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[clevermanka]

Twitter finds:
Sweet Weilan kissing fanart.
Long-haired Prof. Shen being (gently!) dominated by Zhao Yunlan.
The oh. moment when a character in fic realizes they're in love. <3

Finished the sex scene yesterday at 6:52pm CST. It clocked in at three-thousand three hundred and eight words. o_O Over three thousand words of some kinda-weird but hopefully-hot fuckin' with a ghost learning to use a sex toy. /o\ oh god what the hell am I doing with this fic LOLOLOLOL

I plan to start on the art cards tomorrow or Monday. People who claimed them, if you think of a detail you'd like me to (try to) incorporate, please feel free to contact me! I enjoy customizing these as much as possible, given the fact that they're limited to screenshots since I don't draw. Having details of what a recipient would like, aesthetics if not composition-wise, makes it easier for me. If you've got favorite (or unfavorite) colors, let me know that, too. I generally work with reds, oranges, yellows, and golds by default (idk why, I'm just more comfortable with them). So if you really hate warm colors, please definitely let me know! I can totally work in cool colors. Except purple! Purple is my nemesis. Ask write_out , I've made her two things with purple and they both went poorly. sigh

Maybe I just need a different brand than Liquitex? IDK--any artists know if Golden has a purple acrylic that spreads thin well and blends with other colors without going muddy?

Comments

[trobadora]

Oooh, that kissing fanart is lovely. :D

Congrats on finishing the sex scene! It sounds delightful.

[clevermanka]

Oh dogs here's hoping. My beta got back with brief thoughts about the overall story and said something along the lines of "the sex was hot while I was reading and then I thought about it too much and was all lolwhut" which is...pretty much the response I'm striving for. =D Fingers crossed most readers have a similar reaction.

I'm tempted to use part of yesterday's words for tomorrow's snippet, but I'm worried that without any context it's gonna sound even more weird than it actually is. eta: actually, no, it's gonna be pretty fuckin' weird any way I present it *laugh-cry emoji*

[winter_blossom]

I'm tempted to use part of yesterday's words for tomorrow's snippet...

Ooh, do it, do it! I'm definitely interested, weirdness and all. (And, hey, it's corporeal being x incorporeal being, there's no way the whole relationship - the physical and the emotional - wasn't going to be literally otherworldly. But that's what makes it interesting! ^^)

[clevermanka]

Good point. Anyone who doesn't like the story bc the sex is ~weird~ shoulda paid more attention to the tags. =D

[trobadora]

Hotness overrides weirdness. It's a Law. :D

[clevermanka]

[mekare]

Sorry, I have no experience with acrylics at all.
Thank you for the art recs!

[clevermanka]

You're welcome! Happy to share the pretty.

No worries about the art help. I think we acrylics-loving folks are our own breed, and there's not many of us? Not that I hang out with many artists anymore...

[write_out]

Is there another write_out you made gorgeous art for? Because all I know is that I LOVE mine, esp the purple!!

[clevermanka]

[umadoshi]

Bless the Guardian fanartists, truly.

some kinda-weird but hopefully-hot fuckin' with a ghost learning to use a sex toy.

*anticipates*

Except purple! Purple is my nemesis.

(As you can guess, I messaged you before reading this post.) My love of the cooler facets of purple amuses me, actually, because otherwise I tend to be much more into warm colors. It's a mystery!

[clevermanka]

Hey, maybe I'll have better luck mixing purple with the warm colors!

[jo_lasalle]

It clocked in at three-thousand three hundred and eight words.

Aahahaha I hope they got a good rest after that!

Colours sound great to me! Only detail request I can think of is including Zhao Yunlan's eyebrow-revealing hair, not the eyebrow-hiding hair (even though I also like it) ^_^

[clevermanka]

Oh, excellent! That's the perfect sort of thing to know, thank you!

And yes, they have a very peaceful three or four days of some work and a lot of play over Spring Break before (spoiler!) things start to go poorly.

[islenskr]

What if you mixed your own purple? Then you'd have control over warm purples and cool purples?
I've got an excellent book on mixing colors (paints, dyes/stains, etc) at home, and can't remember the title at the mo. It might help with the purple? I'll try to note it and tell you tomorrow!

[clevermanka]

Even Golden (the best brand I can afford) gets a little muddy if I try to mix instead of layer (and even then, purple goes muddy--sigh). I must be doing something wrong, so the name of a book would help, muchly, yes!

[islenskr]

Nope. I don't think you're doing anything wrong. I think it's the fault of the colors.

The name of the book is "Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green: How to mix the color you really want - every time" by Michael Wilcox.

https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Yellow-Dont-Make-Green/dp/0967962870

[clevermanka]

Thank you! I suppose this is the sort of thing I'd have learned if I'd been a painting major instead of wasting two years in the metalsmithing program.

There's a used version for ~$15 with shipping. hmmmmmmm.

[islenskr]

ARE YOU KIDDING? Metalsmithing is super cool and useful and whoa am I jealous!

I never was in a painting program, but I did paint for years and years, and I always believed that the problem with mixing colors had to do with the medium itself: acrylic paint. So I switched to oils very briefly, but because I was so very poor and couldn't actually afford paint, I stuck to black and white. Which wasn't as educational in the way I wanted. But anyway. In more recent years, I've been playing with dyes and silk, wool, and cotton. And I've discovered that mixing dyes is a whole different ball of wax.
/ramble

[clevermanka]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I loved the program for most of it (and am very grateful for it teaching me to be comfortable with a blowtorch), but at the end of my second year, one of our two profs took sabbatical and the visiting prof got the enameling studio for her personal use. That left the students who focused on enamels (like me) one fucking kiln to work with for the year. She also wanted us to do all our final projects in silver--no base metals allowed. And she wanted mock-ups or models of everything. Which was impossible for those of us who worked a lot with found objects. I left the entire university in a fit of pique. =/

[islenskr]

OMG. Okay, I get that. Totally. That's a really awful situation for any student! I hope the visiting prof was Properly Told Off by the department chair at the end of the semester.

[clevermanka]

Unlikely, since the program agreed to her exclusive use of the studio. But I was gone by then, so...I didn't go back to finish my degree (in religious studies--no way I was going back to fine arts) for three years. It all worked out fine bc I made bank in IT and exemplified #BestLife during that period, but it did a nice job of jading me toward higher education.

[islenskr]

D'oh. Yes. That makes sense.
Shitty politics going on there. Definitely not serving the student at all. Grrr. I'm sorry you had to put up with that, even only for a short time.

:(

[clevermanka]

Thanks, bb. Life sure is a weird, fucked-up road often in need of better paving. And signage.