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the-duke-of-nuts · 11 months

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The Florist and The Tattoo Artist

Day 1: Tattoo Shop/Florist @dukexietyweek

Author’s Note: It’s Spooky Gays week bbs! You all remember last year when I said I'd write a fic to this exact prompt based on my post? Of course you do! I of course did not write it yet B U T don't scroll away just yet I promise there's something. I've written a little snippet (I say snippet as if it isn't literally half of one of the chapters) on one of the scenes that happen in the story but I made sure to write in a way where you don’t really need the whole fic to understand what’s going on. With that being said enjoy I guess!

Summary: Pretty much just Remus coming up with a tattoo design for Virgil and asking him out on a date.

Pairing: Dukexiety

Word Count: 1018

Warnings: Food Mention, I guess Remus mentioning his ass I don't know there's not really much here so I think just those should be fine

"Y'know for a tattoo artist I'd expect you to have at least one." Virgil commented as he started watering the beautifully grown plants in the shop. "Oh I do I gave myself a tentacle sword one on the right side of my ass." Remus answered casually. "How did- Y'know what I don't wanna know." The tattoo artist cackled at seeing Virgil shake off the impressive yet disturbing thought.

"Trust me I'm gonna get more soon. So what about you, have you ever thought about getting a tatt?"

"I mean... I wouldn't mind getting one I just don't know of what." The florist shrugged as he finished watering the plants and walked back to the counter. "Well for starters where do you want it?" Remus asked. Virgil thought about it for a moment. Despite the florist's appearance he never thought that far ahead about where'd he even get a tattoo let alone hoped for one in the first place but knowing the tattoo artist, the mustached man would probably come up with a big or possibly suggestive kind of design for him so he went the safe route.

"I don't know probably like..." Virgil started rolling down his sleeve and pushed his wristbands and bracelets out of the way and pointed to his wrist and forearm. "On my wrist or forearm or somewhere around there." "Hmm..." Remus suddenly took Virgil's arm and started lightly tracing the design he had in mind on the emo's wrist area. The florist fought back from shivering at the touch already knowing the smug words that would come out of the tattoo artist's mouth if he did or looked back up and saw how much he was blushing but luckily Remus was still distracted with figuring out the design.

How did we get to this... One moment we're working across from each other and I'm trying to kick you out of here as much as possible on the daily and next thing I know I can't get enough of your stupid flirting...

"Got it."

Virgil immediately snapped out of his thoughts once he heard Remus speak again. "I think something like a stormcloud with patches on your wrist would look good. Something like... OOH! Do you have any paper?" Virgil looked under the counter and found his sketchbook and handed it to Remus with a pencil. The florist mentally hoped and prayed the tattoo artist didn't carelessy flip the pages too fast and see the drawing of him on the very last page.

If he asks or says anything just tell him it's Freddie Mercury but edgy.

But Virgil instantly relaxed when Remus thankfully started sketching the design on the first empty page he spotted which was in the middle of the book.

Remus was known to be fast with his sketches but he made sure everything was detailed and perfect to the point where he didn't even need to use the eraser. After a minute or two Remus finally finished the drawing and looked at it satisfied. "Like this."

Once the tattoo artist flipped the sketchbook over to reveal the design, Virgil stared at it amazed. When Remus said a stormcloud with patches he certainly delivered. It was so detailed that the emo even immediately knew what colors he wanted it all to be.

"Woah holy shit that actually looks pretty badass!" "Thank you! I tend to give only the best for my Muses~" Remus winked smirking as he put the sketchbook back down.

Wink at me with those damn pretty eyes one more fucking time and I'll give you something to be smug about

Virgil cleared his throat blushing. "I'll think about it." "Cool just let me know and I'll give it to you for free." The florist went wide eyed at hearing that. Normally people would be grateful for not having to pay for a tattoo but the thought of Remus possibly needing the money one day just didn't sit right with Virgil.

"What? Ree no no no I can't but what if-"

"No butts except yours getting the tatt for free Vee Vee!" Remus booped Virgil's nose to which the florist sighed defeated trying to swat the tattoo artist's hand away. "Fine." Virgil playfully huffed and crossed his arms looking away. "Good..." Remus suddenly smirked. "Fair warning though tatt's on the wrist hurt like a bitch but I'll gladly hold your hand if you need me to~" He teased wiggling his eyebrows. "Shut up." A flustered Virgil playfully hit a cackling Remus' shoulder.

"But if you really wanna pay me back I'll also take a date as a form of payment~"

"Not that I'm immediately saying yes or anything but what did you have in mind?"

"There's an Italian restaurant down the street... I know how much you love pizza and bread sticks~" Remus took Virgil's hand and kissed it smirking as the emo's face became even redder.

Can you stop making me wanna fucking kiss you for 10 seconds!?

"Alright fine you had me at the pizza and bread sticks." Virgil said not letting go of Remus' hand. The tattoo artist beamed at hearing that. "Really? Well how does tonight after we both close sound?" Virgil couldn't help but smile at Remus' eagerness. He missed seeing that pretty spark of excitement in the tattoo artist's eyes. "I'd like that." "Yes!" Remus fist pumped whispering victoriously to himself.

"You won't be disappointed-"

The tattoo artist was cut off by his phone alarm ringing to which he dramatically sighed and turned it off.

"Looks like my lunch break is over... Meet back outside of here later?"

"Sounds good."

Remus smiled at the approval and before he could turn away and leave Virgil tugged him back to him and kissed his cheek causing him to freeze and blush. "Now go before I change my mind and you mess up your schedule and if you do, that won't be on the lips tonight." Virgil teased. "Yes Sir~" Remus smirked and quickly ran out of the shop and back to his job. Virgil chuckled and shook his head.

I'm in love with a dork.

#dukexietyweek2023 #dukexiety #virgil #virgil sanders #remus #remus sanders #ts virgil #ts remus #sanders sides #thomas sanders #dukey writes

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wolfieworld · 1 year

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4/6 Diary: Dead Projects

it's hard to acknowledge why something isn't working when you're in the middle of it, sometimes it's hard to even know why. There's a few plots that have been in my brain for years that I've rewritten and rewritten and rewritten with little success. I think a big part of failed projects is actually over-estimating ones own capabilities, for example I plan out mechanics that I don't have the experience to achieve, or characterization too far from my own experience that its not fun to write. I often plan out stories that require a lot of research and I feel like I can't write until I know everything-therefore most writing doesn't get done and what does is full of holes. It's kind of embarrassing to look back at stuff and just think "I didn't know what I was talking about at all."

Sometimes shit just doesn't work out. In the words of Pretty Boy Detective Club giving up on a dream can be more beautiful than achieving the dream itself.

Probably 90% of everything I try doesn't work out and it's been on my mind lately that that's a good thing. Of course in an ideal world we learn from finished works bc there are things from those you can only learn by sharing with others and by wrapping up a story and by saying goodbye to your characters but there isn't such a thing as an ideal world and everything we do we learn from whether other people see it or not. There is something special you learn from unfinished projects, the types you choose to put down forever, which is you are forced to acknowledge precisely why it could not get done.

These are all images from 2 retired vn/comic projects.

These projects are prisons for some of my best and worst writing, full of ideas with no through-line or real objective, and no real thorough understanding of these characters who I loved just collections of feelings and images and facts I thought were cool.

What is improvement? I'm not a person who looks at my old art and feels like I've gotten better at drawing, and when I look back at old writing I only really get the sense that I've become less cringe but not become a better writer. I think improvement is more esoteric than becoming better at the skills you use to express, maybe it's just knowing yourself better and playing to your strengths, and crystalizing what you want to say (or finding it in the first place). Aesthetics form naturally from writing and drawings that plainly express what they need too and they are drawn like blood from stone from work that is trying its hardest to be clever.

Personally I find these digital pages from 2020(21?) to be better drawings than anything I've done in the last two years in a technical way but it doesn't matter, I couldn't finish it, and I didn't know the characters. It's just portfolio work, it took me months to do five of them. They're just "cool shots" even though I didn't know it at the time.

As I get further into working on Youth Who Was Killed I'm noticing that cutting corners produces better results, there's more emotion in sketches so why finish a drawing, why design a logo which I'm not good at when I can use a font, why color grade the images myself when limiting the palette to one or two or three colors provides an unmuddied result? This is the kind of laziness you would think would harm 'improvement' but I've found that too much brute force is a highway to burn out, and then you're not learning anything at all.

Making art is a war against human nature I think, cavemen definitely weren't built too instinctually develop a five year plan every new years. However it becomes like less of a war when you work with your nature rather than against it. Maybe. I don't know. I really hope I don't make a blog post two years from now about why I couldn't finish YWWK. If that happens blame ren'py.

i drew my ocs in funny t shirts for the first time in my life so maybe all that stuff i said about improvement being that you become less cringe is untrue, maybe you get more cringe. thats ok with me i guess.

#meow meow meow #youth who was killed #that feels like kind of a scary tag and maybe i should use the acronym i will decide later

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bobbybutterfly · 5 months

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Elliott art dump!

