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andypandysounds · 2 years

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D9 and Unit E

My first ep is going to be 4 songs long, and I have been recording them with Reuben, who will be producing, mixing and mastering them. We have been recording over the past 4 weeks and it’s gone amazingly well.

On the first day of recording 17/03/22 I recorded the rhythm guitar for ‘Ground Floor’ which took a couple takes to get right, I found having a click far too straight in my ears so I got Reuben to make a hihat and kick track with the feel of the song. We recorded 2 takes on the clean pickup and 1 on the mini humbucker pickups. We also recorded demo vocals just to give Reuben ideas. I also experimented with the bassline a bit and finished writing it.

On 18/03/22 I recorded the piano for the prechorus of ‘Ground Floor’. I wrote the piano in the original key of the song however I had put a capo on the guitar so I had to relearn it a tone up before we recorded. This was a good challenge for me because there were a lot of extensions and both hands were playing different chord shapes, but we managed to record after about 7 takes.

After this recording session, Reuben got covid so he had to isolate for 10 days, luckily though, this meant that we were both really keen to get stuff done. On 30/03/22 we came in with Jamie to record the bass, over the time Reuben was off, I had gone through the bassline with Jamie and he could play it with every little detail. I took a few takes to get it right and for me to nitpick but then we had it. I originally wanted a softer tone for the bass but after hearing the slight saturation on his Rickenbacker when he uses a pick I was fond of that as I feel it brings more energy to the song.

After the bass was recorded, Reuben and I went into The Clash room to record the piano for the joy that slowly died. For the whole song apart from the end, I play arpeggiated chords in straight eighth notes which is very challenging to do perfectly in time, so we plugged a MIDI cable into the electric piano then used a VST Reuben has that uses loads of samples from grand pianos, even down to pedal on and off. Some people would call this cheating, I call it working around your skillset. It was really handy cause all it took was one take, and it was super easy to quantise.

On 31/03/22 Reuben and I kept working on ‘The Joy that Slowly Died’. After listening to the MIDI the only problem I had was that I wanted a few ritardandos within the piece. I thought this wasn’t possible with MIDI however Reuben pulled a trick out his sleeve that he’d never used before. It’s to actually automate the tempo of a song to make it gradually slow down and it works in the same way that you’d automate pitch. This meant that we could curve the tempo automation line to make it slow down at an increasing rate.

After this, Reuben and I brainstormed about what else we would want in the production of the song. I landed on a timpani, (not literally) a ride, and a gong (very low in the mix) I chose these because I wanted big orchestral sounds as the song has a lot of atmosphere to it. I also thought about adding strings but I decided against it in the end.

The next day, 01/04/22 we brainstormed a bit more and I decided I wanted a mellotron flute sound to pay homage to The Beatles. I really liked the sound of this as it added a lot of texture and feeling, however I didn’t put it too high in the mix and I only used it to outline each chord. It sounds really pretty in the song and quite melancholic, which is the mood of the song. I only put it in the chorus. After the final chorus, there is a coda to summarise the whole song. Before the coda comes in, I decided to make the mellotron fade out and pitch down slightly at the end of the chorus because it added a really unusual, dream-like falling feeling.

On 06/03/22 we recorded the final vocals for ‘Ground Floor’. Sometimes I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to recording vocals, so recording this took a while. If I have to sing sustained notes, my voice sometimes wobbles a bit, or sometimes I’ll annunciate words oddly. Because of this, we recorded a few full takes, then went a section at a time. After this Reuben chopped together the takes that sounded best for each line. Reuben also suggested I do chorus takes for the left and right but sing more softly and whispery. This was a really beautiful effect and made it sound very full.

Next we were onto the harmonies. I brainstormed a bit and improvised along to the track, referring to the chords on piano as I went along. I find that accentuating the most important or meaningful notes in the chord is a good way to find harmonies. For example, in the chorus I play an E-5 so a good note to sing in a harmony is the flat 5. We slowly went through the song and I would add more and more. Eventually we had a very rich sound with a lot going on.

On 11/04/22, we recorded the piano for ‘I’d give you the world, but you’d still deserve more’. We recorded it as MIDI. Because the song changes metre a bit, I asked Reuben to just give me a one beat click then we recorded to that. It was quite simple however there are two points where it slows down. We were going to try to automate the tempo like we did on ‘The Joy that Slowly Died’, however Reuben realised that it pretty much comes back on beat after it slows down anyway, so I just played it slower ignoring the metronome, then would return back to the beat. After recording that we just went through the midi bit by bit. I found myself nitpicking every tiny timing imperfection, but then I came to realise it sounded better with the imperfections as it sounded human and real.

On 23/04/22 I came into college to write and practice the drums for ‘I’d Give You the World, But You’d Still Deserve More’. I found the drums really challenging to write because I hadn’t played in a while, and there’s a meter change in it. I originally thought of the song as 3/4 with a change to 2/4 for one bar every now and then. I then realised I was playing the drum beat as if it was a slow 6/8, so I had to adjust my thinking and play 6/8 to 5/8 which worked a lot better and sounded much nicer. It was really fun playing drums and I’ve gotten a bit better even though I haven’t played in a while. Reuben used 13 mics for the drums which I was very impressed by. We did quite a few full takes and a lot for the coda as it was quite difficult, but in the end, it sounded really good!

On 23/04/22 Reuben and I recorded the bass for ‘I’d give you the world, but you’d still deserve more’. I hadn’t fully figured out the bassline when I went to record but I slowly figured it out. We recorded for quite a while and I improvised a nice section in the coda where I double the vocal line with the bass and it sounded really cool. I used a very swung rhythm and it ended up sounding really nice. I also alternate between octaves in the prechorus in a swung rhythm which gives the piece a nice feeling of dynamics and a pushing rhythm. We finished recording around 2:30 and Reuben chopped the sections that sounded best.

On 25/04/22 we recorded the backing vocals for ‘I’d give you the world, but you’d still deserve more’. These backing vocals were the hardest ones to do in the EP. The chord changes are quite odd and it was hard to follow them while singing. We had to brainstorm for quite a while but figured it out after a bit. I wanted to do something interesting with the harmonies so I followed the scale a bit more freely rather than completely moving with the chords. After we recorded they sounded really pretty together and I was very happy with how it turned out.

Overall I loved the whole time recording this album. I found it a challenge at points such as playing the drums and writing parts for everything, however I think I overcame those challenges and created songs I’m really happy with. Reuben was a really great person to work with as he encouraged me to try my best and always made an effort to listen to exactly what I suggested. He also made really great suggestions, worked with me when I had confusing ideas, and produced the songs amazingly. I think I’m hindsight I would’ve managed my time a lot better as I put a lot of focus and love into this project and less so my other one. Also we didn’t manage to do ‘In Time’, one of the songs on the EP, but we’re gonna work on it after the project.

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inactive-luv · 3 years

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The Absence of Rain

"the absence of rain is when good things are most present."

the absence of rain

Summary: Y/N Y/L/N meets a stranger in the rain

Pairing: (Spencer Reid x Autistic!Fem!Reader)

Details: I hope I did my best to convey proper Autistic traits; my ASD is not the same as the readers' character, the same way no one's ASD or Autism is the same.

Category: fluff

Word Count: 1.7k

Warnings: Autism

A/N: I decided to make the reader Autistic. This was originally just a short story I made in English lit class my senior year, but upon rereading it, I decided to use the same prompt to write this fic

...

It's two in the morning. The Virginian rain drizzles as it has for the past two days without stop. She loved the rain, even if it was a sign of sadness or sorrow. She misunderstood it when people said the absence of rain was when good things happened. Until tonight when the theory was proven very, very true.

...

She walked from her job down to the bus stop at two in the morning when it started to rain harder than the usual drizzle from earlier in the evening. She spent time analyzing the splashing of droplets, echoing in her head after a long day. Her head raised to watch the water slap against the glass roof above her.

She stayed like that for a while, soothed after a stressful day by the calming aspects of the rain. She was watching and waiting, sitting in her bus stop seat. Her hands folded in each other to scratch lightly at her fingers, bundles of nerves across her skin aching to be touched.

She wants to stay here forever and quietly wishes for a late bus before her peace is interrupted when she sees a dark figure move across the station bridge. Her face turns puzzled, trying to analyze the new person in her space.

He looks tall from a distance. That's the first thing she notices about his body before she investigates further. She thinks about his satchel bag and his converse shoes, how he holds his umbrella in his right hand, and a book in his left. She can't make out the cover, but it must be pretty slim from how fast he blows through it.

She thinks about what would happen if he would walk over to her. She's seen him only a few seconds, yet she feels drawn or compelled to wonder further. He steps to his side, adjusting his stance, and his face falls under the light of the bus station for a second.

His jawline, eyes, lips, and everything about him leaps out immediately, catching even more of her attention. He must have felt her gaze over him, like an ocean wave crashing over a beach. A certain persistence to discover makes her eyes stay glued to the dark figure.

He swallows his lips before turning to see if she was maybe looking at someone else. He expected it. He expected not to be expected of. So when her eyes stayed fixated on him, he was a little curious. And during this time, all she can think about is if he came closer. Suppose he could turn to her so she could find the thing. The thing about him that made him so compelling.

And he does it. He starts to walk over with his book in one hand and the other in his pocket. The sounds she once found comfort in faded as he walked up to her, and everything turned to silence. The soft patter of the rain, once saturated and abstract ringing through her head, turned pale and hushed.

He watches how her eyes still stay attached to him, almost obsessively. A silence fills the space between the two before he breaks it so haphazardly, she can't help but shudder a little.

"Excuse me?" So she turns her head and is met looking up to the dark figure. He's much taller now that he's closer to her, and his hair is long. Long hair so obviously stretched under the rain, with soft curls ever so innocently framing his face.

He doesn't know what to say after that. He couldn't make out exactly who she was or who he was even expecting but, she was beautiful. He finally took notice of the more calming features about her rather than the creepy stare. He saw how her skin glowed, and her lips parted slightly as if in deep thought.

During this time, he notices the silence forming again, and he breaks it once more before he can hear her voice. "Uhm, can I sit?" He murmurs as an excuse he perhaps too eagerly came up with, taking notice of her puzzled expression. "Yeah, here, let me move my bag." Her voice dribbles out of her mouth, laced with an extensive kindness that intrigued him incredibly.

He mumbles a small 'thank you' back while he undoes his umbrella and takes a seat next to her. His head is facing the street now, but he still feels her eyes on him. It takes him a minute to swallow the lump in his throat before he turns to her again, craning his neck to meet her eye-line looking up at him.

His eyes meeting hers makes her pause for a moment before hastily averting her attention from him to anything in her way. The grass peeking through the concrete or the way the rain filled the puddles on the sidewalk.

And just like that, the silence, as well as it faded out, fades back in. The soft sounds of rain climb back through her ears to fill her brain again. Easily and slowly, she listens to the buckling of the stranger's bag, as if he was trying to make an as little sound as possible not to annoy her. But the sound doesn't upset her. It calms her.

It intertwines with the rain in a calming way. Everything blends smoother than she expected. She expected sounds to scare her as much as they usually do meeting a stranger, but the sound of his skin against the leather, and the pitter-patter of the rain, calm her.

So she's at peace when he breaks the silence once more. Although now, his words don't break the silence as much as they seep into the silent sounds, merging to form a tranquil melody. She realizes she could get used to his voice.

"Where are you coming from at," He looks down at his watch, over his sleeve for convenience, a trick she notices because she does the same thing, "two in the morning?" His tone acts as if he made most of his living in the night; the calmness, even in such an abundant presence of darkness, leads her to believe he'd done this a million times.

"I lost track of time in the library." He smiles again, "I thought only I did that." She smiles back at him and feels her cheeks start to swell and pink. He listens to her words; there weren't any libraries open this late at night he of all people should have known that.

He contemplates asking; further, he really wants to. He wants to listen to her voice again and again over and over because, unlike anyone else's, he thinks he'll never get tired of it. But he doesn't pester; he waits, hoping she'd further the conversation herself.

Little does he know she's thinking the same thing. She was thinking about every question he's asked and every question she wants to ask him. But he was a stranger even if she hoped he wasn't for much longer.

It takes a lot of strength for her to continue the conversation but noticing his peaked interest, her tone of voice heightens, "I was working at the university, that's why I was out so late." His questions are answered and followed by more, "Really? What do you do?" he wanted to know everything about the mysterious girl at the bus stop, and she was willing to answer every one of his asks.

"I help my friend who's a professor there, but I'm a medical examiner." His eyes light up, "Really? That's cool." He tries to keep his voice calm, but it trickles out so quickly, and this time she can catch his investment, and it gets easier to talk to him as if she'd known him a hundred years.

"I look at dead bodies all day. You think that's cool?"

"Well, to be fair, so do I,"

"Oh! Are you a serial killer?" Her best shot at sarcasm was successful, he laughed.

Like a modern orchestra erupting into its triumphant climax, the rain, the air, his laugh soothes her ears until she's blessing the world for her ability to hear. It's a kind of sound that reverberates in her mind and stores itself to her happiest emotion.

A type of sound she wants to hear for the rest of her life, but sadly, all of this excitement at once becomes too much too quickly, and her smile slightly fades while his head is turned.

She didn't have too much trouble with sound, so her anxiety heightened slightly when she became overwhelmed. A type of overwhelmed he could sense before he tried to lighten her mood. "No, I just catch them," He turns to reach into his bag, swiftly pulling his federal badge out and showing it to her.

She reads his badge quietly, "Doctor Spencer Reid." That's the first time she learns his name. A doctor working with the FBI. She reciprocates his actions and reaches into her pocket to pull out a card. On it, her name and medical license. "Doctor Y/N Y/L/N." A doctor working in a hospital.

"I'm in medicine. What about you?" Spencer clears his throat and holds up three fingers in one hand, clutching the card tightly in his other. "Chemistry, mathematics, and engineering." Her eyes widen, and her mouth forms a small 'o'; he just twists his face as if he was used to that answer.

And then, abnormally sudden, the rain started to let up, proving good things do happen in the absence of rain.

...

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steve0discusses · 3 years

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Yugioh Season Zero: The Yo-Yo Crimes of Jounouchi Pt 1

It’s been a while since I visited the many times Yugi should have gone to jail, AKA season Zero, and I’m excited to visit it again.

If you just got here, this is Season Zero, which is very different vibe and a different direction plotwise than the other seasons and you can read the season zero recaps from the start in chrono order here: https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yuugi%20muto/chrono

So be warned, this is a 90′s anime, and it will do 90′s anime things, and I expect y’all reading this aren’t like 12.

Like I said in an earlier post, I wrote this out fully when I was going through the symptoms from my second dose--which PS, is worth it--but those symptoms knocked me out for 10 days. I was kind of a space cadet, and yo, I made some mistakes. Including writing this post out in full and then not clicking “save” on this post and then not realizing I had done that until several days later.

So long story short, I don’t remember what I originally wrote here, but lets all assume it was weird, and didn’t make sense and wasn’t funny. We’ll just assume this was for the best that it was deleted forever.

So this episode is about 2 things: Yo-yos and Jounouchi. Both get used as a tool for violence, and both need to get just a little bit cursed by Yugi to scale it the hell back. So, understandably, we start off this episode with Jounouchi, who has eagerly identified with this off brand yo-yo he apparently got out of a dumpster for being just a huge ass defect.

(more Yo-Yo crimes under the cut)

I see you dodging copyright infringement, Yugioh. Eireboy.

Also whenever I read “Eireboy” I do it in my mind in the same pacing and vocal tones that Pegasus uses to say “Kaiba boy.” Something about it’s conjunction to Yugioh, I see anything with “boy” at the end of it, and it’s voiced by a weird guy with one eye.

So I wrote these caps under the influence of my second dose, just assuming y’all understand the life I lived, but I realized writing this episode...traveling bands of yo-yo performers that go to your school and shill yo-yos with yo-yo shows in the hopes that it will get you so obsessed with yo-yos that you will not join a gang and do drugs and have sex may be just an American thing.

So when I saw a yo-yo episode I was like “Tight! Clearly, the yo-yo clowns have come to town!” and I assumed everyone in this class would be draped in yo-yos, because I just assumed that at some point at School you will get MAD OBSESSED with yo-yos for about 2 weeks.

