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arminreindl · 21 days

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Pachycetinae: The Thick Whales

Oh look I'm way behind not only on my work with wikipedia but also in regards to summarizing it on tumblr. Good thing, three of the pages I've worked on these past few months can just be summed up in one post because they are all one family.

So Pachycetinae, at the most basic level, are basilosaurid archaeocetes, the group that famously includes Basilosaurus and Dorudon. Reason I've picked up the articles in addition to my usual croc work, basically a friend and I noticed how lacklustre many pages are and stupidly decided to start revising all of Cetacea (pray for me).

Currently theres two genera within the group. Pachycetus aka Platyosphys aka Basilotritus, which is a whole mess I will get into at the end for those interested, and Antaecetus, which I'll just call "the good one" for now. Among those are three species. Pachycetus paulsonii (or Basilotritus uheni) from continental Europe (Germany and Ukraine mostly), Pachycetus wardii (Eastern United Staates) and Antaecetus aithai (Morocco and Egypt)

Picture: Pachycetus and Antaecetus by Connor Ashbridge

So the hallmark of Pachycetines, as the name would suggest, is the fact that their skeletons are notably denser than that of other basilosaurids. The vertebrae, the most abundant material of these whales, are described as pachyostatic and osteosclerotic. The former effecitvely means that the dense cortical bone forms thickened layers, while the latter means that the cortical bone, already forming thickened layers, is furthermore denser than in other basilosaurids with less porosities. The densitiy is increased further by how the ribs attack to the vertebrae not through sinovial articulation but through cartilage, so adding even more weight to them. Overall this is at times compared to manatees, famous for their dense skeletons.

Pictured below, the currently best preserved pachycetine fossil, an individual of the genus Antaecetus from Morocco.

Now there are some interesting anatomical features to mention that either differ between species or just can't be compared. For example the American species of Pachycetus, P. wardii, shows a well developed innominate bone, basically the fused pelvic bones. This is curious as one would think of it as a more basal feature, with derived whales gradually reducing them. The skull is best preserved in Antaecetus and has a very narrow snout. One way to differentiate the two is by the teeth. Pachycetus has larger, more robust teeth while that of Antaecetus are way more gracile and is thought to have had a proportionally smaller skull (in addition to being smaller than Pachycetus in general).

All of this has some interesting implications for their ecology. For instance, why the hell are they so dense? Well its possible that they were shallow water animals using their weight as ballast, staying close to the ocean floor. This would definitely find some support in the types of environments they show up in, which tend to be shallow coastal waters. There are some Ukrainian localities that suggest deeper waters, but that has been interpreted as being the result of migration taking them out of their prefered habitat.

Now while pachycetines were probably powerful swimmers, their dense bones mean that they were pretty slow regardless. And to add insult to injury, they were anything but maneuverable. Remember those long transverse processes? Turns out having them extend over the majority of the vertebral body means theres very little space for muscles in between, which limits sideways movements.

From this one can guess that they weren't pursuit predators and needed to ambush their prey. What exactly that was has been inferred based on tooth wear. Basically, the teeth of Pachycetus show a lot of abrasion and wear, not dissimlar to what is seen in modern orcas that feed on sharks and rays. And low and behold, sharks are really common in the same strata that Pachycetus shows up in. Now since Antaecetus had way more gracile teeth, its thought that it probably fed on less well protected animals like squids and fish.

Below: Pachycetus/Basilotritus catching a fish by @knuppitalism-with-ue

The relationship between pachycetines and other basilosaurids is wonky, again no thanks due to Pachycetus itself being very poorly known. Some studies have suggested that they were a very early branching off-shoot, in part due to their prominent hip bones, but in the most recent study to include them, the description of Tutcetus, they surprisingly came out as not just the most derived basilosaurids but as the immediate sister group to Neoceti, which includes all modern whales. Regardless, in both instances they seem to clade closely with Supayacetus, a small basilosaurid from Peru.

And now for the part that is the most tedious. Taxonomy and history.

Remains of pachycetines have been known for a while and were first described as early as 1873 by Russian scientists. To put into perspective how old that is. The material's history in science predates both World Wars, the collapse of the Russian Empire and even the reign of Tsar Nicholas II. Now initially the idea was to name the animal Zeuglodon rossicum, but the person doing the actual describing changed that to Zeuglodon paulsonii reasoning that it would eventually be found outside of Russia (something that aged beautifully given that Ukraine would eventually become independent).

And this is where the confusion starts to unfold. Because at the same time people unearthed pachycetine fossils in Germany too, which would come be given the name Pachycetus (thick whale) and be established as two species. Pachycetus robustus and Pachycetus humilis, both thought to be baleen whales.

Pictured below: Pierre-Joseph van Beneden who coined Pachycetus and Johann Friedrich Brandt who described Zeuglodon paulsonii. Beneden easily has the better beard.

These latter two names however were later rejected in 1935 by Kuhn and lumped into other species, whereas Zeuglodon paulsonii was elevated to a full on new genus by Remington Kellogg in 1936. For those curious, Platyosphys means "broad loin", in combination with the species "Paulson's broad loin" to the amusement of some friends of mine.

And then people stopped caring and we have a nearly 70 year research gap. Eventually Mark D. Uhen found fossil material in the United States, but interpreted those fossils as being part of the genus Eocetus, naming them Eocetus wardii, a move that many following researchers disagreed with.

Then in 2001 a new species of Platyosphys, P. einori, was named. It's bad, moving on. More importantly, we got the works of Gol'din and Zvonok, who attempted to bring some clarity into the whole thing. To do so they rejected the name Platyosphys on account of the holotype having been lost sometime in WW2 and picked out much better fossil material to coin the genus Basilotritus ("the third king" in allusion to Basilosaurus "king lizard" and Basiloterus "the other king", isn't etymology fun?). They erected the type species Basilotritus uheni and then proclaimed Eocetus wardii to also belong into this genus, making it Basilotritus wardii.

This move was however not followed by other researchers. Gingerich and Zhouri maintained that regardless of being lost, Platyosphys is still valid and can be sufficiently diagnosed by the original drawings from the 19th and early 20th century. And to take a step further they added a new species, Platyosphys aithai (weird, why does that name sound familiar).

Then Van Vliet came and connected all these dots I've set up so far, noting that the fossils of Platyosphys are nearly identical to those of Pachycetus. This lead to the fun little thing were "paulsonii", applied first to Zeuglodon in the 1870s, takes priority over "robustus", coined just a few years later, BUT, the genus name Pachycetus easily predates Platyosphys by a good 60 years. Subsequently, the two were combined. Platyosphys paulsonii and Pachycetus robustus became Pachycetus paulsonii (simplified*). Van Vliet then deemed humilis to be some other whale and carried over Basilotritus uheni, Basilotritus wardii and Platyosphys aithai into the genus Pachycetus. *Technically Pachycetus robustus was tentatively kept as distinct only because of how poorly preserved it was, making comparisson not really possible.

Then finally in the most recent paper explicitly dealing with this group, Gingerich and Zhouri came back, killed off P. robustus for good, sunk Pachycetus uheni into Pachycetus paulsonii for good measure and decided to elevate Pachycetus aithai to genus status after finding a much better second skeleton, coining Antaecetus (after the giant of Greek myth).

And that's were we are right now. Three species in two genera, but only one of them is actually any good. So perhaps at some point in the future we might see some further revisions on that whole mess and who knows, perhaps Basilotritus makes a glorious comeback.

To conclude, sorry about the lack of images, despite the ample history theres just not much good material aside from that one Antaecetus fossil and I didn't want to include 5 different drawings in lateral view. Obligatory Wikipedia links: Pachycetinae - Wikipedia Antaecetus - Wikipedia Pachycetus - Wikipedia

Ideally Supayacetus will be the next whale I tackle, distractions and other projects not withstanding (who knows maybe I'll finally finish Quinkana)

#pachycetinae #pachycetus #basilotritus #platyosphys #antaecetus #archaeocete #prehistory #paleontology #palaeoblr #basilosauridae #eocene #whale

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trashpandacraft · 3 months

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I found fibrecraft tumblr after searching drop spindles because my dad *didn’t even know what that was.* And despite having been firmly of the opinion that I didn’t intend to learn it, y’all have me getting ever closer to giving in. However, I’m also growing ever more enamored with the idea of weaving - and despite recently deciding to give knitting and crochet another go - I think it looks the most fun of the fiber crafts. My issue is that I have absolutely no space.

But I’m beginning to realize there’s a lot of different looms and types of weaving. So I was wondering if you have any resources or tips for small space methods and storage?

welcome to fibrecraft tumblr! it's fun here, we have enablers.

i will admit that while i love knitting, weaving is amazing, and is much better with regards to instant gratification—weaving for an hour gets you a lot more fabric than knitting for an hour.

so let's talk about weaving, because i have great news for you: you can 100% totally weave in a small space if you want to, and you even have options for how you do it. i'm going to go through basically all the small space weaving options that i'm aware of in roughly size order, and if you make it to the bottom of this you'll have a pretty good overview of space-saving weaving methods.

the first question to ask yourself is what you want to weave. maybe you're not sure yet, which is totally fine. if you don't immediately have strong feelings about it, though, maybe consider if band weaving strikes your fancy. this is pretty limited in size, but lets you weave belts, straps (like camera or bag straps), lanyards, etc.

if you think that sounds neat, it's worth looking into tablet weaving, an inkle loom, or a band/tape loom. tablet weaving takes up no space at all—if you can fit a stack of index cards into your life, you can fit tablet weaving. the tablets are small square cards, often made out of heavy cardstock, and even with a project on them, you can probably fit them into an index card holder.

inkle looms are larger, and to be honest i've never used one and don't know a ton about them, but they're also used for making woven bands. the looms can also be very aesthetically pleasing, if that's something you're into. they can be very big, but the ashford inklette, for example, is only 36 cm long and maybe 12 cm wide.

tape looms are—in my experience, anyhow—larger than tablet weaving but smaller than inkle looms, and even the larger ones are only about shoebox size. they vary widely, from gorgeous, complicated little looms to a handheld paddle that you use to create a shed, which is what you put your yarn through when you're weaving.

if that doesn't sound like good times, consider a frame loom. these are pretty simple—if you ever wove potholders out of stretchy cloth strips as a kid, you probably used a frame loom to do it on. frame looms are generally inexpensive and readily available, and can be used for small woven objects like potholders, coasters, placemats, etc. they can also be used to make some truly stunning tapestries. while you can buy a huge frame loom, you're still only talking about huge in two directions—it might be as wide as your armspan, but it's still only a couple inches thick.

another option is a pin loom. these don't get mentioned a lot, and i'm not totally sure why. pin looms are shapes with a bunch of pins (metal points, usually) coming out of them. on one hand, you're limited to making things that are the shape of the loom, but on the other hand, if you've been hanging around fibrecraft tumblr, you've seen all the things crocheters get up to with granny squares, right? there's no reason in the world that you can't do all those things with the squares made on a pin loom. or the hexagons! or the triangles! i've been kinda thinking about getting a little hexagon or triangle pin loom and using it to sample my handspun, then turning the shapes into a blanket.

if you hate all of that, that's ok! we have more options.

