#stuff happened.. backgrounds hard.. i'm lazy..

[r0ryss]

aah sorry this took me so long!! here’s aubrey practicin her magic 

[skoff-the-artist]

A very interesting post...👀 (Life update)

Hi everyone!!!!! It's been... Some time since I've been active on Tumblr. And for a reason!

I have a bachelor's degree in animation now! ✨

It's been really hard, but I did it. Yay. Finished the race with all the honours, btw. You can check out my graduation project on YouTube. It's called "FIREKNIGHTS": https://youtu.be/RXqUHP_4GCc?si=qlxlLMov2IlSWVfZ

There's a lot to say about it, but I feel lazy rn, so I hope a little description will be enough. Magical Ukrainian firefighters fight dragons to an energetic rock song. Sounds fun, aye? If it does, give it a watch! A lot of interesting characters, and also beautiful backgrounds inked by my dear friend @ikoltm

I now have a job.

Amongst other news, while I was working on my final academic project, I got a job at a cozy place that has contact with designers and puts their prints on every kind of stuff, from mugs to metal plates to flags to t-shirts etc etc. So essentially, I now know how merch is made from inside out. The owners treat me like I'm their child sometimes lol.

It's kind of nice.

So!

I'm now free!!!

Sort of. I still prefer to spend time with family and friends as much as I can, as you know (or, tbh probably you don't know), russian attacks only get worse and worse with each day, and every day could be my last, unfortunately. It's fucking scary, and I will probably have to leave my life behind to survive sooner or later, move to another country and forget about coming back, but I'm not ready yet, and my survival instincts are now duller than those of an average human, so I'm willing to play with fate for now, if only to stay in my hometown for bit longer.

Anyways!

I will be drawing much more often now that I don't have any homework lol. Still can't believe it, I did it!!!! Despite all the terrifying stuff that happened.

So stay tuned. If you're reading this, you've probably stayed tuned for long enough already :))

Some Starscream art is coming soon guys..hehe

[zvahlne]

Hi I read your Laurance Mermaid Tales fic. It was great, can't wait to see where it goes. :] Can we get some of your Mermaid Tales Laurdad and Malachi lore? (Like, where did Mal come from? Was he on the Emerald Fang when Laur aquired it or did Laur find Mal somewhere else?)

hiiii omg thank u!!! yesss i can't wait to get back on it, a lot has been stopping me (the universe will NEVER let me have laurmau omg....) 💚💚💚

i'm so delighted by the reactions to him, because i was totally worried malachi would be too out there and nobody would like that addition ehe...

yes you may ask!!! i'm not sure how much of this will be revealed in the fic since it's not the main plot, but i do have more lore for them, so here you go!!! my one note is that this is all pretty loose and conceptual, since for this fic i only needed enough for myself to understand the characters i was writing:]

malachi doesn't have legs out of laziness not lore. and speaking of lore under the cut!!

1. where did malachi come from?

malachi's mt storyline aligns a lot with his mcd origin, but with some nautical twists to it. namely, he was sold to pirates as opposed to being sent to a castle. he was meant to work on the ship as a cabin boy and hopefully learn to control his magic somewhere more remote... unfortunately he ended up driving the entire crew to madness whoops. they shoved him overboard and then shortly after the ship went down anyway lmao. so instead of getting pushed from the castle, malachi drowned at sea:] he's now bound to the ocean!!! he can't go over land. he can go on boats though, obviously:]

2. how did laurance find him?

i have a gazillion headcanons about mt laur and his background, but one of these is that he used to be a more pirate than merchant that he is now, with a fondness for treasure hunting and a habit of getting into trouble he shouldn't. he caught rumors of malachi's sunken ship—a pirate's ship lost after acquiring some sort of magical loot—and went to see what he could score. he'd hired help, but as they approached the location of the sunken ship they were all plagued with nightmares. malachi managed to scare them all off but laurance, who upon realizing malachi was a little boy more scared than anyone else here promptly took malachi under his care. malachi was hesitant after what happened to his old crew, but laurance was very persistent and won out lmao. it took a while though—luckily, laurance had time to hang around, seeing as all his help ditched him >:( smh aaron would never back out like this...

