcerers because everything in Gojo's mind revolves around Jujutsu Sorcery. Gojo does not exist outside of the world of sorcerers. Gojo may be the chosen one but he'd never be able to hold down a job at Mcdonalds.

I think in general readers put more investment in the things characters say out loud, rather than their actions. You can say one thing and do another. I can say "I should never eat sweets again I'm going to improve my diet", and then go and eat ice cream five hours later. Gojo can state out loud his intention to foster children and protect their youths, but then fail to properly do that in the story. Characters are not always what they say they are, that's why they're interesting to interpret. This isn't me calling the readers stupid, just pointing out that Gojo is made up of contradictions. He wants to get rid of the old guard and replace them with something new, but Gojo IS THE OLD GUARD.

If the culling games arc has shown us one thing, it's that ancient sorcerers brought to the modern age do not care that much about human life on an individual level, they are all of them egoists. There's a reason Gojo resembles someone like Sukuna more than he does any other character in the manga. I'm not saying Gojo is exactly like Sukuna, he's far more altruistic and uses his genuinely noble ideals but at the same time Sukuna is a shadow archetype to Gojo he represents Gojo's flaws. The flaws that Gojo succumbs to in tragic fashion.

Which if you believe that Gojo genuinely does love his students, and the ideal he's fighting for is to raise up a better generation and allow them to live out their youths, then Gojo throughout the entire Sukuna fight is acting against those ideals. He cares far more about fighting Sukuna then he does saving Megumi, it's shown over and over again in the battle, Megumi is an afterthought to him. If Gojo care moredefeating the big bad and saving the world is more important than helping a child that Gojo is responsible for then Gojo is acting against his stated principles. Why should Gojo win the fight when he's fighting for all the wrong reasons?

Tragedies are like visual novels, if you make the wrong choice the novel will give you a red flag. If you ignore the red flag then you get locked into the route with the bad ending. Gojo always fights alone. Gojo only ever fights for himself, even if he's using that selfishness in support of a more noble ideal like creating a better generation of sorcerers. If Gojo consecutively makes the same changes then in a tragedy he's not going to be rewarded for it.

Gojo wants the old generation out and the new generation in, but Gojo resembles the old generation too much. Old sorcerers like Hajime and Sukuna respect him, Hajime argues that Gojo being able to fight for his pride is far more important than him living to the end of the battle when Yuta wanted to interfere and help him.

Gojo's death isn't a surprise curve ball that Gege is throwing us for shock value, it's a result of his choices throughout the manga. A manga about change, and the change between generations is not going to punish a character for remaining roughly the same. Of course you might find it disappointing that Gege didn't give Gojo the chance to grow and change and experience a character arc like Megumi or Yuji, but Jujutsu Kaisen is a tragedy, and the way Gojo's arc ended is consistent with what Gege wrote.

Jujutsu Kaisen is not just a tragedy though, it's a manga about death. The manga begins with Yuji's grandfather warning him not to die alone the way that he did. His grandfather's dying words are what motivate Yuji throughout the beginning of the manga as he's searching for a "proper" death.

One of the major themes of Yuji's character is a contemplation of death. He accepts that death is inevitable, so he wants to save them from the gruesome deaths they'd experience if they became victims to curses and allow them to have a more satisfying death. Yuji's grandpa died an unsatisfying death because he died alone in a hospital room. Yuji even tries to make his own death a satisfying one because he believes by dying to seal away Sukuna he'll reduce the total number of casualties to curses.

Jujutsu Kaisen keeps investigating the theme of death and what exactly would make for a satisfying death. At one point it's all but stated that death is the mirror that makes humans analyze their lives.

When Yuji fails to save Junpei from the "unnatural death" it calls into question whether or not his goal of saving people from unsatisfying deaths and the gruesome deaths caused by curses is even feasible. Nanami even says that Yuji might not be able to accomplish his goal and warns him away from the path.

We see repeated unsatifying deaths in the manga, each time someone reflecting on their deaths that they weren't able to get what they wanted out of life. This list comes via @kaibutsushidousha by the way I'm quoting them.

Nanami's a character who chose to work as a sorcerer because he didn't want to evade the responsibility of doing all you can to help people, he wanted to believe he's somewhere where he's needed. He never runs away from responsibility like Mei Mei does so he quite literally works himself to death, living and dying as a sorcerer. Nanami or Gojo's dying hallucination of Nanami even says as much, his death is the result of him choosing to go south and returning to be a sorcerer.

Maki chose revenge against the Zen'in over her sister, and as a result Mai is dead. Maki has all the power in the world now, her revenge complete but she's left with a sense of "now what?" She's as strong as Toji now but she failed to protect her sister, and it's the result of the choices she made. Maki's reflection isn't triumph, it's "I should have chosen to die with her."

Even Yuji himself is robbed of his narrative purpose. The manga began with Yuji saying he wants to choose how he's going to die and he'll die taking out Sukuna with him so he can reduce the number of people killed by curses in the world. Both of those things are thrown in Sukuna's face. Number one the amount of people Yuji can save by permanently killing Sukuna is now a moot point because he let Sukuna rampage in Shibuya.

Number two, Sukuna isn't even in Yuji anymore. To build on what Comun said though, this repeated tragedy has a purpose to it and understanding requires understanding that Jujutsu Kaisen is an existentialist manga. Existentialism is basically a school of philosophy centered around the question of "Why do I exist?"

There's nothing about the invetability of death to make you question why you're alive in the first place. In the myth of Sispyhus, Albert Camus boils down all of philosophy to one question.

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. "

All of philosophy is should I shoot myself in the head or should I keep living? Everything comes after that question, which is why in Jujutsu Kaisen a lot of the characters motivations revolve around them contemplating death. Sorcerers exist in a world where they can die any moment, and as Gojo says most of them die alone. It might be the nature of sorcery itself that causes so many people to die, not only are they dying because they are trapped in an uncaring system, but the characters themselves aren't really attempting to live outside of it. They live and die as sorcerers, replaceable cogs in the machine.

All of these unsatisfying deaths may just be the result of all these characters making one choice, to live as sorcerers rather than people. Because to exist means to live in the world.

Even in Mechamaru's case, his goal is deeply existentialist by what I defined, all he wants to do is live in the world with everyone else rather than be stuck in his hospital room but his actions contradict that goal. Instead of letting his friends come and visit he's obsessed with the idea of getting a normal body because he feels that's the only way he can exist with everyone else, he makes a deal with the devil, he lies and goes behind their backs. He wasn't living with everyone else in the world and he could have chosen to, he chose wrong and his death is the result of that choice.

Jujutsu Sorcerers aren't living in the world. They're living in a little snowglobe far removed from the world with its own rules, most of them regressive and disconnected from the rest of society. If you define existentialism as just "living in the world' then a lot of these characters aren't, because they only exist in the world of sorcery.

INVISIBLE BUFFY: What are you talking ab- SPIKE: The only reason you're here, is that you're not here. (drinking) INVISIBLE BUFFY: Right. Of course, as usual there's something wrong with Buffy. She came back all wrong. (moving around on the bed) You know, I didn't ask for this to happen to me. SPIKE: Not too put off by it though, are you? (drinking) INVISIBLE BUFFY: No! Maybe because for the first time since ... I'm free. She tosses the sheet aside. Spike looks around, trying to figure out where she's going. INVISIBLE BUFFY: Free of rules and reports ... free of this life. SPIKE: Free of life? Got another name for that. Dead.

Not living in the world with everyone else is the same as being dead.

A lot of these characters either make the choice to act alone, or be a jujutsu sorcerer rather than a person and because of that they die as sorcerers, b/c sorcerers die that's what they do. Mai didn't want to keep living as a hindrance to Maki so she kills herself. Maki didn't want to be anything other than a sorcerer, so her little sister dies and she's not a big sister anymore. Nanami chose to leave his job behind and become a sorcerer again, he dies as one.

Of course I don't think the manga is punishing characters for being too egotistical, but rather too unbalanced. If anything Mai is too selfless and that is why she died, she didn't want to live for herself and chooses self sacrifice for her sister. An unbalance between selfishness or selflessness results in an underdeveloped ego. Jujutsu Kaisen doesn't punish individualism per se, moreso if you're not a fully developed individual you won't last long. Because it's also a manga about growing up in the world, and a person who doesn't have a healthy, mature, well-balanced sense of self is not a grown up.

This twitter user det_critics points out that Gojo (and also Yuki + Yuji's) failures in the manga can be attributed to the fact they don't have real senses of self.

Gojo has an identity crisis as outlined by Geto, "are you Satoru Gojo because you're the strongest, or are you the strongest because you're Satoru Gojo?"

It's a challenge for him to find some reason to live outside of being the strongest, and in tragic fashion Gojo just doesn't find it in time. Gojo lived for fighting others, and proving to himself that he's the strongest, and that's how he dies.

There's something I like to say about narrative punishment in stories. There are two ways to punish a character, you either don't give them what they want, or you give them exactly what they want. This is the latter, Gojo wanted to find someone stronger than him because deep down he believed that nobody could understand him unless they were on his level. He wanted to be surpassed, and that's why he focused on creating stronger young sorcerers, but he never shook himself of the belief that only someone as strong or even stronger than he was could ever be emotionally attached to him so he made a deliberate choice to draw a line between himself and others.

Gojo's essentially gotten what he wanted from that choice in the worst way possible. The student he picked to succeed him Megumi, has his body stolen and kills him. Gojo is surpassed, but it's not by one of his own students it's by an enemy that's not only trying to kill Gojo but is going to massacre his students afterwards.

Gojo's spent his entire life believing that because he's more powerful that makes him inherently different and above others, and being lonely because he himself believed he couldn't relate to ordinary people and he dies like an ordinary person, an unsatisfying death where he wasn't able to bring out Sukuna's best, where he gets unceremoniously cut in half offscreen but yay he's no longer the strongest. He's gotten exactly what he wanted. Megumi is still not saved, Sukuna's probably going to kill more people because Gojo failed to stop him here, but hey at least he stopped to compliment Gojo.

It's empty, but it's empty because of the choices Gojo made in life to just not bother connecting to people or develop any kind of identity besides being a sorcerer. Gojo lives and dies as a sorcerer, and his dying dream is returning to a teenager being surrounded by everyone he was with during his school days, because that's the happiest time in his life. Ironically he was happier before he became the strongest, because that was the only time in his life that he allowed himself to connect to people.

However in the eyes of others, he is someone who has it all. That's why he is always alone. There was no one who could hold the same sentiments and mutually understand him. Geto was the only one who could understand what he was trying to say, and the only one who could communicate well with him.

It's no coincidence Gojo and Geto die exactly a year apart on the same day, if anything I'd say the reasons they die are similiar to at least thematically. They both die because they don't want to live in the world. Geto thinks the world is too corrupt and GOjo doesn't want to be anything other than a sorcerer, both of them fail to adapt.