These pictures are quite mid so I decided to post a whole bunch of them at once. Back when I was starting Tumblr I really wanted as much likes as possible. Yeah. It’s cringe. But I’m a furry. I’m all cringe. It’s especially cringe because likes and followers don’t matter much on Tumblr. You’re never gonna make any money on here! Oh boy. Isn’t being disabled and incapable of work fun!

Well. Now I got some stability with responses. About four per non Squirrel and Hedgehog related stuff. In the past I would spit these three into separate posts. Thus gaining about 12 likes if I’m lucky all together. But now I will post them all together because I’m not such an attention whore anymore.

So now about these fellas. The first Elliott is actually the last one with the sea background. I wanted to impress with the best one so I put the latest one to show first. But this sea background one. He was an attempt at the jelly art style. I still have a long way to go, don’t I? He’s kind of cute. Though he could use more polish. They all could. He was supposed to be more realistic but after I finished the sketch I didn’t pay much attention to the reference photo. A lot of the time my painting don’t have the best of anatomy. That’s quite strange because anatomy in my sketches while not perfect is pretty good. My art teacher said that it’s because I get so engrossed in painting I forget to pay attention to it.

I did learn something on this piece though. Using the blend tool. I first block out under my sketch with a flat base paint. Then I add (lol I wrote ass by accident!) a clipping layer onto the flat base. There I do all the colours. Then I merge the base and the colours to blend it. Don’t forget to use alpha lock! Then merge that with the sketch layer on top. Blend away the lines. Switch off alpha lock and do the polishing.

Got all that? No? You didn’t understand a word what I just said? Ehm. Moving on.

The middle one. I quite like this one. Even though I didn’t do enough blending around the eyes so he got some sick eyeliner. By now you noticed that Elliott doesn’t look the most like his in game appearance. I really love the earlier designs. He’s just so dorky! I also base my head cannon version of him from the actor Haruma Muira. I’ve got a whole bunch written about my head cannon if you’re willing to scroll for two hours down my blog. There’s not much to say about this drawing. It’s sketchy. It works. I went lazy with the sweater. It turned out pretty good.

Now the top one. The eye catching furry version of Elliott. I drew him as antro lion before. But then I remembered that lions are supposed to have a collar like mane. Not just hair on top. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to make him a twink though!!! I did challenge @32girassoisdevangogh but it seems they chickened out! That or they have more important stuff to attend to…

IMPORTANT!!! IMPORTANT!!!!

@32girassoisdevangogh is not a chicken!!! They drew Elliott as both a lion and a Iriomote catand did and incredible job doing so! Really taught me not to do cheap jabs at people because they will make a big fool of you!!

INTERMISSION OVER!

So I changed the species to a Iriomote cat. Which works far more for the story I have for him. My head cannon is he’s a 2nd generation immigrant from the Gotoro Empire, which is like Stardew’s version of Japan in my head. Everyone thinks he’s white because though he has monolid eyes and bronzish skin (when he dares to go out his cabin) he still got ocean blue eyes and red hair. Iriomote cats do look like your usual street cat unless you look close. I won’t have him be a furry if I ever get around to writing the fanfic about him. I don’t want Zootopia 2 Bad Racism Allegory Boogaloo.

This picture looks… alright. I have a lot of learning to do when it comes to digital paintings. Do you have some suggestions for what I should work on? I draw in Procreate.

Bobby out!

#my art #fanart #procreate #digital art #furry art #stardew valley #stardew elliott #digital painting #art criticism #give art advice please!

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jinxthejubilee · 1 year

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Venus - We Need to Talk (Again)

Back here again, aren't we? I'm so sorry, but I just can't help myself.

Because I have just discovered that there were plans to reveal not just one, but TWO lost turtles in ROTTMNT, I will discuss the story potential both Venus and Slash could have, should this show ever come back. (Please Nickelodeon, do something right for once and give us this show back-) But I must finish Venus first, before moving on to Slash.

And for those of you who might ask about Jennika, I thought about making her own page to hold out hope that she could make it into the Rise universe, only to come to the tragic realization that it was highly unlikely that she could ever appear in the show, given that Venus and Slash are pretty infamous as characters, and that the creators said that there were 2 missing turtles and not 3. My apologies to all Jennika stans.

Anyway, I did talk about Venus already, yes, but after revisting her backstory from The Next Mutation, I've come to the conclusion that her debut story isn't all bad? Yeah, I can't believe I just said that either.

I'll give the Next Mutation writer's 15-year-old brains credit, the idea that Venus was adopted by someone else and learned ninjutsu/magic is a cool concept, if explored correctly.

Since it's been pretty well-established that Big Mama's assistant was likely going to be revealed as Venus, I have an idea as to how she got there.

Now I could be wrong, but I believe that Big Mama's assistant debuted in Season 2. Whether or not she was just hired or was hiding out until the time was right, who can say.

For those of you who don't know or simply wiped that show from your memory, Venus was raised by Master Chung I, a human martial artist who taught Venus everything he knew.

Chung I died after confronting the Dragon Lord and demanding that he release Splinter. And his last words to Venus were for her to travel to New York City.

Now if I were in charge, I would keep some similarities to this, but obviously take some creative liberties.

In my Rise version of event, Draxum's lab explodes, the boys and Splinter take off, and Venus and Slash are presumed by Draxum to have died.

Instead of Venus' father being a human, I would make him a yokai, who finds her somehow and takes her to the farthest end of the Mystic City.

This father-figure would parallel Splinter in a few ways:

He would simultaneously be responsible, yet neglectful at the same time. The guy would be very much a loner with a tragic past, so while he would take care of Venus physically, her emotionally needs are something he simply can't and would not handle.

He would never leave his home. Granted, it would be hard to do so, as he lives very, very far away from other yokai, but he just refuses to interact with anyone he doesn't have to. But not because he's lazy, it would likely be due to paranoia and his strict moral code to keep his whatever he's keeping secret, safe from everyone.

Less of a father, and more of a master. A total flip from Rise Splinter, who focused more on fatherhood than teaching his sons dangerous martial arts, this guy is "teacher first, father second."

I see him as a cat. Not sure why I went with that, but it was a cool idea I thought of while brainstorming. While Splinter is an overweight, yet agile rat, I imagine Chung I would be a skeletal, agile, and exhausted cat.

I even have a sketch I drew.

Honestly, just think of 2012 Master Splinter for a frame of reference on his personality. He's still wise and knowledgeable, but instead of kind and compassionate, he's grumpy, unwelcoming, and snappy.

Not the greatest upbringing for Venus: living in isolation and rarely going outside, only knowing and living with one person her entire life, training constantly every single day, and being told that her emotions should never interfere with her duty, but she knows that it's the best for her! Poor thing...

So how does this play into how Venus became Big Mama's assistant? Allow me to explain:

The whole reason why Venus' father isolated himself and Venus was because of an ancient prophecy. I haven't worked out all the logistics of the prophecy, but basically he needs to protect that sacred amulet he has around his neck, or the Dragon Lord will rise once more.

Unfortunately, shenanigans happen and the Dragon Lord is awakened, but not at full power. Though he has just enough to kill Chung I.

Heartbroken and determined to stop the Dragon Lord, Venus travels through the Mystic City for any information on another ancient weapon that could destroy the beast once and for all.

This leads to her meeting Big Mama and learning about the Battle Nexus tournaments.

Whether Venus likes Big Mama or not, I haven't decided, but she's honestly just using her to gain battle experience and knowledge on everything going on within the Mystic City and/or the surface.

Depending on when all of this happened, she might have become Big Mama's assistant at least several months to a year prior to the boys being introduced to her in Season 2.

I picture that the big reveal of Venus being their sister would play out a bit similarly to how I discussed previously. I loved looking through everyone's ideas about Venus, and I can say without a doubt, that the amount of fanfare behind ROTTMNT and Venus overall is worth Nickelodeon bringing back this show.

Note: Well! I hope you all enjoyed this! If you read till the end, thank you very much! Please tell me what you think of my ideas, that would be very much appreciated! Until next time with my comments, concerns, and ideas about Slash, have a great day everyone! Byeee! 💗

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realityhelixcreates · 8 months

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Some days ago you wrote a post saying that you were writing something using elder scrolls lore? I think? What's that about? Are you writing some au? I'm a bit lost on your most recent fanfics (I'm waiting until I have some free time so I can give nexus a try, I'm just a bit intimidated cause I know next to nothing about DC) but I love reading about your ideas and characters, they all sound so genuinely interesting and we'll writen.

Ohhhh yes, okay so!

Wayyyyyyyy back in the day, there were a bunch of Riddler ask/art/rp blogs, that all portrayed their respective Riddler in very different ways. Some were based on official material (YJ is from the 2011 Young Justice animated series, Arkham from the Arkham City video game, Detective was originally based off the 1992 Batman: the Animated Series, but became highly altered as their storyline continued) some, like Narci, Puzzles, and Nash, were original takes on the character. Swag stared out as a parody that became a solid character as time passed. All of these interacted with each other, and developed into a found family.

