#writing counts as art

[art-gelato]

In the Same Device (2)

a stone’s throw from the precipice, paused

Vex and Percy navigate a quantum conundrum, their pasts, and each other.

The first time Percy finds himself back at his sink, he doubles over, phantom pain in his bones and the ghost of a metallic tang in his mouth. He spits, half-expecting to see red flow down the drain with the running water.

But the memory of injury fades. All he tastes now is the minty afterglow of toothpaste. He spits again anyway, and turns off the water. Leaving the bathroom, he finds his neatly made bed. On top of it is his shirt, his jeans, and his gun.

“Okay,” he murmurs, and gets dressed. He does everything again—checks his gun, tucks it away, gets his jacket, locks the door, stows the key beneath the mat, and leaves. Through it all, unease itches under his skin.

On the stairs, Keyleth calls.

“You’re checking on me,” he says by way of greeting.

“Yeah, you never answered my texts,” she replies, vaguely baffled. “Everything alright?”

[continue reading on AO3]

#perc'ahlia #percahlia #percy de rolo #vex'ahlia #the legend of vox machina #critical role #tlovm #critical role campaign 1 #writing counts as art

[ikevamp-twitter]

#his writing counts as art Right #ikemen vampire #ikevamp #ikevamp twitter #incorrect tweets #incorrect ikevamp tweets #incorrect ikemen quotes #ikevamp dazai #ikemen vampire dazai #dazai osamu

[akakumoeteru]

The weather's getting colder!

#魔道祖師 #忘羨 #mdzs #wangxian #my art #my art 2021 #忘羨ワンドロワンライ #drawn for JP fandom's WX 1 hour drawing/writing challenge #prompt was shuangjiang #which is the 18th of the 24 solar terms #and usually marks the last two weeks of autumn #i'm not sure this really counts as fulfilling the prompt but #i was drawing a blank that week #backdate later

[apotheotic-cravings]

I just started Harrow the ninth and the shift in tone… was both jarring and kind of hilarious.

#also Gideon Nav being a canonical virgin with acne has no business being so sexy #the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrowhark the ninth #harrow the ninth #gideon nav #harrowhark nonagesimus #I guess my MO is now just posting some shitty doodle every 4 months of a different fandom huh #this month it’s locked tomb… in October? who knows…! #surprisingly I don’t have many rambles to put in the tags this time… hmmmm. #god but knowing that tamsyn muir was a homestuck….. lord. I can see it in every inch of her writing #and I love it. #my art #fanart #also the body is t posing to assert dominance btw. and it’s working #comic #though this barely counts as a comic. oh it had two panels huh??? yeah right

[rochenn]

Eye Level, pt. I

Getting into the comic groove by making Dooku (loneliest most pathetic man in the galaxy) develop a Thing for his tailor. Part two in progress!

#this doesn't flow the way i want it to but i'm learning a lot! #can't write anything about dooku without an asajj mention. both him and atrem are horrid girldads #(the girls in question being women above the age of 30) #oc: atrem #count dooku #my art #anyway i hope dooku's overfocus on very basic professional touch comes across #babe that guy is just doing his job but whatever... when was the last time someone actually touched u

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

So I made a thingie,

#uquiz #oleg's writing #kind of #I count this as experimental art-adjacent for. reasons

[biblically-accurate-dca]

if you met an alternate reality version of yourself that was better than you in every single way would that be fucked up or what lol

#my art #dca fandom #daycare attendant #moondrop #sundrop #sunnydrop #<- technically its an oc but they're purposefully drawn to resemble the dca's decal art so idk if it even counts as an oc lol #i really enjoy the concept of an accurate dca being face to face with a version of themselves that isnt 'ugly' or 'weird' #the image of the person you should've been but that you can never achieve. and they're standing right there in front of you #(but then eventually you see them fall into the same tragedy that you did. and now you need to be there for them #in the same ways that nobody was there for you) #if i could write and/or had the attention span required for a comic series i would never shut up about these two btw #newmoonAU #<- haha ignore that :) smiles

[buqbite]