「 'It's just. . .' It's just that it was what Geto had to do. [...] To someone like him, the reality that the world of sorcerers presented to him was just too cruel. '. . .that in a world like this, I couldn't truly be happy from the bottom of my heart.'」

They can't be happy in a world like this from the bottom of their hearts, so narratively they both die. The things they chose to live for at the end of their life they fail to accomplish, Gojo is no longer the stronget, Geto fails to wipe out mankind or make major changes to the world and they die as normal people unsatisfied because they weren't trying to live in the world and make connections to others. They die almost karmically a year apart because their main connection for both of them, the thing which made them feel connected to the world and other people was each other.

Which is why this panel breaks my heart and is so narratively satisfying because of how unsatisfying it is...

"If you were among those patting my back... then I might've been satisfied."

Gojo reflects that he's not satisfied dying against Sukuna, not because he failed to give him a good enough challenge but because Geto wasn't there to pat him on the back. The one thing that would have satisfied him he couldn't have, because he didn't live to connect to people he lived to be the strongest and he died alone as the strongest. There's just something deeply upsetting about Gojo's dying dream fantasy just him being there talking with all of his dead friends who he never appreciated or connected to properly when he was alive. Knowing that if something had just gone a little differently, that even if he had to die no matter what he could have died happier if Geto was among the people saying goodbye to him because that connection with Geto is what gave his life meaning.

Dazai Osamu: "A life with someone you can say good-bye to is a good life, especially when it hurts so much to say it to them. Am I wrong?" -Bungou Stray Dogs Beast

#gojo satoru #jjk spoilers #jjk meta #jujutsu kaisen 236 spoilers #jjk 236 #jujutsu kaisen 236 #jjk 236 spoilers #jujutsu kaisen #jujustu kaisen meta #jujutsu kaisen theory #jujutsu kaisen manga #satoru gojo #geto suguru #suguru geto #satosugu

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astercontrol · 3 months

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If KOSA passes

Or if any other form of censorship (there are many in the works!) ever succeeds at stepping in to impede our ability to communicate online:

We have to make plans.

Now, I dunno who'll even see this post. The few followers I have are TRON fans (who despite the fantasy we live in, tend to have realistically dismal views IRL about Disney and the various corporate uses of software).

And this fandom, on average, is pretty tech-savvy. It's where I've encountered the most people under 20 years old who actually know how to use a desktop or laptop computer.

So, if there's any hope for what I'm thinking about, this is prolly a good place to start with it.

(As with all my posts, I encourage reblogging and containment-breaching.)

(Gifs are clips from TRON 1982, mainly the "deleted love scene," from the DVD extras.)

Anyway.

Current society has moved online communication much too far onto major social media sites for my comfort. Whoever you communicate with over the internet, chances are you do it through a service owned by a big company: Tumblr, Twitter, Discord, Telegram, Facebook, whatever. Even TikTok (shudder).

These sites, despite their many flaws, can provide experiences that are valuable and hard to get otherwise. And once all your friends are on one site, you can't just leave and stay in touch with them all, not unless they all go the same place. It's easy to see why it's hard to abandon any social media platform.

But a backup plan is important. Because, as we've seen over and over, social media sites can't be relied on. They change their policies suddenly, without good reason-- and are inconsistent, even discriminatory, about enforcing those policies.

If they're funded by ads, the advertisers are their main customers, and your posts are the product. Their goal is that the posts most valuable to the advertisers get seen by people the advertisers consider desirable customers.

Helping you communicate-- making your posts get seen by the people you want to communicate with-- is optional to them.

Not to mention that the whole business model of an ad-funded website is generally unsustainable. Many of these sites are operating at a loss, relying on shareholders in a fragile bubble, doomed to fail soon just from lack of real profit.

And the more restrictions --like KOSA-- that the law puts on freedom of online speech, the likelier they are to go down or just become unusable. Every rule a site is required to follow is another strain on its resources, and most of them are already failing badly at even enforcing their own self-imposed rules.

If we want any control over our continued ability to stay in touch with our online friends-- we need to have a backup plan. Maybe it'll be simple at first, a bare-bones system we cobble together-- but it's gotta be something that will work. For a while at least.

There are lots of really good posts about ways to build your own website, using a service like Neocities. I VERY MUCH recommend learning this skill-- learning to make websites of the very simplest, most stable, glitch-resistant type, made of html pages-- which you can upload to a host while you store backups on your home computer. If you value the writing and art that you put online, this is probably the safest you can keep it.

But that's for making your own creative work public.

As for communicating with others-- for example, receiving and answering other people's comments on your work-- that gets more complex. I personally haven't found it worthwhile to troubleshoot the problems that come with having a system that allows visitors to comment publicly on my website.

But what we do still have-- and likely will for a long time-- is email.

Those of us who came of age before social media's current hold... well, we might take this for granted. Email was the first form of online contact we ever encountered… and thus it can seem to us like the most ordinary, the most boring.

But in the current world, it is a rare and precious thing to find a method of communicating that doesn't require everyone in the chat to be signed on with the same corporation.

Email is, as of now, still perfectly legal-- as much as social media companies have been trying to herd the populace away from it. I'm sure there are other ways to share thoughts online that are not bound by laws. But I am not going to go into that here.

Email service is provided by law-abiding companies, which will comply with subpoenas if law enforcement thinks you are emailing about doing illegal things. So, email is not a surefire way to be safe, if laws become dystopian enough to threaten your freedom to talk about your own life and identity.

But it's safer than posting on a public social media page.

For now.

Email is beautifully decentralized. You can get an email address many different ways-- some reliant on a company like Gmail, others hosted on your own domain. And different people, with all different types of email addresses, hosted in all different ways-- can all communicate together by the same method.

Of course any of these people, individually, can lose their email address for some reason or other, and have to get a new one. But as long as they still know the email addresses of their contacts, they can reconnect and recover from that loss. The structure of a group linked by email is reliant not on a single company-- but on the group itself, the friends you can actually count on.

This is why I am trying to promote the idea of forming email lists, as a backup plan to give people a way to stay in touch as mainstream social media sites prove to be unsustainable.

I'm envisioning a simple system of sending emails to several addresses at once, and making each reply visible to everyone in the chat by using "reply all" (or, if desired, editing the To field to reply to only some).

If enough people get used to using email in this way, it could fill most of the needs met by any other group chat or forum …without depending on a centralized social media company that's taking dystopian measures to try and make the business profitable.

So here are some thoughts about how I personally imagine it could work.

(Feel free to comment and bring up any thoughts I haven't addressed, or suggestions to customize how specific groups could set it up. This is meant as more of a starting point for brainstorming than a catch-all solution.)

As I see it, here are the basics of what you and your friends would each need to start out:

An email address. Any kind, hosted anywhere. You should use a dedicated email account just for this group, one that you do NOT use for other communication. Being in this group will result in things you don't want happening to your main email address-- like getting a TON of email, one for every post and reply. Or someone could get your email address that you really don't want any contact with. Use a burner email account (one that you can easily replace) and change it if needed.

The knowledge of how to "REPLY ALL" in your email. This will be necessary in order to add a comment that everyone in the group can see.

The knowledge of how to EDIT THE "TO" FIELD in your email, and remove addresses from the list of all recipients. This will be necessary if you want to CHANGE WHICH PEOPLE in the group can see your comment.

The knowledge of how to FILTER WORDS in your email. This will be necessary if a topic comes up that you don't want to see any mentions of.

The knowledge of how to BLOCK PEOPLE in your email. This will be very important. If someone joins this email group who you do not want to interact with, it will be up to you to BLOCK them so that you do NOT see their messages. (If they are bad enough to evade the block with multiple burner accounts, that's what you have a burner account for. Change it, and share the new one only with those you trust not to give it to them.)

Every person in the group will be effectively a "moderator" of the group, able to remove people from it by cutting their email addresses out of the "To" field. Members will all have equal "moderator" privileges, each able to tailor the group to their own needs.

This means the group may naturally split, over time, into other groups, each one removing some people and adding others. Some will overlap, some won't. This is good! This is, in my opinion, what online interaction SHOULD be like! There should be MANY groups like this!

In this way, we can keep online discussion alive, no matter WHAT happens to any of the social media websites.

If the dystopia got bad enough to shut down email, we could even continue with postal mail and photocopies, like they did in the days of print-zine fanfiction.

If it looks like the dystopia is gonna come for postal mail too, we'll use the connection we have to preserve whatever contacts we can with people who live near us.

Not saying it's GONNA get that bad. But these steps of preparation are good no matter exactly what kind of bad stuff happens.

As long as some organized form of communication still exists, we'll have a place where it's at least a little safer to be your true self…

to plan events and meetups…

and maybe even activities a little too risque to make the final cut of a 1982 Disney movie.

They're trying to censor us. We want a Free System. So we're gonna fight back.

For the Users. Not the corporations.

Peace out, programs. <3

#tron #tronblr #tron 1982 #userworldproblems #diy punk #censorship #kosa #internet literacy #email #solutions

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emelinstriker · 7 months

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{Eternal Servants AU} Red Son ♡ Offering

Art drawn by me + the AU itself is mine.

It's still my birthday (November 14th) in my time right now, so might as well post it since it just fits- Peeps voted for fluff, and I wanted to make something with Red Son's cooking, and boom, idea. :D

[TL;DR] Red Son bakes a cake for you.

♡ ~ Fluff ~ ♡

"Maybe this one..? No... This..? No..."

Red Son was flipping through the pages of a book for a recipe and hadn't even started anything. Just because he couldn't decide on which type of cake to bake. It needed to be perfect. It was his Master's birthday after all. He wouldn't be worthy of his title as one of your champions if he managed to fail at such an important task. And he'd rather not be a disgrace to his Master and the other servants.

He did think about asking another champion for some input, but he also didn't want to tell anyone he wanted to bake a cake for you. And he was aware that some champions, which shall not be named, weren't exactly the most quiet about keeping plans for their Master a secret. So putting his trust into the others wasn't much of a safe option... Though, maybe he could ask one of the more quiet ones for help, such as MK.

The red champion hummed in thought before letting out a rather tired groan. He wasn't tired of doing this for you, he was tired about possibly having to rely on another champion again and splitting the work credit. Much like Macaque, he enjoyed your full praises, but having to share the credit would only give him half of your attention and affection.

Suddenly, he snapped his fingers with a little smile as he exclaimed, "I've got it!"

Red Son then flipped through the book for a recipe on (Favorite Cake). Upon finding the page, he read through the required ingredients and grimaced... He knew for a fact he was missing some things from the list. The palace's kitchen was big but was usually low on ingredients after. Half of the palace didn't need to consume food after all. The kitchen was mostly there for their Master if they enjoyed cooking or wanted to try out cooking without the fear of setting anything nearby on fire. And now it was mostly occupied by Red Son so he could develop his own cooking skills more.

Sighing, he decided that he would have to actually go out and collect said ingredients. He wrote down the items that were missing before he closed the book and carefully hid it away in one of the cabinets again. It was best if he kept his plan a secret.

The red champion then picked up the list he wrote with his left hand and quietly made his way out of the kitchen. He had to be quiet yet also casual about how he moved, otherwise Macaque or someone else would-

"What are you up to, Bull Boy?"