But in this episode, everyone was like “Jounouchi, why are you playing with a random yo-yo?” and it didn’t occur to me until typing this out just now: only Jounouchi is doing this. He did this unprompted, without the encouragement of a bunch of middle aged performers doing tricks to techno music.

So instead, I have to think of Jounouchi as Ralphie in this scenario, and he just got a official Red Ryder, carbine action, 200-shot, range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time for Christmas, but he’s gonna shoot his eye out.

Because yo-yos in this episode are basically guns.

...Kind of like a duel deck was also just a gun...

...or the wands in Harry Potter...

...which honestly...I’ve probably said this before but where I’m from, we just use straight up guns in these elaborate analogies because we freakin have to make the point crystal clear. The moment Ralphie finally got his hands on a bb-gun, he very nearly shot his eye out and broke his glasses. And that scene will haunt me until my dying day...

...but fine, we can use yo-yos, I guess it works, although to me, yo-yo’s are just teachers hoping you’ll become such a dork that no gang will accept you (and then in this universe, it does the opposite? So freakin weird).

The beginning of this episode is Jounouchi trying do his best to impress with his skills, but in actuality, getting very close to clubbing Anzu with a yo-yo. And, while Anzu is the strongest person in Yugioh in the later seasons, I feel like Season Zero Anzu is another level. It’s a serious tempt of fate that Jounouchi is doing, so Honda wisely cuts him off from doing any more of that so she won’t end up strangling yet another person in broad daylight in the middle of school.

Remember your yo-yo safety, children.

Straight up, Honda’s version of yo-yo safety is to just Never Use a Yo-Yo and that’s the most gun safety thing ever that they’ve slipped into this Yugioh Episode. I almost expected Yuugi to pull a “well, actually, I use a hunting yo-yo to get enough venison to feed my family.” But youknow, he lives in a city, so while Yugioh is pretty weird and Yuugi has to worry about a lot of things--he doesn’t have to worry about that.

This is actually foreshadowing, which I only realized in hind sight, mostly because I just can’t associate a Yo-yo with crime. Joey knowing how to use a yo-yo was foreshadowing that he was absolutely part of this gang in a past life.

Yeah that one went completely over my head the first time and the second time and it really wasn’t until just now that I finally caught it. Hoo boy, sometimes I wonder why y’all let me analyze this show.

Jounouchi decides to confront the yo-yo bandits and everyone else is like “Silly Jounouchi, he’s not gonna do that. That would be stupid.” And...in S0, they don’t know him well enough yet to know that he really is that much of a well meaning dumbass.

I think a S1-5 Yugi would have been sprinting out the door to keep Joey from killing himself (again), but Season Zero Yuugi had hope that Jounouchi would just naturally tucker out and fall asleep or something.

And he was so wrong.

Anzu’s “New Tricks” line was from the dub itself and man that’s a good line. I love Anzu’s sass in Zero.

So, Honda decides to help them find Jounouchi so all of them together could give Jounouchi an intervention for skipping school. This is the same Honda that once skipped school to babysit a tomagachi and said it was because of “Maternity leave,” but don’t worry about the hypocrisy, because from this episode we learned that Jounouchi needs a very short leash.

So this episode is a great Jounouchi episode to explain stuff that still hasn’t been explained in 5 seasons of Yugioh. In S1-5, we don’t get much about his home life other than his Mom left and his Sister lives far away and is like sickly as hell. We know nothing else. But this is the episode where we finally get to find out why Yuugi and his Grandfather decided to basically adopt him from S1 onward.

Yugioh is tackling some pretty heavy territory, but I respect the show for not trying to magically change Jounouchi’s parents like they did to Dartz. Instead, the crew decide to reach out and try to find their friend who clearly didn’t go home last night (and won’t be going back for a while), by checking every alleyway in Domino.

Fun fact Yuugi drops this episode, Domino is one of the biggest cities on Earth. This makes the Battle City Tournament even more crazy when you realize Kaiba shut down several blocks but, it also makes a tiny bit more sense how we have so many Millennium items in one place. (Yet...it still doesn’t explain Bakura and Joey’s accent.) And, I guess if your city is just extra large, you get an extra large warehouse district, too.

Speaking of, they eventually find Jounouchi at his new (but also old) crime antics mugging some random stranger next to this Game store that I just realized was cropped so it looks like it says “GANG.”

Say hello to our crime clown. He’s sort of like a discount joker, and that beanie is...man it is green.

I forget this green exists sometimes, but Season Zero has it as one of their prime colors. Good ol’ Retro Kaiba green.

I’m a little tempted to swatch Season Zero a bit and figure out their full color scheme--it’s really saturated, which is interesting when you compare it to the later seasons which are a lot more muted since...the 00′s were like that, they greyed a lot of colors out. But I’ll do it later if I do, maybe another post for another day.

Jounouchi and Honda, before they moved to the school with Yuugi in it, used to go to the same school and up until now I just assumed they were close friends. But apparently they were a lot more distant than that. I’m sure they met up several times as Jounouchi destroyed stuff and Honda came along in his volunteer janitor outfit to put the stuff the hell back, and maybe that’s how they got to know eachother better?

But basically, Jounouchi was the freakin worst, and Jounouchi’s best friend was Hirotani--this 45 year old 15 year old with the blue pony and turquoise fade--and Honda has SO MUCH hot goss to say about it.

I really get the gist that Honda may not have liked anyone else at his old school, like at all. Like maybe Honda likes cleaning up trash so much because his school was just trash top to bottom.

As is tradition, Yuugi got his tar beat in by Hirotani. Another concussion to add to his list of issues to tell his future therapist that lives in that puzzle he wears around his neck.

I still expect him to do a double cross, but it seems they wanted to keep it a relatable and more realistic fall-out, where Jounouchi has just bounced on them without even a goodbye. He and his Dad had a bad fight, and Jounouchi was like “well so long to all of this and everyone that has anything to do with it.”

In later seasons, Joey is the one trying to save other people. He’s saving his Sister, he’s saving Mai, he’s saving Yugi, but in this season Jounouchi’s friends had to save Jounouchi from himself a few times now.

I like this depth to his character, I’ll be honest. I can understand why S1-5 don’t touch on it, and I don’t think it’s because they didn’t want to have an abusive Dad storyline, because they did that several times over with Seto Kaiba (man the Dad situation in Yugioh is DIRE.) Instead they probably just felt like Season Zero already did it, so why do it again?

It’s just a shame that it wasn’t talked about in the other seasons. Joey makes a lot more sense to me now because we get to see why Jounouchi is so hard set on saving people. S4 Mai Valentine, who ditched everyone and joined a gang? That’s basically a Joey move, and that was why Joey Wheeler was all over that.

Really would have added a lot to that particular arc if the show...actually talked about Joey’s history at all rather than assume I would have watched something that was never released in the States. Instead...it just looked a lot like he had only romantic motivations, which may not have been what they were going for.

Speaking of romantic, check out this sunset. Like the sun is exploding for some reason--just a wild sunset you only see for a still frame before a commercial break.

As Joey, youknow, takes on an entire rival gang single-handedly.

Hey guys, I lived near a pretty big city most of my life and I have been on a roof...once. Just the one time when I was doing an internship in SF with a painter and we needed to take a reference photo of his painting for a gallery (and it was hella sketch, and we weren’t exactly allowed up there). Who are all these people giving teens Roof Access? It’s so hard to get! Even if you live in an apartment of a tall building, I can count on zero of my fingers the amount of times I was allowed on that roof. But TV shows and movies--they freakin love roof gardens and roof hangouts and roof fights.

Am I missing out?? How did y’all get on the ROOF? I know I’m on S5 of Yugioh now and I have seen a lot of roof stuff, but like...is this normal for everyone else? I know there’s schools that have roof sport--that’s common in the city everywhere--but that’s like...specialized roofs with 30 ft chainlink fencing and really good supports to your body doesn’t fall straight through it when you jump too much. The hell is using their normal ass roof?

This gang should have their legs swinging halfway into the floor below them, is all I’m saying, if my roof couldn’t handle our solar heating, then a normal ass roof cannot support a gang fight.

But it does look really, really cool.

Anyway, Anzu does some offscreen snooping and finds out where the crime hangs out, and suggests that we step right into crime zone and just yank Jounouchi out of there. Which is something you would only do and say if you were Anzu and cannot fear death.

If it were Jay’s it would be with an ‘s. That’s how you do a plural Jay. But it’s the 90′s, so we put a “z” on the end of everything that should have been an “s” and that’s how you get the...

I mean, thank you, dubbers, for not saying “Jizz” but for reals...that be Jizz.

Please don’t flag me, Tumblr. (which, PS, I think they turned off the flagbot, Tumblr hasn’t flagged me in forever and I’m so thankful. Mods are asleep, we can talk about anime again)

So even though Honda decided that he was fed up with Jounouchi and didn’t want to save his ass, he decided to give it another go but complete with some new sash. He also did this without telling any of the others, who just kinda spectated him for a little while.

Honestly, if they weren’t laughing at him, I wouldn’t have known that this sash was any weirder than any of his other sashes. I don’t know really know what a school uniform should look like. It’s a shame, I feel like this series has a lot of jokes and puns probably soaring right over my head.

A little bit embarrased he was caught being vulnerable, Honda decides to give us a little more context to why he ever decided to give Jounouchi the time of day in the first place.

They had PE class once, and Honda apparently loves the hell out of PE. Jounouchi ran really fast in a straight line that one time, and that is why he’s trustworthy friend material. He just needs to stop joining gangs, and he’ll be solid.

I have no idea if the fandub put that in there or if that was native to the show, but Miho legit stans Honda/Jounouchi and acts as if she’s off to write some fanfiction about it. Honestly if she did, it would make her so much more interesting of a character.

And so, until next time, we shall have to wait and see exactly what Yami Yuugi is going to do with a freakin Yo-yo and I’m sure it’s all sorts of real effed up. Excited to get there, honestly. A shame it had to happen on the part that isn’t dubbed yet, but I’ve done these subbed before, it’ll be fine!

#Season Zero #Yuugi Muto #Jounouchi #Honda #Anzu #yo-yo #Jounouchi joins a gang #Gotta go save Jounouchi's ass I guess #Miho #she was here too I guess #Just a great Jounouchi episode for the Jounouchi stans out there

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elijahs-wife · 4 years

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Why Me?

Requested by @hellotvshowtrash - Hi Tehani ❤️ could you do a fic with the prompt “if I could change one thing, it would be proposing to the wrong man/woman.” ? OR A FLUFFY ONE “falling in love with you was instinctive. Like I was born to do it.” Thank you! 💓

A/N: TYSM ASHLEE!! 💗 I FINALLY FINISHED IT! I've been crazy busy these days which is why it took so long. Like/reblog if you enjoyed reading please <3

Pairing: Elijah Mikaelson x Female! Reader

Word Count: 3220+

Warnings: none, really.

(not my gif!)

Writing a thesis should not be this hard, Y/N fumed inwardly, her fingernails mindlessly tapping at her laptop keyboard without actually typing anything. It was almost 1 am, since she had decided to stay up a little later than usual to try and get started on her paper, but she had no luck yet – all she had done so far was reorganise her desk. Her phone starting ringing from the nightstand where she had left it in the hopes that it would allow her to work better, so she stood up to go and answer it, wondering who it could be but grateful for an excuse to take a break from her attempts at working. Despite her frustration at the disaster on top of her desk, she smiled reflexively when she saw the name flashing on her screen, and swiftly swiped her finger across it. "Hey", she answered, her agitation clear.

"Hello, my love", Elijah said. The smooth sound of his voice would never fail to calm her down – already her breathing had deepened and slowed, and her shoulders relaxed. "Thesis still giving you trouble?"

"Like you wouldn't believe", she grumbled, plopping herself down on the edge of the bed. "I've been at this for so long now, but I just can't make any progress, it's like my brain has totally shut down." She heaved a weary sigh, falling back onto the soft duvet.

Her heart fluttered when she heard his quiet laugh. "Perhaps the issue is that you're putting far too much pressure on yourself. Maybe you simply need... a distraction. To take your mind off of all this work for a little while", he suggested, trying to sound innocent, but she could practically hear him smirk through the phone.

"Oh yeah?" she said, eyebrows raised but laughing nonetheless, "and what kind of distraction would you advise?"

"I was thinking dinner with me tomorrow night, followed by some music. Camille tells me there will be a band performing at Rousseau's and they're supposed to be quite talented. So, what do you say?"

"Food, alcohol and music? Like I'd say no to that", Y/N said, giggling. "I would love to go out with you, Elijah."

"I'll pick you up at 7.30 then", he replied, sounding pleased. "Goodnight, Y/N. I love you."

She almost jumped up and down in excitement but then reminded herself she was no longer a teenager. "I love you too. Goodnight", she said, disconnecting the call. She clutched her phone to her heart, a smile lighting up her entire face. Dating an Original vampire was challenging, and it was moments like these that she really cherished – moments where they didn't have to be anything more than a regular couple. Deciding to abandon her paper for the night, she rolled over her bed to reach the light switch and tucked herself in, before quickly floating into a good night's sleep.

- The next day -

Elijah pulled out his phone when he felt it ping and vibrate inside his pocket. The corner of his mouth curved upwards slightly when he saw that it was a message from Y/N. Hey! Got off work early. Can't wait for our date tonight! Xx

Me too, he typed in response. See you at 7.30 sharp. She sent a kissy face emoji back at him which only made his smile widen. Through all of the horrors that his own mother, Esther, had inflicted on him and his siblings the past few months, Y/N had remained his anchor to humanity, to the world. He often felt guilty that she was constantly pulled into whatever crisis he and his family were hit with, but she was strong – she knew how to handle herself and how to handle him too. But for one night, he was eager to show her that they could still have some sense of normalcy, that they could act the way that ordinary people do. She deserved that much.

"Well well, isn't this quite the miracle. Elijah smiles! Someone ought to alert the press", he heard behind him. He spun around and glared at his little brother who was standing in the doorway.

"What is it that has the noble stag running wild? Let me guess, the lovely Y/N", he said with a devious smirk.

"Not that it's any of your business, Niklaus, but yes. Y/N and I will be going out tonight, so kindly refrain from calling me. I will not take kindly to any intrusions that are not of dire nature." he quipped.

Klaus raised his hands in mock surrender. "Don't worry, brother. I'll hold the fort down here. Best of luck with your uh, date", he said as he walked away, his tone more sarcastic than genuine in typical Klaus fashion.

----

It was just past five o'clock when Y/N returned to her apartment after work, since she had been let off early. She was already in high spirits after a productive day at the office, and psyched for her date. She decided to start getting herself ready, since she wanted to look her best – not that Elijah really minded if she wasn't always one hundred percent dolled up, but sometimes Y/N could hardly believe that someone like him could love someone as ordinary as her. Despite the hardships that came with being involved in his world, he was the most extraordinary man she had ever known, and it wasn't very hard to feel unworthy. So the effort she would be putting into making herself look good was more for herself than for him.

After a long, hot shower and blow drying her hair to near perfection (she could never get the back quite right), there was just under a half hour till Elijah would arrive. All she had left to do was put on her dress and tackle the task of putting on some makeup. Y/N had very minimal makeup skills, so she kept the makeup minimal too – a coating of mascara, a light wash of eyeshadow and a little lip gloss, and she was done. I don't look too bad at all, she thought as she watched herself in the mirror, she was actually quite pleased with her work. She slid her feet into a strappy pair of heels and slipped on a satiny little black dress, perfect for date night, and she reached around to zip it from the back. She was struggling to pull it all the way up when she heard a sudden knock on the door. She glanced at the clock on the wall, which showed that it was already 7.30. Right on time as always, she thought with a smile, as she walked to her front door and opened it. Her heart beat twice as fast at the sight of him – as usual, he was perfection, standing there in a sleek black suit holding a large bouquet of flowers. He started to open his mouth as if to say something but nothing came out – he simply dragged his eyes over her, drinking her in. "Hey", she said, feeling almost shy after his reaction to her, "come in."

He walked through the doorway and closed it behind him. "Good evening. For you", he said, offering her the flowers – her favourite, white lilies. "Oh, Elijah, you really didn't have to", she said, their heady, sweet fragrance already saturating the air. "I know. I wanted to", he said with a small smile. She placed one hand on his shoulder and reached up to press a long, soft kiss on his lips that left both of them slightly giddy when she pulled away. He would never get enough of her kisses, her warm lips against his, it was intoxicating.