malachi is bound to the sea and not his old ship, BUT he still had a hard time staying tethered to laurance's ship when it got moving again, so laurance and him worked together to retrieve some salvageable parts of malachi's ship and work them into the emerald fang to effectively tether malachi to the ship. they also retrieved one of malachi's only personal effects: a small metal owl named owly:] which laurance often keeps in his pocket so malachi can always find him. he's thinking of getting it made into a charm so he can wear it as a necklace or something (it's not very big)

while exploring the old ship, they also found evidence (via a watertight lockbox with the old captain's records) that malachi hadn't been sold to the pirates, but given in the hopes that he would have a better life somewhere else. deciding that the emerald fang was this somewhere else his parents had hoped for was the last thing needed for malachi to completely leave the old shipwreck behind and move on to (un)life aboard the emerald fang:] malachi can travel all across the sea, but the emerald fang is his tether and he'll always return there if he allows himself to drift (this is good, it means he doesn't have to focus on staying near the ship constantly; it tugs him along if he lets it)

3. other stuff !

- i think malachi has been with laurance for about two years?

- cadenza is the only one besides laurance who knows about malachi (she wasn't told, she found out, and then laurance explained the whole situation to her)

- laurance's neon green coat is such because 1. well. laurance has questionable fashion taste and just likes it but 2. malachi's perception of the world is muted, and his favorite color is green, so laurance wears an obnoxiously saturated shade for his son to enjoy!

- malachi still doesn't have a handle on his powers completely, and when they stay in port too long, people start having nightmares. malachi feels terrible about this, but laurance LOVES it because people come to his ship looking for insomnia remedies! more gold for him babyyyy!!

- laurance is affected by malachi's magic, but he's just good about handling it. he hides it well when it's getting to him, but it still breaks malachi's heart when he notices new bags under laurance's eyes after a bad night. laurance takes it like a champ though and has always tried to avoid upsetting malachi over it

- malachi helps around the ship, but he's very out of practice and laurance has to guide him a lot. malachi feels bad because he thinks he should at least be USEFUL, especially given how long he's been "alive", but laurance doesn't mind at all and is happy to teach him

- malachi struggles with corporeality (existing physically/being able to touch things), but has been practicing a lot with laurance's help. does laurance REALLY know what he's doing? no, but neither does malachi, and laurance's advice is surprisingly helpful

thank you sosososo much for this ask!!!! i love these two but adding most of this to the fic would mess with the flow, so i'm delighted you asked!!!! 💚💚💚💚💚💚 i hope you enjoy future installments of the fic, the next chapter has more malachi :D

[alexanderwales]

Not the asker from before, just saw that you were open to questions about web serial preferences.

I'm particularly curious about your opinions on the Wildbow serials; you called Worm out as a prior hyperfixation, but I saw on the chart that you'd checked out early re: the author's other stories.

Did you just not find them interesting? Do you think there's something about what made Worm compelling that was absent in the others? I've always been curious about why Worm in particular was such an explosive success, but it's hard to discuss because the Worm and Wildbow fanbases almost feel like distinct entities sometimes. People talk past each other.

I really enjoyed Worm, yeah, and spent a fair amount of time on the discord, the subreddit, spot-reading, fact-checking, doing analysis, stuff like that. It was ages ago: I read Worm as it was coming out.

As for why I didn't stick with the others ... it's complicated.

I think Wildbow is, for my tastes, actively bad at pacing. This showed in Worm, then showed a lot more in Pact. Part of the issue is that the stories (to the extent I've read them) begin to have this monotone feel to them, like each chapter has the same "energy" as the last, which is often anxious, angry, stressful, cornered, etc. Over the course of, say, half a million words, I tend to get fatigued. So Pact ended up being something that I dropped relatively early, before the Toronto arc.

