tentacledicks

If you're reading this and some of it sounds eerily familiar, it's probably because you saw this back when I was first hashing out the worldbuilding for this; some of it's going to be cribbed directly from those notes, while the rest is a firming and cleaning up of it.

With that in mind:

One of the primary conceits in any a/b/o setting is generally a) that there is some overarching reason for this triadic split and b) that this has societal impacts that may or may not be compounded by sexism and homophobia-lite. The reason can be [trainwreck biology noises] or [literally magic for no reason] and for me, personally, 'it's magic so shut up about it' meshes far better than trying to work out the biological mechanisms of buttbabies. Especially when those buttbabies are not actually justifiable from an evolutionary standpoint, and a Western model of gender absolutely isn't justifiable with several thousands of years of weight behind a triadic notion of reproduction and sexual behavior.

(And you may have noticed, I really do not like the 'secondary gender' wording of most a/b/o. We'll get into that later.)

So, all that in mind, why do the rank dynamics of alpha-beta-omega exist in SotL? It's magic, fuck you is why.

But it's also a little more complicated than that.
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Thinking specifically about digital painting because I haven't dicked around with traditional materials in... over a year I want to say? I have some india inks I need to break into again, though I want to pick up some masking fluid before I really go after that again, it's a fucking lifesaver, but all my acryllics are dead. So that's not my ballpark anymore I guess.

But digitally... I dunno, there's a couple methods that people seem to really find workable that just don't click with me? I know art's always about learning and growing and whatever, but it's annoying as hell to see a method that seems to work perfectly for everyone else but you, and you can't figure out what it is that makes it go off when you try it.

Wait, I'm digging up a video for exactly the method I'm thinking of too.



There are so many high level artists in the spheres I follow, especially and specifically digital painters that work with realism, that recommend the greyscale values > color overlay method of digital painting. And it just! Doesn't! Click with me! At all! I've tried it, oh I've tried it, but I tend to pick colors by eye, which makes for a hell of a thing when the overlay changes the color as you apply it, and inevitably it feels cartoonishly saturated or washed out as fuck. It's aggravating!

As far as I can tell, it's not even necessarily that the method is bad (it isn't, I'm just bad at it lol) it's just... it won't click. Some things have for me; the square brushes for chunkier paint strokes that make things a little more bold? Oh fuck yes I love my square brushes, best suggestion I've ever taken. Using filters? Color adjustment layers? Painting directly over the lines if you're planning to go Paint (tm) at all? I can, like, use all of that.

But damn, if sometimes, shit just doesn't fly for me. Greyscale > color is one. A lot of the recommendations for more fluid and cartoony action are another, I just can't stylize out to cartoony stuff at fucking all, it's hard as hell. Masking properly. Stuff like that. And there's something really goddamn annoying about it not clicking, but I guess that's why you have to try it anyways, right? Just in case? Just to see?

a set of aiden shipping playlists


vol. 1 (aiden/damien)
( tracklist )

vol. 2 (aiden/jordi)
( tracklist )

For the sake of having a good reference post for all my fic (of this series...) I'm going ahead and making this now, even with Undertow unfinished. I'll be updating it as installments are plugged in and chaptered fics are finished, but this should serve as a quick and dirty roundup for all of them.

The whole series is here on AO3. On the chaptered fic, some chapters have additional warnings in the comments beforehand.
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Just for my own comfort, let's have an easy post to break the ice with.

I'm TD! I'm on discord, I'm on tumblr (though the way things are going, not for long lmao), I'm on twitter and archiveofourown, all under the name 'tentacledicks'; I also have a picarto that's 'tentacleleech' but my streaming schedule is pretty inconsistent. The likelihood of me being super active over here is directly proportional to how easy it is for me to adjust to the change in format and content engagement, but also based on how many other Watch_Dogs fans end up this-a-ways, since that's sort of my whole thing these days.

But hey! Now there's a post, I can see exactly what they look like coming from me, and my inevitable stream of bullshit won't look quite so intimidating to me now. Nice.