...Oh, for fuck's sake.

He grumbled in slight annoyance as he turned to face a certain pink celestial. However, he seemed to be accompanied by MK. "I'm... Just taking a stroll. That's all", he replied.

Nezha crossed his arms as he raised an eyebrow. "Really? By rather suspiciously observing the area while walking, as if you were being hunted?"

Red Son's pursed his lips as he tried to hold back from saying any sassy comment that could trigger the celestial's anger. Instead, he awkwardly cleared his throat while looking away from the other two champions. "...I suppose so, yes."

The yellow champion next to Nezha tilted his head, humming as he noticed the folded up piece of paper in the bull demon's hand. "What's that?" He asked, pointing at it. Red Son nervously took the piece of paper into his right hand, hiding it behind his cape.

"That- That is none of your concern. Just... a shopping list, I guess."

"Then you wouldn't mind if I-" Suddenly, Nezha swiftly flipped up the red champion's cape before snatching the paper from his hand. Due to Nezha's speed, Red Son couldn't even comprehend what was happening until it was already over. And once he saw the celestial open the list, his heart dropped in his chest. There went his chance at getting extra affection from you.

The pink champion skimmed through the list's contents and blinked in surprise. "Wait. You weren't kidding. But then why were you so sneaky about it?" He then handed the list to the yellow champion.

And before Red Son could come up with any excuses, MK spoke up. "Isn't this a recipe for Master's favorite cake? For today. I can't forget today."

Nezha did a double take as he looked over MK's shoulder and at the list again... After re-reading the ingredients listed and confirming the young monkey's suspicions, he gave Red Son a rather offended look. "...Were you seriously trying to bake a cake behind our backs? And for Master's birthday nonetheless!"

The celestial glared daggers at the young demon. But before he could scold him or physically harm him, MK stepped in front of him, blocking him. "Let's help. It's Master's birthday. No fighting on Master's birthday."

Pausing, Nezha thought about his words and reluctantly let out a sigh to calm his anger. "You're right", he said before turning back towards the red champion, still seemingly annoyed at this form of betrayal, but he's holding it all back quite well. "Do you perhaps need help retrieving those things on the list?"

Red Son slowly shook his head. "...Uh, no thanks. I'm... I'm pretty sure I can just get it all quickly for Master's cake by myself-"

Suddenly, a shadow portal opened next to the red champion, startling him. And out popped Macaque with an excited grin on his face. He was practically vibrating as his tail happily swished around behind him from what he just heard. "I heard about a cake you're making for Master's birthday from the other side of the palace! I wanna help too!"

It wasn't noticeable, but the others could tell Nezha had a shit-eating grin beneath his mask as he spoke. "The more the merrier, right? Bull Boy over here could have us get the ingredients he needs so he can bake." At this point Red Son could most definitely not talk his way out of it. And he hated this fact.

He cursed a little under his breath, which probably only Macaque caught but brushed off, before reluctantly agreeing to it. "Fine. You can help me. I know you wouldn't stop asking me about it."

"Wonderful! Now, what's on the list? What do I get to collect for Master?" Macaque asked eagerly as he clasped his hand together.

Nezha snorted as he eyed the purple champion. "Better give him an item he won't have to get lost over. Or one where he can't accidentally piss off every demon in the vicinity like last time."

Macaque huffed as he placed his hands on his hips, giving the celestial a little glare. "Listen. I'm not that reckless when it's not a task Master told me to do."

"But it's still a task for Master's birthday", the celestial retorted. "So I hope I can trust that you won't get caught up in a random side task again and vanish for longer than needed. Not on their special day."

While they kept arguing about Macaque's inability to keep things simple without doing extra work and getting into trouble in the process, Red Son was already assigning MK to grab an item. The yellow champion gave him a happy salute despite his blank expression before walking away to get said item. He wants to make his Master proud!

Macaque and Nezha very soon noticed the young monkey's absence and they turned back towards Red Son, who was seemingly trying to sneak away.

The pink champion scoffed as he crossed his arms again, "Where do you think you're going, Bull Boy? You still haven't given us any ingredients to look for."

Red Son was most definitely rolling his void-black eyes before turning around to face the remaining two champion, who have been trailing after him to catch up. "Will you leave me alone if I let you each pick an ingredient to get?"

The dark-furred simian nodded with a happy expression. "Yes! I just wanna help make Master's birthday the best of the best birthdays for them!"

"...Fine. Here, just take the whole list. There's only two ingredients left anyway since MK already went off to find one of them", the red champion said reluctantly as he shoved the list into Macaque's chest. And of course, Macaque quickly took the list, ignoring the way Red Son shoved it into him. He finally could help with Master's special day, which was all that mattered.

The two of them then noticed Red Son walking away, looking like a deflated a balloon. Nezha felt a bit of sympathy for him since he knew how much this meant to him. But he genuinely wanted to help the younger demon. Meanwhile Macaque didn't feel such sympathy. The monkey in purple was all too busy being eager helping out, but just to get pets and kisses from you.

The red champion soon returned to the kitchen, leaning with his back against the now door as he sighed in disappointment. Now he had to share that credit with three other champions. Fun. And all he wanted was some extra attention from you just this once...

And of course, considering who all was given the task of retrieving the ingredients, it didn't take long for the three other champions to return and bring the missing items to the kitchen. It was most certainly surprising to see MK actually return with his task complete since he usually forgot things. However, Red Son figured he remembered this task since it's a task for their Master's comfort. And while he usually forgot about what he did, he never seemed to forget about given commands and objectives. He would only question what he did afterwards.

However, thanks to the other servants' work, Red Son was able to focus on his own task of baking a birthday cake. But this time he would not have another servant take his credit. So he told the others to get out and let him work on it himself. And despite Macaque's persistence in helping him further, the red champion wouldn't budge and wouldn't start anything. At least until the monkey left the kitchen through a portal while pouting. And he knew Macaque didn't know how to bake a cake, so Red Son was confident that the simian wouldn't dare try baking one unless it was absolutely perfect on his first try.

And finally, due to Red Son's skills in the kitchen, the bull demon was able to create the perfect cake. Which was also your favorite cake. Just to top it off, he added a birthday candle and lit it up with a little flame in the palm of his hand. He smiled as he proudly glanced over the cake. There was no way you wouldn't enjoy it, he was sure of it.

But then of course another servant just had to startle him by standing behind him without even saying a word. He turned and saw a certain blue champion, just standing there, yet his presence was menacing.

Shit. Macaque probably told him about the cake.

"Oh- Wha-... W-What is it, Wukong? Did you also w-" Red Son tried to question him, but quickly cut himself off the moment he witnessed the quiet simian just casually taking the cake's plate with his hand and walking away. He didn't even bother giving the red champion a second glance.

Red Son just watched silently in disbelief as the monkey walked away towards presumably their Master's bedroom. He could feel his eye twitch in frustration at how, again, yet another champion was stealing more of his credit.

But whatever.

At this point he was already convinced that he'll be pushed to the side again just so the others could get more love and attention from you. Wouldn't be the first time. He groaned a bit before following Wukong. The simian was indeed headed for your bedroom.

Upon reaching your bedroom, Wukong gently knocked with his free hand on the door while still holding the cake in the other. When he heard you tell him to enter, he opened the door and bowed his head. Red Son moved past the simian in blue and also bowed his head. Then he looked up and saw you in bed with Macaque, MK and Nezha already present either on or around your bed. Macaque was the one in the middle of receiving pets from you. Meanwhile you looked very much tired, as if you had just woken up about a minute ago.

Wukong held up the cake in front of him as he said with a little, rare smile, "Happy Birthday, Master."

Which was soon followed up by the other champions wishing you a Happy Birthday. Including Macaque, whose wishes were muffled due to him snuggling into you. You smiled tiredly, still seeming very much confused for a moment before you realized what was happening. "Aw... Thanks, guys", you said. Then you looked at the cake in Wukong's hands. Your eyes lit up a bit at he sight. "Is... Is this (Favorite Cake)? Did you guys make this... for me?"

Red Son remained silent, knowing the others would just claim all the glory and- "Actually, Red Son made it, Master. We didn't do much this time", Nezha quickly responded with a genuine smile underneath his mask. "We just helped out a bit, but the idea and execution was all his doing."

Red Son slowly turned towards him with his void-black eyes wide open in shock. Did... Did Nezha just make up for earlier? And knowing your attention was no longer on your pink champion, but on your red champion instead, the celestial gave the bull demon a knowing wink. Which made the red-haired boy smile with gratitude. He was given the spotlight for once.

Wukong seemed to have understood what Nezha was doing and decided to chime in, which seemed to encourage the bull demon again. "It's true, Master. He did most of it himself."

Your mouth formed an 'o' as your head turned towards Red Son, who was now blushing a little in embarrassment. You reached out your arm and pat your leg, which was still covered by your blanket, beckoning him over while Macaque scooted a bit away to give the bull demon space to sit on. "C'mere, Red. I wanna thank you properly."

His blush only became more noticeable as he approached your bed, seating himself on it. Then you pulled him a bit closer towards yourself and placed a little kiss on his cheek. This only resulted in his blush becoming worse, and you could swear his entire body began to heat up as his tied up hair turned into flames for just a moment. You gave him another kiss on his reddening cheeks once again before smiling at him.

"Thank you, Red."

He smiled back despite his embarrassment as he nuzzled into your chest.

"You're welcome, Master... Happy Birthday..."

"...Hey Master, where is Mink?"

"Um... I'm not sure actually. Probably still with the Oracle. He came in last night and wanted to borrow the scroll for something involving some lion, I think...? But he said he'll bring back the scroll some time later today."

[ Masterlist ]

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hazelfoureyes · 2 months

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How are you so good at writing smut??? It legit makes my body warm all over and my brain fuzzy, you fucking smut wizard <3 do you have any tips on writing smut? Or just writing in general?

Thank you for such a compliment! 💖🥹This is mildly embarrassing-- but I really am so horny?? I am not playing a character. lol I am a goblin. When I watch porn (for pleasure) I just take in the sounds and the sights, really just going full art reviewer on that shit for inspo even when I'm not trying to.

"Wow his cock got so big suddenly, is he going to cum? his head his massive...omg he sunk it right back into that guy after he came?? he's still going!? DICKS CAN DO THAT?" *takes mental notes*

"Her hips kept pulling away there before she orgasmed, overstimulated a bit maybe, love how he grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back down" *jots down on my notes app*

"wow the way he said that-- jesus I just got dizzy I need to hear <whatever character> say that." *writes Luci saying that shit immediately* I am unqualified to give tips on anything, but I'll tell you what I tend to do! For smut; I just focus on sensations, I think. We can all see what sex looks like! Imagining the feeling of it, that's whats so fucking hot to me. Why is that man moaning? What is he feeling that is so good? What made her legs shake like that? Yeah his dick went into her pussy. Nice. But like---- was it warm? did his head get caught on the way in, popping past that unyielding flesh untrained to his size, just at her entrance? did the feeling of wet walls and a tight grip make him go weak for a second, mind blank?