The Living Flame for the @orvwomenzine

#I CAN POST IT #Participating in this zine was an absolute delight #So Im crawling outta my art hiatus temporarily to post the piece!! #This is my take on 999 Uriel attacking SP #orv #omniscient readers viewpoint #uriel orv #orv uriel #999!Uriel #The Living Flame #my art #orv spoilers #anyways. i got REALLL ambitious with this piece #as you can very evidently see #The zine is filled with incredible fucking art and writing and you should all take a second to look at it #And tumblr will probably FRY this piece. But alas thats what you get when you draw a stupid amount of detail #demon like judge of fire #it dont count but idc

[scificrows]

Okay, my brain refuses to think about anything other than Murderbot, so I looked at every use of the word "friend[s]" in TMBD and... created some pie charts. Normal human activities.

Some Thoughts™ I had while putting this together (under the cut):

In All Systems Red, Murderbot notes that the PresAux crew are all close friends (twice! and goes on to explain their internal relationships which I think is very cute). This is pretty much the only use of 'friends' in ASR, except for when Murderbot says that SecUnits can't be friends with each other.

It seems that this may be one of the first times Murderbot has ever really been around a group of friends before? Murderbot notes that this is not the norm for its contracts and admits that the fact that they are all friends and the way they interact with each other make it actually enjoy that contract (before!!!! the hostile attack, so it already enjoys this contract before they start seeing it as a person etc ghghhhh). [Inference: Friendship seems enjoyable.]

The first character that calls Murderbot its friend is ART in Artificial Condition. Murderbot immediately refutes this (and then goes on to call ART its friend to its clients for the rest of the book). [Inference: Maybe ART is Murderbot's friend. And maybe that is... agreeable]

Rogue Protocol has more than twice as many instances of the word 'friend' as any of the other novellas. Why? Miki. Friendship and its implications for non-humans are a central theme because Miki is friends with everyone. Murderbot initially scoffs at the notion that Miki and Miki's humans are friends. At the end of the book, after witnessing how desperately Don Abene tried to stop Miki from trying to save them, and her grief after its death, Murderbot has to admit that she had in fact been Miki's friend. [Inference: Humans can be friends with bots and can sincerely care about them]

In Exit Strategy, Murderbot tentatively uses the word "friends" for its humans for the first time (several times actually). It questions whether it can actually call them its friends or not and later realizes that it had been afraid what admitting that the humans are its friends would do to it. At the end of the book, Mensah tells Murderbot the PresAux crew are its friends, which is the first time a human has directly said that to it (at least on-page). [Inference: Humans can and want to be Murderbot's friends]

In Network Effect, Murderbot seems to be more habituated to the word 'friend', confidently calling ART and Ratthi its friends, like it is no longer just trying the concept on unsure if it fits. There are many instances in which other characters refer to MB as ART's friend or the other way around and Murderbot's humans refer to Murderbot as their friend several times. Generally, there seems to be less hesitancy, because yes, all of them are Murderbot's friends, why wouldn't they be. [Inference: SecUnits can have friends. This SecUnit has friends. They care about it a lot.]

Conclusion: The Murderbot Diaries tell the story of a construct that does not seem to consider the possibility of friendship for itself and is fine with that - until it accidentally starts caring a little too much and suddenly more and more people annex it as a friend (ew) to the point where it can no longer deny that this is happening and has to begrudgingly admit that yes, it has friends now and maybe that is actually not a bad thing.

#the murderbot diaries #murderbot #𓄿 #hi i'm READY to write a thesis about murderbot i am having way too much fun with this #i created a pretty excel spreadsheet and everything #i don't know why i did this but now i can look at them while i think about this more! so i figured i'd share them haha #i didn't count uses of 'friendly' but special shoutout to when MB is all alone in its cold cubicle missing 20% of its body mass #and starts putting on a show because 'the friendly noise would keep it company' 😭😭 #i feel sick thinking about murderbot all alone on its own not knowing what its like to have friends watching media for 'the friendly noise' #also YES okay i wanted to make a point about miki there but i just #couldn't bring myself to talk about that more so... yeah #also uhhh this data is very subjective #i didn't count particularly ironic uses of 'friend' and generally did not count every instance of friend and sometimes it was a hard call #also i probably shouldn't have counted the times murderbot refered to drones or secsystems as its friends (often after hacking them) #but murderbot does seem to care about them and shows kindness and respect and sometimes points out that a system is friendly #so while i don't think MB means “friend” in the same way referring to them as when it refers to ART for instance #i still think its CUTE and also kinda funny how many times that happened so i decided to keep those!!! #but yeah take my data with a grain of salt lol