She moved to the sink to fill up a small vase with water for the lilies, and remembered she was still technically undressed. "Oh hey, could you zip me up?" she asked, leaning over the sink as she arranged the flowers into the glass. "Ugh, do I have to?" he said jokingly as he walked over to her. "Personally, I think this dress looks better like this." He ran a finger slowly down her exposed back, and leaned into the crook of her neck, about to kiss her skin.

"Yes, you have to!" she said, reaching to playfully hit his arm as she laughed. "Or we'll be late, Elijah." He mock-scowled at her. "Fine", he said, pulling up the zip of her dress carefully. "You look exquisite as always, Y/N. Come, let's go." Gentleman that he was, he offered her a hand, which she gladly took, and led her out of her flat.

----

Rousseau's was only seven minutes away from the restaurant, so they decided to walk there after their meal. Elijah did not let go of her hand the entire journey, a small gesture but it meant a lot to Y/N. Dinner had gone well for the most part, except for the annoyingly flirty waitress. Y/N had noticed her watching them from the corner of the room more than once, and no one could have missed the sultry eyes she made at him whenever she brought something to their table, or the multiple "accidental" brushes against his arm. She tried to be unaffected but she couldn't lie to herself, it pissed her off to no end. Elijah was an extremely attractive man, and it wasn't unnatural for him to get attention from other women, but did they really have to make it so obvious, even in her presence? It had been so long since they had had a proper date, though, that she decided to just ignore it instead of ruining the mood by bringing it up.

They were almost there, and could already hear the music coming from what looked to be a very crowded bar. The place radiated restless energy – there were people all over, some drinking, some appreciating the music, some already drunk and dancing in an alcohol-fueled frenzy. Elijah kept his hand on the small of her back as he led her inside. "What would you like to drink?" he asked, leaning into her ear so that she would hear him over the music. "Uh, scotch on the rocks would be great", she replied. She had never been a scotch girl, but whiskey was pretty much the only thing besides blood that the Mikaelsons kept a steady stock of at their home, so she had grown to like it. Elijah ordered the drinks while Y/N stood at the edge of the crowd of dancing people, bobbing her head and vibing to the jazz. "Are you enjoying it?" he asked her, handing her the cold glass of whiskey. "I really am", she replied, beaming up at him. She took a sip of her drink, welcoming the slight burn in her throat and the warmth spreading through her body. For a while, both of them simply stood there and enjoyed the music, with his arm around her waist and her hand holding his. "Will you hold my drink for a minute?" she asked him, "I really need to use the restroom."

"Certainly", he replied, taking her glass from her and watching as she walked away from him. What a view, he thought, sipping his whiskey with a smile.

Y/N entered a bathroom stall and locked it behind her. She was just about to open the door after relieving herself, when she heard two women come in, talking very loudly. "Oh my God, did you see that guy at the bar?" one of them said. "Wait, which one?" the other replied. "The one in the black suit, obviously", the first woman said. Black suit? They're talking about Elijah! Y/N thought. No one else in the entire establishment was wearing a suit. She stayed behind the door, waiting for the rest of the conversation.

"Oh God, yes, he is delicious", she heard the other one say over the sound of water running. "I just wanted to rip that suit right off." Y/N glowered, suddenly filled with the desire to punch something, or better yet, someone.

"Ugh, I know right? He's here with someone though, I saw them together."

"Ooh, and what did she look like?"

"Honest opinion? She's kind of ugly. I know that's not PC and we can't say that anymore but come on. She was so plain. I wonder what he sees in her."

"He's probably just stringing her along", the other woman replied, laughing. Y/N heard the clacking of heels on tile as they left the bathroom. She opened the stall door and walked to the mirror slowly, taking a long look at herself under the unflattering fluorescent lights. Suddenly her makeup looked overdone, her hair was matted and her dress too tight in the wrong places. She hadn't thought about herself as ugly in a long time, but the familiar feelings of unworthiness took no time at all to come rushing back. Tears started to prick at her eyes, and she blinked frantically to try and stop them from falling. Strange how someone you don't even know can make you feel so crappy, she thought. She couldn't help feeling her heart sinking in her chest. Wonder what he sees in her. Since the start of their relationship, Y/N had always thought about this in the back of her mind but never voiced it out loud, too enamoured by him to be able to handle his answer, or lack of one. She dabbed a tissue at her eyes so as to not ruin her mascara, before she left the restroom feeling more deflated than ever.

She walked over to Elijah, who appeared to be having quite a good time, moving his body subtly to the music. He was already on his second or third drink, and the band was playing a very lively song. A wild grin broke out on his face when he spotted Y/N on her way to him, and he took her hand and kissed it. "Would you like to dance?" he asked her, clearly a little buzzed – he never danced if he could help it. "Actually, I think I'd like to go home now, if that's okay", she replied, in no mood to dance right now. His smile faded when he saw the dejected expression on her face, but he didn't question it. "I'll get us a cab", he said, wrapping his arm around her shoulder and turning to leave the bar.

The cab ride to Y/N's building was short and totally silent. Elijah followed her without a word to her apartment and through the door. "Thanks for bringing me home", she said, setting her purse down on her sofa, not really making eye contact with him. "And now that you're home, perhaps you won't mind telling me what's wrong", he said, leaning against the closed door with his arms crossed. "It's nothing", she deflected, mindlessly shuffling through a pile of mail on a side table. "Certainly doesn't seem like nothing", he said quietly, moving closer to her. "What's on your mind, baby?" He lightly touched his hand to her arm, a gentle request to talk to him.

She turned around and stared at him, unable to stop her emotions from bubbling over. "How is it that you're even in love with me?" she asked. She didn't intend to sound accusatory but Elijah couldn't help but feel reproved. "Are you questioning my feelings for you? What brought this on?" he asked, his brows furrowed together. "I'm just asking", she said, sighing, "why did you choose me?"

"Why did you choose me?" he shot back, looking confounded. She stopped and gaped at him. "Hello? Have you seen yourself?" she asked, laughing humourlessly and gesturing wildly at him. "You could be a freaking Dior model, Elijah. You could have anyone you wanted to like that", she said, snapping her fingers. "So why pick me, some unremarkable, average human girl?" Her voice trailed away, and she looked down at her hands, almost afraid to hear his answer.

He took a step closer to her, his expression softening. He hated it when she doubted herself. "Y/N. I chose you because you are beautiful, both on the inside and the outside. You were strong enough to handle me when I was experiencing one of the darkest times of my life. I was... lost, in my own past sins. And it was you that pulled me back. Because you are kind and loving, and unfailingly good. And I need that goodness in my life, Y/N. I need you. My love, you are the most remarkable woman I've ever met." He caressed her face tenderly, and pushed a loose tendril of hair behind her ear. "Falling in love with you was instinctive. Like I was born to do it. In a thousand years, I have never felt for anyone the way that I do for you." Her cheeks flushed beneath his fingertips, and tears welled up in her eyes. He took her face gently in his hands and bridged the distance between them with a kiss, their lips moving perfectly in sync, hands pulling each other closer. His breath was sweet and whiskey-tinged, and she hungrily let it fill her lungs. She was so absorbed in him that she almost forgot to breathe – she was panting when they finally pulled their lips apart, their foreheads still touching.

"So, now will you take up my offer to dance?" he asked her, smiling wistfully at her. She looked up at him, pleasantly surprised. "I would love to dance with you, but there's no music." He shot her a cheeky grin as he pulled out his phone and opened the Spotify app. "Whoa", she said, taken aback, "you have Spotify?" He raised an eyebrow at her. "I am a vampire, Y/N, not a caveman." He set his phone down on the table nearby and the sounds of a soft piano filled the room. He took her hand and twirled her expertly into his arms, his hand resting on her back, while she placed her hands on his shoulders and melted against his warm body. They fell into step, moving slowly to the music. In that moment, it was as if the whole world fell away, and the only thing that remained was this moment, the two of them.

"You have the most wondrous eyes, Y/N. More beautiful than any star in the sky could hope to be", he said, gazing into them, watching them glisten under the dim light of the room. Her cheeks turned pink at his words. "Thank you," she said shyly, resting her head against his shoulder.

They continued to dance, too lost in the music and each other to stop. She brought her head up to look at him, eyes glowing with joy. "I love you, Elijah Mikaelson." Happiness took over his face – hearing her say those three words would never lose its impact. "I love you too," he replied, his expression one of pure bliss. As he drew her closer to his chest, Y/N thanked her lucky stars that she had found Elijah. She knew from the beginning that she would have done anything, faced anything if it meant she could be with him. But tonight, she knew for certain that they belonged together, that he felt as strongly for her as she did for him. To her, that was everything.

#elijah mikaelson #the originals #elijah imagines #elijah x reader #the originals fanfiction #the originals fanfic

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ot3 · 4 years

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your last post made me think about how I loooove how you use color in your art, it's so vibrant and full of life and movement and expression! I was wondering if you had any advice on how to do color studies? perhaps doing drawings with limited palettes? or anything similar?

First things first, thank you, I really do appreciate comments like these! this post now also has a follow up for finish limited palette pieces

I'm obviously very fond of limited palette art and color studies/color thumbnailing are great ways to get that done. When people think limited palette there's often the association of unrealistic and fantastical color palettes, but learning to limit your color use absolutely applies to semirealism and just builds stronger color theory in general. I was planning to talk about limited palettes in more realistic color use in this post, but this already ended up way too long. If that's something people want to hear about I can talk about it later.

Color theory basics crash-course! I'm sure almost anyone who has colored anything is familiar with this, so I'll be SUPER brief, but I want everyone to be on the same page for this. Color has three qualities you need to take into account: Hue, saturation, and brightness. Hue is what we think of as the 'color'. Saturation is the vibrancy of this color; how bold or dull it is. Brightness is how light or dark the color is. Here's this all labeled on a color picker I stole from google.

As a rule of thumb, things that look good in color should look good in grayscale. Having a strong range of values (brightness) makes for a strong image. Keep this in mind when you're picking colors – knowing what areas need to be light and what areas need to be dark before you start coloring will make your life easier. I'm going to teach you when and how to break this rule later, but for now let's just talk about picking a palette. I've found five to seven different colors to be a really nice sweet spot for working with limited palettes.

There are three main types of color palettes ill work with and ill provide examples each of them. I expect you to all politely refrain commenting on the amount of homestuck fanart that's here.

Monochromatic, where the piece is all within one color family with slight variations in hue, and larger variations in brightness and saturation

Accent, which is essentially the same as a monochromatic type with the addition of a strong, contrasting secondary color in one or two variants. Normally the accent color is lighter and serves as a highlight. This is not any kind of a hard rule, but is instead just what I like.

Split. There are two (or more) main colors at play, each with a couple of different shades.

Cool. Now lets see how we'd go about making one of these palettes.

I'm grabbing an inconsequential sketch i've already got and we're gonna slap some color on it. Let's start monochromatic – I've gone and just tossed six pretty random shades of green on it, picking what goes where based on what I want to be light and what I want to be darker.

Keep in mind, by monochromatic, I don't mean just picking one color and making it lighter or darker! Adjust your hue within the same color family – some of these are very blue, definitely more blue than green, and some are much warmer and yellower. Play around. In this stage I like to have every color on a distinct layer, so I can just recolor the entire layer at once as I tweak the palette.

On the right, I have each color lined up in order of lightest to darkest just so I can get a sense of what I'm working with. Lets go ahead and call this one thumbnail. Now I'm gonna group the layers, duplicate them, and flatten the copy. I'll shrink it down and shove it off to the side so I can compare it to the other ones I make later.

Okay, I did a few more almost completely arbitrary monochromatic palettes. Here they are compared with their grayscale counterparts.

All of them have the same number of colors, and lights stay lights, darks stay dark, midtones stay mid consistent between all of them, but the range of values is different between them all. The difference in light or dark between each tone is different and it gives a different mood that you can see even in black and white. None of them is more 'correct' than any other, and it's all about establishing the tone and atmosphere you want. Experimentation is key.

Now lets try making this a complimentary palette. With a strong accent color, your accent should be placed at areas of importance. People are naturally drawn to contrast and when using an accent color in a piece it'll make that area stick out, so make sure you're placing your colors with intent. For this I went back to that first set of greens I had because it was my favorite. Since this palette is over all very dark, I am going to make my accent the lightest color, because that'll stand out more. In a lighter palette, try making your accent the darkest color. Once again I must stress these are not hard rules – there are very few hard rules in art at all – but these are very useful tips for getting emphasis in the right place. This is just an example piece so I'm not being huuugely thoughtful with how I'm placing the color.

Here's the same image but with the lightest green just swapped out for a far more vibrant accent of yellow. Looks pretty terrible. I don't want all of the papers and blinds to seem so prominent. So let's scrap this and try a different approach. We're gonna instead add our accent as a sixth color to our palette.

By adding another color, I've added another level of detail. Figuring out how to manage detail isn't just dependent on how many colors you have, but this is already going to be ridiculously long so I'll spare you that spiel. This is another one of those things I'll talk about more later if people want to hear my #thots. Using the new yellow accent, I emphasized the eyes, the mug, and added some interior detailing to the objects on the table. I also decided to place yellow in some of the windows of the outside buildings, to add a bit more interest in that area, and to justify giving yellow back lighting to our little goblin lad here, which makes him stand out nicely.

A split palette makes things a whole lot more complicated. Now that you're gonna be working with two different base colors you don't just only have to worry about which one is lighter or darker, you have to worry about how the hues look next to each other. Lets work with an orange on top of our original green here. I picked two of the greens and replaced the darker one with a darker orange, and the lighter one with a lighter orange. Now our palette is six colors split 50/50 between orange+yellow, and green.

But now something interesting is happening. Let's take a look. If you're particularly keen eyed, you might have noticed that there's a third set of colors here, using a greyish brown in place of the oranges. What's up with that?

Well, what's up with that is, they are orange. The palette on the far right is what happens if, instead of choosing my own oranges, I simply hue-shifted the bluegreens until they were technically orange in hue.

The oranges I chose just based on how they looked without actually checking the value and saturation of actually changed the value hierarchy of the whole piece. The table, instead of being in between the objects stacked upon it in terms of brightness, is lighter than either. This isnt bad at all – there's absolutely nothing wrong here. It's just important to be aware of things like this! This is why I said a split palette is the most complicated of the three I'm talking about here – in many occasions, the hue hierarchy can top the value hierarchy. Keep that in mind for slightly later.

I think split palettes work really well for comics, and I like to make my comics with split palettes. Whereas with a single illustration, you can just putz around with your color thumbnails until you get something good, for a comic you're locked into your palette once you've done the first page. Unless you're some sort of insanely meticulous person, in which case I envy you, you probably don't have every single page of your comic blocked out with respective values and can't apply your palette to the whole thing at once to test it. This means you'll need a palette that's pretty versatile. Having a split palette where one of the hue sets is lighter than the other overall allows you to decide whether you're going to create an overall light panel with dark accents, or vice versa. I'm gonna compare two palettes I'm using for comics to make this point.

Here's a sampling of the comic pages in full color, at 0% saturation, and adjusted for grayscale respectively. You'll notice a slight difference between the desaturated colors and the grayscale colors – grayscale seems to hold truer to the full color version, doesn't it?

Now, here are the palettes themselves, and some grids showing the relationship between every pair of colors. When you don't know exactly what you're going to be using any given palette for, the relationship between any two colors becomes more important than ever. The bottom palette is split three ways, red yellow and blue each with a light and a dark, and then a completely neutral dark gray color. I'm using it for a long ongoing ace attorney comic I'm drawing. The top one has 4 shades of blue that go from darker and cooler to lighter and warmer, then 3 shades of orange that get yellower as they get lighter. Underneath is just the values – you'll notice that the top palette has a larger value range, with its lightest color being lighter than that of the bottom palette, and it's mid tones spaced further apart.

What you'll also notice about the bottom palette is that instead of the reds being lighter than the blues and darker than the yellows, the value alternates dark red dark yellow light red light yellow. Take a look at the color grids. You'll notice that for the most part, every color in the palette on the right looks good with every other color. That's not nearly as true for the palette on the left. The light blue has a weird vibration where it meets either of the reds, and a few of the pairings just aren't particularly pleasant. Honestly, from any objective ideas of color theory, this palette kind of sucks shit. Lets make some adjustments to it.