For general writing; oh geez....I have a super visual brain, so I just try my best to describe what I'm seeing.

If it feels like I've forced someone to say or do something, then I back up and try again.

I wrote a part in A Doe in Fall part 4 that I had to redo; I had reader slap the detective when he suggested maybe she was hitting on him, a man coming to intervene making Brady get nervous and apologize before leaving all flustered.

But I realized--- no, this reader is too smart. She would never make a scene like that, she wouldn't know what might happen. What if everyone watches her then sit with Alastor? What if people notice and somehow remember seeing him? What if they recognize him? I loved the scene but I had to remove it. She would never do that, even if I loved seeing it.

I try to just shut down a little and see what my brain throws out unfiltered. It's really mentally taxing. I'm either 100% focused or I can't do it. I proofread maybe 6 or 7 times, or more. I don't stop until I get through it at least once without edits, and if I find myself bored of reading it, then I walk away for a second. If I am too disinterested to read it again for proofreading or just feeling the flow of it, then why would anyone else want to?

Hazbin Smut Masterlist I spent way too long rereading before posting

I felt this like this wasn’t helpful at all 😭

#HazelSaysTooMuch #alastor x reader #hazbin hotel smut #fanfiction #alastor smut #smut struggles #smut writer #smut fanfiction #smut writing #hazelsayshi

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tacomanarrows · 19 days

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Between the Sea and the Sky!

Hi everybody! Meet the TWO new guys I made between last night and today! Their names are Tarmac (an Aeromorph dog) and Soda (a pooltoy fox), and they've filled a desire for these two specific kinds of OCs I've had in mind for MONTHS lol. They were super fun to design and draw and I'm super excited to do more with them soon!! This piece is relatively simple but more so serves as their introduction hehe

See more about them, including refs and some additional pieces/information below the cut :] (it kind of turns into a huge braindump lmao)

Tarmac is an aeromorph, although a bit more towards the furry side of things rather than the plane side lol. His design is influenced primarily by the Concorde and the Space Shuttle! I couldn't decide for the life of me which of those two things I wanted to use so I thought "why not use both?" and here we are lol. I'm super happy with his design, with the black/dark gray markings mean to emulate the look of the Space Shuttle's thermal insulation tiles and then I really like how the red and blue stand out against the gray. I really like his icon too! I wanted to make it look like a stylized depiction of a plane (mainly a Concorde hehe) breaking through the sound barrier with a sonic boon! In terms of personality, I don't have a whole lot in mind yet. Mostly that he'd be the brave, adventurous type and since he can fly both in the air and through space, he's gonna be friends with Astro too :3

Soda is a pooltoy fox! I have wanted to make a pooltoy OC FOREVER (blame my mutuals for always posting/reblogging so many cool pooltoy OCs hehe). I finally got brave enough to actually give it a shot, and I love how he came out! I was mainly just thinking about summery themes and as I was just trying out different colors and stuff, I thought about orange soda, and that's the direction I ended up going! He's got a big stupid tail [affectionate] and can have either rounded bappy hands or have actual fingers, you're free to stylize that either way! I've only ever drawn a pooltoy character once ever before, so this was something way out of my realm of familiarity, but I'm so happy with how he came out! He's so shaped I love him so much already <33

So those are my two new guys! Making two new OCs at the same time is already a rarity for me lol. The only time it's happened before was when I made Rye and Pumpernickel back in August of 2021. And then making these guys when I had only gotten Astro about two and a half weeks ago means this is an exceedingly rare event for me lmao. My friends know how infrequently I make/get new OCs, so this just goes to show how much these guys have been bouncing around in my brain lately lol.

They are definitely gonna have some sort of connection to each other, but I'm not sure how I wanna go about that yet. Since I made them back to back, they are already connected in my brain, but I'm not sure how I wanna express that in a meaningful way. I don't wanna make them siblings bc, well, they're obv very different from each other lol, but they're kinda parallels (with one being in the sky and the other being in the water yknow), so as of right now they're definitely good friends with each other. I might upgrade that to bfs at some point in the future, but we'll see how things go hehe.

Anyways huge braindump of a post lmao, thank u for reading if u did! I'd love to hear your thoughts on these guys since they're so different from all my other characters! Also if anyone may wanna do an art trade of either of these guys (or Astro as well! I'd like to get more art of him too!) let me know hehe

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hbystuff · 8 months

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Process breakdown #1

Here is a breakdown of the butterfly animation. This was originally posted as a twitter thread, but a real blog post seems to be a much better format for it.

Step 1: Static Drawing

I've long wanted to experiment with Bokeh effect in pixel art as a way to avoid drawing background. It ended up being a lot more challenging than just a normal background 😂. Still an interesting experiment nonetheless and I might use it for some other stuff in the future.

Step 2: Rough Animation

I traced the static drawing with a contrasting colour, then roughly sketched the other frames. Seeing it in motion made it clear to me that the form was very obviously incorrect, but I thought I'd adjust as I go.

Step 3: Refined Animation

Before I got to this point, I naively tried to put in the colour. I quickly realized making the "veins" look consistent would be very hard without guides. So I looked up pictures of actual Morpho butterflies to study the wings in detail. Also made the shapes (mostly) correct and doubled the frame count once I was happy with the shapes.

Step 4: Colours

This was the most fun part. I conceptualized the wings as two blue tinted, matte, textured mirrors rotating in 3D space. When two mirrors come together, they start reflecting each other. The closer they get, the less the lighting from the surrounding world contribute to the colours you see. Eventually, nearly no light from the outside world make into the gap and all you see is dark blue/black.

It started looking almost like mirrors as I figured out the rough movements of the reflections; then a shimmering mess of colours as I threw in more details from the static drawing. The key trick to making the complex colours look consistent was to pay attention to every "partition" of the wings to make sure the dark colours creep in and out smoothly.

I also gradually filled in the eye spots and details on the backside of the wings, not sure if many people noticed them but I was pretty happy with how they looked.

Step 5: Shadow

A big part of realism comes from how a moving object affects the lighting around it. In this case: the shadow on the flower. This is a rough version of the shadows as I worked on it. Wasn't too concerned about making it look 100% correct, since the wings probably catch all the attention anyway.

Step 6: Final Touches

I spaced out the movements so it didn't feel quite so frantic. Instead of using the last frame as the resting frame, I used the second last, and only briefly showed the last frame at the begging and end of the motion to add a bit of realism (although in reality, butterfly wings probably don't have enough mass for that to happen, but hey, 🤷‍♀️).

Also spent some time to reduce the palette down by merging similar looking colours. Also reused the darker, subtler yellow in the background to create the illusion of more flowers out of focus.

#pixel art #tutorial #process #art process #artists on tumblr #hbystuff

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mellybabbles · 3 months

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If KOSA pases and tumblr explodes, I'll leave this here.

Thank you all. Seriously, I've managed to pick myself up, and finally become the person I want to be, because of you all. Mutuals, followers, or maybe just some random that popped by and thought "cool, have a like/reblog" You have all helped me recover and actually take that step into becoming a better person. I'm happy, and I can say that with full confidence. You've all given me an unfathomable amount of joy, and let me meet the love of my life, and people I thought I'd never be able to interact with. For my mutuals:

Thank you @italic-doing-random-shit for inadverately helping me take that first step into trying out tumblr properly again, instead of running away. Thank for you being an amazing friend and always being there for me. Thank you @largefound for giving me the pushes I need to get confident on my art, and branch out and try new things. Thank you for being one of the best friends I could've asked for. Thank you @tundra116 for being a mood booster every time I see soem crack fuckin post or ask in my inbox. You motivated me to keep going and give others the same joy you give me, even if for a split moment. Thank you @still-got-no-idea for fulling up my notifs and giving me a big smile every time you begin to like my posts. We don't talk much, but I'm glad we're mutuals. Thank you @panda-of-the-trash for motivating me to actually be creative with my ideas, and inspiring me to properly write. Thank you @godofautism for accidentally teaching me to be more aware of what those around me are feeling, and allowing me to take a step into treatment for my alexithymia. Thank you @systematic-err0r for being the mutual I always really wanted to get to know. You're always giving comments, reblogs and likes to the point the support can be mindbogling at times. Thank you @c00kietin for motivating me to give new people a chance, and to finally work on the relationships I have now. Thank you @phymarsh for giving me that first boost of excitement of an inspiration of mine following me and interacting with me. For giving me a smile every time I see you on my dash. Thank you @switchthedragon for always remaining strong, inspiring me to do so despite all the hate and threats I was receiving. Thank you @liliallowed for inspiring me to try new artstyles and finally figuring out the one I love the most. Thank you @inka-boi for being one of the biggest beams of light, helping me to learn how to sympathize again and love myself and others. For helping me to go back to my roots and mend what was broken. Thank you @juno-punk for inspiring me to make my own OC's and AU's, instead of locking myself up with shame in fear of what others would think if I made them. Thank you @mikerooksi @lust-sans-vios-rpaccount @wonkus-bonkus @doodlenovaa @killersansofficial @dustsansm1 for showing me back to the joys of interacting with new people and finding joy in it, instead of forcing myself into uncomfortable situations. Thank you @safwunnz for making me feel noticed and big in the grand scheme of everything. Allowing me, even if this might all be gone, to feel like I've made enough of an impact to reach out to artists that inspired of me in the first place. Thank you @elizakai for the first step in art. You're the reason I draw and enjoy it, allowing me to actually have something to do when I'm in a pit or rut of depression. Thank you @/swiftmitsu @/artpepkin for making my month by a simple button click. For all the smiles and laughs your art and animations have given me. The joy I once never got to experience. (Too nervous to ping) Thank you @ant1quarian for allowing me to read stories that actually make me feel like I'm there, and escape how horrible reality can be sometimes.

Thank you all for giving me the love and life I'd lost from being beat down. For those who weren't pinged, I was too nervous. Thank you all so much. For all my friends outside of tumblr that are mutuals on here, you all know how much I care for you and I'm happy to have you all in my life. Thank you for everything.

#thank you #stop kosa

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birds--daily · 4 months

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welcome to birds daily!!

this is my blog where i draw a bird every single day! the idea was completely ripped off from one of my best friends of all time, @fish-daily !! please go check him out :0)

my name is sunny and i'm a wildlife biology major and art minor from the eastern united states. i'm 21 years old and i use they/them pronouns!

i'm here because i love birds so much, and i'm assuming if you're following then you do too!!