you could consider a backstrap loom, which is an ancient way of weaving that's still practiced today in many places. backstrap looms are cool because you can weave probably 24 inches wide on them, but even with a project on it, they take almost no room at all. backstrap looms are fairly easy to diy, because they're basically a bunch of dowels, so they can be a good low-cost way to try out weaving. backstrap looms will let you make longer, wider fabric than anything else we've mentioned so far!

another option—stay with me—is a toy loom. there are a number of cheap looms for sale on amazon/ali express/some local places that are actually fully functional looms. recently i've seen a number of people (like sally pointer, though i'm sure i've seen someone using one of the brightly coloured harness looms, as well) who've used them and report that they're functional, if basic, looms. you're fairly constrained in terms of project size, since there's not a lot of space for the finished fabric to wind on, and there's a very limited width, but the looms are quite small and tuck away easily.

ok, but so what if you hate all of those options? don't worry—there are more options! this is the part where things get expensive, though.

as looms go, rigid heddle looms are actually quite reasonably sized. i think the smallest one i've seen is a 40cm (~16") weaving width, which is about 50x60 (20x24") in length/width, and 13cm (5") high. so that's more space than anything else we've talked about, but it's still not a ton of space, you know? a 40cm rigid heddle will let you weave lovely scarves and things of that nature—table runners, placemats, strips of woven fabric to whipstitch together into a blanket, etc.

but maybe that's enough. so let's talk about table looms. some of them are quite large—mine, for example, is about a metre square and sits on a frame that it came with. it is not what you would call space efficient. but many of them, especially modern ones, are very compact, and can even be folded up into something more or less briefcase sized. (weird way to consider it, since the last time i saw a briefcase was probably the 80s, but you know what i mean, i bet.) the cool part here is that you can weave damn near anything you want on a table loom. the less cool part is that for the compact ones that fold up, you're looking at hundreds if not thousands of dollars. the smallest one i'm aware of is the louët erica, which folds down to 42x62x42cm (16.5x24.5x16.5") and gives you 40cm (16") of weaving width. i feel like that's impressively small. you'd have to decide for yourself if that's enough to justify the $500 usd/$800 aud price tag, though.

finally, we've come to folding floor looms. i don't think someone who's never woven before should run out and buy one of these unless money is just literally not at all a concern for you, but they are basically the dream for those of us trapped in crappy rentals, and it seemed weird to leave them out when i'd come this far.

some floor looms are various levels of collapsible. to be clear, this does you absolutely no good at all when you're actively weaving, because you have to unfold them to weave, but it does you a lot of good if you'd like to have a floor loom and still have the ability to, say, walk through the living room when you're not actively using the loom.

most relevant to our discussion about small weaving footprints, some looms fold up entirely. they are incredibly fucking expensive and incredibly fucking cool. the two that i'm most aware of are the leclerc compact and the schacht wolf line, both of which fold up to about half of their unfolded depth. they're still not small—i think that they're both the better part of 75cm (30") wide and tall, so even if they fold down to 40cm (16") deep, they're still 75cm wide and tall. which is Fairly Large, though much better than having something 80cm deep sitting in the middle of the floor.

this was a very, very long post, but hopefully makes it clear that there's a surprisingly wide range of options, and they all have advantages and trade offs. if you're asking my opinion, my suggestion would be to try something—anything—with a backstrap setup and see how you feel about it. maybe you love it and keep at it forever, in which case you're in good company: there are entire cultures that weave exclusively on backstrap looms.

if you like producing cloth but don't love the backstrap setup, or don't like using your body to tension the warp, you have a lot of other options, and you're out maybe ten dollars of dowels.

personally, my next loom is probably going to be a pin loom. unless i win lotto, in which case it's going to be a house that has a weaving studio and like four floor looms in it. but probably a pin loom.

#weaving #i really hope that this was helpful #i get so excited about solving problems that i sometimes go way too hard #but i love thinking about this kind of thing #sorry for infodumping #also weaveblr i didn't forget about warp weighted looms i just don't think that they're super practical #admittedly i am biased by sharing my house with three cats #but also all the learning to weave content is...not on those #if it weren't for the cats my next loom would be warp weighted tho #fibercrafts #fiber art #textiles #smartest raccoon i know #(it's an ironic tag)

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ineffable-endearments · 5 months

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Hello, everyone!

In light of Neil Gaiman's comment that Amazon is close to officially renewing Good Omens but hasn't done so yet, I think those of us who can should start sending physical postcards to Amazon Studios!

The TL;DR of this post is that you can easily send a postcard from MyPostcard.com for about $3 (USD, I'm sure other currencies can vary). The Web site will print and mail it for you, so you don't have to do any printing or mailing yourself. The postage is included in the $3.

If you don't already have an image or card you want to use, you can just use one of mine above. Some of them are small because of small source images, but the site seems to resize them appropriately for the card. There are bigger versions in a Google Drive folder that you shouldn't have to be logged in to see.

You can send the postcards asking for a third season of Good Omens addressed to Jennifer Salke and Vernon Sanders, co-heads of Amazon Studios, at:

AMAZON STUDIOS 1620 26TH STREET, SUITE 4000N SANTA MONICA, CA 90404 USA

@fuckyeahgoodomens was the first to post this contact information for Amazon, so thank you, Ixi.

If it's something you don't mind, I would very deeply appreciate reblogs on this, since it works better if lots of people see it! No pressure if you don't want to, though.

And if you have Questions, click through below for my reasoning on all this.

Why should we send postcards to Amazon Studios?

We've made lots of noise online about renewal, and we've done a lot of streaming Good Omens. But I haven't seen much discussion of sending physical mail or, specifically, postcards.

Mail takes up space in the real world. It's slightly harder to ignore than email. It's way more attention-grabbing than posts on X or Tumblr or any other social media site. Because postage is required, physical mail can also appear more "committed."

Postcards specifically are great because of their convenience for the recipient. No one has to open them to read them. All it takes is a quick glance to see what we're asking for, and realistically, a quick glance is the best we can ask for in a corporate office. That's why I'm emphasizing postcards over regular letters (although really, anything helps).

Is sending postcards really going to motivate Amazon to make more Good Omens?

Postcard and letter-writing campaigns have helped get shows renewed in the past. Star Trek: The Original Series is a good example of a series that got another season after a letter-writing campaign. This article has more examples.

We don't actually know what's going on in Good Omens's case. Maybe postcards would make a difference; maybe they wouldn't. We can only make our most determined effort at making sure we're heard, and sending mail is part of that.

The cost of sending a postcard is too much for me.

I understand that sending a postcard will not be an option for many of us. This post isn't intended to try to push you into spending money you don't have. If you still want to find a way to participate, you can also send an email to [email protected] with your comments about wanting Good Omens 3. It's not physical mail, but it is still a personal message from a customer.

In fact, people who are sending postcards might want to follow up with an email, too.

Do we have to use your postcard designs?

No! Not necessarily! You can use anything.

As long as the message you write includes how much you want Good Omens 3, your postcard's image doesn't necessarily have to relate. You could send a souvenir postcard that says "Greetings from Los Angeles, CA / Tadfield, England / etc" from your local post office and just write your message on the back.

Technically, even a plain index card should be thick enough to mail as a postcard, at least by USPS standards. Just write your desire for Good Omens 3 on it, put a stamp and Amazon's address on it, and make sure it's at least 90mm x 127mm (3.5in x 5in).

Isn't Amazon Studios going to notice a bunch of postcards being mailed from the same Web site?

I'm sure they will. But the messages will each be unique, and again, they'll know each card represents a person who had to order the card and postage themselves.

Speaking of unique messages, what should I write?

One sentence is enough. Definitely indicate that you want Season 3 of Good Omens. If you want to add more, you could also write a sentence or two about how much you love the series so far.

Above all, be polite and straightforward! Remember that sarcasm and jokes often do not come across well in print, so it may be best to stick with simple statements that can be taken at face value.

What address should the cards go to?

The co-heads of Amazon Studios appear to be Vernon Sanders and Jennifer Salke; you can address them by name, although I'm guessing it will be someone else who does the reading/glancing.

Amazon Studios's address is:

AMAZON STUDIOS 1620 26TH STREET, SUITE 4000N SANTA MONICA, CA 90404 USA

Where did you get these images?

The images for the nightingale postcard and the Crowley postcard are screencaps from directedbypiper.

The Please Do Not Lick the Walls and Fell the Marvelous posters were downloads from the Amazon X-Ray feature.

The Nice and Accurate Prophecies postcard was adapted from cover art I did for A Nice and Interpretive Fanzine. Most of it is my own, although the mottled background is an extremely blurred version of a free stock texture from Pixabay, users chrisfiedler and/or humusak.

The bookshop postcard is a promotional image from Amazon used in a Den of Geek article.

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens 3 #renew good omens #ineffable husbands #crowley #aziraphale

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naavispider · 1 year

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Hey, what do you think life would be like for Spider and others in modern au? I mean the universe on Earth, nowadays. (For example - in my hc Jake is in a wheelchair, Spider has cystic fibrosis/severe asthma, Kiri has epilepsy and Grace is in a coma as a reference to the original story)

Spider Socorro Modern AU headcanons

Adding mine to the pile because I'm 😍 hooked 😍 Some of these are definitely influenced and adopted from other posts I've seen, especially @hyperfixatedfandomer (I searched but I couldn't find the other post that I really loved so I'm sorry whoever you are, know that you inspired me 🙌🏻) Again if you haven't, you need to read So close, yet a million worlds apart 🥰

has bounced from foster home to foster home growing up

Norm is his social worker who he has a good relationship with, despite Norm being pretty unable to find anyone to adopt him

Yes, Jake and Neytiri are one of the families who ended up fostering Spider as a teenager

He has asthma, which can occasionally flare up so he always carries his inhaler

His style is lots of oversized baggy clothes, a hoodie here or there but mostly bold t shirts, very grunge, very tumblr boy. His look reflects the care and attention he's gotten as a kid, which is obviously not a lot

Deffs has his ears pierced but hasn't braved his first tattoo yet

Plays guitar and can sing, but hates to do it in front of people

He's pretty musically talented all around, he once picked up piano pretty well

Very artistic, he definitely has a sketch book hidden somewhere and the sketchbook definitely includes Kiri's portrait more than once. The kind of kid that always has graphite on his fingertips

Skateboarder - so he can roll away from his problems

Alexa play 'They See Me Rollin'

Plaits his hair in cool styles, loves incense, would be into Yoga however he's never had the space or the vulnerability to try it in any of his foster homes.

Very popular at the children's home, lots of the younger kids look up to him and he has some cool friends his own age from there as well

Bright in school, though he can be cheeky so ends up in a few detentions, definitely has ADHD as well (high functioning)

Loves peanut butter! I feel it in my heart that it's his favourite food

relationship with the Sullys

when Norm called Jake and Neytiri and asked if they were willing to foster a kid for a few weeks, Lo'ak was Not Impressed

Tuk was delighted and Kiri and Neteyam were skeptical

The kid really needed fostering though due to a safeguarding concern (oh no Papa Miles found out where the children's home is but isn't allowed to see him so the only other option was to send Spider away across the country to another children's home)

As soon as Spider walked in the door Lo'ak knew they were gonna be thick as thieves, all trepidation vanished

Neytiri gives a warm welcome, but allows Jake and the kids to show Spider around. She definitely never tries to mother him, and Spider can feel that, it doesn't bother him (most of the time)

Jake is definitely in a wheelchair, and when he sees Spider's skateboard tucked under his arm on the doorstep he knows there's gonna be some wheel jokes

Spider is of course always respectful but the kid has banter, and Kiri and Lo'ak are all over it

Jake finds out his fave food is peanut butter and makes peanut butter chicken one night. The fam have never tried it before but it's an instant hit

Lo'ak and Spider sneak out together all the time, hanging around street corners and parking lots at night, and sometimes Kiri comes too

Spider got Lo'ak into skateboarding, Lo'ak eventually ditches his bike

Tuk is enamoured by Spider's hair, she thinks it's really pretty. Spider is great with her, because he has so much experience with younger kids in the children's home

Spider loved Kiri no doubt, but he's ace af so never thinks of her in that way. Kiri loves him back easily and they just know their souls align.

