Hopefully an Art blog

"Measurements" Thinking about Eddie having to get the measurements for Frank's prince costumes. This update made me so incredibly happy. The gays are canon!!! AAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!

More art from the update to come! :D (Alt rendering below)

Channing has been on the docket to play Gambit since 2005, but each and every time, the character was cut from the script, he had a prior contract, or the director kept getting replaced until the project was scrapped 4 years later with the Fox/Disney merger.

He has family in Louisiana and grew up in the bayous (albeit in rural Alabama). This character has meant something to him since CHILDHOOD when it comes to representation in media.

Gambit doesn’t speak SAE (Standard American English). He’s a street urchin from Acadia/New Orleans. He grew up speaking Cajun (a mix of Southern American, Canadian French, and España Spanish grammar applied to a mostly English vocabulary) and Louisiana French (an offshoot of Canadian French from Acadians).

Every person I’ve seen online who ACTUALLY GREW UP around people who speak Cajun, Creole, and/or Louisiana French has said that his accent is SPOT ON, maybe even a little too clear.

[Image ID: The Destiel confession meme edited so that Dean answers 'There's a petition to ban conversion therapy in the EU' to Cas' 'I love you'. /End ID]

If you are a citizen in the EU please sign this petition:

"Eddie was happy..."

Yeah... not so sure about that one.

So... That update huh?

I’ve had time to process Aziraphale’s choice at the end of Season 2. And I think only blaming the religious trauma misses something important in Aziraphale’s character. I think what happened was also Aziraphale’s own conscious choice––as a growth from his trauma, in fact. Hear me out.

Since November 2022 I’ve been haunted by something Michael Sheen said at the MCM London Comic Con. At the Q&A, someone asked him about which fantasy creature he enjoyed playing most and Michael (bless him, truly) veered on a tangent about angels and goodness and how, specifically,

We as a society tend to sort of undervalue goodness. It’s sort of seen as sort of somehow weak and a bit nimby and “oh it’s nice.” And I think to be good takes enormous reserves of courage and stamina. I mean, you have to look the dark in the face to be truly good and to be truly of the light…. The idea that goodness is somehow lesser and less interesting and not as kind of muscular and as passionate and as fierce as evil somehow and darkness, I think is nonsense. The idea of being able to portray an angel, a being of love. I love seeing the things people have put online about angels being ferocious creatures, and I love that. I think that’s a really good representation of what goodness can be, what it should be, I suppose.

I was looking forward to BAMF!Aziraphale all season long, and I think that’s what we got in the end. Remember Neil said that the Job minisode was important for Aziraphale’s story. Remember how Aziraphale sat on that rock and reconciled to himself that he MUST go to Hell, because he lied and thwarted the will of God. He believed that––truly, honestly, with the faith of a child, but the bravery of a soldier.

Aziraphale, a being of love with more goodness than all of Heaven combined, believed he needed to walk through the Gates of Hell because it was the Right Thing to do. (Like Job, he didn’t understand his sin but believed he needed to sacrifice his happiness to do the Right Thing.)

That’s why we saw Aziraphale as a soldier this season: the bookshop battle, the halo. But yes, the ending as well.

Because Aziraphale never wanted to go to Heaven, and he never wanted to go there without Crowley.

But it was Crowley who taught him that he could, even SHOULD, act when his moral heart told him something was wrong. While Crowley was willing to run away and let the world burn, it was Aziraphale (in that bandstand at the end of the world) who stood his ground and said No. We can make a difference. We can save everyone.

And Aziraphale knew he could not give up the ace up his sleeve (his position as an angel) to talk to God and make them see the truth in his heart.