Helix (My OC) came along a little later, and began interacting with them. None of us really expected how inextricably involved she was going to become, since she's much more of a high fantasy character, than a DC character, but it all happened pretty organically, and was a lot of fun.

Back then, I started a bunch of creative projects I wanted to share with the writers of these blogs, but I had just ended my relationship with my ex-fiancee, moved back in with my parents, and was working in a pretty toxic environment, and it just slaughtered my creative output. If I were to point you to my old blog, which I shan't, you would see that I drew maybe five or six things in as many years, when previously, I had drawn almost every day.

All of those blogs eventually went silent, the last interaction being between Helix and Narci. Since then, some of them have even been deleted entirely. I forgot about the things I was going to do, and they lay ignored for years. Then I stumbled across my old harddrive, where all these ideas still existed, barely sketched out, partially begun, and it all flooded back. Yeah, those blogs are done, some of the writers have disappeared, it's all over. But those stories are still there, and so am I.

I am in a much better place than I was. I have some writing practice under my belt, and, most importantly, I have inspiration again. I can make the art I always wanted to. I can write the stories I always wanted to. I can finish what I wanted to start.

That all being said, One of the things I started a long time ago, was an elder scrolls crossover. I had also started playing Skyrim at around that time, and it was an idle idea that I thought would be fun. When I found that harddrive, the first chapter had been partially written out, and I ended up taking the ideas there, and going in a different direction with them. I now have an over thirty chapter, ongoing story involving Helix and Swag stumbling their way through Cyrodiil, told entirely through Swag's POV. I've been posting it on my main/RP blog rather than here, because I felt that Helix and Swag's relationship hadn't been well enough expressed in the Nexusverse yet. Almost all of the Nexus stories so far take place in 2011-2013, and this crossover story takes place in 2020, so there's a lot in between that I haven't gone into yet, you know?

But considering that I've been posting some of the later Nexus stories out of chronological order, I might just start posting it anyway. I think it's kinda obvious by now how some of Helix's relationships pan out, so it might be okay. What do you think?

Also, you are very sweet, and I'm glad I've been able to express some of my ideas in a way that others can enjoy them with me. I will warn you, the stories that are from Helix's POV can be a bit challenging to follow; she doesn't experience reality in the same way as most people, which I've expressed with synesthesia and the repetition of consonants, syllables, and vowel sounds in a freeform poem/prose manner. If you do start the Nexus stories at their beginning, you'll see why.

Don't be too intimidated though; most Nexus stories are only 1-2000 words, with the exception of Orbital Unresonanace, which is, admittedly, a chonker. But you've been reading Lasa, so I know you can handle unreasonably large stories.

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blastedking · 11 months

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State of the Kingdom - 27.05.2023

Story

I actually managed to finish "The Court Wizard" - didn't think I would but that's how this usually goes. I say "there is no way I get this finished in time" publicly and then my brain goes into stubborn "but what if I did?" Mode. And here we are. Some 50k words of Zargothrax mischief.

The Covers are all sketched out, but there are 23 of them and only 5 are outlined yet. Since the story itself still needs some edits for sure that checks out time wise. So nothing today, probably next week too since I won't be around much next week in the first place (some minor hospital stuff)

Will try for the 10th of June to start uploading this one.

Website

I pushed out a major update to the side last month, including:

Addition of all Gloryhammer / ULF pictures uploaded so far (aka. Like 250 pictures uploaded which drove me near insane by monotony despite writing a dedicated mass upload function for it) - now only the Story Covers are missing.

Updates to the look and feel of the gallery

Major additions to the Wiki, including a now extra page for all Characters. I added a lot already, not all of them have info yet, but they grab all the relevant pictures from the gallery and display them for each character which I think is pretty neat!

Also added files for some other things like the Hammer and the Planets Hatir and Tyr!

Major overhaul of the Theshvo Page - now ordered with sense. Disclaimer; I have no clue about grammar. I barely know what word is what kind of word on the best of days xD

Art

The last of the more random art is getting out now, after that there is a whole set of ones I'm really happy with. Seemed like I had an episode there xD One RttKoF art thing too is queued for the release week of the album!

#universelawoffire #gloryhammer #king's speech #SotK

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jasperygrace · 1 year

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January 2023 Mid Monthly Report

Hello hello, everyone!

It’s been a while—how have you all been? Life’s been pretty busy for me recently. I’m in my third year of college now and I’m starting to feel the pressure. It’s a bit scary if I’m being honest. Time has never been on my side, an experience I’m sure many creatives can relate to, and these last few years have flown by. Some days it feels as if I’m being dragged along behind it, hitting every rock and piece of debris in my path.

Perhaps I’m being existential, but it’s something I came to realize during my hiatus. Life is short, and there is so much I want to do with my existence. So I have the same resolution this year as I did last: to do something bigger and better. What that something is, I don’t know yet. But I hope you’ll join me in seeing it realized.

Anyway, I’ve expositioned long enough. You’re probably curious as to what I’ve been up to since I’ve been gone. Well—you’re in for a treat!

If you’re interested in my work, consider checking out the Masterlist or my Artstation.

So without further ado let’s begin!

~~Project Progress~~

Sharing the Tale

On the Tumblr side of things, I’ve decided that I want to be more open and share my writing more this year. In the past, I would only share snippets I’ve written if I had been tagged in something. Otherwise, the only time I shared progress was through my Mid Monthly Reports.

This year, I want to break out of my shell and put myself out there as best I can. My first plan of action is to share weekly snippets—with how much I’ve written, it’s a shame not to share it with you all, so I hope this will create more interest in Project : Desert.

Secondly, I’ve developed the bad habit of hiding my art behind my MMRs—despite being an artblr, you’d think I’d never make art! So now, unless I’m unveiling something big (like you shall see in a bit ;^)), I’ll be posting my art more freely. So expect sketches! Expect doodles! Expect the ramblings of a madman!

Thirdly, I want to do more with the Youtube channel I created last year. Since I’ve been busy with moving and school, it was hard to create content for it. But now that I’ve lightened my workload, I hope I can start posting there again. So I hope you’ll look forward to that :^)

Art Nouveau Series

Those who may follow my Artstation might know I got a little bit of art done during my hiatus.

So it is with great pleasure to finally show you the finished Art Nouveau series for Project : Desert. Enjoy!

A heart so full of love that you’ll bleed for the dregs. You know how your story ends, but you won’t stop to rewrite it.

So small was the pup born from soot and mud. Time will move on without you, but it is finally time to forgive yourself.

Remember what you’ve seen here, my dear. Though you walk with them as support, you may be the last who will remember them.

You’ve done all you can to protect your liege, now let him grow without you. And take heed, you still have your part to play.

Draft 2

If you remember from my Hiatus post back in September, I was working on Draft 2 of Project : Desert as part of a semester project for one of my classes. Well, I have made huge progress so far! Before the end of 2022, I was able to finish the Pre-Log and Act 1; now I am currently working on Act 2!

So with this in mind, here’s the general schedule I’ll be working with for the remainder of Draft 2:

By the end of February, I hope to have Act 2 completed and some of the accompanying storyboards done.

By end of April, Act 3 should be completed with most of the book’s storyboards done.

During the month of May, I plan on editing and finishing the remaining storyboards. I will also start looking for beta readers during this time.

By June, I hope to have Draft 2 ready for betas to read.

With Pro:Des being at its halfway mark now, I suppose I should discuss what the plans are for the project. As of writing this, I plan to release Pro:Des late 2024, and should my university allow it, publish it as my Honors Capstone. This hard deadline gives the project the urgency I need to get it completed. For now, I just have to make sure I reach my current goals before I start thinking too far into the future.

So in the meantime, I’ll keep doing my thing, and I hope you’ll continue supporting me in the process.

Oh, I nearly forgot!

I wrote all of this still referring to the project as Project : Desert. I’m excited to tell you all that I’ve finally come up with an actual name for it!

I’ve decided to call it:

An Immortal Laid to Rest

~~Goals~~

January Goals:

Complete up to Chapter 22 by February 18th (16/25 total)

Work on new storyboards for Chpt 3, 5, & 7 by February 15th

Create concept art for Clotho and Lachesis (must complete Clotho before Chpt 7 storyboard)

Create a new video for Youtube Channel before next MMR

Post weekly snippets every Friday

Make a WIP intro post (not urgent)

That’s all I have this month—it feels good to be back writing this. I really missed the MMRs.

Thank you for all the support you guys have given me these last few years. I know I’m just a small blog on this side of the internet, but it’s really thanks to y’all that I even have the motivation to keep going with this.

So as always, thanks for reading and I hope you’ll support me in my future endeavors!

#writeblr #dev log #monthly report #mid month report #MMR2023 #project : desert #jasper.txt #jasper's archive

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rise-tmnt-fan · 1 year

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Okay I haven’t updated Jack crap as of recently (I mean two weeks isn’t much but it’s a lot to me and my adhd brain as of right now.

Why haven’t I posted anything well… I decided because I was editing Chapter 6 of my fanfic that I should do some art for each of the chapters. Because if it’s going to be a month late it should have something that shows that I wasn’t just procrastinating I was doing something for the fanfic as well.