[art-gelato]

posting a snippet of the perc’ahlia tam lin au i’m working on bc i’m excited abt it but idk how long it’s gonna take me to write the whole thing, esp since i’m working concurrently on like 4 fics for these crazy kids. anyway enjoy

...

Percy settled as comfortably as possible on a nearby log and busied himself with sketching. He enjoyed the close observation that revealed all the little details—how the leaves’ edges grew jagged, how thin veins webbed the lighter green undersides. He could not attest to exactly how much time he passed this way, only that the sun was descending from its zenith when he was at last satisfied with his drawing. Mild hunger panged his stomach, and he decided he would eat his sandwich and then head back.

Before closing his sketchbook, he reached for one of the leaves. He could press and preserve it, perhaps start a record of the variety of plants he finds in the area. It would be something to do until his workshop was finished, at least.

“I’d recommend against that, darling.”

Percy snatched his hand back and whipped towards the voice, every nerve in his body alight. He felt himself reflexively reaching for the rapier at his hip, though he was at a poor angle to draw it.

A woman leaned against a tree a few meters away, watching him impassively. Her long dark hair was pulled into a braid and woven with vines, and a pair of fresh green leaves were tucked into the locks behind her right ear. She was dressed somewhat plainly in earth-toned clothes that fit loosely around her for ease of movement.

But Percy’s attention snagged on the bow she held casually in one hand. He couldn’t help thinking about how fast she might be able to draw from the quiver on her back, how good her aim might be.

Diplomacy, as ever, was his first recourse. Still, he kept his thumb on the guard of his rapier, out of her line of sight.

“Indeed?” he asked.

She smiled, though her expression was void of mirth. “Indeed,” she replied. “Unless you’d like a nasty rash, of course.”

His gaze had wandered to her face, but movement snapped it back to the bow. She’d made no motion to raise it, though—the bow itself seemed to have an eerie life, the vines he’d taken for intricate etchings twisting and resettling. Ah, he realized. And now that he was looking for more oddities, he could see fine lines of faint green meandering along her exposed skin, as if she had vines in lieu of veins.

He forced himself to meet her dark eyes. “And it would have nothing to do with stealing from a faerie’s wood?”

Her smile sharpened. “That might have its own consequences, yes.”

Oddly, this eased his nerves. There were rules here—strange, dangerous rules, but rules nonetheless. Full of quicksand as it may be, it was a field he was familiar with. “I hope I’m not trespassing, at the least.”

“Not by my ken,” she said. “Though I hear there’s a new lord at the manor.”

Percy wet his lips. “I have his permission,” he said. “I should like yours, as well.”

Her eyes raked up and down him, considering. There was an edge to her, a hunger, like a void that could never be filled, and it made Percy feel distinctly hunted. It set his heart racing in a way he didn’t entirely mind.

At last, she said, “Well, you do seem to know your manners. Continue to mind them, and I’ll allow it.”

“Is there anything else I ought to mind?” Percy asked.

She tapped her chin in thought, though he had a feeling she already knew. “Stay out of the darkest woods,” she said. “Where even noonday sun struggles to reach through the leaves.”

Ominous. He liked it. “Very reasonable,” he replied. “This is a lovely forest, and I am grateful to have your leave of exploring it.”

She acknowledged this with a hum. “If you’re to be here regularly, we may as well have some proper introduction. What might I call you?”