I was messed up by Ineffable Bureaucracy (Boxfly) getting their happy ending when our Ineffable Husbands didn’t, but I see now that them running away served to prove something to Aziraphale. (And I am fully convinced that Gabriel and Beelzebub saw the example of the Ineffables at the Not-pocalypse and took inspiration from them for choosing to ditch their respective sides)

But my point is that Aziraphale saw them, and in some ways, they looked like him and Crowley. And he saw how Gabriel, the biggest bully in Heaven, was also like him in a way (a being capable of love) and also just a child when he wasn’t influenced by the poison of Heaven. Muriel, too, wasn’t a bad person. The Metatron also seemed to have grown more flexible with his morality (from Aziraphale's perspective). Like Earth, Heaven was shades of (light?) gray.

Aziraphale is too good an angel not to believe in hope. Or forgiveness (something he’s very good at it).

Aziraphale has been scarred by Heaven all his life. But with the cracks in Heaven’s armor (cracks he and Crowley helped create), Aziraphale is seeing something else. A chance to change them. They did terrible things to him, but he is better than them, and because of Crowley, he feels ready to face them.

(Will it work? Can Heaven change, institutionally? Probably not, but I can't blame Aziraphale for trying.)

At the cafe, the Metatron said something big was coming in the Great Plan. Aziraphale knows how trapped he had felt when he didn’t have God’s ear the first time something huge happened in the Big Plan. He can’t take a chance again to risk the world by not having a foot in the door of Heaven. That’s why we saw individual human deaths (or the threat of death) so much more this season: Elspeth, Wee Morag, Job’s children, the 1940s magician. Aziraphale almost killed a child when he couldn’t get through to God, and he’s not going through that again.

“We could make a difference.” We could save everyone.

Remember what Michael Sheen said about courage and doing good––and having to “look the dark in the face to be truly good.” That’s what happened when Aziraphale was willing to go to Hell for his actions. That’s what happened when he decided he had to go to Heaven, where he had been abused and belittled and made to feel small. He decided to willingly go into the Lion’s Den, to face his abusers and his anxiety, to make them better so that they would not try to destroy the world again.

Him, just one angel. He needed Crowley to be there with him, to help him be brave, to ask the questions that Heaven needed to hear, to tell them God was wrong. Crowley is the inspiration that drives Aziraphale’s change, Crowley is the engine that fuels Aziraphale’s courage.

But then Crowley tells him that going to Heaven is stupid. That they don’t need Heaven. And he’s right. Aziraphale knows he’s right.

Aziraphale doesn’t need Heaven; Heaven needs him. They just don’t know how much they need him, or how much humanity needs him there, too. (If everyone who ran for office was corrupt, how can the system change?)

Terry Pratchett (in the Discworld book, Small Gods) is scathing of God, organized religion, and the corrupt people religion empowers, but he is sympathetic to the individual who has real, pure faith and a good heart. In fact, the everyman protagonist of Small Gods is a better person than the god he serves, and in the end, he ends up changing the church to be better, more open-minded, and more humanist than god could ever do alone.

Aziraphale is willing to go to the darkest places to do the Right Thing, and Heaven is no exception. When Crowley says that Heaven is toxic, that’s exactly why Aziraphale knows he needs to go there. “You’re exactly is different from my exactly.”

____

In the aftermath of Trump's election in the US, Brexit happened in 2018. Michael Sheen felt compelled to figure out what was going on in his country after this shock. But he was living in Los Angeles with Sarah Silverman at the time, and she also wanted to become more politically active in the US.

Sheen: “I felt a responsibility to do something, but it [meant] coming back [to Britain] – which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.” In the end, they split up and Michael moved back to the UK.

Sometimes doing the Right Thing means sacrificing your own happiness. Sometimes it means going to Hell. Sometimes it means going to Heaven. Sometimes it means losing a relationship.

And that’s why what happened in the end was so difficult for Aziraphale. Because he loves Crowley desperately. He wants to be together. He wanted that kiss for thousands of years. He knows that taking command of Heaven means they would never again have to bow to the demands of a God they couldn’t understand, or run from a Hell who still came after them. They could change the rules of the game.