IMPORTANT INFO BELOW!!

what to know before you request

please check if i've drawn a bird before you request it! if you don't want to scroll through everything, all my birds are tagged by order. don't know the order of your bird? look it up! the IOC world bird list has a great resource for this.

i tag them by name, but some birds have multiple common names.

i also have a spreadsheet of every bird i've done so far! but i can definitely see myself forgetting to update this, so it's best to double check.

any avian dinosaur archaeopteryx-and-beyond can be requested! many ornithologists consider avialae to be the cutoff for "modern" birds.

i can't guarantee full-accuracy of prehistoric birds as i'm not very well-versed in paleontology.

please keep asks to only one bird! feel free to send multiple asks though. if you include multiple birds in an ask i'll just pick one. when i answer the ask to post it, the other birds will be gone forever...

i will prioritize requests in the order i received them in, but a couple times a week i might draw a personal pick instead.

not accepting duplicate birds doesn't mean you can't request a different version of the same bird, which leads me to…

sexual dimorphism and seasonal plumage!

yes! you can request different plumages and sexes of a bird i've already done! want to see a female ruddy duck? of course! want the breeding plumage of the willow ptarmigan? absolutely!

i have sex, maturity, and plumage recorded on my spreadsheet, but i'm bound to make some mistakes on there. once again, double-checking my blog is your best bet to getting accurate bird info!

if you don't specify anything, i'm going to assume the basic mature male with breeding plumage that you come to expect from a bird.

breeding and non-breeding plumage can also be called summer and winter plumage. some birds also have special names for their plumage forms. just to keep things consistent i'll be referring to it as breeding and non-breeding!

final notes

my main blog is @eggpathy if you're interested in any of my other art! i forget to post there a lot. most of my art is on my twitter under the same name (trying to move here though)

i'm a full-time college student with a job, so some days i won't be able to get a bird out. sometimes i might even have to take a few days to a week off just to keep my sanity. this doesn't mean i'm not having fun and enjoying drawing birds! it just means i'm busy and maybe need time for other things

i'm also still human. this means i WILL MAKE MISTAKES! i have not finished my degree yet and i'm still learning! one of the big reasons i made this account was to help myself learn my birds! i take extra time out of my day to find facts to post with my birds, and sometimes those are wrong. if you see me post misinfo, please kindly correct me with a comment, dm, or tag!

any post that isn't a daily bird will be tagged #not birds. any post that is a daily bird will be tagged #birds.

please feel free to add extra fun facts, info, and generally any other silly comment in the tags. i love reading them and they make my day!

asks don't have to be request-related! feel free to ask me anything :0)

thanks for reading! peent!

#about time i made an introduction post lmao #birds daily #not birds

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comradekatara · 4 months

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i am very curious about your thoughts on various utena/atla character parallels… every once in a while i see you offhandedly compare like.. korrasami and utenanthy and i’m like HOLD ON this is so true! if you have any further ideas about that i would LOVE to hear them. i honestly don’t know how big the audience is for rgu/atla analysis but i am definitely part of that audience. 😭

yesss i can't believe you're literally the first person to ask me this lately i've been making rgu references on like, every single post i'm shameless!!!!! over the summer i even wrote (like 95% of) an essay comparing sokka and nanami (tldr; they are meat) and i have yet to revisit it (bc i'm scared tbh) but i will post is eventually that is a PROMISE (for an audience of 5 people). also before we go any further my utena blog is @saionjeans and we have fun there. also, i have some utena/atla crossover art here and here, so check that out if you haven't already. the rest of this post will be scattered thoughts because my nanami-sokka essay will be doing a lot of the in-depth analytical work and i don't need to rehash that all now. but also, because i have never not once in my life heard of brevity, i did write a bunch of mini essays anyway, because of course i did.

korrasami and utenanthy: love and abuse

i compared utenanthy to korrasami a couple times, most notably in this post where i talk about how meaningful their relationship is despite being (arguably) underdeveloped, and then in the tags i still have to acknowledge that utena and anthy nonetheless did it better 17 years prior. but i do think that there is so much to be said for utena-korra and anthy-asami as two young women who are both set up to be "special" but in a way that denies and restricts them from their own humanity, cloistering them away from the outside world and making them more vulnerable to abuse. i talked pretty recently about how asami's abuse is really shrugged under the carpet in a way that pisses me off if i think about it for too long. rgu does such an incredible job of gradually exposing that abuse and its effects on society, not as a deviation from the norm (of the nuclear family, of the romance, of the school, etc.) but in fact a common symptom of it. lok does not critique the nuclear family in any meaningful way despite setting up so many different areas through which such a critique could be facilitated (made worse by the fact that atla sets such a fantastic precedent). but anyway, enough about lok (and how she disappoints me).

2. miki & kozue and katara & sokka: siblings and memory

in my sokka-nanami essay i talk about how various characters can be read to embody various analogues, but how my focus in that essay is primarily to draw a parallel between sokka and nanami by using the framework for gender/patriarchal logic rgu establishes. however, i also talk about how azula can be read as a nanami (or even an anthy) figure, as well as how katara and sokka can be read as miki and kozue (katara = miki and sokka = kozue, obviously) (and note that kozue and nanami are significant foils/mirrors too). i mean, they even have a similar light blue (to signify naïveté, innocence, childlike wonder) versus dark blue (to signify cynicism, jadedness, resigned subsumption into harmful norms) color scheme going on. the Special sibling and the afterthought. (although before going forward i do want to be clear that i am in no way alluding to any incestuous undertones wrt katara and sokka, and i would even argue that the allusions to incestuous desire between miki and kozue are more complex and nuanced than simply reducing it to mere perversion. but that's beyond the scope of this ask lol)

i know that some people might bristle at my comparing katara to miki (baby misogynist, little freak) but miki really exemplifies the trope of the "sunlit garden" in the same way that katara exemplifies that trope in atla. miki isn't the narrator of course (akio is), but the central motif of desire staked to an illusory formative memory since lost that defines a character's motivations and self-becoming is first properly introduced (not including the utena meeting dios intro) and defined through his obsession. in the same way, we are introduced to the world of atla through katara's formative memories, her desire that motivates her self-becoming also being an illusory formative memory, as well as a tale she longs to replicate ("the four nations living together in harmony"). katara, like miki, is defined by her naïveté and childlike innocence, her somewhat reductive desire to be noble and heroic, and her need to flatten everything into a clear-cut narrative wherein she is always its heroine. like miki, she resents her sibling for being transformed into a more cynical version of themselves in accordance with society's pressures (in kozue's case, it's the inescapability of patriarchy, whereas in sokka's case, it's... a lot of things), and longs for a time when they were "truly happy" and playing together (playing piano, playing in the snow, you get it).

both kozue and sokka heavily subscribe to patriarchal logic and comport and reduce themselves in accordance with the dictums of a world they consider truly inescapable. kozue seeks power within her limited frame, whereas sokka only seeks power insofar as it allows him to assume his very narrow role of protector, but they both assume those limitations to be ontological and fixed in a way that does not allow them to see past it. however, the lack of empathy both miki and katara refuse to attempt in understanding their worldviews, in no way making an effort to broach that misunderstanding instead of simply letting the chasm between them fester, nonetheless implicates them equally. after all, they too both adhere to their own limited worldviews, only in their worldviews they are fundamentally special and thus beyond reproach. sokka and kozue are both integral aspects of katara and miki's sunlit gardens, and their idealized return to a picturesque nostalgia involves a transformation (or regression) of sokka and kozue into their more innocent former selves. and sokka and kozue are in turn obsessed with katara and miki, the central figure around which their identity and actions revolve.

through this framework, aang thus becomes katara's anthy (aangthy, hehe), as the embodiment of katara's hopeful/nostalgic ideal of heroism, companionship, and the idealized promise of a distant irretrievable past. like anthy with kozue, aang "replaces" katara's longing for the softer, more innocent version of her brother with aang's friendship. like miki with anthy, katara possesses romantic feelings for aang despite his functioning as a replacement for sokka before he became a shell of his former self (or kozue before she became... sexually active). this is because katara, like miki, idealizes the patriarchal narratives that dictate that all significant relationships be either romantic or familial (or both). she wholeheartedly subscribes to this notion, hence why she attempts to subsume everyone who can meaningfully fit into her narrative framework as either a lover (aang, haru, jet, zuko for all of 2 seconds) or a pseudo family member (aunt wu, hama, pakku, toph, etc etc.), replicating those dynamics as many times as she needs to to make them fit within her two dimensional tapestry. and crucially, coming face to face with yon rha subverts that, because she recognizes the messy humanity spilling forth from the neat boxes she puts people in, and must thus contend with her own role in her narrative. of course miki, being a side character and not the narrator, certainly not the hero, does not get this luxury. and he must find a way to grow up anyway.

3. akio and ozai: patriarchy

there's something truly incredible about how both akio and ozai manage to inflict psychological harm upon every single character in their respective shows, even if they never interact with those characters directly. their reach is vast and spindly; it cannot be overestimated. and yet, ozai has only reigned for about six years. akio is only acting chairman of ohtori academy. they are not patriarchy itself, but merely its signifier. and obviously their modes of embodying patriarchy differ in many respects: a school is not a nation (despite the similarities), and a father is not a brother (despite akio being father-like). ozai is defeated by by being stripped of his technology of violence, whereas akio is not "defeated" in a literal sense (although i suppose anthy driving a car through his ghost and exploding him into a cloud of roses does make quite the statement), anthy merely leaves. and yet, in both instances, they are both forced to succumb to their own limited ideology regarding what constitutes power. if ozai lacks firepower, he lacks control over his subjects and the right to sovereignty. if akio's control is challenged, if people realize that they can just leave, that the ends of his world are entirely arbitrary, he no longer has the power to abuse and exploit and use others for his own ends.

the metonymic signification of patriarchy figured through both ozai and akio in dual ways further emphasizes their respective roles. ozai is both king and father, akio is both (acting) chairman and (acting) father. patriarchy dictates every aspect of [a patriarchal] society: from interpersonal dynamics to the nuclear family to the school to the state to the world. what makes both akio and ozai so brilliant in this regard is the fact that their influence is reflected in all these facets. ozai abuses every member of his family individually; controls them as a system; inflicts his (family's) propaganda onto the fn education system, rewriting history with (almost) no one to disprove him; inflicts his imperialist agenda both within the fire nation (ruining local economies through industrialization, forcing citizens to conform to restrictive roles, inflicting violence through occupation) and beyond it; he refers to the world as "my world," as if he is its creator, its owner, or its god. and in many ways, he is. akio similarly abuses everyone interpersonally (most notably anthy, touga, and utena); subsumes utena into his nuclear family system so that she cannot leave; uses the academy as a site of control in which adolescents are forced to comply with socially codified norms and thus made more vulnerable to the influence of adult authority figures (especially those who emphasize their individuality or inherent specialness when compared with the rest of the student body); operates ohtori as a sort of nation wherein patriotism is reified through the use of uniforms, affiliations, sociopolitical hierarchies, and an acting government (the student council); and defines himself as the creator/owner/god of his world. to be end of the world. to embody not an apocalypse, but a cage.

ozai and akio both fashion themselves the entire world, but it also makes them more vulnerable to resistance, to any mode of critique that points out the obvious: no, you're just one person, and the logic you use to dominate others is deeply, noticeably flawed. it's a logic that they exploit but that in turns exploits them, as they have so deeply internalized it that they can no longer immunize themselves against any kind of resistance. ozai claims that there is no room for an air nomad in his world, which is why aang defeating ozai through the pacifist values of his people and not through his greater power (which would nonetheless be subscribing to ozai's logic, and thus letting him win ideologically if not physically) is so crucial in shattering ozai's paradigm. just as utena, as someone who refuses to conform to the strict, arbitrary, and violently enforced norms of patriarchy, can so thoroughly disrupt akio's control by resisting him. just as anthy can by leaving. akio remains in his cozy little coffin, exerting meaningless control to uphold the hollow puppet of his ego.

people sometimes joke about how long it takes for zuko to recognize that the burning off of half his face was "cruel" and "wrong," but it's not that zuko didn't find it painful, it's not that zuko didn't fear his father, it's not that zuko idolized his father beyond reproach. he questioned his cruelty, in fact he did so constantly. he simply saw no other way to live. he had no conception of a world beyond ozai's defined limits, had no choice but to believe ozai's dogma and loathe himself for not sufficiently adhering to it. similarly, people often ask "if anthy could leave all along, then why didn't she?" because she, too, was trapped in a coffin of her own self-loathing. to leave an abuser is not as simple as simply stepping beyond the threshold and never looking back. first, you must locate the threshold. then, you must find the courage to look beyond it. i briefly touched on azula being an anthy figure before. well, i think that she is. just because she has yet to see beyond the threshold does not mean she does not find her limits. and yes, its not triumphant, and yes, her facade that masks her pain and fear is shattered, but ultimately, that breakdown is a good thing for her. because that's her first step to freedom.

