not a soul

Hudson Williams, #1 Shane Understander

I think Shane was a character who, soon as I read him, made all the sense to me. I felt immediately a kinship and an ownership over Shane. I was like, “I need to be the only person to tell this story. I get it. I want to be the person to be Shane and I want to spend time with him.” [x]

(sources below)

they met at some sort of fundraiser or event and she strikes up a conversation with him, and at the end of the night she oh so subtly asks if he wants to grab dinner (food at tthe event sucked) to finish their conversation about the technical differences between mens and womens professional hockey, an offer shane takes very literally because he's very invested now and actually enjoying this conversation, and at the time has very firmly drawn the line in his head that there is absolutely nothing possibly romantic about hockey.

when her teammates ask her how the night went the victorie player is like "he was really nice, listened intently to everything i had to say, laughed at my jokes, paid for dinner, didn't tell me about how much more difficult mens hockey is. he treated me like the best conversation partner he's had in a while. he's gay. he just doesn't know it yet."

it becomes a thing that anytime the montreal mens and womens teams are at an event together, all the women love talking to shane, and his teammates (who don't know about the not-date because he's never mentioned it) tease him about how he's such a ladies man and he should ask one of them out, they'd definitely say yes. meanwhile the victories all like him because he's actively not hitting on them or talking over them and he really just wants to talk about hockey.

like they're so used to every conversation with an nhl player ending his him disrespecting the pwhl in some way and acting like they should be impressed he's a professional athlete (like they aren't professional athletes too!!) meanwhile shane starts conversations with "so i watched the documentary you recommended on the first womens olympic hockey team and-"

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

Bird number 9: Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on

this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏

BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos

the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise

ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!

aaaand another one bites the duck,

we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos

power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,

the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis

and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day 😭😭) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.

Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp

Bird number 14 out of 14,

The Great blue heron, Ardea herodius

thank you to everyone who reached out or got excited about this project, it genuinely gave me the fuel i needed to keep going. In total, the 480+ total hrs it took me to cover this wall pales in comparison to how long its expected to spend on there, hopefully imparting a sense of beauty and love for the natural world to the next generation and here's hoping i'm only getting started with these.

And then all the other Sesame Street character accounts joined in:

And now I’m thinking maybe we’re gonna be okay… 💗

"So, boss... I may have messed up."

"What did you do, Ray?"

"Well, I made a post for Elmo saying 'Hi, how's everybody doing?'"

"I mean, that's kind of what we pay you for."

"Yeah, but.... <sigh> it turns out pretty much everyone is hanging on by a thread, badly enough that they needed to tell Elmo."

"Oh."

"God help me, boss, I think Elmo needs to be there for them."

“Yeah, Shane Hollander’s boyfriend scored that nasty goal in the third, tying up the game, really brought the energy back in—”

“There’s a lot of good chemistry on the ice — playing on the first line with Hollander’s boyfriend and Barrett is some of the best hockey I’ve ever played.”

“Yeah, the team is really pulling together for playoffs. When you’ve got an all-star like Shane Hollander’s fiancé as captain, he really makes you believe in yourselves. What? Oh, yeah, apparently he’s been holding that out on us since January. They still call each other boyfriends, though — I think cap has a grudge against the French language.”

They should have been given time to sit on Shane's couch while Rose plays Twenty Questions trying to get to the bottom of who Shane is fucking.

Shane should have told Rose about the Tampa hotel room and Rose should have hit him with a pillow and said, "NO. The fuck boy does NOT have a heart of gold, Shane Hollander."

Shane should have had the opportunity to text Rose, "I'm making a bad choice," and then two hours later, "Fuck I am DONE I am NEVER doing this again" because Ilya got up to shower too quickly and Shane hurt his own feelings about it.

There should be a series of texts in Rose and Shane's history that just say, "Relapsed," all of them sent at three in the morning accompanied by a selfie of Shane in Ilya's fuckass navy blue sheets. Rose's habitual response is Not a relapse if you never stopped 😐

They should have met up after Shane was up all night getting just absolutely railed into the mattress and Rose should have reached across the table to lift up Shane's hangover sunglasses and said, "That dick better be unbelievable," and Shane should have miserably said, "It is."

From there it's not actually difficult to get the other soldiers onboard with covering up the fact that poor Ping took one for the team and got afflicted by the vagina curse, especially since it would have been all of them if they hadn't gotten the warning ahead of time. So they agree to help him cover it up, because obviously the army's not going to understand.

Mulan: Uh, what boobs? Huh? Where did these come from?

Mushu: *facepalms and thinks quickly* (speaks from the shadows) I AM THE SPIRIT OF THE LAKE! BEWARE MY CURSED WATERS FOR THEY WILL TURN MEN INTO WOMEN!