Ward was just ... not what I wanted. The premise is that the world has ended and they're reconstructing society on an entirely different alternate Earth, and then this felt like it was largely background, and I didn't enjoy the therapy stuff, and the worldbuilding seemed so lazy to me, which was not at all the case in Worm. I wrote some fanfic, fairly early on, which was my attempt to express the things that I wished it was about, and to come to grips with the fact that it wasn't about the things I wanted it to be about. Still, I used to wait up until midnight for new chapters to drop, so I could read them and discuss with people, and eventually the chapter were coming later and later, and they'd come when I was tired, and that's how I fell off, because I also wasn't having that great a time with it. I didn't care about Victoria, who had too much baggage and uninteresting thoughts. One of the things I remember sticking out to me is that she focused a lot on clothes and appearances, giving much more detailed descriptions of them, and I thought that this was something that Wildbow was doing to differentiate her from other protagonists, and also that I did not really give a shit about Victoria's interest in clothing. I keep wanting to go back to it and finish it, just for the sake of completion, so it's not technically dropped by my standards, and I never hit a point where I thought "okay, I'm done with this, I'm not finishing this". I've been spoiled on a fair amount of what happens after the point I stopped reading the updates (I'm not spoiler averse), and nothing really made me think that it would be a good fit for me. Still, a very decent chance that I come back to it and binge the stuff I haven't read in a handful of weeks.

Twig ... people kept telling me that it was good, and I think I tried three times to get into it. I have no idea how far I actually got, but I gave it a fair shake, maybe ... four arcs? I think biopunk is also not a favored genre for me, and the characters didn't grip me very much, and it felt a bit like a "monster of the week" thing except that there was just so much word count, and not in a good way.

I hear people praising Claw, and Seek, and I think "okay, maybe I should check those out", but it's very possible that after Worm I was just too familiar with Wildbow as an author and thought that there was some ... redundancy to reading more? Especially millions of words more?

I've always been curious about why Worm in particular was such an explosive success

I think there are a few reasons for this, but this answer is already getting pretty long, so I'll be brief: Worm came along very early on, did things with the superhero genre that people hadn't seen much of before, had a particular ethos when it came to powers, munchkinry, and characters, and for all that I would argue it had "bad pacing" it did contain a pretty steady progression from idea to idea, and most of them worked. It also had a lot of structure that helped the fanfic scene explode, in a way other works didn't. I think most people who have read Worm could write a dozen half-decent "Worm-style" heroes without much trouble, but the same can't be said of any of Wildbow's other works (at least, to my admittedly incomplete knowledge). It's a combination of a lot of things, and I don't think most of them are repeatable by Wildbow or anyone else.

[rosesaints]

🗽 LAST STOP, LOVERS' LANE (WIPS & STUFF)

🚇 mind the gap — you've found my wips page! yippee! on this page, you'll find what i'm currently... drumroll please... working on! i've included summaries, wcs, some moodboards here and there, as well as a rough estimate for when to expect them. this isn't a full, comprehensive list of everything i'm working on, just the ones that i feel are close to cooking up to the surface. of course, all info are subject to change just because life happens, i lose motivation, or i pick up the plot and realize it's not going anywhere. updates every week! (last updated 7/30)

✒️ MARA'S NOTE: i've been extremely lazy and procrastinating lately, but i SWEAR, i swear i’ve been meaning to make this page. i just kept putting it off because it felt like too much work and i kept telling myself “you should make it look cute” and then i’d open canva or whatever and immediately shut down and go take a nap instead. anyway. here it finally is! pls tell me if you're particularly excited about any of them, legend has it that if you do, i'll work extra hard and get it done. but who knows! (i do pls i run off validation and caffeine) (love u for even caring enough to check <3 pls be patient with my brain.)

💌 FULL FICS

TITLE: never seen the night (clark kent x reader) OR let the light in SUMMARY: 

in a world where superheroes are commercialized and metahuman abilities are monetized by corporate sponsors, you, invisible girl, are an underrecognized member of the justice gang/former "child superhero," working quietly in the background, sidelined in both battle and branding. your powers are delicate, scientific, and constantly under strain. you hide well. a lil too well.

as increasingly strange anomalies in light and visibility begin to surface, ones that mimic your powers too closely to be coincidence, you're forced into closer proximity with the one person you can’t hide from. clark kent, ever earnest, keeps giving you credit, keeps asking questions, keeps looking at you like you matter, like this is some sort of buddy cop movie.