I've changed the dark yellow and light red hues so now the light red is slightly darker than the dark yellow. That's the palette that's on top now. Looks better, doesn't it? But so now the question becomes why am I using a palette that looks awkward, disharmonious, and visually strained when I know exactly how to fix it? The simple answer is because I wanted a color palette that's awkward. I wanted that visual strain. I have trouble working on comics and general, especially anything as long as this one, and I wanted a color palette that already meant things would come out looking a little bit wonky, so I wouldn't be as concerned with nitpicking all the details and making everything pretty. I think the sort of visual upset also fits the tone I'm keeping with a lot of the comic.

Remember earlier when I said I'd talk about breaking the rule of stuff looking good in gray scale and in color? That's now. Take a look at this image.

Which of the three colors is darker: the red, blue, or yellow? The stupid truth of it is that there's not really a proper way to tell. All three are technically the same 'brightness' but our brain tells us that the blue is the darkest, and the yellow is the lightest. Why do our brains do this? Let’s make em gray now.

On the bottom you can see what the colors look like when they are set to 0% saturation; as you'd expect it's a homogeneous gray blob. So then what the fuck is going on with the grayscale one? The grayscale one is closer to the way our brains interpret the colors, but we know this to be an improper rendering of their respective values. Which is the correct version, then – the grayscale or the desaturation? Luckily, we're using a computer, so we can have photoshop tell us the exact balance of hue, saturation, and brightness of any given pixel. Let's take a look now.

Wait, huh? We can plainly see that all three of the colors are at 49% brightness. But neither the desaturated value or any of the 3 grayscale values have a brightness of 49%. So what does a brightness of 49% look like?

Okay. Sure. Why not.

All of what I've just shown you regarding grayscale is to emphasize the point that your best judgment for which colors look good is a far better measuring stick for a good color palette than any technicalities. Even if the value is the same, the hue can differ enough that you can still get a beautiful finished drawing. Color and our perception of it is so, so vastly technically complex. You can not allow yourself to be bogged down by this. Simply practice, and color will become intuitive to you over time. I have a lot more I could say on the subject of picking and using your colors, but this is already insanely long. Feel free to ask any follow up questions, I hope this was of literally any use!

#long post #uhhhhh.#color theory #i guess #i drew this #Anonymous

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emsartwork · 4 years

Text

Color Tutorial

An anon asked about how I do color so I guess these are the basics? might go more into shading and and other stuff later but idk

color terminology

the color wheel aka the rainbow, primary colors (red blue and yellow), secondary colors (orange, green, and purple/violet), tertiary colors(red-violet, red-orange, golden yellow, yellow-green, blue-green/aqua, indigo/blue-purple/violet)the term tertiary isn’t used a lot tbh, Neutrals (black, white, and gray, i also consider brown a neutral but its technically a type of orange). Hue(the straight up color ex; red and green are different hues), tint (adding white to a color ex; pink is technically a tint of red), Tone(adding gray to a color), Shade (adding black to a color). Saturation refers to the amount of color included while value refers to the amount of white/gray/black(or lightness and darkness). Saturation is SUPER IMPORTANT for creating color schemes, having too many highly saturated colors in a color scheme can result in eye strain and not direct the audience as well as you could.

Complementary; two hues opposite to each other on the color wheel. Analogous; (usually three) hues next to each other on the color wheel. Triadic; three hues equal distant apart on the color wheel(like a triangle). Split Complementary; a hue and two colors on either side of its complementary(like a “Y” shape). There is also a quadratic, which is a square or rectangle shape but I didn’t show that one.

OK NOW LETS COLOR SOME CUTE PRINCESSES

When making a palette, chose your base hues, but then play with the different variations you can make from those by adding white/gray/black. Often a good way to create distinction between two areas of your piece is to use a complementary as it is balanced between warm and cool colors. Analogous palettes are hard for me to do really well, i usually like to have a neutral or a contrasting color in there. However! one way to create contrast in analogous palettes is to play with values. A light crown in dark hair draws the eye more than the gray crown in the dusty orange hair. If your piece feels off balance, try putting small, darker, details in the lighter areas, it creates a heaviness and more contrast to fill up space.

Triadic palettes (especially anything close to the primary colors) are often very childlike and happy looking. it also balances the piece really easily, providing enough difference around the whole space that the eye can move around the canvas easily. Split complementary are my personal favorite. Often, your main hue dominates your piece, with the complementary splits providing accents or even being used as a neutral or drawing the eye to a specific place. Here the dominate color is blue, then yellow, then orange in the skin and just barely on the bird.

Sometimes my own color palettes don’t work, and I pull from already made ones instead. Usually I can just apply these to the outfit or background while leaving the hair and skin whatever color the character needs. Sometimes I tweak the color palette to better suit my tastes/needs for the piece. Pre-made color schemes are helpful but sometimes lack contrast so I’ll also throw black or white into the mix as well.

Often I need to have a specific color in my piece, sometimes in a specific spot. In this case its a bright aqua-green bodice. So I put it into complementary, analogous, split complementary, and triadic color palettes, and decided I liked analogous best(though it is a rather wide analogous). Now that I have my two other hues, I play with the saturation and value for them. I leave the orange super saturated on the gems and the bird to draw attention to them, but toned it down for her skin and hair. When doing a piece with a background its a good idea to stick with your original color palette as it provides a harmonious over all appearance, BUT if you want your character to stand out make sure you use either lighter/darker or warmer/cooler colors compared to your figure. Make the background super different if you want the character to fight against it or look out of place. An easy way to BS perspective is to push the cooler colors(blue primarily) to the back and pull the yellows and oranges out more in the Foreground(this mimic atmospheric perspective). I again used the orange and an attention grabber in the flowers to pull the viewers eyes to the foreground and therefore to the princess.

Hopefully this is helpful?????

#tutorial #art tutorial #color #color tutorial #colors #primary #secondary #complementary #analogous #triadic #split complementary #princess #princesses #this is just how i personally do things none of these are hard and fast rules

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bookcoversalt · 4 years

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SERPENT & DOVE 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO (also blood and honey)

I originally covered (pun intended) SERPENT & DOVE in February 2019, and I wasn't complimentary. While the black and gold color scheme is appealing and there's a nice sense of depth and texture to the snake, beyond that, it is a hot mess. The rendering is plasticky, the imagery is mostly vague ~ AESTHETIC ~ nonsense, the whole thing has an off-center awkwardness, and what, for the love of god, is up with that midcentury typeface. An eagle-eyed blog reader even clocked weird crop mark.

Since then, I've been pointed to the online portfolio post of this cover by the designers, which has some very cool (and enlightening) process shots:

You may notice that this looks better than the actual cover! The serpent and dove figures actually share hierarchical dominance here as a single unit, and their overlap is dynamic and interesting as a focal point. So what happened? Since there's so little color in the comps, I have to assume that either it was originally intended to have a paler overall palette, or the question of color was intentionally punted down the line, but either way, this seems to have been created before the stark black and gold was decided upon. Because that's where we lose the dove completely.

She's also been pushed fully behind the snake, losing any sense of the interaction between them and making our general sense of depth and "physical" space sort of... confused. Knowing how design processes typically work, I would think they tried the dove in gold in that original lockup and for whatever reason, it didn't work: maybe it overwhelmed the cover with too much gold or maybe it interfered with readability too badly. This explains my original discomfort with the size of the snake and weird emptiness of the design between the dramatically spaced type: originally, it was supposed to be (more) filled, and it hasn't been adjusted for the loss of that element.

Full disclosure: the first time I made a post on this cover, I didn't even realize the dove was there. My eyeballs lost it in all the nondescript foliage and flourishes so badly that the meaning-making part of my brain didn't translate those shapes into a specific object. And I spend a lot of time looking at covers when I review them! So that's embarrassing for me, yes, but this is also a failing of the cover itself. Regardless of my other issues with it, I think it's really disappointing that the (interesting! relevant! aesthetique but in a good way!) visual focal point that the entire iterative process centered around ended up completely dismantled in favor of....... ugh, I dunno, the 1950s diner type? Pinterest board trimmings of leaves and sparkles, like turkey trimmings but even less appealing?

Because I didn't know the dove was there, I was, uh, confused when I first got asked about how EXTREMELY similar BLOOD & HONEY is, a sentiment I've heard a number of times now, because BLOOD & HONEY, shall we say, overcorrects on the "bird loss" front.

HELLO, SAM THE EAGLE. LET FREEDOM REIGN, BITCHES. MY COUNTRY TISSSSS OF THEEEEEE-

[Edit: I have been informed that this is probably still a dove, not an eagle, based on the face, but i’m not changing this joke.]

First of all, yes, the red is Bad. The black background of S&D matches the dark coloring of the objects, thereby hiding some of those Rendering Sins and lending a sort of subtlety to the mishmash of Aesthetique Things. It's all out in the open here and no less of a hot mess. The highlights are blindingly shiny and feel arbitrary as hell, like every single spear and leaf is being lit independently of anything else, and the almost pure black shadows that contrast them make my eyeballs burn-- it looks like it's a color being reflected from somewhere, rather than native shadow, because of how metallic objects reflect light, but there's nothing here but a perfectly flat, untextured field of red. I appreciate the emphasized presence of the bird (I'm ASSUMING it's an eagle, but I haven't read it, so correct me if I'm wrong) from a hierarchy and space-filling standpoint, but it is goofy as shit, and I have no idea why its chest has been so aggressively lit and filtered that it looks nearly on fire with saturation.

The primary offense of S&D's cover, that it's a tangled mess of meaningless and poorly crafted flourishes meant to be aimlessly Fancy that ends up being kind of ugly in the process, has been cranked up and the knob broken off here. An "Oooh, shiny!" from a dumb character who is about to trigger a trap manifested through a hypertrendy YA goth lens.

The text is also Still Bad. Compare the font to the one the Fairyloot book box uses for the book:

Although this isn't rendered in the metallic style, which it would have to be to match, it has a dramatic blackletter quality that matches the edgy medieval tone of the story far better than. Whatever the hell this B is doing.

So round!!!! So friendly!!!! So Un-witch-hunt-ey!!!!

To be clear: no, B&H is not a full, exact recolor of the S&D cover-- most of the elements, though the same, are arranged differently, and that's a completely different bird and at least a nominally different snake.

However comma I see why people think it is, because someone got lazy with the bottom left lol.

There is a Behance post for this one, too, although there's noticeably no process work, because the process was quite clearly "do it again but slightly to the left," and that doesn't involve much iterating.

Here's the thing, though; I'm not convinced any of this matters, because the truth is that hot, high-contrast messes photograph well.

Particularly when paired with a moody setting or editing, the red that comes across as kind of a nightmare in the jpeg pops, and the Escherian snarl of detail becomes more a texture nonspecifically indicating luxury and romance than an object theoretically representing something concrete about a story. And I personally may not Love This For Us, but honestly, that's half of a book cover's job these days: look pretty and do nothing.

If there's something to be learned from BLOOD & HONEY's cover, it's that better or worse, instagram filters matter. (Also true of Shelby Maurin's immaculately aesthetically curated, goth-trendy personal brand, which has increasingly been mimicked by other authors since S&D listed, although the author-brand-as-book-marketing-tool has always been a thing to some degree). A book isn't just a book, it's a prop for the countless ongoing performances of book-consumption-as-identity done both for fun and for clout in this particular subculture. I'm not passing moral judgement, here-- anyone buying a new YA fantasy book, no matter what they want to do with it or what my feelings on the book itself are, is a win. But this is the industry moment we live in, and it's savvy of publishers to have it in mind in regards to marketing and design.

Like what I do? Want early access? Support bookcoversalt on Patreon

#bookcoversalt #serpent and dove #blood and honey #YA #book cover

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vamonumentlandscape · 3 years

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Mount Vernon and Charlottesville (again)

Josh’s Perspective:

I have fond memories of going to Mount Vernon when I was about five years old. I remember it was a chilly autumn night, so there was seasonal hot apple cider available. It was delicious! I do not remember much else though, not even the house tour. The visit during our research would allow me to get a better understanding of what the site continues to maintain about America’s first president. I joined Tomi and Dr. Sherayko in starting with the gift shop before heading up to the museum and mansion only to find many massive school groups gathered. Such a sight would have been unthinkable a few months ago, but it is great to see that people of all ages are getting to go out again. Tomi purchased a few items, but I decided to browse. It was enlightening to see books about Ona (Oney) Judge and other enslaved persons owned by the Washington family alongside material about the founding fathers.

When we entered the museum, we decided to start with the exhibit titled Lives Bound Together: Slavery at Washington’s Mount Vernon. Seeing this felt especially appropriate since we visited on Juneteenth, which celebrates the effective end to American slavery two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. The initial film that we watched set the tone for an honest presentation of George and Martha Washington as slave owners. The inclusion of voices from descendants of the enslaved is an indispensable element of the exhibit as they can tell the story of their ancestors better than any historian can. The material culture presented throughout the dim display cases provides visitors an opportunity to see what life was like for the enslaved community of Mount Vernon. There were a few things that did not seem right to me. At every turn, excuses were floated out for Washington. Yes, he expressed concern for the continuation of chattel slavery in the young nation, but he and his family were still slave owners for his entire life. When one of the panels mentioned that Washington only punished the enslaved when necessary, I got frustrated. Just because punishments were used occasionally does not mean he was good to the enslaved. There is no such thing as a good slave owner. George Washington only freed the enslaved persons that he owned upon his death when he did not need them anymore. For someone that our country holds in such high esteem, Washington was still a slave owner. That is an undeniable fact. I appreciated the narratives presented for famous members of the enslaved community at Mount Vernon, such as Ona Judge, Frank Lee, and Hercules. Their stories matter just as much, if not more, than the people that owned them.

After walking through the next exhibit in the Education Center, which was just a shrine to Washington’s military and political career (including a 4-D film experience), we were all unsettled with what Mount Vernon was doing. Monticello had done a much better job in presenting the full history, flaws and accomplishments, of Thomas Jefferson. We headed down towards the tomb of George Washington and the burial ground for the enslaved. I was glad to see that many people gathered around in the area of the enslaved burial ground. The memorial is located around a marker that was placed in 1929 by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association. Since the language was a bit outdated, a new memorial was placed in 1983. It was designed by students of Howard University. So many stories are unknown about the many people buried in this place, and I wish we could know more. Some laminated cards seemed to be out only for Juneteenth informing visitors about a few of the enslaved, but there needs to be a more permanent piece of signage to respect the memory of all. I did appreciate the member of Mount Vernon’s staff playing solemn music on a fife as we paid our respects.

To conclude our visit, we headed back up to the mansion and saw some of the livestock that Mount Vernon cares for along the way. The wait to get inside for the tour took a little longer than any of us were expecting, but we rushed through as soon as we got inside. Some interpreters seemed a bit more knowledgeable than others and the experience was less than satisfactory. There was no real critique of the Washington’s when we were inside the mansion, which needs significant revision. I am not saying that George Washington is on the same level as Jefferson Davis and that we need to remove all statues that were put up in his memory, but we do need to be honest with ourselves. Washington was a man with flaws and his seemingly pristine legacy at Mount Vernon should be complicated. The private organization that owns and interprets the property can do a better job to ensure that everyone can see themselves equally. This may come with serious actions to increase diversity in staff and those that visit.

Though we were all fatigued after the day at Mount Vernon, we made a final stop in Charlottesville before returning to Lynchburg. The George Rogers Clark statue near the University of Virginia is slated to come down later this Summer. The reasoning behind this decision is the depiction of Native Americans. When we saw it in person, I was horrified to see the Native Americans being shown to be subservient and cowering in fear to the explorer on horseback. Colonization had disastrous effects on Native Americans throughout the North American continent. A negative presentation of any tribe or nation does nothing to help the survival of their culture. The University is making the right decision in taking the statue down and discussing a replacement to best honor the culture of the original inhabitants of North America. I am confident that UVA will do the right thing to show that Native Americans anywhere are not cowardly and disappearing people. That kind of monument and education is essential, especially for Virginia groups like the Monacan Indian Nation.