4. the sunlit garden as mythmaking events

i talk previously in this post about the motif of "the sunlit garden" in rgu vs what i like to call "a mythmaking event" in atla, and i do want to elaborate on that slightly. i provided a link to a post on my utena blog going into what the sunlit garden "is" for each principal character, and atla has a similar mode of communicating these nostalgic desires and idealizations that motivate self-becoming, largely through flashbacks. for aang, it is quite obvious, as his memories of a before and after are (temporally, although not psychologically) fragmented by an entire century. that disconnect severs the two versions of himself quite neatly. those memories with gyatso and the other air nomads (as well as with child bumi, and with the mysterious kuzon) are his idealized past, his "sunlit garden," whereas the storm is his mythmaking event, the point in his life where his choices collide with his telos. there is no going back.

katara and sokka have a similar sunlit garden, their snowball fight being the last truly happy memory they have before the black snow falls and their childhood innocence is severed from them forever. kya's sacrifice and murder is katara's mythmaking event as she then chooses to assume the mantle of her mother who took her place, decides to become the greatest waterbender possible to compensate for surviving the genocide, and chooses to be a hero so that the collective memory and sacrifices of her people will not be in vain. like utena, she witnesses pain and suffering at a very young aged and is moved to become a hero so as to mitigate that suffering, even if her own formative tragedy can never be rectified. also like utena, she idealizes a seemingly utopian past wherein violence was more covert and thus presented itself as more ideal (the time of princes vs the time of harmony). her naïveté and persistent idealism are both her downfall and her greatest virtue. she refuses to accept the true state of the world to the point of blindness, but it is also that refusal to accept it that allows her to force the world into a kinder shape.

as for sokka, his mother's death was also a formative trauma, but his true mythmaking event is when hakoda leaves for war with all the other men of his tribe. hakoda tells him that "being a man is knowing where you're needed the most, and right now, that's here, protecting your sister." it's not a rose crest ring, but it may as well be. from that moment onward, sokka officially comports his identity into being his sister's protector, which is how he thus defines his manhood. and of course, being his sister's protector means being a martyr, because the precedent for "protecting katara" that has already been established is, well, dying for her. like aang being the avatar and the last airbender and katara being the last southern waterbender, sokka is thus defined by his necessity (ie, usefulness to others) as well as his isolation – not only the "last warrior/man" of the swt, but also via his own process of depersonalization and self-dehumanization as he attempts to fully embody his role as an eventual martyr.

zuko's mythmaking event is, of course, branded onto his face. in fact, zuko essentially assumes both katara and sokka's mythmaking events by first being irrevocably altered by his mother's sacrifice, and then being all the more transformed by his father's decree as he attempts to dictate what kind of man zuko needs to be. his "sunlit garden" is also shown to us in flashes: memories of a (literal!) sunlit garden, of turtleducks, of his mother's gentle guidance, of happier times on ember island, on his father's hand resting on his shoulder with pride instead of malice. it is unclear just how truthful these nostalgic memories are. obviously, his family was never actually happy. ozai had always been exerting control over them, even if his violence was once more obscured. we never see azula's sunlit garden, for instance (although i'd argue that she and zuko possess the same mythmaking events), and i cannot help but wonder whether it's because, like touga, she never actually had one.

finally, some honorable mentions must go to the following: toph, whose sunlit garden is also her mythmaking event, as she learns from badgermoles how to hone her gift and reject the rigid societal impositions that seek to limit, repress, and control her. hama, who never attempts to return to her sunlit garden in the swt with kanna, despite her freedom as established in her mythmaking event of teaching herself to bloodbend; she knows that she is irrevocably altered, and thus she can never go home again. appa, whose sunlit garden, of playing with the other bison at the southern air temple, occurs in conjunction with his mythmaking event of meeting aang and becoming the avatar's animal companion.

all of these events are depicted through flashbacks wherein the consecutive shots between flashback and present day mirror the character who is having the memory in the past and present, overlaying their younger face onto their current face with identical framing. i'm too lazy to compile a bunch of screenshots here, and i couldn't find the post i'd seen previously that had done so, but if you're as familiar with atla as i am, then you already know exactly what i'm talking about. this device is so effective particularly because it exercises restraint. every flashback in atla is crucial because it signifies either a sunlit garden or a mythmaking event that motivates the character its focalizing in the present day. atla is economical with its flashbacks, but not withholding. like with rgu, flashbacks in atla are used with a specificity of purpose, and illustrate their points in clear, precise ways. just because atla is not as overtly metatextual with its central themes of narrativization, nostalgia, idealization, bias, and storytelling, does not mean it is not present, and in fact, overt. ranging from katara's role as narrator to the fire nation propaganda aang attempts to correct in school, the use of memory and illusion is crucial in illustrating how atla functions as a narrative about heroism, legacy, and challenging dominant myths through preserving cultural memory under an imperialist regime.

5. final thoughts

obviously, i could go on forever. there is simply no limit to my ability to unpack and dissect these two shows (hence, my sideblogs dedicated to doing so). i haven't even talked about zuko as an analogue to saionji with regard to their latent homosexuality, misogyny, violence, and struggle to conform to a patriarchal ideal. and i barely touch on katara as an analogue to utena with regard to their naïveté, heroism, myopia, persistence, and somewhat misguided desire for justice (through her terms specifically), although like kozue and nanami as mirrors wrt sokka, her traits that i describe when comparing her to miki also map onto utena in many ways – except of course, utena, unlike miki, is also the "hero," and thus has the same destabilizing revelation regarding the banality of evil that katara undergoes in "the southern raiders." moreover, i only discuss one central motif in utena, because i think the sunlit garden is the trope that maps best onto the thematic work atla is doing, but i'm sure that there are many more frameworks i could compare. and yet, i only have so much time, and only so much space in which to ramble. so hopefully, for now, this suffices. however, if there any specific areas in which you would like me to elaborate, you know that i shall always be happy to do so.

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parsapuff · 1 month

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Important Updates!

So everyone kinda knows how I'm struggling to release cc rn so I'll list some reasons why I'm currently struggling.

I'm loosing Interest In posting anything on tumblr rn.

I've been out of energy and extremely tired for a while now. I don't really know what's going on with me but I haven't been really able to do much other then sleep

I never expected to get this big of a following and It's definitely making me nervous to post anything.

I had an art account a few years agon on twt and this same thing happened to me so I just kinda stopped posting. 😥

Don't really want to stop posting here tho since I still love making cc and want to release It for everyone. So I decided to make some changes. First of all I'm no longer keeping the voting poll active. I'll also only be making cc that I'm Interested In. Request poll will stay since many of the requests I've gotten are actually really good Ideas!

REQUESTS

Requesting other series Is fine I'll just be making characters from stuff I'm also Interested In! Sadly to the Honkai Impact 3rd fans I might not be making much of them anymore. I Just don't really care for the game but I do like a lot of the designs so I might be making them In the future still! I might make a big batch of mini sets for the HI3 characters that I haven't done yet so you'll at least have the hairs.

Made my current batch shorter as well. I'm going to pick future characters just based on who I wan't to work on.

Sorry If no one likes the change btw since the other option Is for me to just leave and stop posting </3 Just trying to make everything easier for me. Here's a small list of character's I'll still be working on. Some characters aren't here since I ran out of space or just forgot them. (sorry Sethos </3)

To make It easier to post stuff I'll be getting rid of one of the download sites. Either Google Drive or Mediafire. (leaning on google drive cause I hate putting stuff there) I'll also be asking the last people who took my photos If they could continue taking them In the future too 👉👈Other Idea Is letting someone else post them but Idk anyone here that well and talking to people scares me a bit </3

Also I'll be going through my old sets and adding specular maps to them! I'll retweet each set once I've updated them <3 This Is something I'll be doing slowly btw. But that's pretty much everything I wanted to say (I think) Hopefully this makes sense to people cause Idk what I'm typing here half of the time (plus english Is my second language so I make a lot of mistakes) Feel free to ask questions and I'll answer them the best I can. (sometimes tumblr dosen't notify me that I've gotten a comment btw so If I miss It sorry </3)

#updates #important #sorry </3

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swordheld · 9 months

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how do you think in poems? i really enjoy the tags under your posts i've always wanted to write down my own thoughts that way bc in my head they feel so thorough and magical but whenever i put it in words i feel it just gets so much flatter and i no longer see a point and give up

oh oh oh, but lovely, can't you see that you've already started? it's a perspective that you hone, over time, something that is specific to you and you alone – that's the piece of it that makes it so special! you've already begun, and it only goes forward, up, sideways from here, wherever you wish to go!

think of it like a skill, for a moment, or a kind of muscle, if you'd prefer. you have to work at it, with it, over time and differing experiences, in order to progress.