And he’s still going to do that. But it hurts him that he has to do that alone.

OKAY SO. secret good 2-hour spn finale that lives in my head. first hour is a tmwwbk-style episode that takes cas throughout his memories/regrets (a la @plantdadcas’s headcanon here) and culminates with a replay of the confession scene only this time dean says “i love you” back, and that’s when we (and cas!) realize this dean isn’t a memory, it’s the real dean and he’s here to break cas out of the empty. end of act one.

act two starts three months earlier; dean’s drinking and grieving, trying desperately to find a way to bring cas back to no avail. prayers to jack go unanswered and sam and eileen hover around him, trying to get him to eat or sleep or help with the research, but dean pushes them away because he thinks that this is his burden to bear, cas died for him so he’s the one who has to bring him back. then a massive, explosive fight between sam and dean in the bunker kitchen, dean breaking down and admitting that even though chuck’s been defeated and they won, he still lost because cas is gone for good and he can’t bring him back and he doesn’t know what to do with himself when cas isn’t there, he’s never known what to do with himself when cas leaves. cue classic emotional heart-to-heart moment where sam tells dean that he deserves a happy ending too, and that he needs to let sam help him for a change.

enter jack, who’s spent the last three months being god and he’s fucking tired of it skdhkjdj he just wants to be a kid again, wants to come home. sam and dean immediately hug him and remind him that he’s family and he’s always welcome, then dean asks if he can bring cas back. jack apologizes, says that another reason he was gone for so long was because he was trying to find a way into the empty but only something older than time itself can open a portal. eileen pops in, suggests amara could help (“while you guys were busy having a chick-flick moment, i actually did the research. we might be able to pull amara from jack. rowena’s on her way.”)(would also love it if there was implied saileenxrowena here.) rowena arrives with the grimoire, which contains the spell that originally split chuck and amara into two entities. before they can perform the spell, however, there’s a knock on the door (cue dean joke about how they’re not running a goddamn bed and breakfast). it’s charlie, stevie, bobby, max, jody, donna, and the wayward sisters! patience had a vision and told everyone to meet at the bunker because dean needs their help (cut to dean being visibly touched). (short scene between claire and jack, the latter looking apprehensive as she approaches. claire tells jack that kaia told her jack was cool, even if he was a freak, and after this is all over they should go get burgers or something and she’ll teach him how to do all the cool stuff cas and dean says he’s too young to do.) as max, sam, and rowena prepare the spell, jack lies on the map room table while dean, eileen, and claire holds his hands. rowena does the spell, jack screams, and amara appears. (cue short scene where jack and amara properly meet for the first time, amara offers to take over the responsibility of god and jack agrees, but only after they save cas.) amara can open a portal, but warns them that finding cas won’t be easy; the empty runs on angel grace but it cannot absorb pure angel grace - that’s why the empty takes the vessel as well, to serve as a conduit. the portal opens and amara says they have five hours. tfw 3.0 enters the empty. end of act two.

act three opens in the empty, with everyone back to back watching for signs of danger. it’s completely still until jack turns around and empty!meg is there, grabbing him by the throat and asking why they can’t just leave it alone to sleep. dean demands that it let cas go; empty!meg tells him if he wants him, they have to go through it first. (sam:”oh yeah? the way i see it, you’re the one who’s outnumbered here.”) empty!meg laughs and disappears; the room/floor start to bubble and shift as black goo monsters surround them (charlie:”now was not the time for quippy one-liners, dude!”) cue massive fight scene. mid-fight, sam grabs dean and tells him to go find cas. dean hesitates until claire and jack hand him cas’s angel blade. (claire: “i found it in your bedroom. go find our dad.” jack: “bring him back, dean.”) dean runs off, slashing past monsters and running blindly until the angel blade starts to glow in his hand and points dean to a certain spot in the darkness. dean takes a deep breath then thrusts the blade into the goo, ripping a hole into the fabric of the empty and jumping inside. he finds himself standing in a field beside a barn in illinois; a tall figure in a trench coat is making his way to the barn. dean calls out to him, but the figure doesn’t hear him. instead, his shouts draw the attention of the empty’s monsters, and he flees until he finds himself outside a strip club, watching two figures with their arms around each other walking away towards a black car. again, dean tries to call out but he just gets attacked again. (start of short montage that parallels the scenes/memories that cas relived in act one).