Someone at school once started taking the piss out of how friendly Kiri and Spider were, esp that they were foster siblings, and Lo'ak punched the guy square in the jaw, causing a big fight in the hallway and Lo'ak to get suspended for a day

Spider looks up to Neteyam, a little bit wary of him at first when he moved in, but doesn't see much of him since he's older and keeps himself to himself a lot

Neteyam will be going off to college soon (he's like 17 in this AU purely for the older bro vibes) and Spider can see that he wants that for himself as well, eventually

one time Neteyam catches Lo'ak and Spider sneaking in at like 3am from the skatepark and says that as long as they don't do it again he won't snitch on them

Lo'ak and Spider invite him on the next one

Neteyam notices a car parked on the street outside their house over a few days that seems kinda sus, and he mentions it to Jake, who tells Norm, who tells social services, because what do you know, it couldn't possibly be the dangerous Papa Miles stalking his son could it?? (someone please write a fic)

#miles spider socorro #spider socorro #sully family #jake sully #neytiri #neteyam #lo'ak #avatar kiri #norm spellman #avatar the way of water #avatar 2 #jc avatar #avatar modern au #spider headcanons #my stuff

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anakinsafterlife · 1 month

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Thoughts on Dune Part 2

All right, friends. Dune Part 2. I absolutely picked the wrong time to start wanting to return to Tumblr, since I'm currently in the thick of Ramadan, but c'est la vie. I'm a bit worried that if I don't review now that I might forget my specific impressions of the movie, though I have to say that if this weren't Ramadan that I absolutely would be going back to see it again in the cinema, which says a lot considering that it's been at least ten years since I've actually wanted to go back and repeat a film instead of just waiting for it to come out on streaming/DVD.

So the movie is good. It is in fact very, very good. It's the Empire Strikes Back of the Dune duology (possibly trilogy), and (much like Empire) in terms of cinematography, music, scripting and acting it's nearly flawless. There are, however, issues, things that might not occur to a majority-Western audience but which are immediately clear to anyone who either comes from an Arab or Muslim background.

What follows here is a deep dive into some of the historical and cultural sources of Dune and some of the ways in which the movie producers, and in some cases fans, have failed to acknowledge those sources.

First of all, it's obvious that the Fremen are meant to be based on the Arabs, but of the the entire main cast there is only ONE actor with an Arab background, and that is Souhaila Yacoub, the half-Tunisian actress who plays Shishakli, the female Fremen warrior who is executed by the Harkonnens. Now, I have to say that this woman was fantastic. Her attitude is completely on point for an Arab, especially a North African Arab: forceful, loud, a bit brash and mocking even under fire. Nicely done. Points to the producers there, but I have to take that point away again because she is literally the only Space Arab who is actually Arab. Javier Bardem, the Spanish actor who plays Stilgard, does have some interesting moments and one of the reasons why I feel that the screenwriters were advised on Arabic traditions/culture. The incident during which he warns Paul about the Jinn in the desert like it's a joke but then immediately turns extremely serious when Paul starts smiling is so in character for an Arab and honestly just a brilliant bit of scripting, but much of the time he also acted more or less like what people *think* a fanatical religious Arab acts like--loud, frantic and unstable.

Not only this, but the "Muslim" behaviour/traditions in the film are at best...vague. People are praying, but in any direction at all. I do realize that this would be a complicated issue on another planet, where the Ka'aba couldn't be pointed to, but there are Islamic rulings for EVERYTHING. Check out the one about praying in space:

Even if they had as a society simply picked a random direction for prayer, they should all be praying at the same time and in the same direction (they seem to do this in larger crowds, but not in the smaller group where we first see people praying). They also definitely shouldn't be talking during prayer or trying to make other people talk to them during prayer (as Chani does), since talking breaks your prayer and you have to start over all over again (during obligatory prayers).

Language, too, is an issue, and a big one, because while I do understand that a conlang was developed for use in this movie, the linguists consulted did know that the language was meant to be heavily influenced by Arabic. Consequently, they've included a lot of fragmentary Arabic in their work. Unfortunately this Arabic is poorly pronounced at best, to the point where I was looking words up and laughing at what they're meant to be based on. For example, "Shai Hulud," the word for the Worms, is based on the Arabicشيء خلود, which means "immortal thing," and should be pronounced with "shai" rhyming with "say" followed by a glottal stop, and the 'h' in "Hulood" is actually a guttural sound like the infamous "ch" in Bach, followed by a long U. Another example is Mua'dib مهذب , a real word in Arabic that means "teacher," but is is actually pronounced with a "th" sound instead of a d and emphasis on the second syllable, not on the last as in French. (Note: I made an error here. There is a word مؤدب , pronounced mostly the same in the movie, but with a glottal stop after the 'u' sound and a short 'i' after the d sound rather than a long vowel, that is usually used to mean polite, urbane, gentlemanly, etc. but which can also mean teacher, although I have never heard it used in this context) "Usul", أصول, Paul's other Fremen name, was likely not, as I had previously guessed, based on the word "Rasool," meaning Prophet, but on أصول الفقه the Principles of islamic Jurisprudence, which also ties directly into a religious/prophetic them. Again, this is pronounced on the long vowel, so with a short first U and a long second U.

I've included the Arabic spellings in here, by the way, so that you can drop them into Google translator and hear how they actually sound.

Now, I do realize that the story itself is set 8000 years in the future and that spoken Arabic as a language would have changed considerably in that time, if it existed still at all, but Arabic is a liturgical language as well as a vehicle for conversation, and Muslims all across the world today use it as a tool for worship. Muslims who have no cultural connection with Arabic often still learn it in order to connect more deeply with religious traditions and simply to perform prayers and other religious duties. Religious scholars consider it to be a necessary duty of the Muslim to learn at least some Arabic:

And keep in mind that the Arabic spoken today across the MENA region is very different (and different in different places) to the Arabic spoken 1400 years ago by the Prophet Mohamed (peace be upon him). Given Islamic traditions, the chances of the Fremen using liturgical/classical Arabic for their worship would be quite high, even if their spoken language had evolved past the point of being recognizably Arabic.

Keep in mind, also, that Dune as a whole is an allegory for colonialism, economic exploitation of poorer nations (or making rival nations poor through the same), as well as dehumanization of the views and needs of native peoples in order to make that exploitation palatable to the occupying forces (I thought that this was done quite smartly in Jessica's part of the story; although she is sympathetic to the Fremen, she feels that manipulating their religious traditions is the best way to protect her son, and in doing so she allows herself to dehumanize the people who come to rely on her).

It is, therefore, incumbent upon us not to distance ourselves too much from the intended message by claiming that Dune is fiction and need not too accurately reflect the culture and religion of the people that the Fremen are so clearly based on. The fact that the producers have done little to hire Arab actors or induced any real effort to accurately pronounce the Arabic words or accurately portrayal Islamic practices seems to indicate that they are concerned about identifying too closely with the economic and cultural struggle between East and West, properly because they fear the potential economic backlash, and this despite the fact that Frank Herbert clearly wrote his book to illustrate the fallout of that struggle.

Here is a wonderful article written by a culturally Arab woman:

There are numerous other articles addressing the same issues, but I like this one because it's written by a Muslim woman, who also addresses the "hijab cosplaying" in the movie. I didn't get into that much, but I definitely recognize that it's a problem when Muslim women worry about potential violence while wearing hijab in the streets of Western nations, but the same article of clothing is fetishized in movies and fashion.

I've also seen some comment about the Mahdi mention in particular. This is a saviour-figure in Islam who will come near the end of the world. There is no emphasis on this figure in Sunni Islam, but Shias seem to have a significant body of literature concerning this figure and, from what I understand, believe that he may perhaps have already come, and so there has been some poor reception in that community to applying the label of Mahdi to Paul. Criticisms ranging from insensitivity to outright blasphemy have been levelled regarding this usage. Now, there was some tip-toeing around the prophetic theme in Dune, and rightly so, I believe, since the Prophet Mohamed is the "seal of the prophets" in Islam, meaning the last and final. The fact that Paul was essentially set up as a false prophet by the Bene Gesserit does avoid some of the potential fallout from this, and also makes sense of Chani's rejection at the end of the film, since she felt strongly about Paul acting as a false Prophet.

Again, I am aware that there is internal cosmology within the series itself, and that some fans object to the religion of the Fremen being referred to as Islam, but when the inspiration for the entire ethnicity, religion, and the natural resources at stake are as clear as they are in this series, it's also futile to expect that people will not draw those associations, nor that people belonging to the religion or ethnic group in question may not acknowledge the beauty of the movie, the gorgeous cinematography, rousing music, and tightly plotted story, but still take exception to what is clearly Orientalism.

And it is frankly such a shame that we have to place this movie under that header, because the story of Dune is so sympathetic to the Middle East and its peoples, and as I said in the beginning I actually loved the film and found it very beautiful. It was also exciting to see Islamic themes used creatively in mainstream media, but while Frank Herbert clearly wrote the story as an exposition on the exploitation of natural resources, particularly oil, in the MENA region, the truth is that the racism and exploitation that he was protesting are very much alive today and contribute to the oppression of millions. It's particularly disappointing to see the message of the movie sail over the heads of people watching it when Arab Muslims in Palestine are being dehumanized and obliterated at this very moment, and while Libya was one of the latest Arab nations to be targeted for its oil resources, only a decade ago, with European oil companies moving in directly after the downfall of Ghadafi (which makes the timing extremely suspicious, one might say):

And even after the US finished their occupation of Iraq, Western oil companies remained en mass to continued drilling:

Egypt to this day remains economically destabilized while Western nations exploit its oil stocks, to no benefit at all of its peoples:

I'm sure I could cite dozens of other cases, but it's clear that there is a one-on-one parallel between spice melange and oil, making any protests of apoliticism in an inherently political story utterly vain.

I could go on, but I needn't. In short, this beautiful movie could have done so much good even beyond its obvious artistic merits, but instead it is still towing the political line. Much as was the case for Jessica and Paul, sometimes you can be a Harkonnen and not know it.

#dune #dune part 2 #meta #islam #arabic #history #orientalism #paul atreides #lady jessica #chani kynes #oil drilling #colonialism #arrakis #north africa #the middle east

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nametakensff · 23 days

Text

Come Here (S/teddie)

Decided to go off of this idea here and cooked up 3.4k of S/teve and E/ddie fucking 💕

E/ddie decides to tease S/teve with some quick inducing one hot summer day

~~~~~

Content:

M/M, established relationship, both S/teve and E/ddie have the fetish, E/ddie gets off to his own sneezing, manually induced sneezing, mentions of allergy sneezing, mentions of handjobs, dry humping, blowjobs, masturbation, spray, a little tiny mention of mess, sneezing on someone's face, teasing, nose rubbing, nose blowing, some tiiiny sprinkles of foot fetish stuff (my bad), they are both very sweaty lol

CW: nothing especially? E/ddie is playing with S/teve but they're both completely into it, S/teve is very handsy

~~~~~~

NSFW, minors please DNI!

