I took this while we were prepping for one of the shoots the other night, and didn’t really notice it until I had uploaded all of my images to the computer.
This is what I look like naked. No retouching or fancy edits or whatevs, just this.
I have had loads of issues with my body over the years and I think I am finally starting to become comfortable with myself. It’s pretty rad.
In regards to the culprit of this blossoming boost in confidence, I blame shooting porn/smut/erotica. Or just sexy things in general.
Thinking about Hunter explicitly being the youngest of the Golden Guards (which I think is true, even if a lot of things he was told about the position weren’t) and also about him very possibly being the only one to have been passed off as the Emperor’s nephew instead of just a particularly loyal subordinate.
Because yeah, that’s how you get people not to blink when you put a 16 year-old in charge of the Emperor’s Coven. It’s just nepotism, obviously. And that’s how you get a kid with that much responsibility foisted on his shoulders, in a worse position than even many of his doomed predecessors, to stay loyal to you. Tell him you’re his family – his only family – and it’s more than just your ideals binding you both together.
I’m not sure how serious Belos was when he told Luz “I really thought he’d last longer than the others,” but I think there might have been a grain of truth to it, and part of why is the realization that Belos hasdefinitely used different strategies over the years to keep the grimwalkers in line. Just a constant cycle of Ah, that one betrayed me too, I’ll tell the next one something different. It’s like a time loop to him, with a reset button whenever it fails. (Hence “It hurts every time he chooses to betray me.”) He never saw them as different people, just echoes of the same one, and I’m sure every time one rebelled, he took notes and plotted how to keep the same thing from occurring again. Cut off access to more of the outside world with this one, encourage that one to be more trusting, don’t let this one read about a certain topic. And he really might have thought he’d perfected his strategy with Hunter – promote him young, keep him particularly close, throw in a dose of supposed familial warmth to inspire devotion, emphasize his special role in the Titan’s plan (which might have been harder to do with some of the other Guards, without the Day of Unity on the immediate horizon).
It really makes it all the more impressive that Hunter still ended up questioning what he was told. He’s the latest to be subjected to a cycle of brainwashing that’s been refined over multiple centuries, and while all the grimwalkers went through horrible things and met horrible fates, it seems like Belos’ treatment of them had to have grown even more abusive and restrictive as time went on.
As more and more of them died.
As Belos grew more frustrated.
As his brother wouldn’t stop haunting him. Every. Single. Time.
Given how the two guards we saw in the flashback didn’t look or sound much older than Hunter, and given that the empire has only existed for 50 years, Hunter may very well simply have been the youngest Golden Guard in the last 1-3 attempts. I doubt Darius was mentored by someone his own age or younger, so it’s pretty safe to assume that the previous Golden Guard lived significantly longer than all his predecessors (which, given the math of having at least 16 Guards over a span of 300-400 years is still not necessarily that old, on average).
You kind of implied it and I’m sure many people are aware of it already, but depending on how the “cloning process” works Belos may have very well looked at a constant, returning echo of his brother, not just his appearance, but also inherent personality traits shining threw, despite the radically different upbringing to the original. The cycle of abuse wasn’t just perfected to keep the Golden Guards in line, it was specifically perfected to keep one person in line, over and over again. A reason for why many earlier Guards may have failed, was due to potential differences they may have had to the brother.
The comment on, how Hunter is rather similar to the original compared to the other Guards, implies that there may have been some outliers. Guards that were shy and soft-spoken where the brother would have been energetic and outgoing, Guards that had darker hair, a flatter nose, an unfamiliar lilt to their voice they never grew out of. Their individuality may have made them less vulnerable to Belos’ very specifically targeted strategies, may have given them unforseen openings to get out - and therefore die younger. The ones that resembled the brother more may have made it longer, especially once Belos’ methods had been “perfected” for the most recent attempts. May have been doomed by their inherent similarities to the brother, a seemingly kind guy who managed to make a friend in an unfamiliar and dangerous world.
If you wish to take part in any fandom, you need to accept and respect these three laws.
If you aren’t able to do that, then you need to realise that youractions are making fandom unsafe for creators. That youare stifling creativity.
Like vaccination, fandom only works if everyonerespects these rules. Creators need to be free to make their fanart, fanfics and all other content without fear of being harassed or concern-trolled for their creative choices, no matter whether you happen to like that content or not.
The First Law of Fandom
Don’t Like; Don’t Read (DL;DR)
It is up to you what you see online. It is not anyone else’s place to tell you what you should or should not consume in terms of content; it is not up to anyone else to police the internet so that you do not see things you do not like. At the same time, it is not up to YOU to police fandom to protect yourself or anyone else, real or hypothetical.
There are tools out there to help protect you if you have triggers or squicks. Learn to use them, and to take care of your own mental health. If you are consuming fan-made content and you find that you are disliking it - STOP.
The Second Law of Fandom
Your Kink Is Not My Kink (YKINMK)
Simply put, this means that everyone likes different things. It’s not up to you to determine what creators are allowed to create. It’s not up to you to police fandom.
If you don’t like something, you can post meta about it or create contrarian content yourself, seek to convert other fans to your way of thinking.
But you have no right to say to any creator “I do not like this, therefore you should not create it. Nobody should like this. It should not exist.”
It’s not up to you to decide what other people are allowed to like or not like, to create or not to create. That’s censorship.Don’t do it.