Now I have 4 WIPS for that. 2 finished chapter arts.

4 Unfinished WIPS for different rottmnt AUS. And to show that I am doing something you guys get to see the WIPS AND THE FINISHED art. (Yes I have gotten better hence why it’s taking me so long to get the art the way I want to present it. Because I’ll get to the point where I’m like. OMG I LOVE THIS- and feel as if I have done everything in my power to make it look pretty then get just a little better with lighting or background or make the characters themselves look just a little bit better and I’ll repeat the cycle. 😂🤣

Here’s the art and the date it was last edited and if it’s finished or not.

Where’d The Time Go

Leo’s Character Sheet (aka the first piece of digital art I made and was proud of)

Finished?- 04/17/2023

15 hours of work

Where’d the Time Go- Comic Title page (still dunno if I will complete this one) -

Unfinished- 04/25/2023

34 hours of work

*So for this next one I was really just bored and thought of about doing a separated AU/Angsty art for fun. Coincidentally this did inspire the last unfinished/current WIP piece you will see so I will call this-

I didn’t have a clue what I was doing and just decided that I was going to draw whatever thing came to my mind first because I couldn’t fall asleep. 👍🏼

Unfinished- 04/18/2023

6 hours of work

Yes before anyone says anything- I didn’t do the chapter art in order because as soon as I try to make myself follow something my brain very defiantly laughs at me and will make me do something entire different. So whatever I feel interested in at the time will be the piece I work on. Hence why I have so many WIPS.

Please Save Me- Fanfic/Chapter Art

Chapter 1- Donnie’s Chapter Art

Unfinished- 05/01/2023

15 hours of work (so far)

Chapter 2- Raphs Chapter Art

Unfinished (truthfully this is just the base I drew nothing real special has been added on as of now)

04/26/2023

15 Minutes of work

Chapter 3- Casey Jones JR. Chapter Art

Unfinished- Again it’s the base that I drew kind of quick every piece I have done (except maybe the first one) had bases and a idea that I would use before going and doing the sketching/line work. Or anything fancy. So… yeah.

04/26/2023

10 minutes of work.

Chapter 4- Mikey’s Chapter Art

Finished?- Might redo it later but for now I love how it has turned out!

04/30/2023

6 hours of work.

Chapter 5- Leo’s Chapter Art

I worked on this for about six hours then I made a fatal error and deleted it, and while I absolutely adore IBIS Paint I have found out that I cannot recover what has been deleted as I am not a pro member. 😂🤣

Chapter 6- Donnie’s Chapter Art

Finished- Might redo this one as well but as my second finished piece I was super proud of it!

04/28/2023

12 hours of work

Okay so this next one is an AU I will definitely be dropping as I have officially started hyperfixating on it and the story!

This is a separated A.U. Where the EPF knew about the Yokai/Aliens when the turtles were created. They have located and captured many specimens to better know about these newfound species.

That’s all I’m really going to say for now. Since when I finish this overall art I’m going to release it, some character sheets, and a little of the plot!

Unfinished - 05/01/2023 - Was actually working on it till now.

4 hours of work!

#novice artist #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt #save rise of the tmnt #rottmnt art #wannabe artist #rofttmnt angst #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles angst #Making some AUS #rottmnt au

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gamesception · 10 months

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Comments from Kraftpunk

I'm not mad about it - just disappointed. I have tried to stress that Saito's not at fault for these characters & themes being missing. She didn't 'take them out' of the manga, rather it seems Ikuhara 'added them to' the anime. Having watched the anime first though, yeah, it's hard not to be disappointed that several of my favorite aspects from that version just aren't here. It's worth pointing out that I liked the 'Adolescence of Utena' movie despite many of those same aspects being missing, because I found the stuff the movie did instead to be compelling in its own right. I'm just not far enough into the manga yet to see what what its unique aspects are yet, hopefully when I do I'll be won over here as well.

I did not at all mean to imply you were making anything up, so I absolutely apologize for that. And thank you very much for the tip off towards Ursula's Kiss. I was able to find out more about it here: https://empty-movement.tumblr.com/post/168658185929

From some of Chijo Saito's scetches and design work it seems that early concepts for what would later become RGU were much closer to sailor moon, with an entire team of magical girls fighting a team of apocalyptic maybe-space-based bad guys. Of this early concept, it seems the only things that survived were the name of the main character Utena, that she was saved by a mysterious prince as a little girl and decided to become prince-like herself, that the mysterious prince went missing and is maybe one of the villains now, and many character designs - though the one eventually used for Utena was originally one of the other girls on the team. But there's no Anthy, which makes it hard to call it an early version of the same story so much as a different story that never went anywhere and had it's aesthetics and main character backstory later repurposed for the story we know.

The Ursula's Kiss stuff is a weird bundle, a proposed English localization of the anime that never happened. Thankfully so, as it features some of the less favorable tropes of 90s localizations, including random name changes and such. What we see on the web page has to have been put together pretty late in production actually, since from the episode summaries they have to have either had the entire finished anime or at least the full scripts to work with, because there's scene by scene summaries all the way to the last episode. But they also were given seemingly long abandoned stuff from the early story described above that didn't make it into the anime or the manga. And looking at Juri specifically is an absolute hodge podge, as they've got some of the 'Team Eleganza' stuff where neither Touga nor Shiori exists, her character bio is from the manga (likes Touga, antagonistic to Utena), but episode summaries are from the anime, including directly stating that Juri has a 'secret crush' on Shiori. It seems Enoki films was just handed a hodge podge of early concept, manga, and anime stuff, much of it unrelated, and just told to do whatever.

Really interesting artefacts none the less, especially the early sketch concept stuff. Thank you again to kraftpunk for pointing me to it all!

#kraftpunk2763 #sception reads rgu

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ravenwolfie97 · 4 months

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2023 Art Summary

that's right folks, it's the end of the year, and you know what that means here :3

it's been a weird year for me, with lots of difficult and new things going on, but i think that overall it's been an okay time. however, art stuff did not come to me as readily, most of the stuff here this year are either sketches during dead air at work or done in a big batch in one big spurt of inspiration. as per usual, i'll let ya know what all went down. it turned out alright :>

well, without further ado, let's get into it!

Continuing from the tail end of 2022, I got more requests for newer Pokemon to draw, and it was really fun! Having grown up alongside the franchise for so long, I find it really interesting that I can pick up how to draw them pretty quickly and pretty well. These were all first attempts with whatever idea I had in mind, and it was a good time :3

The next month continued the Pokemon drawing trend after I had discovered and played around with the Pokemon Infinite Fusion generator. I loved the dedication so many people had to make their own unique combo designs, so later on I had downloaded the Infinite Fusion fan game and had some fun with that!

Additionally, my partner Stacey was planning a homebrew DND campaign called the Afterworlds where angels and demons live in their own little lands. I ended up deciding on making a Changeling Bard demon of Pride, who I named Masque. I have their initial sketches here because it was sort of a pivotal moment in my character creation process. I had a vague sense of a design in mind, which I sketched on the left, but I wasn't happy with it - it was just too boring and plain. So, I took to the internet, and I looked up various references and inspirations and ideas and came up with the sketch on the right, which was much more interesting! Definitely more fitting of a dangerous entertainer type.

Once again, the months bleed together, and Masque's design was completed! I really fell in love with them and their design, and even though we only managed to do one session with them so far (mostly due to life stuff btwn all of us) I really can't to do more things with them. More things like debuting their stage persona, Escher a.k.a Ghost! As the leader of a ragtag group of traveling performers known as the Cabaret Depayser, Escher is a much more charismatic and charming facet of Masque that keeps them hidden from those who want to hunt them down. Since I haven't got to play with that side of them just yet, we'll see how that turns out :3

In other news, Pizza Tower was all the rage this month, and I couldn't help but be swept up in it too! It's an incredibly mesmerizing and fun-looking game, with excellent animation and music and everything. I eventually picked it up myself, but haven't gotten to play it yet. I did end up really liking drawing them, kind of forcing me to embrace a more cartoonish side of my art style, and it was really fun to do.

Also uh. I got sick. like... really sick. i never get sick. so i made an art to cope. this would not be the last time i got sick like that. was still funny to draw it out though

A rather uneventful month, but hey look! We've returned to Pokemon. This time I asked to draw some from memory, and overall I did okay, even for the newer ones like Toxel here. I got the general angery baby lizard vibes down.

I also drew my friend Cake's egg magical girl OC Sunny Side and her little buddy Tama in my downtime at work. I think she's neat and I thought she would be fun to doodle :>

i truly had nothing else this month other than this one wip, gomen

I actually have a very valid excuse for this, because I was preoccupied most of the month with helping out my partner on her student film, which much like this wip was about our story Cosmic Legacy. I helped out with voice acting, voice mixing, and the music; although we weren't able to complete all of it and we still haven't picked it back up to finish it, I was still proud of what I was able to accomplish in about a month on top of a full-time job.

fun fact about this wip while i'm here though: it's based on this one shot from BTS's music video for Run, one of my favorite songs of theirs as well as one of my favorite music videos

i've always wanted to draw some group with this shot as reference, and it worked perfectly with these kids, but i still have to. y'know. finish it

Most of the month was, again, sketches from work free time. I felt like doodling some of the Destiny Guardians from my own story The Dark Side: War on Destiny from memory, since I don't draw them very often but I still like them a lot.