(a quick important note: not progression as in the kind of quality-check of a grading scale, but progression as in evolution. shifting change. think of the leaves and their colors across the months of autumn, or temperatures rising with the sun and cooling with the evening dark. change isn't intrinsically a qualifying thing, it can just be, sometimes. this is difficult to remember, especially in the midst of frustration, but it is worth it. you are always doing better than you think you are – harshest critic, and all that.)

which is not to say that it's a simple thing to do! compare this to the vibe of me picking up crochet recently, with my shaking hands and too-quickly dwindling adhd focus – my first attempts at making a lil headphone sprout have not been going as well as i once hoped. my stitches are either too big and sloppy bc i'm not holding the yarn tightly enough to get clean ones, or i feel frustrated due to it not looking like how i'd like it to look in my mind when i started it, or even as i begin my umpteenth attempt.

but!! i know that it won't ever look the way i want it do if i set it down and never keep trying. it'll take awhile, like everything does, even the seasons take their time, the moon and its phases; but what i do know, is that, eventually, it'll resemble something i want it to. vaguely, maybe, but it is something. it doesn't have to look exactly like the guide i'm following, or the examples i'm inspired by, because it's mine – something made by my own hands, my own time and experience with every mistake and thrilling joy along the way to learn by.

take it from me: i want to be good at things i want to be good at so badly. and that excitement makes me want to be at the skill level i need to be at in order to do so right then and there, no learning curves or building blocks allowed. which is never how it happens, unfortunately, but –

i think, gently, that we tend to overlook what a pleasure it is to learn. to see the slow progression of things, to begin and change and continue and get better. and even if it's different as we go along, in a way it's our own little kind of magic, maybe, to create and never be done if we don't want to be.

which is all to say: it's already yours. why does it have to be anything else, anything more? why can't it just be good as it is now, where it might never be again? what is there to lose by enjoying the moment of where you are?

like everything, it will grow and shift and evolve with time, maybe into something you'd hoped for, or maybe into something you don't even have the words to describe right now at all. but that's the fun of it: how even now, even then, there, across time and distance and skill, there is a common thread of things; it will always come from your heart, your experience, where you are right then and there and now.

and if you think of that like magic, well, it becomes a little like magic, doesn't it?

also, something to consider: sometimes things you feel or think can't be put into words at that moment, or even at all! something else you could try (that i certainly do) is making something else with whatever it makes you feel - whether that's another form of art, or any other kind of media. if it makes you want to go outside and take a walk or get cozy and read or play a video game? that counts too! that's still an experience, you're still feeling.

i think that counts a little more than anything else, you know?

and as a little ending fun side-note, can i share something cool? i've never thought of it that way before, as thinking in poems. in my mind it's always been a kind of perspective of personal wonder, but you're right – it's poetry, in it's own way. you gave me that – so thank you, from the heart of me. i hope your journey finds you with every bright joy.

#rainsdowninkerala #q&a.#this is truly so much longer than i had originally thought it would be so i do hope it's less rambly and more help-y?#the art of creation goes hand in hand with the exploration and discovery of feeling and it is sooooo important n fascinating to me.#truly tho this can all be boiled down into a kind of: keep going? keep going. you can only get better.#i didn't want the post itself to get even longer & winded BUT if you want a lil fun vibe? watch meet the robinsons. it's a lil silly; but -#truly nothing changed my creative experiences more than hearing ' keep moving forward ' paired with joy at the result of failure.#how it is that you never learn if you don't fail; you have to keep trying; keep going at it; and if we only ever succeeded –#there would never be that? that checkpoint of progression? it changed that frustrating moment into a kind of art; for me.#how each time i fail and feel that sadness or anger it reframes it into oh. i'm learning. i'm doing something new and i'm learning.#isn't that amazing? spectacular? that i can do this? that it's me / you / us together?#i think ab that a lot in terms of inspiring my mindset. i hope it helps you too. wishing u all my best !!!! <3

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coexistentialism · 12 days

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Hey answer this at your own leisure- I have DID and I really relate to a lot of your posts? I think ive even sent you an ask before but i forget so i apologize if ive said the same thing.

Ive known Ive had DID for ages- and in the beginning i thought i had a ton of alters, and now years later 5 months have passed and i dont know who i am at all. Alter advice isnt helpful at all cause it feels like I have no differences. So basically I feel like nobody, Except When Im writing and roleplaying? I have tons of ultra developed characters that I "project" onto and I've been theorizing that my characters Ive created are actually vessels for alters? Or actually my alters? I think I even explained it once as "my characters are all self inserts for my different selves"… Ive never heard of this ever happening to another person and im very unsure. Of course I dont expect you to like diagnose me or anything but i was just wondering if you…had any input? Thank you for taking the time to read this btw I know it was long.

Hii, I went to sleep most of the day, so I'm just seeing this now lol and I love this because that's basically my experience, albeit it with some differences.

Once I was diagnosed and throughout my questioning, I figured that most of the "characters" I made were just alters.

I actually still struggle to comprehend creating characters that isn't just "you" (an alter in some way).

The Warrior cat books were a special interest of mine, and I "created a character" named Rainwhisper, but it wasn't really a character, it was just Me, as a cat in the series.

I liked Utau and Vocaloid, and I created my own Utau called Roxy Mizu, bit it was really just Me as an Utau.

Art and writing is a big way for alters to express themselves, it makes sense. Especially if you grew up in an environment where many of the other ways of self-expression weren't allowed. For example, I was never allowed to look or dress the way I wanted, and most self-expression was punished, made fun of, Not Allowed. So it makes perfect sense to turn to other means of self-expression, when you have no other way to express yourself as a person, and as individual alters (who may not realize they exist, but they are still expressing themselves).

For me as well, my online accounts have also been a huge way of expressing myself (/individual alters to express themselves). Certain icons associated with certain usernames. I get uncomfortable if my Discord icon is something that I don't really vibe or resonate with/doesn't really feel Right. I always grew up changing my icons and usernames a lot, sometimes coming up with a ""fake name"" to use for myself online "for privacy." In reality, I do think it was just alters wanting their own names ad wanting to express themselves, we just didn't know it/realize it/weren't aware we existed as our separate selves at all.

I've known other systems like this, but it never quite feels the same. But lots of systems have talked about how their "characters" turned out to be alters.

Similarly, video games can be a huge way to express yourselves as individual alters (again, without necessarily realizing it. It's not like I ever knew "I am my own separate Entity and this is me now lol" it's never like that for me). Especially if the game has a lot of customization options for your player character, you might find yourself constantly changing how your character looks to fit your Vibe/mood/etc. in the moment. This is my experience, and I 100% think it pertains to different alters expressing themselves.

I'm all about the small details of alter differences when it comes to figuring out alters. I think my autism is kind of an interesting thing in that regards, and because my DID experience is so.. Subtle? It makes sense why my autism combines with that to be able to notice incredibly small details like that, that I find that many other systems just. Overlook completely and/or don't even realize are things at all. Like, I just notice that many systems don't even realize or know that you can be switching without even knowing it, but without individual alters even knowing they exist at all too. It just feels like/seems like most other systems online just go "I know this is an alter because (distinct overt thing)" but don't realize it goes deeper than that sometimes for a lot of systems actually.

I've definitely had experiences where I felt so distinctly different that it was at least easier to assume I was some kind of alter, but it's still not quite like that, and is not my norm (and usually only happens while high).

For many people with DID, it's really, really subtle and alter switches are happening without the person and without the individual alters even knowing/realizing it. I actually read a research paper recently that really put a lot of my thoughts about this into words, Diagnosis Of Covert And Subtle Forms Of Multiple Personality Disorder Through Dissociative Signs if you want to read it! I've been working on a bigger post that goes over it, and goes over my own additional thoughts and feelings about how to figure out if you have DID through incredibblyyy subtle things like what's described in the paper.

It is from 1988, so some info is outdated, but it was still so, so nice to finally read a paper that really talked about these things. I wonder if I can find similar papers from more recent years ("recent" here doesn't necessarily mean like 2020-present, I consider things from 2010, and/or 2015 onward much more recent than, like... 1988 for example LMASNDKS)

#My posts #Inbox #ActuallyDID #DID System

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catbountry · 9 months

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It has been 22 years since 9/11; I was 15 years old in second period art class when a kid, who'd been running down the hallway, opened the door and announced a plane had hit the World Trade Center, and then ran off down the hall, leaving everyone confused. The principal advised teachers not to turn on televisions for us when this was happening, leaving us in further confusion as he tried, feebly, to carry out the rest of the day. We were dismissed before lunch, before fourth period ended.

There are people who are able to legally drink that weren't born yet when this happened and let me tell you, the actual event was fucked up but what happened afterwards, the decisions made in the wake of this fucking event, are a big reason why everything is so fucked up now.

I remember the color-coded terror threat chart, explained by Tom DeLay, who would become a minor internet meme just because of a weird photo of his face. I remember the phrase "known unknowns" in regards to justifying the invasion of Iraq. The "yellow cake" uranium. Being assured that there were weapons of mass destruction. Shock and awe. Bush in a flight suit in front of that "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" sign. The 2000's was the decade of neo-conservatism and 9/11 was a glorious and golden opportunity to have what America had lost with the fall of the Soviet Union; an ideological enemy that hated us because of how great we were. A perfect vessel to pump patriotic sentiment into the public. And it worked... kind of. Not so much for us younger people, those of us who were teenagers or in our 20's. You have to understand that we were at a point where Jon Stewart, the host of the Daily Show, was considered to be some sort of beacon of truth. We would rather get our news from a satirical news program than the actual news, because Stewart would at least recognize the absurdity of it all. A lot of artists did. Green Day's American Idiot is considered to be their most important album and the whole thing was a protest album. I've always had a soft spot for Radiohead's Hail to the Thief for the same reason. Counterculture was dark and bitter and cynical and brooding, and often incredibly edgy, flying directly in the face of the propaganda about how great America was. Counterculture was more queer, more atheist, dressed in black and online, making memes about 9/11. 9/11, this day that was supposed to be symbolic of the nation's greatest modern-day tragedy since the assassination of John F. Kennedy or the bombing of Pearl Harbor, was being photoshopped to make it look like Hulk Hogan was taking down the Twin Towers through sick wrestling moves. 4chan seems to have since been infected with reactionary brainworms over the course of the 2010's, but in the 2000's, counterculture wasn't conservative. It was making conservatives upset. We saw destruction and mass human death played on repeat over and over and we grew numb to it. Desensitized. We saw the obvious emotional ploy that was being used as an excuse to inflict even more violence and oppression on people on the other side of the globe. We reveled in shock sites, in edgy jokes, in transgression, in scaring the normies.

The young men who fall into the alt-right rabbit hole, who might not even be old enough to remember 9/11... I can't help but wonder what they think of it. Because they still want to be edgelords, but now to own the libs. To work in service of the very same people that we were trying to piss off 20 years ago. Trump spoke on 9/11 about how now, the Trump Tower, which had once been the tallest building in Manhattan, was now back to being the tallest building in Manhattan. He's a completely different breed from Bush, Cheney and company. Completely self-interested. Not even bothering with the pretext of things like conviction or truth. Truthiness incarnate. Embrace it. Feel it. Be it.

I think back to a few years ago, I posted a doge meme with the child doge in front of the Twin Towers, with a joke about how great the future was going to be in the coming decade. I had a teenager try and educate me on how insensitive this was. They hadn't even been born yet and I snapped at them that the meme was a real sentiment, that all of us who were old enough to remember essentially watched our futures explode on television, over and over, in a fireball of jet fuel.

This went stream of consciousness again. It always does. It's hard to summarize 9/11 and its aftermath in a cohesive way because we're still living in the shadow of it. COVID-19 is now the big historical event that traumatized us all that we will have to reckon with for decades to come, and how it affected young people growing up at the time. The new scar on our collective psyche. But 9/11 will continue to be that formative scar. Before that for me, it was Columbine, but only because the aftermath did directly affect me. Before that? Princess Diana's death, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the O.J. Simpson trial, and of all of those, the bombing was perhaps the most actually impactful on us. Before 9/11, it was the largest terrorist attack on the United States, carried out by a far-right racist retaliating against the FBI firebombing a compound because a pedophile cult leader with a bunch of guns refused to give up and used his child brides as human shields. That'd be Waco, by the way.