Tomi’s Perspective:

As with most of the sites we have visited, I had not been to Mount Vernon before. I was looking forward to seeing the historic home and museum dedicated to our first president. We entered the gift shop first since we were a little early getting to the site. I picked up quite a few things as I was very impressed with the wide selection of items. My excitement grew after shopping. We walked on a short path to the visitors center and even saw a very cute ram on the way. The funniest part about the whole day was that this little ram would end up being our favorite part of Mount Vernon. The visitors center was packed with guests eager to learn. The staff was kind and pointed us to the maps and audio tour devices. The maps were in a wide array of languages, making the park accessible to a diverse group of visitors. Since I am learning German in the fall and Dr. Sherayko speaks the language, we both picked up one of the German maps for fun. As we were looking where to go, the beginning of our misgivings with Mount Vernon began. The map was not very well done and I got extremely frustrated with this as it was not to scale. Josh and Dr. Sherayko both thought my map frustrations were funny, but by the end of the day we were all feeling that way towards Mount Vernon.

After deciphering the ultra confusing map, we ended up at the museum. We were all very excited to see the Lives Bound Together exhibit on Washington and the enslaved. This exhibit was a breakthrough for the organization as it came out in 2016. It was only supposed to last one year, but the foundation got grants for it to spend extra time in the museum. Once the pandemic hit, the exhibit was extended again. It will finally go on as a travelling exhibit after July 11, 2021. As soon as you walk in you are faced with large panels in a circular room with Washington’s bust in the middle. All of the panels detail the “complex and painful” story of slavery at Mount Vernon. Each of them was honest and told truths about Washington’s slaveholding that had not been shared so explicitly before. One of the hardest hitting facts was that there were over 500 enslaved people at Mount Vernon over Washington’s lifetime. In the beginning here, we noted that it also said he freed his 123 slaves in his will and that he was the only founding father to do so. Though this is true, this fact was unpacked a little more as we went through. The exhibit itself was long and had a lot of reading. This one exhibit was in a space the size of the Tredegar Civil War Museum’s exhibition room. For us, having seen so many different sites over the past few weeks, we know that to truly grasp your typical tourist an exhibit cannot be so long winded. Of course Josh, Dr. Sherayko, and I analyzed the panels as best we could, but even to us it began to be saturated. The worst part was that there was a lot of repetition. It seemed every panel restated something else in different words. Remember back to the fact I shared earlier: Washington freed his 123 slaves in his will and was the only founding father to do so. As we entered the third room, there was yet another panel on the wall about this, but this time there was more to this fact in smaller print than before. Yes, Washington did free his slaves in his will, the ones that he owned himself, but not after his death. In his will his slaves were to be freed at the time of Martha Washington’s death. Mind you, not only did Martha own slaves, but she had over 30 enslaved people she had inherited from her family. Martha owned 153 slaves when Washington died. Why was this mentioned in small print? Just as Josh mentioned our concerns over the extended praise the exhibit was giving to Washington, this was another part that did not sit well with the group. The long, repetitive, overly praising, and not so clear Lives Bound Together exhibit was overall very disappointing. It is wonderful they are talking about the lives of the enslaved and including descendants, but we all feel like the exhibit could have been much better.

After experiencing Lives Bound Together, we went to the other part of the museum entirely devoted to Washington. Sadly, it was hard for me to enjoy the very patriotic exhibits to Washington. I do believe that we can look at the legacies of our founding fathers and be proud of their brilliance in creating the United States. But, it was very hard for me to do so when there isn’t complete honesty about their slaveholding pasts. When comparing the honesty of Monticello and Montpelier, Mount Vernon was subpar. I wished that I could have enjoyed our 4-D experience, the walk through Revolutionary times, and all of Washington’s history, but I could not.

On our way to the mansion tour, we made a few stops at the enslaved peoples exhibits. These were well done in preserved Slave Quarters. This was enlightening to see after the experience we had in the museum. It was interesting to note that there had once been a store dedicated to Martha Washinton in one of the Slave Quarters. It was still on the map and there was still a sign on the door, but it seemed to have been closed for a while. I wish I would have asked one of our guides why this was changed. We were all happy to see many visitors by the enslaved peoples quarters and learning about their roles at Mount Vernon. After this, we walked to the enslaved people’s burial grounds and to the Washington’s family tomb. Of course it was moving to see the site of our first president's burial, but when we walked over to the enslaved people’s cemetery, we were all moved to near tears. With a flutist playing Amazing Grace and other beautiful songs as we observed the solemn site, we read through some of the stories of those who were buried there. It was powerful to stand where so many men and women that had once been forgotten about, but now remembered by name, had been laid to rest.

After climbing the hill from the cemetery, we were only 10 minutes away from our house tour. Sadly, they were running very behind and our tour that was supposed to be at 2:10 ended up being at 2:30. During those 30 minutes standing in the heat, Dr. Sherayko filled the time by teaching us new German words like enttäuscht. The house tour only lasted 15 minutes and was quite an odd experience. In the first room, our tour guide slipped up and used the word “servant” to describe the enslaved population. In the end she corrected herself, but that shows where Mount Vernon’s interpretation has been. Going through the home quickly, seeing the horrid green paint on one of the walls that was said to be Washington’s favorite, and then to end with a really odd tour guide sealed the deal for us to head home from Mount Vernon.

On our way out we stopped by the new Ona Judge National Historic Sign. I was beautifully done and we were so happy to end such an up and down day at Mount Vernon on such a high note. Josh and I were happy to end our trip smiling together in front of this wonderful sign.

Despite all of us being deliriously tired, we made a pit stop in Charlottesville to hit Trader Joe's and grab dinner. At dinner Dr. Sherayko reminded us of a statue we forgot to see on The Corner at UVA that is due for removal. Even though we were all spent, we made the trip. The statue of Revolutionary War hero George Rogers Clark does little to show his heroism. He is best known for defeating the British in quite a few battles and earning the French’s trust, but he also has another legacy that is shown in the monument to him. “CONQUEROR OF THE WEST” is the title given to Clark as he sits on his horse, reaching for a weapon to use against Native Americans. Clark fought and took Native American land in many battles. After the Revolution he was even given the position as Indian Commissioner. Though this statue may accurately represent one of his legacies, it puts it in a celebratory light. Celebrating the destruction of indigenous peoples lands, people, and assets is nothing to be proud of and have a statue for. We are all quite happy UVA is choosing to take this statue down.

After grabbing some delicious ice cream at Kilwins, we randomly saw Dr. d’Entremont, our American History professor, walking across the street. I embarrassingly stuck my head out of the window and called out to him. We pulled over and chatted about what we all were doing in Charlottesville. He mentioned to us another site we should check out that is actually no longer there anymore. There was a Confederate statue on the courthouse lawn that was removed last summer. There isn’t even a base left, so in our initial trip we would have had no idea to look for it. We all mosied up the street together and looked where the old statue used to be. We ran into a resident of apartment buildings right across the street who expressed fond memories of the old statue, the Lee statue that was only a few blocks away, and the Clark statue. She told us about walks along this street with families, how there would be a live nativity scene at Lee Park, and how her fathers law office was right across from the Clark statue. She understood mostly why they were being taken down, she said, but she felt like it robbed her of childhood memories. We all listened to her touching story, but what she may not understand is that there is a significant population of African Americans and other citizens who are unable to have such fond memories. These statues that are entrenched in the Lost Cause and have racist sentiments leaving the monument landscape allow for a more inclusive community where all can create similar memories to hers.

#mount Vernon #Washington #Martha #George #ona judge #history #virginia #monument #important

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thedreadvampy · 4 years

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So this was sent to me by @atiredpan weeks ago when the White Jon conversation was very live and I'm posting it (belatedly) with their blessing (they didn't want to put it up publicly and have it seem like an attack which I really very much appreciate but wouldn't have minded) and I percolated for a few days and then got very busy for a few weeks. Response follows.

So I feel weird about how I'm responding to this stuff, I'm launching rapidly into taking about/explaining my own experience in a way I'm worried maybe comes across as a direct comparison. It kind of feels like I'm talking in a way that's like brushing off your experience and saying OK BUT HERE'S WHY I'M RIGHT and that's not what I'm trying to do, it's just that there's not much I can usefully add to what you've said - you know your experience better than I do, and I'm not gonna go around trying to read into it or reexplain it. So I'm going to talk about where I am/have been coming from, but not with the intention of countering your points, all of which I think really resonate.

First off, the post where I was like "Jon is white and if you disagree you're Wrong" was, unreservedly, just a shitty post and I'm not suprised it upset a lot of people. I'm really very sorry about that, it was thoughtlessly written and pretty stupidly posted.

I totally get that my whiteness has fed into how I hced Jon (and as I think I've said before I saw Jon a certain way well before I engaged with any fanworks, just as you did). There's a lot of reasons I imagined Jon as white from pretty early on, a non-negligible one of which was like...That's Jonny. This is a podcast by Jonny, about a character with the same name and mannerisms as Jonny, and Jonny is extremely white. It would have felt weird, when I was listening to TMA as a Friend Podcast, to stick a brown face onto what at least appeared at the time to basically be a self-insert character of my white friend. Now that's a really personal thing informed less by the story and more by the circumstances under which I've interacted with it, but it certainly laid a baseline. I didn't really have a clear mental picture of Jon (or most of the characters) for a looooooong time (for an artist I'm really not a very visual thinker) but I had a few sort of mental sketches (Jon is short white balding and awkward, Martin is tall biracial and scruffy Basira is fat and somali Melanie is my friend from work etc) which I developed a long time before I encountered fanworks.

I saw the alienation you mentioned and I connected it to class and gender, not race, because I’ve met a lot of cis men, white and otherwise, who interpolate trauma, class insecurity, insecurity about their own abilities, and so on into withdrawal, denial and snappiness. So for me I had an interpretation of that element of his personality which was pretty much race-neutral, and then I had these existing cues leading me to assuming he was white (largely that Jonny is white, but also wee stuff in the story that...it’s not like anything substantial enough to remember, let alone justify, but there were certainly interactions that pinged whiteness for me personally)

There are actually iirc a few throwaway references to Jon being promoted above more qualified candidates throughout (or at least I thought I knew that before s5), but the time I decided I thought White Jon was an obvious conclusion was of course the conversation where Sasha expresses frustration about it. and the context of that conclusion (at least as far as I can see) wasn't "people of colour can only exist in subservient positions/defined by oppression" but was informed by two things that were going on with my life around the time that episode aired

I had been having several conversations with friends of mine (and largely friends of Jonny's) who work in London in the museums/archiving sector and who are the only women of colour in whole departments or even whole museums, and who experience so little career mobility compared to their less-qualified white counterparts (we're talking about women graduating top of their class at Oxbridge with anthropology or library science masters and stellar original research, with a decade or more of impeccable work experience and acting up, being left in internship and low-grade positions, while white men who "fit the culture" but have 0 museums experience sail into upper management positions and then stay there until they retire). So I'd come almost directly from these conversations into what to me sounded like exactly the same gripe in TMA.

I'd been at that point working for about a year and a half on co-coordinating the anti-oppression committee in my workplace, which was a very Good Progressive Activist Charity with Good Lefty Principles, and over the course of experience sharing and discussions both with colleagues of colour and along lines of wealth, disability, class etc, I was very much confronted with the realisation of how much 'being adequately qualified' meant different things for middle-class good-university white men vs much more highly skilled and hardworking women of colour or people of different class and wealth backgrounds. Obviously I'd known that before in principle, but not really having been in Salaried Workplaces (as opposed to like. service and retail hourlies) I hadn’t got so up close and personal with it. So that was also very fresh in my mind, this like...big substantial experience of how Good, Well-Meaning, Caring, Thoughtful, Woke white men just........did not need to think about this. at all. and were startled and discomforted to face it. and that this was also true of most white middle-class women. and these conversations were really carved down the middle between white middle-class European women saying ‘this is such a surprise when we have such an equitable hiring policy and diverse staff, that there’s this gender gap’ and women of colour in the room wearily saying ‘yeah, there’s a gender gap, there’s always a gender gap and it is always a racialised gender gap’ so yeah I was definitely thinking about the intersection between being passed over at work because of gender and because of race.

The point about Tim is interesting because I think for me what’s getting lost is that I don’t think Jon is entitled as like...a Character Trait. He’s not like...Toxic Masculinity Man. He is very anxious about boundaries and about his own capacity to do harm. But it has to be pointed out to him where he’s doing harm. He doesn’t notice where he’s been unfairly advantaged, and that’s to me much more reflective of most people’s relationship to white or male entitlement.

As I say, that exchange with Tim and Sasha cemented the Jon Is White hc in my head specifically because it was so reflective of conversations I had had with women of colour working in similar workplaces, about white men, usually about white men they generally liked or at least didn’t have beef with beyond their unfair advantages.

It seems odd to me to frame ‘bitching about your boss on your friend’s behalf to make her feel better’ as more similar to white entitlement/white privilege than any of that tbh? That’s just...being friends with someone?

Anyway I recognise that it’s not white entitlement to accept a job. Obviously it’s not, it’s just sensible under the circumstances, you get lucky and you grab it. For me my sense of Jon as white-because-of-this is not “he took a job he shouldn’t have taken,” it’s more about his obliviousness to the impact he has on others, and also primarily how people react to him. The interaction between Sasha and Tim is saturated with the of course it would be him I mentioned above, but even before that he walks through the world not expecting to have to think about anything but his conscious decisions, and he’s caught aback when people see him as out of place or as having power above his station.

I think it’s impossible to extricate ‘this is where my head was at’ from that interpretation, and also like obviously my own whiteness is a big factor. And not just my own personal whiteness but the place I grew up (which was 98.3% white) and the world which reflects back whiteness. So this is in no way intended as a bolshy This Is The Correct Headcanon the way my Bad Post was bc examining it I’m like...yeah I mean this is about how I personally interpreted this based on where I was at at the time. But I do feel like there’s some communication gap in what it is about this unqualified promotion thing that pinged me - it’s not that All Bosses Must Be White And All Brown People Must Be Downtrod, it’s something quite specific about the tone and tenor of the interactions around the getting-a-job.

But also? Idk. Kind of unrelatedly, and people obviously should feel free to disagree with me on this, it feels kind of off to frame this as defaulting to a white Jon? I sort of think that my idea of Jon as white is very much not ‘white until proven otherwise’ - part of the reason for my original strident tone was that I felt that I was being expected to drop a headcanon I had for specific reasons and default to the fanon version of Jon without actually having any reason other than ‘this is how the community thinks he should look,’ and without really understanding anything about what that means, and while obviously defaulting to a non-white headcanon isn’t like...entrenched in the way that defaulting to a white headcanon is, it does seem to me like this is perhaps part of why white fans slap brown skin onto a character without thinking into what that means or why they’re doing it.

The thing I’m struggling with as regards my personal headcanon here is that I could decide to only ever draw Jon as Fanon Jon, but it wouldn’t be because I had strong reasons to see him that way, it wouldn’t be the same as why you see Jon as brown, or why I see like...Melanie as Indian, it would literally be Default To Standard in a way it isn’t for you. And I don’t feel that I have Defaulted To Whiteness, or where I have it is for reasons specifically to do with Jon (I visualised Jon as white because I visualised him as Jonny, who is white), not because I think every character is White Until Proven Otherwise. Like, my reasons for understanding Jon as white may be bad reasons, but they are reasons, not post-hoc excuses (I can’t like...prove that. but I know it to be true at least on a conscious level). I didn’t go Oh Jon Is White Because Everyone Is Unless I Have Reason To Think They Aren’t, Hooray, Here Is A Post-Hoc Justification For Why It Isn’t Racist To Think That. So while I am totally on board with the idea that it may be shitty, harmful or poorly thought through to hc Jon as white, I’m not sure I can fully see it in myself as being default. But I do understand that that isn’t necessarily what came across in my original short post.

