I commissioned the amazing @sarcasticbirb for cover art for my fic, and look how amazing it turned out. The best Araba x Kumoko an author could ask for!
If you’re interested in the fic, it’s over on AO3, called A Dragon’s Choice by Loeka.
General gushing about the pic below the keep reading.
Seriously, this is SO GOOD. Look how gorgeous both of them are! And yeah, I know Araba isn’t completely true to his canon design, but the feel is right. I wanted him to be sleek and dangerous, and damn, he definitely is. Also, his coloring is based on his Light Novel pics instead of the anime. Way more gorgeous this way.
I love how adoringly he’s gazing at Kumoko. And I love how flustered Kumoko is in return. She’s embarrassed but also pleased. Which fits perfectly, given how tsundere she is towards Araba in the fic.
But damn, the coloring, the play of light, the scales, the sheer freaking DETAIL on Araba. Kumoko is perfect as well, but given Araba’s size, it makes sense for the most detail to go to him. And damn, did birb deliver. But also, Kumoko isn’t drowned out by Araba! Now that’s an impressive achievement. It helps that Araba isn’t quite as big as he should be, in “real life” he’d be able to swallow Kumoko with a single bite. But if he was true to size, Kumoko genuinely would have been lost in the picture. Can’t have that, now can we?
So instead, we get this GORGEOUS pic of the two of them, with Araba filling up like 90% of the frame, yet Kumoko still being center framed as well. I love it, exactly what I wanted. Birb is an amazing artist.
And again, the detail. Holy shit, the detail. Seriously, zoom in on this pic and marvel at how fine every single part of this is. My personal favorite parts are Araba’s ears and the “fluff” on his lower jaw. It’s not real fur, or well, I headcanon it isn’t at least. Those are all scales too. But they LOOK like fur and it’s amazing.
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This phrase has already entered my vocabulary re: media criticism where like. The viewer has a concrete view of what they expect a story to be based on the tropes and cliches they're used to seeing together, and when that doesn't happen, they judge it as a failed depiction of what they assumed it was going to be instead of judging it as what it actually is.
"This show is problematic because the hero didn't kill the villain at the end": When does he steal the bread?
"These two characters who were close friends throughout the series don't kiss at the end! What the fuck?": When does he steal the bread?
"This feels like it's missing a conclusion! Like, the protagonist does bad stuff and because of a critical decision he makes as a result of his major character flaws, meets tragedy in the end! Where's the part where he learns better and brings is love back from the dead and becomes a good guy and gets a happy ending?": When does he steal the fucking bread??
Years ago back when I worked in cubicle land, we were hiring junior software developers. They didn’t have to have a ton of experience, just a willingness to learn, and some demonstration of their software skills. Like: show me a program you wrote (any language) or a web site you designed. Anything.
And there was this one guy I talked with who seemed super sharp, but had virtually zero experience writing software. When it came time to do the show-n-tell part of the interview he whips out his laptop, brings up a website, and spins it around to show me what he made.
A website of tiny ceramic frogs.
Not for sale. Just… all these ceramic frogs, organized into categories. Frogs on bicycles, frogs with hats, frogs sitting on lily pads. It was a virtual museum of ceramic frogs in web form.
I scrolled through his online collection of frogs, slightly baffled.
“This is your website?” I asked finally.
“Yep!”
“You coded this yourself?” I popped into view-source mode and poked around some incredibly well-formatted, well-commented html. I nodded slowly. This guy was meticulous.
“Yep!”
“So… where’d all the frogs come from?”
“I made those too,” he says, beaming.
And while I’m processing this he rummages in his bag and pulls out a little ceramic frog working at a computer terminal. He places it on the table before us, next to the laptop.
“And THIS one,” he says, “I made for you! As a thank you for the interview.”
It was adorable. I hired him on the spot. I mean, why not? Worst case he’d wash out in 90 days and we’d hire somebody else. He turned out to be one of the best developers on our team.
And yes, his cubicle was loaded with ceramic frogs.
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okay you know those posts that are like "this male character archetype would be better as a woman"? you know what we need more of? female loudmouth braggart hero antagonists. women who are cocky and comedically vainglorious and beloved by the public and also objectively suck so fucking bad. I'm not kidding. I don't care how sexist the audience would be about that. I want to see a woman who should be played by whoever the female equivalent of Nathan Fillion is.
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had a fucked up dream i had a book that turned out could never be read again the same as the first time because each reread the characters became incrementally more aware that the events of the book had happened before and they were “reliving” it and i reread enough times that they became self aware, figured out they were in a book, acknowledged me as the reader, and some lost their minds or had existential crises, became violent to other characters or themselves, some begged me to never stop reading or they ceased to exist and others begged me to end it all stop reading and keeping them trapped in the endless loop of torment, and the literal only way to get the book back to its first run was to hand it off to someone else to read for the first time and for some reason i physically couldn’t tell anyone about it so i’d have to just hope whoever i gave it to would only read it once and i could never open the book again to check if they were okay and back to normal because i was terrified of fucking them all up again :(
1- @Bluewmist on Twitter / 2- Roly Poly is Taken on Twitter / 3- About Time (2012) by Richard Curtis, image from Mita Park on Unsplash / 4- Sherri Turner on Twitter / 5- Cold Solace by Anna Belle Kaufman / 6- The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green