The Third Law of Fandom
Ship And Let Ship (SALS)
Much (though not all) fandom is about shipping. There are as many possible ships as there are fans, maybe more. You may have an OTP (One True Pairing), you may have a NOTP, that pairing that makes you want to barf at the very thought of its existence.
It’s not up to you to police ships or to determine what other people are allowed to ship. Just because you find that one particular ship problematic or disgusting, does not mean that other people are not allowed to explore its possibilities in their fanworks.
You are free to create contrarian content, to write meta about why a particular ship is repulsive, to discuss it endlessly on your private blog with like-minded persons.
It is not appropriate to harass creators about their ships, it is not appropriate to demand they do not create any more fanworks about those ships, or that they create fanwork only in a manner that you deem appropriate.
These three laws add up to the following:
You are not paying for fanworks content, and you have no rights to it other than to choose to consume it, or not consume it. If you do choose to consume it, do not then attack the creator if it wasn’t to your taste. That’s the height of bad manners.
Be courteous in fandom. It makes the whole experience better for all of us.
It is time-consuming and like…ENTIRELY detail work but I had fun! And I think they came out cool, for a first try!
I cannot draw a straight line to save my life, we’ve always known this about me. So the lines could be better and please please ignore my awful dyed nails
I tried a few of the traditional motifs the kit showed but I also did like, a bunch of my own doodling especially on the first egg
Seriously, those are your first tries? Some of my first ones turned out like those. The absolutely best one did.
Listen all I’m saying is K’s homescreen is totally a picture of him and Proko kissing and his lock screen is of the boys doing something stupid together and K managed to get a picture
I worry that I spend too much thinking about all of this. That I’m going to suddenly run out of things to think about, that the mystery will finally be exhausted, and I’ll just be left in a room with nothing but my finger between my lips, flibbering like a loon as I look around in confusion.
I worry that there’s something lost in the exploration, that gut instinct and intuition are getting drowned out by explanation and logic. That what so many seem to take for a Machiavellian level of planning and strategy is just me trying to figure out how this all works, rather than just working it.
I worry that my penchant for control is too overarching, and I’ve lost the ability to just let go and enjoy myself, that everything has to be constructed and in that construction become an artifice. That I turn you into the same, when it’s the very fact that you’re natural and spontaneous that draws me towards you.
I worry that, above all, my head is leading, dragging my lifeless heart along on a piece of string, the poor muscle beaten bloody and swollen by repeated inspection and analysis. That I’ve turned my emotions into an autopsy when all I ever wanted to do was find out why they worked.
I worry that I’ll never know, and will forever be ruled by subconscious and id alike. That somehow desire won’t transform into reality, and I’ll be stuck with the fact that I am flesh and bone, as well as thought and imagination.
And I worry that, in the realisation that all this worrying is getting in the way of all this living, that I’ll forget to worry, and forget to push myself towards whatever it is I’m headed at. That I’ll lose my impetus halfway to the finish line, and stand there on the empty road, without even the impulse to hold my finger over my lips and flibber away.
She hated pink. She had told him this the first day they had met, with the kind of vindication that belied how much of her personality hinged on that one fact. It was a conscious decision, a wilful distaste that she’d acquired, enjoyed, and could now savour with ever the chosen object came up.
It wasn’t so much the colour as the connotations. The association with femininity, with softness, with all the pink and cute and stereotypes that were as negative as they came. Pink was for little girls, the little girls society shoved down your throats, rather than the little girls that existed. Pink was why women were paid less. Pink was why gender dysphoria existed.
He’d taken his time with the ties, made sure they weren’t only tight but solid, the kind that wouldn’t let her wiggle, let alone slide free. Her whole body became a single cylinder, one long line that he could fold and manipulate. The white was new, but she didn’t think all that much of it. She just slipped into that beautiful space between consciousness and un, let herself get carried on the wave of his actions.
And he carried her. Through the bedroom, past the living room. Into the spare room, transformed into pink. A distillation of the colour, splashed on the walls, covering the floor. A conversion into that putrid, hateful colour, until she felt like she was in some kind of focus-grouped womb. She squirmed. Tried to wriggle free. But the binds were too tight, too well made, and as he set her down on the floor, the smile on his face was too sadistic and far too resolute for her to try to appeal to his better nature.
The tape over her mouth didn’t help all that much, either.
He stepped back, saw the pleading in her eyes, and closed the door behind him. She was left in her own pink nightmare, plush and petrifying.
shout out to the mutuals ive never spoken to. i am sitting in the same room as you doing my arts and craft while you read your book. we are vibing and chilling.
Okay, don’t get me wrong here. I LOVE Jurassic Park. I love seeing their dinosaurs. But after watching Prehistoric Planet, and going back to look at this…
And then looking at this…
Notice how much healthier the second set looks? Their lips cover their teeth, they actually have fat on their bodies, their skin doesn’t wrinkle like they’re dehydrated. You can’t see every single tendon and muscle move because you aren’t supposed to. Dinosaurs are animals, not reptilian body-builders.
THIS is the kind of change I want to see in how we create realistic depictions of not only dinosaurs, but all prehistoric creatures. Paleoart has always had a huge issue with shrink-wrapping and making these animals look terrifying instead of making them look like, well, animals.
Well done, BBC.
STOP BACKYARD BREEDING YOUR DINOSAURS
Get your Tyrannosaurs from responsible, DKC registered breeders! Anyone who says your rex should be skinny or ‘thats just how they are’ is lying to you.