(hiding was never safety. and being seen, fully and clearly, might be the most terrifying thing of all.)

slow burn, forced proximity, enemies to lovers (it's one-sided... reader's gonna be feral in this one), inspired by fantastic four + the boys, commercialification of metahumans/superheroes

(give me input on the title. i really want to reference your best american girl by mitski, but let the light in by lana del rey seems like it fits the plot more...)

WORD COUNT: first chapter will be ~8 to 9k, full series will be 11 chapters w/ weekly updates (fingers crossed) masterlist & playlist should be posted concurrently w/ first chapter. ETA?: end of the week?

TITLE: best guess ch. 3 (bucky barnes x reader) SUMMARY:  in progress. THE ava starr chapter. WORD COUNT: 7 to 8k  ETA?: sometime next week of 8/3

TITLE: have you ever tried this one? (clark kent x reader) SUMMARY: pink handcuffs spin-off for touch tank (can be read separately) sub!clark, dom!reader, exploring kinks, light sensory deprivation (but he has x-ray vision.... so not really), back scratching, freaks matching each other's freaks. song for the fic is juno by sabrina carpenter WORD COUNT: 3 to 4k  ETA?: sometime next week of 8/3

TITLE: intolewd (clark kent x reader) SUMMARY: supply closet sex spin-off for touch tank (can be read separately) oral (m!receiving), public sex, hair pulling, clark trying to stay quiet, breaking various equipment in the supply closet. song for the fic is intolewd by matt maltese. WORD COUNT: 3 to 4k  ETA?: week of 8/11

🪩 DRABBLES (SLATE FOR THE NEXT MONTH OR SO...)

✒️ MARA'S NOTE: i tend to be a little bit more unpredictable and unstructured when it comes to drabbles so i don't know if i'll follow this as closely as i should. i just wanted to make sure all you folks who submitted a songfic request (whew... we got i think almost 40+? lotta songs, but i've been listening!) know that i got 'em and am considering!

song drabbles

under pressure — clark kent

sun hands — bob reynolds

everybody here wants you — bucky barnes

night shift — clark kent

lil drabbles

one night stand — jimmy olson

oral fixation — clark kent

baking — clark kent

earth-838 bucky — bucky barnes

🗞️ MARA'S UNORGANIZED DESK PILE OF IDEAS

kind of just some half-baked ideas i'm still working on and not really sure i'll pick up but if any of u guys just wanna see some ideas more fleshed out, lmk! some of these may also end up being integrated into other fics

something something something johnny storm fic (we'll see if i can get myself to write for a blonde man)

ballerina/former black widow x bucky fic

trauma nurse x bucky fic

☕ final note: i’m going into my last year of nursing school (rip me) and i’d love to keep making time for fics during the chaos, because it genuinely kept me sane all summer and also because writing gives me joy even when everything else feels like a dumpster fire.

so if you’ve ever enjoyed what i do here and want to help me keep doing it, even just a lil bit, my ko-fi is open and appreciated more than i can say. no pressure ever, just love and gratitude if you do <3 all my writing will stay free always. but if you do end up supporting me, please shoot me a message and i can work on a prompt, character, or any of the wips of your choice!

[potentialscaryweevil]

My thoughts recently

As a kid, youre told "Become an astronaut or doctor so you can become really rich one day!". As a teenager you're told "Become a lawyer or accountant so you can become really rich one day!". As an adult you're told "Start some fancy tech startup so you can become really rich!"

So your whole life, everything people are telling you is "get a good job and you'll become rich if you work hard!" (Except of course, the classic "You'll have a beautiful wife and beautiful kids one day"). Everything (other than the marriage thing) you're almost constantly told is telling you that you need to be disgustingly rich, you want to be disgustingly rich, being disgustingly rich is a good thing, being disgustingly rich will make you happy because you'll have so much cool stuff like massive pools and helicopters and spaceships, and you will get to eat whatever cool expensive foods you want because you will be disgustingly rich. It becomes less obvious as you get older, it kind of fades into the background. But you always hear these same messages subtly repeated to you through almost every medium imaginable.

