Swirling Inspirations

so i wanted to throw in some suggestions that, whenever I’m trying to find a character reference or otherwise draw very interesting-looking yet regular-looking people, which i usually have to do for bit characters in @ikroah​ or something, I tend to look for references in the following places. these are far from the only reliable way to get inspiration, this is just a non-exhaustive list of places i’ve looked before for visual inspiration when needing to create a character, whether starring characters or background ones:

pre-2000s television (The Sopranos and Twin Peaks especially having incredible character design)

extras in comedy sketch shows

esports players

real photos (not staged stock photos) of line cooks

70s baseball players

athletes from more obscure olympic sports like the javelin toss or greco-roman wrestling, especially if you’re looking for a specific body type

ska, jazz, and blues musicians

firefighters

improv troupes

for teenagers, searching “high school english class project” on youtube and sorting by Upload Date

state senators, small-town mayors, and generally obscure local government positions like comptroller or treasurer (yes i know politicians can be bad sometimes but smaller elections especially don’t really depend on looks)

people who walk by your window (if you live in a city like I do)

the black hole's center of gravity

(and a more canonical monochrome version below!)

Happy Black Fae Day!

I did this as part of a collaboration post with many other wonderful black creatives over on IG. My theme was Warrior Fairy.

Creative Direction and editing by me

thing is I think perpetrator trauma could be a really good thing to explore with Bucky! because even though he wasn't in control, he still is going to be affected by what he did as the Winter Soldier. The fact that he had no control makes it even more traumatizing that he killed those people.

I think a version of the story where Bucky tries to "take responsibility" could be good because I think it would make a lot of sense for him to try to cope that way. Taking all the fault/blame upon himself because he can't really confront the devastating implications of the fact that he was powerless.

He might try to "redeem" himself for the wrong he did thinking this would bring healing, because it softens the trauma to act like he did have a choice somehow.

Employers liked offering this structure because then they didn't have to like, try to guess how long the invasion of spain will take and then carry 800 coins per soldier around the battlefield where it could be captured. It also gives them the chance to budget around the assumption that they take an enemy city and *find* vast sums of treasure even if they don't have the full value at the beginning of the war.

The main flaw of this system is that it's very easy to end up in a scenario where if you have, say, 50,000 guys that have been fighting for 800 days, you now owe 40 million silver to your army, and if the budget has not worked out to a 40 million surplus, you literally can't afford to end the war, but you can probably afford to pay them for a couple more weeks. So then you have to start thinking creatively.

he had so many ideas that he went 'whatever!' in his inability to pick, and Jiang Fengmian had 'suibian' engraved on the blade of the Very Important and Powerful Spiritual Sword that he was presenting to his favorite, most-talented disciple. who by receiving it completed his social transition from 'doomed vagabond orphan' to 'member of the cultivating gentry class in his own right, albeit by the skin of his teeth.'

that sword name is a dad joke.

every time anyone mentions the name of that sword, whether they know it or not they are invoking the ghost of jiang cheng's father. (which, remember that in any scene involving jiang cheng where the name is used for some bonus oof moments.)

what the name 'Suibian' teaches us about Wei Wuxian is actually something way more interesting and illuminatin imo than his having chosen that would be.

this holds broadly true of computer and tabletop games, but the primary characteristic of something dynamic is not fairness, which is almost more of a mechanical law (as in, one with physicality about it) rather than a strictly philosophical one. a wild system, even a simulational one, will at times display unfair behaviour towards anything smaller than it

it is not fair to the player to have their game derailed by something they could not plan for, but for the event system to actually touch the calendar system rather than running parallel to it, the game needs to include this risk of the player getting caught between the moving parts. unexpectedly losing time is the inevitable unfairness of a procedural system, and beyond that, it's the kind that could only be safeguarded against by diminishing the scope of the systems through a manual safeguard

As mxtx's first novel, there are a lot of things that set svsss apart from her later two book, but one thing I've noticed as I've more recently read through mdzs and tgcf is how differently she plays with horror in svsss. Don't get me wrong, svsss still has gory instances, terrifying monsters, and horrifying scenes that could keep you up at night if they weren't so often broken up by humor, but whereas the other two novels delve more deeply into the physicality and presence of the dead as horror and comfort, svsss actually dives into the theater of the mind and, particularly, the horror of being unable to tell reality.

Thrillers are known for their villain-driven, suspenseful narratives, and svsss does not disappoint. After the Immortal Alliance Conference arc, a lot of the horror is purely Luo Binghe: what are his motivations, what will he do to Shen Qingqiu, what does he want? And how does Shen Qingqiu as our main character understand all of these things. But the biggest issue is that Shen Qingqiu is forced to make sense of all of these in a reality that is constantly being shifted and tampered with by outside sources. He needs to understand what Luo Binghe wants in order to make amends and possibly survive his encounters with the og protagonist, but not only is he sabotaged by his knowledge of the og novel and the interference of the system, he is hampered by Xin Mo eating away at Luo Binghe's emotional regulation and reasoning. Thus you get a scene where the system says that Luo Binghe isn't really that angry with Shen Qingqiu even as we (and him!) watch Luo Binghe torture him with our own eyes. We get multiple dream realm scenes where Luo Binghe seems to be vulnerable with Shen Qingqiu, just for them to end in ominous smiles that leave us to question what was real and what was a manipulation tactic. We get half a volume where it seems like Luo Binghe and Shen Qingqiu are finally on the same page, just for the climax to reveal that Luo Binghe had actually lost his grip over himself way earlier without anyone noticing, since he had puppeteered another villain to mask his own deterioration. Luo Binghe's deep scheming, alone, enhanced by Xin Mo's corruption is enough to leave readers in suspense.

But then there's the system. The system has control over the characters' lived reality in ways that would be even more terrifying if it also did not have clear rules by which it was governed. But one very under-discussed aspect of the system is how much is operates within the mind and, specifically, dreams. Just like how Luo Binghe uses dreams to curate a vulnerability to soften post-death Shen Qingqiu up to him, the system uses it similarly but for the opposite purpose: to remind Shen Qingqiu of the stakes of failure by inundating him with scenes of another reality. Shen Qingqiu constantly dreams in vivid detail of torture under the og Luo Binghe's hand, suffused with the senses of pain, smell, sound, and sight, senses he would literally have had no reference for pre-transmigration. He relives Liu Qingge and Yue Qingyuan's deaths in graphic detail, despite his og character not being present for the latter's death and Shen Qingqiu, himself, already having saved the former in a scene that didn't match the dream variant. The system even explicitly sends him into the dreams of the og Luo Binghe where his limbs are ripped off as punishment, a dream not even Meng Mo, the in-novel master of dreams only behind Luo Binghe, can peer into or disperse. And then, beneath all of these terrors are the memories he was meant to inherit from the Shen Qingqiu whose body he actually inherited, memories that only come about in dreams and, unlike the nightmares, he only exists in as an observer rather than a participant.

Who Shen Qingqiu is, what he's experienced, how he behaves, his very mind, are all compromised by the system to be a playground to manipulate him into certain actions, and we as the readers are left on tenterhooks as to whether or not he'll rise above the adversaries literally ripping reality apart or if he'll lose his mind along with everyone else. So whereas the horrors of tgcf and mdzs are mostly external, svsss's are almost wholly internal: are your actions your own? Are your thoughts your own? Is your reality your own? Or are you someone's doll being forced to play as someone you never wanted to be? Would you even be able to tell the difference?