“Stevieee.”

Lying on Eddie’s bed in a spread-eagle position, Steve was pulled out of the depths of his semi-conscious afternoon doze by the insistent neediness of his boyfriend’s voice.

“Yeah?” He called out, rubbing his eyes groggily with the heels of his palms.

“C’mere.”

Steve sighed. Moving was the last thing he wanted to do. They were in peak summertime heat, and the Munson trailer had very little in the way of functional air conditioning. It was fine if he was permitted to lie around like a spoilt house cat, but Eddie was energetic today. Granted, he was always energetic – but this was a lot even for him, given the veritable furnace-like atmosphere they were sweltering in. He’d only been able to snag this little nap because Eddie had been so preoccupied with some fantasy novel or other, eyes flying over the words in the thick tome without pause. Not much interested in books and even less interested in watching somebody else read one, Steve had slunk away to sweat a man-shaped puddle onto Eddie’s sheets.

“Baaaby boy. I said come heeere.”

Steve’s eyes snapped open again, and he realised he had already started to dose off in those 10 seconds or so of sleepy contemplation. He knew Eddie wouldn’t stop, so with no small amount of effort he pulled himself to his feet and staggered in the direction of the living room.

He looked at Eddie through bleary eyes, an apathetic expression plastered to his face in sharp contrast with the beatific grin his boyfriend wore. They were both shirtless, dressed only in boxers. It was way too fucking hot for much more, and Eddie had only been persuaded to keep his underwear on after Steve insisted on it. He didn’t think Wayne would appreciate a great big ass-shaped sweat stain on his sofa, and Eddie had had to agree, if not reluctantly.

“What is it, Eds?” He mumbled, making his way over to sit on the couch next to the older man. Eddie promptly stopped him with a hand to the chest.

“Nope. No sitting for you.” Eddie smiled up at him.

Steve blinked, taking in the mischievous twinkle in those big brown eyes, and the electricity sparked by their mutual gaze woke him up the rest of the way faster than a shot of espresso. Oh. So it was like that. The boner he’d sustained in his sleep, though it had been flagging in the miserable heat, gave an interested little twitch. He smiled back as Eddie started to play absently with his chest hair, waiting to hear what he had in mind.

“How about you kneel for me, huh? Right here.”

Eddie gestured at the space on the floor between his spread legs. And sure. Steve could do that. He dropped to his knees, maintaining eye contact with his boyfriend as he did so. Eddie’s smile widened, all teeth and eyes crinkled at the corners, evidently very pleased with how easily Steve was willing to play along. He swung one arm over the back of the sofa; Steve watched the slight rippling of lean muscle as he moved.

“Great job, big boy.” Eddie praised him in a lilted, singsong like manner. Steve smirked.

“Thank you. I studied really hard for all my obedience classes.”

Eddie’s smile widened as he reached behind a couch cushion.

“Could have fooled me, Harrington. Always talking back, always sassing me.”

“Just following your example, I guess.” Steve shrugged, a little distracted from the verbal back-and-forth as he focused in on Eddie’s right hand – and more importantly, what he clutched between his forefinger and thumb. He opened his mouth to enquire, but Eddie was quick to interrupt him.

“Shhh, Steve.”

He didn’t offer any explanation, and Steve’s eyebrow raised in scepticism. It was only when Eddie began to move his right hand up to his face, and Steve recognised the small item in his grip, that he found himself genuinely wordless with anticipation. The small clothing tag had become a regular and happy edition to their sex life now that they had become comfortable enough to indulge in their mutual fetish. He had to admit there had been a little more reluctance on his part, but not for lack of desire; he often felt like his body was too tiny and mortal to contain the levels of excitement he experienced being around Eddie on a daily basis, let alone when he was sneezing for his – their – pleasure.

His sweaty cheeks were already flushed by the heat, but they darkened a little all the same. His mouth suddenly felt dry, his stomach full of butterflies. More importantly, his genitals were making themselves very well known, pitching a solid tent in his boxers in seconds. Eddie was looking at him through heavy lidded eyes with an almost predatory expression of hunger. Steve could relate; he loved when Eddie was equally as responsive and pliant for him. Still didn’t stop him from feeling just a little embarrassed at his own uncontrollable eagerness, though.

Eddie flashed him one last grin before slipping the little tag into his right nostril and beginning to tease. He was so sensitive, Steve thought with immense appreciation. The rim of the metalhead’s nostril twitched even before the tool was inserted, as if in lusty preparation for the tickle to come. As Eddie probed himself, both nostrils began to flare in earnest. He was a pro at this, and Steve knew it would only be a matter of seconds before the first sneeze would come trembling out of him. His allergies had been behaving today, likely because they had been sweltering inside with every window firmly shut. It didn’t mean they were completely under control, and they’d both ushered in the morning with gentle, rolling orgasms, courtesy of Eddie’s morning sneezes and both of their hands. By the cringing expression that was beginning to crumple his features as Steve looked up at him through unblinking eyes, his sinuses were as easily irritable as ever.

One final, shuddering inhale later and the metalhead was pitching forward with a ticklish little fit.

“Hh-HH! HDdt’TSsieww!! Ehdt’TChieww!! Hah’ESHH’ieww!! ‘TShhieww!! EhH’NGXtshh!!”

Steve couldn’t help it as he let out a closed-mouth moan, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. Eddie had purposely leaned forward more than the natural propulsion of his fit, and so Steve had felt every droplet of the fine aerosol each sneeze pushed out of his boyfriend. He had tilted his head back ever so slightly, letting the sneezes mist his neck and chest. The cool kiss of spray felt even better than usual on his heated skin, and he shivered, breaking out all over in a pleasurable rush of goosebumps.

“Bless you,” He sighed. He wanted to reach out and grab for Eddie, but his boyfriend didn’t even so much as acknowledge that he had spoken to him, slipping the tool right back into his waiting nostril. Steve placed his restless hands on his own thighs, digging his fingernails into the muscular flesh just shy of breaking the skin.

Eddie tickled himself, gasping intermittently as Steve watched him in a dreamy haze, feeling like his bones had been replaced with jelly. He normally only felt this loose post-orgasm, but the combination of sweltering heat, his recent unconsciousness and the unexpectedness of this game left him loopy and soft.

Steve barely had to wait before the next round of sneezes was raining down upon him, the last few so unbearably tickly his boyfriend’s left leg jerked off the ground as they overpowered him.

“hh’NgXt’shieww! HAH’ENGXtch’tsieww!! IGSH’ieww!! Huh’IgKkShieww!! ESHhh’ieww! ‘DDZz’SHieww!!...Ahh, holy fuck, that felt good…”

Eddie sighed, looking about as wiped out as Steve felt. The younger man was happy to see that the metalhead was sporting an impressive erection, pressing up against his boxers and leaking a little through the fabric. His own cock jumped in response, and he swallowed down a sudden deluge of saliva as he drooled at the sight like a fucking dog.

“Fucking bless you, Eddie!” He moaned, fingers flexing as he continued to kneel in front of his sniffling boyfriend.

Eddie didn’t respond this time either, just rubbed at his tickly nose with the palm of his left hand, mashing it around roughly for a couple of moments. The wet clicking sounds the action produced made Steve throb again. He could feel the head of his cock dripping, now.

He jumped at the sudden feeling of Eddie’s heel pressing into his crotch, groaning in equal measures surprise and arousal. It was only for a fleeting moment, a cruel little nudge before Eddie placed his foot back on the ground, thighs spread even wider. Steve tried not to think too hard about how good the pressure had felt, about how much he would have liked to grip Eddie’s ankle and rut back against him. The older man laughed softly at the look of Steve’s wide-eyed incredulity, but then simply returned the tag to his nostril again, barely a pause as he worked on his next fit.

Steve wouldn’t take that shit sitting – or kneeling – down. He pressed forward, torso up against the couch cushions between Eddie’s legs, and gripped each pale thigh firmly before yanking Eddie slightly towards him. Eddie didn’t stop him; he continued to tease himself until his chest swelled with a definitive breath, forced out of him moments later with another attack of spraying, tickly sneezes.

“Hit’TSCH’hieww!! HdT’TScchieww!! EhD’TSchhiew!! ISHhh’ieww!! Hh-! Hah’ISCHHtt!!”

Steve’s eyes closed reflexively, eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks as those sneezes caught him squarely in the face. He sighed, shuddering slightly with adrenaline. This always felt so, so good. He was moments away from shamelessly fucking the couch where his cock pressed up against the worn cushion.

“Bless you, baby.”

Eddie sighed, a distinctly orgasmic and dramatic sigh, sinking back into the couch and luxuriating in the sensation of his own sneezes. Steve liked to sneeze, couldn’t really help the little fetish-fueled rush it gave him, but he wasn’t one to get off to the sensation itself. That Eddie did, admitted to him that sneezing alone, not even someone else’s, could make him cum – it just about made Steve’s head explode every time he thought about it.

“Thank you, Stevie.”

Steve peered up at his face, took in the way Eddie was watching him from under his dark eyelashes. Eddie was addressing him directly now, acknowledging his blessing. He reached for the metalhead’s cock, figuring if he still wasn’t allowed to touch, his boyfriend would be sure to let him know. And, yeah – immediately his searching hand was being redirected, placed right back on Eddie’s thigh. Steve bit the inside of his cheek and swallowed a low whine, feeling as though he was losing his mind just a little bit – even more so as Eddie reached up to tease his nostril again, barely skimming the rim before another set of irritated sneezes burst out of him.

“Hh’EHhTT’TCHieww!! IGSHhh’IEWw!! Hah’EScHh’IEww!!....IISCHhhhhh!”

That lingering, definitive sneeze was so incredibly desperate, so high pitched as it misted over Steve’s face that the resultant shiver of pleasure that rolled down his spine had his hips thrusting involuntarily against the couch. It had been a pretty wet sneeze, too – Steve reached out with a large hand to wipe away the little dribble of saliva that dampened Eddie’s bottom lip. The intimacy of it made both of them moan.

“God bless you. You’re so sneezy, honey. So hot.”

He was getting bolder, incrementally, with every time that they fucked, but Steve couldn’t help cringing just a little at the sound of those words leaving his mouth – even if the giddy rush of arousal they produced was intoxicating. He could handle the embarrassment, however, as long as his words continued to have the effect on Eddie they had evidently just done. His boyfriend almost whimpered, squirming in his seat, cock rock-hard and begging to be touched. Steve was dying. He wanted his hands on Eddie more than he’d ever wanted anyone else’s hands on him – and he always wanted hands on him.

“Mm, thank you. Tickles so much.”

Steve swore and reached for Eddie’s cock, groaning like a petulant toddler when he was once again denied with a quick slap to the wrist. His hands gripped into the flesh of his boyfriend’s thighs, flexing intermittently in restless irritation.

“Eddie,” Steve groaned, voice strained and gravelly.