Honestly, the reason I took issue with Fanon Jon and Fanon Martin in such a bolshy way in the first place was that I didn’t get why these characters were universally seen as Asian and white, respectively, and had such strong and consistent fanon images, when none of the other characters did, and when I was seeing people drawing people like Sasha and Melanie and Tim as white way more when in my mind there was no reason to assume they were white. On an emotional level I guess I think either there’s Fanon As Lore, or there’s no fanon (and I prefer the latter) and my discomfort came from the place that the one character I absolutely saw as coded as white in the core cast had this one really specific Ambiguously Brown Fanon Look (which from what I’d seen at the time didn’t seem to be like...backed with anything or coming from any personal interpretation for most of the white fans I was seeing on like Twitter and Tumblr) but white headcanons are everywhere for characters like Melanie or Sasha or Georgie, who seemed to me to be unambiguously people of colour, or characters like Tim or Martin (who could perfectly reasonably be people of colour and who I hc as Rroma and biracial respectively)? I don’t know, it’s difficult to express, but I find it frustrating.

#tma #White Jon #idk sorry to post this so separate from the rest of the conversation I have been Busy

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wangxian-trash-cultivator · 3 years

Text

hold me tighter (even closer)

Summary: Wei Wuxian suffers from really bad nightmares sometimes. Lan Wangji wakes very early one morning to find him painting, it's been days since Wei Wuxian last slept. So Lan Wangji does what any good roommate would do... help him bathe and put him to bed.

Rating: T || Word count: 3800 || Tropes/Genres: omg they were roommates; hurt/comfort; childhood friends; light angst; pre-relationship wangxian; mutual pining

Notes: Originally created this as a twitter thread fic and adapted it for AO3. Come say hello on twitter! I’m in the process of converting other threadfics over. This is part of my omg they were roommates AU series. Enjoy!

AO3 Link || Original Twitter Thread

It’s nearly 4am when Lan Wangji wakes with a start. The culprit?

Oh, just another vivid sexual fantasy involving his close childhood friend.

You know. The one that’s now his roommate. In the next room over.

It’s not the first time it’s happened. Lan Wangji has grown accustomed to the places his mind takes him when he isn’t conscious enough to control it. To the scenes that always… linger when he wakes. Even now, he can’t shake the image of Wei Wuxian’s swollen lips around his—

Nope, nope, nope, he thinks and kicks the bedsheets off.

Oh. What a mess he’s managed to make this time.

With a quiet groan, Lan Wangji drags himself out of bed to get cleaned up. On the way to the bathroom he notices light creeping into the hall from under Wei Wuxian’s door.

He knows Wei Wuxian stays up late. He’s not sure how late most nights, but he’s usually asleep by the time Lan Wangji wakes up around 5 or 6.

Lan Wangji thinks nothing more of it and goes into the bathroom to shower. When he comes out again, Wei Wuxian’s light is still on.

Now it’s strange. Unless, maybe he fell asleep and forgot to shut the light off?

So Lan Wangji decides to investigate. He raps his knuckles against the door lightly. Testing. He doesn’t want to be too loud and actually wake him if he is asleep.

"Yeah?" Wei Wuxian’s voice calls out and he sounds tired. Beyond tired. Why is he still awake then?

"May I come in?" Lan Wangji asks.

"Sure, just be careful."

It’s an odd request, until Lan Wangji gently pushes open the door and sees why he said it.

It looks like a hurricane passed through. There are completed portraits strewn all over the room, some bone dry, some with fresh paint still glistening under the lights.

Most of them are pure chaos. Horrifying images of beasts and distorted faces painted in heavy blacks, greys, and reds. The longer Lan Wangji looks, the more he feels like he is being sucked into a chasm of despair.

Wei Wuxian is sitting, hunched over, in the middle of the floor. The eye of the storm. He’s built himself a little nest of blank canvases, brushes, paints, and inks for easier access.

When Wei Wuxian looks up from the canvas he is currently working with on his lap and offers a tired smile Lan Wangji’s chest feels uncomfortably tight. Tired isn’t the right word at all. He looks like he’s barely tethered to reality.

"Good morning, Lan Zhan."

His voice sounds all wrong. It wasn’t as noticeable with the barrier of the door to mask it before. Lan Wangji has never heard him sound so drained before.

"Wei Ying, what is wrong?"

"Couldn’t sleep," Wei Wuxian says and drops his gaze back down to the canvas. Lan Wangji waits for him to say more, because he always says more.

He doesn’t.

Lan Wangji’s chest constricts again.

"Wei Ying."

"Lan Zhan," Wei Wuxian says without looking up.

Ever since they were kids Lan Wangji has not known any stretch of silence to last this long between them. It’s like he’s been possessed and placed in a trance where all he can do is zone out and paint. He crosses the room, treading carefully around the minefield of canvases, and clears a space to sit beside Wei Wuxian.

Now that he’s this close, Lan Wangji sees that the floor isn’t the only thing suffering right now. Wei Wuxian’s arms are stained with ink and covered in splotches of acrylic paint.

"Wei Ying, will you tell me why you cannot sleep?"

Because it does not make sense that he can’t sleep when he looks and sounds the way that he does right now. Lan Wangji cannot wrap his head around it at all.

Wei Wuxian dips the brush into an inkpot and hovers it over the canvas, it’s so saturated that the ink drips and splatters within seconds, adding to the accidental portrait he has created on his own skin. Lan Wangji tries to ignore that the existing red splotches look like dried blood.

He turns his attention to the canvas instead. It looks like some sort of dog, only worse. Ferocious with matted fur, giant bloody fangs and piercing red eyes.

It resurrects something dormant in Lan Wangji’s memory. A conversation they had as teenagers.

"Wei Ying," he starts off softly. ‘Is it happening again?’

Wei Wuxian pauses for a moment, curls his fingers tighter around the brush and nods once.

"Yes."

The single word is hoarse and heavy. It sends an arrow straight through Lan Wangji’s heart.

To call them bad dreams would be putting it lightly.

Wei Wuxian would wake in the middle of the night, unable to move or discern whether or not he was awake or still dreaming.

Sometimes he could remember the nightmares with vivid detail.

Sometimes only the indescribable fear would follow and cling to him like a second skin. He wouldn’t always know why he felt so scared.

Sometimes the feeling would just persist without any rhyme or reason.

He had approached Lan Wangji when they were about 13 or 14 to ask if he ever experienced anything like that before.

Lan Wangji had not.

After hearing that Wei Wuxian tried to brush it off and pretend like it was nothing.

Not wanting to pressure him to discuss it further Lan Wangji had let it go at the time.

Until Wei Wuxian stayed over one night and he witnessed firsthand just how much it affected him.

They were sharing Lan Wangji’s bed at the time.

Even though Wei Wuxian had not woken up screaming, he had sat up so abruptly, panting in the dark, that Lan Wangji could not help but be roused as well. Still, he brushed it off when Lan Wangji tried to ask about it. Like he was embarrassed to even bring attention to it.

All Wei Wuxian asked was to be held until he fell asleep again.

So Lan Wangji had held him. And let it go once more. Who was he to make Wei Wuxian discuss something when it clearly made him uncomfortable?

But he did his own research and learned about sleep paralysis, night terrors and how stress can cause recurring vivid nightmares. When he went to share all of this with him, Wei Wuxian had announced that everything stopped altogether.

So the conversation was shelved yet again.

As far as Lan Wangji knows, it’s been years since something like this occurred.

Now that he thinks about it though, it would have been easy for Wei Wuxian to conceal the truth and just not bring it up.

But he can’t do that now that they’re living together.

Lan Wangji tentatively places a hand on Wei Wuxian's forearm. He stops painting.

"Wei Ying, how long have you been awake?"

"I don’t know," Wei Wuxian says. "Two days? I stopped counting."

Lan Wangji brushes his thumb over a flaky patch of paint on Wei Wuxian’s arm. How could he not have noticed him passing like a ghost through the apartment for two days?

"I know you do not like to talk about it, so I will not ask if that is what you wish."

Wei Wuxian lifts his head to look at him and… fuck.

The skin beneath his eyes is shiny and bruised. And speaking of his eyes. They’re so bloodshot, holding none of the chaotic energy that Lan Wangji has come to siphon off of him over the years like elixir for the soul.

"Lan Zhan, I’m so fucking tired. I just want to sleep and I can’t even do that."

The way he says it really should not be making Lan Wangji’s sweatpants feels so uncomfortably tight all of a sudden.

It’s not like he just had a sex dream about Wei Wuxian begging and whining in that exact tone of voice.

Nope, not at all.

But then Wei Wuxian’s eyes start welling up and it immediately pulls Lan Wangji back to reality.

If he starts crying there is no way Lan Wangji is going to be able to keep himself together either. And from the looks of it Wei Wuxian really is dangerously close to falling apart.

Lan Wangji wants to shake him for bottling it all up and keeping this to himself for two whole days. Hell, he wants to shake himself for not paying attention better. He won’t make that mistake again.

"Come," Lan Wangji says, gentle yet firm.

"Where?" Wei Wuxian asks.

"You are covered in paint," Lan Wangji states and plucks the brush from his hands. Wei Wuxian releases it without a fight. "I will start the shower for you."

Lan Wangji gets to his feet and offers a hand out to Wei Wuxian. He allows himself to be tugged off of the floor and only once he’s standing does Lan Wangji realise the flaw in his plan.

Wei Wuxian can barely stand without swaying on the spot. Shoving him into the shower, alone, would just be asking for an accident to occur.

"I will draw a bath instead. Come, Wei Ying." Lan Wangji carefully snakes an arm around his waist to lead him.

"Lan Zhan, taking such good care of me," Wei Wuxian says, notably a little delirious now that he’s actively stringing more than two words together.

Lan Wangji can feel his ears getting warm. If Wei Wuxian notices how red they’ve gone, he doesn’t say anything more about it.

After guiding him to the bathroom, Lan Wangji carefully maneuvers him to sit on the toilet while he gets the bath ready.

"Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan! I like a lot of bubbles."

Lan Wangji rolls his eyes. He knew that already, had already poured the bubble bath soap with a heavy hand. But he tips the bottle over again and pours just a little more in for him.

As the water rises, Lan Wangji rummages through the cabinet and extracts a small essential oil diffuser. He sets it up on the counter and pours a few drops of sandalwood scented oil.

"Lan Zhan, that smells like you," Wei Wuxian says with a dreamy smile plastered to his face. ‘It’s nice.’

In the mirror Lan Wangji can see his ears have turned a deeper shade of red.

Wei Wuxian is now humming to himself as Lan Wangji shuts the water off and realizes… well fuck. Now he has to get Wei Wuxian in to the tub. And to do that he’ll need to….

Okay, so it’s not like they haven’t seen each other naked before. They grew up together. Shared locker rooms at school. Have had plenty of sleepovers in the past where the accidental glimpse while the other was changing was inevitable.

Wei Wuxian likes to be naked most of the time anyways. Especially during the summer. And especially when he’s drunk.

It should not feel awkward. It’s just friends helping friends.

Lan Wangji is helping his sleep-deprived friend— who he just so happens to be very much attracted to and over the moon in love with— to strip down and…

Oh .

Wei Wuxian has already pulled off his shirt by the time Lan Wangji turns away from the bath to look at him. He tosses it into the corner and settles his hands onto the waistband, clearly already prepared to shimmy out of the pants while still sitting.

Lan Wangji feels as though he’s been plunged underwater. Every movement feels sluggish, and there’s a strange sort of muffled buzzing.

He realizes it’s Wei Wuxian speaking to him.

"Sorry, what did you say?" Lan Wangji asks, dazed.

"I asked if you could help me with these. I get dizzy if I move around too much."

There’s absolutely no way that Wei Wuxian can’t hear the way Lan Wangji’s heart is pounding right now. It might actually come flying right through his chest if it keeps up like this.

Collect yourself, he thinks.

He doesn’t trust himself to speak yet, manages a nod instead.

Lan Wangji is already on his knees when he shuffles closer to Wei Wuxian.

"Lean back," he says, throat dry, and places his hands alongside Wei Wuxian’s on the waistband. Not touching.

As fingers dip beneath the fabric though, Lan Wangji feels his heart climb up into his throat upon realizing Wei Wuxian isn’t wearing anything else beneath the pants.

Of course he isn’t. Why would he?

It’s like he’s trying to separate Lan Wangji’s soul from his body without even realizing it.

He swallows thickly.

"Lift your hips." It takes everything in him not to stutter.

Wei Wuxian’s hands brush against his as he relocates them to hold himself up. The brief contact feels like an electric shock. Like Lan Wangji has never known touch before now.

Which is ridiculous.

Ridiculous because Wei Wuxian grabs hold of his hands on a regular basis. Physical touch is just his natural form of communication with anyone and everyone.

Lan Wangji closes his fingers tighter around the fabric to prevent himself from trembling.

Either Wei Wuxian is actually electing not to tease him for once or he really is just too tired to notice anything.

Effortlessly, Lan Wangji works the pants down Wei Wuxian’s slender hips and is now faced with another dilemma.

He’s been avoiding Wei Wuxian’s face the entire time, keeping himself focused on the task directly in front of him. Which means he is now staring directly at Wei Wuxian’s fully exposed dick.

Like full on staring at it. Can’t-look-away-if-he-tried (please don’t ask him to look away) staring at it.

They’ve caught glimpses of each other in the past. But never has he allowed his gaze to linger.

"Lan Zhan?" Wei Wuxian asks, amused. His words are muffled static again, but the next part comes out crystal clear. "Like what you see?"

Lan Wangji is having a heart attack. There’s no other explanation for it. This must be what a heart attack feels like.

And his ears may forever be stained red at this rate.

Reflexively, he turns his attention up to Wei Wuxian’s face and nearly melts because that smile, oh god that smile he has on really will be the death of him.

Wei Wuxian has to know what it does to people when he smiles like that. With eyes slightly squinting shut, the subtle wrinkling of his nose. He uses all of the muscles in his face to portray his happiness.

Lan Wangji feels the earth shudder to a halt when he looks at him like that.

"I’m only teasing," Wei Wuxian says. He shivers, quickly and quietly.

And with a jolt, the world begins to spin again.

Lan Wangji stands up and wraps an arm around him to help him into the tub. After he’s managed to carefully sit him down into the water he gets to his feet again, poised to offer him some privacy and return when—

Cold fingers intertwine with his.

Lan Zhan? Wei Wuxian asks, uncharacteristically soft. "Can you stay with me?"

Back still to him, Lan Wangji’s breath hitches. He prays Wei Wuxian hasn’t noticed. He turns to find another smile waiting for him. It looks as though he is using whatever remaining energy he has to offer it.

Words fail. Lan Wangji nods and sinks down to his knees once again.

Wei Wuxian leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. He doesn’t release Lan Wangji’s hand.

Lan Wangji remembers drinking too much once. Remembers the pressure wrapped around his forehead like a rope tied too tight with weights attached. He feels like that now. Drowsy and drunk as he wades sluggishly through the river of thoughts running rampant in his brain.

He blames it on the heavy scent of sandalwood mixing with the rising steam of the bath water.

"Lan Zhan?" Wei Wuxian’s voice slices through the mist.

"Yes, Wei Ying?"

Lan Wangji feels Wei Wuxian’s hand clench his tightly once, pumping a secret message through his fingertips. "You’re a really good friend."

The wild thumping of his jackrabbit heart in his ears muffles his own words when he replies. "It’s nothing."

Wei Wuxian languidly opens his eyes and fixes him with a look. He opens his mouth, closes it again. A speechless Wei Wuxian is such a strange sight. It’s honestly a little unsettling.

Lan Wangji appreciates the stillness of solitude at times. But not when Wei Wuxian is around. He silently revels in the chaos that Wei Wuxian carries with him wherever he goes.

"I should have come to you days ago, you always know how to calm me down. I don’t know why I didn’t."

I wish that you did, Lan Wangji thinks.

"You are here with me now," Lan wangji says instead.

"How are you always so patient with me?"

Lan Wangji doesn’t know what to say. He imitates Wei Wuxian’s gesture from before, squeezes his hand like it will convey all that he wants to say, but can’t.

Wei Wuxian smiles back dreamily in response. Lan Wangji thinks that maybe he does get the message after all.

They sit in the silence for a few moments before Wei Wuxian starts to nod off, jerking his head up with a start and looking around with wide eyes whenever it falls towards his chest.

Lan Wangji decides to be brave. Squeezes his hand again and forces the words to come.

"Wei Ying, please talk to me about it."

Wei Wuxian raises his free hand from beneath the water, mostly clean except for the ink stains that will take days to fade away, and rubs his forehead. He sighs quietly.

Lan Wangji waits patiently. He doesn’t want to press, but he’s prepared to if he must.