Portrayals of disgustingly rich people in media are almost exclusively overwhelmingly positive, but its done in a way that distracts you from the fact that they are rich. You don't even realize they are rich. Robin hood tropes aren't portrayed except in rare cases. And even if they are, are they really shown as doing something objectively good? or are they shown as a kind but morally questionable character? When I see a very rich person in a TV show or movie who actually DOES happen to be a bad person, it isn't because they hoard wealth. Of course not. Wealth is good remember? It's because of childhood trauma, repressed feelings, and other stuff. They heal by reconnecting with loved ones, going to therapy, getting married, and they might donate to charity too but its just because they wanted to be extra nice today.

And what else are you told in real life? "Dont have much money? Anyone can make a ton of money if they try really hard. You just aren't trying. Lazy bastard. Oh you're disabled? You damn lazy moocher. Work like the rest of us, your condition doesn't affect anything just get a different job and work harder. Damn young people. Don't want to work, and even when they do they just spend their money on overpriced coffees!" (I don't even like coffee, it's just such a common phrase that I had to include it)

Ableism, racism, sexism, etc all are deeply connected with classism. I'm not going to get more into it because you guys get the point. And it's 10:19 and I have a few fics on ao3 I really am looking forward to reading.

Sorry for the long post, thank you for your patience :)

[fiendishfan]

Guys. it wasn't supposed to go this far actually.

Spicy art again under the cut please do NOT click if ur a minor I WILL be mad at you and I will stop posting if I find out minors are looking at this.

Don't ruin this for everyone else.

Okay. So number one. Did anyone notice I put General Vanrouge on the right and Lilia on the left? Bc. He's. the General of the Right? Can we laugh at that? I thought it was silly.

Anyways. We're gonna talk abt the art now before we talk about my Tortured Soul and how heavy the burden I carry is.

I was just gonna doodle something silly haha but now I'm like. Defining muscles and shit. I had NEVER actually drawn a foot before this. This wasn't supposed to be an actual Drawing. This was not supposed to be a showcase of all my Skills. Like only three people are gonna see the final copy. I'm GENUINELY surprised how many ppl saw the sketch. It wasn't supposed to go this far. It wasn't supposed to actually be good.

I have a red multiply layer over the whole thing to make it kinda warmer and just a little darker and I really like it. I haven't decided if I'm gonna try and draw a background yet or not(who am I kidding. I will Not be drawing a background) so I don't know what the final Vibes I'll be going for are. I thought very little of the actual scenario surrounding this piece and just kinda. Drew. I've been trying to retroactively think abt what kind of situation could have lead to this. And all I can think of is like. This would be Fiend's incredibly R rated dream if it were to follow Lilia's in book seven lmfao. Just the existence of two Lilias makes it impossible to really justify happening. But honestly most of my art like this kind of exists in a bubble outside of any real story bc. Well. Haha. Basically I just don't see the ship being canon??? Tee hee. So any cute shippy stuff is. Not Real. Maybe that'll change but. As it is now it's all kinda. Just for fun.

I GOT DERAILED back to the actual DRAWING

I like the idea of Lilia shaving more recently where he didn't really bother in the past so u can't see it super well, but General Vanrouge has a lot more body hair. Also I haven't properly drawn in the scars, but General Vanrouge's scars are fresher and they're more aged on Lilia(obviously) so there's gonna be differences there. Hmmm I also made Lilia's muscles less defined, but still there. Because that just felt right.

I am. Too lazy to look for proper references and not to absolutely over share but I have zero experience IRL and I'm also a lesbian so I'm honestly just going based off vibes and the ludicrous amount of fanfiction I've read when it comes to stuff like this. Haha. Surprise! I'm incredibly under qualified to be drawing this kind of thing. If I was a better artist I'd be looking at muscle anatomy and actual. Feet pics. Instead of just relying on Vibes. Like. Yeah. I think that's what a foot looks like. I kinda think muscles could look like that. The only thing I used a ref for was my own freckles which is both the least important and stupidest thing to get a reference for lmfao.