Eddie said nothing, but as he made to slip the inducing tool right back into his nose, something in Steve snapped. He yanked Eddie forward with a hand behind his knee, causing the older man to yelp in surprise, before manoeuvring the captured leg between his thighs and pressing his straining cock against the older man’s shin. It wasn’t an ideal body part to hump – a soft thigh, an ass, a crotch were all infinitely preferable. Even the sole of Eddie’s foot, the arch of it, pressing up against his cock…but this would have to do. He was pushing his luck as it was.

He started to buck his hips, wishing he was fucking his boyfriend’s ass, imagining the tight clench of muscles around him. Gripping the sweaty skin behind Eddie’s knee was making the angle a little easier, and he found a rhythm faster than he’d expected to.

“Fucking hell, Stevie!” Eddie giggled, pressing his leg up, hard, squashing Steve’s cock and balls between the limb and his own body. Steve gasped – it felt awful and wonderful all at once, and then the pressure was gone and he was pushing himself forward, chasing the contact as if possessed.

“So sensitive.”

Steve huffed at him.

“Shut up. This all your fault, Munson.” He stared up at Eddie. “Look at what you fucking do to me.”

The look that Eddie gave him as he took in the sight of him, the nakedness of his desperation, was so loaded with emotion – burning desire, fondness, awe – that Steve almost swooned with the resultant rush of blood to his already swollen cock.

“Yeah. All my fault...” Eddie muttered, sounding breathless and ruined. Steve wished their chests were pushed together so he could feel the feverish beating of Eddie’s heart, the rapid in and outs of his laboured breathing.

When Eddie raised the tool back up to his nostril, Steve nearly came on the spot. He managed to hold back, gritting his teeth and choking back a strangled ‘fuckkk!’ He wanted to time it just right, bust a nut inside his boxers right as Eddie was showering him with spray. It was going to be an intense orgasm, judging by the way his entire body was beginning to heat up, so, so hot, sweat prickling on his skin as his universe narrowed down to the throbbing in his cock and the sight of his boyfriend’s twitchy pink nostrils.

Eddie’s face crumpled, tongue pressing against his bottom lip as the sneezes built, tickling himself in earnest. His chest jumped with violent hitching breaths, a single tear of irritation beginning to roll down the side of his face. It was so painfully erotic Steve couldn’t catch his breath – the oncoming orgasm leaving him stupid and operating on animalistic impulse alone. He felt his balls drawing up in preparation, felt the coiling pressure in his belly tightening, ready to explode in a euphoric release.

Eddie gasped – a huge, desperate intake of air that sounded almost pained as he pressed the clothing tag as deep into his nostril as he could. He held it there, frozen for an intoxicating moment, the cresting tickle as monumental as Steve’s approaching orgasm. When he did sneeze, they barrelled out of him, an intense rush of both air and sound, overpowering Steve’s senses and ushering his orgasm in so abruptly he yelled with it.

“HUH-!! HHIIISSHHH’IEww!! HahDT’TScHieww!! ENGXT’TSchieww!! IGSSHh!! Hh! HuH’ISSSH’Ieww!! EhH’NGXT’Tschieww!! DDZ’Zshieww-! Heh!! Hahdt’TSSCH’IEWww!!”

Steve came throughout, twitching helplessly, his face a twisted rictus of ecstasy. The sweet, throbbing pleasure of it pulsed through him, cock spitting cum into his underwear, soaked and sticking to the skin of his boyfriend’s leg. He finished cumming in time to tip forward and press his head against Eddie’s thigh, mouth still frozen in an ‘o’ of pleasure, as Eddie sneezed one last time over the expanse of his back. He groaned as the aerosol rained gently across his spine, thoroughly sneezed on and contented in a way only his fetish could make him.

“Ohh fuckkk…” He muttered after a moment, drooling a little onto the soft, pale skin pressed up against his face. Eddie laughed breathily.

“You’re welcome.” He sniffled, the sound of it ominously thick.

Steve gingerly raised his head, feeling almost drunk in the oppressive heat of the room and the closeness of their bodies. Eddie had covered his nose and mouth with a hand, and Steve knew those last few sneezes had been productive.

“Do you need a tissue, baby? Made a mess?”

Eddie nodded, eyes smiling over the protective cradle of his hand.

“Sure.” Another thick sniffle that had Steve’s cock twitching almost painfully with a pitiful, post-orgasm spasm. “But I think you made a bigger one.”

Steve blushed, sighing and pulling himself up on shaky legs. God, that had felt good. He’d practically painted the inside of his underwear, Eddie was right about that. He smiled a goofy, sated smile at Eddie before making his way over to the bedroom. He considered his messy state for a moment, then simply shrugged before removing his underwear and wiping his cock on the clean parts of the fabric. He sighed in over sensitised pleasure; he was still hard and it felt great to stroke himself. He indulged for a few moments longer before flinging his underwear onto the pile of dirty laundry on the floor and returning to the living room, entirely naked and box of tissues in hand.

Eddie was fumbling his left hand over his crotch, pawing lazily at his straining erection as his right hand remained covering his face. Steve’s cock gave an appreciative twitch at the sight of it. He knew in that moment that he wanted his boyfriend to finish in his mouth. He proffered the box to Eddie, waiting for the older man to reach up and take it before he returned to a kneeling position between his legs. As Eddie pulled back his hand, Steve caught sight of the glistening mess underneath for just a moment, and then the metalhead was scrubbing himself clean and indulging in a long, crackling blow. It ended with an awkwardly loud honk that had the pair of them locking eyes and giggling like stupid kids.

When he was done, Eddie simply let himself melt back into the couch.

“That was fun.” He drawled, eyes closed and head tilted back. Steve’s hand crawled up the inside of his thigh. “Did you like that?”

Steve snorted.

“Did I like that? You drained me dry, dude. That felt so fucking good.”

“Yay.” Eddie offered, the corners of his mouth turning up with a smug little smile.

Steve began to pull Eddie’s underwear down, and the older man cooperated by lifting his ass off the couch.

“Not going to slap my hand away this time?” Steve half-heartedly joked, pupils blown wide at the sight of Eddie’s leaking, solid cock. He was salivating in moments, leaning forward and inhaling the scent of him deeply. The press of sweaty pubic hair against his face as he nestled his nose up against the base of his boyfriend’s cock was familiar and intoxicating. Eddie’s breath hitched in anticipation, and Steve knew his arousal was fueled partially by the promise of a blowjob, but even more so out of the suggestible proximity of his pointed nose against his genitals.

“Go to town, honey. I’m not stopping you.”

Steve smiled, kissed his way up the length of Eddie’s cock before pressing his tongue into the slit of his urethra. Eddie uttered a garbled, broken moan, hips bucking uncontrollably and cock head leaking fluid in response.

“You know,” Steve started after licking his palm and wrapping it around Eddie’s sweaty shaft. “Normal people just ask for blowjobs when they want one without the pretence of sneezing all over their boyfriend.” He took the head of Eddie’s cock into his mouth, licking it a couple of times like a melting popsicle before sucking on it, hard.

“Ohh, Stevie…..my way is so much more – ahh! More fun-!” Eddie choked out, fingers reaching out to wrap themselves in Steve’s floppy hair.

Steve couldn’t disagree in the least, replaying the sights and sounds of his boyfriend’s sneezing in his mind as he sucked him down like he was best damn thing he’d ever tasted.

#so much for keeping this around 2k lol #i triiiied!! please take this offering whilst I drag out my longer fics OTL #s/tranger t/hings #nametakenfic #sneeze fic #sneeze fucker #snz fucker #snz kink #sneeze kink #snz fet #snzblr

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hellspawnmotel · 2 years

Note

I love your art!! I really admire your work and I love your deltarune fanart, especially how you draw noelle :) whenever I look at your art I always feel like you have such a firm grasp on anatomy and all your drawings feel like they really exist in 3d space, and i love how the characters in your drawings are shaped :0 do you have any tips for a learning artist?

well gosh, after you buttering me up like that, how can i refuse? (jk but in all serious, thank you so much this is SO sweet) anyway, let's see, tips..... (this ended up turning into a whole tutorial lmao)

so one thing you'll hear a lot of artists say is to start with a warm up first, but not a lot about what "warming up" actually means. some people take that to mean they have to start with a whole other drawing, personally i find that takes away too much energy and i end up spending way more time on it than i want to. i like doodling little cubes and cylinders, but if i have something to color sometimes i just do that to warm up. whatever works for you best, just anything to get your hand used to the motion of drawing.

for starting the actual drawing it really is important to begin with a line of action. think of it as a basic guideline for how you want to pose a character. it will help the pose flow better, trust me. (im going to draw noelle bc obviously im pretty used to that)

some artists start with just the line, i like to do the guide for the head first and then the line, whatever

you dont absolutely have to follow the line for your pose btw its just good to have an idea of what youre doing before you do it

after that is when you start worrying about shapes, usually. an important thing to remember when drawing is that absolutely everything is made of shapes, first and foremost. humans, animals, objects, drawing anything starts with shapes. circles squares and triangles. this goes for drawing from life too! it's why you want to start with a light pencil or a sketch layer cuz this is the stuff youre gonna erase later, but it's essentially the skeleton of your drawing

btw, i give noelle a very basic "average thin teenage girl" figure but it's good to practice other body types too and learn what shapes work best for drawing those

you mightve heard the advice to "draw the person nude first and then draw the clothes on top of them" and that's only partially true- it's good to know what the shape of the body is before you dive in with the clothes but you dont have to do like, a whole nude model first. you just need enough to understand how the fabric is going to fall on the body

also, and this is sort of off-topic, but when it comes to clothes its good to understand how different fabric works and how it's going to react to a body underneath it. some fabric clings, some is very loose, some is thin and some is thick. basically what im saying is that you dont have to shrink-wrap the clothing to the body, especially when it comes to a character with breasts or anything else that sticks out. thats a mistake a lot of beginner artists make. in this case, noelle's robe is very loose but i still want it to conform to her body a little bit so the pose isn't totally lost

aaaaand there ya go! after all that is when im ready to actually draw the dang thing. you can tell if you look close that i didnt totally follow the guidelines i made for myself, and that's okay. for example i tend to almost always draw the head too small and then have to enlarge it afterwards. one of the perks of being a digital artist is i can make mistakes and not have to re-do the whole drawing to fix them.

one other thing as to how to get better at actually drawing the body right in the first place- FIGURE DRAWING! as cliche as it might sound it really helps. it's best to draw from life, but if you can't get into a class for it there are plenty of websites out there with good photography of nude models. i also reference a lot of my poses from those websites, or sometimes from videos of figure skating or ballet if i think the situation calls for it.

this is a good website for figure drawing practice- it lets you set a timer so you can practice getting a pose down quickly or spend a lot of time on one model, your choice

also, yknow, always make sure you're having fun and dont stress out too much about whether what youre drawing looks good. the more you draw, the better, and don't think you have to post everything to social media if you dont want to. draw for yourself first and foremost and observe from life and artists you admire what you WANT to draw and want to get better at, and what looks like fun. that's the most important part

#(im doing this to avoid having to write something else dont tell anyone)#i have no idea if this is a good tutorial or not or if its all stuff you already know #im basically parroting what i was taught in art school. so you dont have to go to art school

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waxingrunes · 5 months

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Heyy i saw your tiktok video on The Prank™ and I'm dying to know what your interpretation is on how it happened and how they made up, how it impacted them, you get the gist I just can't believe I haven't thought to ask before.