Circling back to Pizza Tower brainrot, my friend Atlas and I started tossing around an idea of what if, instead of pizza and Italian inspiration, it was ramen and Japanese inspiration? I was really struck with inspiration by that thought, and came up with five new ramen-inspired Toppins: char siu pork, narutomaki, scallion, boiled egg, and wakame seaweed. I thought they all turned out really cute :>

And, as my one piece of actual polished art in literal Months... Genshin dropped a teaser for the new Fontaine region and showed little glimpses of this Melusine, and I was so enamoured I had to draw her. They are so cute and I like em.

sometime in between months, i got sick. again. just like back in march. but that proved to be a little bit useful because...

SURPRISE, IT'S FULL COLOR ART

it was Artfight time once again, and I did not want to miss out. However! I kind of monkey wrenched myself by doing the color wheel challenge that had taken the internet by storm during the time I was under the weather. I ended up finishing it by the middle of July, so I only had time for a couple of art pieces for Artfight after that, which is kind of what I did to myself last year too. At least I had a valid excuse with doing another big fun art thing lol

I still have so many color wheel theme ideas that I would like to make, but after this, life would really get in the way of things, especially art-making in general, so I definitely plan to revisit those ideas later

it was around this time of year when not only was it forest fire season, and i had an ear infection right after being sick, but it was also time when i started really considering and making plans to move out across the country. it was a really busy and stressful time, even outside of myself since my parents and their aging parents were becoming a situation i had to watch unfold and help support as best i could. i doodled a little bit during work but most of my time and attention was spent elsewhere. drawing Lyney from genshin from memory was pretty fun, though. i liked him far too much even then lol

September was when things ramped up even more, and on the 22nd I, with my mom's help, had left with my belongings and began the 3-day trek from Seattle, Washington to Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was actually a decent time with lots of beautiful scenery, which I'll provide here since I... got absolutely nothing done in this month.

also... coolest hotel ever. absolutely oozing with charm. loved it

and actually, i lied a little bit. once i had actually moved in and settled, as i was getting stuff to furnish the place i wanted to pick up something for a little art project to like. keep me sane. so i had found this little Dia de Muertos ceramic cat statue painting kit and fell in love with it and after many days and layers of paint i basically finished it at the end of the month and I think it turned out really cool!

and so, since September was a bit of a dud, here's an October double feature :D

Over time, I started getting into a groove and much more comfortable in my new home, so my art started to pick back up. A lot of things were on my mind: I wanted to start planning on a potential rebranding/vtuber career and made some iterations on a design for my sona's model before settling on the one here, I was extremely bored one day and decided to pick back up on a papercraft doll for my friend Cake's sona (coincidentally just in time for her birthday), I started getting back into TOME and did a redraw of Demon Alpha over a screenshot from The Owl House to revitalize my love of drawing from that franchise, I wanted to draw Masque again cuz the homebrew game had been dead on our group's end because of scheduling conflicts and stuff, and lastly I wanted to do another halloween vampire-sona piece and got the idea for a fun, spooky, sexy two-parter with some bloods. It was a good time and I was feeling on the up and up :3

This month was less up, not just because I did a lot less, but because... I got covid. Finally. After nearly four years of evading it, I think the new environment and stress got to me and got me infected just in time for my birthday :^)

I could barely get anything done during the time I was sick, but I did do a few cool things. Again, I had gotten back into TOME after watching through the A2Z movies, and the epilogue really got me, especially with the softlocke content. So I did some doodles in my spare time and only managed to get this one digitized (which i didn't post yet cuz i wanted to do the others too first, whoops)

The girl on the left is a product of a nifty design challenge I found while mindlessly scrolling thru youtube shorts, where you create an OC based on some traits of yours (here's the video i found for it). It was just a fun little prompt that got me to do a little bit more this month.

Then I wanted to practice drawing my new vtuber sona some more, and there had been this trend on Twitter where people drew characters in one of the poses from this K-pop music video GUILTY. It seemed like a cool pose idea, but I feel like a lot of the people who did it mostly liked drawing muscly dudes and rendering them or just drawing the pose to be sexy, but I was most interested in the context of the song which made it much darker and spookier while still being very sexy and fun to draw, so I focused on the spookier angle of it

and finally, December was a very busy month with the holidays as I was prepping gift-giving for work and my family, but I still ended up dedicating my time to a couple of projects in the time I could find in between

my main focus this month had been on an idea inspired by this series of videos by ABD Illustrates and based on some kinds of image combination techniques to make a bunch of genshin OCs based on a collage of every character of each body type. I had made five different ideas, each with a different element, weapon, and national origin, as well as movesets and even voicelines! But I hadn't gotten terribly far in rendering them, but I wanted to have at least a preview of one of them for this, so I started with my favorite of them all, Jack! He's the one I've become most interested in developing, and I like how he's shaping up so far :3

And, of course, as always, Pokemon runs through my veins and keeps me going. I did some doodles at work, inspired by Hoenn nostalgia after finding Alpharad's Too Many Types romhack to download for myself, as well as my latest playthrough of PMD Rescue Teams Red and Blue, including DX, which I'll be liveblogging here in the future.

Well, what a year it's been. I've done a lot more than I thought, despite everything, but I'm excited for the year to come, because I am dedicating it to all the WIPs I have gathered over the ages, and I will hope to see many of them done for the next summary! Until next time!

#my art stuff #art summary #hell yeah #what's interesting is that - looking back - this one is way more dense than previous summaries #however for most of those summaries i only picked the highlights. for this it was almost everything dkdhf #i think i felt like i had to do that in order to feel like i accomplished Something #there are definitely still bare spots but like. idk. this year i did not feel confident in my output #but i hope next year will be more fruitful

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buchdrache · 7 months

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Review: Mitternacht by Christoph Marzi

Christoph Marzi was one of my favourite authors in my youth. In recent years, however, I have had to realise that his Uralte Metropolen has unfortunately not aged well. But what about his newer works? So I grabbed Mitternacht and headed to London once again.

Nicholas lives a typical student life: Making ends meet somehow, sometimes this, sometimes that low-paid student job and generally taking a relaxed view of life. He is all the more thrown off course when he suddenly finds himself in an alternative London and then also has to learn that the ghosts of the dead linger in this London until no one in the world of the living remembers them and they fade away. Someone in hiding, however, is trying to influence the world of the living from the realm of the dead, and Nicholas, with his ability to shift between worlds, may be the only one who can turn events around for the better.

Christoph Marzi likes London as a setting and he likes a magical setting, that should be well known by now. And a nebulous London in which the dead of various times linger is pretty cool.

In this London, there are so-called Whisperers, who are ghosts hired by other ghosts to enter the stories of the deceased in their sleep from an in-between world of artists, so that their stories are not forgotten and thus the ghosts can continue to exist. The inspiration to tell certain stories does not (always) come from the authors themselves, but can sometimes be given to them.

So far, so good. I actually didn't think this was a bad idea at all and enjoyed reading about it. I am more at war with the technical aspects of the narrative. What bothered me right at the beginning was an unnecessary hetero drama when Nicholas catches his girlfriend Erica cheating and breaks up with her. Erica adds nothing to the actual plot and could have been dropped without replacement. As it was, it was just annoying and exhaustingly heteronormative.

The narrative style, too, what once fascinated me so much about Marzi, struck me as rather tiring here. I don't know if my reading habits have changed so much over the years, or if Marzi is simply weakening. But I just found it exhausting how characters sometimes repeat things several times and only reveal information in very small steps (after all, Nicholas also finds this annoying at one point, so it was probably intentional, at least in parts, for Chesterton to have everything pulled out of his nose). In general, I think the story could have been told in far fewer words, some of it drags on for a long time and takes time to get to the point.

And then there is the end of the novel. It's just a big, disappointing nothing. Marzi tells us in the epilogue how it came about: He had a severe stroke while writing, which left him paralysed on one side. This made it immensely difficult for him to write and I can absolutely understand if he then doesn't want to type tens of thousands of words when he can only manage it with great effort. Unfortunately, the novel was not yet finished at that point, and accordingly Marzi could only sketch out the ending so that the novel would come to any kind of conclusion at all. However, "any kind of conclusion" is accurate, since the last chapters are really little more than a few short sentences each, roughly telling what should have happened in these chapters. In other words, a very disappointing ending, but in this case there were simply higher powers at work, so it is actually quite remarkable that Marzi finished the novel anyway. I wish him all the best!

Those who like ghost stories can definitely give the novel a chance. For me, the narrative remained too bloated and long-winded in places (despite the fact that I read through the novel in one day) and the characters didn't leave a lasting impression either.