It wasn’t outright asking for his name, but Percy still knew better than to give it. She was testing him, seeing if he’d let down his guard now that they’d struck an accord. In a fit of daring he was previously unaware he possessed, he answered, “I believe ‘darling’ will do.”

Delight sparked in her expression, cracking through the cool mask she’d worn so far, and she threw her head back and laughed. She kept laughing as she disappeared back into the trees, her light chuckle echoing like the call of a magpie long after she was gone.

#perc'ahlia #vex'ahlia #percy de rolo #percival de rolo #the legend of vox machina #critical role campaign 1 #writing counts as art

[aconstantstateofbladerunner]

Genuinely I think at least 80% of fandom toxicity would vanish overnight if people stopped seeing shipping as the primary way of engaging with media.

I would also personally have more fun and that is the real issue here.

#few things are as frustrating as #Looking up a new thing that just left a huge impact on you #And wanting to find others who feel the same #And all the results for pages and pages are just art and imagines of two characters making heart eyes at each other over coffee #Good luck finding any writing or theme analysis that doesn’t center sexual/romantic tension #Whether it’s there or not #Obligatory I’m aroace and don’t like romance #Because apparently my opinions and taste only count #if there’s something fundamentally different about my being

[akakumoeteru]

Just a little reward!

#魔道祖師 #忘羨 #mdzs #wangxian #my art #my art 2021 #忘羨ワンドロワンライ #drawn for JP fandom's WX 1 hour drawing/writing challenge #prompt was reward #i'm not sure this really counts as fulfilling the prompt but #i was drawing a blank that week #backdate later

[rainbow-nijisaki]

It's Composer posting hours

#twewy #yoshiya joshua kiryu #my art #twewy spoilers #needed to take a break from the Joshua analysis I've been (foolishly) writing #7.5k words and counting... #but it did put me in the mood to draw Composer Joshua #what a character...

[mllenugget]

I mean I’m just saying I’m surprised Baghera didn’t do a Baghera on this one

#didnt mean for this to be my last post of the year but didnt expert to fall sick either #last year i spent the new year rushing homeworks last minute and tonight i spend it confined in a bedroom whatsup #i was sad so to distract myself i pulled my tablet and tried to draw something that didnt require too much effort #but i still spent a whole day on this wtf #i wanted to tag something like ‘spotty tries their hands at procreate again’’ but im so feverish i forgot to write the part about the hands #and got jumpscared upon reading it again #qsmp #qsmp fanart #qsmp ron #qsmp baghera #comic #my art #ron lemons #bagherajones fanart #mcyt #does this count as body horror lmao ? i mean whatever theory you have about the faceless thing HAS to have some sort of horrific implic #-ations surely

[lucradiss]

“Oh the age gap was too big I aged one of them up/down so they’re the same age”

YOU HAVE SHOWN YOUR WEAKNESS! YOU ROLL ON YOUR SPINELESS BACK AND EXPOSE YOUR COWARD BELLY IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY! I DONT HAVE A SHIP WITH AN AGE GAP OF LESS THAN A DECADE! GIVE THESE MIDDLE AGED MEN A TWINK AND SOME VIAGRA AND THEYRE READY TO GO!

#hilson #house md #not art #saw #chainshipping #of course none of my ships really include twinks #other than chainshipping #thilbo also has a crazy age gap #thilbo #the only non-age gap I have is aziracrow #but they were born at the beginning of time so idk if that counts #in any case #i’m joking of course #because read and write what you want! #if you want to age characters up or down do so to your heart’s content #but there is SO MUCH that can be done with an age gap #insecurity on both sides #not to mention the fucking omegaverse potential #but yeah #write what you want read what you want #but age gaps can really add some life to a fic

[sqwdkllr]

I’m also working on some banger art until I got hit with the news that cucurucho went missing and we have probably been watching osito for who knows how long trying to be the serious one. I’m coping very well as you can tell

#tw body horror #no real tags bc it’s nothing big tbh just getting the feel of what I want them to look like sorta ? #wip #it counts as one #their similar stances to the watcher is intentional btw #I forgot to write that down in my notes #sillies #my doodle #my art