My HC/take/interpretation of The Prank, isn’t anything so special but I do think if I were to ever fully expand on it I’d make sure Sirius wasn’t so dogged down as he was over it. I think The Prank, despite it being canon, is sometimes very overdone and milked for its worth just for the sake of dredging up angst over and over again.

Now, do I think it’s important if you’re creating something within that verse, yeah. I think it’s a pivotal moment that shows some serious oversight on Sirius’ part. Sirius is notoriously tactile and quick witted, but I believe in his younger years he was quick to get a tad bit overexcited or enthused when it came to revenge and this was a prime example of that. He didn’t think about the consequence of his actions and had tunnel vision with the end goal of a, ‘aha!’ moment with Snape. Pure vengeance (good little Scorpio).

How I like to see it, is Remus, James and Pete were all shocked by this obviously but they didn’t spend weeks on weeks treating him like a piece of shit for it. I think the bounce back rate was quick, but the thick of the aftermath was hard. So Remus got angry fast but it was resolved quicker than most of the times I’ve seen it dragged out for. James wouldn’t ignore Sirius, it would just be strained for a few days while they worked through their own tension over Sirius’ blatant stupidity and selfish motives. Pete much the same, though I suspect he would be armed with a few nasty quips here and there which James would chastise him for, even if he was slightly agreeable to them. Pete would try to keep away from Sirius and encourage Remus to do the same so they could both “cool off”, whereas James is a man of action and want things resolving instantly. Though he wouldn’t lack the sensitivity of being naive enough to know the mending wouldn’t happen like that, it wouldn’t be overnight, he’s emotionally intelligent and a people person and would know when the line is about to be crossed.

Remus, I believe would be in disbelief for the first few minutes of hearing it, type of white noise blocking out everything that isn’t the information he’s trying to compute. I think he would turn physical quick, or at least want to, but not towards Sirius. His violent streak is often downplayed, something that is canon (though I have no interest in keeping things parallel to that or drawing similarities, but this one is important for the topic) and bred through Remus feeling somewhat constantly restrained and bottled up. He has a lot to say, but sometimes doesn’t feel he’s in the right space to say it, a confidence which he found in the comfort of his friendships with the Marauders and Lily. Despite his presence being a quiet, calm and reserved (albeit sarcastic) one, post Prank Remus was a ticking time bomb. Cutting corners, Sirius was fast becoming his world and the betrayal was like a jab to his gut, throat and balls all at once so that pressure valve was ready to burst.

The fallout would’ve lasted in total, a couple of weeks, three at the absolute most. Remus would begin in denial and then lash out physically, the product of which wouldn’t have bothered him due to his existing scars. The headcanon behind Sirius sleeping in Remus’ shirt is something I imagine as a segue in their relationship, the link between Moony = safe, Moony’s smell = safe, Moony’s clothes = smell, safe, secure. Home. Team that with Sirius’ family issues, it ties in well that whilst they were still denying their feelings for each other outwardly, the ball was rolling in the symbolic trade of Sirius wanting to be dowsed in Remus’ scent, only really ever feeling truly safe when he felt encompassed by him. So, cut to Sirius pulling the Prank and unwittingly simultaneously putting Remus’ life in potential danger and landing him in Azkaban for murder, it was Remus who didn’t feel safe anymore. And Remus, when feeling unsafe, will lash out and retreat. He was so angry that he wanted to level out the playing field and strip Sirius of the safety he found in that shirt, something that was an unspoken token between the two of them and therefore, even more sacred. It wasn’t just a fickle give me my shirt back, it was acute enough that Sirius would feel it and understand the icy intention crystal clear.

That night Sirius walked down into the common room wearing it for the first time (the next day) after the Prank, it would be the first time any of them had heard Remus’ full baritone yell. Soon as that man clocked Sirius, it was like pedal to the ground rage, instinct, you don’t belong in that anymore.

#ask #remus #sirius

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strbry-shortcakes · 7 months

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[APOLOGIES FOR THE DELAY- check end notes for explanations- example images should be coming in future edits]

alright, another week has passed, another anatomy class was attended. this one was actually a lot more vague than the previous, with a lot of notions previously mentioned coming back in a way or another, and based itself a lot on showcasing examples. i wasn’t able to take that many “concrete” notes this time unfortunately, but i can still distill what i have written down.

anyway. here goes:

SCENE O-2: BLOCKING IN SHAPES

repeating once, when in front of your support of choice, whether it be a sheet of paper, your sketchbook or a digital canvas (or anything, really), there is a certain series of events leading to the existence of a drawing. these events are influenced by our own personal methods when drawing, such as how you start, what do you always draw first, etc. often these are patterns you follow without noticing.

once you’ve noticed your own patterns, you may start to question them. if you always start by drawing the head, ask yourself, why do you do that?

these may come from a more subconscient part of yourself. maybe that’s how you’ve always done it, maybe you saw an artist you love do it once and that affected you so much you now do it too.

an interesting exercise you may want to do to try and break away from these habits is starting to look at the world through different filters of perception (as mentioned in the previous post). teach gave us the example of looking at strangers in the commute with a single point of view: only focusing on their ears, their nose, maybe look at them like colored shapes. (if you do not commute/use a public transports system regularly, i suggest you try looking for references online, whether they be youtube videos or life model sites like quickposes or lineofaction. these two will be linked below.)

but, in any case, during this class (the one i am attending, i mean), there is one big first step which is: drawing the whole model in its simplest form.

usually, when doing just that, there are twoe factors to keep in mind:

Composition

Setting things up

to start, let’s talk about composition.

when composing an image, yet again, you have to think about certain factors (subfactors of factors! wow!). these generally are:

the 2D-3D perception of your drawing

knowing how and where to place your drawing within your canvas

negative spaces and the void

when drawing in structures (aka using inner “skeleton” lines at the very start) the drawing itself is existing only within a single dimension (1D). when drawing using “shapes” (aka at least three points connected to each other) the drawing transforms to become 2D. 2d adds a dimension of “thickness” to the piece, since you’ve now added a new dimension.

seeing the world in 2d is similar to seeing it like certain painters do: with the aforementioned “shapes” now colored flat, before starting to add in lights.

when drawing, proportion checking is actually done in 2D, and not in 3D (as you might, maybe think). think of it as very simple forms bound by lines. adding in volume is a very risky move, since it adds the notion of distance (“what is closer/what is farther away”), which can be too detailed for the simple block-in stage.

when thinking about this, you should also think about where you place your drawing within your canvas. when you are drawing, you are composing an image. drawing a character close up and standing in the bottom right corner of the page gives a whole other impression than if you were drawing it small, in the middle of the page.

when creating images, these images usually have a meaning, and this whole meaning and wanted feeling you want to transmit is heavily affected by composition.

when a more “academic” artist first thinks and thumbnails their piece, they may think “where will i place the horizon line?” which in itself is the very first step of composing your drawing.

the way you place your horizon line gives away most, if not all of your intentions with this piece.

finally, “void” and “negative spaces” in a drawing are part of what makes it legible and interesting. it is heavily tied to the concept of “silhouette”, and, with good placement within the canvas, adds a lot to the piece. but when drawing a model, these “negative spaces” are here to help you draw the correct proportions: the triangle formed by the arm and elbow when a hand is placed on a hip, the space between legs when the model is standing up, all this should be taken into account when drawing.

but, when drawing, you should pretty much mostly worry about drawing the “general shape” of the model, but accurately, as always, which in turn transforms into a general view of your drawing. in terms of additional things you may want to do when thinking about the composition and proportions of your drawing, you can always

try drawing “over” your model (simply put, hold your pencil over the model while trying to see important lines to draw, whether they be action lines or countour lines)

thumbnail your drawings using your fingers (putting them in a square shape framing the part you want to draw) or a template (like a card that’s been gutted to form a thumbnail viewer)

if you want to transfer your drawing to another surface, you can trace a grid over the sketch and use it as a guideline for the transferred piece (this technique is called “mise au carreau” in French and i cannot for the life of me find the english term, i’m afraid). this is a technique that’s been used since pretty much the beginning of “western fine arts” (aka stuff from the Renaissance era).

now, let’s get to the meat and potatoes:

setting up your drawing

when setting up your drawing, the ideal should be to do so with as little lines as you can. this can prove especially hard, especially when drawing a model from life.

what you can do is stop seeing the model’s body as a body, and more as a series of geometric shapes set one next to the other. (this does sound fairly dehumanizing, but don’t be afraid! the humanity should still exist within the shapes you draw, and will appear even more once the proportions are corrected and the details are added in.) the moment you add another line, you are adding in measures, proportions, and direction to your drawing.

your base should have a limited number of lines, but, as always, they should be proportionally accurate.

“i am simplifying and always checking my shapes”, pretty much.

(i think i am going to make you hate the concept of proportional accuracy with all the emphasis i put onto it… sorry!)

a small tip when drawing these shapes: draw them lightly! the block-in should ideally be very light for the later parts to be drawn with more force. (teach compared it to an architect’s plan, but i yet again cannot attest to the validity of this claim as i completely lost interest in architecture the moment i found out about Bravely Default and how cool the Job designs were. anyway,)

alright, so the rest of my notes are mostly about “mistakes you should avoid”, and given this is coming from only one person, whose ideas are being transferred by another (who is obviously much less skilled) to a post to be seen by others, you can see that this can rapidly become an opinion-piece about “what is good in drawing and what is wrong” (you know, kinda like youtube thumbnails with two drawings, one “bad” and one “good” posted by certain art youtubers…you know what i mean, right?)

so, i am going to share them, but do keep in mind that these are even more subjective than anything written before, so, as always, take them with a spoonful of salt.

so, these are:

drawing using very short lines, the kind that makes for a “hairy” looking drawing

pushing too hard on your pencil (see the paragraphs above for reasons, with the added reason of being really hard to erase afterwards and often leaving a dark mark after having been erased the best possible)

relying solely on lines for proportions, aka using one line as a reference, then adding up more lines until you think you are done, which nets you the risk of having a badly proportioned drawing by the end. (this is something weirdly common when drawing as a whole, but that especially shines when drawing architecture, in my own experience both drawing and looking at my classmates’ drawings).

fuzzy/blurry lines, which can strip the drawing of precision, adding noise where it isn’t needed. this doesn’t really apply if you only draw over the line only a couple of times, or is rather moderate, doing so has its own name in French which is a “repentir” (masculine word, i wonder if there is an English equivalent. “repentir”, aka repenting your other line with a more accurate one. “repent motherfucker!” )

a final note that i think is worth sharing is this one:

there is a whole system of proportional setups, multiple methods, but the more important thing is

i understand what i am doing

well, that should be about it for this week (or rather last saturday, oops). for some reason i have gotten exhausted these last handful of days, and i don’t even know thanks to what god i was able to wake up to attend class this week. it was only the second, too!! really would’ve been upsetting if i couldn’t have attended. but it didn’t happen, fortunately. next week should be about correcting your mistakes and proportions.

and, just like last time, all these notes are from a class by Mr. Francis Buchet i am attending to at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. if you live close to/in Paris, i suggest you look up what classes he is going to be teaching, as a live class is always a lot better than simple notes written down by a student.

and, may i remind you (again): these notes are only here to showcase one approach among many others, so they don’t mean much in the grand scheme of things. i myself am in absolutely no way a professional, so please, take all of this with a grain of salt (or a spoonful, even). draw how you enjoy drawing, and find happiness in the way you want to draw.