Potential triggers:

- Death (off page, topic)

Advertising according to §6 TMG

Series information

Author: Christoph Marzi

Title: Mitternacht

Language: German

Series: No

Pages: 314

Original price: 15,00€

Publisher: Piper

Genre: Fantasy

ISBN: 978-3-492-28090-7

Year of publication: 2019

#book review #christoph marzi #mitternacht #book tumblr #bookblr

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phantapm-senior-project · 1 year

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Week 9

Last Scene Conception

With the time I had left, I wasn’t sure if I could deal with animating wind again for the flowers (as well as tree tops), so I went with a simpler scene that was still pretty to look at!

The final reference image

I also played around with the concept of blood moon, and although it looks cool, I didn’t think it fit the gradient, nor the type of “story” I wanted to tell

Quite spooky no? Maybe another time

And here is the original original piece--I didn’t think I could learn 3D vfx in a week, so the swirls went bye bye

My inspiration was most obvious here

Said inspiration

Creating in 3D

This is what I made with 3D without any texture. Yes, it’s barren, but the complexity comes with creating the water in the scene.

How do I do that?

Water simulation in blender

Very simple shapes to start us off

Texturing everything BUT the water

How it actually looks in 3D

youtube

Twinkling stars

Now you may have noticed everything is basically done except the water. Because it’s a water simulation, the process is a lot more complex to get it fully rendered out and looking the way I want it to.

I’ve been following a tutorial online and it has been working thus far, but it is not ready to be rendered--I need to make a few more adjustments and make sure Blender doesn’t crash (a big one with intensive processes like this)

One adjustment that’s important is to make the water match the scene. Most likely that won’t happen with using the default HDRIs, so I wanted to try to make my own of the scene we already have (which is why I worked on the other parts first)

Silly fisheye is silly fisheye

When I work on the water for next week, I’ll try this out and see if it produces that desired look. If not, I’ll look for a photo HDRI that best matches the starry atmosphere.

Character Design

Not only was I trying to make progress with the last scene, but I also wanted to finally design the character woo!

My main idea was that the character should change clothes when transitioning from scene to scene. A logical place to start would be the sunflower scene.

Sketches for figuring out what I want

I was very inspired by a dress I had, but I didn’t want to recreate it one for one, so I played around with how I could change up the design while also making it safe for animation. What ended up was a very “cottage core” peasant outfit with the added twist of a princess cut.

In terms of colors, I had to think for a while. Originally I wanted the colors to match my original dress (which was the very first color test) but it ended up blending too much with the background. Then I tried the colors I used to sketching for fun, but that gave me the idea:

What if I used the shadows of the scene as her main color palette--a way for her to blend into the scene while also standing out.

And so I went with that.

Turnaround

The official turnaround I’ll be referencing when animating

I decided to go with a more “chibi” look instead of the more realistic proportioned one because I thought it’d be simpler to animate! And also I thought it would fit the installation a bit more to have a more cutesy look.

Next Steps

Slowly but surely the final product is getting closer and closer. For next week I’d like to have done the following:

Added the water simulation and have finished the final scene

Design the other two outfits on the character

Begin thinking of the animatic

Time is slowly getting crunched as the end of the semester is nearing ever so slightly, but I’ll do the best I can to get a lot of progress done!

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phoenixyfriend · 3 years

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The Family Tree is... a Disaster

Takes place in the TCW Leverage AU. It does contain a few deviations, namely that the narrative ended up shifting Plo's role in Ahsoka's life, and Ventress's role overall.

This is mostly just dialogue where I outline the fuckery that is the disaster lineage family tree, not actual fic. It stemmed from my incessant need to justify "25yo Obi-Wan somehow got custody of 9yo Anakin without Shmi dying."

Warnings for: canon character death (modernized), canon violence (modernized), and references to Nazis and white supremacists (Palpatine collects WWII weaponry as a parallel to his canon display of Sith artifacts in his office as chancellor, and Ahsoka thinks it's sketchy)

----

"Okay," Cody says, setting down a glass of whiskey as he drops into the seat across the table. "What the hell is your family tree like?"

Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow, and continues cleaning off the definitely-not-stolen crystal komodo dragon he'd won in today's job. "I beg your pardon?"

"You and Skywalker," Cody says, gesturing between Obi-Wan, who is just sitting there minding his own business, and Anakin, who is across the closed-for-tonight bar and doing something inadvisable on the pool table. "You've said he was your brother, and mentioned raising him, which, sure, I'm over twenty years older than my youngest brother, people take over parenting roles all the time. But you have different last names, have mentioned stepfamilies that the other doesn't have, reference things as 'your aunt, not mine,' and I am just getting... very confused. I figured it was personal and I could leave well enough alone, but considering your older brother almost shot us today--"

"Okay, Xanatos is not my brother," Obi-Wan immediately says. "Just. I just have to stop you right there. Xanatos was a student of my father's for a time, but I promise he's not family. Nobody except maybe Komari would consider him even close, and she doesn't count since she's in prison for life and the farthest thing from stable."

Cody gestures. "That, Obi-Wan. That's what I'm talking about. I don't even know who Komari is."

Obi-Wan purses his lips in a failed attempt to not smile. "Do you actually want the explanation? It's long and unnecessarily complicated."

"So's mine," Cody snorts. Obi-Wan waits, patient and pleasant, and is rewarded when Cody sighs. "Please."

"Of course, my dear. To answer your first question, though, Anakin is my half-brother." With a smile, Obi-Wan digs a piece of paper and a pen from his briefcase. "So, center of the chain: me, my father Qui-Gon, my grandfather Yan, and my great-grandfather Yoda. With me so far?"

"Easy enough. Do you have to go back that far?"

"Great-grandfather Yoda is still alive and regularly escaping the old folks' home to terrorize younger relatives, so yes," Obi-Wan says. "Given that you may just meet a tiny, meddling relative of mine when he's bored, we do in fact have to go back that far."

"...how old is he?"

"We don't know for sure. A hundred and eight-ish is the best guess." Obi-Wan shrugs. "It's not a huge deal, mostly he likes bothering Anakin these days. Anyway, grandfather. Yan Dooku. Inherited a minory duchy from his maternal grandfather decades back. Mostly hangs around there because he's on terrorist watchlists in the States."

"Oh, lovely."

Obi-Wan grins. "Trust me, it gets worse. Anyway, grandfather never actually married, but spent most of his time with his 'best friend' Sifo Dyas, who died about a decade back."

"Gay?"

"Well, we know that now, but they got together in the seventies, and this was back when they were both working government jobs, so, you know. It happens."

"Good to know," Cody says. "So, Yoda's kid is Yan, who inherited a title and land from a maternal relative, and had a life partner but never married. With you so far."

"All of Yan's kids were adopted," Obi-Wan continues, sketching out the first branch away from the Yan/Sifo partnership. "Rael was actually grandfather's cousin, maternally, and ended up in his custody after getting orphaned at five. These days, he does most of the stewardship duties at the Serenno Duchy. His daughter Nim is teaching military history at a university in Germany."

Cody nods. "Uncle number one is named Rael, technically your dad's cousin, has a daughter. Got it."

"About a decade after Rael, they adopted my father, Qui-Gon. He and grandfather fought, frequently, but they did care for each other. My father was a botanist, did bio-engineering. We'll get back to him later, because he's where things get complicated." Obi-Wan made sure to leave room around the name. "Just a few years older than me was--is--Komari Vosa. She is... serving a life sentence. I think she fought Jango once."

"She fought my father?"

"To the best of my knowledge, they both almost died, yes," Obi-Wan says. "She's in maximum security these days. She was an assassin. I'll get a call if she breaks out, and I'll let you know along with everyone else."

"Bad news auntie, got it."

"Last adoption, sort of, is Ventress," Obi-Wan finishes off. "A few years younger than me, is technically grandfather's personal assistant and does secretarial work and the like, but we all know he's planning to leave as much of the inheritance to her as he is to the rest of us. She's aggressive and unpleasant, but she takes care of him and hasn't actually threatened to kill any of us yet, so that's fine."

"How'd she join?" Cody asks.

"Ky Narec was a friend of Qui-Gon's; Ventress was his daughter. Ky died a few years after Qui-Gon did, and Ventress was a mess, after." Obi-Wan shrugs and scratches that connection into the little sketch of a family tree as well. "Grandfather offered her a job until she got herself back together, and then she just kind of... stuck around."

"Youngest aunt, more of a cousin." Cody summarizes. "Now we go back to your father?"

"Qui-Gon Jinn was a man of many skills," Obi-Wan says drily. "Adequate birth control was not one of them."

It's almost a pity that Cody wasn't drinking anything, because going by the way he chokes, Obi-Wan's pretty sure the spit take would have been spectacular.

"I'm sorry," Cody says. "Can you repeat that?"

"I was an accident," Obi-Wan says, not even bothering to hide his smile. "So was Anakin."

"So that sounds like... a story."

"It is," Obi-Wan confirms. "My biological mother has never been in the picture. They had a fling, she wasn't sure if she'd want to abort or give me up, just that she wasn't ready to be a parent, and Qui-Gon volunteered to take full custody so she could go back to her life after the birth. I've never met her, but I kept her family name. You can consider her irrelevant beyond that."