"I watched you die," Wei Wuxian says despondently. "Well, more like ripped apart by—”

He stops, closes his eyes and breathes deeply before opening them again.

"It’s always feels so real when it happens. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t and go back to sleep, but it kept coming back. I get myself worked up and it always comes back. Ever since we were young."

Lan Wangji swallows, squeezes his hand again. His recurring death being the main theme of Wei Wuxian’s nightmares was honestly never on his list of probabilities.

But then again, he never explicitly said what it was that ripped him away from peace in the middle of the night. It was one of the few secrets that he clung to.

"Why do you think I asked you to hold me until I fell asleep again all those years ago? And the few times I’ve come into your bed now after drinking too much?"

Lan Wangji’s throat is a desert. The question is probably rhetorical. Something he should know the answer to without having to ask. But he can’t stop himself.

"Why?"

"I needed to know you were there with me. That you were safe and it wasn’t real because I felt you there with me— Lan Zhan!"

The water in the tub is not quite as hot, but still warm when Lan Wangji leans over and falls in as he throws his arms around Wei Wuxian’s neck, clinging tightly. It’s an awkward scene, with his legs still hanging over the edge of the tub as his ass settles onto Wei Wuxian’s lap. He should be the one comforting Wei Wuxian right now, but the hand moving against his spine makes it feel like the tables have turned.

"Wei Ying, why did you not come to me now?"

"Ah, Lan Zhan, will you really make me say it?"

Something in his tone of voice hints at it. He’s embarrassed. The great shameless Wei Wuxian is embarrassed.

"Tell me," Lan Wangji says, leaning back enough to look at him.

"It’s not fair of you to hold me down and force the truth out of me like this, you know!" Wei Wuxian tries to deflect.

"Tell me," Lan Wangji repeats firmly.

Wei Wuxian sighs. "It’s awkward to say. It feels childish to be afraid of such imaginary things. Children have nightmares, not adults."

Lan Wangji could kick him if he didn’t want to kiss him so badly right now. Of all the things he could claim to be childish.

"Children are afraid of the dark," Lan Wangji says.

"Yes—"

"And so is Wei Ying."

"That’s beside the point."

"Children are afraid of monsters."

"Don’t even—"

“And so is Wei Ying."

"Lan Zhannnn, I’m too tired to be made fun of like this," Wei Wuxian whines, pouting as he looks away.

Lan Wangji wants to lean forward and take that quivering lip between his teeth.

"Wei Ying?" Lan Wangji asks softly and earns his attention again. "I do not think it is childish to fear losing those close to you."

"No," Wei Wuxian replies. "I suppose it isn’t childish at all."

They stay like that for a while, embracing as the bubbles dissipate. When Wei Wuxian begins shivering again, teeth chattering loudly in Lan Wangji’s ear, they decide it’s finally time to move.

Lan Wangji stands first, midsection drenched and dripping water along the floor as he retrieves a towel from the cabinet. He helps Wei Wuxian up and wraps it around him, supporting his weight as he dries him off.

"L-L-Lan Zh-an-an?" he chatters out. How is he always so cold?

"Mn?" Lan Wangji grabs another dry towel and wraps it around him.

Wei Wuxian sighs contentedly, nestling in closer.

"Can I sleep in your room?"

That is exactly where Lan Wangji was planning on leading him anyways.

"Yes."

"Will you hold me until I fall asleep?"

And that is exactly what Lan Wangji was planning to do anyways.

"Of course, Wei Ying."

After helping Wei Wuxian get dressed and settled onto the bed, Lan Wangji changes out of his own soaking wet clothes before laying down to join him.

Normally, Lan Wangji would be sipping his morning tea in the kitchen or out on the balcony by now. His day would have begun hours ago.

Instead Wei Wuxian drapes an arm over his waist and nuzzles in closer, his breath warm and steady against his neck when he whispers, "Goodnight, Lan Zhan, and thank you," and then falls asleep almost instantly.

Lan Wangji runs his fingers through Wei Wuxian’s hair, presses his lips ever so gently to the top of his head, and breathes his confession onto deaf ears, "Goodnight, Wei Ying. I love you."

#wangxian #wangxian fic #lan zhan #wei ying #lan wangji #wei wuxian #the untamed #mdzs #the untamed fanfiction #mdzs fanfiction #omg they were roommates #hold me tighter (even closer)#wangxian trash #hurt/comfort #light angst #mutual pining

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nobody-wants-ice-cream · 4 years

Text

Everything Wrong With The Umbrella Academy. Episode 6, The Day That Wasn’t.

We Only See Each Other at Weddings and Funerals

Run Boy Run

Extra Ordinary

Man on the Moon

Number Five

Disclaimer: This is all in good fun! I wanted to do a really nitpicky re-watch of the series and found some really cool and interesting things I didn’t notice before. This is meant to have a Cinema Sins-esque tone. However, I did take off a lot more sins than Cinema Sins would have because I do genuinely like the series and the people that made it possible. So all of the good things got one sin off and all the bad things got one sin added. This is a really long post, so grab some popcorn. If there’s anything that I missed, feel free to add it!

I would also like to add that normally you wouldn’t watch a show this way. I am purposefully looking for mistakes, easter eggs, and other things that we’re not supposed to notice. I am watching not with the goal of entertainment, but for analysis. So most of the things that I sin, I am seeing for the first time.

Also, no I can’t do better. I am in no way qualified to give this level of criticism about anything.

[Today we got the s2 release date!! I am so excited. To answer any questions about that, I will probably do a season 2 version of this a year after it comes out. Since some of my sins involve fandom and any fic tropes/theories we might come up with, I want to make sure that has time to happen.]

The Day that Wasn’t

Only Dave notices Klaus coming to Vietnam via briefcase. The flashing blue lights and loud “oof!” isn’t loud enough to wake anyone else up. +1

Cody Ray Thompson’s workout routine. -1

“Katz” isn’t a fandom thing! The dude that is yelling at all the soldiers and Klaus to get ready (some sort of commanding officer?) calls Dave “Katz”! -1

Klaus is so confused that he just puts the pants on without really questioning it. What the fuck was going on in Klaus’s head? +1

Where is Ben? +1

Right where I’m paused Klaus’s face is hilarious. “It was at this moment Klaus knew. He fucked up” -1

The Power of Boners is what keeps Klaus in the fucking Vietnam War. +1

For all future Dave sins, I am calling it The Power of Boners because Dave gets one line. As soon as the show corrects this and shows us why Dave was so wonderful, these remain sins. Sin for the show for not providing more Dave content. +1

Overly saturated forigen country cliche. +1

Seriously, why is Vietnam so orange? +1

The Doors. -1

This one shot in the foreground of the girl with white boots. I want those boots so badly. Costume people, where did you get them? Sin until I know, damnit! +1

Cool white boots are cool. -1

Klaus’s dance moves. -1

Klave. -1

Scene does not contain a lap dance. +1

Or any other indication that Dave and Klaus didn’t just make out once and decided to remain friends. Please give me more Klave content show. If anything, just to flesh out this character who motivates Klaus for half of the season. +1

Luther barges in on people in the bathroom. He has six siblings! Anyone with at least one sibling knows that barging in on people in bathrooms is a shitty move. Heh, shitty move, bathroom, get it? +1

Klaus’s face when Luther deadpans “the world’s ending in three days”. It’s the face of someone who completely forgot about that since he’s been in the 60s for ten months. -1

Also, the way Luther tells Klaus “the world’s ending in three days” is the same way I might tell my brother that it’s time for dinner. +1

“Five’s a little- [coo coo whistle]” Emmy Raver-Lampman kills this line. -1

Luther’s face when Allison asks “what did Five even see?” brings me so much joy. That is the look of complete panic. Love that. -1

Luther can’t lie for shit. Checks out. -1

Anyone with siblings can relate to Diego, Allison, and Klaus’s reaction to this bull. -1

The dramatic music leading into the little “we died” followed by a sip of coffee. Priceless. -1

Title umbrella scares the shit out of Klaus! -1

Comic power foreshadowing? Sin until we get answers. +1

Foreshadowing that Five is in HQ by sending orders that don’t follow the same format as the rest of the ones on the shoe. Fiveshaddowing? -1

Kate Walsh plays an excellent villain. Part of that evil demeanor is getting all up in Five’s personal bubble. This is the closest Five has been to someone in the entire show without any injury or being drunk. -1

The Handler is creepy. +2

Five makes demands after setting foot in the building for less than one minute. +1

The masks from the comics are on the wall in the briefcase room. -1

Based on the two agents we see in the briefcase room and Hazel and Cha Cha, the uniform of the commission assassin is a blue suit, yet all of Five’s are grey or black like management. Inconsistency. +1

Typewriters. I hate those things. +1

I think Aidan Gallagher forgot what he was doing in this scene. His expression doesn’t look like Five, it looks like some kid who is letting a math lecture wash over them. You could make the argument that Five is sort of letting this wash over him too, but I would call bullshit. Five knows how dangerous of a situation he’s in right now. He shouldn’t look this calm. +1

The Handler touching Five’s face. +3

Dot has the “i’m in danger” expression when meeting Five because Dot let Five live in hell for 45 years. Five also looks like he wants to kill her. Great acting, Patrice Goodman. -1

Five’s expression when Dot says “No hard feelings” brings me so much joy. And fear. -1

The Handler makes Five the teacher’s pet on his first day by calling him leadership material in front of his new coworkers. +1

Kate Walsh was temporarily directed by Tim Burton for this scene. +1

That weird look one of the commission management people gives Five once Five sits down and starts working. I don’t like it, I don’t like it! +1

The Hargreeves mansion looks really fucking chaotic on the roof. I don’t like it. +1

Leonard’s face at finally being allowed inside the Hargreeves mansion. Just the right dose of satisfied and creepy. Well done, John Magaro. -1

Leonard is raising so many red flags that he may as well be a stop sign. +1

Umbrella Academy action figures. Oh, Reggie. +1

Luther has to explain that everyone in the whole world dies and not just them. The Umbrella Academy School of Delayed Reactions due to Stupidity was too long of a name so Reggie shortened it to The Umbrella Academy. +1

Allison’s right, Vanya isn’t being fair. However, Allison isn’t specific about how Vanya is family but Leonard is not. Sin for both of them for being dumb as hell. +2

“I’m gonna go find Vanya” “There isn’t time, we need to figure out what causes the apocalypse” irony. +1

“Nuclear war” cited as one of the possible causes of the apocalypse. Comics fans, enjoy this sin off. -1

“But I’m thinking this is about the Moon, right?” well yeah, but not for the reasons you think. Foreshadowing the moon. -1

That creepy portrait of Five behind Diego. No, not the big one, the other one by the bar. What the fuck, Reggie? +1

Leonard steals the action figure of The Monocle (reggie for those who don’t know the comics), which symbolizes the way Leonard feels he is controlling the Academy through Vanya. -1

Leonard is creepy. +1

Ben doesn’t realize that Klaus is going through withdrawal despite seeing it the day before. Sure, Ben could have been more focused on the tourture, but because Ben points out Klaus’s withdrawal by name in Man on the Moon, we can assume he noticed and that this is a continuity error. +1

Vanya’s powers affecting the world around her as soon as she is a safe distance away from the academy because reasons. Seriously, there should have been at least something while she was confronting her siblings. Show plays fast and loose with the rules of Vanya’s powers. +1

“If you tie me up after.” “Come again?” Diego and Klaus have the most sibling like relationship on this entire show. -1

Klaus’s Diego impression. -1

Excessive use of the word “bro”. One sin for every time I have to hear it in this scene. +2

“Mr. Five”. Is Five’s first name “Number” or did he not give the Commission any other name? Does this imply that he doesn’t go by Five Hargreeves? +1

This is one of the few scenes where Aidan Gallagher no longer looks like Aidan Gallagher and instead looks like Five. Acting. -1

Dot is really trying to get murdered. Don’t engage the man you put through hell for almost fifty years, moron. +1

The Handler has nothing better to do than to stalk Five. Does this lady have a job or did she take the day off specifically for this? What was she doing in the tube room?+1

The origin of “deadly little thing” is fucking Gloria? Really, fandom? +1

Five is too good of an actor. I understand why Aidan Gallagher might make some of these choices as an actor but I don’t understand how a man who grew up alone in the apocalypse can act this well. +1

The Handler keeps singling Five out in front of his coworkers. +1

The Handler’s arm around Five’s shoulders. +1

Creepy dude is back. I’m not even going to try and look up this guy’s name, but the expression suggests something I don’t want to think about. +1

Creepy guy’s name is Herb. Of course it is. +1

The file Five picks up just has a smiley face inside of it, which suggests that the Handler put it there as a red herring. Nice touch, show. -1

Gender neutral bathrooms. -1

Five’s expression when the Handler continues talking to him as she is peeing. -1

The Handler talks to Five while peeing. Gross. +2

His expression when she starts coughing is so funny. -1

Rugae +1

The Handler peeks over the door of the bathroom stall. +10

Cha Cha says, “Sure, shoot” when Hazel asks if he can ask her a question. +1

Where did the gunshot come from if Cha Cha didn’t shoot Hazel? I get they’re using it to make us think that she did, but there is no other explanation for the noise. +1

Luther frantically searching for his moon research makes me very sad. +1

Also, I’m kind of bored with this episode at this point. It’s such a low episode with the only interesting parts that make me as excited as the last episode Number Five, being the Commission parts. Everything else is kind of boring. Pick up the pace, show. +1

Reggie is a dick to Luther. +7

Luther looks so lost and broken and sad. I’m sad. Fuck you, Reggie. +1

Why the fuck was Luther carrying an axe?? +2

And rope?? +2

When and where did Luther find the time and money to get the engraved gold locket for Allison? This interaction is so full of plot holes and stupidity. +1

However, Cameron Brodeur and Eden Cupid do well with this dumb writing. -1

Seriously, who wrote this scene? The fact that I can’t bring myself to care about what is going on right now says a lot. +1

Reggie jump scare. +1

Cliche record scratch. How did that happen? Did Luther or Allison bump into it? Sin for lack of clarity and for destroying a record. +1

“Fun and games are restricted to Saturdays between noon and half past noon” Reggie is a dick to his children. +7

Klaus and Diego bonding. Literally? -1

Ben is in this scene! -1

I forgot how weird the soundtrack is for this scene. It’s too ominous. Scoring is important. +1

“Dave must have been a very special person to put up with all your weird-ass shit.” -1

“He was kind and strong and vulnerable and beautiful” that’s great, show. Why don’t you show us that instead of having Klaus say it. Just once scene where Dave shows these qualities so that he’s a real person instead of someone created to drive Klaus’s storyline? Please? +1

I feel really bad for Ben in this scene. From Ben’s perspective, he wasn’t good enough to motivate Klaus to get sober, but this random guy was. Ben angst. +1

Also, Justin Min manages to convey this without any lines. Major props. That takes some serious skill. -2

Bro. +1

“Everyone I like is already dead”. Fridging. +1

I can’t tell if this is Ben walking away or if this is the transition between Diego and Klaus’s point of views. If this is meant to imply the pov switch, It would have been easier to have Ben disappear from the same spot. If it’s Ben walking away because he can’t take being told that he isn’t good enough to get sober for, Ben angst. Either way, it’s a sin. +1

“Aww shit! I need to pee.” Diego’s expression is amazing. -1

“If this [having powers] is even true, everything I know about myself would be different.” That is Vanya’s storyline in a nutshell. This line is really underrated. -1

All of Leonard’s lines point towards the book. All of them. Which makes total sense. -1

Vanya is starting to show more sass and personality because the pills are gone. I wish fanfic writers would explore this. Including myself, I am sinning fanfic writers for not taking into account how cool Vanya is without the meds. +1

“I’m sorry you got stuck with the ordinary one” See! +1

“Ordinary” This word keeps coming up. Probably because of the whole rumor situation that we’re not supposed to know about yet. Rewatches are fun. -1

“My life is so weird” “I like weird”. And if you weren’t such a colossal creep, Leonard/Harold, I would like you too. This line is super sweet. Sin for manipulation. +1

Ellen Page isn’t my girlfriend. Have you seen this scene recently? She looks so cute/hot/beautiful here. +1

No transition, just straight from Leonard and Vanya kissing to The Handler slurping her smoothie. It’s jarring. +1