back to tfw 3.0. sam and co. are still fighting the monsters. sam goes to stab another goo figure until he hears it say “haven’t we gotten past this already, moose?” sam pauses, reaches into the goo and pulls out crowley (crowley: “took you long enough.”) rowena cries out and grabs him into a hug. (crowley, disgruntled: “hello, mother.”). jack, seeing what sam did, rushes over to claire and the monster she’s fighting and reaches into the black goo, pulls out balthazar. (balthazar: “and who might you be?” jack: “i’m jack. this is claire. castiel is our father.” balthazar: “your father? well. cassie sure has some explaining to do.”) all around them, angels and demons alike appear out of the goo: anna, gabriel, michael/adam, ruby. empty!meg appears, furious. monologues about how they’ll never leave the empty and that they’ll be stuck there forever, until something stabs it in the back. empty!meg falls to reveal real meg (meg:”shut up.”). crowley asks if they can leave now, but sam says not without dean and cas. he checks his watch; 30 minutes.

back to dean. he’s made it to the bunker in time to hear cas’s confession. close up on cas’s face as he says “i love you”, the exact same shot from 15x18. the camera stays on his face as we hear somone say “i love you too.” cas looks confused; camera zooms out and pans to where memory!dean used to be standing, only now it’s the real dean. here’s the confession we’ve been waiting 12 years to hear: lots of call backs to things they’ve said, lots of apologies, lots of man tears. cas smiles and cries and they (finally, FINALLY) kiss. but cas pulls away and tells dean he has to leave, cas can’t escape the empty, he’s too in too deep. dean remembers what amara says about the empty running on angel grace - he offers cas the blade. cas looks at it, understands. he wraps his hand around dean’s and together they cut his grace out. the thin blue light escapes into the air, burning brighter and brighter and brighter until it explodes and the ‘room” shatters around them. now back in the black abyss of the empty, dean grabs cas’s hand and they run.

back to sam. the ground beneath them starts to shake; it’s time to go. “leaving without me?” everyone turns around; it’s billie. sam and eileen stand in front of jack, protecting him. billie raises a hand in surrender, tells them that even with chuck gone, they’ll need a reaper on their side. sam asks how they can trust her after she tried to kill jack. billie argues that she was trying to spare jack from a life of pain; she looks at him. “being god’s no fun, right kid?” jack nods, but tells her that amara’s gonna be god now. billie agrees (“as long as it’s not chuck, that’s fine by me.”) the ground is shaking even harder now (gabriel: “enough with the hallmark movie, let’s get this show on the road!”) they all start sprinting towards the portal. jack turns back, determined to wait for cas and dean but sam and claire grab him and pull him through. amara stands on the other side, arms outstretched as she tries to hold it open longer. everyone turns around and watches, waiting. 5 seconds…4 seconds… 3… 2… at the last second, dean and cas burst through the portal. it slams shut behind them. jack breaks free from sam’s grip: “dad!” he launches himself into cas’s arms, claire following suit. sam hugs dean, everyone around them breathes a sigh of relief. cas meets dean’s eyes and smiles. fade to black.