Cody nods.

"So, when I was about a year old, Qui-Gon reconnects with an old flame, they get married two years later. Step-mother number one is Tahl. Lovely woman, I absolutely adored her, and she had a daughter, my stepsister, Bant Eerin."

"I met her, right?" Cody asks.

"Yes, she was the doctor who patched up my bullet wound a few months ago," Obi-Wan says. "With the giant glasses that make her look a little fish-eyed."

"She was nice."

"She is," Obi-Wan agrees. "At any rate, that was our family for a while, and then Tahl died when I was fourteen. Bant wanted to go to a magnet school for medical studies, and Qui-Gon's grief was... not optimal for taking care of multiple teenagers, shall we say, so Bant moved in with her paternal uncle, Kit Fisto, and Kit's son Nahdar. He's a marine biologist, incredibly friendly, and has no idea of any of the rest of my side of the family's questionable activities. If you ever meet him, you will pretend that we are a legal firm with a team of security consultants."

Cody raises a brow. Obi-Wan despairs. "Best you could do?"

"We're not that likely to run into him." Obi-Wan draws out a new line. "So, Qui-Gon deals poorly with grief. This is also around the time that Xanatos came around to ruin our lives a little. He was a very rich and unpleasant man, but he's dead as of four hours ago, so you don't have to worry about him. Or his son."

"His son?"

"Anakin handled that," Obi-Wan says. "Thoroughly. Granta Omega is no longer an issue. He's not dead, but... well. Anakin has his ways. Er--I should probably mention Feemor; he was my father's assistant at the university for a long time. Anakin and I still call him our uncle."

"Also a person to avoid mentioning criminal activity to?" Cody prompts.

"Well... no, but only because I don't think he'd care. The man is, forgive me, more of a 'walking sweatervest' than I am. He's a very bland and unassuming man. He once described himself as the background character of the soap opera that is my family's existence."

"Sounds like a charmer."

"Oh, he's very kind and clever, and witty as well. I adore him, and he really is family. He's just also very, very normal. Not boring, but..." Obi-Wan trails off and shrugs helplessly. "He's an editor for an agricultural research journal. Also not someone I anticipate us running into."

"Noted."

"Right, so, Qui-Gon dealing poorly with his grief didn't involve much drinking, but there were a few months of him trying to... lose himself in the pleasures of the flesh?" Obi-Wan tries, and then deflates at the look on Cody's face. "He was slagging around. Shmi got pregnant with Anakin, who was born when I was sixteen. Shared custody at first, Qui-Gon got him weekends and every other holiday, that sort of thing, and then they got married because they actually did like each other well enough, and it was easier on the taxes."

"So Shmi is stepmother number two."

"Shmi is stepmother number two, yes." Obi-Wan sketches in Anakin and Shmi. "About nine and a half years after Anakin was born, Shmi and Qui-Gon were in a car accident with... well, it later turned out it wasn't an accident, there was a hitman called Maul involved, he's actually Ventress's second cousin or something, I don't know. Grandfather handled most of that problem. Qui-Gon died, Shmi was in intensive care, and I got custody of Anakin as his nearest adult relative. We weren't very close before that, because I was off at university by the time he was old enough to form memories, but that changed once he started living with me. I more or less raised him as a single parent from that point."

"This is why he jokes that you're like a father to him."

"Precisely," Obi-Wan says. "Shmi took about a year to recover enough to move again, and grandfather covered the costs. She still had to live with a dedicated carer and attend daily physical therapy. At that physical therapy, she met Cliegg Lars, whose son Owen was also a patient there. They hit it off, and three years later, they married. When Anakin refers to his stepfamily he's talking about the Lars out in Nevada."

"Nevada?"

"They have a farm. A very, very normal one. We don't drag them into our activities, unless we have an at-risk person who needs a safe house." Obi-Wan pauses, and then decides this really needs to be stressed. "This is important to me and Anakin, that we don't get them involved unless there's absolutely no other choice. Shmi's been through a lot, and the Lars are busy enough running the farm."

"Works for me," Cody says. "We've got enough safe houses that it shouldn't be an issue. I'm guessing this story doesn't end there, though."

Obi-Wan grimaces. "My own love life has been... a bit of a mess."

"I already know about Kryze, at least."

There's that. "I was temporarily engaged to a friend, Siri Tachi, shortly after high school. We were in a relationship, but this was mostly something done to appease a relative of hers that was getting overbearing to the point of absurdity, and she couldn't just cut them off. We broke off the engagement after the relative passed, and we're still friends."

He notes that down, then adds the other embarrassment of his early years. "First marriage was actually a drunken joke between myself and my best friend when we were in college. We got it annulled a few months later because we just didn't have time to drop by the courthouse before then, and he's actually engaged to Asajj now."

"Asajj?" Cody asks, watching in fascination as Obi-Wan tries to mark in both his own short marriage and the newer, long-term engagement without crossing any lines. He settles for just writing the name twice and including an asterisk with 'this is the same person.'

"Ventress," Obi-Wan clarifies. "Yeah, Quinlan's a fun guy. His little sister, Aayla, treats Anakin like a beloved younger cousin."

"Are they also off-limits for criminal activity?"

"No, Aayla's the one that taught Ahsoka how to vent-crawl," Obi-Wan says. "And I'm pretty sure Quinlan has contacts in every major government branch, criminal organization, and Fortune 500 company on the planet. I reach out to them regularly."

"Resources, then."

Obi-Wan nods. "Some time later, I married Satine. We had a son; you've met Korkie. We split due to incompatibility a year and change before Qui-Gon's death. Satine doesn't engage in criminal activity, but Bo-Katan is..."

"I've met Bo-Katan. I know what she's like, Obi. You don't have to explain."

"She works with Maul sometimes."

"...the man who killed your father?"

"Yes. It's all very stupid and convoluted." Obi-Wan still writes her in. "So, that's them. Korkie goes to boarding school, and I try not to involve him in anything. Anakin and Ahsoka like to teach him self-defense and the like, but Satine is adamant that he stay unaware of my less legal dealings until he's an adult."

Cody shrugs. "Makes sense. Is that every--wait, no, Skywalker's married."

Obi-Wan grins. "Yes, and Padme's got twins on the way."

"I was there when he told us," Cody says drily. "He was very loud about it. Okay, how does Ahsoka fit in?"

"Hold on, I forgot Beru," Obi-Wan mutters. "Owen's fiancee. Same rules as the Lars. Okay, you asked about Ahsoka. Right. So. Um."

He dithers. Cody waits for him, and then Obi-Wan just gives up. "Ahsoka, dear, would you like to explain how you joined the family, so to speak?"

Ahsoka looks up from whatever she and the boys are doing--there are multiple beer glasses and straws and duct tape involved, and Obi-Wan doesn't really want to know--and then flips off the table and over to Obi-Wan and Cody. She looks over the family tree chart, and then says, "Oooh, did you tell him about the cult?"

"You were in a cult?" Cody demands.

"No, Komari was. She was head priestess or something. I dunno, it's why she's in prison and stuff."

"I did not tell him about the cult," Obi-Wan mutters, already regretting this. "The Bando Gora aren't a problem anymore. I've already gotten to explaining how you and Anakin know each other."

Ahsoka rolls her eyes, steals his pen, and starts sketching in around Quinlan's name, over by Asajj since Obi-Wan's section is too crowded. "Okay, so, Quinlan's adopted. His dad is Tholme, and Tholme's dad is Plo Koon. Plo Koon is good friends with my Auntie, Shaak Ti, who raised me. They live next door to each other, out in the country, and I'd play in his yard a lot, because he had puppies, and he took me to visit his bees. Whenever Auntie needed a babysitter, she asked Quinlan or Aayla to do it since she knew and trusted them, and Aayla needed pocket money."

"This is so unnecessarily complicated," Cody mutters.

"It is!" Ahsoka chirps. Her grin is far too sharp. "So, this one time, Aayla was watching me when I was fourteen, and she was just helping me with my physics homework. BAM, the door slams open, and in stumbled Skyguy with his arm missing. I've never met him before, and my first introduction is him shortly after he's gotten an unplanned amputation."

Anakin, on the other side of the room, giggles. Obi-Wan just sighs. The Fett brothers appear to be in the land of 'horrified fascination.'

Ahsoka revels in it. "There's blood everywhere, I'm screaming, Aayla's panicking, Anakin's halfway to unconscious and insisting we can't call the hospital, and nobody can get Obi-Wan on the phone. Quinlan's in another country, and Auntie Shaak and Uncle Plo are at a movie, so they've both got their cellphones off. Tholme was faking his death at that point to get away from an incident with the Irish Mob, so we didn't even try him."

"What the actual fuck," Rex breathes.

Ahsoka continues with relish. "We get Bant to pick up, and she's there an hour later with Padme, because Padme knows how to drive the way Skyguy does, and the entire drive there is just Auntie Bant on speakerphone telling Aayla how to stop the bleeding and get him stabilized while Padme's screaming at traffic at the top of her lungs."