I want to know why they decided that killing Archduke Ferdinand would start World War I. Noodle incident. +1

“I had a bad Twinkie in the apocalypse once. Kinda put me off desserts.” Yet you still ate the fluffernutter sandwich, Five? +1

The Handler’s office is really cool. Once again, set designers you win this one. -1

Why would Five go straight for a decade instead of a flavor? How does something taste like the 1950s before it tastes like a popular candy from the time for example? +1

The suit is blue like the rest of the time travel assassins have. This suggests a uniform that the Commission didn’t make Five wear before, and suggests a sort of power play. Details. -1

The Handler is a fucking creep. +1

“M26 grenades from the Vietnam war”. This is the comment that sparked the theory that the Commission killed Dave. I want answers. +1

The candy that tastes like the 50s is really chewy. Why is Five still chewing it? +1

The Handler gives Five a pistol and he doesn’t immediately shoot her, which suggests that the pistol is empty. So why was the grenade still operational if the other weapons were not? You would think she would make sure that the grenades couldn’t be used against her. +1

The Handler is a fucking creep. I think Aidan Gallagher was a little uncomfortable in this scene. The look in his eyes isn’t something you can fake. +1

Kate Walsh is an awesome actress. -1

Out of all the candies in the bowl, Five conveniently takes one that is an actual candy and one that is a tracker. +1

So I want to talk about Luther. I think the show did him a great disservice by setting up his story this way. Compared to the Commission stuff, Luther’s story arc doesn’t seem important, hence the “Dad sent me to the Moon” jokes. If this was in a better order, then maybe the fandom would like Luther more. Not that I know what that order should have been, but it definitely shouldn’t have been this one. This whole episode seems kind of disorganized and Luther’s character suffers for it. After this sin, I’m going to shut up about it, so I’ll just add a few and move on. +5

“Four years of my life. A lie” “What an asshole” That’s a bit of an understatement, Allison. Seriously, this Moon research has got to have some value to it. Luther was studying the moon for four fucking years. Who knows what kind of crazy shit he could have found out about the moon’s atmosphere and what the Earth was like when the moon split from it. Those soil samples would tell us a lot about what the developing planet Earth was like. Luther’s moon research is important scientific material. And Reggie just locked it away. +3

This scene is excellent independently. Tom Hopper and Emmy Raver-Lampman play off each other extremely well. -1

“Can I show you something?” +1

The tools in the greenhouse have not moved in seventeen years. +1

And neither has the dust free record player. +1

Two cans of generic cola from seventeen years ago. And these two morons drink them. The family brain cell is dying. +1

This is such a sibling moment. Trying to do something nice and then it all goes up in flames? Sibling. Culture. -1

You know what isn’t sibling culture? The fucking locket. +3

This is a really human moment for Cha Cha. Burning the note shows that deep down, she cares about Hazel. -1

However, I don’t understand why she’s so pissed about Agnes. Is the show trying to ship Hazel and Cha Cha? Because that would be a stretch and I really don’t see it. +1

Klaus asking for one last hit is believable. Diego’s reaction is really good too. Well done. -1

Klaus’s ptsd. Putting my boy through trauma. +1

The wound on Dave’s chest has to be an exit wound. He was behind the barrier, so there’s no way he could have been shot from the front by the enemy. Someone (like a Commission agent) shot him from the back. So I guess we sort of got answers? I’m going to sin this until we know for sure. +1

Klaus is distraught. My poor boy. +1

Why is the chandelier still on the ground? You would think somebody would have attempted to pick that up at this point, right? It’s been two days. +1

Grace’s more relaxed hairstyle shows that she isn’t under Reggie’s strict control anymore. The tight pin curls are now replaced by gorgeous waves. Symbolism, well done hair stylist. -1

Grace lies because Pogo is standing behind Diego. Otherwise, I think she would have told him the truth right then and there. Secrets. +1

Yo, @ Luther. Who the fuck eats a hot dog like that? +1

Also, it was bright daylight when Diego was talking to Grace and now it’s pitch black out. What happened in those hours? +1

Talking about their regrets, Allison says “we can’t go back”. Insert every season 2 headcanon and the whole “Where are they?” tag line from the season 2 promos. +1

Allison attempts to see the silver lining of child abuse. This works and is a valid coping mechanism that I think is totally in character. Well done, writers. -1

The kiss on the cheek is very “this is the last time I will see my sibling whom I love very dearly and who also loves me for me”. This should have been it for Allison and Luther kissing because it’s a really good moment. -1

I love the dancing in the moonlight scene because it’s a reference to something from the comics. -1

The choreography is really, really good. Emma Portner fucking rules. -1

And I love the earrings that Allison is wearing. No joke, someone please tell me where I can find them, they’re adorable and I would love to have them. -1

However, the show made us see two sibling characters kiss. In a very romantic way. +15

And it’s very clear that this kiss happens outside of the fantasy too. +15

Also, without the lights and the music, were Allison and Luther just two weirdos dancing in the park to nothing? +1

The transition to get back to the Commission is really good. -1

“Gloria. The Handler knows that Five is up to something. Get this to Hazel and Cha Cha immediately.” Was the extra info about Five necessary? I feel like a regular person wouldn’t say that. +1

Gloria doesn’t know who the second best assassins are. +1

Five gets that stapler out of nowhere. This goes back to his unexplained power from episode 1, but now the question is: Is this switching power stapler based? +1

Five’s expression when he finally gets the name of the man who will cause the apocalypse. -1

And now we know the origin of the terminate Hazel message. Five, you clever bastard. -1

Did we see the terminate Cha Cha message before this? I can’t remember. If we didn’t then it’s a great reveal. If we did, then I didn’t care enough to pay attention. [I looked back] We didn’t. Great reveal. -1

Five, hide your bodies better so they don’t start waking up for comedic timing. +1

The comedic timing of Gloria waking back up. -1

“You’re a first rate pragmatist!” no he’s not. Have you been paying attention to Five’s character at all, Handler? If he was, then he never would have broken his contract because he was safe in the Commission.+1

Also, this is what a lot of fanfic writers base Five off of. Not his actual character, this fucking line. Sin for the fandom. +1

Why did they have to split up this scene? The Handler just attempted to shoot Five and now we’re supposed to care about Mom and Diego?? +1

Grace finally gets to tell the truth! Sin for Pogo and Reggie for forcing her to lie. +1

The truth. -1

The Commission desk people do care about Gloria. Caring. -1

Vanya finding Reggies book. This could have been the original trigger to the apocalypse in the first timeline. I want answers. How did it go down originally? +1

Dave! -1

“I do owe a debt. But it’s not to you.” This is one of those lines that will be referenced in a future season. “See, [this character and/or relationship] was referenced in season 1” or something like that. This is my favorite Five line, too. -2

Five once again stands too close to an explosion. Fuckin’ run, dude! +1

The ending of this episode reminds me of the “and it was all just a dream” ending that 5th graders write. Nothing in this episode has any consequences. +3

And I am adding back the sins I took off and then some for the important bits like Diego and Klaus bonding, Grace telling Diego all the secrets, and Klaus seeing Dave. +4

Wednesday. 8:15 A.M. (...again). The time stamp is pretty good though. -1

“What gives us a win this time?” And then Five appears. -1

Five snatches Allison’s coffee. And he should be bleeding from the shrapnel wound. +2

Allison’s face when Five snatches her coffee. -1

Diego, Luther, Klaus, and Allison are all watching Five stumble weird and chug Allison’s coffee with the funniest expressions. I want to know what they were thinking. Ya know, beyond “What the Fuck?”. +1

Those expressions, though. -1

“So if y’all don’t get your sideshow acts together” Five this whole season has been you saving the world and everyone else as a sideshow act. That’s gonna take a lot more effort than saving the world. +1

Aidan Gallagher fucking nails this scene. Expletive required. This is why I respect him as an actor. This scene would have been so easy to over act, but he kills this monologue. -5

If you look closely at Five’s hair, it looks sort of like the triangular shape from the comics. I can’t tell if that was intentional, but it was a good detail. Hair department. -1

“Who the hell is Harold Jenkins” followed by a coffee slurp. That is how they end the episode? Really? It would have been stronger without the coffee. +1

Season 2 comes out on July 31, 2020! I got the announcement just as I was finishing this episode! I’ll take off a sin because we finally know! Whoop!! -1

Overall review:

After the powerhouse that is episode 5, this episode feels odd and out of place. My favorite parts were the Commission parts, and everything else felt like an interruption. Even more so when you consider that the commission parts are the only parts of the episode that actually happened. Sure, it’s great character building, but without any consequences, it feels cheap. I feel like I’ve said everything I needed to say, so I won’t get crazy with the analysis. I would say more if anything in this episode actually mattered.

Total: 112

Sentence: The Umbrella Academy of Reacting to things Slowly due to Stupidity. Say that 10 times fast. Then I will undo all your hard work through the power of time travel. Seriously, fuck this ending.

#The Umbrella Academy #all in good fun #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #allison hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #five hargreeves #ben hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #dave katz #leonard peabody #harold jenkins #the handler #dot #gloria #the commission

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wildlyminiaturesandwich · 5 years

Note

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the announcements from Maxis Monthly? Did the Game Changers know about or have any say in the rebrand?

Ok so I’m gonna answer your last question first lol

The title “Game Changer” is definitely a little confusing because it implies that we actually change the game in some way, but we don’t. Well, most of us don’t. I think some of the bigger Game Changers have a little sway because they know the team personally and have been to the Sims Headquarters and stuff, but for the most part all we do is get early access so that we can provide our individual communities with a glimpse of the pack that goes a little more in depth than just trailers, that way people can see what’s included and decide if they want to buy it, and hopefully bring more people to the franchise in the process. And we definitely didn’t have anything to do with the rebrand, we heard about it at the same time everyone else did.

As for your first question, I’m gonna put it under a cut for a couple reasons: [a] Listen, I have opinions lol and [b] for anyone that is like me and is sensitive to colour contrast, I don’t want anyone getting a nasty headache or sore eyes if they don’t have to. Let’s do this!

So first off, LOVE that they’re adding over 1000+ decorative world objects! There have been so many things over the years in different packs that I’m sure we’ve all seen and been like “Why didn’t you let us use that!?”, and now we’ll be able to! Sucks that some creators spent so much time liberating those things for us only to now have their work be obsolete though 😕

I also think the Create-A-Sim Story Mode looks interesting. I don’t like the idea that you can’t change the sims aspiration and traits though; they’re locked in once you’ve finished answering the questions. I’m not sure how much use I’ll get out of it, as I tend to either pick specific traits based on my sim’s backstory or randomise them, but it’s nice to know the option is there and answering the questions might be fun to see what kind of sim you get!

Now, onto the rebrand.

I just don’t understand it!

Listen, I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t like change; I don’t do well with big changes at all. But this isn’t about that, this is about trying to understand why EA felt the need to rebrand The Sims 4 (which I can’t work out) and why they chose those colours, and I just… don’t understand.

I mean I understand, they’re trying to attract a younger audience with bright shiny things. But I don’t UNDERSTAND, you know? I don’t understand what prompted them to do it now, after almost five years?! Why did they feel the need to change something that didn’t need to be fixed at all? And why they went with this particular colour scheme! It’s so unnecessarily bright! As a graphic designer I’m genuinely horrified by the colours they chose and as a consumer of their product, I’m a little annoyed that they spent time and money on this when there are other things that are more important (like things that are actually broken) that keep getting the “We don’t have the resources” excuse or just flat out ignored.

Here’s the difference between the original box arts and the rebranded ones:

That blue is GOD AWFUL! It’s like Tumblr’s new blue background; I literally have a headache from looking at it! It doesn’t fit with the style of the rest of the game at all. And they claimed in the stream that the new box art designs really make the render sims “pop”… they really don’t. The backgrounds of the DLC packs are way too busy. I just I don’t understand why they couldn’t just stick with the nice clean, minimalist look they had before; it was truly a timeless design. A design that actually made the render sims pop and didn’t detract from them at all with busy backgrounds and headache-inducing colours!

Oh and can we just talk about the new base game box art render for a second? I love it, I really do. It looks cool and I’m excited to get to learn more about these new sims that are being added and according to the Gurus in the stream, all of the stuff on those sims is being added to base game (the stuff that’s not already base game that is). I’m excited about that pink hair BUT take a good look at all the other stuff… look familiar? That’s because most of us have already paid for that stuff. The jacket on the pink haired sim is from Get Famous, the beanie on the sim next to her is from Get to Work, the hair under the beanie is from Dine Out, the bracelet on the sim with the camera is from Seasons, the chef uniform in the middle is from Get to Work, the jacked on the sim up the back with the phone is from Get Together, and the sleeveless hoodie on the sim to the left of that is from Fitness Stuff. They’re all recolours of stuff from other packs. I’m all for free content, because hey it’s free, but I really wish they wouldn’t make things from other packs base game; people paid for that stuff.

Side note: I feel sorry for the people who collect the psychical copies of the games, because unless they can afford to buy new copies of all the packs, any new packs aren’t going to match their old ones now. And also the people who got tattoos of the old plumbob 😕

Which brings me to the plumbob, and yet another before and after:

The new plumbob is whatever; I don’t hate it, I just prefer the original. It matched the one in game and suited the artstyle of the whole game really well, whereas the new one looks too much like The Sims 3 and doesn’t suit The Sims 4 at all. It’s also not going to match the plumbob in-game anymore as for some reason they decided not to change that one? I mean it wouldn’t matter to me if it did because I always have my default file edited to get rid of it, but it just makes no sense to leave the original in there if you’re changing everything else.

New box art, plumbob and stuff aside, the thing that probably annoys me the most about this rebrand is that the pack icons and colours are changing. I get that they probably ran out of colours to choose from for each pack, but the fact that it’s so hard to tell the difference between the colours for the game and stuff packs is gonna be a problem for anyone who has difficulty distinguishing between different colour tones. Mr Sandwich, for example, couldn’t tell that there was a difference between the two, even after I pointed it out to him. Why didn’t they make one of them yellow?!

I personally used to find things from expansions in the catalogue by looking for the colour of each pack icon. “I know the thing I’m looking for is from Get Famous, so I’ll just keep scrolling until I see a pink icon”… well, not anymore:

All expansion packs are now teal, all game packs are now blue (a different blue than the box art blue I might add 😩), and all stuff packs are green; the only difference is the icon on them. And yes, I’m aware you can filter things by pack, that’s what I used to do for stuff and game packs because they were always the same colour, but if I’m just scrolling through say the curtains category, it’s a lot quicker to just scroll once or twice looking for an icon colour than it is to go into the little menu, click on “packs”, scroll down to the pack I want and choose it.

The new pack icons and colours also look awful on the main menu. Here’s a little before and after again:

Urgh that blue! There as nothing wrong with the original menu but now we’re gonna have the god awful blue again… not the point, sorry. Look at those icons! They’re too… saturated? busy? both? I dunno what but they look awful, especially on the blue background! At the very least they should have just made them one solid colour instead of trying to carry over the crystallized look.

And lastly the loading screen….

Again with the gross colour combinations and the background is just plain boring. The old one is much nicer and easier on the eyes.

Maybe it’s because I’m old and not the target audience for this new look but honestly I JUST DON’T GET IT! I understand that EA are trying to attract more people to the game, obviously younger people, but I really don’t think alienating and confusing the people who currently play your game in favour of luring in new people is this is the way to go about it.

Thankfully I’ve already seen a couple of the amazingly talented modders in the community say they’ll do everything they can to either give us back the original menus and loading screens or make a less obnoxious version as soon as they can, so I’m just gonna keep my fingers crossed that it won’t be too difficult for them to do and look forward to downloading those mods so I can play without getting a headache every time I have to look at the main menu and loading screen 😅

NOTE: Before anyone starts shouting at me for “being negative about a free update” just note that anon asked for my thoughts on it; these are my thoughts. If you like the new look that’s great, I’m really happy for you! But anon wanted my honest opinion and I’ve given it. Will this rebrand stop me playing the game? Of course not! The game is still the same no matter what the box art and menus look like, but that doesn’t mean I have to like them and it doesn’t mean I can’t express my disappointment about it all, especially if a follower asks for my opinion about it.

#sandwichasks #Anonymous #saviourhide

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