open back to the bunker, post rescue. everyone is safe and happy, milling around the map room eating pizza and relaxing. cas, amara, billie and jack are talking in a huddle, jack curled protectively under his father’s arm. charlie and eileen are trading hunting stories while max and the wayward sisters listen in awe. gabriel, balthazar, anna, and michael/adam catch up in the corner, with bobby, donna ,and jody filling them in on what’s happened since their collective deaths. rowena is fussing with crowley while meg looks on and laughs. dean and sam sit away from the group on one of the library tables, drinking a beer and watching their family. cue sappy scene about how they never thought they’d make it this far, how proud they are of each other, etc, ending with a toast to honor those they lost along the way (“to mom, to kevin, to bela, to emma, to rufus, etc…”). eventually eileen and cas come and sit with them, holding their respective partner’s hand/shoulder. (eileen:” so the winchesters saved the world. again.” cas: “hopefully this one will stick.”). they smile at each other, holding each other close. a beat. sam: “so now what?” suddenly, a phone rings. everyone stops talking as bobby answers. a brief conversation, and then: “maggie’s calling for back up a few towns over. sounds like a woman in white. any volunteers?” sam and eileen look at cas, cas looks at dean, dean looks at claire. “hey kid.” reaches into his pocket, tosses her the keys to the impala. as claire catches it, “carry on my wayward son” starts to play. she grins, starts bounding for the door. cut to jack, who looks at cas with a hopeful smile. cas sighs, and nods. jack follows her out. dean smiles, pulls cas in. sam and eileen laugh. the brothers clink their beers together. smash cut to a fun montage of the past fifteen seasons, interspersed with shots of sam and dean and their loved ones back at the bunker. song ends with claire and jack in the impala, riding off into the sunset.

The fact that the older hunters finally got their peace, and that the next generation of hunters takes over is the perfect way to make an open ending to the series. It gives way more closure than having them all die horribly, and it makes sense for all of the characters!

No one just gives up and lives in paradise! No one gets left behind! Jack gets to have a life and a family, and so does Dean and Cas.

Bringing back old classic characters to help with the rescue also gets you all exited at the end and keeps you hooked. Rowena, Jodie, Donna and the girls, Amara.

Also, the fact that Crowley and Gabriel got brought back just honestly makes me so damn happy.

And of cause. The two dumbasses finally gets to be together. In love and happy.

A preview bc I’m very proud of my attempt at FX

If ur wondering what this board is! Well 😌😌;;

Absolute beginner adult ballet series (fabulous beginning teacher)

40 piano lessons for beginners (some of the best explanations for piano I’ve ever seen)

Excellent basic crochet video series

Basic knitting (probably the best how to knit video out there)

Pre-Free Figure Skate Levels A-D guides and practice activities (each video builds up with exercises to the actual moves!)

How to draw character faces video (very funny, surprisingly instructive?)

Another drawing character faces video

Literally my favorite art pose hack

Tutorial of how to make a whole ass Stardew Valley esque farming game in Gamemaker Studios 2??

Introduction to flying small aircrafts

French/Dutch/Fishtail braiding

Playing the guitar for beginners (well paced and excellent instructor)

Playing the violin for beginners (really good practical tips mixed in)

Color theory in digital art (not of the children’s hospital variety)

Retake classes you hated but now there’s zero stakes:

Calculus 1 (full semester class)

Learn basic statistics (free textbook)

Introduction to college physics (free textbook)

Introduction to accounting (free textbook)

Learn a language:

Ancient Greek

Latin

Spanish

German

Japanese (grammar guide) (for dummies)

French

New L’Manberg

I totally did not used a school assignment as a way to draw fanart. So I give you New L’Manberg as an RPG town !

This took me 30/40h so please can I have some love ( ˊ̱˂˃ˋ̱ )

Fun facts of this town :

Philza is in charge of the mail, using an army of little crows to transport letters

Ranboo and George share a flower shop, Ranboo using the top floor for nice flowers and George the bottom one for magical mushrooms

There are 6 characters present : Ranboo, Niki, Cpt Puffy, Fundy, Technoblade and Dream (+Enderchest) Can you find them all ?

There are A LOT of references. Have fun ! (Actually here a post with ALL of the references I could think of !)