There was another bombing of the World Trade Center that happened in 1993. It was much smaller, using a bomb inside a van in a parking lot underneath; it's the reason Biggie rapped about "blowing up like the World Trade." Osama bin Laden was also behind that one but that wouldn't be fully realized by us until 1996. It only killed six people. It was considered a failed attempt; it was supposed to take down the entire North Tower. It didn't come out of nowhere. The CIA knew that this was in motion since Clinton was in office, and this ball got rolling because of training the United States offered to resistance fighters in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 80's. I remember the shock I felt first seeing that photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam Hussein's hand, knowing about the Gulf War and living through the War in Iraq. All these puzzle pieces are scattered on the floor and my brain is making connections between all of them as I try and fit them together. I'm looping red string around push pins and asking who Pepe Silvia is, except it's not a conspiracy, it's just me trying to fully grasp this event that happened in my lifetime, before I was an adult but after I'd started paying attention to the news regularly and had developed an interest in politics. Just as I was forming my own political beliefs. 9/11 and its aftermath has informed so much of who I am politically, and what my values are. George W. Bush is my Nixon, and yet, somehow, things got so much more cartoonishly worse as I entered my 30's that I was in denial about it until COVID. Trump's presidency felt like a clown show. How on earth was I supposed to take this man seriously? This motherfucker made the neoconservatives appear restrained and reasonable by comparison, and those motherfuckers are actual war criminals.

I can only really tell people who are too young to remember what this era was like what it was like. It's hard to explain if you weren't there in that moment. We're seeing Y2K nostalgia become a thing, which fits, because of the 20 year minimum big nostalgia cycle, as those whose childhood was 20 years ago are now young adults. And some of those adults were born after 9/11. They never knew the world before it. I knew, but I was a child and couldn't really fully grasp it. The 90's felt very distinct from the 2000's, with it's very open cynicism and even nihilism in the very first years of a society with no Soviet Union.

If only we knew how bad things really would become.

#not fan fiction

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sothasil · 2 months

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Have you ever made or been involved on a large scale, art-related project other than beyond skyrim? Asking because the quality of your art is really honed; it reminds me of professional published material.

Hello and thank you! I have not. I do have years of art school under my belt though, and before that I have been drawing since forever. My studies had me work on projects with professional intent and I've interned in a game studio once. While currently still looking for work, the state of the industries I could work in and my inexperience are such that I have little to no chance of finding work right now. Just keeping on making my fanarts and own stories with as much bravado as I could being paid for the time being

Though I must say, that's a really touching compliment for me. Years ago, someone told me they recognized me as "the sketchy elder scrolls artist" (as in I posted sketches, not shady lol) and while it was a compliment it made me a bit self conscious and since then I've tried only sharing finished, polished pieces on there. And you are confirming that got noticed haha!

I hope one day I'll be working on more big art projects, I really love participating in teamwork and how it lets you achieve crazy goals! If it's online fan projects you'll absolutely see it here, like the zine pieces I sometimes post and my Beyond Skyrim stuff :)

And if you do want to see my sketches...guess I might post that again some day if people like it? Already been considering sharing time lapses because I love seeing them myself. Cheers anon, have a lovely day!

#ask #<333 tysm #i will not post anything related to my RL adventures for my own security though! may the curious be mindful of this #i do post a lot of WIPs on twitter bc it allows you to delete them...now that you can lock RBs guess i could do it here? I don't like when #wips get more shares than the finished paintings x)

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yukidragon · 1 year

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Hi, so I wanted to ask you something since I've seen you upload some of the public access art from Sauces OG twitter. I know that's the way to do it, I'm in the patreon too and that stuff is protected. What I wanted to ask was if you had some of the OG Gallagher mansion stuff? Like the concepts etc. Pretty much all of it got deleted and I tried looking some up to remind myself of the project and not much is still around. You can privately answer or make a post, it's up to you.

Yup, that’s the way to do it. Don’t repost the privately posted patreon stuff anywhere, and make sure to always credit Sauce for their publicly posted art when shared. They’re kind enough to allow me to use pictures in my headcanon rambles and such, and I want to always give them the credit and praise they deserve for such wonderful art and creative stories and characters for us to play with. They’re awesome and deserve our support.

If you want content to see the project is still going strong, then you’re in luck! There was a recent update on the project over on the SnaccPop Studios’ twitter. Check out this beautiful background. Though, even more enticing is the voiced teaser of the project in this post. We finally get to publicly hear what Elias sounds like and get a glimpse into what the choices might be for the game.

Of course, there are more teasers up on the SnaccPop Studios Patreon, including nudes of Elias. There were some nudes posted by Sauce publicly on their now gone twitter, but tumblr might not take them as artistic nudity and might nuke my blog if I post any images that are too spicy.

That said, there have been brand new public posts with Elias’ fully clothed sprites over on twitter. Check them out here, and maybe say a kind word to the lovely artist while you’re there~

As for the older publicly posted art, there were a couple shown in a previous ask over here. Sadly, I don’t have the very first original concept art where Elias is putting a necklace on his living bride. I do, however, have a picture of big boy Elias carrying his new “bride” but he’s a bit too excited for me to share the picture here in its entirety.

Sadly, I can’t show the rest of this beautiful piece of art by Sauce to give you a better sense of just how big Elias is compared to Y/N (in more than one sense of the word), but the player stand in character here is also naked, and I’m not gonna roll the dice on whether gray anon booty will result in me being smote by the tumblr gods. Such a shame too.

You know, last time I posted a cropped spicy picture of Sauce’s, I wrote a steamy little snippet to go with it. To make up for the lack of the concept art and cropping this picture, how about I write a little Adults Only bit of spice here too? I don’t have my MC for the Groom of Gallagher Mansion solidified in my mind yet (though I do have a few thoughts) so maybe this would be a good excuse to expand my writing skills by trying to tackle some gender-neutral reader-insert fiction for once. I hope you enjoy it.

...

Elias was warmer than I expected for someone who had been dead for at least 100 years. I felt the heat rise where his bare skin touched mine. I knew that I was screwed when I agreed to tie the knot with the lonely ghost of Gallagher Mansion, but I didn’t really expect that literally.

For crying out loud, how could a ghost get a hardon, especially one so big?

Despite how crazy the situation was and how fast we rushed into this marriage, I couldn’t help but feel excited when he brushed up against my thighs as Elias scooped me up into his arms, all hot, hard, and faintly twitching when our skin made contact. He bit his lower lip in a failed attempt to stifle the noise he made that was suspiciously like a whimper.

Damn it. Why did Elias have to be so cute?

Elias lifted me just a little higher so that he could recover from the contact, taking a moment to… catch his breath? Or at least imitate it. Old habits die hard, even in death, it seemed.

I didn’t have much time to dwell on it, as I was caught by the charming smile he sent my way as he spoke my name with so much adoration that my racing heart sped up just a little more. “My dearest beloved, I can’t tell you how excited I am to finally consummate our love.”

“I can tell,” I said, and immediately I was rewarded by the darkening blue hue of his cheeks that I knew by now was a blush. I smirked as he sputtered for a moment, flustered. It was so fun to tease someone as innocent as him.

Elias cleared his throat as he composed himself. “Yes, well… how can I not be when my beloved consort is as beautiful and alluring as you?” He then smiled, almost devilishly, as I felt the fire in his smoldering gaze blaze through my already burning core. His voice dipped lower, growing in confidence as he leaned in closer. “And I can tell that you’re excited as well, beloved.”

My face burned hotter at that. I shouldn’t have been surprised that Elias noticed, considering every inch of me was laid bare before him, but I was still caught off-guard by his increasing boldness.

I was excited, despite how crazy the situation was. I wanted what was coming next, but it was impossible not to feel nervous, especially when I was expected to take something so big inside me. Could I even handle it? Would he even fit?

Still… a part of me really wanted to find out.

“Please be gentle with me,” I said softly. Sure, it was a cheesy old line, but it felt fitting right now.

“Of course, dearest!” Elias said, almost taken aback that I would assume anything less. “I would never do anything to bring you discomfort in any way.” A bit of his shyness slipped back in as he glanced away. “I might not have… experience in such…�� He paused to clear his throat. “…Intimacy, but I promise that I will take care of all of your needs tonight and more.” He lowered his voice in a husky whisper as his burning gaze met mine. “All you need to do is ask, and I’ll gladly fulfill your every desire.”

The promise sent a shiver up my spine, and the way his fingers began to teasingly stroke my thigh coaxed me to spread my legs just a bit despite the precarious position I was in. I should have been off balance by the way he held me, but I supposed he was using his ghostly powers to levitate me more than he was using those muscular arms of his to hold me up.

Fuck it, I was in too deep already, so I might as well embrace this whole marriage deal and let my husband fill me even deeper.

Throwing away the last of my reservations, I grabbed his cheeks and pulled Elias in for a kiss. I think I displaced his head from his neck in my eagerness, and he jolted briefly, startled, but that melted away quickly as he returned the kiss with a passion I never felt with anyone alive. The taste of him was hot and exciting, drawing me in and making me hunger for more as he held me close.

As I ran my hands along my new husband’s muscular chest, I felt Elias start to explore me as well. I had to end the kiss to let out a gasp as his wandering fingers made their way between my legs and found my entrance.

I clung to him tightly as Elias gave me another devilish smirk, the touch of his fingers light and teasing as he circled my opening. I bit my lower lip to stifle a moan that slipped free as he slid a finger smoothly inside. I couldn’t help but squirm as he touched me so deeply, soon sliding in another finger just as easily.

Fuck. For someone inexperienced, Elias was really good with his hands.

“Oh my dearest,” Elias cooed as he skillfully played with my body like a fine instrument. “My beloved, my sweetest, my only love… You look so beautiful right now, writhing in my arms and making such cute sounds.” He kissed my cheek, then again, marking a trail to my ear. He spoke my name against my ear in a way that sent a shiver down my spine as his… breath(?) caressed me there. “Won’t you use that melodious voice of yours to say my name? Please, my dearest?”

“E-Elias,” I panted, and was immediately rewarded as he pumped his fingers in deeper, sending a jolt of pleasure through me. “Oh fuck, Elias!”

I tried to buck into his hand, but the position made it impossible for me to move much. I was at my husband’s mercy, helpless to do anything but writhe in his grasp and hold onto Elias tightly as he played a concert with my body, coaxing his name out of me again and again. He cooed my name in return as he spoke sweet words of love and praise as he drove me closer and closer to the edge until he sent me over it, screaming his name.

I may have been screwed by marrying Elias, but right now there was nothing I wanted more.

@channydraws @earthgirlaesthetic @sai-of-the-7-stars @cheriihoney @illary-kore @okamiliqueur

#The Groom of Gallagher Mansion #TheGroomOfGallagherMansion #Elias Gallagher #Reader-Insert #x Reader #Ask #Sauce-y Art #My Writing

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