"I owe Aayla a fruit basket," Anakin muses aloud. "The anniversary of her saving my life is coming up, it's warranted."

"Five years, baby!" Ahsoka crows. She fist-pumps.

Obi-Wan just drops his head into his hands. "You're killing me, children."

Anakin shrugs, grinning. "You know, I think Fett Senior might have been involved in that fight."

"My shitty dad cut off your arm?" Rex demands.

"No, I think he was busy fighting the Interpol guy," Anakin says. "But he was definitely there. I think. Blood loss kinda got to me after a bit, but I'm pretty sure Jango Fett was there, and also Boba might've been hiding in the getaway car?"

"I need another glass," Cody mutters. He doesn't stand up, though.

"Wait," Rex says. "So who cut off your arm?"

Anakin shrugs with an unsure noise. "Someone tried to convince me it was Grandpa Yan, but he was in the middle of a court case in Italy for some kind of parole violation when it happened, so he had an alibi."

"...did he actually violate parole?" Cody asks, and Obi-Wan thinks he looks like he doesn't know if he actually wants an answer.

Ahsoka shrugs. So does Anakin. Obi-Wan carefully looks at a spot behind Cody, and doesn't explain anything about wine tastings used as covers for illicit arms deals.

"The arm?" Rex prompts, sounding a little desperate to get back to the question he likely thinks is the most important.

"I still say it was Skeevy Sheev," Ahsoka chimes in.

"It wasn't Palpatine," Anakin snaps.

"Your creepy older friend who took you to operas and gives you fancy gifts and knows way too much about swords who was conveniently there to talk to the police and cover for you so you didn't get arrested for getting in the middle of a gang war in the first place, yes," Ahsoka says, dropping into a chair and sighing dramatically. "The guy who definitely hasn't been trying to convince you for a year and change that your wife is cheating on you with your older brother."

"Ahsoka!"

"What? He is."

"Anakin," Rex says, "your life sounds like a trainwreck."

"I'm not going to assume a frail, elderly man cut my arm off!" Anakin protests. "Even if he wanted to, he doesn't exactly have the muscle for it!"

"Grandfather's older," Obi-Wan points out, even though he knows it won't help. "And he definitely still could."

"Ha!" Ahsoka shouts.

"He could have hired someone?" Cody suggests. "Doesn't need to do it himself, if he has enough money."

Obi-Wan has a sneaking suspicion that Cody is deliberately stirring the pot as revenge for Anakin sending him eighty-seven cat memes inside an hour during last night's dinner.

"You all suck," Anakin declares. "Also, what the hell do you mean 'knows way too much about swords,' Ahsoka? You know way too much about swords!"

"Yeah, but I'm like ninety-percent sure that his antiques are Prussian and mid-century German military officer dress uniform relics, and pairing that with the Nazi pistols he's got on display--"

"He's just a history buff! And his family's German, of course he prioritizes that region, it's not like he doesn't have Russian or French or English antiques in there too, it's all sides of the war and--"

"I'm just saying he's almost definitely sending me sketchy glances like he thinks I'm planning to steal the silver on the three occasions you've had me with you when you stop by, and I'm pretty sure it's got less to do with my criminal record and more to do with me being, you know, not white."

Anakin looks ready to blow, so Obi-Wan interrupts. "Ahsoka, you were explaining how Anakin passing out on Aayla and scaring us all half to death led to your friendship?"

Ahsoka blinks at him, and then sticks her tongue out at Anakin and turns back to the chart. "So basically, Skyguy had to recuperate in Uncle Plo's living room for a week or two, and I kept showing up to bother him because he was bored and nobody would give him a laptop for 'security reasons,' because he had to lay low and stuff. He made me help him sketch out designs for a prosthesis and do all the writing for the math he had to do for the 3D printer, and we got to chatting."

Ahsoka hops up and back onto a table, legs swinging below her. "I decided he was cool and started following him around while he was getting used to only having one hand, mostly because I was bored. He showed me how to hotwire a car, and explained the best places to put a bug if you were looking to make it sneaky, and he picked my pocket to show off so many times when he was walking around Uncle Plo's house that I made him teach me that, too. And, uh, then Aayla found out and they got into a shouting match about it and decided they both needed to teach me parkour so I could get out of any mess I got myself into, since I was obviously going to follow them into a life of crime."

"And you did," Anakin says, far too proudly. "You're the best thief in this half of the country."

"Only because Aayla moved out east."

Anakin rolls his eyes and pulls Ahsoka into his side, digging his knuckles into her skull. "Best thief! You are the best thief! Be proud of yourself!"

"Let go!"

"Never!"

Obi-Wan sighed heavily and rubbed at his forehead. "Children, please."

"You're not my dad," Ahsoka growls out at him. "Skyguy, I'm going to bite you!"

"Good luck, the only arm you can access is the one that's going to break your teeth."

Ahsoka shrieks in outrage and stomps on Anakin's instep.

It's almost funny, for all that Obi-Wan's seen it play out a million times before, but the really interesting part is seeing Rex's look of fond dismay.

Obi-Wan thinks he might be adding a branch out to the Fetts soon. He's not actually sure if Rex is interested in Anakin or Ahsoka, and he's smack dab between them in age, so that's not a help either, but... well. The expression is familiar enough.

"Please tell me you don't match-make," Cody mutters to him.

"No, I plan to let the pieces fall where they will," Obi-Wan responds, just as low, and far more amused. "I'm simply trying to predict where those landings are to be."

Cody looks at him, and then back at the roughhousing trio, and sighs heavily. "You know, I really didn't think that you technically being minor royalty was going to be the least convoluted thing in your story, Obi-Wan."

He laughs, because it's true. "I'm first in line to inherit the title, since Rael denounced his claim. Nim isn't interested, and Qui-Gon's dead, so... I'm next."

Cody makes a face. "Delightful. I'm guessing that's not a connection we can safely make use of."

"No more than the Kryze or Naberries, I'm afraid." Obi-Wan claps him on the shoulder. "Chin up, I've plenty others in the metaphorical rolodex, all far less legitimate and far more amenable to work with our little outfit."

"Rolodex, really?" Cody snorts. "You're not that old."

Obi-Wan smiles winningly. "You don't know how old I am, Cody. All my IDs are fake."

"Anakin's twenty-four, and you're sixteen years older than him, going by the story you just told me," Cody points out. "I do know how to do basic math, Obi-Wan."

"I had to try," Obi-Wan admits. "I threw a lot of information at you all at once; I'd hoped you missed some of the ages in there."

"I have eight brothers," Cody scoffs. "And literally dozens of cousins, plus niblings, uncles, aunts, and so on. I have experience on this."

"If I asked you to list of the age of every single relative you have, you'd be able to do it?"

"Do you want me to draw a chart? I can draw a chart."

Obi-Wan can't help but laugh. "I'd be delighted, my dear."

Cody rolls his eyes, but Obi-Wan thinks--it's hard to tell in the dimmed lights of the closed bar--that there's a hint of a blush on the man's face. Obi-Wan lets himself slouch to the side, drops his head to rest on one fist, indolent debauchery in every line of his body. Cody does his best to ignore him, but Obi-Wan knows how to smile lazily and blink slowly and draw a man in.

(The whole 'indolent debauchery in every line of his body' phrasing is Anakin's, from back when he was a teenager trying to read highbrow literature to impress a cute girl... and to come up with new insults for his older brother.)

"So," Cody says, with a cough meant to somehow distract Obi-Wan from whatever's showing on the man's face. "Why, uh, why is your grandfather on terrorist watchlists?"

"Well, he didn't initially do anything," Obi-Wan says. "He was just a gay man who didn't hide it quite well enough, and had too much money and too white a face for someone to just call the cops on a faulty report. The Red Scare was technically over by that point, I think, but if a few people made suggestions that he was more loyal to the country that gave him a noble title than to the United States... he received a few warnings, of course, and it could have all blown over..."

"But?"

"But my grandfather is not a man to do things by halves, and instead decided that if the government was to list him as a threat, then he would oblige and make himself a threat," Obi-Wan finishes. "Living up to their labels, rolling with the assumptions, whatever you'd like to call it. It all irked him, and so he made some incredibly questionable decisions to make the government's lives harder. Some weren't bad, like donating to anti-war foundations that were protesting the Gulf War and the interventions in Yugoslavia, that sort of thing, and some were... nobody really looks well on gunrunning, you know."

"For fuck's sake..."

"Indeed," Obi-Wan chuckles. "Ironically, he has minimal opinion on the optimal form of economics, for all that virulent xenophobia and the remnants of anti-communism were involved in the whole mess. He just wanted to create problems for the people that were causing him problems."

Cody shakes his head. "I want to judge that, but you've met my father."

"Jango Fett is, indeed, also not a man to do things by halves," Obi-Wan agrees, attempting to nod gravely but breaking into a smile at the end. "That man is absurd."

"At least he's not dragging Boba into it anymore," Cody mutters. He drags over the fresh sheet of paper and pen that Obi-Wan offers him. "Okay, right, let's start with Jaster..."

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