Francis Buchet's instagram: x

[NOTE: this was written last weekend, in the hopes of being posted during a weekday with some added visual examples, but due to school as well as health related issues (physical exhaustion among others) i couldn't get to draw said examples in time, so i decided to just go ahead and post it without any and add them later via edits. is this a good idea? no, but i do not think i can give good examples when my shoulders feel like they'll drop from my torso. i cannot say when part 0-3 will be posted but i hope it will be quick. exhaustion is a bitch but i hope i can still manage eventually.]

#art tips #artist tips #art tutorial #art help #drawing tips #wow this ended up being even less concrete than the last one #ooooooh the magic of basing yourself off examples #teach mostly showed us Klimt; Egon Schiele and Degas as well as a bit of Sargent #i still apologize for the lack of personal handmade examples #and the huge delay #breating feels more difficult than it ought to sometimes yknow?#ah well #will do my best to get part 0-3 up before next weekend #no promises tho. sorry

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queerdraws · 6 months

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i love your postcard artwork for the zolu playlist SO much!! the colours are so so good and i love the brushwork! i think my favourites are a tie between the one for chikai and the one for simple song <3 also, I was wondering if you could share what brushes you used + how long they took you! looking at your art makes me want to draw again after not doing it for so long

Thank you!! and wow i think this is the first time someone's asked me for my brushes, this is like a digital artist rite of passage!

Answers n screenshots n stuff under cut (I went a little to ham on this oops)

While we're talking settings I want to give a quick PSA to all digital artists:

CHECK UR ASPECT RATIO!!!: (MOST IMPORTANT SETTING BY FAR)

DO NOT DRAW WITH THIS ALL MESSED UP, IT WILL DRIVE YOU CRAZY. It's probably good to check this after every system update (I don't, but, you know...). Windows likes to mess w your shit when it updates.

If you have a really tiny tablet you might need to trace outside a bottle lid or something.

Okay now on to the meat of the post

-- Brush Stuff --

I use Clip Studio Paint. For my playlist drawings I think I only used these brushes (these are my main 3 in general) (p.s. they're all default brushes! but i've adjusted the settings):

1) Gouache This is most of what i used for the postcards. I nuked Color Stretch because i hate it (it blends colors together as you're painting, like painting over wet paint. I prefer things to look more crisp)

2) Real G-Pen Used this as little as possible, to keep the painterly effect. My preferred fine-detail pen, has a nice crunch to it. I've fine-tuned my setting further in the thickness dynamics / brush size dynamics settings because I mostly use this brush for linework and wanted it to handle really, really naturally and precisely

The random box is checked by default, probably to make this brush feel more like handling a real inkdip pen (I don't like that)

3) Mapping Pen Least used. I generally keep this brush at the 50-70px range. It's unpleasant to use for detail work (the taper is really fiddly at my tablet pressure settings) but good at filling in large areas very opaque very quickly, with a crisp edge (Also, doesn't lag as much as the gouache brush at large-ish sizes). Has enough wiggle room that it can be used to approximately fill tighter spaces at large brush sizes. Used for when I needed to quickly color over an area that wasn't working or quickly fill in background color that didn't need paintbrush texture. Did not realized the stabilization was set to 10 until just now. I usually turn that waaay down to prevent lag (my laptop isn't very old but it's a sensitive beast)

Other stuff that'll help:

General pen pressure: (under File -> Pen Pressure Settings)

tweaking how CSPaint handled my pen pressure helped a lot with making lineart look more natural. It's worth messing around with this and trying out different settings for a while to see how they feel.

-- How Long it Takes 2 Draw --

I don't really keep track of how long art takes me from start to finish, and making the playlist drawings was kinda nonlinear 😅 sorry!

-> I started out sketching really quick composition and color ideas as the songs were playing, limiting myself to just the duration of each song (so like, 5 minutes for this part) -> i did that again at least 2 more times per song -> after that, idk. I would work on one pic then get stuck and move to another. Some I could hammer out in like... 5 hours? Some took me upwards of 20 (30?) hours for no real reason (I have "will graham clock" days, where I'll try to draw a face over and over and it'll look really strange, like will graham's clock drawing every time) (this seems to be either a vitamin deficiency or a brainfog inflammation type thing 4 me 😵‍)

I'll use ur two favorites as specific examples: -> Chikai was one that went pretty quickly (with the exception of their arms and the clothing folds there giving me trouble). Probably took 4-6 hours? -> Simple Song had a couple different versions, partially because I initially had the cards all laid out landscape-style, and I decided I actually wanted them all portrait-style & repainted it after it was already done. That aside, the colors /atmosphere on that one gave me trouble and the general composition / perspective had a lot of tweaks (I was trying to figure out if I wanted it to be a kinda flat stylistic perspective or if I wanted it to make more literal sense, trying to figure out what to do with luffy, trying to make him not look Too baby boy sweetie pie). Probably took 7-10 hours...?

In-progress landscape versions: (varying levels of in-progress)

Misc in-progress of Chikai and Simple Song:

Simple song looks kinda sequential like this lmao. Luffy looks like he's A-posing and floating away to the boat and then sitting down pleasantly in it. Wonderful. --

Anway -- hope any of that was helpful!

#i draw on my bed because i hate my lower back and hips #every day i pray to god to make my sacroilitis flare up #not art #well...hmmm #some art #long post

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johanna-swann · 7 months

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I read in a 2 year old analysis of the Chibnall era that Chibnall was writing a saga, a huge epic. And I have only watched his era once, but I think that might be exactly what rubbed me the wrong way about his run.

During Chibnall's era erything was connected to everything. The Timeless Child lore is connected to the Master which is connected to the Flux and so on and so on. There are very few self contained episodes after series 11. In series 12 5 out of all 10 episodes are connected, series 13 is one big story told over 6 episodes. A lot of things are being hinted at very early on (via the fugitive Doctor for example), as I said: Everything is tightly connected.

And we've had series before where the bigger plot was being hinted at from episode one (the crack in the wall, the demons run eyepatch lady, bad wolf), but it was sprinkled in there casually. With Chibnall it was important right away because they brought in a new Doctor and the Master, both very significant elements, instead of a more inconspicuous hint.

Here's my problem: I like self-contained episodes. I know a lot of people enjoyed the Flux plot in particular and I'm not saying it was bad, I just didn't like it. Personal preference.

I have the same problem with the Master and the Cybermen in series 12. I was curious at first where Chibnall would take it after everything that happened with Missy, but the Master took up so much space (5 out of 10 episodes) and besides that: The Master teaming up with Cybermen to outsmart the Doctor? Yeah, Moffat did that too. Twice. The Master going on an insanity fueled rampage due to timey whimey Gallifreyan origin story stuff? Yeah, RTD did that too. Twice.

So. While I thought the actor was amazing and I loved to see the Master again that storyline didn't really do it for me. Neither did the Flux series. And I didn't like the extra lore around the Doctor either.

I loved Jodie Whittaker's take on the Doctor. Goofy like 11 with a dash of 10-ish angst and 12-ish rudeness. Loved her, really. But Chibnall's run concentrates on the big overarching plot rather than on the Doctor's character.

I absolutely adored the specials and series 11, but after Ryan and Graham left and they got really into the thick of it with the lore and the overarching plot.... They lost me.

#chibnall era #chris chibnall #doctor who #13th doctor #jodie whittaker #long post

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randomvarious · 2 days

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Today's compilation:

Superlongevity 2 2001 Minimal Techno / Microhouse / Tech-House

A little bit surprised by just how much this one actually failed to click with me here. I've never really ventured all that much into the realms of the more minimally-flavored styles of dance like minimal techno and microhouse before, but this release is so highly rated on Discogs that I thought I was gonna enjoy it; but I didn't.

See, I guess what's always drawn me to a whole lot of different types of music in the first place is the overall dynamism—that is, music with rhythmic and melodic layers to it that has a bunch of different elements coalescing around each other to form a fully-fledged song. And when something like that doesn't end up taking place, I'm far less likely to be riveted.

Now, two things here: one, to be very clear, I'm not posting about the much more popular double-disc DJ mix version of Superlongevity 2; what I plugged into today is the double *12-inch* version of it, which plucked out a handful of tracks that appeared on the DJ mix and presented them in their full, unmixed versions.

And two, no shade at all to the makers of these quieter styles of dance music, either. I hear the innovation in some of these tracks in which this 'less is more' mentality bears a unique type of fruit that can't be yielded with a more maximal ethos. For example, the approach to creating a backbeat with this stuff can be a much more meticulous process than it would be with a regular four-on-the-floor tune, because that backbeat is just so much more prominent on tracks like these. And a song like Dimbiman's "Hōkūle'A," which embeds tiny specks of unidentifiable vocal samples into its backbeat, serves as a prime example of a tune that doesn't overlook its most foundational element, which some terrific house tunes are able to totally get away with, with their pretty simple combinations of 4/4 kick drums, hi-hats, and hand-claps.

But still—and there are definitely exceptions to my own rule here—I'm almost always gonna want more meat on the bone than what's provided in this comp. Nothing but respect for the people who've tried to expand the sonic limitations of dance music and forge new paths for it, but my tastes tend to lean towards something with a lot more thickness. I'll always give this stuff a chance and have been personally wowed by people like Heiko Laux's brand of minimal techno, as well as a bunch of tracks off of this microhouse comp from German label Kompakt, for example, but give me something with a lot less empty space and I'm probably gonna end up digging that more than this crop of tunes here.

All that said, though, maybe the double-disc DJ mix version of this album that was done by Zip—co-founder of the German label that put this thing out, Perlon—will be such a transcendent experience for me that it will completely change my mind one day and I'll regret having written most of what I just said above 😅🤷‍♂️.

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firstdivisiongirl · 13 days

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hi! i was wondering if i could get male tokyo revengers matchup? perfect match please!

ᓚᘏᗢ general info:

/ she/her / enfp / 7w8 / leo /

𓆈appearance𓆈

𓆈 i'm tall, taller than most of my friends → i'm 6'2. my figure is hourglass shaped, something like models in 50s/60s fashion magezines, i think. i have shaggy golden blonde thick curls, my hair is long so i usually tie it up in two buns and two braids (like goldilocks from puss in boots: the last wish). my eyes are amber. i have skinny hands with long fingers

𓆈 my clothing style is mix of whimsigoth, cryptidcore and grandmacore. i really like unusual jewelry → weird shaped rings, earrings, brooches (i especially love the insect shaped and art nouveau ones)

𓆣personality𓆣

𓆣 i'm positive and upbeat person, i try to see the bright side in most situations. i'm friendly, cheerful and bubbly. i'm full of energy and i can be a bit chaotic, but i try to be as responsible as possible, i want people to feel that they can rely on me

𓆣 i'm really confident and i'm not afraid to express myself

𓆣 i care about my friends and family a lot, and go out of my way to show it. i love making people smile

𓆣 i'm super kind person, but won't take any nonsense

𓆣 i have morbid, dark sense of humor. sometimes i randomly say a weird obscure fact in the middle of conversation

𓆣 i'm kinda struggling with taking rest, doing nothing, because there is always something to do, something new to learn, etc. → i'm afraid of stagnation. i overwork myself a lot

𓆣 can't think of anything that i don't like, guess i'm so fixated on my hobbies and passions, i don't pay any attention to other things

𓃹 my hobbies 𓃹

𓃹 dancing and performing. i'm ballet dancer since i was a kid. i also try my skills as figure skater

𓃹 sewing and knitting. i sew most of my clothes and i made for myself tons of sweaters, with most silly patterns like characters from old cartoons, for example "wilk i zając" or "krecik"

𓃹 playing on instruments. i can play on violin, cello, piano, guitar, saxophone, harp and drums, i'm currently learning how to play on trumpet

𓃹 learning. about world and universe or learning new skills. i'm deeply fascinated by space and oceans, they're still unknown to humanity, learning about them makes me sigh in wonder and admiration. i also love nature, i could spend days wandering in forests, observing and learning about animals, insects, plants

𓃹 doll making. i love making dolls, puppets, marionettes. wooden, porcelain, rag, basically every type. i organize puppet theaters, sometimes i give my works as gifts to my loved ones

𓃹 art, any kind of art actually. i like to learn about artists and their work, and i like to try different types of art. sculpting, painting, ceramics, photography, filmmaking, i adore them all. i work as illustrator for fantasy books and books for kids (and honestly this job is dream come true for me!)