Also I hhhhhhh I am trying so so hard to be brave but ouahjsgdjhdjdhfhhhhh it's hardddddd this is weirdddd I say this every time I post something selfshippy or spicy but tHATS BC IT HASNT REALLY GOTTEN EASIER god like let's unlearn shame together but hhhh shame is like ingrained to every fibre of my being and I have to unravel like fourteen layers of guilt and cringe and whatever else horrible things I feel. Anyways I'm trying so so hard to be cool and chill about it but it's not really working? I am way too shy and way too repressed for all this.

But cringe culture is dead and i should kill the voice in my head that tells me I suck, right?

Anyways. Nobody that clicked this is here for my rambling but I just need u all to know I worked SO HARD to be here and actually post my art and if ANYONE says ANYTHING mean to me I'm never posting my art again and that's actually a threat. bc my art is actually pretty good and also I do know for a fact Lilia nation LOVES my spicy art. I love you Lilia nation. Please if you want to talk to me abt my art I would love that I'm very awkward but I can send you lots more pictures I haven't posted lmfaoooo

[apomaro-mellow]

Okay so here's a PSA about A.I music that basically just boils down to we need to be more discerning about what we're listening to. If you don't feel like reading all this, just take that message and go.

I'm gonna talk about three instances where I encountered A.I music and hopefully this will help out people and they'll know what to look for. I think a lot of people have heard of that one fake band on Spotify but not every liar is gonna get blasted on your local tumblr.

My first encounter with A.I music should have been more obvious simply because I could tell they were using generated art work in the video. So there's a protip right there. If they're willing to cut corners in one area, it's probably being used for the rest too.

This channel styles itself like they find rare vintage songs from off the beaten path and upload them. I listened, thinking some were pretty catchy. But when I tried to find the artists and more songs by them, nothing. Not too unexpected for "rare vintage" but there had to be some record somewhere. And yet I couldn't find anything. So I look into the channel. The description starts with "Waking up at the crack of noon to cook up hilarious tunes."

Huh, so they produce all these tracks? No. They don't. They're quite literally cooking them up.

OH Tangent because I just remembered I fell victim to this specific brand not once but TWICE because as I was looking for the article that confirmed my suspicions I realized it was a completely different channel

Here is a link to the article. It's an interview with the person behind this channel, who is an actual artist and does the cover art, lyrics, and instrumentation but doesn't see an issue in using A.I. generated voices to do the singing. Make it make sense.

Anyway, this section is just to say if you like a song you should WANT to look up the artist and find more and if there's suspiciously little, well there's your first clue. Hard Archive is also just over a year old, which also tipped me off. Obscurest Vinyl is older, but they're not even trying to hide the fact that they use generated music.

The next section is music I did not even suspect to be A.I. until a video pointed it out to me. Here is the link to that video. In essence, anytime you see a video with a title like "cute music to vibe to" it doesn't hurt at all to actually look at the tracks and see where they come from. If an artist isn't listed, your next step should be to check out the channel. After all, musicians post their stuff to youtube everyday. But if one channel is pumping out hours long mixes quickly, there's probably something afoot. Don't get caught up thinking you just want something in the background. As tiring as it can sound, we really gotta be vigilant.

The last instance is something that cut me deeply because it happened to one of my favorite genres - citypop.

I innocently clicked the video because it's been a minute since I listened to a citypop mix and they've NEVER let me down before. But as I'm listening to the first track, I take a look at the cover art and realize it's got that strange blur effect that some A.I pictures have. And then I really listen to the song (keep in mind I only know English) but there's definitely something off about the song that I can't quite pinpoint. So I look at the chapters to see what the song is. There's song titles, but not a single artist listed. And when I go to the channel

"Yeah I'll take a Japanese lady standing in front of a Mazdayota"

Yall......there's literally endless songs in citypop. There's endless beautiful cover art in citypop. This one really cut me deep because how lazy and uninspired. And it's going to keep happening. As an aside, the anime Carole & Tuesday came out in 2019 and is set the distant future where most music is made by A.I. and it's a novelty when not and yall... I don't wanna live in that future.

So please, be mindful of what you're giving attention to. Even if it's something in the background because views are power. Don't let youtube or spotify or whoever just put something on and you let it play. Find out who it is and if they're real. I was fooled so many times before learning this lesson and now I'm passing the knowledge to you.