𓃹 gardening and herbalism. i work on in garden a lot, i grow flowers, vegetables and herbs. i know herbal medicine, i make my own infusions and tinctures

𓃹 cooking and baking. i learn new recipes whenever i have the opportunity. my favorite things to bake are bread and cookies. i also pick mushrooms, dry them or pickle them

sorry if it's too long or too chaotic (⁠･ั⁠ω⁠･ั⁠)

thank you so much for even reading this! (⁠ ⁠╹⁠▽⁠╹⁠ ⁠)

Hello. It isn't too chaotic at all. I think I found the perfect match for you! I hope you like it!

You Got...

South Terano!!!

Would love to have you play music with him. He himself is a pianist.

Would love to watch you perform by yourself. Having a talented S/O would make him a proud man.

Would love how artistic you are. It makes him happy (wanted a music pun but could not think of any. Ten years of piano lessons down the drain)

He is a very dark person. So you're sense of humor would be something is loves.

Loves your confidence and how cheerful are. He is also like that too, so I think he wouldn't want someone timid. He loves chaos.

I think dates would be piano bars...or art galleries. Just be warned, he may get kicked out.

#first division girl #tokyo revengers #tokyo rev #tokyo revengers matchups #tokyo revengers matchup #tokyo rev matchup #tr matchups #tr matchup

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nonstandardrepertoire · 2 months

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Ki Tisa

you don't have to be realistic to make portraits that people recognize. stick a stovepipe hat and a bushy beard on a teddy bear, and people will get that you mean it to be Abraham Lincoln. the right hat and pipe alone can suggest Sherlock Holmes. learning to identify these kinds of symbols can be very helpful in coming to grips with artistic traditions that make heavy use of them

if you spend a lot of time with Medieval Christian art, for example, you'll pretty quickly start to run across a figure of a guy with horns on his head. you might think that this is supposed to be Satan, but in many cases, you'd be wrong: that guy is supposed to be Mosheh

in this week's Torah portion, you see, Mosheh is said to have a face that is קָרַן/qaran after spending so much time conversing with G-d. contemporary translations will say that that means Mosheh's face "glowed", but it's a very rare word, and it looks a lot like the word קֶֽרֶן/qéren, which means "horn", and so the most influential Medieval Latin translation said that Mosheh's face had "horns" instead. (the idea underlying the Hebrew seems to be that rays of light emerge from glowing things in much the same way that horns emerge from the head of a ram or an ox)

seeing this prophet with horns tacked on can be a little unsettling, and the Biblical Israelites were certainly unsettled by Mosheh's glowing face, so much so that they were afraid to even come near Mosheh at first, and Mosheh starts wearing a veil around the camp

the Israelites' fear here has many echoes down thru the ages. in 1867, in the wake of the US Civil War and the California Gold Rush, the city of San Francisco was full of poor people and disabled veterans that the rich of the city found unappealing to look at. like the Biblical Israelites, they accepted their gut emotional reaction to those around them as fact, and came to the conclusion that their neighbors were at fault for causing these untidy emotions

rather than helping their neighbors access housing, medical care, and the necessities of dignified living, the rich of San Francisco passed the first of the so-called "ugly laws", bills that essentially made it a crime to be disabled in public, with predictable disparities in treatment along class and racial lines, de facto if not de jure. in the years that followed, similar laws were passed all around the country by cities that would rather arrest people than see to their needs. the last known arrest under one of these laws would ultimately occur in Oklahoma in 1974. today, many of them are still on the books, even if they are no longer enforced

and enforced or not, the spirit that animated these laws is still very much alive. in the US, we still very much live in a society that judges people based on how they look, a society where the powerful would rather remove some people from view than build community with them, a society where some people are given the very clear message that their presence is emphatically unwanted. those on the receiving end of this message often internalize it and start to pull away — "i won't speak up in that meeting because i don't want to take up space.", "maybe i shouldn't go to that gathering; i don't want to make people uncomfortable.", "i feel like even just quietly existing i am already taking up too much space"

even G-d isn't immune from these feelings. after the business with the golden calf, G-d says, "i'm not going to go with you, in the middle of your camp. maybe i'll be in a little tent off to the side here, but i can't be at the heart of your community anymore.". this might sound like a punishment, but G-d doesn't frame it that way in Shəmot. instead, G-d says "פֶּן אֲכֶלְךָ בַּדָּֽרֶךְ/pen akhelkha badárekh/lest i end you on the way". G-d is afraid of hurting the Israelites, and so tries to withdraw. it's a protective measure, not a punishment

it's also not a solution. haSheim cannot be the Israelites' G-d without actually being there, right there, in the thick of them. the Israelites cannot learn from Mosheh how they are to live without going up and being near him, glowing face and all. we cannot build a society together if we all pull away from one another, afraid of causing messy feelings or harm, or having messy feelings of our own in reaction to each other. we have to reach out. we have to connect

this doesn't mean we will never hurt each other. we will. the relationship between G-d, Mosheh, and the Israelites, too, continues to be full of strife, tumult, and harm. in building the world we want to live in, we will step on each other's toes, we'll butt heads forcefully, we'll commit a thousand sins small and grave. but there is no other way. there is no way to build a community without community, and there is no community without tension, friction, and discomfort, because communities are made of people, and people are too rich and varied and messy and complex to snap together perfectly and seamlessly like frictionless uniform bricks in a physics exercise

we will never be perfect. we will always be fraught. coming together to run a community, shape a society, build a better world will always require compromise and generate bruised feelings. but these efforts only fail entirely if we pull away permanently, if we fully disengage

when Mosheh's face begins to glow, he does put on a veil, but, crucially, not when he is talking to G-d or to the Israelites. to be in community with others, he has to be there as his whole, disquieting self, not a covered, tamed version modulated for others' comfort. we don't read that the Israelites ever really adjusted to this — for all we know, every time the light of Mosheh's face fell on them, they felt the same tremor they felt the first time around — but they come near all the same. we have to do so too

to build a world where we all can live and flourish, we have to show up as our full selves, and be ready for others to show up as their full selves too. this work is hard, it is messy, it is uncomfortable, but it is infinitely, irreplaceably worth doing. it is the work that is before us all

shavu'a tov

#ki tisa #dəvar hashavu'a #i want to do more of these i think once the siddur is out #project cranbery #and that's it

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mlimby · 1 year

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JJBA Character Model Studies/Analysis (only Part 5)

Hi, this post is just me praising the art direction in the “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure” fighting games “Eyes of Heaven” and “All Star Battle”. Don’t know if this has been done before but I’ve been thinking about this so much.

One thing I love about the character design in these games is that they avoid same-face-syndrome. Each character is given unique facial features AND retains their part’s art style “quirk”, I guess you could call it, that anime/manga sometimes struggles with (due to the nature of the genre.) This is the closest to canon appearance descriptors that we are going to get that are not the basic things like height, hair color, eye color, etc. I’m talking like face shapes and whatnot.

Since the Part 5 cast are my favorites, I’m going to be using them as my examples. Yes, I am starved of Part 5 content.

Each image I use is going to be from a GTA 3 mod page (which I will source at the end of this post cause don’t you want to play as them in GTA?) since it’s the clearest and most consistent set of close up images I could find lol.

Giorno:

Round, hooded(?), soulful, watery, wet beast eyes (his iris and pupils take up most of the space in his eyes)

Winner of wettest most watery eyes on the team

Very angled, blocked in eyebrows

Heart shaped face (widest at the forehead with pointy chin) very much emphasized by his cornet hair

Square jaw

Big ole rounded ears that stick out (Second biggest ears on team)

Slightly wider nose relative to the width of his mouth but overall balanced facial features

The way his suit is modeled gives him kind of a blocky appearance and make his limbs look shorter

Short fingers

In all, they gave him a very rounded/blunt appearance

I don’t believe in kibbe typing but, Soft Natural

Bucciarati:

Horizontally long, almond shaped eyes with visible double eyelid (smaller iris and pupils leave most of the white showing)

Has the second driest eyes on the team (only behind Mista)

Super thin, straight eyebrows that are more filled in towards the front (probably drew them on)

Thinner, oval face shape I think (pulls off the blunt bangs and bob cut very well good for him!)

Has a wider mouth and super full lips

Thin and long nose (emphasizing longer mid face makes him look more mature)

He got small bones

Well tailored suit (compared to Giorno’s somewhat ill fitted modified school uniform)

Long, slender fingers

Sleek, modern, and sharp impression

Probably Dramatic Classic lol

Fugo

Round/almond shaped eyes with visible double eyelid (smaller iris and pupils with most of the white showing)

Very long, angled, eyebrows but not as fat as Giorno’s

I’d like to say he has an oblong face shape plus IMAX forehead (sorry)

More v shaped jaw most similar to Bucciarati

Similar facial feature placement to Bucciarati but has a slightly more rounded nose tip and a not as pinched nose bridge

Big ole hands and fingers

Lanky teenage boy archetype

Very rectangular but slightly more blunt than sharp

Flamboyant Natural or straight up Dramatic probably

Narancia

Big round eyes with visible double eye lid but his iris and pupil still leave a lot of white showing (biggest eyes on team)

Big ears like huge ears (biggest ears on team)

Really thick and noticeable bottom lashes

Second place for most watery eyes on the team (I’d describe them as more sparkly and alert than watery I suppose)

Thin but angled eyebrows

Oval face shape but no sharp or hard edges just round (retains the most facial baby fat)

V shaped/rounded jaw but not as defined

Lips similar in proportion to Giorno’s but with a more defined cupid’s bow

Shorter limbs

Smaller hands with smaller fingers

He’s not short! He’s compact!

He’s like a small rock to me just all muscle but thin

Like how monkeys have super compact muscles that make their limbs appear thin but they’re actually super strong and can do unspeakable damage

Flamboyant Gamine

I’ll add more of the team in a later reblog of this post or a separate one I don’t know.

Image Sources: (all by Alessandar212)

#jojo’s bizarre adventure #jojo no kimyou na bouken #jojo part 5 #jjba #jjba part 5 #giorno giovanna #vento aureo #golden wind #bruno bucciarati #pannacotta fugo #narancia ghirga #mlramble #jjba analysis #wall of text #text post #personal

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